Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion

FINALLY.

We're FINALLY getting some Star Wars that isn't set during the Clone Wars. I can't begin to tell you how long I've been sick of the goddamn Clone Wars.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike the Clone Wars. I just had some problems with it, and they're mostly the same problems with any prequel setting, really. The Clone Wars show takes place between Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 with Ep2 detailing the beginning of said war, and Ep3 wrapping it up. And that's the problem. We KNOW HOW IT ENDS. The Clones slaughter half the Jedi, Anakin slaughters the other half, a handful of them escape to become Expanded Universe characters, Empire takes over and starts building the Death Star.

We didn't need another movie and 6 seasons to slowly build up and ominously foreshadow that. We didn't need to know that Anakin had an apprentice. We didn't need to know Darth Maul had a brother. We didn't need to see every time the Jedi almost captured or defeated General Grievous, because NONE OF THIS STUFF CAME UP DURING EPISODE 3.

Outside the Clone Wars show, nobody ever mentions- not even in passing- that Ahsoka even EXISTED. And that's ridiculous! As bland a character as I found her to be, she still had an important connection with Anakin, being, you know, HIS GODDAMN APPRENTICE.

I know this review is supposed to be about Rebels, but I'm going somewhere with this, so bear with me.

Remember my rant on fan fiction? Where I talked about how you're better off creating your own characters based on the rules of an established universe, rather than trying to write about things someone else's characters would or wouldn't do in a given situation?

THAT is the number one reason Rebels is already better than Clone Wars.

We get a completely new cast of characters to watch! The writers don't have to worry about whether or not Obi-Wan or Yoda would or wouldn't act a certain way! They don't have to shoehorn in connections to existing characters just to justify having them on screen. Clone Wars would have been so much better if Ahsoka wasn't Anakin's apprentice, and just some other Jedi apprentice out having adventures!

And that's basically what we're getting with Rebels. Except it's not about Ahsoka. It's about a completely random group of previously unknown people doing what little they can to get in the Empire's way. Before the first episode, we have no idea who any of these guys are, and that's GREAT. We don't know what to expect from them! It's not completely predictable!

Well, it's no more or less predictable than any other work of fiction, at least. Obviously the main characters are always gonna make it out alive, because there'd be nowhere to go with the story if they all suddenly ended up dead, but we can reasonably believe they're in some semblance of peril! In Clone Wars, we KNOW Obi-Wan is going to make it out of every fight unscathed. We KNOW Anakin can't possibly die, no matter how deadly his injuries seem because we LITERALLY SEE HIM BECOME DARTH VADER IN EPISODE 3.

Sorry I'm harping on Clone Wars so much, but to be fair Rebels is basically a sequel series to Clone Wars with a very similar animation style, so it's really hard not to compare them. I'm just going to give a quick overview of what I really liked about Rebels so far and what I maybe didn't like so much.

WHAT I LIKED
The new characters. From what I've seen so far, they're all completely likable and I don't find any of them annoying in the slightest. They're all interesting, and I can only assume we'll learn more about all of them as the show goes on.

The almost complete LACK of any appearances by previously established characters in this first episode. The only character we've seen before is Obi-Wan Kenobi, who makes a very short appearance as a hologram recording of his warning to stay away from the Jedi Temple. There was no inexplicable Chewbacca cameo, despite Wookiees featuring prominently in the last half of the episode. There was no sudden appearance of a badass smuggler who we later find out is a young Han Solo. The focus was entirely on the main characters and the setting spoke for itself with the recognizable aliens in the background and the return of the iconic Imperial Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters and Stormtroopers.

The overall darker tone balanced by appropriately light touches of comic relief. One of the first shots of the episode is a Star Destroyer arriving in the atmosphere of a planet. 15 seconds in, and we're already told this is a significant amount of time after the Emperor took over and all but exterminated the Jedi Order. The Imperials are hard at work oppressing, stealing from, and enslaving their citizens. These aren't the Republic's snarky, cookie-cutter clones mowing down the silly Battle Droids anymore; these are full-fledged Stormtroopers ready to shoot anyone as soon as an officer gives the command. Things are definitely getting bad for the galaxy, but there's still the occasional sarcastic remark or light slapstick to lighten the mood a touch. Even the original trilogy had these moments, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Chopper is basically a grumpy old R2-D2, and Kanan is probably the closest we're ever going to get to a canon Kyle Katarn.

Nobody said "I have a bad feeling about this."

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
The Stormtroopers are treated a little too similarly to the Battle Droids for my liking. They make similar stupid mistakes and are outright murdered for comic relief. I really hope this doesn't become too much of a running gag. If there's one thing Episodes 1 and 2 did right, it was making the Battle Droids appropriately menacing. They were cold, murderous, expendable machines carrying out their programming, and Episode 3 and Clone Wars turned them into moronic saber fodder.

Kanan revealing himself as a Jedi was a very well done scene, but the impact would have been so much greater if we didn't see it coming lightyears away thanks to the earlier scene where Ezra finds his lightsaber and holocron. This is mostly just a nitpick with this particular episode, but it would have been a much more effective reveal if they hadn't already revealed it.

Ezra uses a slingshot. I will never be okay with this, and nothing will ever make it okay. It's just stupid, and that's that.

There's unique character design, and there's this.

There is absolutely NO reason he couldn't just use a blaster like everyone else! If it's a matter of showing him killing anyone, set the damn thing to stun! That's a thing! I didn't just heap praise on this show for having the darker atmosphere of a galaxy under the rule of an oppressive, totalitarian government just to watch Stormtroopers get taken out by a kid wielding a goddamned slingshot!

