A demo for Dante’s Inferno was released on the Playstation Network about two weeks ago, with XBox 360 fans seeing the release this Friday. Like other people out there, I was pretty curious as to how the hell the first portion of the Divine Comedy was going to be adapted into a straight up video game. I mean, it doesn’t exactly lend itself for video game fodder. Then again, Electronic Arts isn’t producing a faithful adaptation of the game: it’s effectively a God of War ripoff: angry male faces off against a deity (Ares in God of War, Satan in Dante’s Inferno) to win back his love. Generic character has ridiculous weapon and magical abilities. Yeah, I mean, I’ve only read the Penguin Classics translated version of The Divine Comedy so there may be something lost in the translation, but I am pretty sure that Dante never wielded a gigantic feck-off scythe. I’m also pretty sure that Beatrice, the woman whom the real Dante Alighieri pined over, didn’t have the body of a stripper, complete with massive D cups.

That said, who cares if the video game companies take creative license with things? There’s money to be made and boobs to animate. We can’t let silly things like ‘respect for the classics’ get in the way of things! After all, Hollywood’s been doing it for years so why not the gaming industry?

Exactly. So, here are some potential candidates for the next Classic that could be remade into video games! To any of my former professors who may have accidentally stumbled across this: I am so very sorry.

I’ll be honest: newspapers aren’t really my main source of information, what with this newfangled ‘World Wide Web’ thing that more and more people are flocking to every day. That said, despite my best efforts, I can’t always be plugged in, so there will be times when picking up a newspaper will be the prudent thing to do. Occasionally, I’ll head over to a restaurant and flip through a paper while having a bite to eat. There’s a 24/7 diner just up the road from where I live. It totally has that retro 1950s vibe going on, which is cool.

Anyway, recently this week I’ve been on a bit of a breakfast kick. I’m in the process of moving so I don’t have much in the way of cookable food left at my current place, so I’ve had to venture outdoors to get my nosh. This previous week was E3, the gaming industry’s mega-conference where all sorts of new games and information is unveiled. I kept up to date regarding E3 through the Internet, meaning I wasn’t exactly turning to print media for my information, so I was a little surprised when I saw that the Toronto Star gave E3 the front page treatment in their Entertainment section. I thought, ‘oh, cool’, ferreted that information away and went on reading the paper.

Anyway, Sunday morning rolled around and I headed back to the diner for some breakfast, this time picking up a copy of the Saturday Sun to amuse myself with. Flipping through Peter Worthington’s deranged, thinly veiled racist diatribes, I came across this little gem in the Editorial section from columnist Lorrie Goldstein, essentially bemoaning the fact that the Ryerson Review of Journalism, a student run publication from journalism students at Ryerson University, ignored the Sun and columnist Steve Tilley when writing a feature on video games and their coverage in Canadian print media.

Goldstein goes on to talk about how Tilley does a Really Good feature once a week on video games that is featured as a supplement in the Sunday Sun. He mentions that Tilley has ‘has the biggest journalistic footprint of anyone covering the beat in this country’, a claim that is seemingly only supported by the fact that Sun Media is Canada’s largest newspaper chain. Unfortunately, distribution doesn’t necessarily equate to significance in my books. Prior to reading this editorial, I had literally zero idea who Steve Tilley is, and I consider myself to be a fairly ‘in the know’ gamer. I imagine that if I were to poll other gamers asking them who Steve Tilley is, I’d receive similar responses.

What I find problematic with this editorial, though, is that this was a thinly disguised attempt to bitch about Ryerson and their dismissive attitude towards Sun Media…an attitude which I can’t necessarily fault them for doing so, as the Sun ranks roughly right above the National Enquirer in terms of journalistic ‘quality.’ They’re a tabloid newspaper and employ sports writers such as Bruce Garrioch (whose credibility and knowledge covering the NHL beat rivals only the punchline known as Eklund as being one of the worst voices in sports), Steve Simmons (whatever happened to him, anyway, or Mats Sundin’s career ending hip injury?) and Eric Francis (the epitome of a fair-weather, know-nothing fan whose claim to fame comes from having a famous mommy who was able to pull some strings for him.) Honestly, a cursory look at the Load This games page that the Sun runs, as well as Tilley’s own articles, show him to be nothing more than a glorified reviewer and fluffer. Honestly, I don’t get what Goldstein’s complaints are, beyond the fact that the Sun doesn’t get much respect…

“This is typical of Ryerson’s journalism program — and I don’t blame the students, but the faculty — which has a long, culturally inbred history of repeatedly dismissing or slagging Sun Media, a foolish disservice to their students.”

