MadCap's Game Reviews - "1943: The Battle of Midway"

Now, my dear readers...we can return once more to that classic and timeless era of the arcade machine and...oh, right...Sonic the Hedgehog...I was going to.  But this came up.  So deal.  That being said, 1943.

I’m not going to go into the awkwardness present at the mention of a Japanese game company making a game based around the Battle of Midway (y’know, one of the battles that pretty much turned the tide of the war in the Pacific theatre during World War II), and just get into the game itself.  You’re an American fighter pilot scrolling from the bottom to the top of the screen as you shoot everything in sight.

...no, really, that’s it.

It’s in the style of Galaga or Galaxian, though at a much faster pace.  Even in the beginning, the game can be very easily unforgiving.  The main objective, as I say, is to get through each screen while trying to destroy every single plane on the screen besides your own.  It’s buttonmashing at its finest, but also very satisfying.  Things blow up with an awesome effect and it just feels downright good when they do (proper hit detection is important, after all).  However, it also gets very tiring just pushing down the button to fire.  Again, like my problems with Black Tiger a few weeks back, couldn’t some of these things have been fixed in the port to the 360 - till playing from the Capcom Arcade Cabinet, by the way - so I don’t have to bust my thumbs in order to keep firing?

That’s about the only strategy I can give, either.  Just keep shooting until all the enemies on the screen are dead.  Again, simple, but it can get a little monotonous as all such games can.  So Capcom decided to liven it up.  Must like in Contra, your fire can be changed to several different modes.  There’s a direct shot, a scatter shot, and a a scatter shot with a wider range.  I’ve personally found the direct shot to be the best and just to keep spamming attack until, again, everything on the screen is toast.

But wait!  Capcom decided that that would not simply be enough, and gave some special attacks.  The first, when down into fighting aircraft carriers mode, sees a tidal waves wipe the entire screen clear of enemies.  The second, when up in the sky, unleashes the wrath of God upon anything on the screen, electrocuting them with lightning.  So, basically, God was on America’s side in World War II because he gave them the powers of damnation and craziness...at the cost of fuel.  Huh.

The player has a constantly depleting fuel meter that drops whether you’re using special attacks or not, though it can be brought back up by taking out an entire group of red fighter planes.  Easy enough in the early levels, though later on the sheer mass of attackers will see you neglecting to do that and wondering just why you’ve blown up.  Luckily, 1943 doesn’t penalize you for dying (except for resetting your high score to “0”, but who really cares?) and you can start right from where you were, no quarters needed.

So your plane magically reappears in the midst of the Japanese fleet for you to lay a smack down on them once more…

...nevermind, without the arcade stuff you really DO seem to have the powers of God.

「こんにちは、男の子は！私は戻ってきた！"

Mind you, this game is dated but then...so is Galaga.  Doesn’t remotely keep them from being enjoyable.  If you’ve got some time to kill, go through the sixteen levels and take on the Yamato (no, not that one!) and save the day.  For America...in a Japanese game about one of the decisive battles of World War II…

...the world’s a very strange place, isn’t it? 1943 is now available from Capcom. It can be played from the Capcom Arcade Cabinet, available on Xbox Live, the Playstation Network, and PC. For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Comic Reviews - "Original Sin #0"

I’ve been a fan of comics ever since I could first read.  Well, to be more accurate I’ve been a fan of superheroes since I first had working eyeballs and I’ve irregularly kept up with certain titles - most prominently Spider-Man...at least until One More Day, but if I go into that you’ll click off this and go onward on your journey through the web be ever so diligently reading rantings that people have already made since 2007, so I feel we best move on.  Besides, I’m not here to talk about the fallout from one of Marvel’s most ridiculously overblown and really rather stupid crossovers (again, if you’re on the opposite side of a moral debate as Captain America, you are wrong.  Period.), I’m here to talk about the set up to what may be a really rather good crossover - “Original Sin”.

I first heard about this through my friend EpicApathy (That Handsome Devil!™), when he told me about what sounded like a very interesting plot involve the actual death of Uatu the Watcher.  Now, any Marvel fan worth their weight in back issues knows who Uatu is.  For those that don’t, or are just getting into comics, “Original Sin #0” is clear in its intentions with the issue title “Who is the Watcher?”.  Well, to delve into the history a bit, Uatu is a member of an alien race known as the Watchers who...watch.  They’re an immensely powerful race that keeps an eye on the universe as a whole but are sworn never to interfere.

If you’re wondering why I’m not making a Time Lords joke here, it’s only because Uatu predates the Time Lords by about six years.  So, honestly, if anything, Doctor Who is ripping off Marvel.

