Gunblade NY/Victoria
Game: Gunblade NY, Sega, 1995, Arcade
Beer: Victoria, 12 fl. oz., 4.0% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 3
Level Reached: End Credits. Twice.
Level of Intoxication: Three Sheets to the Wind
Game
There was a time, not too long ago, that Sega was the undisputed champion of arcade games. Back in this storied time, where arcades could be found literally everywhere, Sega made more high-quality games than any other company. Sega made so many classic games in fact that anyone who has ever had an occasion to plunk a quarter or two into an arcade machine has more than likely contributed directly to Sega's profit margin. Were I to somehow come up with a comprehensive list of Sega-branded arcade cabinets, perhaps from a website that rhymes with "sticky-bleedia", I have no doubt that everyone reading it would be able to pick out more than a few games that they had experienced themselves. If you don't believe me, all I have to do is mention Outrun. What I'm trying to say is Sega made a ghetto-dumper assload of awesome arcade games, one of which was named Gunblade NY.
Gameplay
Gunblade NY is one of Sega's many, many lightgun games. The arcade cabinet features two swivel-mounted machine guns complete with a force feedback mechanism that oscillates, making the players feel as though they are firing a real gun. In the game, the player (that would probably be you if you're awesome and love good games) is the wing gunner in a special helicopter built specifically for the task. Your hovering platform of incomprehensible doom flies so low, fast, and completely without regard for the laws of physics that you would swear your pilot is a cross between a 90's-era Gary Busey and Chuck Yeager with a Monday morning hangover. As your helicopter careens through the cityscape, you will unleash an unending fury from your gun, shooting at and explodifying annoyingly agile and resilient cyborgs.
The game is a classic rails shooter, meaning you are on a set path and your task is to simply lay the smackdown on anything that crosses through your field of view. The cool twist to this is that while you have a set path, depending on what you target, the cocaine-fueled pilot will focus obsessively on that enemy until it is defeated, whereupon the camera will spin nauseatingly around to find any of the remaining robots so you can end their robo-suffering in a similar manner. What is difficult to properly convey about this experience is the speed at which everything happens. This is one of the few games to successfully give me a feeling of vertigo as I play, and that is because the game will routinely find the camera panning across insane angles and rotating on wild axes in an attempt to home in on the next set of bad guys or traverse to a new portion of the level. The challenge then, seeing as how you never run out of ammunition and never have to reload, is keeping your sights steady on a group of enemies as the helicopter you're in seems to perform yet another airshow caliber loop or roll.
As the levels progress, the enemies get more agile, dodging your gunfire with infuriating ease. The speed and frequency at which they return fire on you is also increased, with later levels looking like a green rocket salad with a side of rockets and extra rocket dressing. This presents one of the game's shining moments though as you suddenly realize you are one hit away from death, you see enough ordinance coming at your face to make the Taliban giggle like schoolgirls, and in some miracle of coordination, luck, and determination you dispatch all the incoming missiles and proceed to exfoliate the hell out of the bastards who dared fire upon you.
One shortcoming of the game is in the end-level bosses, who--with a few notable exceptions--are pretty ho-hum. Most of them are almost totally stationary, and can be taken out in only a few seconds. The boss challenges seem to have an unnatural dip as compared to the rest of the game and feels like more of an arbitrary gateway to level progression. In certain boss fights, it even seems like the game's designers went out of their way to avoid making the boss fights cool. A chopper versus chopper battle over a bridge, which even sounds cool and had the potential to be sickeningly amazing, was neutered right out of the gate as the boss helicopter flies lazily in front of you, facing away from you for so long that if you fail to shoot it down before it actually turns around and starts shooting back you might want to have the arcade come and check to see if your gun is even connected.
Aside from the bosses and the relatively short game time, which for both missions as well as the time attack remix will clock in somewhere under 40 minutes, the game is full of fun, fast-paced throwaway thrills. Such experiences are essentially the highest form an arcade title can achieve, simply because the short playtime encourages a new batch of players always cycling into the machine, and the fun and addictive gameplay brings the same players back for another round. Thoughtfully, Sega knew that people who loved Gunblade NY couldn't get enough, and in 1998 released L.A. Machineguns as a direct sequel. L.A. Machineguns preserved the same great gameplay with updated graphics and sounds thanks to being hosted on Sega's premier Model 3 hardware.
Graphics/Sound
Gunblade NY was one of Sega's Model 2 games. Other notable games from the Model 2 era include Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter, Datona USA, House of the Dead, and Virtual-On. To say that the Model 2 hardware made Sega a fortune is an understatement. The Model 2 hardware was a dedicated 3D platform, offering up bright, detailed graphics and smooth animation. Gunblade NY may not have taxed the Model 2 like some of its later games, but the graphics are clean and bright, and the amount of action in any given scene along with the number of special effects and level of detail combined to make Gunblade's graphics an incredibly potent showcase of motion and color. If you are epileptic in any form, you may want to keep your wussy-ass away from my game. Of course, if you're epileptic and you play videogames, you're much like a diabetic in a candy-eating contest, equal parts stupid and brazen.
The sounds of Gunblade NY are at once typical and unique. If that sounds like an oxymoron, stick with me. For one, all the gun sounds, explody-type sounds, stuff getting hit sounds, and approximation of musical instrument sounds pretty much scream stock sound libraries. Of particular note in this regard is when you shoot down an enemy projectile, which makes a classic movie ricochet noise. This noise is so pronounced and twangy, that by about the 100th time hearing it you will either have a psychological break, or will have already defensively tuned it out. Other noises such as the constant punch of your machine gun firing into everything you can see are largely unobtrusive and will blend quickly into the background din. The music is so overblown and kitschy that you know it had to have come from a Japanese design team. The synthesized guitars screech and wail patriotically during cutscenes in such a cartoonish fashion that I'm tempted to assume the musical scores were composed on a bet. On the other hand, certain facets of the sound production are so unique and unapologetic they ascend to a new plateau of interest. Worthy of particular mention is the game's voice work. At certain points in the game, usually during cutscenes, a male voice will come on informing you of mission parameters and other such nonsense, since really, the mission is always "kill every robotic bitch you see". In my very humble opinion, this voice-over is the greatest thing ever, because the speaker is obviously Japanese. How do I know? Because when you die and hit the continue screen, the announcer suddenly yells "GUNBRADE! PREASE RESPOND!!" There's no way to explain why a desperate Japanese man with poor enunciation makes me even more frantic as I dig in my pocket for the next quarter, but that's just the way it is.
Story
In the super futuristic year 2005, New York City is suddenly besieged by nasty robotic terrorists all toting RPGs and missile launchers. As these electromechanical malefactors wreak havoc on The Big Apple and its citizens, you are tasked with using withering levels of firepower to bring the menace under control. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Any finer details of the story are buried under the apparent notion that it doesn't have to be explained if it's sufficiently awesome. Why are the terrorists killing people and destroying cars and buildings? Because awesome, that's why. What do the terrorists want? Awesome. Who is leading them? Awesome. Where did they come from? The country Awesome, which as I'm told is right next to the country of What, where they do not speak English.
Beer
Most people know about Coronas, and thanks the the Most Interesting Man in the World ads, everyone and their frickin' granny knows about Dos Equis. A select few know about Modelo, and I'm willing to bet about thirteen people outside of Mexico know about Victoria. Make that fourteen now that I've had a chance to drink it. From what I've been able to find out, Victoria is actually one of the oldest beers in Mexico. In fact, it's only just recently tried to move into the US markets, starting up in Chicago and slowly bleeding out from there. I'm only speaking for myself here, but I actually hope the beer gains a healthy foothold here in the states, as I'm tired of not only hearing about how terrible domestic American beer is, but I'm also tired of having to drink the same three or four well-known Mexican imported brews. Victoria is a nice change, even if it isn't the alpha and the omega of south-of-the-border barley pops. With a simple presentation and quite the lengthy lineage, Victoria sets itself up nicely as a beer to take notice of. Unfortunately, while it isn't terrible, it is by no means going to usurp any beers that I hold dear, and while it has a number of points that do in fact cause it to stand out among the rest, it has an equal number of shortcomings that serve to push it back into the rank and file.
Smell
Victoria has a clean, almost sterile smell, with just the barest hint of earthy tones. There's definitely a lot of malty smell in there, and a slight undercurrent of fruitiness, much like the generic version of Apple Jacks that comes in the 5 pound bags. Don't even play like you don't know what I'm talking about either. Everyone in the world has had a run-in with "Apple Kickers", "Apple Snaps", "Apple Ring-O's", and, if you lived in China, possibly "Apple-Flavored Processed Grain By-Product for the People"...Where was I? Oh yeah. Point being, whether you had poor parents or a thrifty aunt, you know exactly the knock-off cereal I'm talking about. Well, Victoria's odor has just the slightest twang of that special Malt-O-Meal essence, and you know what? I'm diggin' it man. It isn't out of place and actually rounds out the beer's bouquet quite nicely. It's distinctive and interesting in a sea of beers which seem to take the easy road.
