http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Semi daily fourhman.com newspost. en-us joe@fourhman.com 2007-07-21T00:31:22-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2007/07/final-gamecube-1.html And now, the bare facts about my GameCube collection. First, THE GRAPH. This charts the number of games I bought each month, from November 2001 to March 2007. There are 52 games total, with '03 and '04 tied for most number of purchases. For the first three full years, my GameCube buys were pretty much steady, with the only obvious "drought" in summer of '03... which was then evened out by the '03 holiday release blitz. (Of course, by mid-2005, things were unapologetically grim.) On average, that's about one new game every five weeks! 1472@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2007-07-21T00:31:22-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2007/06/chiller-kaitobo.html Chibi-Roboreleased February 2006, purchased February 2006 And another brand new Nintendo IP slips out to absolutely no acclaim while jackholes everywhere bitch and whine about Nintendo never doing any new IP! ANOTHER MARIO GAME DURRRRRR. This is a fantastic little game, a sandbox world set entirely within one family's household chiefly seen from the perspective of toys. Cheebo himself is only about six inches tall, so if you need to get to the kitchen sink it involves climbing up drawer handles and whatnot. This viewpoint has been done before, from Micro Machines to Army Men, but Chibi-Robo's open world environment, task-based storyline and bizarre cast of characters give it the needed charm and luster. This is a very Nintendo GTA. Of course, by February '06, the GameCube was already on life support, so poor Cheebo didn't get the marketing respect nor the sales he deserved. Plus, that dude needs merch, pronto. Memory Score: You found all ten Frog Rings! Now find all ten again! 1328@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2007-06-03T23:57:25-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2007/05/donkey-gun-beat.html Donkey Kong Jungle Beatreleased March 2005, purchased March 2005 I'm all for unusual games and uniquely appropriate control schemes, but it would be nice if said games didn't try to kill you. Although I enjoyed the first half of Jungle Beat (read: the easy half), I never mustered the internal fortitude to finish the game. Eventually, the complicated bongo-banging necessary to maneuver DK through the trickier bits just outpaced me. And it doesn't take too many failed attempts before you completely lose interest in abusing your arms any further. I think Nintendo learned some lessons on the nature of the human body with Jungle Beat, lessons that were applied directly to Wii development. IE, repeated violent movements are superbad. If you can play Jungle Beat for more than an hour, you're either a superhuman or a subhuman, I don't know which. Maybe there's the big problem... Nintendo combined intense physical activity with long, unforgiving level design. Jungle Beat was really nothing more than a Thank You to all the fans who bought the bongos and were (rightfully) tired of Donkey Konga. Plus, geez, if they hadn't released this, what would they have done in 2005? Beautiful game, though. And most of the boss fights make really clever use of the bongo controls. I'm just not sure that full-length platforming challenges were the right venue for the bongo control scheme. Memory Score: And why the duplicate DK closeup in the bottom corner? 1278@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2007-05-09T19:00:01-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2007/02/evil-power-party-46.html Mario Power Tennisreleased November 2004, purchased November 2004 We played the crap out of Mario Tennis on the N64. It was always a reliably fun evening. So I was pretty psyched for the sequel. And then I was pretty disappointed. Because it's not a sequel. At least, not in the respect of offering anything new. It's the same game, except kicked in the junk a couple times. This is the kind of forgettable fare that hurts Nintendo's "the sequels are worth it" image and unleashes the anti-fanboys. What went wrong? Those flashy new power shots, for starters. I'm sure they were intended to "Mario-ify" the experience in the same way that Mario Kart does racing games, but they just assassinated the game of tennis, wrecking the sport's flow with repetitive, over-long animations. And since these cartoonish plays always return any shot, no matter how far across the court, you can forget about your strategy and settle in for some painful endurance volleys. The best feature about the power shots is that you can turn them off. And we did. Then there's the mini-games (and bonus court environments), which run from unplayable to maddening. Half of these games take place on fields so colorful that you can't see the ball. And the other half require the kind of tennis skill that the core game won't let you develop if power shots are turned on. If you've ever played multiplayer on that Paint The Wall game, well, you probably only played it once. It will kill your friends and then it will kill you. Ok, sure, it looks great. Having new character choices is always a Good Sequel Thing (Wiggler!) To give the game proper due, there's not much you need to do to make a great tennis game, if that's all you plan to accomplish. Mario Tennis was a great tennis game. Mario Power Tennis was also a great tennis game, once you sidestepped the lousy add-ons. Just one that you largely didn't need if you still had the N64 version around. Memory Score: "Yours." 