Normally, a trilogy of games would be confined to the same console. Keeping an IP to a confined minimum of three is a respectable decision based on maintaining conciseness with a three-act story arc or preserving the natural evolution of a series before it severely starts to lose its initial luster with subsequent entries. It also helps the general cohesion that all three games in a trilogy are rendered with the same game engine and are released around the same time. It worked for Mario on the NES, Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, both Crash Bandicoot and Spyro trilogies on the original PlayStation, etc. Did the Metroid Prime series on the Gamecube tightly wrap up the 3D Metroid subseries in a neat, little three-piece package on Nintendo’s sixth-generation system? Sadly, Retro Studios only managed to eke out two titles on the twee little lunchbox, putting every Metroid fan that purchased a Gamecube at an awkward place of irresolution. It’s not as if Retro Studios failed to meet their deadlines before the Gamecube’s demise, nor did the sixth generation of consoles deviate from this industry-practiced pattern of a well-rounded set of three consecutive mainline games per series. My insightful conspiratorial musing on why Retro Studios deferred the third Metroid Prime game after the Gamecube’s tenure is that a little birdy over at the Nintendo mothership in Japan flew all the way across the pond to inform Retro Studios that a revolution was coming: The Nintendo Revolution (later renamed the Nintendo Wii). Because they received this tidbit of crucial information, Retro Studios shifted their efforts to finishing their final rendering of the Metroid series on the Wii. What made the presence of a Metroid title on Nintendo’s new console so pertinent? In short, the motion controls. Because a large portion of Metroid Prime’s gameplay involves aiming and shooting, Nintendo would be foolish not to capitalize on the notion of a 3D Metroid game where the player can control Samus more intimately than ever before. As thrilling as the notion of waving Samus’s arm cannon around with newfound layers of kineticism is, the inherent novelty of motion controls will strike gamers with a familiar sense of dread. Does Metroid Prime 3: Corruption supersede the negative connotations associated with motion controls and provide us with an exemplary ending to the critically acclaimed 3D Metroid trilogy? Well…

Why does Retro Studios seemingly enjoy making the Metroid fanbase fretful? Gamers everywhere had to install pacemakers after their hearts couldn’t take the nerve-wracking thought of the highly anticipated next Metroid game being a first-person shooter after its prolonged absence. After being relieved at the result of Metroid Prime being a modern masterpiece and the second gaming carrying on the first game’s mantle splendidly, it was apparently time for another onslaught of anxiety-induced heart murmurs. Considering how astounding the finished product of Metroid Prime was, at least everyone could now trust Retro Studios' game developer acumen. Still, the new ideas on display here feel as if gamers are once again witnessing a pack of vultures circling around the Metroid series on the brink of death, praying to God that it will show signs of revitalized vigor so that they will leave and peck at Star Fox or something instead. If motion controls weren’t as maligned in the gaming community as they are, one might chide me for approaching what could be exciting feats of gaming innovation with such abject cynicism. Frankly, the stigma surrounding them is justifiable, which means the vultures can probably break out the fancy china and napkins for a freshly stinking feast. To assuage players of the mental burden revolving around Metroid Prime’s new peripheral, I’m glad to report that the motion controls in Metroid Prime 3 are perfectly competent (for the most part) and do not severely hamper the Metroid Prime experience. However, there is still plenty to find fault with Metroid Prime 3 which has little to nothing to do with the Wii’s primary control gimmick.

My primary gripe with Metroid Prime 3 is how it strips the essentials of Metroid’s rich, intuitive design down to a slurry of standard first-person shooter elements. I should’ve expected something like this considering the third entry to a series is always the point where streamlining occurs to make a series more accessible after the gameplay formula has been tweaked to refinement over the course of two entries. Even though Metroid Prime 3 submits to the third-entry pattern as usual, certain outliers exacerbate the extent of its accessibility. Historically, 2007, the year of Metroid Prime 3’s release, was when the first-person shooter genre hit its commercial stride and began its course as the dominating king of gaming for the duration of the seventh generation. At the same time, Nintendo was trailblazing new ground for widespread accessibility on the Wii to garner an audience totally unfamiliar with the gaming medium. Metroid Prime is both a first-person shooter and a Nintendo-produced title, so the two happenstance sums of its identity, unfortunately, make for a distressing equation in 2007. Both factors make their best efforts to subdue Metroid’s idiosyncrasies that have made the series one of Nintendo’s most influential and acclaimed properties for the sake of garnering a broader audience.

At face value, Metroid Prime 3’s introduction vaguely recalls the one from the first game. Samus arrives on an intergalactic tanker called the GFS Valhalla suspended somewhere in the vast reaches of the cosmos to discuss a matter of utmost importance with the vessel’s decorated commander Admiral Dane. Samus is tasked to cleanse the internal hard drives of a series of organic supercomputers called the “Aurora Units” located all around the galaxy that have been infected by a nasty virus. Apparently, the situation is so dire that it calls for enlisting three other bounty hunters to assist Samus on her mission: the “Silver Surfer on ice” Rundas, the phlegmatic, mech-powered Gohr, and the bouncy, flirty shapeshifter Gandrayda. Seeing Samus work alongside this motley of bounty hunters reminds me of the Superman joke from Seinfeld, stating that the practicality of the Justice League is superfluous because the Man of Steel would never require assistance for any act of heroism. Still, it’s relatively amusing seeing other figures in the Metroid universe of the bounty hunter vocation besides Samus. Despite the number of valiant warriors on deck, the GFS Valhalla still manages to be successfully infiltrated by a fleet of space pirate goons, causing the spaceship to sink into the gravity of a nearby planetoid as its remnants lie dormant forevermore like the frigate that opens the first game. The chaos during the introduction certainly upholds the Metroid standard of hooking the player with that ticking sense of tension.

Suspicions should rise from any Metroid veteran while witnessing Metroid Prime 3’s introduction sequence. I’m breathing a sigh of relief that the game doesn’t revert to modeling itself as a co-op shooter like Halo after seeing Samus fraternizing with the other bounty hunters during the expositional buildup in the GFS Valhalla. Still, where does the game get off uttering so much dialogue? Gamers often criticize 3D Nintendo titles for lacking spoken lines of dialogue, another smirch against the old fuddy-duddys at the company for rejecting gaming modernity. Even if Nintendo ever decides to inject enough voice acting in their IPs to fill a Tennessee Williams play, Metroid should still be the series with the lowest priority for this radical change. The last time I checked, isolation was a key component to Metroid’s tone and atmosphere, and conversing with NPCs on a regular basis is antithetical to conveying that crushing feeling of loneliness. Samus is still roaming around the map(s) without a bounty hunter peer or a diminutive sidekick to keep her company. Still, the former agents of the now-defunct GFS Valhalla insist on signaling in information on Samus’s objectives through some sort of earpiece in her power suit. Sure, transmitting current objectives to Samus and pinpointing them on a map with a question mark was present in the previous two Metroid Prime games, fueling the counterargument that 3D Samus had already tarnished that explorative Metroid meatiness. To think that the majority of Metroid fans hadn’t batted an eye until now! I, along with several other Metroid fans, interpreted the objective signaling from the first two games with a suspension of disbelief. We viewed the suggested trajectory as something for our eyes only, a videogamey attribute like a pause menu or the game over screen. When characters from the game are constantly voicing commands at Samus and directing their orders by uttering Samus’s name, the immersiveness of being surrounded by a looming air of alienation is heavily compromised. Even with streamlining the trajectory to completing an objective, one would think the process would be at least smoother, but I encountered far too many instances where the game would nail down an objective on the map just to send the player back to fetch an upgrade needed to progress that isn’t marked. This does not foster exploration through the player’s intuition, it’s just brazenly misleading.

A considerable aspect of Metroid’s intentional feeling of onset dread through sci-fi seclusion is also compromised with Metroid Prime 3’s environments not coalescing on one planet. As a landmark first for the series, Samus progresses through the game by traveling to and fro from five different planets and or smaller orbital bodies by flying to them with her ship. Did an unpaid intern at Retro Studios come up with this newfangled idea to “innovate” on Metroid’s gameplay and if so, why did the higher-ups listen? It is the dumbest change that Metroid Prime 3 implements by a fair margin, even among plenty of other questionable ones. If the state of abandonment in Metroid doesn’t send pangs of nervous uncertainty down the player’s spines, the flow of progression deeper into the catacombs of uncharted ground will. That is, it would trigger this feeling if Metroid Prime 3’s maps were constructed as a conglomerate of diverse environments connected by branching paths like every other Metroid game. Venturing from the tranquil origin point of her parked ship to an area comparatively harsher and deadlier through inquisitive excavation is a strong element of Metroid’s level progression. Encountering a number of dead ends after completing the assigned objective and resorting to tread back to the ship to change the course directive is as cheap and inorganic as a lawn flamingo. What is this? Ratchet & Clank? Actually, that comparison reminds me of something amusing. I adored Insomniac’s space-age 3D platformer series as a kid and was slightly disappointed while playing the first Metroid Prime that Samus wouldn’t be revving up her ship’s engines to blast off to multiple planets throughout the course of the game like the way that Ratchet & Clank organizes progression. Now that I grasp the slow burn, intricate direction of Metroid, a Metroid game that actually delivers on my initial expectations is a sacrilegious transgression equivalent to spitting in my face. On top of acting as a remote valet, Samus’s ship is also armed to the teeth with missiles and a grapple beam that lifts hefty objects airborne. All Samus’s ship did in every previous Metroid game was twiddle its proverbial thumbs waiting for Samus to finish her mission or to periodically save. Here, it’s Samus’s indentured servant, and calling it to bombard defensive systems with a load of firepower from the skies is another brassy scene in a series that relies on subtleties.

It could be possible that I’m acting a tad overdramatic. Splitting the notable districts of a Metroid Prime world could still function appropriately if the daunting sense of progression is still emulated on each individual planet. I’m sorry to say that Retro’s streamlining seeps deeply into the level design as the planets are divided by individual districts, signified on the map by the ability to dock Samus’s ship. The worst offender of the planetary parting is Bryyo, the first legitimate location in the game whose exploration isn’t halted entirely by the narrative. The first section of the world that Samus arrives at is a sweltering rock with the cosmos as a prominent backdrop. With the exception of the mechanical Chozo technology that intersects the branching paths, the unhinged alien fauna and the wild humidity exude a prehistoric atmosphere. Its beauty is arguable, but one cannot deny its curious aura. After completing the first objective on the planet, Samus scurries back to her ship with the coordinates to Bryyo’s Fiery Airdock, a smoldering furnace whose sulfurous claustrophobia rivals that of Magmoor Caverns with the manmade industrial sterility of the Metroid Laboratory on Phendrana. Remember when every player’s heart sank from the tonal whiplash of stumbling upon the Phendrana laboratory after an hour or two of plodding along the serene, snowy cliffside? That effective sensation could only be achieved through organic progression, and the fact that Bryyo could’ve offered the exact same reaction but ultimately couldn’t due to the artificial way Metroid Prime 3 approaches level progression is such a shame.

Elysia and the Pirate Homeworld aren’t as jaggedly orchestrated as Bryyo. There are plenty of free vacancies for Samus to park her ship on their surfaces, but she isn’t forced to hop between them via flight to visit each section. Elysia implements a tramway system to carry Samus across the various isles suspended in the sky. If you’re adept with your Greek mythology knowledge, I can affirm that Elysia is as immaculate as its name would suggest. The ancient Chozo creatures have crafted a scattered sky metropolis among the clouds, with glimmers of golden light shimmering among the clouds and cracks of lightning booming in the distance to signify the rapturous scope of the setting. Elysia is Cloud City from Star Wars as depicted in a glorious afterlife with sparse architecture. Yet, I believe that Elysia is a gas giant, so the hazy, ethereal effect is actually a noxious element wafting around, still exuding a sense of Metroid danger (literally) in the air. From a conceptual standpoint, Elysia is a highlight section of the game, and I might prefer its angelic serenity to the electric iridescence of the Sanctuary Fortress from the last game. However, Elysia is quite a pain to navigate due to the zigzagging arrays of skylines that Samus must grapple on and ride around. The Pirate Homeworld also affirms all connotations to its name. The place that the series mainstay menaces call home has a hostile glow surrounding it, signifying a prevailing threat of danger at every step. The underground metro transit system is a logical method of transportation for what we can infer is an active civilization, transporting Samus around the three prominent districts in what is the most organic example of traversal in the game. The only aspect about the Pirate Homeworld that bothers me is the escort mission that serves as the area’s climax. What irks me isn’t the AI of the soldiers charging headfirst to their deaths, but the fact that the corrosive acid rain that Samus spent at least three overarching objectives finding a means to become immune from doesn’t phase them in the slightest. So much for continuity? I’m not sure what to make of the base of the federation on Norion or the Metroid-infested remnants of the GFS Valhalla either. Transitory filler for a few story beats, perhaps?

While I explicitly stated at the beginning of this review that Metroid Prime 3’s motion controls weren’t a substantial detractor, their radical implementation after two Metroid Prime games played on a more traditional controller still makes them worth delving into. All in all, Metroid Prime 3’s control scheme isn’t much different than it was with a Gamecube controller. Shooting is still assigned to the primary A button while the B button usually used to execute action still makes Samus leap off the ground. Jumping manages to be smoother due to the player’s trigger finger fitting nicely on the back of the Wiimote. Analog control still fits on the left thumb even if the nub is separated by the additional nunchuck peripheral. The motion aspect is all in the aiming, which is highlighted by a more pronounced reticle. As one would probably guess, the accuracy of Samus’s shots coincides with the player’s ability to line them up with the reticle. Since Metroid Prime is a more combat-intensive Metroid experience, not automatically ensuring a dead-on hit with the targeting system like in the previous games makes the action more challenging and engaging. The grapple gameplay on the other hand, however, is a fickle affair. Swiping the nunchuck half of the controller when using the grapple beam will tear away enemy shields, machine sockets, and chunks of debris. When executed properly, it feels like the player is cracking a whip, but only when the game decides to register a grapple with the adhesive stick instead of a pathetic energy splash. The section on Bryyo where Samus must pull back three levers on a generator was the worst instance of their unresponsiveness, and I’m pretty sure the flying space pirates that were present were laughing at my struggle, which infuriated me to no end.

All other gameplay attributes in Metroid Prime 3 involve little to no motion control, and the total number of them has been reduced or slightly modified. The game forgoes the Super Missile upgrade that blasted the most microscopic of cracked barriers and stubbornly locked doors. The missiles themselves eventually are rendered in the ice variety after a certain point, and they’re mainly used for freezing makeshift ice platforms more than combat. Accumulating missile upgrades are mainly for the occasional door locked behind five or so targets that need to be hit all at once. The trusty scan visor is now accompanied by an X-ray visor and one that calls Samus’s ship for a variety of commands. Every beam Samus acquires replaces the old one as opposed to having it join her arsenal for specific elemental situations. It’s a shame the game can’t be bothered to mix and match the beams anymore, but I guess upgrading to a stronger beam every time makes sense. The modification that upsets me more is making Samus jump in morph ball form without the push of a bomb, for my proficiency with double jumping with bombs that I honed to expertise has been rendered obsolete. One Metroid tradition I’m actually glad that Metroid Prime 3 has forsaken is the need to recollect all of these gadgets and upgrades because it became a tiring tease.

Metroid Prime 3 forces all of Samus’s weapons and other abilities to take a backseat to Phazon: the mechanical and narrative weight of the entire game. Since its heavy lore implications and infamous mine on Tallon IV, the pernicious substance has been edging its way far too close to Samus for comfort. After materializing itself as Samus’s evil, neon blue doppelganger in the second game, Phazon’s growing evolution in the third game has critically struck the bounty hunter. After an encounter with Dark Samus on Norion in her attempt to obliterate the planet with a Phazon meteor called a “Leviathan Seed,” Samus recuperates from her strained victory with a nasty Phazon infection. It now runs rampant in Samus’s bloodstream, and she must release it from her system like any other bodily waste. Expunging the toxin comes in the form of a superweapon, an extension of Samus’s standard beam unleashed by holding down the start button. Samus’s visor becomes engulfed in a hazy static, and the frenzy ceases when the energy bar at the top of the visor is either entirely depleted or taps out by pressing the start button again. If Samus neglects to do either, the bar will turn red and force Samus to drain the Phazon or succumb to the corruption and die bleeding out into her suit. Considering using Phazon proves to be far more effective at dispatching enemies than any regular weapons, one would figure to abuse this mechanic without impunity. However, the caveat is that the Phazon energy coincides with Samus’s health, with a full bar equalling out to one whole energy tank. This balancing act is what makes the Phazon usage the most interesting new mechanic that Metroid Prime 3 offers. Unleashing the ineffable substance is contingent on whether the player can afford to drain their health for their own safety, a gamble based on the player’s defensive skills during combat.

Even though using Phazon comes with dire complications, it seems like the player will be obliged to take the gamble even if they feel tentative about it. Eventually, the enemies become so durable due to the prevailing corruption of Phazon, so the only effective means of wiping them out is to fight fire with fire. Despite the risk, Samus will end up flaunting her internal affliction. In the way Phazon is used, it seems like an illicit drug rather than space-age asbestos. Everyone, even the heroes, is imbibing the stuff to make themselves stronger at the cost of their physical and mental integrity. The most tragic examples of Phazon use are Samus’s bounty hunter chums, who fall the furthest from grace when they get a hint of it. Unlike Samus who can control her inner struggle, the other three bounty hunters go stark raving mad with drug-induced delusion and attempt to sabotage Samus’s mission. Because they are too far gone to save, Samus must euthanize them with the brute force of her arm cannon to prevent further harm to themselves or the fate of the galaxy. While their boss fights on each of the three significant areas all amount to the struggle of keeping the targets aligned with all of them moving erratically, the narrative depth behind these fights obviously bestows some emotional weight. Or, at least that’s what the game is trying to convey. I got the impression that the bounty hunters were the good guys in the introduction, but were these guys Samus’s bosom buddies? Is the fact that Gandrayda cheekily called Samus “Sammy” enough to signify a sense of a personal connection? We aren’t granted enough time to interact with them under normal circumstances to understand the gravity of the scenario. The main bosses that cap off an area’s completion at their Phazon cores prove to be much more of a challenge but did not feel the slightest bit of grief upon slaying these Phazon-riddled giants, so I suppose the emotional effect sort of worked. Ridley is one of these titans in his new “Omega” variant which seems to be the metallic “Meta” coat, but thicker because it’s now protecting a tender wound from when he plummeted down an elevator shaft with Samus on Norion. What exactly is Ridley’s stake in Dark Samus’s nefarious plans to flood the universe with Phazon? Is he simply acting as a cog in this wheel just to spite Samus? We weren’t bereft by Ridley’s absence in the second Metroid Prime, and his inclusion here just feels like an arbitrary lark.

After liberating each world of their Phazon problem, Samus and the federation troopers take the newly acquired Leviathan Battleship to penetrate the barrier surrounding the planet Phaaze: the source planet of the Phazon corruption. Once Samus makes the intrepid plunge downward to the point of no return, something unexpected occurs. You see, at this point in the game, the player shouldn’t fear the damaging effects of Phazon as they did when Samus’s health bar first turned red and the alert levels were critical. In fact, the player should be comfortable using it as an extra boost. Well, the game assumes the player has been fiending Phazon like a crippling addiction because Samus will be in an inescapable state of Phazon frenzy mode for the duration of the finale. From the trek to the center to the two boss fights with Dark Samus and the multi-phased Aurora Unit, the constant state of alert and the threat of that bar filling to its breaking point is genuinely hairraising, more so than any of the series' mainstay escape sequences. In the end, when the federation celebrates Samus’s conquering of Phazon and all it adulterates, the ending I received was one where she returns to Elysia and looks longingly out into the skyscape. I’m told that this scene is her lamenting the deaths of her fallen bounty hunter comrades, which overtly adds more weight to Samus’s grief. Still, I don’t know why it’s specifically where she fought Ghor. Maybe she’s showing some favoritism like Dorothy did for the Scarecrow. Despite all of the effective moments in Metroid Prime 3’s finale, the best part by a fair margin is how the game handles the obligatory fetch quest near the end. To usurp the Leviathan Battleship from the space pirates, Samus needs to recover a code located deep in the broken catacombs of the GFS Valhalla. Restoring the battleship to the state of traversability only requires five of the nine energy cells, and they can be plucked out of the walls at the first point Samus sees them. This is the only clear improvement that Metroid Prime 3 makes to what was already in place for the previous two games, and I am extremely grateful for not having to backtrack, especially in this divergent galaxy.