IN CLOSING
Overall, it's good. It's fantastic. It's just about everything you could want in a return to the classic Star Wars time period we all have undoubtedly fond memories of. There are little things that bug me about it, but they're just that: little things.

If you liked Clone Wars, you'll love Rebels. If you hated Clone Wars, you should definitely at least give Rebels a chance.

Rant: "Shipping" and Fan Fiction

Oh dear. Is this what I think it is? Why, yes. It’s another rant! I haven’t done one of these in quite a while. So what am I taking up torch and pitchfork against today? None other than perhaps the sharpest of all double-edged swords to ever grace the worldwide web: fandom.

Well, not the concept of fandom as a whole, no. As a whole, I think they’re generally pretty fantastic. This purpose of this rant is not to target any single fandom either, so if you came to hear more about how Twilight is painfully and singlehandedly killing the vampire genre as we know it, kindly go anywhere else on the internet because that dead horse has been so thoroughly beaten it’s actually holding a Twilight book together. I will, however, mention that the catalyst for this rant was a question asked to fans of the recent incarnation of My Little Pony. Simply put, the question was “what are your opinions on shipping?” My personal response was initially rather brief, simply stating that I don’t particularly care for it. I later went back to edit my comment and expand on my remarks, and shortly afterward did so again. It occurred to me that I have a lot more to say on the subject- and related subjects- than anyone would want to read in a single Reddit comment. So here we go.

For those so fortunate as to be unaware, “shipping” refers to the often non-canonical romantic pairing of characters in a given series. It’s short for “relationship,” and that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. So what do I think of shipping? And by extension fan fiction, since that seems to be where the concept is most heavily used? (Fan art being a close contender, but more- much more- on that later.) Well, I don’t particularly care for it. The cornerstone of all shipping appears to be “the less probable the relationship is, the more romantic it is, and therefore the better my version of the story is.” It is THIS notion that gives shipping the bad reputation it inevitably gets. The pairings almost NEVER make even the smallest measurable amount of sense, and the authors simply ignore any canonically established character traits that might make the situation less convenient to write about, which is typically most –if not all- of them.

I have nothing against fan ficeidjkj

Sorry. As I was saying: I have nothing against fan fictiefkiohgh

Huh. I can’t seem to force my hands to finish typing that thought. I guess I’ll have to be honest, then. I pretty much hate fan fiction, so I have a lot against it. I’ll just say this to start: There is a reason the producers of the story (writers, artists, directors, developers, etc.) get paid shitloads of money to do what they do: THEY’RE ACTUALLY GOOD AT WHAT THEY DO. They understand their characters and how the universes they create work, they know how the characters would act in a given situation, and they know how likely they are to BE in that situation in the first place. THEY ARE PROFESSIONALS. THEY CREATED THE FUCKING CHARACTERS.

Now, regardless of my personal, highly biased opinions on the matter, there IS a right way to write a story using someone else’s material. Good fan fic-

Oh, for fuck’s sake, not again. Good fan fi-i-ic…t…

Come on, hands! It’s a legitimate concept!

GOOD FAN FICTION depicts the characters and universe of the story as closely to that written by the original creator as possible. Perhaps one in ten thousand fan-created stories actually accomplish some semblance of this, but it’s really not the fans’ fault the other thousands are terribly written. It’s just not possible to properly use somebody else’s characters the way they do. Look at any episodic (non story arc based) television series that has more than one writer. Doctor Who, for example. Ever notice how the main characters always seem to react somewhat differently to similar situations? That’s what happens when a writer has to try and match someone else’s established style. It might work, it might fool the majority of the audience, but there will be noticeable inconsistencies regardless.

Now put this power into the hands of somebody who ISN’T a professional writer, and DOESN’T understand even the characters’ most basic motivations. Most likely you will end up with a dozen or so pages of poorly set up and increasingly bland descriptions of Harry Potter making out with Draco Malfoy. In other words, you get bad shipping. "Oh, it's a fictional story. Stop taking it so seriously and insisting everything be realistic," you might say. Bullshit. It’s lazy, it’s insulting to the original writers, it’s insulting to the audience, and it’s insulting to the concept of fan fiction altogether because it IS. POSSIBLE. TO. WRITE. GOOD. FAN. FICTION. AND. THESE. PEOPLE. DON’T. EVEN. TRY.

If you’re going to ship two- or three, hell, any number of- characters who have no canonical business being together, you better have a DAMN GOOD and believable in-story justification for it. “Character X was secretly in love with Character Y the whole time but too afraid to show it,” DOES. NOT. COUNT. Has it ever been even SUGGESTED that it might be remotely PLAUSIBLE for these characters to suddenly fall in love with each other? If you can't honestly answer "yes" to that question, then your shipping is bad and you should feel bad. Just because it’s implausible doesn’t make it better.

Do you know why everyone makes fun of romance novels? It’s because they’re usually terribly written, full of clichéd, underdeveloped characters, and little more than vehicles for the sex scenes and fantasies the author really wanted to write about. And those are the ones that get published. Now think about that. The romance genre is subject to ruthless ridicule even when it’s considered good enough to try SELLING to people. What does that say about the quality of the material people on the internet write by the gigabyte for FREE, and base entirely on OTHER PEOPLE’S characters?

This may sound completely insane, but I’ve long believed that the best way to write fan fiction- aside from avoiding romance as a driving plot device like a plague- is by using original characters. That’s right, OCs. Before you start throwing things at me for encouraging this practice, hear me out. By creating original characters based on the rules of an existing story universe, you get the benefit of complete control over those characters’ motivations, actions and- most importantly- development, without having to worry about matching the style of the original writers. Not only can this make for a much more interesting story in general, it makes the universe of the story seem that much bigger by revolving around different characters doing different things, but still being affected by major events from the original story.