Much like the Doctor, Uatu is the being that regularly breaks the non-interference rule and has done so a few times in order to save the Earth.  When he first appeared, it was to help the Fantastic Four save the Earth from being consumed by Galactus.  Since then, Uatu has interfered more than a few times in the course of Earth’s history, as well as appeared before several critically important events in the history of the Marvel universe.  However, that’s really been it.  For the very big cosmic events, he’s been known to intervene and even for seemingly minor events he is at least watching.  It’s been this way in Marvel for more than fifty years now.  However, “Original Sin #0” poses a question about Uatu that I don’t think has really been approached before this point.

What is Uatu watching for?

Well, that question gets answered in “Original Sin #0”, which begins with some narration by Sam Alexander aka Nova about his backstory, and his connection to his missing father - who was a member of the Nova Corps (basically Marvel’s answer to the Green Lantern Corps) and worked a janitor at his son’s high-school before mysteriously going missing.  Nova, being a teenaged superhero in Marvel, has no doubt been given the pamphlet by Spidey on keeping your girlfriends away from bridges, not making deals with Satan, and avoiding archvillains that for bizarre and completely out of character reasons feel the need to mindswap with you and be “superior”.

...I said I wasn’t going to rant, didn’t I? Oh, well.

But still, Nova gains his powers from the Nova Corp and - after a battle with the hilariously named villain “Tomazooma”, Nova gets some recognition from the Big Three of the Avengers, and here I’ll take a minute to talk about the artwork.  It’s pretty good.  Cap looks a good deal like his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart which is both a good and bad thing.  One of the criticisms I’ve heard for the latest film adaptations is that Cap’s original outfit from the 616 universe wouldn’t translate well to the screen (lampshaded in that hilarious USO scene in the first film).  While I disagree, this issue does the opposite and brings the MCU version into the comics and it looks...out of place.  Not bad, necessarily, and a lot more like a military universe than the classic look...but it just feels rather strange.

I don’t know how long Captain Rogers had been rocking the look, of course, but if it’s new because of the recent films, I wouldn’t be overly surprised.  And of course Thor is looking like himself, though not very Chris Hemsworth-y...and Tony Stark is outfitted in Suit #9001, the gold and black look is pretty cool, though.

Getting back to the plot, Nova poses the question of the issue.  When none of the Avengers assembled can give him an answer, Nova decides to take a trip up to Uatu’s home on the Moon.  He even brings Uatu a gift, a piece of the field where the Avengers and the X-Men stopped the Phoenix Force (assuming this was in Avengers vs. X-Men...another overblown crossover) and he is allowed into the Watcher’s compound, where Nova’s helmet begins alerting him to danger, and he sees several versions of Uatu that he theorizes are not duplicates but alternate versions of him, the implication being that they’re all the same man over various potential realities.  This followed up by Nova joining Uatu to review a video record of the event that led to the Watchers declaring their non-intervention policy.

A society that the Watchers gave nuclear weaponry to ended up completely destroying itself.  But the big twist being that the one who managed to convince the Watchers to grant that primitive race the technology was none other than Uatu’s own father.  Huh.  Suddenly, his interest in such a tiny, primitive race as humanity makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

But it’s even more than that when we learn that Uatu hasn’t just been watching the mainstream Marvel universe but every...single...possibility...that branches off from every...single...choice or event.  As Nova puts it, Uatu literally sees into infinity.  All the time.  And all for the reason of trying to find a single reality where his father was right and interfering didn’t result in the destruction of that race.  Sadly, however, across all of infinity...such a reality doesn’t seem to exist.

Now, a more cynical person might all bull on this.  Then again, anyone who wants to bring up the multiverse theory might want to give Sliders a look.  Trust me, all parallel universes have their own degree of suck. So, if there isn't actually a universe where everything is hunky dory with the Watchers helping a caveman race create the atom bomb, I'm more than willing to believe.

But really, I believe most would describe this as “feels”, and these are Uatu feels of the highest caliber.  The only thing he really wants is to find one reality where his father was right...something that Nova sympathizes with heavily.  Eventually, having learned part of the reason why he had come to visit, Nova gets around to asking about the ultimate fate of his father - really only wanting to know whether he’s dead or alive.  Uatu, speaking the only three words of dialogue that he has, tells him that his father is indeed alive and Nova leaves as he joyfully shouts the words through the void of space...somehow.

And the story ends with Uatu taking the piece of earth that Nova gave to him and setting it on a podium, observing it for a panel before walking away.

“Original Sin #0” is pretty good, and was an excellent doorway to get back into comics with my long absence.  It showed us a side of Uatu not yet seen, and managed to make us empathize with a great and powerful being that is one of the most inhuman things that exists (DC, take note).  It manages to introduce the character of Sam Alexander to the reader as well, which definitely got my attention and personally made me want to pick up his series outside of the “Original Sin” storyline.  And it made a good intro to “Original Sin” itself, even though it’s getting us to care about a character right before they’re killed off, it’s done well and actually manages to succeed in doing that.

