Now I know I have a bad habit of hating games before they even come out, but I HATE Dante’s Inferno already. Let me tell you why.

First of all, anyone could find EA’s fucktarded shock marketing for this game loathsome. I may be an atheist but even I thought that their staged religious protest at E3 was in extremely poor taste. And don’t even get me started on their campaign that set up “booth babes” that didn’t even work for EA for sexual harassment and inappropriate pinching. Chances are, if you have to try this hard to promote a game it probably sucks.

The other thing is that even the subject matter shows that the developers are illiterate morons who couldn’t even pay attention in high school humanities class. I understand wanting to make a game about heaven and hell and biblical imagery and apocalypse stuff, that’s fine. It can make for some pretty cool shit. However, why Dante’s Inferno of all things?

In case you as well don’t realize this, the Divine Comedy (the larger work of which Inferno is part of), is not literally about heaven and hell. Yeah I know it dubbed the idea of the 9 circles of hell and all (which, by the way, isn’t a Biblical idea) but really, Inferno especially was part political satire, part a criticism of the 14th century church and general Christian hypocrisy.

via Penny Arcade

So what does EA and Visceral Games do? They turn Dante, who was a real person by the way, into a roided up Crusader knight with a cross stitched into his chest wielding badass scythe that he got by murdering Death himself.

…..Yeah, there are many, MANY things wrong with that sentence but there is one MAJOR problem here guys:  at the time Inferno was written…

THE CRUSADES HAD ALREADY BEEN OVER FOR 20 YEARS!

Auuughh, it hurts my history dork souuul! And you know, if you wanted to raid some classical literature as a source for a heaven and hell themed game… WHY WOULDN’T YOU CHOOSE PARADISE LOST? I mean… GOD! What is wrong with these people!? Or hell, even go for the Book of Enoch, that has some deliciously messed up stuff in it and also features a tour of heaven and hell. But really? The Divine Comedy? A book about politics? I genuinely believe that the developers of this game just went “Duuurhhh, we wanna do a game about hell, Dante’s Inferno is about hell right? Let’s do that without really reading it! Huurhhduurr.”

On the flipside, as I said in my opening paragraph the games industry has become like Hollywood, with different studios creating games of similar themes all around the same time. And that brings me to Darksiders, a game by Vigil Games and THQ. Now, I’m not sure of the quality of this one, but it definitely looks better than Dante’s.

Darksiders seems to be based on bits of the Book of Revelation, which is a crazy acid trip of different supernatural events and prophetic signs and bullshit. But that gives you alot to work with! They can easily take creative liberties with it because it barely makes sense in the first place. And notice how they didn’t go and call it “Revelations” as if it’s accurately based on the source material.

In Darksiders you also play a roid-monkey badass, but he at least has some flaws. He’s one of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and he’s basically tricked into starting the end of the world early. He has to find the other Horsemen and is constantly being watched by the Charred Council, sort of mediator creatures striving to keep a balance in the continuing conflict between heaven and hell.

That’s pretty creative, they took a basic idea and expanded on it. You may say Dante’s Inferno does the same but need I remind you by naming it after that part of the Divine Comedy they’re implying its in any way an accurate portrayal of its contents. And once more, it was allegory, it wasn’t literally about heaven and hell.

Either way, both games may suck, and both are clearly God of War ripoffs. I intend to rent and play both anyway and may do a review in the future. Or I may not, depends on what I feel like! Either way I’m still holding out for Bayonetta to be the top contender, I’ll take a God of War ripoff where a lady takes off her clothes to use her special moves and wears boots with guns for heels any day.

Above: Hot.

Related posts:

1. Bayonetta
2. 5 Games Whose Very Existence Scares Me
3. The Problem With Sims & Spore Expansions

SPOILERS SPOILERS
SPOILERS SPOILERS
SPOILERS SPOILERS

Yeah. Spoilers. For this and other Silent Hill games.

So you know what? No. I’m not done bitching about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. In my review I tried to avoid spoilers but now, now I want to rant a bit about the story as a whole and why it just doesn’t work.

So if for some reason you were planning to play this game and don’t want its stupendously stupid ending ruined for you, well… don’t read this.

So Harry’s dead all along. Yeah. He’s Bruce Willis. Well not quite, he’s not even a ghost, he’s a delusion of an adult Cheryl who is actually the one in therapy (as I said I sensed a bait and switch early on.) Cheryl couldn’t accept that her father died in a car accident after her parents divorced so she created an imaginary perfect dad. What is Climax trying to say here? That the original Harry Mason was too devoted to be real? Anyway, a story where a delusion comes to life/effects reality I have no problem with, I did mention Satoshi Kon in my review, whose work I like, and that’s kind of his shtick (Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, Paprika.) But like I also said Satoshi Kon Climax ain’t.

It seems to me that American companies making these new Silent Hill games are desperate to make the Silent Hill 2 lightning strike twice, thus the constant “blah blah was dead all along” theme. Developer Double Helix’s Silent Hill: Homecoming, while a decent game, did this so obviously that I guessed the ending from the trailers before the game even came out. Climax seems to have attempted to subvert this creative bankruptcy by simply switching the roles in their plot twist (The person you’re seeking wasn’t dead all along, the player character was!) But this creates a host of problems with the plot.

Hello? Yes I'd like to order some plot continuity.

For one, if Harry has been dead for 18 years why the holy hell does he have a high-tech cellphone? I mean did Cheryl actually create this detail as part of her delusion? Sure it plays a vital role in the gameplay as your map, a device to drive the story, and a way to find ghostly residue and mementos (though going around a dark, abandoned city with a flashlight finding ghosts and items of emotional significance sounds alot like the Wii game Fragile which is coming State-side soon, and will probably be better than this malarky) but if Harry isn’t real and was a delusion all along why does he have this thing? Depending on when this game takes place it can’t even be a memory from the real Harry because goddamn iPhones didn’t exist 18 years ago.

I'm like, Dahlia, cha.

Then there’s Dahlia. Dahlia is a punkish, kinda slutty teen or early 20-something that shows up out of nowhere, replacing another person you were traveling with and only has a brief time in the game where she reveals Harry is spacey, they’re sleeping together, and he named her tits. Charming. We find out later that Dahlia is Harry’s wife. Okay. But it seems to me this Dahlia you meet in the game is what Dahlia was like in High School or her early 20’s when she and Harry first met seeing as she doesn’t know he’s dead and doesn’t look, dress or speak like this in Cheryl’s home videos. So she can’t be a real person, she must come from Harry’s memory, but since Harry is a delusion of Cheryl… how the hell does Cheryl know what her mother was like in her youth? How would she know intimate details like the aforementioned tit-naming? Unless she’s re-imaging her mother as a whore, which I guess is possible because she hates her, but still. Or maybe she could be a memory from the real Harry that the delusion possesses (making her the delusion’s… delusion? Augh.)

