Street Fighter IV is Still Pretty Awesome

Oh hey, returning from a good 2-4 months of blog and website silence. I actually have been playing Street Fighter IV for a great deal of time between my last post and this one, which is to say things have not really changed in the slightest from the last post.

Well, except that I have a job now as a dishwasher on weekends.

But that's about it.

...unless you count the Game Developer's Conference: Canada. That was last week on Tuesday & Wednesday, and MANY (like, almost all) of the volunteers for the event were former (or current) Art Institute of Vancouver alumni. Although, lets face it. GDC Canada really WAS NOT a venue for bombshells to be dropped, this was painfully obvious when during the Don Mattrick keynote he and Victor Lucas repeatedly mentioned they'd save their good stuff for E3 next month.

WAY TO NOT GIVE ANY LOVE TO YOUR MOTHERLAND, FRIEND.

Street Fighter IV is Delicious

There's a lot to be said about a genre of game that actually causes you to become enamored with that particular genre of game. But simply put, Street Fighter IV has done what no other game previous could (excluding Smash Bros. because that series is technically not a fighting game series), made me really enjoy, and because of that, really understand how to play the game "properly".

No longer am I stuck with simple (and mostly ineffective) tactic of jump-attacking! Now I am able to perform special moves, Ultra Combos and Super Combos like nobody's business! It feels fantastic to be able to "admirably" perform against the CPU players, but therein lies my major problem right now with SF4.

I really only have one person to play with.

Since I do not have access to XBox Live Gold it is impossible for me to battle the other denizens of the world to prove my strength, gain new skills, and learn how to become a better player at the game. I say this knowing fully well that once March 15 rolls around I am going to purchase one of the Madcatz 360 Tournament Edition sticks from EBGames for about $220. It will be money well spent.

Who's That Guy?

WELL, FOR ONCE I ACTUALLY UPDATE (sort of) WITHIN THE SAME WEEK! Ahahahaha-hum. Anyhow, today's update features a drawn version of my good pal from post-secondary school, Adam McDonald.

"Obviously" Adam was never part of the original Azworld canon, but he certainly deserves to be a part of this odd world I've carved with these poorly drawn characters. Exactly what part he plays is a matter I have not yet decided. He's certainly a cool dude, if anything else.

Yup. Azure and him hang out sometimes. That's really all I got at the moment.

I'm Totally Bad at Drawing Girls

As I am (famously) terrible at drawing female characters, at most creating a female character for me is, 1. Add tits, 2. Add eyelashes, 3. Add hips. Naturally, my ability to do so varies in quality (usually bad to okay).

SO HERE'S EMMA LEE, a character based off of the only gal I usually interact with more than once a month. In the original (awful) character "summary" I wrote up for most of the high-school character parallels I thought up, Emma Lee was a secret agent who strived to find and capture/destroy the elusive Forest Gorilla in Brook Mountain, northeast of Coquitlam Springs.

NOW, she's more or less a projection of May Lee from King of Fighters 2001 in this dumb little world. By which I mean she has a Kamen Rider belt, which she may or may not be able to transform to a masked superhero.

Aftermath of Alphonse no Daibouken

Well, I kind of went on my big "day of being outside" adventure YESTERDAY, but I was kind of too tired to post anything about it last night because I am sort of terrible. Anyhow.

I resolved to yesterday, on January 29th, 2009 to dick around the Lower Mainland area as long as I could. And so I did. Long story short I picked up 3 games that day: Greetest Hits (not a typo) Beyond Good & Evil, War of the Monsters, and Twinbee Deluxe Collection for Japanese Sega Saturn (not ENTIRELY sure why I picked this up, probably because it was only $10).

While wandering around Lonsdale Quay after taking the seabus (a feat I had not done in almost ten years), I found a non-molested copy of a great PS2 game I played back in high school, War of the Monsters. Needless to say, War of the Monsters is a very entertaining monster fighting game which I could easily equate to the King of Monsters games done in 3D, and infinitely more balanced and entertaining. The one thing I imagine that holds it back is that it is only a 2 Player game. Had there been a sequel with a 4-player mode, the series would have definitely become an instant classic.

Beyond Good & Evil is one of those games that I wish I had purchased when it was new (happens a lot actually). Without being able to play it, from what I remember it was a very well-recieved adventure/action game. The weird plastic covering on it somehow melted onto the spine and, in my eyes, ruined the case. That ain't cool, bro. However this also further drives my resolve to purchase a whole whack of Playstation 2 game cases to replace the molested-by-stickers used games I already have.

Lastly, Twinbee Deluxe Collection is a weird little Sega Saturn Jap game I found at GameDeals yesterday when I popped in there to look around and probably not buy anything. At $9.95 the game called out to me, "TAKE ME HOME!" and so I obliged. I can't play it, I don't even have a working Saturn, but it does sort of feel cool to have a Sega Saturn game in my collection, specifically one of a series I always imagine I enjoyed but never played that much.

