VideoGames

Title: Okami Developer: Ready at Dawn Publisher: Capcom Date Published: 4/16/2008 Platforms: Wii

Seeing Double

Okami was originally released for the Playstation 2 games console back in 2006. While it released to amazing critical acclaim, the sales numbers were disappointing. The release came towards the end of Playstation 2 (and Xbox and Gamecube) lifetime and a lot of hype was building for the next generation of gaming hardware--the most innovative of which was the Nintendo Revolution / Wii and its unique motion sensing input technology. At the time, Okami was only destined to come to the Playstation 2 with its ancient dual analog input from the days of yore. While this control scheme has served, and still serves, the gaming populace at large, Okami had a very interesting gameplay mechanic of using a brush to draw or manipulate objects on the screen. The poor sales of the Playstation 2 version could be attributed to the awkwardness or simple lack of enthusiasm for using your thumbs to draw lines and circles on a TV while other new and exciting control schemes were in the pipeline.

Fast forward to April 2008 and we have Okami in all its new, shining glory. The developer for the overhaul, Ready at Dawn, went to great lengths to replicate the original experience with a new control scheme. Some graphical differences exist between the two versions but they are the result of the different hardware platforms and not stylistic changes introduced by the developer. The result is an amazing gaming experience that allows a new audience to paint the world back to life one adventure at a time.

White Wolf Publishing

Okami has a very captivating story and art style that must be seen to be appreciated. The artwork and character design all have a definite Japanese origin but the character interactions are entertaining to American audiences all the same. The story and dialogue is relayed via text but each character has a blurred, incomprehensible "voice" that plays while text is being spoken which is a refreshing creative detail. The main character is a white wolf that does not speak, but an aspiring artist follows you around to provide a communications link with the world's inhabitants.

The intro is quite long, but gives you the tale of a great white wolf that goes with a young warrior to fight an evil, eight-headed serpent that terrorizes a small village. The wolf enters the fray to save the young warrior and engage the serpent until the warrior can return to battle and strike a deathblow against the serpent. Unfortunately, the wolf is mortally wounded and dies after the battle. The nearby village erects a statue of the wolf for her heroic efforts and sacrifice. The young warrior's blade, driven through the serpent, is left stuck in the ground where the battle took place.

One hundred years later, the sword is disturbed and the eight-headed serpent, Orochi, is loose upon the world again. As Orochi regains power, a curse spreads across the land sapping the vitality of the earth. A guardian spirit expends the last of its fading power to awaken the statue and bring the white wolf, Amaterasu, back into the world. Together Issun, the companion artist, Amaterasu must defeat Orochi and revive the world. By rediscovering the thirteen godly brush techniques, Amaterasu can write her will across the world once again set the drab world into full bloom.

It's All In The Wrist

Aside from the enchanting art style, the biggest draw for the game is the outstanding and unique gameplay. Even if your Wii experience only extends to Wii Sports, you can appreciate the fun to be had in motion sensing controllers. Some of the motion sensing input is a simple wiggle or snap to dodge, dash or attack during the heat of battle. However, the painting is what makes the game outstanding.

Before Amaterasu was slain one hundred years ago, she held all of the divine brush power. Upon her physical death, the power separated into thirteen distinct techniques and scattered across the world and cosmos, guarded by lesser gods until the return of Amaterasu, the mother of all. As you progress through the game, you awaken the lesser gods who have awaited your return and supply you with their brush technique. The techniques range from powerful slashes to manifesting bombs or lily pads.

Thankfully, the techniques are very easy to remember despite their varied results. A circle drawn around a wilted plant will set it in bloom; a circle drawn on water produces a giant lily pad. A circle drawn in the sky will conjure up the sun itself; a circle dawn on land, with an added diagonal line to resemble a fuse will yield a lit bomb useful for attack or demolition. There are several more techniques to use, but at least half of your techniques has to do with reconstruction or revitalization of the land or nature. You'll spend about as much time reviving the world as you will fighting the various imps and demons that wander across the world.

Although your powers are always used for good, they are not always used in anger. For instance, one village has its pathway through a valley sealed by a giant boulder. The village has-been (or never-was) swordsman decides that he will clear the path by splitting the boulder with sword stroke. When you watch the swordsman attack the boulder, a prompt appears for you to use your Power Slash technique by painting the sword stroke across the rock. To the villagers surprise, the path is miraculously cleared by the swordsman's power! At least they got the "miraculous" part right.

