Game Of The Week: Pikmin 2

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. Today I’m taking a look at a great sequel to a great game, one of the best for the Nintendo Gamecube and one I love to start back up every now and then: Pikmin 2. I love both games in different ways and it’s hard for me to choose which one I like better, but I’ve decided to a do a review of Pikmin 2 because there’s a bit more for me to talk about when discussing it. So let’s get small and dive into the grass as we take a look at Pikmin 2.

 Released in 2004 for the Gamecube, Pikmin 2 did exactly what any good sequel should do: keep the core gameplay that made the original great intact while improving and expanding the universe created by the first game. The story picks up right where the first left off, with the protagonist Captain Olimar returning home from the alien planet where he crash landed in the first game. However, his triumphant return is short-lived when he discovers that in his absence, the freight company he works for has gone bankrupt and if its massive debt isn’t paid back soon, he’ll be out of a job. The boss of his company is at a loss for what to do- that is, until he discovers that a small object brought back from the alien planet by Olimar is extremely valuable, and that more treasures are there waiting to be collected. In order to save his company and his job, Olimar then travels back to the planet with his fellow employee Louie in search of more treasures.

This is where the primary addition to gameplay in the second game comes in- with the two playable characters of Olimar and Louie, you’ll be able to switch between the two and divide up your Pikmin squads around each of the levels. This pushes multitasking even further than in the first game, as now you’ll be able to simultaneously work on accomplishing different goals around the map by controlling two characters. There are also certain bosses that take advantage of this switching system- for example the toady bloyster boss, which you’ll have to distract using one character and launch Pikmin at from behind with another. It’s a very intricate system which allows you to tackle multiple tasks on completely different sides of the map while maintaining a greater level of control than the first game allowed. Another major difference between the first and second games is the introduction of “caves” throughout each of the maps, which are multilayered underground voids in which both the layouts and enemy/treasure placements are completely randomized. At the final floor of nearly all of the caves is a boss fight in which you’ll have to do battle with a massive enemy which will yield a special item upon being defeated. These items are mostly upgrades to Olimar & Louie’s suits that make the gameplay a little easier (for example, being impervious to fire, a larger whistle range to corral Pikmin, etc). There are four caves per map, with the exception of the last map in which there are only three, for a total of 15 in the whole game. Unlike above ground, when inside of a cave time does not pass, allowing for exploration of a cave without the urgency of moving quickly before a day ends.

Being able to split up your squads between two playable characters exponentially changes the multitasking dynamic of the game.

Speaking of urgency, there is no overarching “time limit” as there was in the first game. In the first game the player has 30 days to recover all of the ship parts before the game ends, whereas in the second game, there’s an unlimited amount of days to explore and collect all of the treasures. The second game doubles down on enemies, adding many new types that present a multitude of different threats to your Pikmin squad. There are a few enemies from the first game that don’t return, but the myriad of new ones makes up for that fact nicely. In addition to the enemies, two new Pikmin types join the ranks of the reds, blues and yellows: purple and white Pikmin. Purple Pikmin are slower than molasses, but their massive weight allows them to briefly stun enemies when thrown, making them extremely useful in combat. Also, they can carry ten times their own weight, allowing just one of them the lifting capacity of ten other Pikmin. By contrast, white Pikmin are small and swift, rapidly following behind you and carrying items. They are immune to poison and can dig up underground objects that other Pikmin can’t see. Additionally, they deal substantial damage to enemies if eaten. Both of these new types are very useful and valuable to have throughout the game, but there’s a major hitch- they can only be spawned in caves by throwing red, blue or yellow Pikmin into their respective candypop flowers and not by the traditional means of transporting dead enemies or pellets to the onions. These flowers only spawn a maximum of five Pikmin, meaning that you’ll have to very slowly build up a squad over the course of the game. However, the usefulness of both types for different tasks makes it very much worth the time and effort to do so.

It sucks that you aren't able to spawn purple & white Pikmin as quickly as the others, but it's certainly worth it to take the extra time to do so.

