Pokemon Gold & Silver Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/23/23)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Pokemon Gold & Silver

Developer: Game Freak

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): JRPG

Platforms: GB Color

Release Date: November 21, 1999

The whole “gen-wuner” sentiment across the cultural zeitgeist of Pokemon has never ceased to spark some personal contention within me. I completely understand that a large margin of people were children during the height of “Pokemania'' and aged out of the franchise's young demographic as it still managed to march on with subsequent releases past its commercial peak in its first generation. For many, Pokemon is strictly a substantial centerpiece of popular media at the turn of the millennium in their respective nostalgia capsules, and that is perfectly acceptable. I was one of these people throughout my adolescence until a social shift occurred in my college years, reeling me back into Pokemon out of curiosity about what I missed during the time when I was “too cool” for Pikachu. Still, my enclosed area of sentimentality beforehand was not restricted to Pokemon’s first generation. I suppose I could call myself a “gen-twoer,” as the era of Pokemon Gold and Silver is where I set my arbitrary boundaries. Pokemon’s second generation was also my introduction point to Pokemon as my older cousin gave me his Gameboy Color with a copy of Pokemon Silver when I was seven and unknowingly created a crippling addiction for me that was difficult to mandate. Given this information, it's no surprise that I’ve encompassed both the first and second generations in my personal sphere of wonderment for Pokemon’s past. Still, I question why my situation isn’t as common with those who grew up with the franchise and how the Gold/Silver generation eludes them. Pokemon’s sophomore outing was released two years after Red/Blue when the franchise's fire was still roaring hot, so its sales still benefited from the ongoing Pokemania craze. It’s not as if Gold/Silver wasn’t a heavily anticipated entry because the Pokemon fad was waning. Are the Kanto enthusiasts that dense to think that the franchise peaked with the first entry, even with the coarse, black-and-white Gameboy pixels and unsightly depictions of the Pokemon to contend with? If this is the case, they must stop smoking the nostalgia crack pipe and come to their senses. Pokemon Gold/Silver should ideally be the primary source of warm recollections of when Nintendo’s franchise was a cultural phenomenon, for it’s essentially an extension of the first generation with so many clear improvements that it’s hard to deny its objective superiority.

Pokemon Gold/Silver begins with the same sense of excitement as Red/Blue did. The player is taking control of another bright-eyed rookie trainer with ambitious dreams of besting everyone in the profession of Pokemon training. This time, the trainer wakes up in his hometown of New Bark Town in the land of Johto neighboring Kanto directly to the west. The deviation in setting here establishes that every Pokemon adventure is going to be across the entire jurisdiction of an uncharted land from here on out. The player’s mom will wish him good luck, and he’ll walk next door to the Pokemon laboratory where Professor Elm will gift him a starter Pokemon that the player will cherish and grow with throughout the game. So far, the starting process to this Pokemon adventure should ring familiar, except for the starter Pokemon displayed for the player to select. Every new entry to the Pokemon franchise adds at least one hundred new additions to the accumulative roster, with the region-specific Pokedex altering itself to give the fresh faces higher precedence. Listed at the top of Johto’s national Pokedex are the three starter Pokemon replacing those from Red/Blue: the leafy little Chikorita who highlights the herbivore diet of the long-necked dinosaurs it's modeled after, the anteater Cyndaquil that spurts flames from its backside, and the blue, fun-sized crocodile Totodile. As one could probably guess from their designs, the starters cement that the contrasting grass, fire, and water types will be the selection at the start from here on out. While copying the elemental types of the beginning batch of starters seems like the transition was slick and smooth, Johto’s first Pokemon friends are admittedly underwhelming. Their initial forms are cute, but Chikorita forgets to shed that baby face when it fully evolves into Meganium. Despite its bulky body, no one is going to be intimidated by anything that looks this goofy. Typhlosion’s deficient array of fire moves it learns hardly makes it a barn burner pick, as much as it pains me to admit it because of my sentimental attachment to Cyndaquil as my very first Pokemon. Totodile’s final form Feraligatr is probably the most formidable choice but is ultimately bogged down by a single typing like the rest of its starter mates. None of the fully evolved starters even represent their respective games on the box art, opting for the legendary pair of Lugia and Ho-oh instead. The threesome here lacks the charisma and capabilities that made the previous starters Pokemon icons.

Fortunately, Pokemon’s initiative is to build that eclectic sextet, covering most if not all of the bases to compensate for your starter Pokemon’s elemental blind spots. In my overall summation of the second generation’s Pokemon contributions, we have a divisive mix of fantastic additions alongside some laughably pitiful duds. On the respectable side of the coin, every player should consider putting Hoothoot and Mareep in their Pokemon arsenal, for they evolve into majestic beasts (Noctowl and Ampharos) and can be encountered early on to assuage the growing pains of a paltry pokemon team. The player is guaranteed more confidence during their amateur era as opposed to when Red/Blue expected them to blaze through the first few gym leaders with a bushel of frail bug pokemon. For those who still give the weakest pokemon type in the series a fighting chance, Gold/Silver introduces Heracross and Forretress to firmly instill that sense of entomophobia in other trainers. Gold/Silver also starts the trend of pokemon with contradictory elemental typings, a hybrid the developers probably took into stressful consideration and decided that it wasn’t oxymoronic or made these pokemon impervious. Lanturn’s anglerfish design (a non-hideous one) is a biologically sound influence to craft a water and electric pokemon, as the detached dandelion cotton spore Jumpluff is for a grass and flying pokemon. Wooper and Quagsire are the first evolutionary line to have both water and ground types properties, an elite fusion as long as the trainer keeps them off the grass as stern as a neighborhood sign. The rugged rock tree Sudowoodo is Johto’s Snorlax, a waypoint impediment that requires an item to reanimate and fight for the taking. Ursaring, Donphan, Xatu, Skarmory, Sneasel, and Houndoom are all alluring in their designs alone. Unfortunately, all of Gold/Silver’s striking and sturdy new pokemon are counteracted on the whole by just as many unexceptional ones. For some reason, Johto unloads an abundance of single-evolution pokemon that feel included just to round out the Pokedex. Who seriously shares any attachment towards Aipom, Qwilfish, Yanma, or Stantler? Dunsparce, the oversized sweat bee that resides in a remote, dark cave, is so pitiful that I find it endearing. Delibird, Smeargle, and the alphabetized Unown are practically novelty pokemon. Girafarig is the only substantial one of the unevolved bunch because its normal and psychic typing gives it immunity to ghost, and battling Shuckle is akin to attempting to break open a diamond. Still, I glance at the entire roster and am disappointed that Farfetch’d was multiplied in triplets.

Fortunately, if one is unsatisfied or is feeling obdurately reverent, Kanto’s pokemon are scattered about Johto as extensively as its native species. However, a sizable portion of Gold/Silver’s roster is dedicated to adding variations on the original lineup. Evidently, there is something in Johto’s water supply that allows previously established pokemon to extend their evolutionary capacities. Before we discuss the old pokemon’s addendums, we should probably make note of their more infantile forms that have just been discovered. The Johto daycare’s services not only increase the level of a pokemon without needing to battle: if the player leaves two pokemon of the opposite gender alone in the yard, there is a strong possibility that there will be three pokemon in the pen by the time the player returns to retrieve them if you catch my drift. If the concept of evolution was enough for the conservative, Christian parents of America to put Pokemon on their shit list, imagine their reactions when the sequel introduces a mechanic revolving around sexual reproduction. Little Timmy will have so many questions left unanswered! Anyways, for a small percentage of pokemon, passing down their genetic material by making whoopee with another of a similar typing and relative size (or the amorphous pile of sex putty that is Ditto), an egg will naturally slide out of the female, and will hatch into a “baby pokemon” after walking about with it for a brief period. Pichu is the infant version of Pikachu, Magby is for Magmar, Elekid is for Electabuzz, etc. The only baby pokemon totally removed from Kanto lineage is Togepi, a freebie given to the player by Professor Elm to test the new mechanic. These adorable little tykes are so underdeveloped that using them in battle would be unspeakably cruel, but at least they can learn new moves once they evolve that their non-bred equivalents in the wild cannot. Regarding the evolution end of the spectrum, the swift Crobat is evolved from the gaping-mouthed Golbat via “friendship” where increasing the bond between a man and his pokemon actually provides some tangible benefits. The same process evolves the additional “Eeveelutions” Espeon and Umbreon, two pokemon that intentionally display a contrast between night and day. Some old pokemon simply needed a material incentive to evolve, such as Slowpoke transforming into the hyper-intelligent Slowking upon acquiring a king’s rock, or Scyther and Onix into Scizor and Steelix when traded with a Metal Coat attached. I don’t know how someone could stick their noses up at how Gold/Silver augments the classics from Kanto, for the examples I’ve given are among the coolest and most competent pokemon that the second generation has to offer.

The last two pokemon I mentioned, along with the coal-black Eevee evolved form Umbreon, are also examples of two typings unheard of in Red/Blue: Steel and Dark. The series didn’t introduce any elemental types until several generations down the line, so two whole new categorizations after the first entry is an exciting prospect. Shuffling steel and dark into the deck of pokemon battle attributes is sure to confuse those who had memorized each strength and weakness. Actually, what their inclusion really does is give the once god-like psychic types something to be afraid of, as dark’s super effectiveness against them sensibly stems from the common fear of a lack of luminescence. Now, psychics tremble to what they cannot see, and we all take delight in their quaking vulnerability. With a slight in logic, dark’s primary weakness is fighting, somehow suggesting that martial arts are more potent and accurate when one is blind like a mystical samurai. Steel, on the other hand, is a solid defensive type strong against ice and rock while crumbling to fighting, ground, and fire. They are also totally immune to poison, so no antidotes are necessary. Unfortunately, pokemon of either type are a scarce breed. Scyther and Onix only evolve through the trading process, so that is a no-go for most players unless they have a link cable and a fellow man-child friend ready to initiate the process. Forretress and the retroactively changed Magneton will have to suffice. In an unfortunate twist of fate, Umbreon is THE only dark type pokemon available before the post-game epilogue, so the player will have to rely on dark-type moves like “Bite” and “Faint Attack” to defend themselves against mind-bending maneuvers. Game Freak is a group of sadists.

Adding an elemental type that triumphs over the cocky psychics is what I’d consider a quality-of-life improvement. For more traditional instances of the term, Gold/Silver is filled to the brim with stark enhancements. It goes without saying that the added color flair of the Gameboy Color obviously makes Gold/Silver more visually appealing than the murky gray that presented Red/Blue. Seeing the Pokemon world’s bright sunlight, brick buildings, grassy fields, and sparkling waters after Red/Blue muted all of them is what I imagine taking the bandages off after Lasik's surgery is like. Suddenly, everything is wonderfully vibrant and that feeling of excitement for a grand, country-spanning adventure is reinvigorated. That added color extends to the pokemon’s health bars during battle as well, using stoplight shades to signify their level of health. A blue color bar is introduced to give the player an indication of how close their pokemon are to the next level, so the eventual grind will be more manageable with a visual reference. Inventory items are organized by general categorizations. It’s far more manageable than the one page in Red/Blue but plenty of miscellaneous items that aren’t pokeballs or TMs/HMs are still jumbled up in a single menu and they still overflow as a result. Berry trees are scattered all over Johto, and their juicy fruit can heal a small percentage of health or cure an ailment. Some trees are conversely draped in apricorns, which can be molded into pokeballs with specific properties when brought to a man in Azalea Town named Kurt. Pokemon encounters now depend on three general times of the day, which coincides with a clock that the player sets before they wake up to start their adventure. I’d still argue the colorization is the most significant improvement because of how the black and white of Red/Blue inadvertently made the game a vexing challenge at times. However, every last addition to Gold/Silver ultimately does its part to make the game a smoother and more engaging experience than Red/Blue.