It isn't all about divine intervention either--you'll encounter many animals along the way who are foraging for food. You can carry some food stuffs in your inventory so if you so choose, you may feed the animals seeds, herbs, meat, etc. In return you'll receive Praise which can be used to enhance Amaterasu's abilities. Not that you don't get Praise from helping people, but after you help animals they wander around with hearts over their heads whenever you come nearby. Having a troop of striped baby boars milling around with caricature hearts held high is arguably more rewarding than helping someone find their missing clothes hanging pole.

It's worth a moment to touch on some of the complaints about the controls. Some people complain that the game has little mercy about translating your scribbles to game commands. I have to say that it took some effort to get the first few lines or circles right but that learning curve is quickly overcome. Here's a hint: hold Z to draw a straight line at any time. I had the small epiphany that the game's leeway for registering the brush strokes actually adds to the gameplay. This isn't Wii Sports nor Super Smash Brothers Brawl. You are trying to paint the world back in to order. Therefore, you must paint it reasonably well. Sound surprising to you? Me either.

Final Thoughts

If you couldn't guess, I heartily recommend this game. The controls are enjoyable and a great example of potential uses of the Wii's input mechanisms. The art style and story telling are fantastic. Most games will have a story that results in good beating out evil, but Okami's delivery is something that stands out from most every other game. Yes, you work for the forces of good to vanquish the forces of evil, but there is a deeper mechanic at work than smiting the evil doers. As you travel the country side, you help the world's inhabitants overcome their own unfortunate events, like a bridge collapsing or a mill wheel breaking. As previously mentioned, you have a chance to feed all manner of furry or winged animals roaming the world. When you encounter small spots of cursed land, you simply brush vitality back into them. Every time you rejuvenate a spot cursed land, or a tree or a four leaf clover, there is a small cut scene where lush green grass and thick plots of flowers explode in the world, bringing color back to the barren landscape. The story may not the fight of good over evil but rather an epic story of bringing goodness to a world at the edge of darkness (and I do mean epic, as the game is surprisingly long). This does not mean the story is simple.

Matter of fact, if you want simple, here goes: Take $40, drive to the store and buy the game.

"Beware of shadows..."

There is a darkness that dwells in the imagination. It is the sense of foreboding; a fear of the unknown world behind every wall and around every corner. A place in the mind that cannot be illuminated. As we age we learn to quell these fears, ignoring the fantastic and unimaginable horrors that the imagination flings upon us. The pit of darkness is buried, hidden away, repressed and depressed down to the farthest recesses of the mind. But such was not always the case. The young at heart, you see, face the black void and do not simply rationalize it away. There is a need to face the darkness and overcome it, for where there is a darkness there is always a brightness to provide the universal balance. The child faces the darkness of his or her imagination and feeds into it. It is the imagined peril of an innocent mind.

Eric Chahi and the team at Amazing Studio, creators of the renowned science fiction hit Another World (developed under the Delphine Software label), kept the same dark artistic design and eerie landscape from that game but strayed from the role of the adult adventurer in order to provide a visually stunning experience in the dark corners of a child's imagination. They created a world in which we are driven to face the...

Heart of Darkness
Developed by Amazing Studio
Published by Interplay Productions in North America, Infogrames and Ocean Software in Europe
Released in 1998 for the PC and PlayStation platforms
Rated E for Everyone

Heart of Darkness tells the tale of Andy, a good-natured if slightly mischievous kid who dreams of lying on the grass and watching the clouds along with his spotted dog, Whiskey. It begins, as these stories tend to begin, with every fictional child's most dreaded nightmare: elementary school. The teacher's lecture foreshadows the events about to unfold for Andy and his poor innocent pooch: "Many believe that these black holes are, in reality, doors which open to parallel worlds. Unknown, fascinating... perhaps even terrifying!" The teacher, a man of ill temperament and even more unpleasant appearance, forces Andy into a cupboard as punishment for sleeping during class, and provides the premise for the adventure ahead in Andy's apparent fear of the dark. Andy is (literally) saved by the bell and escapes to spend quality lounging time in the great outdoors. As Andy and Whiskey lie out on the grass a solar eclipse occurs (darkness), during which Whiskey is dognapped by a mysterious shadow (more darkness). This sets Andy on a path to his tree house where a yellow flying machine of his own design transports him to a desolate world inhabited by minions of one who is called the Dark Master, as well as other creatures that are both friendly and unfriendly. Thus the side-scrolling platform adventure begins.