Hogwarts has hundreds of students learning to perform feats of magic. What were they all doing while Harry was out fighting Voldemort? What about all the Jedi who survived Order 66 and went into hiding when the Empire took over? What have they been up to in the 20 years between Episodes 3 and 4? (It’s actually really easy to forget this, but almost the entire Expanded Universe canon of Star Wars is essentially published fan fiction.) What’s going on everywhere else in the world while Aang and his friends are battling the Fire Nation? For that matter, what happened years before these stories began? What might happen years later? There is so much potential for creativity that is being wasted on trying to tell a story about characters who don’t fit into it, and the best solution is to make up your own.

Obviously this not only opens the city gates, but completely blows them off their hinges to make way for the invading armies of badly written OCs, but as long as nobody’s shipping them with main characters from the original story I consider this an acceptable compromise. (In fact, that alone is pretty much an outright death sentence for any semblance of credibility your OC may have.) I won’t go into too much more detail on OCs because there are pages and pages on this subject elsewhere and I don’t feel like going that far off track of the original subject of my ranting, but I stand by my assertion that they’re the best way to go about writing fan fiction. OCs and shipping are both terrible, but of the two, OCs are less so and can even be GOOD if properly utilized.

TL;DR: Shipping sucks, romance plots are only good for being mocked, and it's better to write an OC than make a half-assed justification for out-of-character behavior of an established character.

Halo 4 (360)

So. Halo 4. After 5 years, Master Chief finally gets to star in another Halo installment. No more prequels, midquels, spinoffs and all that nonsense. We're actually continuing the story that we last saw in a game whose tagline was "finish the fight."

The point I'm trying to get around to is that I'm not a fan of unnecessary sequels, which is exactly what Halo 4 is, so upon its announcement I had already decide that I would hate it. Even so, I was unable to force myself not to get excited for it after seeing gameplay footage featuring new weaponry from a certain ancient race of dead aliens. I decided that I would give it a chance.

Having finally gotten around to playing it, my response can be summed up as: "Eh."

Translation: "Better than I expected, but not by much."

Halo 4 feels much too small for Master Chief's return after a 5-year absence (1/2-second cameo in Reach not counting.) There are a lot of fantastic new ideas, but I don't feel they were taken as far as they should have been. I get the impression that 343 was afraid to change too much, lest they tempt the wrath of the Bungie fans. As such, there is a distinct lack of variety in Halo 4, especially when compared with what we saw in the jump from Halo 3 to Reach.

This lack of variety very clearly shines through in the enemy designs. Remember how Halo 3 added more advanced forms of the Flood, but used them just sparingly enough that they managed to be terrifying each time you ran into them? There are exactly 3 new enemies in Halo 4 and you fight them over. And over. And over. And over. And over. AND OVER again. To the point where "oh shit! It's those new guys again! Better be careful and strategize a bit before this next fight" becomes "oh, look. It's THESE assholes. Again. I wonder how many I will have to sprint toward and unload 1/4 of a clip of ammo into this time." It's repetitive even by FPS standards.

Also Covenant. Again. All the same ones. Because they're somehow evil again even though we CLEARLY had everyone but the Brutes realizing what assholes the Prophets were in Halo 2 and 3. So why are they suddenly evil again? The game's ONLY line of dialogue relating to the situation is "a lot can happen in 4 years." Supposedly, it's explained in some expanded universe material that it's a different group of Covenant who never got the "HUMANS GOOD, PROPHETS BAD" memo (or did, but told everyone to fuck off anyway), but really the only reason they're here now is because they're iconic enemies.

AND SPEAKING OF LACK OF VARIETY, LET'S TALK ABOUT THOSE FORERUNNER GUNS I WAS SO EXCITED ABOUT.

Yeah. They're literally clones of the other guns.

The Light Rifle? It's just the DMR or Carbine. (Incidentally, they added the Battle Rifle back in alongside the DMR, so there are now FOUR guns that do the exact. Same. Thing.)

Scattershot? Shotgun.

Suppressor? Assault Rifle.

Binary Rifle? Sniper/Beam Rifle.

They do the EXACT SAME THINGS as these previous guns. I don't even think there's a difference the damage they inflict! Even the new grenade is literally as easy as stepping 3 feet away from it to avoid getting damaged. The only reason to use these new guns over the ones you start with is because they're a lot easier to find given the environment 85% of the game takes place. (Meaning on a Forerunner planet...thing....)

SO WHAT ABOUT STORY?

Halo 3 ended with Chief and Cortana stranded in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere in the other half of the ship that got cut in half buy the Ark's closing subspace portal. Still not clear on how that worked, what with the exploding Halo ring and their half of the ship NOT going through the portal with the rest of it, but hey. Killing off the main characters would just ruin the prospects for another sequel trilogy,wouldn't it? (Except Halo reach was just fantastic, despite Chief being demoted to Easter Egg and Cortana having exactly 4 seconds of background screentime.)

ANYWAY. Cortana wakes up Chief after some weird scanny-beam passes through the ship, and they soon get boarded by the aforementioned now-evil-again Covenant. After fighting them off, they find out that the Covenant weren't the ones scanning them. So who was it? None other than UNICRON!

Overused joke aside, the gigantic metal planet...thingy (AKA Requiem)...opens up and pulls all the nearby ships inside, where we discover that it's actually a very nice place once Chief escapes the flaming pile of wreckage he arrived in. The sun is shining, the grass is blowing in the wind, the holographic death machines slaughter everything in their path- wait...what? Okay...maybe not such a nice place after all...but still pretty enough to make Bethesda's environment artists jealous, that's for damn sure.

