The "Mother 3" Mother 3

Once you play Mother 3, you may not need to play another videogame again. Instead, you'll probably want to read a lot of literature, smash your TV, and wish capitalism never existed -- or, at least, these are the feelings the game evokes in me after about ten hours of play time. Many people across the Wonderful World of the Internet have already posted their feelings on the new Mother 3 English patch, and I certainly don't want to add to the cesspool of opinions (though I'm certain some opinions are more thoughtful and well-written than others). So I'll try to make this addition to the cesspool short.The term "videogame" is dirty. Nintendo has been trying to distance themselves from the word since the launch of the DS and Wii, and Sony and Microsoft now would like their customers to call their wonder machines "Home Entertainment Systems". I unabashedly agree. "Videogame" conjures up images of juvenile delinquency and inadequate social skills and yellow orbs eating ghosts; this most likely will never change. However, since Mother 3 was brought out into the world, surprisingly not kicking and screaming but docile and sophisticated, I honestly would be comfortable to use "videogame" in a conversation with a normal human being. This is the direction videogames should go. Enough of the war-reenactments, the guns with knives, the Scarface wannabes -- they were fun when we were thirteen, but now we've grown up. We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore.

Mother 3 reads like a book, plays like a movie, floats like a butterfly, and stings like a bee. It never falters, never shrinks, and has balls. From the moment the game begins to the ten-hour mark, Mother 3 knows exactly where it's going and how it's going to get there. It's absolute perfection.

So, as of this moment, I propose that the term "videogame" be abolished and replaced with "Mother 3". We'll be better off for it.

No More Heroes: A World of Murderers, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

No More Heroes is a Wii game I bought because the Wii didn't have any games. When I take a glance at the case sitting on the shelf, I think of all the incredibly polished NEXT GEN GRAPHICS and REALISTIC PHYSICS ENGINES on other systems and in other software, I almost have to sigh with relief that thank God I don't have to deal with that videogame marketing shit in this game. What does the back of the box say, anyway? Here, let me read you some of the bullet-points:

1) "Slash your way to the top with your trusty beam katana."

Okay, that's true. You do hack bad guys. You also have a lightsaber. The marketing team at Ubisoft was pretty trustworthy on this one.

2) "Complete side jobs for extra cash to customize your character and weapons."

This, while knowing why undergoing side jobs should be listed as a positive bulletpoint is a joke in itself, is also true. So far, you special marketing team you, are not completely bullshitting me.

3) "Bring the pain with an arsenal of over-the-top combat moves."

Yes. Okay. But enough of that.

Like I said before, No More Heroes was a game I bought because the Wii didn't have any games. Metroid Prime 3 was dead and gone, a mere shell of what the original had been, and you can only play Wii Sports for so long before it becomes something akin to actual work. As a skinny kid pretending to be a fat kid for the sake of this blog entry, I'd like to say that, yes, Wii Sports was my weight-loss savior, but now that all the women flock to me like my old-fat-self to a Krispy Kreme donut, I really don't want to mimic swinging a tennis racket anymore. I'd also like to point out the state of our nation when people actually get tired by pretending to play a sport in front of a television set -- and doctors, for christsake, are forced to give a "scientific" name to a "disease" caused by this "exercise".

But since I'm not a fat kid anymore (or never really was -- it's your call), I guess I can sympathize.

Anyway, when the first trailer for No More Heroes was posted online, I watched it with little curiosity. The game at the time was dubbed just Heroes. The trailer starred a dude with a lightsaber named "Travis Touchdown" and another dude with a cigar and long silver hair named "Helter Skelter". Personally, I was rooting for the silver-haired dude because I was a fan of Final Fantasy, and even though I'm not gay, I would totally go for a dude that looked like a chick. Travis Touchdown looked like a Johnny Knoxville clone, and Jackass isn't all that appealing to a not-gay dude who could totally go for dudes that look like chicks.

In the end, the trailer was poorly voice-acted and honestly looked like it was destined for the bargain bin within a week after release. Plus, my effeminate-looking-cigar-smoking dude lost the duel! Not cool!