1252@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2007-02-23T00:51:15-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2007/01/paper-konga-legends.html Donkey Kongareleased September 2004, purchased September 2004 This is a classic example of Nintendo releasing something silly and fun that nobody cares about. I mean, come on. We all knew that the DK Bongos would not be used for f-all else but this one line of rhythm games (We got two of them; I think Japan got three.) Nintendo managed to squeak out the innovative Jungle Beat in a surprise move, but, like the eReader before it, the Bongos' future strength was decided by the lack of present sales. The Konga project was actually done by Namco, not Nintendo, who would later sideline a PS2 version (Taiko Drum Master) without any pretense of ever using the drum peripheral again. Donkey Konga and Taiko Drum Master are therefore bizarrely identical games, with Taiko just edging out with a better song list. Both games, however, include a terrible version of Love Shack. Donkey Konga's biggest failing - apart from killing your arms in 20 minutes - is the decidely low-fi presentation. The backgrounds are filled with Donkey Kong Country renders that amount to animated gifs, and the menu structure is obnoxious thanks to the Bongos' lack of a d-pad. Nintendo could have gotten a lot more mileage out of this one had they just worked with Namco to amp up the look to something more than SNES levels. (Perhaps not ironically, Taiko Drum Master arrived with a stylized, cartoony look far superior to DK's 3D renders of dancing banana chickens.) Memory Score: Be fair... that "konga" pun was pitch-perfect. 1233@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2007-01-11T00:07:45-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/12/pikeman-box.html Spider-Man 2released June 2004, purchased July 2004click here for my review written in July 2004! Spider-Man spends 90% of his time retrieving lost balloons for kids. Although this was a huge improvement over the previous Spider-Man movie game, it still has some weird angles to it that you can either spin as "unfinished" or "ahead of its time." The true-to-scale New York City that never you can roam at will, top to bottom, without hitting a loading screen is wild... but it looks like total crap and has too few landmarks to help you navigate. Web-swinging is almost perfect, a zen experience that makes you feel like you're actually the -Man... but street-level brawling is a mess of impossible combo moves against burly no-name thugs who consistently dodge your super-heroic attacks. There's plenty of GTA-esque side missions and item hunts to keep you occupied... but they repeat to infinity, it just looks weird to have Spidey constantly standing on the sidewalk talking to pedestrians, and the boss fights are all terrible. (One of which, the Mysterio battle, is enough to make you swear off video games forever.) You have to play it for the web-swinging. Seriously. Memory Score: Just because humankind has invented ragdoll physics does not mean they must be employed every time. 1202@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-12-07T19:36:00-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/11/four-mega-twin-party-snakes.html Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakesreleased March 2004, purchased March 2004 Years ago, I had a demo of Metal Gear Solid for the PS1. I didn't like it. I couldn't even get out of the first room without being spotted and whacked by the ! guards. But when MGS2 showed up as one of the first truly "next gen" offerings for the PS2, I took the chance on it and found it one of the most compelling and original games I had ever played. And I decided that I probably missed out on something cool by passing on the original MGS. Against all odds, Nintendo got Silicon Knights (the Eternal Darkness team) to do a Metal Gear Solid remake for the GameCube, but with the look and feel of the PS2's MGS2. There is so much wrong with that sentence. It boggles the mind. It seemed like a win-win: Silicon Knights gets to work with a gaming legend, Nintendo gets a new "mature" title that is kinda sorta exclusive. But I don't think many people bit. Despite early hopeful rumors, this obviously did not lead to a GameCube port of Sons of Liberty... and Silicon Knights now works for Microsoft. So, uh, I think we can chalk this up to the Nintendo M-rated curse. For my part, I thought the game was great. Seeing Snake's Alaskan adventure, with the classically silly bad guys and the first encounter with Otacon... it underscored the "virtual mission" theme to Sons of Liberty. Seemed kinda short, though. Memory Score: The WaveBird kinda took some of the fun out of the Psycho Mantis scene 1171@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-11-07T23:59:33-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/10/beyond-fantasy-pokemon.html Beyond Good & Evilreleased December 2003, purchased February 2004click here for my review written in February 2004! This is the absolute most over-rated game this generation. BG&E consistently pops up on every critic's "Overlooked Gems" list. It's held up as a triumph of story in video games. Guaranteed, when the dust finally settles on this generation, you'll find it on every single Most Awesome Games list out there. And I do not get it at all. This is a half-hearted, transparent effort at best. The vaunted storyline is obnoxiously simple, with stock characters (hey look! the guy who looks like a jingoistic dope actually is a jingoistic dope!) and a plot that could have been ripped from an episode of Captain Planet. And here's a pro tip: it's all over in six hours. The advance hype on this thing was intense... here was a new IP with a deep-thinking title that was going to change the way you thought about interactive media. Somehow, everybody bought into it. Still. When you can find genuinely complex storylines and richly layered characters in games like MGS2, Fatal Frame 2 and Eternal Darkness (to name a few) on this generation's racks, holding up Beyond Good & Evil as some kind of artistic pinnacle is just humiliating. Any critic who does so should have his or her license revoked. Sales for BG&E were so poor that the price was dropped from $50 to $20 after only a month on sale. $20 is about right. The actual gameplay was okay (if you dig Zelda clones, which is fine), but the whole package was hugely oversold and falsely reviewed. Memory Score: ALPHA SECTIONS MURDERERS! ALPHA SECTIONS MURDERERS! 