Taste
This beer manages to pull off a clean, malty swing, with a hint of complexity and a slightly bitter aftertaste. There's definitely a feeling like I've been here before, and to be truthful, I'm seriously reminded of a more full-bodied and bitter Budweiser. I'm not saying this is all that and a bag of chips mind you, this beer is still just on this side of pedestrian, although it seems to toe the line between a beer that's strictly middle of the road and one that has enough character to be almost great. It isn't displacing any of my top five; or top ten for that matter, but it does manage to get my attention, if even for only one bottle at a time. Not unlike the weird girl at school getting all made-over and showing up at the prom looking super hot and grabbing the attention of all the guys, but then showing up all mousy and weird again the next day at school. Victoria reminds me of that weird girl's rainbow tights and knee-high moccasin boots.
Intoxication
This beer lends a very full-bodied intoxication, giving the limbs an interestingly numb feeling that leads to exaggerated movements when walking and poor coordination when typing. Seriously, I had to spell-check this paragraph like 16 times because all the words came out looking like "exxagetated", "interstinglly", and "corrdinatuin." Going to grab another beer was like learning how to walk again, only more in a funhouse ride sense and not in a tragic, spine-paralyzing accident sense.
Feel
Victoria is afflicted with the same problem most Stephen King novels suffer from, too much body. Even a small sip will seem to fill your mouth like that cool ass safety foam from the car in Demolition Man. Unfortunately, this stuff isn't going to save your life, and if you drink too much of it, will probably make you feel like you just ate a whole bag of the Demolition Man car foam. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to YouTube and check it out, it won't take long. Once you come back enlightened and a better person overall, we can discuss how logic and physics would dictate that safety foam finding its way into every one of your orifii possible and how insanely uncomfortable that would be. Anyway, yes, Victoria has a lot of bloat to it, as well as a lot of fizz. Remember those certain drawbacks I mentioned earlier? This is chief among them.
The Matchup
When you look at Gunblade NY and Victoria each in their native environments, they both seem to fit quite well. For me at least, Gunblade's native environment is reflecting off the back of my retinas. Your mileage may vary depending on how much of a nostalgic love affair you had with classic Sega arcade games and how tolerant you are of rail shooters. In the case of Victoria, the beer is quite well loved in its native land of Mexico, and with such a loyal and long-standing following, it's easy to see why it attempted to make the jump to the American market. Only time will tell if this particular fish can survive in unknown waters. Of course, as Budweiser and Coors have so readily proven, popularity is based less on taste and more on advertising and forced availability, so if Victoria manages to embrace that, it very well could do just fine.
Cheers/Game on.
Loaded/Twisted Tea
Game: Loaded, Interplay, 1996, PSXBeer: Twisted Tea, 24 fl. oz., 5% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 1
Level Reached: 2
Level of Intoxication: Woozy
Game
Back when the Playstation 1 first debuted, the games industry was undergoing a significant change. Its image as a children's toy was beginning to fade and while older gamers were still being compared to sweaty-palmed 15-year-olds, the target demographic was slowly sliding upwards. While bloody, violent games were by no means a new concept, it seemed as if the advent of the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn embraced these ideals even more. The games industry was apparently going through puberty, as games of the time and their advertisements were filled with course language, accentuated female body parts, and lots and lots of chunky red blobs. Enter Loaded, a property which attempted to posit the notion that all you need to make a game is a ton of hallways, some locked doors, and lots and lots of chunky red blobs. Many would say that the developers of Loaded and its sequel succeeded spectacularly in making something game-ish.
Gameplay
From simply hearing about the game and possibly viewing a few screenshots or YouTube clips, one might assume that the goal of Loaded is to simply shoot everything that isn't you, including prisoners, insane people, security guards, sentry guns, tables, chairs, walls, doors, and anything else that could conceivably be aimed at in the game. While this might be technically true, it isn't really the actual goal of the game, and this is where the intrinsic problem with Loaded lies. The real goal of Loaded is to get to the next level, and yes, I realize that sounds pretty elementary. The problem is, that's really the goal of the game. Seriously. Oh sure, they may be dressed up in the loading screen as "Find the warden's elevator", "get to the escape pods", or even the clever and misleading "get to the level exit", but in the end, that's all you are doing, everyone you shoot at is just getting in the way. Now, I realize that once over-simplified, every game's objective boils down to that. But finding varied and interesting ways of getting you to that objective is one of the secret ingredients that make some games good, some great, and some abysmal. While Loaded doesn't quite fit into that last category, it comes dangerously close. In the game, you choose your character from a roster of criminal caricatures that for one reason or another makes me feel like I'm getting a disturbing peek into the hidden insecurities of the game's design team. Between psychotic clowns, gigantic babies, bald men in purple dresses, or a female who can only be described as disappointing; there's a specific criminal deviation for everyone. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, and no matter who you pick, you'll be wishing you picked the fastest one halfway through the first level.
Why? I'm so glad you're wondering.
When you are entering a new area in a level, you will be positively inundated with enemies, turrets, explosions, gunfire, lights, sounds, and power-ups. Once you have frantically dispatched all the baddies, exploded all the crates, and collected everything there is to collect, you will move onto a new area. Once again, you will be set upon by what seems like every pissed-off guard and lowly prison inmate possible, and you will again have to kill everything that moves. This pattern will repeat over and over, giving you an incredibly steady and well timed sine wave of conflict, collect, and carry on, all the way up until you find the key card. The. Key. Card. Old-school gamers know exactly where I'm going with this, but for all of you who just got your first game system in the form of a 360 last Christmas from your parents, I'll explain. Back in the hey-day of videogames, certain platformers and First Person Shooters used a combination of multi-colored key cards and correspondingly locked doors in order to create more branched and intricate levels, as well as to elongate the gameplay and get more playtime out of a given map. Back then, it was regarded as one of those basic gameplay conventions, something that any game in the genre would be crazy not to have. Unfortunately, no matter how cleverly the level was designed, the key card system always involved backtracking. Backtracking has never, ever been fun. Ever. Ever. Unfortunately, anyone who has played the original Doom, Descent, or yes, even the original Metal Gear Solid has come to understand how terrible it is to have fought hours through a level just to get a silly card that you needed for a single door on the other side of the known universe, and now, instead of sneaking/killing/shooting your way through a level, you are walking, in silence, through stuff you've already seen and slowly realizing how much laundry you have to do before Monday. Ask someone who has beaten any one of these games what color the keycards are, and once they've stopped having PTSD-style flashbacks, they'll tell you. It doesn't matter which game they played, because the colors are always the same across every single game that uses them. Red, Yellow, Blue, and sometimes Green. Loaded uses this exact same design cue. Players have to fight all the way to one corner of the level to snag a colored key card so they can slog all the way back to a door they saw right after the loading screen so they can continue to another remote corner of the game for another card. If you're wondering why I mentioned the first MGS, don't forget, at the very end of the game, you have to use three key cards to "deactivate" Metal Gear. One yellow, one blue, and one red. Aaaaand you have to backtrack.
Of course, I know why they included the keycard mechanic in Loaded. Aside from the fact that it was still in vogue at the time, it was also included to add artificial complexity to the maze-like levels of the game and the nauseatingly repetitive nature of the shoot-em-up gameplay. The sloppy controls, the cheap hits snuck in by the cookie-cutter bad guys, and the hideously repetitive graphics only serve as gravy to this decaying sack of potato slurry.
Okay, sure, maybe I'm being too hard on Loaded, seeing as it's almost 16 years old. It has its moments, and to be sure the game is good for blowing off some steam and just cutting loose with some mindless kill-em-allitude. Unfortunately for the game, I'm definitely not looking back with rose tinted glasses and in playing this, I can see that now, the game's shortcomings outweigh its highlights, with the ultra-violence and super fast paced gameplay engineered to mask the weak underlying structure of the game. Before you jackals start emailing me, I actually still own an original copy of this game, and it is in pristine condition. So yes, there was a point in my life that I enjoyed this game enough to pay upwards of $50 for it. I know it was heralded as groundbreaking when it was originally released, but sadly, this property has not aged well.
Graphics/Sound
Given that this is a Playstation 1 title, the graphics aren't half bad. Of course, textures in this game are reused so often, one may start to think the level artists went on strike halfway through the development cycle and the programmers paid some kid to just sit there and hit Ctrl+V until the game looked finished. All I'm saying is that the blue vented steel floors texture apparently won some sort of contest because they are everywhere. Of course, aside from potentially falling into the pit of "I'm lost because every part of this level looks exactly like every other part of this level", the repetitive graphic assets are bad because really, the designers had free reign of a storage medium capable of 650MB of storage, and most of that was taken up by songs from a band whose name alluded to someone's father engaging in self-cannibalism. Or something. I don't know. The 90's were a confusing time. Forgetting for a moment the repetitive textures and sprites, the lighting in the game was superb, and set a benchmark for smooth, colorful, realtime light sourcing. There, I said something nice about this damned game, get off my back you hateroids.
The sounds weren't bad at all, seeing as this game came from the glory days of the CD era. Music tracks were streamed directly off the CD, and sound effects were nicely digitized. In addition to the two or three music tracks that were actually pulse-pounding, pump-up murder music, the majority of the game had level scores that were quiet and unfortunately repetitive techno rave material. The sound effects are an unusual mix, with menu effects and certain other cues being authentic sounding gun loading and shooting sounds, whereas pretty much all of the characters' guns have a variation on the "pew-pew-pew" sound libraries. Classic fight noises and cartoonish grunts also abound as you skitter through a level, and guards in the game will oftentimes yell a stern "FREEZE!" None of these sounds ever really seems to get auditory priority over any others, and when absorbed in a normal play session, will all wash over you in the exact same fashion, as a dull roar that you'll instinctively tune out. If you've ever wanted to know what sensory overload feels like, sit as close to the screen as you can in a dark room, turn the volume all the way up, and play this for as long as you can stand it. Loaded excels at overwhelming your pathetic human brain.