A couple months later, a second trailer was released at the Tokyo Game Show (and this would also become the game's opening). This, however, immediately made a fan of me -- even before the game was released! I mean, here you have this satirical videogame about a guy who doesn't have any money, decides to become a serial killer to earn a living, and gradually make his way to the top of the serial killer food-chain. How could that not be appealing to anyone who plays videogames? Most games have a main objective: destroy anything that moves. See that goomba walking toward you on screen? Stomp it to bloody bits. How about those ghosts? Eat the shit out of them. And those falling bricks that threaten screen-closing demise? Line those suckers up for ultimate decimation.

Maybe the Tetris reference should be rendered moot, but my point here is that anyone who has ever picked up a videogame has probably killed something in that virtual world. That's okay -- I'm not saying this should be taken negatively; just mull it over for awhile. Destroying stuff has always been fun, like smashing an expertly-built sand castle. What's wrong with taking out a bunch of Nazi scum in Call of Duty? Nothing. But that's because it isn't real.

Silvia, your assassin boss, contacts you during your first real mission. You've already slashed about a hundred guys into fountains of blood and cash and exaggerated vocals, and now, your controller begins to vibrate. It's Silvia. You put the controller to your ear, like a cell phone. Your boss really has nothing but frenchly-accented gibberish to say, but you think it's cool anyway that the developers had the incentive to make the Wii remote into something of a phone. The only reason you are impressed by this, though, is because you've played many a videogame before.

No More Heroes was made for people like you and me, people who watched all the Star Wars movies and can quote Han Solo's script word for word; people who get excited when a new Sin and Punishment is announced; people who, when the Wii was first revealed, daydreamed during dull math lectures about pretending to be a Jedi and swinging that goddamn controller around like a lightsaber.

What do you do with a lightsaber, exactly?

Kill stuff, that's what.

We're a nation of murderers. That last sentence isn't a cut on who we are as people -- it's just simple fact. Destruction is in our nature, and by God, do we like to slash the everloving shit out of salary-men, baseball players, wannabe-superheroes, katana-wielding minors, bad girls, and most importantly, magicians. Slash left: Travis twirls his fluorescent blade and massacres a dude into a fountain of blood (bastard!). Slash down: Travis leaps into the air and slices another dude in two (my spleen!). Slash right: you get the picture.

It's like lightsaber porn, really. At the beginning of the game, we're so jazzed up by the action on screen and the motions the game demands of us, but by the end, we've killed so many guys and defeated so many bosses that becoming number one doesn't seem so glamorous anymore. Travis, too, seems more and more disgusted by the people he meets (and eventually kills) -- a trait which makes him surprisingly human.

In the end, Travis kills his father. Er, he doesn't kill his father! His sister kills his father, but then his sister, who actually is only a half-sister, reveals that the person she just killed wasn't Travis' father at all -- but she did kill his real father a few years back.

This is good, isn't it? A mish-mash of convoluted plot-lines that really don't matter in a game where all you want to do is massacre the shit out of assassins and Pizza-Butt CEO's. Or maybe, near the end, the game has affected you in such a way that you end up caring for these characters.

Or maybe not.

P.S. -- The music is awesome, bro! Let's see how far we can take this thing!

Eyes

With blood pouring down my face, I picked up the dead man's cell phone and called it in.

"It's done. You can let her go now."

"Not quite," the voice said. "You've still one more assignment."

Silence on my end.

Finally, I mustered, "Isn't there another way?"

The voice didn't reply.

Frustrated, I conceded defeat and hung up. I closed my eyes, wishing the throbbing pain in my head would fade, that the blood would stop seeping into my eyes. My sight was important. Without it, I had nothing to rely on.

How many had died for her? Ten? Twelve? Fifteen? It wasn't a staggering number, but killing anyone ripped chunks from a man's soul, to the point where that person became inhuman, a monster. Once you kill, the soul was essentially a goner, and so, too, the man with it.

Searching the ground for my sword, my head became increasingly heavy, and I collapsed to the ground. There, sticking from the corpse -- there it was. Shining blue steel, my third arm. The organization who had taken her had given it and vague instructions to me:

"Use this sword, and only this sword, to conduct your business. Then she will be set free."

