Review #813: WWF WrestleMania - The Arcade Game

 Mortal Kombat gone Wrestling.

 I've never been much of a fan of digitalized sprites, however, WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game looked so weird that it intrigued me, so of course, I went ahead and got both it and its sequel. What makes it so weird is that this game isn't your average fighting game, it's more akin to Mortal Kombat, with life bars and a block button, as well as a very similar sense of humor. Undertaker can summon ghosts, Bam Bam Bugalow can throw fire punches and Ramon Razor can turn his arms into deadly blades. It's a weird game, alright?

 This is a straight up port of the Arcade original, without any bells and whistles. You get 8 wrestlers: The Undertaker, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Yokozuna, Bam Bam Bugalow, Lex Luger, Ramon Razor and Doink. Wrestling wasn't a thing over here, even though curiously enough, Hulk Hogan was a household name, so... I could barely recognize anyone besides The Undertaker, so the roster might resonate a bit more with American households, or people big into wrestling during the 90's. Single Player Mode is made up of two Arcade Ladders, but you can also play Co-Op and Deathmatch with another player. It's... it's quite lacking. And the Arcade Ladder is quite annoying, one of them starts off with 1 on 1 matches, but then you have two one VS two matches and ends on a one VS three match, while the other ladder is even worse, starting off with one VS two matches, then two one VS three matches and ends with a fight against all 8 characters. It's tough and it's unfair and I recommend turning off blocking for this mode.

 The game has a very Mortal Kombat five-button setup: Punch, Kick, Super Punch, Super Kick and Block. Punch+Kick makes your wrestler run, while S. Punch+ S. Kick allows you to grab opponents... with a specific few characters. Other universal inputs are forward-forward-S. punch to get your enemy in a headlock, back-back-S. punch to throw your enemy towards the rope and back-back-punch to throw your enemy into the ground. You can also get out of the ring and get on top of the torn buckles to produce jumping attacks. There's a combo gauge that lets you use Super Moves, but the instruction booklet is no help and there's no in-game moveset, and I couldn't care enough to google them, so I wasn't able to pull off any of them. Even so, controls didn't seem very responsive, and the fighting system was a bit clunky, so I didn't have much fun. That said, I'm sure it's better against other players, since the CPU just isn't fun to fight in this game, they react to fast to your head-locks, producing reversals before you can try to figure out what input combination works with the Wrestler you picked.

 I'm pretty sure this game has a small cult following behind it, but sadly, I just didn't enjoy it much. Combat in the game is bit wonky and unresponsive, although not altogether bad, just subpar, and playing solo is more of a chore than anything. I give them props for the idea, however, and while I wasn't so fond of the end product, I'm glad that such a weird idea can live on as a game.
 3.0 out of 10

Review #812: Ridge Racer

 It's RIIIIDGEEEE RACEEEEEEEEEER! ....but where's the rest of the game?

 So, last year I decided to give Ridge Racer a try which meant I bought a ton of Ridge Racer games. I decided to start with 7, and spoilers, it's pretty darn fun, but the original piqued my curiosity so I started it shortly after. And I was done with it 2 hours later.

 The game offers a single track with 7 variations. Beginner, which has a slow max speed and a 2 lap race, Mid, which raises the max speed and makes it into a 3 lap race, Expert, which once again raises the top speed and adds another very sinuous part to the track and Time Trial which raises the top speed even further but turns it into a race against a single AI opponent. Getting first place on all four variations will unlock mirrored versions of each. And... yeah, that's pretty much it. It's just a simple racing game against 11 racers, while trying to make it onto checkpoints too since you can lose if the Time limit expires, even before anyone reaches the finish line. There isn't even a multiplayer mode, this is a single player racing game. You get 4 cars to start with and can unlock another 8 by... beating the Galaxian minigame upon start up. The game is so small that it's completely loaded into memory while the brief Galaxian minigame runs, and once that's done you can swap out the CD with a Music CD to play your own tracks, which doesn't work very well and... why would you? This game's soundtrack is AMAZING. As for the graphics... it's pretty rough and undetailed, pretty telling of a very, very early PS1 game.

