I Can't Believe This Didn't Suck: Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Alright, so I am going to be trying a few new things with the blog in the next couple months. Mostly I want to start working on focused, regular features. The first that I want to try (and have been wanting to try for a while) is a semi-weekly ode to my favorite games that should have been utter garbage but turned out to be much better than we thought possible.

Everything said and done, let's give it a shot.


I Can't Believe This Didn't Suck: Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Holy shit can I go on for ages on Mortal Kombat. I have always had a love-hate relationship with this series. It was great when I was a kid because of its simplicity and because over the top violence was all I needed to please me as a child (I swear, there are no bodies nor missing neighborhood pets buried in my backyard). I still love it today because, despite what a lot of people say, they actually have continued to evolve in play mechanics and depth while still staying simple enough to pick up and play with a few friends after a long night of excessive drinking.

I hated the series as a little kid because it wasn't Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Toy Story (after inputting Abracadabra for level select in Toy Story because a quarter of that game was fucking impossible). I still hate it today because, just as everyone says, it still isn't deep at all. Just when you get the more complex maneuvers and gaming physics nailed down, well...that is it. I always want it to go deeper. I will show my maturity by not making a sex joke so let's see here...ah! It is like ordering a thick crust pizza, you bite into it and you get into all the cheese and toppings (ha! I didn't even say 'sausage') and you are thinking, 'This is it! I am about to finish my bite and reach the crescendo and unlock all of the mystical secrets that this deep dish is hiding and....what the fuck? It's all sauce! The rest of my pizza is sauce!'


So yeah, I can get down on Mortal Kombat just as long as it knows and respects where it stands in my library of fighting games. And then they announced that a story driven, beat-em up would be released in September of 2005. I believe I may have sat my copy of Deadly Alliance down and had a very long, 'Look, its not you, it...it really isn't...come on! Don't be like that! Look I am sorry, but I just...I just don't think we can do this anymore. People might...well, they might find out,' chat with the thing. A story driven beat em' up based in the realm of Mortal Kombat?

Come on!

Why it really, really should have blown ass.


To understand my confusion as to why they would be releasing a story driven beat em' up set in the mythos of Mortal Kombat, you need to remember that this was coming out nearly six months after God of War reinvented the third person platformer/beat em' up by giving us tight controls, epic set pieces, the best boss fights fucking ever, and a really awesome story. You know, pretty much everything Shaolin Monks was promising in its advertisement campaign? So, it had already set itself up to be an also-ran.

Seriously, how are you gonna beat this?

Secondly, the Mortal Kombat story itself is a big what the fuck. Before we got our hands on Shaolin Monks we really had no damn idea what part of the story they would use. Where most fighters are content with giving enough background story to bring some fightin' dudes and dudettes together to do some fightin'. John Tobias and Ed Boon went ahead and created a whole working story arc for the first few MK games. However, it quickly reached critical mass in the alligator fucking stupid department. If the developers of Shaolin Monks were going to use the story of anything after MK III, it was going to be an absolute disaster.

Get the fuck back to the 90s.

Speaking of developers, let's talk about those guys. The game was developed by Midway Studios - Los Angeles, what is wrong with that? MS-LA used to be the forsaken by anyone with intelligence Paradox Studios. And what is so wrong with that? Well, the best game they ever made was Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style in which the developers lived up to the name Paradox Studios by making a competent fighting game based on the Wu-Tang Clan. Cool right? Well, they also made the two Backyard Wrestling games which, content aside, were ugly and utterly broken. Oh, they also brought us both of the X-Men: Mutant Academy games and the sequel X-Men: Next Dimension. All three played like Street Fighter overdosing on heroin. And oh fuck! They were the guys that tried to bring the fuck awful, pointlessly controversial (and never released) Thrill Kill. So, fuck me! Not a lot of faith in the guys working with an also-ran 3D action platformer based on a very shaky property plot. Oh and...

This was the shit that happened last time MK did a non-fighter. 

Why it really, really didn't blow ass.

So, it turned out that everyone was right about it being a poor man's God of War. However, this wasn't a bad thing at all. It controlled quite similarly and had the same multidirectional combo system (wherein you could start off by punching the dude in front of you and then hit the guy behind you without breaking your combo). It has great streamlined special attacks (press R1 and then press one of three buttons...how fucking sweet n' simple is that?), just enough platforming and (simplistic) puzzles to keep things from getting too stale, and boss fights that (though nowhere near the scale of the epic fights you faced in God of War) were nearly always different and challenging in their own right. 

Not only did it do everything God of War did to an acceptable level, Paradox Studios managed to add just enough Mortal Kombat flair to make it stand out. First off, those special attacks? All three are straight out of the arcade cabinet. Liu Kang bicycle kicks, fireballs, and super uppercuts the shit out of his enemies whilst Kung Lao flings his hat, teleports, and spins. Both characters have unlockable fatalities to pull off, a 'multality', and a brutality. Also, every level is pretty much straight out of the backgrounds of MK II. Neat shit!

