When I was 8 years old, I had an older cousin who introduced me to the Sailor Moon anime; she was obsessed with the show. During her adolescent years, whenever I’d visit her for the holidays, her room was decked out in Sailor Moon stuff. She had posters on her walls, action figures and other toys on her shelves, all of which were neatly organized, as she was a girl. My favorite item of hers was a wand that would sparkle and make noises when a button on it was pressed. She even had a notebook full of Sailor Moon trading cards and many duplicates, and she would let me have some of her duplicates. This was my first encounter with collectible cards and would only manifest further with the likes of Pokemon three years later.

Skip ahead about 10 years and I’d come across a new friend who re introduced me to Sailor Moon and enlightened me on things like Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon Stars, Super Sailor Moon Saiyan Stars versus Goku, and that’s when my mind was blown. Of course, I stopped caring about the series after the first three seasons, and for good reason. My friend informed me that in Sailor Moon Stars, there are boys who turn into girls who turn into Sailor Scouts. WTF? Now I’m proud to say that I never delved that far into the Sailor Moon canon or any anime for that matter—it simply gets too weird.



Before I bore you any further with more nostalgia, the Sailor Moon Super S fighting game for the Super Famicom was discussed recently on the Giant Bombcast. There was an interesting discussion about the title and it piqued my interest. They joked around about if Tuxedo Mask was in the game and the comment was shot down as him being the only one with competent fighting skills, would be too overpowered for the game. There were additional jokes about how Jeff Gerstmann was “getting his Sailor Venus and Sailor Uranus fighting sticks ready for tournament play.” I then decided to do a quick Google search for the game, and sure enough, I found a Web site that was dedicated to Sailor Moon video games and spotted a ROM for the Sailor Moon Super S fighting game.

Upon booting the game up, I was greeted with the familiar Sailor Moon theme song in MIDI form. The game’s in Japanese, obviously, but I managed to piece together things like random English words and numbers and got into the game’s story mode. I had the choice of picking Sailors Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Chibi Moon. I of course went with my main girl, Sailor Venus. If you want to debate who the best Sailor Scout is, we can take this outside (the comment section), but you are wrong if you think otherwise.



Anyway, I started the battle against Sailor Mars and boy is she overpowered! She starts off with a quarter extra health than me and she chains her flame attacks right and left. I was lucky to get a few hits in as I frantically mashed my keyboard for possible combos. I managed to pull off some heart projectile attack that dealt decent damage and then my heart whip, which does jack shit. Two rounds passed quickly and the match was over and I had lost.



I was soon greeted with a Game Over screen that featured a unicorn, so I guess that was cool. I decided to try again, but with Chibi Moon. To summarize: fuck her! She died in like five seconds.

Fortunately, I did manage to see a change of scenery as I played as Sailor Mars, who would fight Sailor Mercury. She features the same difficulty of having more health than me and being a cheap bastard. Seriously, she picked me up and threw me down three times in a row. So, maybe it’s just I suck at fighting games (I won’t argue that), but perhaps I’ll take out my frustration on my Sailor Moon friend, by beating her at the game because she sucks at video games.



*theme song*

Testing my patience by moonlight
Pissing me off by daylight
Never letting me win a fight
Fuck the game of Sailor Moon

It is meant to offend
Emotional injuries to mend
Hell is where I will send
This shitty game…

Sailor Venus (she’s alright)
Sailor Mercury (what a dyke)
Sailor Mars (fuck that bitch)
Sailor Jupiter (ugh!)

Testing my patience by moonlight
Pissing me off by daylight
Me playing this game is not right
Fuck the game of Sailor Moon
Fuck the game of Sailor Moon
Fuck the game… SAILOR MOON!

DJ Hero was surreptitiously released last week and it’s unfortunate that such an original game gets lost in the music game clusterfuck of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Though it’s not completely original since Konami started a turntable rhythm game called Beatmania more than a decade ago for arcades and consoles. That series ended in 2002, and now Activision and FreeStyleGames have adopted the gameplay of Beatmania with a turntable peripheral game of their own.

Since DJ Hero uses a new peripheral, the game is more interesting than Guitar Hero and Rock Band in my opinion. You can’t simply hop into the game with what you know from those games. Fortunately, the game offers a very robust training mode that grinds the game’s interface into you.