For as involved Johto is in improving the mold of Pokemon, the entire country is surprisingly much more subdued than its neighbor to the east. The region of Johto is directly inspired by the real-life Kansai region of Japan, which is situated on the same island as its capital Tokyo where Kanto took inspiration from. Unlike the bustling industrialized marvel of the modern age that Kanto strived to emulate, Johto’s landscape has a comparatively placid atmosphere. Johto achieves this laidback sensation through its rural iconography. The towering buildings that shadow the notable districts are ancient architectures crafted from wood and bronze, with the triangular roof as the cherry on top to signify its worn and torn history. Unlike places of Buddhist worship in Japan, Johto’s spiritual houses were erected to practice pokemon devotion. This strange phenomenon can be witnessed as early as Violet City where bald monks kneel at the visage of golden Bellsprouts in the Sprout Tower. The Ruins of Alph feature an exhibit dedicated to uncovering the primeval mystery behind the Unown and translating the supposed language behind their cuneiform bodies. South of the ruins, the people of Azalea Town rely on their rampant Slowpoke population to predict the weather (boy, are they betting on the wrong horse). Mahogany Town is a perfectly quaint place to stay by the picturesque Lake of Rage, and the island of Cianwood City is so off the grid that it's a wonder how they communicate with the rest of Johto. All of the region’s urbanity is congested to Goldenrod City, whose glimmering roads and buildings arguably dwarf any of the metropolises of Kanto. After exploring Johto again, I now realize why fans of Kanto look down on them: they are a bunch of backward rubes stuck in the wrong century. Ironically enough, for how advanced Kanto claims to be, navigating through Johto’s unaffected landscape is a far breezier excursion. Misremembering the Union Cave made me anticipate another grueling Mt. Moon escapade, but the exit is merely down the path from the entrance. The Ilex Forest is intentionally designed like a maze, and I had an easier time walking through it than any of Kanto’s commercial sites that were made to be accessible to its citizens. However, one aspect of traversing through Johto that turns me off is the inclusion of two new water-type HMs on top of "Surf" needed to power past whirlpools and trek upwards on waterfalls. I don’t like the idea of my chosen water-type pokemon having three redundant water moves in its selective range of skills, especially since it was Quagsire whose ground nature was heavily undermined by this requisite.

Because Johto is relatively nonchalant, the overall pokemon adventure here is overall fairly languid. Sure, becoming a Pokemon master by collecting all eight gym badges and defeating the Elite Four is still an admirable goal to strive for, but there is not as much content in between completing the primary quest. Team Rocket is still retaining their presence as a nefarious organization but without Giovanni as their menacing leader, the group is rudderless. The player will stop their black market Slowpoke tail scheme along with halting their radio wave mind control operation, with Elite Four member Lance disappointingly volunteering to do most of the leg work. A mission to procure medicine for a sick Ampharos being hospitalized by gym leader Jasmine in the Olivine Lighthouse facilitates a non-linear sequence of collecting three nearby gym badges similar to the middle of Red/Blue. Still, Cianwood’s distant location away from the Johto inland will probably result in the player completing these gyms in the intended order anyway. Also, the player’s rival this time around will never be up to snuff with their pokemon training prowess. Yes, the red-haired thief is just as much of an asshole as Oak’s grandson from Red/Blue, but he falls under the spectrum of a hostile, emotionally distraught asshole who desperately needs therapy. The brutal treatment of his pokemon never leads him to victory, something that infuriates him to no end due to his pure strength prerogative. Eventually, we learn he’s Giovanni’s son, which explains his fiery disposition and why he’s so hellbent on winning. Learning this makes his motives interesting, but we know he’ll never skid past the Elite Four before you in a million years. Having a competent rival greatly raised the stakes for that climb to victory.

Gold/Silver will keep the player busy anyway because the player will be busy grinding to adequately match the gym leaders. Matching the correct weaknesses of the opposing pokemon is no longer a surefire guarantee for smooth success as it was in Red/Blue. The combat greatly considers other aspects like level and base stats, which unfortunately fosters the need to train one’s pokemon outside the series of consistent trainer battles. Also, the assemblage of pokemon gym leaders in Johto specialize in the other half of typings that weren’t featured in Kanto, and these types are the more unorthodox ones. The one available Machop to trade in Goldenrod is the ace up everyone’s sleeves for the deceivingly strong Whitney unless they want to be pulverized again by her Miltank, and catching Swinub in the Ice Cave is the only pokemon that will even dent Clair’s dragon pokemon in Blackthorn. Speaking of dragon pokemon, establishing a grinding regimen is essential this time around not only because the Elite Four members have high-leveled pokemon in their arsenal, but because newly appointed champion Lance has THREE fucking Dragonites this time around. Tell us you have a tiny penis without explicitly telling us you have a tiny penis, Lance. Because Lance’s six beasts are massive and vicious unlike his shriveled manhood, it’s recommended to leave a trail of dead Golbat, Onix, Rhyhorn, and Graveler in their wake from the Victory Road exit, even though the process will truly grate on every player’s patience.

As climactic as it feels, mastering Johto’s Pokemon League is not the finishing moment that rounds out the Gold/Silver journey. After returning home to New Bark Town to rest momentarily, Professor Elm gives the player a ticket to the familiar SS Anne cruise ship docked in Olivine. As expected, the fanciful ship arrives at its home in the southern port city of Vermillion, and Lt. Surge is now the first of eight gym leaders to conquer in another tour around Kanto. If featuring almost all of Kanto’s pokemon in Johto didn’t tie a connective rope between Red/Blue and Gold/Silver, then the trek around the franchise’s first nation once again is practically what makes Gold/Silver a direct sequel. However, it’s a truncated tour that will only take the player a few hours to accomplish. While on this short lark, the player can marvel at the little things that have changed in the three years since Red put himself on the pedestal of the pokemon Hall of Fame. Regarding the gym leaders the player will face, Koga’s daughter Janine is running the poison-type gym leader in Fuchsia and ex-champion Blue has got himself a full-time gig as Giovanni’s replacement in Viridian. Blaine’s island of Cinnabar has washed away to the point where he is its only resident, and the Safari Zone is closed indefinitely. Instances like these snap the revisiting Red/Blue players back to the reality of time upon expecting a Gold/Silver Kanto to pave a road of untainted nostalgic bliss. Then again, why would anyone want to see Kanto again the way it was when the colorful graphics that are now rendering it are so pleasant? Arriving at the old hub of Pallet Town before the final Kanto gym badge sees a distraught Red’s mom wondering where her son is, as he’s become an instance of someone who evidently couldn’t handle the pressure of fame and literally hid from the overwhelming limelight. Finding Kanto’s finest at the peak of the perilous Mt. Silver across the Johto border to battle him is the true final challenge that Gold/Silver provides. Because Red’s reputation as a champion is surely documented, his pokemon are leveled far higher than any other team of pokemon in the game, so be prepared for a ruthless duel that will have you sweating bullets. Another tedious grinding session aside, having the final opponent of Gold/Silver as what is essentially the player from a past life as the ultimate test of trainer aptitude blows the Elite Four out of the water. Red’s stoic silence isn’t awkward at all, for the scope of this fight leaves me speechless as well.

Gold/Silver’s final fight is also a genius way to illustrate how the new guard of Pokemon has vanquished the old, which is exactly its modus operandi that it never shies away from flaunting. Gold/Silver is unmistakenly familiar to its predecessor because it attempts to succeed the Pokemon formula with pinpoint specificity to improve Red/Blue. It shares the same pokemon, the same pace of progression, and the same troublesome terrorist organization of Team Rocket and streamlines all of these, erasing the jaggedness that came with Red/Blue’s presence on the original Gameboy. Red/Blue’s pokemon championship narrative was admittedly already rounded to perfection, which is why the same arc executed in Gold/Silver is a tad less gratifying. Then, returning to Kanto to face the true champion of the series offered an unprecedented final battle that could make the player faint with its tension. Gold/Silver’s superiority to Red/Blue isn’t simply due to the shift into color on the advanced Gameboy Color model, even if it does improve the graphics significantly. With its positive streamlining, additional content, comparatively deeper battle mechanics, and glowing visual flair, Pokemon Gold/Silver eats Red/Blue for breakfast. I can’t believe there is still a large portion of Pokemon fans who refuse to admit it with all the evidence at hand.

(Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/31/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Pokemon Crystal

Category: Expanded Game

Release Date: December 14, 2000

Pokemon Yellow debuted the concept of re-releasing the latest addition of a Pokemon game with a slew of extra content to justify its existence. However, I wouldn’t consider it to be the definitive version of the original Kanto journey. The bells and whistles attached to Pokemon Yellow deviated far too much from the core narrative and progression of pokemon catching than what was displayed in the Red/Blue entries. For the fans of the Pokemon anime that Yellow was catered towards, it set an inaccurate precedent for every Pokemon generation that followed where they’d have to manually type in Ash’s name for their character and Pikachu would not act as their little staticky shadow step by step. Pokemon Crystal, the subsequent release acting as a sister version of Gold/Silver, is the first instance of what I’d consider a definitive edition for a Pokemon generation.

I can’t believe no one at Game Freak thought to include the option to play as a female protagonist before Crystal. I understand that Pokemon’s target demographic (and video games as a whole) is young boys, but is it outside the realm of possibilities that girls would be interested in a game revolving around collecting cute, fictional animals and bonding with them like pets? Is it the battle system and conquest arc that inherently cements Pokemon as a male-centric series? Hardly. The ability to swap the protagonist’s gender is a brilliant tactic from a marketing standpoint, garnering a crucial audience whose newfound interest in the franchise is because of this new feature giving them a chance to be a contender as a Pokemon master. For the boys who already experienced Johto in either Gold or Silver and are confident in their masculinity, the female protagonist should also mix up the familiar backdrop adequately.

Really, a definitive version of any game should remedy the mistakes made by the rougher iteration it’s sprucing up. One new feature introduced in Gold/Silver is the ability to save the phone numbers of a select few trainers after defeating them in battle, and I didn’t care to humor this feature. Every time one of these people called me to give me an unsolicited rundown of their day, I immediately deleted their contact information. In Crystal, these trainers will notify you of when swarms of rare pokemon are occurring, plus give you various gifts they scrounge up. Socializing finally pays off. The select pokemon found in seasonal packs are also much easier to obtain than the less than 1% chance given in Gold/Silver, which should honestly only be entertained for Remoraid and Snubbull anyway. Gold version exclusive Growlithe is catchable around Violet City to use against Bugsy if your character didn’t choose Cyndaquil as a starter, and dark-ice type Sneasel can be found in the Ice Cave. It’s a far more sensible spot to put a new pokemon with a beneficial typing for both the dragon and psychic challenges the player will face before shipping off to Kanto. Also, if Gold/Silver’s onus was to give the ugly Red/Blue a makeover, surely the moving pokemon sprites that introduce a battle are a pleasant little touch that gives these creatures a boosted speck of personality.

Crystal’s slight narrative deviation seems to revolve around the Suicune, one of three legendary dogs that succeed the legendary bird trio from Kanto. Like in the base game, the elemental dogs will scurry from their resting place in the basement of Ecruteak’s Burned Tower and run frantically around Johto. I did not mention the side quest involving capturing them because stumbling upon them is a rarer occurrence than catching a pokemon only found during swarms, and the exciting moment of finally finding them just to have them roar your pokemon away from battle adds too much insult to injury. At least encountering Suicune periodically finally culminates to potentially catching it in Kanto, unlike the tortuous hunt for Entei and Raikou.

Pokemon Crystal isn’t merely Gold/Silver for girls, even though the addition of playing as one would naturally entice the other half of the gender demographic. Like Pokemon Yellow, its quality-of-life enhancements from the base game are relatively minor, but it doesn’t inject any outside influences from other Pokemon media to discern it for a different player base. Crystal is Gold/Silver plus one, which inherently makes it the definitive version by clear definition.

Mega Man 6 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/17/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 6

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: November 5, 1993

Now this is just getting ridiculous. Doubling the the number of Mega Man games on the NES after overstepping the amount fitting for a nicely succinct trilogy almost makes Mega Mans 4-6 its own trilogy separate from the first three games. What defining name shall we refer to Mega Man 4-6 to codify this selection of the series' latter half on its debut system? “The charge shot trilogy?” “The Dr. Wily bait-and-switch trilogy?” “The semi-useless Eddie trilogy?” There are so many different possibilities. All jokes aside, I’m actually glad that Capcom rounded out their flagship franchise with their blue robot boy with six games. Mega Man 5 would've been a rather tepid note to end Mega Man’s tenure on the NES, for its contributions to the long-running series amounted to nothing of substantial growth to the Mega Man formula. I never expected Mega Man 6 to reinvent the wheel, especially after Mega Man 5 inadvertently proved that Mega Man’s full potential peaked with the fourth entry. My optimism regarding Mega Man 6 stemmed from the fact that Capom now had the opportunity to rectify the mistakes they made in Mega Man 5 in their attempts to give it some fresh discernibility. Mega Man 6 could now cement Mega Man’s legacy on the console that started it with something comparable to the apex point that was Mega Man 4. Alas, Mega Man 6 is yet another entry marked by unnecessary changes, but at least the changes it makes are far more interesting and involved than those from the previous games.

