Weak franchises

I was thinking that the movie franchise equivalent to Mega Man vs. Mega Man X (in terms of quality, disregarding that the two series are related) is probably Friday the 13th vs. Hellraiser. With Friday the 13th, you know exactly what you're going to get - it's never going to be particularly great or special, but it's never going to go off the rails either (except the one time it did, catastrophically, with Mega Man 8 GOES TO HELL). Hellraiser starts off genuinely great and hits one solid riff on that, takes a wrong turn but is still kind of tolerable for a few more entries*, completely jumps off a direct-to-video cliff by the fifth, and hangs around for four more things and a reboot that no one was asking for.

*I hated HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE ("in space") until I saw its pathetic shadow EVENT HORIZON.

Mega Man X7: The Final Trilogy

For hopefully the last time I ever publicly discuss Mega Man X7, let's talk about Mavericks. In the spirit of wonderfully creative portmanteau names, why not offer some alternates in the form of anagrams?

FLAME HYENARD
Okay, he's definitely a hyena, but what ends in "rd" or "ard" that would describe a mentally deranged dog-man who runs in circles and screams the word "burn" so frequently that he often can't make it through the first syllable without interrupting himself? Best anagram: Handle my fear!

VANISHING GUNGAROO
Pretty easy one here - it's a kangaroo who rides around in the front pouch of a giant mech (actually a clever way of integrating X's animal and ride-mech themes). The mech carries the Maverick like an Indian water-bearer carries his burden, thence Gunga Din + kangaroo = Gungaroo. Best anagram: Ongoing vagina rush.

SPLASH WARFLY
I was tempted to believe war fly could be an actual species, maybe one that was particularly recognized for hanging around the carnage of battlefields. I may have been thinking of the Black Fly. Why when you look up pictures of flies are they always perched on human skin? It's like we've encoded into the entire phylum this notion of personal intrusion. Someone oughta get these guys a microaggressions lawyer. A micro-lawyer? Best anagram: Wasps shall fry!

RIDE BOARSKI
Take away this motorcycle man's wheels and you bet you'll find him chasing his speed fix out on the slopes, skiing down the double black diamonds in record time. We've got all the bases covered and filled in quite a bit of backstory too. Best anagram: I broker AIDS. Hey, someone's gotta do it.

SNIPE ANTEATOR
The wise, veteran member of Red Alert's ensemble, nimbly picking apart his opponents' psychology with years of battle experience to draw upon. Thus the name must refer to Shakespeare's most famous poem, "To be, or not to be" - a question all foes looking to defeat Anteator will soon have to answer. Best anagram: Psion Anteater.

TORNADO TONION
Now presumably this is a contraction of a name that once had an apostrophe, like Darby from D'Arby, and historically our Tornado would hail from the T'Onion clan. I find myself picturing an African kingdom, where the T'Onions coexist alongside T'Carrots and T'Artagnans and T'Challas. Not particularly great anagram: Onto triad noon.

SOLDIER STONEKONG
I mean, I think we all know exactly what a Stonekong is. You've seen CONGO, I've seen CONGO; killer volcano apes are not something to be messed with. These guys would rip Donkey Kong's head off and serve it on a silver platter (which is just something they do with any dismembered body parts they have available). Best anagram: Gooks' tenderloins. I apologize for the slur, but you'll have to blame this one on Capcom.

WIND CROWRANG
For one thing, didn't we just have a wind-themed boss in this game? Secondably, isn't Tornado Tonion meant as a clever satire of the dozens of wind/bird Mavericks throughout the series? This seems to undercut that otherwise effective parody. Not to mention this is the hackiest portmanteau of the bunch. Seriously, fuck Wind Crowrang! No anagram!

Revisiting Mega Man X7

Finished the game this week, clocked in around 6 hours at a solid D hunter ranking (I did get a single C on Ride Boarski!). Luckily the game treats all time equally, whether or not it's paused, so if you take a mid-stage break, enjoy your automatic D. I guess it's true an elite Maverick Hunter wouldn't stop for a piss or a yogurt. Presumably what I saw was the "bad" ending, but it's just X saying to Axl "you're not ready to become a MavHunter" (presumably only veteran Hunters are allowed to get D rankings and stay on - a sort of grandfather clause). Not really on the same level of consequence as X5, in which I believe the entire Earth blows up if too much time expires. And what's with Sigma's master plan? He comes back from the dead, takes over a vigilante gang, gets them all killed, and then says "X and Zero will be mine!". You could call it a revenge plot, but it comes across as romance.