So it turns out that another ship, the UNSC Infinity, is on its way to pick up Chief and Cortana after finally picking up their distress signal. Except...Oh no! If they get too close to Requiem, they'll get sucked in and be trapped too! Cortana tries to warn the Infinity to stay away, but Chief's suit transmitter is being mysteriously jammed. So we're led on a big ol' mission to find and shut down the jammy thingy and stop the Infinity from trying to rescue us.

ONLY IT DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE SPOILERS: CORTANA WAS WRONG AND ALL THE STUFF YOU TURNED OFF ACTUALLY RELEASES A VERY VERY BAD FORERUNNER GUY WHO WANTS TO KILL ALL THE HUMANS BECAUSE HE DIDN'T THINK THEY WERE READY TO INHERIT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GALAXY AFTER HIS PEOPLE KILLED THEMSELVES TO STOP THE FLOOD.

OR. SOMETHING.

Chief, remember what happened the last time you took instructions from a computer on how to operate machinery left behind by an ancient alien race? Something about almost accidentally wiping out all life in the known galaxy?

Yet somehow 98% of the campaign involves fighting from one terminal to the next to plug in Cortana so she can do whatever it is she needs to do at that particular point, then move on. You fight through jungles to the crash site of the Infinity, you fight through the Infinity to destroy some Covenant ships attacking it, you fight through some more jungle, you fight through Forerunner buildings etc, etc, etc. The game feels extremely linear and almost claustrophobic, as opposed to the much more open areas of the previous Halo games. You could get lost in Halo CE, and 2 and 3 still felt very expansive. Even Reach had some wide nice lengthy vehicle sections. There is ONE level that tries to capture this feel in Halo 4, and it still keeps you pretty much on a straight track and gives you very little to actually explore. It doesn't even let you DRIVE the biggest land vehicle in the game! (Granted, the ONLY place it can go is along the path the game lays out for it, but how can they deny the player the opportunity to control a vehicle easily 8 times the size of the Elephant? It's the human equivalent of the Scarab for fuck's sake!)

BUT YOU DO FINALLY GET TO FLY A PELICAN, WHICH IS SOMETHING EVERYONE'S WANTED TO DO SINCE HALO CE, SO I HAVE TO GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE, EVEN THOUGH IT'S EXACTLY LIKE FLYING A FALCON ONLY WITH A SPARTAN LASER MOUNTED ON THE FRONT SO IT'S REALLY NOT ALL THAT IMPRESSIVE. (You know that mission in Reach where you fly the Falcon over a city, land at buildings, kill everyone inside, and push a button about 3 or 4 times? It's literally the exact same mission only with Forerunner buildings.)

Not to give too much away, but the entire plot is resolved in the space of this single game and doesn't even ask any new questions that warrant a sequel to answer them. Halo CE ended with the climactic destruction of a Halo ring, but had introduced the Flood, an enemy that would take a further 2 games to finally fully understand and ultimately defeat. The primary villain of Halo 4 is defeated at the end of the first game of what is supposed to be another trilogy, meaning the story isn't supposed to be fully resolved until Halo 6! This could have been another Halo spin-off and been all the better for it instead of branding itself as the Chief's triumphant return!  

In short,  Halo 4 is crippled right off the bat by its predecessors. 343 had a lot to live up to, and surely did their best, but overall it just doesn't work. The graphics are amazing, though, and the story itself is fairly interesting for those who haven't gotten into the books and other supplementary material. I can't help feeling this rendition of Halo may have been better off as a movie. Or even a multi-part episode of the apparently upcoming Halo TV show. (Yeah, it's a thing.)

For still being reasonably enjoyable, but rather lackluster, I'll give Halo 4 a 6.5/10.

Sonic Generations (360)

Okay, SEGA. You made Sonic. Pretty much all of his Genesis titles are among the best video games of all time. We get it. What you don't seem to get is that pretty much everything you've put him in after the death of the Dreamcast has been complete shit.

 It's painfully obvious that all you want to do is remake the old (actually good) levels that made Sonic great. Sonic Generations was off to a great start, even with the stupid plot, but why in the HELL would you only use ONE zone from EVERY game? I emphasize "every" because that's including the objectively awful Sonic 2006 and Sonic Unleashed. Because of this, literally only a QUARTER of the game is even in the same ballpark as "fun."

We start out 20ish years in the past, with the original Sonic (here on out referred to as "Classic Sonic") running around and doing...whatever the fuck else he did in his free time before he started battling gigantic eldritch abominations. Suddenly, Steampunk Haunter shows up and attacks him. You're probably wondering what exactly the hell just happened.

Fuck it! We're cutting 20 years ahead to Sonic's birthday party! (So obviously he survived the attack in the past or he wouldn't be here in the present, right?) Steampunk Haunter shows up and attacks again, with Sonic wondering what the hell it is. Shouldn't he know? He saw it when he was his past self helping his future self fight it, right? He should know how this whole story turns out because he was already present when it took place- WIBBLY WOBBLY TIMEY WIMEY THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T USE TIME TRAVEL AS A DEVICE FOR AN EXCUSE PLOT.

Steampunk Haunter sucks everyone into black holes and puts Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber where they find a bunch of locations from their past adventures (or Classic Sonic's future adventures) all frozen in time and de-colorized. They discover that by running really fast through the zones, they can unfreeze them and rescue their friends who have been trapped inside.

