All You Do Is Talk Talk: Binary Domain

First, I wanted to thank everybody who read my previous post, and Bryan Ochalla in particular, who led most of that traffic here. This is just one gaming blog of thousands, and it's difficult to get noticed when there's that much competition. I'm grateful to all of you who took the time to listen to my thoughts on the Tomodachi Life fiasco, even though other writers went into greater detail and had first-hand experience with the Japanese version of the game.

Ash from Bare Knuckle 3, the Japanese version
of Streets of Rage 3. Such depictions of gays
are not uncommon in Japanese pop culture.
(Image courtesy of RPGCodex)

Speaking of that, it looks like Nintendo of America will offer more relationship options in the next Tomodachi Life game, if this press release is to be believed (Thanks to Atlus USA's Nich Maragos for the link, by the way). Nintendo of Japan, on the other hand, seems intractable in its decision to keep the series gay-free on its home turf. Talking Time member Estragon was kind enough to translate the company's response to the controversy, and its cavalier dismissal of the issue is infinitely worse than Nintendo of America's wimpy excuses from yesterday. Generally speaking, Japan has a rather... juvenile view of homosexuality, and many of Japan's gay citizens have grimly accepted that the country will never grow out of it. To quote Japanese Twitter user @tumblin_dice_K...

Recently I don't play games much so I didn't know, but even if I played it I don't think I would have thought, "It's stupid that there's no gay marriage! Let's protest!" I'm already just that used to my existence being ignored in this country. Sadly.

Thanks (again) to Estragon for the translation.

Well, I've got that worked out of my system. Let's turn our attention to another recent annoyance! I purchased Binary Domain in one of the all-too brief sales at the Microsoft Store, and can tell you this... if you buy only one cover shooter with a science-fiction theme this year, it should be something else. May I suggest Mass Effect 3?

Jerks R Us.
(Image courtesy of Segabits.com)

Binary Domain is similar to the bro-riffic Gears of War, with slimmer characters (even the game's big black stereotype looks like a twig next to Marcus Fenix), a sleeker setting, and voice activated squad commands. The voice commands are optional... in fact, if you want to keep your sanity, I would suggest unplugging your microphone and throwing it in the back of the closet for the ten hours it'll take to finish the game. Your commands are either misunderstood, ignored, or angrily rejected, to the point where you'll abandon all hope of guiding your teammates to victory and just shout obscenities into the mic.

The only other feature of Binary Domain that distinguishes it from the sea of other cover shooters on the Xbox 360 is its storyline, set in a future where global warming has drowned most of the world's population and the few that remain are threatened by a robot rebellion. As Dan Marshall, it's up to you and your often annoying fellow soldiers to invade Japan and put an end to a new wave of more human than human androids known as "Hollow Children." 

"The cigar makes me look cool. The drinks I
need to stay interested in Binary Domain."
(image courtesy of Cracked.com)

It's a familiar but effective plot... more than one reviewer has drawn comparisons to the science-fiction classic Blade Runner, but you could probably draw parallels to Hideo Kojima's Sega CD release Snatcher as well. However, a twist that happens about halfway through the game stretches its credibility to the point of snapping. One of your partners is the offspring of a human father and an android mother, which is supposed to introduce conflict to the robot-hating team of mercenaries, but just leaves you wondering about the developers' tentative grasp of biology. How, exactly, does this work? Are you familiar with the old robot saying "Does not compute?"

What's more troubling to me are the frequent scenarios you're forced to complete to progress, even though they're not always adequately explained. "Shoot this sign," your first teammate Bo barks, "and get the lead out!" There are several signs in this room... which one do I shoot? "Blast the cable to kill that giant rampaging mech!," another partner screams, conveniently forgetting that the cable's not even visible unless you climb to the roof of a building on the playfield. Yeah, thanks for not mentioning that. That focus button doesn't help me much when there's a wall blocking my view of the target. 

Stop me if you've seen this before.
(Image courtesy of Segabits.com)

Right now, I'm stuck at a part where you have to fuel up a vehicle. (Yes, that's a couple hours before the human/robot hybrid revelation. You could say that I ruined the surprise by reading some walkthroughs on the internet, but this game came pre-ruined.) Your commanding officer demands that you defend him from a constant onslaught of robots, but half the time, you don't even know where he is, or where he's taking that payload of fuel. The fuel gets blown up, he screams at you, rinse, lather and repeat until you take the disc out of your Xbox 360 and slam it to the floor. Those earth-friendly cases shatter real good, by the way.

