Author: aaron-r-conklin

You can count on one hand the number of “M”-rated games on Nintendo’s fam-centric Wii, and it’ll take you only slightly more fingers to count the number of quality third-party software titles, too.

Add one to both categories—a bloody, hilarious and utterly immature thrill ride with more pop-culture and videogame history references than an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” No More Heroes is the videogame equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino movie, and I mean that in the best possible sense.

Now that’s a knife: Cyber butcher Travis Touchdown goes all Kill Bill on some bad guys in No More Heroes.

Our protagonist is the brilliantly named Travis Touchdown, an anime-, porn- and wrestling-obsessed would-be assassin. To fend off boredom and do the dirty with the French blonde he met in a bar the night before, Travis finds himself going all Luke Skywalker with his lightsaber-like beam katana, battling his way up the weirdest assassin leaderboard ever to grace a videogame. The rogue’s gallery features a singing, gun-slinging doctor, a woman who fires bombs from a prosthetic leg, and a Houdini-like magician, just to name three. All of ’em are distinct, fascinating characters, brought to bizarre life through a funky animation style and first-rate voice-acting.

Oddly enough, Heroes’ most entertaining parts are actually its most repetitive—clicking and slashing the Wii remote and nunchuk to eviscerate the endless stream of grunts, all of whom erupt in firework-like fountains of blood and gold coins after you deliver the coup de grace. After each kill, a set of three slots spin at the bottom of the screen; if they match up, Travis can unleash brutal moves with ridiculous, dessert-based names. It’s like a trip to Assassin Vegas with a pit stop at a blood-drenched Dairy Queen.

Even the side missions are a trip down the freakshow highway. To earn the extra scratch needed to enter ranking matches, you’ll find yourself mowing lawns, lugging coconuts and stabbing the beach with your katana to score buried treasure. At several points, you’ll have to use the sword as a baseball bat, smacking fastballs back at enemies to mow them all down. Oh, and you save the game by camping Travis on a toilet. Need we say more?

Outside of the 20 or so specific locations that are key to the story, Santa Destroy—the city Travis and the rest of this assassin tango calls home—isn’t exactly what you’d call a vibrant metropolis. There are the cursory cars and pedestrians, but the Wii doesn’t sport the graphical firepower to make a city come alive the way the Xbox 360 and PS3 can. Basically, you can consider the time you’ll spend trolling from Point A to Point B on your motorcycle as a brief purgatory between missions. For a hell this hilarious and delicious, it’s utterly worth it.

videogame

I like to call it stick shock.

If you play any of 2K Sports‘ basketball offerings, then you’ve grown used to the fact that the right analog stick is used to shoot the ball, a mechanic that makes so much sense you wonder why it took so many years to implement. Conversely, if you’ve played any of Electronic Arts‘ hoops games, you know that the right stick is the Trick Stick, used to bust those ankle-breaking moves on the way to the hoop.

Who’s got game? You might be better off combining March Madness 2008’s backcourt with NCAA College Hoops 2K8’s lightning fast offense (pictured) for a well-rounded team of ballers.

And if, like me, you play both, the first game of the new videogame college basketball season—or, in this case, NCAA College Hoops 2K8—is always a blast. Especially when you spin the stick at midcourt, expecting to dodge a defender, but instead leap up to launch a half-court duck.

O.K., so some adjustment is needed. And luckily, both 2K8 and EA’s March Madness 2008 let you make plenty of adjustments —before the games, during time-outs, during halftime, during the Atlantic-Ocean deep recruiting season. If there’s something you’re looking to control on or off the court, it’s pretty much here, with the exception of the consistent ability to defend a backdoor cut (2K8) or shoot a consistent jump shot (March Madness).

I’ve noted before that nailing the atmosphere is the key to any good college sports videogame. This used to be EA’s hoops signature stock-in-trade, but 2K8‘s new sixth man meter finally steals some thunder from the master. Taking care of business on the court fills the meter and unleashes the wrath of your rabid student section on the opposition. EA’s offering has meters, too—player-specific ones—but somehow, the constant, in-your-face taunting I found so interesting last year now seems kinda fifth grade-level uncouth. I get that trash-talking and mascot melees might happen in a Cavs-Terps rivalry game, but Cavs-University of Albany? What the hell happened to sportsmanship?

