Ryan Gosling in Pitfall

Since Gosling seems to be making more commercially driven projects lately, why not just go whole hog and put on a fedora and leather jacket for a movie based on everyone’s favorite treasure-hunting Atari 2600 game? Bonus: he can enlist his band, Dead Man’s Bones, to perform the hit closing credits song — it’ll be called something like “Pitfall (Pitfall Harry’s Theme).”

Don Johnson in Leisure Suit Larry

Admittedly, Johnson has never given off Larry’s desperate, schlubby vibe — but he’s 61 now, and the thought of him wearing Larry’s Miami Vice-inspired duds should send a suitable tingle of sweaty dread down the spines of women all over the world. Bonus: Johnson can provide vocals and guitar for a will.i.am-remixed version of his hit single “Heartbeat.”

Jamie Foxx in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!

Half hard-hitting biopic, half video game-inspired action thriller, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! would tap into Foxx’s knack for lending humanity to roles based on troubled celebrities — and as a gifted vocal mimic, he could do two separate covers of “In the Air Tonight”: once as R&B loverman Jamie Foxx, and once in lisping, high-pitched character as “Mike Tyson.”

Joey Lawrence in Zork

Not that he’d be particularly well-suited to a film adaptation of the long-running adventure series. We just wouldn’t mind seeing him wander into a dark place and be eaten by a grue.

Zooey Deschanel in Metroid

The big reveal at the end of the original Metroid — that the space-suited badass protagonist Samus Aran was a woman — was arguably the greatest video game mindfuck of the ’80s. Deschanel would be perfect to play Samus in a Metroid movie, because the unisex suit would prevent her from adorkability, and she could sing as much as she wanted to underneath the goddamn helmet, but we wouldn’t be able to hear a word.

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Prepare for magical magic, think fluffy thoughts, spin the chamber and squint when you pull the trigger – it’s time for another round of YouTube Roulette. This time, we put in  “Unicorns!” and the democracy that is the YouTube viewership and/or the random site selector have graced us with these.  Sit back and…enjoy?

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• YouTube Roulette: The Worst Music Videos Ever (popdose.com)

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But I am nothing if not a good solider, and when Giles, the fourth-grader-with-a-pituitary-problem who runs this weird Satriani-obsessed day camp, asked me to do a thing on the J-Stache iPhone game, I wasted no time before saying, “Jeff Giles, you listen to me: I don’t have an iPhone.” So I had to wait to get an iPhone, which I did, and then I jerked around with the iPhone for two weeks, and I played Scrabble, and I downloaded the lightsaber, and I found a constellation map for some reason, and then one day it hit me: Wasn’t I supposed to write something for that tinny-voiced nasal spray addict this month? So I looked into the piece, mostly because it let me play with my iPhone more, and not because of Giles, who smells like pepperoni and cries during cartoon movies.

Anyway, Run J-Stache Run is available for your portable computing iPhone machine at the approximate cost of “Kiss On My List,” which is to say, DEAL. Game play involves swiping your finger across your phone to make a mustache escape from a confined space, which was basically exactly what Q-Bert was about, but whatever. You may choose which make and model of mustache you most prefer. The mustache yells when it bumps into stuff, such as walls and coins and record players. If you’re thinking, “Jeff, this sounds basically exactly like Burger Time,” you’re totally right, but let’s not get hung up on intellectual property rights here, Litigious Jackson.

The point of J-Stache, as near as I can discern, is to cause the mustache to go CAREENING WILDLY THROUGH WALLS, which is basically exactly what Zaxxon was about, but whatever. Fewer swipes = higher points. Extra points are collected by picking up rainbow-colored blank cassette tapes, which fill me with tremendous nostalgia. “Your Imagination” is, tragically, never played.

Pleasingly, the whole thing revolves around the same sort of careening/English/bouncing-off-the-walls situation that has powered video games since the glory days of Combat, or Breakout, or Super Breakout, which means it’s a video game that I can play without being hopelessly pathetically instantly lost, which is what happened when I recently attempted a futile game of Halo 3. That shit went badly.