So good job, developers...you took a simple clone and gave it more than enough fan service to stand out on its own and even carve out some of its own turf. 

Look! Look! I am not awful! WATTAAHHH!

Not only did Paradox manage to pull of the gameplay, they also went the smartest route when tackling the story. Instead of either spinning their own yarn or telling some of the fuck awful modern stories, they chose to stick with Mortal Kombat II. The game starts up right after the end of the first tournament and then follows the accepted canon of events up until the end of the second MK. This works great as the story here is concise and acceptable, but also gives the developers enough room to fill in some blanks with their own ideas and events. Its no genre bending, heart-wrenching tale of love and loss...but the story here will at least get you from point A to point B without making you cringe/vomit. 

Ugh.

Lastly, you really got your money's worth here. The main story will probably run you about five to eight hours, but then there is the second character and two other's to play as. Surprisingly, the four play just different enough that it is worth a revisit and at least some dicking around on a rainy day. Alright, so we get maybe twelve-ish hours if we play as both characters? How is that getting my money's worth, exactly? Well, theoretical skeptical ass clown, there is also multiplayer! 

Two players can team up with any combination of the four characters to take on special 'two player only' puzzles and paths. I honestly can't say how much this adds to the game because every time I have asked someone to play this with me, they look at me like I just asked if they will kindly go stick their dick in a beehive. But I am guessing it adds something. There is also a versus mode where you can unlock a handful of characters and fight each other using the engine of the game...again, never actually got to play this. 

The developers even packed the entire Mortal Kombat II arcade port on the disc. This isn't anything earth shaking but it is worth a neat revisit. 

You actually get to fight in this exact area and those floating purple dudes are regular enemies in Shaolin Monks! How fucking cool is that?

Lastly, Shaolin Monks continues the (then new) tradition of packing fuck tons of extra content into the game. In Deadly Alliance and every MK after, this is done through 'The Krypt,' you win coinage for fights and spend them to unlock neat little things. Here in Monks, its just hidden all over the world and requires exploration and some platforming to track them down (To this day I have only found about 89% of them and one out five hidden Smoke missions!) 

So in conclusion, Paradox Studios lived up to their name by not only making a hilariously playable Wu-Tang fighting game but also managed to remove Mortal Kombat from the fighting genre without it becoming a train wreck. It is too bad that God of War crushed this thing so completely and utterly because it would have been neat to see a bigger and badder sequel to this (the story in MK didn't get ungainly retarded until the fourth game). 

Oh, and you can still get the Toasty! SFX if you pull a decent enough combo in Shaolin Monks. MEGA RAD!

Third Shift: A Few Things I Have Learned

Hey guys (and gals), look at this shit! I am going to write a whole entry that doesn't have fucking anything to do with video games or comic books! Fuck yeah, right?!

So, yep, third shift. Midnight to eight in the morning at the front desk of a hotel. It is what I do and have done for over a year and will probably be doing for another couple of years. I am sure there are thousands and thousands of people that work this shift and it really isn't that special. In fact, that is one thing I am going to try and express here.

However, there are a few things (like any job, really) that you learn about yourself and other people.


I. It Really Isn't That Bad


Let me just get this out of the way because it is the one that I always hear from guests and friends, 'Woah! You always do that? That has to be so hard!'

It was, for the first couple weeks. It was the same level of difficulty as getting into any new routine that is foreign to you. College students face this pretty much every semester when their classes change up. For the first couple of weeks they feel like crap trying to re-calibrate their systems to the new schedule. Then, once you do it for just a bit, you don't even really notice.

My friends will ask all the time how I can sleep in the day.

Like this.

The same way you guys sleep at night? I turn off the lights, close my curtain, and lie the fuck down. Trust me, if you are exhausted and need sleep, your body will not complain about the time of day (drunks know this really well).

I understand how strange it seems when you are on a  nine to five or college classes type schedule seeing as most people don't stay up all night unless they are studying or glued to Reddit. But seriously, you get used to it quicker than you would think.


II. Get Ready For the Judgement Train


Alright, let me ask you a question. If you are working from nine to five, do you go to sleep immediately after work? Fuck no! I used to hang out and do shit for seven or so hours, get seven to eight hours of sleep, and get up at eight in the morning to get ready for a new day.

Well, that translates to my overnight schedule as well. I go into work at midnight, get off at eight in the morning, hang out until one or two, sleep for seven or eight hours, and get up at eleven to get ready for the night.

So another question. What do you do when you get off of work? Maybe you just hang around your house/apartment and play video games and listen to music. Maybe you had a stressful day so you want to grab a few drinks with a friend. Whatever is clever, man. It is after five p.m. and human morality says you can do whatever the fuck you want!

