Save Tonight for Karaoke Revolution

Sweat pours down your forehead as you furiously belt out the words to yet another hit song. The spectators cheer your every move – all eyes are on you. As you hit that last note, the crowd bursts into applause. You remove your microphone headset and pass it to the next wanna-be diva: Your mom.

Are you like this man?

Because in this fantasy, you still live in your parents’ basement, you loser.

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to credit Konami with fathering the singing game genre with their 2003 PlayStation 2 title, Karaoke Revolution. Also involved in the production was Harmonix, the company that would later blow out countless speakers and wrists with the Guitar Hero series and, of course, Rock Band and its many sequels. In a way, you can thank the makers of Silent Hill, Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid every time you pick up that guitar or those drum sticks and make a fool out of yourself with three of your closest friends.

About a decade ago, there was nothing that could get me to sing anything but the Super Mario Bros. Super Show theme song in front of any living being, not even dogs. But once Karaoke Revolution came out, I become fearless. As long as the PS2 was running, I was dropping those hits like pre-scandal Michael Jackson, only my skin was somewhat paler and I hadn’t been accused of serving wine to small children (yet).

Though future Karaoke Revloution titles came with a handheld microphone, the first one utilizes a headset that plugs into either of the USB ports on PlayStation 2. The microphone fits snugly on your head and rarely needs readjustment, which a big plus when you’re trying flailing around someone’s dorm while mutilating “Wind Beneath My Wings.” The headset is probably the best special controller I’ve ever used, aside from the bad ‘n rad NES Power Glove: It does its job, stays out of your way and is so comfortable you forget you’re wearing it half the time.

Gameplay in Karaoke Revolution is simple and sweet. After choosing a song, the player sings it. All the words to the song you’re performing appear at the bottom of the screen as they are needed, making it easy to sing something you might have only heard once, or even not at all. Above the words are blue bars that represent the pitch you’re supposed to hit on each word. If you sing the tune as it was originally recorded, the pitch arrow turns green, skidding across the blue bar. Sparks start flying off of it and you earn a high score. The more you mess up, the less green the arrow becomes, and the fewer points you’re awarded. High scores unlock secrets, including extra singers to choose from, new backgrounds and more songs.

Speaking of the song selection, unfortunately, every tune in this game is a cover. That said, there are some truly great tracks you’ll want to sing over and over again, like “Billie Jean,” “Wind Beneath My Wings,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Like a Virgin,” and “Hey Jealously.” There’s also “Ladies’ Night,” but my therapist told me not to talk about that song anymore.

Yeah, I "borrowed" this shot from IGN. I'm telling you, but I still removed the watermark. I'm so vain, I think this song is about me.

The graphics are below par, but that really doesn’t matter the second you start singing. The characters look like prototype Miis (as in “dumb”) and the backgrounds consist of a stage, a band and a few spectators that react to your performance with either enthusiastic cheers or angry, confidence-dashing boos. When the player sings exceptionally well, his or her character begins to glow, kind of like Angry Mode in Rival Turf! or going Super Saiyan in Dragon Ball Z. When the player sings poorly, however, the crowd lets him or her know with flesh-melting lasers that pour from your headset directly into you exposed ear canal.

There are only two real problems with Karaoke Revolution: The first is that the mike has trouble picking up low notes, making it harder for someone with a deep voice, like Barry White or Dr. Girlfriend from the Venture Bros., to score points. This can be solved by singing an octave up, but that tends to make you strain your voice and sound like a Alvin and the Chipmunks. Secondly, just like in Rock Band, it’s really easy to cheat. If you know the tune, all you have to do is hit the correct pitch. The words you’re saying really don’t matter as long as it sounds right, just like when you’re dealing with you irate wife after forgetting her birthday.

With a group of friends playing along side me, the first time I fired up Karaoke Revolution, it lasted for hours. I sang (screamed?) so hard, my throat was sore for the next day and a half. Later on that week, someone called security on us for nearly taking down the walls with our shrill, shrill voices. But everything, even the misdemeanor charge, was worth it: Just like Dance Dance Revolution before it, Karaoke Revolution was a surprise hit from Konami. Seven years later, games like Rock Band, Super Smash Bros. and several other titles have surpassed it, but in the pre-Wii era, Karaoke Revolution was greatest causal party game ever.

It might be difficult to find now, but if you see it on the cheap, go out and snag a copy of Karaoke Revolution, gather some friends around the PS2, and sing ‘til you can’t sing no more. Don’t go and make things complicated; celebrate good times with Karaoke Revolution before it’s the end of the world as we know it.