The turntable peripheral includes three colored fret buttons on a spinning disc and, much like other rhythm games, you press down on the correct button as its appropriate icon scrolls down the screen. You’ll then see long bars with slanted lines trailing behind either the blue or green icons. These are sections that require you to scratch the disc by pushing up or down on the disc. When playing on Hard, some of these sections will be direction-specific and you’ll have to scratch up or down. In Expert, these sections are exclusively direction-specific. On the left side of the turntable, there’s a cross fader switch that you can slide left or right with a small notch in the middle. At certain points in the game, a track bar jumps to the left or right and back, and you’ll want to slide the cross fader in the appropriate direction. This is to simulate the experience of cutting between the two songs that play simultaneously in each mix you’ll perform. One issue with the cross fader is that it’s very sensitive and you often slide it too far when returning it to the center and it’ll ruin your note streak.

Additionally, there are sections where a thin, golden hump will appear over a track, prompting you to twist the effects dial back and forth, which is located right above the cross fader. The effects dial earns you additional points and bonus multipliers; it’s the DJ Hero equivalent of the whammy bar from Guitar Hero. Also, there will be sections highlighted in white that must be played perfectly in order to acquire “Euphoria,” the game’s version of Star Power. When you acquire “Euphoria,” a flashing red button will light up to the left of the effects dial, earning you more points when pressed. Another feature is that after you’ve reached a number of note streaks, a glowing green rewind icon will appear and you’ll be able to rewind a section of a song by spinning the disc backwards and catching it. It’s a cool, tactile feature, but more often than not it doesn’t make the mix sound any better.



The game features 102 songs that come in the form of 93 mixes consisting of two songs. The library covers hip-hop, house, pop and more. You’ll come across mixes such as “I Want You Back” by Jackson 5 vs. “Just to get a Rep” by Gang Starr, “All Eyez on Me” by 2Pac vs. “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Aranbee Pop Orchestra, “Brass Monkey” by Beastie Boys vs. “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen and so on. Aside from the quick list option, you can only play these songs in a set list. So if there’s a mix that you want to play, you have to play through all of the mixes before playing the one you want to play. These set lists consist of having anywhere from two to eight mixes.

DJ Hero is very forgiving in terms of difficulty. Don’t get me wrong, the harder difficulties are brutal, but you can never fail out of a song for performing terribly. As such, the game gauges your progression with the number of stars you earned for playing through the mixes. Like Guitar Hero, you can earn up to five stars per mix and the stars unlock new characters, outfits, venues, turn table decks and more.

Graphically, the game is what you’ve come to expect with these types of games. You’ll be more focused on the note charts than the dancing character animations at the top of the screen. If you are easily distracted, there are also lots of flashing lights in the background. The game features original DJ characters as well as caricatures of well-known DJs including Grand Master Flash, Daft Punk, DJ Shadow and the late DJ AM.



DJ Hero is a breath of fresh air in the world of rhythm games. Much like the original Guitar Hero, DJ Hero has limited features aside from playing through the different mixes and multiplayer mode. This of course, means the inevitable flood of sequels and downloadable content in the months to come. There’s also the ability to have another player plug in a guitar or microphone and play along with the DJ, but those get lost in the chaos of all of the DJ action. I highly recommend checking the game out, despite the $120 price tag, or $199 for the Renegade Edition of the game.

Score: 4/5


Photo credit: Giantbomb.com

Psychonauts was my first experience with Tim Schafer and his creative development team at Double Fine. I loved the game for its hilarious story and creative game design. When it was revealed in 2007 that Schafer’s next masterpiece was going to be a metal-themed action game starring the voice and likeness of Jack Black, I was ecstatic. Two years and various publisher and logistical changes later, Brutal Legend has finally come to rock the Xbox 360 and PS3.

After turning on the game and being greeted by the “DOUBLE FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!” logo, you’ll witness a live action video of Jack Black entering a record store and searching around for a specific album that will “not only blow your mind, but also your soul.” It’s none other than Brutal Legend, which beautifully transitions to the game’s menu screen.

Once you start the game, you’re quickly introduced to Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black), the world’s greatest roadie. Unfortunately, he works for a “modern-day” metal band that appears to be a parody of popular bands such as Fallout Boy and Linkin Park, which go on to prove that “real metal” in this day and age is dead. Eddie wishes he was born into a different age, “like the ‘70s—the early ‘70s.” His wish is granted when he is killed by a construction accident and is transported to a world of metal, complete with evil demons, mountains of skulls and characters donning S&M gear.