2 New (Fodder) Foes!

Not gonna lie to you, I haven't drawn much of anything this week. I spent a majority of this week playing Fallout 3 and enjoying the sight of punching things so hard they explode. But that's neither here nor there. Today's sort-of update includes a picture of the two enemies I "created" when I drew the picture for the Momentumeter idea.

Shoop Lizard: These odd little reptiles have the curious ability to concentrate the air within their lungs to a (relatively) devastating energy attack. Naturally since they are fodder foes they are easily dealt with by Azure with a couple of hits. Just be mindful to avoid their "shoop a da woop" as best as you can, it knocks the player back far more than any normal attack.

Sicklepeede: Unethical giant hybrid of mantises and centipedes, the sicklepeede is a mildly irritating person-sized carnivorous insect. Despite the menacing pinser on their rears, due to their unweildly large size and blind spot directly behind them it is all but useless. The sicklepeede's main strength is in its dual sickle-like claws, which it uses to tear into prey. Taking a sicklepeede head-on is not recommended unless you are able to strike first, and most of the time that will not be the case. It is best to leap over them and hit their unprotected rears.

Good times.

Let's Talk About: Noitu Love 2

Instead of the (for some reason) popular Let's Play, I decided to go with the title, "Let's Talk About" pretty clever, eh?

...Yeah okay.

ANYWAY. Noitu Love 2. Noitu Love 2: Devolution is the high-speed action game sequel to the very short-range and methodical Megaman-style game, Noitu Love and The Army of Grinning Darns, both created by Joakim Sandberg. While I can say that I never did finish the first Notiu Love, I tore through its sequel like a chippy tearing into a lobster and had a blast doing it. "But hold on a second!", you might think, "Noitu Love 2 was released in the spring of last year! Isn't this review a tad tardy?" Yes, that is true, the game's been out for a long time. However, the new price attached to it has NOT been out all that long.

Noitu Love 2 is $10 US now! (And here I paid $20, it was money well spent though.) That's as much as an XBLA arcade game!

But enough about the new price, let's talk about the actual game some more. From the get-go, the frenzied movement and attacking of the game's protagonist Xoda Rap reveal just how much Mr. Sandberg has improved in his game development and design abilities since the first game. An ingenious combo of the mouse and keyboard make for a control style that really feels at home on the PC. Left click to attack and home in on enemies, use the WASD to move and perform special movement techniques (slide, duck, "double jump") and use the right click to summon a sheild that is actually quite imparative to success in more than one occasion. It works incredibly well and it is almost mind-boggling that the control style is not nearly as widely used in PC side-scrollers.

Trying not to dwell too long on the graphics and music of the game, both parts (especially the pixel art graphics) are composed with such a charm that the game really does feel like a lost 16-bit era classic of Treasure Ltd. caliber that happens to have a control scheme none of the systems of the day could have.

Each of the levels in Noitu Love 2 has its own distinct feel and, in several cases, foes to fight. Because of the pseudo time-travel plotline within the game, you will find yourself using Xoda to battle darns across many varied landscapes, from Victorian England to the wild west to a post-apocolyptic future. Each landscape stands out as seperate from the others, yet obviously feeling of the same world, despite the obvious time difference. Some stages, like the aformentioned wild west stage, have completely different control schemes!

Combat is by far the crux of the game. Every single grinning darn or other mechanical monstrosity that Xoda swipes into oblivion is entertaining to fight, from the weakest orange darn to the towering Omega Darn (depicted in the first picture of this post), the game is full of action and enough boss fights to really drive home the "Treasure-like" feel of the game.

And after all is said and done with Xoda Rap, the game still is not quite over. There are also unlockable characters to be played as, and their playstyles vary radically from Ms. Rap's homing beat-em-up action. Of the two unlockable characters, Almond is the most interesting to play as. Playing as him causes the game to become a lightgun/mouse-controlled platformer, as you click the screen to shoot at foes, move the mouse to the bottom of the screen to reload ammo, and right click to maneuver Almond places he simply cannot jump through. Rilo Doppelori plays more like the usual mouse-based side-scrolling shooter, which in this game is also supplimented by her WASD-based double-tap attacks and charge laser. Her storyline runs sort-of parallel to Xoda's, with her actually fighting Xoda in the third stage, and also her having a completely different final boss.

In short, Noitu Love 2 is a game that was well worth the price of admission when it was $20, and now that the game is $10, it is even more worthwhile to play. It is a maddeningly fast-paced action romp that oozes with charm and the feel of a bygone era while still being as tight and polished as any game of this era is expected to be. In the hunger for 2D side-scrolling action games is abound, Noitu Love 2 will definately curb your appetite.

Notes: Noitu Love 2 can be purchased from Joakim Sandberg's website at http://www.konjak.org/ for $10.

Pictures of game from Mr. Joakim Sandberg's website and used without permission.