Zelda vs Metroid vs Contra

A friend of mine asked me very politely to do a post on my blog. His first two topics were things that I'm just not inspired to write about and similarly am not really inspired to play their games (except maybe a brief rant on how can New York suck so much in Double Dribble). But the third is definitely deserving of a topic:

What is your favorite between Metroid, Zelda and Contra? And why.

This is a great question. Especially because the answer changes depending on exactly how you look at the question.

All three of the original games are great and all made my list of Top 50 NES games when I made it way back when. That list would change now. Contra might move ahead of Zelda or it might not. You see, if the question were which of these games (NES originals) has the best memories for me, the answer is hands down, Zelda. I received Zelda with my NES for Hanukah of 1987 and that game was my world for many months and filled me with such joy and excitement. I played Contra at a friend's house and enjoyed it, but didn't actually own it for myself and play it through until 1997. Metroid I played a few times at friends houses, but didn't actually own that cartridge until 2002. So of the three original games, Zelda has my favorite memories.

If, though, the question is which of the original games is my favorite to play, then the answer is easily Contra (I'm talking about the NES games here as the Contra arcade game wasn't as good). Contra is the game of the three that has aged the best and is still a lot of fun to play today.

Metroid and Zelda were both revolutionary when they were released. Indeed, they both pioneered open-ended exploration and tantalizing glimpses of areas inaccessible without possession of the proper equipment. But they both have what, by today's standards, would be considered horrible design flaws. Metroid has a huge, open world that is easy to get lost in. Games back then did have automaps so this is somewhat forgivable. But unlike Zelda which also didn't automap the overworld (and did automap the dungeons and come with a mostly complete map in the box), the rooms and corridors weren't on an exact grid so mapping the game with graph paper or the like was and is extremely tedious. Of course, today you can just get a map off the internet, but that takes away from the exploration aspect of the game. Another flaw both the original Metroid and Zelda share is that they have no easy way to end the game and save your progress without dying (Zelda did have an undocumented way to do this, but it was roughly equivalent to dying except it didn't increase your death count). Unfortunately, when you died in Metroid you started back at the beginning with very low health and low missiles. Since there was no easy way to recharge these, you had to waste a lot of time not only backtracking, but also getting your health and items back to their correct status. In Zelda, this problem was mitigated by only having to restart at the beginning of dungeons when you died and by having less total health and enemies more generously dropping it. Zelda did suffer more from one problem than Metroid did: having to bomb random areas. Bombs were a limited resource in Zelda and many vital resources were located behind rocks that needed bombing. There were no clues as to where these bombable areas were so a player would have to randomly bomb places and then restock their bombs and then try again. Burnable areas were almost as bad if all a player had was the blue candle.

Contra, being in some regards a simpler game than either of the above, doesn't possess such flaws. It wasn't really revolutionary. There were certainly other platformers were you ran, jumped, and shot at things. But none were quite as polished as Contra (including its sequel). It is difficult, but features few cheap deaths and can be beaten without memorization. It is amazing that few run and guns even through to today have matched its balance. The fact that two players can play simultaneously makes it even better.

Okay, so question answered right? Well, the wording is kind of vague so maybe he means which is my favorite series of Zelda, Metroid, or Contra?

Well, Metroid is the series that has my favorite game to play of all the games in those three series: Super Metroid. Despite coming out on the SNES in 1993, the game holds up today as being nearly perfect. And that's not hyperbole as I only played it for the first time last year. Super Metroid gets free form exploration with new areas begging to be explored when you acquire a new item absolutely correct. It takes place in a world that seems natural and organic. It gives you a map and save points, but doesn't hold you by the hand instead gently nudging you in the right direction with level design. It's an amazing game and I would recommend it to everyone.

The other series have had great games. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is my favorite in the series and there is a lot to recommend in Link to the Past as well. And I haven't even played any of the 3D Zeldas and I know many hold up Ocarina of Time to be one of the best games ever (of course they also tend to be at least five years younger than me). I'll get around to trying Ocarina at some point, but I highly doubt it can usurp Super Metroid. As to the Contra series, the first three games were all very good, but the original is probably still the best (granted, I haven't tried the recently released Contra 4) and I know it doesn't reach Super Metroid's level.

Finally, the question could be asking which series overall is my favorite?

There my answer once again goes to Zelda. With the exception of the CD-i games, every Zelda game has been good - at least at the time of its release. The first two Zeldas may not hold up, but every 2D Zelda since then has and Zelda made the transition to 3D very well. The series has always oozed quality and has what is probably the most quality and the most average quality of any series.