Run J-Stache Run is the single best mustache-themed codpiece-including video game I have ever played in my life, except maybe Super Tecmo Bowl, whose Neal Anderson sported a giant elephant codpiece for some reason. And it will do just fine until someone finally gets off their ass and launches Run Daryl Hall’s Luxuriant Mane Run. Patent pending.

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The game doesn’t do anything groundbreaking new in terms of gameplay, and it doesn’t try to stretch the bounds of your imagination, or even change the way you look at music games, but it does try to give you a very honest and honorable feel for who the Beatles were and what they meant to music. It plays more like an interactive museum at times as it takes you back in time to relive some of their greatest moments. Some of you might be thinking “I don’t like the Beatles, so I don’t care.” Well, you’re wrong. I don’t care about your background, where you came from, or if you’re deaf — you like the Beatles.

If you’ve played a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game before then you know how this works; the only new development is that you can use up to three mics at once, so you and two shitfaced Japanese business men can belt out horribly off-key three-part harmonies together (suck on that, karaoke bar!) In fact, trying to actually pull off those harmonies is by far the hardest part of this game; other than that, I wouldn’t say the overall difficulty is terribly high, which is good, ’cause if you’re old enough to remember when these songs came out, you’re probably also old enough that you’ll suck at the game.

The Beatles: Rock Band starts with the Beatles touring, taking you from playing at the Cavern in ’63 to the Ed Sullivan show to Shea Stadium and finally ending with Budokan. During this period, the game acts very similar to other rock band games, as you witness the band playing in the background and fans screaming their heads off (especially with realism turned on).

But when the Beatles bunk up in Abbey Road, that’s when the game really hits its stride. The songs begin with the fab four gathered around in the studio, but that all changes as each song progresses. You’re treated to some of the most amazing, creative and beautiful visuals I’ve seen to go with the unforgettable music, each song with its own custom and painstakingly well-crafted background dreamscape to accompany it. Seriously, these alone had me staying up to the early hours just to see what the next song had in store.

Playing through the amazing songs conjures up old memories and enough nostalgia to fill the block, it also helps to wash away whatever foul taste was still left behind from that awful Across the Universe movie. Whether you’re new to the music or a loyal fan, you will be impressed with the careful consideration and respect Harmonix and company used to create this game.

There are a few downsides. The Beatles: Rock Band is a standalone game, meaning while Rock Band and its sequel allow you to combine its songs, The Beatles: Rock Band does not. I understand this — it would be odd to see someone as talented as Sir Paul playing one of the horrible Coheed and Cambria songs; hell, I’m not talented and even I was questioning what the hell that girl was crying about — but it still would have been amazing to bring the songs back into Rock Band 2. I also secretly wish I they had the mythical keyboard guitar so I could rock the hell out of the amazing piano solo in “Revolution.” All in all, however, I love the game and feel that Harmonix should be commended for a job well done.

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I was over a friend’s house recently when his son burst into the living room proclaiming he was going to start a rock band with his friends. It was a scene I participated in many times during my youth, the thrill of the larger-than-life expectations undiminished yet by that dreaded “real world.” Being a supportive “uncle” I offered to show him some guitar chords and a few tricks he could probably get by with. Lord knows how some of these golden fakes served me.

The young boy looked at me with the most quizzical eyes, as if I had just recited The Iliad in Esperanto while standing on my head. “What are chords?” he asked.

“He’s talking about forming a ‘Rock Band’ band, not a real band,” his father confided to me. The boy gnashed his teeth and spun out of the room, infuriated by his father’s distinction. Yes, this kid was talking about forming a digital equivalent of a band with his friends through his X-Box, not the actual process of writing and performing songs but, in his mind, the two were one and the same. “Don’t be offended. He gets like that lately.”

