Umihara Kawase is an odd Super Famicom game I’m pretty sure never made it here to America. As far as I can tell, this game is about a little school girl trying to make it through some inter-dimensional fun house filled with fish monsters. A glance at the Wikipedia article for Umihara Kawase reveals that I’m not too far off. I guess she’s somehow gotten lost in a world of mutated aquatic life. (more…)

As with many of the NES games I played, I was introduced to this game through renting it at Blockbuster. I remember playing this game into the wee hours of the morning, and getting goosebumps from the death theme. All these years later, that song can still give me goosebumps. I do have to wonder about a few of the game’s influences - but I’ll get to that in a bit. (more…)

This review contains spoilers. Making a new Indiana Jones nearly 20 years after the last one is bound to divide audiences between “YES INDY’S BACK” and “THIS FUCKING SUCKS”, and sure enough, the movie has elicited both responses since its release. I’ve heard glowing reviews and awful reviews, and I fall somewhere in between. The movie has that unmistakable hint of modern era Lucasfilm at points (in other words, an over reliance on computer generated images early in the movie and late in the movie) as well as some questionable script choices (was this really the best script they could have come up with? I mean, really?), but much of the middle part of the movie is just fun, enjoyable action movie. (more…)

I am going to review a book. Now, before you click the back button and see if anyone reviewed a videogame or movie, let me just say this book is better than any videogame I have played this year. It has been a long time since a book has captured my attention like Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, but there are many likable elements to this work. McCammon delves into the subject of man’s demise via a nuclear holocaust and the determination of scattered survivors to evade the closing grasp of death. He gives a sweeping glance of how different regions in the United States are affected by the devastating Russian assault. Everything from an urban setting, provided by New York City, to the rural, represented by Kansas, is taken into account. McCammon wonderfully details this juxtaposition. You receive a vivid image of the devastation that affects the good ol’ US of A.

Why does Russia attack America you may ask? No, Prime Minister Putin did not go insane and start pushing missile buttons. Swan Song was written in 1987, and if you know your history then you are aware that 1987 is during the Cold War which was waged by the United States and the Soviet Union. This time period began roughly in 1945 and ended in 1991 with the fall of Communist Russia. Neither side attacked the other but there were many instances where the fear of nuclear obliteration overtook the general populous. McCammon used this backdrop and added a twist. He took into consideration the idea that an evil force was behind all of the catastrophic events in our history, and that it was this force that existed to hunt down every last human being. This nameless and faceless entity sparks the apocalypse leaving behind him a wake of death. Thus enters our protagonists.

There is a vast array of characters McCammon introduces. A large African American professional wrestler, a homeless religious nut, a shoe salesman from Detroit, a retired military colonel, a computer nerd, and a small girl with mysterious powers are some of the survivors that must fight against this strange man that wants them all dead. Each of these characters is well written and they each undergo transformations from pre to post nuclear wasteland. Some change for the better, our homeless friend uses her experiences gained from living a hard life to survive, and some change for the worst, some characters cannot mentally withstand the sudden change and succumb to madness or death. The way these characters change is engrossing, and your hand reaches effortlessly to turn the next page.

When it is all said and done you shall be rewarded with an enthralling experience from start to finish. As the pages turn, the metamorphosis of the characters and world flow fluently. Places, people, and objects (nouns I suppose) are described with enough detail to create a complete image without boring you to death. A clear struggle between good and evil takes place alongside a somewhat historical context. Plus, the chapters are short so the 956 pages don’t seem as daunting. If you need a good book to read this summer, put Swan Song at the top of your list.

This is part one in a series for G-E. I will go over the games that I had on my Top 07 Games of ‘07 list (as seen in the groundbreaking [and initially incomplete] list Top 07 Top 07 of ‘07). Because four of the games I listed already have posts, I will be going over the three without, namely Rock Band, Mass Effect, and today’s item, BioShock.

