Welp, looks like it’s time to bookend the year with another post about my own silly personal interests. Don’t worry though, I’m not gonna make a bunch of gifs about some anime that may or may not have directly inspired the creation of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. What I am gonna do is write a bunch of words about a random collection of games I’ve played!
The Bouncer
This game was ostensibly supposed to be a “playable action movie” that blended the best parts of action games and narrative heavy RPGs, featuring some of the slickest visuals of the time and the entire film’s worth of voice acting, complete with language settings and subtitle options. If The Bouncer had come out today, I have no doubt that there would have been a director’s commentary option in there as well, and honestly, I kind of wish the existing game had that, if only because it would provide some insight into the design process for this game, Re: WHY IS EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS GAME SO TERRIBLE
The plot of The Bouncer is that the three bouncers who ostensibly work at a bar inexplicably named DOGSTREET witness the main character’s homeless not-girlfriend (described in the game booklet as having become DOGSTREET’s “mascot”, which is BULLSHIT BECAUSE DOGSTREET’S MASCOT IS CLEARLY THE DOG EMBLAZONED ON ALL ITS PARAPHENALIA JESUS CHRIST THIS GAME WAS WRITTEN BY MONKIES) get kidnapped by a ninja wearing what appears to be Mankind’s facemask, and then spend the rest of the game skipping work so they can pummel their way up the corporate ladder of the local evil Solar Energy Conglomerate. You see, kidnapper/CEO Dauragon C. Mikado has decided to take revenge on the society that failed to save his sister’s life by using his newly constructed remote energy transfer satellite as an ORBITAL DEATH LASER. His plan to accomplish this involves kidnapping some random homeless girl because HUGE SURPRISE it turns out that she’s the robot clone of his sister. Or she’s his sister’s cyborg zombie. Or something. Either way, Mikado needs to plug his giant telescoping satellite laser into his robosister so he can blast hot vengeance all over the face of the earth because [SCENE MISSING]
The best part is that they spring this on you literally out of NOWHERE
Less hilariously, the “playable” portion of this “playable action movie” is, at best, aggressively shitty. You basically run around a bunch of rooms in various locales with no interactible objects or useful geometry to distract you from the game’s incredibly repetitive combat, usually consisting of using the same one or two techniques against a group of identical triplets who have decided to try to rough you and your fellow bouncers up. Boss battles play identically to normal enemy encounters and the only real variation in gameplay comes if you choose a different character to play as, and even then, the only difference is the animation of whatever attack you are repeatedly using to stunlock the feckless computer enemies into oblivion. Also you probably shouldn’t be playing as more than one character your first time through the game, since only the character you choose to play as will gain BOUNCER POINTS at the end of battle, which are required to learn new techiques that aren’t complete ass and otherwise make it so the final boss won’t require upwards of six billion dropkicks to the nuts before keeling over and admitting defeat.
If you want an idea of what the gameplay of The Bouncer is like, just imagine this dipshit donkey kicking a security guard in the face, FOREVER.
Oh man, speaking of the final boss, in true Squaresoft fashion the CEO of the evil electric company is a multistage beat down against his various transformations, by which I mean, you kick his ass, and then he takes off his edgy trench coat, revealing that underneath he has been BARE-CHESTING SUSPENDERS this entire time, at which point you have to fight him AGAIN, his shirtless suspenders somehow granting him a SECOND LIFE BAR and UPGRADED ATTACKS. Did I mention that if you beat the game with all three characters (which requires you to play through this game THREE SEPARATE TIMES (WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF)) he will get back up after round two and dramatically unbutton his overalls, REVEALING A MAGICAL DRAGON TATTOO THAT ALLOWS HIM TO USE EVIL PURPLE FIRE KUNG FU
Yeah Dauragon knows what the ladies want *FLAME PUNCHES THE LADIES IN THE GUT*
From this progression I can only assume that if Dauragon were to remove his pants he might literally ASCEND TO GODHOOD.
Oh and in case you can’t tell JUST BY LOOKING AT THEM, the characters in this game were all designed by the now infamous Tetsuya Nomura. After the downright mainstream designs he put out for Final Fantasy 7 and 8, he must have removed his shirt and reached his FINAL FORM, because this some next level shit from the future inventor of some of the most memorable fashion disasters in video game history. Like I don’t even know where to begin with some of these designs, shit is like some kind of Fashion Chernobyl.