The entourage of robot masters this time around is an especially inspired bunch. Instead of leaving the creative process to a few lucky Japanese kids via a contest, the cohesive theme for these eight robot masters is that they all vaguely represent a different nation in the real world based on both their physical designs and levels. One might hear this idea and facepalm considering that the developers callously drew parallels between a sensitive world event where several innocent people died with Napalm Man’s Vietnam War-theme level in the previous game. However, the pack of international mechanical marvels is constructed with far more tact and respect. Tomahawk Man represents the deep cultural heritage of the native people in America, Blizzard Man is a comment on how absurdly frigid the northern land of Canada can be, and Yamato Man is the robotic samurai that Capcom felt would be emblematic of their own culture. The others are up to speculation because their origins are not detailed in the game’s manual for some reason. If I had to guess, Plant Man is Latin American because of his tropical level and the rose’s affiliation with their dances, Knight Man is a chivalrous artifact of Middle Ages England, Centaur Man is a Greek mythology reference, Wind Man correlates with China’s reputation for wind energy, and Flame Man’s Indian identity can be assumed from his turban and by the fact that food from that country is scorchingly spicy. The nationalities of this array of robots is also relevant because they are the worldly representatives in the newly founded “Global Robot Alliance,” a UN of sorts established after Dr. Wily has attempted to upset the balance between the machines and their human creators numerous times. Speaking of Mega Man’s perennial antagonist, his new ploy to disrupt the order of this organization is to construct a tournament of champions between the eight robot masters for the prize of sole representation as the world’s robotic protector. Yes, the game introduces a villain named “Mr. X” as its diabolical schemer, but I absolutely refuse to humor the notion of another Mega Man antagonist for a THIRD fucking time. Besides, Mr. X’s resemblance to Dr. Wily is uncanny, so even the developers knew that they couldn’t maintain their own charade. While I’ve given up on taking the Mega Man conflict scenarios seriously, at least the themes of the robot masters behind the plot are intriguing. Capcom crafted a slew of cool robot masters with a cultural theme one tasteful degree above Nintendo’s Punch-Out!

Squeezing six games onto one console has an implication that a lot of time has passed since Mega Man’s birth in 1987. By late 1993 when Mega Man 6 was released, the SNES successor to the NES was well into its course as Nintendo’s primary soldier in the console wars. In fact, the SNES had been available on store shelves for so long at this point that those interested in playing Mega Man 6 most likely had to dig through their closets and blow off the dust that their old NES system had freshly collected. Some may ponder why anyone would be interested in regressing to the outdated guard briefly when the future was in full swing and why Capcom didn’t bother to simply develop Mega Man 6 for the current console. From another perspective, Mega Man 6 had the advantageous position of being a practically posthumous period release on the NES because it could comfortably relax in the house that all of the preceding NES titles (including previous Mega Man games) had painstakingly crafted with their blood, sweat, and tears. It’s a smaller house than the SNES that was under construction at the time, but a fully erected living space is far cozier. Due to the lack of mechanical strain, Mega Man 6 looks fantastic from a graphical standpoint. Every 8-bit texture that renders the eight robot master stages and the interior of Dr. Wily’s castle is refined to near-perfect, pixelated perfection. The foliage of the hanging rainforest trees is remarkably green and textured to the point of seeing every individual leaf. The pistons holding together the man-made foundation of Tomahawk Man’s stage are as finely detailed as the natural crags of the rock formations outside. Every star over the background city seen from the entrance point of Wily’s castle shines brighter from that view than the scene of space in Star Man’s stage from the last game. Mega Man 6 proves that 8-bit graphics are a legitimate aesthetic.

What interests me more pertaining to the levels in Mega Man 6 has less to do with how they are graphically rendered and more with their design. Mega Man 6 unfortunately may only offer a couple of alternate routes to change the trajectory of the destination to a robot master as it is this game’s means of unlocking Beat. Still, at least the game puts a calculated effort into diversifying the straightaway trek for every other level. If one can recall back to the first Mega Man game, they’ll remember that the weapons did more than act as alternatives to the blaster and counter the element for the contrasting robot master. Mega Man 6 continues what was abandoned in Mega Man’s debut by blocking extra lives and energy/weapon tanks behind large, compact cubes of junk. To unearth these impediments to obtain these items, Mega Man needs a gadget that is not granted to him until he defeats a certain number of robot masters. The catch is that there are instances where vital pickups are obscured behind these crude formations across every level, so the player is persuaded to replay the levels to gather all of the goodies. Also, confining a hefty quantity of these types of items to these out-of-reach nooks and crannies means they are in less abundance, so the player cannot suck down a twelve-pack of energy tanks when they are slightly wounded anymore.

Which item allows Mega Man to manipulate the mounds of mechanical dirt? I guess how Mega Man 6 defines its strides of innovation is with the alternate suits that replace Rush. When selecting either the Jet Suit or Power Suit in the menu upon unlocking them, Rush appears as he converges with Mega Man, turning Mega Man’s armor to the crimson sheen of his canine companion. The Power Suit is bulky and is the method of disposing of what stands between Mega Man and his rightful energy tanks. Holding the attack button will launch a deadly blast of energy, but it is constricted to a short range. The Jet Suit, on the other hand, allows Mega Man to soar gracefully like a rocket blasting off into space, but more akin to one of the hobby models that craps out after a few seconds. The only caveat is that the charge shot will be unavailable, but we’ve already ventured through three Mega Man games before the charge shot was even conceived and managed to survive. The primary perk of the suits is that they refill their fuel automatically upon depletion instead of needing to walk over an energy replenisher and invite all players to keep this apparatus on at all times as I did. The alternate suits are the new implementation of the Mega Man formula that sticks out in my mind for their usefulness, but it still raises a few questions. Does Rush meld into Mega Man with the mechanical malleability of a Transformer, or does he shed his modular armor for Mega Man to use as a token of assistance? Is he just a simple dog underneath the suit, running off to Dr. Light’s house to chase squirrels and drag his ass across the carpet whenever Mega Man is borrowing the outer layer of his body?

The alternate suits are also a welcome addition to Mega Man 6 because they compensate for the charge shot’s comparatively limp power capacity. Upon charging the standard blaster, searing energy still flows throughout Mega Man’s being, but the range and impact of the fully charged release feel far less impactful when dealing with enemies. The convenient crutch that I’ve been using for the past two games has been nerfed, probably an intentional effort from the developers to coax me into shuffling through the robot master’s weapons outside of their battles. Overall, the robot master weapons in Mega Man 6 do nothing to impress because a lot of them are recycled from previous games. Plant Man has a shield that performs exactly what one would expect, Flame Man has another fire weapon, Knight Man’s projectile morning star top and the Yamato Spear both have a straightforward trajectory, and Centaur Man’s flash weapon should inspire strong memories of a certain robot master from Mega Man 2. The “blizzard” attack barely amounts to a fucking flurry. While I’m completely underwhelmed by what’s in Mega Man’s arsenal, at least there are no impractical weapons such as Stone Man’s or any effortless screen obliterators like Gravity Man’s, both from Mega Man 5. Because the developers knew that the player would be exhausting more of the ancillary fuel from the weapons, Mega Man 6 introduces an energy balancer that supplies the most depleted weapon with energy from another to fully refill it. Thanks, Capcom. I wish they thought of this when the Metal Blade was still in Mega Man’s grasp.

I’m also underwhelmed by Dr. Wily in Mega Man 6, and it isn’t because Mr. X reveals himself to be Wily with more facial hair because I’m not a brain-dead simpleton. The two castles that lead up to Dr. Wily are perfectly challenging, with some spiky blindspots during some drops that vanquished me more than I’m willing to admit that reminded me fondly of Quick Man. I’m referring to the final duel between Mega Man and the mad doctor that takes place in three stages, as par for the course. Again, the first two stages see Dr. Wily attempt to crush Mega Man under the weight and force of stomping him, and then the third stage involves Dr. Wily disappearing periodically to give Mega Man a fleeting chance to aim a shot while dodging a series of cyclones. Fortunately, the upward angle of the Silver Tomahawk allows Mega Man to end the all-too-familiar fight in seconds. After experiencing deja vu from Wily’s final fight from the previous game, Mega Man mixes up the result considerably and finally puts the scourge of the robotic world under arrest, tying him up with rope as if he’s planning on placing him on the train tracks. I’m almost proud of Mega Man for placing Dr. Wily in custody, but it's taken him too goddamn long to do what is necessary for me to seriously commend him.

I guess Mega Man 6 triumphs over the previous Mega Man game in its commitment to reverse some aspects back to the earlier entries. Mega Man 5 was a facile experience with too heavy of a reliance on the booming charge shot and an inexhaustible amount of energy tanks at the player’s disposal. Hiding the items behind walls and channeling less firepower into the charge shot so as not to eclipse the series staple of robot master weapons started to remind me of the challenge I had come to associate with Mega Man. Still, the lack of inspiration with the weapons despite the solid theming of their users along with Dr. Wily phoning in his final challenge against Mega Man is further indication that Mega Man had run its course on the console it was born onto. While Mega Man 6 is still a more respectable experience than the last entry, the series is still long overdue to wrap things up like the series hero eventually did with his mortal nemesis.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/11/2023)

[Image from wikipedia.org]

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Developer: Intelligent Systems

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): JRPG

Platforms: 3DS

Release Date: November 11, 2012

Look how they massacred my boy…

At first glance, Paper Mario: Sticker Star seemed like an exciting return to form for the skinny, subversive offshoot Mario RPG series. Super Paper Mario’s only significant crime in the eyes of the fervent Paper Mario fan was that the standard 2D platformer direction compromised on the substance that the accessible, yet buoyant RPG brought to invigorate the tired Mario brand. While the more meat and potatoes platformer gameplay in Super Paper Mario was relatively lacking in certain aspects, the straightforward meal being served was surely decorated with some snazzy garnishes and exotic spices to amplify the flavor and presentation to a wild degree. Super Paper Mario was akin to drinking light beer out of a clear, glass top hat that glows in the dark; approaching a beverage that comes by the barrel full in the most unorthodox and quirky manner possible, so it still fits the oddball Paper Mario identity like an oven mitt. With the announcement that Sticker Star was reverting to Paper Mario’s turn-based roots, the devil’s advocacy for Super Paper Mario is almost completely blown back to utter excitement. With the return to RPG gameplay, we can experience another abstract Mario adventure with a concise world map, badges, and proper partner characters with robust personalities and combat abilities. Our son is returning from college, and it's a delight to see him in person after settling for digital communications for a solid three months. However, even with the promise of RPG-facilitated splendor, Paper Mario: Sticker Star is a downright tragedy. Sticker Star is the equivalent of the son from the college analogy dying in a car accident on his way home, and playing it is like watching the medics and coroner peel his bloody body out of the tarnished vehicle. It’s so unpleasant that it's revolting.

For some reason, modern Mario games like to present themselves with a festival of some sort coordinated by Princess Peach. Sticker Star’s event of inane frivolity is gathering around for the annual occurrence of the almighty Sticker Comet that has the power to grant everyone’s wishes. Naturally, Bowser jumps at the opportunity after hearing about this cosmic Macguffin, so he crashes the party with all of his minions and absorbs the divine energy after obtaining the comet for himself. While the festival grounds are in ruin from Bowser’s upset, all hope is not lost. Kersti, a floating silver crown that is the embodiment of the Sticker Comet’s essence, promises to assist Mario in reclaiming the falling star’s power from Bowser before he uses it to dominate the Mushroom Kingdom.