Upon playing Metroid Prime 3, I’ve concluded that the 3D trilogy should’ve been titled “Metroid Phazon.” Now that the third and final entry in the trilogy shares little in common with the previous two, Phazon is the one constant that unites all three games and gives them the sense of a cohesive trilogy arc. Everything else in Metroid Prime 3 is naturally hard to compare to the previous two Metroid Prime titles, and it’s not only because the player has to contend with flailing Samus’s arm cannon around with a detached, bulky wand to ensure accuracy. For the record, I much prefer how the first two Metroid Prime games approached exploration and level design because it was astounding that a 3D game could effectively emulate a design philosophy that seemed staunchly planted in the 2D space with no legroom to innovate. Metroid Prime 3 looks like a Metroid game but does not act or feel like one, sharing more in common with its first-person shooter contemporaries than any title of its own namesake. I cannot criticize Metroid Prime 3 for what it wasn’t trying to be, which was the first two games only with motion controls. As far as a more action-intensive, space opera Metroid goes, Metroid Prime 3 still succeeds thanks to the Phazon system, and the grapple beam utility to a lesser extent, for offering something interesting while raising Metroid Prime’s skill ceiling. My comparative distaste for Metroid Prime 3 compared to the other two ultimately comes down to a matter of taste. I much prefer Alien to Aliens because I prefer a rich, brooding atmosphere in my horror media, but I can still concede that the latter still achieves something substantial with its different intentions.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Gather around boys and girls, for I am about to regale you with the tale of Okami. Long ago in the antediluvian year of 2006, noble subsidiary developers Clover Studios wished to make another offering to the chief Capcom lords, the kings of their third-party country, and the paramount source of patronage to their artistic endeavors. After pleasing the masses with the vibrant Viewtiful Joe and its sequel, Clover Studios conjured up a new IP called Okami, an action-adventure game in the vein of the 3D Legend of Zelda titles set in classical Japan. Okami upheld the Clover Studios' reputation of divine aesthetic achievement, emulating the watercolor art of the Edo period with scrupulous cel-shading. Other industry vassals also adored Okami for its subversive interpretation of 3D Zelda’s action-adventure tropes that had been ripened by its source through repeated uses across subsequent entries. With all of the commendatory praise that Okami received from those of discerning taste, it seemed like the title was destined to elevate the clergymen of Clover Studios to the ranks of lords in Capcom’s esteemed parliament. To their dismay, Okami did not imprint its intended impact on the public and failed to break even with Capcom’s funding. Sure, everyone who experienced Okami at its release lauded it as vociferously as the critics, but the wide gaming demographic turned a blind eye to it out of sheer apathy. As a result of this unfortunate fluke along with the upset of God Hand the same year, Capcom disbanded Clover Studios due to too many financial flops under its belt. The indignant kings cast their young squire out of their chambers as Clover Studios hung their heads in shame. At least they hadn’t demanded that they’d endure the brunt of the heretic’s fork, for Clover Studios still maintained enough spirit to reform as the successful Platinum Games. I’d hate to refer to the general gaming community as peasants in this light, ye-olde medieval allegory bit, but shame on you if you didn’t even grant Okami a passing glance at the time. We weren’t experiencing an economic recession, nor was there a cataclysmic bout of famine we had to prioritize over purchasing video games. The populous gaming world was itching for the new reign of the then-upcoming Sony console, and an exclusive on the previous one was inherently old hat even at its inception. Now that I think about it, the tale of Okami is actually a tragedy because this game more than deserves more recognition.

By definition, Okami is the epitome of a cult classic video game. It shares this distinction with the likes of EarthBound, Killer7, and every game that Tim Schaffer has ever stamped his name onto. With the examples I’ve given, Okami is at least in good company. Still, Okami sticks out like a sore thumb among these underappreciated gems. To put it bluntly, these games are weird. Despite their exceptional quality, one would not be surprised that their content would alienate the broad gaming demographic and condemn them to a lifetime of cult stardom. Okami is the beautiful, blonde Cleopatra from Freaks being initiated into the club of misfits with the “gooble gobble” ceremonial table banging while everyone can plainly see that she shares no kinship with this marginalized group. I realize that I’m inadvertently being harsh to the bonafide cult classics of gaming and that Okami is described as a cult hit for a clear reason, but Okami sharing the space with all of these eccentric oddities is like sending a man to a maximum-security prison for twenty years among the filthiest scum of society for the crime of mail fraud. What I’m trying to illustrate here is that Okami is such an exceptional title that it transcends that niche cult appeal that inherently restricts the other ones from gaming prime time, which makes the fact that no one paid it any attention at its release all the more tragic. Some attributed Okami’s financial failure to the fact that the game was “too Japanese,” creating an uncomfortable culture shock for young Western audiences. Firstly, they underestimate how enraptured a widespread percentage of young people in the West are with Japanese culture of all kinds, and this is because it is so detached from their waspy American upbringing. Secondly, all of the longstanding titans of the video game world feature at least a pinch of Japanese culture and folklore in the fabric of their foundations (Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, etc.) Surely an unabashed homage to the developer’s collective heritage wouldn’t prove to be too disagreeable for the designated gaming demographic, no? Not only is Okami not off-putting in the slightest, but the game is innovative, immersive, charming, and arguably outclasses many of the 3D Zelda titles that it takes heavy inspiration from.

Given that Okami is an interactive Japanese folktale, the expositional method of introducing the game is displayed as a storied campfire legend, presented with that papery storybook tone portrayed with still images. A hundred years prior to the events of Okami, an evil eight-headed serpent named Orochi cast an oppressive shadow over the cozy little village of Kamiki. From the human sacrifices to the rumors of turning people into stone with just its gaze, Orochi’s presence rendered the poor village folk of Kamiki in a catatonic state of fear. One valiant warrior named Nagi dares to challenge the beastly tyrant when one of Orochi’s sacrificial arrows strikes the home of his love interest Nami, and the duel that ensues sees Nagi’s blade struggling to even make a dent in Orochi’s hardwearing scales. That is, until the mystical white wolf Shiranui barges in to save the exhausted Nagi. By summoning the moon with a thunderous howl, the luminescent power of the celestial body grants Nagi’s blade a gleaming vigor powerful enough to decapitate all eight heads of the foul dragon. To ensure the longevity of the time of peace after Orochi’s defeat, its spirit is immured in Nagi’s blade situated in the ground of the Moon Cave arena where the legendary battle took place. A century later, some prankster unsheathes the sword from its earthly casing and Orochi is once again unleashed onto the world to usher in a new era of darkness. Fortunately, one beacon of hope is that the wolf who aided in vanquishing Orochi in the past also shakes its dirt casing slumber and awakens to nip the new regime of the sinister hydra in the bud. A hundred years may not seem like a long duration of time for this epic tale to be canonized in the archives of ancient legend, but Okami is set in the classical period of Japan when all of the stories of yore were still being written. A century between the origin story and its follow-up is but a hiatus in the ongoing legend.

I could describe Okami’s visuals as gorgeous and breathtaking and call it a day, but even attributing those glowing descriptive words to the game wouldn’t be doing it justice. Instead, I am going to illustrate the true extent of Okami’s radiant presentation. Have you ever been out on the town and unexpectedly caught a glimpse of the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in your entire life? (or man. Sorry if this analogy isn’t all that LGBT+ inclusive) Suddenly, anything else occupying the cognitive drip feed in your brain is blown to the wayside and you find yourself in a dumbfounded daze. Your mind short circuits, your face is beet red, your heart is running a marathon, and your stomach is being throttled by butterflies the size of bricks. Choruses of a string quartet reverberate from no origin point, and a mist of red, white, and indigo colors illuminate the elated, palpable mood. You can’t help but want to stare, but you know that any prolonged visual contact with this woman is as dicey as looking at the sun. Any real human contact with this woman is ill-advised because the Broca’s area of the brain responsible for human speech and articulation will be clouded in an obscuring torrent of static, resulting in a stream of manic gibberish. Or, the newfound passionate fire burning will conjure up the ability to speak French, serenading her with the language of love, albeit haphazardly like Pepe Le Pew. The marvelous aspect about Okami is that it is a video game and not a human woman with thoughts and feelings, so the player is free to ravish its awe-striking aesthetic with hearts in their eyes and their tongues rolled out on the floor. I make no hyperbolic claims when I say that EVERY visual aspect of Okami’s ink-washed world is as stunning as the next. Even the demonic underlings and their murky territories that should be ugly by all logic still managed to steal my breath away. Okami is a dime piece, the it-girl; not just eye-candy, but the inside of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Okami isn’t a beautiful game, it’s THE beautiful game. It’s Scarlett Johansson if she were rendered in Japanese watercolors and wood carving art. Okami makes fellow cel-shaded marvel and possible artistic inspiration The Wind Waker look flat and depleted in comparison.

The world that the cel-shaded watercolors are vividly constructing is the nation of Nippon, otherwise known as Japan during the “classical” era of its history. As one can expect from a game set before the advent of the printing press, the chain of islands off the Pacific coast of Asia is still unadulterated by technological proliferation. This pre-industrial island nation is a naturalistic wonderland, an immaculate environment with only the organic essentials that comprise a landscape. Blooming cherry blossom trees are aligned in unison along the cliff sides, with the brisk wind gently blowing off the pink petals with such grace and coordination that it's like a visual symphony. Hillsides are drenched in the towering downpour of roaring waterfalls, whose running stream continues to rapidly flow in the intersecting river channels. The grass gleans the color green as strikingly as the fields of Ireland, surrounded by a bouquet of pleasant flowers. Any man-made architecture interspersed around the area fulfills the simplest fundamentals of human civilization, from stone towers to the single-room, bamboo huts located in the villages. At least, this is the general aesthetic of the starting district of Eastern Nippon where herbage is abundant. The Western area of Nippon features slightly less vegetation and instead is geographically defined by beachy cliff sides overlooking the ocean and the capital city of Sei’an hosting a grid of more resplendent pavilions fitting for the aristocratic political representatives that reside there. All of the greenery that the horizontal halves of Nippon share is totally deviated from in the blustering snow of Kanui, mirroring the mountainous northern island of Hokkaido. Whether or not the player is treading through the tall grass of the mainland or climbing the wintry peaks of Kanui, any kind of topography on display in Okami is the epitome of the word picturesque. I’d also like to point out that even though the game is relatively restrained by the historical accuracy of a light period piece and cannot include too many outlandish points of interest on the map, Okami’s various hubs are richer and more engaging than Hyrule Field or its branching paths. All Ocarina of Time needed was more elevation and maybe a running brook or two.

At least, these districts of ancient Japan should ideally epitomize the word picturesque under normal circumstances. Because the errant evil of Orochi and his wicked ilk are now mucking about once again, a pernicious haze has cursed every region of Nippon into a gloomy depression. Fear not: for it is the divine mission of Okami’s protagonist to alleviate the noxious presence of the aura and restore balance. Okami’s benevolent savior is Amaterasu, the sun god from Japanese mythology. George Carlin once expressed that his choice of religious deity was the sun, for he could easily prove that the insurmountable star actually existed and that it provided tangible sustenance to humans and the Earth they exist on as opposed to the other supreme beings worshiped in organized religions (although he prayed to Joe Pesci to “get shit done”). I think the developers conveyed the same sentiment here, personifying the gargantuan mass of fire as a magnanimous heroic figure. Amaterasu is the “origin of all that is good and mother to us all,” a common tagline uttered about her that implies that the sun is the true benefactor of the universe. She feeds the animals and clothes the trees with leaves: she’s Mother Teresa with a silky coat of white fur. It was also Clover Studio’s creative decision to depict Amaterasu as a white wolf, for reasons I will delve into in the future. For now, let’s focus on how playing as a four-footed lupus is compared to a bipedal human. Controlling Amaterasu is just as fluid and graceful as the most nimble of video game protagonists, possessing a few distinctive quirks. Unlike Link who can only hop onto a platform or an edge when he reaches the absolute tip of it, the developers have granted Amaterasu the ability to jump manually with one press of a button and stick to the walls for a one-time course correction. Her innate attack is a headbutt, mostly used to break open chests and disturb the peaceful snoozing of various NPCs. While traversing the fields, Amaterasu’s speed accelerates twice if her run isn’t interrupted, either creating a streak of grass and flowers behind her or her swift speed brushing through them to the point of seeing them more clearly. Amaterasu’s movement and physical characterization is surprisingly dynamic in a gaming climate more accustomed to characters balancing themselves with only two feet.

But Amaterasu’s innate movements are not the focal point of discussion concerning her control scheme. The astonishingly unique mechanic in Okami is the use of the Celestial Paintbrush, a godly tool modeled after Amaterasu’s bushy tail dipped in black ink. The paintbrush can be used at any time as long as there is a splash of ink in the tank, holding down the R1 button and skidding the still screen with black paint strokes whenever the square button is also held down. The player can technically imprint any black indentation if it’s a simple scribing and not an illustrious canvas, for the ink supply is not infinite. Plus, the developers rightfully chose to keep this mechanic simple for the actual practicalities of the paintbrush outside of spontaneous artistic expression (except for the one time where the player gets to draw the design for a mask). Another overarching mission parallel to Amaterasu’s goal of revitalizing Nippon is reclaiming all thirteen of the celestial brush techniques learned from the brush gods: deiform creatures that represent a different animal in the Japanese zodiac with the same pale white skin and red tattooed markings as Amaterasu. With these varied techniques, Amaterasu can fully extend her transcendent influence upon all that constitutes the universe. Manipulating the elements of water, fire, electricity, and ice all involve drawing a defined line between the elemental source and what needs to be impacted, usually something contrasting. Changing the way of the wind requires directional coordination with a loop to violently blow gusts of blustering air. Amaterasu’s kryptonite is understandably water, so drawing a circle over any body of water will create lilypad platforms to prevent her health from dwindling from water exposure via swimming. A simple circle/oval around any plant life will make any pitiful and dour, leafless tree or four-leaf clover flourish with bright allure. Adding a stem to that circle creates a cherry bomb that uncovers cracked crevices, and a simple slash will sever. Painting a sun or a crescent moon in the sky will revert the current time of day like the “Sun’s Song” tune from Ocarina of Time. While we’re on the subject, Amaterasu’s mystical apparatus is far more convenient and accessible than Link’s musical instrument which similarly sways the world around him with another artistic medium. Sure, what I can execute with the brush is comparatively limited, but memorizing the various techniques with their elementary etchings and constant usage makes me feel more capable and adept than pressing pause to recite a composite tune only used once or twice. I did, however, become rather cross whenever the game decided my brush strokes didn’t match the intended technique pattern. I’m no Claude Monet, but I thought art was supposed to be subjective! It’s the intent that matters!

A number of the Celestial Brush techniques can also be used while fighting enemies. Okami orchestrates combat like a JRPG would. In the close vicinity of a hovering scroll that emanates an eerie glow, the screen will enclose Amaterasu and create a bounded, annular arena where grunts will be summoned to ambush the white wolf. Okami’s common enemies from the underworld are a more eclectic bunch of demons and imps than the legions of hell from Doom. At first, the mischievous breeds of imps will taunt Amaterasu by slapping their asses at her. Then, the armies will increase their numbers with long-nosed Tengu Demons, ogres, foul avian spirits, elemental wheels with detached sensory body parts as hood ornaments, etc. The potential of what the paintbrush can provide during the skirmishes with these hellion trolls mostly results in liberally using the slash move and planting a cherry bomb at arm’s length to create a devastating impact. Luckily, Amaterasu’s other means of offense are not restricted to butting enemies with her skull. The arcane disc that she carries on her back is not a glowing saddle, but the primary melee weapon used to dispatch the horrid beasts. The “divine instruments” are classified into three distinct categories. Amaterasu’s base instrument which seems to be the only one rendered in the cutscenes is a reflector, which deals a modest amount of damage while also countering damage that the enemies dish out. Rosaries are a chain of sacred beads that are best used at long range, dealing rapid fire short bursts of damage. Lastly, glaives are heavy blades whose attacks can be charged up to really blow chunks out of the demon’s health bars. The player isn’t persuaded to stick with one instrument type to hone their specific properties, for certain enemies are slayed more efficiently with one type of instrument compared to others. With all of the holy devices at hand, the power of the sun will compel these demonic fiends and exorcize them back into the spiritual ether.

Then again, even if Amaterasu is having some complications with eradicating these foes with one instrument, it is unlikely that failure will be an imminent consequence. The one glaringly negative aspect of Okami that is subject to prevalent criticism is that the game is ridiculously easy. 3D Zelda games don’t exactly provide the apex of a video game challenge, but Okami’s general difficulty is brisker than an autumnal breeze in the New England countryside. The imps and demons are not as fierce as their hellish denominations would suggest, with their attack damage equating to a measly little papercut. Amaterasu is more likely to dwindle her health orbs while swimming than she is grappling with these unwashed ghouls. About one-fourth of the way through the game, I noticed that the tiny sliver of health I had lost due to a few honest mistakes in battle hadn’t replenished after it was over, so I figured that every battered bruise was accumulative. This theory was dead and buried once I looked through my inventory and found three types of “holy bone” health restoration items that I unknowingly had in bulk. Soon after, I realized that simply walking up to the luminescent save points automatically restored Amaterasu’s health entirely. I died a whopping total of ZERO times throughout my blind playthrough of Okami, which would be an astounding accomplishment in any other video game. Here, it’s indicative of the game lacking a substantial challenge. The game does grade Amaterasu’s performance in battle with a series of blooming trees, with the pink cherry blossom trees signifying the maximum proficiency in terms of time and damage received. Still, sweating the effort to fulfill the game’s highest standards is not a herculean hurdle as it will likely happen across 70% of random enemy encounters. The paltry reward of extra yen for your troubles is a fittingly lukewarm compensation. The only excuse I can salvage to redeem Okami in this regard is that the patron saint of the sun, Amaterasu, should never befall the embarrassing fate of being trounced by hell’s little henchmen, for that would illustrate an illogical imbalance of power.

As arguable as it is for 3D Zelda, Okami’s strengths pertain more to the puzzle-solving aspects. Puzzle-oriented obstacles are littered all over the game’s central progression route at practically every waking moment. Sure, none of the puzzles in Okami will cause the player to experience an oncoming brain hemorrhage in their attempts to solve them but considering how effortless the combat can be, it’s refreshing to approach another facet of Okami’s gameplay with at least a modicum of honest consideration. A large sum of the puzzles will involve the brush techniques, so the player will become more than accustomed to each one’s special properties to the point of mastery. The one exception is the bullshit Blockhead puzzles whose pinpoint accuracy and randomized patterns must sincerely expect that the player has a camera lodged in their eye socket but fortunately, these outliers are few and far between. The potential of the brush techniques also flourishes with minigames that will pop up occasionally as alternative ways to spur progression. Okami will cast a line with the brush to aid a series of hapless fishermen reeling in some aquatic whoppers in a fishing minigame far less tedious and dull than any time Zelda implemented something like this. Catching a thief in the urban streets of Sei-an always requires sharp reflexes like Amaterasu is in a duel, and the “water lily taxi” features a fine collaboration with both the lily pad and whirlwind techniques. The digging minigame is an underground escort mission where Amaterasu paves a traversable path for a seeing-impaired human (it must be pitch black under the ground) which involves swift reaction times with a myriad of brush techniques to blow away the blocky nuggets of Earth from beneath the surface. The trial and error type of difficulty curve with this minigame is probably the sole example of a sizable strain I experienced while playing Okami.