 The game's main mechanic is its drifting, you have to let go off the accelerator, or make a short break, turn your car and then go full throttle. The instruction booklet is of little help, but Ridge Racer 7 prepared me a bit better for it. When drifting you have to be quick to straighten your car, lest you take a massive loss of speed. It feels slippery, car-on-car collision doesn't feel quite right and the lack of analog support is harsh.... but I can't deny the game's charm. This single track was a load of fun, and I had so much fun during my 2-2.5 hours with the game, as I very slowly got better at drifting and actually managed to score first places! Having a banging soundtrack helped so much to keep me invested in the game, no lie.

 It's very hard to score Ridge Racer because while it's oh so very barebones... it's also pure bliss. It's a fun game to play, it's a fun course to race in and working out how to drift was fun. I mean, I was, heck, still am terrible at the game, but I had so much fun losing over and over again. That said, since I already played RR 7, and I know RR 4 has a very simple(and even more barebones!) remake of this game.... I just can't recommend it in good faith. It is a fun time, I think it's worth a look, but I don't think it's a game that deserves to be paid for in this day and age. And I'm telling you already, there's no way this game is making it into my "Worst of 2020" because, at its core, it's REALLY good.
 2.0 out of 10

Review #811: Ultra Street Fighter IV

 Greatness born out of laziness.

 I loved Street Fighter X Tekken, despite its garbage DLC practices which played a huge part of why the game bombed so hard. But if Capcom knows one thing it's how to be lazy and sell you a recycled product, so they grabbed all the Street Fighter assets, Rolento, Poison, Hugo, Elena as well as its six stages, they also repurposed Cammy's model to make Decapre and then resold Super Street Fighter IV AE as Ultra Street Fighter IV. Love it or hate it, Street Fighter IV rekindled the mainstream interest in Fighting games, making it a legendary game alongside Street Fighter II. This game came out at a time I was falling out of love with the Fighting genre, no longer watching every Evo and every other Tournament that came out, so I ended up skipping Ultra.

 Truth be told, there are more novelties to the game other than the new characters and stages. Now you can pick a third option when picking your Ultra: W Ultra Combo Double, which nets your character access to both Ultras, albeit a bit weakened to make up for the added tools. There's a new focus attack, Red Focus, which can tank any amount of hits instead of only one. Lastly, there's delayed wake up, to play tricks with your opponent. Nothing to mindboggling, but they are good additions. There are no new offline modes, which kinda suck considering Street Fighter IV was already pretty lacking there, but now you can play Versus matches with Edition Select, letting you pick any SF 4 version of whichever character you like. If you download the free dlc, you also get wacky Omega versions to pick from.

 Included with this game was every piece of DLC released up to that day, this means veteran characters get 3 DLC costumes, Super and AE characters get 2 DLC costumes and the newbies get none. You still need a Street Fighter IV savefile if you want access to colors 11 and 12 for the pre-AE characters, something I found out since my PS3's HDD got murdered a few years ago and didn't have a SFIV save file. Oh, and the last nine new characters(AE plus Ultra's new comers) still don't have Trials, which is ridiculous since they shouldn't be hard to implement, nor do they get Rival cutscenes, making them stand out from the rest of the roster. Remember how every iteration of Street Fighter IV up to now came with very beefy instruction manuals? Nope, not this time, Capcom had to follow their time-honed tradition of cutting corners.

 As far as the new characters go.... I really didn't care about the SF X T newcomers. I guess Hugo is so huge he is fun to fight, but that's it. Surprisingly, I really, really liked Decapre, the lazy model repurpose. She's like a much cooler version of Cammy and isn't wearing a glorified bathing suit.

