Wild Shot

Annie's Wild Shot is a game I bought some months ago but have been avoiding doing an entry about. It was the first game that convinced me of the iPhone's capabilities as a gaming device. See before this game I genuinely thought that games for the phone were an idiotic idea, that they couldn't do much with the platform therefore most games produced would be just like other puzzle-centric games on other cell phones. In short I just thought game developers were phoning it in with their games, this looked like they actually meant to produce a quality title.

And there is much to like: the graphics are superb, done in a very color rich animated style using a palette of pastels and drawings straight out of a well made flash game. In other words its pretty to look at. Gameplay uses the touch capabilities of the phone for shooting, reloading and looking to your sides. It's a first person shooting gallery game in which you control a pink haired girl instead of the usual grunt taskforce/militia.

Unfortunately there is also lots to dislike. For starters the shooting involves touching and hitting whatever you want, there's no trigger or buttons or anything to mimic either a gun or a controller on a game console. So you just feel like you're tapping on a screen, I realize that most games on the iPhone have you doing this but others do a better job at making you forget this sad point.

The game also might be a bit too easy. It has four or five levels with a Western boss a the end of each one. There are three parts per level: the first one is a shooting gallery (in which you are rarely shot at) the second is a chase and the third has you battling the boss in a unique way. It can be entertaining but it's not challenging and feels like you're gonna finish it in under in hour (which you certainly could do).

But the art is ultimately this game's saving grace. Sure its a bit weird to shoot pink paintballs at enemies but the fact that they're pretty makes it ok. Sure the protagonist is a pink haired tomboy but, again its ok. Sure she drives around in a traffic buggy but, again, its fucking eye candy. The great music doesn't hurt either. Also: cutscenes!

So what's the final verdict after this crazy mishmash of love and hate? I dont know. I really dont know, I'm actually torn over a fucking iPhone game and its pretty ridiculous. I know, but I simply don't know.

Oh hey Cody, Guy, Adon

Three more new characters for Super Street Fighter IV were unofficially unveiled today as some dude scanned a Famitsu magazine which does not come out until Friday and was supposed to signal the official unveiling. Somehow I really don't mind these spoilers.

Guy, Adon and Cody are the three returning characters. Nothing out of the ordinary, we sorta expected them. I don't care for any of these so its all a big meh for me. I'm glad I know three more characters sure but the actual characters do nothing for me. Design wise they look great updated to the SFIV style, if anything I'd say Cody's prison outfit should be baggier. We'll have to wait for high quality official artwork to be able to critique them.

Looks like the reveals are going to be made three at a time and possibly done on a monthly basis in order to maximize the hype up until the release.

Check out Hadoken.Net for more info.

KOF meets NBA

Well now I can't decide whether this flickr gallery of mashups of NBA players and King of Fighters is the worst thing ever or the best thing ever. I think I'm gonna go with best.

Let us now count down how this in fact is the best thing to happen to the SNK franchise in years:

-KOF: Maximum Impact brought 3D action to the 2D stalwart. This would be great if it wasn't for the fact that the characters suffered from heavy polygonitis and the gameplay was choppy at best. It also relied heavily on a few new characters who were frankly horrible.

-Bankruptcy in 2001.

-The release of King of Fighters XII with brand new, beautiful sprites. Too bad the game has been universally panned as incomplete and lacking in replay value. That games like Blazblue and Guilty Gear had already taken KOF's 2D throne didn't help, that Street Fighter made a marvelous return with SFIV didn't help either.

-There's a new KOF live action movie coming up with promises to be horrible. It's so bad that it probably already did come out but nobody cared.

Yes, the fact that somebody decided to photoshop Shaq as Chang Koehan (and keep the beard) is definitely the best thing to happen to King of Fighters this decade. Ok, except for the adorable alternate costume Leona had in Maximum Impact.

France '98

To celebrate Thierry Henry's magnificent use of his hands to land France a spot in the 2010 World Cup (and make UEFA, FIFA and all sorts of other acronyms very happy) we have a wallpaper from the earliest FIFA titles (the earliest?).

At the time these graphics were fucking killer, the gameplay was amazing and it actually had announcers. This was unprecedented, I remember being amazed at how they could achieve such thing. Not only that but the introduction? it gave you some Chumbawamba.

This was more than 10 years ago, the level of complexity that goes into today's FIFA, from rosters, teams, uniforms, online play, ball physics, stadiums, chants, is unbelievable and cannot even begin to be compared to what was going on then. The question then is what is a soccer game going to look like 10 years from now?

Man that is so dumb

"Hands Down" (Warning: Youtube) by Dashboard Confessional has been stuck in my head for the better part of two days now. I'm not exactly sure why a self described emo song would be in there but it is and I have a crazy hankering to play it on Rockband (ha! I just tied it to video games) but the problem is its 180 points and I only have 70. I could add points but I don't want to. What to do. What to do.

In other news that X-Plorer whose customization I analyzed in exhausting detail some months ago has broken. This fucking blows. Now I have four guitars and three of them are broken in some form or another. I'd like to believe I've just played them too much and messed up the gears (I certainly did play that custom til it could take no more) but most likely they're just meant to be break after playing for some time.

The good news is I have a replacement in the form of a GH3 Gibson wireless which is jet black (ok its just black) and to which I have attached the Weezer inspired lightning bolt strap. It actually looks pretty cool. Add to that the three months subscription to Live Gold that I bought for $5 today and I'm a pretty happy camper.

Now if only I could get some better updates on this thing. You must admit though, even if by "you" I mean "me", yesterday's post was the shit.

Oh hey its Paul McCartney

Princess

Rosalina > Toadstool

Somebody had to say it.

Super Empire Strikes Back (!)

Super Empire Strikes Back is not, by any means, an easy game. It's a standard platformer in which the main character must pass through multiple stages fighting off multiple baddies with multiple weapons and the help of multiple, well, helpers. The reason why this game is more like Dungeons and Dragons than, say, Mega Man, is because while in MegaMan you encounter an enemy every once in a while in SESB it's a neverending parade of creatures trying to kill you.

You start off as Luke Skywalker in Hoth (a planet which is very cold) with a lightsaber and a pistol surveying the area for meteors or some shit. He gets to right around in a Tauntan, he gets to fight wampas and so on. You know like that in that one movie. Right from the get-go there are tons of enemies shooting off spores or bursting or running at you or fucking biting you. It is unrelentless and, for some reason, it takes about five lightsaber hits to kill some of these things.

Most levels are like this but in other planets or environments. In some you fly around in vehicles, in others you fight off a boss. The player is helped by a password system which keeps you from tearing your hair out in frustration every time you get killed (it happens often). You get a number of continues, when you use one Yoda's head tells you to "do or do not, there is no try". The voice of Darth Vader also appears sometimes.

Not much more to say about this game. The lightsaber seems weak like the other weapons mostly because the enemies are so tough and numerous. It was the middle game of the "Super" trilogy, followed by Super Return of the Jedi whose cover is the only instance of an official Star Wars product downplaying Slave Leia. Empire came out in 1993, a year or two before the relaunch of the original trilogy which signaled a resurgence of the Star Wars phenomenon.

Since the relaunch the machine has not stopped, producing three prequels of varying quality, as well as countless merchandise, television, video game in other properties. Star Wars has always been a part of the video game landscape to this day, from the early games to Shadows of the Empire for the N64, to KOTOR to Battlefront to the appearance of some characters in SoulCalibur 4. Lucas is not exactly hesitant to license his intellectual property and this could be readily seen in 1993 and even earlier on.