New York. Only slightly more violent than it's real life counterpart.

Prototype starts out in a chaotic battlefield in what remains of Manhattan, New York. You play as a fully powered Alex Mercer who is fighting both the army and infected citizens. The tutorial type level ends before you get totally overwhelmed by all the powers at your disposal and quickly rewinds to the beginning of the story. Through various flashbacks and flash-forwards, we learn that a virus is spreading throughout Manhattan that turns people into mindless monsters. Alex is also infected with it, but for some reason it has granted him superhuman and shape shifting abilities. Alex also has a nasty case of amnesia, so it’s a good thing he is able to absorb people and their memories which slowly restores his memory as you progress through the game.

You can easily travel to the top of any of the buildings.

Gameplay is broken up into a series of chapters. Each chapter has one main mission that must be completed before you can move on. However, you can spend as much time doing whatever you want before taking on these main missions. In the early parts of the game, it’ll usually be side-missions that involve killing enemies or running through a small part of the city within a certain amount of time. However, as the game progresses so do the number of things you can do in the open world. You can seek out and destroy infected hives or sneak into and infiltrate army bases. The variety does tend to die down about halfway through the game and you may find yourself skipping it to get to the main mission.

Movement is fluid and frustrating at the same time.

Alex controls fluidly to a fault. His main method of traveling is simply running and jumping. Like a parkour practitioner on speed, he is able to run up the sides of buildings, launch himself over another and glide across city blocks. This method of travel feels very smooth, but you can’t help but wish there was a speedier way to get from point A to point B sometimes. Also, running up buildings is twitchy at times, you’ll be running in a straight line and veering off even in the slightest direction can send you horribly off course. In addition to just running and gliding across the city, Alex can also hijack army tanks and helicopters as well. These tools of destruction add some variety to the basic hack and slash combat, and there is something satisfying about taking down army bases and infected hives with them.

Combat is a gruesome affair.

Similarly, combat is also fluid to a fault. Alex can shape-shift his body into a number of melee weapons you might expect in any kind of action game, the balanced one, the fast but weak, and  the slow but powerful among others. Alex can perform simple 3 hit combos, but things get really interesting when you start powering up your abilities. Nothing is more satisfying than killing off thirty infected with one screen clearing move. Enemies range from one hit kill fodder, to larger beasts that will relentlessly follow you to army tanks and helicopters. Combat will frustrate you at many times during the missions. The problem is you are just one person against numerous waves of enemies. Even with Alex’s powers, he is still within a fragile body. One mission, for example, has you destroying waves of tanks. Normally fighting against one or two tanks is not much of an issue, but when you are trying to handle four tanks, plus infected who won’t let up attacking you, trying to avoid rocket launcher shots and fire from helicopters, you end up the victim of many cheap shots. Most of these frustrating moments are contained within the missions, so you can always get your destructive nature on outside of them and not feel like you’re constantly fighting against an overpowered AI.

Destruction from above in a hijacked helicopter.

Honestly, the most fun I had with this game was outside of missions. While Manhattan is nowhere near as large as say Liberty City, there’s still a decent amount of space to play around in. However, don’t expect any semblance of realism among its citizens. As you progress through the game, the island gets quarantined off and more and more of the populous come infected. Infected parts of the city are rampant with chaos as the few normal people run for their lives and the army tries to fight off the horde. However, on the flip side, the neighborhoods that remain uninfected always remain calm and collected. They go about their normal lives as if they aren’t trapped on an island with no way of escaping and death just a few blocks away. They also must have seen some amazing things in their days to not react at all to someone running up the side of a building and gliding halfway across the city.

There are worse ways to go in Prototype than getting your ribcage smashed in.

Overall the story is what is going to get you through mission mode, and not to spoil the end, but it will probably leave you more confused than anything. The carnage and destruction are really the highlights of this game and to its credit it does it well. However, this charm has diminishing returns and soon you’ll be wishing it had a little more substance. Still, the idea of Devil May Cry meets Grand Theft Auto is merit enough to play the game, just make sure to monitor your stress levels while playing. 

Shibuya. Always the hip happening place.

The World Ends with You is not your typical group of teenage stereotypes saves the world from evil forces storyline. It refreshingly takes place in modern day Shibuya, Japan and immediately introduces you to main character, Neku Sakuraba. He wakes up in a busy crossroad of Shibuya, voices in his head, little memory of how he got there and a text message on his phone saying if he doesn’t get to a certain area within 60 minutes he will face erasure. Brushing it off as a joke, he soon realizes it is real as a timer displaying 60 minutes appears on his hand. You soon learn that Neku is part of a game in which he and the other players are fighting for their lives against a group of people who call themselves Reapers. As you progress through the game the mystery slowly and slowly unravels itself never fully explaining itself until literally the last boss.