Besides rehashing an overdone plot catalyst from the mainline Mario series, several other concerns arise just from the opening cutscene. For one, has the cat got Bowser’s tongue? Why didn’t he monologue on how awesomely righteous he would be after taking their precious comet, laughing devilishly at everyone is doomed as a result like he normally does? Where is his assistant Kammy Koopa, hovering right behind the Koopa King to humble him with her advisory input? In Sticker Star, the snarling, practically mute Bowser from the mainline series and the immature, comically inclined one we’ve come to adore throughout all of Mario’s RPG spin-offs are now unfortunately interchangeable. Also, every single Goomba and Koopa seen in the introduction is acting as enemies causing a commotion in the quad, which means that these two species of Mario foot fodder are now simply relegated to positions as grunts in Bowser’s army. So much for erasing the stigma with non-partisan Goomba and Koopa citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom. Having other species that roam the Mushroom Kingdom sure would’ve spruced up the heavily homogenized Toad Town hub of “Decalburg” considerably. Not only are Peach’s shroomy denizens the only ones that reside here, but their designs are the commonplace Toad model with little color variation. There are no toads with glasses and mustaches, no elderly toads, no preppy celebrity toads, no toad martial arts masters in uniforms: only the most basic of toad designs scanned thousands of times on a paper copier. Paper Mario’s characters and their dynamics are now indiscernible from the ones found in the mainline Mario series, and this is really Sticker Star’s most fundamental flaw. Mainline Mario can skate by with one-dimensional characters because the player will constantly be focused on the fast-paced platformer action, requiring tighter concentration on every momentary leap. In a slower-paced, character and dialogue-driven genre like a JRPG, the dynamic nature of the eclectic cast and the NPCs, regarding their appearances and personalities, can either make or break the experience. They really couldn’t have formulated a more literal translation of the typical Mario experience in the RPG realm, making what was deemed as more traditional narrative fare in the first Paper Mario seem like an avant-garde depiction of a Mario story by comparison. Because mainline Mario is arguably the least narratively rich franchise in gaming, Sticker Star’s story (or lack thereof) suffers completely.

If the blank characters are any indication, Sticker Star also extends its skin-wearing symmetry with the mainline Mario series with its levels. Mario’s range of level themes is the archetype for all platformer motifs, using base elements to diversify the handful of areas on display. Because Mario established the blueprint of elemental themes that all subsequent Mario games and derivative platformers followed, their prevalence became exhausting. This is why chapters in Paper Mario set in raucous wrestling arenas, poshly-decorated commercial trains, and the fortresses of sweaty, stuttering uber-nerds are highly refreshing deviations from the simple layouts found in the mainline series. Even the first Paper Mario that stayed loyal to the Mushroom Kingdom setting at least used the RPG format to let the tired topography breathe to the extent of livability. Sticker Star and I’m not shitting you, not only features the bare bone essentials of the standard elemental themes with its six worlds but the progression is also conducted via a grid-based map like the one in Super Mario Bros. 3. Progression is but a means of trekking to the end of a level as one would in a standard platformer-centric Mario game, only halted by the turn-based combat at several occurrences along the way. Overall, most of the worlds found in Sticker Star act as less lively versions of the environments from the first game. The desert area does not have an Arabic toad plaza, the Boo mansion isn’t creepy in the slightest, and the tropical jungle does not have a single Yoshi in its wild grasses. The developers couldn’t have approached this facet of the game with a more by-the-books method if they tried.

Mario’s leisurely trajectory through the Mushroom Kingdom will also be detoured often by the game’s main collectible and namesake: the stickers. From the hub of Decalburg to Bowser’s fiery domain in World 6, stickers will be plastered all over the land like a daycare center. Fortunately, Mario does not need a razor blade to procure these collectibles, for they simply tear right off with a moderately forceful pluck. Firstly, I must delve into a tangent with the absurd emphasis Sticker Star puts on paper and paper-related products like stickers. Modeling Mario’s world out of paper was strictly a pleasing and quirky visual aesthetic that compliments the storybook aura of the whimsical Mario RPG. The few special paper “curses'' inflicted onto Mario in The Thousand-Year Door were presented with a tongue-in-cheek sense of irony, a novel idea of actually warping Mario’s thin anatomy into paper objects as a jokey afterthought when the first game forgot to utilize it. The developers here seem to be convinced that paper itself is the selling point of Paper Mario, with the constant crumpling of characters like refuse and weightless floating moments. They think Paper Mario will inspire players to pursue a career at Staples. Eye-rolling paper gags aside, I start to audibly groan when the paper initiative is instilled on the field as a mechanic. Sticker Star heightens the tearing of the small stickers to ripping the foundation of the foreground, leaving behind the molecular substrate of the architectural bearing. It's an interesting mechanic in theory, but leave it to the developers to botch its execution. Filling in the required patch to hurdle over an obstacle is merely a matter of finding a suitably sized construct and placing it over the impediment. This mechanic could have warranted some intriguing puzzles, but even Sticker Star’s new properties are painfully streamlined.

The sticker mechanic is boring and condescendingly easy on the field, but how they are used in combat is bafflingly flawed. There is a reason why most of the stickers are shaped like boots and hammers, Mario’s primary attack options one will recognize from the first two Paper Mario titles. Each sticker equals an allowance to attack, one per sticker collected that is displayed in a sticker album along with the healing items that Mario must peel off the walls. If Mario does not possess any attack stickers in his inventory, the only option he has at his disposal is to scurry away like a yellow-bellied coward. I could understand that the developers implemented this bizarre system to supplement the already bland digression of Paper Mario’s turn-based combat, but this is a horrendously miscalculated decision. The basics of combat should NEVER be relegated to a disposable item, regardless of whether or not it has been watered down to the point of melting. Coaxing the player into meticulously searching for stickers to stand a chance even against the wimpiest of Goombas just enforces long bouts of tedious grinding to pad the game. Or, at least it would if the player doesn’t realize that there is no incentive to fight enemies because Mario cannot gain experience points from battle. All Mario receives is a sum of coins, used to buy more stickers I might add. No, I am not kidding. The sticker system that the developers coordinated as this entry's specific gimmick can be eluded almost entirely.

Upon hearing this revelation, one might ask themselves that if combat can be avoided entirely in Sticker Star, how will Mario fare against the game’s bosses? Well have no fear, fellow gamers, for the developers have thought ahead for this predicament, and what they’ve devised is of course, really fucking stupid. In each world, Mario will stumble upon a “thing,” a notable domestic object of interest whose conspicuous nature is highlighted by its size and sharper, rounder graphical rendering. These series of sore thumbs can be used by Mario once he converts their state of solid matter into stickers and uses them on the field to bypass obstacles (ie. the vacuum in the desert world). Where they come into play with the bosses is that these household apparatuses are exclusively the keys to conquering each boss, their Achilles heel that will bring them to their knees. Naturally, this connotes that all Mario has to do is use the “thing” item during a boss battle without any supplementary damage to it from regular attacks, but it's also the only way to subdue the boss at all. Imagine the cricket sound badge from The Thousand-Year Door as not only Hooktail’s weakness to give the player an advantage but if it was just a pass to automatically win the fight. “Winning” the fight is simply a reward for collecting the badge at the end of the day. Did they overlook this, or were the bosses intentionally this cheap and effortless?

Super Paper Mario is looking pretty good right now, isn’t it? Paper Mario’s former less-than-favorable effort on the Wii was an odd duck that took some wild liberties with the gameplay and pissed off some series veterans like myself at the time, but it is a goddamn masterpiece compared to Intelligent Systems follow-up to Super Paper Mario when they decided to appease fans with another game revolving around turn-based combat. Sure, it technically returned, but at what cost? At least Super Paper Mario was funny, creative, irreverent, and offered something outside the capabilities of typical Mario procedures. Paper Mario: Sticker Star is not a return to form: it’s an aggressive deviation in every shape and form. It’s generic, bland, pointless, broken, tedious, and mind-numbingly boring, all negative characteristics that do not match its Paper Mario brethren. It offends me in every way imaginable. Perhaps the biggest offense is that the process of sizzling all of the taste out of Paper Mario was a calculated effort on the part of the developers thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto’s “guidance.” If this isn’t just a grapevine rumor, it's time to put Nintendo’s patriarch in a rest home.

Mega Man 5 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/5/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 5

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: December 4, 1992

“Um, excuse me sir, the thing is, there’s not really anything wrong with The Itchy & Scratchy show, it’s as good as ever. But after so many years, the characters can’t have the same impact they once had.”

Thank you, Lisa Simpson. While this quote is obviously about the decline in viewer interest in the fictional cartoon series in the universe of The Simpsons (also a meta parallel on the state of the actual Simpsons show by its eighth season), I could strikethrough Itchy & Scratchy with Mega Man and the quote would still apply to the state of the franchise by its fifth entry. Mega Man 5 is when the gaming public started to turn on the blue bomber, for the long-running series on the NES wasn’t just overstaying its welcome: it was still drinking and hooting in the morning long after the party was over and everyone had gone home. After several entries in a franchise on the same system, whose potential is fairly limited by the primitive NES hardware despite the clear evolution across every subsequent title, Mega Man started failing to captivate gamers because the formula had been exhausted by this point. In Mega Man 5, he still fights eight robot masters with individual levels and climbs through the intimidating fortress of Dr. Wily afterward, all while pew-pewing with his blaster along the way. Mega Man 5 is exactly what one would expect from Capcom’s seminal series, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Mega Man 5 still possesses plenty of upstanding qualities that make the game worth playing even if none of them are revolutionary.

However, Mega Man 5’s plot is not one of them. Protoman is the primary villain in Mega Man 5, you say? Yeah right, Capcom; and I’m Roger Ebert. If Protoman isn’t a red herring for Dr. Wily, I’ll eat my own shoe. Nevertheless, we are intended to humor the premise that the rogue, shielded older brother of Mega Man is unmistakenly evil now, kidnapping Dr. Light and mustering up a new slew of robot masters as a defensive blockade for Mega Man to hurdle over. Just unveil Dr. Wily as the culprit for all of this madness. There is no need to insult everyone’s intelligence for the sake of artificial freshness.

How is this new crop of robot masters that Dr. Wily Protoman has whipped up? Well, there are eight of them as usual, and they are all distinctive from one another to balance their weaknesses so Mega Man can exploit them when he absorbs their power upon defeating them. Overall, the level of creativity with this flock of robot masters is up to par with that of the previous game, with only a few of them such as Wave Man and Crystal Man being instances of breaking out the trusty thesaurus to repaint over previous robot masters with similar thematic identities. Gyro Man’s main characteristic is a green propeller normally attached to an aircraft, Stone Man is a rocky golem, and Star Man features the gleaming astronomical object on the front of his body like an uncomfortably large insignia. Charge Man is the most unique robot master that Mega Man 5 offers from a design standpoint, for he aesthetically resembles a steam train and kind of maneuvers around with the straightaway driving force of one as well. Because of this, he’s also the most irritating robot master to fight because he’ll stick to Mega Man on the ground like stink on shit.

But thinking of descriptors to design new robot masters around is a relatively simple task compared to rendering their defining properties as weapons that Mega Man can utilize as alternatives to the blaster. The weapons obtained from these bosses are interesting, to say the least. Star Man marks the first instance where defeating him grants Mega Man TWO weapons: a star shield and an arrow. I can’t complain that the shield is yet another attempt at copying Wood Man because at least this sort of device always comes in handy. However, the “super arrow” acts as a less beefy version of the Hard Knuckle, with a much sluggish acceleration if you can believe it. Gyro Man’s projectile propeller could also fit in the long line of unsatisfactory Metal Blade substitutes, restricted to the stringent Y and X-axis directions with the speed of a softball toss. The bulbous Crystal Eye scatters into three ricocheting balls once it hits a surface, but what are the chances that Mega Man will find a wall to bounce this cluster of crystals off of along the straightaway path? Gravity Man’s weapon is the cheap screen clearer weapon that most players will end up abusing, as it quite literally blows enemies off the screen. At least the Metal Blade requires at least a modicum of skill to use. Weaponizing the dash maneuver with the Charge Kick seems novel enough in theory, but a tool that forces direct contact with enemies in a game that emphasizes ranged combat is as impractical as one would assume. The spiraling power stone is so wild and imprecise that I opted to use Mega Man’s charge shot on Charge Man instead of his assigned weakness. In fact, in most instances, I barely ever shuffled through these weapons and instead favored Mega Man’s upgraded standard blaster as I did in the previous game.