And it does pose an even bigger question than simply who would want to kill Uatu and why.  What has he seen that someone thought he shouldn’t have?  I suppose the only way to find out is to pick up the rest of “Original Sin”...which I’ll more than likely be doing...until somebody decides to make a deal with Mephisto to bring Uatu back to life.

...yes, Joe Quesada sucks.  Now shoo!

“Original Sin #0” is now available from Marvel comics wherever comic books are sold.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Fable II"

Before the time when the Hero of Oakvale failed to impress me and the Hero of Bowerstone managed to somehow irritate the piss out of me with an interface that a first year game design student would be sobbing in the corner after seeing…there was Fable II.  Fable II happened to be the first game in the series that I picked up, having no prior knowledge of Fable beyond having seen the trailer for it.  Of course, by the time I had actually gotten around to where I could play the original, Microsoft had jumped to the Xbox 360 and Fable II had just come out.

But I apparently didn’t miss much, so no harm done.

Fable II begins some five centuries after the events of Fable II, making it even easier to get involved without prior knowledge of the series for newcomers, with a boy or girl living with his/her sister in the city of Bowerstone. When a snake oil salesman comes to town trying to sell cheap knock-off magical merchandise, Sparrow and his/her sister Rose get a nod from the Lady Cassandra O’Brien dot Delta Seventeen to buy a music box that she claims really has magical powers.  After acquiring five gold coins in a tutorial level and buying the box, Sparrow and Rose use it and make a wish…which seemingly does nothing until they are met in the middle of the night by guards sent by Lord “Oh, My God, He’s So Obviously the Villain”.

This results in Sparrow and Rose finding out about their hero heritage before Rose is unceremoniously shot and falls dead on the spot, followed by Sparrow being shot and falling out of a window.  Saved by Theresa, however, Sparrow doesn’t die and lives for the next indeterminate number of years in the peace and safety of a gypsy camp.  Just enough time for them to get to the 18-20 years old range and be ready to pick up a rusty sword, a crossbow, and a spade and go out to kick the ass of the aforementioned Lord Villain.

...oh, and you get a dog. It barks annoyingly and occasionally tells you places where you can dig. Until it gets killed at the end like everything else you've ever loved. Spoiler Alert.

This is what happens when you roll a crit...

Theresa reveals the Tattered Spire, an artifact of the Old Kingdom that was immensely powerful and caused a massive cataclysm in Albion long before the events of the first game.  Now, Lucien’s trying to rebuild it to resurrect his dead wife and daughter…

…at the very least, that’s the implication if you don’t ready the diaries provided later in the storyline.

...obviously (and this does get lampshaded later), he’s eventually going to realize that bringing back his family isn’t all he’ll be able to do, so now Sparrow has even more motivation to stop him…depending on whether or not you get bogged down in the side questing.  In fact, you’re going to have to do some of that in order to get any progression in the storyline at points.  It really just kind of kills the pacing when I have to stop my quest to save the world from the Genocide Tower in order to go hunt down some bandits or dance around like a Russian in front of some villagers to increase my Renown.

Speaking of hunting down bandits, we have the combat. You have Strength, Skill, and Will – which translate to melee, ranged, and magic attacks – and I know that this joke has been made by every single game reviewer and their mother by this point, but with the area of effect spells available you basically pick one, pour points into it and spam until you win…no, really, that’s it.  It’s hilariously easy to pull off.  However, your other choice would be going the melee route and making flourishes your best friend.  Seriously, it’s nearly impossible to block them and will send all by the strongest of enemies flying.  Still, for crowd control, you can’t do much better than the Will area of effect spells.

Speaking of the three forms of combat – the three Hero Skills factor into the plot through three of the main supporting cast that form a strong trifecta.  Those would be Hammer – the Hero of Strength – Garth – the Hero of Will – and Reaver – the Hero of Skill.  Three heroes that Lucian needs for his plans in order to build the Spire…for some reason that isn’t ever really made clear.  Nevertheless, the three heroes make a colorful group and are very interesting characters in their own right – so much so that Reaver showed up in III and will no doubt be in later chapters of the game series.  Then again, when you’re voiced by the magnificent Stephen Fry, you’re worth keeping around.

The Rolling Stones tour in Albion was met with screaming fans...out of fear...

But as the Hero of Bowerstone, Sparrow is the mystical Fourth Hero that Lucien because he/she is the only one who can stop his plans…because…destiny?  There’s really no clear way to understand it – whether it’s just Theresa’s machinations or if there’s actually a prophecy involved, we never really know.  However, it quickly becomes clear that you’re the only one who can stop Lucien. Provided you can get away from the dynamic and in-depth NPCs…who…aren’t…really.

