Retro Review: Stubbs the Zombie

Grade: C+
Time Spent Playing: 5 hours

The most enjoyable part of Stubbs is when you build up a platoon of zombie recruits and, like an undead papa, watch them stumble out and destroy humanity without your direct guidance. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. I can imagine the dilemma for the designers: you don't want a passive experience to be the most enjoyable part of a game. So, they make the player take a more active, action game approach to getting past many of the levels; which doesn't work so well with a cumbersome zombie fighting speedier humans who can backpedal as quickly as you can lurch toward them. As to your horde: it rarely grows larger than six or seven zombies and the humans, whose melee attacks are more powerful than gun shots, can generally wipe them out with little trouble; especially in the middle and later levels when they start wielding shotguns and automatic rifles. In the very last levels you pretty much have to do everything yourself, which is where my dissatisfaction really took hold.

Stubbs has an absolute wealth of potential, so I wonder if it was due to a lack of time and resources instead of poor decision making that led to its mediocrity. It certainly feels like an unfinished product. The levels are large but empty. There's little to interact with. The objects that are there are cemented in place. I distinctly remember running into a park bench with a jeep and getting nothing but a dull thud as my jeep came to an abrupt stop with neither the jeep or the bench look the worse for wear. There's rarely many citizens running about, which is odd considering the PS2 grade visuals. Maybe all of the Xbox's processing power was taken up putting on that annoying, old timey screen filter.

Stubbs does succeed in the charm and writing departments. While poking fun at the 1950s is trite at this point, the game does succeed in making you laugh on purpose. One of my favorite jokes was the gas station robot that refuels cars by literally having sex with them. Stubbs also has the distinction of having the only rhythm mini-game that I recall enjoying; a dance off against a midget police chief to covers of old songs performed by new indie and indie-oid* bands.

Speaking of the music, the first thing I did upon firing up the game was find the soundtrack. It's really good but, continuing in the line of perplexing things about this game, pretty much only shows up on the title screen. Beyond that is the dance contest and then one other time, in a diner, one of the songs plays from a jukebox. All told, you hear less than half of the soundtrack, including some of the very best executed covers on it. I'll post a review of the sound track later.

There are other, small things that Stubbs does right. For one, there are a number of different brain eating animations, adding variety to the same basic task. Ripping off a guy's arm and beating him with it is pretty fun as well

I really wish that Stubbs had lived up to its monstrous potential. Perhaps after Wideload finishes up Hail to the Chimp, they'll take another look at Stubbs. Give it elements of pikmin or lemmings, don't treat Stubbs like an action hero, add more interaction with the world, put dozens of characters on screen, make use of a great soundtrack you undoubtedly spent loads of money on, retain the humor; I think you have a triple A title.

*Indie-oid: a word I just made up to describe indie-esque bands that are actually on major labels. Like to Built to Spill, who, unfortunately, aren't on the Stubbs soundtrack.

Archive Footage, Radical Graphics, Marketing Lies, and White Supremacy

Classic Sega: Having all of the dumb ideas before anyone else...

Retro Review: Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath

Grade: A-
Time Spent Playing: 8 - 10 hours

Stop what you're doing. Grab a belt. Walk to a mirror. Pull your pants down. Start flogging yourself while you recite, "I'm a dirty little slut bitch." Don't feel too ashamed, because I'm right there with you, bruised ass and tears streaming.

Our crime? Ignoring Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath when it dropped three years ago. Sure, we can blame Microsoft Studios for drop kicking Lorne and company when they showed up late with a game they weren't supposed to be making. Or we can pin the onus on EA for picking up the game with the express purpose of making a sizable equipment donation to the mini-frisbee championship of the world.

But we all knew about this game. We knew it was coming. We knew Oddworld Inhabitants made good games. And for whatever reason, we shunned it. Probably because we're assholes.



Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath tells the story of Stranger, a lion-goat-thingy bounty hunter that's desperately trying to earn 20K to pay for a mysterious, life-saving surgery. It has pretty much no connection with any of the other games, except that it takes place on Oddworld, albeit on a heretofore unseen part of it and the bad guys, predictably, are corporate mooks. Unlike the industrial-nightmare backdrop of previous games, Stranger's world is directly inspired the frontier west of North America. And what a lush, beautiful representation of that forgotten country it is.



The graphics may be the absolute best the Xbox ever produced. The models are highly detailed and are clearly the result of hours of love and thoughtful design while the surroundings beckon you to explore by their beauty alone. It truly would have been an aesthetic crime if EA had succeeded in forcing the devs to make a PS2 version. I imagine it would be something akin to the way Don Swayze looks like his brother Patrick Swayze; there's a resemblance, but it's a retarded resemblance.