True, the plot is simple, but like all things it is simple when one merely looks at the surface. Beneath the veneer there is a tale of a child facing the darkest recesses of his imagination, and to discover the truth behind the disappearance of Andy’s dog is to discover a story stemming from the oldest tales of the child lost in the woods, facing darkness that no man or woman would wish upon a child. We see the story through Andy’s eyes, and his bravery in the face of great danger is perhaps foolish but nonetheless inspirational. While on his quest Andy meets many foes, as well as friends in the form of the pudgy Amigos, a race of beings with pink flesh, wings, and big googly eyes atop their triangular heads. They serve as the suppressed minority in the story, attacked by minions of the Dark Master and helping Andy to fight him in the latter portions of the game. Andy ultimately faces the darkness alone and perseveres, of course, but like any good story the journey makes or breaks the tale.

So, the player is tasked with guiding Andy through the perilous Dark Kingdom where shadow creatures dwell in canyons, caverns, jungles, and even across the sky and beneath the sea. Andy is limited to the standard platforming set: walking, running, jumping, climbing, and occasionally swimming, and while there are some environmental action elements to engage the player's reflexes they are few and far between. Instead, the gameplay design relies heavily on solving puzzles to clear obstacles from the path or to create a new path that will permit further progression. An example of such a puzzle is a rock formation early in the first level when the player uses Andy's plasma cannon to shoot the rocks and bring down the wall blocking the path, albeit simultaneously ripping a hole in the cliff that allows several shadow creatures to emerge. There we arrive at the bulk of the action in the game: fighting off hordes of encroaching shadow creatures with nothing but a plasma cannon or mysterious powers from a hidden meteor. The plasma cannon is used through a portion of the first level as the player is introduced to the combat system. Eventually, however, the plasma cannon is lost (for a time) and Andy is left defenseless until obtaining what the game manual coins as the "normal" and "special" powers. These powers allow the player to kill enemies as well as manipulate mobile plant seeds to create ladders and reach previously inaccessible areas in a level. All of this weaponry is required, along with keen use of the intuitive if somewhat rigid control system, to traverse the dangerous Dark Kingdom and reach the Dark Master's lair.

Topmost among the game's many achievements is the art design. Although the pre-rendered 3D backgrounds and hand drawn environments were considered outdated by the time the game released in 1998 (in the midst of the real-time 3D boom), that does not change that the game's environments are simply stunning. It is one thing when a game can present candy for the eye as the player traipses through the environments; it is another matter when the game presents a rich, enticing world that seemingly asks the player, “stop, won’t you, if only for a moment?” Stop and enjoy the scenery; smell the overgrown roses in the steamy jungles; allow the glow of phosphorescent fungi to cast eerie shadows across cave walls; stand and look out over a vast landscape beyond the edge of a cliff beyond the edge of a lush and dark jungle, beyond the skyscape of the horizon of gray clouds. And, eventually, stare down the darkness of an evil lair where light from above casts faint traces of itself across piles of long-dead creatures and twisted formations of stone. As I said, stunning.

Having said that, when I say that the game’s background and level art are not the most impressive aspect of the art design then you may grasp what it means when I say that it is in fact the animation that is the visual highlight of the game. It is that which that took hold of my sight from the moment I first loaded that disc, so many years ago. Chahi and co.’s dedication to richly detailed animation was apparent in their previous work on Another World and in Heart of Darkness they not only met those same standards but far surpassed them. They created that stunning world and then filled it with such brilliant movement in the characters and ambient level details that one can see part of the reason why the game took over four years to develop. It begins with Andy, our guide through this fluid world. His movement as he walks along is greatly detailed. He walks, jumps, ducks, runs, swims, crawls, hangs, and climbs; his clothes sway and ripple with every movement, his hat flys off and is quickly caught as he floats through the air after a jump or runs away from strange black creatures. But we’ve seen good character animation before and since, so why, then, is the animation so important? In this case it’s a case of quality and quantity, or variety to be exact. There are many types of movement in the game, and as morbid as it may seem the most varied type of movement is death. This poor kid dies in more ways than I’ve seen any other video game. Falling from a variety of high places into bottomless pits, drowning, burning alive, crushed by rocks, bones, suffering a broken neck, and being eaten by anything with a mouth are just some examples of the many ways you can allow Andy to perish. On the flip side, Andy can dish out the deaths just as well as he can take them. With the aid of his plasma cannon, meteor powers, or even sunlight, Andy can cause enemies to burst into brilliant puffs of charred, glowing smoke, ranging from orange to green to blue, and all animated in such a way that you feel the heat and sizzle of their rapidly evaporating corpses. It could be said that these are all beautiful deaths. The ambient animation of swaying grass, falling rocks from the decaying stone beneath Andy’s feet, and smaller creatures such as butterflies and lizards all serve as further examples of the shear beauty of all that surrounds Andy.

