Miister X's adventure in [redacted] part 3

A message from the editor

When Miister X sent me the copy for the second part of what we had promised the readers would be an epic tale of adventure in a foreign land, I had some concerns. There was only one day left in the story, and I was worried that having learnt the secret to enormous wealth (back breaking manual labour as it turned out, who'd have guessed) that it seemed unlikely that anything tense or exciting could happen during that time. I received the copy for the final part a few days ago and found my fears realised. I'll give you the abridged version of what happens: our now very wealthy hero buys some nice clothes, gives a speech and goes to a nightclub. That's it. I called him and attempted to explain how this might be an issue but this proved pointless. At one point, in an attempt to explain the problem I mentioned the notion of a three act structure, which he saw as a reason to segway into talking about when he used to perform three stand-up comedy gigs a night.

Timeless stuff.

 Several hours later I managed to steer the conversation back on track but when I tried to be tough and say that he'd have to rewrite the previous entries so that the finale could have some kind of climax, he giggled, then in a serious tone explained that he wasn't contracted to do re-writes of any kind. He also explained how he had long since lost interest in the project because the whole concept was as he put it "lame as hell".

On that it was hard to disagree.

So without further ado I give you the concluding part to the trilogy. When we last left our hero he was fabulously wealthy, despite what his attire might suggest.

For part 1, click here.

For part 2, click here.

As I awoke, I felt happier than I'd felt since I got here, knowing that my time in this town was almost up. It might also have had something to do with the bright summer colors of the room, they were just so positive! I made a mental note to have at least one room in my house decorated with this "carrot monster" theme when I got home.
I occurred to me that my one day of labor may well have made me the richest man in town, but that money would be of little use to me in the outside world. I had taken lots of money out of the town, and who knows if this bunch of idiots could deal with a sudden dependence on importing. Clearly, there was one decent, honorable thing to do....




SHOPPING SPREE

This spree didn't exactly last long, the town only has four places to buy things and I wound up buying an awful lot of horrible wallpapers, carpets and museum fixtures but I like to think I shared the wealth.

"Oh... someone to weed, right, see, thought you said some... although that might have explained a lot"

I knew the villagers didn't recognize me, and probably wouldn't be that enthusiastic if that unshaven, sweaty homeless guy who'd spent the previous day shaking down trees tried to open the lighthouse so I stopped by the beauty parlor to get cleaned up, and managed to perfectly describe, from memory, the dimensions and design of my favorite suit to a local tailor.

The result. You're welcome, ladies.

You can't please 'em all I suppose.

Two things caught me by surprise when I arrived to give my speech.

1: That a few people had actually shown up

2: That the lighthouse was there at all, because I swear to myself it was a construction site eight hours ago

I had taken the time to write my speech on a scrap of one of the carpets I bought earlier (no sense letting it go to waste). As I recall, it went something like this:

Citizens of [redacted]

When I arrived I was a success but your country ways made me feel like a failure. And yet here I am, the richest man in town, who unlike the rest of you, has the power to leave. My time here proves what I have always known, that winners always win because they're winners, and losers like you always lose. I cannot think of a better public work for this town than a lighthouse. A lighthouse stands tall giving the message, "you don't want to come here" a fitting description of this dump. NOW WHO WANTS TO PARTY IT UP WITH A WINNER?

Unsurprisingly only one (guy called Static) of these losers had the nerve to meet my challenge to party it up and to be honest, I'm not sure he heard me... you'll see.

I'm bald you idiot.

Like I said: a few pieces of fruit short of a stack. Sorry, local humor.

So I partied all night long. All night long. ALL NIGHT LONG, except for when I was asleep. I wasn't keen on taking the train with a hangover but in the morning, when he woke me up, the club owner explained how I'd been drinking fruit juice all night, and that my drunkeness may have been half placebo effect and half mental fatigue. 

As the train sped away from New Wangsburg, I reflected on my time there. What I learned from the experience was that a winner

Wait, I said all that in the speech. Just read that again, but this time picture me on a train as you do so. I think I was drinking a latte. That's it. This is the end of the story.

See what I mean. Bought loads of stuff, makeover, speech and party. That's all. What a waste of internets.

Miister X's adventure in [redacted] Part 1

For part two click here.

