Rez HD

Even for when it was released, Rez feels uniquely old-school. One only has to look as far as the "Story" page in the Options. That's right: rather than convey the story through the game itself, Rez explains the relevant background information through a page of text that you'd really only find if you just happened to stumble upon it. That's not all that far from the days of the NES, where the most likely place you'd find story to put the game in some context would be the accompanying instruction manual. Aside from some extras (of which there are a surprising amount), the game is comprised of five relatively short stages and, on top of that, the gameplay is, despite all it's fancy trappings, a rail shooter.

The core gameplay feels like StarFox without direct control; the game takes your constantly morphing avatar on a scripted trip while you move and fire with a targeting reticule. It's fairly simple and not all that original, but the presentation is where the game really hits off. The first comparison that comes to mind is the Disney film, Fantasia. Rez portrays a world where music exists not only as accompaniment, but also takes the place of incidental sounds and finds its way into the player's interaction with the game. There are no explosions or laser noises to be heard. Each shot fired has a corresponding musical result, usually adding to the overall song in the background. Single shots result in single staccato notes, while targeting multiple enemies, fire multiple shots, creating 8-note sequences.

The game is at it's best when the main track and the music created by the player's actions sync up well. One great example is the boss fight from the first stage, a floating machine encased in a disco ball shield. Chipping away at the shield produces a thumping sawtooth rhythm (I found myself naturally hitting the fire button to the rhythm); taking down the swarms of missiles fired your way produces a hail of snare hits; after taking down the shield, the song triumphantly shifts gears with a synth flourish while the boss morphs into another form. The psychedelic visuals, the music, the games fantastic trance vibration system, and the naturally emerging rhythm from your own hands comes together to produce this sense of interaction with the soundtrack that I've rarely seen in other games, no matter how obviously scripted these interactions are.

Rez is a product of a fantastic, unified vision, where the music is complemented heavily by the visual design. Each stage is a highly scripted track that pulsates and changes with the music. Produced by then-SEGA employee Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the world of Rez (a computer simulation) shares much in common with the visuals of Mizuguchi's other games: neon-bright, polygonal shapes that are low on detail by high in polish and, most importantly, sit well with the electronic soundtrack (a recurring theme in Mizuguchi's work.) The game plays up it's raver visuals with various references to enlightenment and eastern philosophy (one of the player character's forms appears to be a man floating around in a state of meditation.) One of the best examples of the developers tailoring the visuals to the music occurs in the game's third stage. As the player approaches the Sphinx-like gateway to the stage's boss fight, the screen's bright colors suddenly go negative and washed out just as the usual techno fair ceases behind a slow, distorted bass drum beat.

While I've never played any of the previous versions (I didn't own a Dreamcast back in the day, nor a modded PS2), the claims I've heard of Rez HD's triumph over them holds true: mainly, there is almost no slowdown. This keeps the game as fast and fluid as possible. Not much can be said about the HD component other than that it looks great. Rez is a game that wanted to be HD when it came out, and now it really has it's chance. With, the caveat of not having previously played the other versions of Rez, this one feels like a special edition Criterion Collection-esque release. There are a surprising number of extras to be had: visual and sound filters (if you ever wanted to play Rez in Sepia with your ears underwater), an option to play through through the entire game in one run (which I feel should have been an option from the beginning, but whatever), a "lost" level, a score attack mode, and multiple play modifiers unlocked throughout the game.

Perhaps the game's most annoying attribute (to once again bring up the game's archaic nature) is the esoteric manner in which these things are unlocked. The optional things i.e. using First Person Mode are strange enough: Rank 1st in Area 5 on Score attack mode. Who would just know that right off the bat? But things like that are forgivable due to their optional nature. The game's final stage must be unlocked in a similar manner. Each stage has a number of cubes that must be shot to gain 100% analysis rating, but these cubes are easily missed in the hail of shots and colors the game is constantly throwing at you. Without 100% analysis on the first four stages, the player cannot progress to the fifth and final stage. The final stage of a game is most certainly not "optional", and I found it frustrating that I had to replay two of the stages just to unlock the final one. As I said before, archaic is the right word; I wouldn't have thought twice about something like this in the 90's, but doing this in modern day feels strange and out of place.

