Kid Icarus: Uprising - Sorry to keep you waiting!!

Kid Icarus: Uprising - Nintendo 3DS

Kid Icarus: Uprising is a 3rd person shooter / rail shooter released for the Nintendo 3DS back in 2012. Immediately upon launch, the game was met both with ruthless criticism and professional acclaim. 25 years separates this sequel from the franchises' original 1986 installment and as a result, both games are radically different.

But different, in this case, is awesome. Though the NES Kid Icarus took the form of a vertical platformer, featuring our protagonist, Pit, jumping to scroll up and down to complete levels, Kid Icarus: Uprising features Pit soaring through the skies, shooting down soldiers of the Underworld Army, and using Mega Lasers, explosions, and swords to defeat famous mythological bosses over the course of 25 levels. The game employs fully 3D models, has bright colors, a consistent frame-rate, impressively adjustable difficulty levels, an appealing interface, a variety of game modes including multiplayer, customizable weapons and ability configurations, a good length, high replay value, cute dialogue, likable characters, beautifully crafted levels, and fun gameplay that should be appreciated both in long and short play-sessions.

Wow. That's a lot of good things. How is it that this game hasn't got everyone foaming at the 3DS-game-deprived mouth? 1 thing: the controls.

The controls of Kid Icarus: Uprising are really the only thing that keeps the game from perfection. Stay with me here as I describe them.

You have two different sections of every mission: Air and Ground. The air sections are on rails, so your flight path is taken care of for you, but dodging enemy fire is your own responsibility. Use the Circle Pad to dodge and move. Great. Shoot and attack with the L button. Strange that attack is not A, B, X, or Y, but whatever. Fine. Circle Pad and L. Now aim by sliding your stylus on the touch-screen- an action that uses up the entirety of your right hand. While on the ground, everything is the same, but camera is controlled by flicking the touch screen, much like how you would spin a globe to rotate it, and you use the circle pad to move through the levels as you would in a typical action game.

Basically, in order to really aim effectively with your right hand on the touch screen, you must hold your heavy 3DS in your left hand alone. This can be uncomfortable. And dumb. It really does take away from the experience. Everything offered in Kid Icarus: Uprising is crafted with extreme attention to detail and with mastery of game design in general, but the hand-fatiguing controls will inhibit you from playing more than one or two levels at a time.

DISCLAIMER: the controls can be changed in order for aiming to be performed with the ABXY buttons, but while this is way more comfortable, it is slower, less accurate, and less responsive.

The controls are disabling enough to warrant considerable score reductions for Uprising, but they do not make this game bad. Kid Icarus: Uprising is still a fantastic shooter overflowing with Nintendo charm, but it is nearly impossible to play for long stretches of time, which is a huge bummer. When a game is this good, it is disappointing and frustrating to have it physically hurt to play. Still, during the moments without discomfort, I argue that Uprising is a masterpiece. Simply put, it is a hard sell: if you can get past being unable to play this title for more than 30 minutes at a time, you'll love it; if you're looking for something to relax with and play for hours and hours on, say, a long car ride, Uprising is not for you.

Gunman Clive

My experience with Gunman Clive started as one of those rare times when I actually purchase a game on a friend's recommendation. Shout out to my friend Andrew for suggesting this one to me. The game's price of $2 on the Nintendo 3DS E-shop was also a large contributor of why I went ahead and bought it. Turns out it was worth all 200 pennies, because Gunman Clive is actually pretty damn great, so let's talk about it.

Gunman Clive - Nintendo 3DS

Intro / Summary
     Gunman Clive is a side-scrolling shooter platformer that combines the best platforming elements from Rayman Origins with the best shooting elements from Mega Man II. You move from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen shooting anything that is A) alive, and B) isn't you. Complete each level by jumping on platforms, climbing ladders and trying not to die as much as you are totally going to die. There are 20 levels each taking about 75 seconds to complete if you don't die, and something around 3 minutes each if you die as often as I did. All together I beat the game in about 65 minutes on a long car ride my band and I took from Long Island to Washington D.C. last week, and I did continue to play it on a harder difficulty once the game was beaten which believe it or not is something I don't normally do. The fact that I took the time to replay this game immediately after having beaten it means the game was either too short, or the game was really fun to play; I am going with the latter on the grounds that I feel a game can really only be too short if you paid $20+ for it, and beat it in 65 minutes- Once again, this game cost me $2, so I consider myself to have gotten exactly what I paid for, and I was pretty down with it.

