This is a pretty controversial take in the gaming world, but honestly, I just didn't get Fallout New Vegas. For the most part, I liked the stories of the game. The engaging questlines were what kept me playing for as long as I did. However, the gameplay is what brings this down so much for me. I spent most of my time in combat using guns and it always just felt clunky and unsatisfying to me. There are options to avoid combat, but even those options usually end up being some form of a persuasion check. While I'm glad that these alternative options are there, it does still feel like I'm just skipping over a lot of the content, which left me less engaged, and thus less invested in the story which had been dragging me along. Exploring the map also gets boring after a while. When you are first exploring the map, it is fun. Finding a place mentioned in a log entry and filing out the lore in my head was fun, but after all the iconic locations are discovered, exploring all parts of the map felt like a chore. The games' faults may be chalked up to it being older, and me deciding to play it on older hardware (Xbox 360), but it really just does not hold up to my modern standards of how a game should play and feel.

Sorry, baby. I just don't love you the way I used to.

It's not you. It's me. You haven't changed, even though you really should have. You're still as much of a buggy mess as you were on release, with all of your crashes and non-functional mechanics, but those never bothered me. A couple community patches — you always did have a tendency to rely on others to make you work properly — and you're about as stable as you could have been. So why is it that I'm coming back to you over a decade later, with all of my fond memories, and I find that whatever spark we once had is now gone?

It's because you're boring, baby. That's the awful truth.

I really did think I was above such a petty complaint. I mean, your writing is excellent. You've got some incredibly strong characters and storylines, and you allow for a way more freeform approach to your narrative than most of your contemporaries could ever dream of. You've got a tone about you. Nobody could ever look at you and mistake you for anyone other than yourself.

But your moment-to-moment experience is just so boring. So repetitive. All I'm doing is walking. Walking and walking and walking from flat plain of dirt to flat plain of dirt, and then fast traveling between flat plains of dirt, while one of about five licensed songs play on loop. You've got the shortest playlist in the world. You've got spurs that jingle-jangle, you were always a fool for your Johnny, yippee-yay, I know it all. I could always turn off your radio and listen to the ambience of the areas around me, but your environmental sound design just isn't up to par. I don't blame you. You didn't even have a year to get ready. It's not your fault.

You take way too long to get going, and by the time we get there, I've seen everything you've had to offer me a hundred times over. I'm sure some people would say that I'm not treating you the way that I ought to, and I'm just being unfair because I've played too much of you. Maybe. But I've visited old favorites that I've been with a lot longer than you, baby, and none of them bored me the way that you do now. I can't keep feeling like the burden is on me to make you more fun; like I need to be the one going out of my way to get all of these mods and patches for you when keeping me entertained is your job.

I know nobody ever came to you for the gameplay, but you keep insisting on putting it front and center. I can't get away from it. If there was about 50% less "game" in this game, it would still be too much for what it currently is. It's borderline vestigial. I know that you care a lot more about your story, and so do I. I wish that you could have just focused on what you were good at. Your environments aren't pretty enough to get lost in, and they're not enough of a traversal challenge to be engaging; all I'm doing is walking forward and popping the occasional enemy, and it's just not enough.

What more can I say? I've fallen out of love. A classic needs to hold up to be a classic, and the twelve years since your release have left me unsure if you ever even qualified. You were novel once, and now you're not. You could have been more, but neither your publishers nor your developers were keen on that idea. You were rushed, and it'll always show.

I got carded trying to buy this at a Gamestop in 2011 and was refused because I didn't have my ID on me.

The “Dead Rising” I knew was dragged behind a shed and shot in the sweltering summer of 2010, its rotting shell sharing the same name but carrying the soul of an entirely different beast. Stumbling upon the shambling creature, I fell for its ruse, a 24-hour entanglement with a monster wearing a beloved veil. But for all of the carcass’ failings, I couldn’t bring myself to hate it. Glancing upon the decayed remnants of a lost friend, I still could see the remains of the dearly departed; in spite of the malicious current pulsating through its veins, I still saw the “Dead Rising” that I fell head-over-heels for, crumbling away but still recognizable all the same. Laid to rest and buried away, I said goodbye to not only “Dead Rising” itself, but the love I held for it, not out of new-found hatred, but out of acceptance for what it was becoming. In 2013, something bearing the name “Dead Rising” crawled out of that grave, festering and desecrated.