Oh. Well, I guess that sums it up. Unfortunately, Goldstein completely misses the point of the article he’s being critical of, even when he’s gone so far as to speak with Prof. Lynn Cunningham, the faculty advisor for the Review. She points out that “she would have mentioned Sun Media, but only briefly, since Tilley does game reviews, whereas the article was mainly about the media’s lack of social commentary on the industry — something akin to the film criticism of Pauline Kael, the late, legendary movie reviewer for The New Yorker magazine.”

Which is the point. It’s wonderful that Tilley is a part of the Sun Media empire and writes lots and lots of words for reviews of games, but that’s not what the Review was going for. Hell, Tilley’s own bio states that he ‘actually gets paid to play video games on cutting-edge HDTVs.’ So, yeah, I could see why there’d be little interest in someone who is trumpeted as being nothing more than a fucking reviewer.

Video games are becoming more and more mainstream and they are becoming more accepted in our society. Being able to have writers who are capable of providing valid, mature and well-reasoned criticism, debate and discussion of the industry as a whole is important and is something that could appeal to video gamers who, believe it or not, are not just 15 year old slackers. If books, television, movies, comic books (sorry, SEQUENTIAL ART) can be treated with seriousness and maturity, why then is it so hard to do with video games? Sorry, Goldstein, but Steve Tilley embodies what is wrong with video game journalism, not what is right and your editorial shows that mainstream journalism’s attitudes about gaming and gaming culture aren’t going to be changing anytime soon.

Moving away from hockey, I found some interesting news regarding a Chrono Trigger ROM hack that was providing a ’sequel’ of sorts to the classic SNES game. Predictably, Square-Enix issued forth a cease and desist on this group. The real kick in the nuts, though, comes from the fact that this group had about 98% completed this ROM hack before SE decided to descend upon them and give them hell.

A lot of folks are pissed off at SE for doing this, claiming it was a scummy move and so on and so forth. Well, yes, it is a bit of a scummy move, but it’s one of those things that needs to be done if Square wants to protect their intellectual property. Some people might scoff and go ‘Well, it’s just a fan made game, nobody’s getting hurt over it and blahblahblah.’ While that’s probably true, it does set an ugly precedent and it would make it harder if someone else came along and decided that there was profit to be made in meticulously remade fanfiction using existing ROM files. The whole 98% thing, to me, is getting thrown around way too much, as well, as it seems to be nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence than anything else.

Here are some unfortunate truths for people out there who are wanting to get their hate on for SE:

1, They have had a history of stopping fan projects before. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is the aborted 3D remake of Chrono Trigger. Square jumped all over that quickly and nipped it in the bud. For the people who have been a part of the Crimson Echo project to openly advertise and promote their project before it was done, knowing that SE has stopped fan projects in the past is either naive or ignorant.

2, A sequel to Chrono Trigger hasn’t been made because the original creators aren’t all involved. Despite everyone screaming bloody murder at SE and going ‘OMG WHY WON’T U MAEK GAEM’ as a justification for a lack of a sequel, SE is instead showing consideration for their fans by NOT making a sequel to the game that doesn’t involve people who were originally affiliated with it. This is part of the reason why I find this whole thing to be hilarious: rabid fanboys think they know more/better than the original developers/designers of the games and are arrogant enough to go where the Big Bad Evil Company are loathe to. Yet people are angry at SE for being ‘money grubbing bastards.’ Oookay.