Rez HD feels like a labor of love. It's a classic, unappreciated title who's extras feel like the man behind it loved it too much to simply give the game a cursory 720p face lift and throw it out on the market. Rez HD is a unique audio-visual experience; an interactive visualizer that should be played by anyone with a love of video games and music.
9/10

Resident Evil 5: Demo Impressions

I am one of the few. Is Resident Evil 5 really Resident Evil 4.5? Possibly. Does that diminish from my experience? Not really. True to form, Capcom's demo (released several days early for Xbox Live Gold users. Sorry, have-nots) is short and to-the-point, showing off two fairly intense scenes from the game. The unfortunate thing about the Resident Evil 4 style is that it's not very conducive to being cut into a demo. What made the game great was it's unparalleled sense of pacing; the player was constantly put into different situations with a solid sense of when to play it slow and when to ramp up the action. In that sense, I think the more frantic moments in Resident Evil 4 were best taken as part of the whole. That's what this demo is: two scenes, both of which are essentially kill-rooms (or, in the first one's case, a timed kill-room). While I think both are well done, I feel Capcom could have done a little more to show of the variety that I'm sure will be in the game. Sure, they probably don't want to spoil much, but we've already seen videos of Chris and Sheva fighting off zombies on a truck; couldn't we have played some of that?

It feels weird to say, but this demo combined with the previous trailers have really made the quality of the game a foregone conclusion to me. It's roughly the same team working on a similar game to one of my all-time favorites, and if the videos are any indication, the sense of variety and pacing, what made the game truly great will certainly be there. The menu's are refined, and now support in-game weapon selection (a feature the series has needed since it started.) The enemies, while not all that different from Los Ganados, are still every bit as good at creating that sense of a mob bearing down on you. The numerous message board complaints of the game feeling outdated by it's "walk or shoot" controls worried me. Then I played it and remembered that the limited controls were one of the best parts. Having to pay attention to when to stop, fire, reload, and get out of the way added to effectiveness of the mobs of enemies who weren't all that fast. People seem weirded out by the idea that controls they consider "bad" were made that way for a reason.

It also feels weird to admit that, honestly, the only true innovation we've seen (and now played) so far is co-op. I have to admit that without the addition of multiplayer in the demo, I probably would have been more soured by the same-ish content. The old adage of "games are always more fun when you're playing them with other people" holds here. Not to say that Resident Evil 5 isn't fun on it's own; it's just that the cooperative play fits so well with the Resident Evil formula. I've played through the demo's two stages with multiple people, and already the moments of shared panic and elation rival some of my favorite Left 4 Dead stories. The second stage (Shantytown) involves taking down a tenacious, chainsaw-wielding psychopath amidst a mob of zombies. The level design deserves praise; we were able to find multiple strategic points within the area and, after dying several times, we actually took the time to plan out the attack. After multiple close-calls (the chainsaw is a one-hit-kill) we managed to take him down with my last pistol shot. It was epic; a fantastic moment made far better with a friend playing and shouting out internet high-fives.

When it comes down to it, I'm more excited about Resident Evil 5 than I was when I saw the first trailer. I was expecting"more of the same", however fantastic that "same" is; what I got was "more of the same that I can share with a friend". And that makes a difference. Co-op made Too Human bearable for me. For a most-likely great game like Resident Evil 5, it'll make it that much better.

Game Log #10

• Perhaps against my better judgment (and the judgment of most of my 360 owning friends), I've been playing Call of Duty: World At War. "Against my better judgment" because, despite the insane amount of time I've put into the multiplayer, none of my friends are really playing it all that much. If they're playing a Call of Duty, it's Modern Warfare (I was told as much by most of them; I ignored them based on the fact that WaW was 20$ off at Target.) The latest of my long list of weird perspectives on games is that I have yet to play Modern Warfare. In fact, other than playing a lot of CoD 2 at a LAN Center, this is my first Call of Duty in a long while.
• I was pretty steadfast in my personal decision that Fallout 3 was my game of the year. And then I played Left 4 Dead. We all knew Valve had a winner on their hands over the game's long PR cycle, and finally playing it confirms that. My review is in progress, but I'll give a couple thoughts here. I really believe that more than any other co-op game I've ever played, Left 4 Dead succeeds at it's team dynamic. The usual subversive magic of Valve's games are present, this time in gameplay mechanics designed to encourage staying together. The AI director is every bit as effective as you could hope. The 360 controls are some of the best console shooter controls I've ever used. It doesn't match the speed or precision of a mouse, but with it's subtle auto-aim tweaks and quick but manageable turning speeds, it definitely approaches it more than anything I've ever played. More to come.
• Mortal Kombat V.S. DC Universe has been my big in-person multiplayer game. Not sure what my thoughts are about this game other than "hilariously unbalanced." I'm sure that's what they were going for, though.
• Fable 2's been played a lot as of late. I'd have to say that of any game I've played with a customizable character, Fable 2 has possibly created (somewhat without my help) the most accurate portrayal of myself in a video game. And by that, I mean a great big fatty with sideburns and a pirate hat. The horns and the three consecutive divorces are creative license.
  