Metroid comes close to the Zelda series as all of its games are good except Metroid II which I think is only above average (though some think much less of it). Super Metroid is probably one of the best games of all time, but the original Metroid doesn't hold up, Metroid II barely does, and Fusion is fun, but flawed. Zero Mission is a great remake of the original game that is worth playing, but is also "merely" good. I have no experience with the 3D Metroids. All of them are supposed to be good, but not amazing and so while the Zelda series probably averages out to very good, the Metroid series only averages out to good.

The Contra series had three good to very good games and then unfortunately the PlayStation Contras came along which were awful. The PS2 Contras were good, though Shattered Soldier was ridiculously difficult and Neo Contra didn't feel like a Contra game. Contra 4 is by all accounts very good, but that still puts Contra at a notch below the other series.

So there you go, a very long-winded explanation of which among Zelda, Contra, and Metroid is my favorite and why.

No More Heroes - Ranked 7th

Why did I get this game? Well the premise is that you play as an American anime nerd named Travis Touchdown who wins a real life light saber on eBay and decides to use it to become the world's best assassin. How can one not want to play that game? Additionally, the game play is supposed to be a mish-mash of Devil May Cry and Grand Theft Auto. All of this is presented in a neat cel-shaded aesthetic.

My overall impression of the game so far is that it's awesome despite having some flaws.

Some of the gameplay works very well. The swordplay mechanics are great. I love slashing at foes, attempting to kill one while avoiding others, and putting together combos of slashes and wrestling moves. The motion controls of the wii remote are very well used in this game. It probably would have been too error prone to attempt to determine whether the player was making a horizontal or vertical strike, so instead the A button slashes and whether it is horizontal or vertical depends on the position of the remote. Additionally, motion controls are used for winning battles of strength, wrestling moves, and finishing blows and they work perfectly for those.

Battles tend to be frenetic and intense - especially when you are taking on multiple thugs at once. You have to strike a balance between finishing off the foe you are attacking and dealing with the other foes surrounding you. After taking down one foe, you often need to immediately dodge out of the way to avoid the blow coming from the guy that ran up next to you while you were fighting. All this slashing, dodging, and waving the controllers around is amplified during boss fights. The boss fights are very well done with each boss having unique attacks and moves that you have to learn in order to defeat them.

Unfortunately, the gameplay mechanics aren't all roses. The camera in this game is pretty bad. You often have to move it as much as you move your character which is nearly always a bad sign. The fact that the camera doesn't move well with you character can absolutely wreck you when fighting a lot of enemies and especially in boss fights.

The game takes place in a fictional California town of Santa Destroy. While the game was compared to Grand Theft Auto in terms of freely roaming the city, this description isn't really apt as there is precious little to do in the city. While there is other traffic and pedestrians you see and can hit while walking around or riding your motorcycle, they never react to you, making the city feel pretty lifeless. Really, I think it is best to think of the city as more of a hub than the open cities of the GTA games. In the city you can go to various shops or take on side missions to make money before going to the fuller levels where you will fight the next ranked assassin.

For a game with such a bizarre premise, it is actually more subtly wacky than I would have thought. The game has a kind of internal logical consistency even if it wouldn't make any sense in the real world. The characters you meet all have bizarre philosophies about life, how to get ahead, and what to do, but they involve things like cleanliness, collecting balls, and using the force while avoiding the garden of madness. The dialogue is similarly just subtly bizarre. Kind of like a cross between David Lynch and Hideo Kojima. Seriously, the conversations you have with the bosses before and after you fight them have a very Metal Gear Solid feel to them. Characters wax philosophical when they should be killing each other and it doesn't really make sense. All this does make the plot a little opaque and hard to pick up. The background for the story was done in two lines and the fight with the 8th ranked assassin contained one or several plot points that made no sense to me.

Besides the poor camera and lifeless city, my other big complaint is how the side missions work. You need to go to one location to get them, then drive to wherever the mission is located, and then if you fail it, go all the way to where you got the job and then back on to the starting locating to try it again. Other minor complaints include odd graphical issues (textures and pop-in) and characters and especially your bike getting stuck on terrain and other obstacles.

Still, the game gets so many details right, that it is easy to overlook the big things it does wrong. Details include:

Travis' apartment being decked out with anime stuff. Posters on the walls, a giant gundam in one corner, toys on the shelves, anime woman pillows, his cat occasionally grabbing onto the fish hanging on his fan, and a tissue box by the tv chair.

The fact that to recharge your light-saber, you make a masturbating motion (and Travis acts like he is doing just that)

Wrestling references (predominantly Mexican wrestling references) peppered throughout the game including trading cards of wrestlers, and a mysterious acquaintance who leaves you notes and helps you remember moves.