Lastly, there’s the introduction of items which aid in your adventure. I already mentioned the special items you’ll receive from defeating bosses, but there are two others that are very useful to collect as you progress- spicy and bitter berries, which can be used to create spicy and bitter spray, respectively. By pressing up or down on the D-pad, you’ll use one of these sprays which greatly helps in combating enemies; spicy spray causes your Pikmin squad to become temporarily enhanced, making them move and attack faster, while bitter spray briefly freezes enemies allowing your squad to attack them without being counterattacked. You’ll find the berries to make both types scattered in flowers around the maps, and by bringing five berries back to your ship you’ll be able to make one spray. 

By far, the biggest aspect that sets this game apart from the first is the cave system, which is also where my biggest critique is. I do like the randomization aspect, as the challenge always slightly differs every time you enter a different level of the cave. Also, I like that time doesn’t pass in the caves, so you have an unlimited ability to explore and strategize. However, the thing I didn’t enjoy about the cave system in comparison to the first game is that spending time in the caves makes up a majority of the game. Because of this, there’s a noticeable lack of emphasis on above ground exploring and puzzle solving, where you’ll be working against the clock to find items, break down barriers, build bridges, etc. until the day ends. Also, another above ground aspect lost by spending most of the game in the caves is the ability to sprout new Pikmin from dead enemies. Since the onions don’t follow you into the caves, you lose a lot of the satisfaction from defeating enemies and then using their carcasses to create new Pikmin, which is one of the most fun things about the first game and being above ground in the second. And lastly, the caves really don’t present much of a challenge at all unless you really act on an “honors system” for yourself, so to speak. Every time you enter a new sublevel of the cave, the game automatically saves. I’m not sure if there’s some practical reason for this, or if this feature can be manually shut off for that matter (honestly, I’ve never thought of checking until writing this sentence), but it happens every single time you finish a cave level and then move on to the next. Because of this, if something horrific happens and half your squad gets obliterated by an enemy that dropped in while you weren’t paying attention, you can simply reset the game and start over in that level like nothing ever happened. Like I said, you can impose an honors system on yourself and not do this if you have the discipline to do so, but more often than not I just got so annoyed at losing a ton of my hard earned purple Pikmin because a bomb rock exploded near them while I was off on the other side of the cave that I’d jump up and do a reset out of anger. I know they were trying to put a little less pressure on the player than in the first game, but I think this kills a lot of the challenge in making it through the caves, especially in the later ones when things start getting extremely difficult.

It's kind of like using save states in the caves, if you think about it.

Despite these things, the caves are really my only gripe with the game. I love the diversity of enemies new and old, plus the in-depth enemy analysis in the “Pikelopedia” which appeals to both my inner biologist and nerd at the same time. The new stage hazards of poison and electricity are very cool, as well as the enemies that utilize both, along with fire and water too. The game throws multiple hazards at you at once and you have to come up with some intricate strategies to deal with them. For example, there’s one part of the game where an enemy called the fiery bulblax (as the name implies, it’s on fire) is holding a treasure and sitting across a lake in a little enclave. There’s no other way around and only blue Pikmin can cross the lake, but they can’t attack the beast without being incinerated if they touch it. So, you’ll have to quickly wake it up and retreat into the lake, hoping it will follow you into the water and have its flames doused, at which point you can attack it. The game throws multiple hazards like that at you all throughout the game, and I like the creativity implemented there.

This guy takes a bit of fanagaling to take down, and it's just one instance of the game putting multiple obstacles in your way to complete a goal.

As in the first game, the graphics and music are both great. The music amps up in tension as enemies attack and then slows down peacefully when there’s no threats. The enemies are designed quite nicely and really give you a sense of accomplishment when you take down the massive, ugly boss enemies. Besides the main game, there’s also plenty of time to be spent in challenge mode, in which you’ll have to collect a certain amount of items within a time limit while dodging enemies and other obstacles.

All in all, Pikmin 2 is a great sequel and a worthy successor to the first game. It does lack some aspects that make the first game a lot of fun, so it’s kind of hard for me to choose which one I like better. I usually keep them separate in my mind and enjoy them both equally for their own reasons. Now I just need to get my hands on a Wii U so I can check out the third one…but that will be another story for another time. For now, so long and be careful where you step in your backyard, you never know what’s crawling around in the grass beneath you.