But there’s a problem here. That isn’t possible because this game completely eschews the Silent Hill mythos.  Silent Hill is a normal town in this game, there’s no ancient Native American sacred land, there’s no cult throwing rituals and occult magic around, there’s nothing supernatural happening to anyone but Harry and it isn’t stemming from the power of the town itself. Look at Maria from Silent Hill 2 for example: Maria is also a delusion, or quite possibly an extraordinarily complex monster (seeing as she transforms into one in all but one of the endings) and she has memories she seemingly shouldn’t have. Basically the power of the town feeds her, mixing the subconscious desires and memories of James with the memories of Laura causing her to manifest the way she is and sometimes switch personalities. Maria herself may not even understand what she is at first, similar to Lisa Garland who only transformed into a monster when she realized she was one. Lisa of course was a human transformed by the town, or she could have been a monster based on the real, long-dead Lisa.

And that’s the thing about the original Team Silent trilogy, they were subtle, they were ambiguous. No one outright points out Maria is a delusion, you only find out Lisa was Alessa’s nurse if you examine videos and diaries and even then it’s only implied. In fact what I said above is only my interpretation, though the basics tend to be agreed upon by fans the details aren’t. Shattered Memories basically has your therapist (who I realized later is Michael Kaufmann which is admittedly pretty clever) lay out everything in the end leaving no room for speculation from the viewer.

Well there’s room for speculation about the monsters and the Nightmare world, I guess, but my only thoughts on that is they have fuckall to do with the plot in the end. Well, I understand that it could represent the therapy Cheryl is going through, that the monsters are trying to destroy Harry only to free her, but really what the hell is with the snow and ice theme? There is nothing, nothing to indicate that Harry’s car accident happened in snow. The video where he’s leaving shows him in a short-sleeved shirt on a sunny day with full, green trees in the background. Silent Hill is supposed to be located in New England, I live there and I’ll tell you our winters ain’t like that. Sure there’s snow in the game, but the snow storm is happening in the present time. Harry the delusion is just running around the real world with real people in a real snowstorm 18 years after the real Harry died, this isn’t even the Fog World because the Silent Hill mythos don’t exist in this game, it’s just a normal blizzard. Some people say it’s because Cheryl’s memory of Harry is “frozen” in time, but i’m not buying it, and even if that is the case not very freakin’ subtle is it? Some people also say the whole town was in Cheryl’s head but there’s snow on the ground at the end, and what reason would she have to make up Michelle, John, Cybil, Lisa, the bridge operator and everyone else you can call? My point is the Nightmare world could have had some variation, I’m wondering if the snow and ice wasn’t just a choice because of the Wii’s limitations.

Then there’s the oft-praised “psychology” aspect, slight changes to the monsters and game and slight variations on the ending depending on your answers to psychology tests and what you make Harry stare at. The problem becomes that in the context in the story this is nothing but a whole lot of fourth wall breaking, and it’s distracting. Really, think about it, why would the appearance of real people change depending on what the real Harry Mason was like according to the player? Instead of crafting various models for minor characters they could have spent more time on the monsters, but like I said in my review it’s not like you even have time to get a good look at them anyway. The game thinks it’s shocking or mature because it mentions sex and has racy posters but goddamn, Silent Hills 2 and 3 had some of the most phallic and disturbingly sexual imagery, and it was all in the monsters and environments.

I will praise this game on one thing though: its UFO ending is hilarious. If you don’t know, a joke ending called the UFO ending is a running gag in Silent Hill games, usually only able to be achieved on a second playthrough (though Homecoming made the mistake of having it available on the first playthrough.) In Silent Hill 1, Harry Mason is abducted by aliens. In Silent Hill 2 Harry Mason returns along with the aliens and they abduct James Sunderland. In Silent Hill 3 Heather returns home to tell her father what happened and he and the aliens go and blow up Silent Hill. And well so on and so forth. However the infuriating thing is Shattered Memories’ UFO ending shows that the creators do have a detailed knowledge of past Silent Hill games, which they chose to ignore.

This game was so bad even composer Akira Yamaoka seemed to be phoning it in. I can’t remember any distinctive tracks from the game, and especially the music that plays when the monsters chase you sounded pretty generic.

All and all I still don’t understand the praise and high review scores for this game. It’s like the writers read a Psyche 101 book and decided they knew everything about psychology. It’s not a psychological thriller if you’re literally making the player do art therapy and Rorschach tests, that’s just blazingly stupid. The reason why Silent Hill 2 was so psychological is everything was subtle, implied, and left to the player to put the pieces together. It could have been that the town was literally transformed, it could have been that it was just a metaphor and the reality was that shortly after killing Mary and wracked with guilt and denial, James fled to the last place the two were happy and worked through his demons (or, in one ending, committed suicide.)  More than likely it’s something in between, but again that’s for the player to decide. And that’s the thing Climax doesn’t seem to understand. Silent Hill isn’t just about “freaky shit happening” and until these American companies understand that, or Konami hires a better developer, Silent Hill will never be anywhere near as good as it was.

The only other entertainment value? I can’t wait to see what Yatzhee has to say about this.

Related posts:

1. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
2. Alan Wake
3. Dante’s Vs Darksiders

Sure American companies have been making terrible Silent Hill games lately, but how can they screw up just taking Silent Hill 1’s gameplay and script and making the game again?

Well they could screw it up by deciding to make this a “re-imagining” rather than a remake, and by being developer Climax Studios the people behind Silent Hill Origins. Great. And like always, Climax has friggin’ missed the point of Silent Hill.

And the first point they fail on is the idea that “Silent Hill is psychological.”  True, Silent Hill games do have that reputation, however it was Silent Hill 2 that set that precedent. And their definition of “psychological” isn’t the subtle, nightmarish Freudian imagery of Silent Hills 2 and 3, no no, it’s making the player take a laughably rudimentary psych test at the beginning of the game. And to add to the fun every time you boot up the game you’re greeted by an obnoxious bright red screen that warns you that it will psychologically profile you and use this information against you. Woooo scary.

There’s a problem here though. This is not some open-ended game where the person you’re playing is a blank slate of an avatar for you to put yourself into. It’s a very linear game with a very specific story where you’re taking on the role of the legendary Harry Mason. And that’s a problem too, Harry Mason is not James Sunderland, he was never characterized as a mental train wreck, he was just a widower and a good father desperately searching for his daughter in the face of an occult nightmare summoned by a crazy cult. The monsters and atmosphere didn’t stem from his psyche, but Alessa’s, the girl lying in the basement of a hospital purposefully kept in alive in agony so that she would birth the cult’s god. In fact the entire Otherworld was an extension of her suffering. Silent Hill 2 kept the Otherworld theme but introduced the idea that people with painful secrets could now shape the town and see different things depending on what was in their own minds. Futhermore I don’t see how you’re supposed to notice the “psychology” aspect of Shattered Memories at work unless you play through at least twice and try to spot the differences. Which would be interesting if this were a stronger game.

And if you’re a Silent Hill nerdtard like me it gets worse: this Harry Mason’s catchphrase is now “I was in a car accident” rather than “have you seen a little girl”, tsk, unforgivable! Oh and he also has amnesia, but it doesn’t resemble amnesia as much as it does Alzheimer’s disease. Really, Climax? An amnesiac video game protagonist? You’re really pushing the envelope here, huh? So yeah, this character doesn’t sound like Harry Mason at all, so for the remainder of this review he will be referred to as Barry Lason.