In terms of series ranking X7 probably belongs around the middle, between X3 and X5 (as if it needs to be said, the full ordering is X > X2 >>> X4 > X3 > X7 >>> X5 > X6, and I've yet to play X8). And I probably feel better about it than X3, which only barely coasts by on the strength of things done better in X and X2. X7 at least feels fresh and has some new ideas that genuinely work, namely the 3D stages and the weapon and character swapping. The story - while really terrible - is at least perfectly comprehensible, a big step up from the latter two PlayStation games. I even like the pre-fight dialogue with bosses - never hurts to give them some personality, and it's pretty cool that each player character gets unique exchanges. As for the legacy stuff: the 2D levels range from fan-made level editor junk (Soldier Stonekong) to tedious redundant slogs (Tornado Tonion); the Maverick designs are insanely terrible (did you read the names I just quoted?); hostage reploid permadeath is goddamn obnoxious; and copy abilities have never felt more superfluous. In the category of new-but-bad are the frankly humiliating graphics, absolutely pathetic for a 2003 PS2 game from a major studio competing against the likes of Jak II and Going Commando (it doesn't even look to be from the same hardware generation as Capcom's own Devils May Cry or Maximos). Yet more embarrassing is the frequent slowdown, an unheard-of problem on the PlayStation 2 even for games with acceptable sixth-gen polygon counts.

There's a New Game+, which would allow fully powering up all three characters (there are only enough chips in a single playthrough for 16 upgrades; each character has 12 slots). I wonder if that has any reward. I got enough out of the experience that I'd like to get to know it better, although I may wait a month for the Switch Mega Man X Legacy Collection Collection, which collects Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 and Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2. The weapon and character selection add textbook replayability, about half of the bosses seem decent (Snipe Anteator eventually did get some competition for worst), and 3D action-platformers are just a rare thing. I mean, I'm the guy who likes Shinobi '02. On my most recent go-round with Ratchet & Clank Future... Dudes of Destruction? (sounds too cool, must be something stupider), I realized the series thinks it's 3D Mega Man, and started to process it in those terms. So Mega Man X7 is a great point of comparison, as it completely butchers all the presentation and accessibility stuff that makes R&C so palatable, yet maintains the legacy of Mega Man enemy and stage design.

Then I wrote a blog post about the motorcycle stage in Mega Man X7

Yeah but you know what does have great hover bikes? Mega Man X7. It doesn't, but I'm glad to see they at least tried for a 3D version of the then-established variety stage. And the fact that the bike accelerates rather than blandly auto-scrolling almost inherently makes it the best iteration of the always weak gimmick. Unfortunately, there's something terribly wrong with the steering mechanics that I can't quite put my finger on - it might actually be what's been described to me re:Outrun, that X-velocity and Z-velocity are totally independent, combined with a 3D Sonic camera that doesn't stay behind the vehicle (e.g. a left turn will have the camera placed so the road snakes from the right edge of the screen to the left).

Whether or not the controls are something I could get used to, the design of the stage is especially trashy, just a narrow corridor littered with boxes, hostages, and the now-iconic Runnerbombs. (It's pretty amazing that "Runnerbomb" isn't a name that I made up, although maybe not as amazing as the fact that a Runnerbomb's modus operandi is to stand in place and throw bombs). Each of the obstacles/enemies spawns on-screen with a bright teleporting-in effect that saves the game from needing a draw distance - it's good for drawing attention visually and shows that the developers at least understood that you can't just have enemy pop-in (I really am describing an Outrun remake, huh?). The downside is that Runnerbombs, which need to be avoided, and hostage reploids, which need to be collected, have near identical silhouettes that make every decision whether to dodge or collide a last-second one. That gives the already cluttered layout an extremely haphazard mouthfeel, and, since this is X7, the heroes have enough reserve HP to just plow through everything. Which is important, because all of this is operating on a time limit.

Yup, continuing on from the brilliant structural mix-up of the intro level's cyclops-walker arena-showdown, the bike stage deviates from standard traversal/survival gameplay towards an actual racing format. Not entirely racing, thankfully, but the objective is to grab (all) 20 time-bombs planted across the course loop before the countdown timer reaches Zero. The player can drive as fast or slow as they want, but can't turn around, so missing a bomb means needing to speed through another lap to come back to it. The mission ends instantly as soon as the 20th bomb is collected. Given this collection objective structure, you might call this the long lost final level of Sonic R.