This story is both simple at its core and incredibly deep and profound if you wish to explore it in depth. At its heart this game is a mystery novel that throws just enough questions at you to feel compelled to play more, but not so much that you get bogged down or confused. I can honestly say that I was surprised at the ending and even more surprised when I read the epilogue of sorts.

Neku and Shiki are shocked to find they are sent on another kill quest.

I found the characters to be really likeable. Each one has their reason for being part of the game and you really feel for them when you find out why it is. Neku in particular was a great example of how to make a Square Enix emo character. I felt he had great character development without feeling like they forced a personality change into him. I remember not being able to stand Neku at the beginning of the game and slowly over the course of the game found myself cheering for him. I also remember making a big fuss about how if the characters were older I could relate to them more, but eventually I realized that even though the characters are in their teens, they feel almost ageless so it really became a non-issue for me.

Trust me, leave the AI on auto attack.

Gameplay wise, The World Ends With You uses unique ways to take advantage of the NDS. During battles you have both a top and bottom screen. The top screen shows your partner and the bottom screen is Neku. You control both players at the same time with the d-pad controlling the top and touch screen based actions controlling the bottom. This initially starts you off with a huge learning curve as paying attention to both screens is quite difficult. Luckily you have the option of having the top screen go on auto-attack and honestly you never really have to control them.

Utilizing different pins keeps a fresh spin on battling.

Neku must equip different pins in order to attack and that changes the way you interact with the touch screen. Some pins will make you slash with the stylus, some will make you tap the stylus and some even make use of the microphone. It’s great to see a game actually integrate the touch screen controls instead of feeling like they were tacked on. There are many other little gameplay touches that make the game feel unique, such as eating food to increase your stats, decreasing your levels and being weaker in order to get more pins to use, different clothing brands that reflect equipment and pins that get stronger or weaker depending on what style is hot in the area you are in, and even a built-in mini game that can be described as marbles on crack.

Nothing screams out fear more than a barrage of giant stuffed plushes!

After you beat the game you can come back and replay the chapters in the game to access additional storyline content. In addition there’s one mode where you play through a day with the characters as they exist in an alternate universe which ends up being really humorous. These do add a bit of replay value, but if you really just want the story and don’t feel like playing through the same game again, just do what I did and check out spoilers online. You’ll see how deep the storyline can really be for this game.

Overall, I feel the Kingdom Hearts development team hit it out of the park with this one. It was refreshing that it broke many JRPG stereotypes and it goes to show that new IP can be a success if done right. I realize the game is over a year old by this point, but if you missed out on it the first time around I highly recommend you pick it up and add it to your DS collection.

One of the many cameos from the first two Ghostbuster films.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game takes place in 1991, two years after the events of Ghostbusters II. You play the role of a new recruit who the other Ghostbusters only refer to as Rookie. The game starts off with paranormal activity that centers on the Gozer exhibit at the museum. A shockwave is sent out, which attracts the attention of Ray and Egon, and which also frees resident ghost mascot Slimer in the process. The team chases Slimer to the Sedgewick Hotel where he is eventually captured, destroying a familiar looking hotel reception room in the process. No sooner had they wrapped up this incident, than they were greeted by a familiar Gozer destructor form. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is wreaking havoc in Times Square and once again the team is called into action to defeat him. What unravels after these events is a plot which, of course, will bring about the destruction of the human world.

If you cross the streams, expect to get an earful from your teammates.

Gameplay is mainly comprised of third-person shooting. You start the game off with the iconic proton pack which weakens ghosts until the point where they can be captured and sent into a trap. Since there is no ammo in the game, you can continue firing your weapon until it overheats. If it overheats you temporarily cannot use your weapon, you can stop this by manually cooling it down. However if this were the only weapon in the game, the gameplay would get really stale really quickly. Luckily, being the new guy, Ray gives you all the new equipment to test. While some of these new weapons give you the feeling they were just thrown in without much thought, they are all distinctly different so it just doesn’t feel like a slightly different proton pack. You also earn money for every ghost you defeat that you can use to upgrade your weapons. The upgrades are minor and you can upgrade them all fairly quickly, but it’s a nice touch to have them.

First person mode with the PKE meter.