So as I said, we get ONE zone from each major Sonic game, for a total of 9 levels with two acts each. This is where the bad design really sets in. You play act one of each zone as Classic Sonic, and it's the standard side-scrolling, spin dash "no homing attack" gameplay you know and love. Act two is played as Modern Sonic, and is in the 3D, gimmicky, stupid special attacks gameplay style. This means you will be playing 2D versions of designed-for-3D levels as Classic Sonic, and 3D versions of designed-for-2D levels as Modern Sonic and this DOES. NOT. WORK. It's the reason exactly FIVE of the EIGHTEEN total acts don't suck.

Everywhere SEGA has had to come up with original level designs, they fail horribly. If it's not 2D based on an originally 2D level, or 3D originally based on a 3D level, it's awful. And even then all the levels taken from the later games are crap across the board because THEY WERE CRAP TO BEGIN WITH. There's far too much reliance on precision jumping and the homing attack, ridiculous enemy placement, forcing the player to learn new special attacks as Modern Sonic, it's all just stupid! Seriously, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW SONIC CAN FUCKING WALL-JUMP NOW? (To be fair, there is a warning and offer of a tutorial when these new mechanics pop up, but I made the mistake of assuming they would be obvious and easy for someone like me- who has literally grown up with Sonic games- to figure out.) On top of this, some of the last few acts are insanely long. You know how in the old, good Sonic games, you had 10 minutes to get through each act, and most of the time you wouldn't need more than 5 or 6? GOOD FUCKING LUCK BEATING PLANET WISP IN LESS THAN 15, AND THAT'S IF YOU CAN QUICKLY FIGURE OUT WHERE THE HELL TO EVEN GO.

And that's not all. "Oh thank goodness," you think. "I've finally gotten through those horribly designed levels and can move on to the boss fight! That should be fun at least!"

NOPE. YOU GOTTA DO SOME CHALLENGES IN THOSE HORRIBLY DESIGNED LEVELS BEFORE YOU CAN GO TO THE BOSSES.

"Oh...okay. So what, I gotta beat the act with a tough, but reasonable time limit now or something?"

NOPE. YOU'RE RACING A COPY OF YOURSELF WHO'S NOT BOUND BY THE LAWS OF REALITY. HE FOLLOWS A SET PATH AT A CONSTANT SPEED EVERY TIME NO MATTER WHAT, BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR MOVING PLATFORMS. AND IF YOU SCREW UP EVEN ONCE YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO CATCH UP IN TIME TO WIN.

"Oh...well that was tremendously unfair, but I managed to beat it. Can I fight the boss now?"

NOW YOU HAVE TO USE CHARMY TO GET THROUGH THIS JUMPING PUZZLE!

"Who? Oh, the annoying bee guy...I see. That was painfully frustrating, but I finally got it. Boss time now?"

MORE PUZZLES! BUTTONS AND LASER WALLS!

"Okay, I see you're trying to extend the gameplay experience, but this is getting a bit ridiculous. Can I just fight the b-"

NO! PLAY MUSICAL TENNIS WITH VECTOR!

"Musica- What!? I don't- That doesn't even- Know what? Fuck you! I'm playing Sonic Spinball."

Okay. So let's say you complete the necessary challenges without putting a controller through a TV screen and make it to the bosses. Well, to sum it up: The first 2 are way too easy, and the last 2 are way too hard. Death Egg Robot and Perfect Chaos? Both immensely difficult final bosses in their respective debut games? Pushovers. You don't even go Super Sonic against Chaos. Also, his modernized design looks stupid. Why the hell does he have armor now? There was a high-definition version of him in Sonic Adventure's opening! Make him look like that!

And I don't know what the hell the Egg Dragoon came from (Sonic Unleashed, apparently) but FUCK THAT THING TO HELL AND BACK TWICE. It's a running boss fight with Sonic going constantly at full speed, so you have to boost to catch up. Unfortunately, while doing this he steers like a goddamn semi truck, making it effectively IMPOSSIBLE to get to Robotnik and damage him until the fight shifts into side-scroller mode and has you jumping over ice bombs. Because of the element of randomness to it, this fight can TAKE FUCKING FOREVER, only for you to fuck up when it's time to deliver the final hit and have to do the WHOLE THING OVER AGAIN.

Oh, but that's nothing compared to the final boss fight with Steampunk Haunter. It shouldn't come as any surprise that both Sonics use the Chaos Emeralds to turn into their super forms for this fight, and as per tradition, you need to keep collecting rings throughout the battle in order to stay super. This would not normally be much of a problem, except...

HOW THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO SEE THE RINGS WITH A BACKGROUND THAT FLASHY AND BUSY? YOU'VE GOT HYPERSPACE RAYS GOING THIS WAY, GEARS AND SHIT GOING THAT WAY, AND IT'S ZOOMED SO FAR OUT YOU CAN'T EVEN TELL WHERE YOU ARE HALF THE TIME. It doesn't even TELL you what you're supposed to do! Like at all! There is NO mention that all you have to do is catch up to the boss and keep boosting into his little orb thingy to damage him.

 The Sonic-switching mechanic is confusing and leaves you clueless as to what you're supposed to do even though the characters all told you a hundred times to use it. You spend 90% of the time trying to catch up to the boss only for it to go into side-scrolling mode, and the other 10% trying to get some goddamn rings so you can stay alive long enough to keep doing that! There is no point in switching whatsoever!

Also, do you know what a homing shot looks like? Don't worry. The extra characters will let you know. All of them. Every. Fucking. Time. It. Happens.

"THAT LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT!"

"THAT LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT!"

"IT'S LIKE THAT SHOT CHASES YOU!"

"THAT'S A HOMING SHOT!"

"THAT LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT!"