Tales from the Krypt: MK Deadly Alliance

Worst. Headache. Ever.

I never want to play Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance again.

It’s not the moderately outdated fighting mechanics, the unexplainably chunky blood splatters or even the bowel-stimulatingly dumb fatalities like Quan Chi’s “Neck Stretch” that have me wanting to lob this game at the nearest handicapable youngster. No, it was my own obsessive-compulsive nature that rammed that last nail through my heart and into my koffin.

The three PlayStation 2 era Mortal Kombat titles – Deadly Alliance, Deception and Armageddon – share a similar way of awarding extras: The Krypt. The Krypt holds literally hundreds of unlockables, with kontent ranging from new characters and battlegrounds to the gaming equivalent of those asbestos-lined gumball machine prizes you used to beg your mother for as she checked out at Shoprite. Using the kurrency he or she earns in battle, it’s up to the player to purchase as much krap as possible. It’s sort of like Pokémon and its “Gotta Catch ‘em All!” tagline, only what you’re catching are shattered bone fragments and pieces of Kano’s shameful spleen.

Worst. Fatality. Ever.

Sensing that the Mortal Kombat database in my head needed updating when I didn’t recognize about 25 characters from the lazy-yet-brilliant hodgepodge that is MK: Armageddon, I chopped a bloody trail through MK4, MK: Deadly Alliance and MK: Deception until I had thoroughly explored all three titles. I cleaned out all the koffins Deception’s Krypt, but of the 626 koffins in Deadly Alliance, I only opened about 400.

Those 400 koffins didn’t come easy: For days all I did was earn kurrency for the Krypt or try to dream up ways to get more. My friends started disowning me, I almost got fired from my journalism gig and Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of missing persons and lost things, called my cell phone and threatened to have me excommunicated if I didn’t put down the controller. So one day I told the game that I was taking it out to clean it, then before I lost my nerve, I shoved it back in the case and left it on my shelf. For awhile I was free of the kall of the Krypt.

Worst. Caption. Ever.

Kut to about three weeks ago when my hard-hittin’, girlfriend-ranglin’, N-Sync lovin’ cousin came over and we started kombatting it up with MK1, MK2 and UMK3. All it took was a little Southern Comfort and his innocent suggestion that we play Deadly Alliance to set me off again, but worse this time. It was like quitting smoking only to take up licking tar directly off the sun-baked road.

I must have slogged through Deadly Alliance’s single player mode at least 20 times over the course of the next week before going through the ultra boring Konquest mode again. Then I started making dummy profiles with names like “Strawman” and (at the suggestion of my cousin) “Asshats,” kopping some easy koins, then fighting endless two-player battles with myself to “win” all the currency on my real profile. My cousin walked in at one point while I was sleeping, but I still had the controller in my hands and was attempting to do Sub-Zero’s fatality mid-round.

“This is sad,” he said.

“Mumble, mumble Kano wins,” I am told I replied.

With most addictions, it’s up to the afflicted individual to realize that he or she is stronger than their habit and consciously push it away in the name of a better life. My MK:DA Krypt addiction came to an end when I opened that last Godforsaken tomb one morning as the sun was just peeking through the clouds and over the horizon. The camera twisted around to a side view, as it always does, and the lid slammed down on the floor. An evil laugh reverberated in the chamber. Through the dust these words appeared on my screen:

EMPTY KOFFIN.

I know there’s a metaphor here, but I kan’t quite put my finger on it.

This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Silent Hill Sunday #3: Stay Locked in Your Room with Silent Hill 4?

Have you ever wondered what a skinless dog with a snake tongue or a two-headed baby with no legs would look like? If you’re mostly sane, the answer is probably no. But if you’re Konami, the creators of Silent Hill 4: The Room for PS2 and XBox, the answer is a resounding “of course!” Normally I’d suggest psychological evaluations for every member of Team Silent, but with all their talent, this is one group of crazies I’d rather have walking free.

When it was released in 2004, the fourth Silent Hill was promoted as a very different experience from the first three games which still remained true to the series’ roots. But how well did Silent Hill 4: The Room live up to expectations? Frankly, it depends on what you were expecting.

Although not the surreal mind-rape that Silent Hill 2 is, SH4: The Room has a deep and engaging plot. Henry Townshend’s apartment is average as can be, with photos on the walls, a TV and radio, and even a kitchen… that is, until the haunting starts. After being trapped in his apartment for five days, a strange hole appears in Henry’s bathroom. He has no choice but to crawl through the portal to unknown horrors and, perhaps if he’s lucky, salvation.