Fallout 3

It's a commonly held opinion among gaming critics that the more airs of realism and freedom a game puts on about it's world, the easier it becomes for the illusion to fall apart. We saw this a lot in Grand Theft Auto IV, with it's extreme dissociation between it's story and gameplay, and I think we see it a lot in Fallout 3. And the first part of the above rule fits: Fallout 3 tries it's damnedest, and succeeds in a lot of ways. There were definite moments where I felt for the characters, was immersed in the world. But like a grease stain on your best Sunday shirt, the aberrations stick out like a sore thumb. In this article, I'm going to point out some I found interesting, funny, baffling or what have you. Enjoy.

Alzheimers
The citizens of the American wasteland are a forgetful bunch. A common thread I've found with Bethesda's games is the bizarre disconnect between an NPC's role as an element of the plot and the NPC's role as an NPC. There are many times when one will be saying one thing while the other will be saying the exact opposite. So far, one of the best examples I can find so far occurs fairly early in the game. If you take the "good" path in Megaton and disarm the bomb, you'll be periodically visited by a lady in the town bearing a gift. I say periodically with some reservations: the situation is so bizarre that it almost seems like it has to be a glitch. She just keeps giving me more stuff. I even figured out the time: I was greeted by the lady, went to sleep for a 24 hour period, and found her outside again waiting with another box of Blanco's Mac and Cheese. The real punchline, however, is the dialog. Upon greeting me, she tells me how much the town appreciates what I'm doing for them. They've scraped together and saved to get me this gift, whatever it may be at the time (a box of apples? Shotgun shells? 'sall good.) Then I try speaking to her right after, hoping to maybe press her further and maybe find a new questline, only to be met with "Go away. I have no time for strangers." Shit.

The Flop
One of the weirdest issues in Fallout 3 is it's repositioning of bodies each time an area loads. I haven't had time to test it, but in general, loading into an area with a dead body seems to cause it to literally drop from the sky. I assume it's another one of those side effects of having such an expansive world onscreen at all times. Still, it's endlessly amusing to see a super mutant flop around like a fish on the pavement.

Missing Person(s)

The Capital Wastelands is a world full of mysterious disaperences. And by that, I don't mean the same mysterious disaperance that comes with double-crossing the mob or angering the Disney Gestapo. They just fuckin' disapear. Take the water treatment plant worker in Megaton. I didn't have the good sense to look around online and see if this was a recuring problem, and I'm not going to take the oppertunity now to do so. All I know is this jerk bought 200 caps worth of scrap metal from me and I haven't seen him since. And I know it has to be a glitch. I looked everywhere. If there's some kind of secret bonus round stage in Megaton that I just don't know about, I'd apperciate being told about it.

Game Log #9 (with the promise of more frequent posts)

I pretty much stopped this Game Log thing. Hell, I haven't been posting much at all. It's no use lamenting this fact, however. I'll commit when I'm damn well ready. It's probably now, but who knows.

• Going against my long-standing self-imposed ban on renting games from video stores (it's a price versus time thing), I rented a copy of Mirror's Edge. The game's somewhat short length (my playtime was around seven hours), it luckily fit in the 5 day rental time. I wasn't too busy that week. The stars aligned. I will be writing a review on Mirror's Edge, though I'd like to offer some quick comments here. Mirror's Edge is an interesting game with an fantastically implemented set of mechanics who's main, fatal flaw is that it's developers often times seem to be at loss on how to "break up" the game play. In short, the parkour gameplay has the potential to get monotonous (though I'm not entirely sold on that. More in my review). The games attempts to break up the possible monotony fall in line with the genre DICE seems to be trying to distance themselves from: the modern First Person Shooter. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, just... misguided? More to come.
• I've recently found the time to get back in to Dragon Quest 8. I've spent some time recently with some other JRPGs as of late, and my view has changed somewhat on the game. I like it a lot more, first off. Many of the games biggest issues for me, mainly the archaic nature of some of it's mechanics, are actually fixed by abilities you receive in-game. "Some" is the operative word. I appreciate JRPGs, and many of the mechanics that haven't really changed all that much in the last few decades are precisely. Maybe I'll find time to elaborate on that. In short, I'm not the kind of person who necessarily feels that game mechanics should be abandoned as soon as they're well-worn. But when it comes to things like the ordeal the game puts you through to save your game, I can't show any love to that. If there's one thing I hope Japanese game designers learn from this recent downturn (and hopefully rebound) of their industry is to put less idiotic restrictions on saving your game. And the game never really fixes that. Luckily, one of your characters learns a spell that fixes one of my biggest issues. In Dragon Quest, if one of your party members die in a dungeon, you're fucked. You have to get out, trek back to a nearby town, then pay some arbitrary sum of money to a priest for a resurrection. It's extremely annoying, especially in dungeons. Leveling up Angelo gives you Zing, which gives you a 50% chance of resurrecting a fallen party member. It certainly makes the game easier, and I assume that was the point. I don't think granting shortcuts to players after they've reached a certain point is a bad idea. But do they have to make it so damn hard? Japanese RPGs are a strange genre for me. I love them, and tend to rush to their defense when people are hatin'. Too bad these games seem intent on fighting me all the way. Chrono Trigger had cross appeal among non-RPG fans because it stayed away from the awkward tropes I'm talking about. Too bad none took a page from that book.
• I borrowed a copy of Diablo 2 from a friend. It's mostly a trial for me, as I'm planning on buying the Battlechest. After all, two people can't play on battlenet at once with one CD key, and playing with said friend is one of the reasons I wanted to get into Diablo. More on that to come, but so far, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Necromancers seem like the way to go.
  