It’s… extreme, to put it in such intense terms, perhaps hyperbolic. However, as time passes and as I expose myself to more and more of the series, my individual story becomes one of watching something I adore be ripped limb from limb, it’s remains cobbled together in a discombobulated amalgam and presented as a new iteration on “Dead Rising”. The spirit of the original has long been excised, and the withered corpse walks, lacking the stylistic flourishes, the mechanical depth, the heart and soul that the name “Dead Rising” usually encompasses.

Yet despite my obvious grievances with the game, I have reached acceptance in my personal stages of grief. Beyond my preconceived notions of what is or isn't “Dead Rising”, of a minimalist structure maintained by the backbone of breakneck pacing and nerve-shredding time limits, something is under the shallow surface. Buried under the murky sands of mid-2010s design philosophies, emotionless browns and soul-sucking grays plastered under a user interface reminiscent of a thousand mobile games, the embrace of freedom over structure flawlessly encapsulated the mindset behind Dead Rising 3. Disregarding story, tonal consistency, and filing away mechanical grain, the city of Los Perdidos becomes a puerile playground, an endless wave of gory, grotesque, goofy ways to dispatch impressive waves of undead practice dummies.

I wish there was more to say, but Dead Rising 3 casts aside most of what I like about the prior entries, with the tone leading in the grimy direction pushed by its direct predecessor, the oversimplification of combo weapons and streamlining of the leveling system. I can’t fairly say it’s a game I disliked; playing online was still extremely fun, but that comes down to the fact that every game in the world can be fun with someone else, even irredeemable trash. As a game building off of one of my favorite series, it’s a massive let down.

So obviously expect a Dead Rising 4 review in a month or so, We Doin’ This

Played via Rare Replay

I am in no way an Xbox hater, but if there is one thing that hurt the British juggernaut Rare after they looked unstoppable in the mid & late '90s it was getting acquired by Microsoft. Following a string of high profile disappointments the original founders jumped ship and those who remained got put on Kinect duty, where the studio's reputation faded to the point where they don't even have a presence in present day gaming outside of their online pirate adventure simulator Sea of Thieves.

One such stumbling block responsible for that was this 2003 horror-themed brawler that sees you battling your way through a maniacal weirdo's monster-filled mansion in an effort to save your girlfriend like some family-friendly version of Splatterhouse. It was a bit of a misfire with professional critics and didn't quite have the developer's typical sense of personality or style. Yet, despite its mediocre reception I actually think there's a lot to love here.

There are definitely a few odd design choices, such as how the camera is controlled with the left and right triggers while the second analog stick is used to attack. For the most part though it's a fairly straightforward experience. As you head towards your goals you'll learn that each section of the estate you pass through comes with a challenge that must be completed before you can progress and turns what would otherwise be normal combat scenarios into miniature puzzles as you try to contend with whatever rules have been put in place. The variety of modifiers, enemy types, and consumables have been mixed and matched in a number of ways to ensure that no two segments feel identical. A huge plus as the grounds you'll be traipsing over end up not being as big as they at first seem, so you'll be revisiting the same rooms over and over again. The fact that you'll encounter different obstacles and item placements every time prevents a repetitive vibe from ever truly setting in even when your surroundings start to look familiar.

If there's one aspect I wish I could have enjoyed more about the title it would have to be its persona. Don't get me wrong I LOVED the setting and motif despite areas of the environment getting a touch overly traversed as they both proved a perfect fit for my October season. The story and accompanying comic book panel cutscenes annoyed me however, as the writing lacks the comedic wit I expect from the creators of Banjo-Kazooie and Conker. So my enjoyment comes exclusively from the gameplay.

Between Viva Piñata, Kameo, and now this I can confidently state for certain that Rare did in fact lose a level of quality back in 2002 when they were bought out by their current parent company. Each of the games I just mentioned (all of which I am a fan of) have their rough edges where you see the hints of underdeveloped ideas and cut concepts. If this is as far as they were destined to fall before getting stuck in their motion-sensing sports compilation phase though, then I wish they would go back to putting out products of this caliber as opposed to the whole bunch of nothing they're working on these days. "Ghoulies" may not match anything from the N64 height of the team's career, but it is still more creative, imaginative, and fun than the majority of what we've gotten since their relative absence.

