Classic Halloween
Posted by: j_john
Today I am playing the recently released "Classic NES Series" GBA game, "Castlevania" and waxing nostalgic.
Since the release of the GameBoy Advance in 2001 I have picked up all three of the new GBA releases in the Castlevania series, prompting some friends to inquire about the reasons behind my dedication to the classic Konami franchise. So, in honor of the great holiday that is Halloween, I've decided to take a look at my history with the whip-cracking Belmont clan.
In the summer of 1988, after saving up enough money from pool-cleaning jobs, I was able to proudly purchase my first game console, the legendary NES. Many of my friends had already been playing games like Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Double Dragon, so I decided to buy something nobody else had--the vampire and monster-themed Castlevania. I fondly remember studying the enemy movements, figuring out the patterns and limitations of our hero, Simon Belmont.
I must admit I never was able to finish the game, since save features hadn't been invented yet, and I wasn't allowed to occupy the TV with my gaming for too long. However, those early gaming memories stayed with me, and I was intrigued by the adventurous changes the series took for the first NES follow-up, "Castlevania II: Simon's Quest." The next sequel (1990's "Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse") took things back to its more action-oriented roots, yet introduced a variety of playable characters, such as the son of Dracula, Alucard.
"Super Castlevania IV" debuted on the updated SNES in 1991, and proved to be a worthy addition to the series, allowing greater control of the trademark whip, and it sure looked a lot prettier than previous installments. There were a few games after that I never got to play ("Dracula X" being the most notable), but I was drawn back in during the fall of 1997 when "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" came out on the Sony PlayStation. C:SOTN is now considered to be the definitive 2D action-adventure title, and thankfully I was able to experience the brilliant depth and RPG elements, in addition to some memorably horrendous voice-acting. (Playing through C:SOTN again last year reminded me how much I still love Castlevania.)
Back to the future--I have continued to be impressed by how much fun I have playing the GBA Castlevania games with their legendary obtuse subtitles: ("Circle of the Moon", "Harmony of Dissonance", and "Aria of Sorrow"). Even though I am perpetually asked to maneuver the latest hero through a vast castle in order to destroy the immortal Dracula, I take up my whip and get going up those steps. I know that seeing that dude go up in flames will still put a smile on my face and remind me of the joys I had playing my first game over 15 years ago.
Arcade Tetris
Posted by: kmikeym
(by Ryan Wise from Winning Tetris)
So you want to play winning tetris? Well, don't look to this dud of a Tetris implementation to hone your skills on. You'd be better off playing the awkward original Playstation version (The Next Tetris) with its psychedelic wobbling pieces than this train wreck. Where to begin?
The stand-up arcade version of Tetris purports to bring you the game we all know and love, but it almost seems that the designers were more focused on bringing "cute" russianisms into the graphic design rather than focusing on the gameplay. Look! Backwards letters! Crazy kicking dancing men! Onion Domes! IT'S RUSSIA!!!!!
Hinderances to succeeding at this game abound: the gigantic joystick vacillates between horribly unresponsive and hair-trigger sensitive. Each level has a different line total to meet, but when that goal is met, the game stops to play you some maniacal trepak (which was blasting out of the speakers on the particular machine we were test-driving) and recap your progress. When the next level begins, the board is reset, and you might be given a completely different objective! Talk about breaking your rhythm! To top it off, the speed increases almost exponentially, no gradual increase here.
Some levels have garbage, some don't. This, in my mind, is a terrible distortion of the original game, where the object is to last as long as you can, until the bin overflows. I know some variations on the Existing Garbage objective have been around for almost as long as Tetris itself, but all of the competing implementations never agreed on basic rules. The beautiful simplicity of the original Tetris objective is its masterstroke. Like chess or soccer, you begin with very simple available moves, but the complexity of how a single game can turn out is where the beauty exists. Attempts like this to "mix it up" with garbage and non-garbage levels just overreach and distract from what could be a passable implementation.
But the most criminal decision the designers made? The one that should have them serving 10 years in the arcade gulag? NO TETRISES. None. Get four lines and you get points for four lines. No tetris bonus, and certainly no flashing screen atta-boy. What were they thinking?!
Bottom line, it might be tempting to step to this arcade with your friends thinking, "I'm a decent Tetris player, I can hold my own here," but don't kid yourself. This version isn't worth your time.
Do Not Doubt Us, For We Are Nerds
Posted by: kmikeym
The Legend of Zelda, Four Swords Adventure, as played by Cabel, Mike, Afryl, and Steve.
Playing Hitman: Contracts
Posted by: kmikeym
Being a nameless killer for a secret organization is very delicate work. You might think it'd be easy as an overly trained killer to hack, strangle, or, most likely, shoot, other human beings. The real game is having the ability to kill everyone you see and not pulling the trigger.
The truely zen killer does not need the brashness of an AK-74, but rather finds peace inside by sniping someone from an elevated position, or slipping rat poison in a bottle of wine, or even the initially horrifying killing of an entire stable of horses by pouring awful chemical weed-killer in their drinking water. It's not a game about what you can accomplish, but rather it's a test of what you can refrain from doing.
Hitman: Contracts rates your performance on two scales of stealth and aggressiveness. Stealth is rewarded, while raw aggression is a route that is initally satisfying, but leads to your own undoing. I choose the aggressive route. If there is a person in front of me, I kill him. No questions. I am not about questions, I am a trained and very skilled killing machine.