Though Silent Hill 4’s graphics are as gritty and ambient as the previous three entries into the series, gone are the flashlights and buzzing radios of old, and the game is heavy on the action and light on the puzzles. It’s fun for a while, but the brutal, plentiful enemies eventually grind down the player’s patience into a fine dust. New also is the 3-D perspective of Henry’s apartment, which you’ll be returning to over and over and over again. The apartment is explored in first person, similar to Doom and Half-Life. It looks cool, but adding a first person perspective to only one area makes the player wonder if the programmers were just trying to get a little mileage out of a failed Silent Hill first person shooter-style engine.

Melissa Williams reprises her role as the Silent Hill series’ singer, so this game’s music is libel to make your ears bleed with joy. In the same vein, the sound effects fit the action nicely; for example, the clank of the baseball bat as your character swings it into an unsuspecting demon is priceless.

The wacky controls are likely to put some players right off the game. The run function has inexplicably changed positions from the square to the circle button, frustrating veterans of the older titles to no end. Instead of breaking out into a full gallop away from some grotesque monster, you wind up opening your menu and getting torn to shreds as you fumble to close it. Otherwise, this game controls just like the first three: stiff, but workable.

Unfortunately, if you’ve played through any of the other games in the series, especially the original Silent Hill, SH4: The Room offers nothing new in the way of scares. Little things to creep the player out, like when Henry receives a call on a broken phone, are few and far between. Trouser-soiling scares are what helped the series gain a place in horror gaming history, so it’s a shame Silent Hill 4 didn’t try harder in that department.

The last of the PlayStation 2 era Silent Hill games, SH4: The Room is proof that the original survival horror formula was starting to go stale and doubling up on the action just wasn’t the move that would save the series. Cleaning up Henry’s haunted apartment offers players a fun but flawed excursion to the freakiest town on earth, but don’t expect the entertainment to last for more than a single trip through. Play it, enjoy it and then squirrel SH4 away in your room in favor of one of the better Silent Hill games.

The Godfather: The Game - An Entirely Accurate Lesson in History and Culture

I’ve never seen any of the films in the Godfather trilogy, so my knowledge of the franchise is limited to cliché “offer you can’t refuse” imitations of the late Marlin Brando and cheap allusions to the series in the cartoons of my youth: The Godpigeon from Animaniacs comes to mind, as well as the fact that calling him “Godfeather” would have been so much more witty. Furthermore, I don’t know much about Italian culture aside from what the 1989 Super Mario Bros. cartoon taught me, including the crucial fact that every Italian is preoccupied with spaghetti, pizza, meatballs and ravioli to the point of obsession.

So obviously, The Godfather: The Game, Electronic Art’s awkwardly-named sandbox title for Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii, was the perfect choice for my newest gaming excursion – as well as a much-needed lesson in Italian culture.

In The Godfather: The Game, your goal is to change your name to Donald. Currently, there is only one man named Donald: Vito Corleone, often shortened to “Don Corleone.” People are always nice to Donald Corleone because he has a lot of money, kind of like Donald Trump, who must be really good at The Godfather: The Game. Also, the Donald is allowed to talk with his mouth full, which he seems to do at every given opportunity because it’s pretty hard to understand him sometimes. About three quarters through the game, Donald Vito Corleone is tired of being Donald and wants to play with his grandchildren or something – it’s not explained too well – and suddenly, your character has a chance to be the one and only Donald, the Donald of New York City (often just called “The Don of NYC”). I’m not sure how they know that no one else in New York has named their child Donald, but the game is pretty sure there’s only one Donald available at any given time, so who am I to argue?

The only way you can become Donald is through punching and choking a bunch of bakers, bartenders and hotel owners until they give you money, presumably because a prerequisite to being the Donald is to be rich. To do this, you maneuver your character into an establishment that is otherwise peaceful and you find the person who runs the joint. It’s pretty easy to find them because they all wear the same black and white hat that floats three feet above their heads. Also, the layout of every bakery, bar and nightclub is basically the same, because during the Great Depression, around the time when this game is set, people didn’t have enough money to buy different businesses. Instead, they all pooled their money, bought one building, and made illegal copies of it though Napster.

Anyway, when you find the owner, you punch him or her. A lot. The manual calls this part of the game “Blackhand,” but my character’s hands are clearly Caucasian, so I call it “The Lady Punching Part” or just “Dad” for short. After stopping the evil bakers and whatnot, they donate to your Donald fund. Thanks to what I’ve learned about Italian culture so far from the Godfather game, I can only assume that in addition to troths full of pasta sauce and crazed bouts of binging thousands of meatballs, Italian family reunions include patrolling the neighboring streets looking for palette-swapped businesspeople to terrorize, then eat pizza with.

