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22 December 2023
Player One: Staff Member #716
I confess, I’m a wrestling dork. Sure, admitting that you are a casual wrestling fan has become much more acceptable in recent years, but I’m way more into it than that. I can tell you exactly how Mick Foley lost his ear. I remember precisely where I was when I heard that Owen Hart died. I saw Highlander: Endgame because Edge was in it. I am a dork.
Combine that appreciation of the most violent of performing arts with my passion for video games, and it makes perfect sense that I’ve been anticipating the release of the newest SmackDown! game like a death row convict waits for the call from the governor.
This year, the new installment in the franchise promised not only an updated roster of well-toned grapplers, but also a much more sophisticated fighting system. That sat well with me, because despite how much I’ve enjoyed the previous games, multi-player matches have always seemed to devolve into merely seeing who can press the "X" button the fastest.
"So they want to tune up the game engine?" I said to myself, thinking back to the much more complex and challenging WWF No Mercy for the N64. "Cool." But, in doing so, the developers have created the single most unbalanced piece of playing-favorites shit since Tekken’s Devil Kazuya.
Example: I’m a huge Rey Mysterio fan (and have been ever since I first saw this tiny little Mexican dude take down a spherical land monster like Bam Bam Bigelow about four years ago). So I boot up the new SmackDown! game and begin playing a match as Mysterio against the seven-foot Vincent D’Onofrio look-alike, Kane. The game starts, I’m flying around the ring, hitting Kane with about 30 consecutive flippy-whirly luchador backflips and somersaults. Kane just shrugs it off, nails me with two bodyslams, and pins me for the win. Seriously, WTF, mate?
I try the same match a few more times, but end up with the same results: I rock Kane’s world for about ten minutes without putting so much as a dent in his health, he does a handful of super-death moves on me, and wins. Just to make sure that the computer isn’t cheating (once a common video game phenomenon that has been altogether stopped with modern technology), I try playing as Kane, fighting a CPU-controlled Mysterio,.. and I knock the shit out of him within a matter of minutes. At this point, I’m about ready to snap the controller in half, Brock Lesnar-style. What the fuck is this game trying to say? That a lightning-quick little guy doesn’t stand a chance against the biggest, slowest shaved ape in the locker room? Bullshit! Where I come from, Chun Li can beat Zangief.
That’s not the last of my gripes with this supposedly “improved” game, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Hey, maybe Bork can tell you about the absolutely insane roster choices which include Ultimo Dragon, but leave out Faarooq and Bradshaw!?! Christ! Take it, Das.
Player Two: Nicht besonders sehr gebirgig Das Bork (Translation: "Not especially very mountainous The Bork")
Sure, #716. Shit, you know what? I really don't care about wrestling. So I'm gonna review,.. uh, let's see,.. ARMORED CORE! Hell yeah! 716's a big fan of wrestling, and I'm a big fan of fighting robot games, so it works out. Whatever. Anyway, Armored Core is as entertaining as a boobie haircut. For those of you that don't know, Armored Core is a fully-customizable, anime-styled, giant robot fighting simulation.
Meg's boobs.
To sum up the game, your "Core" is fully customizable; its parts, color, and logo are up to you to create. I love the band Bad Religion so much that the logo I created was a painstakingly rendered portrait of lead singer Greg Graffin’s head, pixel by pixel. Two hours, it took me. You can combine different part groupings to make a Core of destruction, or one that just looks cool, or both. In order to get these parts, you have to go on missions and/or enter arena matches where you go against other Core pilots.
What's nice about the game is that the core that you create along with the logos you make can be loaded into newer Armored Core games, like an expansion. What is also nice is that anytime I play against #716, I kick his ass, because the controls are pretty tough for a beginner to use. This makes me sad, too, because I don’t know anybody that can play this game. Someday, I pray to Lucifer that this game will feature online play. Until then, I drink alone-- I mean, play alone. No, not with myself. I mean I play the game alone. Damn,...
