WJXX closed 10 years ago today. Right around this time I was cashing my "huge" severance checks and buying a new computer. Whee.
Everything I had to say about the matter I've already said here. Seriously, it's a good read, you should check it out. But otherwise? I'm actually over it. Have been for a few years now. Feels good to say it.
The "pile of shame" is literally a pile of unplayed video games that every true gamer has. We buy games we want to play but then get caught up in something else and most of us never get back to the pile. I'm stopping the cycle and playing through all my old games before I allow myself to buy new ones.
If you didn't already know this about me, I tend to be drawn to movies and games that no one else has ever heard of. I'm not entirely sure why that is, I guess sometimes I just like trying to discover hidden gems instead of going with the flow. Unfortunately this game is no gem.
Onechanbara is an ongoing budget line of games in Japan, two of which have been released here in the States. And damned if I know what the hell is going on in the Xbox 360 edition, Bikini Samurai Squad. While there are English subtitles, all the voice acting in the game is Japanese, and each mission is preceded by a loooooong, scrolling wall of text that might as well not even be translated because it never makes a lick of sense. (You can read about the series here on Wikipedia, it's the best I can do.)
Basically here's the deal: you're a scantily clad zombie killer, and along with your equally inappropriately dressed kid sister, you roam the streets hacking and slashing zombies. Lots of zombies. Literally thousands of zombies in each level. Sometimes you're on a motorcycle while you're killing zombies. Sometimes the zombies are dogs or policemen who have grown to twice their normal size. And the zombies always spawn from the ground, no matter if you're standing on grass or concrete or on the fifth floor of a building. The zombies ALWAYS come from underground. There's even a scene in a hospital where you're in a morgue, and instead of the zombies coming from the vaults they're coming from underground. They'll just bury you anywhere in Japan, it seems.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm all for totally over the top absurdity in video games. In one of this game's cut scenes for example, you're trapped in the back of an armored car, and you escape by literally slicing the truck in half with your sword and jumping out. I'm okay with that. That's what made this game bearable, for a brief time.
Graphically the game is all over the place. The cut scenes are decently done CGI (aside from some pretty bad screen tearing), and had the game looked like the cut scenes throughout it would have helped matters. Instead the actual gameplay looks like a pretty Sega Dreamcast game. Unfortunately it also plays like a game from a few console generations ago too.
The main problem is that the gameplay is beyond repetitive. Each level features at least one but sometimes more "zombie arenas". You reach a certain point where spikes come up from the ground, trapping you inside with hundreds of constantly spawning zombies. To get out of each area you eventually have to destroy a mini-boss zombie, but the game never tells you this. So for the first few levels you could stay inside one of these things for 20-30 minutes wondering if the spawning will ever end. Also, normal attacks aren't enough to kill these mini-bosses, you have to use combos that have you pressing two buttons on the controller at once. Again though, the game never tells you this, or even that you CAN do this.
But my main question about Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad is this... what the hell is up with Japan? Certain japanese games seem to take being a pervert to a whole new level. For example, boob jiggle. Japanese game developers have almost elevated this particular type of physics-based coding to an art form. What I want to know is if boob jiggle code programming is entry level grunt work or is it something you get promoted to. I'm betting it's the top job in the programming department. Something you strive for all your life.
Now watch this video, which is the game's first or second cutscene, and tell me if it doesn't just creep you out with how pervy it is. In case you can't guess, it's NSFW:
Even weirder than that is the "Dress Up" mode in the game, where after unlocking outfits and makeup during the game itself you can dress up your character and have a little hack 'n' slash fashion show. I'm sorry, I like skin and all, but video game skin just doesn't do it for me.
By around level six or so I decided life was just too short and abandoned the game. The story was non-existent, the gameplay repetitive and frustrating, and the way the characters are being displayed was downright embarrassing. And you only score achievements if you either finish the entire game or finish each level on three different difficult levels. Fuck that noise, ain't happening. Listed it on Half.com and within an hour I sold it for twice as much as I paid for it. Silver lining achievement unlocked.
So let's say I have this movie jukebox, and when I hit the random button it starts up the movie I'll be watching next. Let's also say that the movie jukebox contains some of the worst movies you've never heard of. Acceptable premise? Good, then let's begin.