Indeed, I should probably mention that the Maverick ruling over this high-speed terroristic attack is branded Ride Boarski. I'm going to go out on a limb and hypothesize the name is a reference to Polish sausage, you fill in the details.

Ultimately the whole experience is like the opposite of the PSX/Battletoads-era cycle rides where any minor deviation from the exactly plotted course is instant death. Since the layout requires constant last-minute course correction, the slippery mechanics make that especially difficult, and there's plenty of time for multiple laps, the most productive strategy seems to be starting off barreling forward as fast as possible, grabbing all the low-hanging fruit, then on later laps slamming on the brakes whenever a bomb is known to be coming up. Like other points of comparison with X5 and X6, X7 isn't really better, but it's at least more interesting.

What I'm Playing, May '14

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

More catch-up on unfinished posts. Again, the ones with long summaries I actually wrote back in May and the others will just get a sentence. Never gonna get these done if I keep giving every game a huge essay. Next up is the summer list. 

Games Finished (that never had a Started entry):

Mega Man V (Game Boy / 3DS VC)

Really like the execution of level themes in this game and its downplaying of gimmicks in favor of small unique moments.

Mega Man Xtreme (Game Boy Color / 3DS VC)

The Game Boy Megas Man were really all over the place. Dr. Wily's Revenge is a semi-port of Mega Man that retools the level design, Mega Man V is 100% original, and now there's Mega Man Xtreme, a mixed port of X and X2. Four stages are drawn from each game and strictly recreated here, so while the level design remains brilliant because the first two X games are, there's also no need to play this game if you have access to the SNES titles (which, if you own a SNES, PS2, Gamecube, Wii, or Wii U, you do). There are a few things that set Xtreme apart as distinctly worse: 1.) Select is the dash button, which is really pretty awful on a 3DS, 2.) the gameplay is a little crunched down to fit the smaller screen (enemies missing here and there), 3.) the level selection doesn't cohere since it was taken from two different games, 4.) most of the collectibles are gone and 5.) when you charge your gun (aka all the time) the lead guitar track cuts out of the music, making this the rhythm-only version of the X/X2 soundtrack.

Spec Ops: The Line (Xbox 360)

Spec Ops: The Pretty Good Story about PTSD That Wasn't as Much an Adaptation of Heart of Darkness as People / The Game Itself Said It Was. And would have been more effective with less shooting, to be completely honest. If it's supposed to be mind-numbing and emotionally dulling, mission accomplished, but we were there by the halfway point.

Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires (Xbox 360)

The Dynasty Warriors: Empires games are a sub-series all their own, having run for five or six games now (they started at 3). They use the same engine as their main series counterparts but instead of focusing on character variety and bosses, they shift the focus to tactics. It seems a little silly that at this point "Empires" isn't just a mode in the main games, since I can't imagine them having separate audiences. Just a cheap move by Koei to inflate sales from their die-hard fans.

Anyway, worth an extra purchase or not, DW6: Empires is a solid game. Like in DWG3, the player is still conquering territories by grinding through troops at enemy bases, but enemy commanders don't play as big a role in the action, functioning as HP sinks more than bosses. The movesets are extremely basic, allowing room for tactics to take over as the key gameplay element. Each map is wide open and contains almost a dozen bases and enemy armies, meaning there are far more critical points to the battle. Because the enemies are so plentiful and widespread, the player needs to take advantage of their ability to pause the game and issue attack and defense orders to allies. The game feels more along the lines of Battalion Wars or Battlestations than pure action, as winning requires the full utilization of the player force.

The strategic over-map (familiar to anyone who's romanced the three kingdoms) is more a stage select than anything, offering far too few options to make for real macro-strategy. Still, Empires seems to provide a nice middle ground between the tough arena fighting of the main series and pure turn-based tactics.

Games Started:

Tomb Raider (Xbox 360)

Basically the same gameplay style as Resident Evil 5, this shines when it breaks into exploration of broad climbforming hubs, but does so too infrequently and bores with it's scripted mini-game segments.