Your enemies, aside from prostitutes and flower shop owners, are other mobsters. The mobsters dressed like normal people yell things like “please don’t kill me” when you attack them and are the wimpiest enemies in the game, but the other mobsters, the ones dressed in blue, green, yellow and red, usually put up more of a fight.

Battling the other mobsters is no easy task, but the real challenge is taking care of all the people who betray you. There are some truly unbelievable double and triple crosses that will have you yelling, “No way!” Or as Super Mario would say, “That’s un-pasta-ble!”

Also, “It’sa me, Mario! Let’sa go!”

In addition to the excellent gameplay, The Godfather: The Game: The Soundtrack is wonderful. The Godfather theme sounds just like it does on my copy of “Mob Hits Vol. 1,” a series of albums aimed at Italians which is not offensive in the least. My only complaint about the soundtrack is that the cops, all of whom are Irish, don’t have their own appropriate theme songs involving the color green. Incidentally, I like store my copy of Mob Hits next to my album of whimsical drinking songs about leprechauns and potato farming called “Lazy Drunken Red-headed Hits.”

Before I end this review, I’d like to thank Electronic Arts and The Godfather: The Game for teaching me all there is to know about Italian culture without resorting to insulting stereotypes or grossly misrepresenting 99 percent of the Italian populous. Thanks EA; you’ve done just as much for Italian culture in the 2000s as the Super Mario cartoon did in the 1980s.

Next week on Wordsmith VG: I learn all there is to know about African American culture by playing DJ Boy on Sega Genesis, studying Barrett from Final Fantasy VII and watching the first season of Goodtimes over and over again. DY-NO-MITE!

Zone of the Enders: Not Just a Metal Gear Solid 2 Demo Anymore

Poor Zone of the Enders. Like the younger, quieter bother of the high school track star or baseball prodigy, the only reason people even knew about this PS2 game is because it came packaged with a demo of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the sequel to one of Konami’s hottest PS1 games. To be fair, this gimmick might have been the only way to sell a significant amount of copies of Zone of the Enders, because the game itself is unremarkable: It’s short, the storyline provides little in the way of closure, and there’s mot much here that experienced action gamers haven’t seen before. But ZoE also has a sliver of charm all its own, which, if you’ve got the time, makes the game worth playing.

The story is lifted almost directly from every mech anime ever. In the heat of battle, a hobo child named Leo unwittingly becomes the pilot of Jehuty, an advanced “orbital frame” (read: Gundam). Leo is forced to kill to survive and he makes everyone in the game well aware of his displeasure through a futuristic technique known and “b*tching and moaning every five minutes.” Whiny, whiny Leo is cursed with the most static personality Konami has ever penned. I wished more than once during the cutscenes that there was a button combination for wrapping Leo up in a carpet, covering him with honey and leaving him next to a bee hive that someone just hit with a big stick.

Thankfully, every other aspect of the game compares favorably to the storyline. The graphics are still pretty good, even by today’s standards. Normal enemies and backgrounds look suitably space-age and bosses are big and detailed. The first time you take control of Jehuty, you’ll have great fun zooming about the screen, blowing things up like there’s no reset button. However, the controls are a little wonky and take some to master; even after finishing the game, I still had some difficulty keeping my mech on course. The action is repetitive, but that's all right, as the game is so short and the fighting is great. Jehuty’s giant death ball, crazy lasers and one heck of a sword give you the advantage in battle, while a boost button increases the speed of the gameplay exponentially.

Zone of the Enders’s technoish soundtrack ranges from head-bangingly awesome to boring background noise. The sounds are fitting but forgetful, but you might find yourself reaching for the mute button anyway: Every time your situation changes, such as your health going below 50 percent or running out of ammo, Jehuty announces it an a tooth-grating, monotone voice.

“I suggest you escape from this battle,” says Jehuty when your health is low.

“I suggest you shut the heck up and let me play the game I purchased,” I reply, though I know it can’t hear me.

The ending is not satisfying in the least and playing the game a second time through will leave you wanting to hurt yourself at about the midway point. Zone of the Enders is fun while it lasts, which is about 10 hours. But if you think about it, 10 hours is a lot more fun than most games can provide.

Maybe because the hoopla surrounding Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty ceased long ago, Zone of the Enders will have a chance to be its own game. While it’s nothing remarkable, it certainly ain’t bad. If you want a weekend worth of frantic flying combat and you’re on a budget, I suggest you snag yourself a copy.