I suppose Okami has “dungeons” in the same way that Zelda does, but the game approaches these enclosed, labyrinthian mazes a bit differently. Because dungeons are an essential ingredient to an exceptional Zelda adventure, they all take high precedence in the comprehensive arc of the story. Completing any dungeon in a Zelda game will always reward the player with some sort of dazzling Macguffin that is imperative to unlocking more of the plot. The climactic climb of a dungeon will always elicit a proud sense of accomplishment because earning the MacGuffin is an essential point of progression. In Okami, excavating through the structures outside of the Nippon hub is relatively anticlimactic. They are structured similarly with locked doors and multiple floors, but the context behind the need to survey the grounds isn’t always an elevated task. The first dungeon in the depths of the Agata Forest is to find a boy’s lost pet, a piece of an ongoing quest to reunite the dog with the eight other members of his canine squadron. The Water Dragon’s insides involve plucking the fox rods from its fleshy ligaments, a shorter yet more sumptuous version of Jabu Jabu’s belly where the stomach acid is as boldly red as a hearty Shiraz wine. Some dungeons are but fleeting treks that are over as soon as they begin, and some abstain from culminating in fighting a boss to conclude it. Disappointment struck me at first because the elaborate Zelda dungeons are what I yearn for, and these samplers weren’t quite fulfilling my expectations. However, I came to appreciate that this direction gave Okami’s overall progression a smoother ebb and flow. Zelda’s primary points of interest are the dungeons, so any lull in the overworld makes the progression graph resemble a wonky mountain range. In Okami, all story points share a relatively equal standing.

The most surprising facet of Okami that caught me off guard is how humorous it is. One would assume from the elegant, artful aesthetic and old-world atmosphere that Okami would conduct itself with the utmost graceful decorum like a regal princess. It turns out that this royal lady has a layer of immaturity and cackles loudly at fart jokes, or so to speak. In a game where a humble, pristine setting is liable to be swallowed into the looming black abyss at any given moment, Okami’s lighthearted charm stems from its constant streak of levity. As spellbinding as the tale of Nagi defeating Orochi a century ago is in the introduction, the result of passing it down from generation to generation has twisted the triumphant epic into an apocryphal mess. Somewhere along the line, a factor of Orochi’s defeat was rumored to be attributed to the heavy consumption of a golden brand of sake brewed in the meek hamlet of Kamiki. Now that Orochi is rearing its eight ugly heads over the village once again, the modern Kimiki mixologist, Kushi, is brewing up a new batch of sake to sedate the beast with drunken impairment once again. Fellow supporting characters in Okami also tend to flaunt their comical traits. Nagi’s descendant Susano resides in present-day Kamiki touting himself as the greatest warrior alive due to his prestigious lineage. The reality of his status is that he’s a lazy, balding buffoon with a beer (sake?) gut who is seen sleeping around like a hibernating bear during daylight hours. When he’s awake, he clumsily stumbles over himself at every step he takes, and Amaterasu must use the imperceptible power of the Celestial Brush to assist every valiant action of Susano and protect his inflated ego by proxy. Disguised by a makeshift mask with a crude emblem drawn on it, Amaterasu gets to learn about the intricacies of the opposing operation in the Moon Cave and learns that the Imps are nothing but a bunch of excitable spastics who are just as afraid of Orochi, if not even more, as the denizens of Kamiki. I laughed out loud when the chubby bullying victim Urashima was yeeted across the beach by The Orca fish that he was accused of lying about, receiving the most severe lashing from the thing that would’ve saved his dignity in an ironic twist of fate. Think that the majestic, heavenly Amaterasu is immune to all of the silliness? Well, the player can purchase a move at one of the dojos called “Golden Fury” where Okami lifts up her legs and urinates on enemies. Do I really have to elucidate on the similar “Brown Rage” move and what orifice she uses to execute the move? The wacky tone may seem disorienting for the grand spectacle that Okami conveys, but the many moments of mirth are quite refreshing and self-aware. Okami is an interactive fairy tale, and the content in these fictional chronicles admittedly tends to be outlandish as is.

All of the moments and interactions that I’ve mentioned are interspersed throughout the whole game, but I did mention that Okami’s lightheartedness was a constant. Amaterasu is a protagonist who dabbles in upbeat instances with her jovial, doglike expressions, but her lupine form that is confined to barking and howling sort of inhibits a fully comedic personability. The character in Okami that makes levity leak like a sieve is Amaterasu’s right-hand man Issun: her envoy on her heroic quest and the mouthpiece for the communicatively subdued Amaterasu. This nanosized shrimp is essentially the Okami equivalent of one of Link’s partner characters from the 3D Zelda titles, which might reignite a feeling of panic as severe as an acid flashback for many players. Don’t write off Issun just yet, for he is not a headache-inducing nightmare like Navi. Or, at least that’s my perspective because Issun seems to be a contentious character even for those who adore this game. I gather that what makes people tend to dislike Issun is that the hopping bug has a sexual appetite that would make Tommy Lee seem gay, along with a sleazy manner of pronouncing his lasciviousness. He first appeared out of the cleavage of a maiden’s dress and hasn’t really refocused his mind on more enterprising priorities since. He simply cannot refrain from commenting on the buxom bosom of Ms. Rao and not-so-subtly squeezing out innuendos about her bust in casual conversation while bouncing in unison with their gravitational rhythm. I’ve been a Daxter apologist all my life, so I’m quite attuned to randy, pygmy sidekicks who stick to the hero’s shoulders like a hardened booger. I’ll make the same defense for Issun because he’s my favorite character in Okami. His forthright, borderline belligerent responses to the NPCs are always hilariously candid, and always keep the game from sinking into the overwrought soberness of a story with this kind of grand spectacle. Despite his crassness, Issun still carries a strong moral center and is actually a respectable artist who is dedicated to his craft. In the end, when Amaterasu, or “furball” as Issun so flippantly refers to her, must part ways, I felt a sentimental detachment from the hopping little bug. Issun does, however, tend to habitually give unsolicited advice in several situations, and his nagging during a particularly difficult blockhead puzzle made me want to squish him like a grape.

Okami’s story has what I like to refer to as a “Star Wars Original Trilogy arc,” a grand epic divided into thirds whose individual parts can function on their own detached merits separately, but still have a particular narrative tone and placement in the overarching story like the iconic space opera film trilogy. The reason why the first Star Wars feels finalized despite its role as the first in the trilogy is because George Lucas hadn’t anticipated making any sequels. Okami’s first third is to save Kamiki Village from the wrathful omniscience of Orochi, the scenario set up to be the central conflict for the duration of the game. After drinking himself stupid, Orochi is defeated by the efforts of Amaterasu and the bumbling oaf Susano to conclude his dauntless hero arc, with the revelation that he was the one who pulled the Tsukyomi sword in the first place. If the game ended here as the narrative had implied, the game would’ve been unsatisfyingly brief, but capping off the game with the situation that introduced it still would’ve proven to function as a complete narrative package. To my delight, the adventure was far from over.

“The Empire Strikes Back” is situated over yonder in the urban western Nippon where the capital, Sei’an City, is facing a miasma of mist and the hostile rage of the Water Dragon, creating a serious famine and a total plummet in morale. What draws comparisons to the darker sophomore sequel in the Star Wars trilogy is the shocking twist. The source of the plague is on the offshore Oni Island where a civilization of evil demons call home, and the only creature who can penetrate its defenses is the Water Dragon. With the guidance of the priestess Rao, Amaterasu and Issun snatch the source of the Water Dragon’s almighty ability, killing it as a result. This outcome may signal victory, but the Water Dragon is revealed to have been Sei-an’s once benevolent protector from the vile outside influences of Oni Island, who was suffering from a confounding curse. With the city's primary protector ousted at the bottom of the ocean, Rao reveals herself to be the nefarious fox demon Ninetails, whose duplicity has allowed her to conduct a coup of Sei-an City and kill the active Queen Himiko when Amaterasu’s guard is down. While Ninetails is ultimately stopped by Amaterasu when she finds another method of ransacking Oni Island, the shocking murder of Sei-an’s executive figurehead is still a gut punch that elicits more doom and gloom from a society that was already despondent.

Lastly, the “Return of the Jedi” final third takes place on the icy peaks of Kanui. Besides serving as the grand finale of the game, the last third of both Star Wars and Okami clean up the loose ends that the previous two arcs scattered about. Amaterasu collects the last of the thirteen brush techniques, Issun’s lore is expounded on when Amaterasu visits his microcosmic tree stump society of Ponc’tan, and the stakes are raised even higher when the dreadful omen of an eclipse is going to sap Amaterasu’s powers. Like “Return of the Jedi” the last act of Okami features an Ewok filler B plot involving Amaterasu and Issun traveling back in time and reenacting the events of the tale that occurred one hundred years ago with Nagi and Orochi, all to affirm that Amaterasu is indeed the reincarnated form of Shiranui. Couldn’t they see the resemblance beforehand? The Kanui arc features the village of shapeshifting wolves struggling with a harsh blizzard that can only be halted by summoning the molten spewings of a volcano, but it’s the secondary side to the “Ark of Yamato” A single that finalizes the story. Okami’s narrative has often been criticized for being too wonky and uneven, with the proposal that it should’ve ended with defeating Oroshi as the game promised. My rebuttal to this solution is that those who state it overlooked the fact that the Orochi conflict was always minuscule in scale. Orochi’s influence merely oppressed one dinky hamlet on the eastern coast of the country, and the infamous battle between him and Nagi is what put Kamiki as a relevant dot on Nippon’s map. Amaterasu is a God who should supersede the repeated small potatoes prophecy she’s been summoned for to fulfill her potential. When the game raises the scope of the setting and presents a conflict with an unexpected result where the mighty Amaterasu might fail, the story becomes far more interesting.

I mentioned before that I’d divulge why Amaterasu is a wolf, and the reason is that the Kanji character for “wolf” is synonymous with “great god” as a double entendre. As simple and cheeky as this clever developer easter egg is, the subject of why Amaterasu at least couldn’t be a chiseled, human-like God like in Greek or Roman mythology is still subject to discussion. I believe the God Amaterasu couldn’t be human because humans are flawed creatures. We’re insecure, boastful, cowardly, and easily led astray by our temptations: characteristics that can be attributed to the actions of Okami’s various NPC characters like Susano. Take Amaterasu’s rival Waka for example. We don’t want to believe that this pretentious pretty boy (Issun’s words) who butchers the French language is Amaterasu’s empyrean peer because of the humanoid way in which he conducts himself. We see him as unfit to be a messiah of any sort, yet somehow everything he bolstered about his status was true, and he still makes many mistakes like the people his body is emulating. A wolf is a mammal with the same milk of human kindness, but not the complex, frazzled cognitive intricacies that plague the human race. Yami, the root of all evil and the head honcho of every previous boss in the game, is a featureless sphere that is physically removed from any organic life as possible. The contrast between the awe-striking Amaterasu and this barely describable thing at the end showcases a profound connection between animals and man, life on Earth, and the symbiotic, kindred bond that all organic life shares. Now that’s what I call a spiritual awakening.

I still insist on speculating that Okami being released at an inopportune date in gaming’s burgeoning itinerary is the root cause of its lackluster fate because the game sure didn’t falter on quality. Okami is a spectacular reinterpretation of 3D Zelda’s action-adventure foundation that discerns itself from its source with more than a stunningly captivating aesthetic. Admittedly, my Zelda comfort zone associated with meatier dungeons and substantial combat difficulty was not contented in Okami, but the game more than compensates with its own feats of surpassing its source. Okami’s world would beam with effervescence even if it was rendered in muted gray, for the characters' spunk and personality match the shine of the sun. All of the gameplay assets remain useful throughout the game’s duration, and the plot probes something deeper than the traditional hero’s journey from Zelda. In short, Okami is too damn good to leave in the undiscovered realm of obscurity, as hip as its hidden gem status might make it. Who wouldn't like Okami? Now is your chance to rectify the past and play this euphoric, funny, epic, hippy-dippy adventure game.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Despite how groundbreaking the first Resident Evil was in 3D game design and in popularizing the survival horror subgenre, something still wasn’t right about Capcom’s landmark horror creation. But what? What are the early trappings of the Resident Evil franchise endemic to the first release that grants its borderline rough draft reputation? My diagnosis is that all of Resident Evil 1’s elements were a little too uneven. Resident Evil’s series formula is a mix of a moonlit graveyard atmosphere, uncomfortable claustrophobia, and a tongue-in-cheek camp value with a body horror biological infection as its thematic nucleus. All of these attributes were certainly present in the first Resident Evil game, so the game is not so primitive that it predates the established tropes we’ve come to associate with the series. However, like a cocktail, there needs to be a nuanced blend of the ingredients in order to make the drink tasteful, and the first Resident Evil didn’t quite shake and stir them all to coalesced perfection. The atmosphere tottered throughout the Spencer Mansion, and the game added far more than a light splash of campiness. I don’t think I have to remind everyone of that whole “Jill Sandwich” situation because that line seems to stand as the most noteworthy thing from the first game. It should be an indication of how the first Resident Evil has aged, and the disputable king of the horror genre should not take this mockery sitting down. While the first Resident Evil was an early game on the earliest of 3D video game consoles, I do not think the series needed to sit in limbo to finally flourish on an advanced system released subsequently in the near future. The game’s graphics, admittedly as blocky as they were, did not factor into the first game’s follies as much as one would guess. Resident Evil 2, a direct sequel on the same hardware as the first one, proved that all of the other presentational attributes were the valves that needed to be tweaked, and out came one hell of a survival horror experience.

What is the extent of Resident Evil 2’s direct sequel status? Well, the events of Resident Evil 2 occur only two months after those of the first game. The initial source of deviation from the first Resident Evil is that its playable characters have hit the road, both figuratively and literally. Chris and Jill have gone backpacking to Europe to extend their conquest of taking down the international factions of the Umbrella Corporation. The former of the first game’s intrepid zombie hunters apparently forgot to inform any close friends or family members about his overseas adventure like the meathead clod he is, so his little sister Claire is worried sick about him. The anxiety about her older brother’s whereabouts is so severe that Claire rushes to the brink of the new T-Virus zombie contagion running rampant on the streets of Raccoon City, the metropolitan area where the S.T.A.R.S unit was founded. Meanwhile, rookie cop Leon picks the absolute worst day to join the Raccoon City police force, as he is stuck in the city’s precinct as the sole surviving team member of the police department trying to evade his would-be mentors who now want to sink their teeth into his warm flesh. Not even those who joined the Boys in Blue during the LA riots jump-started their careers under circumstances this nonideal. While the new protagonists in this Resident Evil sequel are still stacked with armor and weapons galore, the narrative context of both Leon and Claire being untrained amateurs in the heat of a pandemic evokes a better sense of fear and dread than with the seasoned supersoldiers in the previous game.

The first Resident Evil was rougher than unpaved concrete, so the sequel was ideally ripe and ready to potentially offer a plethora of quality-of-life enhancements like any worthy sequel should. In fact, improving on all of the erroneous aspects of the first Resident Evil’s foundation was so plainly obvious to anyone that not improving upon them would be an act of blatant sabotage on the part of the developers. Fortunately, Capcom did not poke holes in the Resident Evil raft in order to sink it and delivered on what was expected of them. For those of you who were put off by the hazy polygonal blemishes that rendered the visuals of the first game, all Capcom needed was more time with Sony’s debut 3D system to smooth over the jagged edges. The character’s mouths are still unnaturally sewn shut when they talk, but at least the characters uttering the lines of dialogue no longer resemble blurry Stretch Amstrong toys with clothes painted on them. The FMV craze of the mid-90s has thankfully bit the dust, so the cutscenes are now intertwined with the general graphical display. Foregrounds look far more realistic and blend together better for a more cohesive visual look. This improvement is the greatest source of satisfaction for me because the amount of unnaturally bright lights in a number of the Spencer Mansion rooms, namely the foyer, sullied the ominous horror atmosphere at times. Here, all of the foregrounds are lit appropriately throughout. I’m convinced the tedious door-opening sequences that subtly function as loading screens could not have been rectified because it's an intrinsic handicap of the PS1’s hardware, so I’m still stuck suffering through every long-winded door creek to progress through the game. Tank controls persist to further solidify their placement as a mechanical staple of the survival horror genre, and at least the character’s joints have been oiled even if controlling them still carries that clunky robotic stiffness. Other refinements to Resident Evil’s presentation are the zombies flinching upon being shot at like their muscle reflexes haven’t atrophied quite yet, and the pitiful limping the protagonists will do when the zombie bites start to take a toll on their health. These improvements might seem miniscule, but it’s still an integral fraction of Resident Evil 2’s strive for realism. Or, at least, a reasonable standard of realism for an early 3D game on the PS1, in which RE2 certainly surpasses the first entry on that merit. As for the voice acting, it’s not exactly on par with a Hollywood animated feature or anything, but the pronounced emotion in the dialogue with fewer cringe-inducing lines in the script can ensure that the player will be laughing less often at a game that is intended to make them scream (or at least startle them).

But do all of these refined touches make the Resident Evil experience a more frightening one? The consistent array of dimly lit corridors evokes a fittingly eerie aura, but I caught myself basking in the spooky glow rather than being in a constant state of tension. Really, I believe everyone understands that the monsters that roam around the horrid halls are what cause feelings of terror in anyone playing Resident Evil. Zombies are the supernatural haunt synonymous with the series, but are they really all that terrifying? Their abundant numbers in close quarters and the methods of strategy in the game implore the player to consider conserving the scant resources almost making facing them like a game of chess, and they’re the pawns to navigate around on the board. Other enemy types in the first game were momentary fodder like the crows and wasps, with a few zombie dogs sprinkled in to increase the beat of Chris or Jill’s pulses. RE2 introduces a relatively common enemy type that is liable to trigger a panic attack: the infamous lickers. All previous Resident Evil enemies resemble creatures with realistic biology, albeit in mangled and deranged interpretations, but the lickers are borderline Lovecraftian. They look as if a scientist merged their human form with a frog (a Brundlefrog) and the process removed their skin, pronouncing the muscular and nervous systems of the body and amplifying the physical brain matter. The adhesive properties of their webbed feet allow them to climb and stick to walls and ceilings, which is where Leon shockingly encounters the first one of many early on in the game. From this angle, they can lash their jump rope-length tongues at Leon and Claire like a whip, and tear them to shreds with their webbed claws when situated on the ground floor. The lethargic hobbling of the zombies allows them to make a strategized decision on whether or not to engage with them, but the swift rabidness of the lickers will almost trigger an involuntary reaction to fire their weapons out of fright. Capcom has crafted a Resident Evil monster worthy of soiling one’s pants over, and they crawl all over the game’s setting.

