The following posts were lifted from Larry's Super-Kawaii Neko Blog just hours before the forces of Mishima Zaibatsu invaded Rhode Island "for practice" and turned Larry's home into a pile of rubble. They have been preserved here so that we might learn something about the motivations of the evil Tekken Force from a young man who had briefly trained with them...
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Ohaiyo gozimas, fellow gaijin! It's your old pal Larry again!

I finally got that sweet gig in Japan I was hoping for! I saw on Craigslist that some company called the Mishima something-or-other was asking for people to join some sort of "evil army capable of taking on the armed forces of major nations." I'm sure it was just an exaggeration, but I couldn't pass this chance to travel to Japan, so I kinda fudged a few things on my resume: I said that I was proficient in firearms training, had military experience, few moral qualms about killing people, physically fit, sociable, hygenic and knew how to speak Japanese fluently. But now I'll get to travel to Japan, all expenses paid baby! I'm so gonna get that raw manga and K-ON! body pillow I've been saving up for!

Sayonara!
--Larry-kun, Monday, 5:00 PM

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Ohaiyo gozimas! Larry here, from glorious Japan!

After getting off the plane, I was dragged into a truck by some men wearing dark red stormtrooper gear. I thought that maybe my fantasies had finally come true! That they knew I had a hidden power and that they had sought me to save the world from whatever evil demons threatened it! I was so pumped that I started quoting lines from the latest season of Gundam 00 in anticipation of the mech I was sure they would give me. I mean, the Exia is nice and all, but the Cherudim has heavy firepower that could vaporize enemies from a distance. Oh original Lockon Stratos, you were too good for this world...



Then the next thing I know, they tell me to get off the truck and I'm in a military base. They shave my head and hand me a helmet and a uniform. I ask if they have anything in a larger size, but they just laugh in response. I think one of them shouted "Katsu-chan!" and started making pig-snorting noises. I thanked them for reminding me that I should visit Katsu Con when I get back to America and struggled my best to fit in the suit so as not to appear dishonorable. I also asked them if they had a different color of stormtrooper suit. They laughed again. I know I am not a native-born Japanese on the outside, but on the inside I am sure they will realize I am like their "onee-chan."

Sayonara!
--Larry-kun, Wednesday, 7:00 AM
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Ohaiyo, fellow readers! It's your old friend Larry here!

Today I found out that we were selected to become part of this super-secret military force called the Tekken Force! Awesome! We get guns and cool body armor and everything! I asked if we were fighting for the glory of Japan or for the chance to end war, and this older guy named Hawk or something slapped me across the face of my helmet with his armored fist. Thanks to my helmet, I could read the english subtitles as he spoke to me in his native tongue, but I think the translator was broken. I mean, he couldn't have really said, "Dear God, they must be really fucking desperate to accept a fatass like you." "Kami-sama" is how they say "God" in Japanese. I learned that from watching anime online.

Then they told me to run laps up a mountain. I asked if they could perhaps just throw me in the truck like last time, but then Hawk kicked my ass so hard that purplish sparks flew out. Apparently, they installed that feature recently as a training device on the Tekken Force armor so people wouldn't die from the attack, but it still hurt like a bitch. I decided to give it my best, for if Thor from the Kenichi manga could handle such abuse at the over-exaggeration of his weight and still fight against his enemies, then so could I.
--Larry-kun, Thursday, 9:00 PM

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Hey folks, I know it's late for you readers in America, but I have faced true prejudice while training with the Tekken Force.

They won't let me go into Akihabara!

I just want to go out and buy some manga and doujinshi to show my internet friends back home, but then some guy code-named Falcon yelled in Japanese, "You're 25 years old! Why are you still reading children's comics?" I began to show him the error of his preposterous presumption that all manga was made for children, and that even the lowest of Japanese graphics contained story and character designs that outshone even the best American comics. But he didn't care. Instead he tossed me a protein bar and yelled at me to run a mile in my armor.