Disclaimer: I have never been a really big PC gamer. I didn’t have a PC that could run Windows until 1997 or so. My life was established mostly on DOS games, and when I made the leap to PC games, I relied on my local library for gaming purposes, so my PC life was restricted mainly to Civilization II (one of the truly great games of all time). That being said, I have never had a chance to play System Shock, System Shock II or Deus Ex or any of those legendary PC FPS games that would make BioShock a “less new” experience. I am coming from a history of console gaming and light console FPS gaming (Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Halo.) And now, without further ado, here is my review of BioShock.

THE STORY:
You know, if you don’t know the story of BioShock already, you’re probably not paying attention to the internet and you probably would never have come here in the first place, because this is where people in the know go. But for the uninitiated, here goes: Objectivist archetype Andrew Ryan was sick of the man keeping him down, so he took his untold millions of dollars and built a city on the ocean floor called Rapture, inviting those who agree with his views to come join him and live unbound by the rules of government and religion. Of course, it all goes to hell, as most utopias do, and we pick up in a post-revolution Rapture as the unknown protagonist who has arrived at Rapture via a downed plane. As we enter the world, we are introduced to a man named Atlas, who guides us through the underwater city to help him and his family escape. Andrew Ryan, Atlas’s nemesis, tries to thwart you at every turn. I will not reveal any more of the story due to spoiler avoidance, but it goes without saying that not all is as it seems, you will meet a cast of dark characters, and you will more than likely step back and think about the greater implications of the game, which few games actually do.

Oh, and you meet this nice man named Sander Cohen. His escapades make for some of the greatest gaming in history.

THE GAMEPLAY:

BioShock is a first person shooter with a twist: using the right trigger and shoulder button, you choose (RB) and fire (RT) the weapons, aka the guns and the wrench that hits things when you run out of ammo. The left trigger and shoulder button helps you choose (LB) and fire (LT) your plasmid abilities, which is essentially the “magic” of Rapture. You see, when politics plays no part in your science, you can create all sorts of fucked up shit, according to BioShock, so if we didn’t have government and religion to hold us back, we could all be shooting fire out of our bodies, or lightning, or bees. Not something I’d actually want to see in real life, but in BioShock, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to use! What’s great is that there are so many ways to kill people in BioShock that you can get creative and run around setting people on fire, who will then run to water to douse the flames. When they are in the water, take out your electricity plasmid, and fry the bastards in the water. Shocking!

BioShock also has a few other major elements to the gameplay. The first is photography, where you can do research on your enemies to make yourself more powerful against them. Just take a snap of them, and your research bar goes up, making it easier to kill them. The second is hacking, whereby you take control of video cameras, flying defense gunners or gun turrets, who will then protect you and go after the enemies. The hacking is a game of moving pipes from one part of a grid to the other so that a flow of water reaches the other side. It’s kind of fun at first, but gets a bit tiresome when you know which ones you’re screwed on.

The final and “most important” is the choice of whether to be a good guy or a bad guy, aka the “moral” choice. BioShock talked a big game about this at the beginning, but it’s nothing on the level of KOTOR or Mass Effect or any other BioWare or BioWare influenced game. Basically, there are these small children running around called Little Sisters, who hold ADAM, which is the genetic currency of Rapture. The more ADAM you have, the more plasmids you can obtain and the more powerful you would be. The Little Sisters are protected by the kings of the box cover, the Big Daddies. They are the big bad diving helmet dudes with giant screws for arms. To get to a Little Sister, you gotta kill the Big Daddy protecting her, which is almost like a boss battle every time you face one. You could choose not to fight the Big Daddy or get the Little Sister’s ADAM, but then you would be uber-weak and struggle at the end of the game. The “moral” choice comes once you’ve defeated the Big Daddy. You can either “save” the Little Sister by only removing part of her ADAM, which sets her free from her disease and makes her into a normal girl again, or you can take ALL of her ADAM and kill the girl in the process. Some doctor will thank you for saving the girls and berate you for killing them, but in the end, it pretty much comes down to one thing: do you really want more ADAM? I mean, I ONLY play light side in the KOTOR games, so I saved them all during my first playthrough, but I have no issues with killing them on my second playthrough, whereas I would not be able to be mean enough to play dark side all the way through in a KOTOR game. So, morality is kind of weak in this game, but it’s still a choice.