1166@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-10-30T21:34:22-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/10/i-pacman-hero.html I-Ninjareleased December 2003, purchased December 2003 One of the great cyclical debates in video gaming is Old Franchise vs. New Franchise. Everybody complains there is too much Mario, too many Final Fantasies, a crutch-like reliance on movie/TV cash-ins, and just nowhere near the number of wholly original intellectual properties appearing on the racks. Like in the 16-bit glory days of Aero the Acrobat, Bonk's Adventure and Bubsy, I suppose. So Namco - no doubt still fighting against the urge to release a next-gen Mappy 3D mascot platformer - steps up with I-Ninja, a pure-fun 3D action title with combined elements of Mario64, Monkey Ball, Sonic and Legend of Zelda. And no one buys it. I honestly don't remember how I heard of this one. I think there may have been a demo on one of the OPM PS2 discs. But however I found it, I was glad I did. It's good like first-Sly-Cooper good. Yeah, baddie variety was nil and it's really only a thin veneer on lots of established gameplay types, but the departure mini-games, the fast/smooth action, and the convincingly cartoony art direction more than made up for it. Memory Score: Somehow, classic gameplay plus unfamiliar characters equals refreshing. This time. 1161@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-10-23T01:11:24-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/10/the-party-edition-channel.html Mario Party 5released November 2003, purchased November 2003 After the slapdash efforts of #4, the screenshots for #5 gave me some hope for this Party. Although, by this time, everyone I know is pretty much burned out on the whole concept... and I'm weary of picking up a new one every Thanksgiving. But I just had to see some real, next-gen board game renders. Whee. Mario Party 5 introduced the capsule system for using and planting items... which, although it's easier to explain than #4's mini-mega system, it's still clunky and slow. There are some absolutely crazy extras on this one, the too-cute action games of Beach Volleyball and Ice Hockey, and the strangely detailed Super Duel Mode, where you build custom go-karts for arena-style car-based deathmatches. Really? I'm serious. Nintendo should combine all of the Mario Parties into one big massive uber-game for the Wii, complete with every single extra mode and bonus feature. With so many boards and mini-games available, you could play for weeks without a repeat, and you'd definitely feel like you got your $50 worth. Memory Score: I'm a big fan, but at this point I'm, like, $300 in just on Mario Party games. Ugh. 1152@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-10-09T01:02:39-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/09/double-joe-hobbit.html Viewtiful Joereleased October 2003, purchased October 2003 I was pretty excited for this one, because I liked what I saw of the funky art style and what I heard about the retro 2D gameplay. And I really wanted to know what the hell "viewtiful" meant. But it turned into a disappointment. The kinetic Power Ranger visuals were great, until I found out that, under the mask, Joe is just a hydrocephalic, media-addicted Fred Durst. Add to that the fact that the bad guys repeat like crazy (including a far-too-hard duplicate boss sequence that sent me crawling to the corner in shame) and you have a title that took the old school homage a bit too seriously. There were some fun quirks to the combat, namely a bunch of VCR-derived super-attacks that slowed down and/or sped up time... so it was totally playable. It just tried too hard to be a "HIT FRANCHISE" right out of the gate, instead of letting itself appear naturally cool. And I still don't know what "viewtiful" means. Memory Score: My young Joe... 1143@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-09-30T01:34:50-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/09/soul-pik-run.html Soul Calibur 2released August 2003, purchased August 2003 I like some good hype once in a while. And I like a good fighting game once in a while. I generally don't care much for fighters. Prior to SC2, all of my traditional fighting games were based on comic book licenses (can I get a HELL YEAH for Justice League Task Force!) My problem is that you don't usually get much with them. A roster of combatants, a handful of arenas... and that's it. If you lack the desire to master all of the impossible finger-crunching special moves, and if you're not all that interested in fielding match-up after match-up... well, it seems to explain to me why fighter fans tend to pick one fave and belittle all else. Because if you're hardcore, you've made a serious time investment. And if you're casual, you need exactly one of them. Ever. And it should probably be Smash Bros. Two things sold me on Soul Calibur 2: the unlockable, collectible weapons... and Link. Which brings us to the hype portion. There was mad hype about this release, because each console received a different exclusive character. The PS2 version borrowed Heihachi from Tekken (no one cared). The Xbox received Todd McFarlane's overplayed fan-service 1990s embarrassment, Spawn (no one cared). And the little purple GameCube got Link, looking just like he did in the Spaceworld 2000 demo, before being turned into one of the Flintstone's neighbors. Of