The in-game action is complemented by the occasional pre-rendered cinematic featuring notably dated 3D animation. The cinematics are, however, well-directed and they serve to provide dialogue and scenes that further the story along. The only folly in the game’s visuals is that there can be noticeable drops in the framerate when there happens to be too much of the aforementioned animation on screen at one time, and the framerate for the cinematics is also noticeably lackluster. Additionally, players who try both versions of the game will notice that some of the cinematics in the PC version are missing from the PlayStation version, but these are only action scenes placed in during transitions from one area to the next. The key story scenes all remain.

As any film director or game designer can tell you, sound plays a significant part in the experience that the observer or end user draws from a work. Heart of Darkness makes excellent use of sound effects for all animation in the game, from something as common as Andy’s footsteps to a screech hinting at a creature that has not yet appeared. All creatures in the game emanate eerily realistic noises as they either rush Andy or lie in wait to feed on him, and the sounds of creatures or environmental ambience serve as more than background noise, often providing clues or warnings. The game's soundtrack – composed, conducted, and produced by Emmy award-winning TV and film composer Bruce Broughton – was the first game soundtrack to be recorded by a live orchestra. The subtleties of what appears on-screen are enhanced by the swell and fall of a rousing score, and the more dramatic moments in the game’s cutscenes are all the more effective after the music kicks in to amplify the emotional impact.

In the end… well, I won’t be talking about the end as that it something the player must experience, but I will say that in the end the game is a shining example of the possibilities of the side-scrolling platformer genre that was introduced over a decade before the game released (with bits of adventure and puzzle that appeared in more financially successful games such as Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee). In the unfortunate end of Amazing Studio we received a game that ends much too quickly but will forever be remembered as an entertaining and fun experience. In the end, this is a story about a boy, his dog, and the limitless possibilities of the imagination to frighten and at the same time challenge us to face that which we fear, to face the darkness and overcome it.

Sources:
Game manual for the PlayStation version of Heart of Darkness
MobyGames
Wikipedia
GameFAQs

Recommended Playing:
American McGee's Alice
Ico
Psychonauts

Thanks to:
panamaus and Time Bandits
Space Cat and Shadow of the Colossus
Timeshredder and El Laberinto del Fauno
kovidomi and Youtube

There are two characters who appear to be hot anime chicks wearing nothing but body paint and funny masks. The violence isn't anything extraordinary; no blood but lots of flashes and noise.

Description:
Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is the first Ninja Gaiden title to appear on DS. It is intended to bridge the story between the original for Xbox and the sequel that is on the Xbox 360. If you've played the first one, you'll notice a lot of the same settings and characters, scaled down for the DS.

Distinguishing Features:
The entire Team Ninja (of Dead or Alive fame) was on board for this title, including Tomonobu Itagaki. Also, this title embraces two of the DS's more eccentric features: all-stylus controls and a side-by-side screen orientation.

Review:
I was able to complete the game on Normal in about eight hours, only dying two or three times. Much like its Xbox counterparts, most of your deaths are going to come from boss fights. If you're familiar with the Ninja Gaiden series for Xbox, you're also familiar with the controller-snapping difficulty the game embraces. It's an ultimately rewarding experience, especially when you finally figure out the trick to a particular boss, but until then you're swearing under your breath and going "This is it, one last time and I'm putting this down and ACTUALLY flagellating myself instead of letting this game do it for me." Reports of people hurling gamepads and other near-to-hand objects are not uncommon. Fortunately for the DS, the difficulty level has been toned down a bit. In fact, I would recommend playing on the harder difficulties for anyone experienced with the Xbox version. However, these are only unlockable on completion of Normal mode.