Game Of The Week: Ghostbusters II (NES)

Hello again dear readers and welcome to this week’s edition of game of the week. Today I’ll be talking about a near and dear gem from my childhood on the good old Nintendo Entertainment System. It might not be a classic, but it has a special place in my heart as one of the very first games I ever remember playing and enjoying as a young child. Yes, I’m talking about Ghostbusters II on NES.

Released in 1990, I have distinct memories of picking this game out at Toys R’ Us and proceeding to play the hell out of it as soon as I got home. It’s a simple, average game that doesn’t stand out too much from the crowd, but it’s one of my favorites due entirely to the nostalgia factor I get from playing it. Also, it’s worth mentioning that I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Ghostbusters. It was just my childhood thing. I mean, I’m one of those people with a full scale proton pack replica and costume that I break out every Halloween. Anyway, in the 26 years that have passed I still had never beaten this game myself, so after all this time I set out to do just that and along the way I took a more critical look at it. And what perfect timing, as the folks down at Cinemasssacre just recently did a video on this very game (and, not to mention, the imminent release of the Ghostbusters “reboot” in a few weeks which I have many mixed feelings about, but I digress).

So for the starters, the previous Ghostbusters game for the NES that was based on the first movie was…well…not very good at all. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s probably one of the worst games in the entire NES library (official, anyway). At any rate, there was pretty much nowhere to go but up after that train wreck, and Ghostbusters II certainly makes improvements in just about every category. It has a decent mixture of side-scrolling stages ala Contra, stages of driving and dodging obstacles, and stages of blasting away enemies falling from the sky using the Statue of Liberty reminiscent of games like Space Invaders. Not extremely diverse, but again, definitely an upgrade over the first game. The graphics are pretty nice. Nothing supreme or anything, but good enough for the kind of game it is. I particularly like the little in-between stages graphics, especially the one for the Statue of Liberty stage.

 So should I start using the NES advantage here or...?

In the side-scrolling stages, you’ll take control of one of the four Ghostbusters (who all play exactly the same and even have identical sprites, with the exception of Winston) and simply navigate a stage from right to left. These are the primary stages of the game, with the driving and Statue of Liberty stages in between. It’s interesting that none of the Ghostbusters use their signature ghost-catching weapons, the proton packs, at any point in this game; instead, they all use the slime blowers (which, now I’m going to get really nerdy here, there were only two of in the movie). Not really that big a deal, just an interesting choice. Plus, it does make sense when you consider the context that they were really pushing the “slime” aspect in the second movie to the max (much to the chagrin of Bill Murray, apparently). In fact, now that I think it about it, it wasn’t just Ghostbusters…slime itself was EVERYWHERE in the late 80’s/early 90’s. I think it probably started with Ghostbusters, but there was just this really big deal about slime back then. But now I’m getting off topic here.

Anyway, the levels each have the extremely simple objective of getting to the end of the stage without dying. You’ll have to dodge a variety of ghosts and other things like severed heads and hands, spiders, and..uh, random objects. Yeah, sometimes you just get pelted with random things that come flying in from off screen, but I’ll discuss that in more detail later. Shooting slime destroys the ghosts in one hit, but the other things will have to be trapped. By pressing the select button, you’ll drop a ghost trap that sucks in anything directly above it, including ghosts and Ghostbusters logos. Yeah, there are a lot of those in this game. They come flying in at the top of screen, and you’ll gain one every time you hit one with slime or suck one into a trap. Collect 20 and you get an extra life. I always found it kind of funny that you’re collecting logos to gain lives…kind of like if Mario was collecting Nintendo logos instead of coins. Anyway, just run to the left, dodge the ghosts, collect logos, and you’re through the stage. However, one pretty annoying thing about this is the spider that crawls along behind you all through the stage. Yeah, for some reason the developers decided that a simple time limit wasn’t quite enough and put in a little invulnerable spider that slowly crawls behind you as you progress in the stage. Most of the time you probably won’t even notice it, but if you stand still too long it will catch up with you and instantly kill you if you touch it. I guess they were trying to make the game a bit more difficult but it’s mostly just annoying, especially during the last stages of the game that get quite difficult and you’re just trying to take it nice and slow.

 That little spider always annoyed the crap out of me. I ain't afraid of no ghosts, but spiders, that's another story.