So that's the Binary Domain experience in a nutshell. Loud, frustrating, obtuse, and with gameplay that hinges on a gimmick that's somehow less intuitive than pressing combinations of buttons on the controller. I might go back to this game if the disc somehow survived, but I could make better use of my time by returning to Mass Effect 3 instead. It doesn't impress me as much as the previous entry in the series, but it's a dozen times better than this.

Knife Edge

"Can you still keep your balance?," Greg Lake demands to know in a track from the first album by progressive rock supergroup Emerson Lake and Palmer. "Can you live on a knife edge?" Nintendo seems entirely too eager to prove that it can in response to the growing controversy surrounding its upcoming 3DS release Tomodachi Life.

In case you missed it, Tomodachi Life is a life simulation, not far removed from Nintendo's long-running Animal Crossing series. When it was first released in Japan, gamers discovered that it was possible to not only marry partners of the opposite sex, but ones of the same sex as well. This turned out to be a programming error which turned the game code inside out and prevented players from saving their progress, but it also seemed to open the door to the possibility of gay relationships when the game was released in the United States, a country which has seen a shift in its view of homosexuality over the last twenty years.

They make a nice couple. Or would, anyway.
(Image courtesy of Cinema Blend)

Nintendo faces a difficult decision in its localization of Tomodachi Life. Either it can include gay relationships in the game and be celebrated by the LGBT community as progressive and inclusive, or settle for the more rigid religious definition of marriage and escape backlash from Fox News and AM talk show blowhards like Rush Limbaugh. Rather than making that tough call and offering a public statement about its decision, Nintendo hopes that it can escape controversy entirely by quietly releasing the game without a word to either side in the debate.

Weak move, Nintendo.

Personally, I'm with the gay community on this issue, although perhaps not as strongly as they would like. I've seen footage of Tomodachi Life, and the game is wacky by design. Compared to some of the outrageous antics that happen (like giant versions of your friends looming in the ocean, and cameo appearances by Christina Aguilera), two men living together is positively mundane. At the same time, I understand the difficult position Nintendo has been put in over this game. I find myself in the same position when I tell my gay friends that I won't boycott the company for its decision... or its apparent lack of one.

Whatever Nintendo decides, it owes its customers an explanation, rather than sticking its head in the sand and hoping nobody notices. They've noticed. You can't ignore this, because nobody else will. If you support what gay rights advocates are calling Miiquality, you'll give your customers a more inclusive and full-featured game in the process. If you don't, you'll briefly avoid the righteous indignation of right-wing loudmouths (until they find another scapegoat in your library), but it won't reflect positively on you in another twenty years, when gay marriage goes national and is embraced by a majority of Americans.

You don't get a third option, Nintendo. You can only ride the razor's edge for so long before you fall off and make a mess of yourself.

EDIT: Okay, okay, I dropped the second prog rock reference. It was a little too self-indulgent, even for a personal journal. That tip of the hat to ELP stays, though!

Also, I was made aware that Nintendo did offer a public statement earlier today about Miiquality, a mealy-mouthed excuse that satisfied absolutely nobody and even angered a few. They claimed their game was too silly and escapist for "social commentary," which holds almost as much water as a bucket made of doilies. Fable II had same-sex relationships, and that was a game where you wooed potential partners with farting and handstands!

(This marks one of those all-too rare occasions where Pete gets to feel smug about a promise he actually kept. But I digress!)

Tye Marini, the man who started the push for same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Life, stopped short of boycotting the game. It seems that The Gay Gamer's Bryan Ochalla will also be picking up a copy, in spite of Nintendo's decision to forsake Miiquality. I don't blame anyone for buying the game if it interests them... personally, I'm not gay, and don't really have a stake in this debate. Nevertheless, the heteros-only gameplay of Tomodachi Life reminds me of how stubbornly unwilling Nintendo has been to listen to fan input. 

It's not just about civil rights issues, either... it was like pulling teeth to get Nintendo to embrace online functionality, and we had to suffer through two years of an unlit Game Boy Advance screen before the company relented and gave us a system we could play without standing on the surface of the sun. With Nintendo suffering financially in this console cycle, maybe it's time for them to take the concerns of their user base seriously? I really don't think their current plans to segue into the health care industry is going to work out for them...

Kirb Your Enthusiasm

And now for something completely different! I'd like to talk for a minute about a game I actually liked. Nintendo released Kirby: Triple Deluxe last midnight, and I made it a point to grab a digital copy as soon as it was available. Now I've got mixed thoughts about digital distribution, but I decided to go that route anyway because 1) It's a lot faster than twiddling your thumbs waiting for a cartridge to arrive from Amazon or Best Buy, and 2) I don't really want to futz around with a stack of cartridges when I could just have all my games on one handy, high-capacity SD card. There was a slight price advantage buying the game on cart, but not enough to offset the speed and convenience of purchasing it straight from Nintendo's eShop.