By this point, the Mega Man series had reached the apex of graphical potential it was ever going to reach on the 8-bit NES system. However, this relative restriction didn’t limit Capcom’s creativity with level themes. Manipulating Mega Man’s buoyancy, a platforming gimmick usually reserved for underwater sections, has seemed to have transitioned to the opposite spectrum of the outer reaches of space. Gravity Man features Mega Man walking on the ceilings, while Star Man’s stage is an unbounded area of the cosmos where Mega Man can soar almost limitlessly with one leap. Mega Man 5 still innovates with water, however, as Wave Man’s stage suddenly transforms into an auto-scrolling vehicle section with Mega Man riding a jet ski. The crystals that gleam off of Crystal Man’s stage are so decadently textured that they seem impenetrable like Superman’s fortress of solitude. One can argue that Stone Man’s stage is a refurbished version of Gutsman’s stage as Gyro Man’s is for Air Man’s, using similar motifs while refining the jagged aspects of both respective areas for a smoother experience. The robot master stages in Mega Man 5 are as consistently outstanding as those from Mega Man 4. However, I have to make mention of one stage in the game that stands out above the rest for all the wrong reasons, and that’s the domain of Napalm Man. No, I’m not singling out this one stage because it’s the most difficult one (even though it damn well is), but because of its insensitive parallels with a tragic war in another Asian country. I’d shrug off the contextual evidence of a jungle setting for a robot master called Napalm Man as a coincidence, except that Capcom actually confirmed that creating a Vietnam War-themed stage here was intentional. What made them think this was a tasteful idea? Why not have a robot master named Gas Man whose stage is set in 1940s Poland while they’re at it (sorry, I might have crossed some lines here)?

The points of progress with the Mega Man series can only be minuscule little additions at this point, and the evidence to this claim can be affirmed by the few that Mega Man 5 implements. Complimenting the nifty and convenient energy tank that restores Mega Man’s health to its full capacity are the new weapon tanks that refill every single one of his exhaustible beams at once. I remember wishing for an item with this exact function back in Mega Man 2 and now that it’s real, I’m at least somewhat pleased. I’m less ecstatic because the weapon tanks are as rare as finding a four-leaf clover, while Mega Man will stumble upon so many energy tanks that he’ll be practically tripping over them. The more conspicuous addition that the player will readily notice is a large grid of letters that spell out “MEGAMANV” with the fifth Roman numeral attached, and each letter of this grid is found across every level. Why should the player bother with the painstaking effort to gather these collectible letters? Well, the reward for the player’s troubles is another trusty animal companion, overshadowing Rush due to the red, robotic dog having one less function (and a wonky reworking of the rush coil) than usual. Beat is one vicious bluebird bot, eviscerating both enemies and bosses alike by violently pecking at them and depleting their health bars. To prevent Mega Man’s gameplay from becoming like 8-bit falconry, he also comes with a finite energy meter like any of the secondary weapons. Still, with the ease and personality attached to this unlockable ally, the player will abuse Beat’s abilities without shame. Surprisingly, I fully endorse using Beat with impunity because he’s an interesting reward that motivates me to engage with Mega Man 5’s main gimmick.

Even without Beat and a surplus of energy tanks, Mega Man 5 is much easier than every title in the series before it. One could argue this observation during the robot master stages, but this becomes transparently evident during the climactic sections in Wily’s castle and the illusionary one made for Protoman. A select few platforming sections involving some conveyor belts might stir up some spicy anger with some players, but streamlining the NES Mega Man experience is more noticeable with the bosses. Surprise, surprise, the Protoman that has allegedly betrayed the trust of Dr. Light is a shapeshifting alt-series robot called Darkman and the real Protoman is innocent of his charges. Color me shocked. Darkman and his quartet of multicolored, jaundiced bots are the bosses of the section that leads up to Dr. Wily, and every last one of them is predictable and embarrassingly vulnerable. The two roadblock bosses in Dr. Wily’s real castle are satisfyingly challenging and fit the imposing sizes we’ve seen across all of the mad doctor’s tower defenses. Unfortunately, it all culminates in the most pathetic Dr. Wily dual since that time he transformed into an alien. The first section is waiting for Dr. Wily to descend downward with enough space to avoid being crushed by his spacecraft, the second involves shooting a shot or arrow into the gullet of his skull tank and lastly, Dr. Wily zooms about in his saucer, disappearing in a circle of pink energy balls to illuminate himself again at a height that leaves himself exposed. Integrate Beat to simply contact Wily in the air and Mega Man is free to get a lawn chair, lift his feet up and relax. No, I’m not realizing that I’ve taken the Yellow Devil for granted as a worthy opponent. In fact, I’d be praising the fairness of the final fight against Wily here if all three of his forms weren’t limp and lazy versions of phases we’ve already seen in the series.

Mega Man 5 didn’t need to exist. I apologized up and down to Mega Man 4 for exceeding the harmonious arc of a trilogy, for it more than proved that there was still plenty of unpaved ground that when smoothed over with innovation could make for a tighter experience in a series that was still coarse by its third entry. Sure, Mega Man 5 is smooth as silk, but we’ve already knit the swankiest suit from the fine fabric the previous game was composed of and these are just the raw materials left over. Nothing Mega Man 5 adds is all too necessary or poignant in what the previous games were lacking, except for perhaps the weapon tank that would’ve been a lifesaver in earlier entries. Still, Mega Man 5 is fortunate to be one of the most agreeable experiences in the at-times excruciating NES library by default of being a Mega Man game. It’s ultimately an exceptional game, but it does nothing to impress the already initiated.

Ape Escape Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/6/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Ape Escape

Developer: SCE Japan Studio

Publisher: SCE

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS1

Release Date: May 31, 1999

Here’s a little trivia question for all you frothing nerds with too much useless information in your memory banks: what is the first PlayStation game that forbade the use of the classic PlayStation controller model, igniting a downward spiral that soon rendered it obsolete and ushered in the age of the Dualshock that still persists today with Sony’s game consoles? Was it yet another innovation that the first Metal Gear Solid contributed to the medium? Is it perhaps the reason why Final Fantasy VII is still held in such high regard? Perhaps Crash Bandicoot needed the double analog control scheme to perform rude gestures with, obnoxiously sticking double barrels in the air at Neo Cortex upon dismantling his laboratory? If you guessed any of these classic titles on the original Playstation, you’d be dead wrong. However, if your guess was Crash Bandicoot, you’d at least be on the right track. The Playstation title that dared to reject tradition and embrace experimentation is the 3D platformer Ape Escape. While some well-versed video game historians might sometimes credit Ape Escape with its place as a dividing line between the beta model of the first 3D console controller and its more practical superior, the general public of gaming seems to have forgotten it. In fact, Ape Escape is seldom mentioned alongside its 3D platformer contemporaries such as Crash or Spyro, much less in the grand scheme of the entire era of the 3D platformer across all consoles that Ape Escape was staunchly a part of. Tis’ a shame, for Ape Escape’s reputation, is worthy of more than simply a footnote in the early history of Sony’s tenure as a video game console heavyweight.

Ape Escape’s premise is fairly self-explanatory. The monkeys have escaped from the zoo, and pandemonium ensues. Specter, their savior, is an albino monkey (even though he barely resembles the same simian phenotype of his peers) that has been granted the gift of superintelligence by an experimental helmet. His superior capacity for insight makes him realize that he and his fellow chimp compatriots are under an oppressive human shadow while living at the zoo. But simply liberating himself and the other monkeys from captivity is merely step one of Specter’s master plan. The bigger picture here is that while Specter and the rest of the apes are free from human confines, humans are still the dominant species on the planet. To usurp the biological throne from human hands, Specter uses the time machine built by the professor who also made his helmet, and sends fleets of apes across a myriad of past periods throughout time, rewriting the course of history and ensuring that the apes come out on top in the present. Fortunately, the human race isn’t doomed to be subservient to their pre-evolved species, for their fates lie in the hands of an adolescent boy named Spike who will chase the apes across time to put them in the rightful, diminutive places. The developers ostensibly skimmed over the plot premise of 12 Monkeys and didn’t bother to actually see the film in full while multiplying the amount of time-traveling monkeys by a factor in the triple digits.

Recapturing the apes involves using a net apparatus so comically sized that it’s fit for Dick Dastardly but hey, we’re catching monkeys here, not butterflies. Using the net on the field is (technically) not assigned to a simple button, for it and the other gadgets Spike needs to restore balance to the world coincide with Ape Escape’s innovative, dual-analog control scheme. The direction of the net’s downward swing depends on whichever 360-degree swing the player executes on the right analog stick. The same function also applies to the lightsaber modded as a stun stick to briefly subdue the apes whenever they run from Spike or when encountering other enemies scattered across each level. Spike’s gadget inventory is found in the pause menu, but he can assign a total of four of them to use in a roulette by each button on the controller. The saber and the net are already assigned to the triangle and X buttons, and the player should ideally keep the two on those buttons because of their constant usage. The other gadgets juggled around both the square and circle buttons include a monkey radar that tracks the general direction of nearby apes, a slingshot for projectile damage, a hula-hoop that gives Spike a temporary speed boost when swung around, and an RC car. I don’t know exactly how to compare the neon-glowing gadget that allows Spike to glide, but I always feature this gadget in an inventory slot because how it allows Spike to mitigate gaps between platforms. Obviously, placing the utility of each gadget on the right analog stick is unorthodox, especially since this is the first game that featured the use of the extra protuberance. In execution, using every gadget is surprisingly smooth, with the circular span of the beam weapon and the net as a testament to that. Rigidity is never an issue while using the gadgets. Relegating the jump mechanic requisite for all 3D platformers to the R1 button is arguably an even stranger facet of Ape Escape’s control scheme.

As innovative as Ape Escape’s control scheme is, it is ultimately the next page in the 3D platformer playbook written by Super Mario 64. I suppose Ape Escape verges more towards the collectathon angle of the genre, only if screeching apes that scurry away from Spike when they spot him count as collectibles. The objective in each level of Ape Escape is to catch an arbitrary number of pesky primates located all around the map doing various mischievous things. Ape Escape is cut from the cloth of the exploration-intensive 3D platformer, as Spike is dropped onto the landscape and is free to roam around it in whichever direction he chooses to seek out the rogue chimps. Despite its relatively free-flowing design, Ape Escape unfortunately borrows the boot-out system from Super Mario 64. Once Spike apprehends the number of monkeys that the game assigns in the objective, Spike returns to the hub located in the present day. The amount given in the objective will never be the total number of monkeys swinging around, so he will always leave the level incomplete. While I enjoy the fact that the game doesn’t force measures of completion upon the player, I wish the game gave the player the option of staying in the level if they so choose to wrap things up nicely and put a tight Christmas bow on their package of recaptured monkeys. Banjo-Kazooie existed a year before Ape Escape was released, so perhaps borrowing the totally free-flowing, sandbox design philosophy of that game would’ve fit Ape Escape more suitably as opposed to the initial 3D platformer influence.

Capturing monkeys encompasses the entirety of Ape Escape, save for the two racing missions placed in between two worlds. The gameplay variety isn’t exactly nuanced, but the game does its best to divvy up the constrained parameters of its main objectives. I claimed that the monkeys would bounce around evading capture, but the dynamic isn’t simply predator versus prey for each one. As the game progresses, the monkeys will resort to desperate tactics to maintain their freedom. The grunts of Specter’s operation will throw banana peels in Spike’s way so the boy will slip and fall, a wise use of classic money resources if ever. The higher-ups are stacked with some serious firepower that they must’ve somehow stolen from the modern military. Some have machine guns and energy blasters, and others will spurt a barrage of missiles at Spike from a backpack. The irritating bounciness of their jumping around and their no-nonsense weaponry is why I suggest using the element of stealth when approaching them if possible. Still, the variety of the monkeys, as ruthless as they can be at times, offer a fair and engaging difficulty curve in what becomes the standard grind of the game. Also, the enemy variety from the digging sprouts that shoot pellets to the winged creatures expands on that variety splendidly. The only other collectible is the golden Spencer tokens used to unlock minigames in the hub. Seek these out only for the steeper platforming challenges they offer, because the minigames do nothing but reference the potential of the dual analog sticks, which is something that we are more than familiar with in retrospect.