That was it. I had wondered why they hadn't equipped me with a gun or some other more efficient weapon, but I found out soon enough.

It's the eyes. The eyes give it away.

When you stab a man through the heart, all the while listening to his hopeless gasps for breath, you witness a quick flash in the eyes. Brief, almost too brief. In that moment, you get to know a man better than you ever could -- you see his hopes, dreams, memories, everything, vanish into thin air. They're yours now. Absorption. However, because everything that once belonged to that man has changed ownership, you begin to lose the essence of what you call "yourself". It's unpleasant to say the least. I'm hardly me anymore.

That's why the organization equipped me with a sword instead of some other weapon -- all of this murder is beginning to kill me from within. But finally, I have only one more target to defeat. One more target.

Still lying there, blood pulsing from the head wound, I unstuck the gleaming steel from the man's corpse and brought the blade to my throat. It would only be a matter of time before they found me, and then, only then, would they let her go. Sweet release from this awful assignment.

I hope she knows what I've done for her.

The Bikes of Burnout Paradise

Some time ago, the developers of Burnout Paradise added bikes to their exploding cars game.

This may have been the best thing that had ever happened to anything, anywhere.


Much like F-Zero GX on the Gamecube, I like to occasionally take one of the speedier bikes out on the open road and just space out for about an hour. Seriously -- I just hold down the R2 button for a full sixty minutes, staring blankly at the screen until something in real life jerks me back out of the cycling-induced coma. This isn't the first time this phenomenon has happened: F-Zero GX, too, had me cruising the free-run-never-ending time trial in Captain Falcon's or Rainbow Phoenix's rides until several blood vessels popped in my head and I was rushed to the emergency room. The doctors told me to slow down.

Ha, right. Now, both fortunately and unfortunately, popping blood vessels has become a tradition. The doctors stopped complaining once I became a regular bill-paying customer, though.

Thing is, I'm not sure whether driving these blistering-fast vehicles, be they the futuristic-hovering variety or two-wheeled insanity, is fun. Honestly, I'm not really sure what fun is anymore. If it includes an injection of adrenaline, then yes, I will have another dose -- otherwise, talking to random NPC's in those fancy RPG's isn't all that enjoyable to me. Nor should it be to anyone! Want to talk to the crotchety, cane-wielding old man in the next Final Fantasy game? Why don't you just walk into some real-life woods where the sounds of "Dueling Banjos" incessantly waft through the trees and synchronized shotguns chime in the distance? I'm sure you'll find an interesting old man in there to talk to. Heck, if you're lucky, he might even be a cannibal! Hooray for that!

Anyway, the Burnout bikes are a fantastic double-edged sword: on one hand, you have these amazingly fast modes of transportation for getting you from one place to another, rocketing off jumps all the way. But on the other hand, the cars themselves feel slow in comparison. I almost don't want to go back to four-wheels...

INFECTIOUS

OH MY GOD. Listen to that.

Let's Tap: The sensation that's sweeping the nation!

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (1): Surprise Cameo!, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

Note: This article also was ripped straight from the devilishly artistic pages of IGN, and it doesn't exactly say anything about the actual game. But, since I'm strapped for things to post on a blog that nobody reads, I guess this will fit nicely into the plethora of articles that do the same as this one.

I loves me some Johnny Depp.

And I don't mean this in, uh, that way. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Apparently, Nintendo does too. I mean, if Depp didn't make a surprise cameo in Phantom Hourglass, how would the game continue?

It wouldn't. You wouldn't have a boat, and you'd be stuck on that island for eternity. Depp's girlfriend on the high seas (who just so happens to just dress like a pirate, yet strangely knows how to captain a ship and shoot torpedoes, just by standing at the bow) might pick you up since she seems to have a thing for little boys in green tunics anyway, but that's beside the point.

Link, although fiercely determined and courageous, wouldn't get anywhere in his games if it weren't for someone else's assistance. Take a look at the series: besides the first three, every single Zelda pits Link against these perils -- yet, even though he's equipped with a sword and a mean face, he'd get nowhere.

In Ocarina of Time, poor crying Link-on-a-bed needed a fairy.