Moai statues scattered throughout the city.

The fact that, during the loading scenes you can make the spinning "wait" star bounce and send it flying around.

After you kill each assassin there is a message on your answering machine from the video store about some adult video you ordered or that is overdue.

8-bit style victory screen after you kill an assassin and take their rank.

Customizable outfit of sunglasses, leather jacket, jeans, belt, and t-shirt (all of which can be bought, or for t-shirts, found in dumpsters).

Receiving cell phone calls where the Wii remote vibrates and then the person's voice comes out of the remote.

Dialogue such as "If challenge were a taste, you'd be quite delicious!"

Bitstream of Consciousness is back (hopefully)

So moving across the country, starting a new job, dealing with New York hours - all of these things have conspired to prevent me from chronicling the video games that I'm playing. And I certainly have been playing games, including Planet Puzzle League, Final Fantasy Legend, Wii Sports, Excite Truck, Final Fantasy III, X-Com, and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.

Also, shortly before leaving Utah, I had an amazing party at my place: A night of old-school sports games. The ground rules were simple: 2-player games, winner stays, new challenger picks the game. We stuck to NES, and Genesis as our systems and it was awesome. For several hours we played games like Tecmo Super Bowl, Blades of Steel, NHL '94, Madden '96, NBA Jam, Double Dribble, and Super Dodge Ball. It was truly awesome. I hope to amass a good number of friends here in New York to repeat the performance.

Anyway, I hereby pledge more regular updates - at least when I'm playing games.

Sin and Punishment - Finished the game on Normal

The other night, I finally managed to finish this game on Normal mode without seeing the game over screen. That means I continued probably about 15 times, but since you have to earn your continues, that definitely feels like an accomplishment.

This game really has some epic gameplay moments. The later levels really kick this game up a notch. The boss battles and stages at the beginning are good. But soon it just starts ratcheting up. You get a feeling of it when you are inside the ship and chasing the monster that has stolen Achi. You are then blown away when you get to the stage where you are on the flying platform zooming around all the battleships with planes and monsters flying at you. It is hard to describe in words, but the action is just exhilarating. After this level, the tone heads down a notch, though still remains well done while you are fighting through the subway train. Then the action shifts as the final stage is played more like a 2D side-scrolling game. This then takes you to one of the best final boss battles ever.

In the final battle, it is you against the planet earth - the evil planet earth. Once again, the focus of the action changes as you hardly need to worry about your health in this battle at all. Instead, you need to concentrate on protecting the good planet earth as the evil fires all sorts of projectiles at it. While you are defending, you also need to get your shots in at the evil planet. If you concentrate too much on attacking the projectiles, you will not do enough damage and either time will get you, or you will lose as the earth's health is slowly wittled away by the projectiles you miss. If you concentrate too much on just damaging the planet, it's stream of shrapnel will quickly decimate the earth and you will lose. You must strike just the right balance, knowing what you must destroy and what you can let through to finish this battle correctly.

I am undecided on whether I will attempt this game in hard mode. Given it is the end of the week and I've played this game a lot this week, I think not. But that is no reflection of my opinion of Sin and Punishment which I give a rating of 'totally awesome' to.

Sin and Punishment - Birth Model Ruffian on Long Island Subway on Normal

This is the first game I have downloaded on my Wii's virtual console. Not because I don't think there haven't been other games worth downloading. The fact that I own most of the SNES and Genesis games on the virtual console dissuades me from them, but there are plenty of good TurboGrafx-16 games. It's just that I can't seem to justify to myself buying virtual games when I have plenty of real ones. Sin and Punishment is different.

Sin and Punishment is a game that was never released on the North American Nintendo 64. It was only ever released in Japan. Those who imported or emulated the game claimed that we in the United States missed out. The game was made by Treasure - renowned for making great action games. It was amazing and it never came here until now. Clearly I want to support Nintendo releasing never-before-seen games on the virtual conole so I downloaded this the day it came out. I wasn't disappointed.

The game is truly awesome. It's a bit like Space Harrier or Cabal or Panzer Dragoon. It isn't quite a first person shooter nor a shmup. Basically, your character is at the bottom of the screen and can only move right or left. You use the analog stick to aim the crosshairs anywhere on the screen and shoot there. Additionally you can jump and roll to avoid projectiles. Sometimes you move forward automatically and sometimes you are standing in one place. The action is fast and frenetic and relies on your reflexes to get you through every situation. The game is Treasure at its best and it really is a shame that it never made it across the pond.