Hey, it's mii, Miister X. You may remember from such roles the King, the Prince and the Princess in Streetpass quest. I don't need to tell you, I'm a pretty big name in the Miiverse. So when Ivan and the other one were putting together their plan for a games blog, they'd the right idea asking mii to be their mascot. In the negotiations they insisted I do promotional work for them and write at least one piece, because when you're both a champion tennis player and an ace pilot, people want to know what's it like in your head. That's why I wrote my book, "Miiverse-us the World". I was in a bad way financially at the time because of my skiiing injury, so I couldn't say no. I did manage to talk them into letting me do the article about the promotional junket mind. With the contract signed, the Moustache guys said they'd be in touch when they had the junket arranged. Four months later, the other one remembered that he was the mayor of a small town called [redacted] (I didn't call my town [redacted], by how I wish I did. ~Ed) which thanks to a lack of checks and balances he could pretty do what he wanted with. He arranged for mii to spend a few days there promoting the blog, culminating in a speech at the opening of the the town's lighthouse. This is that story. A story of making the best of a bad situation, of fixing problems when no one will help you and absolutely terrifying snowmen.

The other one recommended I explore the town and check out the sights on my first day there, so I had a wander around. The first thing I noticed was weeds, lots and lots of weeds.

Also, tropical fruits.

Not funny. At all

One of the sights I'd been encouraged to check out was the local museum. This proved to be another mystery. The place had a number of extremely valuable paintings (the Mona Lisa to name but one) but clearly no security, seeing as most of the exhibits had been stripped bare.

My leg had healed nicely, so for the first time in weeks I was ready to shake what my Miimaker gave me. I rolled up to club lol (or is it club 101, I couldn't tell), told them who I was and.... nothing. I was pretty mad at the Moustaches for this, how the hell am I meant to promote their duff blog if no-one in the town's heard of me. But this wouldn't be their only mistake.

A frosty reception

Disappointed, I made my way to the other one's house where I'd be staying. At one point, a talking wolf asked me to sign a petition to ban anchovies. I tried to make a "get stuffed" "stuffed anchovies" based pun. I failed and then awkwardly continued on my way. Then I encountered this...

Something about it gave me a feeling of unease,so I kept my distance.

The other one had told me that he'd hide a key under the mat. With that in mind, can you see what's wrong with this picture?

The red light district.

Finding myself without a place to sleep, I headed straight for the mayor's office to see if the other one had made other arrangements.

This bitch was no help

The mayor's assistant seemed to have some repressed rage towards her "blow in, absentee boss" (something to do with having the same uncompleted paperwork on his desk for 6 months)which she took out on me. She told me to try the campsite and then threatened to release the hounds (her cousins). Sadly, the facilities at the camp site proved to be.... lacking

Who leaves a perfectly good picnic go to waste like this. These people are animals. ANIMALS!

You know what mate? Go quack yourself!

Night at the Museum

Things looked bad. It was winter time and I needed a place to sleep. As I wandered the high street looking for shelter, an idea occurred to me. The museum was open all night, and with such lax security I could probably find a quiet exhibit or store room and sleep there. 

Sure enough one of the store rooms was unlocked.

I wasn't too keen on the totem pole, but I once slept in Sean Connerii's attic, and, well, 'nuff said.

Will Miister X get a good night sleep? Will the petition to ban anchovies be a success? Will he ever forget the things he saw in Sean Connerii's attic? And what of the sinister snow gentlemen? For the answers to these and other question tune in next week whenever this blog gets updated to find out!

QR Codes

Hey you! Do you long for style? The kind of style that says "yeah, I'm the face of a games blog that's read almost as infrequently as it's updated". The kind of style that starts to look disheveled over time because you only packed one set of clothes. The kind of style claims to resemble that of Gordon Gecko just because of the suspenders. The kind of style that isn't sure if the previous three sentences should have ended with question marks.....?

Well now you can have that style!

Watchmen with Space Animals

5 Reasons Why Star Fox 64 Is Darker Than You Think

Star Fox 64 tells the tale of a group of anthropomorphic animals who defy the odds (and their natural desire to kill and eat each other) to defeat a monkey who threatens the galactic peace. There is some darkness on the surface of this story, Andross (the aforementioned monkey) is responsible for the supposed death of Fox's father and during the course of the story, the team encounter a pig called Pigma Iscariot, who betrayed the original Star Fox team to Andross. But if you delve deeper, you find a much darker layer to the game that is only hinted at.