Silent Hill Sunday #1: Next Stop, the Nightmare Town

You wake up sweating and disoriented. Sitting up, your gaze darts wildly about the surrounding area. Then, your heart beat lessens, the terror leaves you, and you let out a sigh of relief. There you are, in your own bed. The only remnants of your nightmare are the now-cold puddle of sweat you’re sitting in, foggy memories of an unpleasant being, and a vague feeling of unease. By the time you’re in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, your mind is already on something else. For you, the nightmare is over.

Now try to imagine a world where the nightmare is never over; a world of constant fear, where you’re already awake, and dying is the only release. Yet, even death may not bring the relief you seek, for what awaits you afterwards may be even worse. This is the curse of Silent Hill.

Since the original title on the PlayStation was unleashed on the unsuspecting gaming public, the Silent Hill series has been terrifying players around the world for more than a decade. After the first two critically acclaimed games and a respectable third entry into the series, Konami’s outings into the nightmare town became increasingly stale and formulaic, despite new gameplay elements introduced to each successive title. While Silent Hill games once required an overdose of tranquilizers and a good therapist to complete, entries like Silent Hill Origins, the sixth game in the main series, inspired as much terror a typical Syfy channel flick on a Saturday afternoon.

However, the recent Silent Hill: Shattered Memories on the Wii shook up the series’ gameplay by removing combat entirely and adding motion controls. Many players think this was the kick in the pants the series needed to revive an ailing franchise. The eighth Silent Hill game is due out in 2011, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Regardless of the quality of the gameplay in later entries, the soundtrack for each of the seven games in the series is varied and creepy, incorporating the tag team of Japanese composer Akira Yamoaka and, from the third game on, American singer Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. Yamoaka reportedly will not be producing the music for the next Silent Hill game; taking over the reigns will be Daniel Licht, the music composer for Showtime’s Dexter.

In celebration of a series that took survival horror to such terrifying highs and drab lows, allow me to introduce Silent Hill Sundays here at Wordsmith VG. At least two Sundays a month, I’ll write about a different aspect of the Silent Hill series, from reviews to theories to little-known SH tidbits.

Coming up next: “Have you seen a little girl? Short, black hair. She just turned seven.”

Relive Your Awkward Mall Job Days with DDRMAX2

In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, there was nothing cooler than going to the arcade and playing Dance Dance Revolution – at least if you were a 14-year-old mallrat or working a retail job and needed a way to keep yourself from elbow-smashing the customers. Around that time, back when six-pack plastic rings dumped in the ocean were responsible for more animal deaths than discarded DDR discs, DDRMAX2 for the PlayStation 2 hit the home gaming scene. The game manages to hold on to some of the charm the series was known for in its heyday, but the more play time one invests in it, the more obvious it becomes that MAX2 stretches the core Dance Dance Revolution gameplay to the breaking point.

Just in case the only exposure to the series you’ve ever had was making fun of the tweens flailing around to J-pop songs as you waddled to the foodcourt, let me explain how it works: When the music starts, arrows begin floating from the bottom of the screen to the top; that’s the player’s cue to stomp the corresponding arrow on their dance pad. It’s sort of like a video version of Twister, only there’s little chance of “accidentally” touching the other player’s rear end. One can choose between Beginner, Light, Standard, and Heavy difficulties, thus allowing every song to be accessible to beginners and pros alike.

The most important part of any Dance Dance Revolution game is the music, and the songs the player can choose from in DDRMAX2 are a mixed bag. There are plenty of well known songs this time around, including “Will I?” By Ian Van Dahl, “Love at First Sight” by Kyile Minogue, “Heaven” by DJ Sammy, and “A Little Bit of Ecstasy” by Jocelyn Enriquez. However, anyone who cut their teeth on the older games in the series will be disappointed that many songs created specifically for DDR games of the past, like “Dynamite Rave” and “B4U,” have been displaced.

The extras in this game will keep those willing to play it entertained for weeks. There are a staggering amount of secrets to unlock, and the game entices you to keep playing at the end of each game by telling you how close you are to unlocking the next secret. Unlockables include new songs, extra play modes, and on-screen dancer options, among other things.

If you worked at a mall at some point during the last 12 years and you’re feeling nostalgic for the good ol’ days of double shifts and surviving exclusively on greasy mall pizza, DDRMAX2 should be your guilty pleasure game of choice. By this point the Dance Dance Revolution series was getting more than a bit stale, but so was the group of people you hung out with at the arcades on your 15 minutes breaks. A few hours with DDRMAX2 and you’ll remember that Dance Dance Revolution used to be something fun and unique, kind of like that old retail job you used to have.