While the events of the past are firmly etched in the history books that ground them in some kernel of reality, at least a game developed at the turn of the millennium has a plethora of time periods to reference. Specter evidently went to the deepest measures of time to secure the ape’s place as top dog, for Spike reverts the time machine back millions of years in the past to the prehistoric ages. Because these levels occur long before the dawn of civilization, foregrounds are heavily naturalistic jungles that feature unkempt grass, water rapids, and sizzling volcanos. One level takes place mostly in the tender, spacious insides of a carnivorous dinosaur named Dexter, a personal highlight that certainly deviates from the rank humidity of the outside (what is with this era of gaming and its fascination with exploring the insides of giant creatures?) The ice age shifted the climate balance of the previous prehistoric levels on its head with roaring blizzards covering the land in a quilt of thick snow, but the overall topography still retains a dearth of man-made structures and a lack of a busy, congested atmosphere. Eventually, the levels that take place in the era of humanity involve Spike traveling to feudal Japan and the Xin Dynasty era of China, and then to a castle in the Middle Ages of England. After that, Spike returns to the present to find that Specter’s manipulation of the space-time continuum worked well in his favor, and Spike has to eradicate all of his adulteration in the bustling city streets of the modern day. While I appreciate that Ape Escape doesn’t permanently stick Spike in environments where he must wade through untouched wilderness, the developers failed to reach the full potential of Ape Escape’s time travel theme. I don’t think I have to tell anyone that there were several time periods between the Middle Ages and the turn of the 20th century. It would be marvelous to see monkeys riding in horse-drawn caravans on The Oregon Trail, see them perched on the Empire State Building in the 1920s, or storm Normandy during WWII. Alas, the restrained level themes along with the paltry amount of them make Ape Escape a brief experience.

Ape Escape is also probably too silly for its own good. It’s a game with a kooky concept of hunting time-traveling monkeys but even then, Ape Escape goes overboard with this premise in its presentation. Ape Escape has bar none the worst collective voice acting I’ve ever heard in a competently crafted triple-AAA video game. It makes the performances of the first Resident Evil game look like a production of Hamlet performed by the gilded Shakespeare Company, and that game is one of the most notable instances of wretch-worthy voice acting of all time. All dialogue from every character is choppy and sounds almost like the voice actors are treating every line facetiously. When a man is being pursued by a monkey on the city streets, his frantic line of “help me, help me!” is delivered as if it was uttered by someone making fun of him while people watching. Even if there was no one in the recording booth to offer guidance, absolutely no one should seriously think speaking any line with this total lack of delivery should be acceptable. Specter’s voice does not match his menacing, Clockwork Orange stare at all, making every interaction with the game’s primary antagonist laughable. By the time Spike reaches the final level of Specter’s carnival, the game attempts to funnel in a lesson of growth with Spike’s character and his soaring capabilities as a hero, but I’m not slurping this down as a point of narrative substance. Ape Escape didn’t need to be campy or profound: the base wackiness should already strike a tasteful balance. While we’re at it, I can’t think of a more useless secondary antagonist across gaming (or all media) than Jake, Spike’s blue-haired friend who is under Specter’s spell and starts to work for him. I don’t care how intelligent Specter has become, no amount of high cognition will ever give someone the ability to possess people. Perhaps Jake contracted brain worms from inhaling the fumes of monkey feces for too long? Whichever it is, the developers didn’t need to shoehorn him into the game as a villain to motivate Spike to save the world. I would think that preventing an alternate timeline of being a monkey’s neutered pet bitch would be a substantial enough incentive already.

Ape Escape’s colossal strengths as a 3D platformer lie entirely in its gameplay. What could’ve been just a glorified tech demo for Sony’s new controller model and its capabilities resulted in something that surpassed all expectations. The fluidity of the analog controls is impeccable, and the unique objective involving swiping up monkeys in a net never grows tiring. While I remain yearning for a wider range of level concepts with the time travel theme, at least the modest amount of levels on display are designed to foster an inviting sense of exploration. Ultimately, Ape Escape might have crumbled in the eyes of gamers because it’s kind of dumb. Yes, dumber than an orange marsupial conquering a mad scientist with nothing but a pair of jeans. Still, it’s dumb fun all the way through. If Ape Escape was the beta test to see if the Dualshock would be functional, then no wonder the controller still reigns supreme.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 11/30/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Developer: Rockstar North

Publisher: Rockstar

Genre(s): Open-World

Platforms: PS2, Xbox, PC

Release Date: October 24, 2004

In all honesty, I don’t feel all that confident or comfortable assessing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Why am I plagued with a looming sense of apprehension? Well, to be frank, it’s because I’m white. I’m not only referring to the fact that my skin pigment lacks so much melanin that I cannot physically tan, as the sun’s rays have always transferred searing burns to my skin instead of a radiant, golden sheen. I’m alluding to all of the cultural factors of my ethnic background that have molded my general upbringing whether or not I actively engaged with them or was aware of their status quo alignment in American society at the time. I grew up middle class on a street with three churches of differing Christian denominations, my music of choice was a variation of rock/metal music, and my dad votes Republican. And yes, I was an avid watcher of The Simpsons (a strong white signifier according to Aqua Teen Hunger Force). My background and the one that comprises the cultural iconography of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are as contrasting as fire and ice, which is why attempting to delve into the substance of the game’s narrative, characters, and real-world parallels may result in a vortex of ignorant poppycock. The cold comments on modern urbanity in Grand Theft Auto III affect all city dwellers, and the neon-lit Vice City is arguably more akin to the nostalgic recollections of 1980s pop culture from an Anglo-centric descendant demographic, albeit of a certain age. San Andreas, on the other hand, draws its influences from a specific facet of American culture that is almost alien to myself and several other gamers, and should probably be approached with a modicum of sensitivity. Still, I have to discuss San Andreas, for it would be detrimental to my reputation as a comprehensive video game critic if I never even uttered a single word on this monumental achievement for the interactive medium. San Andreas is the most significant entry in the infamous Grand Theft Auto franchise, arguably the most exceptional title on the basis of quality, and a titanic benchmark for the burgeoning open-world genre.

A gangster’s livelihood is neither fun nor glamorous, or at least that’s what I’ve come to understand. The gangster genre of fiction in film and literature gave us a glimpse of the seedy underbelly of society to elicit a great vicarious thrill for all of the good-natured, god-fearing common folk. The highs of gangster life verge on euphoria, but every piece of mob media assures their audience that the repercussions of this lifestyle can be cataclysmic in more ways than one. While the allure of the criminal life is strong, one can still ignore the enticing criminal riches and intimidating swagger that come with it, unless you’re The Sopranos who argues that a mafioso lifestyle is a damning, dominant genetic trait for certain ethnicities. Also, all of this pertains to organized crime. A facet of the gangster world that is just as ever-present as Italian guys in their pinstripe suits and loafers carrying Tommy guns around are the street gangs predominantly run by African-Americans in impoverished urban areas, a harrowing result of the American government’s war on drugs and racial systemic oppression. Unlike the mafia, the excess and glamor of street gang life are far less extravagant, but the ramifications are no less disastrous. Still, the conditions of the streets where gang violence occurs are so bereft of any legitimate economic prosperity that it seems like flirting with danger is the only way to make a living. The vicious cycle of drug-inflicted murder in America’s ghettos among young black men was the subject of John Singleton’s 1991 film, “Boyz n the Hood,” and its breakout success gave the rest of the world insight into the Afro-centric state of depression. Despite how sincere Singleton was with his film, several insubstantial imitators came out of the woodwork like Menace II Society and Juice, along with an influx of “gangsta rap” music emerging from Los Angeles which expanded to other parts of the country as the decade progressed. Like its GTA predecessor Vice City, San Andreas is a time capsule that intentionally oozes the motifs and atmosphere of the raw and grimy scene of urban decay when it was ubiquitous in mainstream culture. I’m actually surprised that it took until the franchise's fifth entry for Rockstar to revel in its thematic potential. While San Andreas is intended to be manic fun like any GTA game before it, the game offers enough tact and subtle substance in its narrative to prevent the act of making mayhem in its culturally sensitive setting seem tasteless.

Enter Carl Johnson (aka CJ), a young, twenty-something black man who is seen returning to his hometown of Los Santos after a five-year stint in Liberty City. He absconded from his birthplace because his younger brother Brian became another statistic of gang violence, and he returned to Los Santos under the unfortunate circumstance that his own mother had also fallen as a result of their environment. Before he arrives at his old stomping grounds, he is intercepted by two C.R.A.S.H officers named Tenpenny and Pulaski. They blackmail CJ by threatening to pin the murder of fellow officer Pendelbury, who was actually killed by the two when he attempted to call public attention to their prevalent corruption within the force, on him unless he becomes their indentured servant. Carl reconnects with his brother “Sweet,” his sister Kendl, and a plethora of other familiar faces upon his arrival. He’s been away for so long that his old homie “Big Smoke” rashly tries to bash his face in with a baseball bat, confusing him for a common thief upon not being able to recognize him. Now that the gang's back together, Sweet orchestrates a revenge mission against the rival “Ballas” gang in purple on the speculation that they’re responsible for his mother’s murder, and CJ is the muscle of the operation. Rockstar has decided to continue their streak of setting the scene with the protagonist returning to the streets after a long hiatus to draw parallels between the player’s unfamiliarity and the protagonist’s refamiliarization. The only difference now is that CJ isn’t returning after any time behind bars, mussing up the traditional introduction a bit. Still, the opening sequence of San Andreas splendidly establishes the tone of the setting along with the characters that reside in it, mostly through natural character interactions as opposed to overt exposition.

Judging from how his return is received, CJ gets even less respect than Rodney Dangerfield. His long absence from the dilapidated cradle of civilization he was born into has made him detached from the rough and rowdy gung-ho attitude that all ghetto denizens live by to survive. Or, at least that’s a concern that his brother Sweet and other various acquaintances vocally express regularly. His neighbor and fellow gangbanger Ryder, especially, keeps calling CJ a “straight busta,” which I can infer from context clues means that he’s calling CJ a “lameoid” or a “poser.” All of his family members consistently give CJ a hard time, but Ryder has the gall to disrespect CJ right to his face. I am appalled at the audacity of CJ’s friends and relatives for treating this man with such blatant contempt because he’s a glowing instance of the continual evolution of Grand Theft Auto protagonists. San Andreas is far more character-driven than any of the previous 3D GTA games. CJ, our newest mischief maker in the realm of chaos that is the GTA world, supersedes the stigma of a simplistic avatar character that Claude had unfortunately established for any future GTA successors. Tommy was a stark improvement on Claude with a voice and a clearer background but let’s be frank, his brightly colored Hawaiian shirt carried his character’s charisma. CJ is as animated as a Tex Avery cartoon. He’s confident to the point of being arrogant, he isn’t afraid to shout at those who provoke his ill temper, and he’s quite diligent when it comes to enacting all of his destructive, illegal deeds. Still, he shows compassion and respect to those that he is loyal to, namely his older brother Sweet who gets himself trapped in many perilous pinches as an executive gangbanger, and CJ must provide his aid to protect him. GTA’s protagonists have been upgraded from emotionless psychopaths to a wavering, complex sociopath. Hey, it’s still Grand Theft Auto at the end of the day. Don’t expect CJ to be Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow. Most of all, CJ is uproariously funny. Because he’s brash as can be, he combats all social interactions with hilariously candid and loud retorts. The characters that I enjoyed from the previous two GTA games were the secondary characters seen through sparse interactions via cutscenes, but San Andreas marks the first instance where the protagonist is a strong contender for my favorite character in the game.