1: The Cornerian Army is Dangerously Dependent on Freelancers

This one is the most obvious, in fact, one of the first lines of the game is "you're the only hope for our world". According to the Star Fox Wiki " In earlier times the original Star Fox team, led by James McCloud, protected the world as mercenaries, with the help of the Cornerian Army." Surely a team of mercenaries should help an army, not the other way around. In the first level, robots appear to knock over entire skyscrapers and it’s suggested that the whole planet of Corneria is under attack, yet there doesn't seem to be a force on the entire planet capable of fighting the invaders off. In another mission, they need Star Fox to defuse a bomb, in their own base. 

It should also be noted that the military force necessary to turn the tide of every single battle witnessed in the game consists of four Arwings one of which is piloted by Slippy Toad, another by an aging veteran. The bar is pretty low and they can't even reach that. When General Pepper implores you to "be reasonable" about going to Solar, his concern is if anything understated. Fox's decision to take an extremely risky route to Venom simply because his map allowed him to endangers not only himself, but the safety of the entire system.

2: The Army's Leadership is Shockingly Incompetent

In the prologue we're told that years ago, General Pepper sent a team to Venom to investigate strange activity. This team was promptly captured by Andross and Fox's father James sacrificed himself to help Peppy escape. To summarise, the team were sent to investigate strange activity and found it. Pepper proceeds to do absolutely nothing with this information. As a result, a few years later, Andross launches his attack. Well done General, well done. The fact that at the end of the game he still has his job is something of a miracle. Maybe his personal relationship with the only three capable pilots in the system, and Slippy, makes him too valuable to lose.

Another question raised is why Andross was on Venom in the first place. Apparently, Andross was once a scientist who wanted to help others before developing an insane thirst for power. Whether or not he genuinely wanted this power for himself or just wanted to take it away from the idiots who held it is unclear. Andross destroyed a large amount of Corneria city with an explosion resulting from one of his experiments. This proves to be the last straw for Pepper, who had been suspicious of Andross for some time. Andross' punishment is to be sent to Venom. In other words, death by exile. It later turns out that Venom wasn't quite as desolate as everyone assumed allowing Andross to build an army. Had they taken time to research the planet where they intended to send one of the most dangerous individuals in the system, the entire Lylat war could have been averted. Or they could have just thrown him in jail, which raises the question of whether or not the Cornerians are so stupid that they don't actually have jails.

Of course it's possible that the Cornerian army simply have other matters to contend to. That's because:

3: Corneria is Clearly a Military Dictatorship

Signs that Corneria is a dictatorship are everywhere, from the literal signs showing pictures of Pepper's face on Cornerian buildings (in the 3DS version at any rate) to the absence of any figure of authority other than the General. Pepper is described as having authority over science and research as well the military. Whether or not you can have authority over a military that doesn't exist is up for debate. It's just as well the camera cuts away at the end after Team Star Fox turn down Pepper’s offer to join the army, the following scene in which Pepper explains that in his Corneria, when someone is asked to sign up, they sign up, and has his goons rough up Slippy would have ended the game on a very dark note. The army are so busy keeping civilians in line that they can’t protect against outside threats. But how could the oppressed population be so large that they occupy the army's attention so fully. How could there be that many people on the planet? This leads me onto my next point.

4: This Dictatorship Oppresses a Race of Tiny People 

The buildings in the opening Corneria level visually resemble skyscrapers, but are obviously too small for Fox and Co. to enter. As mentioned earlier, these buildings are knocked over by robots and no-one shows any concern. In fact, apart from a quick remark by Falco, "this is horrible", the death and destruction doesn't seem to have any effect on the team, hell, it's entirely possible that Falco was simply talking about the number of enemy ships the team would have to deal with. Firing at buildings by mistake goes unpunished. I ask you, what sort of monsters could cause and witness so much damage to skyscrapers and their inhabitants and be unaffected? Who could do that?

People/animals who have grown up in a culture where the tiny people are treated as second class citizens, that's who!

Pictured: Anti-establishment protest posters from Corneria

Maybe this is why they couldn't just execute Andross on Corneria, they sent him to Venom to die after all, so killing him was obviously the goal. They had to give the illusion that they were exiling him, removing him as a threat, but without infringing on his rights as a "big person".

Team Star Fox are obviously a part of this horrible culture that permits them to use smart bombs in a highly populated area, it is the norm for them. But that is not the only troubling thing about the team.