Outside of the fighting, it's a fairly standard action game. There are a couple of easy puzzles (hint: Use the microphone) and a shop to unlock extra moves and spells at. Unlocks are purchased by killing enemies and collecting the essence that they leave behind. When you complete a level, your kills, successful Ultimate Techniques (UT), and clear time are tallied up, and you are given Karma and a rating based on your performance. Karma is just another name for high score, and is used for the global rankings. The rating ranges from Ninja to Master Ninja; once I'd really picked up the combat system I didn't get anything lower than Master Ninja on Normal difficulty.

The sound is well-done, if a bit repetitive. The music is pretty forgettable. I didn't actually notice it most of the time while I was playing. Cutscenes are either shown through very detailed still images or animations within the game engine, plus text. The animation itself is very fluid, and the models have some very impressive texture work to make up for the low polygon count. I didn't notice any slowdowns during the game, and I was able to keep track of Ryu without much trouble.

The control system caused a bit of a stir when it was announced. In fact, everything except guarding against attacks is controlled by the stylus. If you want to move to a location, simply press in that direction with the stylus. You attack enemies with your sword using quick, short strokes, and throw shuriken by tapping them. You can jump with a simple upward stroke, and you can dodge by holding down Guard and tapping in the direction you want to move. The game features Ryu's student, resident hot ninja woman Momiji, during the prologue of the game as a training sequence, which is just enough time to grasp the basics of combat before moving on to Ryu's combo-heavy style.

In order to play the game, you hold the DS sideways, so the screens are side-by-side, sort of like a book. Since you can guard by holding down any button you want, including the shoulder buttons, you can change your grip on the DS if you need to. I actually found that the most comfortable way to hold it was in the palm of my hand with my thumb on the shoulder button, or flat on a table with one finger on the D-Pad.

The combination of the controls and the Resident Evil-style static camera feature probably the only actual complaint I can come up with. Since you're limited to a single viewpoint, if one of the enemies steps in front of the other, Ryu will assume you want to attack the one you can see and not the one you can't. However, most of the rooms are designed in such a way as to prevent this and in the rooms that it can happen in, both Ryu and the enemies move quick enough that it's nothing more than a minor hitch. I can't even recall a single time that this lead to a player death, and tends to work in your favor more often than not since keeping multiple enemies off balance is the key to winning combats.

The box features one of those "WFC Compatible!" logos on the front, but don't let this fool you into thinking you're actually getting anything interesting. There is a global ranking system you can connect to through WFC that pulls your total karma from one of your saved games and compares it against everyone else who's uploaded their score to the rankings. It then returns your global rank and stats, as well as a list of the top twenty players. However, I suspect there's some issues with the system as the top five players had completely topped out on karma despite having playtimes of only a few hours and zero player deaths. It's neat, but useful only as far as having proof that you're better at the game than your buddies are.

Final Verdict:
This is an extremely solid action game, and would have been one of the DS's "killer apps" if it had been released closer to the DS's launch. In fact, other developers who are working on action games need to take several large cues from the combat system and quit goofing around with gimmicky spellcasting or unintuitive controls. It's simple enough that I can play this while waiting in line for something, put it into sleep mode for an hour or two, then open it back up and carry on like I never closed it in the first place. Along with Tetris DS and Contra 4, this title's earned a permanent spot in my rotation.

Developers: Sora Limited, Game Arts
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: 2008
Platform: Wii
Genre: Fighting
ESRB Rating: T for Teen

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the third, and possibly final, game in the Super Smash Brothers series. It was released for the Nintendo Wii on January 31, 2008 in Japan, and March 9 in America. As of today, release dates have not been announced for the rest of the world. The previous two were 1999's Super Smash Bros. and 2001's Super Smash Bros. Melee.

The game has been in development for a long time, and hyped to the point where I normally start to doubt it can live up to the buzz. But did it?

Yes.

Originally, the rumor was the Brawl was going to be a launch title for the Wii, but it quickly became apparent that this would not be so. In fact, the game was pushed back repeatedly, with Nintendo apologizing each time, and explaining that they would rather release a perfect game late than an imperfect game early. And seeing the habit of some other developers have recently acquired of releasing buggy halfware on consoles, I'm glad they did it.

