I’m surprised you don’t know what a hawk looks like

March 19, 2007

Not that this should come as a shock to anyone, but it's really great to see something fulfill your expectations. I've been looking forward to God of War II since the end of the first one. What we asked for has been delivered: more blood, more bosses, and more busty babes (the sex-with-two-women minigame returns in all its "glory"). Really, no other game can lay claim to a "hysterical" level of violence as God of War II can. You'll fight all kinds of humanoid enemies. The circle button will let you grab them and: rip their arm off and beat them to death with it; break their spine in half; tear off both arms; or just knock them into the ground and punt them toward another enemy. It's absurd. The fatality for the "Horsekeeper" is slamming his head in a door. GameSpot calls the game "a giggle fest for violence junkies" and they're not kidding. Not since Riddick have I been forced to be so evil.

The combat engine is the same: absolutely the same. The timing is the same and your basic moves are the same. Sure, the Blades of Chaos have a little extra shine to them and there are some new combos, but there's nothing in the pure hacking and slashing that could be called "refined." A little disappointing, but not much. We found an odd quirk: you can jump in the air and do the L1+Circle attack about three times before you hit the ground, on average. If you're jumping up to a Cyclops and doing that move, you'll occasionally land on his head, enabling you to do five or more combos. Kratos is in mid-air, whirling those blades away while the enemy just takes it. You'd think someone would catch that.

Overall, God of War II pushes the boundaries of what a four star game can be. Thank goodness this title came out in 2007 so I don't have to pit it against FFXII for "game of the year" status.

I've actually been satisfied on the anime side as well, but this was really unexpected. The show in question is Ninja Nonsense, which is a kind of cross between Steel Angel Kurumi, Excel Saga and Naruto. It stars a female ninja named Shinobu who is about as worldly as sweet Kurumi ever was. She's a trainee in a ninja academy under this yellow blob named Onsokumaru and a hundred or so ninjas, all drawn identically, only one of whom has a name ("Sasuke").

The show itself is completely mad. In the opening video Shinobu goes through a quick montage of ninja training activities: making tea, dusting the dojo, lifting weights, jumping rope and posing sexily while the other ninjas take pictures of her? She has a fixation with cats (calling them "meow-meows") and isn't very good at her ninjutsu. After incanting "Art of Invisibility Technique" (and not becoming invisible) she opens the door to a house and screams, "Let's go! Yeah!"

It's also rather perverted. Shinobu's latest assignment under the Head Master is to collect high school girls' underwear. Kaede, the girl she's stealing from and who she eventually befriends, yells at her: "Thief! Low-life! Pervert! Ero-ninja!". Shinobu, the most innocent soul in the world, is heartbroken: "Am I perverted? Am I ero? Am I Emmanuel?" Shinobu also develops a strange fixation with Kaede that is something more than friends and less than lovers. She seems to think the thoughts a normal anime boy might think about a girl his age, but Shinobu never really connects the dots to find home base.

Maybe that paragraph didn't convince you. What Ninja Nonsense really has is timing. Hard to translate that to text. Come and watch. It's funny.

Shinobu and her hawk