 While I've got nothing but criticisms about Ultra Street Fighter IV as a product, there's no denying that underneath it all you've got Super Street Fighter IV, a classic through and through. The game is an absolute blast to play, it's always been. That said, I understand why I skipped this game back in the day, I didn't really care about the new characters and the new gameplay mechanics were but a few small nuances to an already spectacular set of mechanics so I never saw any need to get the new update. That said, anyone who is this late in getting into Street Fighter IV should undoubtedly pick up this final version, and someone that never made the jump from Super to AE might find 9 new characters a much more enticing offer.
 9.0 out of 10

Review #810: Blazing Chrome

 Part Contra, part Metal Slug, all metal.

 Believe it or not, I actually kinda like Contra, even though the only games I owned were Contra Force(I know), Alien Wars on the Gameboy and Shattered Soldier. That said, I'm always up for some Metal Slug. Blazing Chrome borrows a little from Metal Slug and a lot from Contra to produce an original 2-D shooter for a modern audience ironically borrowing very '80s aesthetics.

 At the beginning of the game you can only pick between Doyle, a robot punk, and Mavra, a human soldier, who must then go through 6 stages to fight the invading aliens. The first four stages can be played in any order, while the last two must be played one after the other. The game took me little less than an hour to complete on the Easy setting, which is a bit short but is just fine for a game like this, lasts just enough not to get boring. Beating the game unlocks a Boss Rush(Who plays those anymore?), Mirror mode(Move left to right instead of right to left) and Raijin and Suhaila as playable characters, which is a fair amount of extras. If you are braver and better than me, you can finish the game on Normal an unlock Hardcore difficulty.  It's a nice assortment of extras, and the fact that there's an easy mode so that terribads like me can brute force their way through the game is pretty nice. The game can also be played with another player in tow.

 Doyle and Mavra play exactly like you'd expect, being able to jump and shoot their infinite ammo assault rifles, as well as lay down into a prone position and roll from it(By pressing Jump while crouching). Tapping the shoot button next to an enemy will produce a melee attack, just like in Metal Slug. Lastly, you can hold down the R button to root yourself where you stand so that you can aim anywhere without moving. One touch is one death in this game, so learning how to deal with the enemies coming your way is paramount to your victory. To help you achieve that you can arm both heroes with more powerful weaponry: The Laser whip that deals a constant amount of damage as it hits enemies, a Grenade gun that's very slow but deals a ton of damage and the Laser gun that can be charged for more powerful shots. Once you get a weapon its yours to keep and switch between the others, but if you die while you have one of these optional weapons equipped...it's gone until you find it again. You'll also lose your weapons when you use a Continue. There's another type of power up: The bot. They are little assist drones that either speed you up, grant you two extra hits or grant you more speed.

 That's all fine and dandy... until you unlock Raijin and Suhaila, because these two offer a completely different playstyle. Instead of a basic, unlimited assault rifle they get short range sword/arm slices, and they can't equip other weapons.... but they can charge up their basic attack into a powerful, piercing wave that goes through every enemy in its path. They also get an aerial dash. They have their own benefits and drawbacks when compared to the original two characters, but having characters that play so unlike the others is a pretty great bonus.

 The stages themselves offer a nice amount of variety. Besides the usual run and gun you also get Contra inspired bike segments, as well as the occasional armored mechs you can pilot, which are a bit more Megaman X than Metal Slug to be honest. A few times I wished the game tried being a bit more original with the things it did, but at least what it did it did well, and considering the official Contra game we received was so lackluster.... I'll gladly take a great homage.

 Blazing Chrome is a great option for anyone that enjoys these 2-D run and gun games. It lasts as long as it should and the extras are a nice cherry on top. The Switch version of the game is lacking a few effects, like the bullet casings dropping from your gun, but it plays quite well. I read that the fifth stage had some slowdown but either I didn't notice it or it got fixed for the limited physical release. Regardless, I'm sure a little slowdown isn't enough to dampen this fantastic game.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #809: Oddworld Abe's Oddysee - New 'n' Tasty(Vita)

 What's old is tasty again.

 Alright, so I wasn't the biggest of Oddworld's fans when I decided to purchase Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee New 'n' Tasty!, y'see, I used to own the original version on PC and I didn't really like it. However, Limited Run Games had just started and I wasn't about to miss an opportunity to own a limited release game I was somewhat familiar with.