Similarly, there are different types of defeating enemies to vary things up. While the stronger ghosts are captured, some of the lesser ones you just destroy by depleting their energy. Some are distinctly unique like the gargoyles which you must capture and slam into the ground to break them. There are also first person elements as well when using the PKE Meter. In the game, you use the PKE Meter to scan enemies for their weaknesses, reveal ghosts you normally couldn’t see, find passageways to the next area and search for hidden bonus items you can collect. There is no HUD that displays health, instead like many shooter heroes, your health regenerates when you aren’t getting attacked. If you happen to fall in battle, as long as there is another team member near you, they can revive you.

Egon's character model looks eerily spot on to Harold Ramis.

As mentioned earlier, this game does not try to hide the blatant Ghostbusters’ fan service. This is great for fans of the movies, but also limits the audience of who will enjoy this game who might not understand why a giant painting of Vigo the Carpathian constantly taunts you at Ghostbusters headquarters. But even for hardcore fans it may give you the feeling that it falls a little short of being a total revival for the franchise. At times it feels like it relies too heavily on past movie references. The storyline makes it feel like Ghostbusters 1.5 rather than a true third movie. Some of the performances feel a bit subdued as well, primarily Bill Murray as Peter Venkman. You get the feeling that he isn’t quite putting his all into the role. That being said the performances by Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis feel spot on and there have been more than once instance where I found myself laughing at the writing. Ultimately that is what’s going to keep you playing the campaign mode. The gameplay, while unique, doesn’t exactly carry single player. Since storyline quality can be a subjective thing, if it doesn’t draw you in, you may not find much to keep you playing.

Imagine this hulking beast times 3. That's a good idea of what multiplayer throws at you.

It won’t take long to complete the campaign and it does not offer much replay value, but there is a surprisingly robust multiplayer mode that is available. All multiplayer modes are co-op up to 4 players and they all vary in mission types. For example one mode is a survival type mode, where you capture ghosts until your team is defeated. Another mode however has you protecting 4 relics from being taken away by ghosts until time runs out. Another mode has you destroying ghost spawn points. You can play these multiplayer missions on their own or you can play a campaign which has you playing 3 different missions one after the other. I was very skeptical of the multiplayer mode, but after playing it I found myself really enjoying it. It really does give the game a breath of fresh air after you’ve completed the campaign mode and it gives you a chance to check out other player’s crazy ghost capturing techniques. If you feel the storyline doesn’t carry the campaign mode for you, you can probably find a breath of fresh air playing with other people in smaller gameplay bursts.

One more thing I have to mention. The game does a great job at giving you a creepy atmosphere that you normally don’t find out of games like Residen Evil  and Silent Hill. While you won’t find any pyramid heads doing questionable activities with mannequins, you will find yourself at the receiving end of some cheap scares. It took me by surprise, because the movie, while having to do with ghosts, was never really scary.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game definitely does one thing right. It completely caters to the Ghostbusters fanboy crowd. With anything involving fandom, many hardcore fans may be able to ignore the shortcomings of the game, but those who don’t quote Ghostbusters in every day life may find it hard to ignore them. Take away all the big name actors and the story and you have what feels like a fresh third person shooter with new mechanics, but eventually falls into a repetitious trap. For most people I would say this game is a solid rental. You’ll enjoy the experience and you’ll also enjoy that you didn’t pay full retail price for it.

The 80s were a simpler time. You had girls in mechanical suits...

From the Unwound archives. Way back in the days of my budding anime fandom, a dear friend of min pulled me aside and said he had something to show me. It was called ‘Bubblegum Crisis,’ and he was positive that I would enjoy it. Now, of course, I had my doubts as to the veracity of his claim. After all, it was kind of a ridiculously absurd name and did not really pique my interest all that much. In response, he simply told me to ignore the name and try not to judge an anime based on the title. I was too tired to put up much of a fight, and after work we ended up at his place and settled in for an afternoon of anime watching.

Yeah, I was taught a rather valuable lesson that day. Had I gone with my instincts of begging off, I would not be the same person I am today. I think, along with many other early titles I watched, Bubblegum Crisis is a staple of anime fandom. At least, it’s a staple of mine. I’m not talking about the remake from Pioneer/Geneon, either. I’m talking about the late 80s produced original, where you could tell it was all hand-drawn and not computer-assisted. along with classics like Urusei Yatsura, Macross, Yamato, Gatchaman, and many others, BGC is a must-see for any anime fan out there. It’s a common frame of reference, a point of contention between fans over what constitutes a bad dub, and if you haven’t seen it, you’re punched right out of the conversation, I guarantee you.

gaudy yet awesome outfits, ...