Oh and not only is Silent Hill a normal occupied town, but Barry Lason is a citizen. Enjoy your nerd rage, SH fans.

Anyway we open with a very sinister and condescending therapist, later in the game he forces you to do degrading art therapy and some of his actions and things he says makes you wonder why the hell anyone would pay for his services. Therapist man is talking to someone, presumably it’s Barry Lason but I suspected immediately this could easily be a bait and switch. Barry Lason was driving around in some insane blizzard that has caused all the roads to be closed and convenient 3 story tall banks of snow to act as invisible walls. Just like in the original game he crashes his car, gets out, and starts desperately searching for his daughter Cheryl. Unlike in the original game you can clearly see Cheryl wasn’t even in the fucking car. So great, I could take a good guess at the ending within the first 15 minutes. Good jorb, guys.

Thrilling!

When the game isn’t being extraordinarily boring it’s incredibly frustrating. It’s hard, but not in any challenging way, mostly in unfair and cheap ways. First the boring parts: most of the time you’re just plodding around ridiculously dark rooms finding no clues, no mysteries, no monsters, just walking. The game attempts to creep you out in these sections with loud music at times but because you quickly become aware there are no monsters you know there’s no threat. Occasionally you’ll run into a locked door and Barry Lason will mutter the obvious that he needs a key. The key is always right around the corner hidden in some object like a can. In fact, one of the very first key puzzles gives you two blatant clues right in a row, the second of which is literally a sign that might as well have said “THE KEY IS OVER THERE.” Okay, sure, past Silent Hill games have had some pretty ludicrous puzzles (like finding four keys to unlock a box with a piece of hair in it that you can then use to fish another key out of a drain…) but the ones in Shattered Memories are just insultingly easy. There are other kinds of puzzles too, but the solution to them all is always in some obvious location in the same room, usually with an arrow pointing at it. Other times you take pictures of the ghostly residue of things that occurred, presumably, in the past with Barry Lason’s widely ridiculed iPhone. There are a few benefits to the cellphone, however, such as easy access to the map and being able to save any time you want.

This portion of the game operates like an old point and click adventure, including the common issue in that genre where you often can’t figure out what the hell the game wants from you. Many times it wants you to work locks on doors, open cupboards and pick up objects. This is fine, but it wants you to use meticulous Wiimote motion so the game can pretend it’s simulating what it would be like to be REALLY opening cupboards and such with your own hands. It took me almost 10 minutes to figure out how to turn a beer can upsidedown and shake it to get a key out, mostly banging it around the screen like a frustrated gorilla before I got it.

Then there are the “Nightmare” portions of the game. This is our Otherworld proxy. Unlike previous Silent Hills where you’d have sparse monsters in a foggy, almost entirely abandoned town and more dangerous monsters when the blood-and-rust-covered-everything Otherworld took hold, you only get monsters in the Nightmare portions. The transitions are pretty cool, but in the end ice is still boring and not scary.

The monsters as well are extremely underwhelming, they all look like faceless naked mole rat people and are more annoying than scary. Sure the monsters evolve slightly over time depending on what objects and signs you stare at the most, but there’s no rhyme or reason or clear motif here, there’s nothing “psychological” about it. Look at Silent Hill 2’s monsters: from monsters that are just two pairs of women’s legs on either end, to monsters that struggle against a straight jacket made of their own flesh, to a manifestation of one character’s molestation at the hands of her father we’re talking about some pretty mind-fuck level stuff.

And no, Climax, referencing drugs and mentioning sex every now and again doesn’t make a game “disturbing”, unless maybe your target demographic is Amish teenagers or something. In fact Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is such PG-13 horror movie fare it almost seems ludicrous that it has an M rating. It doesn’t help that most of the story pieces you get focus on obnoxious teenage stereotypes.

Anyway, Silent Hill: SM’s monsters are just screechy little bastards who never stop chasing or attacking and since they can jump, climb, and go through doors an entire horde of them could be following you at any given time.  I also found that they slow Barry Lason down before they’re even latched onto him and it’s nearly impossible to just run past them. When you do have these pests hanging on old Barry Lason seemingly humping him to death you have to use very specific waggle motions to get them off, which are kind of hard to remember when you’re struggling to get three of the things away from you before they drain your unseen health. You can get flares to scare them off for a short time, but this makes it even harder to see where you’re going considering the game is so retardedly dark. None of this would be a problem, however, if you were allowed to fight the monsters.

Yeah. No lead pipe. No gun. No rifle. Not even a board with a nail. Why? Who knows, Climax wills it?

Previous Silent Hill games let you decide whether to flee or fight, it was a big part of the gameplay, and many of the monsters would not actively attack you, and even if they did they were not impossibly fast. Here in Shattered Memories your only choice is to run around blindly until you find the exit of the “Nightmare”.  Barry Lason will at least automatically open doors as you run toward them, but this is ridiculous. Although the information on the GPS/map system in your phone states that when a waypoint is set you can see a “faint path” that leads in the right direction I’ll be damned if I’ve spotted it yet. Unless that meant they made all the ledges and doors glow blue for you. You can hide from the creatures, but they can find you anyway, you can throw stuff in their path but it requires a nunchuck waggle which is rather cumbersome since you’re using the joystick to move and holding the Z button to run. I died in these sections mostly because I ended up running in circles with no idea where to go, since everything beyond your flashlight is pitch black you have no peripheral vision and it’s hard to make snap decisions about which direction to go in, you also can’t slow down and think about it or even look around because you’re constantly pursued by screechy hump-monsters, and you can’t look at the map because that makes you stop running and the monsters will get you. The third Nightmare sequence even forces you to take pictures of things while there are monsters afoot. And since they can climb walls and you can’t kill them this is incredibly frustrating. Honestly, this game would have been ten times better if you could kill the friggin’ monsters, even temporarily. I can’t even begin to fathom what made them decide to make the game this way, were weapons too difficult to program in?

And I’ll say again none of this is even scary! These things are just stock jump-scare monsters, and they don’t even do that well.  What made the classic Silent Hill monsters scary was their corpse and insect-like undulating forms. It’s because those games weren’t afraid to truly disturb you and did so by creating creatures and a world based around what repulses the human psyche most. Alot of it was also in the sound design, the classic Silent Hills would feature a bevy of atmospheric sounds that would just crush you with their intensity. When you weren’t hearing disgusting, squishy noises you were hearing nauseatingly high pitched buzzing that made you feel like you just had to get out of there. The only notable atmospheric sound I’ve heard in Shattered Memories thus far is a repeated noise in a dark forest that sounded like someone eating potato chips.

Now, truthfully, this game could be a decent distraction on its own, if it was an original story. The graphics are nice, especially for a Wii game, with good character models and some pretty impressive character animation, especially in the facial expressions. But the fact that it has to castrate Silent Hill 1’s plot and bank itself on the namesake of a classic series is just annoying.  In fact it is so radically different from the plot of Silent Hill 1 I am baffled as to why they didn’t just make an original Silent Hill story, you know, like Homecoming did? I mean Homecoming wasn’t up to par with the original trilogy but it at least kept in the spirit of Silent Hill games and had some good ideas (especially with the bosses.)