That's Falcon in his training armor. Sorry the pic is blurry, but he's such a "baka yaro" he broke my cell-phone camera!.

I tried to prove to him that I could do it, but the armor was so tight and constricting that I collapsed in front of the barracks after I ran about 30 feet. Hey, that's like a first down in American Football! I'm sure plenty of football teams would want me to play for them, like that lineman from Eyeshield 21! Even so, that jerkass Falcon kept calling me "Katsu-chan," making pig-snorting noises and kicked my buttplate until the purplish sparks started to turn brown.

Hey, it's not my fault! I've been eating awful cuisine here for days! They won't let me eat real Japanese food like crabmeat sushi or General Tsao's Chicken! They don't even have pizza here! I thought I would see more of Japan that this stupid army base. I would tell you that it's somewhere near Mt. Fuji, but they made me sign a non-disclosure agreement. Hey mom, if you're reading this, please send me a care package with all the Pocky you can!
--Larry-kun, Saturday, 7:00 AM
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It's Larry again, today was probably the worst day of my life. Yes, even worse than when my Second Life girlfriend broke up with my online persona.

Today we were told that some guy named Jin Kazama was stopping by, and that we were expected to be on our best behavior. Must be an important guy, as even Hawk and Owl were real quiet during the briefing. I squeezed into the suit as best as I could, made sure it was polished with scars of battle thanks to a black dry-erase marker I managed to sneak out of the briefing room. I'm sure the scratches would make me look more manly in front of him.


That's Jin! Isn't he "sugoi?"

We lined up in rows on the parade grounds, and then Jin Kazama stepped out of a helicopter, followed by some pretty American blonde. Oh, how I wish I was in her place right now! I made sure to clap the loudest so that this Jin guy would notice me, and shouted, "Jin-senpai!" to make him feel good. Apparently, my American emotions must have set him off, as he stepped down from the podium and walked up to me. I thought he would congratulate my enthusiasm for being part of his evil army and promote me to Falcon. Instead, he punches me so hard that my armor bends in on itself and red sparks start flying out.

Let me get this straight: We have ceramic plating that can stop most bullets and shrapnel, kevlar that can minimize a blunt-force impact embedded in our body armor, and none of it can stop a single punch or kick? I thought Jin would appreciate knowing that whatever guy he's buying this armor from is ripping him off.

Apparently, Jin made a personal note to kill the defense contractor currently supplying his army, and then gave me a reward of a plane ride home.
--Larry-kun, Tuesday, 2:00 PM
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Ohaiyo gozimas!

I feel like I know even more about the Japanese system of honor and glory after my excruciating almost-two-week ordeal working with the Tekken Force. I feel more physically fit and healthy now after that training to become part of an evil army. Even if they didn't want me, I'm sure that whole "evil" bit was just an exaggeration. Sure, that Jin Kazama guy has declared war on the whole world, but obviously we've done something to deserve it. We should thank him for having the foresight to expand Japanese industry to all parts of the globe by force!

New anime reviews to come tomorrow, assuming that no military forces accidentally cut my broadband lines. Hey, Falcon, Hawk, Owl, if you guys are reading this, then come over to my house and we can watch anime together. You'll see that it can be fun for both kids and adults! My door is always open for you guys.

Sayonara!
--Larry-kun, Friday, 3:00 AM

Raise your hands, how many people have heard of the game Wet? Originally licensed by the now-defunct Sierra, picked up by Vivendi, bought up and then dropped by Activision, and now in the hands of Bethesda Softworks. Wet was supposed to join the vaporware community alongside Starcraft: Ghost and Duke Nukem Forever, but apparently the developers managed to put together something of a finished product with a release date. As for me, I stumbled upon it while skimming the newest demos section on XBOX Live, so I decided to give it a shot.