Yes, there’s more variety to the NPCs here, but they suffer the clone brush very fast and it shows when you can actually marry an NPC and have several hot, sweaty love children with them and go off and find three other copies of your beloved in the same area. Of course, you do have to have a house in Albion in order to actually have a wife and family…and it’s surprisingly easy to work up money when you get a set amount every five minutes from shops you own and houses that you rent out.  With enough time and patience, you can very easily buy out every property available in the game.  As soon as you own two million gold pieces worth, you can actually take the title of King or Queen of Albion.

…and then fork over a million gold pieces for the Castle.

Still, considering that you make however much money every five minutes no matter what, it makes making that money back insanely easily.  Just buy out the Bowerstone Market District and you can pretty much go about shopping at your leisure and have the money back with no issues within a few five minutes stretches.

Of course, if you raise the rent or the shop prices, you risk corruption points – something that gets brought in along with the Good-Evil Scale is the Purity-Corrupt scale, which pretty much just further changes the way you look.  Good luck trying to stay both good and pure, because beyond the neutral look it’s the only one that doesn’t look nightmarish (in the case of corrupt) or hilarious (in the case of evil).

She doesn't look a day over 10,000...

Tone wise, Fable II can be a little jarring.  The tutorial is a delightful romp through the streets of Bowerstone that gets capped off with your sister getting shot and you getting thrown through a window.  You can go about killing civilians, but as soon as you pay a fine or do a community service quest you can play a lute a few times or rip off an extreme powerful fart and the villagers love you again like nothing happened.  Even the art style is very cartoony and over the top and yet can easily sink into very dark and depressing areas – like the Tattered Spire or the soldiers of Lucien therein.  I wouldn’t mind this, variety is the spice of life and all, but it’s hard to get a grip on what they were going for and that distracts a bit.

When I first played this game, I absolutely loved.  Now, coming back to it after having played its sequel and its prequel, I still find some enjoyment out of it.  While not taking the broken promises of Peter Molyneux into account, this game is actually very good and provides a lot to find even within the linear set it has.  Seriously! Six years after this game’s release, I’ve still managed to find and realize things I didn’t before.  Still, though, the world feels open and it lacks that overpowering feeling of linearity that Fable III has, if only because the shackles feel a little looser.  Then again, that might actually be enough and the game does do well for what it is.

Fable II is now available from Lionhead Studios and Microsoft Games for Xbox 360.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Rad Raygun"

It is the year 198X at the height of the Cold War.  Ronald Reagan’s in the White House and unfortunately he does not have the elite hacker skills of Ferris Bueller to aid him in defeating a horde of Communist robots that are poised to destroy America.  The answer to this? A Mega Man clone!

I’m not even kidding.  The very title screen is a homage to Mega Man 2, and it’s actually pretty awesome.

But the comparison doesn’t stop there as you take on the role of a robotic soldier named Rad who is charged by none other than the Gipper himself to defeat the Communist hordes in the Middle East, Germany, and other battlefields across the world all in the name of America’s righteous anti-Communist agenda!  After all, better dead than Red, am I right?

That being said, there’s really not a lot of red in this game.  Or any color other than green and black, with the stylistic choice to make this look like an early 1980’s computer game rather than one of the Mega Man games…at least in coloring.  Personally I like the design, though it sometimes makes it difficult to figure out where Rad can stand and where he can’t.  Luckily, there aren’t any insta-kill hazards to speak of in the situation, and the developers do actually poke fun at the style.  And, as we all know, I’m a stickler for games that aren't afraid to poke fun at themselves.

But it’s a platformer, so Rad moves around (usually) from left to right while either blasting or avoiding dangers that present themselves.  You fire bolts from an arm canon to take care of enemies, which can be upgraded with disks that can be found in the game world.  Along with some power ups that allow you to refill your health from the pause menu (like that one game of a similar style…with Sub Tanks…can’t think of the name…).

And really, that’s all there is to it.  You move from left to right taking out enemies throughout a level, then you take on a boss monster at the end of every level.  As far as your mechanics go, standard platformer shooter.  No, more than that, a really good platformer shooter...with some pretty awesome throwback 8-bit music to boot (by FantomenK!)   It has some good humor that pokes fun at the Cold War paranoia of the 1980s, as well as some other political humor.  Like DLC Quest and other games in the vein that I’ve played, it is long enough to get its point across without overstaying its welcome.  It’s only five stages leading up to the ending, but it was only a dollar and I really think it was worth the investment, and I think you will, too.

Rad Raygun is now available from Trufun Entertainment for Xbox 360 and PC.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Game Reviews - "DmC: Vergil's Downfall"

Yeah, I had determined that I wasn’t going to do this.  I had said that absolutely nothing could convince me to go ahead and see what else Capcom had to offer in this train wreck of a storyline.  Which is saying something, I mean…this is Capcom we’re talking about.  But I figured to give Vergil’s Downfall a try, since perhaps it would do some repairs on Vergil’s mangled character and perhaps give us some more insight into his psyche.