Given that Leon and Claire are trapped in the police precinct, the main police station building serves as the primary setting. Raccoon City’s domain of righteous order is the Spencer Mansion equivalent for RE2, a layered superstructure whose locked rooms are to be unraveled as the player progresses through its vacant hallways. While the police station is atmospherically consistent and more accessibly designed than the last major enclosed setting, it’s ultimately inferior to the Spencer Mansion on a conceptual level. A decrepit old mansion is the perfect place for a horror game that revels in widespread quasi non-linearity and utility-gated progression. The Spencer Mansion is such an ideal setting that the series teetered on peaking with it at the series debut, so any sequel would have to fire on all cylinders to meet it at eye level. Sadly, I don’t think the police station accomplishes this. Something about the inherent domesticity of this public building doesn’t exude the same bewitching ambiance. Only a few days prior to the outbreak, this was a place of business operated by a group of average joes, shoveling a truckload of coffee and donuts in and out of the place as frequently as the flow of paperwork. The prevailing tone of the empty facility is a dismal one, lamenting the collapse of organized justice with the shocking sense of how sudden it happened. It simply doesn’t make sense for this establishment to mirror the design of the private Spencer Mansion estate but oh boy, do the developers attempt to turn this molehill into a mountain. According to lore pieces, the building was once an extravagant art exhibit, explaining the ostentatious decor and winding, multistoried design. Still, why does the building retain the architectural qualities of a museum years after it shifted into something completely different? Wouldn’t the stained glass windows and goddess statue in the foyer be a little distracting? I’m surprised the latter of the police station setpieces isn’t covered in beads. The game could arguably still skate by under the pretense that Leon and Claire are unfamiliar with the station’s layout, but it can never match the esotericism of excavating a Gothic manor. Besides finding the poker keys and chess piece plugs, the police station also doesn’t offer too many engaging puzzles that inhibit progression either.

Everything else in Resident Evil 2 gets a little complicated. The player still has the choice between two characters with their own unique attributes, but the decision of which character to play affects a grander scheme of things rather than a relative difficulty curve and a different arsenal. RE2 is divided into two discs and depending on who the player picks to play on the first one, the second campaign on the next disc will involve the shelved other character. Leon or Claire will not swap the onus of chief zombie slayer due to one’s fatal demise or throwing in the towel; rather, the opposite character’s campaign is a “B scenario” that occurs in conjunction with the events that took place in the previous story. It rounds out the entirety of RE2’s narrative with a Rashomon-esque double perspective, but the results will still vary beyond flipping the two sides of the RE2 coin. The events of Claire’s story will be altered if completed second, and vice versa with Leon’s. Apparently, the canon route is Claire’s campaign first with Leon’s following soon after. So, of course, my lack of intuition led me to do the opposite. Even though it’s not the “proper” order of the RE2 narrative, it's the only sequence of events I can use to divulge the game’s story, so shoot me.

I did not favor Leon over Claire because of our mutual Y chromosome, nor did I assume that he'd be more capable against the zombie outbreak because he possesses this stark male signifier. I chose Leon because growing up in the 2000s one gaming generation after RE2’s release, he was The Fonz of Resident Evil characters thanks to his successive protagonist role in a future title of the series. I was interested in seeing Leon’s humble origins as a junior varsity monster killer, a leopard before he got his spots scenario. Or, in this context, the time before Mr. Cool guy who suplexes mutants got his groove. In Resident Evil 2, it amuses me that Leon is a bit of a dork, and his police uniform is but a small factor in his dorkiness. Or, at least this is the case for the actual physical blue garb he wears. A bright-eyed Leon S. Kennedy exemplifies all that the badge stands for, or at least it does for the endearingly naive types. Leon’s soul and sense of justice have not been adulterated by corruption because it’s his first rodeo as an officer, so he approaches the unfortunate situation he’s been catapulted into with valor and conviction. Frankly, it’s adorable. Leon’s unique weapons in his arsenal are a shotgun and a magnum, two heavy-duty firearms from the first game that will effectively blow through the undead as efficiently as they always have. Somehow, I think Leon’s determination and police training have made him well-equipped for this dilemma, for his campaign is actually the smoother of the two.

I could’ve begun RE2 with Claire under the assumption that her campaign would be the easier one because this was the case for Jill in the first game. Capcom evidently changed their chauvinistic ways and proved me dead wrong. Considering that Claire has no combat training besides what rubs off from her brother, I should’ve known that she’d be a delicate little flower. To me, it seems sensible to play her campaign after becoming acclimated to the game through Leon’s, for she faces the brunt of the T-Virus contagion and its horrific spawn. Do not make the same mistake as I did and take the machine gun as Leon, thinking that it would be of no consequence for Claire. Even if Leon fails to consider Claire’s livelihood, she’s still armed with the high-caliber explosive weapons from the first game such as the grenade launcher along with the Spark Shot pistol to subdue the monsters. All these perks barely make a difference when an indestructible, trenchcoat-wearing enemy referred to as “Mr. X” decides to wreak havoc solely in Claire’s campaign, and the lighter and frailer of the two playable protagonists is the one to contend with his hulking invincibility, naturally. There is nothing wrong with offering a substantial challenge, but I shudder to think about the amount of people who unknowingly chose Claire first. All I’m saying is to let the buyer beware.

Besides the varying differences in weapons and barrage of monsters, the supporting characters unique to both campaigns are the greatest source of divergence in RE2’s narrative. In Leon’s campaign, he encounters Ada Wong, the seductive spy who is looking for her boyfriend John, who is a chief researcher for an Umbrella laboratory. When Leon descends down to the sewers beneath the police station, Leon and Ada work side by side together to find her estranged lover with a budding sexual tension between them. At times, the player gets the chance to play as Ada, who is armed with a pistol and a modest amount of bullet rounds to aid her in the brief section in the sewer plant. Mirroring the same accompaniment on the other side of the RE2 spectrum is Sherry Birkin, a little towheaded girl whom Claire feels obligated to help find sanctuary away from the zombie scourge. Sherry runs solo in the same section as Ada but must scurry away from the infected undead that roam about for she is but an unarmed prepubescent girl who is half their size. Her dynamic with Claire is a sisterly one where the older Claire will fend off all that could harm Sherry with strong opposition. The character that converges with both stories when the two (four) characters reach the underground laboratory is Annette Birkin, a virologist working for Umbrella and Sherry’s mother. She’s rather truculent with Leon and Ada as she suspects the latter is a spy and attempts to quash her meddling with Umbrella operations by shooting her dead. With Sherry and Claire, on the other hand, she worries greatly for her daughter’s well-being and begs Claire to find her daughter a vaccine on the likelihood that she’s been infected with the virus her husband formulated. I was surprised to see a lovingly maternal side of Annette after acting psychotic in Leon’s story. RE2 takes the concept of supporting characters for each playable character seen in the first game. It fleshes out their roles through more direct interactivity, something that these secondary roles need in order to have more relevance to the narrative.

After traversing through the police station, I was beginning to fret that RE2 omitted boss battles completely. The gargantuan animals that served as roadblocks in the Spencer Mansion were only slightly perturbing, but I still appreciated that something served as an incentive to conserve my ammunition. Why would you consider avoiding all the zombies if not for the possibility of facing off against a durable beast on the horizon? Thankfully, my concerns were quelled in the latter half of Leon’s campaign, and RE2 has two bosses. Well, one mutant creature in the sewers and once recurring one has a significant role in the narrative. William Birkin: father of Sherry, loving husband to Anette, and head researcher for the T-Virus, has seen better days. While he played an integral role in the contagion that spurred the zombie pandemonium, his claim to fame is the “G” Virus, an even more potent biological weapon that Umbrella is foolishly trying to cultivate because they learned nothing from their previous mistakes. Before the evil corporation usurped his work, William injected himself with his creation which caused a striking mutation to the point of an unrecognizable superbeast. His first encounter where he summons his parasitic bugs to infest the investigative journalist, Ben, resulting in the creepy crawlies bursting through his chest like a face hugger from Alien, is the most horrific display of gore seen in the series thus far. He presents himself as a formidable threat capable of great harm, making him a horrifying beast. William is a burly foe that requires relinquishing every bullet and explosive our heroes have while he’s still relatively humanlike, but his final form is so ghastly that it would make HP Lovecraft beam with pride. William’s final form can only be unlocked if the player finishes both Leon and Claire’s campaigns, and the promise of a gruesome and sad character arc with William should be enough reason to commit to the time.

Resident Evil 2 is one game split in two, and even that logical statement could be fervently argued against. Many could voice the opinion that the two halves of Leon and Claire could’ve been melded together and that retreading the same areas as either character for a second time is shameless padding. What these people fail to realize is that Capcom already did this with Chris and Jill in the first game, with the same slight deviations in character build and sequential progression beats. The difference is that there was no real motive to play as either Jill or Chris after playing as the one of first choosing, and maybe the first game would’ve benefited from a second playthrough after all. Admittedly, I did grow tired of the police precinct setting and its lackluster puzzles, but I grew to appreciate Leon’s campaign I completed first after finishing Claire’s. The underwhelmed feeling that resonated with me after only one campaign was relieved because the game exfoliated through Claire’s differing perspective, even if it was through the same areas. The decision turned out to be the ideal method of letting Resident Evil 2 blossom, and it resulted in something grander than the first game by default. Even if Resident Evil 2 drags, one still can't deny its objective quality compared to the first game. With better focus, presentation, gameplay, and a more ambitious narrative, Resident Evil 2 is finally where gaming’s most celebrated survival horror franchise earned its title.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Oh, how I loathe The Last of Us. Harsh words for a game that I just played for the first time ever which is also considered to be a shining exemplar for the gaming medium, I realize, but I stand firmly on my negative stance with full conviction. I am of the vocal minority of gamers who left The Last of Us feeling cold, distant, and underwhelmed; followed up by pangs of disgust and confusion at the fact that the general critical consensus did not vindicate our lukewarm experience. It’s not a matter of failing to understand the appeal of The Last of Us because the game is a post-modern slew of radical innovations in the gaming narrative. We fully understand why The Last of Us is as well-regarded as it is, and the thought of its sweeping acclaim makes our collective blood boil over and bubble like molten lava. However, I need to clarify that the animosity for The Last of Us does not stem from the public blindly celebrating an objectively flawed game. I fully trusted that The Last of Us was a competent and agreeable experience before playing it because the game’s industry wouldn’t be showering it with almost unanimous accolades if it faltered on that aspect. I don’t harbor contempt for The Last of Us because the game is a disastrous abomination in interactive media, but for how its massive success and messianic status are indicative of a prevailing issue in the modern gaming climate.

Why does this so-called “masterpiece” that has received an outstanding flux of adulation over the past decade inspire such passionate feelings of rancor in me? Well, I don’t mean to come off like a snob (as usual), but I’m a gamer who likes playing video games. I’ve expressed my relative discontent with the seventh generation of gaming from roughly 2007-2013 countless times before, for it's an era synonymous with video games using their graphical and mechanical advancements to compete with the film industry. Many of the era-defining titles during this generation trimmed that dividing line between the two mediums to the point of hanging by a flimsy little thread of discernibility. It almost seemed like gaming was gallivanting around in film’s skin, reaping the praises the older visual medium was once and should ideally still be garnering until gaming shut film out of existence like a shapeshifting cosmic entity. The film industry theoretically shouldn’t worry about gaming’s growing ubiquity in the entertainment landscape, for both mediums satisfy two different artistic itches with their distinct meritorious strengths. However, upon seeing the success of The Last of Us and other games of its ilk that have achieved great praise for emulating the film’s cinematic properties, I wouldn’t blame the film industry for raising a concerned, suspicious eyebrow one bit. Sony subsidiary developer Naughty Dog, a studio whose previous works molded my love for the gaming medium (Jak and Daxter plus Crash Bandicoot to a lesser extent), redefined themselves as trailblazers in developing some of the generation’s most prestigious cinematic video games of that generation. Their Uncharted trilogy on the PS3 came first and was (unjustly) showered with high praise, but their 2013 game The Last of Us is a monolithic behemoth of laudation that transcends any and all credit given to any Uncharted title. My discrepancies pertaining to these cinematic video games are that they are like ordering a steak well done; it’s still the same delicious piece of meat, but all of the substantial flavor and fleshy texture has been sizzled to oblivion. Why not eat something else at that point? I don’t judge someone if they want to order their steak in this fashion, but grievances arise when the majority of people claim that well-done steaks are the best way to cook a cow knowing full well they’ve never bothered to try a bloodier strip out of the fear of contracting E. Coli and other food-related bacterial infections. What exacerbates my irritation is when the cultural mandarins feed off the sentiments of public opinion and meld the overrated title into the video game canon with the all-time greats that are more exemplary of the medium’s actual merits. Either that or the success of The Last of Us affirms my theory that mainstream video game journalists are nothing but glorified tech reviewers, approaching games like pieces of hardware and assessing them on their objective performance. My (hypothetical) Apple Watch should operate adequately as advertised, but no stronger emotions other than content satisfaction will resonate with me after I’m finished toying with it for the day, unlike a work of art. Actually, emotion is the crux of substance for The Last of Us, the facet of its cinematic performance that resonated with everyone who praised it and what surprisingly struck a chord with me once I gave The Last of Us a fighting chance.

At least The Last of Us knows what it’s doing from a cinematic standpoint, and this is evident from the game’s prologue. The events that promptly establish the conflict and tone for the duration of the game use an “adrenaline hook,” a term of my own creation defined by reeling the viewer into the story with high-stakes action and suspense. The atmosphere is content in the Joel Miller household located in the rural outskirts of Austin, Texas, where his adolescent daughter, Sarah, gifts him a watch for his birthday, and he banters with her on how she scrounged up enough money to afford it. This humdrum tranquility is forever upset when Sarah gets a call from her uncle Tommy, Joe’s younger brother, who panics over the phone as if the world is about to end. Little do these characters know, his frantic mood is actually a precedent for the duration of the game. Puffy spores from mutated Cordyceps plants have sprouted all over the nation, and the malicious effects of the airborne toxin they excrete have transformed a substantial percentage of the population into wild, inhuman monsters who scream and growl as they scratch and bite their victims in a savage frenzy. The infection will also spread to those who have sustained physical lacerations from one of the monsters, which means that the premise of The Last of Us is Zombie Movie 101. Joel’s process of getting the hell out of dodge with his brother and daughter goes awry due to the chaos ensuing from the zombie pandemic all around, so they are forced to escape the plague on foot. This slower method doesn’t work either as Joel is accosted by a military SWAT member on the charge against the outbreak, opening fire on Joel and Sarah on orders from a higher-up. Tommy subdues the soldier and Joel is unscathed, but Sarah is fatally shot and dies in Joel’s crestfallen arms. We’ve seen this zombie outbreak premise catalyzed in this way several times before, especially in the era of the cultural zombie craze when The Last of Us was released. Still, the pacing that coincides with the dichotomy of normal peace with the explosion of zombie pandemonium makes the tragedy that ensues an effective gut punch.

We do not witness how Joel grieves with the enormous loss of his only child, for the screen turns black and transports us twenty years later after that fateful night. Joel is only marginally greyer, but his demeanor along with the lengthy timespan that has passed suggests that he’s far more grizzled. A facet of The Last of Us’s zombie outbreak premise is the grim, irrevocable tone of such an epidemic. The state of the world has only gotten worse since it began two decades prior, and now it is in apocalyptic ruin. Buildings erected to serve as mankind’s architectural backbone are now ghosts of the society they were meant to support, and now they’re lofty equipment pieces of a dilapidated playground where the remaining humans play deadly games of hide and go seek for survival. The roads are fractured by gaping fault lines and finding a car whose battery and engine haven’t been frazzled to the point of no return is like finding a unicorn. The parasitic spores have crumbled society as drastically as a collapsed Jenga tower, and the damage done is impossible to amend. The untouched wilderness in every cityscape's background is beautiful, but the sight is ultimately bogged down by the urban decay in the foreground. It would be an awe-striking scene where one could bask in the still melancholy if not for the constant screeches of the infected and the whizzing bullets from the military. I usually chastise the visual murkiness in Triple-A titles of the seventh generation, but The Last of Us is one exception where a depressed tint is apropos to the depleted landscape.

The epidemic has vastly spread throughout the world over the two-decade period, and so has our protagonist Joel. This statement is affirmed by the fact that Joel now resides thirty hours away from his hometown of Austin to Boston, or at least the remnants of the New England metropolis as it’s just as destitute as anywhere else in the country. We have no idea how Joel has survived for twenty years or how he ended up on the opposite latitudinal end of the USA, but the conversations between him and a woman he’s affiliated with named Tess grant us some context of his current situation. Joel is now a smuggler who sneaks in contraband and a bunch of other elicit objects of interest past military-sanctioned lines to trade for even more risque rewards. Their rightful shipment of guns has not been properly transmitted to them for compensation, so Joel and Tess venture outward to get to the bottom of this mishap.

This early section with Tess is the game’s tutorial mode where the player should become acclimated to Joel’s gameplay mechanics, and one of them is crafting. Because the capitalist economy collapsed when the outbreak escalated by proxy, obtaining goods and services is no longer a one-stop shop convenience. Everything in this post-apocalyptic world is scant, which means that it is wise to conserve every resource that Joel scrounges up from off the ground. Ammunition for the various firearms in Joel’s arsenal is a given, but vacant households and former civic centers also have nifty tools strewn about that are essential to any emergency survival scenario. Despite the usefulness on their own merits, it’s the makeshift mingling of these items via the crafting menu that is going to prove vital to Joel’s well-being. For example, the combination of duct tape and one leg of a pair of scissors melds together to form a shiv, which can be used to force open locked doors and quickly dispatch an enemy from behind. Certain chemical properties of sugar mixed with packs of fertilizer combine to create smoke bombs, and Joel can stick a blade or two to that concoction which makes a deadly nail bomb. Alcohol, rags, and a strip of tape can craft Molotov cocktails, but those same materials are also needed to make medkits. Joel will occasionally find these to patch up his wounds on the field but does not rely on seeking them out and focusing on burning the scourge to a crisp in a glassy, fiery inferno. Materials for all of these tools are conspicuously found if the player even does a minimal amount of excavation off the beaten path, so Joel should never be unprepared to deal with the legions of enemies the apocalypse has created. It also helps that Joel comes about an eclectic smattering of firearms on his journey, ranging from the handgun and shotgun staples to a flamethrower and even a bow and arrow.

Of course, the amount of ammunition for any of Joel’s guns rarely surpasses single-digit quantities, so the wisest approach is to dispatch enemies by being sneaky. What I didn’t expect from The Last of Us was the emphasis on stealth and survival gameplay. Similarly to Uncharted, factions of enemies will be crowded around a relatively open space on the lookout for any undesirables, namely the protagonist. Obviously, these armed men will proceed to open fire on Joel if they catch a glimpse of him, and the game will then transition into a cover-based third-person shooter. Unlike Nathan Drake who exists in a Naughty Dog depiction of real-world modernity (albeit as a rambunctious action-adventure flick) where ammo is plentiful, the deprived Joel must make every bullet count, and the sparse amount of them is sometimes not enough firepower. This is probably because I set the game to “hard” difficulty after learning from playing four Uncharted games that Naughty Dog downscales the “normal” difficulty for noobs, but shooting a man between the eyes will somehow not stop him dead in his tracks. Therefore, using the element of surprise is paramount to survival. Years of evading the horrors of the post-apocalypse have sharpened Joel’s senses to the point of having sonar-like bat hearing, which is displayed as the player seeing silhouettes of enemies walking about while being obscured behind a wall. Using this to his advantage, Joel can tiptoe up to his target and either snap their necks in a sleeper hold or quickly stab them in the neck with a shiv like disposing of a prison snitch. It should be noted that humans and infected should be approached differently, as humans have a keener sense of sight while the infected rely mostly on sound. The creepy, ravenous “clickers” and the disgusting, apex-of-the-infection “bloaters” have been rendered completely blind by their advanced affliction, so Joel can quietly waltz past them and save his resources for more observant foes. It should also be noted that Joel is rather vulnerable when he’s in the spotlight of conflict because his aim with any gun is shakier than a blender and he reloads his gun like old people fuck. On the spectrum of the survival horror protagonist, from the kickass boulder punchers from Resident Evil to the hapless schmucks from Silent Hill, Joel ranks somewhere in the middle. Because Joel’s battle prowess is confined by inherently human capabilities, it’s best to put some consideration to any conflict.