I found the whole concept depressing. A few generations ago, the story went that The Velvet Underground weren’t huge but everyone who saw them play formed their own band. Although Nirvana was a lot more successful, they too spawned a legion of guitar slingers with this notion that it could be done. The thought that those days were past us and now the act of creativity was relegated to just as much vector spaceships spinning to blast ‘asteroids’ weighed heavily on me for a good long while. I’m not alone in this either. By doing a little reaseach – well, okay, more like a little web-surfing – I’ve found an undercurrent voicing this same opinion, that creative, artistic expression is slowly being co-opted by facsimile. Some go as far as dubbing it “art porn” though that may be too harsh.

There are similarities though. Our standard concept of pornography is that it is a depiction of sexuality that is used to substitute the real thing. Along those lines, then fine, a ‘rock band’ that supplants a rock band is creepily similar to the sexual counterpart, being all bang and no real relationship, not even involving real people, just images on a screen that reward you for touching at the right time and penalizing when you’ve pushed the button at the wrong time. For me, the incongruity lies in that exposure to a music role-playing game isn’t liable to screw up your ideas about what performers really want from their fake guitar players.

No, for myself I think about what these youth, who have somehow fallen into the notion that they’re making something, are missing. Currently hanging on the wall of the room where I’m writing this is an acoustic guitar. It’s made by Hondo and probably could use a dust rag dragged underneath the string array. The frets are a little nubbed and could definitely stand some repair work, but when I pick it up and strum across that sound-hole, I get a decent, pleasing tone. I’ll never be Mark Knopfler and don’t think that doesn’t tick me off as well, but I can rustle up a tune when called upon.

This is not my guitar, although I own it. If I live to be a hundred and still have the thing, it will never be my guitar. It was given to me by my grandfather John. He had a workshop in the backyard of his house, once a garage but converted into a sort of a club house. This is where he went to have the occasional beer, smoke the occasional cigar and pop in a VHS tape to watch Chuck Norris kick the occasional ass. In this box of stick-em tiles, exposed ceiling beams and wood paneled walls, he showed me, or atttempted to show me, the proper finger placement on the fretboard. He showed me how to get a sustained note, how to graze a string to produce a harmonic and how to focus so that it all came together in the form of a real, flesh and blood song.

On one of these impromptu lessons, I hit record on my portable boom-box. This way I could take the tape, and that Hondo guitar, home with me to practice. Poppy, as we called him, picked up his guitar, found his finger placement, started strumming and sang, “Your cheatin’ heart will make you weep – You’re moving from this chord to that chord on the word ‘weep‘ – You’ll cry and cry and try to sleep – Now you’re taking it back to that first chord – But sleep won’t come the whole night through – And follow it up – Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you…”

There was a good block of time when I had forsaken that guitar, any guitar for that matter. Still, I had that cassette. I stored it away in my closet. Those lessons, but that one in particular, meant so much to me. I wished to keep it so that I could hear it on those days when I needed to feel connected. One such day was a dreary spring. I got the call at work from my sister. Poppy was at the hospital, the COPD that was knocking him around during those last few years was finally taking its toll. I needed to get down to the hospital as soon as I could. After some cajoling of the boss, which in hindsight probably sounded more like angry whining, I was off to make the twenty minute trek. I arrived before some of my other relatives, but we assembled eventually. When the last cousin finally arrived, Poppy breathed a sigh of relief, having seen his family all in one place one more time, and was gone.

There was a lot of crying, as could naturally be expected, and the loss that seized everyone was more than palpable. Poppy was just that kind of outsized personality, whether it was cheering his beloved Giants on to the touchdown, tossing the baseball at the park, or showing his grandson how to knock out a tune. Some people who leave are a loss, and others make you yourself feel lost, but I had my ace. I was determined to get home and dig that tape out of the closet, hear him once again trying to out-Hank Hank Williams and get some comfort in his instructions. “You’re moving from this chord to that chord on the word ‘weep’” After some frantic digging, I did find the tape. It was shoved in a box that stored my old Burger King Empire Strikes Back glasses (it has a couple Muppets Take Manhattan glasses in there too.) I rushed the tape to the deck, popped it in and hit play. The inner spools had seized over time into a sticky, black oval, unmovable. Unplayable. I stared at the deck, then zeroed in on the cassette in all it’s uselessness. The rain was still falling outside and the day had that strange cast to it, like it might never be sunny again, the kind of gray that infects the most porous parts of your bones. I must have sat staring at that thing for hours. That is when I truly felt my grandfather die.