An hour and a half later, Vergil had killed the last bits of goodness in him in a very literal sense, marched out of Hell (yes, Hell apparently now) with some new followers and I realized that I’d just been conned out of eight bucks for what is essentially the set up for DmC:  Devil May Cry 2…which will hopefully be better than the other one, but I’m perhaps hoping for too much.  Regardless, let’s take a look at this particular waste of time.

Vergil takes to using Yamato for melee and some magically summoned energy blades à la Devil May Cry 3 because he apparently regained his dislike of guns in between DmC and now…or whatever.  He unlocks an angelic and a demonic mode for Yamato, giving him pretty much the same movesets as Dante and a few unique combos given his difference in style – but otherwise is rather uninteresting as he lacks the visual variety of Dante’s arsenal by the end of the vanilla game.  Would it have killed you guys to put in a set of gauntlets like Beowulf from 3 for us, Ninja Theory? C’mon.

He also receives the angel and demon leaps from his respective heritages, allowing him to leap to objects and enemies as well as pull them to him in combat.  The only problem I have with it is that there’s no solid connection between Vergil and whatever object, as in the basic came with Dante and his chains.  Just energy blades that then teleport Vergil to the object or teleport it to him, which make me more than a little paranoid and saw Vergil falling into the great abyss far too many times for me to count.

Vergil gets two different Devil Triggers over the course of this DLC, the first manifesting as a ring of energy blades that cause massive damage to all enemies that get anywhere near him while refilling himself.  In the last chapter, Vergil receives one recreating the Doppelganger style from both his boss battle in DmC and – again – in Devil May Cry 3.  That at least makes up for some of the lacking visuals with the weaponry…if only just.

As for the story however…

…yeah, I’m not gonna sugar coat it.  This story is as much an extended trailer for DmC 2 as Captain America:  The First Avenger was for The Avengers.  Vergil, mortally wounded following his battle with Dante (seriously, Dante, why didn’t you just kill him?), returns to his childhood home…falls on his mother’s grave…and then falls directly into Hell.  Yes, Hell, which apparently exists now.  Heavy wounds don’t impede Vergil’s ability to hand the hordes of Hell their asses, however, and he eventually finds his way to a ghostly version of himself who demands that he correct three holes in a gigantic representation of his heart.

This is done by hunting down and confronting ghostly versions of Kat and Dante from the vanilla game, both of whom play on Vergil’s insecurities before he kills them and “fixes” the first two holes in his heart. Then we have a bit of confusing meeting with his and Dante’s mother, Eva (who, again, is an angel in this version) who is apparently in Hell.  Is she alive? Dead? No idea, and don’t expect an answer from this.  Vergil saves Eva from a particularly nasty demon, but then gives her the facsimile of Dante’s amulet, claiming that he’s killed him as revenge for Eva loving Dante more over him, showing how far to the dark side that Vergil has gone over the man who previous had risked even his own safety to get back his twin brother.

So, after defeating his Hollow self and merging with him, Vergil goes Super Saiyan and marches his way out of Hell.  Waking up on his mother’s grave, he rises to find himself surrounded by demons and prepares for a fight…only to have the demonic horde bow to their new king.  While Vergil does not yet have control of the Earth, as he planned for (rather suddenly) at the end of DmC, it seems only a matter of time before he begins to make his move…no doubt leading up to the sequel.

"I am the hope of the universe..."...wait a minute...

Mind you, the entire story of this DLC is told through barely inanimate cut scenes very much akin to the style of Dragon Age II’s yearly transitions or some of the Arkham Origins cutscenes.  While that works in the first as being like the hieroglyphs of Kirkwall and…doesn’t work in Origins really at all, it doesn’t work here in comparison to the main game and just looks…weird.  It’s not bad artwork and is an interesting style but there’s really no reason for any of it.

It’s also painfully short and, again, it really only a way to connect DmC:  Devil May Cry with whatever sequel they come out with.  Personally, I hope they don’t.  I honestly hope that we’ll be getting Devil May Cry 5 at some point.  C’mon, Capcom.  It’s been six years.  I admire, as much as anyone, trying to reinvent yourself and try something new, but the fact was that you just didn’t need to.  Some of your people have even said that the classic Dante and his world aren’t gone so…why not bring it back? In something other than mobile games?  Bring back Reuben Langdon for motion capture and the charm and wit we all know of the son of Sparda.

Continue the story of Nero and show us where his journey will take him.  Build upon what’s already there, and we’ll love you for it.  Keep the way you’ve done the combat (not necessarily the Style Gauge, but that’s another matter entirely) and the mechanics, but return to that world you guys created that manages to be dark, intense, and gritty, but isn’t afraid to poke fun at itself and have moments of pure, over the top hilariousness that keep us begging for more.