Ouch.
(Image courtesy of SheAttack.com)

Anyway! The game itself is grand, with the quality you'd expect from the long-running Kirby series. (Well, not Kirby 64.) It feels like a heartfelt tribute to Kirby's Adventure on the NES, but with all the visual splendor the cutting edge 3DS can offer. The pastel graphics are dazzling, chock full of detail and clever 3D effects... in past games, enemies would pop into a cluster of stars when Kirby dispatched them, but here, they often spiral toward the player or off in the distance before they burst. There are also a lot of multi-tiered playfields, similar to the ones in the Virtual Boy's lone standout Wario Land. Simply hop on a giant star and it takes you to platforms in the background, often a necessity for completing stages. The music is also worth mentioning, putting fresh CD-quality spins on all your favorite tunes from Kirby's Adventure.

Commencing Operation Vacuu-suck.
Suck... suck... suck!
(image courtesy of 3DSRumors.com)

As for the gameplay, well, it's boilerplate Kirby, with a gimmick to keep things from getting too predictable. This time, instead of cartoon animal steeds or a small army of clones or a brain-damaged grape sidekick, there's a special fruit that kicks Kirby into "hypernova." While Kirby is flashing all the colors of an LSD trip, his suction power is dramatically increased, letting him pull massive stone blocks, devour enemies three times his size, or even peel away the screen, revealing a sunny landscape underneath. The pink puffball has never seemed more powerful than he does while on a hypernova fruit high, and it's hard to imagine how Nintendo and HAL Laboratories will be able to top it in the next Kirby game.

Above all else, Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a game that oozes optimism. It's hard not to be happy playing this, whether you've found a new keychain to add to your collection or putting the smackdown on cartoon enemies with one of Kirby's surprisingly deep copy abilities or just admiring your colorful surroundings. Triple Deluxe offers a simple, innocent euphoria you probably haven't found in too many games lately. If you're as tired as I am of the grim work of running over hookers and gunning down one-dimensional terrorists, that's reason enough to pick up a copy for yourself.

The Agony and the Ecstacy: Midway Arcade Origins

It's my opinion there's no gaming experience as pure as the one you'd find in a 1980s arcade. All the baggage we've come to reluctantly accept in today's video games was blessedly light in the quarter-munchers of the past... or absent entirely. There were no interminably long, nonsensical cut scenes, no tedious resource management, and no pointless, game-bloating filler... just you, a million hungry aliens, and a weapon to keep the two apart. 

Astronauts one, creepy bug guy zero.
(Image courtesy of Spong.com)

With this in mind, it should be no surprise that some of my favorite games from the past twenty years were collections of arcade greats from the decade of excess. Namco Museum! Atari Anniversary! Taito Legends! And the granddaddy of them all, Midway Arcade's Greatest Hits, created by Digital Eclipse and released just in time to satisfy gamers' first pangs of nostalgia. After the debut of the Playstation 2, Midway Arcade's Greatest Hits evolved into the more robust Midway Arcade Treasures, and now, over ten years later, we have... this.

Midway Arcade Origins' flaws can be traced back to the industry turmoil that cost Midway its life. The company went bankrupt in 2009 thanks to the mismanagement of Shari Redstone, daughter of Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone. Under the Redstones, Midway went down the same path as the other game companies that went defunct in the 21st century, spending lavishly on marketing and licenses while recouping little of that investment.

Around the same time, Digital Eclipse was facing a crisis of its own. The design team, acquired by Foundation 9 Entertainment in 2003, was in the process of being fully absorbed by the company. Many of Digital Eclipse's programmers abandoned ship during the transition, leaving to form a new studio called Code Mystics. Code Mystics had nothing to do with the production of Midway Arcade Origins, and believe me, it shows.

I'll be honest, I liked this game
better with the Budweiser
license. Even caffeine-laden
Mountain Dew seemed like
a better substitute
than this!

I can't write off Midway Arcade Origins as a total loss. It's got over thirty titles for your gaming pleasure (and occasional bemusement), and they're all reasonably well emulated, even if there's not much to enhance the experience. You get some beautifully rendered cabinets, a trivia scroll at the bottom of the screen, and that's about it. You also get some questionable choices for inclusion, including two flavors of Super Sprint, crusty late '80s relic 720°, and Joust 2, the most unpalatable sequel since Snake Plissken tangled with a cross-dressing Bruce Campbell in Escape from L.A. The decision to leave out the Mortal Kombat trilogy is understandable, since it had already been released in its own collection the year before, but who in their right minds would choose the dreadful Spy Hunter II over Roadblasters, which has never been hotter thanks to its cameo in the film Wreck-It Ralph?