"IT'S LIKE THAT SHOT CHASES YOU!"

"THAT LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT!"

There is simply not enough good in this game to counteract all the bad. The early levels are enjoyable to play,  and they're obviously all visually impressive, but the story is stupid, the gameplay shifts so rapidly between fun/nostalgic and tedious/infuriating, the voice acting is annoying as fuck,  all the required extra challenges are such obvious padding, and the classic bosses are so dumbed down it's downright insulting.

If you want Classic Sonic gameplay, PLAY A FUCKING CLASSIC SONIC GAME because SEGA apparently has no idea how to do a remake anything even remotely resembling justice.

4/10

And no, I'm not touching Sonic 4 Part 2 unless it goes on sale for a fucking buck because SEGA still hasn't figured out that homing attack is NOT A GODDAMN 2-D MECHANIC. I don't care if it's a level-for-level, platform-for-platform remake of EVERY Genesis Sonic game. 

Dead Space 2 (PC)

Oh hey, I've got a blog that I haven't posted in about 7 months. Sorry about that. I'll make it up to my nonexistent loyal readers by reviewing Dead Space 2. Obviously the sequel to Dead Space, which I have previously reviewed.

Dead Space 2 picks up some time after the events of the first one. In the opening cutscene Isaac Clarke finds himself being questioned by some scientist guys on a gigantic space station. They go over what happened during the last game for expository purposes, and then Isaac wakes up in a straight jacket while all hell breaks loose aboard the station. That's right! Isaac's old buddies, the Necromorphs are back and wasting no time slaughtering everyone! Your main objective becomes "get the fuck out of here!"

So DS2 almost literally throws you right into the action, which is not really a bad thing. Recall my rant on DS1's lack of scariness because of how you can kill everything? During the opening of DS2, you're stuck in a straight jacket. It's a very chaotic scene, and it actually manages to briefly make the Necromorphs scary for a while. Even once you're out of the jacket, it's still a while before you get an actual weapon and get back into the routine of "SEE MONSTER, SHOOT ARMS OFF, MOVE ON."

Unfortunately, Dead Space 2 does still suffer from that problem once you clear the first chapter. It's a bit saddening, because it is very obvious that it's at least trying to be scarier than its predecessor. The fact that the game is set on a residential space station gives it some some fairly wonderfully disturbing moments (especially considering that you're witnessing a Necromorph outbreak AS it's happening, rather than just seeing the aftermath), but it's still mostly just jump scares.

If anything, the changes Dead Space 2 has undergone have improved on its already good action game qualities, rather than its few good (if any) horror ones. Isaac has much more personality (also a face) this time, and seems to be fairly good at voicing the player's own opinions of the situation at hand. For instance, stomping on an enemy several times in a row will result in Isaac grunting, "Argh! Die! Fucker!" Barely audible in most cases, but I thought it was a nice touch.

Spoiler warning begins.


Sadly, Isaac is the only character to get any kind of development. The crazy guy just gets crazier until you predictably have to kill him, and the badass chick just stays the badass chick.

 Even the main antagonist throughout the game is never seen in person until seconds before the final boss. Seconds during which you kill him in a quicktime event. You never even really find out what his problem was or why he wants to kill Isaac so badly. Unless I'm just really bad at paying attention.

In fact, the entire ending just seems to come out of nowhere. Suddenly there's a giant marker that Isaac and the crazy guy apparently helped build, all the Necromorphs getting near if causes it to start sucking them in, and Isaac's hallucinatory dead girlfriend needs to kill him to complete the process.  Or something. The characters call it a "convergence event" but nobody ever explains what that actually means or why it's bad!

Spoiler warning ends.

There are several new types of Necromorph this time around, in addition to most of the originals. Most interestingly at first are the Stalkers. If you hear their sound, get a good look at them, and your first thought isn't "velociraptors" then something is wrong with you. These bastards are different from the other Necromorphs and are actually some of the scarier ones in the game for the sole reason that they HUNT YOU.

They seem unnervingly smart until you get their pattern down. They will charge at you, then run and hide behind a corner, and peek out at you. "Ha! What a dumb creature! Giving away his position like that!" You might say, as you go around the corner to dispatch the beastie- OH SHIT HE'S CHARGING AGAIN! Before you know it, you're on the ground and he's run off to hide again around a different corner. Unfortunately they're actually not nearly as clever as their first ambush might lead you to believe. Indeed, that first ambush is the only time I was actually afraid of them. Once you figure out their simple pattern, it becomes all to easy to blast their legs off mid-charge and leave them effectively harmless.

Another new enemy is the Puker. You get exactly one guess as to what he does. Time's up. He pukes acid at you. However, the damaging effects of the acid are the least of your worries, since it doesn't seem to really hurt you all that much. The main problem you will face when going against a Puker is that the acid slows you down a lot. This can cause serious trouble when you're facing a group of enemies, and is the reason a Puker should always be your primary target. They also have probably the most gruesome Isacc-killing scene when you lose a grapple with one. (Incidentally, this was the only enemy I ever lost a grapple with despite seriously trying to win.)

Strangely, with all those and more additions to the enemy team, nothing has really been done to make the bosses more interesting. In Dead Space you had a boss fight in zero-g, one you fought using the ship's turrets, and even one that was completely invincible! Dead Space 2's bosses are all just "shoot the big glowing weak spot until it dies," except for one fight which is 95% cutscene until you get a "shoot the explody thing" moment. Definitely a step backwards.

