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The first sound you hear upon booting up Katamari Damacy is the recording of a man singing a nonsense tune a capella. Eventually, you'll recognize his song as the recurring musical theme to Katamari Damacy, but initally it's just an unexpected oddity.
Which neatly sums up the entire game: an unexpected oddity. Katamari Damacy (which I've seen translated as "soul of the blob" and "clump-soul", but it's probably untranslatable) is a game that should never have been released outside of Japan. It is uniquely Japanese from core to skin... not in the androgynous Final Fantasy character design way, nor in the big-eyed anime style way, but in the very normal way that Japanese people live their daily lives. Katamari Damacy - alien kings and magnetic balls aside - presents a glimpse into their country. I'm not saying it's a substitute for true culture research, just that it's interesting to learn that the Japanese have special car signs that indicate a Young Driver or a Senior Driver, among other things. I wonder what a native's reaction is to this game. What I see as bizarre or exotic might be mundane. Katamari Damacy begins with an insane open movie with singing ducks and posing pandas, mushrooms and flowers and rainbows... and the game's hammer-headed lead characters. Is this strange to the Japanese, or just the usual style? Does this stand out, or get swallowed in a whirlpool of like games? Games like this only rarely see a US release. Culturally, it reminds me of Mister Mosquito, No One Can Stop Mr. Domino, and the Parappa series. All of these games contain that undefinable central Japaneseishness. Particularly Mosquito and Domino, and Katamari (appropriately enough, as you will soon see) builds on that. All three take us inside the social aspects of Japan, albeit in a slightly funky fashion... not in the obvious way that The Sims goes inside American culture. And while Domino was brief, and Mosquito damn near unfinished, Katamari marks a full flowering of the progression. There are plenty of levels, a solid interface, cataloged unlockables, a wonderful soundtrack, and the simplest of control schemes. As the game begins, the King of All Cosmos - your father - has gone on a bender and knocked every star out of the sky. Immediately regretful of his actions (although he'd do it again in a second), he tasks you, the Prince, with putting the stars back in the sky. To do this, you must use a knobbed ball, roughly the same size as the Prince, called a katamari. The katamari is sticky or magnetic or something, because anything it rolls over will become permanently glued to it. After you roll random Earth objects into giant balls, the King turns the clump into a star. Initially, the katamari can only stick to small objects. Thumbtacks, postage stamps, wrapped caramel candies. But as you collect more items, your katamari grows, and it can then pick up bigger objects. Kanji workbooks, plates of sushi, fried snacks with a small octopus inside. And the katamari gets even bigger. Cement blocks, RC cars, alley cats. And so it goes, to levels that I'm positive are beyond your imagining. If you are moving too fast and roll into something you can't pick up, you'll likely do damage to your ball in the effect of having a part of it knocked off. Beginning with a katamari of a predetermined size, you are given undirected access to wherever you wish to roll. The floors are littered with objects for you to pick up, and how quickly you achieve your goal size is determined by how cleverly you explore. It's possible to get distracted with the flurry of small objects early on, and thus ignore your opportunity to pick up larger objects as you grow. There's no set path, and the only restrictions are a time limit and the occasional barrier that demands you to be at least X meters to cross it. The levels are all really large (relative to your starting size) so you can play and play and not feel like you're repeating levels. Smart level design adds replay value. Throughout each level, your katamari will reach several plateau sizes that cause an upgrade to your vision: the camera zooms out so you can see more. Although it is hidden with a trippy blur effect, what is actually happening is the game takes the opportunity to shrink all the objects in the world so you can more readily see what new items can be grabbed. Tiny objects are eventually eliminated altogether as your viewpoint gets bigger and bigger. Now you can go grab the bicycle that you could initially roll straight under. And in case you're still unclear about this, you can see the items you have picked up, all still stuck to the exterior of the katamari. Cows, train cars, buckets, all visible. Depending on how you touch certain objects, you can even cause the long end of a flagpole to stick out, giving you a rod to balance on or vault yourself over a barrier. The graphics are nothing astonishing, partly due to a quirky style (everything is blocky) and partly due to the game's fundamental design. It's tracking hundreds of objects at once, including the ability to scale them down as your viewpoint grows. Although I'm sure the PS2 could do a nicer job visually, it's not going to upset your asthetics even though it's probably the equivalent of a PS1 game with a hellaciously good draw distance. This world is not sitting back and waiting for you to suck it up. There is plenty of movement, even some objects that must be chased. Living things (rats, pigeons, people, bears) will run around and bonk into you, sometimes causing damage. If you're close to the proper size for attracting them, they will be stunned... sometimes physically thrown for a short distance and stunned. That means you're probably just a smidge away from picking them up proper. Some items are genuinely aggressive and will chase you for a time, but never more than a few steps. Usually just long enough to hit you. Once you reach your goal, the King allows you to keep playing (until time runs out) so you can work up an even larger katamari. At the end of the level, the King turns your clump into a star and the nighttime sky gets a little bit happier. Then you play again. Stars are essentially high score boards; when you play a level again, you can elect to have your new star replace the old... or just turn it into dust. There's some sort of star naming system that is based on what class of objects you collected the most. Like, I have the Playtime Star because on one level I rolled up more game bits than anything else. There doesn't seem to be a way to keep track of all the possible stars, since you erase an old one completely if you get a new one. However, the other "collectible" elements of the game are treated with anal reverence. The collection screens organize every possible object in the game according to class or size. Some objects are dubbed rare and some have personalized names (like a dog named Lin Lin) that are even harder to find. The info includes the minimum katamari size required to "roll up" the item, plus text commentary from the King of All Cosmos himself. Filling out the entire collection is a feat not unlike collecting everything in Animal Crossing, because the game is so big that there are places you may never ever see. Each level also has a hidden Royal Present, which were intended to be given to you by the King but lost along the way. The