Good Things: Also the title of a great Reel Big Fish song
     One of the first things to be noticed about Gunman Clive is the visual style and the musical score; both are beautiful. The game employs a visual effect that makes it appear to have been hand-drawn frame by frame, complimenting the game's ol' western style. Gunman Clive looks like the music video for A-ha's Take On Me meets an old western film. Swag-tastic.
    Gunman Clive prizes itself on the classic easy-to-play, hard-to-master technique. All you are able to do in the game is jump, walk, and shoot, but the level design is so clever that even these old-school moves won't get boring before you finish the game. The game is pretty tough, being at about "diamond" on a hard-scale from Vanilla pudding to Dwayne "the rock" Johnson, but it is never frustrating because of a combination of different video game staples being removed from Gunman Clive. First, there are no lives in the game, which means no Game Overs. Live are outdated and dumb for reasons that have been discussed infinitely by gamers who aren't me, so if you need an explanation on that, go somewhere else and come back. No lives in Gunman Clive. Without any lives, checkpoints aren't really necessary either, because the threat of being thrown back to the start of a 55 second level in which dying has no penalty really isn't that scary, so those are removed as well, which would only be frustrating if the levels were long, but they are not. The game presents a challenge intense enough to make sure that it won't be completed in 20 minutes, but it is not so unfair that it frustrates the player. I believe "sweet-spot" is the proper term here, but I've always found that term to be suggestive (made worse by the pink-colored text), much like how utilization of the word "moist" suddenly begins to make me feel sticky out o....sorry, lost my train of thought there. Difficulty curve is just right.


The game has a very modest length. Games these days (or at least the ones I have been playing) have the most aggravating tendency to last about 6 hours longer than the amount of time for which I care to play them. I always think it is rather cocky of a game to assume that I will refuse to quit playing if it gets boring just because I'm already 10 hours in and I might as well finish it. Well, those games are fucking wrong, and they're the games out of which I take the most pleasure in ripping apart. Gunman Clive, like I said, is only about an hour long if you only play through it once. Honestly, the fact that this game is so good, while being so short makes me fear that the developers lost confidence during development and in the voice of an insecure 13 year old mumbled at some point "aw shucks, no one is gonna wanna play this game!", so they made the game an hour long assuming that no one would ever want to play it for more than an hour any way. Now don't get me wrong, I am glad that the game was only an hour long because it means I have more time to play other games, but honestly, this may be the first time ever where I wish a game was longer, but perhaps only by or hour or so. Also, you can play as a duck after beating the game once. This mode is called "Duck Mode" and it makes me giggle.

Short-Comings: "Homecoming" is a great Green Day song that sounds similar to "Short-Comings".
          Hmm...the game is short...but like...that is a good thing when playing simple games...I mean, Pac-Man is a great game, but does anyone want to play that for more than 20 minutes? I got nothing for short-comings. Gunman Clive is a great game, and it is so short that it ends before fucking anything up. So I am going to use this space to quote something profound I read on Kotaku: "The longer a game is, the more it has to justify its length." OR a different quote by Ben Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Puntuation: "Madworld is a 6-8 hour game with enough unique ideas to fill a 3 hour game." I isolate these points because they have to do with length, which is a HUGE fucking problem with games nowadays. To all game developers everywhere: If you only have enough good ideas to keep me entertained for 5 hours, then your game should be 5 hours long. BAM. That's all folks. Gunman Clive has enough unique ideas to keep me REALLY satisfied (another sticky phrase) for 1 hour, and so the game is 1 hour long. And for that, Gunman Clive, you get my virtual glad-hand.

                                                                                                 Conclusion:

This game is $2 and is one of the best games I have played in a long time. You can beat it in a single lunch break and get right back to playing Super Smash Bros. afterwards, so just do it. I'm serious. I know I am just a computer, but seriously, buy this game and play it. Recommended to everyone.

Playground Series: This Shit Is Bananas

I've recently learned to stop apologizing. So EXCUSE my bitch ass for not posting for a bit.

P.N.03

Okay so you know how when a game comes out people are all like "wahhh imma go check IGN anf fuckong.. Gameinformersomeshit fuckin'...askn all ma frendzz an whatev see hoiw good the gmae is befo I spend moneuy err whatev" I say FUCK THAT. In order to know how good a game is, you have to play it yourself. And no game has taught me that lesson more thoroughly than P.N.03.

