Not now, Otis

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Happy happy days. August is here and I'm finally cashing in on what's been a boring summer. Dead Rising is a treat even when you factor in it's inane save system. You only get one save, so if you miss a timed event (which, to be fair, is pretty hard to miss), you have to start the game over. I've had to do this once. It's nice that they let you restart with the skills you earned during your earlier attempt, so you'll always be getting stronger.

Probably the highest praise I can give Dead Rising is that it really feels like a next generation game. Sure, so did Project Gotham Racing 3 and Oblivion, but Dead Rising feels really new. Although the concept isn't totally innovative, Capcom really pulls it off well. The mall gives you a great sense of being there. I can feel it especially on the roof: every pipe and strut is modeled in 3D, not just a texture on a wall. The zombies look great, move fluidly, and number in the hundreds without affecting the frame rate.

And then there's Otis, The Most Annoying Character in the Universe. Otis is a maintenance man at the mall; he watches the surveillance cameras and tells you when somebody somewhere needs to be rescued. And by "tells you," I mean calls you incessantly, causing this horrible buzzing noise that doesn't go away until you answer the call. And by "answer the call," I mean "put away your weapons and try and read Otis' tiny text message while the zombies maul you." Oh, and if a zombie does maul you while you're on the phone with Otis, he'll immediately call back and badger you about hanging up on him. Oh, I'm sorry Otis, but the zombies out here are very rude. I'd love to beat some sense into them but some jerk keeps calling me back.

I finished up the episodes of DearS, Tenjho Tenge, and UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie that I rented. DearS, despite the warm feelings I got last week, will not be continued. I kind of feel like I've snapped; I've seen enough shows where a man, faced with a subservient babe, refuses to even touch her. Oh sure, his friends are complete perverts, but he's so far on the other side of the fence that even the sight of a breast can cause seizures. Feh. Takeya, you can go take a flying leap.

Still, as bad as DearS is, UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie is worse. Princess Valkyrie of the planet Valhalla (you can tell they really did their research on this one) runs away from an arranged marriage with some perfectly normal looking space prince (above). She whines that "my feelings don't matter," indicating that she is both super hot and culturally bankrupt; you can hardly spit in the children's section of a library without hitting a book about some princess who has to marry for political reasons. That's what you get for being a princess, honey: ultimate galactic power... very small life partner options.

So miss Whiney Whiney Princess flees Valhalla, crashes her ship into some kid's bathhouse business (how she does this is left unexplained, even given the "woman driving" stereotype), and kills said kid. She gives him half her soul in apology, turns into an 8-year old due to lack of energy (or some nonsense), then becomes a constant burden to the poor bastard. Plus, the poor bastard already has a "childhood friend" (don't we all) with some awesome shrine powers. Ugh. Maybe I can't convey how disgusting this series is. You really have to see it for yourself, then weep for humanity. If aliens land on earth tomorrow, I hope they don't stop by Tokyo.

Picked up DarkStar One today and came away very impressed. Even though their resolution options don't work for my monitor, I'll forgive them for now. The game is fun. Pure, pure fun. Have ship, will travel, let's say. You get a kind of organic, self-upgrading spaceship called the DarkStar One and get to go all Freelancer on the galaxy. What Gamespot mentions about having fun immediately is very true, and very very important. It takes about ten minutes before you get your first upgrade and buy a second gun. Unlike X3, the economics model wasn't designed by Alan Greenspan. All you do is buy low and sell high without worrying about wildly fluctuating prices or supply chain breakdowns.

The combat is merely okay. It's still WWII dog fighting in space, which is really starting to show its age. You mean to tell me that while "modern day" games like F-22 Raptor give you missiles that will take out another plane before it's even within visual range, I still need to be within 1000 feet of a spaceship before my guns will give me a targeting reticule? It's absurd, but it comes with the genre. The only other gripe I have is that the writing for the game is strictly amateur level. Not the battle chatter (which is banal no matter what game you play), but the lovely CGI cinematics are saddled with the kind of dialogue I thought was really neat back in middle school. It's not quite as bad as Dungeon Siege II, but they're working on it. If I have to play one more game where I was bequeathed a ship by my dead/dying/missing father, I'm gonna scream.

Hopefully I can remedy some of this when I start building my own game in September...