8.6/10

Well, he ain't my boy, but the brother is heavy
Gave away my possessions and moved in to a Chevy (van
Yeah, that's the master plan)
(Drive to woods and eat corn out the can)
Yeah I gave it all away, the hard rock band
The groupies, the booze, the all-night jams
Now all these fans, askin' "Where did he go?"
(Meditating on a rock lettin' go of the ego)
So rapping with the squirrels is the way of the mountain
They took half my nuts and berries and riddled "Who's countin'?"
Bit my finger with the truth, the blood was spoutin'
Now my cup overfloweth, just like a fountain
Seen birds in the sky, trees in between
Grubs in the ground, it was so serene
The sky was blue, yeah the grass was green
(And that's three square meals if you know what I mean!)
So now I wake up every morning with a fat cup of piss
My third eye's open, so give me some Swiss Miss
Saw a thirty foot fairy walking down your street
Thought I was down with God, I had to yell "Retreat!"


Because I gone guru so cut the ballyhoo
Rock the tambourines and the didgeridoo
Set the animals free from the pimpin' zoo
And I'll elevate your mind like airplane glue

Out in the desert on a three-day stint
I had a revelation and I made a mint
So take a hit and won't you join the club
Send your wives to my hut for the body rub
Mental guru in the Subaru
Four-wheel drive to the commune
Pick up the crew
And we out to the zen monastery on the prairie
Where I milk the holy cow, but quit the dairy
So run with the yeti eatin' veggie spaghetti
Don't have to live like no refugee, peace to Tom Petty
Ready, steady, spiritually grow
Til I found out my boy worked for the COINTELPRO
Graham, damn, now I gots to scram
And start handin' out my leaflets in Bethlehem
Cause the Bible's played out, so I'm writing a new text
(We are all one, so what's the problem with group sex?)
And so many children want to join the fold
(Mike Love on line two) Put that sucker on hold
And shine, to thine own self be true
They can't tell you what to do when you've gone guru
(Yeah, shine, to thine own self be true
They can't tell you what to do when you've gone guru!)
(You got to shine, to thine own self be true
They can't tell you what to do when you've gone guru)

Gone guru, I'm the new Nehru
So rock the tambourines and didgeridoo
I'll deliver who-ever pays what's due
That's nine for me, and one for you

Awwwwwwwww yeah, we got it going on and it's strong up in here tonight!
We got that incense burning! We got them peacock feathers, tickling!
We got all that cuckoo karma connection, that you can use
So come on, people, get with the program!
We can get this together...
Tonight!

Too many wives for Ohio, they were looking to try me
So I got twelve divorces said aloha, Hawaii
Arrived without traveling, they lost the bags
Another trial for my people, don't scratch the Jag
(They might say hang loose, but they really don't mean it!)
Deported me to Rio and you watched it on CNET
News chumps had me singing the blues
Til thirty thousand showed up with the right to choose
Rose petals in bed, milk in my bath
And now Harrison Ford wants my autograph
I laughed when we met, cause he busted a sweat
Then I stuck out my tongue, he donated a jet
(Stole the spotlight from the Dali Lama
Cause my crews coming tight in the orange pajamas)
(Got 16 Caddies and 29 Rolls
Fuck the shoes, I transcend through soles)
With constant expansion, I live in a mansion
Getting jiggy with Madonna and Marilyn Manson
60 Minutes exposé, taxes you never paid
Papparazzi, Code Blue! Down toupee!
Yes I'm starting to age, I can feel it in my bones
My advisers tell me (Start thinking 'bout clones)
Found out! Heaven is a place on earth!
I cut off my head, it cost all I was worth
Cryogenic robot, now my head can spin
(I'll be around a million years, so let the party begin)
PARTY ROBOT!!! (Now my head can spin
I'll be around a million years, let the party begin)

Gone guru, new Nehru
Rock tambourine and didgeridoo
Must free animals from pimpin' zoo
Deliver who, two plus two
Gone gone gone-gone, gone gone, gone gone gone-gone gone gone
Gone gone gone-gone, gone gone, gone gone gone-gone gone guru

By the middle of the 2000s, the zombie genre had turned a page. With George A. Romero’s take on the zombie, primarily as a symbol of consumerist culture in Dawn of the Dead, slowly falling into the past, the modern zombie was viewed as little more than a violent marauder, a faceless mass dedicated to the sole purpose of visceral carnage, both as an actor of said carnage, or as an excusable victim. Within the context of zombie media, the death of a living being is the peak of misery, the failure of a group or society to protect its own, symbolic of the loss of innocence, while the true death of the undead is typically reserved for scenes of wanton brutality, either as an action set-piece, or to display the morbid mundanity of life in the apocalypse. Seeming valueless, the pop-culture zombie no longer stood in as a representative of any perceived plight, anxiety, or worry, instead becoming an unavoidable, vacant threat, something to expound the tension of the group, as opposed to being the source of tension in and of itself.

