No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

Kamxor 2, and Supporting the Ones You Love

The précis for the past week reads somewhat similarly to last week’s effort: nothing but Kameo and Luxor 2.

I’ll start with the latter: I think I’ve managed to burn myself out on Luxor yet again, pushing through to Stage 12-4 on Normal (and up to the Supervisor of Fledglings rank); whilst I’m getting some jollies from my conservative approach to grinding through the levels, the rewards have started to be outweighed by the relentless pressure of the game. It’s stopped being fun and, though I’m a mere eleven stages away from another rare achievement (and the chance to get my gamerscore modulo five again), I might have to step away… again.

Kameo, though, is finally – after having picked it up on the 360’s launch – off The List. Monday night saw me knock off the two remaining solo Thorn’s Pass Achievements, and a greedy late night attempt at my final Score Attack A-Rank ended in failure when I neglected obscure game traits – like Kameo’s health. But Tuesday morning I woke up nursing a dribbly, muddle-headed cold, and subsequently had two days away from the office… I still had sufficient hand-eye co-ordination to play, however, and a repeat attempt at the final Score Attack was a half-billion-point success. Enabling Kameo‘s inbuilt cheat modes (through Score Attack unlockables) yielded a simple Expert-mode walkthrough, and with that… Kameo was done.

But I still want to write a longer piece on Kameo, so I plunged straight back in and started a whole new game, just to check whether my memories of the game were correct. And it was a blast – my A-Rank skills allowed me to blitz my way through the game, and I almost 100%-ed the game inside a dozen hours, and my level scores nearly all exceeded the A-Rank requirements (except that bloody Forgotten Forest level – grumble). So – the information gathered will now likely gestate for a couple of months before popping out into an experience-piece (as opposed to opinion-piece, or review).

There’s one more thing I’d like to write about this week (having just pissed away a large amount of time watching stuff on YouTube), and that is the battle that I’m facing on an almost daily basis about whether or not I go on a big game-buying frenzy. Now, let’s be quite clear, here: I’m well aware of the need for retail therapy, but what I’m currently feeling isn’t an instance of that; rather, I’m currently being jostled by the desire to Support the Ones I Love conflicting with the need to reduce The List.

One of my many Other Lists is a collection of names that I feel have earned my immediate support – creators that will get my money almost immediately upon release, no questions asked. But that List has been causing me a lot of double-takes lately; whilst Llamasoft seem to have targeted the non-List-impacting iOS, Double Fine have seen fit to release Trenched which, by all accounts (and I admit to not having even tried the demo), is a tower defence game that requires friends for Good Times (a problem for me, since its release in Europe – where most of my XBL friends are – has been caught up in a legal quagmire). And I’m not a fan of tower defence stuff… at all. Platinum Games have delighted with Bayonetta, and then disgusted with a not-returned-to-in-ages MadWorld; the demo for Vanquish didn’t impress me (on either the 360 or the PS3). And after the stunning Killer7 and No More Heroes, I was shattered by the crapulence of Suda 51’s No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, and am thus wary of grabbing Shadows of the Damned (especially when Suda 51’s next game is slated to be the zombie-filled Lollipop Chainsaw – because I hate the use of zombies in games). If Shadows is shit, that may put Suda 51 in the three-strikes territory for me (as it has for other people).

In short: I want to buy Vanquish to support Platinum. I want to buy Trenched to support Double Fine. I want to buy Shadows of the Damned to support Suda 51 and Grasshopper Manufacture. But I’m scared by the resultant pressure on The List; whilst Shadows looks easy enough, Vanquish most certainly does not, and I’m already struggling with Luxor, another game-style I don’t get on well with, and I doubt Trenched will offer the same opportunities to brute-force progress.

My arm gets twisted when I hear that sales for recent games have been “disappointing”; whilst I have no real idea how accurate the numbers at VGChartz are, Child of Eden is pegged at less than six-figure-sales, and Shadows of the Damned has struggled to sixty thousand sales (split evenly between the 360 and PS3).

And that, frankly, is bullshit.

I went straight out and bought a brand-spankin’-new copy of Shadows. I’ve not played it yet, but at least I’ve put a penny in Grasshopper’s pocket. Vanquish will have to wait – part of the lust behind that was driven by the discovery of a local store selling lenticular copies (on both platforms) for a mere AU$30. But then that’s almost too cheap; I’d actually rather pay AU$50 to buy it on XBLM (or, I assume, PSN) because I believe in digital delivery, and because I figure Platinum would actually get more out of that.

…oh god, what have I done?

2010: The Year in Review

So, with 2010 drawing to a close, and after enduring my last New Year’s Eve as a thirty-something, I take heart in the old adage: another year older, another year wiser, right?