But the ostentatious CJ isn’t simply caterwauling at blank NPCs just because he enjoys the booming sound of his own voice. San Andreas’ greater emphasis on character relationships and interactions is a two-way street between CJ and those that he is close to. I’ve briefly stated that CJ’s loved ones and acquaintances give him heaps of grief, but the amounts of spurning vary in loads and stem from different perspectives. Sweet, CJ’s older brother, is fiercely dedicated to the feuding struggle between his hood and the rival Ballas gang around the perimeter. If the conflict between the Families and the Ballas were comparable to war, Sweet would be General MacArthur, patrolling the streets with a towering sense of pride as a de facto five-star ranked warrior. You can imagine why he’d be disappointed in his brother for abandoning the cause for half a decade. Meanwhile, CJ’s sister Kendl, expresses a disgusted resentment for all the senseless violence that her brothers are aggrandizing. She’s so deliberately detached from the Grove Street insularity imposed upon her that she’s dating Cesar, the leader of the Los Aztecas Hispanic gang, much to Sweet’s chagrin. The close allies around the block that support Sweet’s cause are OG homies Ryder and Big Smoke, the lieutenants that directly assist Sweet with missions of defending the reputation of the Families. Ryder is an amoral degenerate who brandishes his angel dust cigarettes as casually as if he were smoking tobacco. Gang activity seems to be a perfect outlet for this unfeeling soldier of death and destruction. Big Smoke, on the other hand, is more akin to a comic relief character. Whether it be his artery-clogging order at the Cluckin’ Bell drive-thru or his incoherent musings on life, Big Smoke is quite lighthearted for a man who regularly murders people. It must be a law for all rotund supporting characters across all fiction to be somewhat jovial. Non-affiliated characters from around the block include aspiring rapper Jeffrey “OG Loc'' Cross, the celebrated MC whose fame OG Loc covets named Madd Dogg, drug dealer B Dup, and his drug monkey Big Bear. While these supporting characters exist on the outskirts of Grove Street affairs, their existences are still influenced by the same destitute state of urban life. Up until now, GTA’s approach to character interactions was becoming acquainted with strangers, and the overarching goal of the protagonist’s relationship was still constricted by business. When every supporting character already has a history with CJ and some are composed of his family and friends, their personal chemistry heightens the dramatism of both conflict and moments of mirthfulness.

San Andreas extends the enhanced dynamic between the protagonist and the other characters with the game’s main antagonist(s). The opposing force that is making CJ’s life more of a living hell is LSPD officer Tenpenny and his crony Pulaski. One strong facet of hood-related media is the presence of a corrupt police force that puts the already underprivileged members of society under further subjugation. The constant slaps in the face the boys in blue inflict on individuals of the impoverished African-American community especially sting when they are from people of the same skin color who are perceived as traitors to their own kind, as portrayed with Officer Coffey in Boyz n’ the Hood. Not only does Tenpenny not share any kinship with those he undermines, but he treats them as pawns in a game he manufactured by abusing his power as an officer. He’s sitting pretty as the king of the streets, and he’d go to horribly despicable lengths to maintain his tyrannical reign. Pulaski is like Tenpenny’s attack dog lackey, enforcing Tenpenny’s demands with bellicose strong-arming. I’d say he represents the bad cop delivery to Tenpenny’s good, but they’re both rotten to the core. A major strength of Tenpenny as a villain is his confident control over CJ. One might question how Tenpenny could simply snatch CJ off the streets and make him indebted to serving them when their blackmail against him is baseless, but it’s terrifying to realize that this is the extent of influence he has over everyone that falls under his jurisdiction. Unlike the distant main antagonists of the previous GTA games, Tenpenny is an omniscient force of evil who appears periodically to rub CJ’s face in shit and remind him that he’s his bitch.

If CJ isn’t going to receive the respect that he so duly deserves, the player can assure that he eventually will, gosh darn it. How can the player prevent future acts of harsh criticism, insults, and other forms of impoliteness from being dogpiled onto CJ from all angles? The amount of respect stemming from the general perception of others is actually something that can be improved on, the top of the increasable statistics in the quasi-RPG mechanic that San Andreas introduces to the series. Given that San Andreas is relatively grounded in reality, albeit a warped one, and is set in 1992 and not 1092 (AD), the RPG attributes displayed here are all domestic. By pulling up a side menu, the player will see five gray bars that coincide with either a physical or personable attribute. These attributes range from subjective, intangible concepts like respect and sex appeal to the measurable fat, physical stamina, and muscle content of CJ’s body. Throughout the game, the player will be either actively or inadvertently increasing these stats, with a variation of pacing and methods to maximize them. CJ can visit the nearby gym to lift weights and become shredded immediately, provided he’s harboring enough fat to burn so his hard work doesn’t atrophy away (always remember to visit your local Cluckin’ Bell to refuel!). Other attributes such as respect are boosted in microscopic increments by completing missions or gaining gang territory. Don’t be discouraged by how disastrously low CJ’s sex appeal is and the immovability of its pitiful status for the vast duration of the game. Eventually, expensive clothes and driving around in a bodacious automobile will shift CJ into an irresistible, suave casanova this side of Shaft. Additional to the five featured in the menu are also a plethora of alternate stats. Excess shooting with any type of firearm will increase their caliber and spread, and driving around the map in between missions will ensure that CJ will gain a tighter grip on swerving around, thus preventing unfortunate accidents. The RPG elements are an oddly genius way to enhance the player’s engagement with the protagonist. A recurring theme in the GTA series is climbing up the social and economic ladder to glorious prosperity, and incorporating RPG character attributes alongside the protagonist’s narrative growth is a finely complimentary gameplay mechanic. The player will notice the shift in how CJ is perceived by the NPCs based on the stats at hand, even in a negative light if CJ eats too much and plumps up like a Christmas ham. Truthfully, I wish Rockstar had introduced something of this nature in GTA III. Claude was a vacant blueprint similar to a base character from an RPG, making him an ideal contender for role-playing customizability. Still, this staircase thought evidently works just as effectively for a personable character like CJ.

The RPG mechanics are just one of many ways to immerse the player in the world of San Andreas. An argument could be made that a game in which the player is free to cause cathartic amounts of chaos to their heart's content doesn’t need additional perks to enhance the experience. Nevertheless, San Andreas incorporates a plethora of new activities to spruce up the sandbox. Firstly, why is sex appeal a relevant factor in a game revolving around gang violence? Certainly, CJ isn’t trying to bed any of the homies. CJ needs to exude the manner of a debonair gentleman to impress the ladies he can take on dates. After saving a fellow Ganton girl Denise from a burning building during a mission tasked by Tenpenny (that CJ burned down in the first palace, mind you), the expression of her gratitude towards CJ is to become his girlfriend. But Denise isn’t merely a status symbol so CJ can brag about getting a little action on the side to Big Smoke. CJ has the option to occasionally court her whenever she can fit into his demanding schedule. CJ can show Denise a good time by entertaining plenty of the fun new features the game offers, including a rhythm-oriented minigame on the dance floor where CJ can flaunt his sweet dance moves. If Denise is satisfied with CJ’s efforts to woo her, she’ll return the favor by offering him “coffee,” leading to a cutscene depicting an outside view of her house with screams of pleasure echoing overhead. If you’re of the appropriate age demographic to play a Grand Theft Auto game, I shouldn’t have to spell out what is happening behind these closed doors. If CJ goes on enough dates to the point where their relationship is super serious, maximizing their relationship status will earn CJ the reward of a pimp suit. While CJ should be grateful, other girlfriends can give him the privilege of retaining all of his weapons and body armor after being wasted or busted by the cops, a GTA player’s dream finally come true. Normally, I wouldn’t condone adultery but here, I recommend discretion to reap all of the benefits. Another extracurricular activity that coincides with another of CJ’s stats is conquering the rival gangs that pollute the streets of Los Santos with drugs and whizzing bullets that are as precipitous as rain. Outside of the missions, CJ has to approach and kill three Ballas or Vagos members standing in districts with their respective gang colors on the map. This act of aggression will trigger a gang war where hordes of them will ambush CJ in three waves. Once they surrender, the territory will be CJ’s for the taking, painting Los Santos green like a St. Patrick’s Day parade. If acting as a one-man army in the line of fire sounds scary, CJ can recruit a posse of generic Family members to help wipe the Ballas off the map. Other activities verge more on leisure such as billiards, basketball, casino games, arcade games, etc. I’d even count the new ability to ride a bicycle as a merry little lark. Admittedly, none of these activities are as thrilling as blowing off the heads of pedestrians, but the fact that CJ can still engage in these mundane minigames helps the world of San Andreas mirror reality a tad clearer.

For more serious engagements with San Andreas, the game offers as many quality-of-life enhancements as it does frivolous distractions. I’ve bleated on and on about how shooting combat in the past GTA games is an awkward, imprecise process that involves more tension than necessary. To expand upon the life-saving targeting system, the player now has a reference to the amount of health an enemy has with a declining color-coded indication. CJ can also shuffle between arrays of enemies with the back trigger buttons to mow down multiple enemies with quicker efficiency. CJ can also execute a dodge roll and aim at the gas tank of a car to immediately blow it to smithereens in a fiery inferno. However, the location of this spot on any car is as elusively nanoscopic as the clitoris, so any occurrence in setting off this makeshift bomb was a stroke of dumb luck. I would execute a total face turn on GTA’s combat system if CJ could duck and cover behind walls and scaffoldings instead of merely crouching, but at least San Andreas marks the first GTA game in which encountering a gang of enemies firing at me from all angles didn’t make me feel like a sitting duck, causing me to take passive precautions to survive. CJ is also thankfully the first GTA protagonist who can swim and no, I’m not pointing out the irony of this milestone. How the developers didn't consider that the first GTA character who should've been granted this useful ability was Tommy, who resides in a city surfaced below sea level, is befuddling, but this other staircase thought comes much appreciated nevertheless because CJ is still in close proximity to the Pacific coast. One slight regression to the GTA gameplay is that CJ’s health and body armor are displayed with bars instead of percentages. I prefer having a pinpoint accurate reference to the state of my character’s being so I have a better understanding of how to approach dangerous situations. Still, complaining about this slight change is but a nitpick. Overall, the greater accessibility with performing the combat and CJ’s apt mobility make for the most capable I’ve felt in a GTA game so far.

Because CJ seems to have a higher battle acuity, progressing through San Andreas’ story through the missions is a smoother excursion. I’d need an extra pair of hands to count how many times I failed most of the individual missions in both GTA III and Vice City, but I copped a clear victory on my first try for every other mission in San Andreas. Tis’ a blessing that CJ is such a talented killing machine, for the total number of story missions in San Andreas exceeds double digits. Objectives in San Andreas tend to revolve around the GTA standard of mass murder and driving with frequent deviations to keep things interesting. One frequent element that pops up from time to time is the necessity for stealth. Missions where CJ channels his inner Solid Snake that come to mind are stealing a war veteran’s weapon crates as he sleeps in “Home Invasion” and “Madd Dogg’s Rhymes” where CJ must ransack Madd Dogg’s mansion using only a knife to dispatch his roaming guards, boosting the potential rap career of his corny and untalented hood acquaintance OG Loc. Still, San Andreas’s difficulty curve compensates for its lack of rigidity by stacking individual missions with multiple objectives or expanding the scope of one objective to epic proportions. “Reuniting the Families” sees CJ rolling through the halls of a hotel defending his homies from a SWAT team ambush that intercepted their plans. Then after wall-to-wall SWAT officers fire at CJ in enclosed spaces, CJ has to shoot down a police chopper on the roof and then blaze through dozens of police cars pursuing him while he makes a getaway with Sweet, Big Smoke, and Ryder. “Wrong Side of the Tracks” involves CJ and Big Smoke biking all the way past the Hollywood Hills following a train with four Vagos members trying to escape. This mission is infamous for not only its length but Big Smoke’s wonky upward shooting that the player has to rely on the unstable accuracy of to succeed. On a positive note, Big Smoke’s AI is far tighter here than in any instance of cooperative missions with an NPC in the previous games. If it were, say, Lance Vance on the back of that motorbike, the mission would turn from disagreeable to impossible. While scraping through some objectives by the skin of my teeth just to have another to contend with before completing a mission made my brow sweat like I was under interrogation, I appreciate the constant stream of climactic missions that San Andreas offers. Every mission in the game is all killer with maybe the occasional filler. There definitely aren’t any missions where CJ has to race to four phone booths or sit and wait to spend over $300 at a strip club, that’s for sure.