What’s BGC about? Four women battle against the out-of-control creations of the Genom corporation: one driven by revenge, one driven by boredom, one driven by excitement, and one driven by loyalty. Led by Miss Sylia Stingray, the Knight Sabers band together to crusade against the injustice of androids with too much power. Underground singer Priss Asagiri, Linna Yamazaki, and police data specialist Nene Romanova round out the group, wearing Stingray-designed hardsuits and kicking some serious Boomer ass through eight episodes of OVA goodness.

Can you sense my enthusiasm? Good.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this series. It delivers action, romance, drama, and a memorable soundtrack the likes of which has never been reproduced. Every character shows a level of depth that you really only got to see in much longer series. What a story like BGC, it would take a series such as Full Metal Panic or Gundam much more than eight episodes to provide you with a clear background, and even then it took Crash to really screw the pooch. Which in a sense was an additional three episodes to the story, but you see how perfect the eight was? It really didn’t even need the full eleven, right? See?

... and big hair.

Though… Crash had good music. What is it with all these series that are bad, but have kickass OSTs?

Not that BGC was any slouch in the OST department. Quite possibly the most recognizable set of vocal tracks in anime history belongs to this series, which includes the perennial Konya wa Hurricane and my personal favorite, Bye, Bye, My Crisis. The latter of which is just a fun song to chairdance to. Also, it took me forever to find the music in the pre-Complete Vocal Collection days. I could write a full review on the music, itself, so I’ll cut myself short here. The bottom line is, if you haven’t yet watched this series, then crawl out from underneath your rock and get thee hence!

All other religions don't matter! Only Haruhi-ism matters.

I know I need to wait until we broadcast the first episode, but I don’t think I can properly contain my being almost completely enamored with Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. I finished watching this fourteen-episode series just yesterday and all I can do is keep humming the ending theme, Hare Hare Yukai, which comes complete with a crazy dance sequence that many many people are trying to emulate on YouTube. Haruhi reminds me exactly what anime is all about, and that’s good all-around fun with a dab of drama and romance to it. This series literally has it all, from sports junkies to space opera fans and everything in between. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was skeptical beforehand, but when you hear from many many people about how awesome a series is, there’s something inside that tells you to believe them and I’m so glad I did!

Haruhi's loyal followers.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you’re probably in need of a torrent download. Head over to Animesuki and download the torrent right now, if you haven’t yet. Go ahead. I’ll wait. (Editor’s Note: DON’T download this anime; instead buy it at your local defunct video megastore or Amazon.)

Done? No, seriously… go and grab it.

Okay, now that you’re about to embark on this riproaringly funny journey, you need to understand that not since School Rumble have I been so completely enraptured by this series. You’ll rush to your nearest SOS Brigade branch and join up! Check with Negi Springfield on the forums, because I think he’s starting a chapter up as we speak. Hell, I think I might have to sign up, myself.

Normal time-traveler greeting.

The only problem I could even think of with the series is the fact that it’s a mere fourteen episodes! C’mon, folks… a series this good needs at least twenty-two to twenty-six installments so I’m not going crazy waiting for a second season (which rumor has it, is in the works). However, I think the beauty behind Haruhi was the order in which the episodes were broadcast. Instead of telling the story in a linear fashion, the episodes were shown out of order, starting with the eleventh and ending with the sixth. Therefore, if I wanted to, I could rewatch the whole thing in chronological order. For the new viewer, I would recommend experiencing it in the broadcast order first and then electing to do what I will be doing, which is spending more time with Haruhi in a new way. This makes the series rewatchable! And it’s like I have 28 episodes instead of just 14!

Don't be fooled by the typical love story beginning.

From the Unwound archives. This was one of those series that had been sitting on my hard drive for a while. I’m not sure how anyone else watches anime, but I tend to be a collector of digisubs. I’ll download a metric ton of anime and then get daunted by the fact that I have a metric ton of anime to watch, until one day I’ll be bored or someone pushes me to watch something. A majority of the first season was generally: “Oh, you have to watch [title X]. It’s awesome.” “Oh, yeah, I downloaded that like a month ago. Haven’t gotten around to watching it, yet.” “Why not?” “I don’t know. It’s never come up.” When Jesse said we were watching Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, I was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s on my hard drive, but I only watched the first episode and it didn’t seem like much.” He told me, “You have to watch the second episode. Trust me, man.”

The episode where I got owned.

Holy crap. The second episode owned me.

And then the third and fourth, until the end.