3, The ’shittiness’ of current SE games is YOUR fault. Yes, YOU. Okay, maybe not you specifically, but you catch my drift, yes? While there are tons of people out there who either love or hate Final Fantasy 7 and the subsequent trends that they created in JRPGs, often pointing to this guy:

As the source of Final Fantasy’s ills. For many fans, Sephiroth represented a lot of what went ‘wrong’ with the Final Fantasy series: vaguely effeminate, ‘badass’ character  with an absolutely mindboggling past that led to a plot that didn’t make a lot of sense. The black trenchcoat and katana also led to a more ‘contemporary’ look in character design and, blah, blah, blah. I’m not repeating anything that hasn’t been said before. While that’s all fine and good and nerds will either rage or love Sephiroth in entirely inappropriate and disturbing ways, I’d argue that Sephiroth wasn’t the root cause of all the bullshit that clogged up the pipes of the Final Fantasy series (and even I would argue that ‘blaming’ anyone or anything as a specific cause would be reaching…why I am writing this, then, I have no fucking clue.) No, the blame should land at the feet of THIS guy:

Big weapon, silly hair and the same sort of nonsensical backstory that you got with Sephiroth and whom also has a ridiculously huge cult following, just like Sephiroth. While there have been no cults forming in honor of Magus, there were a group of people who devoted five years of their life in making a game in which Magus plays a central part, if what I’ve viewed from the 15 or so videos already up on YouTube are anything to go by.

And this is what I find the most insane of all of this: you have a group of people who have an obvious passion for something and, more importantly, the ability and desire to create something. Why didn’t they make their own game instead of penning what basically equates to a bunch of electronic fanfiction? And why did it have to be a game where the company in question has a known history for striking down such work?

I have little sympathy for these guys, as they were obviously begging for SE to come and take them down a notch or two.

Part 1: Introduction, Back To The Front, You Will Do What I Say, When I Say

Okay, call me a purist. Or a dork, I don’t really care which epithet you wish to throw my way. I refuse to acknowledge the Sierra Hero’s Quest games by their ‘Quest for Glory’ moniker simply because, hey, I grew up playing Hero’s Quest, dammit, not Quest for Glory.

Welcome to the first instalment of the LP for arguably the best Sierra adventure game produced: Hero’s Quest 1: So You Want To Be A Hero? I know that there are several LPs already done of the Quest for Glory series, so this isn’t necessarily being done to shed a ton of light onto a game that folks don’t know a whole lot about. HQ1 is a game that I’m really comfortable with, having played it to death growing up, so I think it’d be a good game to pop my LP cherry on, and it will allow me to spend time trying to make this LP entertaining, rather than going over everything in the game in detail.

I’ve become a fan of The Spoony Experiment, mostly for the savage beating that he’s given to Final Fantasy 8. Anyway, another standout Let’s Play he’s done is of Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh, a rather bad Sierra game. Spoony riffs on the game’s main character, Curtis Craig, who is unintentionally portrayed as a huge dork and it’s all quite amusing.

Anyway, as I’ve been doing work on some content, I was doing a bit of snooping into the actor who played Curtis, Paul Morgan Stetler. Most of Phantasmagoria was filmed up in Seattle and used local talent, of which Mr. Stetler was one. Anyway, he’s still acting, doing a lot of theatre and looks to be doing pretty well for himself. If you look around, you can find pictures of some of the stuff Stetler’s been in and, well, this one happens to be my favorite:

Which of course, reminds me of:

Also, an interesting sidenote: Paul Mitri, the actor who played Trevor, is now a professor at the University of Hawaii!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1477104515422436351

I haven’t stopped laughing yet. Absolutely perfect parody of horrible Let’s Plays.

Part 2. Time to rant about people ranting about video games. Woop woop. There’s a TL;DR at the bottom, by the way.

So, this:

Has been pissing off quite a few people as of late, for a variety of reasons, the least of which is, arguably, that it’s a horrible fucking show, at least in execution. In concept? Maybe not so much. I don’t know. At the very least, people seem to forget that there are people out there who will watch gamers. Particularly over in Korea and with Starcraft.

Anyway, this wonderful show has been leading to a ton of people to stand up on their soapboxes and loudly bitch about how ‘The Man’ is exploiting gamer culture. Case in point. To which I have to say…what?

Okay, so it is fashionable to be a ‘gamer’ now, apparently. Video games are ‘cool’ and you’re no longer shunned for liking them. Err, well, yeah. That’s been the case for pretty much the entire time I have been ALIVE. Oh, but we’re talking about HARDCORE gamers, the ones who eat, sleep, breathe video games. The ones who will PLAY ALL NIGHT. Right, I don’t for the life of me understand why this sort of behavior would be looked down upon.