Story
Story...Story...Okay, well here goes.
You are one of six psychotic maniacs, armed to the teeth. You have been imprisoned on a maximum security planet because you have been framed for the crimes of a failed military-cook-turned-space-pirate named, no joke, Fat Ugly Boy. This paragon of charm has actually worked his way up to the position of warden in the very prison system that your character is jailed in, and it is up to you to exact your revenge on F. U. B. for saddling you with his crimes before he uses super-advanced technology to hold the universe for ransom. Nevermind that you are already a psychotic, mentally deranged mercenary who already has a storied past of mass-murder and sociopathic behavior. As you chase F. U. B. across the galaxy, killing what can only be quantified as everyone who ever existed, you will begin to realize that no person ever played Loaded for the story, and the designers themselves probably came up with it as an afterthought one night during an intense session of injecting liquid LSD into their eyeballs.
Beer
Twisted Tea, yeah I'm again stretching the definition of beer with this outing, and you know I can feel you judging me right now. Fortunately, I know that you are more curious than judgmental, and that once I begin to describe this oral misadventure, you will decide, like I did, that choosing this product for this review was a terrific idea. Which allows me to segue nicely into something that wasn't a terrific idea: drinking this...thing. This...abomination. The person who sold this to me remarked casually that her friend loved it because she was unable to taste the difference between it and real sweet tea, and that this got her inexplicably bombed after just two cans. Had I been a certain ascot-wearing preppy crime solver, I would have correctly identified the preceding two sentiments as "a clue" whereupon my nerdy but still hot female sidekick would have uttered something along the lines of "Jinkies!" Unfortunately, I had neither the ascot nor the insight and simply paid my money and took the Twisted Tea home. Before I continue, I want to make one thing clear; whatever choice phrases I coin to describe Twisted Tea, however badly I rag on it, it will never even come close to touching the rings of Hell that is Earthquake, Joose, Four Loko, and others. Nothing can. Sure in its own little microcosm, the relatively weak Twisted Tea is bad, but comparing it directly to those other alcohols is like comparing Lindsay Lohan to Andrei Chikatilo, the scale for comparison is simply not able to open that wide. Anyway...Smell
I have the feeling that everyone on the face of the planet knows the smell of tea, whether it be hot Earl Gray, or chamomile, or even plain old black tea left to sit for a day or two, the smell of tea is pretty characteristic. Following that assumption is that with an odor so widely known, it's a fairly trivial matter to tell whether or not it has gone bad. In the case of tea: does it still smell tea-like? Well, if you were like me when you opened the can of Twisted Tea, you smelled it and immediately came to the conclusion that your can had somehow been tainted. If you were quite unlike me, you would have immediately poured the offending beverage down the drain and spent some quality time sorting your sock drawer. My sock drawer was left unattended however, as I carefully considered the smell. The tea is in there, but it has been...changed...corrupted by the introduction of alcohol. The alcohol presents in an unusual manner, tempered perhaps by the tea, it isn't as sharp, and is somewhat changed in character. Instead of the normal notes of ethanol and casual sex, there is an almost wooden quality there, coming off with a similar odor to most British insurance claims adjusters.
Taste
Get some cat urine, add some Splenda, toss in a dash of Armor-all if you really want to do this right. Drink. Bam, you have Twisted Tea. If you don't have cat piss handy, go to your local bus station and lick the floor, it's basically the same thing. If I have irreparably grossed you out, please send me an email telling me. I am so lonely.
Okay, to be absolutely truthful, the tea taste, the sweet taste, and the alcohol taste just do not go together, it's like sour cream and watermelon, or goat cheese and chocolate, or snails and salt. Basically what I'm trying to get across here is the taste of Twisted Tea has a habit of making one's tongue cringe. I can say however that the taste seems to flatten out as more TT is consumed, until the taste really becomes inconsequential, and is really more of a minor annoyance to the newly risen goal of making it through the whole can. Now, in my limited experience, and as a mental throwback to the comments made to me by the saleswoman in regards to her friend, I am under the impression that Twisted Tea creates a specific female phenomenon whereby a woman will eagerly drink multiple cans of this substance in order to inoculate her own brain against the horrors of being hit on by that guy across the room who keeps eating his boogers. In extrapolating my own experience with the stuff, I can say that with enough Twisted Tea, a woman can successfully weather just about any adverse social situation, including waking up with Doctor Snotmuncher the next morning.
Intoxication
With only 5% abv, Twisted Tea is not going to obliterate you like certain other bargain basement offerings, but if you are the aforementioned lightweight chick who is prone to intentionally drinking away her lack of self-worth, Twisted Tea will get you there in fairly short order. The intoxication this drink offers is more mental. Where other alcohols make you look like John Travolta with a Novocaine shot to the lower spine, Twisted Tea leaves your gross motor functions mostly uninhibited, choosing instead to attack your upper mental faculties, leading to the well known phenomenon of telling everyone in earshot that you "totally love them" and asking any possible authority figures "if everything's cool...because you totally love them too."
Feel
Well, technically, Twisted Tea is not carbonated, there are no bubbles to foam up in your mouth. The weird thing about this is that when you do drink this concoction, there is a certain zing that you can most definitely feel on your tongue. I know it isn't carbonation, it doesn't even feel like carbonation, but there is a kick there that defies rational explanation. It's as if the tea and the alcohol have pulled some weird Captain Planet thing and through their powers combined have become even more tooth-curdling. Of course, aside from that, the rest of the drink is as flaccid as one would normally expect from a sweet tea-derived product. It's sweet, it's tea, and if it wasn't for the strange and clumsy interjection from the alcohol, it would be refreshing and forgettable. Also, just in case you missed it, I used the adjective flaccid to describe a product that you put in your mouth.
The Matchup
Both of these products are actually well paired here because in a certain capacity, they both do the same job. They reject the typical reality and substitute their own. Loaded is a game that you fire up and play to simply forget the world around you and indulge in your basest fantasies. Even so, at its core, it manages to take something that normally dwells on the fringe of acceptability and make it boring. On the other hand, Twisted Tea is a can you open when you want to forget the world for the next 6-8 hours and go from some boring nobody to that person everyone always records and posts to the internet. Each property has its own core audience that it caters to and who consequently adore it, and that reason alone may be enough to recommend giving these properties a go. Some people may hate it, some may feel as though they found their secret vice, and others may just be like me, who shrug their shoulders and sigh out a half-hearted "meh..." and that's okay too.
Cheers/Game on.
Minecraft/Ziegenbock
Game: Minecraft, Mojang, 2010, PC
Beer: Ziegenbock, 11.2 fl. oz., 4.0% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 3
Level Reached: 127 (Minecraft players know what I'm talking about)
Level of Intoxication: Buzzed
Game
Unless you were an extremely disadvantaged youth, you had the distinct pleasure of getting to play with Legos as a kid. Of course, if your parents hated you, they either bought you the far inferior MegaBloks, or they just forced you to play with your little sister's Duplos. If they loved you, you might have come downstairs one Christmas to find a brand new Pirate's Cove Lego set under the tree. Point being that anyone aside from Amish kids has at one point or another in their lives, played happily with Legos and discovered their subtle charm. Any adults reading this have invariably stepped on a Lego block barefoot and discovered to their sickly dismay that Legos are made out of brightly colored razor sharp edges and corners. The people over at codehouse Mojang either had metric tons of Lego blocks as children, or they were the pee-smelling Duplo kid down the block that cries while he's eating his school lunch. Either way, they've taken Legos, thrust them into the digital realm, and somehow made them even more awesomer.
Gameplay
Ironically, describing minecraft as a "Lego Simulator" is wrong, because the only slight similarity between Minecraft and ye olde plastic blocks is that you can take blocks and build them into things that depending on your skill level, may be nothing more than larger blocks. The reason the above comparison is bad is because Minecraft is actually better. In all my days creating awesome things with Lego blocks, I never recall being able to fashion floating islands with waterfalls, lava flows, working monster traps, or the ability to make a Lego furnace which would make certain blocks transmogrify into other certain blocks. Any Lego furnace I encountered as a wee young'n would invariably transmogrify my blocks into rainbow soup and get me grounded for a week. So yeah, Minecraft = better.
In Minecraft, you are basically given a random world which contains all the ingredients needed to create anything you want. I don't mean that in a silly or facetious way. I literally mean "anything you want." If you spend about 5 seconds casting around on the internet plugging such terms as "greatest Minecraft creations", "awesome Minecraft stuff", or "omg Minecraft wtf crafty craft" you will find your search engine bursting with results that are both amazing in scope and design and slightly saddening when you realize the time it took to make a 1:1 model of the USS Enterprise or a working 16-bit computer. No, I'm not making those examples up, yes, they are real. Yes, lest you ask, the next step is three-dimensional animated porn.