That is, until I take that Hondo guitar down from the wall and give it a strum. It doesn’t matter what I’m playing either, be it “Blister In The Sun” or “Heart Of Gold” or dear old Hank. When that tone drifts out, my grandfather is there somewhere, and that is why even if I have that instrument until my dying day, it will never truly be mine. Sure, you can feel like you’re a rock and roll celebrity when you’re twiddling those buttons on your Strat-shaped controller, and sure you can punch along with Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain or, very soon, John Lennon, but video-game musicians will never conjure up the dead like I can, with only a couple chords and the right tempo.

I’m not telling you to not enjoy playing games, but when the game is done, get into the real thing. The easy way out may give you pleasure for a moment or two, but you have no idea of what you’re missing in that substitution.

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Stuck Genie (Warner Bros., 2009)
purchase this iPod app (iTunes)

There’s a seemingly limitless number of them, but the rules for most iPod game apps are essentially the same: they have to be affordable enough to trigger a regret-free impulse buy, they need to be colorful enough to grab our attention, and they have to be simple enough to get the hang of in a few minutes (or less). Warner Bros.’ latest entry into the app arena, the intriguingly titled Stuck Genie, goes three for three; it sells for $1.99, boasts the sort of bright, cartoony graphics that iPod game developers (and consumers) seem to love, and its mechanics are simple enough for anyone with one finger and two minutes to master.

The premise is simple too, pitting the player against the mischevious Puzzle Genie, who has challenged you to free his captives by pushing a ball through a series of mazes via click and drag. In each maze, you need to collect a handful of other balls, which is accomplished by simply bumping up against them. Get them all before your time runs out, and you’ve completed the level. Repeat as necessary.

If this sounds like a premise in need of a twist, don’t worry — Stuck Genie gives you one, in the form of a series of mazes that require you to pick up the balls in a certain order, then rotate the shapes you create in order to get around corners and through passages. The developers did a fine job of ramping up the difficulty at odd intervals, too, allowing the game to lull you into a pattern of gameplay before delivering an unexpected jolt that inevitably produces colorful bursts of profanity. I picked it up quickly, and so did my 10-year-old nephew; like any good iPod game, it’s great for short bursts of concentration when you’re stuck without anything else to do, difficult to put down and easy to resume. (Word of warning, though — simply hitting the home button on your iPod and leaving the game won’t save it; you need to exit and save manually if you want to retain your progress.)

For fans of colorful puzzle games with deceptively simple mechanics, Stuck Genie delivers 73 increasingly infuriating levels of action for under two bucks. What else do you want?

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Dynasty Warriors: StrikeForce (2009, Koei)
purchase from Amazon

I was going to write a real review for this game, but here’s the deal: it’s too fucking hard. Not writing about it, mind you, but playing the damn thing.

Dynasty Warriors: StrikeForce has much stronger RPG elements than the previous DW titles, because this one puts you in the shoes of just one warrior. (I personally chose Zhou Yu because I find it hilarious that he’s gone from scholar to marching band leader, with his raven black hair and swirling baton like a bo staff of pain.) You will find yourself in the middle of a small town with just a handful of pedestrians and a few shops. There is a also a message board where you can accept small challenges for (at the time) small gold rewards; complete a few of these, and you’ll finally get to accept a mission or storyline quest. Like all the other Dynasty Warriors, it begins with the Yellow Turban rebellion.

