Retro-spective

With the recent news of Nintendo releasing "Metroid Prime Trilogy" which encompasses Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and adds Wii Play controls to the first 2 of those games since Corruption already has them. It just made me remember the original game, Metroid Prime.

Now I wasn't a Metroid fan growing up, never really played it on the NES, or SNES when I was a kid. But in the run up to when Prime was coming out, it looked like a pretty sweet game. And as a guy who hates most FPS, looked like a game i wasn't going to hate playing. I even pre-ordered it online pretty early...and forgot about it. So when I was at my house and got a early morning delivery one morning the day it was released. I saw my name on it and had no idea what it was, opened it and was pretty freakin' excited. Of course I only had like an hour to play cause I had to go Class...and then work.

The game was great it focused on exploration of this detailed world, which wasn't totally flooded with enemies so I wasn't afraid to get killed by a million enemies every possible second. Had the Zelda-ish lock on feature that let me enjoy the combat. And was fun to play, gaining abilities, and as I said before exploration and discovering the story of WTF happened to this planet. And actually a bit of horror for the game cause you never were entirely sure what was going to pop up, and especially when the Metroids showed up. I played that game a lot but I must confess, I never beat it.

I got to the last area, final boss fight, I gained all the power-ups defeated every other creature in the game. The final boss was too hard for me, I couldn't manage my 3 visors, and 4 beams quick enough to destroy that thing. So I hung my head in shame and put it back on the shelf. (Thanks Youtube for allowing me to see the end)

When the next Prime game came out, Echoes, again I was all over it. Received it as a X-Mas gift, and dove right into it. The Game was significantly more difficult than the original. Added a Dark/Light World Mechanic, and paired down the beams to a Ikaruga-esque system. And a bit more focused on combat. The horror element played up a bit more, with some genuinely creepy foes. It was hard a TON of back-tracking. With this game I made a good dent in it, and one boss battle ended up relying entirely on Morph ball mode. *Sigh* Again the frustration built. After many attempts I had to give up, and put it back on the shelf.

Then we come to the third game, Corruption, those other games were Gamecube releases, this was a Wii release game with brand new controls. point and look, very interesting. But to be honest to me it seemed very imprecise, unless you have a really big TV. But the game requires you to be precise , things with multiple targets you need to switch between on the fly. But again I will be honest, I rented the game, didn't play very far. Then I got it as a X-Mas gift again...and havn't put it in my Wii system. I want to like it....and thats where I am today.

But hearing people reminisce about those games now that this new edition is coming out, makes me want to play that game again, the old version. And also makes me think how much the new play controls make me not want to play it. Cause I hate FPS and just seems like its gonna make them all play imprecise and infuriate me. But I still have the old ones I might go back and enjoy them.

Netflix

After much deliberation on what my obsession was this week, I realized that it was Netflix. I originally started a post on podcasts, and then on the art of Skottie Young (of New X-Men fame). But I just wasn't feeling it. But then I realized what I've been doing all week since Monday when I'm home, building my Netflix queue.

I actually just signed up for the service on Monday after much deliberation. A year and a half ago, I had a Blockbuster Online account, which was ok and pretty cheap(and helped me catch up on Smallville, Scrubs, Lost, and Monk) but the price kept going up and turnaround took too long(this was before you could return stuff to the store). But lately there has been a large amount of movies I wanna see, but no time or money to buy or rent them all. After I set it up I spent a long time figuring the first discs I wanted were. Then I rated a bunch of stuff to get suggestions, which I did for hours. Y'know how you often forget about movies you wanted to see, well those were the ones I was looking for, waiting for them to appear and smack me in the face.

Then of course Netflix now has the feature of letting you watch movies right off the site, I dove into that watching a couple Anime episodes. I also was looking to dive into one of the main reasons for getting Netflix, Doctor Who. Been curious to watch some of the classic stuff, and darn those DVDs are numerous and expensive. So that was how I spent my free time on Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday I got my first 3 discs and got to watching. Can I just say there is nothing better than to go home excited that something fun is gonna be in the mailbox, I've started getting monthly comic shipments from DCBS, and now I'll be getting a bunch of DVDs in the mail, rock! My first selections were "Death Note Vol.1", "Idiocracy", and "Paprika". I started my queue with some Anime, and more particular Anime Movies, which Cat(my gf) would never rent with me, and those are the only times I goto Blockbuster. I blazed through "Death Note", and watched "Idiocracy" tonight, and I expect to enjoy "Paprika" on Saturday morning.

Hopefully this will begin a regular monthly movie obsession which I can share with you. I hope I don't sound crazy, I feel like the last person to get Netflix, I hear so many people talking about it all the time, or maybe its just the voices in my head....anyway. Plus now I can give movies I'm even only slightly interested in a chance, because why the hell not? And certain movies I've felt I need to see can finally get watched, "Brazil", "Citizen Kane", "The Good the Bad and the Ugly", etc

Video Game Lawyering

This Weeks Obsession is Lawyering Video Games. It of course all started after Christmas, I used a gift card to buy "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations" for DS, and I just got into it, when I discovered there was a "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law" game for the Wii which was coming out in a few days and I vowed to buy since I really liked that show from Adult Swim. Then the night before I was going to get it I had dinner with my friend Jim, and we exchanged Christmas Gifts. He had gotten me "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice For All" for DS, the game that preceded the one I bought, so before I could continue with "Trials" I had to beat "Justice". Then the next day of course I bought "Harvey Birdman" and because I like things that are hilarious, I dived right into that. So technically I'm in the middle of 3 lawyering games. And they are all developed by Capcom, based off the same basic game system, the only difference being "Birdman" is more animated, comedy based, and fully voiced.

The Phoenix Wright Games for the DS were originally GBA games that never made it over here, and have been translated over to DS. They are anime styled, and a bit quirky. Basically its your job to investigate a case, gather evidence, interview witnesses, and when your in court cross-examine, which makes up most of the gameplay. Basically during Cross-examination a witness gives testimony, and you present evidence to try and poke holes in parts of their testimony, then they revise their testimony, poke more holes till they freak out and reveal the truth, with a lot of yelling of "Objection!", "Take That!", and my favorite "Hold it!". Its a lot of text boxes, and many repeating locales. But its fun, and interesting, a lot of it is simple logic, sometimes devilishly hard. Its almost like a puzzle game.

The Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law game for Wii/PSP/PS2 is based off of the Adult Swim show of the same name which I highly recommend. In which washed up hero Birdman has become a lawyer who defends other Hanna Barbara cartoons in wacky zany law cases. The game was devoped by Capcom who did the Phoenix Wright games, so the setup is similar but in Birdman visual style. The presentation is top notch, looks perfectly authentic, you are playing original episodes of Harvey Birdman. If you love the show it is a must own, and is hilarious. There are so many animated parts to it its pretty crazy, the game is fully voiced by the cast of the show (Gary Cole, Peter MacNicol, Lewis Black, etc) with the sad exception of Stephen Colbert, but the replacement is competant. This game is much shorter and easier than the Pheonix Wright games, but gives me hope for when Pheonix Wright hopefully will come to the home console, fully voiced and more animated. This game I feel will only appeal to Birdman fans, especially because if you havn't seen the show I feel you won't get the joke, since they don't spend anytime introducing the characters at all, they just toss you in, they don't even play the theme song(which is awesome), but do closing credits at the end of each "episode".

In closing I currently own every lawyer game out there, until "Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney" comes out in February, which will be the first of the Ace Attorney games to be made fully for the DS, and will make it more dynamic and interesting, they only hinted at it in other games.
In case you couldn't tell, I'm obsessed!