Do this, Capcom, and we will come.

If you make, they will come.

DmC: Vergil's Downfall is now available from Capcom and Ninja Theory for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, and iOS.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

MadCap's Trailer Reactions - "Godzilla"

Godzilla.  Everybody knows the name.  Even if, like me, you've never sat through one of the long running Japanese produced daikaiju (“giant monster”, for those of you reaching for your Google) films.  But we all know the iconic monster.  A towering behemoth, with an iguana-like face and body, a cowardly approach to facing off against the military, and a bizarre fixation with eating a lot of fish…okay, yes it's a cheap shot at the 1998 film.

Needless to say, when stacked against the actual towering behemoth, “Zilla” – as he is called by both Toho and the fanbase – really doesn’t stack up.  After all, the real Godzilla was more like a force of nature than any sort of animal.  Bred and mutated by nuclear fallout, this wasn’t some Jurassic Park reject.  Godzilla stands tall, muscled and powerful, ready to crush any that opposed it with the weight of its own body, smash through buildings with its tail, or burn enemies to a crisp with his atomic breath.  Nothing can stop it…and for the last ten years, it had thankfully lain dormant…but now…

…The King of Monsters comes roaring back to the American movie screen, to be combated by the United States military, Heisenberg, Ensign Pavel Chekov, and the Scarlet Witch (the real one.  No, FOX, I don’t care if your movie has Jennifer Lawrence in it, it’s still going to blow…).   First off, and I know this seems like a weird thing to point out but bear with me, I like how you never clearly see the titular monster. 

Eh, well...still looks terrifying...

Unlike, say Batman: Arkham Origins where we already knew who the Joker was and there was really no reason to hide the fact that he was in the game from the general public (not that they tried, or anything…), Godzilla comes to us from a joint Legendary Pictures and Toho effort after the last Godzilla film ten years ago, allowing them to give an air of some mystery back to the character…provided they hadn’t plastered him on the front of Empire magazine, revealing the new form of the creature and…oh, oops.

Not to say that it’s bad, I really do like the design, I just almost wish they would have taken a page from the advertising of the 1998 film and not have it clearly seen until the film premiered.  That being said, again, I love the look.  This looks very much like the terrifying beast that the original film first brought to the screen and definitely something to strike fear into the hearts of the wee humans that will be caught in the path of its destruction, and that’s one of the best parts of the trailer:  humanity is clearly making some efforts to combat the beast, but we see a lot of shots of the human protagonists simply staring on in terror at things just off-screen – presumably Godzilla and/or the destruction it has caused -   reinforcing something that the 1998 movie had just been unable to.

The fact that, no matter how hard we try, we may be facing a creature that even all the power and ingenuity of humanity will be unable to stop.  A terrifying, gargantuan beast that can cause the very Earth to crumble beneath its feet, and whose roar can cause the very pillars of Heaven itself to shake.  Yes, Virginia, the King of Monsters is indeed back…and it looks like the summer has yet another excellent blockbuster coming up…

But yes, the teaser itself gives us very little and yet just enough to whet out appetites for that film.  Besides the beginning dialogue spoken by the leader of a military strike team dropping on what looks to be a Godzilla-wrecked Manhattan, there is no spoken dialogue.  Simply a few quick scenes to be seen flashing by that, without context, can only really be speculated at the meaning of.

Until we got the extended trailer…

Protip, America.  When Heisenberg is telling you that you need to stop what the hell you’re doing, you had best do it.  We get to see more of the film to come, as well as Bryan Cranston bringing some awesome prophet of Doom narrations over scenes of destructions as he warns about humanity’s inevitable return to the Stone Age because of the monster.  We also get the realization that the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests (which inspired the Gojira films to begin with) were not tests at all, but an attempt to kill the creature.

…oh, yes.

And, of course, more of what we got from the trailer.  More almost reveals of Godzilla – the closest full shot we get being of its head as what appears to be bay doors on some sort of vehicle as it lumbers forward to cause more destruction.  Even the dialogue itself within plays up the whole “force of nature” aspect, claiming that humanity’s own belief that it can control nature is entirely wrong, and that maybe it’s been the other way around the whole time.  Really, I like that they’re playing up that angle, because it’s definitely more fitting with what Godzilla is.

When the King of Monsters comes roaring back to theaters on May 16^th, I think we’re all going to have an awesome movie to look forward to.