 Oddworld is a 2-D cinematic puzzle platformer kinda game. You play as Abe, a creature known as a Mudokon, who finds out the company he is slaved to is planning to produce a new kind of treat, a treat made out of Mudokon. As soon as he finds out, the game starts with Abe setting out to free his kind, all 300 of them. If anything, the world of Oddworld is very odd, there are all sort of ugly-cute creatures populating its world. Most of them want to hurt you. While it plays strictly in 2-D, the entire game has been remade in 3-D, for good or bad. A few details were lost in translation, but overall, it looks decent enough. I never got too far in the original, but for what little I did... it seemed quite faithful, although the screen-by-screen format of the original was traded for a camera that scrolls alongside Abe. Plus, I've read the developers admitting to changing a few of the puzzles, so it's not a 1:1 conversion, even if it feels quite similar, and, while the puzzles may have changed, the overall plot and Abe's adventure didn't really change, so it's like a slightly different take on the same game.

 Abe can sneak, run, jump and climb on to ledges in order to move through the environment. I felt like a few jumps required pixel perfect timing, but it might've been due to the framerate. That said, prepare to die quite a few times since you didn't jump at the right spot. Some stages, particularly the ones that have you riding the Enum, can be particularly bad about it, since they have a lot of jumps between checkpoints. Along the way you'll also find a few items you can throw, such as meat to distract a few aliens or grenades to, well, kill them. Grenades are a bit more interesting since you have to cook them before you shoot them, since you'll want to kill plenty of floating enemies with them, enemies that will prevent you from chanting.

 Chanting is Abe's other main ability, which he can use to open up portals for his people to escape and to open up secret areas or.... to possess enemy Sligs, the yellow aliens that carry machine guns. As a Slig you can communicate with other Sligs, to open up areas and what not, as well as to kill other Sligs. Although, if there are Mudokons nearby, you might want to order them to stand down before any shootout begins, lest they die in the crossfire.

 Another big part of the game is communication. Abe has access to four different 'words' he can use to communicate with fellow Mudokons: "Hello" and "Hello All", which will make any Mudokon on the screen pay attention to you, and "Follow me", in order to make them follow you, or "Wait" to have them wait. The game's main objective, besides getting to the end, is rescuing all 300 Mudokons, and if you want the best ending, you'll have to safely guide them into portals. Which is easier said than done, since Sligs are very trigger happy if you don't do things the right way. Holding the Triangle button will change your words into other sounds, such as whistling and, well, farting, which are mostly used to clear Simon-says puzzles.

 While I think the game as a whole is alright, I mean, these slow-paced platformers really aren't my cup of tea, at least the Vita version is a bit buggy. The game soft-locked twice when using the main elevator on the very first stage, since the assets didn't load when the elevator stopped so I had to reset the game. Another time, when I got to the Scrabanian temple, the game got semi-stuck on the loading screen, so the audio for the cutscene played while the loading screen flashed over the previous level. When the 'cutscene' 'stopped' it didn't load, so I had to reset. Oh, and the final Zulag stages? It felt like the game would get locked every two loading screens, it wasn't even funny.  At least the game autosaves very frequently, so I never lost much more than a few seconds worth of progress. Speaking of the game's performance, framerate on the Vita isn't so hot either, but it's playable.

 It's alright. I mean, I really dug the world of Oddworld, it has a lot of interesting creatures inhabiting its world. The game's premise is very interesting as well. That said, I've never been too big on these slow-paced platformers, so I know I'm not able to appreciate it as much as other people. As far as the performance of the game, I wasn't too mad at the frequent freezes because the auto save is so generous so I never lost much progress. All in all, as someone that barely scratched the surface of the original, this felt like a decent remake and a decent game.
 6.0 out of 10

Review #808: Mortal Kombat(Vita)

 Vitality!

 Mortal Kombat is, in my opinion, the most important game in the franchise because it's when the series finally got really good. Like REALLY really good. Abandoning most of the silly element from the 3-D era of Mortal Kombat, they went back to their 2-D roots with a sequel reboot, one that was billed as one instead of the Final Fantasy VII Remake switcheroo, that did everything right and put Mortal Kombat back on everyone's radar... for a good reason.