The Electric Haunted Hayride

All this talk of zombie invasions in everyone's favorite games with the general resurfacing of zombies as a rule during Halloween is bringing back my bizarre 10 second musings on how awesome it would be if a zombie apocalypse ever happened. Never mind that I'd probably be one of the first to go. Luckily, if my activities this October are to be believed, I'd make one hell of a zombie. In between intense readings of The Walking Dead, a comic I took far to long to read, I've taken an odd job at a local haunted hayride.

Whitetail Farm's haunted hayride occupies a bizarre space somewhere between exceptionally hokey and genuinely scary. I'd feel extremely awkward criticizing the ride if it were some sort of family-friendly wacky Halloween fun ride, but the rather gory props used and attempts at genuine scares seem like they were going for a somewhat older audience. At the same time, it plays it ridiculously safe in other areas. Is a cliche chainsaw-wielding Jason or a flying white sheet ghost really pushing the horror envelope? And that's where I come in. The ghost part. Not a zombie per se. That's the job of a friend of mine several yards down the ride, while another guy I know jumps at passers by in a devil costume between conversations with a Priest who, none too ironically, is a total pedophile. Does lusting after underage girls negate the stereotype?

There is a truly bizarre thrill to be derived from scaring a trailerfull of Missourians pulling a rope behind a tree. With the hood of my raggedy jacket down low, crouched behind a couple thin trees who's seems fairly dubious, the frightened screams from up ahead serve as a wonderful confirmation that I succeeded. It's not that I'm particularly overjoyed with my having what it takes to become a haunted house worker, if that is something to be excited about. It's just nice to be vindicated for the effort. "Did you see those punks? That's right. I scared them. Beat that, McDonalds Burger Flipper man. Damn straight I'm earning that $6.25 an hour." And let's bring that back to where we started. I'd be one hell of a zombie because I'm already doing a damn good job scaring people for minimum wage. Imagine how good I'd be at it if minimum wage was brains?

And like a preacher myself struggling to bring a story about my niece and her skateboarding friends back to the Lord, it's time to bring this exciting anecdote back to games. I've been building this weird metaphor in my head between my weekend job and Valve's upcoming multiplayer horrorfest Left 4 Dead. The game is like the virtual extension of a haunted hayride. The survivors are the paying customers ($60 dollars, in fact) on a ride crafted to some degree to scare the living shit out of you. Meanwhile, the zombies are the paid employees. Except it's like if you wanted to pay to work at the hay ride. I guess that's not totally out of the realm of possibility. There are paid internships and unpaid internships. I'm sure it can go into the negatives. Left 4 Dead is one of those fun games I get to talk excitedly about with my friends who don't happen to be internet-reading game nerds. It's a big budget zombie game coming out at just the right time, Halloween. As a result, a lot of my friends just know about. Something odd I've been noticing though is that many of them don't seem to know about playing the zombies. Perhaps it's not something sold very heavily in the advertisements?