Masahiro Sakurai, inventor of Kirby, former employee of HAL Laboratories (the developer of the Kirby series, the previous Smash Bros. games, and Earthbound, among other favorites of mine), was originally reluctant to work on this game, but was finally convinced. In mid 2007, as talk about Brawl started to heat up, Sakurai began to release information about the game droplet by droplet on smashbros.com, with a new gift of information each day, and his personal commentary on the features, images, and very occasionally movies being released. Other than the two videos demoed at E3 2007, this was the only source of information on Brawl until the game's Japan release. It was interesting to see how anticipation built with the developers favoring an older style of information release, rather than the continuous deluge of information that spews forth from every other game developer.

Some of you may recall that I'm a bit of a Smash fanatic; I've written several other nodes on Smash technique. So I was more excited about this game than I've ever been about any other game before. On release day, I woke up at 8:30 in the morning (on a Sunday, and the first day of the Daylight Savings Time change, so as far as I was concerned, it was actually 7:30), and rushed to the mall to find it wouldn't open until 11. I got there at opening, waited in line for my game, ran home, ripped it open, and spent the rest of the day immersing myself.

When I've played more, I will write a node on technique and secrets; if I were to write this now, I would have to copy it from Smashboards, and that would be plagiarism. So this writeup will be my initial reactions.

The first and biggest change to Smash Bros. is the inclusion of a beefy story mode. Called The Subspace Emissary, it's a platformer which involves nearly all of the Smash characters, and reminds me heavily of Kirby Super Star on the Super Nintendo. Hardly surprising, since both were Sakurai's brainchild, but KSS is one of my favorite video games, so that's a pretty favorable comparison. There are a variety of levels, some of which you can revisit later to expose secrets and unlock characters. There's very little in the way of puzzle elements, but it's a competent platformer which finally gives you the chance to use your Smash skills outside of a fighting arena. Loaded with little secrets, a goodly number of bosses, some reasonably difficult forced scrolling levels, and an interesting RPG element where "stickers" you collect can be applied to characters to boost their stats (there are some spacial constraints so you can't go totally wild). Classic Mode is still here, as is All-Star — an unlockable mode where you must defeat every character in the game using a limited number of recovery hearts and no continues. Still, Subspace Emissary is the real heart of Brawl single player gameplay (though it can be played with a friend), and puts the Adventure mode in Melee to shame, but even so, it's not the core of the game.

What is the core of the game? Brawls. You can now take them online, although I've found this to be pretty flaky. This could be the instability of my connection, but even so, I have broadband and found the game pretty much unplayable in a match between me in Maryland and a single friend in Indiana. Once again, Americans are foiled by our terrible Internet connectivity.

Ahem. Brawl features four control schemes. You can use a Gamecube controller identically to Melee's control style, although some techniques are different: for example, a change in the mechanics of air-dodging means that anybody used to Wavedashing to move quickly will be in for an unpleasant surprise. You can also use a Wiimote on its own, a Wiimote with the nunchuck attachment, or a Virtual Console Classic Controller. I'm not sure why anybody would use the Wiimote alone, since you won't have a joystick and thus won't have access to tilt attacks, among other things. I have friends who are happy with the new control schemes, though I myself have stayed with the Gamecube controller. All of these schemes are fully configurable, if you don't like them.

Here's the part you've been waiting for. Brawl has 35 characters, although 3 of these can switch between several different characters, so there are properly 39 characters in Brawl. Roy, Mewtwo, and Young Link are gone, but clones are present in their places. Dr. Mario and Pichu are gone without replacements. This is also an interesting game because of the inclusion of two non-Nintendo characters: Snake, who would have been a Melee character had there been development time, and the often-requested Sonic the Hedgehog. Here are the new characters, and the games they come from.