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien is a story of a group of three friends. I say three, because the fourth friend is really just background noise. A lame attempt at a comedic foil that failed miserably. But anyway, the story centers around a love triangle. Two girls and a guy.

The basic recipe for Kiminozo is: Guy dates Girl. Girl’s Friend also likes Guy. Girl gets hit by a car, goes into a coma. Years later, Guy and Girl’s Friend get together. Girl wakes up. Add drama liberally and stir until angst is thick enough to be used as molasses, unable to be cut with a damned lightsaber. If you make it all the way the last episode, feel free to reach for the tissue, because you’ll need it.

Is this considered cheating if you believe your girl will never come out of a coma?

The whole series is a mere fourteen episodes long, but they manage to pack enough angst into each episode to make you think it was twice as long. I realize that may not be appealing to some, but the fact is that each episode felt more like it was an hour than twenty-six minutes. I don’t mean to say that it dragged, but more like that there was so much going on in each one that there was no way it was that short after getting to the ending theme. I kept having to check my computer clock to make sure I didn’t accidentally hit daylight savings time or something. Needless to say, each episode had something of a hook at the end, and I was firing up the next one almost immediately. Note to self: never try to watch a gripping series as a means of falling asleep. I just won’t sleep until the series is done!

Sleep is for the weak, anyway.

Overall, Kiminozo is for anime fans who thought Kimagure Orange Road was lacking in drama or Maison Ikkoku didn’t have enough angst. Be prepared to get sucked in by the end of the second episode, and be prepared to rip your own heart out over it. I nearly did.

I'm sure Equality Now will looooove this series.

As the name suggests, ToLOVEru’s premise is all about trouble — you see what they did there? The story revolves around Yuuki Rito (Watanabe Akeno), yet another normal Japanese high school boy and the trouble (or more like catastrofuck) that follows his otherwise mundane life. For most of his adolescent life, he has a crush on Sairenji Haruna (Yahagi Sayuri); he wants to confess his feelings for her, but whenever he musters enough courage to do so, practically everything including the kitchen sink gets in his way. Now in his second year in high school, Rito tries to confess his feelings for Haruna once more. However, on that fateful day, divine intervention struck again, when a UFO crashed between him and Haruna. If that wasn’t incredibly cliched enough, later that night, a despondent Rito was taking a comforting bath when suddenly a pair of bewbs appeared in front of him, and he accidentally grabbed them. The pair of knockers just happens to belong to the voluptuous Lala Satalin Deviluke (Haruka Tomatsu), or Lala for short. Unbeknownst to Rito, by fondling Lala’s naughty bits, he entered a marriage contract and must marry her on  some predetermined time (essentially whenever Rito is unguarded).

And UNICEF too.

ToLOVEru tries to be all of the rom-coms in anime history, but practically ripping them all off at once, from old school series like Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, Tenchi-Muyo! to newer series such as Girls Bravo, DearS and School Rumble. There’s just too many ingredients in this anime series, all you get from watching ToLOVEru is excruciating constipation, which is trouble in itself — you see what I did there?

The only saving grace in this series are the character designs and the opening theme song. The illustrator and character designer Yabuki Kentarou, who also designed the characters for Black Cat, created a nice and rather provocative cast of female characters for the series. The band THYME performed the opening theme song for ToLOVEru, “forever we can make it”, is the only legacy the series will be remembered for. While the opening theme song is the standard pop rock you’re accustomed to on the radio, it is both appropriate and catchy enough that attempts to hook the viewer to watch the series.

Who am I kidding? This series will be banned in the near future.

Like I’ve mentioned in the radio show, ToLOVEru is probably better off as a hentai series. The entire series is essentially a bunch of individual vignettes where the hapless Rito gets into various relationship and sexual misunderstandings that eventually goes nowhere, leaving this reviewer frustrated in every possible way. Though it contains a lot of sexual innuendos and themes, ToLOVEru is ultimately juvenile; this may as well be called “Date Movie, the Anime Version.” Unless you want more cliched, mindless and unentertaining rom-coms and you couldn’t buy hentai, do not watch ToLOVEru ever.

OH SHI- Spoilar alart!