PURCHASE THIS OR SIMILAR ITEMS
I confess, I’m a wrestling dork. Sure, admitting that you are a casual wrestling fan has become much more acceptable in recent years, but I’m way more into it than that. I can tell you exactly how Mick Foley lost his ear. I remember precisely where I was when I heard that Owen Hart died. I saw Highlander: Endgame because Edge was in it. I am a dork.
Combine that appreciation of the most violent of performing arts with my passion for video games, and it makes perfect sense that I’ve been anticipating the release of the newest SmackDown! game like a death row convict waits for the call from the governor.
This year, the new installment in the franchise promised not only an updated roster of well-toned grapplers, but also a much more sophisticated fighting system. That sat well with me, because despite how much I’ve enjoyed the previous games, multi-player matches have always seemed to devolve into merely seeing who can press the "X" button the fastest.
"So they want to tune up the game engine?" I said to myself, thinking back to the much more complex and challenging WWF No Mercy for the N64. "Cool." But, in doing so, the developers have created the single most unbalanced piece of playing-favorites shit since Tekken’s Devil Kazuya.
Example: I’m a huge Rey Mysterio fan (and have been ever since I first saw this tiny little Mexican dude take down a spherical land monster like Bam Bam Bigelow about four years ago). So I boot up the new SmackDown! game and begin playing a match as Mysterio against the seven-foot Vincent D’Onofrio look-alike, Kane. The game starts, I’m flying around the ring, hitting Kane with about 30 consecutive flippy-whirly luchador backflips and somersaults. Kane just shrugs it off, nails me with two bodyslams, and pins me for the win. Seriously, WTF, mate?
I try the same match a few more times, but end up with the same results: I rock Kane’s world for about ten minutes without putting so much as a dent in his health, he does a handful of super-death moves on me, and wins. Just to make sure that the computer isn’t cheating (once a common video game phenomenon that has been altogether stopped with modern technology), I try playing as Kane, fighting a CPU-controlled Mysterio,.. and I knock the shit out of him within a matter of minutes. At this point, I’m about ready to snap the controller in half, Brock Lesnar-style. What the fuck is this game trying to say? That a lightning-quick little guy doesn’t stand a chance against the biggest, slowest shaved ape in the locker room? Bullshit! Where I come from, Chun Li can beat Zangief.
That’s not the last of my gripes with this supposedly “improved” game, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Hey, maybe Bork can tell you about the absolutely insane roster choices which include Ultimo Dragon, but leave out Faarooq and Bradshaw!?! Christ! Take it, Das.
Player Two: Nicht besonders sehr gebirgig Das Bork (Translation: "Not especially very mountainous The Bork")
Sure, #716. Shit, you know what? I really don't care about wrestling. So I'm gonna review,.. uh, let's see,.. ARMORED CORE! Hell yeah! 716's a big fan of wrestling, and I'm a big fan of fighting robot games, so it works out. Whatever. Anyway, Armored Core is as entertaining as a boobie haircut. For those of you that don't know, Armored Core is a fully-customizable, anime-styled, giant robot fighting simulation.
Meg's boobs.
To sum up the game, your "Core" is fully customizable; its parts, color, and logo are up to you to create. I love the band Bad Religion so much that the logo I created was a painstakingly rendered portrait of lead singer Greg Graffin’s head, pixel by pixel. Two hours, it took me. You can combine different part groupings to make a Core of destruction, or one that just looks cool, or both. In order to get these parts, you have to go on missions and/or enter arena matches where you go against other Core pilots.
What's nice about the game is that the core that you create along with the logos you make can be loaded into newer Armored Core games, like an expansion. What is also nice is that anytime I play against #716, I kick his ass, because the controls are pretty tough for a beginner to use. This makes me sad, too, because I don’t know anybody that can play this game. Someday, I pray to Lucifer that this game will feature online play. Until then, I drink alone-- I mean, play alone. No, not with myself. I mean I play the game alone. Damn,...
PURCHASE THIS OR SIMILAR ITEMS
artid
1818
Old Image
6_4_videogame.jpg
issue
vol 6 - issue 04 (dec 2003)
section
entertainmental