Working Title 03.10.11: Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage is...AWESOME
Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.10.2011
What's this? I'm defending another horrible game? YES I AM. Since when was simplicity a bad thing in the gaming world...and why did it take them THIS long to make a Fist of the North Star game that actually captured the feeling?
Welcome to the #1 Column to think that BulletStorm has the best goddamn dialogue this side of a 4th grader, WORKING TITLE. It might be immature to downright CRAZY ass levels but for some reason the dialogue in BulletStorm just constantly has me laughing at how fucking STUPID it is. I mean...DICK-TITS. KILL YOUR DICK...WHAT THE DICK.
It's like someone just took my column and used it as a syllabus for fucking dialogue.
Oh, the game is alright, too.
After going on a quest and a call to arms a few weeks for BAD Xbox 360 games for a new column idea, I finally got the first one in the mail and spent the last week playing it. The idea is that you (the reader) suggest a horrible game from this generation and I (the dumbass) will buy/rent it and review it...and try to defend it as
much as possible.
I've done this before with my "...is AWESOME" series in which I defended pretty much every videogame movie known to man and then some other stuff like G4TV and Used Games. But now I am returning to defending 'bad' games. And at the suggestion of one commenter this week I have turned my sights to the most recent video game adaptation of one of my favorite mangas/comic books (when I read it back in the 90s I didn't know what the fuck manga was)...Fist of the North Star. So be prepared for me to tell you why Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage or Hokuto Musou is...AWESOME.
Well, after the Working Gaming Update of course.
Working Gaming Update
Dead to Rights: Retribution
Another one someone recommended to me for an AWESOME column but I haven't gotten a lot of time to play it yet...but it's actually pretty good so far. And I don't mean in the way I am going to defend Fist below...I mean I am actually digging this game a lot and when I play more of it I'll probably either like it more or find something to dislike about it.
Although the first thing I did in the game was bite someone's balls off as a dog...so it's looking up so far.
BulletStorm
This game...I...I want the audio of this game to play at all times. I have only played the first two chapters but...but...WHAT THE DICK; THE GAME IS SO GREAT IT'S FUCK AND DICK-SHIT-AWESOME-TITS-MCDONALDS.
No, that didn't make any sense. Maybe I'll make sense of it next week
Working Title: Fist of the North Star is...AWESOME
So if you are reading this on the internet right now you probably know what Fist of the North Star is. If you somehow managed to get this far without knowing I will go ahead and give you a quick rundown of the premise right now.
Bruce Lee Jesus walks around the wasteland from Mad Max and pokes people so hard that they explode. That is pretty much it. I mean I could tell you that Kenshiro is a master of an ancient martial art and is destined to become the savior of a war torn/fallout ruined world...but my description is just so much better.
But why hasn't this series gotten a decent video game yet? We've had tons of mediocre to bad FoTNS games but none of them have ever captured the fun and...well HSQ (Holy Shit Quotient) of the manga and show. I mean between the manly tears and social commentary there was pretty much nothing else there than a couple of bad asses kicking the shit out of idiots who would dare to stand in thief way. It's just a shame that there isn't some sort of video game series based off of those principals alone.
Wait.
WAIT.
There IS a game like that! But everyone thinks they are horrible? But you know what? FUCK THEM. Dynasty Warriors is the PERFECT fit for a FOTNS game...and this is why
It's AWESOME. Yes, I am going to fucking praise Dynasty Warriors for its shitty AI and it's fucking horrible level design. Why? Because it WORKS for Fist of the North Star. The world has been hit by fuckton of nukes and pretty much everyone is dead so that explains the barren levels but if you have EVER seen ANY part of Fist than you know that Kenshiro fucks up the shit of ANYONE who gets in his way. PERIOD.
Take a look.
Do you see that? How the fuck could you make a game like this work with a character who is a goddamn invincible fucking badass without basing it off of the same engine that has made tons of games about being invincible badasses! The AI is stupid, it won't fight back, and thus allows you to fucking pummel them until they scream HIDEBU and fucking explode in a baptism of gore. So you play your character and just run through the world beating the crap out of everyone in your path until you--
You know what? You know the drill. It's fucking Dynasty Warriors. Yes, the gameplay is old it's clunky...it's simple...but you know what? It's FUN.
