Review – PixelJunk: SideScroller

Review PixelJunk SideScroller
Way back in 1990, when I was but a freshman in high school, I received R-Type for the TurboGrafx-16 as a Christmas present. As anyone who has played the game knows, it is an absolutely punishing horizontal shooter. I lost count of how many times I blasted off to destroy the evil Bydo Empire only to be met with failure, and I’m not too ashamed to admit that I never cleared the final stage. Nevertheless, I refused to give up, and in fact, the game’s extreme difficulty level may have made me love it more.

R-Type requires players to methodically conquer each stage one small step at a time. Getting just a tiny bit further in a level is cause for celebration. The more I played, the further I eventually progressed, learning exactly where on the screen I needed to position my humble spacecraft at any given moment. I can’t think of any other shooter in which so much trial-and-error, memorization, and perseverance is required to succeed.

“But Mister Raroo,” you might wonder, “Why are you spending so much time talking about R-Type in a PixelJunk: SideScroller review?”

Because, dear readers, playing SideScroller is very much like playing Irem’s masterpiece. SideScroller is clearly a love letter to the classic horizontal shooter genre of yore, and it contains elements that bring to mind games like Gradius and Darius, though more than anything, I couldn’t help but think it would fit most comfortably in the R-Type family.

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Posted: November 4, 2011 at 1:00 pm By | 1 comment

Review – Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone

Review Zombie Apocalypse Never Die Alone
Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone is the tale of four annoying wankers who join forces to survive the eponymous apocalypse in yet another entry into the top-down horde-blaster genre.

The core concept of the title is simple, and in the end, the core concept is really all there is to it. Mow zombies, keep moving. There’s little nuance and little window dressing, and the title makes no effort to disguise this fact.

The hokey, tongue-in-cheek story features the grown-up equivalent of a 13-year old Call of Duty player, Ned Flanders with a shotgun, the obligatory angry rapper and doubly obligatory hot girl, all making bad jokes as they stroll through the blackened streets of an anonymous city and paste zombies.

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Posted: October 31, 2011 at 11:29 pm By | No comments yet

Review – Batman: Arkham City

Review Batman Arkham City
There’s a certain vocabulary in the Batman fan community, a dialogue made up of stories that everyone recognizes, with an acknowledgment of common reverence that need not be spoken.

Few need to explain what they thought of The Dark Knight Returns, or ask about The Long Halloween. It is simply understood that one should know of these stories and their significance, as such tales are the seminal books of Batman.

It’s not often that outside media enters in to this exclusive lexicon, where respect and adoration are implied merely through reference. If one talks about Burton’s 1989 film, it is not simply assumed that he speaks of it with approval.

Those outside properties that have entered this elite class, such as The Dark Knight and Batman: The Animated Series (so revered that its original ideas bled into the comics for years) succeeded in the same way that Arkham City does: by being more than a mere cipher for the source material.

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Posted: October 29, 2011 at 2:27 pm By | No comments yet

Review – House of the Dead Overkill: Extended Cut

Review House of the Dead Overkill Extended Cut
The return of the infamous 2009 Wii addition to the House of the Dead series represents the latest effort toward Sega’s goal of preparing gamers for the zombie apocalypse a significant number of scientists cite as inevitable. Perhaps more importantly, the PlayStation exclusive HD revisit offers those gamers who invested in the PS Move fresh reason to charge their glow sticks.

This extended cut of Overkill supports both the Move and the standard PS3 controller, but honestly, the idea of playing it with the latter loses plenty of the fun that justifies giving up standard movement controls to the rail that controls the camera and guides players through this mutated funhouse of horrors.

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Posted: October 26, 2011 at 1:06 pm By | 7 comments

Review – Okabu

Review Okabu
Poor Mother Earth! We humans have been treating her badly for far too long. But at least one good thing has come out of our mistreatment of the planet: it inspired the creation of the lovely Okabu.

With a strong ecological message, the game puts players in charge of halting the industrialized takeover of a blissful wilderness by a thoughtless empire, the Doza. But who possesses the power necessary to stand up to the might of such a mechanized menace? Cloud whales, of course!

Okabu does not take place in our world, even if its message reflects the perils we are currently facing. The game’s fantasy realm immediately brings to mind The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, particularly Link’s home village. Okabu’s gorgeous, flat-shaded visuals leap off the screen with an abundance of color and detail. Zones within the game range from grassy lakesides to illuminated forests, and a good chunk of Okabu’s enjoyment comes from simply exploring every inch of these beautiful stages. The accompanying soundtrack, which mixes traditional African music with jazz, adds even more vibrancy to the already rich world.

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Posted: October 18, 2011 at 9:29 am By | 1 comment

Review – Sideway: New York

Review Sideway New York
To my amazement and despite some initial concern, Sideway: New York didn’t make my head hurt. The main hook of the game is that you play as a character sucked into the 2D world of graffiti art, making your way from one point to another by moving along, up, and over 3D buildings. It’s an atypical game design concept, and quite difficult to explain in words. Imagine sliding a Shrinky Dink through a maze that runs over all sides of a box and that should give you a start.

Thankfully, what I figured would be a confusing, infuriating nightmare turned out to be clear-cut and easy to navigate. Color me impressed.

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Posted: October 14, 2011 at 1:03 pm By | No comments yet

Review – Space Channel 5 Part 2

Space Channel 5 Part 2
A long time ago, before Tetsuya Mizuguchi created a bunch of synthesthetic puzzle games, he worked for Sega, where he created Space Channel 5. The crazy retro-futuristic style made it one of the most iconic titles for the now-defunct Dreamcast. Last year, when Sega announced that it was going to re-release a series of the Dreamcast’s most popular games in HD for XBLA and PSN, it was only logical that they would include Space Channel 5…

…Part 2, the sequel which was only available for the Dreamcast in Japan. Well, I guess it technically counts, even though a lot of the world knows it better as a budget PS2 release. I suppose the fact that all the backgrounds in the first game were pre-rendered in 480i disqualifies it from being released in HD. Space Channel 5 Part 2 is also a far better game than the original, but it’s still a bizarre choice for a collection that seemed like it was made to bank on Dreamcast nostalgia.

But alas, this is not a review of Sega’s handling of what could have been a great series of downloadable titles – this is a review of a classic rhythm game. Unlike the current wave of peripheral-based rhythm games, in which the goal is to make a small band into a very popular band, older titles of the genre always had a story to tell – though it was usually a completely messed up story.

The story of Space Channel 5 Part 2 features a futuristic news reporter who follows reports of bad guys who take innocent people hostage and force them to dance – which requires out-dancing the bad guys to save the hostages, who then show their appreciation by dancing in line behind her as she continues reporting; this is how you earn TV ratings in space. The game’s heroine, Ulala, does play a guitar and the drums as well, but only to demoralize rival reporters and to fend off the space police (yes, in the future, if you beat the police in a drum battle, they have to let you go – it’s the space law).

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Posted: October 11, 2011 at 1:55 pm By | 7 comments
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