Basically, you have yourself a kind of love story the likes of which you’ve seen many times before. A guy moves from the country to the city and upon his arrival becomes very interested in a girl he sees doing the high jump on his future school’s grounds. It’s love at first sight and so far I was buying into the premise. Until they started talking and interacting, and then it was like I was watching someone rip off three great romantic comedies all at once. Within the first episode alone, I groaned at how the writer seemed to rip whole plot elements from Kimagure Orange Road, Maison Ikkoku, and Love Hina right before my very eyes… and not even with any sense of flair. Most romantic comedies nowadays find it difficult to be original, but the fact is that most of the best series out there take an unoriginal idea and make it their own. Suzuka managed to simply adopt those concepts and executed them with all the finesse of open-heart surgery with a rusty chainsaw. I didn’t think the series could get any worse, but then the main “male” character, Yamato, apparently uses his audacious tenacity to pursue a girl, the eponymous Suzuka, in spite of the fact that she thinks he’s a complete moron and doesn’t want anything to do with him. By the way, this all takes place in a bathhouse attached to a dormitory for girls. It’s like Love Hina and Maison Ikkoku, except both of those series were actually good. Kimagure Orange Road’s comparison lies in the fact that Suzuka is like Super Madoka, only I actually liked Madoka… oh, and KOR was actually a good anime.

Seriously, don't watch this anime, unless you want your balls to shrivel up.

Twenty-five damned episodes of this bullshit! Don’t get me wrong, I like a good strong-willed female character just as much as the next guy, but this one kind of took it to an extreme and after then fourth episodes, I was like… c’mon Yamato, there are other girls out there for you to fall for. No need to waste your life trying to get this bitch to fall in love with you. I mean, for shit’s sake, man… grow some balls. By the twenty-fifth episode, I was convinced I was watching two women and not a guy and a girl… or quite possibly, Suzuka was carrying enough balls for the both of them, because Yamato had to be standing behind the door when they were passing out balls and spines. Possibly brains. And guts. I find it very difficult to like a character or even bother caring about what happens to him when in the end, I have no respect for him. It’s called piss-poor writing, or quite possibly, how to screw up a story in a hurry.

Use Suzuka if you need to forcibly extract information from someone. Do not look directly into the screen or else your soul will ache.

This fake Matt Hazard game looks more fun then the real one.

The game is a third person cover based shooter with very simple goals, walk from one end of the level to the other, killing enemies that spawn along the way. The thing that is supposed to make up for this stale kind of gameplay is the humor, but really there is nothing terribly clever about it at all. Matt Hazard is voiced by Will Arnett, but Matt’s dialogue doesn’t take advantage of Arnett’s talent. It makes it feel like anyone with a gruff voice could have done Matt’s voice. In this universe Matt Hazard is the stereotypical hero of an action game franchise, much like Duke Nukem or Max Payne. The game even shows you the history and evolution of these fictional games from an 8-bit sidescroller, a first person shooter, a GTA style game and a kid friendly shooter with water guns instead of real ones. Matt Hazard games stopped being made in the late 90’s and Eat Lead is supposed to be Hazard’s comeback game. Sounds good enough right?

Here’s where things take a massive turn into confusion. To sum it up, they want you to believe that Matt Hazard is both a video game character and a real life person. Matt talks in a way that makes you think he is a real person. He constantly breaks the 4th wall and is fully aware he is in a video game like when he makes fun of the level objectives at the start of the level. What more is the CEO of the game company wants revenge against Matt Hazard because he could never beat any of Matt’s games as a kid. He plans to get his revenge by killing Matt Hazard in the video game. That would be like me wanting to kill Mario because I could never beat Super Mario Brothers. It doesn’t make much sense in real life and it doesn’t make much sense in this video game either. What confuses me even more is real world is rendered using the same in-game graphics as the video game world. This makes me feel like both worlds exist on the same plane. I think they could have been much more effective if they used cheesy FMV video for the CEO scenes, especially since he’s played by Neil Patrick Harris in this game.

One of Matt's enemies from his previous Western themed game.

I could almost forgive this game for its non-sensible storyline, after all it’s supposed to be a parody and not to be taken too seriously. But the gameplay is just way too shallow and repetitive to make up for it. Enemies can be taken down in two ways, one way is by melee attacks. You can go up to enemies and do a quick melee combo that will usually take them down. But since it is risky to expose yourself in this manner, most of the times you’ll be trying to shoot them from behind cover. Headshots are very powerful in this game, so even though there are multiple weapons to pick up, often times you can get through a whole level with your default pistol. While this is nothing new to shooters, the game never varies on this basic run and gun formula. Sure it tries to make you feel like it does. One of the gimmicks in the game is the programmers are pulling enemies from Matt’s old games to fight against him. So in the same level you may fight against cowboys, Russian soldiers, zombies, water gun soldiers, and even 2D Nazi’s that turn sideways to avoid your fire. Ultimately, it all just feels like different skins on the same enemies as the same basic strategy of headshots seem to work against everyone.

