I gotta keep up with this blog. I don't feel like writing one day, and a week later, I've got too many little thoughts to keep track of. First off, I didn't feel like writing up a full review of Neo Contra, but it was fun. Chris and I played through co-op on easy, then I went back and played through on normal. Contra games never let you truly finish the game on easy. But with a final boss fight against Spuds MacKenzie in a Nazi biker helmet, easy is plenty nutso. Of course, on normal, the bad guy destroys the earth and moon, so that's pretty awesome too. I guess I need to play on hard or get super high mission rankings to see the "good" ending. But I can't imagine it being better than the bad one.
I've been playing a good deal of Ninja Gaiden Black. The sequel is coming out soon, and it had gotten a lot of press as being as good as Devil May Cry. It's not. The camera is far worse than Devil May Cry's, which isn't exactly awesome to begin with. I literally died on one boss with the camera looking at nothing. I couldn't see me. I couldn't see the boss. I couldn't see the attack. The 1UP podcast folks (talking about some time they spent with a preview of the sequel) said that it's a bad camera, not bad design. But it is bad design. If you can't even tell what's going on to fight, it doesn't matter how rewarding the fighting is.
So how is the fighting? It's okay. It's not as good as DMC, though. In DMC, I can watch my enemies and react accordingly. In NGB, most enemies do unblockable attacks at random intervals. This was a reaction to the problem of players simply sitting and blocking the whole game, but it really doesn't work. Fighting offensively, especially against multiple attackers, will always result in taking damage from offscreen attacks. Fighting defensively will mean falling victim to random unblockable attacks. If the unblockables had escape moves, maybe the whole thing would work out, but as it is, DMC is still king of the hill by a good margin. Maybe I'm looking at it through rose colored glasses though. It's been since DMC3 first came out that I've played it.
I also picked up Twilight Princess for the GameCube. I have a Wii, but I hate messing with batteries. I really wish there was a way to plug the Wii controller into the wall. Also, the Wii version is a graphical flip, which means Hyrule is backwards and Link is right handed. I understand they did that because most people would be holding the remote right handed, but I like the old fashioned way. I'm sure fishing and archery would be a little more tactile with the remote, but as infrequently as I do either, I don't miss it.
I also picked up Jam Sessions for the DS. It's not really a game, per se. Press buttons to choose chords and use the touch screen to strum. The D-pad on the DS is garbage for pressing diagonals, though, so I end up holding the thing facing away from myself, using my first and middle finger to press chord buttons with my thumb on the shoulder button to switch from major to minor. It's awkward. Still, I made one song I like, and spent a little time with the ear training, so it's been worthwhile.
A new concept has been kicking around in my brain, as well. Well, new is probably a bad choice, the Greeks pretty much cornered that market. But I keep coming back to Crimson Sea 2 and thinking about how it's "my kind of bland". I'm not even sure what that means. I just know that I spent time grinding, which I normally detest. It wasn't challenging on the setting I played it on. And the moves weren't very gratifying to pull off. But I could (and did) play it all day.
Penny Arcade: Episode One (On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness) was pretty much the same way. After the initial learning curve of blocking attacks and executing my own simultaneously, there really wasn't much to the game. But it was funny, and kept me hopping almost through to the end.
As an aside, I wouldn't say it's so much better than an episode of Sam & Max that it deserves to command more than double the price, but I get more than my money's worth out of PAX each year, so for me, it evens out.
Back to the point, I'm feeling like I need to revisit an article I started but never published where I try to get very specific about what I like about games. It would probably help me understand why I seem to be enjoying certain games more than I could have predicted, or can currently explain.
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