bacon is magic

I saw a post on Kotaku earlier this week and saw that there would be a full Rocky & Bullwinkle game for XBLA coming later in the week, and I got EXCITED. Unreasonably excited. I already got the Rocky & Bullwinkle pinball table for Pinball FX on XBLA last week without even thinking; I saw it on the XBLA Marketplace, everything went hazy, and then I saw it being downloaded. I don’t recall ever pressing the A button to confirm spending 200 points three bucks on it at all. In any case, it wasn’t a bad pinball table, and I did really well on the table on my first try, unlocking multiball on my first ball about 4 times, and it was pretty well themed with the table design and such.

In any case, I was EXCITED about the Rocky & Bullwinkle game, though I didn’t even know what it was about. I found out later that it would be some sort of minigame collection, trying to grab on to the success ho-train that is Warioware. However, I was sorely disappointed. It’s made by the same people as Pinball FX, which makes me really wonder WTF happened.

First, the good bits about it:

• It has a bunch of Rocky & Bullwinkle characters sprinkled throughout the minigames, including Peabody’s boy Sherman, some Fractured Fairy Tales characters, the moonmen, Captain Wrong Way Peachfuzz, and so forth.
• Some of the games are based on stuff that happens in the cartoon, such as Gidney and Cloyd scrooching things as a whack-a-mole theme.

And now here is what’s actually included in the game:

• Shitty hack flash animation. Seriously. This looks like it was animated by the same people that make those crappy, disjointed e-card animations you get in the chain e-mails from the crazy person at work. Bullwinkle running and throwing Rocky into the air looks like a reanimated corpse puppet with a different puppeteer for every limb, lumbering along with the grace of a manatee on a pogo stick down a flight of stairs. I don’t know if the animators have no talent, or are just extremely lazy. A good example is losing the trampoline minigame: Boris throws a bomb on you and laughs, and his “laugh” is moving his head up and down independently of his body.
• Shitty representations of the R&B characters. Load up the game and look at Bullwinkle, and you will immediately know something’s wrong, even if you can’t quite understand why; his head is poorly proportioned and his eyes are all fucked is perhaps the reason why. Don’t these guys have, I don’t know, at least 78 episodes of reference material?
• Awkward interface. For a game that tries to capture the fast-paced hectic fun of Warioware, they can’t seem to understand that there needs to be a flow of “a game is coming, here it is, figure it out and play, repeat” in a boom, boom, boom fluid motion like clockwork. The Rocky & Bullwinkle game is “this is the game and how to play (press A), here’s the game, you won/lost (press A), repeat”. The problem here is the (press A); Warioware moves at a steady clip, keeping you on your toes. In this game, the pace is nonexistent; you have to read how to play the game, confirm, play the game, then you see if you win or lose, and confirm. There is no excitement, no adrenaline rush, no crazy fun to be had, making for a disjointed, staccato experience that’s rather jarring. This also brings me to my next point…
• The games are not intuitive, because if they were intuitive, they wouldn’t have to tell you how to play each game. Because the games aren’t intuitive, they have to provide instructions. Because they have to provide instructions, there is no pace, there is no flow, there is no challenge, there is no fun.
• WTFBBQ use of video clips. You will see clips from the actual cartoon interspersed throughout the game, particularly after each minigame. However, they serve no purpose other than to proclaim, “Look! It’s Rocky & Bullwinkle! These clips prove it!” It makes the game look cheap, like one of those “multimedia” games from the 90s, or the Mario/Zelda CDI games.
• Inappropriate, awful MIDI music.  It was already bad on the Rocky & Bullwinkle pinball table for Pinball FX (why is there guitar?), but here, it’s there to give you the feeling that you are in fact, not playing a Rocky & Bullwinkle game.  But you are, and it makes you sad.  It doesn’t help that the nature of the game flow (as listed above) means that you’ll never hear music for more than 10 seconds at a time or so before switching to something else.
• False variety in minigames. The “buy me” information screen boasts over 100 minigames to play should you purchase the game, but that number is probably a lot closer to 35, as many of the games are clones of each other, bringing us to the next point…
• Game design without the design. Here’s a set of game “designs” they use:
  • Press the L and R triggers as fast as you can.
  • Rotate the analog stick. A lot.
  • Move the cursor over the targets. (you don’t even have to press any buttons)
  • Press a button with the right timing.

That pretty much sums up most of the games, as there are about 2-3 of each of those game types. Oh yes, there’s a dodge and collect minigame where you collect Fudge cakes with your spaceship while dodging asteroids, bringing us all the sophisticated gameplay of an LCD dodge ‘em game.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of all is the fact that they made this game; because it’s so god-awful, we’re far less likely to see another game using the Rocky & Bullwinkle license anytime soon, and that’s a shame.

I realize that I only played the trial version, but it did show a decent percentage of the minigames, and amazing lack of attention to detail like, the interface, the animation, the graphics, the gameplay, the use of the license, the use of video clips, and trampling of one of the first highly intelligent cartoons has peeved me just a bit. If we sent this game to Pottsylvania, they’d send it back. I never got to try any of the Xbox LIVE Camera minigames, where “players with an Xbox LIVE Vision camera can control 25 of these games using fun gestures.” Unfortunately, I can think of only one gesture to give this game, and I think Jay Ward would approve.