Lone Survivor (PC / Steam)

If you've ever said to yourself, "what would happen if I made Resident Evil into a sidescrolling pixelated thing and gave the player character the ravenous hunger of Ultima VII's Avatar", then you've played, sealed, and delivered Lone Survivor. See you're in this post-apocalyptic world and there are zombies and you can only shoot in three directions so to get headshots you gotta get real close but worse than ammo scarcity is food scarcity and also your little dude is going insane (maybe? or is the world going insane?!) so you're forced to trek out into the wilderness and keep moving to keep fed. So maybe it's like Don't Starve meets Eternal Darkness. There's some neat mystery going on (that of course as all insanity-based games threatens to get overindulgent) and a bit of old-timey adventuring of the go-find-the-scissors-to-cut-through-the-skin-wall variety. It's definitely thrilling to duck through a dark passage and have no clue where in time or space it may lead. I generally like the tiny graphics, as it reminds me that part of the horror of older games was the power of imagination. The old rule is that what you don't see is scariest, but I'd say that what you can only kinda-sorta half make out is even scarier. Trying to figure out what the fuck I'm even looking at can get some twisted possibilities running through my head and be even stranger than the often bland cut-and-dry 3D of modern horror.

The low-res art looks great on the environments but a lot of the monsters come out looking more silly than scary

Moon Chronicles: Episode 1 or whatever (Nintendo DS / 3DS eShop)

This was a shockingly boring game that wasn't survival horror at all, more like a spaced out visual novel whose remaining episodes I certainly will not be playing. Also, how many Alien references do you need in one game?

LPGA Revisited: One level from Mega Man X

To make up for my lack of a post yesterday, enjoy this lovely micro-LP (EP?) from the days before we were known as LPGA. The full Let's Play of Mega Man X features Greg and many of his other friends, and can be found, I don't remember, somewhere. Needless to say, this is the best part.

Back in the CCCR - I don't know, some game [looks like it ended up being Mega Man X]

Lordy lordy what an ill-advised feature. Whose stupid idea was this? The worst part is that it was the original idea for the ENTIRE BLOG. And you think you have it bad now.

I have no idea how to choose games to Back in the CCCR. Any suggestions? That's half the reason I put it off all the time; the other half is that I can't write it when I'm anywhere but home, because I have to play the game to review its menus. It's not like I store them in my head. Hm, maybe I ought to take an hour or two one day at home, go through a dozen or two games taking notes, and write the reviews later based on the notes. That would actually be a... good idea.

How was that little vacation through my thought process? Pretty interesting stuff, right? That's what I call river-of-consciousness writing, and I've already copyrighted, patented, and litigated that word, so don't even try. Jimmy Joyce'd be proud. That sellout bastard. So uh, until I do the thing I just said I was gonna do, allow me to write one of the few Back in the CCCR's I can do from memory: Mega Man X.

Hey, that old boy just made an appearance in the last post! What is this, some kind of corporate Capcom shill blog? Next you're gonna want me to go buy a Pepsi.

Yes, I would like you to buy a Pepsi. All I wanted was a Pepsi. Just one Pepsi. And she wouldn't give it to me! So go buy a 2-liter today at your local Giant grocery store! At the low low price of $0.99! Pepsi has never tasted this good, and this cheap!

The original Pepsi marketing department

Wonder if I can get sued for that. For prices this low I mean. So low they can't be legal! Luckily the odds of a live person finding this blog are about the same as the Angels winning the pennant. Then we can be a family again! It never occurred to me at age 7 just how ridiculous is the concept of that movie. I guess that's the idea; kids don't understand sarcasm. That's why it was the greatest film ever made! (Ebert preferred Little Big League, but what does he know). Was the lesson in the end that his family actually did get back together because he believed, or that you shouldn't use figurative language around kids unless you want them to be really disappointed? I'm not reading the wikipedia, you do it.

I've played Mega Man X about a thousand times and each and every last time I have to take a detour into the options screen to set my controls. That's right, MMX let's you reassign all of your face and shoulder buttons freely. Spectators have asked me "how do you wall-jump/dash/charge so fluidly?" The answer, of course, is that the default controls are kinda stupid, because they make this nigh-impossible. Y for shoot, A for dash, and B for jump. The obvious evolution you can see this makes on classic Mega Man is that dash function, and the key to effective play of X is combining this speed with precision wall-jumping. How the fuck are you supposed to combine that with charging a shot when it requires three face buttons? The answer is simple: re-assign dash to one of the shoulders. High-level play is outright impossible without doing so. Of course, later Mega Man series (Zero, ZX) wised up and put it there by default.

The Verdict? Mega Man X gets a: Control customization saved this game from ruination out of 10

If some genius at Capcom was able to figure out in 1993 that giving the player full control customization can allow playability beyond what the developers had envisioned, why nearly 20 years later do I still need to be writing this feature?