 Let's get the elephant out of the room first, this Mortal Kombat never looked good. The character models were ugly, the faces, the figures, everything. Males, like Liu Kang have the most awful faces and weird looking arms, while the females have bodies with huge shoulders and tiny waists alongside the same giant breasts on every single lady in the cast. Their heads are really weird, like they have too much depth, and Kitana is one of the ugliest characters ever made. And while Netherealms Studios finally started getting good at animating... there are still some very, very ugly animations in here. There are some very good ones, but some truly awful ones.  It was an ugly game, and on Vita it looks like a very sharp Playstation 2 game. I had to check, so I ran Tekken 5 on the PS2 and it looks miles better than this game, from the models' complexity to the textures.... this is not a good looking game. And I can live with that, because the game excels everywhere else. To make up for that we get about 13 new costumes, mostly retro costumes for the Ninjas and female Ninjas, as well as an entire new 200-floor challenge tower as well as new Test your Swipe and Test your Balance minigames that use the Vita's features. Test your Swipe is particularly amazing because it's a Fruit Ninja clone but with heads instead of fruit! Its only shortcoming is the fact that it always plays the same, the same power ups and bombs will show up at whatever time they first showed up, so it ends up being very predictable instead of random, which would've been WAY more fun.

 While the game is missing VS CPU, there's an enormous wealth of content to go through. First, the Story mode. It's a bit gimped by the fact that it's divided into character, so, for instance, you play as Johnnie Cage first for four fights, then as Sonya for four fights, then as Cyrax for four fights, and so on, this means that a character loses most of their relevance after their chapter, and the story only pushes forward from the viewpoint whatever character you are playing as. I also disagree with Sub-Zero's fate, stop doing my boy dirty, yo! It uses cutscenes from the console game, so these look really good... even if it can be a bit jarring when it switches to the Vita graphics. Then you've got the Arcade Ladder mode, as well as a Tag Arcade ladder, because this game also had a pretty neat, if barebones, tag mode! Lastly, you get a 200-floor challenge tower, as well as a new, bonus, 200-floor challenge tower. The new tower puts the spotlight on the DLC characters and on the Vita's features, so expect a lot of tilting, touching, swiping and shaking. I tend to hate everything that isn't a button input, but since this is a bonus, I'm perfectly OK with it. The bonus towers did have a few too many fights against Shao Khan which I didn't really enjoy since they are very unfair, and when you are forced to use him... he feels so clunky and you can't really spam moves like CPU SK can. The new tower also has you playing as Tremor one time, and fighting him another... and it kinda sucks that they didn't turn him into a new bonus fighter for the Vita.

 The game was fantastic back then, and it still does. You have four attack buttons: Left and Right punch, as well as Left and Right Kick, although the game calls them Forward and Back because a character's stance can change. There's also a block button. The game uses a mixture of pre-set attack strings, like Tekken, but also uses input special moves, like Street Fighter, and it works really well. You have a three-tier energy gauge that you can use to pull of EX special moves, with extra damage and/or effects or Kombo breakers to break away from your opponent. You could also use all three tiers to perform a brutal X-Ray moves that remove a huge chunk of health... if they land. That said, on hindsight, I was into this game back when I was really into the FGC and would watch every single tournament of every single game, and not just EVO. Regardless, knowing how competitive tournaments used play, as well has having played the game extensively back in the day, I can clearly see that the game can very easily turn into a keep away game, because most characters have at least one projectile, and they are very easy to spam and not many ways to go through them.

 Mortal Kombat is a pretty decent purchase for the Vita. The graphics took a huge hit, but it plays just as well as its big console counterpart, plus, the exclusive extra content is really nice. Far from the best Fighter of its era, but even all these years later, Mortal Kombat 9 is still a fantastic fighting game that makes up for its shortcomings with a meaty amount of content. It's not a fighting game that you play just for its gameplay, but one that you play for its lore, for its story mode, for all the silly challenges you can find on the Challenge Towers. It's the whole package and then some.
 8.5 out of 10

Review #807: Dark Void

 Nolan North strikes again.