Godzilla is set to be released on May 16^th, 2014 by Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures, and Toho Co.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

Madcap's Game Reviews - "DmC: Devil May Cry"

Good God, this game…

So many people hate it, and I can understand why.  If you look at the original quadrilogy for Devil May Cry, this game is about as far away from those as you can get…at least in appearance.  In mechanics, it’s not that different from the first four games.  Dante hacks, slashes, and shoots his way through various levels of monsters and mayhem.  The only problems in this stem from…well, Dante…

I get that it’s a reboot.  I get that the development team, Ninja Theory were trying to do something new and original.  I honestly do.  But one of the big problems in this stems from Dante himself.  From how he looks to how he is portrayed, they really took too many steps too far in the wrong direction with him.  In the previous games, Dante was a good-natured half-demon who had taken it upon himself to continue his father Sparda’s mission to rid the world of demons.  He loved a challenge, was snarky and made quips as he did just what he lived for – and he was absolutely crazy about it!

Jesse Pinkman is your savior...bitch!

New Dante, though…he’s just…awful.  For starters, he looks like a meth addict.  Not from the choice of clothing, but just how his face looks.  I know they were going for an “emo” look, but he just looks like a strung out junkie who really is just about as cranky and psychotic as you’d expect.  Unlike the fun-loving and snarky Dante, New Dante is really just a nihilistic asshole.  He doesn’t care about anything beyond women, wine, and song.  And just to demonstrate this point, the opening cinematic details him going to a strip club and taking two strippers back to his trailer – yes, that’s correct, trailer – for a fling before the actual plot picks up.

Because, much like Hal Jordan in the Green Lantern movie, we couldn’t possibly respect Dante as the hero unless he woke up next to a naked hot chick.  Or, in this case, two naked hot chicks.  Suck on that, Hal!

But the plot picks up with the arrival of Kat, Dante’s sidekick/love interest who is able to warn him about a Seeker Demon sent after him literally moments before the thing actually shows up and pulls Dante into “Limbo”.  Not Hell, “Limbo”.  Remember when this series had atmosphere? And…y’know…balls?  I do.

However I won't be giving Ninja Theory grief for this as Capcom told them to get Dante as far away as possible from the classic version of him.  So, Ninja Theory, no grief for you.  Capcom, doing something to appeal to a younger demographic and pissing off your die hard fanbase is incredibly stupid.  Stop doing that.  Also, no, I don't care about the fact that he starts looking like classic Dante by the end.  It's stupid and so are you people.

But regardless, the story begins and Dante begins to learn of his heritage as a nephilim, one of the only two beings who can defeat the legendary demon Mundus.  Oh, that’s right.  Instead of just being a half-demon, all semblance of Dante being somewhat human - something, I remind you, was cited as a good thing even back in Devil May Cry 4 - has been removed thanks to the development team deciding to make him a half-angel, half-demon hybrid.  This would be an interesting change if anything was actually done with it, but nothing ever gets done.  Besides Dante receiving some weaponry that is claimed to be “angelic”, there is no real impact on the character in the least for finding this out.  No actual angels, and possibly not even a God...though considering the guy who thinks he's God, this might not be a terrible thing.

Also, I’d call BS on nephilim being half-angel and half-demon, rather than being half-angel and half-human, but since Darksiders did the same thing I’ll give it a pass.  This once.

It’s breathtakingly stupid, but I’ll give it a pass.

The storyline is mixed for me, though leaning more towards insulting in a big way.  It’s a mixture of the storylines of Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 3 but flipped on its head and given a more Western influence than the Eastern one of the original games.  In some cases, this works well and provides with some interesting situations and developments.

Unfortunately, not often enough to save the whole.  I will say that I enjoy the parodies of both American commercialism and a certain news network that I won’t say by name, but everyone should pretty obviously make out what it’s lampooning.  I do enjoy the idea that Mundus and his demons control the human world through debt.  These are things that make a lot of sense.  After all, if you were going to corrupt the heart of man, why not do so through his vices and the excess created by them?

Angel power ups come from...this place.  Whatever the hell it is...

The problem is, again, that the game essentially boils down beyond the aesthetics to being Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 3 in a mixed pile…and not really being as good as either of those games, just in terms of story.  And, to be fair, not being as good as a Capcom story is like not being very talented at the Yearly Marianas Trench Skydiving Competition, so let that sink in.  Honestly, the real problem comes from the attitude of the new Dante.  Again, he’s a nihilist and a complete and unashamed asshole.  A far cry from the snarky, sometimes smug, but loveable half-demon hunter with a flair for the theatrical of the original four games.  From the beginning, he’s thoroughly unlikeable and just doesn’t care – thereby taking away our ability to care.  And yes, while he does get better later, it doesn’t really seem all that concrete for me.  Even so, Dante is not even close to the worst-treated character from the original games.