P.N.03 is a third-person shooter that gives off a classic arcade-like feel. You navigate through linear levels and just try to fucking kill everything in your path before they kill you. Once you reach the end of the level, you move on to the next level. The point of the game is to beat every level and once you do, you're expected to move onto the next difficulty. This game's concept is simple and during this day and age, it could appear to be outdated and stale. This game was reviewed poorly and was criticized for it's sloppy controls, small move-set, length, and gameplay. Well you know what I say? Wanna know what I think about these claims? I think FUCK. THAT. This game is AWESOME. It's so frustratingly difficult, but rewarding and even though it only takes you 2 hours to beat the story on Easy mode, it will take you a lot longer than 2 hours to earn the ultimate prize.

So we gotta talk about all the different aspects of the game that make it what it is. Like I said, P.N.03 is pretty much a level-based action game. You start in one "room", kill all of the enemies, then move onto the next room. Once you complete every room, the level ends and you are pushed to the next one. Easy right? NO. So first of all, what you need to understand in order to play this game is that even though, yes, it is a shooter, there is only 1 or 2 buttons that make you shoot. You got the A button, which unleashes the rage of your trusty Palm Shot, and different combinations of the D-pad buttons + A for your strongest attacks. Knowing when to use your 2 different shots is important but what is even more important is knowing that every other button, including, B, L, R, LL, RR, Z and Y are all different buttons that let you dodge in different ways. The point is that health and energy necessary to charge your strongest attacks is scarce and if you fuck up, the game is not going to forgive you. Every single bit of your health counts so the skill you need to master in order to beat this game is not shooting the enemies, rather it is dodging the enemies, because you better believe that if you're trying to kill these enemies, then they are trying to kill you.
 
Imagine each room is like a spacious, in-door paintball arena. There are sections of the room where you are out in the open, as well as sections where you can jump and duck behind things. Using the environment in order effectively avoid the enemy onslaught while picking off each enemy one by one is critical in order to beat, or even play this game. The incentive to avoiding every single bullet shot at you, in addition to not dying, is the fact that the game awards you a certain amount of points each time you complete a room, and then gives you a nice bonus each time you complete a level. Wow points? Like fuckin....Super Mario Bros. or some shit? Yeah points. Obviously, whenever someone hears the word "points", they think of older games. Points, and trying to achieve the greatest amount of them, is a personal goal. In Mario Bros, you aren't rewarded for getting a high score with some kinda fuckin power up or something, you were just supposed to feel good about getting more points than ya friends. P.N.03 tries to rekindle that desire to snag the most points and does it flawlessly.....not satisfied are you? Okay, you got me. P.N.03 does definitely give you incentive to earn points, but not in order to fulfill any video game goal, but to fulfill you sexual goals. Yup I said it. So lemme explain this shit. You see the points given to you at the end of each room and level is the currency in P.N.03. You can exchange the points you've earned in order to upgrade your suit, increase your health, or buy different suits. The specs of your suit, predictably, affect how quickly you are able to vanquish enemies during levels, thus making it easier for you to beat the game faster. The amount of points earned at the end of each room is determined by how quickly you completed the room, as well as how much damage you took. Then the bonus at the end of the level is determined by your average performance during each room. So where is the sex? Well what if I told you that the character you play as was a woman? What if I said she was curvy? and sexy? What if I said that while you're standing there idle on the screen, and pretty much whenever she is not jumping or rolling around, she is shaking her ass right in your face? What if I said that if you earned a fuckload of points over time, and purchased every suit, and upgraded every suit, and completed the game, that you would get the final suit: Vanessa in her underwear. Yeah I'm a fucking pig, whatever. It's funny! Think about it: the ultimate, final suit as a reward for beating the game, leaving no stone unturned and no enemy alive, is just porn. It's amazing and kicks the shit out of earning any Trophy nowadays.

This game has an insane learning curve, but it's not hard, it's just untraditional. I know when I used to play Halo 3 with my brother, I would head out and if I got shot, fucking, whatever I didn't care. You just run away, get your health back automatically and then you can go out and shoot again (I am not good at Halo). In P.N.03, if you just run out there and not give a shit, then you're gonna die in like, actually 5 seconds. You have to be stealthy and attentive. You have to learn how to use all of your different dodging techniques in order to avoid fucking EVERYTHING. I remember I definitely just ran out into the open field first thing when I turned on this game and I got pwned. I looked at the screen and I was like "...ffffuckn whaaa??" So I reconsidered my strategy, and learned how to play the game the right way. Ultimately, the fact that this shooter was so different than anything I had ever played before gave me confidence in games that try to teach an old dog new tricks. Not every game can do it, but some, very few, can. And among those games that successfully tackle familiar game genres in untraditional ways is, in my opinion, P.N.03.