Before you accuse Minecraft of being nothing more than a blocky sandbox however, allow me to touch on a number of systems that the game features and what make it what it is. First of all, the game has several game modes and variants. As of this writing, Minecraft is still a beta product and things are being changed all the time. If you wanna just get your create on, the free version of Minecraft (called Classic) can be played in a web browser over at the Minecraft site, and there is no actual crafting, you just place any block you want anywhere you want. Many of the behemoth Minecraft creations are made in that mode. For anyone who wants to pony up a little dough however, the downloadable client is available which offers the ability to craft things, as well as a larger variety of blocks, animals, achievements, and monsters. Tools are on offer such as buckets, swords, shovels, and the absolutely necessary pick-axe. Different grades of tool can be made, from the practically throwaway wooden type, all the way up to the tools made of diamond, which are as hard as they sound, and are the only tools capable of harvesting certain materials. Day and night cycles factor into the game, and at night or in dark corners of the world, monsters will spawn and scare the bejeezus out of you because they make creepy noises, hurt you, and generally appear out of nowhere. Of course, fighting the monsters will yield certain materials which can't be found anywhere else, giving you the ability to craft even more complex items, and even allowing you to tame certain animals in the game world. Still, the first time you're building something at night and run across a Creeper, you'll be super tempted to change the game's difficulty down to peaceful so you can just build your giant glass dome in peace.
Before you ask, yes, everything in the game has that same derp-face. Including you.
As mentioned before, the current version of the game is in beta and so as time goes on, more things will be added, but I'm reviewing the game as it stands, and currently, one of the big shortcomings that kind of hold this game back is the fact that despite baddies to kill, things to craft, and even a robust multiplayer where people can work together and build what may amount to a huge insane and labyrinthine town, there is still no overarching goal to be found. There is no actual character progression, no level structure, and no true "endgame". Thus what you encounter when you first fire this thing up is what you'll have all the way up until Mojang updates something. For people who are used to moving through outside goals, or require certain aspects of linearity or progression are going to be somewhat disappointed with Minecraft. Unfortunately for those people, in its current iteration, Minecraft just isn't that sort of game, and in my humble opinion, shouldn't be. I don't profess to be any real voice of authority on the games industry or even of any specific cross-section of gamers, but I feel like Minecraft is great because it isn't the same typical grind from beginning to end. There isn't some level designer telling you how to experience this world. You have literally been given a blank slate with all the tools you need to shape the world offered to you as you see fit. For anyone who has ever played a Sim-City title just so they could make the city they always wanted to live in, such a game is an incredibly powerful tool for self-expression, and if you leave the monsters on while you dig and build in Minecraft, that expression will frequently be "AAAARRRGHH! GODDAMN CREEPERS! STOP TRYING TO BLOW ME UP!"
All complaints about the lack of a true endgame aside though, Minecraft as a beta is as robust and feature-rich as any full version game released by any other company. And again, given the open invitation to make the world (or multiple worlds) offered belong only to you and/or your E-friends, it's no surprise to see the community that has grown out of this game. So get online, look up how to build a portal and transport to the Nether, where you will immediately be consumed by lava and lose everything you're carrying.
Graphics/Sound
Ahh yes, the graphics. Depending on who you talk to, the graphics are either a wildly clever homage to 8 and 16-bit gaming, or quite possibly the ugliest and most jarring punch to the eyeballs ever. The debate isn't quite on par with say, abortion or stem cell research, but it has a fair share of mouth-frothers on both sides of the tape. As far as I'm concerned, the graphics do exactly what they need to do, which is to facilitate the gameplay. The chunky appearance actually ties in with the block-building gameplay, and if the 8-bit-inspired textures aren't tickling your ballyhoo, Minecraft allows you to apply 3rd party texture packs to make the pig's faces as creepy as possible. At any rate, the graphics are actually some of the most competent I've seen, the design is tightly cohesive, and help to convey in-game cues and interface language in an organic and understandable way. Certain graphical cues are subtle, and require a sharp eye and more in-depth understanding of the game world to interpret, which in my opinion only serve to flesh out a Minecraft biome as being even more alive. Small differences in plants, animals, and environment can give insight into a given region or particular point of interest. In Minecraft, the seemingly simplistic graphics are more than just window dressing--as is the case in many million-dollar-budget titles--but are actually a useful catalog of information for those able to read it.
The sound in Minecraft is most definitely a mixed bag, and although I don't agree with certain aspects of it, I understand what the design is trying to accomplish. For approximately 85% of the time, the significant sound effects in Minecraft consist of your footfalls as you walk somewhere and of the muted thump-thump-thump noise as you break blocks. Although in these cases the sound guy seems to be on vacation, you are simply being conditioned for what lies ahead. See, at it's heart, especially in single player "Survival" mode, you are alone on an infinite world, left with only what you build, the animals nearby, and any monsters you will invariably encounter. Sparse sound design only serves to accentuate that solitude. It also sets a precedent whereby anything that occurs outside the norm will be that much more striking and engaging. These striking, engaging moments can either be a enigmatic, quiet and beautiful score by the game's musician C418, or it can be a jarring, frightening shock when a monster comes up behind you and hungrily samples your sweet, vulnerable brain as you mine deep underground. Trust me when I say hearing a zombie groan in a dark hallway deep in the belly of the earth will make your butthole pucker tighter than a 90-year-old nun in a lemonade rainstorm. Lest you think you're safe from these nasty shocks by setting the game in peaceful mode, ambient noises will still drift along, many times making your heart skip a beat or two. One night I was happily mining around level 7 when out of nowhere huge rumbling noises began lighting up my sense of self-preservation. I knew I wouldn't run into any monsters--the game was set to peaceful, the cavern I was mining out was extremely well lit--but the noise was so unsettling, and I was so deep underground, that I actually panicked and ran back up my mineshaft back into the daylight.
Well played Mojang, well played.
Story
Yet another game with no story. I really need to review a couple good RPGs or something.
In this space I could do what I usually do, and make up some crazy story on the spot about how you've just woken up in a strange land where the only other humanoid inhabitants happen to be the undead. Logically assuming you are the only survivor of a zombie apocalypse...in the wilderness...except on multiplayer...you set about fortifying your position and crafting tools, weapons, and traps to help you survive the undead onslaught. Along the way, you'll mine up precious stones and metals, and build unthinkable monuments both as a show of your indomitable human spirit, and to prove that despite a zombie incursion, you can still horde massive amounts of bling. I could make up a story like that, and it would be an awesome interpretation of an open-ended scenario, and many people who read it might end up imagining my awesome scenario as they play, and one of those people could conceivably be Markus Persson, and he would be so impressed with it that he might include it in a future update to the game and I could be given credit for it in the game which might be the most awesome thing ever to happen to anyone in the history of the world. That could happen, but I'm sure a bunch of Minecraft purists would complain, mention that they were so old-school they had been playing it since before it was called "Cave Game", and call me out as a noob because I only got in after it went beta, and I don't need that kind of drama.
As an aside, I would posit the argument that given the type of game Minecraft is, it really doesn't need a classic "beginning-middle-end" story in order to justify its existence and is doing just fine as a property guided by the expectations of the player. As of this writing, over 3.2 million copies of the game sold seem to bear that sentiment out. If that seems like a small number, remember, 3.2 million people (including yours truly) bought and paid for a game that is essentially unfinished.
Beer
To the uninitiated, Ziegenbock might look like a craft brew or possibly some slick local offering from a Texas-based microbrewery. Unfortunately, if you are the type who is prone to reading the fine print, or you have a proclivity to Google everything you've ever touched, you will come to discover that Ziegenbock is actually brewed by Anheuser-Busch specifically for the Texas market, and specifically to compete with a real Texas-based brewing company known as the K. Spoetzl Brewery, located in Shiner, TX. If the name Shiner rings a bell, it should, since this company is most well known for their Shiner Bock, an award-winning beer that many beer lovers have a deep affection for. Unfortunately, we aren't here to review Shiner...yet. We are taking its deceitful corporate rival to task. Just for the record, Ziegenbock already lost this review simply due to the fact that it's a wolf in sheep's clothing, but in the interest of thoroughness, we'll continue.
Smell
Malt. Hops. Grain. Lies. Yup, this beer has it all, a strong, characteristic odor with layered notes and a not entirely unpleasant undercurrent of fermentation. In fact, left to stand on its own merits, this beer has a pretty attractive smell, one that is probably magnified in intensity and complexity when consumed with good food. I'm sure BBQ would pair with this offering from an underhanded, soulless corporation quite famously. Of course, one can only imagine that this beer was likely formulated in a cold, sterile laboratory for just such a purpose. It was probably formulated by robots, or scientists who were forced at gunpoint to talk like robots. They probably made a robot taste-test this, and not an awesome smarmy robot like Bender from Futurama, but a cold calculating robot, like the T-1000.
Taste
Since I have proven above that this beer was made specifically to enslave mankind, I'll touch briefly on the taste, ignoring for a moment or two that I'm actually drinking corporate contempt in a bottle. The taste is clean, with a muted bitterness that fades quickly and blooms into crisp maltiness. If I really pay attention, I can detect a faint twist of greed and grassy notes dancing lightly over my palate. No one sensation lingers for too long or mingles unexpectedly with anything else. This is very middle of the road beer. Not too daring, not too safe, but overwhelmed with treachery.
