Ahhh...Nothing beats a lazy weekend where instead of going outside to enjoy the late-spring weather, you're pent up inside playing video games. The sun glare in my television beckons me, "come out and play!" it says.F*** you sun! Can't you see I'm trying to beat this boss!? Damn!!! I need black curtains.
More after the break!
So this weekend I sat down again with Madworld for the Wii and came to an alarming realization that I'm actually stuck on this deceptively simple game (at least on the default difficulty.) Frank's Castle is the first level where I get killed by regular scrub enemies and it's always the same giant-scissors wielding devil-mask guy that gets me.
Another realization I've come to with Madworld is that you can't be lazy with the motion-controls. To do our hero Jack's horizontal attack you can't fake the funk. A wide horizontal swipe with the wii-mote is really the only way to consistently do this move that is needed to fillet giant-scissors wielding devil-mask character. Problem is, I'm too lazy to actually put any real life physical effort into playing video games, so that's probably why I keep getting iced on this level.
Motion-controls were great the first time you swung your tennis racket as your mii-doppelganger in Wii Sports two and a half years ago but now, for the most part, I'm kinda over it. The new Punch Out!! for Wii is being advertised as a motion-control-heavy game but thankfully, it allows players to tilt the wii-mote on its side for a "classic" control scheme. Guess how I'll be knocking out Glass Joe?
Back to Madworld. Armed with only one life left, I finally made it to the end of Frank's Castle to face the boss, a King-Kong-sized Mary Shelley inspired monster-man sitting eerily still in his electric-chair throne. All of the bosses so far in this game have been gnarly, but none intimidating enough to the point that I didn't think I could take them down on the first try. Frank was a different story. Again, this boss is the size of a Shadow of the Colossus beast, and simple hacking away at him with your chainsaw arm just ain't gonna' cut it (da-dum-snik!) Needless to say, I didn't beat Frank on the first try, in fact, he destroyed me instantly by swatting me off the upper-level catwalk plummeting me into the electrified cesspool below.
Game over.
Oh well...Maybe next time.
As the weekend rolled on I was inspired by Chris's Uncharted 2 hype-piece to pop in the original Nathan Drake romp. It had been a while since I played Uncharted and was happy to find it's stunning graphics and it's "Prince of Persia meets Gears of War" gameplay have held up nicely over the past year and a half. I started a new game on normal difficulty and played for an hour or so. As I guided Drake through the lush jungles and murky ancient ruins my excitement for Uncharted 2 really sunk in. Game sequels often surpass their originals and if this remains true for Uncharted 2, it could be a Game of the Year contender. Judging from the 5 minutes of footage shown earlier this week, I have no doubt that it will show up somewhere on our list come the end of December.
As the weekend drew to a close I got an urge to try out a new game. I browsed the demo section of XBOX LIVE and was pleasantly surprised to find a demo for XMEN Origins: Wolverine. My interest in this title had been piqued by buzz it's received on many of the gaming podcasts that I listen to. I think it was on the Joystiq podcast when one of the hosts mentioned that this game couldn't have originally been designed as a Marvel movie-licensed game because it was too good. Other podcasts have described it as a fun action game that was not worth full price but definitely deserved a weekend rental. Games that are prescribed that description by smug professional game journalists usually turn out to be really good to us unwashed commoners, so I thought I'd give Wolverine a whirl.
The first thing that shocked me wasn't the slightly above average graphics or snappy gameplay mechanics. No, it was the ridiculous amounts of bloody pulpy gore that ensues as you glide Wolverine through swarms of unfortunate enemies. Remember "hard R" movies? Well, this is a "hard M" game tied to a "soft PG13" movie and I'm equally thrilled as I am puzzled by this paradox.
Once I wiped the bloody giblets from my face I found that this game demo actually was, dare I say, too good. The game devs behind this game did a great job capturing the savage brutality of the character. As Wolverine you absolutely devastate the poor chumps brave enough to stare down the end of his razor-sharp claws. XMEN ORIGINS: Wolverine combines the spattered heroic violence from Madworld with the cinematic kinetics of Uncharted to create a game that I'd would most certainly pick up for twenty bucks in the used bin. What a coincidence that my weekend game-fest would be topped off by a game that melded the best elements of the titles that I had been playing.
It's a small game world.