Apparently the movie jukebox decided that we weren't done with Lorenzo Lamas just yet, so Tilt popped up next. As you might imagine, Tilt is a pinball movie (which features Lamas in a small role, sharing a scene with Fred Ward of all people), but it's also much, much more. It's concrete proof that everyone in the 1970s was Roman Polanski. Not in terms of talent, but in terms of wanting to have sex with 14 year old girls.
Tilt stars 14 year old Brooke Shields as a pinball wizard / runaway who teams up with hustler / country singer Neil Gallagher (Ken Marshall, star of Krull) as they head from California to Nashville by way of Corpus Christi, Texas. Why the stop in Texas? Well, because Neil wants revenge against pinball guru The Whale (Charles Durning) who thwarted Neil's attempts to cheat him earlier. Makes perfect sense, right?
The film has a somewhat fascinating backstory according to its entry on IMDb. Triple threat (and only ever threat) auteur Rudy Durand had been trying to get someone to make the film since the late 60s and eventually tried to get Orson Welles and Jodie Foster to star. Welles was too busy (doing absolutely nothing, of course) but he encouraged Durand to go ahead and make the movie himself. And the rest is Tilt history.
As you might expect there's a lot of pinball action in this movie, but there's also a whole helluva lot of talking and talking and talking. It takes the film 45 minutes before the actual premise even kicks in. Along the way there's all kinds of inappropriateness for a PG movie, all of it either drug related or Brooke Shields having sex related or both. I understand that a PG rating now doesn't come close to meaning what a PG rating meant 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. But this movie made me feel dirty. A pinball movie is right in my wheelhouse, and yet I was thoroughly disgusted by this one.
Everyone seems to want to have sex with Brooke in the film, and there are copious loving shots of her ass (because there are words written on her jeans, *wink*), but I was probably most disturbed by this scene, where Brooke is picked up by a truck driver (played by veteran character actor Geoffrey Lewis), and well... just watch for yourself. Again, please remember this is a PG-rated movie...
The "pile of shame" is literally a pile of unplayed video games that every true gamer has. We buy games we want to play but then get caught up in something else and most of us never get back to the pile. I'm stopping the cycle and playing through all my old games before I allow myself to buy new ones.
I am a fairly hardcore Guitar Hero and Rock Band player. I play guitar/bass, almost always on Hard, and can play for hours at a time. I realize I'm not a real rock star, but I enjoy the level of interactivity with songs that I enjoy listening to.
The reason I've embraced the Rock Band series over the Guitar Hero games is that Rock Band "speaks" to me more than the other. What I mean by that is that Rock Band just feels right. I feel like I'm playing along with lots of my favorite songs. Guitar Hero, on the other hand, features a lot of songs from genres I cannot stand, and charts those songs in the most frustrating ways, seemingly catering to hardcore music gamers who end up building robots to play the game for them. I'm not knocking Guitar Hero for this, I'm simply stating why one series works better for me than another.
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits is a collection of songs from the first three games in the series, along with a handful from GH: Aerosmith and GH Encore: Rocks the 80s. All 48 songs now include full band support, and unlike in the past, all the songs are master recordings from the original artists.
I didn't start this series until Guitar Hero 2 came out for the 360, and therefore was never able to play the first game or the 80s edition since they were Playstation only releases. Unfortunately, the bulk of the songs in the playlist come from the games I've already played to death, and considering that I only play guitar/bass, the game essentially offered me nothing new.
Playing through the career mode quickly became a tedious chore, as the songs got worse and worse as I progressed, eventually becoming nothing but the finger-melting squeal-fests that I can't stand. And of course the game concludes with "Through the Fire and Flames" which if that song was a person I'd punch it in the ovaries.
For a small fee there is an export feature where you can download 21 of the 48 songs to your hard drive to play in newer Guitar Hero games, and that was fine for me. I got to export "Freebird" and "Nothin' But a Good Time", which is probably all I would play anyway. After the export, there was no reason for me to keep the game, and I managed to sell it on Half.com for three times what I paid for it.
So yes, this became the first Guitar Hero or Rock Band game that I didn't keep in my library. I think that says it all.
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