Eddie adapts to this new world painlessly as he almost immediately finds and wields a large battleaxe and discovers that his guitar, dubbed Clementine, is able to summon bolts of lightning and fire. Eventually, Eddie meets up with a group of humans and learns that a war between humans and demons has been waging for years. Eddie uses his advanced knowledge of heavy metal to aid the humans in their quest for freedom.



From the outset, the game appears to be a regular hack ‘n’ slash game, but players will eventually use the guitar to play brief solos that have various powers much like the ocarina from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. These powers range from a facemelter solo, which literally melts the faces off of a group of enemies, to summoning a burning (led) zeppelin to come careening down on your foes. One of the solos you’ll use most often is the ability to summon Eddie’s vehicle, the Druid Plow. The vehicle elements become another large part of the game as it transitions to an open-world game where you can take on dozens of side missions in addition to the main story missions.

Not much later, Eddie rounds up various troops including the melee-class Headbangers, the ranged Razor Girls, fire-breathing Metal Beasts, structure-destroying Roadies and many more. Eddie is able to command these troops to advance to different locations or to attack specific targets. This all leads up to the epic stage battles, which changes up the gameplay style once more to that of a real-time strategy game.

Your stage is your base of operations and your goal is to build up your units and destroy your opponent’s base. In order to accomplish this task, you must appease your fans by building merchandise booths and gaining their support. Your fans act as your resources for building and maintaining your army. However, your opponents will also seek these resources by attacking your merchandise booths and building their own, so you must defend your own resources while fighting for theirs. While this is going on, you’re still controlling Eddie like you do in normal play—often taking matters into your own hands.

Since the stage battles aren’t your typical mouse and keyboard RTS controls, nor is it your typical console RTS controls, you’ll find the controls and interfaces somewhat clunky. Your “cursor” is Eddie and you can only issue commands to units near you and your commands direct your units only so far, so you constantly have to issue new commands every couple of seconds as they advance forward. All of your unit creation tools are hidden under a submenu that can be brought up with the right-bumper. The stage battles wouldn’t be that bad if they weren’t a huge part of the game, but the latter half of the game solely consists of these battles.

The stage battles in the single player mode prepare you for the game’s multiplayer mode. Now, I’m not much of a competitive player and when I have a hard time playing a mandatory match against a computer opponent with awkward controls, what makes you think I’ll want to go out of my way to get humiliated by a human opponent? If you said achievements, you’d be right. In multiplayer, you play skirmishes with other players as one of the three factions that you meet in the game: The metal army, Ironheade (spelled with an ‘E’ to show they mean business), the emo army of Drowning Doom and the demon army of Tainted Coil.



The main problem with Brutal Legend is that it’s too ambitious with its game design. It’s part-action, part-rhythm, part-open world, part-RTS. With so many game varieties mashed up into one game, not all of them are fully developed. I would have preferred a straight third-person Zelda-style game, despite the combat being somewhat repetitive. I personally had major issues with the driving mechanic, specifically the escort and racing missions. When driving, if you happen to even slightly brush up against an obstacle, you’ll lose control of the vehicle and go flying off somewhere and experience difficulty recovering

More often than not, you’ll trudge through the tedious gameplay just to get to the next cinematic and hear the hilarious dialogue. Some of the quotes I’ve ripped straight from the game in this review already to give you an idea of the game’s humor. There are also tons of references and inside jokes to metal lore that I wasn’t too familiar with, but my metalhead roommates picked up on them.

Many fans were worried about the inclusion of Jack Black in the game. Love him or hate him, he manages to pull off the role and I don’t think anyone else could do the job better. Jack Black isn’t the only celebrity to offer their likeness to the game. Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister acts as the game’s shaman character known as the Killmaster. Ozzy Osbourne takes on the role of the game’s merchant and sells Eddie upgrades for his axe, guitar, and Druid Plow. Tim Curry voices the game’s primary antagonist, Emperor Doviculus, but he only appears in roughly three scenes in the whole game, which is disappointing.



Going along with the metal theme, Brutal Legend boasts more than 100 metal songs. I was never a metal fan prior to playing this game, but after completing it, I’ve warmed up a little to the genre. Some of the highlights for me were “Deadly Sinners” and “Destroy the Orcs” by 3 Inches of Blood and “Kickstart my Heart” by Motley Crue. The cool thing about the soundtrack is a specific song will play at a specific point in the game and it totally sets the mood for the current situation. The most epic moment in the game in my opinion is when you’re quickly escaping from a crumbling tower with burning debris crashing down on you and “Through the Fire and the Flames” by Dragonforce starts playing in the background. “HO-LY SHIT!” was what came to mind.