Intoxication
Being that this beer has a pretty low alcohol content, it's pretty hard to get wasted on this. At 4% abv, this beer is more suited to church picnics than a night watching the Superbowl. What intoxication there is comes on predictably and with an easy countenance. Of course, while I have no prior experience with this, I imagine it would be pretty difficult to get blasted off of nothing more than pure, distilled avarice. If you're thinking about bar-hopping with friends, and you don't mind filling your body and mind with the essence of capitalist foul-play, this particular brew may be right up your alley.
Feel
The carbonation is right in the sweet spot here, not being too fizzy, while at the same time, deftly avoiding being too flat. The taste and sensation is refreshing and it goes down easy and leaves the drinker wanting more. The only drawback I could come up with was the fact that as I held a mouthful of beer, the bubbles in my mouth seemed to be whispering something directly to my inner ear, and when I concentrated and listened, I suddenly heard, very clearly, the words "sssscrrreewwww ssssmmaaalllll-tooooowwwnn Aaaammeeeeerriiiicaaaaa...."
Okay, maybe not, and I admit that I've really been ragging on Anheuser-Busch this entire review, but I'll just spell it out. Anheuser-Busch, the number one largest beer maker in America has created and marketed a beer in direct competition with a much smaller craft brewery. Now, there's nothing wrong with a little competition, but the way this Ziegenbock is displayed, and the fact that it is only marketed in Texas, makes a simple "corporate specialty brew" seem like it's doing everything it can to elbow a widely loved craft brewery out of their own market, the one they helped create. I know, Spoetzl Breweries aren't exactly a 2-man operation either, but their beers are genuine, loved, and their entire line has something worthwhile, and I seriously doubt they're coming up with a beer called Budweizen just to compete with another company on their own turf. So knock that shit off Anheuser-Busch.
The Matchup
Minecraft proves that anyone, with a good enough idea and effort, can create something amazing that millions of people will love. It also shows that it takes a special someone to become worth millions almost overnight and still remain humble, focused, and personable. Minecraft is the type of game that comes along and redefines a generation of gaming, and despite certain shortcomings (which is par for the course when any property is an innovator) is loved and venerated by millions of people from all walks of life. On the other hand, Ziegenbock is a great example of what NOT to do when you are the biggest dog in town. At least not if you want to maintain a good reputation. I'm of the opinion that the only reason this brand has not yet gone down in flames is because too few who buy it actually realize why it was made in the first place, or who made it. Still, at the end of the day, despite my own misgivings, I must concede that the beer itself isn't bad. It will just never see the numbers or the loyalty that a genuine product such as Minecraft (or Shiner) rightfully deserves.
Cheers/Game on.
Combatribes/Four Loko
Game: Combatribes, Technos, 1990, Arcade
Beer: Four Loko, 23.5 fl. oz., 12% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 1
Level Reached: The end credits...
Level of Intoxication: Three Sheets to the Wind
Game
For those of you who are idly wondering what kind of game Combatribes is, allow me to offer a simple video game-based comparison: Combatribes is like Double Dragon's younger brother who listens to death metal. While Double Dragon sits around listening to Journey and air-guitars in his socks in front of the bathroom mirror, Combatribes goes and hangs out with his friends after curfew and smokes cigarettes...while air-guitaring in front of chicks. Where Double Dragon lays claim to helping to shape the brawler genre, but has a few minor stumbling blocks due to being an innovator; Combatribes is intended more as a refinement and while bringing comparatively nothing new to the table, manages to be smoother and more involved.
Gameplay
As mentioned above, Combatribes takes the Double Dragon formula and attempts to improve in the areas Double Dragon fell short. For anyone who never played Double Dragon, and to stealthily move away from wanton Double Dragon comparisons, the game featured two fighters who punched, kicked and elbowed their way through cadres of unusual (and at times cheap) enemies in an effort to best the final boss. Pretty standard fare by today's expectations, but groundbreaking at the time. Combatribes takes a similar approach, but the punches, kicks, and elbows are supplemented with even more punishing moves, all of which are the kind that you secretly wish you could perform on that guy in the next cubicle who always laughs like a horse while watching YouTube videos on company time. Your offensive arsenal includes the standard punch and kick combos, but also includes hair-grabs, knees, throws (into other baddies), bashing the skull of an unfortunate enemy into the concrete, kicking guys while they're down, throwing motorcycles and other debris at people you dislike, and in an unprecedented display of multitasking, bashing the skulls of two enemies together. In an effort to ensure you use all of those fancy moves, the game helpfully throws as many bad guys at you as it possibly can at one time, routinely resulting in a screen that has more wildly flailing arms and legs than an X-Games highlight reel. All of these bad guys are dead set on chipping away at your health, and in classic Beat-em-up fashion, will do so despite your best efforts because at the end of the day, the game maker wants all your quarters. All I'll say on that regard is the punk-rocker with the hammer, and the Indian dude with tomahawks, and the biker with a caber and a beer gut...and the bionic machine-gun arm guy...and the fire spitting circus dude...and just about everyone else that isn't controlled by you.
For those who persevere however (or have an unlimited supply of quarters), the game is host to some outstanding gameplay moments sprawled through some truly original and memorable levels and characters. Throwing one bad guy into a crowd of others and watching them all dogpile is cool, but the real greatness comes when you walk over to all of them and start bashing heads, kicking bodies, and causing general havoc. The ability to approach any situation in a variety of ways helps to immerse the player and opens up possibilities for events that can be awesome and downright hilarious. The elation I feel when I'm smashing a fat clown's head into the pavement is difficult to quantify, but rest assured, it is bountiful.
Most levels are separated into two areas, and in each you'll fight a number of carbon-copy thugs until the boss shows up with an entourage of hate in tow. Dealing with any number of opponents at once is tough enough, but add to that a boss character who's tactics are cheaper than a two dollar prom dress and you have an instant go-to reference for why they really don't make very many Beat-em-ups any more. The boss fights are long, arduous grinds full of aggression and piggish maneuvering in an attempt to get some damage in without being turned to mush by a litany of unanswerable hits. Any player who is either stubborn or rich enough to arrive at the last level will most likely throw their hands up in disgust when they realize that Combatribes also falls into one of the other less-loved conceits of the old brawler genre, that of a level filled in entirety with recycled bosses. If you want to beat Combatribes and do not have a method of garnering free play, you either need to have a Neo-level understanding of the Matrix, or be Richie Rich because unlike Double Dragon, there is no "Magic Elbow". Remember, as much fun as Combatribes can be at times, it still hates you. Forewarned is forearmed.
Graphics/Sound
I really hate making the Double Dragon comparisons, but Combatribes is most definitely a spiritual sequel to the venerable pioneer, and as such will inevitably draw a number of parallels. The graphics will most definitely recall the house that Billy and Jimmy Lee built, albeit with a marked upgrade in detail and animation, not to mention eliminating the much chagrined slowdown that plagued the original. Levels are, as mentioned above, highly varied and rife with color and verve. From the detailed storefronts in the first level to the manic lights and movement in the club level, all the way to the posh interiors of the highrise level, each stage is set and detailed in a way that draws the player in. The characters themselves are also quite detailed, featuring generous amounts of animation, including custom frames for different actions and circumstances. The way the enemy's arms hang limply when you grab two of them and force them to kiss each other at 200 Mph adds that perfect touch and shows that in the right hands, a great deal can be conveyed through the power of the pixel.
The sound is also riddled with reruns from the older Taito/Technos standby, knife sounds are nearly pitch perfect carryovers from Double Dragon, as are certain sounds of faces being pounded. Unfortunately, the funny, weird croaky sound of a baddie dying was not carried over from DD to Combatribes, which would have made the game about 1000% more entertaining. The music in the game was adequate, nothing really stood out or stuck in my mind, and it wasn't like I was headbanging or throwing up horns while I was playing. But I didn't hate anything that came out of the speakers so I guess--if nothing else--the composers of Combatribes have a distinct advantage over the guys that made the music for Lizzie McGuire: Homecoming Havoc. There's a complement in there somewhere.
Story
In Combatribes, you step into the shoes of one of three muscle-bound brawlers whose names all start with the letter "B" and who all wear brightly colored, head-to-toe coordinated jumpsuits. Sorta like Charlie's Angels but with less makeup and more ass-kicking. As with many arcade games of its era, a story per se wasn't exactly high on the list of requirements during the developmental process and as such they typically let the cousin of one of the developers write a quick synopsis to get the game going. The big burly brawling guys--who are most certainly not sissy, wimpy, chicks controlled by a speakerphone, but who still manage to look fabulous in yellow, blue, and red, respectively--are set upon a mission to battle a shadowy syndicate in control of all the local gangs. In their travels they happen to meet an unlikely yet colorful cast of characters who, because of the magical limitations of arcade ROM sizes divulge no information whatsoever. After whipping the asses of enough people to populate Boise, Idaho, our heroes arrive at the real root of the corruption, which I will reveal here because a) Combatribes is a 22 year old game and the statute of limitations for spoilers has long expired, b) because as previously mentioned the story is an afterthought and spoiling it is only doing you a favor, and c) the end-end boss is a cyborg chick in a miniskirt named Martha Splatterhead. The potential for cheap laughs over such a name far outweighs any potential benefit gained by holding back spoilers.