Look, I’m not mocking someone for having their own hobbies or interests…you could bring up crazy ass sports fans who wear thongs in -30 weather, slathered in body paint. Or music fans who follow artists around while they tour. I knew a girl who used to do that with a couple of bands. There’s nothing wrong with going to extremes, like camping out or whatever. People should be allowed to enjoy whatever the hell it is they enjoy (within reason.) But to get hyper defensive because other people are encroaching on your turf?

Seriously? Who the fuck cares. The crazy ass football fan isn’t going to get mad because other people like the Minnesota Vikings. I cannot think of a person alive who would not be THRILLED at getting someone else into a band that they adore. So why the problem with games? People act like this is the first time that “TEH MAN” has tried to encroach on their electronic fiefdom. Well, not exactly. You could point to Fred Savage’s lovely cinematic masterpiece The Wizard for proof of their attempts at trying to make gaming go ‘mainstream.’

Note to Ramsoomair: games have always been marketable and, more often than not, they’ve generally sucked when attempts are made at trying to appeal to the mainstream. As much as you may want games to serve as your own personal pleasure dome, they’re interested in making money.

Which goes to the second point most folks go on about when they talk about television shows like The Ultimate Gamer, and that’s how it is clearly pandering to the ‘casual gamer’ demographic. You know the type, ‘idiots’ who like World of Warcraft, the Wii or, gasp, play Bejeweled. These people are clearly ruining games, because games nowadays are complete and utter shit, right?

Well, no.

Games have always been shite. There has always been a healthy dose of crap out there. For every classic like Mega Man or Super Mario Bros. 3, there are horrible, horrible games like Bart vs. The Space Mutants. Or you get absurdist consoles like the headache inducing piece of crap known as the Virtua Boy. The oversaturation of video games was one of the main reasons the entire market crashed back in the 80s: the number of shit games vastly outnumbered the ‘good’ ones.

Yet people want to act as though there were never any horrible games released ‘back then’ and everyone got to enjoy some sort of magical gaming wonderland. I use the term back then in quotation marks because, really, the goalposts get moved to a certain period depending on who you talk to, which is what makes this all the more hilarious to me.

Take one of the sacred cows for gamers, Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. That, along with Starfox and Mario Kart 64, constituted a good chunk of my time spent on the 64 back in the day. It was fun as hell to play, especially with friends.

Fast forward a few years and you have Halo, a game that gets a lot of hate from gamers because it apparently appeals to the date-rape frat boy crowd and I honestly can’t sort out how Goldeneye is superior to Halo, once you move past from the personal attachment folks have, which is really all this is boiling down to: Scott R becoming the old man, yelling at the kids to get the hell off of his lawn. Why, back in my day…

You’d think folks would be happy that gaming is becoming more and more popular. To go back to my music analogy, I don’t know why people are getting mad over the fact that video games are more mainstream than ever before. It’s common ground you can share with other people, isn’t that a good thing? Who cares if someone got their start through Peggle or the Wii or whatever, you get to play gatekeeper and open other people’s eyes to the truly great games. Why bitch about something like that?

TL;DR: There has always been a glut of shit games out there, with the few rare good ones buried deep. Gaming companies have always tried to ‘cash in’ and market games to the ‘mainstream.’ The Ultimate Gamer is a stupid show because it is crap television, not because gamers are being romanticized. Scott R not only made a poor webcomic that screwed up Colbert’s The Word segment, but he, and people like him, are getting bent out of shape over something that should be seen as a good thing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go watch old Video Power episodes on YouTube:

Okay, welcome to my second iteration of Dumb Video Game Design Decisions. I gotta give thanks to my little brother, Mikey. He caught my post where I was talking about having the PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics and he helped a brother out, hooking me up with a PSP. So…thanks!

That said, I have had some time to sit down and play around with Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, a game that was ported over from the Playstation and onto the PSP. For those who aren’t familiar with FFT, it fits into the FF family on the same branch as Chocobo Racing and Dirge of Cerebeus: games that deviate quite strongly from the JRPG formula that the Final Fantasy Series is known for. Tactics, as the name suggests, is a tactical RPG. You build a small army, using the FF job system to give them new abilities and access to different kinds of equipment. It’s very similar to Tactics Ogre, another tactical RPG, which isn’t a coincidence, given that both games had the same development team.

