Castle Crashers: Light-hearted violence and humor for the child at heart.

During one of our game days (not the most recent, which by the way, my problem was resolved with little problems thankfully) I brought it my Xbox and had some of my classmates play the game Castle Crashers. Castle Crashers is a downloadable game from the Xbox live arcade, it is an old style "beat em' up" side scrolling game. the story is very simple, your king's four daughters and his jewel of power were stolen by an evil wizard, and it is up to the Castle Crashers to rescue the girls and retrieve the stone. You get to play as one of the four Crashers, each with different powers based on the elements, and can play them four different ways (Offense, Defence, Magic, Speed and Archery). The game takes you on an adventure, fighting barbarian hordes laying siege to your castle, exploring through a dark forest filled with bandits and wildmen, treading volatile volcanic lands, facing off with a fearsome dragon and evil warlord, assaulting an enemy wizard's fortress of ice, and eventually challenging the evil wizard himself for the king's gem, saving his daughters, collecting weapons, items, and treasure along the way.



The game allows for up to four people to play at a time, each with a different Crasher (the blue one is my favorite). The game has a great cartoon-esk art style that is reminiscent of older games, but is cleanly drawn and crisply animated. Castle Crashers is very humorous and silly (one villain is thrown into a pit of lava and gives a thumbs up on the way down, similar to the ending of the movie Terminator 2), something that I feel is lost in a large amount of the new, popular games such as God of War and Call of Duty. Due to its 4 player capabilities, Castle Crashers is a good game for cooperative play.

Castle Crashers has become one of, if not is, my favorite downloadable games for Xbox 360. The vivid color and style, as well as the cartoon violence and comic relief make this game something that I have anticipated since its announce and was extremely impressed and delighted to play. I would highly recommend Castle Crashers to anyone looking for a lighthearted, silly, and exciting gameplay experience.

Super Mario Bros.:The Movie- The beginning of a hideous thing

So being that this is a video game class, how better to start this blog by saying it will not be about video games...entirely. This week I chosen a different path to walk (blog) and want to talk about video games and their adaptions into movies. Reason being for this topic is that I was lucky (any normal person would say unlucky but hey normality is not one of my talents) enough to catch this movie on TV...

This marvelous chunk of coal, never destined to be a diamond, is Super Mario Bros. the movie. Now although this movie has one of my favorite actors of all time (Bob Hoskins), the movie is a train wreck. It had no relation to the games other than borrowing names from the video game franchise and dressing the main characters up in Mario and Luigi's usual attire. This however is beside the point. The important factor about this movie is that it is the first of its kind, a video game adapted into a film.

There have been many video games that were adapted to film, ranging from childish, lighthearted games such as Mario Bros., to the dark and dramatic games such as Max Payne. All of these movies have something in common however, they are all terrible! The only video game franchise that has had some success is Resident Evil, which has just had its 4th movie hit theaters. But if you are a fan of the games, and good movies, you would know that the on-screen adaptions are a perversion of what the games are all about, and despite their success, the movies (according to my infallible opinion) are cheesy, poorly written, and overall painful to watch. I shall try to humble myself and learn to appreciate the films for the action scenes they contain, but sadly that will not happen any time soon.

This has sparked the idea in my mind that video games are a dead end medium, what I mean by that is video games are the final frontier for adaptions. Still confused? Don't worry, I will give a less metaphorical definition. Novels, comics, and movies have been adapted into video games with huge success (well maybe not movies so much, but a few do get good reviews, but that is a different story, see JAWS blog) and when video games reverse the role and try to become movies, they crumble like a castle made of sand. So the options that the writers who adapt these games have is to either abandon the concept of video game to movie adaptions, or go back to their respective college and refund their English/Writing degrees for something else, because they are not up to the desired snuff that I, and I'm sure many, many others, wish they were.

Until then, let the bad times roll with masterpieces such as this...

Oh Yea...



Survival Horror- Scary has never been so...well...scary...

Ok this one might turn out to be another one of my rants so bare with me. Personally, I LOVE horror movies. Anything and everything from the supernatural thrillers to hack and slash murder mysteries, I am indeed a fan. Not only am I a fan of horror films, but honestly I think everyone is! Anytime a new horror movie hits the big screen, people flock to the local theaters and eagerly sit and wait to have the bejesus scared of of em. It just seems to me that as much as people enjoy seeing a riveting dramatic film , or feeling good when they watch a romance movie, they equally love to be scared by cinema. And it doesn't end there. I remember my mother telling me when I was a kid watching "The Amityville Horror" that she loved to read horror novels and that one in particular terrified her while she read it (and if you are familiar with the story, it scared her even more when she lost the book midway through).

As with any popular medium of entertainment, horror stories have been adapted to video games. The survival horror video game genre can be traced all the way back to the Atari game system with a game entitled "Haunted House" which was released in 1981. This game expanded on the idea of solving puzzles and evasion tactics as opposed to fighting your enemies. This concept of avoiding conflict in games ands a new element to the game, the element of vulnerability as compared to the in game monsters you face. This vulnerability can then lead to the desired effect, fear. Jumping ahead a little under two decades, we arrive at one of, if not the, most influential and inspiring of all survival horror games ever created, Resident Evil.

In Resident Evil, you play the role of a member of a police task force trapped in a mansion with various nightmarish creatures. As the story unfolds, you uncover the truth behind the mansion and why it is overrun with all these different ghouls, by solving puzzles and defeating enemies. This game was the first to actually receive the moniker "Survival Horror". As I stated earlier before that vulnerability leads to fear, although a large portion of the game consists of killing enemies with various weapons, they are exponentially more durable then you, faster than you, and pack one hell of a punch (zombie bites are not to underestimated). Conserving ammunition is also an important factor, as it is not found everywhere and firing wildly is never a good idea due to the fact that almost every enemy must be shot to death numerous amounts of times (the buggers get back up!), so you must take your shots carefully, little as they may be. So even though you have a weapon, sometimes even a very good weapon (Shotgun > Knife) your are still extremely weak as compared to your enemies, causing you to still have that overwhelming belief that death is soon coming your way.

Now what is worse than death? Fear! When you die in Survival Horror games (Ironic) you at least have a moment of comfort to reflect on what happened and now expect it next time. But in those few moments where impending death is shambling, creeping, or running your way, the tension of turning that corner, looking in that room, or opening that door cause your heart jumps into your throat. And this may seem bad, but the worst part is that when you muster the courage to open that door,  you see nothing is there. It was all in your mind the whole time, so you begin to relax, and then, oh then, that's when the monster strikes, because while you were turning that doorknob, the foul creature was waiting right behind you!

These two elements are key components of a successful Survival Horror game. One where you have a sense of vulnerability, and the other is that feeling of uneasiness with every step you take. A genuinely scary enemy helps too of course, I will talk about that in my next blog when I review a favorite Survival Horror game of mine. But it is truly that fear, that feeling of being naked in a black room with no light, that makes Survival Horror the popular video game genre it is today.