The Quixotic Engineer

Title: Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure
Platform: Wii
Played for: ~2.5 hours, 4-5 stages cleared
Would play again?: Yes

Zack and Wiki is considered to be one of the Wii’s hidden gems, tremendously innovative but outsold 3:1 by the uninspired Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. Perhaps comparing a new IP with a hit series isn’t fair; Z&W certainly did well enough to likely warrant a sequel. That being said, it’s a shame that more people aren’t playing this brilliant puzzle game, which features very creative Wiimote implementation.

The A button alone is used to move around and examine objects. However, to interact with these objects, players must imitate the movement they wish to perform. From turning a crank to chopping down a tree, if you want to do it in game you have to mimic it in real life. These actions aren’t treated like mini-games either, there’s no on-screen pop up telling you what to do. It’s up to you to figure out which motion is appropriate for the situation. It’s a simple formula that’s surprisingly deep.

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Title: Devil May Cry
Platform: Playstation 2
Played for: ~2 hours, up to the first boss
Would play again?: No

As I mentioned in my last post, I picked up a cheap copy of Devil May Cry mainly because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. There’s been a lot of hype around the release of the latest installment, Devil May Cry 4, and the previous ones have generally been received very well.

Unfortunately, the game is nearly seven years old and it shows. Action games have evolved significantly since then, with titles such as God of War** and Heavenly Sword showing that you can have corridor fighting and linear levels with the illusion of openness and freedom***. This is not the case in Devil May Cry, and I quickly became weary of the repetitive castle corridors, endless minions and straightforward puzzles. I couldn’t find anything remarkable about the touted “stylish combo” system either, though a trip to GameFAQs told me I could perform a slightly different combo by mashing the circle button a little more slowly.

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As part of my ongoing exploration of graphic novels, I just finished reading “Batman: The Long Halloween”. I can’t say it was the type of book that I had initially pictured myself reading. Traditional superheroes were, in my mind, characters that fans loved too much to let go of but had long lost their innovation. How many times could you watch Superman defeat Lex Luthor before you moved on to other things?

Despite my preconceptions, I was confronted with Batman graphic novels at every turn in my search for reading material. Books such as “The Dark Knight Returns” and “The Killing Joke” kept popping up in lists of highly recommended titles. A little casual research told me that Frank Miller, who later penned 300 and Sin City, revitalized the campy character in the 80’s with a darker, more gothic interpretation. This spark set off a firestorm of creativity, leading to some of the best graphic novels of the era. I instantly felt a mild discomfort in my paradigms, perhaps due to the shifting.

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When I was a child, video games were a precious commodity. There was a wealth of great titles available for the SNES, but I only had a chance to play a handful of them. I cherished the ones I was fortunate to get my little hands on, and never tired of playing them over and over. There isn’t a SNES title in my collection that I haven’t beaten at least once, including some that I’ve revisited at least a half-dozen times.

Nowadays I find myself in the 18-30 unmarried male demographic, equipped with disposable income and the Internet hype machine. My free time isn’t what it used to be, but the game industry keeps chugging out more terrific games, culminating in last season’s veritable tsunami of AAA titles.

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Goichi “Suda51” Suda, CEO of Grasshopper, is a bit of a renegade game maker. His last game was Killer7, a strange on-rails shooter with a convoluted plot and extreme gore that became something of a cult classic. His latest offering, No More Heroes for the Wii, was released in Canada just this week. This of course was a week later than our neighbours down south, a week I spent reading some of my favorite bloggers have a nerdgasm or two over it. Needless to say I picked it up the day it arrived with great anticipation.

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