 During the HD era, under Keiji Inafune's misguided approach, Capcom tried outsourcing their games to Western developers, as well as publishing a few titles overseas, like Remember Me and Dark Void. Most of these endeavors failed miserably, which is kind of a shame, because what I've played so far... wasn't so bad.

 Dark Void takes place sometime before the second World War, and pits you as Will, pilot for hire. The client is Ava, a long lost flame, and what was supposed to be just another flight through the Bermuda's Triangle ends with Ava and Will stuck somewhere outside America. No, this isn't Kansas anymore. In these new world natives worship the Watchers, robotic enemies that Will doesn't take too kindly too, and soon finds himself embroiled in a war between a Resistance group and the Watcher trying to enslave humanity by substituting humans, such as the president of France, with their own brethren doubles. All of these while fighting over the Dark Void, a place so high you can't see below the clouds, not to worry, as Will comes equipped with a jetpack! Y'know what? I liked the setting. I liked the plot. It's nothing new or fresh, but it's decent. That said, the plot does have a few elements that aren't properly explained. As a matter of fact, the tool tips during loading screens give away a lot of plot points before they actually happen, and in a way, it's the only explanation you'll get about certain things. The soundtrack is absolutely beautiful, it's very 80's and very grandiose, really fits the overall theme and setting.

 At its core, the game is your average modern third-person shooter. Heavy on taking cover and your always trusty regenerating. There are only six different guns in the game, which is a bit skimpy, and you can upgrade all six up to two times by finding techpoints from hidden enemies or stashed away in secret locations. The weaponry felt a bit boring. You have the assault rifle, which was the first weapon I upgraded and never regretted it since it became so useful, a magnetic gun that makes enemies float for a bit, a "Desintegrator" which is a cross between a shotgun and a rocket launcher, with very little ammo capacity, a sniper rifle, an alien assault rifle and a continuous-energy gun. You can also melee enemies with the circle button, which is an instant kill on most enemies, but it initiates an overly-long animated sequence during which you can still get hurt and killed, plus, it wasn't very responsive. Sometimes I'd just mash circle in front of an enemy and it wouldn't trigger.

 And then you get the jetpack and things get more interesting. At first you can only use it to double jump-into-hover, which did open up a few more alternatives in battle. By this time you'll also get introduced into the vertical-cover system, which seriously didn't get enough use in the game, basically, you can take cover from below or above certain objects and/or rock formations, something that enemies can do as well. It's a bit gimmicky, yes, but it's a rather interesting idea, and it was relatively well pulled off, I mean, as I said before, I wish the game would have had more of these sections. If anything, I was annoyed at the fact that sometimes Will would lose his grip when jumping above/below levels and you'd have to mash a button. QTEs are (almost)never fun.

 And then you enter Episode 2 and get introduced to the Jetpack, by pressing triangle you'll turn you jump into a forward-propelled flight. And you get full freedom of movement when using it, which is why most shootouts thereafter take place in very open arenas. You'll also get some intense dogfights against enemy ships, which you can hijack... after a QTE. A few times I'd initiate the dull sequence only for the enemy ship to crash onto a wall and KILL me. If you've got allies, you can also seamlessly get into or out of their ships, no QTE required. These aerial shootouts were a bit tough until I realized that you are expected to pull evasive maneuvers by hold R3 and using both analog sticks to barrel rolls and the such.... and until I realized the jetpack has infinite missiles with L2. You're welcome.

 Dark Void is fun. It's nothing to write home about, that's for sure, and it's hard not to praise it for trying to do something different. If anything, I think the slow-paced vertical cover system clashes a bit with the more fast paced free-flying system of the Jetpack, because one is pretty much the antithesis of the other, which is probably why the vertical-cover segments were so scarse after the first episode. Regardless, it's a fun, if short, time.
 7.0 out of 10