In Majora's Mask, he needed help from a crazy mask salesman.

In His Awakening, Link received assistance from an imaginary monochrome-yet-really-red-haired girl and her mushroom-sniffing father.

In Twilight Princess, Link was transformed into a wolf and needed help from a floating cat-thing.

Need, need, need, need, need.

And now, Link needs help from Johnny Depp to save his spunky pirate girlfriend from the clutches of an evil boat.

Who's the real hero, huh? Certainly not Link. And since Phantom Hourglass was such a great game, one that hearkened back to my nostalgia of A Him to the Past, I think we all owe Jack Sparrow a round of applause.

Without him, we'd be stuck on that island forever, forced to repeatedly cut the weeds in that one guy's garden and find that we ONLY get hearts instead of rupees, which we need for that way-expensive ring-thingy at the shop that looks like you'll get a bargain for at the treasure place, but you'll really just get gypped out of a great deal.

Thanks, Johnny. We appreciate your support.

Shadow of the Colossus -- Revisited and (OH PLEASE SAY IT AIN'T SO!) Reviewed!

Note: This "review" was posted on that wonderful Shakespearean website, IGN, a few years back. It's not very good -- even by IGN standards! -- seeing how I received a "thumbs down" from some jerk on the internet. Oh well. Can't win 'em all!

Well, after a year of holding down the R1 button, desperately trying to cling to the grassy-hair stuff on the back of a giant colossus, I decided enough was enough.

My right index finger was getting cramped. I needed to beat this foul beast of a game and I needed to beat it NOW.

So I did. And it was extremely frustrating.

But at the same time, I was totally in awe of what I was experiencing.

There aren't many "Holy Crap" moments in video games anymore. The last game I played with these moments was Twilight Princess -- I'm hoping that riding an over-sized top while fighting a giant floating skeletor-head made other people shout "Holy Crap, this is fricking awesome" at their television sets while waving their controllers in their air and weeping with pure joy.

But that might be just me.

Shadow of the Colossus doesn't have giant skeletor-heads. Instead, it has a huge flying worm that makes you turn to your brother and scream directly into his ear, "Holy [expletive], this is [expletive] epic!"

I kid you not. Shooting the bulbs on the worm's belly, riding neck-and-neck with its arms, making a death-defying leap onto its climbable appendages, rushing headlong through grassy-hair, and then shoving your sword into the poor worm's convenient weak points -- aw, man, I did not want that battle to end.

No other game, I thought, made me feel so much like a badass. I felt that Shadow of the Colossus wasn't just a game -- it was an experience.

But, after I massacred a couple other colossi, those feelings did a complete 360.

And that was when I met the final boss.

* * *

Some games make you want to throw your controller at the wall, and then run and cry into your pillow, cursing the world for all its misery.

When those fricking balls of electricity began to plummet in my direction, I could feel the frustration-factor start to sink in.

I was shot. I was shot again. I was knocked down. I could not get up.

"Get the [expletive] up, you dirty son of a [expletive]!"

Why the hell wouldn't the game let me get up?

Oh, because this is an experience, and not a game?

In a game, when I get shot with electricity, I get knocked down, and then have the ability to immediately get back up.

However, since Shadow of the Colossus is an experience that walks the fine line between reality and fiction, I have to wait ten seconds while frantically rotating my joystick, all the while screaming at the TV for the down-and-out character on screen to get to his virtual feet.

And then I get shot again. And again. And again.

And then I got mad.

Anyway, I beat the game. Great twisty ending, yadda yadda yadda, you've heard it all before.

But while the credits were rolling, I reflected on what had made this game so different from anything else I had ever experienced.

And then it hit me:

I have not been more scared in a videogame than when I swam out into a calm lake, all alone, anticipating the cold icy fangs of death to form beneath the dark surface and consume me, all the while a faint wind howled along the walls of the valley.

It evoked a Jaws-instilled fear that has never released me from its ever-tightening grip, even in the most shallow of swimming pools.

And for that, I -- someone who has the coldest of hearts, numbest of souls, and the personality of a brick -- commend Shadow of the Colossus for making me feel something.