What Would Kratos Do (WWKD)? Part 1

A friend of a friend of mine was in the hospital some time ago for a problem that might have been related to drinking too much soda, but let's just say it was caused by the gods on Mount Olympus. These ferocious gods had been angry for the longest time! For they had created the fine beverage of water, and blessed the entire world with its presence. One day, however, the gods realized that there may have been too much water for all the world's beings, so they cursed the oceans by contaminating them with the most deadliest of devilry: salt. Oh, were the humans pissed!

"Curse you!" they shouted to the gods, who were relaxed on their La-Z-Boy recliners up on Mount Olympus. "We must drink from these oceans, and now you have contaminated them? Curse you!"

So these humans created a beverage of their own, one that would rival water and put it out of commission in supermarkets across the world. The beverage was called "soda". And most of the world's inhabitants shrieked with joy and frolicked among the flowers and bunnies and fireflies, Diet Dr. Pepper's in hand. This was the beginning of World Peace.

That is, until one fateful day, the gods caught wind of these "Diet Dr. Peppers" and these "Mountain Dew: Code Reds" and decided that they must put a curse on these as well, for humans should not be able to make a beverage as delicious as something the gods could concoct.

"Have some kidney stones, pitiful humans!" they shouted with a chuckle. "Consume too much of your delicious drink and may you have the best of times trying to urinate! Har har!"

And so it was.

Edit: And in consideration for the blind, a narrated version:

A Non-Winner

Note: I wrote this for a 1up contest that asked users to explain what they liked best about the game, No More Heroes. I didn't win! But even so, the contest got me writing again, something that I haven't done in a long time. This is good! So, here I am, hopefully about to consistently write here for the months to come. About what, I don't know! Get excited, though, whoever might read this!

If nothing else, No More Heroes has unwavering pizazz, a flashy word that can only exist in the English language if italicized and preceded by an out-of-place adjective. And that maniacal pizazz is usually what people mention first when they talk about the game: the blood, the beam sabers, the wrestling moves, the ridiculous characters, the story -- No More Heroes is essentially a Tarantino flick in game-form without most of the film homages that anybody who isn't a film geek will give a shit about (Wilhelm scream? Who the fuck cares? Okay, I care a little...). Sanctimonious pizazz is good and all, but it only goes so far in the argument of style versus substance.

No, what's best about No More Heroes is how amazingly self-aware it is. Right from the start, it plays as a videogame and then remains a videogame throughout the course of Travis' blood-soaked journey. No matter what the situation, whether you're slicing through spleens or shooting aliens Galaga-style in that out-of-nowhere minigame, No More Heroes revels in its self-consciousness and fourth-wall humor. A couple noteworthy examples of some fourth-wall-breakers: Travis mentions the person "holding the remote out there" in the introductory cutscene, Sylvia's less-than-optimistic phonecalls play through the Wii remote's speaker (welcoming you to the "Garden of Madness"), and without giving too much away, a certain character speeds up their dialogue just to avoid a nastier ESRB rating. Really, when you boil it right down, No More Heroes is a game for people who like games, much like Tarantino movies are generally for people who like movies.

While we're being honest here, yes, No More Heroes is a little uneven, and yes, the overworld may or may not have been intended to be a satire on open-world games, but goddamn it -- if No More Heroes didn't have all the right pieces in exactly the right place, then it more than makes up for it in sheer love of the medium. And in an industry where remembering your roots is slowly becoming the hip, cool thing to do, No More Heroes is undeniably a game worthy of a place on the hip, cool pedestal of unrelentless pizazz.

The Seafood Burrito

There's something terrifyingly uncomfortable about seeing a bunch of white people in a Mexican restaurant, you know? Most of what makes the Mexican restaurant experience is the atmosphere, with the music, the adobe architecture, and most importantly, the authentic Mexican people rounding out the whole package. When you can't even hear the mustachioed guy in the speakers singing about his long-lost love because a large group of obese, middle-aged white people keeping cackling and chewing away at their food, something is wrong with the world.