The story is all kinds of bizarre and messed up. It is sort of like if Akira was made by a low budget studio and then really poorly translated when it came to the US. Apparently in the future (2007!) there are these monster creatures that are loose in Japan and a militia was formed to fight them. But the militia has started oppressing the people and a resistance was created to stop them. This group is led by Achi, a woman with mystical powers who compels everyone she helps to rise up and fight against the militia. In the game, you alternately control Saki and Airan, two members of the resistance. Achi shared her blood with Saki to help him and that gave him incredible strength.

In the course of the game, basically everyone except Saki and Airan turn out to be bad. The militia turns out to be studying and encouraging the monsters, not actually destroying them. Saki turns into a mech-looking monster. Achi turns out to have given her blood to the leader of the militia, giving him super-powers. He in turn has shared it with and experimented on others. Airan goes inside Saki's head and fights monsters in the future with her daughter to regain his humanity. Achi gave her blood to the militia commander so he would create a big army which the new monster-Saki could fight. This huge battle would allow her to totally remake the earth to save her purpose and the final battle of the game is you protecting the old earth as the new earth attacks it.

Wacky story aside, the game is great fun to play. I managed to make it all the way through easy mode without getting a game over. The way the game works is that you start with some number of continues (3, I think) and for every 100 enemies you kill, you get another. On easy mode, I continued several times, but still had about three or four left over when I finished the game. Normal mode is proving to be a lot more difficult. I can only get through about half the game without getting the game over screen. I'm going to keep trying throughout the rest of the week to finish the game on normal.

Contra III: The Alien Wars - Wall-walking boss in level 3

I've been looking forward to playing this for awhile since the Contra games on the NES are definitely among my favorites. They are so well done in terms of level design and enemy placements and attack patterns. So I was excited to put this into my Super Nintendo. I was a bit disappointed.

It is enjoyable, but it just doesn't feel quite as good as the NES versions. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about it. Then again, Contra's sequel, Super C wasn't quite as good as the original either. And, at least for Super C I know that isn't nostalgia talking.

One really nice thing about this game is the weapons. The crush and homing missiles are very good additions to the Contra power-up arsenal and being able to have two different weapons and switch between them is great too. I would say that makes the game significantly easier, but then I've only gotten up to the third level. Still, all that is something I think the game does well.

What I think the game doesn't do as well is the platforming. The first two Contra games had different platforms that you could jump to, but it was rare that you had to constantly jump from place to place just in order to survive the environment. Contra III has that in the first level when the ground gets fire-bombed. There are various spews of fire and lava that you have to time your jumps to avoid and it just comes off as annoying. Contra's jumps were never meant to be as precise as those in Super Mario Bros.

The big addition to Contra III is the overhead stages that take advantage of the Super Nintendo's sprite-scaling mode 7 effects. Your character is centered on the screen and you use the L and R buttons to rotate the screen around you to effectively changed which way you are facing. It is certainly interesting and novel, but I don't think it is handled with as much care as the side-scrolling stages. I like that they are breaking up the action, but I think I prefer the behind-the-shoulder base stages from the original Contra.

I'm currently stuck on the wall-walker boss in level 3. I have to assume I'm just being dumb about it and next time I play, I'll be able to hit him while his eye is open without taking damage.

Zone of the Enders - Destroying the EPS generator

My first impression of this game was that it was kind of a tech demo/experiment/half-formed game created by Hideo Kojima that largely served as a vehicle for the demo of Metal Gear Solid 2. I recently learned that there's a bit more to it than that. Yes, the game doesn't quite feel fully realized, but apparently it's a pretty good giant robot simulator that was improved upon and made truly good in its sequel.

Several nights ago, I couldn't sleep, felt like playing a game to settle myself down, and decided that I would start with this.

It really does a good job of making you feel like you are controlling a huge, mechanical, man-shaped robot. The two analog sticks allow you a good sense of movement in three-dimensions and the ability to lock on enemies ensures that you will always stay in the action. There are a wide variety of attacks, including both long range and melee attacks and there are also a variety of weapons and other upgrades you can get for your mech.

All that said, the game taxes your fingers on the controller as you often have to hold down three or four buttons or sticks in order to do what you want. For those who have played Metal Gear Solid 3, this will seem par for the course of any Kojima game. I'm not really sure how it could be improved, but it definitely takes awhile to get use to all the controls and what they do.

I'm also wondering about the strategy of the game. I can't remember whether I'm playing it on normal or hard mode, but so far pretty much all of the enemies can be defeated by using the same technique. While I know the game is short, I am very curious as to whether I will ever have to seriously adjust my tactics. Then again, given I stopped playing after some normal (but level 4) enemies were totally kicking my ass, I think I may have found the answer to that question.