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I almost feel like I'm hitting something in Sammy's Seven Samurai 20XX (PS2), the title of which depresses me. The game has a more-than-interesting art style. It has nice sound effects. The voice acting -- in English -- really isn't bad at all. However, the game feels too much like a room-to-room slash-fest like the recent Shinobi for PlayStation2. Except without the stylish explosions of blood and falling-apart of standing-dead ninjas with the end of each segment. Lots of fire and slashing in this one. I don't know how it's going to turn out. Nor do I know what the hell it has to do with Seven Samurai. I'll play it anyway, because of the Kurosawa name. The whole time, I'll probably keep calling it "Seven Sammyrai. Which maybe makes me suck.
One thing that doesn't suck is the video demo of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. People are talking about this all over the internet already. I won't bother tossing in conspiracy theories. So I'll do two things:
1. State the obvious: The game takes place (at least partially) in 1963.
2. Say something that I know, which you may not: A Snake Eater is what they call a US Ranger. They call them that because they eat anything when attempting to survive, even snakes.
Oh, hell, I'll throw in a rumor, too:
This trailer is totally a tease. I'd go so far as to give it the biggest teaser of E3 award.
Perhaps the only bigger teasers were Hideo Kojima's Glasses. He was standing outside the Konami booth. His glasses -- perfectly transparent plastic frames that look not unlike mine -- made him look like both a pimp and a mack daddy. I almost asked him where he got them. He was just standing there, staring at some kids playing Castlevania. I asked him -- in English -- if I could take a picture. His bodyguard said no, and then dragged him away. It was a little rude. Well, maybe not. I wouldn't let myself take a picture with me, either.
Kojima's other game, Boktai . . . well, I don't know. It didn't do much for me. Maybe because I couldn't play it. Nor could I get any idea of what it's like to play it. Nor could I touch it -- it was under glass. If it left a bad impression, it was probably because of the ugly presentation -- on a Gameboy Player, blown-up on a too-big TV that made the resolution look chunk-nasty horrible. Grr.
Speaking of suckass resolution, Virtual On Marz (PS2) angered me -- and it wasn't the game's fault. It was Sega's -- putting the game on some ungodly television. Soul Calibur II (GC, Xbox, PS2) was on a butter-smooth progressive-scan setup just feet away. So I went over and killed several people at the game. Ah, yes: Soul Calibur II is the best game at E3 that I already owned.
[This writer has deleted his comments on Namco's Ace Combat 4, which he unexplainably played for half an hour and found to be just like Ace Combat 3, which he secretly loves. Ace Combat 4, then, wins the game to get if you love Ace Combat 3 or like flying games, just beating out Konami's new Airforce Delta game for PS2, which he only played for twenty minutes, and with a Logitech flight stick, too. For information on why this section has been deleted, see the comments on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.]
Still, conquering people at Soul Calibur II -- which I have owned for some time, and have conquered for some other time -- at least satisfies me. When E3 ended on day three, in fact, that's where I was, and that's what I was doing -- satisfying myself by beating up people in Soul Calibur II. One thing that didn't satisfy me was the new multiplatform Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It looks nice -- kind of like a neatly, cleanly simplified Jet Set Radio Future -- yet plays like a bland walk-and-punch. I'm no longer young and dumb enough to love a game just because it features ninja turtles. And the same axiom applies to the Gameboy Advance edition, which supposedly has driving and shooting levels mixed in; I'm guessing the 3D sewer-boat stage is as flat and boring as the flat and boring platform level I played. If nothing else, I find it interesting that licensed games have gone from Bart vs. the Space Mutants' or Friday the 13th's level of ungodly bad to today's standard of "polished, yet shallow." The new TMNT games, collectively winners of the safest, most vapid use of a historically good license, stand in the shallow end of the kiddy pool of pander-games.
Sonic Battle for Gameboy Advance is another pander-game -- only it's of a different type. I suppose one could call it a licensed game, in that it features characters we know from outside videogames (odd how Sonic feels like he exists in our real lives somewhere -- or is it just me?) trapped within a videogame. Playing Sonic Battle -- with a Nintendo 64 controller, and hooked up to an enormous television -- was the non-injury equivalent of using my eyes as pincushions. Everything was so pixilated and jagged. Sure, the game has a roving "3D" camera. Really, though, should I "take pity on it -- it's on Gameboy Advance"? Hell no. Good gameplay can be done on the Gameboy Advance. Good graphics or no good graphics, this two-button (that's jump and punch) fighter involves running back and forth as Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles (possibly more characters in the finished version), and punching. Eventually, you win, because no one else seems to be punching.
Let's give it the why does a game that feels based on a summer blockbuster have Sonic the Hedgehog on the box? award.
[next: Best Page 6 of E3 2003 Award]
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