Great stuff from the gameplay keeps the long game fresh.

THE AESTHETICS

Graphics are absolutely wonderful, the art style incredible, and the sound is probably the best sound ever in a video game. The music is superb and the voice acting is almost unmatched in the history of video games, and it stands up strongly to most films that require voice acting. You will not be disappointed in the aesthetics of Rapture. You will almost certainly be caught up in the world that was created by the good folks at 2K.

THE VERDICT

Look, this is my favorite game of 2007. I didn’t get to tell you about the discovery of the world via audio tapes, the crazy cast of characters you meet, the twists in the story, the excitement you get with each Big Daddy fight. And I didn’t tell you a damn thing about Fort Frolic, which is in my mind, the greatest single level in video game history. Everything about it is pitch perfect, and you meet my good friend Sander Cohen…sigh. So amazing. You MUST play through this game at least to Fort Frolic. If you do not care to play past that level, I can forgive you of your sin, but I think that level should be shown to any and all designers out there to show you what truly great strides video games have made in the past decade. PLAY THIS GAME.

Classic.

Contributed by Matt Gburek, our senior correspondent in Japan.

Bangai-O Spirits for the DS is a really great shooter. It’s a very different game from its predecessor and at first I wasn’t sure what to think, but the more I play it, the more I like it.

The game isn’t nearly as simple as it used to be. You have a myriad of special weapons this time around, and you can equip two normal weapons and two special weapons at the same time. The stage design is very intricate and each one has its own unique concept this time around (with interesting ideas like “Use the baseball bat to knock balls back at enemies!” and “Get from point A to point B before the goal closes!”), so rather than just going in there and destroying everything in your path, HOW you’re actually going to go about doing that plays a key role this time. Therefore, you have to think carefully about the weapons you choose before entering each level. Additionally, destroying things is not always the point of the level, and there are even some puzzle elements this time around. A level always ends when all enemies marked as “targets” are destroyed, and there are no real bosses in that sense.

The brilliance of Bangai-O Spirits is the stage design, and how a simple and enjoyable concept can be made using relatively simple tools. The game contains a level editor, and it was with this same level editor that Treasure themselves made all the stages in the game! If that’s the case, then the main levels in the game aren’t just made to be beaten and then never returned to, but rather to serve as templates or inspiration for you when you make your own. On that note, the most important thing to remember is that the level editor in the game is not just an extra: it IS the point of the game. You can edit the default levels on the fly (as in, while playing them, although you can’t record your high score for that stage if you do so) and you can save and send your levels via a technique called “sound relay,” which compresses the data of your level into a sound which can be read via putting a speaker playing the sound up to the DS microphone. Needless to say, this is pretty cool stuff.

Unfortunately, I think most Treasure fans will likely lambast it for not being like the original, but their loss, I say. There’s little to dislike about it, but one thing I admittedly don’t like. Outside of tutorial mode, there is no dialogue in the game whatsoever, which was one of the best parts of the original. I understand that it wouldn’t have fit the game’s premise this time and thus had to go, but still, it is missed.

In short, Bangai-O Spirits is not concerned with being a direct sucessor to it’s predecessor as it is with being a homage to every great archaic 2D PC game with a level editor, which makes sense since Bangai-O itself was originally a remake of a Sharp X-1 game called Hover Attack (more info here). The game is essentially an inquisition into old-school game design theory and the player’s real test is to use the knowledge that he or she absorbs from playing the default levels in order to make their own interesting concepts and execute them. It hasn’t left my DS for almost a month now and I’m working on some brilliant stuff!

Note: This game will see American release sometime later this year.

I could have also titled this “bargain bin game review that most of you won’t bother reading”, and that would probably fit just as well. However, I played it, I’m gonna talk about it. I think that by playing through this, it made me realize that yes, this is a very mediocre game, but at the same time, there are things to appreciate about what the developers constructed. It has a decent metroidian progression that slowly unlocks the entire game to you as you complete areas, it has good music, interesting (if sometimes annoying) play mechanics, and some decent enemy designs. For $7.99, I got my money’s worth. (more…)