best Royal Present is a camera - which allows you to take three pictures per level, which can be saved - but most are just dress-up items for the Prince. Like a scarf, wrestling belt or guitar. They can be a crazy bitch to find, since they are naturally very small. In addition to the normal levels, there's a bunch with unique goals. Some require you to collect a ton of one type of object, like crabs or fish or women. Two levels require only one item to win: the biggest bear or cow you can find. Naturally, the place is covered in bears and cows of all types... and if you accidentally snag a small one, the level ends and the King gets upset. One level asks for a 10m katamari, but it doesn't tell you your current size. You have to guess when to stop rolling! After completing a level, you'll get a mini-movie. Half of them tell a short story of an Earth family and their astronaut Dad. The other ones (from the sidebar missions) feature the family daughter explaining what constellation has been returned to the sky. She begins each clip with "Oh! I feel it! I feel the cosmos!" which is as quotable as anything video gaming has yet produced. And just to give you a spoiler on how far the game will take you: The first level asks for a 10cm katamari. The final one demands one at least 300m, and you can easily double that. The controls are dead easy. Using both analog sticks, you roll the ball as if it were a tank. Push both up to go forward. Push one up and one down for a tight turn. There are some ancillary functions mapped to the shoulder buttons (first-person look, birds-eye view) but they're rarely used. The developers did a great job of making the movement seem real. As the ball gets bigger, inertia plays a greater role and you must become judicious with your control. You'll occasionally bounce around, or get stuck between objects. It all makes perfect physical sense, except for the charge move... by rapidly moving the sticks up and down, you can build up a charge and fire the katamari ahead faster than normal. It's tricky to pull off. It would work better to have that also on a shoulder button, but the manual specifically wants to avoid button combos that "cause distress." There is an attempt at a multiplayer mode, called the Space Mushroom. Vertical splitscreen pits one player against another in a circular arena filled with random objects. You can ram each other with that obnoxious charge move, and you can temporarily roll up the other player if you're suitably large enough. Which means that once you fall behind, it is stupidly difficult to catch back up. It's awfully weak. There's very little reason to play it, especially since even watching 1P mode is ten times as much fun. That's what Katamari Damacy is all about. As crazy as it sounds, it's easy for anyone to understand and play. "Oh, I roll around and pick stuff up?" And even if you don't meet the King's request on a level, this is one game where losing doesn't really matter. Do you have less fun playing the level because you didn't make a star? You still play the full time, you don't lose life or points. You just have to endure a couple sarcastic jabs from the King of All Cosmos. This is a game that has bypassed even the time-honored practice of YOU FAILED GAME OVER. Fun regardless. This is going to be a tough game to find, but it is worth the hunt. Early reports indicate that retailers under-ordered and Namco probably under-produced. At only $20 (a price that greatly mediates any concerns about length or graphic quality) it is a super addition to your shelves. You're going to see this one talked about in all the Best of 2004 lists... and if you're scratching your head wondering what the hell is that crap, you will have missed out. |
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September 2004 Archives
You can expect a game to be good, but sometimes you're taken aback by just how good. Katamari Damacy is such a game.
I'm glad I preordered it. My local EB scored exactly two copies. I bought one and the sales clerk bought the other one. I find it highly unlikely that I'll see many of these warming the racks.
Seeing games like this reminds me that video games are not a dying medium, that they're not stagnating like many suggest, and that there will always be those who take the effort to come up with something really different. And given generous publishers like Namco, some of them will actually reach the US market.
This weekend was another tedious motorcycle-related tourist event in York, so Rhon and I skedaddled down to see Mike and Noelle's new place... and Katamari Damacy was along for the trip. We all played it quite a bit. Multiplayer mode is weak (I'm sure I'll hit that in my inevitable review) but this is one of those times when watching somebody else play a 20 minute level is perfectly acceptable entertainment. Even the soundtrack is awesome. I've already ordered it from play-asia.com.
This game should be in your PS2 collection. Good luck finding it.
With the Snorlax blocking the way and the route into Saffron City closed (which is something the Kanto Transportation Authority really ought to look into) there's still a lot of walking to be done. Today's diary entry is going to cover the most maudlin area in a Pokemon game before or since: Lavender Town.
Lavender Town covers a topic rarely broached in modern poke-literature, the deaths of pokemon. Apparently pokemon can die, and this is where they go when they do. Or, at least, this is where we bury them. Lavender Tower is a multi-storied building packed with gravestones and mourning trainers. I'm not sure what can kill a pokemon, other than the town's gossip about Team Rocket. Old age? Advanced Pokerus?
The Tower is currently reset by evil spirits and a squad of psychic channellers are in there trying to Ghostbust the place. It's not working. I had to battle all the channellers instead, while avoiding random attacks by unnamed ghosts. However, it was easy. My Meowth's Bite attack is super-effective against all the Gastlys and Haunters fielded by the trainers, and my Raticate's Run Away ability guaranteed that I would not get caught offguard by the "ghosts." I'll have to come back to clean out the tower, since you need the Silph Scope to battle the spirits, and those come from Saffron if I recall correctly. I also ran into Liquid again.
I can't stop loving my Meowth. Pay Day is making me rich, and Pickup is amazing. I had Lavender's Name Rater change his name to Katamari. I have cancelled his evolution several times because becoming a Persian erases his Pickup ability.
The other exciting news is I stopped by for yesterday's Trade and Battle Day at my local Toys R Us. Which was only barely being operated. Although Nintendo's email promised free stuff and game demos and the titular trading and battling, there was nothing on display, no special table, no banners, and no demo monkey. We figured it was another example of the local franchise just not having the staff to support these nationally-based special events, but then Rhonda noticed a fellow patron clutching a Pokemon poster. Turns out you had to go to the customer service desk and make an ass of yourself begging to see the free Pokemon stuff.
So I did. The counter woman, harried and missing someone in electronics, called over her shoulder to someone else "They want to demo the Pokemon game." Then "Red or Green" to me. Uh, Red?