For as grandiose as the missions in Los Santos are, the surprising thing is that they aren’t even situated at the halfway point of the game. If the player opens the map in the pause menu, they might question why 75% of the map is obscured in an unopened blue and perhaps realize that the unexplored areas are not situated in the Los Santos zip code. The state of San Andreas encompasses lands that greatly extend past the parameters of CJ’s home city, which should be an exciting prospect for those who salivate at the soaring breadth of a game’s map facilitated by the open-world genre. As wondrous as exploring beyond the reaches of CJ’s hood of Los Santos is, the starting point of CJ’s San Andreas odyssey couldn’t have been started under less felicitous circumstances. Before CJ meets up with Sweet to dispatch a high-ranking unit of Ballas, Cesar calls him to show him something urgent. CJ is shocked beyond belief to find out that both Ryder and Big Smoke are working for Tenpenny in his syndicate to sell out the Families alongside the Ballas, the same syndicate that coordinated the drive-by that killed CJ’s mom. In his attempt to reach Sweet and save him from the trap Tenpenny has set up, everyone is taken into custody by a fleet of police helicopters. Instead of sharing a cell in prison with Sweet, CJ is bagged and driven to the southwest wilderness of Whetstone by Tenpenny, who threatens to harm Sweet if CJ returns to Los Santos. The “Green Sabre” mission that unfolds the game’s most crucial turning point in the plot has a devastating outcome. CJ’s world is completely shaken and disturbed in a state of irrevocable disrepair. All CJ can do now is reshape his life in his new environment and even though things seem awfully grim, CJ’s relocation has given him a golden opportunity. CJ’s story as a Grand Theft Auto protagonist isn’t only defined by financial growth, but a personal one through broadening his horizons past the deficient confines of his unfortunate birthplace.

Alas, CJ’s journey of self-discovery must begin below his former status as a Grove Street gangbanger. In order to hoist himself up by his bootstraps, CJ has to contend with surroundings outside of his comfort zone. I can’t think of a starker fish-out-of-water scenario for this black city slicker than residing in the podunk wooded area up north, where his racial background makes him stick out like a sore thumb among the unsophisticated white farmer folk, who drive tractors and only use their guns to shoot wild animals. CJ is proverbially naked and afraid in what is the antithesis of his normal setting, so he feels inclined to find anyone out here who is affiliated with his riotous way of life for comforting familiarity. Unfortunately, Cesar recommends somebody whose criminal tempo runs faster than even CJ’s. Cesar’s cousin who he hooks CJ up with is none other than Catalina from GTA II, yet another instance of Rockstar revitalizing a character from a previous game and seeing them at a different point in the series canon timeline. CJ and Catalina form a Bonnie and Clyde bond with one another where the two rob every bank and place of business in the rural vicinity, with the striking difference of the Bonnie character in this dynamic calling all the shots with Clyde scared shitless of her. We can infer from her role as GTA III’s main antagonist that Catalina is a deplorable person, but the amplified narrative and character interactions seen in San Andreas allow us to see the full extent of her loathsome personality. Catalina isn’t a firecracker: she’s an entire fireworks show firing off all at once and crippling all those in the blast radius. She’s an inexhaustible beacon of rage and rancor whose source of scorn is self-generated. She makes bunny boiler Alex Forrest look like Mother Teresa. She’s also the reason why the mute button was invented, for she nags and disparages CJ every five seconds they are together. This section is perceived as the weakest in the game, but I appreciate how it depicts how dire CJ’s life is here with Time Magazine’s contender for craziest bitch of the century, giving greater impact to his downfall in Los Santos.

Once Catalina leaves CJ for Clyde, who still doesn’t utter a single word, it’s time to head on up north in the 1967 Volkswagen Camper van belonging to aging hippie “The Truth” to the American free love mecca of San Fierro. This fictional depiction of San Francisco, while sharing the urban architecture of Los Santos as opposed to the wild woods of Angel Pine and the surrounding areas, is essentially just as alien to CJ. The steep, slanted streets of this fellow San Andreas metro are not covered from head to toe with loitering gangbangers ready to aim their AKs at CJ once he crosses their peripheral lines of sight. The friendlier atmosphere of the baked bay area sounds lovely, but CJ is still flying solo. Because the exposure that comes with lacking support is discomforting, the facet of CJ’s journey of personal growth explored in San Fierro is fraternizing with people who aren’t of the same skin color and don’t share the same upbringing. Specifically, gathering a whole new gang of people to take down the Loco Syndicate, the drug distributors who supply Big Smoke with his biweekly load of crack cocaine, his incentive for selling out CJ and Sweet out to Tenpenny. To put a hurtin’ on CJ’s former friends, CJ establishes connections with all walks of life in San Fierro. Wu Zi Mu, aka Woozie, is the blind leader of a faction of San Fierro triads who employs Carl in the interest of using him to combat the rival Vietnamese Da Nang gang. For having a leadership position in a crime organization, Woozie is calm, level-headed, and extremely polite. However, the mere mention of the Da Nang does tend to rile him up a bit. Zero is the owner of an RC shop in San Fierro, and seeing him and CJ interacting with each other during the cutscenes is as unnatural as the sun and moon sharing the same sky simultaneously. CJ has found his polar opposite in every way imaginable. To gain Zero’s valuable electronics expertise, CJ must vanquish his intellectual rival Berkley, who is constantly giving Zero grief with his weaponized RC equipment. Next to Catalina, this pasty, timid dork tends to draw the most ire out of gamers. Gaining his shop as an asset only requires the completion of three missions, but they are definitely the most bizarre and demanding missions that San Andreas has to offer. “Supply Lines…” is even a prominent contender for the hardest mission in the entire franchise. If I were CJ, I’d just hire somebody working at Radio Shack and leave this pathetic nerd hanging by his underwear where he belongs. CJ also finds himself in close quarters with his Loco Syndicate enemies as a tactical maneuver, which includes the brazen, purple Jizzy the Pimp and the prickly T-Bone Mendez. At first glance, circling the map to the various mission markers to conduct business with these strangers mirrors the impersonal interactions found in GTA III. On the contrary, CJ forms a genuine camaraderie with the people he meets in San Fierro, playing video games with Woozie in between hunting down the Da Nang and cracking jokes about the absurdity of Zero’s predicament with Berkeley. Cesar, the man whom CJ previously judged because of his ethnic background, starts to form a deeply compassionate bond with him as they work on building their San Fierro garage. In an ironic twist of fate, Cesar, a man from across the tracks in the no-man's land of Los Santos, shows CJ more loyalty and respect than anyone who runs with the same colors.

After dismantling the syndicate’s drug operation and getting revenge on that mark-ass trick Ryder, CJ ventures across the Golden Gate bridge beyond the coastline to the scorched wasteland of the desert, along with the sin city parallel of Los Venturas to traverse. In the gambling capital of the USA, the overarching conflict is Woozie’s casino business venture being eroded away by the competing one controlled by the Italian mafia. To halt the suckling straw of greed and ensure the success of Woozie’s new livelihood, CJ and his pals from San Fierro methodically conjure up the scheme for an elaborate heist mission in the rival Caligula’s Casino. A balder, yet no less stressed out Ken Rosenberg and a neutered Kent Paul also return six years after the events of Vice City to join the ranks of CJ’s new friends. The heist mission “Breaking the Bank at Caligula’s” is the climactic finale that closes this chapter of San Andreas but up until then, CJ isn’t twiddling his thumbs in the planning room waiting for further instructions. What this section of San Andreas showcases for CJ’s journey is the grander scope of what he is capable of. Acting as the tail gunner in a police car chase as wild and adrenaline-pumping as that of To Live and Die in LA with the Grove Street gang is thrilling as is, but CJ’s new compatriots squash the missions of Los Santos into small potatoes with their extravagant assets. Mike Torino, a seedy, borderline insane government agent, grants CJ full access to his hangar of fighter jets and compromised commercial airline planes to zoom around the skies of San Andreas, enacting feats of espionage that even Solid Snake would shy away from. Any mission involving flight is a hair-raising affair, with the fear of crashing and burning always a distressing possibility because the plane controls require substantial proficiency to prevent CJ’s fiery demise. Flight school sucks, but the courses are warranted. “Black Project” sees CJ humoring The Truth’s scattered-brained conspiracies, believing that there is a government project housed in the deep catacombs of the highly secured Area 69 facility located in the desert. Only a damn fool would even spit near this alert quarantined zone where guards would call an airstrike on a fly that buzzed over it, but CJ does the impossible and yoinks a jetpack financed by more American tax dollars than anyone could fathom. The “Saint Mark’s Bistro” mission entails CJ flying all the way to Liberty City on a hit job assigned by Salvatore (yes, the same Salvatore from GTA III) and flying back in one piece, and I’m still in disbelief of the country-wide scale this mission covers. CJ starts San Andreas with acts that would make him an un unnamed statistic but outside the realm of his hood, he performs stunts that would define him as public enemy #1 on all of the San Andreas headlines.

Even though CJ is out of town cultivating growth and wealth, it becomes time to end his adventure by clicking his heels and repeating “There’s no place like home.” When CJ finally returns to Los Santos, however, he repossesses Madd Dog’s mansion that was foreclosed on him and houses himself and his new allies there to aid Mad Dogg with the production of his big musical comeback. Sweet is even released from prison, so the story of San Andreas seems as if it's neatly wrapped up nicely in a pleasant bow. However, Sweet’s transgressions upon hearing that CJ has forsaken his hood yet again to gallivant off with non-affiliates touring the state of San Andreas means that closure is still out of reach. That, and the non-guilty verdict given to Tenpenny after good-natured Officer Hernandez blew the whistle on his vile ass erupts into a city-wide state of utter chaos that mirrors the historic events of the 1992 LA riots. To restore (relative) balance to the hood, CJ must bring Tenpenny to justice by exterminating him, along with Big Smoke as an auxiliary act of personal retribution. The “End of the Line” mission in which all of this transpires is a five-act endurance test that had me breathing heavily out of sheer tension by its completion. All's well that ends well when CJ looks over the deceased body of his uniformed oppressor and says, “See you around, officer.” The line gives me chills every time I hear it.

Understanding San Andreas comes with the realization that Sweet is the game’s main villain. Tenpenny is the flower of evil acting conspicuously above the ground, but Sweet is really the root of CJ’s problems. Like a strict parent, no matter how much money CJ earns or how far he climbs up the chain of command in life to better himself and his family, Sweet is unsatisfied with CJ’s success if it conflicts with his own perspective of success; dominating the Los Santos gang terrain as an unrelenting foot soldier. Near the beginning of the game, wiping out the presence of the Ballas and Vagos gangs was something to take pride in because it was the pinnacle of achievement for the narrowly bounded world which our protagonist was born into. After broadening CJ’s perspective by traveling abroad, initiating outside connections, and accomplishing insurmountable odds that make those around him awe him like he’s Superman, returning to the origin point to reclaim lost gang territory feels unsatisfying. Grove Street and all the baggage that comes with it is beneath CJ at the end of the game, which is why reverting back to being unappreciated and unpaid like at the start is undignifying. Sweet is an irritating anchor who is tying down CJ and the rest of his family to a life of squalor, but he’s still a sympathetic antagonist in a pitiable sense. Sweet has drunk too much of the thug life kool-aid supplied to him by the systemic restrictions of his background. He’s been fed lies of honor and loyalty that come with sticking to his literal guns, but the game proves that Sweet’s convictions have little basis in reality. Eventually, his stubborn, myopic dedication to the life that has been chosen for him, even when CJ gives him an avenue out of it, is going to kill him and cause even more grief for the Johnson clan. Using the juxtaposition between CJ’s success and Sweet’s propensity for lying in the dirt, San Andreas presents the viewpoint that gang life is tragic and unnecessary, which is how the game prevents itself from existing as a case of glorification despite gamifying it.

GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas act as a loose trilogy of games from the franchise, sharing the designation of being developed for the PS2 console as early stepping stones for the open-world genre before it reached its mechanical peak in successive gaming generations. While the varying years, stories, settings, and central characters slacken the connection between the three games, I’m still going to reference it to convey that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of this GTA threesome. It’s the entry that dwarfs the previous two by catapulting the open-world design built from their framework into the stratosphere with ambition so remarkable that it is unbelievable that it was capable of being presented on the PS2. Admittedly, the shoddy graphics and compressed audio are a humbling reminder that it shares the same system as GTA III and Vice City. Still, Grand Theft Auto was never intended to be pretty: its allure has always been associated with the thrill of vicariously simulating the freedoms deemed too taboo to execute in real life. GTA: San Andreas offers so much content on one game disc that it transcends the initial novelty of committing acts of unspeakable violence that it could potentially supplement one’s real life entirely to the digital realm of gaming. For those who want substance behind the slaughter, San Andreas provides an insightful narrative arc into the dynamic life of a street gangster arguably more riveting and substantial than the hood movie that inspired it, created by a team of British guys whiter than I no less. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is absolutely incredible on all fronts and is truly when what we wished for the open-world genre came to fruition.