For the rinse-and-repeat nature of the enemy encounters, they are all refreshing juxtaposed with the other gameplay mechanics on the field. I’m not implying that the repetitive combat becomes invigorating once again after a prolonged break, but only because traveling across the shattered American plains is mind-numbing. Without the breaks of action in between, I’d definitively umbrella The Last of Us in the category of “walking simulator” because that's a clear estimation of the gameplay. The Last of Us forgoes the parkour platforming found in Uncharted, for Joel is an emaciated middle-aged man with crippling joint pains. Puzzles are also omitted because they wouldn’t fit the rationale of the once-bustling city streets as opposed to encountering these thinking challenges while spelunking in the arcane crypts as Nathan Drake. Occasionally, Joel will need to cross a gap or reach a high ledge which requires some semblance of thought to proceed, but it simply boils down to grabbing a nearby ladder or a portable dumpster as a solution to every obstacle. Sounds riveting, doesn’t it? Truthfully, if these sections required any more effort from the player, the game would probably risk alienating the broad audience it desperately wants to cater to. However, I still fail to understand why anyone, experienced with video games or not, would be enthralled by gameplay so effortlessly simplistic. For a gamer, it’s naturally equivalent to watching grass grow but even for someone who doesn’t normally play video games who ideally wouldn’t be turned off by the simplicity, why wouldn’t they just watch a film? Why would they seek an alternative visual medium if the differences are only minimal? Is the notion of an interactive film really that novel? The Last of Us skates by offering only the absolute bare essentials of gameplay mechanics, and it’s the source of my core discrepancy with the game’s overwhelming glory. One could argue that the hiking trail that is The Last of Us’s gameplay is intentionally serene and the player is intended to immerse themselves in the tranquility but if this were the case, why would the game constantly interrupt that stillness with barrages of monsters and military men? Naughty Dog has shaved the gameplay beard down to total nakedness, and the stubbles it has left behind hardly constitute facial hair.

Actually, I have a definitive explanation as to why The Last of Us gets away with its facile gameplay mechanics, and the reason is why I came to tolerate a game where all I was accomplishing was pressing the analog stick upward with little instances of deviation. While I was moving Joel around the American wasteland, what kept me from utter boredom was the character interactions that were progressing The Last of Us’s narrative. My precognition on The Last of Us’s mechanics was affirmed to be correct, but what I didn’t count on was being enraptured by the story that the gameplay was flimsily supporting. With this, I understood the appeal of The Last of Us and why it is widely commended.

The overarching task assigned to Joe on the streets of Boston is to trade a special package to the Firefly resistance group for the misplaced shipment of guns. What is this vital piece of contraband? A fourteen-year-old girl named Ellie, who is well acquainted with Marlene, the commander in chief of the bug-themed militia Joel and Tess are trying to appease. What is so special about this adolescent girl? Well, she’s been bitten by an infected and hasn’t succumbed to the damning effects usually associated with spreading a biological scourge and only sustains a ghastly rash on her right arm. Marlene believes that her incredible immunity is the key to discovering a vaccine for the virus, so it is of great importance that Joel escorts her to the headquarters of her group unscathed to research her and conduct surgery if needed. The only problem is that the Firefly’s place of operations is at least two time zones away from Boston, so Joel must acclimatize himself to having a teenage girl in close proximity to him for two thousand miles, traveling mostly on foot. Do not fret, for Marlene dumping Ellie off on Joel is not an instance of the game pulling the comfortable wool rug out from under the player, igniting a harrowing escort mission like the second half of Silent Hill 4. Ellie was born into societal devastation and madness, so she’s perfectly accustomed to dealing with the products of the plague despite her age. She’s invulnerable to all enemy fire and feral zombie gnashing, and even chips in with giving Joel items and ammunition from time to time.

While Ellie does not annoy or inconvenience the player at any point, the same cannot be said for Joel. He’s not all that enthralled by the prospect of delivering this girl to the other side of the country via a process that’s slower than snail mail, as one could reasonably imagine. Given that he’s an all-American, red-blooded male cut from the same masculine cloth as Ron Swanson and she’s a vulgar and excitable young lady who is young enough to be his daughter and then some, their personalities don’t quite mesh. However, this dichotomy between them is the basis of their chemistry as characters. Joel is as stern with Ellie as he would be with Sarah in this situation, although it’s difficult to say whether or not Sarah would’ve been as defiant with Joel’s wishes and demands as Ellie is. One altercation between them gets so heated that Joel has to explicitly state that Ellie is not his daughter, alarming the player into thinking that Joel would commit a heinous act against Ellie as opposed to a young girl he has an unconditional love for. When they bicker, the dramatic tension is palpable, but it just makes the lighthearted moments between them like driving out of Boston in a car obtained from the insufferably churlish smuggler Bill and Ellie curiously asking Joel about the times before the epidemic all the sweeter. They’ve got a long way to go together, so they’ve got to get along at some points to survive not only the hazards of the fallout but each other as well. Also, the voice actors deliver Joel and Ellie’s lines fabulously.

Eventually, as one would anticipate from Joel and Ellie’s relationship dynamic, she starts becoming his surrogate Sarah. After the aforementioned tense pivotal scene, Joel ultimately doesn’t dump Ellie off as his brother Tommy’s responsibility and decides to finish what he started. Once he makes this decision, his rapport with Ellie improves as she no longer is treated like an annoying burden. While their relationship has delightfully improved, Joel getting impaled on a piece of fallen railing after a scuffle on the campus of the fictional University of Eastern Colorado seems like a turning point where Joel has been prematurely erased from the Ellie escapade equation. This change seems dreadfully concrete when the “Winter” chapter begins and Ellie is hunting for food in a snowy lakeshore forest by herself. During this task, she comes across two scavengers named David and James and fights off a hoard of infected with the former of the two men. While David initially seems friendly like he’s going to jump in Joel’s shoes as Ellie’s protector, he starts antagonizing Ellie once he reveals himself to be the leader of the group that attacked her and Joel at the university and he’s out for retribution against them. His group is also cannibals, which heightens the suspense that Ellie is in grave danger. Fortunately for Ellie and the narrative, Joel is resting his stitched wounds on a mattress on the cold basement floor of a safe house. Even though his condition is bad, the notion that Ellie is in danger prompts him to spring into action in the frigid haze of a Colorado winter with David’s rabid cannibal goons everywhere. Like George Romero’s Day of the Dead, The Last of Us implies that in a hectic world full of monsters, humans are still the most monstrous creatures of all, conveyed through Ellie’s diner duel with David where he’s shed the polite facade and has fully embraced his true maniacal, sadistic nature. When Joel reconvenes with Ellie after she is traumatized by what she just experienced with David, he wraps his arms around her like a big cuddly bear and calls her “baby girl.” It was at that moment when Ellie was no longer being taken care of by Joel out of obligation but by pure affection. The end of this hair-raising chapter was when I became totally invested in the characters and their story.

The “humans are bastards” theme is but a slight motif across The Last of Us. The game’s core theme that I have deduced is preservation in dire circumstances and how it conflicts with the greater good. Throughout the game, many human characters have had to sacrifice what they cherish even if the result is soul-crushing. Tess, Joel’s original partner, doesn’t want to reveal her new infection and only does when Ellie exposes her. As a result, she lets herself get gunned down by the pursuing military before the infection takes over her brain. The African-American brother duo of Henry and Sam who partner up with Joel and Ellie when they’re stranded in Pittsburgh share a bond tighter than knotted rope. Yet, when Sam is infected and starts attacking Ellie, Henry shoots his little brother square in the head, devastatingly killing himself immediately afterward not being able to cope with what he had to do. But the point is, he still did it because he knew it was the correct course of action. It seems like the only way to prevent oneself from being a bastard in times of zero hope is to improve the future which boosts humanity’s morale. This is a moment of clarity that every moral character in The Last of Us eventually comes to. One would expect Joel to follow this altruistic pattern considering he’s the game’s protagonist, right? After finally locating the Fireflies in Salt Lake City and embracing his father-daughter dynamic with Ellie, Joel is an eager beaver prepared to finish the mission and spend his days spending time with Ellie in his brother’s fortress in Wyoming. His twenty-year trauma which he thinks has been healed through Ellie is dreadfully tested when he learns that Ellie’s operation to create that vaccine will kill her. Unable to bear the pain of losing her like he lost Sarah, he breaks through the facility's defenses and carries an unconscious Ellie out of the operating room, paralleling the opening sequence with Sarah. Marlene tells Joel that dying for a noble cause would be Ellie’s wish, and she’s not bullshitting him. Still, Joel fully knows this and murders her for getting in the way of his wishes. With an awakened Ellie expressing feelings of unease about not going through with her destiny, Joel feeds her a line of lies to assuage her concerns, even if it’s really just gaslighting for his own benefit. The fact that this was Joel’s decision is not surprising. He’s been through twenty years of hell, and it all started when he lost the most important person in his life at the very start of it. He even gets the impression that trauma is a dick-measuring contest where nothing anyone else has experienced in a barren world defined by loss even compared to what he was forced to endure. What is surprising is how the narrative has made us all disgusted and ashamed of the man whom we’ve been rooting for the entire game, almost shifting into the game’s core antagonist for committing the most deleterious act of self-preservation. Yet, while taking the honestly sorrowful events of his past into consideration, he’s still a sympathetic character, albeit garnering pity rather than genuine sympathy. I was appalled.

If I am to be so bold, I declare that The Last of Us is the ultimate Uncle Tom in gaming. The Last of Us sheds a sizable chunk of its innate video game makeup to please the so-called high arbiters of art, embarrassed at how it will be perceived by them if it flaunts its true nature. Because The Last of Us goes down smoother than strawberry yogurt, it gets a pass from the snooty cultural elite as “one of the good ones.” It gets the privilege of being compared to Hollywood films, but they will never accept it as one of their kind no matter how hard it tries. How do I know this? One of the various kernels of The Last of Us’s success is a television series, a faithful adaptation of its video game source material. Google the title of the game and you’ll get nothing but the TV show until the fifth or sixth result, even though it aired the year I’m writing this review and the game is a decade old at the point. Isn’t this further proof of how attempting to fraternize with film as a “degenerate” piece of media is only doing harm to gaming instead of helping it reach a standard of mass acceptance? Considering how the gameplay of The Last of Us is shallow and tedious, perhaps the exquisite story it presents is better off as a TV series. Still, there are video games that achieve strides in artistic innovation that are far more deserving of a patron saint status for the medium even if they aren’t as well-known by the public, even some of The Last of Us’s seventh-generation contemporaries. After what I’ve said, I still can’t believe that I’m curious to see what unfolds in the sequel. Perhaps I’ll watch someone play it on the internet instead of experiencing it firsthand, kind of like a television show.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I don’t think there is a clearer example of the trilogy pattern in gaming than the first three Resident Evil games on the PS1. What I’m referring to, if you’ve never read one of my reviews before, is the arc of quality that fluctuates over three games in the same series and the pattern one can discern of how the IP grows and evolves. The first game introduces a template of the franchise’s tropes, while some gameplay mechanics tend to be inherently rough-hewn and unrefined due to lacking the hindsight of a debut effort. For the sequel, the second title is granted a treasure trove of hindsight, and they use this to smooth out the coarse gameplay elements with a far better understanding of the franchise’s idiosyncrasies. This results in the peak of what the first game established by flourishing its framework to an outstanding degree, crafting the finest experience the franchise has to offer. The third game is then released as an opportunistic endeavor to capture that lightning-in-a-bottle effect generated from the second game’s positive reception. Instead of finding ways to perfect the already solid source of the second game, the third game tends to add some overblown elements while streamlining the gameplay for the sake of accessibility. It indicates that the developers have slightly overstepped and that it’s closing time for the series. I did not overtly mention the first three Resident Evil games in this explanation, but I’m sure that anyone who has played every game in this PS1 trilogy knows that this subsequent progression of games fits it like a glove. Of course, I realize that placing RE 3 in this position already sets a negative precedent for this review, so brace yourselves for paragraphs criticizing how Resident Evil 3: Nemesis took the franchise’s survival horror properties and adulterated it with the overblown sins a threequel usually commits.

Technically, from a narrative standpoint, RE3 is a direct sequel to RE2 only on the basis that the number in the title is the successive follow-up in numerical order. We do not witness how the T-Virus outbreak has expanded beyond the parameters of Raccoon City and the Arklay Mountain outskirts with global panic ensuing in the streets. Apparently, the singular situation in Raccoon City seen in the second game was so monumentally cataclysmic that we needed ANOTHER storied account from yet another perspective. The person’s point of view, however, should come as a pleasant surprise as it's S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine from the first game. Chris’s backpacking conquest across the pond was evidently a solo venture removed from his police adjacent outfit, so Jill is an unfortunate victim of circumstance in the Raccoon City pandemic, who did not fully anticipate this zombie pandemonium occurrence if her comparatively tarted-up civilian clothing is any indication. Her mission now is to use her special training as an advantage in surviving the chaos.

Jill not only gets the special distinction as the first returning Resident Evil protagonist but one that soaks up the entirety of the spotlight as the sole primary protagonist of RE 3. There are no mirrored events to Jill’s in another campaign playing as another character. Only one playthrough of RE3 with the little lady from S.T.A.R.S. is necessary to grasp the full breadth of the game’s story. However, I still somewhat recommend playing RE3 twice as a lark to experience what should be the soonest of Capcom’s “bright ideas” to spot that were implemented for the third game. Capcom has decided to (literally) cut out the middleman and omit the normal difficulty selection as an option, offering a “hard” difficulty for the seasoned Resident Evil veterans and an “easy” difficulty level for the flock of newbies that they anticipated would now be interested in playing their popular survival horror series. Despite how it may initially seem, forcing the two types of players to accede to what is a stark division of skill levels isn’t completely baffling. One could argue that someone who has survived two outings in a hostile, zombie-infested environment should challenge themselves by ramping up the stakes of their third excursion. On the opposite end of the spectrum, uninitiated players should keep it breezy so as to not taint their first impressions of the series and deter them from all other Resident Evil titles as a result. I chose to play on hard not only because of the rationale listed above but to also preserve any somewhat tangible gamer credibility that I suspect I might have (but probably don’t). As it turns out, with a few exceptions, RE3’s hard mode doesn’t ratchet up the base difficulty from RE2’s normal mode too drastically. Jill begins her trek out of the city with a pistol carrying a modest sum of ammunition as Leon did, and she must collect the formidable firearms as the game progresses. On the flip side, easy mode is so facile that it's hilariously condescending. The player is automatically blessed with a submachine gun, a first-aid pack, an infinite number of ink ribbons, and a whole other bunch of goodies. The developers forgot to include a bib and highchair for anyone playing on this difficulty, but perhaps they couldn’t have fit those in the finite inventory. I kid, of course, but my sincere issue with the unbalanced choice of difficulty here is that a normal difficulty is the solid base of any game’s intentions. Whenever I play or replay a game for a review, I always pick the normal (if difficulty options are offered) option, even if it’s a game I’ve played religiously and am exceptionally skilled at. Without this option, I cannot ascertain what the game is truly attempting to prove with its gameplay, which is why the normal mode is impeachable while the other options aren’t.

What is seriously included in the player’s inventory as a housewarming gift are two tutorial journals that detail every single new aspect that the developers have implemented for RE3. If they felt it necessary to implore the player to read a manual’s worth of text to prepare them for their playthrough, you know the great lengths they went to keep the franchise's familiar formula from stagnating. The result of their efforts is new mechanics and attributes that substantially change the fabric of Resident Evil’s gameplay, and I’m not entirely sure that it’s for the better. For starters, the player might notice what looks like a grinder contraption straight out of shop class in their inventory. One of the journals states that this is the Reloading Tool which is used to craft ammunition with three different types of gunpowder coinciding with the handgun, shotgun, and grenade launcher. One might raise a concern that this new utility mixer will take up valuable space in Jill’s inventory, a stationary position due to ammo pickups regressing into their unprocessed forms. Fortunately, the usual packs of bullets are still located abound on the Raccoon City streets, so carrying around the damn thing at all times won’t be necessary. However, it still comes recommended if Jill has a square of inventory space to spare because the high-caliber ammo the Reloading Tool can craft is highly effective. The journal tells Jill to keenly look for sizable red objects in the foreground, for shooting them with one bullet will cause a fiery explosion that could potentially blow a swarming pack of zombies to kingdom come, a nifty method of ammo conservation. The explosive barrels will definitely spark a “eureka!” moment for the player, for their prevalence as auxiliary offenses in first-person shooters makes their inclusion here a borderline cliche. The bombs that cling to the wall, on the other hand, confused me for health stations for a second, so I guess familiarity is important. Arguably the most significant alteration to the gameplay is the addition of the dodging mechanic. If timed correctly when unarmed or holding a gun, Jill will duck, jump, or roll out of harm’s way. A skill-based way to better mitigate potential damage seems like a helpful inclusion except for the fact that the timing window on the dodge is incredibly strict when done intentionally and surprisingly swift whenever executed on accident. That, and the type of dodge maneuver Jill performs is seemingly random, which can result in Jill backing herself into a wall and leaving herself far more vulnerable than before. I appreciate that these interesting mechanics drive a discernible wedge between RE3 and the previous game. Still, their awkward and somewhat unnecessary presence is somewhat of an indication that the Resident Evil foundation had already been honed to perfection in the previous game and all these new implementations do is complicate things. However, RE3 does feature a number of quality-of-life improvements that I genuinely appreciate, such as making the items more conspicuous in the foreground, a button designated to pull up the map, and a maneuver that swiftly turns Jill around instead of robotically turning her body like a mannequin on a pedestal.

The Raccoon City setting is something that should’ve been reworked entirely as opposed to being augmented like the game’s mechanics. I fully realize that the game’s events run parallel to those of Leon and Claire from the previous game, so placing Jill in the same predicament makes sense. Still, I fail to comprehend why Capcom thought the Raccoon City epidemic needed an additional point-of-view when the events had been exhausted after two almost identical campaigns. As it stands, RE3’s depiction of this doomed city is a reversal of how RE2 coordinated it. The city streets where Leon rushed through to reach the police station are now the primary place of excavation to escape the unremitting madness. Jill also revisits the police station briefly, albeit a truncated version of the precinct with new impenetrable barriers to signify that this takes place in the aftermath of Leon/Claire’s campaigns. Not only does the game fail to refresh the rehashed environments from the previous game, but treating the city streets that were once rightfully a straightaway trek the same as an exquisitely floored establishment is the most fundamental flaw with RE3’s direction. Sure, the worlds of Metroidvania games, the 2D cousin of the survival horror genre that shares the same sense of utility-gated progression, tend to be a collective of areas that vary in topography and thresholds of claustrophobia. With this logic, a Resident Evil map could flourish with the same design philosophy, but RE3 proves that this can’t be the case. The Raccoon City roads simply can’t transcend their initial workings as a linear series of paths no matter how many back alleys and piles of wreckage are impedeing Jill from crossing over the boundaries that the developers have placed. The richly labyrinthian constructions with their multiple stories that have served the series well in the past have been flattened to the ground floor, stretching across the broad radius of a metropolitan area. The breadth of a cityscape makes the backtracking of a survival horror game incredibly tedious, marching to and fro for a marathon’s length of retreaded steps to reach one objective. Any floor of an establishment from the previous two games, no matter how lofty, was never more than a few sets of hallways with several branching rooms as one would realistically expect from an architectural standpoint. I criticized the police precinct setting when it was still a centerpiece in RE2 for exuding too much of a domestic atmosphere for a horror game, but at least it was modeled just as exquisitely as the Spencer Mansion. The developers even had to separate the city into two “uptown” and “downtown” districts with two distinct maps, admissible proof that a linearly designed, sweeping environment does not gel with the survival horror genre.