Without spoiling too much I’ll tell you right now the ending of Shattered Memories is a plot twist, but it’s a plot twist that renders the whole game pointless and doesn’t make any sense. You can’t just subvert the predictable ending you seemed to be building toward with a random plot twist in the opposite direction, Climax, it doesn’t work that way. It isn’t deep, it isn’t shocking, it’s just bad writing. It doesn’t help that the mysteries are all spelled out for the audience with an ending speech instead of letting them draw their own conclusions and analyze it themselves. It’s like when you can tell a generic summer horror movie got a script rewrite halfway through and no one bothered to fix the plot holes. You are not Satoshi Kon, Climax. This game is worth a rental at least, just to experience it whether you’re looking to throw yourself into a fit of Silent Hill nerd rage like me or curious about it’s much lauded but ultimately shallow gameplay mechanics.

If you want to know more about the game’s story and ending click here to see my spoiler-ridden follow-up rant.

If you'd like to experience the original Silent Hill games without having to play them I highly recommend L0rd Vega's Let's Plays. You get all of the story as well as some hilarious commentary.

Related posts:

1. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Follow-Up Rant
2. Alan Wake
3. Dante’s Vs Darksiders

Yeah! The first Sims 3 expansion is basically Vacation meets Galactic Adventures. Send your Sims to Egypt or some other exotic locale and then proceed to fill it with fog, make booby traps and then direct your clearly ethnocentric Sim to rob a foreign country of its ancient artifacts. WHY? The Sims is not built for this kind of malarky. I could perhaps see this as a 5th or 15th expansion pack (you know when they’ve run out of ideas) but how about we start with the ability to build businesses and actually go inside of them, EA?

He knows, man! HE KNOWS! ...Seriously this is the funniest Sims screenshot I ever took, just wanted to share.

Like most people half the time I only buy expansions for the more minor extra gameplay and content anyway. With Sims 2 I didn’t buy University to send my Sims to college, it was long and tedious and basically gave you two whole neighborhoods to keep track of at once, I got it for the expanded furniture and clothing. I didn’t buy Open for Business to have my Sims run businesses, which was also long and tedious and more trouble than it was worth, I primarily wanted it so I could finally build working restaurants downtown.

The Sims should stay simple. You have a Sim, or Sim family, and you have them live their lives in an exaggerated, cartoony and often hilarious manner. You focus on their interactions with each other, advancing their careers etc. So instead of over-complicating the gameplay like this can’t we just enhance what’s already there? More traits. More objects to interact with. More careers. That’s all we need.

As for Spore, it’s not the expansions so much but the endless retarded spin-offs that no one in their right mind could think would make money. It’s sort of an open secret that Spore was dumbed down from what it was intended to be in order to be more marketable, but even the way they’re trying to market it now is all kinds of stupid. So you destroyed my dreams of a next-gen version of SimEarth so that you could try to turn an amusing but dumbed down game about alien monsters into a franchise empire. Thanks, EA.

Really?

First there was the Spore Comic Book Creator. Even the Spore website is too embarrassed to list this one. What possible use does this have? Oh? Take your Spore screenshots and turn them into comic books? Because you couldn’t possibly do that with a number of other cheap comic book making software or even I dunno, say, Gimp or Photoshop? Why the hell would you want to make a Spore comic book in the first place?

On top of that after the first DS game failed they’re gonna go ahead and make another one anyway, not to mention one for the Wii as well. The Wii one might work out, but I assume alot of these spinoffs are going to be like the PS2 Sims games, they’re just not as good as the PC version.

And even Galactic Adventures didn’t make that much sense as an expansion pack. Like I said, it works for what it is, and it’s cool they clearly took suggestions from the suggestion thread in the Spore forums (though mostly from the “we should have GUNS! Pew pew!” crowd and less from the “here’s how you can make the existing game better” crowd.) Galactic Adventures is more like a separate entity, the main game only serves as a portal to it, but it isn’t part of and doesn’t add anything to the existing gameplay.

And like I said in my Galactic Adventures review, the level building is a great aspect but it’s also extremely cumbersome. I’d rather see them improve on the Creature, Tribal and Civ stages really, add more things to do, add more options than just being kill-everyone-carnivore, hippy-herbivore and buy-your-way-out-of-trouble-omnivore. The Tribal stage especially has the potential to be great, but as it stands right now is the one I always cheat through just to get it over with, mainly because it’s boring.

I hope with Activision as the new big bad of the gaming world and EA learning its lesson as of late now that its sales and customer loyalty have suffered we’ll see expansion packs that are created more out of necessity and creativity than some out-of-touch cynical marketer’s warped idea of what the unwashed masses will blindly rush out to buy. But I’m not holding my breath.

Related posts:

1. Spore Galactic Adventures
2. The Sims 3
3. Dante’s Vs Darksiders

This, however, tends to result in horrid abominations that one doesn’t even need to play to be terrified of.

Sure it might be funnier if I actually played these horrible games and made fun of them then but shut up, I ain’t got that kind of time/mental stability. And I know I already brought you 5, but, here’s 5 more!

#1. Any Game About Makeup

"Girl" Games... my arch nemisis.

It may seem like I’m cheating with this one, but I’m not, I assure you these are likely in essence all the same goddamn game. You may remember from my “Girls and Games” post that as a female gamer this sort of thing just chafes my ass.

Of course girls don’t want to go on high flying adventures with plots and characters that don’t insult their intelligence when they play video games, they want to learn how to look like a painted French whore!

Now granted I’m not anti-makeup, I wear makeup, but these sorts of games are both attempting to be “trendy” and cartoony at the same time and can only end up creating droves of little girls that look like Divine. Besides, one should play video games to experience things one can’t do in real life, these girls should just be raiding mommy’s makeup drawer and won’t have to pay 30 bucks for the pleasure.

Also there’s another make up etc. game called “Girl Time”, the cover just bothers me:

Something about what looks like Kotex flowers adrift in a reddish river,
the fact that it’s, you know, called “Girl Time”.  …Moving on.

#2 Skate City Heroes

Okay maybe it’s just the cover of this game that scares me, but what the shit is this? Is this like some failed American remake of Jet Set Radio? It’s trying so hard to be Japanese but has that tell-tale “everyone must be scowling GRR” American design mentality. It’s the same phenomenon that leads to even lovable pink puffball Kirby having angry eyebrows drawn on him for US releases.

Do you know when you can just look at a game’s cover and simply sense that it controls like ass? I think this game is a prime example. This game was so shitty no industry professionals even bothered to review it.

#3 Family Party

It may seem like I’m picking on the Wii, but damn it’s got more shovelware than PS2. Well okay, maybe not, but close! Family Party! Over 30 great games! Such as log sawing. Log rolling. And archery while wearing frilly pink aprons. 30 games is more than 1, so isn’t this more fun that that Spaceman Marios Galaxmacy you wanted, kids?