Splatterhead. Be both know what you're thinking.
Beer
I've been meaning to get Four Loko on this site for a while now, not just because it has what sounds like a foreign insult for a name, or because it has easily the most eyeball-melting art design on the face of the planet, but because it was censured by the FDA and the company that makes it was forced to reformulate it. While I may not have gotten one of the cans of what the internet has taken to calling "liquid cocaine", I think the experience I had with the drink is still comparable and at the very least I got to sample an alcoholic beverage that apparently has no quality checks beyond the question "is the new batch toxic enough?" After spending an evening with this particular brand of ferment, I can with full and complete confidence say that Four Loko is exactly what I would drink were I ever instructed at gunpoint to severely poison myself but not die.
Smell
Well, let's just get this out of the way, I'm not certain about the other flavors, but the Purple flavor smells exactly like grape soda. Only when I closed my eyes and really, really concentrated could I detect even the faintest hint of alcohol. When one considers what's going on here, it's actually quite alarming. A 12% alcohol-by-volume malt liquor lurking under a completely innocuous odor of sugar and artificial flavors. In nature, many animals use the sense of smell to detect dangerous substances, when something is either odorless (such as deadly antifreeze) or deceptively delicious smelling (such as your baby sister's cake made with super extra salt) one's first line of defense against ingesting bad things is defeated. In the case of Four Loko, the grape soda smell is not only seemingly harmless, but cautiously inviting. Add to that the fact that in appearance Four Loko is a deep uniform purple tint, and one begins to realize the sinister disguise this drink effortlessly assumes.
Taste
Again, need I mention that it seems as though Four Loko pulls out every possible stop to resemble grape soda? I'll skirt around the obvious racial joke and just say that someone was probably driving around one day in a car that may or may not have resembled a heavily modified '69 Impala, and lamented inwardly that while grape soda was the absolute shizzle, the one heavy shortcoming that prevented it from being essentially hookless was that it had no alcoholic content and thus could not on it's own bring about a feeling of crunkitude. "Oh my word, indeed," this imaginary person of unspecified skin tone would exclaim, "I do believe that the remedy to this particular quandary is quite obvious, and furthermore, it lies upon my conscience to bring this breakthrough to all of my fellow man who share my vexation. Verily!"
Lest you ask, yes. I absolutely believe in my heart those are exactly the words that were uttered. Moving on.
Aside from the grape soda thing, the big blast is the alcohol, which is completely unmaskable, even under the desperate and severe layers of sugar and artificial flavors. After enough mouthfulls of this, the taste begins to flatten out, and by the time one reaches the bottom of the 23.5 ounce can, their tongue is pickled and the only sensation is that of sugars broken down through the fermentation process. Even the artificial flavors give way to the overpowering taste of fusel alcohol.
Intoxication
Thanks to the near-deadly alcohol content, this beverage intoxicates fast and lays the whirlies on heavy. For those individuals who feel like every minute of a Saturday night spent sober is another minute wasted, Four Loko is here to help. Before half the drink is down, one can count on a distinct decline in equilibrium, accompanied by an equal loss of mental faculty. When I say this drink kills brain cells, I'm not just overstating the obvious. Four Loko is Bruce Willis in Die Hard, and your brain cells are the German terrorists. Standing up presents new challenges, as does walking, discerning between proper restrooms and random shrubbery, and convincing the officer at the checkpoint that being the least drunk out of the group is just like being sober. (Don't drink and drive kids, it's as cool as plaid socks, mullets, and starring on Jersey Shore.)
Feel
Like ulcers? If so then Four Loko is the brew for you! The slight carbonation will allow you to down this as fast as you please and before you know it, your stomach will feel like an IED. In addition, all the sugars and artificial flavors will give you a sugar high before they put you in a frame of mind I like to refer to as "tired." If you have never experienced a proper sugar crash, Four Loko will show you what you've been missing and then some. The enhanced crash brought upon by the depressant qualities of the alcohol will basically make you want to do a flying face-dive into a pillow. Of course, thanks to the high alcohol content and your resultant lack of motor skills, you'll likely miss. Please record it and post on the internet for the entertainment of the rest of us. Thanks.
The Matchup
Every review I do is a learning experience, and this one is no different. In this case, I learned why the Brawler genre slowly died off in the early 2000's despite more reasons to survive than not and why when the government feels the need to step in and regulate alcohol manufacturers, the best place to turn is Craigslist. I also learned that when one game in a genre is popular and another isn't, there's a pretty good reason for that. Finally, I have learned that if alcohol appears to be marketed to minors, it probably tastes terrible.
Cheers/Game on.
The Impossible Game/Red Stripe Light
Game: The Impossible Game, FlukeDude, 2010, iPhone
Beer: Red Stripe Light, 11.2 fl. oz., 3.6% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 3
Level Reached: Haha, level...right.
Level of Intoxication: Woozy
Game
Impossible. As a singular term, even without all-important context, the word "impossible" is imposing. It is a word which suggests the subject in question is not only difficult, but wholly insurmountable. Many gamers have, in the throes of frustration, declared one game or another as impossible, even when it isn't. Many of these outcries were at the helm of games from the highly venerated 8-bit era, when games were true tests of fortitude and endurance, yet still not quite impossible. Fitting then, that a game which is actually titled "The Impossible Game" would so unapologetically recall those bygone days of gaming yore. Oh, and just for the record, The Impossible Game isn't really impossible, it's just really, really, really hard.
Gameplay
The Impossible Game, created by independent (or "indie" if you insist on sounding cool) developer FlukeDude, is an old-school platform game which originally saw release on Xbox Live and which was recently ported to the iPhone. The Impossible game (from here on out referred to as TIG) is deceptively simple; all you do is make a little orange box jump over stuff. The first few jumps are the "tutorial" after which shit becomes real with a heretofore unprecedented level of expedience. In the main game there is only one level, others can be either be purchased or unlocked through play. While one level sounds paltry, even by mobile standards, let me assure you that in the case of TIG, one level is plenty. During gameplay, the player controls a small orange box which is always moving along at what can only be described as Ludicrous Speed. Obstacles present themselves in a few simple forms: black boxes which kill when collided with, black ground which will kill when landed upon, and black spikes which kill when collided with or landed upon. The fact that all the elements in this game that kill you are black is either a meaningless coincidence tying into the art direction of the game, or seething social commentary from a game designer who unwittingly found himself walking through the wrong neighborhood at dusk and translated his experiences into a game that's harder than a jigsaw puzzle in an amputation ward. Since Wikipedia is unable to offer any insight, and because my life is boring, I'm going to assume the latter for fun.
When I say this game is hard, I'm not just being a pansy. This game was designed to do one thing, cause players to explore the limits of survivable frustration while simultaneously creating and adding completely new foul words to their particular national language. Judging by how many perfect playthroughs there are on Youtube, I'm confident that someone out there spontaneously coined the filthy term "scumpmuffin" at some apex of personal distress. This in itself is a noble thing in my opinion, if nothing else, this game can lay claim to being at the absolute forefront of the Shakespearean curve. Of course, I'm confident even The Bard himself would have thrown his iPhone against the wall after his 874th attempt to jump over those goddamn triple spikes. Also, I'm taking suggestions as to what people think scumpmuffin actually means, because I'm sure whatever the internet people come up with, it's gotta be funny.
If it could not have been inferred by now, the crux of the game relies on memorization and insane amounts of repetition to succeed. The level never changes, the pace never changes, the music never changes, and when you die, you go all the way back to the beginning of the level, where you are tasked with doing everything over again. This works as both a punishment and a reinforcement as the player, having gotten further along than ever before, will (literally) run into something new and unexpected, scream curses to the gods, and immediately attempt the level again. The weirdest thing is that through some miracle, this style of gameplay can not only be fun, but routinely gives way to triumphant glee. The feeling of elation that comes with finally surmounting a spike or jump that has been dogging you for the past 3000 attempts is so cathartic and encompassing, it feels like a drug and you will subsequently ride that high for the .03 seconds it takes for you to die at the next unexpected challenge and be dumped back at the beginning of the level, crushed and demoralized.
On the other hand, if you are the type of person who must graduate through progressive levels of testicular fortitude, the game offers a practice mode which allows you to place flags at any point in the level. These flags act as an instant spawn point, meaning that upon death, instead of being whisked away to the very start of the level, you are instead thrown back to the flag. This makes learning the level much easier, but also signals to every one of your gamer friends that you're the kid who buys a new game, takes it home and before ever playing it for the first time, goes into the options and turns the difficulty down to easiest. You know who you are.
Graphics/Sound
The graphics in TIG are very simple. Featuring only a handful of colors, a striking art style, and clean, well defined lines, this is one of the few games that truly embraces the "graphics over gameplay" argument. The box you control is quite orange, and the obstacles in the level are all black. The level itself has a cool blue/turquoise gradient, making both your bright orange square and the black obstacles clearly stand out. Because of the pace and style of gameplay, this convention in art direction is not only smart, but crucial. If the game field was cluttered up with meaningless graphics, effects and other nonsense, the game would be much harder to decipher and more unfair (and not-cool) deaths would result. As with Tetris, the graphics serve only to convey the gameplay, and instead of getting in the way of the interaction, actually facilitate it, enriching the game as a whole and lending some much-needed credence to the notion that while ten bazillion polygons with pixel shaders looks pretty, it does not guarantee a good game.