Graphically, the game looks great. It’s a bit more realistic than Schafer’s past titles, but it retains the animated movie appeal. Schafer has gone on the record saying that every scene from the game was designed to look like a metal album cover and it accomplishes this well. The animations look great and in combination with a stellar voice cast, this game really comes to life.

Tim Schafer has managed to create another hilariously awesome game with Brutal Legend. If you like humor, metal and/or video games, this is perfect for you. The game does try too hard to be so many game types at once and it definitely falters because of it. If you can endure the gameplay, it’s absolutely worth it for the story and dialogue.

3/5


Photo credit: Giantbomb.com

Over the first couple of days returning to school, one thing has crossed my mind: freshman girls. Now this is my third year attending college and last year there were freshman girls, but I saw them more as little sisters and they were a bit too close to my age for my liking.

There is the high school teacher pedophile creed of “Man, I get older, but these girls stay the same age.” And this goes further than that. This summer, a friend and I indulged in an anime called Fruits Basket. In the anime, one of the characters writes erotic fiction as a career and has a hidden obsession with high school girls. There’s a particular scene where he’s cleaning up the house in preparation for a visit from said girls and he sings a brief funny/creepy song:



I came up with my own version of the song that simply switches “high school” to “freshman,” and it has the same effect; I’m perceived as a creepy pervert. Of course, I do this all for irony, while my roommates are actually the ones who are obsessed with the "youngins."

While tweeting about the subject, I came up with the brilliant game pitch for Ubisoft’s 100+ games in the Imagine series: Imagine Freshman Girls. In this game you follow the day to day lives of your choice of one of seven freshman girls including the activities of:

-showering
-panty pillow fights
-deciding on what to wear for the day
-trying on clothes
-subtlety degrading your friends’ individual self-esteems
-shop at Hot Topic
-shop at Macy’s
-shop at Victoria’s Secret
-Asking parents for money
-curling straight hair
-straightening curly hair
-gossip
-texting
-MySpace/Facebook
-Obsessing over Twilight
-Talking about the boys they like
-Talking about cute boys
-Bragging about their relations
-tripping when going up stairs
-running into people in the hallways
-standing and staring blankly in public places
-order food and get full after one bite
-suck horribly at Guitar Hero/Rock Band
-going to the bathroom with other girls
-make-up
-shave legs if not wearing jeans
-wear jeans
-Starbucks
-bake
-Listen to Death Cab for Cutie
-Listen to Taylor Swift
-Listen to Kanye
-Ask everyone in class for gum
-Obsess over the Jonas Brothers
-Complain about being too cold
-Watch MTV/MTV2/MTV7/VH1
-Watch 27 Dresses… again
-tanning
-being too hungover to come to class
-cross legs when sitting
-cross arms when standing
-fail at driving
-get knocked up

This package alone would satisfy the needs of creepers of all ages. Considering the Imagine series is geared towards women, why not gear it towards men also. This could be the start to a series of games such as Imagine Fratboy and Imagine Douchebag, but that would be redundant…

First, I’m going tell you that I was never into the Beatles, or any music for that matter. As such, I’m often seen as an outcast in that regard and I had little interest in The Beatles Rock Band when Harmonix announced the game. However, many of my friends are huge Beatles fans, so I came up with the brilliant idea of grabbing the title a week after release and my Rock Band set, thus, appeasing them and boosting my popularity. Essentially, it’s a pyramid scheme to get me laid, but now is not the time for that. After playing through the game I’m less of a non-believer.

The game opens with an LSD-centric animation showcasing the Beatles’ most popular songs. Then you can jump into Quick Play and play through the game’s 43 songs from the outset. I convinced my comrades that the songs weren’t available and we had to play through the story in order to unlock them—suckers! The story chronicles the Beatles’ humble beginnings in Liverpool, England to their touring of the United States, to their recording sessions at Abbey Road. After playing the previous Rock Band games, I’m relieved that the Beatles takes on a more relaxed, linear approach that the original Guitar Hero games did with their career modes. Also, there’s less pressure to succeed because you don’t have to worry about losing fans or making less money if you fail a song. All of the stuff that makes Rock Band’s World Tour mode so overwhelming for me is gone. Also the story can be completed in no more than three hours.