On the gameplay front, it seems like they decided to take a few elements of Monster Hunter, where you can farm resources from your enemies and wooden crates thoughout the level and use them to craft weapons, abilities and even expand the shops. Expanding the shops will allow them an even larger selection of items, skills and weapons to choose from. Fighting in the game is at times very much like your traditional Dynasty Warriors game as well, until you’re introduced to jumping, and the game’s new frustrating platformer additions. It can seriously take awhile to figure out just how the hell you’re supposed to get to certain areas in the game. The jumps they ask you to accomplish can be equally ridiculous, forcing you to combine a dashing charge and double jumps to help you leap beautifully from one ledge to another. Just pray that you don’t hit the invisible barrier, sending you crashing down to ground level and giving yourself a fun chance to try the whole thing over. Sweet!

StrikeForce‘s great new addition is the ability to do these missions with up to four players online. That may have been a lot of fun and really helped get past the harder missions, but whenever I went to one of their online towns, no one was around. So much for that idea. Now I’d love to give you a detailed description of just how the game progresses and all of its great features, but you see, after hours and hours of attempting to beat Zhang Jiao as he and his three brothers flew around the room shooting large fireballs everywhere, trying keep me from destroying the tower (which occasionally sends large electric waves that also hit me), I gave up. Even if you manage to take down the tower and then the three brothers, those three assholes come back to life immediately — except this time as Super Saiyan versions. So until I can find someone to help me with it, fuck this game and fuck this review.

Peace.

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Koei’s powerhouse, Omega Force, returns with its second installment of the Dynasty Warriors Gundam franchise, adding all new characters, bosses, missions and online capabilities (but no online co-op — lame, right?). They’ve also really touched up the game’s AI to make even the weaker enemies very difficult at times at the harder setting. It almost reminded me of how hard Dynasty Warriors 3 XL was back in the day. There are several modes to play through, multiple stories, and if you’ve never played a Dynasty Warriors game before, a whole crapload of stuff to acquire through grinding.

Grinding? I know what you’re thinking: sounds boring, right? Well it is usually, but in this title they’ve really gone out of their way to help curb that. Sometimes, when trying to build relationships with one of the game’s many pilots you’ll find yourself doing the same map over and over — but to help change it up for you, different enemies will attack you every time, the terrain will change, and so will the objective (even though you’re running the same mission). This may not sound like much, but it really helps.

One of the new things you’ll find from the last installment — aside from the 43 new mobile suits — is the very large boss battles. When these occur, you will be locked into the battle area, and the camera will be locked onto the boss — which helps keep track of them, since they’re faster and usually have large area attack specials. This also gets a little annoying, because if you get low on health you can’t really change the camera angle to help locate some. The AI gets a little weak here too; one boss has several small limbs that you must attack before you can take a whack at the main body. The problem is your team members don’t seem to understand this, and also don’t even bother trying to evade the enemy’s attacks. So you can find yourself racing against time trying to defeat the boss before he defeats your friends.

That aside, there was only one other thing that annoyed me with the game, and it’s the same thing that irritated me with the last one: they only have a handful of sound bits for each character. I like Heero Yui as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to hear him say “Buzz off” every two seconds. I understand disc space limitations, but you could at least make the voice acting a bit more varied.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam — hell Dynasty Warriors titles in general — have been poorly received, mainly by the critical community, due to lack of overhaul every title. These are typically the same critics that will give Madden or other sports titles that update the rosters and add small additions decently high ratings year after year (even the infamous Madden 06 ). Perhaps you should take note of this, Omega Force, and add footprints in the snow and allow the mobile suits to get dirty, as this seems to be the only criteria for acceptable change for them. Overall, this is a good addition to the series, and something most fans of either franchise should enjoy.

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Ah, The Godfather II. I know what you’re thinking: EA plus movie franchise equals suckfest. No brainer, right? Not so fast — this isn’t as bad as you might think. The game takes a few liberties with the movie, throwing you into the mix as Dominic Corleone, underboss of Aldo Trapani (main character from The Godfather). The game starts you off in Cuba, where the mafia is trying to get its foot in the door when everything goes to hell. After you sit through a few cut scenes — ta da, you’re a don.