The sound is similarly minimalist, there are only two real sound effects in the game, and to be perfectly honest, you will really only concern yourself with one of them. That of course is the sound of your fragile orange box exploding. Over and over. That single sound will become etched into your brain, it will consume you, and after enough deaths, will eventually become the sound of comfort. It will be familiar, every nuance of its frequency and modulation will become known to you, and when you miss a jump or fall onto a bed of waiting spikes, a gentle smile will crease the edges of your mouth, for you will soon be reunited with your old friend, StupidOrangeBoxDeathExplosionHaha.wav, and as the music abruptly stops and your cube disintegrates in a shower of radial sparks, you will knowingly reflect upon the transitory nature of life. Or you'll rage and throw your iPhone over the nearest building. Either one is a perfectly acceptable response.
Also very worthy of mention is the music that goes along with each level. The main level is guided by a song called Fire Aura, which was composed by a talented chap known as Kid2Will. The song itself is more than a little infectious if your musical proclivities happen to include Electronica, with a good driving beat layered with rising anthems and a very sharp main hook. Long after you've put the game down (with varying levels of force depending on how frustrated you are), you will find the song looping in your head, partly because it is so distinct and well-composed, and partly because you've heard it a thousand or more times and it has successfully drilled down to your brain stem and started pumping for oil.
Story
The problem I'm having with reviewing iPhone games is that very few of these things have any story or plot that is even worth mentioning. As is the case then with TIG, there is no story whatsoever...nothing. You can't even really make one up that sounds cool, although because this section can always use some padding, I'll do my best.
The Orange Square has to go rescue his girlfriend, famed polyologist Purple Circle from the Green Octagon Gang, who have placed a host of obstacles in the Orange Square's way to slow his progress as they get Purple Circle to tell them everything she knows about the dreaded Tomb of the PolyGods, final resting place of the legendary Megagon, the million-sided polygon who was rumored to have bent all of geometry to his will, and whose dusty remains are said to safeguard the fabled ring of Torus, the unlocker of the Third Dimension.
Okay, so that's pretty damn cool...FlukeDude, if you're reading this, I'm totally available if you want to collaborate on a sequel.
Beer
Red Stripe Light is a Jamaican beer. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere, so I'll just throw a bunch of words out there and see what sticks; Cool Runnings, lazy, dreadlocks, Bob Marley, marijuana, feelin' irie, British colonization, and/or backup vocalists in popular R&B songs of the late 90's.
Okay, perhaps that was needlessly cruel on my part, but this will more than make up for it. Red Stripe's advertising campaign is so ingenious, so simple, and yet so over the top, this beer almost wins by default. Their slogan is simply "Hooray Beer!" and really, as far as beer slogans go is just about the best advertising slogan ever devised. Ever. In my opinion it is the equivalent of the first cavemen ever to discover fire standing up, pointing at the flames and saying "Hooray Survival!" The slogan itself is perfectly distilled to the simplest possible terms, it is literally exactly what I think every time I open a fresh beer. Couple that with an unabashed Jamaican stereotypical spokesman juxtaposed against the whitest whiteys middle-America could cough up, and you have a series of 30-second spots that have more intrinsic entertainment value than most half-hour-long sitcoms and makes what is a typical beer stand way out of the pack. No small feat.
Smell
The initial odor is very spartan, not unlike any other light beer that may have been inhabiting the cooler alongside Red Stripe. Under the extremely average surface however, there's just the teeniest twang of roasted...something. Seeing as how this beer is Jamaican and proud of it, I have a few theories as to what that Roasted Something might be, and really, none of those theories are anything I want to drink. Further under the hint of undefinable roastiness is a sweetness I had to press the bottle up against my nose to detect. This might sound needlessly pedestrian (and a little disturbing) but after my initial sip I was vindicated in my perseverance.
Taste
Bam! Sweetness. Not the kind of earbending sweetness that one would routinely associate with a bottle of flat Smirnoff Ice or of a Shirley Temple marathon played all weekend at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but the kind of sweetness that is a common thread with many lower tier lagers. It is that sweetness that screams "we threw a bunch of malt in here, not for the sake of taste, but because malt is cheap, we needed something to pad out the brew, and we were all out of dreadlocks and rat poison." Yes, these are the exact kind of thoughts I get when I drink a new beer. That's why I usually drink at home, so I don't inadvertently make an ill-advised comment in the wrong bar, and also because I have an unusual (and slightly self-endangering) habit of ordering Irish beers in Scottish restaurants. Don't ask. Aside from the sweetness, the roastiness reemerges as a taste, and actually isn't as bad as I would have anticipated. The whole experience is tied together with that all-too-familiar grainy, hoppy lager taste, and actually, when one considers that this is one of the few commercial exports from Jamaica that you can't smoke, isn't half bad.
Intoxication
The intoxication is a strange one. There is very little physical intoxication, particularly in the first three or so beers, but at the bottom of the very first bottle one is beset with a mental state that can only be described as addled. In playing what is admittedly a very difficult game, I notice my coordination and concentration is instantly reduced. I'm dying in ridiculously early portions of the game, and what's more, I'm laughing about it. I'm not laughing because I'm genuinely entertained by watching my little orange box explode, rather the laughter is an effect of the alcohol. It stems from a bitter realization that life is tragically short and--much in the same way one laughs at a truly terrible movie when forced to sit through it--through whatever path brought you to this point, your current actions only serve to make it shorter. Also, and perhaps because of the previous point, I find my attention divided. One moment I'm working on trying to get my orange box over a set of three spikes and the next--oh cool, Fringe is on!
I blame the beer.
Feel
Red Stripe Light is somewhat intriguing in the fact that while it has a fairly high bubble content, once nestled within the body proper, it takes on a leaden quality, one that makes me really not want to do anything but sit on the couch. I'm not exactly riddled with the desire to swallow fishing weights, and when an FDA-approved substance makes me think that I've just flown mouth-first into someone's tackle box, I usually decide not to venture that way again. What really unnerves me about RSL is that despite being a sharply middling brew, and one that I take less and less pleasure in trying each time, I've actually bought and consumed more sixers of this than all but my most favoritest of brands.
Yes, I said "most favoritest." Piss off.
The point I'm trying to make is that for reasons I'm not able to explain, this stuff sneaks its way into my kitchen. Interpret that as you like.
The Matchup
So here it is, the wrap up, and what can I say about this little venture? The game is one of those rare few that can actually cop to the "graphics over gameplay" moniker, that all the energies of the game are dedicated to providing a sharp gameplay hook that sinks deep into the player's brain and refuses to let go. This fact in and of itself pretty much means the game is going to have enough substance to elicit a thumbs-up from me. The beer in this case is another of those that is really not bad, but isn't nearly super awesome either, and so if you want to drink a middling beer in a "short ugly bottle" you can stop searching. If that was ever a specific goal for you, then I need you to email me and tell me about your taste in the opposite sex, because I get the feeling it'll be hilarious. Anyway, at the end of the day, the game is great bordering on classic, and the beer is...well, it might be the closest anyone ever gets to a Jamaican, and for that I feel a furtive thumbs up is in order.
Cheers/Game on.
Godfinger/Rolling Rock Extra Pale
Game: Godfinger, ngmoco:), 2010, iPhone
# of beers consumed during play: 1
Level Reached: 30-something
Level of Intoxication: Buzzed
Game
Godfinger, a game whereby the player assumes the role of omnipotent creator, is one of those "casual heroin" games. For those people within the civilized populace who are predisposed of addictive behavior, but are reluctant to actually find a dealer and purchase schedule I controlled substances, this product will suffice nicely. This game also falls squarely in the realm of "pretending to go to the bathroom at work just so you can sit on the toilet and catch up on your gold collecting" games, of which there are way more than the average person is even aware of. Ironic then that smartphones, which were originally developed to increase the productivity of your average worker drone, are actually causing said drone to fall into a holding pattern of un-productivity. Videogames: bane of capitalist nations everywhere.
Gameplay
The premise of Godfinger is simple: open the game, play for about 15 minutes doing repetitive yet strangely alluring tasks, then log out. Once logged out, dwell listlessly on the prospect of logging in again and curse the Earth for turning on its axis so painfully slowly. If you've read this far and surmised that Godfinger is one of those timer-based games, you have surmised correctly. Go ahead and get yourself a cookie out of the jar. If you don't have cookies, then go fetch yourself whatever it is that passes for a treat in your bleak little world and come back, the rest of us are waiting on you.
Godfinger--as the name may imply--puts you in the shoes of a god who controls and rules a little 2D world with his or her finger. With your fleshy wand of ultimate power, you will summon rain, lightning bolts, floods, firestorms, and terraform the land and move buildings. None of this compares though to the vastly underrated power to pick up your followers by their feet and fling them maliciously off the screen. Oh sure, you can zap them with lightning or roast them in a firestorm, but the primal glee that accompanies the act of flicking them across the planet is only rivaled by the fact that the game actually measures said throw and rewards you for it. Seriously. The developers of this game know exactly the kind of assholes people are and have included a game mechanic to tap into that. Point in fact, the game designers included virtually every device possible for griefing the minions featured within the game, making this less of a world building simulator and more of a fancy, high-tech way of projecting your intense hatred of your co-workers into a safe and consequence-free environment. Of course, if you are the kind of person who is a slave to actually playing a game in parallel with its intended objectives, Godfinger is pretty fun for you too.