5: Team Star Fox are Deeply Troubled Individuals

Behind the jovial (perhaps too jovial?) "do a barrel role", "get this guy off of me" banter something is rotten at the core of this team. We'll go through the more subtle examples in a moment, but I'll start with the most obvious sign of the rot. The team member who most clearly demonstrates the messed up dynamic of the team, the weakest link, the one most likely to get his team killed. Most of you probably can guess who I'm talking about.

The ol' bait and switch. Classic.

Falco is the team's weakest link because he doesn't know how to be in a team. He's a lone (Star) Wolf forced into working with others. His bad attitude and lack of respect for authority threatens the future of the team at every moment. If you rescue him he'll sometimes say "oh great I've been saved by Fox" in a sarcastic tone which suggests some kind of death wish. Can someone like that be trusted? Falco is too unstable to be a part of the only competent military team in the Lylat system.

Slippy is the second biggest problem with the team, but at least he thinks about the team. His team-mates, and whether or not he's safely within their range of vision are constantly on his mind. But Slippy shouldn't be in combat, he's the team's engineer and its weakest pilot, shouldn't he be, oh I don't know, working on a G-diffuser that won't malfunction after running for a few minutes? That Peppy in particular, who has lost comrades before, allows Slippy to join the fight suggests he and the rest of the team are very callous individuals. On the subject of Peppy, his constant comparisons between Fox and his father have an air of manipulation about them. These arguments about how the team willingly endanger Slippy would be mere speculation were it not for the existence of ROB 64.

As a robot, ROB 64 would be well suited to combat, but instead controls the great Fox, despite the fact that as the mechanic, Slippy could do the most good if stationed in the base with quick access to the repair bay. There must be a reason that ROB is kept safe from harm. The members of Star Fox must be replaced if and when they die, because due to military incompetence, this is the only way for the galaxy to be kept safe. The team needs to be structured in such a way that in the event that all the Arwings are destroyed in combat, the member stationed on the Great Fox, i.e. the one most likely to survive can fulfill this task of rebuilding the team. The death of your colleagues and destruction caused by the galaxy's most disturbing individuals would affect even the relatively cold and detached members of Star Fox after a while. But not ROB 64. ROB 64's cold robotic nature reflects the lack of empathy or remorse that piloting the Great Fox and convincing others to join the team, knowing they will die, entails. When Fox is  barrel rolling with the angels, ROB 64 will passively note a vacancy in the team roster and make plans to seek out another adrenaline junkie to take his place.

The team are obviously very damaged individuals, because that is the only type of person who could do what they do, yet they are lauded as heroes across the galaxy. This brings me to my final question, is Star Fox 64 basically Watchmen with space animals?

Or it could just be that Star Fox 64 is a 3D scrolling shooter whose trope heavy plot is there purely for entertainment value, but where's the overly analytical fun in that?

Still haven't scratched the procrastination itch? Then why not read my Star Fox 64 3D review (comes with a free Kid Icarus Uprising review), Super Mario 3D Land review or Steam World Dig review?

3 Games that Deserve Sequels

In which Eye Moustaches is let down by something on the internet, but out of that darkness starts a blog

While browsing the internet ¹ I came upon this. I clicked on it and what followed were three minutes of crushing disappointment. All but one of the games on this list have numbers in their title and crucially are all successful franchises. I'll cut you in on an industry secret: Skyrim was something of a big deal, they're probably going to make another one. The article had no fight, no argument to win. To say you want sequels to games that are or were enormously popular is the equivalent of white noise. With that in mind, I present the article I thought I was going to read, a list of games that deserve sequels but probably won't get them. These are the games, if you find them in a store, you put them at the front of the stack when the manager isn't looking because people need to play them and damn their filing system. Fight the power. 

The oppressors of generations who kept you down with myths of... alphabetization!

Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

Yep, I'm one of those people.
 Zack and Wiki was a puzzle game in the purest sense in the world. The Legend of Zelda is a puzzle game interspersed with unnecessary monster battling to pad out the run time, Professor Layton is a puzzle game embedded within aimless wandering and fetch quests. Tetris isn’t a puzzle game, whoever gave you that idea? Zack and Wiki is (with a handful of exceptions) simply puzzle after puzzle for the entirety of the game. Your objective in each level is clear, use the objects at hand and some outside the box thinking to survive and reach the treasure chest.