course, the Cube version then went to massively outsell the other two, in a slam dunk for Nintendo that ranks as one the GameCube's finest hours. But back to me. I had a hell of a great time with this one, even though I thought Link's moves sucked. My girl is Talim. Mike and I will still pull this one out for some easy late night gaming. Also: the single player "adventure" mode is a complete joke. Memory Score: I refuse to spell it as one word 1133@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-09-17T15:57:34-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/09/legend-of-cell-splinters-revenge.html The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Wakerreleased February 2003, purchased February 2003 The thing about Wind Waker is that, no matter how great the game is, it will forever be labelled as the One That Let Everybody Down. Even though by the time everyone actually played it, most people got past the kneejerk whiny ex-fanboy reaction and decided the game was a worthy addition to the series. Maybe it's because I was pretty late to the Zelda bandwagon (I was annoyed by Link to the Past and got-bored-and-left on Ocarina of Time), but I was more or less okay with the Wind Waker look sooner than most. Yes, I had seen the Spaceworld 2000 demo. Yes, I thought that looked cool. My only reservation to the cel-shaded reveal was one of irritation-by-proxy; I (rightly) figured that this would be assessed as a graphics downgrade and be yankee doodled as an example of how the GameCube is a weaker machine than the Xbox and the PS2. So it wasn't so much that I was ticked that Link didn't look like a cosplayer, but that it would add fuel to the Nintendo Haters party. Wind Waker polarized the Nintendo audience: you had the half that felt disappointed that "their" franchise had been denied the opportunity to graduate into a fully realistic, modern experience... and you had the other half who began chanting "GAMEPLAY NOT GRAPHICS" at every opportunity. And it sold like crazy, but that was too little of a press release too late... the street damage had already been done. Perception is reality, and the new reality was the same as the old N64 reality: Nintendo as kiddie friendly, Nintendo as unwilling to appeal to the core demographics, Nintendo surviving on tentpole first-party releases. This was the junction box, and Nintendo stayed on the road well-travelled. It would be another two years before a game would come along with the anticipation and hype to rival Wind Waker. Memory Score: Wind Waker sealed the GameCube's fate as the N64-2 1125@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-09-07T23:33:12-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/08/metroid-party-quest-4.html Mario Party 4released October 2002, purchased October 2002 After enjoying all three N64 Mario Party editions, I was psyched for the sub-franchise's next-gen debut. I was imagining the cheerful board game fun combined with visuals at Super Smash Bros. Melee quality. And I really didn't get that. The board game worlds - which formerly explored fantastical 3D terrain themed to birthday cakes and pirate ships - were flat and abstract, with SNES-style tiled backgrounds. The mini-games were what they were, but there simply was not enough of them... and the board game itself introduced this confusing "mini-mega system," where you had to shrink to take path A, and grow to take path B. Which meant I had to waste fifteen minutes of playtime explaining the concept to players who just wanted to roll the die and get to a mini-game match. The only good thing about Mario Party 4 is that the end of single-layer mode faces you against Bowser in a private challenge that was quite a leap for the series. Ya hear that? The only good thing about this *Mario Party* is a small portion of the *single player mode*. That's worse than a Sonic game where you have to constantly stop running (which we'll get to in January of '04). Memory Score: The worst Mario Party ever. 1114@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-08-27T20:00:38-05:00 http://www.fourhman.com/blog/archive/2006/07/super-animal-spikers-sunshine-crossing.html Beach Spikersreleased August 2002, purchased August 2002 Banking that this would just be a tennis variant with bikini gals, Beach Spikers become one of the very few sports titles to grace my library. This was about half a year before Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball came out for the Xbox, but this little GameCube exclusive did absolutely nothing to steal any heat from that game. The fact that Beach Spikers had no franchise tie-in (aside from a few Sega references) probably did not help. Man, it is crazy to think of how games advance during each generation. If you dropped a volleyball game today with limited tournament options, a lackluster create-a-player mode, weird unplayable minigames, and a stilted CPU-controlled camera... at $50... it would be like printing a formal request for bankruptcy. During each cycle, we expect more - and we get more - from our games as time goes by. It almost makes you want to not buy anything until the midway point. Almost. Anyway, Beach Spikers is a cozy, fun title... faithfully leaping into the Cube's early multiplayer must-haves list. Takes a round to get used to the timing on your button presses, and occasionally the camera will choose the wrong angle (so you get used to keeping an eye on the overhead player position radar map), but overall a worthy party game. And it is far classier than the infamous DOA game, choosing to use realistic (if attractive) female volleyball player models, rather than over-the-top anime cheesecake. Which, in the end, didn't help sales. Memory Score: Some of the worst voice over editing in this generation. 1087@http://www.fourhman.com/blog/ Farewell to the GameCube 2006-07-23T22:37:21-05:00