Why Does It Have to Be Poodles?

I have heard that the original version of Dead Rising didn't feature zombified poodles and birds but since the Wii version is modelled using the RE4 engine, Capcom decided to jazz the game up a little by adding them. That's probably the breaking-point for the game as the developers failed to realised that this isn't Resident Evil, you don't have the luxury of standing around trying to take aim at these flying birds coming at you. When frustration sets in, I have even attempted to hurl/swing my melee weapon in that direction hoping to land a direct hit at these poodles and birds. Sometime it works but you can clearly see these poodles are not designed to take such hits.

Suddenly the most menacing thing in the game isn't the sheer number of zombies but how many of these little bastards lurking among them ever ready to make your life miserable.

Last Hurrah for Touchdown

Although there have only been two No More Heroes games so far the series has always been about Travis Touchdown to me. Kinda like how Al Pacino's Tony Montana made Scarface into one of the best mob movie ever, it hard to imagine how either one would fare without their central character. The first No More Heroes game was a very average game when striped to its bare-bones and mind you, there isn't even that much meat on the bone to begin with. It has a couple of things that made it stand out though like a killer soundtrack, good voice casting and of course, Travis touchdown.

Suda was mentioned that No More Heroes 2 will probably be the last one appearing on the Wii platform and also travis touchdown's final appearance. Any future installment will have to wait for Nintendo's next-gen console and will not feature travis as the central character. Things have changed quite a bit since the first No More Heroes game, there weren't so many third-party games on the Wii platform back there. Now that I finally have my copy of NMH2 I can finally see how it stacks up against today's third-party games, hopefully Suda and co have given travis a proper send off that he deserves...

...and have him killed off at the start of NMH3 in a totally-irrelevant manner like only Suda can.

Rainy Days & Mondays

No matter what era of music you grew up on the classic Carpenters never go out of style. From being prominently featured in the movie Tommy Boy to Nicolas Cage making part of his Johnny Blaze character, the Carpenters are distinctly hip for such soft melody music. Well maybe we should leave Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider out because badass biker with a spirit of vengeance and the Carpenters just don't mix plus Cage isn't exactly hip anymore these days.

Sing is not the first song that come to my mind when I think of the Carpenters in fact i don't even remember the song was featured in Sesame Street despite coming to know of the Carpenters from my dad's records as a kid. Now thanks to Hideo Kojima I can't think the recent Peace Walker without thinking of the Carpenters' song, Sing. It was the only source of comfort during the horrific torture sequence and also strangely became the boss' theme music in Peace Walker. Somehow it fits with the theme of Peace Walker and the game's message of peace. This is probably the second time I remember a pop culture song being featured in a Metal Gear and both instances happened to be part of the Big Boss saga. The last time was during the ending credits of Snake Eater and a popular britpop band's song was used. I can't exactly remember the band or the name of the song but I did remember thinking to myself that Kojima-san got great taste in music.

NBA Jam Crossover

When I first watch NBA games as a kid I didn't think anyone could possibly missed a potential slam dunk for a sure-fire two points but it's possible. The ball hitting the wrong side of rim on its way down sometimes just bounced off in the opposite direction flying as fast as a hard dunk. In a way EA sports missed a potential slam dunk when they did both parties (ps3/xbox and wii) injustice for their highly-anticipated reboot of the NBA Jam brand.

EA are indeed bringing the game to the ps3 and 360 but as a downloadable-content if you purchased NBA Elite 2011 for the respective platform. The catch is it isn't the full version of the NBA Jam game on the Wii and NBA Elite isn't really that good of a basketball game according long-time hoop gamers. So Nintendo loses another exclusive third-party game while Sony and Microsoft gets a real boost for NBA Elite especially since the game wouldn't have any resell value as the downloadable code for NBA Jam is for use one-time only. It's like EA sports is trying to please everyone but just end up upsetting everyone instead, ps3/360 are getting a gimped version of NBA Jam while Wii owners are no longer enjoying an exclusive third-party game. I was initially planning to get the Wii version if it was exclusive then decided to go for the ps3 version since it would probably be cheaper as a downable game on PSN. It's not going to be available for purchase on psn or xbox live so it's likely i won't be able to find anyone to play with since online mode for the wii version is still unconfirmed.

Looks like EA Sports just lost a lot of potential sale of NBA Jam on the Wii though it probably won't hurt having a free game included with NBA Elite. This feels like EA's payback for Dead Space Extraction poor performance on the Wii platform but surely nobody deserves to be treated like this, Wii and ps3/360 owners alike.

A Witch's Job is Never Finished

It's been a while since I last played Bayonetta and while I long to play that game again there are always issues preventing me from doing so. For one thing there are other games waiting to be played (though the reality is I'm also replaying some other games at the moment) and then there is also the 'fragility' of dualshock3 controller i have to be concerned with.

During this time Platinum Games has released a 5-disc soundtrack album and artbook to complement the game release with the Best of reprint of the original game for Japanese market scheduled for release later in September. Looks like a witch's job is never finished surely this won't be the last we see of her as Platinum Games is set to unveil some Bayonetta-related news really soon according to the game's producer. While I would love to add both the 5-disc soundtrack and artbook to my collection it stills burns that I wasn't given the pre-order soundtrack sampler when i purchased the japanese copy of the game from a local dealer. Having the 5-disc soundtrack might just be a painful reminder of that so the artbook is certainly much more tempting to me right now. Now if only I was done going through the last artbook I got I won't feel so guilty about getting this now.

Quick Torture Event

While I take good care of my games I don't normally go overboard with my controllers like most. I believe restraining yourself with the controller will ultimately just hinder your enjoyment of the game after all these controllers are made to take the abuse. Despite my penchant for fast-paced hard-hitting action games I only had to replace my controller once on any of my past consoles so there is surely some truth to this.

Things are a little different with handhelds after all you can't just replace the faulty controls you have to replace the entire system so I'm not sure how I should restrain myself with these handheld games. Thankfully most developers don't expect you to button-mash like a madman in front of public eye so handheld games aren't really made that way.

Except Peace Walker isn't like any other handheld game and Hideo Kojima isn't any ordinary developer either. I have read fans lament about the now-infamous torture sequences that live on in every Metal Gear games fearing the worst for what's to come in Peace Walker. Tonight I survived the ordeal and my PSP lived to tell the tale but the build-up to that very moment was agonizing to say the least. I was about 25 hours into the game with no idea of when the torture sequence would pop up and what to expect save the unfavourable feedback from online fans. Then Snake gets captured in my last mission and I knew it was just around the corner but somehow I messed up the quick-time event leading up to the scene. So being the paranoid android that I am I decided to replay the last mission to get the quick time event scene right before playing the torture sequence. I'm not sure if it helped or not but I had an easier time getting Snake out of the prison cell then if I have failed the scene. I certainly don't want to replay that torture sequence again though the game itself is pretty addictive. If there is one thing I know about lady luck is you should never push her too hard.