I went to the Zhongxiao Fuxing Sogo department store today to buy some point cards for the Xbox 360 and PS3 today. Why Sogo? I had about 5000NT in gift certificates to the place given to me by my company for various events like holidays and weiya(year-end company party) prizes.

I made the following wonderful observations:

• New and old 360/PS3/Wii games were about 2000NT ($67USD) on average at Sogo, going for about 1890NT at cheapest and 2200NT highest (approx.)
• New 360/PS3/Wii games are normally 1380NT at ANY GAME SHOP in Taipei, and that’s without shopping around (however, some JPN-version 360 and PSN games run 1800NT, as the Asian versions are the ones at 1380NT)
• This means that Sogo regularly marks up game prices by about 620NT on average, or about $20USD
• In other words, games at Sogo cost 44% more than normal for no good reason

I also found out that they didn’t sell the point cards at the store, and I’m pretty sure I know why: these items are pricelocked, so they can’t overcharge you for them, so they don’t sell them. Unlike the 360, PS3 cards have NT values on them, usually 400NT or 800NT(about $14/$27USD). How can you mark up the prices on something that has another price on it already?

The problem is, pretty much everything here is like this - marked way up already. Whenever there’s a sale, it rarely matters because the prices were high in the first place, and generally cost more than retail anyway even after the “sale”. After all, other stores have sales too.

Now I have 5000NT in gift certificates that I can only use to buy overpriced goods. It’s pretty irritating; I have free money, but the money is worth less than it’s supposed to be because I’m limited to spending it on excessively priced goods. Ain’t that a b.

Still, I believe that Sogo is ideal for particular groups of people:

• Stupid rich people (must be both stupid and rich)
• People who are in a pinch, such as someone who needs to buy a gift ASAP
• People looking for a very specific brand they can’t find elsewhere
• People who have gift certificates to the place already (why me?)

If you don’t fit into one of the above groups, you should really shop somewhere else.

Anyway, I’ve determined that I can only get my money’s worth for my gift certificates through one of the following ways:

• I use my gift certificates at places where the prices are less likely to be pushed up, such as at chain stores like The Body Shop or one of the restaurants in the place.
• I use my gift certificates at “new” Sogo’s City Super supermarket - the prices are always high there, but at least the stuff I buy there is of good quality and I can’t get those things elsewhere.

All of this is totally retarded too, when they sell things like this:

On the bottom shelf, you can see the Vii (hilarious breakdown examination here), also known as the Chinese knockoff of the Nintendo Wii. It boggles the mind to think that Sogo, which prides itself on being a high quality Japanese department store, sells knockoffs of the Wii instead of selling the actual Wii itself.

But wait! Sogo isn’t a Japanese store, at least not in Taiwan, where it’s owned and run by the Far Eastern Group. Going to their webpage, you can see the following quote:

The Far Eastern Group’s Founder - Mr. Y. Z. Hsu - has always taken “trustworthiness” as the guiding principle of his business management.

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t see how products priced 44% over retail and blatant knockoff goods in lieu of the ones customers are looking for help to instill a feeling of trust.

Update: I’ve since found out that the Vii is produced by KenSingTon,(or 广州市京仕敦电子科技有限公司荣誉出品, which is Guangzhou, Beijing Shidun Electronic Technology Co. Ltd. roughly translated) which I’m guessing is trying to imitate the name of Kensington, a computer peripheral company, which does have a Chinese branch in Beijing, making me wonder how they deal with trademarks in China. The fact that the official inquiry e-mail is a Hotmail address makes them seem very sketchy. They have since come out with a redesign of the console(Google translated link), ironically making it look less like the Wii and more like a PS3. According to the Wikipedia entry, it now has a cartridge slot for 3 different multi-game cartridges (like 7-in-1 style cartridges), giving it expandability over the previous model, though I have no idea who will make the cartridges other than “KenSingTon”. My issue? Sogo is still selling the obvious Wii copycat, and the one that could be potentially mistaken for a Wii.

i have RAINBOWS! >giggles<

I picked up the 360 version of Rainbow 6: Vegas 2, since they didn’t have the Limited Edition one here, so the cover is this fuck ugly orangeovision guy rappelling with shitty lettering instead of the cool poker spade design that actually doesn’t suck.

I’m further irritated by the fact that I was secretly hoping that the PS3 version would be chock full of badass instead of having reduced textures, lighting, and frame rate, and the PS3 versions of the case don’t have stupid ad text FOREVER ON THE COVER AS LONG AS YOU OWN THE GAME. Furthermore, the Limited Edition look just looks better with black trim, instead of the Christmas green that the 360 cases have to have.

This is as bad as the differences between the Japanese Kagero Deception cover and the US one from the old Playstation game.

Okay, maybe not.

What pisses me off more is reading the back and seeing:

“Plan your assault on breathtaking new Vegas hotspots alone or with up to three friends in a massively upgraded co-op mode.”

and:

co-op 2-4 (same console)

co-op 2-10 (online)

Actually, Story Mode Co-op(AKA normal co-op mode) was reduced from 4 players to 2 players only, and this is like the opposite of a “massive upgrade”. But okay, they have Terrorist Hunt mode, which does allow for more than 2 players, but only up to 4, WHICH IS NOT 10. Why must you let these lies spew forth from your lie-hole, Ubisoft?

Oh well. I’ll probably play the crap out of it with my brother and love it anyway.

-chef