While there is no ultimate goal or end to the game, Godfinger strings you along by assigning tasks which yield breadcrumb-like rewards for successful completion. Such tasks include using a specific power on a specific object, making your minions do certain things, building a required number of buildings or decorations, et cetera. In most cases, attaining any given goal is accomplished by the core gameplay conventions, which are as follows, in rough order of importance and/or repetitiousness: buy farms, make followers farm for gold, collect gold, find exhausted followers and punish them for being exhausted by flinging them around and/or striking them with lightning and/or dropping them in the lake before finally dropping them off at a tavern or water fountain to refresh themselves. There, that's it, I just described the entire game in minute detail. And of course, therein lies one of the biggest problems with the game itself: after a while, logging in, doing those tasks, and logging out seems like more of a chore than fun, particularly after you've exhausted your vocabulary of hate on all your followers and have discovered that if you don't log in often enough, the gold your minions farm up for you actually turns bad after a set amount of time.That's right, in a devious twist of gameplay design, if you don't play the game at set intervals, you the player are punished by having your gold rust and become worthless. So if you don't want your time waster to be a waste of time, you have to make sure to waste time at the right times. Which wouldn't be so bad if the game wasn't so goddamn crash prone.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that...
As far as the game goes, it's a fun if slightly repetitive time waster, which is perfectly fitting for the iPhone. Unfortunately, people who have a device such as the iPhone want their apps to be, like, stable...which is apparently a new concept over at the ngmoco:) codehouse. Godfinger has something like 10,000 reviews, which are fairly evenly split between 5-star glowing reviews by those who are just starting out and are gripped by the clutches of follower-flinging oblivion, and the 1-star scathing diatribes who have gotten tired of an app that crashes, lags, hangs, glitches, and causes the entire device it is installed on to exhibit unusual behavior. Lest you, the reader, think I am criticizing Godfinger by others' reviews, allow me to give you a window into my own personal experience. Once I got above level 30, I noticed times when the app would lag very badly, to the point where the sound would stutter, the framerate would drop to almost zero, and the controls would be entirely unresponsive. An app restart would typically clear this up, though I would lose whatever progress I'd been working on. Later, the app started exhibiting even more uncouth behavior, whereupon the whole thing would dead-hang at the splash screen, and later, ingame. Most of this behavior was attributed to the 2.2 update, and after the game crashed to the home screen several times in one day, also mysteriously screwing up my baseband until I rebooted (the part of the iPhone that allows me to make and receive phone calls, y'know, no biggie), I stopped playing the game. Once an update was released which promised bug and performance fixes, I downloaded it, installed it, and encountered many of the same problems as before. The lagging was back as was a strange crash behavior that would force my email client to refresh and as I was already at a sufficiently high level in the game where nothing interesting or new was happening, I uninstalled Godfinger and haven't looked back. More's the pity since the game mechanics and polished graphics had so much potential, especially if new content, goals and powers were forthcoming. But, like I said in my own 1-star review of Godfinger in the app store, the last thing I need on my $600 phone is software that doesn't work, no matter how pretty it is.
Graphics/Sound
The visuals in Godfinger are superb, particularly on the iPhone 4. All the graphic assets in Godfinger are hi-res, and they positively shine. Details such as the individual blades of grass swaying in the breeze, the leaves in trees and the accents in the followers' clothing are all amazingly rich and lovingly crafted. Lively touches such as butterflies flitting from flower to flower and the way the clouds billow realistically add a level of polish and verve to the game not often (if ever) found on mobile platforms. Similarly, the myriad special effects on offer, from the awesome way water flows and undulates, to the particle effects from lightning and fire strikes, all the way down to the appearance of the sun's rays and the burst effect when activating a god power are stunning in their smooth animation and incredible presentation. On a similar note, the characters themselves are all unforgivably cute in a creepy, xenophobic "I'm really glad there is no real life counterpart to you" way. The way their mouths look remind me vaguely of Wallace and Gromit, which is by no means bad, and their animations (especially when in dire, life threatening distress) elicit more smiles out of me than plugging the search term "idiot kid" into YouTube. The game's UI is simple, well thought out and intuitive, and is--as user interfaces should be--largely invisible to the game experience as a whole. Visually, the game is so accomplished I'm almost tempted to give it a pass on graphical merit alone...Almost. I'm not even kidding when I say that Godfinger has some of the best 2D graphics I've ever seen. Whoever the art director is on this game should get a raise, a promotion, and if possible, a Maserati made out of chocolate and a huge freezer-garage to keep it in.
If the eyeball-candy in Godfinger is the cream, then the sound must surely be the sugar. Few games really strike me with their sound production. Most times when critiquing the music and sound effects in any given game, words such as "adequate" "unobtrusive" "easy to ignore" and "donkey" come to mind (Okay not the last one really, I just threw that one in to see if you were paying attention). Godfinger is different though. While the music is entirely non-existent, liberal use of sound is used to fill the aural gaps. From wind blowing over dusty terrain to crickets chirping in the verdant grass, the planet you rule actually has a feeling of environment, something many of the most expensive big budget titles seem to miss almost constantly. In addition to the excellent ambient noises--indeed, as an exclamation point to them--are the sounds of your god powers. When you create mountains out of molehills and wide stretching plains out of useless mountains, the sound of tumbling earth comes rumbling forth. When you summon lightning from the heavens, the resultant crack is zappyrific, and when said lightning bolt hits the innocent follower who was just standing there minding his own business, the high-pitched scream he makes is stupefyingly hilarious. In fact, the sounds of the followers are so well done, and carry with them so much character, that single facet alone breathes enough life into the game to make it worth playing, that is until the wanton crashing gets out of hand.
Story
This is one of those games that don't have so much a story as a premise, which seems to be popular among the games which inhabit Mobile Deviceland. One supposes that when games are played in bite sized 5-10 minute chunks, wading through cutscenes tends to dilute the experience. While Godfinger hasn't even the barest sliver of writ story, it can be argued that the player is creating their own narrative through their playstyle. Whether that narrative is one of happiness and prosperity or suffering and humiliation depends on the person playing.
Beer
Rolling Rock is one of those beers that is so ubiquitous as to be practically invisible. Its availability is widespread, yet its appearance so pedestrian, and its placement in most retail beer coolers so inconspicuous, that most pairs of eyes sweep right past it in search of the more well known brews. I am convinced this is actually intentional on the part of the distributors of Rolling Rock, since they've had more than ample opportunity to change the packaging on their product to something more eye-catching.Smell
As can be expected out of an extra pale, there's quite a bit of grain in the odor. This isn't bad really, just pedestrian, and in fact, gives the beer a pretty good foundation. The teeny-weeny hints of bitterness and the slightest blast of baby skunk ass give this beer some character, even if there isn't enough to really set it apart from other pale lagers.
Taste
While the smell may be totally unremarkable, the taste seems to hit a sweet spot as it were. As one drinks, they are hit with the feeling they've drunk this particular drink before, but not in any "been there done that" sense. No, instead, as the clean bitter taste slides over the tongue, many drinkers may feel a distinct notion of nostalgia, of backyard bar-be-ques, of parties with good people and good music, and of saying the wrong thing to a wealthy relative while intoxicated and getting that sudden icy feeling of knowing your portion of the inheritance has quietly slipped away and been permanently divvied up among your other family members. One thing this brew is particularly suited for is lounging poolside and soaking up the sun's rays as your body soaks up the alcohol. Thanks to the clean taste and easy drinkability this is a fine summertime beer which also goes surprisingly well with the odd videogame.
Intoxication
The relatively low alcohol content in this beer means easy drinking with an even easier intoxication curve. It would take several beers before any real mental or bodily impairment would begin to take hold, and at no time would the drunk take a sinister or belligerent turn. One of the especially nice things is the fact that speech seems to work fairly unhindered, and with careful consumption, the drinker would be able to maintain an indefinite buzz with no debilitating side-effects such as the irrational urge to jump through that plate-glass window over there.
Feel
The feel incurred as one brings the bottle to their lips is fairly bubbly, but not overwhelming, being crisp and refreshing rather than feeling like a mouthful of Alka-Seltzer tablets. The fluid slides down to the stomach and finds a quiet corner where it won't bother anybody while it's being digested, leaving the drinker to feel quite good about him/herself and their choice in beer. Thankfully there's very little bloating, if any, and if a person is so inclined as to power through a six-pack, once done, they will likely feel good enough to engage in any number of summertime leisure activities.
The Matchup
In this case, the game and beer in question are fairly dissimilar. In Godfinger's instance, there is a great deal of polish to the property's outside qualities, and very little foundation given to the core, leaving a fantastically pretty game with very little long-term fun-factor. Rolling Rock on the other hand has very little bling-bling on the outside, but makes up for it with a perfectly fine core which, while inhabiting a solid middle ground in quality, is still a much better choice than a great many other properties on offer. Together the two products make for an entertaining afternoon, but while I would definitely go for some more Rolling Rock in the future, I have a feeling that now that I've put Godfinger down, I won't be picking it back up again. Such is life.
Cheers/Game on.