The first level has you breaking out of an Asylum and includes this wonderful moment straight out of The Professional when you put on the outfit of a dead SWAT member and walk right past the oncoming assault squad of Romanian Tactical Police. But, I can't help it, I turn around and gun them all down, blowing my cover. Then it's just a matter of carefully and methodically gunning down every human in the game. Dead. All of them. I imagine the surprise when the chief of Romanian police arrives and sees over thirty of his best officers dead, every mental patient shot in the head, and the entire staff of the facility also murdered. I mean, that must be such an amazing MIND FUCK! Does he retire? Does he weep into his pillow as his wife looks on from the bedroom doorway, wondering what is happening? Does he fear for his own life, misinterpreting my escape as some sinister message against the people of Romania? I don't know. I am gone.
And where do I go? To a meat factory, where a recently released criminal kingpin (the Meat King) is throwing an "Eyes Wide Shut" sex party. Now, this mission really pisses me off because in addition to killing two men, my assignment includes a rescue. Ugh! Puh-lease! I am not Face of the A-Team, I don't do rescue missions. I KILL! And so, I decide, fuck it, I'm gonna kill the person I am supposed to rescue. I start in the back of a refrigerated meat packing truck, having just knocked unconscious a slaughterhouse employee. I shoot him in the face, he is not an innocent, he is working for a criminal in a slaughterhouse. Next I approach the front doors to the party. Shit. Guards with machine guns are patting down the S&M dressed guests as they enter. I could toss my guns, knock out a guest, and sneak in unnoticed, but I am not a NINJA, I am a killer. I shoot everyone. I take their guns. More guards, hearing the gunfire, run out the main doors. I shoot them too. A prostitute, hired for the event, runs outside in the confusion. I shoot her. Next I go inside. I am required to kill two people, but I don't worry about that, because I plan on killing everyone. I open a door, I shoot everyone, and I move on. Soon I find I am standing over the dead body of one of my assignments. Oh good. Just to be sure, I shoot his corpse. I wander upstairs from the main party and find the fat man leader, who starts screaming for his guards (mostly all dead by now, along with most of his guests) when I pull out a 13" kitchen knife. But I drop it on the floor. I'm not some sick psycho who gets off on causing pain. I am just a simple killer. I use the gold plated pistol I took from his brother and shoot him in the face. Oh yeah, that rescue business... I wander around, checking nooks and crannies, killing a few drugged out party-goers (they are serving opium here) and the last remaining guards. Finally I find her. The girl i am to rescue. Well, what is rest of her. It's all Manson Family in this room. I take her severed arm as proof she is dead, quickly track down the sick butcher who did this, shoot him (yes, in the face), and leave. All told I probably killed about seventy people in there.
Again, imagine the HUGE impact of this event. Not only is a recently released criminal found shot to death by his dead brother's pistol during a drug-fueled S&M orgy in a slaughterhouse, but everyone involved is dead. All the men who went to the party, probably low to mid level politicians and business men, wives having to come to grips with their dead husbands as vile criminal sick men, and also dead. There is the girl, still in that scary ass room, hanging from a meathook and cut up like a animal. The investigators on this are probably able to piece together that someone (me) with a .45 caliber pistol made his way inside and killed everyone. They most likely assume it was a gang, perhaps a rival criminal underlord. They enter the data into the Interpol system and see that a very similar thing happened in Romania. The clues begin to link together. They send a junior investigator to romania to ask about the incident and he finds SO MANY similarities. They even found what they believe are the killer's clothes, and it matches fibers found at the slaughterhouse. They have a suspect. He dresses well.
Now this junior investigator is scanning the Interpol computer system every day for another incident, and he hits paydirt! There was a large explosion at an old cold-war era submarine base in one of the former soviet republics. They found members of a terrorist cell, all dead, had been meeting a military officer (found dead on the toilet, shot in the face, pants down, severe diarrhea brought on by ingesting laxatives) who sold them a nuclear device! But someone had killed everyone, and sunk the unarmed device into the icy depths and then flown away. They found an identical suit of clothes. Black tailored suit, lightly starched white shirt and red tie. Something big was happening!
Now the junior investigator tells his superior what he suspects, some kind of weird CIA para-military theory. They write a report and send it out to the major law enforcement agencies of the world. And who responds but Scotland Yard. They have an eye witness! Giles Northcott, a recent Oxford grad and a young man of some standing was kidnapped by Lord Winston Beldingford and his brother Alistair Beldingford. The young man was found by police running from Beldingford Manor where he said the Beldingfords were planning on hunting him, but he was saved by a bald man wearing, that's right, a black suit and red tie. And as you might guess, when police arrived at Beldingford manor they found that everyone, including the dogs and horses had been killed. This brutal slaying of a prominent (if criminal) English family propels the junior investigator into a multi-country task force to find the killer.
They receive a tip off about a reporter who may know something in Rotterdam. And the Rotterdam police tell the task force about a brutal gang war they are cleaning up. Apparently a counterfeiting biker gang had some rivals and there was a shoot out. They found a dead reporter and yes, actually, they did find a suit and red tie, how did you know? By know the task force is having trouble keeping this quiet. Already internet rumors have started about a secret CIA killing machine, but the CIA has a man on the task force, it's not the CIA, or even the US.
The shit really hits the fan days later there is a report of the latest slaughter, this time at a UN Conference. By now the rumors are all over the papers and there is a huge international manhunt. During a tense gang negotiation in China the local police gun down an assailant... wearing a black suit, lightly starched white shirt, and a red tie.