Like most college hoops programs, both March Madness and 2K8 remain solid works-in-progress. The offensive side is 2K8‘s greatest strength, with crisp ball movement actually leading to good cuts and open shots. (P.S.: The "tilt-the-SixAxis-controller" free-throw mechanic in the PlayStation 3 version is atrocious, and needs to be scrapped. Immediately.) EA, meanwhile, puts the "D" in defense—the right analog control is an awesome way to seriously lock down quick guards and get key stops. The downside is a huge emphasis on low-post play that’s glaring to the point of distraction. Even historically deadeye programs like Gonzaga and UC-Santa Barbara will go ridiculous stretches without sinking a simple 15-footer.

So let’s take a 20-second time-out and regroup: 2K’s got offense, EA’s got the D, and both have atmosphere to spare. Smash both games together and you might get the perfect college hoops sim. Too bad the chances of that ever happening are about as good as Norfolk State cutting down the nets in San Antonio this March.

videogame

Mario’s excellent space adventure isn’t just the Wii’s first absolutely must-have game—it’s also the equivalent of an interactive Disney movie, with rainbow-star bits plummeting from the sky and bursting from patches of grass and pummeled enemies. Manipulating an on-screen cursor with the Wiimote to collect and use the star bits to unlock new colorful galaxies is cool; pitching ’em to knock enemies on their asses is better than blasting aliens in Metroid Prime 3. 

Fly me to the moon: Every bit as classic as N.W.A. in our opinion, Nintendo’s timeless hero, Mario, goes interstellar on the wild and Wii-tastic Super Mario Galaxy.

The story set-up is as familiar as Frank Caliendo’s Madden impression, mashing up two of Mr. Plumber’s most tiresome tropes. In the middle of the Star Festival, Mario’s on his way to the castle to score a gift from Princess Peach when Bowser and son crash the bash in a set of flying pirate ships, lassoing the castle and jetting off into space. Turns out our fire-snorting friend has also been swiping power stars from a comet observatory run by a Peach lookalike named Rosalina, and Mario’s recruited to play Space Ace and get ’em all back.  Let’s see: Collecting stars and saving Peach. Let’s hear it for Captain Originality.

Fortunately, the story’s just a convenient prop to send our plumber pal hopping from one bizarre-ass, gravity-challenged galaxy level to another. In the course of the ridiculous number of galaxies you’ll visit, you’ll walk Mario along the curved surface of countless egg-shaped mini-planets, scale impossible heights, maneuver him through space like a slingshot and, in a move that’s familiar to more than a few Nintendo games, dress him up in plenty of stylin’, power-conferring costumes. It’s possible to turn him into a bee and a Boo, make him invincible and even into a human bedspring. Don’t mention this to Bee Movie actor Jerry Seinfeld, but the bee’s the dog in this group: Your costumed powers vanish if you touch an enemy or water.

There’s a huge sense of exhilaration that comes every time Mario slingshots through a star launcher—you rattle the Wii controller to make this happen—rocketing through space toward a new part of the galaxy and a new set of puzzles. Individually, the puzzles and boss battles don’t rise to the level of brain- or wrist-busting (well, except in the water-racing levels, and at the end, where it’s time to bash some Bowser butt) but that’s okay. When a game looks and plays as well as this one does, it doesn’t need to break your will, too.

game

Brian Urlacher spin-toss-tackling Clinton into the backfield. Mark Brunell pounding the turf in disgust at tossing his third INT. Santana Moss pointing skyward to celebrate a hard-won first down.

It’s a reasonably sure bet that all of these things are going to be part of the Redskins’ 2008 NFL season. Thanks to the addition of a roster’s worth of terrific new player animations, they’re definitely part of Madden 08. Finally, EA Tiburon has taken a cue from Peyton Manning and gotten over the hump, becoming comfortable with the next-gen platform that’s bedeviled them for two seasons in a row.

The Madden football franchise gets a two-point conversion for playability and enjoyment in its latest incarnation, Madden 08.