That “honor” goes to Vergil.  If there’s any way to more quickly and efficiently not get a character I don’t have a clue what it is.  The game builds up Vergil to be a very reasonable human being (well, half-angel, half-demon being, but tomato tomahto), which he is for a while.  He loves his brother, wants to help humanity fight off the demons, and has set up a terrorist organization known as the Order to do so.  This is all well and good, but then we get a particularly jarring scene where he wants to leave Kat behind to die when the Order’s base is about to be seized.  Following this, we get a scene where he unashamedly shoots Lilith – the concubine of Mundus – through the back and killing her unborn child before putting a bullet in her head as well.

Why are these actions wrong? Because Vergil in the original games had honor.  Even when turned into Nelo Angelo in Devil May Cry, he refused to attack an opponent when their back was turned (something the player could exploit).  But there was a reason behind it, mostly that he held himself up to a higher standard than the demons he was trying to exterminate.  Leaving not only an innocent woman, but a woman that has been helping you (something which Dante rightly calls him out on) and shooting an opponent in the back?  Pretty damn dishonorable, really.  Though it really goes even beyond that.  In Devil May Cry 3, Vergil wanted to take the power of Sparda to help exterminate demons and assure that what happened to his and Dante’s mother, Eva, never happens again.  In fact, her death was a major driving force behind his motivations in that game.

Here, Vergil’s turn to the dark side is actually…done.  I won’t say well done, because classic Vergil was never exactly a nice guy himself.  But there, it at least made some sense for the sudden turn.  New Vergil could have been just an asshole as he’d been in Devil May Cry 3.  A misguided anti-hero, to be sure, but you could at least understand where he was coming from with his idea.  New Vergil, however, goes right from Well Intentioned Extremist to Eviler than Thou as soon as Mundus is pushing up daisies with virtually no warning, leading into a boss battle.  And that’s not even getting into his dishonorable and underhanded actions in the game itself.

Not that I couldn’t see a logical way for this to happen, but it goes way too fast for it to be remotely believable as a shift in character.  Really, for a game where he actually received more development and even something as seemingly simple as more spoken lines, DMC really doesn’t do Vergil any favors.

And then we have Kat.  Kat, a witch-psychic-magical girl with powers as the plot demands who serves as a supporting character and love interest to Dante.  She’s not really memorable, brings out a type of spray that involves squirrel semen as an ingredient (don’t even want to know how she got that) and pretty much is a pair of boobs to have running around during the events.  Out of Dante’s leading ladies, I rate her third behind Trish and Lady, and before Lucia.  Why before Lucia?  Kat didn't make me play the game twice.  Not to say that she's bad per se...just that her purpose is to sway Dante more towards wanting to protect humans and it just kind of falls flat...more because of Dante than her, however.  Had it been classic Dante and this had been a prequel, I could possibly see it working.  But with New Dante? No. Just, no...

Laziest.  Devil Trigger.  Ever.  And a poor attempt to appease the fanbase to boot...

Now for some actually good things I like about this game – the combat.  The box art for the game has a quote from G4 of all critics talking about “…the combat here is as refined and precise as ever.”  Which I think is accurate.  Dante gets an arsenal to rival all he had in the previous games put together, and unlike the classic games, Dante can use and flow between each one with the less delay.  Whereas in other games it required going to a menu to switch out weapons, now all it takes is the click of a trigger or the press of a button.  And the variety is really awesome too.

Dante can also use the chains created by his angelic or demonic weapons to either pull himself up to the level of his enemies or bringing them down to his, which is immensely useful against flying enemies and disarming enemies with shielding.  However, the firearms are a little lacking for me.  In previous games, Dante had variety from his classic Ebony and Ivory to a shotgun to a harpoon to a rocket launcher and beyond. Now…he just has Ebony and Ivory, as well as the classic sawed-off shotgun (always a classic) and a new gun called the “Kablooie”, which attaches little mines to enemies that Dante can then detonate…provided he does actually hit them with it, some enemies just have to deflect them.  Assholes.

But that’s all that DMC:  Devil May Cry boils down to.  Good mechanics, arguably the best that have ever been in a Devil May Cry game; but what keeps it down is the jarringly bad aesthetic choices, a storyline that a ten year old could be critiquing to the point of graduate thesis, and not even a single likeable character.  Even by the end, Dante’s conversion from nihilistic asshole to a defender of humanity isn’t exactly the most well done or even believable – though it’s closer to the original character and a damn shake better than Vergil got in this game, limping off angry and mortally wounded after his battle with Dante for his DLC.

This was just uncalled for, Ninja Theory...

Really, when it comes down to it, why did the franchise need a reboot?  Besides being of a higher difficulty, Devil May Cry 4 wasn’t a horrendous game and left the door open for Devil May Cry 5 easily…so what gives, Capcom?  Didn’t feel like you were fitting in with the young and hip crowd without some Combichrist, Jesse Pinkman without any likeability, and deliberately flipping off people who liked your games before?

What the hell is wrong with you people?

DMC:  Devil May Cry is now available from Capcom and Ninja Theory for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.