And you’ve got to love the sickeningly stereotypical 1950’s nuclear family they’ve painted here. White, middle class, heterosexual family unit with 2.5 kids, little Billy’s the star, Dad always wears a tie, little Suzie is perfectly lady-like because she never wears pants, and Mom always wears a frilly apron even in those rare moments she leaves the kitchen to snipe the neighborhood hoodlums on her lawn with her goddamn bow and arrow.

A closer inspection of the cover reveals they even get poor old Grandma into the action, forcing her geriatric ass to climb ropes. What kind of sick family is this?

#4 Super Army War

I don’t know what this game is. I’ve never played it. I’ve never seen it played. All I know is the first time I saw the words “Super Army War” on a tired old Game Boy Advance cartridge I was flabbergasted. Go ahead. Just try and say the title out loud and see if you don’t laugh.

I mean “Super Army War?” What does that even mean? Surely armies are something inherent to war, isn’t that just redundant? And super? What’s super about it? Are these mutated super armies? Fighting a war of some kind? Are they Nazi supermen? Someone tell me what the hell is going on here!

Super Army War… I mean just … Super Army War.

#5 Wordmaster

Well! …That’s certainly racist.

For some reason shovelware crafters extraordinaire, ZOO Games (who also made Skate City Heroes up there, surprise surprise), decided  that the perfect mascot for their English word matching game was a rotund ethnic stereotype. Named Sum Ting Wong. Dear god. I mean the faux Asian theme has absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay, that’s far out of one’s way to go just to insult every Chinese person who ever lived.

You know what this reminds me of? An ad from the early 60’s about how “Poor Chinese baby can’t eat Jello with chopsticks!”:

Oh how far we’ve come, isn’t it nice to know such ignorant media doesn’t exist anymore!

Hahaha….Fuck you ZOO.

Related posts:

1. 5 Games Whose Very Existence Scares Me
2. Girls and Games
3. Video Games and Kids

Now yes, I’m a fan of Japanese cartoons if that wasn’t blatantly obvious to anyone with a pair of working corneas. And yes, weeaboo, they’re cartoons, get over it. Naturally the East and West have distinctively different approaches and different schools of thought when it comes to comic books, cartooning and animation and both sides of the world have particular underlying techniques and ticks throughout.

But it irks me to no end when people go on about anime sucking because of something common to most cartoons in the world. Sure, you don’t have to like anime, but it’s my pet peeve and my website damnit! So here’s my list:

#1. Anime Characters Are Disproportioned!

I don’t understand this one myself. Are all cartoons, nay all art in general, expected to follow strictly realistic human proportions? Applying this complaint to anything else would seem unreasonable as best and puppy-neck-snappingly retarded at worst. According to modern figure drawing the average human body is about 7/7.5 head lengths tall, although idealized classical figures could be as much as 8 or 9 head lengths tall. What this means is that a proportionally correct person would be drawn as tall as their head repeated 7 times.

Let’s compare:

So how come Disney gets away with it guys?

#2. Anime Characters Have Big Heads!

I could just say “see above” in this instance but then I wouldn’t be a very good snarky internet writer would I?

Let’s do another comparison, this time showing the characters’ total heights with their heads all sized roughly the same:

The differences are pretty drastic huh? Of course there are alot of “chibi” anime styles wherein the head is purposefully drawn huge and the body is drawn stylized and “super deformed” but I’m going by the most average builds I can. As you may have noticed all of these characters have over-sized heads anyway, because you’d be hard pressed to find a toon that doesn’t. Also why do most American toon women seem to have tattooed on lipstick?

#3. Why do Anime Characters Have Big Eyes!?

Why do American toons have four fingers? Really, what does that mean? And you know what else?

MOST CARTOON CHARACTERS HAVE OVER-SIZED EYES.

Except Doug and Charlie Brown. But screw them.

Seriously though humans respond to eyes almost more than anything else in a picture. Get the eyes right and alot of other flaws will be forgiven, at least by the laymen. Cartoons stylize everything but eyes and heads are particularly exaggerated because that’s what we notice first and that’s what we’re drawn to because that’s how we recognize something as representing a human being (or at least an anthropomorphized being. You get the point.)

#4. Disney is BETTER!

Yes you sure showed those anime fans by implying that Japanese television animation is even comparable to American multi-million dollar full-length animated features! Pat yourself on the back, dumbass. By the way, have you noticed Disney has been feverishly dubbing and distributing practically everything in Studio Ghibili’s library over the last few years? A much smaller Japanese animation studio responsible for traditionally animated full-length theatrical films that are far superior to anything Disney has produced in the last 10 years or so?

Not to mention that in 2003 Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away (a film Disney was responsible for giving a North American theartrical release) beat out the likes of not only Ice Age but Disney’s own Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch to the Oscar for “Best Animated Film.”

Suck on that!

#5 ALL ANIME LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME!

No.

In Conclusion…

Sure, some anime does suck for legitimate reasons, just like some American cartoons suck, some books suck, some movies suck, etc. But you don’t write off an entire media for stupid, stupid reasons. In the end the whole American animation vs. Japanese animation argument doesn’t matter… because it’s all produced in Korea these days anyway.

Related posts:

1. Elfen Lied
2. Anime Fanservice
3. Bleach Sucks

Why is summer slow? Because all of the games companies save their biggest releases for the year-end holidays that’s why. So, because I have nothing better to write about, here are the games I’m waiting on bated breath for, in general order of wantingness, that are going to heavily distract me throughout the fall and winter.

1. Assassin’s Creed 2

Due date: Nov. 17 | Platforms: 360/PS3

To illustrate just how excited I am about this game I will now
transcribe an actual conversation I had with my good friend Angel:

Me: Assassin’s Creed 2, DO WANT blah blah blah

Angel: Dude… you are so straight for Altair.

Me: That’s not Altair, It’z Ezio! And he can swim! Altair is dead to me!

Now I know alot of people didn’t like Assassin’s Creed 1. It was short, many people found it boring, and it got obnoxiously Da Vinci Code at the end. And sure, I was irked by the “omg teh assassins and templars are still warring to this day!!1″ ending and would rather have ignored the science fiction elements of the game, cause really, I don’t see why we need to be a dude experiencing ancestral memories in order to just have a health bar. Although now I’m assuming in either the third or a future game this guy is going to use the talents learned from his assassin ancestors to escape the facility and we get to have the gameplay in near future/modern times.

Anyway, sure, Assassin’s was short. You did only have 5 mission types over and over when researching your next target, but I still was into it because they were in a different context each time. I also have a hardon for ancient history and I loved the mechanics of being able to crawl all over every building (though oddly enough Altair was incapable of climbing things like trees) and although the story got kind of stupidly convoluted toward the end I loved that your targets had surreal asides expressing their motives after you knifed them.

However Assassin’s Creed 2 really looks like it’s leaps and bounds over its predecessor, more detailed environments, new and improved mechanics, new moves, better focus on style and storytelling. This time it’s the 1400’s, you’re in Italy, and your new assassin Ezio is fueled by revenge rather than by duty. You also get to hang out with Leonardo Da-fucking-Vinci. And no, he doesn’t tell you conspiracy bullshit or where to find Mary Magdalene’s bones: he makes your weapons upgrades and gives you a hang-glider straight from his famous invention sketches. HELL YEAH. That alone should be a selling point.