NOT TO SCALE
The SaGa Series
Pictured: A SaGa game being remarkably candid about your chances of success
The SaGa Series is a group of Japanese RPGs created by mad genius Akitoshi Kawazu in an attempt to give the player the ability to organically shape their role playing experience to their own tastes with the unintended unifying theme of outrageously complex underlying game mechanics which are never explained, and quite often never even revealed, to you the player. I think I’ve seen like ONE SaGa game that has any in-game tutorials available, and for every aspect of gameplay that it explains, there are like SIX other game-defining concepts that it doesn’t even so much as HINT AT.
And I’m not talking like the game never tells you the secret method required to unlock a cool ultimate treasure or something. Which it doesn’t. But more to the point, I’m talking like one time I killed one too many lizards in the lizard cave, which caused a frontier town the other side of the world to get BLOWN THE FUCK UP by a giant bedazzled sandworm. I’m talking about the time I randomly pressed the right control stick in as though it were a button and discovered that doing so activated a core gameplay mechanic vital to completing most of the dungeons in the game. I’m talking about the primary method the game expects you to increase your characters’ power being to routinely choose one of three random abilities presented to you at the end of a scenario and place it in one of seven spots on a hexagonal grid with literally no explanation of how what you’re doing works beyond showing you a preview of how a bunch of unexplained numbers will change depending on where you stick it. I’m talking about how you’d better figure out REALLY FAST whether the game is scaling the enemies based on the numbers of battles you’ve won, especially if you’re playing the game blind and flailing around too much in the early game trying to figure out where to go. Because again, why would SaGa tell you where to go? What, does SaGa look like your mom to you? DO YOU WANT SAGA TO TUCK YOU INTO YOUR GOD DAMN BED AT NIGHT WITH A PECK ON THE CHEEK AND GLANCE IN THE CLOSET TO ASSURE YOU THAT YES THERE ARE NO MONSTERS IN THERE? WELL THE JOKE’S ON YOU KID BECAUSE WHILE YOU WERE SCREWING AROUND IN A PLOT-IRRELEVANT CAVE OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE YOU KILLED ONE TOO MANY GOBLINS AND NOW YOUR CLOSET’S FULL TO THE FUCKIN BRIM WITH ALL MANNER OF GREATER LICHES
I like these games. I really do. But my enjoyment of them is directly proportional to the number of GameFAQs pages I have open at any given time while playing.
The Xeno Series
Pictured: Two characters from the SAME GAME
What if you were anime Jesus and you had to kill the anime Demiurge using a giant kung fu robot whose power source was the literal Judeo-Christian God trapped in a lower plane of existence as a disembodied field of electromagnetic radiation? What if you had to kill the anime Space Pope with the help of android Mary Magdalene before he could use his giant robot cathedral to annihilate his two sworn enemies, Gnosticism and Secular Government? What if the Devil sent a bunch of robots to wipe out all the sentient lifeforms God had created and God retaliated by transforming said lifeforms into HORRIBLE MINDLESS ABOMINATIONS, and it was your job, as anime Jesus, to BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF BOTH OF THEM?
The answer to all of these questions, of course, is that you would be playing a game from the Xeno Series, because these games are all fucking INSANE
Reminder: Chu Chu died for your sins
Sonic ’06
To clarify for the uninitiated:
Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) is the game where you play as a mascot character codenamed “Mr. Needlemouse” who uses his Bubsy-like speed and in-your-face 90s commercial appeal to defeat an overweight animal hoarder with way too much time on his hands.
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is the game where a human princess character unique to this game becomes Sonic’s love interest and eventually kisses Sonic on the lips to bring him back to life after he gets stabbed through the heart by another character unique to the game, Mephiles the Dark, who is a spikier shadowy counterpart of Shadow the Hedgehog. Yes, you read that right, this game’s villain is THE DARKER EDGIER VERSION OF THE DARKER EDGIER VERSION OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
ORIGINAL CHARACTER (DO NOT STEAL)
Sonic ’06 is a game where it often feels like you’re just constantly hoping that when you press the attack button, it will actually cause Sonic to attack, and not, say, launch himself into outer space, or blast him through the floor into inescapable lava, or breakdance off into the horizon while you and the camera are left behind, watching the shot dim as the game deducts a life and restarts the level. No breakdancing allowed, the game chides, as it silently replaces every button with BREAKDANCE.