Our waiter called us "amigos". I don't know why he did. He didn't look like he wanted to be there working, so I doubt serving us food made us welcoming and friendly to him. Still, if I had any friends, I would probably call them "amigos" with an affected accent, but the only friend I have is a pet cat named Amigo. I just renamed her that. I hope she's okay with it.

I had a seafood burrito, though.

The Grandfather Paradox

I once met my future self in the auditorium of my old high school, a high school that wasn't old at the time because there was still asbestos in the walls and the authorities hadn't yet realized that it was slowly killing us all. Two of my female classmates and I were rehearsing for an upcoming play -- and for the sake of privacy, let's name these girls "Judy" and, the other, oh, I don't know, "Megan O'Flannegan" (how's that for specificity?). After we were finished for the day, Megan, who I may or may not have been unhealthily obsessed with at the time, came up to me looking for some sort of consolation for a problem that had been pestering her:

"You know, sometimes I just can't stand Judy."

"Really?" I inquired with an incredibly handsome smirk. "Why not? She seems fine to me."

"Well," said Megan, who had had more theater and acting experience than Judy and I combined, "she started giving me pointers today about what I could do better. It's like she thinks she knows more about acting than I do."

"That's ridiculous. She probably was just...insecure about her own abilities, so she criticized yours."

That's probably what I should have said. As a complete jackass who then viewed the world as an axe murderer who was out to get me at every whim, I thought that Megan's complaints were childish and immature. She was probably talking to me just for the sake of talking to me, seeing as I was an attractive and lovable guy who was absolutely impossible to resist (but apparently not too impossible, as we will soon see).

Instead, I replied, "Know what, Megan? Just deal with it."

Megan looked at me with disgust.

"'Know what'?" she mocked. "You're an asshole." She stormed off.

Looking back on it, she was wrong about me; I was a jackass, not an asshole. Either way, I had pissed off a girl who I had liked above all other girls in a high school appropriately deemed "The Hot Girl Academy," which only accepted the hottest of the hotties. Oh, and I attended it, too, for some reason. Don't ask how or why. It just pays to know people, that's all.

In any case, I stood alone in that auditorium, feeling both dejected and rejected. But this story isn't about how I had lost the girl of my dreams -- it's about how I lost the girl of my dreams to science. For at that moment, a bright light appeared on stage, and from that bright light appeared...me. I hadn't aged a day.

"Howdy, there, old self," he said.

My jaw dropped. "What the hell? Who...what are you?"

He smiled. "Isn't it obvious? I'm from the future, delivered unto the heavens from my very own homemade time machine, here to correct the sins of my past. I'm you."

"Really, huh?" I accepted this strange twist of fate rather quickly. "You look good."

"Thanks. Eat your vegetables. Drink your milk. Yadda yadda." My future self cleared his throat. "Anyway, delightfully pleasant conversation is not why I'm here, I'm sorry to say. I'm here to correct the si--"

"...'sins of my past'. Yeah, I got it." I was incredulous. "What sins? I haven't committed any sins, uh, per se..."

Now my future self looked incredulous. "You don't consider that a sin, what you just did? You let the goddamn girl of your dreams slip away like that, and you don't consider that a sin?"

"Well, now that you mention it..."

"You're damn right it's a sin! Just because you're all angsty now does not give you the right to bash your future's hopes and dreams against a friggin' brick wall!"

I scoffed. "I haven't bashed anything! You -- I mean 'I' -- built a time machine! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"No, it's definitely a colossal human achievement; I will admit that. But I slaved hours and hours to build it, and in the process, denied the hundreds upon thousands of gorgeous women knocking at my doorstep just to get here. To get to this one moment."

"Are you serious?" I asked, again incredulous. "Out of all the events in history, out of all the tragedies you could have averted, out of all the wrongs you could have righted, you chose this moment in time...just to tell me to stop being such a jackass?"