Sadly the game itself never brought in much treasure and so a sequel seems unlikely. This is a shame as Zak and Wiki’s particular style of gameplay was and still is a rare thing. The game involved manipulating objects and planning out the result of your actions in a way that only Portal seems to resemble. Like that game, Z&W is very suitable for co-operative play. In the game’s best puzzles once your solution is planned out, putting it in motion is quite straightforward, the real fun is to be had plotting out these sequences of events.

When it worked it was a deeply satisfying game, but when it didn’t it was quite frustrating and these moments, that perhaps a sequel could avoid, sullied an otherwise excellent game. As suggested earlier, the game does best when it keeps things cerebral, once you know what to do, the doing shouldn’t pose a problem. Occasional (badly implemented) combat scenes, sections involving genuine dexterity, that awful thing with the tennis racket and certain puzzles based purely on magical rules (the Barbaros’ castle levels are notorious for this) betray this ideal. Having to sometimes restart the longer levels from the start was also annoying. 

No, not that awful thing with the tennis racket

Zack and Wiki: Quest For Higher Sales is a game that deserves to be made although to say that is hardly original. Before and after the game came out, previewers and reviewers were notably more direct about telling people to buy it²At the time, they knew that the fate of what had the potential to be a fantastic, unique series rested on a game with a cringe worthy name and cover, that what they had was an incredible game that people were unlikely to buy. Unfortunately, it seems they were right. 

Also, most of the cast are rabbits. Didn't seem relevant earlier.

Red Steel 2

This suggestion may surprise you. In a moment, you'll probably find yourself thinking: "wait a minute, that game has a number in the title, the very thing you were annoyed about earlier". My response to that accusation is to make that accusation myself before you get the chance³. Before you have time to reflect on that, let me confuse you with a paradox. While I believe Red Steel 2 deserves a sequel, I never would have said the same about Red Steel 1, a game which actually did get a sequel. The original Red Steel was an ugly and hard to control mess that forever damaged Matthew Castle's credibility. The guns were hard to aim and the motion controlled sword fighting was an awkward, shoehorned in feature. The grey, dark multiplayer levels weren't up to much either.

The motion-plus enabled sequel was a far better game. The setting was an interesting addition to the well trod the-wild-west-but-with-samurai-and-the occasional-robot-drone genre and most importantly, bright especially when compared to the Winter solstice set original. The controls were tight and the transition between sword and guns was smooth and natural. The guns themselves were satisfyingly varied  and the customisation options kept them fresh.

The trouble was that the combat was pretty much the entire game. Red Steel 2 consisted of combat sections that led into quick time events that led into dull training sections that rewarded you with more combat events. The streets you explored had not a single NPC and aside from the absurdity of its setting the game had little humour. Over time, the repetition gets to you. The overly effective kneecap option in fights didn’t help matters.

This is why Red Steel 2 needs a sequel. Its team got so much right in terms of controls and combat⁴ but didn’t do anything else with these ideas. The resultant game was a series of combat arenas with enemies that gradually increased in strength. While enjoyable, Red Steel 2 taunts you with the game it could be. The man with the ridiculous coat and eye moustaches deserves another chance.

Just look at tho- YES I know it has the Eurogamer watermark on it. Is the fact that this is on blogspot not enough of a clue that this isn't a well funded operation? 

Infinite Space

Infinite Space was a game with great potential and a combat system that offered slightly more depth than you might have first assumed. It offered to show you the stars like Doctor Who⁵ but in the end you were the gamer who waited, waited for the dialogue you’d read before to finish so you could move onto the next block of dialogue you’d read before, so you could advance the plot. Infinite Space was a fine game when it was in space, the menu heavy port sections were the problem.

Unlike the other games in this list, Infinite Space is not necessarily a game I really liked, but a game I wanted to really like. It promised me the freedom to explore space in a way that was an end in itself, not simply a way of getting from one planet-based level to another⁶.

Footnotes:

1: Which sounds much more sophisticated than "while procrastinating"

2: Reports of IGN home invasions later turned out to be unfounded

3:You just got 8-Miled

4: And the equally important field of making shooting explosive barrels satisfying
5: : It’s not the characters name….. but if you say the Doctor, no one will now who you mean…. But it’s… wrong…. But you need to be accessible to the reader, on that note, transcribing an argument with yourself about how to refer to a fictional character will not help matters
6: Also, I needed a third game for the list. Ironically, Infinite Space is included here to fill up space