Which is disappointing because one of the bigger steps forward is the new and improved zero-gravity mechanic. Instead of just pointing, clicking and jumping to another part of the room, Isaac can now freely navigate areas with no gravity using little jets on his suit. It's fantastic, to be honest. I loved the zero-g sections of the first game, but the parts of DS2 where you actually fly around in space are just mind blowing, and they could have easily taken advantage of it for a boss fight or two. Instead, you get a couple of admittedly awesome scenes of falling through space at high speeds and carefully maneuvering around broken sections of the space station. They're fairly intense, but still only really serve to push Dead Space 2 further away from the horror genre and into action territory.

It's surprisingly easy to like the Dead Space series if you acknowledge that it sucks at horror and succeeds really well at action. Even if you're very easily scared, you'll come to expect all the jump scares they throw at you, but you'll still have fun desperately fighting off swarms of Necromorphs and running like hell after realizing you just fired your last plasma cutter shot. The story is a bit confusing and most of the characters except for Isaac are dull and forgettable, but Dead Space 2 makes some significant improvements on several aspects of the original, and  manages to be a fairly enjoyable game overall despite its few steps backwards.

8/10

10 Sequels That Are Better Than The Originals (2)

Yep.  It's time for the second part of my 10-part series-a-majig. Where I count down a list of sequels that are a million times better than the games that came before. So, what game will we be looking at this time?

#9: Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus (PC)

That's right, it's none other than the sequel to one of the stranger games to ever exist (but no less entertaining because of it), Abe's Oddysee!



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You know...Abe's Oddysee!



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By Oddworld Inhabitants?

You play a skinny blue alien guy who escapes a meat factory? Get shot at and eaten a lot? Any of that ring a bell?

You sorry excuse for a human being.

In Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, you play as Abe. A Mudokon slave in a gigantic meat processing plant called Rupture Farms. Rupture Farms is run by the evil cigar-smoking Glukkons who are in a panic because of falling profits due to dropping populations of the local wildlife they've been chopping up for their meat products. Molluck the Glukkon is the CEO of Rupture Farms and knows just what to do about that little problem. Chop up the workers!

Abe overhears their plan while working late at the factory, and is understandably a bit freaked out. Thus, the goal for the first part of the game is escaping from Rupture Farms and rescuing your fellow slaves along the way. You do this by utilizing the interesting "Gamespeak" function. Each of the number keys is assigned to a different phrase that you can make Abe say. 1 is "hello," 2 is "follow me," 3 is "wait," etc. When you come across a Mudokon, you alert him by saying "hello," then get him to follow you to a portal where you can free him. In most cases this is easier said than done, as getting them to said portals often requires navigating a multitude of death traps.

Abe also has the ability to chant. Chanting opens the escape portals, and allows Abe to take control of certain enemies, most notably the Sligs. Sligs are the security guards of Rupture Farms. They carry machine guns and will shoot you (and any Mudokons who happen to be following you) on sight. Fortunately, they're extremely vulnerable to each others' bullets. UNfortunately, another part of Rupture Farms' security involves floating orbs that painfully zap Abe whenever he tries chanting. Sometimes they can be destroyed, but other times the lack of chanting is part of the puzzle.

You get infinite lives, so you're free to experiment with each area for as long as you need. But be careful if you've recently rescued some particularly difficult Mudokons. If you die before reaching a checkpoint, they'll get reset and you'll have to do it again.

And again.

And again.

AND AGAIN.

AND AGAIN.

Even when you have a certain puzzle DOWN TO A SCIENCE,  you'll end up getting killed by your own carelessness inches away from finishing it and having to do it all over again five more bloody times. This is a TREMENDOUS pain in the ASS if you're going for all 99 Mudokons. Hell, it's hard enough just FINDING some of the little bastards. There's a secret area with 2 of them HIDDEN ON LITERALLY THE VERY FIRST SCREEN OF THE GAME. I'm talking the MINUTE you get control of Abe for the first time.

I never even beat the game without cheating until a couple years or so ago, and I still got the bad ending for not rescuing enough Mudokons. 

Everybody who's into video games always has that one obscure game that defined their childhood and nobody else had heard of. (Sure, we had Nintendo, SEGA, and all the other big titles, but these are different.)  Abe's Oddysee was mine.

So. We've established that the first game was already amazing to start. How does Abe's Exoddus manage to top it?

Well, it's about 3 times longer, to start. That's right. In Abe's Oddysee, you had to rescue 99 Mudokons. In Exoddus? There's three. Fucking. Hundred. And they're just as deviously hidden.

Abe's Exoddus, takes place minutes after the good ending of Abe's Oddysee. Abe gets a whack on the head following an accident and has a vision of 3 Mudokon ghosts, who warn him that ancient Mudokon burial grounds are being plundered by another Glukkon-owned company, Soulstorm Brewery. One of Soulstorm Brew's main ingredients is Mudokon bones, hence the grave robbing. The objective of the game is to rescue the rest of the Mudokon slaves and send Soulstorm the way of Rupture Farms. To do this, Abe makes use of quite a few new abilities.

You can chant to control nearly every enemy you encounter, barring the presence of an anti-chant orb. The vicious monsters that tried to eat you in the first game? You can use them as weapons now. And you can also control the Glukkons themselves! They even have their own Gamespeak commands. (Abe can also chant to take possession of his own farts.)

The cutscenes are also more character-focused than the previous game. There's a lot more voice-acting, and the dialog puts this game in my Top 3 funniest games to ever exist. (Right up there with Psychonauts and the Portal games.) Oddysee had an overall fairly dark story with a few little jokes here and there. Exoddus is pretty much the reverse of it. Less dark, more dark humor.