Of special note is that there is very, very little loading. Journeying from region to region is seamless.




The gameplay is a peculiar mixture of third-person platforming and first-person shooting. In platformer mode, you run faster and have longer jumps and can wallop enemies with headbutts and tornado punches. First-person allows you use of the crossbow, which, instead of arrows, fires different little creatures that vary in purpose and strength. I can see why the big publishers likely held this game pinched between their thumb and pointer fingers, holding their noses with their free hand. I'm an experienced gamer--one eager to play this game--and it took me a while to really get into the flow of switching between the two. Even after having beat it, I wonder if the game wouldn't have been better served by keeping all of the action in third-person. Perhaps, instead of switching to first-person, clicking the right stick could have allowed an over-over-the-shoulder view with strafing controls.




The flow of the game, at least the first two-thirds or so of it, is similar to that of Shadow of the Collossus. You're presented with a large, continuous world--though more limited than Colossus--where you hunt down bosses who are essentially gameplay puzzles. On the way to bosses you have to take out scores of lesser bandits and explore the area for gold and ammo. To collect a bounty on those bandits and bosses, you suck defeated enemies up ghostbusters style. You're rewarded with more moolah for live enemies, which in turn adds a nice level of difficulty for people like me who simply can't deal with the possibility there might be some power up or upgrade that I'll not be able to afford. The last third of the game is much more linear as larger events push the story forward.

Speaking of the story; it's what you should expect of Lorne Lanning. Industrialists are inherently evil and people stuck in the stone age--sorry, people who live in harmony with nature--are, by default, good. Someday, I'd like for Lorne Lanning to explain how exactly we could have things like computers and aeroplanes and vaccines for deadly diseases without the wealth and technology brought on by the industrial revolution. But whatever. In all likelihood, most players won't care and unlike another preachy game, it never detracts from the experience. Outside of the message angle, the story is pretty straight forward. There is a major twist two-thirds in that, upon further reflection, doesn't make much sense even though you'll likely see it coming. There's a final twist at the very end that actually makes no sense whatsoever.

I will contend, however, that Stranger is a likable and interesting character. What he was willing to do to himself was poignantly sad and in the end, I'm not so sure he cared for the plight of the natives. He seemed more motivated by killing the guy who put a huge bounty on his head than with helping the natives win back their land. I could be wrong about that, but given this supposed to be a western, a genre known for morally ambiguous heroes, I don't think I'm stretching


The caveats:

Much like another great but under performing Xbox game developed by an ace adventure game designer, certain faults betray the inexperience of its creators with an unfamiliar genre. The difficulty can be quite erratic and the enemies are all perfect shots; the automatic-weapon wielding baddies will bullseye you from vast distances while snipers will hit you even at full gallop. Some of the bosses will induce hair pulling, while the final boss is ridiculously easy.

Remember where I mentioned sucking up enemies? That's how you'll die 90% of the time because the bad guys love shooting you when you do it. And because they only stay unconscious for about five seconds, you often have to resort to trying to capture them in the middle of firefights. Taking on a group of six enemies can be annoying, often requiring you to fall back and snare them as they follow you one by one.

A final buggaboo: I took great care to capture all of my main bounties and the vast majority of the henchmen alive and there is little reward for it. The aforementioned story twist makes all of the money you made worthless and I'm convinced I could have afforded all of the powerups had I killed everyone. Nor is there a special ending for going out of your way to save lives.

But even given those complaints, this is an excellent game. The game world realized is beyond what most developers are even striving for. It's a shame this put Oddworld Inhabitants out of the game business.

Retro Review: God of War

Grade: B+
Time Spent Playing: 8 - 10 hours

I actually did try to play this one when it first came out, but the disc was bad and the rental store didn't have any more so I traded it for Doom 3--which I liked, thankyouverymuch.

In God of War, you spend most of your time mercilessly smashing your controller buttons and grunting. In this respect, you really become one with Kratos.

Kratos is actually a character I designed for my never-developed, mid-nineties fighting game, Phancy Disembowler II. To their credit, Sony added a nice dimension to his character by having him yell "Ares!" every few minutes. Plus, he totally bangs chicks (two at a time!) and
feels nothing for his fellow man.

Ok, so I think Kratos is a stupid character. Luckily, this game is really fun. The detailed level deisgn is spectacular and the graphics are amazing for their time. The puzzles, in particular, I found to be truly a joy. The melee combat is fun, though you have to do way too much of it. In fact, it will be a while before I play God of War II because getting locked in a room and fighting off hordes of monsters for 30 minutes just doesn't sound too appetizing at the moment.

