An Underwhelming E3

Despite the best intentions of my plump, juicy (and likely very tasty) brain, my pathetic body slumbered blissfully through Nintendo's E3 presentation yesterday, in which Reggie Fils-aime apparently announced a lot of cool stuff, like the same Zelda game Nintendo promised us at last year's E3 and a Kid Icarus title that's been in the works for quite awhile. Also, there was something about affixing random letters to the end of the already stupid Wii name and calling it a different console - the Wii U, which sounds like a frighteningly surreal college where small children go to become more proficient at Wii Sports. However, I'm a biased, bitter old man with a cane fashioned from the microchips of thousands of copies of Super Mario/Duckhunt, so I promise to withhold my ire until further information on Nintendo's next gen box is available.

What really excited me was the announcement of Super Mario 3D for the 3DS, which appears to have ripped a page from Mario 3's book by bringing back the beloved Tanooki suit. I'm sure it won't recapture the magic of Mario's NES days, but I'm still going to keep an eye on it. After all, a pale but well-intentioned imitation of a beloved classic is better than another insipid Pokemon title.

IT HAS A TAIL

I also missed Sony's pitch, but I assume it was just an hour and a half of high-level businessmen apologizing over the recent PSN outage and committing sepukuu, then a man dressed as Cole MacGrath from inFAMOUS nervously explaining how Sony's new security features will add hours of fun to your PlayStation Home trolling experience.

Thankfully-ish, my brain was able to jolt my body awake in time for the Xbox 360 presentation, which consisted of approximately 4000 first person shooters - all sequels - another Tomb Raider game that didn't look too bad, and the fact that now you can be much more lazy when purchasing content on the Xbox Marketplace by just screaming out what you want to buy instead of using the wireless controller to navigate menus. If my neighbors don't think that I'm crazy at this point, my early morning shouts of "Xbox! Show me Transformers cartoons NOW!" should confirm their worst fears.

Halo 4 or whatever; yawn.

Microsoft's showing show presented me with a conundrum: How could I have been mind shatteringly disinterested in a show completely devoted to my favorite pass time?

The most important thing this year's E3 taught me is that no matter how disillusioned I become with Nintendo, I'd still rather hang with them than wade through the uninspired shooter wasteland that is the Xbox 360.

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!

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.”