It is not until the second half of the game where Jill crashes the railcar she’s using to flee the Raccoon City scene that the game provides the player with some truly impeccable survival horror settings. The clocktower is the kind of enclosed, gothic construction that I was craving as a potential successor to the Spencer Mansion, enhancing the dark, eerie atmosphere akin to the first game’s iconic stomping grounds with that desperately needed graphical maturation. The neighboring cemetery park is a competently restrained outdoor area compared to the urban streets of the city, and the underground laboratory efficiently refurbishes what is now a series motif. To heighten my feeling of engagement and admiration with these latter-half areas, they also include puzzles that are bonafide brain teasers, something that the second game was lacking.

Of course, the definitive difference and unique signifier to RE3 is the character on the right side of the full title’s colon. Before entering the gate of the police station, the gameplay will be interrupted with a cutscene of Jill’s S.T.A.R.S. ally, Brad Vickers, getting horribly and forcibly impaled by some fleshy tentacle of a colossal monster wearing a trenchcoat. Once Nemesis, the monster in question, refocuses his attention on Jill after decimating his previous victim, he’ll acutely stalk her like a lion does to a wildebeest for the duration of the game. Upon hearing the premise of an intimidatingly invulnerable tank of an enemy pursuing the female protagonist, one might wonder why Mr. X’s skin has been melted to a Freddy Krueger crisp because the previous game already toyed with the idea of placing a hostile, formidable figure with seemingly impenetrable defenses on the field for the player to contend with. In RE3, if one couldn’t infer his top-billing from the title, Nemesis has a larger presence here than the former superhuman stalker ever did. Nemesis is a T-Virus Terminator that will trounce any target he sets his sights on. On top of his hulking body that is as durable as Kevlar, Nemesis charges at Jill like a raging bull even in the tightest of corridors, as if he’s Frankenstien’s monster composed out of the corpses of the NFL’s finest linebackers. If Nemesis is unable to reach Jill and fling her around like a ragdoll, he’s strapped with a rocket launcher that he will not hesitate to use even in the tightest of indoor corridors to assure that Jill’s ass is grass. Not every encounter will involve the choice-based prompt either, so I suggest running like hell and forgetting about the potential rewards he might drop if you manage to subdue him. All of the evidential context surrounding Nemesis should make him a player’s worst nightmare, but there is something about his determination and overpowered attributes that conjure up feelings of irritation and frustration rather than fear. Nemesis popping in unexpectedly to give Jill a thrashing felt more like encountering your school bully in the hallways and making me groan with painful anticipation. There needs to be an aura of creepy subtlety to elicit a scare factor with this type of villain, something Mr. X already accomplished splendidly.

However, what is terrifying is the fact that Jill will be forced to fight this burnt-looking behemoth twice. His final fight in the laboratory should be prepared for like any other final boss, but the other one occurring at the clocktower beforehand is a traumatic experience. The front lawn of the tall tower is the arena when dueling Nemesis, and Jill will be cramped up against the surrounding walls and the burning debris of a helicopter while she is limping from an unavoidable status effect given to her during the cutscene that introduces this fight, giving Nemesis ample opportunity to have his way with Jill more so than in any standard encounter with him. Get ready to exhaust all ammunition and master the finicky dodge maneuver, because this is what is expected from the player for this fight. Also, pray a few times just to be safe. After being taken to the cleaners far too many times by Nemesis, I could not revert to my last save and explore the clocktower meticulously for any missing items, for the cutscene locks Jill to the top of the tower. This kind of action-intensive fight is not suitable for a survival horror game with tank controls and limited supplies. This encounter seriously made me consider restarting the game on easy difficulty and or abandoning the game entirely. So congratulations Nemesis, you are the newest inductee to the exclusive club of video game bosses that have made me whine like an upset puppy and raise my blood pressure from furiously screaming obscenities. Don’t pat yourself on the back with a sense of pride: if I had some sort of statuette of Nemesis, I’d imbue it with voodoo magic and shoot it point-blank with a revolver and burn the remnants.

Surprisingly enough, or maybe not so much if one reads deeply into Resident Evil’s linear notes, Nemesis is not the main antagonist of the game of his namesake. The apex of villainy across the Resident Evil series is and has always been the Umbrella Corporation that caused this entire mess. In fact, Nemesis was created by Umbrella as a countermeasure to eradicate all members of S.T.A.R.S that might blow the whistle on their involvement with the zombie pandemic, hence why all Nemesis can gravelly utter is the name of the organization. But Nemesis isn’t the only Umbrella associate out on the prowl tonight in Raccoon City. Jill will meet three members of an armed Umbrella task force assigned to dispose of anything infected by the T-Virus and rescue any remaining civilians. Jill is right to be untrusting of anyone who bears the symbol of her mortal enemy, but she must work alongside these guys due to running low on options for lucid human interactions to aid in her escape mission. It turns out that only one of the three men is an unscrupulous bastard, and that’s their leader Nikolai. This Soviet army veteran treats the whole T-virus epidemic as a front for business, willing to exterminate all that keep him from financially benefiting from it including some of his own men. Shoot this guy down with a bazooka when given the opportunity. Speaking of which, the other two Umbrella mercenaries are so disgusted at Nikolai’s callousness that they defect to aiding Jill instead. Carlos, one of the men who becomes the game’s secondary protagonist, takes a temporary role as a playable character in a hospital section where he retrieves a vaccine for an infected Jill. We see less of the other noble mercenary, Mikhail, on account of his grievous wounds, but sacrificing himself to save Jill on the cable car is certainly a noteworthy action of decency, right? Besides Wesker, these three men give the Umbrella corporation a face to attach with, and the reference we obtain from the mixed bag of interactions and intentions between them illustrates a complex moral quandary for what was previously an enigmatically evil force in the franchise. Perhaps the same complications of duty versus dogma can parallel real-life factions with bad reputations.

If I’ve played any third game of any franchise beforehand, and I certainly have, then my experience with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis should come as no surprise. The unification of Resident Evil’s tropes and mechanics seen in RE2 made it a tough act to follow, which can be said for most sophomore sequels for a number of franchises. Still, quelling the sensation of yearning from fans after they’ve played the peak of the series by rounding it out with a third game is always a requisite, even if these last hurrahs tend to overflow the foundation with additional attributes. Most of the additional attributes that RE3 wove into the fabric of the franchise are flawed at best and infuriating at worst, and I wish I could avoid the bad ones as deliberately as the unyielding monster at the center of the game. The best aspects of RE3 that make it a worthy entry are improving on the elements already in the franchise that Resident Evil 2 lacked, such as challenging puzzles in eerie environments instead of all the window dressing they figured would make a substantial difference. With a few noteworthy gripes withstanding, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is still an effective note to end the franchise’s reign as the champion of survival horror on the original PlayStation.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Fantastic Voyage is a science fiction film from 1966 based on a short story from underrated science fiction writer Jerome Bixby. The film was met with mixed reception as it's more a piece of spacey, psychedelic 1960s camp than a groundbreaking, awe-striking pillar for the genre like 2001: A Space Odyssey. As lukewarm as the film’s impact was on the genre of science fiction, one resonating facet of Fantastic Voyage that managed to be impactful was the novel and brilliant premise of using the insides of someone's body as a setting, shrinking the valiant adventurers down to the size of gnat larvae to enact their perilous mission of great biological importance. I could bet that you’ve seen this concept depicted in some sort of media even before you knew this movie existed and if you have, you now know that Fantastic Voyage is where it stems from. Using the premise of Fantastic Voyage seems to be ideal for animated media as numerous cartoon series have ripped it off to fill in an easy episode block or to either tribute or parody the once unique science fiction story. Rick and Morty tactfully utilized a Jurassic Park theme park inside the body of a drunk homeless man to tackle the premise with freshness, while seemingly every conceivable Nickelodeon cartoon I grew up with simply rehashed the plot with its characters. In the realm of gaming, the king of the medium, the one and only Mario, decided to dip his toes in the ostensibly public Fantastic Voyage domain pool with Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.

Which of the iconic Mario character’s bodies have been chosen as the vehicle to enact Fantastic Voyage’s premise? Well, it sure as hell couldn’t have been either Mario or Luigi. If you’re unfamiliar with the mechanics of Mario’s offshoot, handheld RPG series, he and his green brother are tied at the hip, hence why they finally share equal billing in the title, unlike the mainline platformer series where Mario himself is sufficient enough for the both of them. Mario diving into the insides of his taller, lankier brother to extract some maliferous presence making him sick and unsightly or vice versa would present an imbalance of narrative and gameplay weight for one character, even if Luigi is the optimal candidate to be the subject of bodily humiliation via excavating throughout his vulnerable interior. Peach would be perfect from a narrative standpoint, but Nintendo was wise to their perverse older players who would become inadvertently erotically stimulated by the prospect of venturing inside a woman and the eventual, genuine complaints that the developers boarded off all of the anatomical areas unique to the female body as prospective places to wander. No one would care about the livelihood of any of the Toads in this situation, and that apathy goes double for Peach’s butler/assistant Toadsworth. Donkey Kong is relatively canon to the Mario & Luigi series, but perhaps he vetoed the invitation to be put in a compromising position. What many might fail to consider is that there are Mario characters outside the realm of its heroes that could satisfy the role, and he’s a big boy just like Donkey Kong. The title of this Mario & Luigi game couldn’t be more on the nose with its allusion: Bowser is the subject in question for a “fantastic voyage.” Bowser is a true delight when he’s situated in a JRPG vehicle, and the fact that he’s a central character here should make everyone giddy with excitement.

I doubt Mario and Luigi would willingly help Bowser if he were struck by a cataclysmic illness under normal circumstances. In fact, Bowser succumbing to some sort of fatal disease would be a fortuitous coincidence for Mario and Luigi, letting Bowser’s health atrophy away so Mario can finally experience some well-deserved R&R with Princess Peach without Bowser swooping down and swiping her on what seems like a weekly basis. The developers also realized this fallacy that contradicted normal character relationships and conjured up a fittingly whacky catalyst for how Mario and Luigi ended up ensnared inside Bowser’s body. Rescuing Peach from Bowser’s clutches hasn’t earned Mario the privilege of exploring Peach’s insides if you catch my drift, but at least she has granted him a prestigious position in the Mushroom Kingdom government. With Luigi as his plus one, the brothers are fashionably late to an executive meeting taking place in an administrative room in Peach’s castle. The issue of utmost importance is the “blorbs” outbreak running (or should I say, rolling) rampant throughout the Mushroom Kingdom. By consuming a special mushroom sold by a seedy merchant, the toads of the kingdom have inflated to such a spherically large mass that they cannot use their legs for mobility. Upset that he’s not considered to be an essential figure in the Mushroom Kingdom, Bowser angrily crashes the meeting and is duly discarded by Mario and Luigi as always. Bowser approaches the merchant selling the shrooms and consumes one that grants him the ability to inhale with the ferocious power of a Mach Five tornado (didn’t he already possess this ability in Luigi’s Mansion?). Bowser returns to Peach’s castle and just sucks up everything indiscriminately, and both Mario and Luigi are unfortunately in the crossfire, sending them to the dingy and disgusting bowels of Bowser. The introduction is definitely on par with the previous kooky setups that ignite a Mario & Luigi adventure.

I don’t believe I efficiently conveyed the extent of Bowser’s role in Bowser’s Inside Story, even in stating that he is indeed a central character in the game. In Bowser’s Inside Story, he is THE central character, the sun which all other planetary characters, even Mario and Luigi, orbit around. The DS system’s top screen is entirely dedicated to giving us Bowser’s interactive point-of-view as he attempts to reclaim the Mushroom Kingdom from this new threat responsible for the blorbs pandemic. Yes, the developers are testing out this dual-screen gimmick again but this time, the dynamic between Bowser and the two brothers is far more engaging. Playing as the baby versions of Mario and Luigi in Partners in Time was Mario and Luigi squared, a doubling of the Mario and Luigi gameplay that would be completely redundant if not for their bite-sized physicalities allowing them to squeeze through tight crevices. As one would expect from Bowser’s hulking, non-mammalian biological genotype that differs from two Italian guys, controlling him is a radically alternative procedure. Bowser stomps around the various districts of the Mushroom Kingdom leaving a trail of foot-print craters in his wake. His two primary methods of offense are a wound-up sucker punch and breathing fire, both of which are obviously beyond the capabilities of the two shrimpy plumbers. He’s certainly a strong physical force of nature and the enemies he encounters on the field attempt to match him at least in physical mass. Instead of evading enemy fire by jumping or batting objects away with a hammer, Bowser’s opposition tends to strike almost exclusively in either directional plane. To block enemies from vertically falling on him, Bowser will use his spiky damage-proof shell, while he counters any on-coming horizontal hostility by punching it away from him. Saving his loyal minions trapped in cramped and demeaning black cages on the field unlocks a special move that incorporates their aid in some fashion for a deadly attack. These moves also manage to utilize the DS stylus, a system-exclusive apparatus that I forgot existed while playing Partners in Time. Bowser even has his own separate inventory from Mario and Luigi, mixing and matching barbed neck bands like a goth girl's great dane and shells, of which I wasn’t aware could be accessorized. He also has his own food health items in the form of hot wings, for the carnivorous Bowser would probably ralph at the taste of a mushroom. Bowser is not only a blast to play on the field and in battle, but his contrasting gameplay and environment actually display a solid dichotomy between him and the two main characters, unlike the babies in Partners in Time.

Bowser’s portion of the gameplay also includes practically the entire realm of traveling around getting from point A to B, considering that Mario and Luigi can’t tread too much ground from inside Bowser’s gut. Bowser’s Inside Story decides not to go on holiday to a neighboring kingdom like in Superstar Saga and sticks to the homeland of Mushroom Kingdom as Partners in Time did. Still, the map here doesn’t resemble the one from the previous game in the slightest, with all of the notable landmarks that comprised the significant areas of the last game totally erased from existence. My theory, beyond the logical fact that the developers had to conjure up some fresh sites for a new game, is that perhaps the Mushroom Kingdom was so devastated by the Shroob invaders that the topography completely shifted upon reconstruction. What came as a result of the kingdom’s hard work is a fine conglomerate of districts that still fit the eclectic and lighthearted atmosphere of gaming’s most famous setting. Toad Town exudes a returning sense of quaint coziness that it once did in Paper Mario, with an additional air of prosperity-enhanced ritziness because of the shopping mall and cascading fountain. Just ignore the bloated Toad dumplings scattered about. Bubble Lake in the south is a wide basin filled with crisp, clear water, and Plack Beach directly to the east features boulder-sized teeth sticking out of the washing waves. It’s less gnarly than it sounds. Ultimately, the map of Mushroom Kingdom in Bowser’s Inside Story shows that the series carries over familiar area tropes that still persist three entries in. However, the game at least recalls Superstar Saga’s erratic pacing that was lost during Partners in Time, blasting Bowser all over creation mostly whenever he makes a rash decision that leads him to violently deviate from his trajectory. Not allowing the progression to flop around with the hilariously bumbling and oafish RPG Bowser would be a disservice to us all.

The map of the overworld in Bowser’s Inside Story can be excused for not offering any revolutionary settings because it shares the workload of propping up the narrative with Bowser’s insides. On the bottom half of the DS screens are Mario and Luigi attempting to survive the belly of the beast as microscopically-sized versions of themselves. One can naturally assume that the cavernous abyss of Bowser’s anatomy would be a cesspit of nightmarish imagery that only the sick and deranged would be able to imagine. Because all Mario media should ideally refrain from disturbing people, the tender, inner world of Bowser’s physical machinations takes a more fantastical approach in rendering its aesthetic. The backgrounds of Bowser’s insides are as lurid as a lava lamp, floating cellular matter streaming with a bevy of eye-catching colors. The flesh platforms in the foreground are pleasing shades of pink, inoffensive tints that will ideally not gross out the player. It’s difficult to say whether or not the psychedelic backdrop of Bowser’s insides is directly inspired by the acid-laced presentation of Fantastic Voyage, or if the Mario brand naturally verges towards the lightly surreal. Either or, Bowser’s insides are a marvel to look at. Unlike the sprawling Mushroom Kingdom map without solid borders, Bowser’s insides are constructed like a directed graph. Whenever Bowser is irritated by an ailment or a Macguffin has scurried across the confines of one internal body part, a noodle branch will sprout from the current area, represented by a translucent Bowser model with two icons of Mario and Luigi. By the end of the game, the map will resemble an X-rayed tree. Besides the RPG battles against a myriad of microbes and defensive cells trying their best to exterminate the invading Mario and Luigi, their gameplay on the “field” is entirely situated on the X-axis. At times, platforming as both the brothers is more of a chore than it was previously from a top-down perspective because Luigi drags ass behind Mario like an anchor. Eventually, the brothers return to their normal sizes and explore the surface world, but the pipe transit system they use as a passageway between it and Bowser’s body that he somehow doesn’t feel or notice requires a serious suspension of disbelief. It’s probably cleaner and less graphic than the anatomically-sound exit hole, however. Yeesh.

While Mario and Luigi’s gameplay hasn’t really shifted since the previous game, the few quality-of-life enhancements are still worthy of discussion. One of my many complaints regarding the gameplay of Partners in Time is that the player could rely too heavily on the potent “bros items'' to carry them through the game, something that I’m admittedly guilty of taking advantage of. The “bros items” still persevere into Bowser’s Inside Story, but are now streamlined as “special items.” Using the green shell or the fire flower coincides with an SP meter and is given appropriately assigned numerical amounts that keep the player from buying them in bulk and obliterating everything in sight with them. The same goes for all of Bower’s special moves as well. It’s more traditional to the standard RPG “magic meter” but hey, it’s been proven to work throughout the evolution of the genre. Beans buried in the ground are to be consumed in their rawest forms as opposed to mixing them in a hearty, caffeinated blend, and their nutritional benefits raise Mario and Luigi’s base stats. A new item called a “retry clock” will restart the battle that either Mario/Luigi or Bowser has tragically fallen on instead of having to retread ground from the last save point. All this item’s inclusion does is make me wish that it was available at times during the last two games at points when the difficulty ratcheted up the skies and beyond, and at no point does Bowser’s Inside Story match those enraging instances. However, the difficulty curve of Bowser’s Inside Story offers a consistent challenge, with enemies attacking in less predictable patterns.

The realms of Bowser in the overworld and Mario and Luigi mucking through the guts of the giant turtle are obviously as different as night and day, a contrast of reality and surreality. Even though their division seems concretely defined, the gameplay is at its most interesting in the instances when the two worlds coalesce in perfect harmony. The scenario of Bowser’s Inside Story is so ruinous for both dueling parties that they must set aside their age-old squabbles and work together for the sake of their mutual interests (Bowser regaining his castle and Mario and Luigi not suffocating in the noxious fumes of Bowser’s colon). At least, Mario and Luigi are the men behind the proverbial curtain assuring that Bowser survives the trek to his eventual upturn because if Bowser knew that his mortal nemesis was trapped inside him, he’d gleefully drown him out by chugging a gallon of Drano. Fueling the dramatic irony of the dire state of affairs comes in the form of tweaking and manipulating Bowser’s various anatomical “buttons” in the form of minigames. When Bowser is straining himself trying to lift something that weighs a ton, Mario and Luigi travel to his arm center and stimulate his muscles to give him that extra boost. When faced with a challenge to consume a Guinness record-worthy-sized carrot, Mario and Luigi act as enzymes to help him digest the orange chunks before he either vomits or explodes. Mario and Luigi help Bowser remember a code from his memory banks that are cluttered by images of Peach, and resurrecting a crushed Bowser by floating down the canal of Bowser’s rump (barf) somehow enlarges the Koopa King into a skyscraper for a short period, dueling the oversized foe that stomped on him before in epic kaiju fashion. Bowser also inadvertently aids Mario and Luigi by illuminating platforms via an X-ray machine and freezing his lungs to solidify some gooey platforms. In combat, Bowser can use his suck ability to vacuum up smaller enemies so Mario and Luigi can share the workload. This is the atypical collaboration between the Mushroom Kingdom’s most seasoned rivals we’ve always wanted because the relationship here is as fluid as a glimmering waterfall.