"Well, basically."

I stared in amazement. "You know, now that I think about it, I do recall something I learned from the HGA's science class about time travel, something I wouldn't have ever thought about had you not shown up. Or did you forget about that seemingly crucial piece of information, too, even while making your time machine?"

"Like what?"

"Well," I announced, "there's this little thing called the 'Grandfather Paradox'..."

My future self's eyes became headlights.

"Oh, shit..." Realization had hit him in the face, apparently. I continued.

"You remember, now, don't you? You know, the theory that states that if a person were to go back in time and kill his or her grandfather, then the grandchild, AKA the killer, would have never been conceived at all? Come on, man! Have you never seen Back to the Future? ...Well, obviously you have because I have..."

"No, I see where you're going with this."

"Right. This means that by coming back here to warn me about a dumb verbal mistake I had made with Megan, it will seemingly convert one 'bleak' future path to another future path filled with a lifetime of happiness with her, right? But you wouldn't even be here had that happened. What I'm saying is, nothing will come of your time-traveling actions. You being here means I'm still going to go down a lonely, yet extremely technological-savvy road no matter what you do!"

Defeated, my future self admitted, "You know what? You're absolutely right. Huh. Well, that sucks. No use crying over spilt milk, right?"

"Er...not exactly."

It looked like my future self was physically trying to hold back the tears. He probably was about to say something profound, but all he could muster was, "See you later...asshole."

"Jackass."

And with that, he disappeared into the light and, contrary to his farewell, was never to be seen again. Well, except a few months later when I checked my face in the reflection of the time machine I was building.

Dragon Quest IV: The Only Game I Actually Enjoyed Last Year

Yes. It's true. Well, sorta.

Dragon Quest IV, in terms of pacing and set-up, is really the exact opposite of Mother 3, a game that it obviously inspired. Whereas the former's beginning is mind-numbingly slow in order to delve into the respective character backgrounds, the latter begins with tragic events, an Indiana Jones-type excavation for a magical egg, and a fun little romp as a monkey. Honestly, it took me about ten grueling hours to get past Dragon Quest IV's opening chapters, but once the game explores the story of the actual hero, the rollercoaster ride takes off without a hitch.

Mother 3...personally, not so much.

No other game last year had me coming back, night after night, making me crave to see the story through to the end. Yes, there had been Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and Valkyria Chronicles, but Dragon Quest exerted another type of pull...and I can't quite put my finger on it. I will say, however, that the Dragon Quest series has always had a perfect formula: fight difficult monsters, defeat them, obtain gold, buy better armor and weapons, and then kill so-called difficult monsters in one hit.

Repeat.

It sounds somewhat dull on paper, but in practice, the grind can be very addicting. Becoming stronger and "being the very best" has always been a good videogame incentive, and Dragon Quest is probably the master of this tactic. Once I got sucked in, I couldn't put the game down. And that's why I'm giving it 2008 GAME OF THE YEAR! That is, if I cared about GAME OF THE YEAR, but I don't.

This has somewhat opened my eyes a bit to the whole ridiculous Dragon Quest versus Final Fantasy debate -- and I have to say, despite being a Final Fantasy fan since I played X a couple years ago, Dragon Quest has nearly always bested its competition in each and every installment. The slime-slaying series relies more on telling a simple, down-to-earth story rather than delving into melodrama, and as I get older, all the tales revolving around attractive and stylish teenagers in Final Fantasy have become a bit silly. That melodrama silliness has become more and more evident over the years (and especially evident in the recent Final Fantasy IV remake). But don't mistake Dragon Quest's usually light-fared stories as entirely simple, throw-away adventures -- there's certainly depth there. You just have to look for it.