OK, so this is sort of what was promised. I feigned interest and fired up FireRed. The game's PC has about 10 boxes filled with one type each. Like, a box of Ekans, a box of Slowpokes, a box of Haunters. Nothing I would classify as awesome, like the unattainable starters or a Moltres or even a damn Kingdra (which I would immediately transfer over to Sapphire.) Of course I had my SP with me, so I had Rhon pretend to play while I turned my LeafGreen on and hooked up the link cable. Stupidly, Toys R Us had no mention of the wireless adapter, which is probably one of the big reasons Nintendo tried to orchestrate these little events: show off the new tech.
With Rhon manning the demo copy, we traded over a Haunter, Machoke and Shellder to my game. I gave up some extra lowlies... a Zubat, Meowth and Geodude. Bye, guys! Naturally, the Haunter and Machoke evolved on transit, so my pokedex got a +5 boost after all was done and powered down. I'm sure the counter women weren't impressed, but I'm happy to have a Gengar.
After handing over the demo unit, we got a free poster, promo card (the same Beldums they were handing out at Origins), and a coupon for $5 off $20 of Pokemon merchandise. Done.
Time: 13:09
Badges: 3
Pokedex: 33 (Seen: 70)
Party: Geodude lv20, Gengar lv26, Katamari (Meowth) lv29, Wartortle lv25, Mankey lv25, Raticate lv26
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I don't like car games. Back with the first Gran Turismo came out, I was blown away by a demo disk and ended up getting it, Ridge Racer Type 4, and a steering wheel. But I ended up bored and annoyed by GT's plodding pace. I found out that, while the photo-realistic replays looked great, I lacked the motorhead gene that would get me through all the under-the-hood stuff. I'm just not interested in earning "licenses" and maintaining the engine.
Because what I want in a car game is fast racing, drifting through turns, and all-around aggressive driving. For years, I found this only in games like Crash Team Racing and Mario Kart. Even Smuggler's Run and Grand Theft Auto. And that was pretty much where I expected the genre to peak for me. Then I started noticing the reviews for Burnout 3: Takedown. (Note: I have never played Burnout 1 or 2, so I can't say what features are a historical part of the series and what is new to 3.) This is a game built for guys like me, who prefer an arcade experience filled with flashy wrecks and unbelievable speeds. I can recommend it without hesitation because it succeeds on nearly every level. Great tracks, great draw distance, great crashes. And it's the fastest thing I've ever played, even on the first level. Burnout 3 is shockingly fast. The speed is real. Then you hit the turbo button and it gets ever faster. Burnout 3 is built around a supply of tracks so diverse I lost track of counting them. There are three major venues - USA, Europe and Far East - each with several gigantic courses. Each course has multiple paths for different events, but you never feel like you're driving the same areas over and over again, probably because it's so damn fast you don't see much of the beautiful scenary. There are a bunch of race types. You can run solo for the fastest lap, a normal race of 6 cars, an elimination race where the final guy each lap gets erased, and a road rage race where you just have to score crash takedowns. There are also Grand Prix events, where you travel several courses with a recurring score tally. All of these take place on "real world" courses where you have to face commuter traffic and tight turns... no boring NASCAR loop tracks here. What differentiates this game from other hardcore racers is the emphasis on crashing. When you smack an opponent off the track, you earn more energy for your boost meter, which is used to activate a searing turbo charge. Plus you earn points, which act as one way to unlock more cars. And the camera follows each enemy crash for a couple seconds so you can gleefully see the results of your Dale Earnhardt-esque abilities. Happily, these sudden camera switches do not affect your driving at all; the game takes care of your car for you during the split-seconds you're watching the crash cam... so you never zoom back to your car to find it upended into a Starbucks. It adds a sort of smacktalkable sports angle to it, since you get to actually see the big crash instead of just watching opponents disappear offscreen. Now what happens when you crash? One of the most overused effects in contemporary video games: bullet time. But you have to love it because they do it with cars. You crash and the world goes slo-mo (if you hold R1). During this, you can kinda sorta continue to steer your smoking heap, or control its flying trajectory, so that it hits enemy cars. They call it "aftertouch," which smacks of rampart buzzwordism to me. If you can manage to whack another car during aftertouch, you score an immediate crash on him. All the while, parts sail off your car, sparks are everywhere, and the music dives into a slowed-down aural blur. It's good fun. You even get a couple points for your crash, tallied in a Tony Hawk style stunt display: Into Rival + Barrel Roll + 250ft Skid + 1.3s Air + Into Taxi. Another feature of Burnout 3 is almost a minigame: crash junctions. These are 100 separate levels, culled from intersections and roads in all the main courses. The whole point of these is to cause the biggest car pileup you can, initiated by sending your car down into oncoming traffic like the amazing rocketship Phoenix. You can even trigger a gigantic explosion once you score enough incidental wrecks. Once the chain reaction ends, your total damage (in $) is added up during a hilarious flyover with overlaid graphics. Collecting crash $ is another way to unlock additional content. The crash junction paths are littered with power ups, which is how you get the big money. The power-ups are all grabbable even after you personally wreck, so you can still snag the big $x4 multiplier by steering your exploding metal heap into it in mid-air, slo-mo style. The music follows EA's usual jukebox of licensed tracks. They're all modern alternative songs, with one classic thrown in for no good reason: The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated." The options are slim, especially when compared to playlist-centric titles like SSX3. You can select each song to play only during races, only during menus, or both. During a race, you can tap L2 to skip to the next track. Not much ado there. There's also a terrible in-game DJ who is intended to build the illusion that all of these races are part of some overarching world tour storyline. He can be easily switched off, in the greatest audio option since SOCOM's in-headset comm. He talks at stupid times (in the middle of songs?!?), and his dialogue repeats far too often to maintain any amount of genuine DJ plausibility. Now about those unlockables. They're lame. This is one time where it ain't the landslide of locked content that's keeping you playing (OMG it's the gameplay!) I don't mean the locked courses and events, that's part of an expected progression and not really bonus material per se. What counts for unlockables in Burnout 3 is more identical cars and lots of stupid art files. First of all, the cars are not actual cars. There are no licensed automobiles