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Not everyone could win, however, when our very own Brandon Sheffield picked up a PlayStation2 controller and played some King of Fighters 2001 at the booth that wins the SNK, GOD DAMN IT! award. It might even be safe to say that no one wins. Before I could get frustrated, I grabbed a few beauty-full SNK posters -- winners of the most soulful freebie award -- and then played some Metal Slug 3 on another PS2, shot a few things to hell, and then got tired of being turned into a zombie. Damn that zombie level.
Whenever there's a zombie level in a game, I tend to want to say that: "Damn that zombie level." Do I not like zombies? Am I an anti-zombite? Hey, hey -- that's not exactly the case. Zombies can interest me if they're presented in an interesting and/or colorful manner, just as shooters can suck me in if they involve, on some level, cartoonish characters (Radiant Silvergun, Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug -- oh, hell, Shock Troopers: Second Squad). So believe me when I say that Resident Evil 4 (GC), shown only in video form, is intriguing as hell.
I'll tell you why: it seems to involve a lot of light-and-dark play. The main character's flashlight struck Eric-Jon as reminiscent of something out of Alone in the Dark, and he meant it as a compliment. What really got me was a scene involving the main character walking down a hallway, aiming his flashlight -- and then he's suddenly attacked by a . . . person? A zombie? Whatever the hell it is, it's holding a giant hooked sword-ish blade. Could this zombie be some kind of not-completely-failed experiment? Could this mean more interesting monsters than before? I sure hope so. I think . . . I'll actually play this one. Most mind-changing video clip of the show? I'd say so.
I think I'll actually play Viewtiful Joe, too, much as I thought it was a sequel to Car Battler Joe when I first heard of it. Because, my god, that game is freaky as hell. It takes a good five minutes to figure out what the hell is going on. Standing up at E3, worrying that someone's going to swipe my fifty-pound bag of magazines and posters, with rug-burned palms from carrying all that shit around, the "VFX" system just doesn't make necessary sense to me. Trippiest game of show, I’d say (and I’m not even going to mention Eye Toy). I need to be able to sit down and compete with the game's innovation on my own terms.
On seemingly someone else's terms, I cashed in a little bit of my life on Megaman Battle Network Transmission for GameCube. It was interesting, if too dialogue-filled to be a Megaman game. Every four or five steps, the game was stopping me to explain what I was supposed to do next. The backgrounds were cycling "computer"-themed deals that simultaneously reminded me of Mother 2 and made me wonder if the game's platform-level layouts weren't randomly generated. How hard would it be, I wondered, to make a platform game with randomly-generated levels? I decided it would be a little harder than in an RPG. Though probably not as hard as playing this game, the hardest Megaman game ever. This one wins the that midget who posed for the cover of Megaman for NES is spinning in his grave, even if he's not dead award.
Shortly after trying all the Megaman games on display (and rather enjoying the gutsy 3D perspective on Megaman X7 on GameCube), I made one last sweep of the Square booth.
Regarding Sword of Mana for Gameboy Advance: it's the same thing as Final Fantasy Adventure, from all I can tell -- only it has Secret of Mana's ring command menu. And nicer graphics. And your friend "Willy" doesn't die. The first challenge -- traipsing out of the dungeon where you're kept as gladiator-prisoners -- doesn't seem to be in place. I was not pleased.
I played Final Fantasy XI for PlayStation2 for about three minutes. In that time, my yellow-bearded, manly, level-60 red mage / level-30 white mage with a name out of a fantasy novel was able to kill a bat in a cave. I will . . . try this more later. And say nothing else now.
Nothing else more than Drakengard, Unlimited Saga, Final Fantasy XI, and Sword of Mana earn Squaresoft the show me something new, damn it award and the weakest booth from a company that has proven its ability to kick serious ass award.
When all was said and done, when Nintendo's big day-three announcement happened to be a GameCube/Gameboy Player bundle, I was feeling disappointed. To fill the time before my BioWare appointment, I hit the Konami booth with gusto. I watched that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater trailer a few more times, and it was good. I avoided the Turtles. I watched the rest of the trailers Konami had on display, and thought up something that made me feel pretty good about myself as a gamer. One of those trailers was for Treasure's Gradius V, and it showed the Vic Viper's options rotating. This made me wonder: how the hell do you make the options rotate? I'd tried the game before, and got ripped up by the first boss. All throughout the fight, I'd been wishing I could fire in some other direction. I should have read Vincent Diamante's impressions. You should have read them, too. And you should read this: Gradius V is my pick for most welcome sequel, best Treasure game of show, and the -- read it and weep, you who pick quotes for game boxes -- my frothing demand for this game increases awards.
[next: Rosy-faced Schoolgirls]
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