Although this game’s one big sin is that the Limited Edition with an Ezio action figure is only available in Europe! What the hell, people!? We Americans are supposed to get all the good stuff! It isn’t faaaair! Oh well, a North American special edition may yet be announced.

2. Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Due date: Sep. 8th | Platforms: Wii

Yes that's in-game graphics, not a drawing.

Anyone ever play Odin Sphere? No? And I never did a review of it either. Stupid Sai, stupid stupid! Although truthfully I got stuck in the game and haven’t played it since (damn bosses with regenerating health) I immensely enjoyed it. It was a 2D side-scrolling RPG brawler by a company called Vanillaware where all of the graphics and backgrounds were hand-drawn digital artwork seeped in Norse mythology and you played the game as five different characters experiencing the same story from their individual viewpoints.

So what’s Muramasa? Well a 2D side-scrolling RPG brawler where all of the graphics and backgrounds are hand-drawn digital artwork seeped in Japanese mythology and you play the game as at least 2 different characters experiencing the same story from their individual viewpoints. And more boobs. Big difference!

Anyway, the game looks gorgeous, the graphics are even better than they were in Odin Sphere and this is definitely the hardcore gamer’s game the Wii needs right now. Sure stuff like Mad World and The Conduit have tried that, but those were both made by Sega and failed hard trying to be “hardcore” and “mature” with gore and dick jokes in the former and mundane FPS in the latter. Muramasa is just going to be a straight up action game with a unique take on classic video game elements and a hell of alot of style.

3. Mass Effect 2

Due Date: Jan. or Feb. 2010 |  Platforms: 360/PC

My experience with Mass Effect is difficult to explain. I’m not sure what finally made me pick it up but I’m glad I did. I’m not generally into shooters, but it was third person so that helped. And I’m definitely not into science fiction Space Operas along the lines of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactic and what have you, which is exactly what Mass Effect is, and yet it managed to dominate much of my time for the span of two or three months. Not a day went by where I didn’t play Mass Effect for at least an hour, it was that engrossing, like a good book you just can’t put down, only it was a video game and I was shooting things and macking on blue women.

I’m also weak against games with character customization, robust side quests, exploration and multiple options. Luckily my urges to go through the game and see every possible bit of conversation and try every possible character combination has since faded, but I’m sure they’ll be rekindled with the sequel.

I’ve heard you’re going to be able to transfer your old character over, which is just fantastic, I hope it’s their looks and not just their stats (or a bait and switch where you’re playing the Son of Shepard or something, Liara did mention she could make babies with my fem!Shep.) The gameplay looks like it’s gone through some definite improvements with a few new features (including the mischievous “interruption” feature that lets you cut off someone in mid conversation to shoot them or throw them off a cliff or something) but what impresses me most overall is the game’s style.

I can’t really explain it, but from the looks of things there has been a drastic increase in the game’s design and aesthetic. That’s all I can really say about it!

4. Brutal Legend

Due Date: Oct. 13th (hopefully) | Platforms: 360/PS3

This game flew under my radar for a while but hey, it’s looking like it may be the first commercially successful game Tim Schafer (of Psychonauts and Grim Fandango fame) has ever had! That is if Activision doesn’t fuck it up for everyone!

Lemme explain, Brutal Legend has had a troubled publishing history. First it was with Vivendi Games, but then Activision acquired Vivendi when it merged with Blizzard (makers of WoW.)  During a long series of poor decisions Activision decided to drop Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend, among others, because they’re apparently retarded and can’t recognize potentially well selling games when they see them. EA picked up Brutal Legend, advertised the hell out of it and now it’s all over the map as one of the most high profile and highly anticipated games this year.  Seeing that the game is actually going to do well Activision decided it needed to get its thumb in that pie and sued saying Double Fine (Schafer’s company) didn’t have the right to bring the game they dropped to another company. Double Fine is counter-suing because Activision not only dropped Brutal Legend but was considering the unthinkable of turning it into another goddamn Guitar Hero game.

So what is Brutal Legend anyway? Well it’s an action game that takes place in a world revolving entirely around heavy metal music and imagery. It stars Jack Black as a hapless roadie who is transported there, and for those of you who would be worried about that: he doesn’t really sound like himself in the game. That is to say, he’s actually playing a character rather than just, you know, being Jack Black. Tim Curry and Ozzie Ozbourne among other big names are also lending their voices to it. Just watch this cutscene, it’s hilarious. I’m probably going to rent this game first but I do have high hopes for it.

5. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Due Date: Aug 24th | Platforms: DS

Goddamn I love me some Professor Layton. I don’t even really like the puzzles much, I overthink them, or I can’t do math, I often skip them or cheat and look up the answers, though when I do solve a puzzle on my own I feel pretty accomplished. But, really, I’m more into Layton for the story and the characters. Finding out the mystery of St. Mystere and seeing some of the most EPIC cutscenes EVER (wish it was better quality) is what has kept me plugging away at the first game.

Probably why I’m so happy there’s going to be a Professor Layton theatrical animated film in Japan next year. GLEEE~

Where it’s not likely, I’m kind of hoping the puzzles in Diabolical Box actually have more to do with the game’s plot. It was getting a little ridiculous that no one in St. Mystere would give you any info unless you solved a completely unrelated puzzle, or that Layton would be reminded of puzzles from seeing garbage on the ground or something. I’d rather prefer the game’s puzzles to actually fit into the what’s going on, but I realize it would be difficult to include over 100 puzzles that way.

But wait- … This game is coming out in this month!? Crap! I still haven’t finished the first one! Oh no, looks like my distraction is starting early!

A Parting Note/Mini-Rant:

You may have noticed I didn’t include Bishock 2 on this list even though I clearly loved Bioshock 1. Well, you know what, I’m not looking forward to Bioshock 2. I kind of agree with this GamesRadar article, it’s a bad idea.

This sequel feels like a fanservice cash-in. I mean it’s not being made by the original team or lead writer Ken Lavine for one, what it is being developed by is a clusterfuck of 4 or more teams spread out across different continents. For two, you play as a Big Daddy. Really? Was this necessary? Again, this just screams fanservice  and it’s not even entirely true: you have to be a previously dormant “prototype” Big Daddy in order to be sentient, and you’re smaller and faster, so you might as well be a normal dude with a drill for an arm. The team(s) claim it’s because in the first game you were a guy on the outside looking in, so this time you’re someone from Rapture.

SPOILER/NERD RAGE ALERT

BULLSHIT! Did these clowns even play the first game? The whole stupid, idiotic, nearly-game-ruining plot twist in the first Bioshock was that you were born in Rapture, 2 years ago, rapidly aged, brainwashed, given false memories and sent out into the world to live a pre-programmed life until you would be needed to come back to reach Andrew Ryan using your DNA because you’re his son and everything is controlled by his genetic signature and your makers managed to not only plan a plane crash 2 years in advance (in the 1960’s no less) directly over the entrance to Rapture in the middle of the Atlantic but were confident that you would fucking survive it.