Probably the best, almost-seemingly scripted event in Dragon Quest IV had to be my battle with the Psaro the Manslayer, a multiple-formed, nearly never-ending bastard who made me scrimp and save my magic and dig into the recesses of my inventory just to beat him; in other words, he was the ideal final boss. During his fourth form, Psaro wiped out my ultimate party of Kiryl, Maya, and Alena, and the main character was the only one left standing. I knew within the next turn I was going to lose, and sure enough, the final boss took out the main character as well -- but something strange (and like I said, scripted) happened.

I had an item that, if whoever has it equipped is knocked out, revives all the other members who are out cold, too. So, as it were, Kiryl, Maya, and Alena all returned from the dead, ready to do battle with the bastard that killed them a few minutes before, while the main character lay lifeless on the ground.

He had become a tragic hero, really, like something out of a film or novel. The aspect that amazed me about the whole incident is that it wasn't the developers' intention to happen -- it was something that just occurred naturally during the moments when I was actually playing the game. Later on, I had Kiryl revive the main character, and my party went on to pummel the final boss into submission.

But to have a dramatic event happen randomly like that...that's quite something.

Random Dreams: Part Two

I swear to you, right now, that I am not on drugs. I swear!

There's this dream I've had, one that is quite famous among my friends because I've told it so many times, and it honestly doesn't get any less weird each time I tell it. I have strange dreams -- I can't help it. Speaking of which, many philosophical-minded people seem to analyze dreams and how they pertain to a person's hidden demons or subconscious feelings.

I don't really buy in to that school of thought. That's not really how my mind works: logically, I'm probably insane.

Anyway, the dream begins during one of my science classes in high school. The teacher is an older woman with shoulder-length gray hair, and it should be noted that she and I never really saw eye-to-eye. She's lecturing to the class as always, when she suddenly turns around and says,

"Hold on: I'm going to get the experiment from out of the back room."

Okay, so no big deal, right? Wrong.

After about ten minutes or so, she doesn't emerge from the room, so the class calls upon me to find out what the hell is taking so long. I get up, open the door, and there she is, sitting on a white bucket with her pants down, a determined look on her face.

Now, in the dream, I somehow get a close-up shot of what she's, uh, producing in the bucket, and it turns out to be this:

A vein-y, white sausage. That was her experiment for the class. My god.

If you try to approach this from an analytical perspective, I don't even know where you would begin. I'm sure you could get into the sexual implications or something like that, but that's a topic that doesn't seem too appealing right now. Or ever.

As it stands, the vision of the sausage is something that will haunt me forever.

Hmm.

An Ode to Dr. Salvador

Resident Evil 4 is good. Real good. The Wii version is even better.


Sure, I'd played the shoot-'em-up to death on the Gamecube before (and even bought it the day it was released -- man, I was hyped!), and then I even went out and bought the PS2 version to play the additional "Seperate Ways" segment. Buying the same game twice in unusual for me, but Resident Evil 4 is always worth the extra cash. My love doesn't end there: I think I might have even wrote an ode to the chainsaw man (named Dr. Salvador, apparently) back in high school, praising his fashion sense (the potato sack is a nice touch) and lovely manner in which he proceeded to remove Leon's head from his body. I still have nightmares.

But the Wii version...man, it's really, really good. I haven't played much of the main game because I've been spending most of my time with the Mercenaries mode, which is still as hectic and addicting as it was when I first played it on the 'Cube. The aiming definitely makes the whole shooting system much easier and accurate, and the remote probably (at the risk of sounding like marketing PR) makes the Resident Evil 4 experience that much more immersive.

This is the third time I've bought the game, though, making it the only game I've bought more than twice. It was on sale at Wal-mart and I couldn't resist. My brother finished the final boss over the weekend, and now I'm back into the Resident Evil mania. Why the hell is it still so addicting a few years later when most games lose their shine within the first couple weeks of release? Was it due to the constant revisions? Probably. When a game is in development stew for so long, it had better be a damn near-masterpiece -- and Resident Evil 4 is definitely that.

And the dialogue?

"Rain or shine, you're goin' down!"

Still so bad, yet still so good.