This change in style in the undead landscape paved the way for zombie works in general to experiment in presentation, taking the iconography of Romero’s of the Dead franchise and putting new spins on it, framing the end of the world in different lenses. In a way, 2006’s Dead Rising purely represents this experimentation, becoming a beacon of the era’s sensibilities, not only in technical and mechanical value, but as a symbol of where the horror genre was. Dead Rising, the splatstick masterpiece, found its place as the forerunner in gaming’s view of the undead, as an innumerable wave of ghoulish targets for what could fairly be called bullying, tied together with a feel that leaned serious in presentation, but often showed its hand at the surreal nonsense surrounding every second of gameplay. The tone defined the game, and in the same way that tone defined the growing landscape of zombie media.

So, as hype for a sequel swept through the scene, and as Dead Rising 2 entered development, it made sense that it would attempt to follow the vibe set by its progenitor while also tracing the energy of the new decade of horror. Released at the dawn of the 2010s, this sequel aimed to go bigger, bolder, and dumber than its already ludicrous prequel, but along the way, something… changed. What once was a splatterhouse comedy now felt mean-spirited, cruel in a way that felt absent from its predecessor. Somewhere along the way, through the change in developer from Capcom Production Studio 1 to Blue Castle Games (later known as Capcom Vancouver), the magic of what made Dead Rising feel unique was lost, replacing it with a colder, rougher, harder-edged soul.

Feeding off the harsher aesthetic of late 2000s horror, with the advent of the torture porn subgenre and the exploitation revival in full swing, Dead Rising 2 sees a world that lacks the spirit of the original, all in the hopes of endless escalation. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment you can tell things are going to be for the worse… perhaps it starts with seeing how the game has moved to hardcore male gaze pandering with every single woman in sight. Perhaps it's the fact that you can’t go fifteen steps without a Playboy cover filling the screen. Maybe it’s noticing how you’re expected to have moved on from the ubiquitous mini-chainsaws and conventional firearms of Dead Rising to Firework Launchers, M60-toting plushies, Serv-bot brain blenders, and Knuckles-approved Knife Gloves as your bread-and-butter zombie dispatchers. It’s not as if the series was known for an sort of basis in reality, as anything other than an excuse to throw you into a messy sandbox bound to an anxiety-inducing timer, but seeing such a sharp lean into try-hard jokes makes the humor of the original shine ever so clearer.

Dead Rising 2 is… disappointing. In an attempt to solidify the foundation built by Dead Rising, the sequel works only to sully the perfection that came before it, over-polishing a knowingly messy work and filing off any sense of personality in the process. It’s still a mechanically and technically impressive work, and its attempts to build on Dead Rising’s formula are admirable, but they all serve to push the series in a direction that feels completely at odds with the prequel.

She saunters casually, pulse slow and steady, as she meanders through the decrepit halls of Hotel Banballow. The stagnant air, suffocating like a thick fog, stands as a constant reminder of the incendiary fate that befell the manor, alongside the owner’s son, one Jimmy Banballow. Silence hangs heavily through the vacant corridors, an unending moment punctuating the loss of one life and the taking of many others, as the latest victim inches closer to her demise. With Jimmy’s beloved baseball bat clutched stiffly in her palm, caked in an absurd coating of viscera, Eriko Christy makes her way to an eventual dead-end, a one-way confrontation with the man behind the slaughter, Gale Banballow, eternally vengeful over the death of his son. The sharp hiss of a blowtorch begins to pierce through the veil, a siren song signaling a violent end…
Until the tension is cut by another crash test dummy jumping you, hitting you with sidekicks and an oversized wrench, escapable with only the finest of frame-traps and side-steps. Her foe maimed and brutalized, Eriko walks away, a blank stare on her face as she speaks her one-word eulogy: “Cool!”

Illbleed is as sincere as horror gets. Beyond the high-concept of a killer amusement park with a $100 million cash prize, nothing cuts to the inherent silliness of horror like Illbleed. For context, the 90s and early 2000s were an era of introspection and reflection with horror, where metanarrative and critique became the standard through which the genre could express itself. The innate need to satirize and comment on the tropes that solidified the genre itself became a trope, a voice strained by overuse. Thus, sincerity in horror, the wink-and-smile that formed the backbone of the medium, was shattered. However, as film moved further from the side-show roots of 70s and 80s horror, other formats became the realm for celebration of the old-school mentality.

