GameCola Recap: November 2012

November seems to have been the all-podcast month for me at obscure gaming website GameCola.net. And I'm still having trouble describing the site in a way that flows. "Videogame humor website" worked so well, but we've changed our slogan to "GameCola: Gaming Outside the Mainstream!". That's a little cumbersome to drop into casual conversation, though it still works as a slogan. But "obscure gaming website" sounds less like we talk about obscure games, and more like nobody's ever heard of us. Both of which are true.

Whoo, that's a dense-looking paragraph. Better get to the part where I hyperlink to stuff.

Podcasts:

- GC Podcast #55: Gaming Outside the Mainstream

- Off-Topic Podcast #3: The Thirties

Videos:

- GC Podcast #38 on YouTube: Too Many Podcasters

- GC Podcast #39-40 on YouTube: The (Rest of the) Mike and Jeddy Show

A Day in the Sun, Literally

According to the in-game timer that appears when you save your game, I have now spent 24 hours playing Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

I did the math—that's an entire day. And I'm not even finished with it yet.

I like the game well enough...but do I like it enough to justify pouring a whole day of my life into it? Will the next few hours it'll take me to finish the game do anything to drastically change my opinion one way or another? In the long run, will it be worth the couple of extra hours I added to the game by obsessively checking every. single. pot. and. crate. for apples, cookies, and cash?

I look back at Final Fantasy VIII, which took even longer to play, and I didn't come anywhere close to completing all the optional material in that game. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has considerably less in the way of nonessential content, and most of it involves nothing more than a slight detour or an extra puzzle to solve. No card games with ever-changing rules to master; no rare monsters that rarely drop rare items. Everything I'm doing feels like a normal part of the game—it's just not mandatory.

That's what makes the sidequests of Chrono Trigger so great: instead of bloating the game with new  gameplay elements and superficial length, they offer you more areas to explore if you already like what you're doing. The rewards for continued adventuring are new challenges, more story, and items that give you a better shot at defeating the final boss—but if you're eager to be done, you can bypass them entirely and still feel like you've brought the game to a satisfactory conclusion. There are no gaping holes in your Pokédex; there's no smug Dr. Robotnik denying you a proper ending as he juggles the Chaos Emeralds you missed. Chrono Trigger doesn't guilt you into completing its sidequests if you're not totally in love with them.

Happily, the same is largely true of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. There's still a tally of how many important names you've added to your journal through conversing with people, and the cute little magical Djinn creatures you collect and summon are arranged on a menu screen that makes it obvious when you're missing a few, but there's less of a pressure to find everything out of obligation. You're adding journal entries because they enhance the story, and scooping up Djinn because they make combat and character customization more fun and interesting.

Or because you're a completionist, and it's really not that much more effort to shoot for 100% completion...

The trouble with Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is that almost everything about it is "good enough" for someone of my tastes. The graphics aren't beautiful, but they're not as hideously blocky as I'd feared from the screenshots I saw before playing the game. The plot isn't blowing me away, but it's nice to see some continuity with the previous games in the series. A few of the Zelda-esque puzzles are pretty clever, but most of them are not only simple but make no effort to hide the obvious solution. Random encounters present virtually no challenge and are concluded in 1-2 turns of mashing the Attack command, but the boss battles are fun and satisfying, particularly the one I just fought...against a completely optional boss.

What gets me about Golden Sun—the whole series; not just this game—is that it's an entry-level puzzle-RPG through and through...with a handful of shining moments that lure in the seasoned veterans, teasing them just enough to believe that the series' brain-bending, tactics-demanding potential might be realized if they just keep playing. Inevitably, it's the more challenging optional content that makes this series worth my time, but if I have to slog through hours and hours of battles that require no effort and puzzles that solve themselves, is what I get out of each game truly worthwhile? 

Final Fantasy VIII was the turning point where I realized that fun needs to trump compulsion in the pursuit of 100% completion. Perhaps Golden Sun: Dark Dawn will be the turning point where I stop playing sequels in series that fail to deliver what I know I can get elsewhere.

There may be hope for me yet...

Exfanding Review: Double Dragon

In an effort to expand my knowledge of movies based on video games (to broaden my frame of reference when other people talk about them; not because I think they'll be any good), I sat down with my wife to watch the 1994 film Double Dragon.

Her reaction: It was painful to watch.

My reaction: It was exactly the kind of cheesy, tongue-in-cheek '90s action flick I didn't realize I had been craving.

 Don't let my reaction fool you, though; Double Dragon is not a very good movie. It falls under the category of "awesomely bad," the term used by a friend of mine to describe the Spanish dub of The Legend of Zorro—that is to say, parts of it are so over-the-top bad that they're good again. Which is the evilest thing of all.

I don't recall ever playing any incarnation of the game, but I've seen and heard bits and pieces about it over the years. I know about Billy and Jimmy Lee, the two bad dudes (whoops, wrong game) who punch and kick the stuffing out of wave after wave of enemies, all in an effort to rescue their (their?) girlfriend, Princess What's-Her-Name (whoops, wrong game again). Along the way, they occasionally beat up such iconic, vaguely human enemies such as Abobo...and...yeah, that's about all I know.