Yeah. Sounds pretty retarded when it’s all laid out like that, huh? That’s because it is. It is really retarded. But my point here is I liked the idea of being some poor sap unrelated to the whole mess trying to survive in Rapture. The first game already takes that away from you, and I want it back!

When they first launched their viral “There’s Something in the Sea” website I thought you were going to get to play as the detective guy slowly going conspiracy theorist levels of insane trying to figure out where all these little girls all along the Atlantic coast all over the world were getting kidnapped to. And I do like the idea of the Big Sister and the kidnapped little girls, but in the end the only real purpose it serves is to arbitrarily repopulate Rapture with Little Sisters. Can’t we think of something new, people? It’s just the same rehashed environment and it’s not going to have anywhere near the same impact it originally did.

And multiplayer, bullshit again, online multiplayer doesn’t automatically make every game better. Maybe next I should do a list of games I’m dreading, but I can only really think of this and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The latter is definitely a rant for another day!

Related posts:

1. Assassin’s Creed 2
2. Assassin’s Creed
3. Girls and Games

Not that I care, but there is a side effect of all this in advertising that’s beginning to irk me. Although the average age of gamers is now late 20’s early 30’s, and around 40% of gamers are indeed female, advertisers seem to be stuck in the same old stereotypes as the rest of society of gamers being braying, maladjusted 19 year old males sitting in dark basements playing teh Haloz.

And nothing displays this more than how they’ve begun to advertise to girls and women.

My ambiguous facial expression has
everything to do with playing video games!

Gamestop seems to be the worst offender I’ve seen, with their “Sharpen the Mind and Shape the Body” DS advertising campaign. For one thing, just look at that ad. They’ve traded in their trademark black and red signage for something that looks like it belongs in the AT&T store, plastered with stock photos of women.. uh.. making vague faces expressing no particular mood or emotion? I guess? Because, you see, women are delicate creatures who will be overwhelmed by all the bright lights and moving pictures, and they don’t understand video games so you have to trick them into thinking they’re somewhere other than a game store. Of course! It also helps that absolutely none of these signs have any video games pictured on them at all.

But the cherry on the shitcake here is that they have a special offer if you buy DS games: a free subscription to COSMO! SQUEEE! That’s what EVERY girl wants, right!? Well alright there’s a few other magazines offered too, but most of those are things like Oprah magazine and Country Living. Gee, Gamestop! How very condescending! It’s also just great that the picture of Cosmopolitan on the ad offer located in a section of the store primarily perused by little girls has clearly visible sex tips on it.

Working with young children and
making pretty dresses is all you can aspire to, girls!

But if the advertising is offending, some of the games themselves are downright offensive. I’m sure we’ve all seen that mediocre “IMAGINE” series of DS games Ubisoft shells out new iterations of every week to make a quick buck (that are, ironically, pretty unimaginative.) The job prospects they’re asking little girls to imagine for themselves are slightly better than what women’s expectations for gainful employment were in the 1950’s. BABYSITTER! WEDDING DESIGNER! ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER! MOVIE STAR SQUEE! There’s about a dozen of these games and what, no Imagine: Doctor? I’ll bet if they did do anything in the medical field it’ll be “Imagine: Nurse”. Because women can’t be doctors, silly! That takes too much smarts! And until I see an Imagine: Mayor, Imagine: Congresswoman or Imagine: Attorney I’m not going to let this one go.

Related posts:

1. Video Games and Kids
2. Xbox Live Bans Teh Ghey
3. 5 Games Whose Very Existence Scares Me

The games industry has always attracted companies out to make a quick buck, and this leads to some horrifyingly ill-conceived games that are only ever purchased by idiots and well-meaning grandparents who inadvertently ruin a child’s birthday. Without further adieu here’s 5 in particular (in no particular order) that have haunted the dark recesses of my mind ever since I had the misfortune of coming across them:

The Crazy Frog Game

If you used to watch television and live an insomniatic lifestyle like me you may remember these surreal commercials that came on at 3:00 am for some ringtone company with this horrible, bad CG, purple mascot thing masquerading as a “crazy frog” whose sole purpose for existing seemed to be to insure you would never sleep again. Basically this clever company had stolen a sound clip from the internet (it was funny at the time) and turned it into a ringtone no one would ever want to use or pay for.

Because said company obviously had such a fail-proof business plan they then decided the best way to turn a profit was to have their hideous creation star in a terrible video game. My first thought upon pulling this game down from a shelf was to question why it needed to be.

Frogger: The Great Quest

Speaking of crazy frogs, Konami, what abomination have you wrought? Even those too young to remember the Atari or those mythical places adults called arcades know that Frogger was just a simple game about a frog trying to cross a busy street without being flattened.

Well apparently Konami decided to reboot the franchise in a more complicated time and decided the best way to do so would be to make him run upright in khaki shorts surrounded by fairies and robots to save a bubble-headed princess. It’s like they tried to recreate an old property while cramming Crash Bandicoot, Sonic and Mario together and it just predictably ended in massive failure.

Redneck Jamboree

Well boy howdy, Cletus! Time t’get that thar pig on the barbie and break out the sweet teah! YEEHAW! Being a scarf-wearing, wine-tasting (not really), pinko commie elitist from the Northeast I commonly stereotype people from the South and yet even I’m offended by this game. And it’s a very recent game to boot. And it’s mini games. On the Wii. Of course. SIGH.

I’m not really sure which demographic this game is trying to appeal to, those who make fun of rednecks or rednecks themselves. If it’s the latter it must be part of the South’s nefarious invasion of the North as of late. Damnit, no one cares about Nascar up here, stop trying to convince us it’s popular!

The Guy Game

Yup because if one demographic is grossly overlooked by game developers its guys! Video games are hardly ever aimed at guys! We better make one, guys!

From what I’ve heard the game basically plays like a Girls Gone Wild commercial, only with lower resolution. The cover is textbook when it comes to advertising to highly suggestible men: you got a goofy looking, ugly Jim Breuer wannabe surrounded by models who would never give him the time of day in reality. Incidentally the only person who made any money from The Guy Game was an under-aged girl who sued after willingly letting the development team film and display her bare jubblies. Hear that? Playing The Guy Game officially makes you a pedophile.

Heaven: The Game

I heard about this one through Kotaku and its existence still perplexes me. The company making the game gives precious little info, even after two unskippable flash intros and a blaring chorus, but their own website claims their mission is to make games to “stimulate Christian spiritual growth”. Mmm.

By the looks of things our hero is a blue-eyed, blond-haired, Aryan beauty with pouty glossed lips and an ample heaving bosom who looks more like a Valkyrie come down from the glorious halls of Valhalla to gather the souls of brave warriors for Odin than an angel or a church choir girl or whatever she’s supposed to be. With the help of white Jesus and presumably white God and equally superior Aryan angels she’ll teach the lost lambs on some random spaceship whatfor. Seriously just go look at the trailer and comic book, I’m not even making this up.

Related posts:

1. 5 MORE Games Whose Existence Scares Me
2. Girls and Games
3. My 5 Top Year-End Games (With Bonus Rant)

Warning: some readers may find images in this article disturbing.