• Diddy Kong (Donkey Kong Country)
• Ike (Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance)
• King Dedede (Kirby's Dream Land)
• Lucario (Pokémon Diamond/Pearl)
• Lucas (Mother 3)
• Meta Knight (Kirby Super Star: Revenge of the Meta-Knight)
• Captain Olimar (Pikmin)
• Pit (Kid Icarus)
• Pokémon Trainer: Squirtle, Ivysaur, Charizard (Pokémon Red/Blue)
• The Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.) (Gyromite)
• Solid Snake (Metal Gear)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog)
• Toon Link (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker)
• Wario (Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins)
• Wolf (Star Fox 2)
• Zero Suit Samus (Metroid: Zero Mission)

Many of these characters are wholly new, but there are (to my eyes) a disappointing number of clones of other characters. Three characters are eliminated, two of whom are clones, and the two clones are replaced with new clones. We get a new Mother character, and since Earthbound is my favorite video game, I was properly excited, but rather than, say, Duster or Jeff, we get a Ness clone. The biggest kick in the pants is that there are now three Fox-style characters. Although clones' moves differ a lot more in this game than they did in previous Smash games, to the point where they play almost completely differently it still strikes me as laziness on the part of the developer to have so many characters whose moves are all variations of each others'. With so many other Nintendo mainstays available (Simon Belmont? Mega Man? King K. Rool? Toad? Pokey Minch?), this is just plain frustrating. Of course, this doesn't ruin the game; there's more than enough variety already. But it's a small tarnish, and a completely foreseen tarnish, on an otherwise fantastic game.

And the gameplay is superb. Some techniques are gone (like wavedashing) but many new ones take their places. You can now grab items while running, grab somebody behind you, edgegrab when you're facing the wrong direction, and some other, more complex stuff, which I'll get into later. In some ways, Brawl is much closer to the original game than to Melee, specifically in how much time you spend fighting in midair, and how long matches last. Characters can recover far more easily in Brawl than in Melee and live longer; gone is the "scream of death" that indicates that a character hit hard enough is dead without the game giving her a chance to recover. Abilities have been balanced; Ness and Kirby are once again good characters, and some painfully cheap moves like Peach's down-smash and Sheik's forward-air have been weakened in the interest of balance.

Even the trophy collection has been improved. Trophies can be found in Subspace Emissary through clever exploration, as well as throwing a "trophy base" item at an enemy to convert it into a trophy. In place of the lottery system, there is now a simple shoot 'em up to collect both trophies and stickers, a cross between Galaga and Puzzle Bobble. And you have reason to want these; stickers make Subspace Emissary easier, and with enough unique trophies, you can unlock Mr. Game and Watch. Since many more accomplishments lead to unlockables, with a bevy of new stages, unlockable music, and other things, there's a screen where you can see the feats you've overcome, and get hints to others. You use a limited supply of hammers to complete objectives without actually accomplishing them, but unless you're looking it up online, you have no idea whether you're going to unlock a new character or just waste some time (like playing for 100 hours without having played for 30 hours).

Should you buy Brawl? As the announcer says: No Contest. It's great. It's everything that the previous games were, and more. If the things I've been reading on Smashboards are any indication, this is a worthy successor and a top-notch fighting game. Like the other Smash games, it's clearly a sell-up to the big Nintendo franchises (this one even includes demos of Virtual Console titles featuring Brawl contestants), but it's the most fun you will ever have being marketed to.

My Brawl friend code is

3351 3724 4135

Guitar Hero 2 was a game for which I have nothing but unconditional love, but Guitar Hero 3 is a much more complicated animal. In several ways, I can't stand it, but in several other ways, I need it.

You are familiar with the basic premise, yes? You hold a fake plastic guitar and push five buttons in time with the notes, and your acquaintances who've never actually seen the game proclaim that you're wasting time in which you could be learning a real instrument, ignoring the fact that thousands of kids all over the world are much more likely to form bands because of the positive reinforcement that GH gave them at an early age.

So but the thing that needs to be emphasized here is that GH3 is a product of new management. Harmonix, the studio that made GH1, GH2, and GH 80s, left to invent Rock Band, a four-player game which I'm sure is far more fun than GH3 but which I personally cannot afford. Activision, who had acquired Red Octane, the games' previous publisher, handed the franchise off to a developer named Neversoft, known mostly for its Tony Hawk games. Enjoy the privilege of rebuilding the GH engine from scratch, guys! If you fuck up one tiny detail, millions will scream at you, but no pressure!

The Good:

All the truly essential gameplay mechanics are not only intact but have actually been improved. The board scrolls in at a steeper angle so you can see more of the notes coming. The hammers (the notes you don't need to strum to play) are now designated with a blazing white light that leaps up off the board. (In previous GH games, they lack a black ring around the white dot in the center, but this detail is so subtle that many players never notice.) After you get used to this interface, going back to the Harmonix games is tough.