The zombie side has me flip-flopping on whether I'm interested or not. All reports from the field make it sound pretty fun, for sure. The survivor side sounds like where it's at, though. The AI Director system which dynamically restructures the game based on your preformance and experience, really speaks to Valve's unique approach to making games. As anyone who took the time to replay the Orange Box games with commentary knows, Valve loves to focus test. But they seem to take it from another angle. Rather than dumbing down their games based on rumblings from the peanut gallery, they come up with new and creative solutions that include the idiots while keeping the more seasoned players from walking away in disgust. It'd be interesting to know the kind and amount of focus testing was involved in the making of Left 4 Dead based on the nature of the game. Valve promises restructuring encounters, making them easier on you if your ragged and beaten, or upping the ante if you're doing too damn good. It would be interesting to see how they found out when to let off the onslaught. What is too much? Hopefully me and Valve will agree on when and when to ramp up the difficulty. If Portal is any indication, I'm sure we will.

Toonami is Dead. Long Live Toonami.

And so, after more than 10 years (you better be right, Wikipedia), Toonami is finally dead. Shows over, folks. And to be honest, I'm not really sure how to feel about it. I wasn't around for it's humble beginnings of running Thundercats and Voltron. I didn't even really get cable till around 2002 (and we'll get to that.) I sure as hell didn't really stick around for the end, either. My interest tapered off around the end of 2004 due to the general lack of anything new or interesting. I had already discovered the joys of fansubs and high speed internet, and, to be honest, had no interest in the shows on at the time. I did catch on to Gundam SEED later on though, and later became a Megas XLR super fan. But that's another story.

But it was that 2002-2003 Toonami stint that I remember the most. I can probably thank those programs ran during those 2 years for ultimately solidifying my love of anime. Some of them (namely Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z) don't really hold up now that I'm somewhat older and wiser in the medium, but it was definitely a step up from what I had been watching before. As previously stated, my Saturday morning cartoon watching was limited to whatever was on the basic channels in the area. Admittedly, some of these were Batman TAS and Sailor Moon. But most of them were KidsWB throwaway cartoons that maybe aired 2 to 3 episodes before realizing that no one really cared. Pokemon, of course, was still hot then, but even then I was growing tired of it. So the switch between that and weekday afternoon viewings of Toonami was pretty staggering to say the least. "What's that you say? You guy's have got cartoons with killing and PG swear words!? Sign me up!" Ah, the thought processes of a young anime fan. At the time, I was at least semi-aware of the fact that Toonami edited their programs and that the opening sequences were by and large cut out, but it was mostly irrelevant to me. I hadn't even seen Adult Swim when I started out, much less an episode of DBZ with it's original audio. Put simply, I had nothing to judge it by.
Toonami sort of drilled into me a lot of the prefrences and tastes I have when it comes to anime. G Gundam, which debuted in 2002, was probably what made me the giant robot freak I am today. For all the flack the series gets from, well, MOST anime fans, I think G Gundam is, in many ways, one of the best introductions to the super robot genre. It really carries on many of the traits that make the genre awesome. It was a series with a borderline idiotic premise that existed for it's writers to show off how zany their international robot designs could be, and where every character always has something crazy and melodramatic to say, most notably Domon Kashu's Indigo Montoya-esque repeated battle speech. As much as I through enjoy Gurren Lagann, shows like G Gundam were doing the over the top impassioned monologues years before Gainax tried their hand at it. The action was fast and furious, without any care to outdated concepts like "logic" and "science" and "realisim". And the special attacks? Totally memorable. Despite having some of the most bizarre names ever (Bakuretsu God Finger? Hot.), using a burning mech hand to crush another mech's head is about as visceral as it gets. I was totally pumped at every new episode for the whole production of stock footage and the aforementioned impassionate battle speech, followed by the attack name screams. To say that it's stuck with me would be an understatement.


And then there was Yu Yu Hakusho. I had seen a couple episodes from it's short run on Adult Swim, but I never got fully into it until it made the switch to Toonami. I've actually been slowly trying to rewatch the series as of late. I've watch only the first 3 or so episodes, so the jury's still out on whether it holds up. The first couple episodes are, as remembered, pretty damn slow (who's bright idea was it to begin a shonen fighting series with episodes of Touched By an Angel?), but we'll see where that goes. And of course, there's Kenshin and the Dragon Ball shows which, say what you will know, where totally fascinating to me back in the day. The Big O, another classic robot series, ran a bit before my time, but when I caught it rerunning on Adult Swim, I fell in love with it's outlandish designs and obivous Batman influence.

I'm not sure really what to say. It's a shame that Toonami got to the state it did. It's really an sign of the times. Anime (and action cartoons in general) are on the out. Cartoon Network is making no secret of wanting to switch to some kind of live action dominate format like Disney Channel. I'm definetly not going to have an outburst over them betraying their name or anything ridiculous. They can do what they want, and I probably wouldn't watch their channel either way. I do fear what this will do for the anime industry as a whole however. One must assume it won't be a change for the better.