It starts with a deal gone bad and a chase through some 70's Chinatown. As Rubi (above, voiced by Eliza Dushku!) there's several different ways you can shoot the hired goons that you come across: Diving through the air, leaping off a ledge, swinging around a pole, skidding across the floor, running on a wall, or even sliding down a ladder. Granted, it is a bit difficult for the camera and the aiming reticule to keep up with all of this, there's so much you can do that you're just as likely to slide into an unmoving table as you are to shoot a guy while doing it. Even so, I had quite a bit of fun.

One thing that irked me was the unexplained enemy spawners that could only be destroyed by whacking them with your sword (yes, you have a sword as a melee weapon). It kind of ruined the atmosphere of the level, as I don't remember many exploitation flicks suddenly throwing up enemy spawners in the hero's path while the bad guy waited patiently for them to be destroyed (unless the game later includes zombies, then we'll talk). Even so, it did give me some time to work out more of Rubi's skill set on the hired goons until the evil black vans drove away and this section of the demo was complete.

The second part of the demo involved Rubi shooting a guy in the face and getting some blood splattered on her own. For some reason, this triggered a strange trip where everything around Rubi was painted in three colors. What's black, and white, and red all over? This real twitchy level where random guys in muscle shirts with swords and other guys in suits with pistols all become slaughtered by a high-speed mix of sword-swinging, wall-running, twin-uzi-blasting action. There were a couple of parts where it became difficult to see where I was supposed to wall run to advance, but I figured it out pretty quickly and the killing resumed until I reached the ending door where a scary-looking Rubi kicked it open.



The third part of the demo was both the most exciting and the most frustrating, as you're car-surfing down a highway trying to chase the lead car. Most of the movement is controlled by quick-time events, which could be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view, but the animations look pretty cool in this section. There's one time where Rubi is running alongside a stalled tanker truck as a flaming car spins in the air right behind her, then she leaps off the truck and cuts some gunman's hand off in one swift motion.

However, most of this level, you'll be spending your time shooting at guys, and they'll be shooting back. Unlike the first two parts, unless a QTE pops up, Rubi's feet will be glued to the car and you won't have the slo-mo advantage you had before, which made this part kind of frustrating. It was difficult to hit the gunmen as the cars kept swerving, yet they had little problem shooting back.

Granted, this game could have been "just another shooter," but the thing that sold me was the atmosphere. The Tarantino-esque action (including Dushku growling, "Fuck you, door!" if you take too long to open it), the soundtrack in the background as you cut down those who stand in your way...hell, even the game's interesting twist on health stations where Rubi drinks a bottle of whiskey, tosses it in the air, and shoots it in half in the span of about three seconds. Not to mention the sheer amount of ways that Rubi can kill someone in the game.

Having said all that, I'm still not sure how the final cut will turn out. It could turn out to be another Oni, or another Jet Li: Rise to Honor. But based on my impressions from the demo, it looks like a solid rental if nothing else. Give it a shot and see if it makes you Wet as well.

Lemme tell you a little story: once upon a time at some Microsoft-sponsored event, I was given a choice between a free copy of Mass Effect and a free copy of Project Gotham Racing 4 for my XBOX 360. Considering I already had a copy of Mass Effect at the time, I decided to give PGR4 a spin. I mean, I was okay at Burnout: Revenge, so this wouldn't be too hard, right?

Oh, I was so wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Compared to Burnout, every car felt like I was steering a shopping cart down a steep hill into a wall made of aluminum siding. Every biker I controlled cringed in pain at the horrible pain and suffering I kept causing them as their helmets met the cold hard pavement. TV On The Radio's "Wolf Like Me" was playing over the car's stereo, the one solace I found in this game where all my efforts to get anything better than third place were in vain. Don't even get me started on the few times I ventured online to play actual people.

It wasn't like this was a bad game. Oh, far from it. The graphics were amazing and the physics acted much like I'd expect a real car or bike to handle, to the point where you could feel the wind whipping past your face and various small flying bugs smacking into your helmet's visor. Oh the thrill of the chase, the adrenaline rush you could get from the speed as you zipped through the track...and despite all this, I could not make it past the first few stages of the single-player mode. My pride wouldn't let me go any lower than normal (silver medal) difficulty, and I still couldn't make it.