The Bad:

So, while making the note patterns easier to read, the Neversoft execs paradoxically decided to make the score and multiplier info much harder to read. The board is what you're staring at the whole time; the score is something you only have a split second to glance at between riffs. Instead of fat black-on-white, it's anemic dark green on black. You learn to live with it - you have to - but a decision this stupid suggests to me that the game was not play tested at all.

The Ugly:

The game is fucking ugly. At first I thought it was cool when the camera cut to the drummer before a big fill, but I soon realized these moves were all preprogrammed. More often than not what you're staring at is a close-up of the singer, who, with his beady eyes and underbite, bears an uncanny resemblance to a hammerhead shark. More polygons do not equal better art direction. Hey, what happened to ME? This game is supposed to be about ME!!! If it's not a medium shot of me shredding, at least make it a long shot of me onstage.

Relatedly, there's serious loading problems. You'll experience hangs on every single menu, and if you fail a song and select 'retry', the game needs to load the song again, even if you only made it 1% in. What? Where the hell did the song go, it was just there! Previous GH games never did this. This should have been a warning sign to the people at Neversoft that they were placing far too high a priority on polygons.

Song Selection:

This is more important than all the cosmetic stuff above, of course, and I wish I could say this made that not matter, but boy: bleh. Out of 70 songs, there's about 10 I find interesting enough to play over and over. Here they are:

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar
La Grange - ZZ Top
Welcome to the Jungle - Guns N' Roses
Even Flow - Pearl Jam
Pride and Joy - Stevie Ray Vaughn
Cliffs of Dover - Eric Johnson
Black Magic Woman - Santana
Knights of Cydonia - Muse
Cult of Personality - Living Colour
One - Metallica
Through the Fire and Flames - DragonForce

Now maybe this is just because I played GH2 so much I need a serious challenge to excite me, but I doubt it. More attention seems to have been paid to selecting songs that were "notorious" like Raining Blood, Paint It, Black and School's Out, instead of picking somewhat more obscure pieces that fit the concept better. Additionally, for a game with the subtitle "Legends of Rock", what are so many contemporary bands doing in there stinking it up? The Strokes? The Killers? AFI? Disturbed? SLIPKNOT???? That last one is straight up terrible. Also, get off my lawn.

I should add here that the DragonForce song (which you have to beat the game to unlock, so you might as well set it on Medium early on, because as I'll explain below, NO ONE can beat this game on Hard) is insane. Hear it to believe it insane. Like the final level of the brilliant Portal, it may well take you as long to beat this song as it did the rest of the game combined.

Battle Mode:

Fuck you, Battle Mode. Fuck you till you die of blood loss.

Now, if this had just been an added feature for multiplayer, it'd be harmless. I like the idea of kids throwing their little brothers' note boards into disarray - giving them "trash" like I used to give my friends in Dr. Mario. However, the suits at Activision must have thought this idea was ripe for that increasingly pervasive video game gimmick, the CELEBRITY CAMEO! Which is always a ringing endorsement, as we all know from wearing out our copies of Apocalpyse starring Bruce Willis - which was coincidentally developed by, yes, Neversoft.

So you have to "battle" Tom Morello and Slash and even, at the very end of the game, El Diablo, who calls himself Lou. (One presumes his last name is Cipher.) Problem is, you can't win these battles by simply being better than your opponent. If you make it to the end of the song, you don't get a score or a percentage, you just automatically fail. Rewarding! To succeed, you MUST nail the "Battle Power" sections and then use them all at once to make the other guy fail.

What this means is, even though I'm awesome at playing GH on Expert, this is the only installment I can't beat on Hard, because when Satan inflicts Lefty Flip on me (inverting which button plays which fret) or Double Notes (which would accurately be described as Chords Instead Of Notes) my needle drops into the red. Why wouldn't it? How does that relate to my actual skill level? I could be Duane Allman playing onstage with Jerry Garcia on 7/28/73 in Watkins Glen, NY in front of 600,000 screaming hippies, but if some dipcunt in a three piece suit made it past security and wrenched my guitar upside down, yelling NOT SO HOT NOW ARE YA - yeah, I'd fuck up. So? What does that have to do with rocking? Nothing. Because it is retarded.

That said, if you're a GH addict like me, you need this game, and it will give you countless hours of thrills. Unless of course you have the superior-in-every-way Rock Band.