Erm… not quite.

2010 turned out to be an odd year, rife with emotional turmoil and great steps forward in responsibility, mixed (paradoxically) with chunks of silly self-indugence; and that personal stuff impacted on my beloved hobby somewhat. This year marked the first time in years that I’d failed to complete a game in a calendar month… not once, but twice, with December being barren as well. But I don’t feel as unhappy about that as I thought I would: massive inroads into long-standing bugbears were made in December; the foundation of an assault on The List in the year ahead.

But enough yakking; it’s time for my light-hearted, piss-weak, ridiculously-limited-and-skewed look back on 2010!

The Where-Have-You-Been-All-My-Life Award: Why hello, Miss Fifty-Two Inch Telly with HDMI Inputs; I do love you so very much, and can’t possibly imagine what life would be like without you now… Side-by-side, or Picture-in-picture, is the most wonderful thing to have happened to my Gaming World in aeons. Miss Portal was a worthy runner-up, but so far back in the field it didn’t matter.

Blast From The Past Award: So… Chrono Trigger, eh? 70 hours in, and only one of the thirteen endings unlocked. Bloody nice game too. RPG-grinding goodness just made for those long plane flights I suffer for my work.

Proudest Achievement of the Year: After hours and hours of shit-yourself scaredy-cat timid play, I finally beat Halo: Reach on Legendary… solo. A Monument to All Your Sins was mine.

The “Go Fuck Yourself” Dismissal: Introduced last year, this Award allows me to vent at a game that annoys me. This year’s winner? Astropop. May I never play – or mention – it again.

Disappointment of the Year: Not much of a contest for this one; No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle takes the gong for taking a big steaming shit over everything that was wonderful about the original game (my Game of the Year for 2008).

WTF Gaming Moment of the Year: Pretty much all of Bayonetta. Wackiness from beginning to end.

Surprise Discovery of the Year: Back in 2006 I bought Gears of War and, after completing all the campaign elements, I tried out the online multiplayer… and was disgusted by the nature of the people who habited that world. Arrogant, gobby fucks, the lot of them. So imagine my surprise when, returning to Gears for the first time in three years to do a bit of Achievement boosting, I discovered that the vast majority of people still playing the game were kind, fun-loving, and considerate… a delight to play with. Massive props to Lita, narv, beets, Bolch, Raven, Slash, Danger, and others who I’ve just offended by failing to explicitly mention… you guys (and gal) are awesome :)

The “I am the King of the World” Throw-Your-Arms-In-The-Air Trophy: I like the name of this one, and it goes to Braid – or, more specifically, the whittling down of my speed runs until the final Achievement popped, and all the Hidden Stars were collected. An utterly wonderful game, and a totally doable – and immensely rewarding – Achievement.

The Shrugging “Huh?” (for Most Notable Lack of Comprehension for Critical Acclaim): Uncharted. Why, exactly, do people rave about this game, with its sloppy controls? Or am I only going to figure it out on my fourth painful playthrough?

Multiplayer Moment of the Year: Boosting in Gears when three people popped their “Seriously” Achievement in one session was pretty impressive; but Crackdown 2 takes this award for the Battle Bus adventures I experienced with a bunch of people online.

The More-Of-The-Same… And-We-Like-It-That-Way Appreciation Award: Super Mario Galaxy 2 takes this one easily, after Crackdown 2 sadly failed to challenge it. Galaxy 1.5 it may be, but that’s just fine by me; the gameplay is as solid as a rock, and just as rewarding as the original.

The Easy-Peasy… Oh Shit! Discovery Award: This is a new award intended to honour the game that looked like an easy one to beat, but reveals itself to be a List-haunter. After Burner Climax was a doddle to get all 200 GS in, but obtaining all the medals in Score Attack mode? Insane, and about as doable for me as Wave 100 in Robotron. Whoops… a great example of an impulse buy gone bad.

The “I Love You… Honest” Missive of the Year: Get ready for a surprise… because the PS3 console hardware takes the gong. I love my Slim, it’s a beautiful box of electronic goodness – quiet, cool(-ish), and powerful. If only the DualShock controller, XMB software, and PSN were up to the same high standard…

Under-Appreciated Game of the Year: Why oh why aren’t more people raving about Costume Quest? It was the perfect example of a bite-sized, joyous, downloadable nugget of a game, with a wonderful sense of humour and awareness.

AAA-~~Hype~~Title I Missed Award: CODBLOPs. Gran Turismo 5. Red Dead Redemption. Heavy Rain. Mass Effect 2. Assassin’s Creed. I missed ’em all.