in Burnout 3, just a bunch of lookalikes. There's several different classes (compact, muscle, coupe, sports, etc) and many cars in each class... but - physical model aside - they're all the same. Cars are rated on speed and weight, but every car within a particular class has the same rating (plus or minus one measly point.) The only reason for choosing the Assassin Coupe over the Coupe Type 3 is the exterior. (Hit square to cycle through three exciting paint jobs! Three!) I just unlocked the Coupe DX! It's the same as everything else! Whoopee. The other collectibles are signature takedowns and crash headlines. On each track, there are certain semi-secret spots where you can land a signature takedown if you crash a guy at just the right location. You get more points for a signature, and you get a pre-rendered Polaroid picture of the crash. Yes, pre-rendered... so it's not a picture of your takedown, it's the artist's conception of what a takedown in the area might look like. Uh. The crash headlines are only marginally better. If you exceed a pre-determined amount of damage in a crash junction, you get a cute newspaper front page detailed your massive wreck. Again however, it's generic. Uh x2. Splitscreen multiplayer offers the necessary racing and raging modes. The graphics take a hit here; they're just not a sharp as in fullscreen. You can do the crash junctions multiplayer as well, both splitscreen and taking turns. Taking turns is the more spectacular option, since you get the fullscreen effects plus the competition of besting each other's score. Burnout 3 also does online multiplayer, which naturally retains your fullscreeniness. This is game to play for hours, where the gameplay is so solid that you don't need unlockables, you don't mind load times, and waiting your turn in multiplayer crash junction isn't bad at all. I hate car games and I can't put this one down. |
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Nintendo is now completely serious about the DS. It's set to launch November 21 for $150, with IM software PictoChat built-in and (maybe) bundled with a Metroid game. Head here for details. Great price: although Sony's PSP price is still pure conjecture, this could be undercutting it by as much as $100... which will rock sales, especially in the kid-friendly portable market.
Now where's the launch games list? That's what will make or break it, in these days where every business move is watched by a thousand magazines, a million websites, and a billion fanboys. Nobody can pull off a weak launch like the N64 ever again.
I haven't seen much said about the DS's wireless setup, other than vague promises that you can have it search for games over your pre-existing wireless network. If that turns out solid, Nintendo will have back-doored their way right into the online world... and with a portable, no less. Hotwiring PictoChat directly into the system was absolutely necessary. Hopefully this means we'll be able to use PictoChat as a kind of lobby service, accessible from any game. Although given Nintendo's prior fear (excuse) of not being able to provide watchdogged online content for kids, embracing PictoChat means that assholes can not only swear at buddies, but also draw cocks and swastikas at buddies. Maybe it will come with cock-blocking filters.
I have no doubt that if this thing wins big, we'll see the end of the Game Boy line. Nintendo's "third pillar" marketing angle is simply to hedge their bets, plus keep people from abandoning the GBA SP too early. It's genius, actually. If it sells, the GBA quietly retires. If it tanks, the DS goes on the pile with the eReader and the Virtual Boy and everyone moves on.
Except for those of us with online / portable Animal Crossing, who will play it for years without pause.
Not to be forgotten, Sony announced the PStwo, a revised PS2 hardware model than we all should have seen coming. Built-in ethernet is great, but I don't like the slimmer design. They just made it flatter (and slightly less wide.) What they should have done is stack the components to give it a smaller footprint. Making it less tall doesn't really save anybody any space in their entertainment center. Although I guess you could now stack it on top of something else if that doesn't bother you. Like your Xbox.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has absolutely nothing to say, but they couldn't allow a press release war to go on unattended, so they announced that Xbox2 chip production is right on schedule (scroll down to find my comments). This is, of course, a fucking joke of non-news, but it's better than reminding current Xbox owners that v2.0 won't have a hard drive.
Between Gyms 2 and 3, the world starts opening up for you and the path becomes less linear. Now is when you can begin getting lost... which makes the startup flashback feature all the more helpful.
I boarded the S.S. Anne, docked at Vermilion's port. This venerable cruise ship is little more than a floating battleground, so I got plenty of fights in. Happily, the second room from the right on the ship's first floor lets you heal back up, so you're not stranded with an ailing party. The ship's seasick captain - don't look in his trash can! - hands over the CUT HM, which is really the main purpose for shoving aboard.
Liquid - who is perpetually one step ahead of me - challenged me to a fight on the Anne. His Bulbasaur still hasn't evolved up to an Ivysaur; he seems to be concentrating on his Pidgeotto. The fight was brief, and Liquid soon sauntered off to the tune of his personal theme music.
Armed now with the CUT move, I went back to clear out some CUTtable trees I had to pass before. Went through Diglett's Cave, found the blocked road with the sleeping Snorlax, and took down the third Gym Leader, Lt. Surge. And I went back through Mt. Moon to fight all the guys I avoided on the first pass.
Since when did Surge become the "lightning American"? The guy is a total cheeseball, but his third (and final) fighter - a Raichu - smacked me down a couple times. Surge leads with a Voltorb that I handily Mankeyed. Then a poor Pikachu that my Mankey can KO with one Karate Chop. Then that Raichu, who paralyzes opponents into submission. I hate status attacks.
I've changed my opinion on the Vs. Seeker. It looks like there are a lot more trainers to re-battle in LeafGreen then there was in Sapphire. So if you are near a bunch of available trainers, odds are the Vs. Seeker will snag one or two of them for an immediate battle. Sapphire's list of eager trainers changed over time, plus you had the inconvenience of finding them again. With the Vs. Seeker, you just have to use it where you stand.
However, I don't like LeafGreen's inventory organizating system. Instead of listing the TM holder and Berry Pouch at the root level, these items are buried inside the Key Items section of the bag. So you have to drill through extra lists to get down to them. It would be easier if they stayed at the top level of the bag. I'd also like a top level gadget list, so the Vs. Seeker and Fame Checker and stuff were easier to use. And speaking of that, it's high time Pokemon added more hotkeys for items. Right now, we're still stuck with a single hotkey (Select) even though there are tens of items that would be more usefully accessed on a single click.