The one thing I hate about most racing games (including Burnout) is that whether you lead by a meter or a mile, all it takes is one mistake for the AI to zoom past you with a lead you will find almost impossible to get back. And if you happen to be in second or third when you smack into a wall? You might as well restart the race altogether, or Rage Quit against the uncaring AI and do something more productive with your time.

I can't tell you how many races I bumped into a wall and lost any hope of victory, or when I drifted to avoid the wall and ended up losing too much speed. Then again, do consider that even the lamest cars in this game are a hundred times better than anything I can drive with my current income in real life. I knew one guy who was nigh-obsessed with cars, to the point where the only games he would play on his (son's) PS2 were the Gran Turismo games. The few times I tried playing him 1-on-1 I'd be lucky to finish within 15 seconds of him.

I've been getting better at RTS titles when I put enough time into them, I can hold my own in most FPS's (except Quake Live 1v1...the less said the better), I can slit throats in stealth-action titles and grind it out with the best of them in RPGs from the East and the West, but I just cannot do well in driving/racing games with even partially-realistic physics.

You think NASCAR is boring because you have a bunch of cars going in a circle for several hours? Well...okay, it is. But how many of those racers would quit if you forced them to go through tracks that contained several tight turns in a row, sometimes even at near-right angles? Hell, maybe they should put in some tracks like the more advanced ones in PGR4. After all, the most exciting part of a NASCAR race is the crashing, and there would be a lot more of them. Or maybe they'd just adapt to it while I struggled with manual gear-shifting and lost more of my credibility as a Real Man.



So give me Mario Kart. Give me the Burnout series. Give me a car where crashing won't put you out of the race like in real life, and give me a car where I can smack anyone who passes me with some kind of colored shell. But for the love of God, don't let me play another "realistic" driving game again! In fact, take away my driver's license before I kill another innocent driver or cause an auto insurance agent to commit seppuku!

Now if you'll excuse me, the light's turned green, and this guy honking in the Hummer behind me is being very rude. Doesn't he realize I'm trying to write a post and drive at the same time? Sheesh.

Awright, it's past midnight, I'm not drunk, but I can't fucking go to sleep and my brain is drawing a blank on how to continue this short story (not Dry Serial. That shit's something else) I told myself I'd finish this weekend but failed. So I might as well talk about something else that comes to mind: fighting games. In this particular one, I'm going to ask a question and hopefully get more than one comment in response from someone who's had a bad day and decides to take it out on me. *ahem*

Do you prefer realistic or not realistic fighting styles in your fightan gaems? On one hand, you look at fighters like Virtua Fighter 5, which based some of its fighters' fighting styles off of real-live martial arts from Aikido (Aoi) and Bājíquán (Akira) to Muay Thai (Brad) and Jeet Kune Do (Jacky). You've also got your UFC games which involve a lot of Brazilian Jiu-Jutsu a.k.a. "two guys grab-assing until one of them gets his opponent in a nasty arm-lock or choke hold."

(Full disclosure: this author has taken part in some BJJ lessons, and ended them in a lot of pain. Mostly his own.)

Perhaps the realistic fighting styles are cool because you can somewhat emulate them in real life. Sure, I can't exactly leap 10 feet into the air and backflip onto someone's face, but you do get a sense of where the power in a strike comes from, how the energy within your body needs to be twisted around. And it's cool, because it's a sense of art somewhat imitating life. Or something.

But on the other hand, there's plenty of fun to be had in fighting games with fake fighting styles, like the various Street Fighter titles including all the characters that shoot fireballs from their hands. Also, on a semi-related note, I've been having fun playing with BlazBlue, even though nothing in that game could quite be described as realistic let alone the fighting styles. I guess the argument could be made that if we limited our fighting games to having the characters imitate styles that could only be found in real life, it wouldn't be fun anymore. We wouldn't have teenage girls able to stand up against giant hulking cyborgs, or old men fighting fake green-skinned war gods. After all, ain't that what games are supposed to be about, having fun?