Naturally, several other of the Mushroom Kingdom’s denizens have gotten sucked up into this mess (no pun intended) and are integral to the narrative. Besides the legion of cookie-cutter Toads and their posh patriarch Toadsworth with whom we are familiar, the new characters that Bowser’s Inside Story adds to the roster of NPCs are a marvelous bunch. The game introduces a new species of creature to the Mario canon called “brocks,” sentient, yellow block constructions that resemble pieces of mechanical cheese. The central “brock” in Bowser’s Story is Broque Monsieur, a character so French that it’s a wonder how he’s not actually made of cheese. This mustachioed immigrant from Western Europe curates Bowser’s one-stop digital shop cube accessed by punching it. He also beseeches Bowser to find his pet “blitties' (cat-like brocks) that roam all over the map in enemy captivity. If Bowser finds all of them, Broque grants Bowser access to his mangy, cuboid dog Broggy, who functions as a special attack. This optional reward does so much damage during battle that it should be illegal. On the opposite spectrum with Mario and Luigi is Starlow, the ambassador representative of the Star Spirits introduced during the meeting who is the big Oz head taking the credit for Mario and Luigi’s deeds. At first glance, Starlow’s role as a guide character disparagingly proves that the developers did not learn from the godawful mistake that was Stuffwell, and the player should anticipate several hours of quickly clicking through dialogue boxes of condescension. While Starlow functions the same as the thing that fulfilled the same job, she succeeds whereas Stuffwell doesn’t because she has a clear, confident personality. She’s not afraid to banter with a fussy Bowser, who refers to her as “Chippy” in a begrudging, contemptful manner, nor is she stoic in times when Bowser’s insides seem like they are on the verge of collapsing. Who knew that actually adding characteristics to a character was all this role needed to transcend being insufferable?

But the strongest inclusion to the cast list of Bowser’s Inside Story is a returning character, and I’ve been having trouble maintaining my poker face for this long so I could dedicate an entire paragraph to his return. From that characteristic cackle to the abstract twisting of the English language, anyone who has played Superstar Saga will recognize this silhouetted merchant as Fawful. I was absolutely delighted that he’s back to being a central character as opposed to an easter egg relegated to the cramped corners of the Mushroom Kingdom sewer system. After regaining enough moxy to leave his squandered place off the grid, Fawful’s overtaking of Bowser’s Castle is step one in his revenge mission against the Mushroom Kingdom for conquering him and Cackletta in the first game, even though he’s completely unaware of Mario and Luigi’s presence here as Bowser is. His screen time is mostly dedicated to grieving Bowser on the field with the help of his thuggish armadillo-boar hybrid minion Midbus, resulting in comedic chemistry between the two that is as rich as one would expect. Fawful is as fun and fiendish as ever with fury and chortles galore, but the second act of his diabolical plan to seize the Mushroom Kingdom is where the game loses my attention. Fawful has discovered yet another mythical star Macguffin, the calamitous “dark star,” and is going to use its diabolically evil power to destroy all living things and reshape the world in his image. And yes, Peach is a necessary tool in awakening it once again because everyone else in the Mushroom Kingdom is apparently an amoral deviant. I am absolutely exhausted by this plot device trope in its third consecutive outing. Perhaps I expected more from this irreverent series, but it is inherently tied down to the safe and familiar Mario brand nevertheless. I would’ve been satisfied with Bowser reclaiming his castle one humorous step with Fawful at a time as the primary overarching plot, seeing the extent of how Fawful has refashioned Bowser’s estate and jurisdiction of the kingdom to the Koopa King’s chagrin. Having a theater erected in your castle that only shows films that celebrate the success of your enemy and also having to wait forever in the lobby just to get crappy seating arrangements has got to be an assault on one’s ego.

Alas, the “dark star” urgency encompasses all of the second half of the game. To combat the dark star’s potential, Mario and Luigi must first find a cure to the blorb problem whose relevance has been relatively dormant up until this task is assigned. They fight (and break the monk-like concentration of) four sages housing the materials of the cure and extract their essence, culminating in a star whose shine burns the colossal amounts of fat from the Toads and reduces them to their normal size. Everything seems wrapped up neatly once Bowser storms Peach’s Castle and confronts both Fawful and Midbus until the impudent dumbass decides it would be a grand idea to swallow the dark star to harness its power like a toddler eating something off the floor. As expected, this was not a wise decision, as the eldritch monster extracts pieces of Bowser’s DNA to shape itself into a shadowy, ghastly version of Bowser. Its new physical form is the final boss of Bowser’s Inside Story and even though it was crafted from a plot device that I am sick to death of, it offers the best final boss in the series so far. Why do I say this? Unlike Cackletta’s Ghost and the Shroob Queen, the arduous two phases that prolong the final fight to a grueling extent are divided almost simultaneously between Bowser fighting his uncanny shadow and Mario and Luigi facing its Fawful-faced essence in Bowser’s stomach. The retry clocks also help a bit as well, I suppose. The whole ordeal is far anxiety-inducing. After the final fight, Bowser is irate upon finding out that Mario and Luigi were gallivanting in his innards this whole time, but the two brothers give him a rightful ass whoopin’ for being so ungrateful. At least Peach then sends him a cake for all his troubles. Bowser should count himself lucky since this is as far as Mario’s ever gone with the princess!

By aping the premise of Fantastic Voyage as many media has done, the Mario & Luigi series has revitalized itself after its second entry somewhat faltered. Partners in Time was not an indelible stain on the series that couldn’t have been rubbed off no matter how hard the developers attempted to ebb away its middling impact. However, Bowser’s Inside Story is a far more exemplary successor to Superstar Saga because it took risks where Partners in Time didn’t. Implementing Bowser as a heroic figure, albeit as a bratty nincompoop, through the perspective of Mario and Luigi manipulating his inner sanctum was a brilliant way to rationally integrate any Mario RPG’s best and brightest (in a charismatic sense) character in the spotlight. Adding Fawful again was also a nice bit of fan service that I will gladly eat up like it's the Sunday gravy. Partners in Time didn’t realize that succeeding Superstar Saga wasn’t a matter of streamlining and smoothing over its rough patches: following up the cheekiest of Mario outings requires letting loose and paving your own trail of kookiness and unpredictability. Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story took this direction with full force and STILL added many technical improvements. It’s a strong contender not only for the best in the series but as the quintessential Mario RPG period. Paper Mario be damned.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

In all honesty, I don’t feel all that confident or comfortable assessing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Why am I plagued with a looming sense of apprehension? Well, to be frank, it’s because I’m white. I’m not only referring to the fact that my skin pigment lacks so much melanin that I cannot physically tan, as the sun’s rays have always transferred searing burns to my skin instead of a radiant, golden sheen. I’m alluding to all of the cultural factors of my ethnic background that have molded my general upbringing whether or not I actively engaged with them or was aware of their status quo alignment in American society at the time. I grew up middle class on a street with three churches of differing Christian denominations, my music of choice was a variation of rock/metal music, and my dad votes Republican. And yes, I was an avid watcher of The Simpsons (a strong white signifier according to Aqua Teen Hunger Force). My background and the one that comprises the cultural iconography of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are as contrasting as fire and ice, which is why attempting to delve into the substance of the game’s narrative, characters, and real-world parallels may result in a vortex of ignorant poppycock. The cold comments on modern urbanity in Grand Theft Auto III affect all city dwellers, and the neon-lit Vice City is arguably more akin to the nostalgic recollections of 1980s pop culture from an Anglo-centric descendant demographic, albeit of a certain age. San Andreas, on the other hand, draws its influences from a specific facet of American culture that is almost alien to myself and several other gamers, and should probably be approached with a modicum of sensitivity. Still, I have to discuss San Andreas, for it would be detrimental to my reputation as a comprehensive video game critic if I never even uttered a single word on this monumental achievement for the interactive medium. San Andreas is the most significant entry in the infamous Grand Theft Auto franchise, arguably the most exceptional title on the basis of quality, and a titanic benchmark for the burgeoning open-world genre.

A gangster’s livelihood is neither fun nor glamorous, or at least that’s what I’ve come to understand. The gangster genre of fiction in film and literature gave us a glimpse of the seedy underbelly of society to elicit a great vicarious thrill for all of the good-natured, god-fearing common folk. The highs of gangster life verge on euphoria, but every piece of mob media assures their audience that the repercussions of this lifestyle can be cataclysmic in more ways than one. While the allure of the criminal life is strong, one can still ignore the enticing criminal riches and intimidating swagger that come with it, unless you’re The Sopranos who argues that a mafioso lifestyle is a damning, dominant genetic trait for certain ethnicities. Also, all of this pertains to organized crime. A facet of the gangster world that is just as ever-present as Italian guys in their pinstripe suits and loafers carrying Tommy guns around are the street gangs predominantly run by African-Americans in impoverished urban areas, a harrowing result of the American government’s war on drugs and racial systemic oppression. Unlike the mafia, the excess and glamor of street gang life are far less extravagant, but the ramifications are no less disastrous. Still, the conditions of the streets where gang violence occurs are so bereft of any legitimate economic prosperity that it seems like flirting with danger is the only way to make a living. The vicious cycle of drug-inflicted murder in America’s ghettos among young black men was the subject of John Singleton’s 1991 film, “Boyz n the Hood,” and its breakout success gave the rest of the world insight into the Afro-centric state of depression. Despite how sincere Singleton was with his film, several insubstantial imitators came out of the woodwork like Menace II Society and Juice, along with an influx of “gangsta rap” music emerging from Los Angeles which expanded to other parts of the country as the decade progressed. Like its GTA predecessor Vice City, San Andreas is a time capsule that intentionally oozes the motifs and atmosphere of the raw and grimy scene of urban decay when it was ubiquitous in mainstream culture. I’m actually surprised that it took until the franchise's fifth entry for Rockstar to revel in its thematic potential. While San Andreas is intended to be manic fun like any GTA game before it, the game offers enough tact and subtle substance in its narrative to prevent the act of making mayhem in its culturally sensitive setting seem tasteless.

Enter Carl Johnson (aka CJ), a young, twenty-something black man who is seen returning to his hometown of Los Santos after a five-year stint in Liberty City. He absconded from his birthplace because his younger brother Brian became another statistic of gang violence, and he returned to Los Santos under the unfortunate circumstance that his own mother had also fallen as a result of their environment. Before he arrives at his old stomping grounds, he is intercepted by two C.R.A.S.H officers named Tenpenny and Pulaski. They blackmail CJ by threatening to pin the murder of fellow officer Pendelbury, who was actually killed by the two when he attempted to call public attention to their prevalent corruption within the force, on him unless he becomes their indentured servant. Carl reconnects with his brother “Sweet,” his sister Kendl, and a plethora of other familiar faces upon his arrival. He’s been away for so long that his old homie “Big Smoke” rashly tries to bash his face in with a baseball bat, confusing him for a common thief upon not being able to recognize him. Now that the gang's back together, Sweet orchestrates a revenge mission against the rival “Ballas” gang in purple on the speculation that they’re responsible for his mother’s murder, and CJ is the muscle of the operation. Rockstar has decided to continue their streak of setting the scene with the protagonist returning to the streets after a long hiatus to draw parallels between the player’s unfamiliarity and the protagonist’s refamiliarization. The only difference now is that CJ isn’t returning after any time behind bars, mussing up the traditional introduction a bit. Still, the opening sequence of San Andreas splendidly establishes the tone of the setting along with the characters that reside in it, mostly through natural character interactions as opposed to overt exposition.

Judging from how his return is received, CJ gets even less respect than Rodney Dangerfield. His long absence from the dilapidated cradle of civilization he was born into has made him detached from the rough and rowdy gung-ho attitude that all ghetto denizens live by to survive. Or, at least that’s a concern that his brother Sweet and other various acquaintances vocally express regularly. His neighbor and fellow gangbanger Ryder, especially, keeps calling CJ a “straight busta,” which I can infer from context clues means that he’s calling CJ a “lameoid” or a “poser.” All of his family members consistently give CJ a hard time, but Ryder has the gall to disrespect CJ right to his face. I am appalled at the audacity of CJ’s friends and relatives for treating this man with such blatant contempt because he’s a glowing instance of the continual evolution of Grand Theft Auto protagonists. San Andreas is far more character-driven than any of the previous 3D GTA games. CJ, our newest mischief maker in the realm of chaos that is the GTA world, supersedes the stigma of a simplistic avatar character that Claude had unfortunately established for any future GTA successors. Tommy was a stark improvement on Claude with a voice and a clearer background but let’s be frank, his brightly colored Hawaiian shirt carried his character’s charisma. CJ is as animated as a Tex Avery cartoon. He’s confident to the point of being arrogant, he isn’t afraid to shout at those who provoke his ill temper, and he’s quite diligent when it comes to enacting all of his destructive, illegal deeds. Still, he shows compassion and respect to those that he is loyal to, namely his older brother Sweet who gets himself trapped in many perilous pinches as an executive gangbanger, and CJ must provide his aid to protect him. GTA’s protagonists have been upgraded from emotionless psychopaths to a wavering, complex sociopath. Hey, it’s still Grand Theft Auto at the end of the day. Don’t expect CJ to be Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow. Most of all, CJ is uproariously funny. Because he’s brash as can be, he combats all social interactions with hilariously candid and loud retorts. The characters that I enjoyed from the previous two GTA games were the secondary characters seen through sparse interactions via cutscenes, but San Andreas marks the first instance where the protagonist is a strong contender for my favorite character in the game.

But the ostentatious CJ isn’t simply caterwauling at blank NPCs just because he enjoys the booming sound of his own voice. San Andreas’ greater emphasis on character relationships and interactions is a two-way street between CJ and those that he is close to. I’ve briefly stated that CJ’s loved ones and acquaintances give him heaps of grief, but the amounts of spurning vary in loads and stem from different perspectives. Sweet, CJ’s older brother, is fiercely dedicated to the feuding struggle between his hood and the rival Ballas gang around the perimeter. If the conflict between the Families and the Ballas were comparable to war, Sweet would be General MacArthur, patrolling the streets with a towering sense of pride as a de facto five-star ranked warrior. You can imagine why he’d be disappointed in his brother for abandoning the cause for half a decade. Meanwhile, CJ’s sister Kendl, expresses a disgusted resentment for all the senseless violence that her brothers are aggrandizing. She’s so deliberately detached from the Grove Street insularity imposed upon her that she’s dating Cesar, the leader of the Los Aztecas Hispanic gang, much to Sweet’s chagrin. The close allies around the block that support Sweet’s cause are OG homies Ryder and Big Smoke, the lieutenants that directly assist Sweet with missions of defending the reputation of the Families. Ryder is an amoral degenerate who brandishes his angel dust cigarettes as casually as if he were smoking tobacco. Gang activity seems to be a perfect outlet for this unfeeling soldier of death and destruction. Big Smoke, on the other hand, is more akin to a comic relief character. Whether it be his artery-clogging order at the Cluckin’ Bell drive-thru or his incoherent musings on life, Big Smoke is quite lighthearted for a man who regularly murders people. It must be a law for all rotund supporting characters across all fiction to be somewhat jovial. Non-affiliated characters from around the block include aspiring rapper Jeffrey “OG Loc'' Cross, the celebrated MC whose fame OG Loc covets named Madd Dogg, drug dealer B Dup, and his drug monkey Big Bear. While these supporting characters exist on the outskirts of Grove Street affairs, their existences are still influenced by the same destitute state of urban life. Up until now, GTA’s approach to character interactions was becoming acquainted with strangers, and the overarching goal of the protagonist’s relationship was still constricted by business. When every supporting character already has a history with CJ and some are composed of his family and friends, their personal chemistry heightens the dramatism of both conflict and moments of mirthfulness.

San Andreas extends the enhanced dynamic between the protagonist and the other characters with the game’s main antagonist(s). The opposing force that is making CJ’s life more of a living hell is LSPD officer Tenpenny and his crony Pulaski. One strong facet of hood-related media is the presence of a corrupt police force that puts the already underprivileged members of society under further subjugation. The constant slaps in the face the boys in blue inflict on individuals of the impoverished African-American community especially sting when they are from people of the same skin color who are perceived as traitors to their own kind, as portrayed with Officer Coffey in Boyz n’ the Hood. Not only does Tenpenny not share any kinship with those he undermines, but he treats them as pawns in a game he manufactured by abusing his power as an officer. He’s sitting pretty as the king of the streets, and he’d go to horribly despicable lengths to maintain his tyrannical reign. Pulaski is like Tenpenny’s attack dog lackey, enforcing Tenpenny’s demands with bellicose strong-arming. I’d say he represents the bad cop delivery to Tenpenny’s good, but they’re both rotten to the core. A major strength of Tenpenny as a villain is his confident control over CJ. One might question how Tenpenny could simply snatch CJ off the streets and make him indebted to serving them when their blackmail against him is baseless, but it’s terrifying to realize that this is the extent of influence he has over everyone that falls under his jurisdiction. Unlike the distant main antagonists of the previous GTA games, Tenpenny is an omniscient force of evil who appears periodically to rub CJ’s face in shit and remind him that he’s his bitch.

If CJ isn’t going to receive the respect that he so duly deserves, the player can assure that he eventually will, gosh darn it. How can the player prevent future acts of harsh criticism, insults, and other forms of impoliteness from being dogpiled onto CJ from all angles? The amount of respect stemming from the general perception of others is actually something that can be improved on, the top of the increasable statistics in the quasi-RPG mechanic that San Andreas introduces to the series. Given that San Andreas is relatively grounded in reality, albeit a warped one, and is set in 1992 and not 1092 (AD), the RPG attributes displayed here are all domestic. By pulling up a side menu, the player will see five gray bars that coincide with either a physical or personable attribute. These attributes range from subjective, intangible concepts like respect and sex appeal to the measurable fat, physical stamina, and muscle content of CJ’s body. Throughout the game, the player will be either actively or inadvertently increasing these stats, with a variation of pacing and methods to maximize them. CJ can visit the nearby gym to lift weights and become shredded immediately, provided he’s harboring enough fat to burn so his hard work doesn’t atrophy away (always remember to visit your local Cluckin’ Bell to refuel!). Other attributes such as respect are boosted in microscopic increments by completing missions or gaining gang territory. Don’t be discouraged by how disastrously low CJ’s sex appeal is and the immovability of its pitiful status for the vast duration of the game. Eventually, expensive clothes and driving around in a bodacious automobile will shift CJ into an irresistible, suave casanova this side of Shaft. Additional to the five featured in the menu are also a plethora of alternate stats. Excess shooting with any type of firearm will increase their caliber and spread, and driving around the map in between missions will ensure that CJ will gain a tighter grip on swerving around, thus preventing unfortunate accidents. The RPG elements are an oddly genius way to enhance the player’s engagement with the protagonist. A recurring theme in the GTA series is climbing up the social and economic ladder to glorious prosperity, and incorporating RPG character attributes alongside the protagonist’s narrative growth is a finely complimentary gameplay mechanic. The player will notice the shift in how CJ is perceived by the NPCs based on the stats at hand, even in a negative light if CJ eats too much and plumps up like a Christmas ham. Truthfully, I wish Rockstar had introduced something of this nature in GTA III. Claude was a vacant blueprint similar to a base character from an RPG, making him an ideal contender for role-playing customizability. Still, this staircase thought evidently works just as effectively for a personable character like CJ.