Time: 10:07
Badges: 3
Pokedex: 26 (Seen: 59)
Party: Meowth lv24, Wartortle lv25, Mankey lv24, Beedrill lv19, Pidgeotto lv23, Raticate lv21
This sort of thing is less impressive in the modern world of online game stats-tracking, but fun nonetheless. When you finish Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, you get an alphanumeric clear code... which ranks your accomplishment worldwide when entered into Konami's Twin Snakes website. (That link is for the english version of the website, which is oddly translated. One page says "METAL GEAR SOLID: THE TWIN SNAKES has finally been released, and we believe many people have played it.") So here's what my clear code indicates:
I'm sure that's not very good at all. All those "max" counts annoy me since I don't know what the max might be. The code doesn't seem to track your collected Dog Tags, which pretty much ought to be the first damn thing listed. I would judge the mark of a great MGS player by a low Alert Mode stat. I am clearly not that great an MGS player. That's one Alert every 12 minutes.
I went through Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty several times, and would like to go through Twin Snakes again, especially since Twin Snakes seemed to short in comparison. But with the run-up to holiday shopping sending new games into my home vitually every week, it's unlikely I'll circle around to it again in the near future.
Although I wasn't planning on it, I bought Sly Cooper 2 this weekend and started it tonight... which means Sly 2 has totally lapped two other games purchased earlier that still have never been booted (Pikmin 2 and ESPN NHL 2K5.) Sly 2 is in addition to Burnout 3 and Pokemon LeafGreen. I was planning on starting Pikmin 2 next, but the notice of a "USB headset" on the back of the Sly package intrigued me. It's not mentioned in the manual (?), but if you plug in your USB headset, you'll receive most of mission operative Bentley's audio in your headset instead of your speakers. I love that! I just wish I could talk back to him.
Next week: Katamari Damacy, which I already ordered from EB. This little game ($20) is so niche and so bizarre that there is no way anyone is going to have it in shelf stock around here, so I went ahead and formally requested it. You may have heard of it, it's the PS2 game where you're an alien and you push around a ball of trash that gets gradually larger. See. And that's why I choose console games over PC games.
There's a new Hiptop coming out. New design, different features, better camera, same flippy screen dealie. Still provided only by T-Mobile. I've been kinda on the fence about getting it, since the damn things are expensive ($300 retail) and I've pretty much burned through my fascination with the gadget. My Hiptop has been entirely utilitarian for months: AIM monitoring, quick eBay checks, killing time in waiting rooms, website updates on the road. And the odd phone call. I even stopped carrying around the plug-in camera.
That said, I couldn't live without it. It's too great to have all that functionality immediately available. And I have been using the same black-and-white model that I bought in October '02. I know it's trendy to order replacements because they're chincy and break a lot. I know it's cool to create forum avatars that illustrate the amount of broken Hiptops owned like Japanese flags on the side of an F6F Hellcat. But my Day One model has been a perfect little soldier for almost two years now. So suck it.
Monday I get an email. T-Mobile is proud to announce a limited time offer for loyal Hiptop owners: call this number and trade in your old Hiptop on a new model for only $200. They promise to ship it within a week, which means you get it before it's available in stores. Cool. Offer available while supplies last or until 9/24.
That night I do something I stopped doing years ago: I hit the Hiptop.com forums. I'm not trying to name names here, but the Hiptop forums stopped being useful a long time ago. Somehow, T-Mobile managed to market the Hiptop to the Disaffected Moron Youth population, and they hijacked the message boards like crazy... with incomprehensible messages, your usual internet non-spelling, and incessant requests for IM friends. But I ventured back inside to see the buzz on this offer.
It's legit... but it's trouble. Most folks can't get through. It's rumored that T-Mobile has only 10 operators running it, and they're swamped from sunrise to sunset. People are pissed.
Tuesday I get an email. Thanks for your patience, the response has been unexpected. Please keep trying. I figure I'll wait out the rush and try after a few days. Back to the boards. Some folks are getting in, some orders have been screwed up (Some people placed their trade-in order, and instead received a refurb model of the current Hiptop! Some people are being charged an additional $70 for trading in the old one!) People are still pissed.
Wednesday I get an email. The offer is closed. We're out of Hiptop2s. We will re-open the offer soon. People are really pissed.
That's shitty. The entire supply was blown out in under three days. One thing that's great about the forums is that people will post verbatim conversations with T-Mobile customer service monkeys - filled to the brim with stupidity - and then the few "official" forum mods have to scurry to explain how the monkey screwed up. (Like the classic instances mentioned above: sending out a Hiptop1.5 instead of a Hiptop2, or the extra $70 charge.) I have to agree; those idiots fucked over my T-Mobile service too. When I added a phone for Rhonda and switched over to one of their family plans, they immediately disconnected my Hiptop. And whenever I would visit the T-Mobile store looking for Hiptop accessories, they would never know what I was talking about. Customer care just isn't a priority, because delivering informational memos to a million seasonally-employed high school kids is too large a task.
BUT. Friday I get an email. The offer is back on, and now it's web based. I immediately hit the website, but how's this for lacking confidence: Now you give them your name and phone number, and they promise to call you to finish the deal. Oh, sure. The same company who f-ed up everybody's Monday Hiptop2 order because the system was down and they had to write everything down on paper... yeah, they're going to call my ass back and set up my upgrade order.
T-Mobile sucks. They've got the best goddamn phone gadget out there, but they suck.
So I will wait and see what happens. If it does work and I get a Hiptop2 for $200, that will be phenomenal. If it doesn't, I doubt I'll rush out for a $300 retail edition. There will be an inevitable sale or promo anyway. For crying out loud, for months you could get a Hiptop for free through a New User service plan and a couple combined Amazon.com rebates.