Then there are the achievements. They run the gamut from insultingly easy (enter a warp zone in Total Carnage? You mean the one that appears one screen to the right of the beginning?) to murderously hard (the game's cousin, Smash TV, tasks you with killing Mutoid Man and thousands of his minions with one credit. Good luck! Are you ever going to need it...). A few of the achievements are broken, like finishing the Colorado stage in Toobin', while at least one goes so far as to break its game. Reach 10,000 points in Wizard of Wor and the game shifts into glacier speed until you return to the main menu. 

Too often, this game made me
want to do to the designers
what William Conrad here
is doing to this lousy cop.

To Warner Bros.'s credit, the bug doesn't come back the next time you play the game, and it is much closer to the arcade version than it was in past Midway collections. Still, how did Warner's playtesters miss a bug that I found an hour after I popped the disc into my Xbox 360? Did they hire any? It's a question you'll find yourself asking again and again, when you play 720° and can't control your skater worth a damn, and when you can't make your hero fire diagonally in Smash TV unless you jam the analog sticks in place until they snap. (Want to use the face buttons on your controller instead? Forget it; that ain't happening.) It's just sloppy, and below the standards established by the former Digital Eclipse team fifteen years before.

Midway Arcade Origins is the first collection in this series with native support for high-resolution televisions, and that alone might be enough to seal the deal for fans who couldn't stand the way the Treasures trilogy looked on their LCD displays. Still, Warner Bros. could have done better with Midway Arcade Origins. They probably would have if the Code Mystics team had been calling the shots.

The Atlus Workout

A few weeks ago, blogger and Japanese pop culture aficionado Apricot Sushi declared April to be Atlus Game-Along Month, a time for players to get re-acquainted with a few of their favorite titles from the niche Japanese game publisher. Now I realize that any random schlub can declare April the month of anything they damn well please (and here's proof!), but Apri-soosh seems like a good kid, and it wouldn't kill me to spend a little quality time with some of the Atlus games in my collection. There was just one problem, though...

What Atlus games?

If you think this is hard to look at, you should
see it on the actual hardware.
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

See, Atlus caters to a very specific audience, the RPG-loving otaku, and I left my weeaboo days behind in the late 1990s. For many years, the only experience I had with the company's signature series, Shin Megami Tensei, was a few minutes with the ill-considered Virtual Boy title Jack Bros. Some introduction, huh? Even after that, I didn't think of Shin Megami Tensei as a role-playing epic with a focus on Japanese culture and Eastern mythology, but rather that game with the dick rickshaw in it. (I'll spare you the pictures; chances are you've already seen them. Then screamed yourself hoarse.)

However, after leafing through my games, I came to the conclusion that Atlus had a stronger presence in my collection than I realized. Those remakes of Double Dragon and River City Ransom on the Game Boy Advance? Both published by Atlus, along with a handful of other Million/Technos games I intend to buy in the future. The King of Fighters XIII for the Xbox 360? That was published by Atlus in the United States as well... and so was King of Fighters EX 2: Howling Blood, released some years earlier for the Game Boy Advance. 

I've seen some things, man.
And also some stuff.
(Image courtesy of
CrunchyRoll)

The company was also responsible for Touch Detective 2 1/2 and Trauma Center: Under the Knife, both for the Nintendo DS. I've owned Trauma Center for years now (and was stonewalled by the GUILT virus shortly after I bought it... who thought practicing medicine would be this hard?), but the latter game I downloaded free for my Android tablet. I didn't make much progress in that, either... I find the obtuse puzzles, liberated from anything resembling logic or reason, hugely off-putting. The same could be said of the creepy moon-eyed lead character, who must have also seen that rickshaw.

Then there's Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzonoha vs. The Soulless Army. I picked that one up in the late 2000s to dip my toe into the waters of the Shin Megami Tensei series, thinking that its blend of action and adventure would be more palatable to me than the straight role-playing of other Megaten titles. I didn't make it very far, and after revisiting it I understand why. Like early entries in the Resident Evil series, the characters are polygonal but the backgrounds are still images, resulting in a jarring transition when Raidou moves from one screen to the next. It's disorienting, and leaves the game feeling dated. That may have been easier to tolerate when Devil Summoner was released in 2006, but I've gotten a little spoiled by crisp playfields rendered on the fly, which have become commonplace in the eight years since.