The RPG mechanics are just one of many ways to immerse the player in the world of San Andreas. An argument could be made that a game in which the player is free to cause cathartic amounts of chaos to their heart's content doesn’t need additional perks to enhance the experience. Nevertheless, San Andreas incorporates a plethora of new activities to spruce up the sandbox. Firstly, why is sex appeal a relevant factor in a game revolving around gang violence? Certainly, CJ isn’t trying to bed any of the homies. CJ needs to exude the manner of a debonair gentleman to impress the ladies he can take on dates. After saving a fellow Ganton girl Denise from a burning building during a mission tasked by Tenpenny (that CJ burned down in the first palace, mind you), the expression of her gratitude towards CJ is to become his girlfriend. But Denise isn’t merely a status symbol so CJ can brag about getting a little action on the side to Big Smoke. CJ has the option to occasionally court her whenever she can fit into his demanding schedule. CJ can show Denise a good time by entertaining plenty of the fun new features the game offers, including a rhythm-oriented minigame on the dance floor where CJ can flaunt his sweet dance moves. If Denise is satisfied with CJ’s efforts to woo her, she’ll return the favor by offering him “coffee,” leading to a cutscene depicting an outside view of her house with screams of pleasure echoing overhead. If you’re of the appropriate age demographic to play a Grand Theft Auto game, I shouldn’t have to spell out what is happening behind these closed doors. If CJ goes on enough dates to the point where their relationship is super serious, maximizing their relationship status will earn CJ the reward of a pimp suit. While CJ should be grateful, other girlfriends can give him the privilege of retaining all of his weapons and body armor after being wasted or busted by the cops, a GTA player’s dream finally come true. Normally, I wouldn’t condone adultery but here, I recommend discretion to reap all of the benefits. Another extracurricular activity that coincides with another of CJ’s stats is conquering the rival gangs that pollute the streets of Los Santos with drugs and whizzing bullets that are as precipitous as rain. Outside of the missions, CJ has to approach and kill three Ballas or Vagos members standing in districts with their respective gang colors on the map. This act of aggression will trigger a gang war where hordes of them will ambush CJ in three waves. Once they surrender, the territory will be CJ’s for the taking, painting Los Santos green like a St. Patrick’s Day parade. If acting as a one-man army in the line of fire sounds scary, CJ can recruit a posse of generic Family members to help wipe the Ballas off the map. Other activities verge more on leisure such as billiards, basketball, casino games, arcade games, etc. I’d even count the new ability to ride a bicycle as a merry little lark. Admittedly, none of these activities are as thrilling as blowing off the heads of pedestrians, but the fact that CJ can still engage in these mundane minigames helps the world of San Andreas mirror reality a tad clearer.

For more serious engagements with San Andreas, the game offers as many quality-of-life enhancements as it does frivolous distractions. I’ve bleated on and on about how shooting combat in the past GTA games is an awkward, imprecise process that involves more tension than necessary. To expand upon the life-saving targeting system, the player now has a reference to the amount of health an enemy has with a declining color-coded indication. CJ can also shuffle between arrays of enemies with the back trigger buttons to mow down multiple enemies with quicker efficiency. CJ can also execute a dodge roll and aim at the gas tank of a car to immediately blow it to smithereens in a fiery inferno. However, the location of this spot on any car is as elusively nanoscopic as the clitoris, so any occurrence in setting off this makeshift bomb was a stroke of dumb luck. I would execute a total face turn on GTA’s combat system if CJ could duck and cover behind walls and scaffoldings instead of merely crouching, but at least San Andreas marks the first GTA game in which encountering a gang of enemies firing at me from all angles didn’t make me feel like a sitting duck, causing me to take passive precautions to survive. CJ is also thankfully the first GTA protagonist who can swim and no, I’m not pointing out the irony of this milestone. How the developers didn't consider that the first GTA character who should've been granted this useful ability was Tommy, who resides in a city surfaced below sea level, is befuddling, but this other staircase thought comes much appreciated nevertheless because CJ is still in close proximity to the Pacific coast. One slight regression to the GTA gameplay is that CJ’s health and body armor are displayed with bars instead of percentages. I prefer having a pinpoint accurate reference to the state of my character’s being so I have a better understanding of how to approach dangerous situations. Still, complaining about this slight change is but a nitpick. Overall, the greater accessibility with performing the combat and CJ’s apt mobility make for the most capable I’ve felt in a GTA game so far.

Because CJ seems to have a higher battle acuity, progressing through San Andreas’ story through the missions is a smoother excursion. I’d need an extra pair of hands to count how many times I failed most of the individual missions in both GTA III and Vice City, but I copped a clear victory on my first try for every other mission in San Andreas. Tis’ a blessing that CJ is such a talented killing machine, for the total number of story missions in San Andreas exceeds double digits. Objectives in San Andreas tend to revolve around the GTA standard of mass murder and driving with frequent deviations to keep things interesting. One frequent element that pops up from time to time is the necessity for stealth. Missions where CJ channels his inner Solid Snake that come to mind are stealing a war veteran’s weapon crates as he sleeps in “Home Invasion” and “Madd Dogg’s Rhymes” where CJ must ransack Madd Dogg’s mansion using only a knife to dispatch his roaming guards, boosting the potential rap career of his corny and untalented hood acquaintance OG Loc. Still, San Andreas’s difficulty curve compensates for its lack of rigidity by stacking individual missions with multiple objectives or expanding the scope of one objective to epic proportions. “Reuniting the Families” sees CJ rolling through the halls of a hotel defending his homies from a SWAT team ambush that intercepted their plans. Then after wall-to-wall SWAT officers fire at CJ in enclosed spaces, CJ has to shoot down a police chopper on the roof and then blaze through dozens of police cars pursuing him while he makes a getaway with Sweet, Big Smoke, and Ryder. “Wrong Side of the Tracks” involves CJ and Big Smoke biking all the way past the Hollywood Hills following a train with four Vagos members trying to escape. This mission is infamous for not only its length but Big Smoke’s wonky upward shooting that the player has to rely on the unstable accuracy of to succeed. On a positive note, Big Smoke’s AI is far tighter here than in any instance of cooperative missions with an NPC in the previous games. If it were, say, Lance Vance on the back of that motorbike, the mission would turn from disagreeable to impossible. While scraping through some objectives by the skin of my teeth just to have another to contend with before completing a mission made my brow sweat like I was under interrogation, I appreciate the constant stream of climactic missions that San Andreas offers. Every mission in the game is all killer with maybe the occasional filler. There definitely aren’t any missions where CJ has to race to four phone booths or sit and wait to spend over $300 at a strip club, that’s for sure.

For as grandiose as the missions in Los Santos are, the surprising thing is that they aren’t even situated at the halfway point of the game. If the player opens the map in the pause menu, they might question why 75% of the map is obscured in an unopened blue and perhaps realize that the unexplored areas are not situated in the Los Santos zip code. The state of San Andreas encompasses lands that greatly extend past the parameters of CJ’s home city, which should be an exciting prospect for those who salivate at the soaring breadth of a game’s map facilitated by the open-world genre. As wondrous as exploring beyond the reaches of CJ’s hood of Los Santos is, the starting point of CJ’s San Andreas odyssey couldn’t have been started under less felicitous circumstances. Before CJ meets up with Sweet to dispatch a high-ranking unit of Ballas, Cesar calls him to show him something urgent. CJ is shocked beyond belief to find out that both Ryder and Big Smoke are working for Tenpenny in his syndicate to sell out the Families alongside the Ballas, the same syndicate that coordinated the drive-by that killed CJ’s mom. In his attempt to reach Sweet and save him from the trap Tenpenny has set up, everyone is taken into custody by a fleet of police helicopters. Instead of sharing a cell in prison with Sweet, CJ is bagged and driven to the southwest wilderness of Whetstone by Tenpenny, who threatens to harm Sweet if CJ returns to Los Santos. The “Green Sabre” mission that unfolds the game’s most crucial turning point in the plot has a devastating outcome. CJ’s world is completely shaken and disturbed in a state of irrevocable disrepair. All CJ can do now is reshape his life in his new environment and even though things seem awfully grim, CJ’s relocation has given him a golden opportunity. CJ’s story as a Grand Theft Auto protagonist isn’t only defined by financial growth, but a personal one through broadening his horizons past the deficient confines of his unfortunate birthplace.

Alas, CJ’s journey of self-discovery must begin below his former status as a Grove Street gangbanger. In order to hoist himself up by his bootstraps, CJ has to contend with surroundings outside of his comfort zone. I can’t think of a starker fish-out-of-water scenario for this black city slicker than residing in the podunk wooded area up north, where his racial background makes him stick out like a sore thumb among the unsophisticated white farmer folk, who drive tractors and only use their guns to shoot wild animals. CJ is proverbially naked and afraid in what is the antithesis of his normal setting, so he feels inclined to find anyone out here who is affiliated with his riotous way of life for comforting familiarity. Unfortunately, Cesar recommends somebody whose criminal tempo runs faster than even CJ’s. Cesar’s cousin who he hooks CJ up with is none other than Catalina from GTA II, yet another instance of Rockstar revitalizing a character from a previous game and seeing them at a different point in the series canon timeline. CJ and Catalina form a Bonnie and Clyde bond with one another where the two rob every bank and place of business in the rural vicinity, with the striking difference of the Bonnie character in this dynamic calling all the shots with Clyde scared shitless of her. We can infer from her role as GTA III’s main antagonist that Catalina is a deplorable person, but the amplified narrative and character interactions seen in San Andreas allow us to see the full extent of her loathsome personality. Catalina isn’t a firecracker: she’s an entire fireworks show firing off all at once and crippling all those in the blast radius. She’s an inexhaustible beacon of rage and rancor whose source of scorn is self-generated. She makes bunny boiler Alex Forrest look like Mother Teresa. She’s also the reason why the mute button was invented, for she nags and disparages CJ every five seconds they are together. This section is perceived as the weakest in the game, but I appreciate how it depicts how dire CJ’s life is here with Time Magazine’s contender for craziest bitch of the century, giving greater impact to his downfall in Los Santos.

Once Catalina leaves CJ for Clyde, who still doesn’t utter a single word, it’s time to head on up north in the 1967 Volkswagen Camper van belonging to aging hippie “The Truth” to the American free love mecca of San Fierro. This fictional depiction of San Francisco, while sharing the urban architecture of Los Santos as opposed to the wild woods of Angel Pine and the surrounding areas, is essentially just as alien to CJ. The steep, slanted streets of this fellow San Andreas metro are not covered from head to toe with loitering gangbangers ready to aim their AKs at CJ once he crosses their peripheral lines of sight. The friendlier atmosphere of the baked bay area sounds lovely, but CJ is still flying solo. Because the exposure that comes with lacking support is discomforting, the facet of CJ’s journey of personal growth explored in San Fierro is fraternizing with people who aren’t of the same skin color and don’t share the same upbringing. Specifically, gathering a whole new gang of people to take down the Loco Syndicate, the drug distributors who supply Big Smoke with his biweekly load of crack cocaine, his incentive for selling out CJ and Sweet out to Tenpenny. To put a hurtin’ on CJ’s former friends, CJ establishes connections with all walks of life in San Fierro. Wu Zi Mu, aka Woozie, is the blind leader of a faction of San Fierro triads who employs Carl in the interest of using him to combat the rival Vietnamese Da Nang gang. For having a leadership position in a crime organization, Woozie is calm, level-headed, and extremely polite. However, the mere mention of the Da Nang does tend to rile him up a bit. Zero is the owner of an RC shop in San Fierro, and seeing him and CJ interacting with each other during the cutscenes is as unnatural as the sun and moon sharing the same sky simultaneously. CJ has found his polar opposite in every way imaginable. To gain Zero’s valuable electronics expertise, CJ must vanquish his intellectual rival Berkley, who is constantly giving Zero grief with his weaponized RC equipment. Next to Catalina, this pasty, timid dork tends to draw the most ire out of gamers. Gaining his shop as an asset only requires the completion of three missions, but they are definitely the most bizarre and demanding missions that San Andreas has to offer. “Supply Lines…” is even a prominent contender for the hardest mission in the entire franchise. If I were CJ, I’d just hire somebody working at Radio Shack and leave this pathetic nerd hanging by his underwear where he belongs. CJ also finds himself in close quarters with his Loco Syndicate enemies as a tactical maneuver, which includes the brazen, purple Jizzy the Pimp and the prickly T-Bone Mendez. At first glance, circling the map to the various mission markers to conduct business with these strangers mirrors the impersonal interactions found in GTA III. On the contrary, CJ forms a genuine camaraderie with the people he meets in San Fierro, playing video games with Woozie in between hunting down the Da Nang and cracking jokes about the absurdity of Zero’s predicament with Berkeley. Cesar, the man whom CJ previously judged because of his ethnic background, starts to form a deeply compassionate bond with him as they work on building their San Fierro garage. In an ironic twist of fate, Cesar, a man from across the tracks in the no-man's land of Los Santos, shows CJ more loyalty and respect than anyone who runs with the same colors.

After dismantling the syndicate’s drug operation and getting revenge on that mark-ass trick Ryder, CJ ventures across the Golden Gate bridge beyond the coastline to the scorched wasteland of the desert, along with the sin city parallel of Los Venturas to traverse. In the gambling capital of the USA, the overarching conflict is Woozie’s casino business venture being eroded away by the competing one controlled by the Italian mafia. To halt the suckling straw of greed and ensure the success of Woozie’s new livelihood, CJ and his pals from San Fierro methodically conjure up the scheme for an elaborate heist mission in the rival Caligula’s Casino. A balder, yet no less stressed out Ken Rosenberg and a neutered Kent Paul also return six years after the events of Vice City to join the ranks of CJ’s new friends. The heist mission “Breaking the Bank at Caligula’s” is the climactic finale that closes this chapter of San Andreas but up until then, CJ isn’t twiddling his thumbs in the planning room waiting for further instructions. What this section of San Andreas showcases for CJ’s journey is the grander scope of what he is capable of. Acting as the tail gunner in a police car chase as wild and adrenaline-pumping as that of To Live and Die in LA with the Grove Street gang is thrilling as is, but CJ’s new compatriots squash the missions of Los Santos into small potatoes with their extravagant assets. Mike Torino, a seedy, borderline insane government agent, grants CJ full access to his hangar of fighter jets and compromised commercial airline planes to zoom around the skies of San Andreas, enacting feats of espionage that even Solid Snake would shy away from. Any mission involving flight is a hair-raising affair, with the fear of crashing and burning always a distressing possibility because the plane controls require substantial proficiency to prevent CJ’s fiery demise. Flight school sucks, but the courses are warranted. “Black Project” sees CJ humoring The Truth’s scattered-brained conspiracies, believing that there is a government project housed in the deep catacombs of the highly secured Area 69 facility located in the desert. Only a damn fool would even spit near this alert quarantined zone where guards would call an airstrike on a fly that buzzed over it, but CJ does the impossible and yoinks a jetpack financed by more American tax dollars than anyone could fathom. The “Saint Mark’s Bistro” mission entails CJ flying all the way to Liberty City on a hit job assigned by Salvatore (yes, the same Salvatore from GTA III) and flying back in one piece, and I’m still in disbelief of the country-wide scale this mission covers. CJ starts San Andreas with acts that would make him an un unnamed statistic but outside the realm of his hood, he performs stunts that would define him as public enemy #1 on all of the San Andreas headlines.

Even though CJ is out of town cultivating growth and wealth, it becomes time to end his adventure by clicking his heels and repeating “There’s no place like home.” When CJ finally returns to Los Santos, however, he repossesses Madd Dog’s mansion that was foreclosed on him and houses himself and his new allies there to aid Mad Dogg with the production of his big musical comeback. Sweet is even released from prison, so the story of San Andreas seems as if it's neatly wrapped up nicely in a pleasant bow. However, Sweet’s transgressions upon hearing that CJ has forsaken his hood yet again to gallivant off with non-affiliates touring the state of San Andreas means that closure is still out of reach. That, and the non-guilty verdict given to Tenpenny after good-natured Officer Hernandez blew the whistle on his vile ass erupts into a city-wide state of utter chaos that mirrors the historic events of the 1992 LA riots. To restore (relative) balance to the hood, CJ must bring Tenpenny to justice by exterminating him, along with Big Smoke as an auxiliary act of personal retribution. The “End of the Line” mission in which all of this transpires is a five-act endurance test that had me breathing heavily out of sheer tension by its completion. All's well that ends well when CJ looks over the deceased body of his uniformed oppressor and says, “See you around, officer.” The line gives me chills every time I hear it.

Understanding San Andreas comes with the realization that Sweet is the game’s main villain. Tenpenny is the flower of evil acting conspicuously above the ground, but Sweet is really the root of CJ’s problems. Like a strict parent, no matter how much money CJ earns or how far he climbs up the chain of command in life to better himself and his family, Sweet is unsatisfied with CJ’s success if it conflicts with his own perspective of success; dominating the Los Santos gang terrain as an unrelenting foot soldier. Near the beginning of the game, wiping out the presence of the Ballas and Vagos gangs was something to take pride in because it was the pinnacle of achievement for the narrowly bounded world which our protagonist was born into. After broadening CJ’s perspective by traveling abroad, initiating outside connections, and accomplishing insurmountable odds that make those around him awe him like he’s Superman, returning to the origin point to reclaim lost gang territory feels unsatisfying. Grove Street and all the baggage that comes with it is beneath CJ at the end of the game, which is why reverting back to being unappreciated and unpaid like at the start is undignifying. Sweet is an irritating anchor who is tying down CJ and the rest of his family to a life of squalor, but he’s still a sympathetic antagonist in a pitiable sense. Sweet has drunk too much of the thug life kool-aid supplied to him by the systemic restrictions of his background. He’s been fed lies of honor and loyalty that come with sticking to his literal guns, but the game proves that Sweet’s convictions have little basis in reality. Eventually, his stubborn, myopic dedication to the life that has been chosen for him, even when CJ gives him an avenue out of it, is going to kill him and cause even more grief for the Johnson clan. Using the juxtaposition between CJ’s success and Sweet’s propensity for lying in the dirt, San Andreas presents the viewpoint that gang life is tragic and unnecessary, which is how the game prevents itself from existing as a case of glorification despite gamifying it.

GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas act as a loose trilogy of games from the franchise, sharing the designation of being developed for the PS2 console as early stepping stones for the open-world genre before it reached its mechanical peak in successive gaming generations. While the varying years, stories, settings, and central characters slacken the connection between the three games, I’m still going to reference it to convey that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of this GTA threesome. It’s the entry that dwarfs the previous two by catapulting the open-world design built from their framework into the stratosphere with ambition so remarkable that it is unbelievable that it was capable of being presented on the PS2. Admittedly, the shoddy graphics and compressed audio are a humbling reminder that it shares the same system as GTA III and Vice City. Still, Grand Theft Auto was never intended to be pretty: its allure has always been associated with the thrill of vicariously simulating the freedoms deemed too taboo to execute in real life. GTA: San Andreas offers so much content on one game disc that it transcends the initial novelty of committing acts of unspeakable violence that it could potentially supplement one’s real life entirely to the digital realm of gaming. For those who want substance behind the slaughter, San Andreas provides an insightful narrative arc into the dynamic life of a street gangster arguably more riveting and substantial than the hood movie that inspired it, created by a team of British guys whiter than I no less. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is absolutely incredible on all fronts and is truly when what we wished for the open-world genre came to fruition.

------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com