Boomshanka – that’s 2010 over and done with. And, for the first time in ages, I don’t have a post ready-to-go about my game of the year… because I like to have crossed stuff off The List before assembling the final article. I like to have experienced all the game has to offer before I clumsily rant about how great it is. And the two real contenders for my Game of the Year are both still firmly on The List.

Halo: Reach coupled a fantastic campaign (which encouraged you to empathise with characters you knew were going to die) with stunningly flexible multiplayer; rich stats tracking wreaks havoc with my OCD, meaning I’ll never be truly satisfied until I hit that Inheritor rank… in another 19.4 million cRedits’ time. Until then, I’ll be ducking in for my Daily Challenges, popping grunts in the head, and belting through the campaign again… and loving every second of it.

But Reach misses out.

Because my 2010 Game of the Year is Bayonetta.

From the moment I first saw Bayonetta in her first teaser trailer – a few brief glimpses and half a lingering calf – I was smitten. A strong female lead in a game of gunplay? Oh, yes please. But when the first gameplay videos came out, I became conflicted; it looked like a hack-and-slash button masher, a style of play with which I’m completely cack-handed. But when I got my copy (well, two copies, really… with playing cards and Scarborough Fair replica pistols) in my hands, all concerns were erased; Bayonetta plays amazingly well, allowing even the clumsiest player to bludgeon their way through to the utterly gobsmacking ending. The combat also has incredible depth; there’s oodles of different combos and attack options, always something new to learn, but endless options should one route prove too difficult.

I love it.

And the storyline… words can’t describe it. I cannot imagine a crazier progression; sure, I’ve engaged in battles on the wings of flying aircraft before, but I haven’t laid the smack down on a many-cocked god-like creature with my hair-fists before. I’ve not had the opportunity to unleash my hirsute hair suit (see that! clever!) as a demonic monster that bites the heads off enemies while I look on, comfortable in my statuesque nudeness. I’ve not ridden a motorbike along the body of a space-bound rocket, punched a space-statue in the eye, battled a massive deity, then flung her through space, guiding her into the sun.

I mean, seriously… Bayonetta won the WTF Gaming Moment of the Year for good reason. But it’s winning my 2010 Game of the Year for a thousand better reasons.

More CrackHaloBraidWars

Just a very quick one this week, because I’m just about to scoot back to my childhood home to spend some time with my folks. My writing continues unabated and, despite the fact that the novel itself is turning out to be utter trash (what was intended to be a cutting analysis of modern social networking and the Baby Boomer / Gen X divide has morphed into a deathly dull diatribe about some bloke who just wanders around letting stuff happen to him. But he’s managed to get lucky and, as a result, I’m now deeply envious of him), I’ve managed to get a stack of gaming in this week.

(Read that first paragraph again. Check out that mighty fine structure, with the massive bracketed bollocks in the middle messing up any flow the paragraph may have had. Yeah, I’m a writer ;)

Last week, I ended my post with a tiny little snippet that said I was starting to tackle Braid again. And, dear lord, did it sink its teeth in. I basically played that game for three days straight, improvising and analysing and testing and replaying speed runs over and over again in order to snaffle my last outstanding Achievement on the game, and finally managed to snaffle it (the tale itself is long and boring, but I like it; that’ll be another post, I reckon). But that wasn’t enough to knock Braid off The List, oh no! I went back and bested all the Challenge Times for all the speed runs, then went and hammered out all the hidden Stars. Maybe it wasn’t the Herculean effort that it felt like at the time, but I was mighty pleased to have managed it. Off The List.

What was next, then? Geommie Wars 2, and the Smile Achievement. Much practise, little progress. Harrumph.

But then Crackdown 2 got its Deluge DLC and, despite another rocky start with the DLC installation (the DLC was available for purchase from Marketplace for a good nine or ten hours before the title update that enabled it), it’s again managed to up the interest factor in Crackdown 2. Deluge adds yet more new abilities to your character, and adds some arcadey Horde and CTF modes which are pretty bloody good fun. Though I’m pretty sure there’s a large number of people out there who consider me a griefer for my penchant to spam the helicopters in Deluge mode; certainly, several gained the habit of blowing all the helicopters up before I could get near them.

And so to my final big session for the week, a Halo 3 multiplayer boosting session. I had a solitary social Achievement outstanding, and I joined a boosting team in order to try and snaffle it. The team’s instigator didn’t even turn up to his own session, so I – and my trusty spreadsheet of attending players and Achievements and maps – became the default Master of Ceremonies. And it was a delight – hammering through Rumble Pit and, later, Team Mythic maps, we managed to stay focussed on the tasks at hand… with the occasional devolution into the random explosive mayhem that can make Halo multiplayer so much fun. In the end we managed to get everyone all the social multiplayer Achievements, so it felt like a really productive session.