You do remember that, don't you?
Not to get on the soapbox I usually get on but I think the main reason Fist of the North Star is awesome is simply because it's pure fun. It sticks to the source material well and even offers Dream Mode which is a great addition which allows you to use characters in a "What If" storyline that you didn't see in the original Fist series...but the main point here is that simple gameplay can still be fun. It doesn't make us any less hardcore, it doesn't turn us into 'casuals' nor does it make your precious e-penis shrink. So yes, the main reason I actually like this game is because of its highly flawed, highly simplistic, HIGHLY gratifying gameplay. I get to poke people in the head...and the head in turn explodes.
But I guess I have other reasons, too.
Fist of the North Star is NOT a short book or anime, in fact it spans MANY volumes and episodes (and even has new shit coming out now 30 YEARS later) and for those who actually know the fiction this game actually stays pretty goddamn true to it...and includes it all. Although it's highly abridged only because having a game be 45 hours long would just be a goddamn shit show. But the game does make sure to hit all of the major plot points of Kenshiro, Rei, Mamiyama and Raoh's story and manages to make each of them feel good. Sure, the cut scenes sort of overlap and Mamiyama was NOWHERE near the badass she is in this in the actual source material but going into this game I figured I was going to get a 'licensed' game and instead I ended up getting a game that not only captured FOTNS's god-mode like style but also told a story...THE story!
Hell, they even went farther with the Dream Mode and actually made up new stories. Of course they are all kind of short and the characters you play as are clones of characters already in the game...but the fact that someone even bothered to let us play as fucking Jagi and let you see the story from his fucked up eyes is a nice little nod for people who actually are deep into the fiction.
So now that that is out of the way it allows me to get back to the point of this rant/defense. Yes, this game is AWESOME. Why? I could cop out and say it's "because I said so" and leave it at that, but I think it's just one of those times where you have to say the game is more fun than it is good. It's not a perfect 10 game by any fucking stretch. Hell, if I had to officially review this game I'd probably give it a 5 AT MOST. But it's the sheer fact that this is the BEST Fist of the North Star game we are ever going to get and I think it's the best one to capture the soul of what the fiction is about. Kenshiro is an unstoppable force that will let nothing stand in his way in his quest for redemption and peace throughout his crapsack world and is given very little pause to do nothing else but beat the shit out of ANYTHING who tries to keep that dream from becoming a reality...and you do pretty much the same exact thing in the video game. It's just that this time you are aided by stupid ass A.I and easy as shit gameplay in order to let you feel that badass.
So in review:
- The game is fun, if not simplistic.
- The game follows the fiction, and even creates new fiction to go with it.
- The game fits the look, feel, and personality of the fiction itself to create the experience of you being a Bruce Lee Jesus badass.
Yep. That looks pretty AWESOME to me. Besides, with the horrible A.I Koei uses it's at least easier to explain in this game than the others. A whole bunch of in-bred psycho rapist motorcyclists are INFINITELY dumber than one thousand trained Chinese soldiers standing around just waiting to be viciously murdered by someone who looks like this.
And if you disagree? Well...
You're already dead.
Working Question
Let's make an easy one here.
Capcom has outright stated that they will NOT be adding Spectator Mode to MvC3. Do you think this is something the community just needs to get over or one of the biggest oversights/WTF moments in Capcom's recent memory?
Personally I think their reasoning of "It's too hard" is fucking bullshit. You managed to put online support in Resident Evil 5, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Final Fight, Magic Blade, Street Fighter IV AND Street Fighting 2 and all of its remakes...but you couldn't do it in MvC3? Bullshit. You are obviously waiting for some Super MvC3 to bail you out on this but I don't think the fan base is going to let you get away with it this time, Capcom.
Fix this shit.
Meanwhile, I'm going to go back to playing DickTit's Curse-O-Rama: The Game. Stay tuned next week to see what horrible game I end up thinking is AWESOME. Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and I think BulletStorm out Duke Nukem'd Duke Nukem...I don't know how I feel about that just yet.