And someone, somewhere, said, "Let's fill an hour and a half with this game that takes 15 minutes to beat if you don't die."

So they fleshed out the simple kidnapping plot with this story about an ancient Chinese medallion known as the "Double Dragon" that grants the wearer incredible power of body and spirit. The medallion was broken into two pieces, hidden away from people who might misuse it, and promptly stolen by people who might misuse it.

The spirit half is stolen, at least; the power half is possessed by some possibly unnamed girl (did they ever mention her by name?) who hangs out with Billy and Jimmy, and who totally doesn't try to use the medallion when her life is in danger and she's about to get thwacked by the bad guy. (Or maybe she does, and I missed the subtlety of it.)

Notice how we've sort of lost the girlfriend-kidnapping plot. The girlfriend (Marion—she has a name) does appear, however, as more of a not-until-the-end girlfriend, who happens to have her own gang, which prowls the streets of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles in the far-flung year of 2007 against bad guys like this film's main antagonist, who is actually the T-1000 from Terminator 2 disguised as a goofy, gaudy bajillionaire.

As far as cheesy movie villains go, he certainly is one. It's funny how he's not really evil, and he doesn't seem to be all that good at villainy; at best, he's like a mediocre CEO who fires his employees by turning into a shadow and choking them to death. Sample quote: "I just want total domination of one major American City! Is that too much to ask for? Is it? Is it? Huh?"

He's not the only antagonist; there's Whip Girl (who I'm pretty sure never got a name), hordes of colorful cannon-fodder grunts, and, of course, Bo Abobo.

Abobo on steroids:

Abobo on more steroids:

Abobo on spinach:

There are plenty of action sequences, all of which seem to have been choreographed by someone who merely shouted out things he wanted punched or broken, leaving the "martial arts" bit to the imagination of the actors. Somebody even threw in a couple of vehicle chases, with vehicles that have onboard computer navigation screens so you feel like you're inside a video game! Not the right video game, mind you, but the fact that somebody thought to make a video game movie feel at all like a video game? Genius.

What made Double Dragon so fun to watch was that it wasn't really a failed attempt at a game-to-movie translation; it was more like a live-action adaptation of a terrible cartoon based on a video game, one that tried its best to be taken seriously while fully acknowledging its ridiculous source material, all the while referencing the source material's source material wherever possible.

If that makes any sense.

The absolutely random cameos from the likes of Vanna White and Andy Dick. The sight gags and one-liners that actually made me laugh out loud—I am a sucker for punnery and the ironically absurd, so take that with a grain of salt. The gratuitous jumping. The whole production feels like Escape from New York meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meets Mighty Morphin Power Rangers meets Looney Tunes, which, in and of itself, is amusing to me.

It's still got a quirky-but-otherwise-average script, a predictable plot, passable acting, messy fight scenes, and a forgettable soundtrack (which at least attempted to sound like a video game toward the end!), which keep Double Dragon from being a good movie. But, unless your sensibilities are closer to my wife's, it remains a fun movie.

Coming in with low expectations and no nostalgia for anyone to tread on, I found myself pleasantly surprised. So, if you need your cheesy, tongue-in-cheek '90s action flick fix, Double Dragon might just do the trick.

Especially if you're watching the (Swedish?) subtitled version on YouTube, which has subtitles that sound really funny when you read them aloud as though they're in English.

Stanna, get me a pudding! Pudding forever. My type.

Thanksgiving; or, Why Not to Write About Thanksgiving

I'm sometimes reluctant to post anything topical when a holiday or other commemorative event rolls around, if it's just for the sake of posting something topical—it's not that holiday posts are bad, per se, but they make annoying our readers even easier than usual. For example:

- Distinctly US holidays such as Thanksgiving have the potential to alienate our international readers (you may recall that one person from Romania who navigated here by accident that one time);

- Religious holidays such as Easter aren't celebrated by everyone, and even if they were, I'd still be wary of helping oversaturate the public consciousness with the only thing that anyone is able to talk about that day (or that half of the year, if we're talking Christmas);

- Valentine's Day and other romantic celebrations (such as wedding anniversaries) remind your unhappiest single readers how lonely, bitter, jealous, and/or emotionally vulnerable they're feeling;

- Any day that, simply by mentioning it, means you have to pick sides—I can't just say that it's Veterans Day; I need to condone or condemn war in the same breath, which will divide readers, or else people will start making assumptions about my beliefs based on what I don't say, so I need to write a longwinded explanation that honors our veterans while even-handedly respecting both viewpoints about war, which will still aggravate some people;

- Tax Day.

 I could go on, but even posts about how posts about holidays can be obnoxious, can be obnoxious. Like that last sentence.

Exfanding tradition dictates that, unless we've got a full-blown post in mind, we should find a comic book cover relevant to the holiday that we want to recognize, maybe throw in a famous quote, and call it a day. Well, if you can overlook the fact that I forgot Halloween and blew my chance to write about the Fake Election this year, I'm not one to argue with tradition.

So, in the traditional Exfanding style, allow me to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Why are they playing Christmas music already?
-Me

Image from www.coverbrowser.com.