Sonic ’06 is a game with gameplay SO BROKEN that the game will often completely take control of your character away from you whenever the track you’re running on gets any more complicated than a straight line, for fear that you might accidentally rub up against the wrong wall and PHASE INTO ANOTHER DIMENSION. Even when the game is ostensibly in control, though, there’s a hilariously high chance that Sonic may just FLY OFF THE RAMP he’s running on and die ANYWAY. There’s a sequence where you run through a loop and you can’t actually adjust your angle during it, so Sonic will just run forward in whatever direction you entered the loop, meaning that if you don’t have the foresight to know that the game is about to remove your ability to control the character there is a 1000% probability that sonic is, at some point during the loop, going run off the edge of it at roughly MACH 5 and is now careening into the skybox, where he will die, restart the level.
Sonic ’06 is a game whose failure states for this game are so bizarre and poorly implemented that I am entirely capable of believing that literally no bug-fixing was done prior to the game’s release. When you die in Sonic ’06, and you will die, it is the rule, rather than the exception, that it defies logic. Sonic flies through an invisible death wall and suddenly just noclips through a mountain? WORKING AS INTENDED. Sonic jumps over a wall at 400mph and the camera doesn’t know how to handle it, causing the entire stage to vanish, leaving Sonic breakdancing above the black void of Hell? IMPLIMENTED AS DESIGNED. Sonic gets caught in a programming oversight and is condemned to being repeatedly flung against an invisible wall, trapped in an endless purgatory of horrible looping voiceclips? IT’S NO USE IT’S NO USE IT’S NO USE IT’S NO USE
Basically what I’m saying is you’d have more fun (and much more responsive controls) trying to use your controller to direct the actions of a real live hedgehog.
Final Fantasy: Dirge of Cerberus
PLAGUEDDARKNESS.TUMBLR.COM
What if The Force Returns had starred a Jedi Master Jar Jar Binks and ended with a sequel hook where Samuel L. Jackson showed up and recruited him for the Avengers?
What if when Go Set a Watchman was published we found out Harper Lee’s reluctance to release it was because it was a terrible AU Twilight fanfic with the main character’s name blatantly find/replaced to X Billups?
What if the final chronological sequel to Final Fantasy VII was a poorly implemented 3rd person shooter that starred completely optional and entirely plot-irrelevant looks-27-but-is-actually-57 glampire VINCENT VALENTINE, and its plot assumed that you were not only familiar with his (again, entirely optional) backstory as laid out in the original game but were desperately interested in playing an ENTIRE GAME REVOLVING AROUND IT? What if Vincent’s support team consisted of Final Fantasy VII’s OTHER totally optional character, a serially ineffectual electric company executive, and original character slash walking fashion disaster, with a later appearance by a now DISTRACTINGLY TEXAN airship pilot, a blink or you’ll miss it cameo by everyone’s favorite Super Smash Brother, and a FORCED STEALTH SECTION where you play as god damn CAIT SITH, aka nobody’s favorite gameplay mechanic featuring nobody’s favorite character?
Shalua what is even HAPPENING HERE
What Gothy McBroodgun had to fight against a heretofore unmentioned cabal of bad guys with a vague connection to PREVIOUS GAME’S ANTAGONISTS who now pose a serious threat to world peace, no really guys, these dudes are serious business, please take my OCs seriously
What if Alucard Von Shootman’s love interest in this abortion of a game ended up being a 19-year-old girl in the body of a 9-year-old who’s had the mind of our 57-year-old protagonist’s now tragically deceased and also unrequited one true love downloaded into her brain?
Also she’s Shalua’s sister
What if the game ended with a literal self insert of Camui Gackt showing up
GAME OVER
RETURN OF GACKT
GAME OVER
And that’s pretty much it for this installment of my ongoing Master’s Class in Having HORRIBLE TASTE. Tune in next time when I write like a million god damn words about every horrible manga I’ve ever read