At this point, the level of information the Madden series allows you to view and strategically tweak before each snap is freakin’ ridiculous—it’s no wonder the football IQs of hardcore Maddenites rival those of actual NFL coordinators. Madden 08 adds yet another level with the new player-weapon icon feature, these pretty little images beneath the feet of certain superstars that clue you in to their inherent uberskills—Peyton Manning is a smart quarterback, Sean Taylor is a big hitter, etc. Quickly noting that the defense has matched a no-name cornerback up against speed-receiver Marvin Harrison is the quickest path to six you’ll find—and, frankly, it’s the same thing Peyton Manning does every Sunday.

Off the field, Madden 08 is obsessed with, like so many of its players, the bling.  Everything you do in the game, from quickplay matches to running a franchise and sailing through the same collection of mini-games that marked last year’s edition, earns you points—and pieces of jewel-encrusted rings you’ll build and display in your main-menu showcase. Unlike Madden 07, the achievements you unlock are acknowledged only infrequently during the games themselves. Finding out exactly which goals you’ve knocked down in the course of your 47-10 pasting of the Cowboys (take that, Tony Romo) means backing out to the main menu and examining the game ticket that accompanies each ring. Dropping the goals ‘n’ glory into your own personal showcase obtrudes less on the games, sure, but I’m into immediate gratification when it comes to bumping my gamerscore.

game
 
Activision’s Guitar Hero series is that rare specimen that aces what I like to call the waking reality test: When a game effortlessly intrudes on your everyday life—in this case, when you’re walking through a grocery store, hear a Nirvana tune on the Muzak system and immediately begin flipping imaginary fret buttons—you know it’s got some serious kick.

Don’t stop believin’! Pick up your axe and shred in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s

With Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, the series also now has some serious synth, ridiculously teased hairdos and a bright neon sheen. Dee Snyder and Belinda Carlisle must be so pleased.

Even veteran slash-and-thrashers who didn’t live through the heyday of Poison, Ratt and Extreme are gonna feel right at home in the Me Decade, because just about everything from Guitar Hero 2 has made the trip in this ’80s flavored way-back machine.

Familiar character models now sport headbands, green hair and knee-highs (or, eventually, death-metal makeup and wings) and the stage locales will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s picked up an axe controller before.

Plenty in Guitar Hero nation are treating the game’s set list like an unwelcome Milli Vanilli reunion, knocking its scattershot approach—tracks by Twisted Sister and Scorpions camped alongside .38 Special, Asia and the Vapors. Thing is, the ’80s weren’t just about glam rock and hair metal, and while I’ll bite that including joke-band Limozeen as an encore track is grody to the double-max, it’s offset by unexpected gems like Oingo Boingo’s "Only a Lad" and the Dead Kennedys’ "Police Truck." Yeah, I could wish for The Cars, Duran Duran and The Replacements as much as the next ’80s refugee, but let’s not forget that the set lists for the first two Guitar Hero games had a sizable set of detractors as well.

If the Rocks the 80s set list feels like a quickie MTV travelogue, the game’s price point is Iran Contra-level egregious. Activision must have been ripping pages from the Gordon Gekko handbook when they slapped a $50 price tag on a 30-song package. Essentially, they’ve violated the cardinal rule of expansions: The expansion must cost less than the original game.

For PS2 rockers, Rocks the 80s will probably play like one last (albeit pricey) way to proudly pledge their allegiance to Air Guitar Nation before taking the next-gen plunge—assuming they haven’t done so already. Now that developer Harmonix has jumped ship to create Rock Band, a Stevie Ray Vaughn rival to Activision and Neversoft’s upcoming Guitar Hero 3, forking a Ulysses S. Grant over to make like Bret Michaels may prove a hard—but ultimately worthwhile—sell.

game

It’s just one more digitized testament to our national football jones: Training camps don’t start until August, but our football videogames now come out in July. The big dog, EA’s Madden 08, doesn’t take the field for a few more weeks, but we’ve already got two solid options to toss around.

Live in the Michael Vick present or the Joe Montana past with NCAA 08 Football and All Star Football 2K8, two new, very different offerings.

Three years ago, 2K Sports was making a serious gridiron grab for EA’s dynastic dominance with its own bargain-priced football series. Then the NFL inked an exclusive licensing deal with EA, banishing 2K to football obscurity. They’re still cut off from active pros, so the 2K coaching staff opted for a trick-play end-around, resurrecting the Canton canon of retired NFL stars instead.