Retro Review: Yakuza

Grade: B
Time Spent Playing: 15 hours

Meet Kazuma, awesome badass. As a soldier in the Yakuza, it's his job to collect money and administer beatings where appropriate (hint:it's always appropriate!). Unfortunately for this bare knuckled warrior, he also has this silly sense of honor which gets him into a heap of trouble early in the game and subsequently drives the story.

I remember, years ago, when this game was being previewed, it was often described as a streamlined Shenmue. And that's a fair descriptor; one that carries with it both negatives and positives.

It's similar to Shenmue in that it presents a living world for you to interact with. Though, instead of a small Japanese town or Chinese ghetto, you get to run amok in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. It does offer less interactivity--no knocking on random strangers' doors--but it still feels like a real place. From what I understand, the representation of Tokyo's red light district is authentic. Except maybe the public park run by hobos that only has one entrance, through a public men's room. Did I also mention that the same hobo dominated park also leads to an underground--literally--black market where the rich and powerful can gamble and buy prostitutes?


In contrast to Shenmue, you're not bogged down with chores, day jobs, bed times, and painfully sex-free relationships with females. Unfortunately, the fighting has been stripped down too, to the point that it's insulting to compare that aspect.

It's a shame the fighting is so simple, because you do a shit ton of it. I'm not even talking about your missions, which offer plenty of opportunity to split lips and bruise egos. I'm talking about random battles. Yeah, like a jrpg. Leave your hideout intending to walk a couple blocks to meet your paid-for-girlfriend and you're bound to get into about three random battles. You do learn new moves and such, but it's pretty much button mashing the whole way through. The saving grace here is the joy found in picking up objects and beating the hell of people. Perhaps if I wasn't forced to do so much of it I wouldn't be as down on it.

The biggest draw for Yakuza is the world it portrays and the story unfolding within it. While the story does start off incredibly strong, in the end it gets too big and borders on ridiculous. It's still good enough to keep you playing, to find out what happens next, but it is disappointing when the potential of the first few hours was so high.

In the end, I'd recommend Yakuza. While the fighting and story do falter, the world realized is worth the price of admission. And Kazuma is a total badass.

Retro Review: Metal Gear Solid 3

Yeah, three years ago isn't retro, but screw it. I've been playing a lot of older games lately and I want to write about them. The first is a treat, because I'm actually going to discuss concepts outside of gaming. Yeah, yeah, I promise I won't--as my friend and confidant Ice Cube surely would--put your butt to sleep.



Grade: B-
Time Spent Playing: 12 hours

Metal Gear Solid 3 tells the tale of a huge pussy with an abandonment complex who infiltrates a Russian military base for reasons only God can comprehend. The story is moronic and self indulgent. The cut scenes are actually pretty good in terms of action and composition. When Hideo Kojima is trying to make you laugh, you do. When he is trying to make you think, your eyes roll. The acting is good and the characters are pretty memorable, despite the ever present philosophical meanderings of a well intentioned 19 year old.

Make that a well intentioned, Japanese 19 year old. There's this hilarious phenomena among the Japanese as a group: complete and utter denial of anything that might have occurred in the years ranging from 1935 to 1945. The Japanese military of that day did horrible, unspeakable things. Thanks to the denial of the past, the typical modern Japanese citizen believes his ancestors were good. This leads to cognitive dissonance. The only way to mend the idea that Imperial Japan wasn't evil is to come to the conclusion that there is no good and evil, just players on opposing sides. What does that have to do with this game? Because this story hinges on the United States and the USSR being morally equivalent. Why is this a laughable notion? Because while America hasn't been perfect, it didn't kill tens of millions of its own citizens through purpose, neglect, and the sheer incompetence of a controlled economy. America didn't imprison people for disagreeing with those that ruled. America didn't subjugate its neighbors. Do I really need to continue?

So, I've gone on and on about the game's story with no mention of what it's like to play. There's a reason: watching cut scenes is what you'll spend most of your time doing. Outside of watching the game's story, you'll either be running from screen to screen--make no mistake, there's very little reason to actually sneak around when you can just haul ass to the next cut scene--or fighting bosses.

As much as you probably presume I hate this game, fighting the bosses is actually pretty great and ultimately redeems this ridiculous, over-hyped game. The bosses make those neurons fire off, signaling your adrenal glands to start pumping. They tickle the brain as you try to solve the mystery of their undoing. Most notable is The End, a sniper with whom you'll spend an hour or more entangled in a deadly match of hide and seek.

So, in the end you have a game with a story that fails on fundamental levels, sneaking gameplay that fails because you needn't bother, and boss fights that are fun and memorable. Can the boss fights be good enough to warrant playing through this game?

Yes.