Just your typical emo JRPG hero.

To me there is only one saving grace about this game. Matt Hazard is a game about parodies and the funniest by far is the inclusion of a boss that is a parody of JRPG protagonists. The boss is named Cloud Strife Altos Tratus and he is from the game Final Fantasy Penultimate Illusion. During the in-game cinema he even talks to Matt using text boxes complete with brooding over drawn monologues and ellipses. You may think the game is worth playing just to get to this point like I thought it was, but in the end this other method proved to be far less painful.

Ultimately the idea behind Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a unique one but just lacks in its execution. The storyline feels very non sensible and wants to blur the lines between reality and video games. While there are many enemy types, they end up all feeling like the same ones just with different weapons. It gets dull in a hurry and almost makes you wish you could play Matt Hazard’s Go Kart racing game instead. To sum it all up in a line I might say if I were in this game, playing this can be very hazardous to your enjoyment.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is available now for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Baseball Superstars 2009

As an iPhone owner, I’ve pretty much got my ear to the ground on most of the hotter apps out there.  I’m a total lemming when it comes to using apps I find on LifeHacker or the Consumerist (especially if they’re free).  Needless to say, after almost a year of having an iPhone 3G, I have almost seven pages of apps of which I maybe use a small percentage on a daily basis.  One of the most awesome aspects of the iPhone are the game apps.  I love games.  I’ve been a gamer since the Atari 2600, and a fan of handheld gaming since the original Nintendo GameBoy (which by comparison to today’s handheld platforms, was the size of a huge brick).  Now that I’m done flashing my gamer street cred, I want to use my time to talk about GAMEVIL, Inc’s iPhone game, Baseball Superstars 2009.

Who here remembers Baseball Stars on the NES?  I actually didn’t discover it until later in life, but I had a lot of fun creating my own baseball team with the names of my friends and some fictional characters I was enamored with at the time.  It was a crazy game with power-ups and the ability to launch the long-ball with ease.  Baseball Superstars 2009 takes that kind of fun and puts right on the iPhone for easy carrying.  I find myself playing this game pretty much all the time whenever I’ve got it.  I play it while waiting in line for food, or before I go to bed, if I’m stuck in traffic and I’m not moving an inch… I love it!

As this game has no license with the MLBPA or the MLB, it uses a complete fictional league with fictional teams and players.  You create two players, a pitcher and a batter to use within the league and you can assign them to the same team or different teams.  If you want to stand out on a team with awful pitching, assign your pitcher to that team.  If you want to stand out on a team with crappy bats, then your batter will flourish there.  As you run through the Pennant Race mode, you can earn money every year you run it, and buff up your player.  Batters are far easier to level up than pitchers, as batters have 3 categories (hit determines how often you’ll actually make contact with the ball, power determines how far you’ll hit it, speed determines how fast you are on the base paths) to modify, while pitchers have 5!  Both types are subject to stamina, popularity ratings, and morale.  Lower morale (losing a lot of games) will result in your meager stats decreasing a lot.  In the beginning, you’ll lose almost all your games because your little guy is as crappy as his team.  As time goes on and you can equip better stuff (helmet for your hit stat, bat for your power stat, shoes for your speed stat) to boost your states without having to train in them.

Don't let the cute designs fool you.

Graphically, what it reminds me of is an updated and far more customizable edition of the old Nintendo Baseball game for the NES.  Super-Deformed players on the field with set distances that determine what kind of hit you make.  Singles were all I could hope for in the beginning, but over time as my little guy got stronger and faster, I was hitting home runs and triples with regularity.  Another aspect of the game beyond training and buying equipment are Events.  Events are very cool.  You can send your guy on a date to boost his morale at first, but as you gain popularity (by winning games, making hits, and knocking in RBIs), more Events become available to you.  The highest is handing out autographs at a sports shop, which only boosts your popularity more.  I’m not sure exactly why you’d need more if you’ve already made to the top of the ladder, but whatever.

For the tl;dr crowd: The short version is that this game rules for all fans of baseball games and has a high replayvalue for what you pay for.

Publisher: GAMEVIL, Inc.
Platform: iPhone (2.2 or higher)
Cost: $2.99 (iTunes App Store)

Shion no Ou’s story revolves around a gifted middle school shogi (Japanese chess) prodigy named Yasuoka Shion. When she was five years old, she witnessed her parents’ brutal murder. The ordeal was so shocking, Shion lost the ability to speak and can only communicate through writing on a notepad. The one part that Shion remembers about the tragic event was that the murderer took her father’s shogi piece, a king, which leads her to believe that the murderer is a shogi player. Following the event, Shion’s neighbor, the Yasuoka family, adopted her and has taken up the game of shogi. Under the tutelage and influence of her foster father, Shion is in love with the game of shogi and is fast becoming a professional player. Shion’s love for shogi is also a double edged sword, as she discovers that shogi is not child’s play at all.