...says the talking cat.
(Image courtesy of GamesRadar)

Both the plot and combat seem to have promise, though. Devil Summoner is a period piece, taking place in the early 20th century. The magic and myths of ancient Japan are being left behind in favor of a more modernized country... but Japan's yokai aren't ready for retirement just yet! These bizarre creatures are hidden throughout the sepia-toned city, waiting to leap for the throats of unsuspecting heroes. 

That's where the combat comes in, which feels like a more sedate version of the battles from the Devil May Cry series. Raidou is armed with both a sword and a pistol, and can swap between the two on the fly. Pressing a trigger button lets Raidou summon a monster of his own to fight alongside him. Monsters can be paralyzed with ammo they're weak against, then scooped up into a glowstick for later use, giving the game a slight Pokemon aftertaste. The collection aspect is likely what will keep me coming back to Devil Summoner even after I get annoyed with the static backgrounds and the repetitive action.

The apparent result of a tryst between
Humpty Dumpty, Bozo the Clown, and a plush
toy found in the free bin of a yard sale.
(Image courtesy of Mojo Interactive)

Finally, there's Persona 4 Arena, which I've just barely touched. Truth told, there are a lot of fighting games on the Xbox 360 I like better, including the surprisingly awesome Mortal Kombat reboot and Darkstalkers Resurrection, a rock-solid port of the last two games in the underappreciated Darkstalkers series. Nevertheless, it cost me ten dollars, and I'd hate to think that I wasted that sawbuck. Maybe I can find the appeal of this one with a little persistence...

Leggo My Logo

We interrupt this extended hiatus for an important announcement. Atlus, the preferred game development house for hipsters with an unhealthy Japanese fixation, recently changed its logo. (Well, it happened a month ago, but I recently found out about it.) You may remember the original design looking something like this:

But shortly after the company's acquisition by Sega, its logo was dipped into a bubbling vat of 21st century minimalism, and came out looking like this:

Oh, the humanity! The Atlus logo has gone from sleek, dynamic, and imaginative to something you might find on a box of store brand laundry detergent. If you were worried that Sega's purchase of the company was going to suck all the personality out of Atlus, well, the new logo suggests that they've taken that first step in the journey toward Blandsville.

But hey, since we're talking about iconic corporate logos being shoved into the shareware font machine and coming out looking like last night's taco salad, let's try that with Sega's own calling card. Hey, they've been using it for thirty years now. It's about due for a revamp, right?

There, much better! No need to thank me, Sega. Just cut me a check and send me all those unsold copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga I know you've got hidden in a warehouse somewhere.

World's Smallest Violin

In an interview with GameSpot, Microsoft's executive frat boy Phil Spencer said that he was "personally hurt" by the chilly reception to the original, hellspawned Xbox One design, and that Microsoft didn't do a great job of communicating the value of its features. You know, features like a camera that's always watching you even when the system is "off," and games so full of DRM that you couldn't play them without daily permission from Microsoft headquarters. 

I don't know what's more galling about Spencer's response to the complaints about the original Xbox One... the fact that Microsoft still thinks its mountain of anti-consumer features was a good idea, or that he's using guilt to manipulate players into grudgingly accepting them. Oh wait, it's definitely the last one. I mean, look at this doucher!

Is this a face that inspires sympathy? No, it's the face attached to the hands that pulled your underwear over your head in high school. I wouldn't give this man a dime even if the original Xbox One design hadn't been conceived in the bowels of hell.

I'll be honest, I can't think of too many reasons to buy any of the latest consoles. My Wii U is working on its third coat of dust, and I can't imagine any video games on either the Xbox One or the Playstation 4 that wouldn't work on their predecessors with only a modest visual hit. A recent Games Radar article declared in its headline that "Titanfall on Xbox 360 looks perfectly fine," which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone familiar with the system's still impressive capabilities. 

The fact is, the new wave of game consoles have got a long, long way to go before they can live up to the legacy of their ancestors. The Xbox 360 has nearly a decade of great games under its belt, with only the earlier ones showing their age. The Xbox One has... uh, Killer Instinct. No sale.

Since I'm kicking Microsoft in the teeth, I might as well finish this post by sharing a comic I found on Tumblr, drawn by Mike J. Larson. It's dated now, but just remember this was what Microsoft had in mind for the Xbox One. They'll likely try it again in the next console cycle, if Spencer's unrepentant, "you don't understand my genius" attitude is any indication.