The irony is not lost on Count Bleck… FAIRIES!!!

Monday, April 16, 2007

Final Fantasy XII has come to an end. It would be inaccurate to say I have beaten Final Fantasy XII; this is not a game you can beat very easily. You need to say things in a vaguely PC fashion. Let us say that I have progressed to the final cinematic. The final boss has been vanquished, and all is well. The credits have been displayed on the screen. The game itself is not beat: I still have half a dozen hunts to go on and about a dozen side quests to complete. Killing Mr. Evil was, at level 61, a trifle. Even when he turned his airship into scrap metal for his new angelic robot wings and became "The Undying" and was so powerful his health bar disappeared, I was yawning. Compared to my fight against Zeromus, this was nothing. But it was necessary to free my mind from Ivalice's iron grip.

So now I am free to focus my attention on other neglected titles such as the wonderful Okami or Puzzle Quest, which I picked up yesterday. Describing Puzzle Quest is really a rare pleasure: witness a new genre born before your very eyes. It is a Puzzle RPG. In Puzzle Quest, you play the game of Bejeweled against a monster, each taking turns on the same board. Match three red spheres and get red mana (or blue, green or yellow). Match three skulls and you do damage to the monster. Three coins and you get money. Three purple stars nets you experience. You level up, cast spells and use attacks with your mana, and buy new items that bestow interesting abilities on the battlefield.

This is all well and good. The early console RPGs like Final Fantasy had a similar structure and grew into wonderful franchises. Unfortunately, since Puzzle Quest is the first entry in its own genre it incurs significant flaws: this is the most dry, dull, boring, uninteresting, unoriginal, unappealing story/setting/plot/random sequence of characters and events I have ever had the displeasure of being displayed on my Nintendo DS. You play as a character of either gender and of any four generic fantasy professions (Knight, Warrior, Wizard, Prostit-uh, I mean, Druid) sent to save the land from invading orcs and zombies and giant rats. No, that's not a summary, that's the entire thing. That Gamespot's review says the writing is "better than you might expect" means... what, exactly? The original Dragon Warrior for the NES had better characters and plot than Puzzle Quest. I also found Bejeweled 2's Terms of Service to be "a new great American masterpiece, with writing far better than you might expect."

Idiots.

Speaking of great American masterpieces, I picked up Breakfast of Champions this weekend now that Kurt Vonnegut is dead enough to find himself in the "Literature" section of Borders. This needs to be made clear: I miss Russell Aaronson, my high school English teacher. Reading this book is effortless; Vonnegut's writing is disarmingly straightforward. There are adorable illustrations by the author, usually preceded by "this is what a stork looks like," and then a picture of a stork. Vonnegut uses this as an example of the lie parents tell their children about where babies come from. Babies actually come from one of the three definitions of the word "beaver", which is an animal that looks like this:

Like I said, I need Russ. I'm sure there's acres and acres of significance in this tiny yet hideously expensive book I'm reading. Why is there so much talk about Veteran's Day? What's the deal with Dwayne Hoover's echolalia? I've strung together the words he says but no coherent sentence comes out of it. My mind must have seriously deteriorated since I graduated; I feel like a blind man in a house of mirrors. Rescue me... or at least point me to a credible online source of literature analysis. Preferably one that disparages Oliver Twist. Hi mom!

Oh! Super Paper Mario came in today. I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.

Ever since the new Sam and Max episodes came out I've been leery of online reviewers who say a game is "funny." Everyone thinks Sam and Max is/was funny. They use the word "deadpan" like a shield against negative criticism. They are incorrect. Sam and Max is not deadpan; it is just dead. Get Smart! was deadpan. Married with Children was deadpan. Hit me with a frying pan.

So Super Paper Mario, another "funny game," was ignored at retail by yours truly. Traumatized by my previous experience, I tossed it on my GameFly list and forgot about it until the envelope arrived this afternoon. I played through half an hour of the game and, praise the gods, I was laughing. The plot, such as it is: Princess Peach and Bowser have been kidnapped. They will be forcibly wed and the union will create a Chaos Heart that will destroy all existence. Mario must journey with his friends Donald and Goofy to... um, that doesn't sound right.

Most of it is correct, though. Your new nemesis is Count Bleck, who reminds me of a slightly toned down Mr. Crocker from The Fairly Oddparents. Bleck cackles constantly and refers to himself in the third person ("You are not dressed as dapper as... Count Bleck!"). Mario does his best Gordon Freeman impression, grunting and "oh yeeah"ing and "oh nooo"ing as the circumstances require. But Mario gets a pass because everyone else is so compelling. I've done old coots before, but Wattchit the town elder is a total riot.

It's really the characters and plot of Super Paper Mario I find thrilling (you listening, Puzzle Quest devs?). The gameplay is constantly on the verge of becoming a one-trick pony. It starts out as a regular Mario platformer: run to the right, jump on monsters, climb on platforms, bang blocks and collect coins. No run button, no fire flower powers, no cape or Tanooki suit. You get new helpers, called "Pixls," that let you hold on to blocks and throw them and probably other stuff.

Then the big "twist" is revealed as you rotate the world 90° and experience the level from a new angle (at least temporarily). Maybe I'm just aching for those damn kids to get off my lawn, but this didn't do anything for me. Warp pipes appear behind what you thought was a mountain. Thwomps are rendered harmless and downright silly as they angrily pound the ground ten feet to your right. I will give full points to the developers for creativity, ingenuity and originality, but if you've seen any of the video previews of this game (such as the TV commercials), you've probably won't be bowled over by the "flip" feature.

Still, it is far better than Vista's crummy "flip" feature. I did say "wow" when I first saw this in action (in a trailer on Kotaku). When I saw Vista's flippy nature, I believe I said "what?" and then "why?"

The irony is not lost on me. Puzzle Quest has the engaging gameplay and abysmal story, while Super Paper Mario has an environment as interesting as Final Fantasy XII and some seriously one-dimensional moves (ah ha). How about this: I play Puzzle Quest on my DS Lite while someone else slogs through Super Paper Mario, nudging me when a character has something interesting to say. Who's game?