The Godfather II takes what its predecessor did and builds on it, adding features like recruiting your own family and a new feature called Don’s View. This time around, you can take over businesses from other families — or just bomb them. If you decide to take something over, you’ll have to defend it, which means hiring guards to watch over the place while you’re off doing your don thing.

On occasion, the other families will decide they’d prefer it if they owned one of your territories, and attempt to take it back, forcing you to defend it by either driving over there and performing one of the many fatalities on them personally or by sending one of your men to oversee the matter. This feature gives you a nice little break from the story from time to time, and if you hold a monopoly on something it provides you with a bonus. You can even choose to assassinate one of the other family’s members by killing him in a certain (sometimes elaborate) way. Once a family loses all its territory, it leaves their headquarters open to attack.

The graphics haven’t improved all that much, and look kind of garbage the farther away you are. As you get closer the graphics sharpen and show much more detail. The overall city environment does little to help draw you into the game as the buildings, streets and overall look of the look of the game is almost generically simple. The music, sound effects and banter from your men are all pretty decent, though. The game also has a very solid online mode, which gives the added bonus of strengthening your men.

You certainly get a sense that some people truly loved working on this game — and certain people felt they had better things to do. Sometimes the small things in the game can really make a big impact; for instance, when you skid out during a police chase and hit a fire hydrant, it would be really cool if it didn’t just roll over, turn grey and vanish, leaving no evidence that it ever existed. The Godfather II also suffers from its fair share of bad glitches. One that stands out the most: cars you’re driving disappear, sending your men magically back to your compound. That glitch is just fantastic when you’re surrounded by policemen with shotguns.

Overall, this is a reasonably entertaining game despite its glitches, and its solid online mode allows for some good replayability. If you have 60 dollars to spend and you love the Godfather franchise this won’t let you down. If you’re not a Godfather fan, you might like Saint’s Row 2 or GTA IV more.

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Suikoden Tierkreis (Nintendo DS, Konami, 2009)
purchase this game (Amazon)

I’ve been playing the Suikoden series since it first came stateside in 1996. Each story typically would touch on a cataclysmic event in the planet’s history, which involved one of the True Runes. The stories, while on different timelines, would usually have some sort of recurring cast which would help tie each story together. I was excited and intrigued when I saw that the DS was getting its own installment of the series in Suikoden Tierkreis.

However, the addition of touch-screen mechanics wasn’t the only change — this title is a spin-off from the rest of the Suikoden series. One of the series traits they removed was that every character had his/her own personal weapon, instead deciding to go with the more traditional “buy them at a shop” method. With all the minor changes, this game still remains a solid RPG title for the DS.

The story starts in your typical small village (named Citro, in this case). The protagonist is a member of Citro’s defense force, and the game follows the ongoing global conflicts with the Kingdom of the Order. You eventually come to head up your own company and find and recruit up to 108 characters to help your cause, which helps extend play value. Sadly, previously recurring characters like Vikki are absent from this list.

The combat system plays similar to its predecessors, allowing four team members in each battle plane. Magic is gifted (called “mark of the stars”) via special books, as opposed to runes, and is used with an MP pool. Each of the characters is given different magic from the books, giving them each their own unique feel and use. Cooperative attacks have made their way back into the game as well, to help deepen the strategy a bit.

The title’s most impressive note is its fantastic background designs, which are both creative and filled with a brilliant attention to detail. The musical score is masterfully blended into the environment, truly immersing you into the Suikoden universe even through the tiny DS screen. The voice acting, however, is poor, thanks to the protagonist’s machine-gun delivery of his lines — and the character’s inability to even pick up on the slightest of clues is sometimes mind-blowing.

The character designs are decent enough, even if they are a bit heavy on the anime side — you can see a character’s personality spelled out for you in their look. The characters do hit a large spectrum of personalities, from the dull to the ridiculous, which should help attract the wide age range of DS users into the franchise. The storyline remains deep, and has its fair share of twists and side stories along the 40+ hours of gameplay it provides. All in all, this game remains one of the console’s best RPG titles to date, and is sure to deliver without regret.

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