Like most remakes these days, War of the Lions has a bunch of new features and I have to say that unlike other remakes, WotL actually does have a bunch of new features thrown in, moreso than some other remakes, such as Chrono Trigger for the DS, or the Gameboy Advance remakes of Final Fantasy IV and VI, which basically had bonus dungeons thrown in at the end, like some sort of weird afterthought. There’s some nice stuff thrown in: fully animated cutscenes done in the game’s original art style, several new characters and 2 new job classes. There’s also some additional quests you can go through in the game, as well as some new battles involving Delita (who didn’t have as much of a role in the original game, despite him being one of the major players.) Although there were some minor complaints, such as the lag with some abilities, it’s not huge enough that it dampers my spirits.

For the most part, it’s a good game and it was a fun distraction going through and playing through Ivalice again. I know, big surprise that a self-professed FF geek is going to like an FF game. However, there is one pretty significant beef I have with the game and the decisions Square-Enix decided to make with War of the Lions. Specifically, the multiplayer features. There are two types of multiplayer available in War of the Lions: Melee, which is a sort of PvP option, where you can fight your party against other player’s parties, and the Rendezvous mode, which is basically a Co-Op mode that has all sorts of weird and wonderful battles. Oh, also, there’s tons of new gear, some of which is incredibly useful for the 2 new Job Classes that are available that can only be obtained in these 2 multiplayer modes.

See, this is a trend that is becoming ridiculously annoying with games nowadays: a focus on multiplayer functions, even if it’s not needed or necessary. More than that, though, is the insistance of tossing multiplayer features into games in a completely slipshod and random fashion. I don’t get it. More to the point, I do not understand why Square decided to shoehorn a multiplayer feature into a game that is a SINGLE PLAYER GAME. It’s like fireproofing the hull of a submarine: sure, it is a beneficial feature, but the practicality of said feature is questionable at the very best.

What I’m specifically talking about with WotL is the local multiplayer option that is available. Actually, I shouldn’t say option, as it is the ONLY way you can use the multiplayer mode in this game. There’s no official way to play this game say, online. I say official, as there are ways out there to jury rig your PSP to play with other people online, but this requires more work and you having to then find people who own a copy of the game and have gone through the same efforts as you have, which is a frustrating endeavor for the sake of simply enjoying the new content that comes with the game, a fact made all the more frustrating as the other new fights and battles that are in the Story version of the game aren’t anything particularly special. The Delita battles I mentioned earlier? Delita is specially equipped to pwn the characters you face, meaning they end inside of a minute of starting. That said, the lion’s share of the new fights are in the multiplayer mode…and they’re also the most challenging and interesting content thrown into the game.

As a sidenote, I’d like to also issue a hearty fuck you to the spectacular bastard who thought it’d be a great idea require you to finish the game in order to fully unlock all the missions available in multiplayer. For the unitiated, the final portion of the game is a sequence of battles at Orbonne Monastery that prompts you to save before continuing onwards. The game prompts you to save right before you go into these series of battles and most experienced players will NOT save the game before going on to finish the game, as there is no way to get out of these fights once you’re locked in. Basically, if you save at that point, that’s all you’re going to be able to do with your savefile.

However, the multiplayer works on a tiered system: as you progress through the game and plod through the storyline more multiplayer missions will become unlocked for you. In order to unlock the last set of missions in the game, you have to finish the game, creating a ‘Clear Game Save’ on your save file. However, to continue with the mindfuckery, you have to have not saved your game once you’ve started these battles. If you have, you’re screwed, as the game doesn’t bump you back to the world map once you’ve cleared the game, unlike virtually every other game I’ve played that unlocks new content once you’ve finished the game. It’s like Square is actively TRYING to keep you from experiencing this new content by trying to construct as many hurdles as possible.

So, again, in order to play the full multiplayer features in this game you have to:

• Own a copy of the game (DUH)
• Know someone else who owns a copy of the game who lives close enough to you so that you can set up a LAN game
• Not save your game before fighting the final boss

Why would you lock out this content for what is admittedly a rather niche game? Why would you not provide an easier method of allowing users to use the multiplayer feature you provided? I honestly don’t get it.