Cue none other than Illbleed. Acting as reflections on the genre’s messy past, the game is split into six episodic stages, each representing different subgenres. Ranging from straightforward slashers to old-school creature-features, each level hinges on classic haunted house scares, pushing you into stories that feel like grinning asides to the audience, less a condemnation or remorse for the source material, and more an acknowledgement and appreciation for the works that inspired it. The jokes aren’t at the expense of classic horror, but out of a sense of love. Laughing with, rather than at them, gives this game a unique viewpoint in gaming.

When I say this, I look at the trend in modern horror games to match the expectation of modern horror films. This is to say, horror games lean toward the self-serious, the unhumorous, all in the name of truly terrifying the player, breaking down the façade of safety fundamental to any indirect medium by way of intense threat and malice. While this manifest sentiment is not a direct failing of the medium or genre, it speaks to the same cynical sarcasm that poisoned the well of horror: a refusal of the genre’s funhouse beginnings, a tacit refusal of the tactless, the tasteless, and the puerile: a refusal of the past, with sights set purely on innovation, truly original thought. Through this lens, games and their depiction of horror barely breach the surface of what the genre is capable of.

Illbleed, on a mechanical level, is flawed, stilted, and representative of a generation of design that has been overwritten and forgotten. But in that same sense, what better way to reflect on the works of the past than by incorporating your medium’s flawed past into that retrospection? What can tie a game to horror’s fraught, tangled past better having remnants of the past be part of the game design itself?

It’s hard to categorize Illbleed as anything more than schlock, a heart kept pounding with the screams of B-movie scares and cheap haunted house tricks, but there’s an intrinsic originality in the energy of the B-movie, of the midnight movie and the genre film. Not only as a work honoring a legacy of horror before it, Illbleed an original exploration on the humor and excess that created the modern horror movie in the first place, which in its own right puts it in a unique place in gaming, especially within the console release scene of the mid-2000s.

As a game bound to bounce off of the majority of players for very valid reasons, it’s difficult to just unabashedly recommend Illbleed as a must-play, or some major strive in the medium of gaming, because… well, it’s not. My love for it stems from an intensely personal place, as my love for this game stems from my love of slasher films, monster flicks, the realms of the gory and the gruesome. To love Illbleed is to love horror, as broken and chaotic as it can be.

In October, Nintendo opened a limited-time buffet.

"589,00 Norwegian Krone to enter!" they said. "Come now or miss a chance to try some of our best hits!"

Nintendo? They had always been a pretty good chef. I'd always enjoyed their dishes, even if I've had a bone to pick with many of their newer recipes.

"Say what you will about their lows," I thought to myself, "but their highs have always been some of the highest I've ever tried. All right, I'm interested."

I walked in, thanking my boyfriend for being willing to get the reservation as a Christmas-turned-Valentines-turned-Easter-turned-birthday present for me.

"Thanks for waiting. Here's your spaghetti, served with mushrooms and alfredo sauce just like you remember it!" Nintendo said, getting me settled at a table. "And the tropical fruit salad, and one of our most beloved specials: the black forest cake!"
And they served it all up on one big plate.

I froze for a second, and looked up at the corporation serving me my plate.

I asked: "Um, wouldn't it have been better if you worked on how you'd serve this up just a bit? I mean, it's kind of weird to imagine eating spaghetti, salad and cake all out of one plate, and I thought a chef like you would know better."

"Not at all!" Nintendo immediately responded, so quickly they almost snapped. "This is the most direct way of serving you our classic recipes just how you remember it, isn't it? No nonsense!"

I blinked. "Maybe? I mean, it still all tastes good. But shouldn't I get to pick my own plate at a buffet? It's how you used to do at The VC."

"Oh, we decided that we know what's best for you." Nintendo casually said, waving their hand with confident nonchalance. "It's like our Switch Online cookbook, right? You get to try our repertoire exactly the way we decide you should!"

"...sure. but why are you closing down in April?"

"I, well, you see... it's to encourage everyone who wants to come to get their reservations!"
And with that, Nintendo walked away.

I get it, Nintendo. You've had a rough year, and you probably wanted to make sure your fiscal year would end on a profit, even if it involved resorting to pretty desperate measures.

But we've all been hit by recent events. We're all getting quite impatient with a lot of things, and I'd like to think our tolerance for hostile decisions is getting lower by the day.

I liked the spaghetti and the salad, right? And the cake was fine, I guess. I don't necessarily regret that, but if this is the kind of ventures you see fit to do more regularly from here on, I think I'll be happy looking for my noodles elsewhere, even if nobody makes spaghetti like you do.

It's funny how both of my All-Stars review ended up being food-themed.