Despite the streamlined career mode, the game retains the Rock Band formula for gameplay of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. Playing on Easy automatically enables “No Fail Mode” for that player, and it can be turned on when playing in Quick Play. The one major addition to this entry is the integration of two-part or three-part harmony when one or two more microphones are plugged in respectively. Assuming you can find people who can sing harmony, it’s great, but even if you can’t, it still lets more players get in on the action if the other members aren’t quite adept at playing and singing simultaneously. The songs also aren’t that difficult compared to other Rock Band games. I often found myself getting 100% while playing guitar on hard, despite knowing little or nothing about most of these songs.



After completing the story, you can go back and take on the challenges, which are essentially playing through each set list without breaks between songs. As you’re doing this, you’ll be unlocking photographs that feature information on the band’s career, as well as behind-the scenes videos. Even with all of that said and done, the game is short-lived and you’d only play it again whenever guests are around or if you have the urge to play Beatles music. The title also features its own set of DLC. Simply put, you won’t be able to import Beatles music to Rock Band or vice versa.

The game does take a unique approach with the visuals during the songs. You’ll see digital renditions of Paul, John, George, and Ringo that sort of creep me out their countenance. I made a joke about how the “Sgt. Pepper Beatles Rock Band” issue of last month’s Game Informer had the Mario Brothers on the cover, but no one thought it was funny. When the story gets to Abbey Road, the “dreamscape vision” scenes dominate the background and sometimes you’ll simply want to watch these scenes instead of playing. The videos included with “Yellow Submarine” and “I Am the Walrus” are two of the highlights in this regard.



Each track is a master recording, so Beatles fans will have much to appreciate from this game. Another key thing is when you use the whammy bar on the guitar; it doesn’t make that god awful sound distortion, which is much welcomed. It makes me hope that future Rock Band games will give you the option to turn off distortions.

Coming from someone who isn’t into the Beatles, I’d probably say rent it or at least don’t pay the full $60, unless you’re a die-hard fan or you often have friends and family that are heavily into the Beatles visiting. It’s definitely a gateway game for non-gamers much like Wii Sports. I definitely prefer the core game design of this title over the previous entries, and that definitely makes up for my lack of interest in the source material.

4/5

This session will consist of two sessions, as the initial one was only about two hours and hardly enough to merit a full-fledged post. As of now we have logged just over 39 hours and are midway through September.

When we last left off, we were just about to hit the next full moon and another huge shadow battle. This full moon brought us to an abandoned military complex that went underground. We were then locked in by the opposing group of Persona users called Strega who are trying to prevent us from completing our mission of defeating all of the shadows and bringing an end to the Dark Hour.

Meanwhile, Junpei got himself kidnapped by that Chidori chick who has revealed her true intentions of getting Junpei to stop the mission. Of course, Junpei has no real say in these operations and he ended up lying about being the leader. SEES defeated the Shadow, which came in the form of a detachable tank and the other half of the tank would revive its counterpart if it fell in battle, thus, we had to defeat both parts at the same time or when they were whole again. We then made our way to Junpei and seized Chidori. She tried to summon her Persona, but we seized her before she could get her gun out. We then discovered that she has no real control over her Persona and she passed out, to awaken in the hospital. Here, Mitsuru and Akihiko kept her under heavy surveillance and interrogation, with interventions from Junpei.

As time passed, we increased our social link with Maya, the MMO player and learned that the servers for Innocent Sin Online are being shut down soon. It’s like The Matrix Online. Our tenure with the game also brought up the fact that Maya is totally into Steve at school, and doesn’t realize that she’s been chatting with Steve this whole time. We’re at Social Rank 9 with her, so it’s about to go down hard with her soon.

In other news, a typhoon has hit the area and cancelled the eagerly anticipated Cultural Festival. Many students were disappointed that they wouldn’t get to see Yukari in a maid costume. This also led to an exchange of banter between Kenji and Steve in the form of stand-up comedy.

Things are getting more intimate with Yukari, who is Social Rank 6 with us. During one date, she left her wallet at the train station and ran back to get it. It didn’t seem like she would be coming back soon, so we went after her only to find a gangbang about to ensue. We saved Yukari, but she was anything but appreciative for our heroism and got pissed at us. We fixed that by praying at the shrine, so everything is back to normal.

We are a little over a week from the next full moon. So stay tuned for the next installment, where we hope to power our way to the end!