In defense of the first side, though, you could argue that such things are kinda childish escapism, whereas putting characters with realistic fighting styles actually could convince people young and old to look up and attend such classes about various martial arts in real life. We may not be able to fling fireballs from our hands, but with enough training and motivation we can disarm a charging bum with a knife and immobilize him in a matter of seconds.

What say you, collective Destructoid hive mind? Is it better to have cool fighting styles in videogames that are possible to emulate? Is it better to have wacky characters and magical projectiles? Or is the true answer somewhere in between? Feel free to leave your answer, I'm going to try getting some sleep again.

Y'know, I was going to make another humorous-post about the internet creaming its collective undergarments about BlazBlue. But I guess I can't do that now, because I went onto Amazon and bought the damn game today, in its (not quite) Limited Edition Glory for $56.99 (A full 5% discount! Whoopee!). It'll probably arrive in my mailbox sometime this upcoming week.

In lack of much more information that, I guess I could also post other times I've given into temptation and paid full price for a game: Like when I paid full price for Left 4 Dead only to see it go on sale for 50% MSRP on Steam a couple weeks later. Or when I bought C&C3: Kane's Wrath but realized that not only do I suck at it, but the few of my friends who play RTS either stuck with Starcraft or moved on to something else like Red Alert 3. Yep, I'm ahead of the curve and my wallet cries out in agony as a result.

Still need more stuff to put...well, I guess while I wait for the game to arrive I can listen to the MOST EPIC FIGHT SONG EVAR!

DocHaus apologizes for the lack of funny in this post. He will do his best to rectify the situation in the future.

Let me start off with this blurb about the game I found at GameRankings:

"Evolving the shooter genre with its unique and exhilarating combination of fluid action and combat, Damnation will feature huge, open environments, frenetic combat, daredevil acrobatics, and high-octane vehicle-based stunts. Presenting players with an intense test of reflexes, quick thinking, and rapid-fire conflict, Damnation will feature vast, breathtaking landscapes, each covering miles of distance and thousands of vertical feet."

Strip away the BS, and what this blurb tells you is the following:

--Our levels are huge!
--We have guns that you can shoot people with!
--The character has a "dodge" command!
--There's a few driving sections!
--Don't forget those awesome jumping puzzles!
--Oh, and did we mention our levels are huge?

I guess my first warning playing this piece of crap was when I went to rent it at a local Blockbuster store, and the teenager behind the counter snickered as he read the title. Maybe he thought the title was funny, or maybe he heard the game was a piece of crap. Surely, it couldn't be that bad, right? After getting home, I popped the game in my 360 and decided to jump into a single-player game.



I was greeted with textures that could've come out of a PS2 game, an oppressive army marching down a street, and some unexplained evil ninja. Then a bunch of awesome heroes slid under a falling pillar with their bikes and destroyed the evil Serum-infused soldiers with only a few shots. This is probably the coolest part of the game. If the gameplay itself was any better, I could have forgiven the last-gen graphics.

From what I've gleaned in the story, Damnation takes place in an alternate version of America where steampunk technology reigns supreme. The main producer of this tech, Prescott Standard Industries (PSI) has decided to use it to conquer its own swath of territory in the "Sovereignty" and turn it into "New America" (yeah, real original name there). You play the deep and mysterious Rourke, who apparently lost his girlfriend at some point during the Civil War and seeks to get her back along with stopping the evil PSI. The story premise actually sounded interesting in a kitschy way.