In a vain attempt to post something not related to Pokemon, here's some newish websites for you to visit:
LazyTown: This is a Finnish kids' show re-done for Nick Jr. starring a neo-Power Ranger athlete ("Sportacus") who must spend his days teaching the hideous puppet populace of LazyTown how to not be slugs. As usual, boring parents everywhere are turning against it, just as they did against Barney and Teletubbies and everything else that young kids glom onto. After reading a blog mention of the show, I made sure to check it out today on Nick... and it's not all that great, actually. But Sportacus himself is undeniably awesome, and he deserves recognition if only for spending his workdays leaping and backflipping in front of a greenwall. At the least, you have to watch the preview video, which does a better job of presenting the concept's crazy verve than the actual half-hour show does.
johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com: I couldn't have said it better myself. John Kerry is a douchebag, and yet I shall vote for him. This site presents one person's take on the current US war de politic. And it rather neatly covers my view: all politicians are lying, dirty scumbags and the only thing we can do as voters is punish the ones that do wrong and take a chance on the next guy. Unless we're voting for Sportacus. Sportacus is awesome.
Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Be honest; you have never read the Bible. No one has. 99% of all Christians flip through it, give up, and go buy a little inspirational quote calendar instead. If you did read it, you'd uncover all sorts of disgusting passages, utter nonsense, and obvious contradictions. This site lays them all bare, and should be required reading for anyone heading into a Bible-based argument against one of those stupid Fundies.
I kinda duck-and-covered my way through Mt. Moon. Things were getting hairy for my tiny crew, so I avoided a lot of battles. (Except the Team Rocket intro and the fight for the Helix Fossil.) Unfortunately, that meant losing out on some experience points... which made a difference when I got to Cerulean City.
I trapped myself for a couple hours. You see, the path from Mt. Moon to Cerulean is one-way and (initially) the only exit paths are blocked. The southern route is blocked by a CUT tree (don't have CUT yet.) The east path requires the cops to step aside from blocking the house that Team Rocket robbed. Stepping on the northern path triggers a fight with Liquid. Then there's Cerulean's Gym Leader, Misty, blocking the town's major plot point: the Cascade Badge.
So I had effectively cornered myself with a weak team, surrounded by blocked paths and difficult fights. Luckily, there is one patch of tall grass just outside city limits, so I burned some time out there training up my party. Also picked up a Mankey, a silly beast who I remember fondly from his primal screaming back in Pokemon Snap.
Trained up to my satisfaction, I took down Misty and Liquid in short order, then travelled north up the Nugget Bridge gauntlet to visit Bill's House. Turned down an offer to join Team Rocket... which would be a cool idea for an alternate-angle future game: joining Team Rocket. Saved Bill from his teleportation accident (where did the Clefable go?); I guess that was the scripted event that allowed the police to move away from the Rocket-ransacked house.
Now I could take the long walk to Vermilion City, passing the awkwardly-placed Day Care Center along the way. I left my NidoranF with the owner there... hey, shouldn't we able to breed pokemon at this Center? Weak.
Now begins the item parade: received the Old Rod, the Bike Voucher and the Vs. Seeker from various generous folks in Vermilion. Caught a Magikarp with the Old Rod. Ran back to the Cerulean Bike Shop for the free bike (they're $1,000,000 otherwise.) The Vs. Seeker is an different take on Sapphire's Trainer Eyes. Activate it and it shows you what trainers in the area are willing to battle you. Since you have to be standing near people for the Vs. Seeker to ID them, the Trainer Eyes (which listed every willing fighter and their locale across the continent) strikes me as quite a bit more useful.
Caught a Meowth near the Day Care Center... if I remember correctly, you couldn't catch Meowths in Yellow since that game followed the cartoon's storyline a little more than the other games, and Meowth is pretty much a Team Rocket thing (except that episode with all the city Meowths and the explanation of how the TR Meowth taught himself to talk.) The first Meowth I caught was holding a Nugget, which you can sell for $5000. That is awesome. I went back for some more, but no such luck. However, it's fun to start your battles with a Meowth, because the little bastard will usually steal something from whoever he's facing... so far, he's lifted a couple of berries for me. Which I gather is a cool thing, since LeafGreen doesn't have the whole Berry Planting deal that Sapphire had.
Time: 7:07
Badges: 2
Pokedex: 21
Party: Rattata lv16, Wartortle lv22, Meowth lv14, Pidgeotto lv20, Mankey lv20, Ch'Ding (Farfetch'd) lv8
I have to wonder why Nintendo didn't keep the cool clock feature from Gold/Silver in the Advance generation of poke-games. It made those games all the more compelling to know that you could only enter the Bug Catching Contest on Saturdays, or that you have to be at a certain place during the morning, or whatever. The real-life clock really elevated Gold/Silver, and it is keenly missed in Ruby/Sapphire and FireRed/LeafGreen.
Speaking of bug catching, are there any sadder trainers in Kanto than the Bug Catcher boys? They insist on fielding Kakunas and/or Metapods that have no aggressive attacks, only defensive ones. It's an easy way to level up some lowly lv3 pokemon: against a lv9 Metapod that refuses to do damage to you. I suppose the Bug Catchers are placed here in the beginning of the game for just that purpose: painless experience-farming.
I've already evolved up both a Beedrill and a Butterfree, but I doubt I'll hold on to both for long. Two bug-types seems a bit much. I'm trying to actively pursue pokemon I tended to avoid back in Pokemon Yellow, so the Beedrill might win out. These bug types are all about short-term gratification since they evolve so quickly. What fun is it when they reach their highest stage at level 10? There's nothing left to look forward to but fresh attacks. You can see why Ash himself had no trouble releasing his Butterfree to the wild back in the first season.
For every bit of script that I recall exactly from the original game, there's something I have wholly forgotten, like the Museum in Pewter City. I paid my $50 to get in, but I don't remember what eventually happens there. I'm sure the plot points will reveal themselves in time. I love the spooky reconstructed skeletons of prehistoric pokemon Aerodactyl and Kabutops, though.