The stages are all pretty short and sweet and follow the story arc of the movie quite nicely. After the first stage at the river of slime, you’re at the first of the two driving stages. It’s much the same as before- just move up and down, dodge ghosts and other hazards. You can also collect more logos and other powerups such as invincibility and a better slime blaster. The most difficult parts about these stages are the jumps. I don’t know who’s been paying attention to the roads in New York City for a living, but it seems that huge chasms have opened up in the middle of the street (perhaps a bigger problem than ghosts?), and you have to “jump” over them in order to proceed. Yeah, the Ecto-1A jumps, just go with it. But you won’t be able to make it simply by jumping- no, you have to drive over little arrows that serve as speed boosters to successfully clear the ditches. It’s not too bad in the first level, I think there’s only two or three jumps to make. However, in the second driving stage, there will be areas of two consecutive jumps in a row, and if your timing and placement isn’t precise on hitting the arrow and jumping, you’re going down. Also, another annoying aspect is that if you fall into the hole, you’ll lose a life AND have to start the stage over again from the beginning. This doesn’t happen if you get hit by a ghost and lose a life, as you’ll be able to start up again right where you died.

 The jumps in the driving stages, especially ones like this one pictured, are really difficult until you've practiced enough that you can get the hang of them. I also like how it says "Jump!!" at the bottom of the screen, as if you wouldn't know what to do when confronted with a giant hole.

Next up is another side scrolling stage in the courthouse (which is interesting that you play as Winston in this stage since he wasn’t in that scene. Well, actually he was briefly in the beginning of it, but then disappears later on when the Scolari brothers appear. Where did he go, anyway? Damn it, I’m getting sidetracked again). In this stage, big ghosts start to appear- ghosts that can't be blasted and can only be trapped. This is followed by the second driving stage, and after that comes another side scrolling stage in the abandoned subway. Then, it's onto something quite different- in the next stage, you’ll control the Statue of Liberty (with an NES advantage controller, perhaps? I just love the irony here) and have to blast away ghosts that fall from the sky while dodging projectiles. This is quite different from the previous stages, as the stage scrolls automatically while you move the Statue left and right on the screen. There’s a few powerups to grab in this stage- one that lets you shoot at an angle as opposed to just straight up, one that launches a bomb that destroys all the ghosts on screen, and one that grants you brief invincibility. There are technically two of these stages, but they both play the same and really the only things that change are the backgrounds and the patterns of the ghosts.

 As as kid, I assumed that the big ghosts that appear in the courtroom stage were supposed to be the Scolari brothers.

Once you complete the Liberty stages, you’ll be at the last section of the game- four different stages in the museum in which you’ll have to guide each of the four Ghostbusters to the end where Vigo the Carpathian waits for you in his painting. I mean, he literally waits there and doesn’t even do anything, but I’ll touch on that more in a moment. The four stages all look the same, but enemy placements are different and gradually increase in difficulty. By the time you get to the last one, you’ll really start getting frustrated by the level design. As I mentioned earlier, some enemies just come flying in from off screen with little time for you to react. These enemies will bounce along the floor in different patterns, and the best strategy is to quickly run in the opposite direction and drop a trap that they’ll get sucked into. However, when you have a bunch of slimers flying above you and the spider inching its way toward you to the right, this isn’t always easy to do and you might end up getting hit and losing a life. And that’s another thing- the one hit deaths are kind of annoying. The game is pretty generous with the opportunity to earn extra lives, but maybe two or three hits before death would’ve been nice. And lastly, the most annoying part of the last four levels is the fact that if you lose all your lives and have to continue, you need to start all the way back at your first Ghostbuster again. So, say you get to the fourth and final stage and then lose all of your lives, you'll need to go back to the first and do all four all over again. It’s far from impossible, but this part had me repeatedly starting over again and was the major reason why I could never complete the game. However, I refused to give up and powered through, eventually conquering the four stages and…that’s it. Yeah, there’s no final boss or anything, the game just ends with a short scene where the Ghostbusters shoot Vigo's painting with slime and….that’s it. A final boss challenge would’ve been better, but at the same time, I’m just happy I finally put this 26-year vendetta to rest.

 Only a Carpathian would come back to life now and choose New...wait, the game's over? That's it?