Oh, and the Mudokons have feelings now. Sad and angry ones won't follow you unless you give 'em a pat on the shoulder, but slapping them will drive the sad ones to suicide and the angry ones will fight back. Crazy ones need to be slapped or they'll keep running around like idiots and waking up any nearby Sligs. There's also the blind Mudokons, who will keep walking in a direction until you tell them to stop, regardless of any present dangers.

And, of course, they improved a number of game mechanics that made the original game a right pain in the ass. You can now speak to ALL Mudokons on the screen by using the "All o' ya!" command. So instead of painstakingly guiding each Mudokon to the escape portals, you can lead an army of them! If you die shortly after rescuing them, there is no longer any need to worry about doing it all over again, because there is now A QUICK-SAVE FEATURE. This option may easily be the best addition ever.

Graphics and gameplay-wise, Exoddus is actually not too noticeable an improvement over Oddysee, but in this case, all the subtle changes and improvements definitely make it a worthy sequel.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (PC)

 I suppose you remember my Dead Space review, where I had this to say on the subject of what makes something scary:

"Scary is being all alone with no weapons in a dark room hiding from something that is actively trying to murder you. Scary is hearing that thing moving around and having no idea whether or not it is even near you until you step on its toes."

Well, it turns out there is an entire game based on that EXACT concept, called Amnesia: The Dark Descent. That's right. There's a horror game that's ACTUALLY SCARY. And not just for 10 minutes like Silent Hill 2.

Amnesia is played in a first-person perspective, and involves solving puzzles, finding journal pages to regain your memory, and dealing with horrifying monsters while trying not to go batshit crazy. (Think of it as H.P. Lovecraft's MYST.)

The catch? You can't fight. At all. So if you something sees you and starts chasing you, you're pretty much fucked if you turn around. So you hide in the dark. But if you stay in the dark for too long, your sanity drops and makes the controls and screen go all weird (among other things). If you look at the monsters for too long, sanity drops. If you witness paranormal events, sanity drops. If your sanity drops too low while a monster is looking for you, it becomes more likely to find you.

Prior to playing, I had heard a great deal about how terrifying the game is. Of course, given that I've heard a great deal about how terrifying a lot of things are, only to be met with severe disappointment, I can be forgiven for my initial response consisting solely of the word "psh," followed by an explanation of how just about nothing is capable of inducing a legitimate fearful response in me.

A short time later, I downloaded the demo from Steam to see what it was all about. Sure enough, it was pretty much what I expected. Generic horror cliches and jump scares. The atmosphere is very reminiscent of Silent Hill though, very dark with occasional otherworldly sounds.

You are a man named Daniel, who- for some reason- has given himself amnesia, and awoken in a mysterious castle. Luckily, Daniel's former self had the foresight to leave messages explaining the situation, and ordering you to find and kill a man named Alexander. Pages from Daniel's diary are found throughout the castle, and explain more about how Daniel  came to be in this situation. Entering certain areas also triggers flashbacks as Daniel regains more of his memory.

For the most part, as I mentioned, the castle is extremely dark which takes a toll on Daniel's sanity. You can find tinderboxes here and there that allow you to light candles, torches and other sources of light. This has the advantage of keeping your sanity up, but each tinderbox is single-use and may be needed in the future, and turning on lights makes monsters able to see you easier. Additionally, you have a lantern, which provides a portable source of light for areas that have no candles or the like. The lantern runs on oil, though, so you need to use it sparingly or it will run out at the most inopportune moments.

I slowly made my way through the demo, up until a certain point. At this certain point, the game went much darker than normal, and the hallway inexplicably became flooded with about a foot of water.

"Oh, please." I said. "Water? Really?" No sooner had I whipped out my lantern and begun to step toward the nearest flooded room when I heard splashing that was most certainly NOT coming from me. I turned around and saw large splashes in the water....moving...TOWARD ME!?  Yes. I was being chased by water-dwelling monster that was FUCKING INVISIBLE.

Initial reaction: RUN THE FUCK AWAY! RUN! HOLY SHIT! RUN! RUN! RUN! OH GOD, WHY IS THERE A GATE IN THE WAY WHO PUTS A GATE IN THE MIDDLE OF A GODDAMN HALLWAY OH SHIT I'M BEING EATEN BY SOMETHING I CAN'T EVEN SEE! WHAT THE FUCK!?

And then I died. At which point the game's death screen helpfully pointed out, "STAY OUT OF THE WATER." No shit. So there's boxes and stuff you have you jump to in order to not get eaten alive by the invisible water monster. Easy enough. I'm certainly not going to make the same mistake agai-

*Splash*

WHY CAN'T I JUMP ON THE BOX!? SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! IT'S RIGHT FUCKING BEHIND ME AND I CAN'T GET ON THE BOX!

And that was the most heart-stopping moment in the DEMO. Running like hell up to a box and realizing you can't jump onto it. (You have to jump on the smaller one NEXT to it first.) The demo ends shortly after this area.

Realizing that a game had just effectively given me multiple heart attacks without resorting to jump scares and horror cliches, I hurriedly purchased the full version, eager to continue the experience. (On sale on Steam at the time for about $10.)

I was not disappointed. At all. On several occasions I had to take off my headphones to find out if the terrified, heavy breathing was coming from me or Daniel.

As a game in itself, it's actually fairly decent. There's reasonably challenging puzzles and fetch quests, and I needed to consult a guide a few times near the end to figure out just what to do, but the final encounter was severely disappointing. I know it's unreasonable to expect a massive boss fight in a game that has already firmly established itself as a "run and hide" sort, but something involving more than 3 mouse clicks would have been nice.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a surprisingly good game with one or two minor drawbacks. Every bit as terrifying as I had been told, which is certainly a first, and overall very entertaining to play.

9/10