Brock, Brock, Brock. Pewter City must not have much of a legacy in pokemon training if the best you can swing is a lv14 Onix. My Squirtle's Bubble attack pretty much rocked the Pewter Gym single handedly.
I did not find any Pikachu in Viridian Forest (maybe later), but I did catch a Jigglypuff down in the grass below the entrance to Mt. Moon. And that's where I am now; it's bigger than I remember it, with cute little water puddles and sand patches. And tons of Zubat, which is irrelevant because you could find those in Sapphire so I could always trade one over for 'dex completion.
Time: 2:52
Badges: 1
Pokedex: 12
Party: Rattata lv11, Butterfree lv10, Squirtle lv14, Beedrill lv11, Pidgey lv14, NidoranF lv7
My Pokemon LeafGreen adventure begins now, and this online diary will track my progress from neophyte to master.
Since LeafGreen (and its counterpart FireRed) are remakes of original Pokemon classics Blue and Red, it's back to the continent of Kanto, Professor Oak, and the original eight Gym Leaders. I named my character JoeLG, which was intended to stand for LeafGreen but now looks like JoeLarge. Bleah. How about JoeLegend? Yeah, let's go with that.
Since Oak can never recall the name of his own nephew - destined to be my greatest rival - I named him Liquid. I just finished Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, so the allusion amused me.
As expected, Liquid is a complete prick and wanted to battle as soon as Oak gifted us our starting pokemon. I chose Squirtle; he picked Bulbasaur. I won. Then it was off to wander through a couple of in-game tutorials about catching and status effects and such. Now I'm in Viridian Forest, which if I recall correctly, was just the place to catch native Pikachu.
First impressions: the cartridge is a very healthy glowing green color. The graphics are much the same as they looked in Ruby and Sapphire, with a couple effect tweaks... like a cooler Pokedex, and fullscreen splash screens upon entering a new area. One feature I really like is the flashback recap that occurs every time you load a saved game. You get a brief visual rundown of your latest accomplishments, which will be great if you pick the game up after an extended period of not-playing and have forgotten what you have to do next. The flashbacks are all black & white, and they even animate your actual actions, so it's just like watching yourself on a convenience store monitor. And yes, they're skippable, o impatient one.
My name is JoeLG from Pallet Town, and I will be the greatest pokemon trainer Kanto has ever seen.
Time: :29
Badges: 0
Pokedex: 3
Party: Squirtle lv8, Rattata lv3, Caterpie lv4
Part of what makes games like Magic exciting is the continuous influx of brand new cards. Right from the start, I wanted to do something like this for TaleSpin in the form of small expansion sets. Originally, I had drawn up plans for a Thembrian-themed set and a Pirate-themed set... but it seemed cruel to make players wait for Sky Pirate cards, so most of that imaginary expansion went into the current "base" set.
With TaleSpin being a single deck card game, there comes a point where you can have too many cards. Especially when they're sleeved, which almost doubles each card's thickness. Shuffling can be a bitch. So I have settled (probably) on two separate expansions, approximately 20 cards each. That will bring the final deck size up to around 140, which is plenty. (Although I'm considering adding variant rules that would split the deck into two decks for a 2-player Baloo vs. Karnage game. That will require some investigation into balancing two halves of the main game deck.)
The first of these expansions - aptly titled Expansion #1 - is online now, along with a revised rulebook that evens out some rough spots.
Expansion #1 contains the fully-realized Artifact card type, which is now sort of a specialized Cargo card. Playing Artifacts isn't exactly elegant under the new rules, but it works well enough. There's two ways to play them: you can play them directly to a cargo hold by replacing an existing open cargo card. The idea being that the Artifact was what was inside the box. The second way is to play them as normal, facedown cargo and wait for someone to open them... thus exposing what was hidden inside. In both cases, the Artifacts apply permanent effects to whoever controls them. There are good Artifacts and there are bad Artifacts. All five of them are rather powerful.
The balance between red and blue characters is now equal with the Expansion (unless you're playing with less than 4 players and have shuffled in the Passenger versions of the main 4 Player characters), so things are a bit more fair there in terms of red vs. blue. The blue "good guys" get a rough new Pilot named Joe McGee, who has a Damage, a Reward of opening 1 cargo, and uses your Player's Pilot stat as his... he could add up to one mean dogfighter. (If you know the episode Joe is from, he is a famed pilot instructor, so having him share your Pilot stat is thematically appropriate!)
As promised, the Thembrians have arrived: Spigot, Dunder and one of my favorites, the Firing Squad. Loyal Dunder's stats get bigger if Spiggy is around, and the Firing Squad move any Passenger to last position, putting them under crosshairs, as it were!
And there's now a Group Passenger that doesn't suck: Khan's Board of Directors. The Board lets you re-roll any die roll, and they have +2 Shipping. These guys hit the table quite a bit.
So that's a taste of the new cards, but what did I have to change in the game's overall rules? Well, I believe they call these "patch rules" in the biz, and that's usually not something to be proud of. It tends to indicate something majorly wrong with the game design, and a quickie patch rule must be fashioned to shore up the leak. My big patch has to do with the number of cards in hand. All players still draw up to 5 at the start of their turn, but now they can't have more than 10 cards in hand, and all players must discard down to 7 at the end of EVERY turn.
What we learned is that unchecked hand growth created unstoppable players. And since card-drawing is most often associated with the better skilled Pilots, a player with a high Pilot stat was almost impossible to stop. The 10-card hand limit severely weakens the game's big dogfighters. Yeah, it's an ugly patch... but my playtesters have incorporated it perfectly so I'm not ashamed. Of course, now I think I'm sensing a new problem: the tide has turned towards the game's big shippers...