One more thing before I dash off to the bus station: last week I was quite remiss in not mentioning that I’d managed to snaffle one of the pre-order versions of the Japanese No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle sets (the Hopper Edition – try to buy at Play-Asia). Since it was a pre-order, I managed to grab the “erotic comic” that was issued with it, and… yeah. It’s interesting to see some more of Suda51’s ideas in the NMH universe, and more interesting still to see the Japanese trailers and FMVs from the first game, but… hmmm. Dunno whether it was worth expanding The List for, y’know?

For now – toodle-oo. I’m off to, literally, revisit my childhood.

Je Retourne (2010 Edition)

Hello again!

So: the Fringe this year was good – blindingly good, in fact – and, coupled with an appropriate Festival, ensured that I got zero gaming done (apart from the odd brain-awakening game of Sudoku on the iPhone) for over four weeks. And, unlike last year, I didn’t miss gaming at all – mainly because I was too busy either filling my mind with arty stuff (120 shows all up), or my gullet with alcohol (equal parts Asahi and house reds), or talking to many culturally far-flung people, or all of the above. It was easily one of the greatest months of my life…

…which could explain why, when I returned to my Other Hobby after a month, I was so utterly disappointed by what I found before me.

I’d received my NTSC copy of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle from Play-Asia mere days into my self-imposed gaming exile and, while tempted, I managed to leave it in the shrink-wrap until last Tuesday. Somewhat rested and dragging my sleep patterns back into off-season normalcy, I fired up the Wii and began Travis Touchdown’s second outing.

And, from the opening sequence, there’s something that rubs me the wrong way about NMH2. Maybe it’s the more detailed textures on the character models that ruin the semi-cel-shading; maybe it’s the immersion-breakers. Hey, the original game revelled in the knowledge that it was a game, but the sequel flaunts it like a drunken D-cup bridesmaid on a hen’s night, with fourth-wall-breaking references a-plenty in the opening hours.

Whilst I can understand the majority of complaints about the clunky overworld in the original game, its absence in the sequel makes the whole experience feel empty and disconnected. There used to be a real sense of purpose – no matter how monotonous – about having to ride to the High School to take on Shinobu, or to the baseball stadium to meet Bad Girl; now, their counterparts are just a menu item, something trivial on a list to cross off once beaten. There’s also no character to any of the new bosses; they’re essentially anonymous until you get the garish “DEAD” message and discover their name for the first time.

In fact, there’s so much that appears to be changed for no reason – the aforementioned texture tweaks (resulting in a muddy look), the lower camera angles, and the slightly faster – but seemingly less fluid – combat are all steps backwards, in my book. Even the ability to play as both Henry and Shinobu is handled clumsily, with the latter introducing a precision jumping mechanic to a game that really shouldn’t have one. The real-time weapon change is nice, though (but I thought you needed the power of the Playstation 3 for that? ;)

And then there’s the gamebreakers – getting stuck in endless knockdown loops. Changing katanas leaves you immobile and invincible for longer-than-a-moment – but not when that instakill satellite beam is being used. The penultimate boss battle seems to have not been playtested at all, and is plagued by incredibly crap timing; once you’re knocked down, it’s only by the grace of god that you can actually get up again before your health is depleted. And in a late bit of dialogue, the subtitles used “your” instead of “you’re”. Really? Quality control is that lax?

Eventually, after 11 hours (which included a fair bit of whoring, foolishly expecting extra weapons to appear in the lab run by the now-completely-ridiculous Naomi), I finally beat the lacklustre final boss. And, just like much of the action preceding it, the ending is disappointingly perfunctory; there’s no surprise denouement, no sting in the tail, nothing clever.

Now, I accept that I may not have been in the best mental state to play this game; I always suffer a bit of a depression when the constant mind-stretching delight of the Fringe wraps every year, felt more acutely this year on account of the personal connections I made over the period that I’m desperate to not lose. And it’s through this haze of malaise that I viewed NMH2.

Remember that I love the original game; it was my Game of the Year in 2008. And I recognise that I only began to truly love it on about the third playthrough.

And at all times – even on the first playthrough – I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed belting through NMH2.

Where the original was original and witty, astute and brash, and with solid gameplay to match, the sequel seems to rely on the tone alone, rather than the mechanics. In making the NMH2 a more mainstream production – decision described by most reviewers as “fixing all the bad bits of the original” – Grasshopper have callously ignored all the things that made the original great, making change after pointless change, leaving behind an almost completely soulless experience.

Yes, I’ll give it another couple of playthroughs – my OCD demands that much – but I can’t see NMH2 growing on me the same way the original did. Here’s hoping it does… but it has a very, very deep dark pit to climb out of first.