The roster of stars you can recruit includes players you’d expect (Joe Montana, Barry Sanders), players that leave you scratching your head (Brian Bosworth, Mike Golic) and a player you’d really rather hadn’t made the cut ( O.J. Simpson). You can drop 11 of ’em on your roster—two gold-, three silver- and six bronze-level players. The remaining stars get dispersed randomly throughout your DIY league, leading to bizarre-ass matchups where the defense you sadly neglected has to stop a team featuring Jerry Rice and Warren Moon. Gulp.

Aside from minor complaints (the kicking game is an absolute mess, especially on field goals), the game is as solid and entertaining as it was in 2005. Unfortunately, it’s also stuck where every next-gen sports title was at this point last year, offering great graphics and far too few play modes—single-season is the only choice for folks who aren’t planning to spend all their time playing no-salary cap smashmouth on Xbox Live. Next year will be better. And hey, the way things are going, the cover can feature soon-to-be ex-Falcon Michael Vick.
 
EA’s NCAA 08 Football, meanwhile, is like the freshman quarterback who struggled to find the open man last year but suddenly looks like the second coming of Matt Leinart. The paltry game modes of 07 have been beefed up to prime-time levels. Campus Legend mode is the new BMOC, starting you off as a player looking to impress college scouts in a high school championship bracket and forcing you to fight through a college depth chart.
 
Elsewhere, the erratic team momentum meter of last year has been scrapped in favor of something called "motivation," a riff on the player-focused feature in EA’s NCAA hoops game that gives key players stat boosts when they’re kickin’ it with big plays. The Super Sim feature, which lets you fast forward the action through blowouts (or, better still, choose to play only offense or defense) is bloody brilliant, and a great way to blaze through dynasty mode when you don’t have time—and who does?—to play every down of every game.
 
The pervasive advertising is still annoying as hell—even the achievements smell like Old Spice—but for a game this good, I’m willing to put up with it.

game

Overlord cackles and crackles with the droll and dastardly spirit of Dungeon Keeper, Bullfrog’s late-’90s series of games that cast you as an evil force bent on building up an empire of minions to crush those goody-goody heroes once and for all. As Dick Cheney proves to us every single day, there’s nothing quite as fun as being evil.

Want to feel like the master of your domain? Wreak havoc—or have subservients do it for you—in Overlord.

As the game opens, the land’s been overrun by self-serving halflings, elves and dwarves, and you’ve been awakened, in your decimated dark tower by a troupe of gremlins who are now your new best friends. It’s time to kick some hero butt.

When it’s not deftly blending real-time strategy and role-playing elements, Overlord draws its oh-so-British charm and humor from several venerable sources, including Fable, Pikmin and The Bard’s Tale. Controlling your fearsome Overlord (in third-person view) is one way to wreak havoc, but hell, any evil bastard can do that. Instead, use the right control stick to sweep your minions in to do all the dirty work—slaughtering sheep, guzzling ale, battling monsters and grabbing goodies that seem out of reach. Unleashing minions is ridiculously fun and, for the most part, they’ll do exactly what you need them to, even when you’re juggling the four different types the game adds to your evil arsenal.

The graphic detail of your minions is remarkable. (The same can’t be said for the cut-scenes, which is odd because, in most games, it’s generally the other way around.)  Watching your band of pointy-eared pals shredding a pumpkin patch or group of elves, then lovingly bringing back treasure and life essence to you gives Overlord an emotional heft you rarely get in a standard real-time strategy game.

As in Fable, your Overlord’s appearance darkens as your evil deeds mount, and the game generally lets you be as nasty (or nice) as you wanna be, although the consequences for going all Sauron on this fantasy world are more funny than game-altering.

What’s truly evil is the game’s lack of a map function, a glaring omission that comes close to torpedoing the fun. Wandering around the countryside with your horde of grinning gremlins, you’ll quickly stumble into five or six quests you can’t complete until you discover the item or new minion that’s located…well, somewhere else in the countryside. 

How ironically appropriate that an otherwise evil genius is tripped up by something so simple. I’m sure Dr. Evil and Goldfinger can totally relate.