I had heard alot of praise for Elfen Lied and I think it caused me to imagine all sorts of things about it without ever having actually seen it. Like imagining it was good, for example. I was on a forum one night and someone was complaining about a particular scene in the show with a link to Youtube. I was more taken aback by the juxtaposition of a cutesy, colorful, boringly mainstreamed, low-budget moe animation style with something that looked like it was supposed to be serious, dramatic and bloody than I was by the scene itself. To me it looked like it was pandering to guro fans, and the series didn’t serve to erase this opinion as I watched it out of sheer curiosity. I’ve seen about 10 of the 13 episodes and skipped around the last three for this article but I don’t think I intend to finish watching it. There will be spoilers because the plot is just too ridiculous for me not to rant about.

Yep. This is about where the artistry ends.

Let me first comment that the opening animation for Elfen Lied is deceptively artistic, of course it may only seem artistic because the entire thing is a reference to The Kiss and features an operatic song. The ending theme, it should be noted, is some shallow pop number.

The show is essentially about killer pink-haired catgirls (well okay, they have horns conveniently shaped like cat ears, but one of them even acts like a catgirl) with invisible stretchy hands that can explode peoples’ heads who are of some mutated race that is destined to destroy mankind and are usually killed at birth but some secret military place has kept a few alive, naked and tortured in the name of science. In the opening scene one such naked pink-haired girl escapes from the military compound, exploding guys’ heads as she goes, at one point twisting off the head of some unforgivably dumb, clumsy secretary girl who was introduced probably just to be killed like this and using her body as a shield for a million billion bullets. Where alot of men are killed throughout the series, it’s much more graphic, slow, and given alot more focus when women are killed. There also features alot of slapping, hitting and punching of women by men. Take from that what you will.

The show can't decide if Lucy should be a merciless killer or the Japanese ideal infantile woman.

So killer pink-haired catgirl falls into the ocean before they can kill her and ends up with amnesia and some kind of dysphasia which instead of being serious of course leaves her only able to spout cutesy nonsense words; she’s discovered in this state by some boring stock anime guy and his cousin.  They naturally don’t go to the police when they find a disoriented naked girl wandering around on the beach but keep her at their house, and name her “Nyu” because that’s all she can say. She doesn’t know how to do even basic things and just acts like an all around obnoxious honto kawaii desu ne catgirl with lots of “accidental” flashings, precarious posing and boob groping thrown in. At this point I couldn’t tell if I was still watching the show or had accidentally loaded up an episode of Chobits instead. It’s supposed to be some sort of split personality but because it’s just so damn archetypal you can’t really take it seriously as one. This is also the point where the show teeters on the border of harem anime-land. Next stock guy and his cousin take in a runaway loli who has been raped repeatedly by her new stepfather, which brings the count up to three girls living in the house but luckily only two want to get into boring stock guy’s pants: “Nyu” and his goddamn cousin. I dunno what Japan’s policy on kissing cousins is, but, blech.

Nothing will convince me this scene isn't fanservice for guro fetishists. I bet it's popular on 4chan.

Anyway so another more loli killer pink-haired killer catgirl is sent out to retrieve the first one, she has a daddy complex about this antisocial scientist guy who apparently keeps her chained up and covered in blood somewhere. Okay then. She confronts “Nyu”, who at this point has bumped her head and gone back into psychobitch mode and so she mutilates killer pink-haired girl #2 in what can only be described as a guro fan’s wet dream, ending with pink-haired girl #2’s limbs being torn off.  Seriously, it needs to be seen to be believed (NSFW.)

The cutesy style, the moe look of the characters, and the overall lack of depth in the scene prevented me from taking it seriously at all and it really did just come across as some sort of bizarro world version of fanservice. Especially since the same girl gets stripped and beaten again toward the end of the series. Of course there is the aforementioned regular fanserivce too, we get to see “Nyu”’s boobs plenty of times, but it’s so often it just becomes boring, and of course she’s most often sexualized when she’s in cutesy, innocent, dumb catgirl mode.

I've brutally murdered dozens of people throughout the series but you need to feel bad for me cause DEY KILLED MAI PUPPEH!

And then it turns out “Nyu” (or her real name is Lucy) is in love with boring stock guy from a long time ago when he was the only one who was nice to her after a bunch of bratty kids at an orphanage she was at killed a puppy she had been taking care of for like a couple of weeks and she exploded their heads in return (this is the source of her deep, deep trauma and why she’s such a misanthropic bitch as the show will blatantly spell out for you.) She hung out and played with boring stock guy while at the same time murdering families in the night and staying in their houses because she didn’t want to go back to the mean old orphanage. It seems some sort of trauma makes these killer pink-haired catgirls realize they were born to eradicate mankind for some reason, and so Lucy hates people, all people except boring stock guy, except when she’s in catgirl mode then she loves everybody. You know, I never liked the whole “amnesia turns a violent, sadistic badass into a cute, squiggy all-loving sap” device, perhaps because it’s a shallow thing you generally see overused in bad fanfiction.

Anyway things went bad when killer catgirl killed boring stock guy’s sister and father out of jealousy and he delved into denial and decided his sister died of disease instead and has forgotten most things from that time, which had initially pissed off his cousin because they didn’t see each other for like 8 years after that and she thought he’d remember their last day together as fondly as she did despite the horrible, horrible murder. Have I mentioned that the cousin is a stereotypical overly emotional woman hung up on really stupid things? Because she is. Thanks, Japan! Oh yeah and later a third pink-haired killer catgirl is introduced who has explosives planted in her body so that the secret military/scientists/whatever can keep her at bay. What. It could be a serious plot device if they didn’t state it so blandly and it wasn’t obviously a convenient way to explain how they can keep the ultimate killer catgirl under control. And an easy way to get rid of her since she’s unbeatable and all. Oh and she’s also the real daughter of the scientist guy mentioned earlier who killer pink-haired girl #2 has a daddy complex about and they explode together in a sentimental scene blah blah blah.

Ho ho! Those homicidal catgirls sure are WHACKY!

I’m honestly confused by all the praise I’ve seen for this series. For one the animation isn’t that good, the characters aren’t that well designed, they’re also cookie-cutter and unrealistic, when the story attempts to be deep it just comes across as lame or not even trying, its themes aren’t anything that haven’t been explored before with much more thought, artistry and depth. It’s also got pretty clumsy writing and hits you over the head with plot points, like for example episode 12 having a long, near full recap of episode 9 in it, just in case you’re too dumb to get killer pink haired girl #1’s motivation for killing boring stock guy’s sister. Not to mention boring stock guy seems to take the revelation that she brutally murdered his family in front of him in stride. It’s not that I have something against graphic violence, hell Akira is one of my favorite anime films and manga, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this show was purposefully trying to attract a particular sex-and-violence niche. And I never thought I could describe an animation as having “fakey blood”, but boy does Elfen Lied ever. Usually I can finish watching even a mediocre series just to see where it’s going but even though I went and confirmed how boring stock guy’s sister died (a “plot twist” I’ve seen coming from nearly the beginning) as well as a few other things, I really have no desire to finish watching Elfen Lied.

Related posts:

1. Death Note
2. Hell Girl
3. Haibane Renmei