Overall, Ghostbusters II might have been an inferior movie (certainly not a bad movie, as some people on the internet like to claim), but it definitely was a superior game. And interestingly, there was an even better Ghostbusters II game called “New Ghostbusters II” that never made it to America and was only released in Europe and Japan. I would’ve loved that one as a kid for sure, and maybe I’ll get my hands on it one day to give it a proper review too. But for now, Ghostbusters II on NES, it ain’t all that bad and still manages to bring me back to my early childhood every time I pop it in. So until next time: two in the box, ready to go, we be fast and they be slow.

Game Of The Week: Silent Hill 3

*Warning- This review contains spoilers for the first three games of the Silent Hill series.*

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. Now that I’m finished with school and I no longer feel guilty about playing video games and not studying, I’ve taken the time to sit back and catch up on all the games I’ve been meaning to play for a while but haven’t been able to. That being said, I’d like to start a little weekly segment in which I talk about a game I’ve been playing, since it’s a little easier for me to write about when it’s fresh on my mind. I don’t expect these will be particularly long but they will provide me an outlet to give a quick opinion on a random game, so every Sunday I’ll get around to posting one of these. 

This week’s game is Silent Hill 3, a truly excellent survival horror game and probably one of the scariest games I’ve ever played. Although I’ve previously mentioned in other reviews that my favorite of the series is the second game, I believe the third represents the point at which the series reached its absolute pinnacle. Released in 2003 for the Playstation 2 and later on for the PC, SH3 pushed the boundaries of psychological horror in a video game to new heights and greatly built upon what the previous two games had established beforehand.

SH3 is more or less seen as the “true” sequel to the first game, as SH2 had virtually nothing to do with the first. Picking up 17 years after the events of SH1, SH3 follows the story of a young girl named Heather, who as it turns out is the daughter of the protagonist from the first game, Harry Mason. To quickly recap the sort of complex and confusing events of the first game, Harry came to Silent Hill for a vacation but ended up being separated from his daughter and plunged into a nightmare world by a cult bent on resurrecting an ancient God that would bring about the end of the world. As it turns out, his young daughter Cheryl is one half of the spirit of a young girl named Alessa, who was ritualistically burned by her fanatical mother in order to bring about the birth of the God. Harry manages to the halt the dark plan, destroying both the God and Alessa in the process, but before she disappears Alessa produces a child with whom Harry runs off with. Like I said, complex and confusing. Anyway, that child is none other than Heather, now 17 years old and living the life of a normal American teenage girl, and by that I mean hanging out in malls all day. However, her strange and mysterious past catches up with her as she, like her father before her, finds herself trapped in bizarre nightmare world filled with horrific monsters.

SH3, by my evaluation, is pretty much the perfect mixture of the first and second games. It follows the story arc of the first game and picks up where it left off, but has the general gameplay style and even revisits some of the same locations of the second game. The nightmare world is much more similar to that of the first game; everything is blood and rusted metal and decaying corpses and other generally disturbing things. It’s wonderfully awesome and absolutely terrifying at the same time. This is in stark contrast to the nightmare world of SH2, which was much more quietly unsettling and a bit blander, if anything. As I mentioned in my review of SH2, this is more of a reflection on each games’ respective protagonists as they venture through Silent Hill, but I digress. 

The nightmare world of SH3 is the most intense and disturbing incarnation you'll face yet.

The trademark moments of the Silent Hill series to that point are back with a vengeance. The monsters are grotesque and otherworldly, most not even coming close to resembling anything human or animal. The music and sound effects are once again masterfully implemented, building up dread, tension, or haunting uneasiness, depending on the situation. Sometimes, it’s even just the complete lack of sound effects or music that adds to the horror. The story is a bit convoluted and even to this day I’m still not 100% sure I understand what happens, but it’s tolerable enough to follow along with and doesn’t detract from the overall experience at all. As was the case with just about all late 90’s/early 2000’s horror games, the voice work for the characters gets pretty hokey at times. For example, I know she’s just a teenager, but Heather is constantly pouty and sometimes downright obnoxious instead of scared out of her goddamn mind like any rational human being would be if trapped in a nightmarish hell world. It plays out like more of an inconvenience for her than anything most of the time. Again though, this doesn’t take away from the overall game, as the cutscenes with dialogue are pretty much few and far between. And yeah, I know the HD revision improved the voice acting, but I’m talking about the original here because I’m old and can’t keep up with the times.