Then you actually start to play the game, and it goes downhill. Oh, where do I begin? First of all, you're only allowed to carry three weapons, including a pistol and two larger guns. You have your standard weapon loadout, though it has steampunk touches: a full-auto rifle that takes an entire drum just to kill one guy, a sniper rifle that can gib anyone's head but otherwise has no effect, a shotgun that is useless when the target is more than five feet away, and a revolver with all the stopping power of a particularly pissed off gnat. The only decent gun in the game I found was a "railroad spike" gun, but it only appeared once in the first level when I found it and it had such limited ammo I didn't keep it for long.

Of course, none of this matters when you can't actually hit the motherfuckers. No, this is not an "I suck but I'm blaming the game," thing. I mean that the aiming control is too damn twitchy, which makes it difficult to hit someone from far away with any efficiency, and there's no slider to change the sensitivity either. To top it all off, the game doesn't even give you a cover mechanic which kind of became standard in most third-person games ever since Gears of War (or perhaps Kill.Switch, if anyone remembers that game). I actually found myself wishing that they would rip off Gears of War a little more than they did. Sure, you can dive through surprisingly weak windowpanes (not really "dive" so much as "walk through") but that doesn't help when people are shooting at you.

But don't worry, they made sure the AI is pretty freaking stupid. Sure, they can shoot straight most of the time (as long as you're the target anyway), but they will stand out in the open shooting, not even bothering to take cover if it's not in their script to do so. On occasion, when you snipe their friend standing a mere centimeter away, they won't even notice. The friendly AI also has similar brain-farts of this type, but unlike the enemies they can't really die, just sit on the ground gasping for air until you revive them or all enemies in the area are gone. This may sound pretty easy, until you realize that almost all of the weapons have been gimped in order to give the retarded AI a fair fight.



As for the "high-octane vehicle based stunts," they have steampunk-ish motorbikes scattered throughout each level, lending itself to a driving section. These things basically handle like speedy shopping carts, the only innovation being that you can drive on some walls where you see conveniently-placed tire marks. It sounds cool until your bike gets stuck in some piece of the level geometry for the umpteenth time and falls off a cliff, then you just want it to be over.

Speaking of innovation, I hope you like jumping puzzles, because you'll need to complete a lot of them just to get to the next checkpoint. Rourke will be forced to shimmy along aluminum siding, climb up ladders, wall jump off of various objects and make leaps of faith in order to get to the next part of the level, and it's often difficult to find the way you're supposed to go in order to accomplish this. You can also shoot enemies with your pistol while hanging on a rope/pipe/chain/whatever, but I've only found one part of the game so far where this was absolutely necessary. Not to mention that Rourke's hand has a habit of disappearing into a wall when he's shimmying along it.

Note to the developers: making big levels does not make your game good on their own. It makes them boring and even frustrating at times. And when the game starts to feel frustrating, that's when I start looking at the game as a damn chore and start losing my will to continue playing it. Fallout 3 and Oblivion had huge freakin' levels, but they were able to compensate for this by throwing up occasional random encounters and useful items in this big world. In Fallout 3's case, they even had some radio stations. No one's going to pay $60 for a game full of jumping puzzles punctuated by lame gunfights.



For those of you who were chomping at the bit to do all of this awesome puzzle-jumping, pea-shooting action in online multiplayer? Good luck. No matter how many times I searched, no one was playing online. No one. Granted, it's only been two weeks since launch, but even the first Gears of War had some people chainsawing each other online by that date. If there is anyone who's played Damnation online that doesn't include the development team, please let me know.

The last straw for me was during Act 3 of the story when Rourke and his Spanish sidekick Zagato were sent to destroy some giant artillery pieces. You think that one of them would have considered maybe bringing some explosives, but no. After spending a while clearing out all of the enemies, I finally figured out that I had to use one of the artillery pieces themselves to launch a shell at this large stone tower which would conveniently fall down and smash all of them. Each time I fired at it, Zagato yelled at me in a three-second cutscene to clear the area before it fell. And even though I jumped clear of the artillery piece, the game still decided to kill me off anyway. I did this two more times and got the same result.

As the exasperated zookeeper said to the last male panda in the world while pointing at the species' only remaining female, "Fuck That."