And okay, maybe this is something that is huge over in Japan, and there are hordes of Final Fantasy Tactics fans that congregate at Final Fantasy Tactics Meetings and have tournaments and so on and so forth. Maybe I, the ungrateful gaijin, should just shut his cracker mouth and be satisfied that Square was able to port over a non-FF7 related game without laming it up too much. To that, I have to say fuck off. Final Fantasy Tactics was a cult hit on both sides of the pond and it wouldn’t have been impossible to have made the Rendezvous crap available in single player mode. I mean, fuck, they provided VOICE ACTING for the North American localization, something which didn’t happen for the Japanese version. Clearly, Square was willing to spend money on this game, so why not spend a few more dollars and make the game playable online (making it easier for people who live in Podunk, Alabama, say) or simply make the multiplayer features accessible to single players as well?

Long story short? Don’t fucking try to cram multiplayer features (or other, similarly needless features) into games that REALLY don’t need them. And if you must insist on such a course of action, make them as accessible as possible. From a marketing perspective, I can see why it’s supercoolawesome to have a laundry list of ‘features’ for the game to slap onto the back of the box, but at least make them features that people are going to be genuinely interested in.

I am a longtime old school Final Fantasy fan. I loves me some Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI (moreso FF6 than FF4, to be totally honest.) It’s probably the biggest reason why I am such a gigantic nerd and has left a huge mark on me. The series is the reason why I bought a Nintendo DS. It’s why I bought the PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics, even though I don’t own a PSP (although I plan on either grabbing an emulated version of the game or a used PSP one of these days!) Seriously, I love the series, up until FF7.

And then I got the news today.

Final Fantasy IV: The After. The SEQUEL to FF4, released as a freaking cell phone game in Japan is now being slated for release in North America.

What’s this, though?

WiiWare?

Are you KIDDING me?

If there is a God, he’s no doubt looking down on me, laughing.

Welcome to a new feature that’s going to be taking place here at The Internet Trashcan. So, you’ve got a multi-billion dollar industry, one that is becoming more and more mainstream, yet time and again, we see absolutely retarded design decisions that just make you sit there and wonder who the hell thought this would be a good idea.
Which brings us to Dumb Video Game Design Decisions.  I am going to talk about Street Fighter IV, a game that I am sure some of you out there may be familiar with. More accurately, I am going to talk about one dumb design decision in particular that is fairly commonplace in most fighting games, but which Capcom has taken to Extra Level of Hell type depths.

First off, I want to say that I enjoy Street Fighter IV immensely. It strikes that perfect balance of new and old features, tone and feel that is so hard to find in sequels nowadays. I’ve always been a sort of peripheral fighting game fan, being of mediocre-to-decent skill, but I’d have to say that it was a chance spotting of a Street Fighter II arcade cabinet in Kalispell, Montana, of all fucking places, that was the ‘turning point’ for me with regards to video games. So, it was a happy surprise to sit down with Street Fighter IV and have it be like an old friend coming to pay a visit.

What would otherwise be a great game is marred by the ‘unlockable’ characters format that is a staple in genre of fighting games. Yes, I can understand that designers need to come up with some way of making the game ‘replayable’ for people, but why does it have to be at the expense of one of the MAJOR selling features in a game?

What makes this incredibly retarded, though, is that unlike other games which have ‘unlockable’ characters, where you simply have to beat the game to unlock a character, SFIV has several characters which need to be unlocked via a couple of qualifying conditions. For Gouken, you have to complete the game with Akuma. Then (in single round matches) get at least 1 perfect, 3 Ultra Finishes, 5 first attacks all without using any continues.

And yes, I can see that this might be an homage to the Sheng Long April Fool’s Joke that EGM ran many, many moons ago and for some people, doing something like unlocking Gouken isn’t an issue, as you can mulch through the game rather easily. However, I can’t help but think that this decision is counter-intuitive: the people who will plow through the single player content aren’t going to be folks who are going to be spending a lot of time on the single player content. They’re going to want to be playing online or playing the 2 player version with friends. The folks who are going to struggle to get characters unlocked are the ones who will (more than likely) be spending more time on the single player content for their shits and giggles.

So, you’re forcing people to indulge in the content of your game who have no real interest in that particular aspect of the game, while penalizing players who are more likely to be using said content. Brilliant. Why don’t we start inducing vomiting in bulimics or pass a law that requires bears to shit in the woods?

Also, I am dismayed that there was no bonus stage that involved the complete destruction of a car. Second, what the hell was up with those anime sequences? Don’t half ass things, Capcom, which is what producing something that makes Dragonball Z look GOOD is.