Several cards from the original set were tweaked or changed. Claws for Alarm is now playable and much cooler. Louie got a major upgrade to his die roll table, plus a cool combo effect with the otherwise chumpy Monkey Workers. My favorite revised character is the Passenger Molly. She now has an adorable effect I call the "stowaway." If you reveal her as bluff cargo, instead of being discarded she jumps to your first position and all opponents must discard a card. Of course, you'll only use this card if no one is playing Molly, but it is sooo thematic that I just love it.
So check it out; you'll find the game a little more even-handed than before, and a lot of the expansion cards really kick ass. Now it's off to think about Expansion #2.
So now that Zoe has been de-mited, distempered and spayed we needed a new excuse to keep going to the vet. So Annie is currently on pills for a bladder infection. She's been having trouble peeing - for a couple weeks now, I'm guessing... if the pills don't get her back on track then it could be something more serious. Once upon a time we had too much urine. Now it's not enough.
There's not much sadder than the look on a cat's face when she wants to pee but just can't. She'll amble into the litterbox, sit there for minutes at a time, and gingerly step out without having done anything. I first noticed some irregular bathroom habits about a month ago, but I chalked it up to the stress of having Zoe around. When Annie squatted over a discarded pair of my jeans right in front of me and released two tiny droplets of piss, I assumed it was a territorial thing. Turns out it was a cry for help just less blatant than sending me a sheet cake personalized with "Can't piss. Meow."
So the vet prescribed some pills - which we hide in sliced turkey, the first genuine animal meat we've had in the house in quite some time. Not that we're happy about it, just that it was the only sure-fire way to get her to eat the pills. Annie is not the kind of cat that will sit still for the ol' crack the skull back and chuck the pill down the throat trick. Annie loves the turkey, but she's a natural carnivore and that's to be expected.
In other cat-secretion news, Zoe threw up for the first time last night. I'm pretty sure this was her First Ever Vomit, because she was wildly confused about the whole process. First she started dancing back and forth, with a couple of plaintive, worried yowls. It sounded very much like "OMG OMG WTF." Then she parked herself, gave a very sad meow, and vomited. I caught most of it in my cupped hands (to save the carpet). It was primarily barely-chewed cat food.
The latest OPM demo disc had a video preview of the sure-to-be-awful upcoming Playboy game. Actually, after watching the movie, it doesn't look as bad as I had imagined. Aside from it being nothing more than a complete Sims ripoff centered around a rock-jawed Hef avatar, there's one big redeeming feature: centerfold photo shoots. I love photography in video games; it could conceivably be enough to make me pick up Playboy when it hits the value racks four months after release. Could be.
Anyway, after watching the girlie model models bounce around in the demo movie, I started thinking about other sexy women in video gaming. Say, there's a phrase that's sure to pump up my Google search rating! Here's my highly personal list of sexy stuff I have witnessed in video games. And I am limiting this to just my collection, as much as I'd like to include DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball and Final Fantasy X-2.
It's really easy to just toss out screengrabs of Lara Croft, the Fear Effect girls, hell... even some of the Trainer sprites from the latest Pokemon games are pretty hot. So that's what I'm going to do. But I'll temper that raging ploy for pageviews with a VH1-esque series of quirky explanatory quips. (Add your own Mo Rocca and Leif Garrett.)
Sexy From Behind
Claire Redfield of Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (PS2)
Although everybody does this nowadays, RE:CVX was the first game where I really noticed the heroine's high-quality ass texture map. In third-person games like this, we spend a lot of time staring at asses. It's nice to have that ass painted in low-riding jeans.
Sexy Strategist
Nell of Advance Wars (GBA)
Nell is in charge and you'd better get used to it. Happily, she stays safely at central command while you're out positioning army units against General Sturm. You wouldn't want her to get hurt, would you? She's adorable!
Sexy In Motion
Chrissy of Aggressive Inline (GC)
Chrissy seems pretty panderingly sexy when she's standing still: blonde, pigtails, schoolgirl outfit. But it's when she's blading that she's really panderingly sexy. You see, Chrissy-in-motion showcases a bouncy bra-less jiggle effect that probably clinched sales of Aggressive Inline the world over.
Sexy And Sporty
Any Team from Beach Spikers (GC)
Okay, yeah, an international cast of girls in bikinis playing volleyball. Fine. But where Beach Spikers goes the extra mile is whenever the girls score a point: then they hug. And, unlike other volleyball games, this one offers a genuine fun game too.
Sexy And Paid For It
Cowgirl Stripper of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)
No, she doesn't strip. She just sort of runs through random low-fi motion capture sequences. But I paid her quite a bit of money to do so... because you eventually unlock something if you sit there long enough. Insert "unlocking something" joke here.
Sexy Scary
Alexandra Roivas of Eternal Darkness (GC)
Although the rest of the cast of Eternal Darkness fills up more of the game, Alex is the star. She's haunted, she's frightened, and she kicks Lovecraftian ass. And look at those eyes. Those aren't just vapid pixels; there's determination behind those eyes.
Sexy Button Mashers
Talim, Taki and Xianghua of Soul Calibur 2 (GC)
Soul Calibur 2 has plenty of beautiful women in it, but these three are my favorites. Firstly, I love playing Talim... fast and nimble. Taki's skin-tight bodysuit ensures that certain victory pose angles are worth winning for. And Xianghua is just about the happiest prize fighter around.
Sexy Double Vision
Mio and Mayu of Fatal Frame 2 (PS2)
Like Alex Roivas, the truly sexy have more to their story than an entrancing jiggle. Mio and Mayu double their waifish innocence with a horrific backstory, making them sexy and complicated. Now that I think about it, Miku from FF1 was probably a little sexier, but the twin factor beats her out.
Sexy Motorhead
Reiko Nagase of Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1)
Unquestionably my sexiest moment in gaming. In the opening movie, Reiko is hitchhiking while you're speeding down streets in your crazy retro-Namco race car. When you pull over, she leans in your window, looks your car over, and does this super-great lip-biting thing because she can't stand how awesome your car is with Pac-Man painted on it. Hot.