The beauty of Japanese animation is that anything under the sun can be told in an interesting way. It’s proven with Hikaru no Go, and it’s a similar case with Shion no Ou. Even though Shion no Ou’s story seems like it’s a “been there, done that” situation, it is different and interesting enough, that it can stand on its own legs, despite Hikaru no Go’s existence.

What got me hooked with Shion no Ou is the titular character herself. Shion’s bubbly attitude and roller coaster experience with the game of shogi and the other characters are captivating. Also, she’s a character who’s easy to root for, since many of her opponents, mostly adults, are just plain cruel to her. (Come on! She’s only a kid. Pick someone your own age!) Some of the other characters have extraordinary back stories. In the first episode of the series, we learn that Saitou Ayumi is a male shogi player, who crossdress because earning money in the female competition is easier and more lucrative. On the other hand, other characters are missed opportunities, like Nikaido Saori, a female shogi player who came from a rich background. The only interesting fact about her is that she plays shogi for self-respect and to be respected as a player.

My only complaint about Shion no Ou, was that even though the writers somehow combined a compelling story about a cold case and shogi, I wish they somehow explain about the basics of playing shogi. But then again, perhaps the writers and producers of Shion no Ou probably didn’t account for this series to be viewed by people outside Japan.

Even though it seemed like it ended so quickly, Shion no Ou was a surprising ride. Just when you think Japanese animators are running out of ideas, they keep churning out more of the good stuff. It’s without question that we like Shion no Ou and we hope that you’ll give it a try as well.

Our story revolves around Ayase Yuuto (Hatano Wataru), our typical high school male lead and of course Nogizaka Haruka (Noto Mamiko), the titular and quirky high school girl. Haruka, like all original rom-com female leads, is Hakujou Academy’s top idol and the girl of men’s creepy fantasies. One day, Yuuto’s crazy otaku friend Nobunaga (Reiko Takagi) asked him to return an anime magazine called Innocent Smile to the school library. As he returns the magazine, he literally bumped into Haruka, with a copy of Innocent Smile flew out from her bag, exposing her most embarrassing secret — she’s an akiba-kei.

(You may have noticed that term akiba-kei for Haruka, and otaku for Nobunaga. The difference between the two terms is that an otaku is a full-fledge fanatic, while an akiba-kei is a person that has some interest in anything that’s related to Akihabara. Well at least that’s what the Wikipedia otaku would want you to know.)

We’ve seen stranger situations before in the boy-meets-girl theme — from a girl turning into some dude’s right hand to a girl reverting back to a mind of a 7 year old — but we have yet to see something a relatively realistic. Let’s be real, a cute girl who happens to be an otaku is just another plot device. I’m surprised that it took this long for this plot device to be animated, especially a few years after the wildly popular Densha Otoko franchise was released to the wild. Despite my cynicism, I had some expectations thinking that this might actually work, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

The staff at Studio Barcelona didn’t exploit Haruka’s secret. Instead, we’re exposed to the same cliches and frustrating story arcs found in practically every rom-com anime since Love Hina. The series is peppered with episodes that are unrelated to the main character that drags the already short 12-episode series. Episodes such as Yuuto dating Haruka’s younger sister Mika (Goto Mai) and, Yuuto and the gang wasting an entire episode trying to learn about the secret love life of Haruka’s quiet maid Hazuki (Shimizu Kaori). Plus, the series’ screenwriters couldn’t figure out how to correctly intertwine a possible love triangle candidate, Amamiya Shiina (Satō Rina) into the existing story! I mean, sure there’s the typical episode of misunderstanding a scene, but unsurprisingly it was resolved quickly. And to add insult to injury, on the last episode, I was expecting Haruka to come out of her closet and admit that she’s an akiba-kei. Instead, we have a “class war” type of episode where Yuuto has to prove that you don’t need fame or money to prove a person’s worth… or some shit like that.

In any case, it just goes back to how Studio Barcelona mishandled a clear-cut premise into something completely unrelated. At the end of the day, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu is just forgettable and not worth your time. Even though it tries to have some feel good moments, the only thing you’ll feel from watching the entire series is regret.