The voice acting/writing isn’t all that great. I love this part all the way toward the end of the game where Heather just nonchalantly thinks she can call an ambulance in the nightmare world like that would work just fine. Like, did she even look around!? She’s been fighting monsters straight out of a David Lynch film and the entire world is made of a rusty chain-link fence!

Anyway, the patented disturbing nature that is so indicative of the Silent Hill series is ramped up tenfold in this game. There are so many little moments where you’ll come across something that has nothing to do with the story or gameplay but will just creep the ever loving hell out of you so much that you’ll find yourself not even wanting to play any further because of it. The best example of this I can think of is in the infamous mannequin room, which is what I’d probably consider the scariest moment of the entire franchise, maybe of any horror-themed video game ever for that matter. Just watch for yourself, if you’ve never played the game. It’s such a small, insignificant moment that has nothing to do with anything else happening in the game, but if you were actually able to keep your wits together the first time you turned around that corner and then came back to a decapitated mannequin with blood all over the floor, I thoroughly commend you. The lack of any cues to prepare you for that moment, the lack of any music or other sounds leading up to it, it’s pure evil genius, absolute mastery of horror as far as I’m concerned.

Yeah...I...I just don't even know what to say about this.

Despite the common ground it has with its predecessors, SH3 does much to distinguish itself from them as well. Perhaps the biggest difference I noticed in comparison to 1 and 2 was the difficulty level. I’m no master of video games or anything, but I honestly have never really considered the first two games in the Silent Hill series all that difficult. What I personally considered the true challenge of the games was to endure the psychological horror without jumping up and shutting the game off in the middle of your session (which actually did happen to me a few times). However, the games themselves weren’t very hard in terms of solving puzzles and battling monsters and bosses. Even on the harder difficulty levels, I never had all that much of a problem getting through either the first or second games. However, beyond the easiest settings in the third game, the level of difficulty can ramp up quite rapidly.  The lack of supplies is evident in SH3; even on normal mode, I felt like I was constantly low on ammo and health items. Enemies are also noticeably more dangerous and harder to take down than the previous games. The puzzles aren’t very numerous compared to the first two games (only four as opposed to eight and ten, respectively) but range from genuinely confounding on normal riddle mode to criminally insane on hard riddle mode. Upon beating the game you’ll be rewarded with a number of things like bonus weapons and bullet multipliers which make future playthroughs easier. Also, beating the game on both hard difficulty and riddle mode unlocks the so-called “extreme” mode, which is beyond my comprehension since I had a tough enough time making it through hard mode as it was. Oh, yeah, and beating extreme mode unlocks “extreme 2” mode, and this keeps going all that way up to “extreme 10” (!) mode.  I can’t even imagine what that must be like.

At any rate, some new gameplay mechanics do help with the increase in difficulty. For one thing, the camera system is a bit more responsive than the first two, allowing you better control over seeing what’s ahead of you and dodging potential incoming threats. Also, a new blocking mechanic aids greatly in squaring off with monsters. By holding the R1 button and pressing square, Heather will briefly hold up whatever weapon you are equipped with, and if timed right you can effectively block monster attacks. Blocking reduces damage taken to only 10% of normal, and if equipped with the bullet-proof vest item, no damage will be taken at all. It takes some practice, but blocking is extremely useful in conserving health items and all but mandatory on harder difficulty levels.

The blocking mechanic adds a whole new layer of strategy to the combat system that was absent from the previous games and greatly enhances overall the experience.

In all, SH3 may not be my favorite in the series, but it’s definitely a close second. It’s a shame to me that future games in the franchise didn’t follow suit in what this game established. I can’t speak about any of the later entries (i.e. Downpour, Homecoming, etc.) having never played them, but I have played others such as 4, Origins, and Shattered Memories, and I know that none of those games have lived up to the legacy those first three games left for us. It’s also a shame that the series has experienced controversy in recent years, with the strange and sad tale of what could have been in the cancelled “Silent Hills.” At any rate, I still have hope that the series can make a return to its roots, just as I hope for franchises like Resident Evil. Only time will tell. Anyway, if you want a true dose of psychological terror, check out Silent Hill 3, you won’t be disappointed.