What I imagine five o'clock feels like to everyone else.

Well, I feel the same way when I get off work. Except, no one will ever understand why you are getting hammered at nine in the morning and rocking your taint off to Bivouac by Jawbreaker. You see, there isn't a magic label on my head that says, 'Hey, I work midnight to eight and right now is kind of like my six p.m. so I want a twelve pack, I really am not that bad.' You can awkwardly explain to friends, family, and loved ones...but no one ever really accepts it.

My neighbor actually asked me, 'If you do anything.' Because according to her, all I ever did was get drunk, play video games, and then yell at them. I awkwardly defended myself by saying that I work thirds and when I am at my productive best, she is asleep and therefore never sees the good I do. Like Batman, I am a lot like Batman. You see, what I am trying to say is that I am Batman. I think she now thinks that her neighbor is an alcoholic schizophrenic. Job well done.

The Drunk Knight.

This only gets magnified when I explain what I actually do at my job. Honestly, I don't have much to do, it is a laid back job and the only challenge it provides is the fact that you must become a third shifter. I check in a couple drunks, do the nightly audit, hope I don't get robbed, and then set up breakfast. Other than that, I read a fuck ton of comic books, think of how much ass I am going to kick in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 when I get off of work, and bring my blog to the few of you kind enough to read them.

So now I look lazy as fuck and unskilled (which, admittedly, I am). But you know what? Fuck you! I still go to work (mostly on time, might I add) five days a week, work forty hours a week, and pay my bills (mostly on time, might I add). I have had two friends who are currently unemployed (and doing nothing about it) tell me I had the best and easiest job ever. So, I asked them why don't they apply to some of the other hotels in the area. Their answer? 'Because third shift would fucking suck, man.' Alright, then have some goddamned respect for the guy that has done it for a year and three months now.

I believe that I look like the text book definition of 'Skilled' and 'Respect'.

III. I Meet The Worst and Strangest Human Beings


Anyone that has worked a service job knows that you meet the worst people ever. There is apparently something about waiting for another human being to get you food/beer/cocaine/a hotel room/hookers/whatever that brings out the worst in people.

This normal negative of working in the service industry is fucking tripled by working third shift. I get all of the drunks, (unfriendly and rude) homeless, and simple fuck-nuts in the city.

Most nights are pretty quiet and uneventful, which is nice. I am not dealing with this shit every night. What I am saying though, is that when people are mad at me, it is late as shit, and maybe they had a few drinks...people fucking explode like none other.

Because it is two in the morning, that is apparently excuse enough for someone to fly into a blind rage with me when I inform them that we are sold out or whatever. I have had a drunk guy threaten to beat my ass because we were sold out and he couldn't stay here. I had an elderly lady tell me that I would be screwing Hitler in hell because I didn't have her rewards card on file. I have watched and subsequently been caught in the middle of a divorce. I have been called a humorless cunt, a shit eating failure, and (my personal favorite) a gazelle's dick in the middle of a lion pack (no idea what that means, but...well done, sir!).




In the end, some people will hear me bitch if I had a rough night or if I didn't get enough sleep and had to drag my ass through the night and they will ask me, 'Man if it is that rough, why don't you find another job?'

Because I can get paid for reading comics and making dick jokes on the internet!

A Few Reasons to Hate Batman Arkham Asylum/City (Using Spider-Man: Edge of Time)

So, I have already gone on record to say that I was a bit disappointed with Batman Arkham City. However, it is still a near perfect game and a perfect super hero game. It is truly fantastic. However, it is honestly a bit too damn good. The level of polish, atmosphere, nerd love, and fine-tuned game play the developers poured into it has forever tainted any super hero video game that is inferior to the Bat.

It is like the first time I saw Die Hard and sat there thinking, 'Well fuck, this is it. I won't like anything more than this movie. Ever.' And I haven't! Or the first time I ate beef and sat there thinking, 'Well fuck, my journey is at an end. I need not search for any other food. This is all I need.' Or, the first time I met that little person at the end of the dark alley and oh, I forgot...I am not supposed to talk about that.

Forever and ever and ever. 

What I am trying to say is that the '6 or 7 outta 10s' that I used to accept (and truly enjoy) in the super hero genre just don't do anything for me anymore. In fact, I go into bizarre frothing, thrashing seizures at certain aspects of them...or is that a separate problem?

Anyways, I could sit here and babble mercilessly about the dozens and dozens of crap to acceptable super hero games we used to play the shit out of, but we know all about those. So, instead, I will be simply comparing the work put into Arkham Asylum/City to that which was put into a single, newer game: Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.

*Please note* I am about three fourths of the way through the game so my assessment of it as a whole is not currently complete. Also, I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but I there might be a few here and there, so read at your own risk.


I. Go Atmospheric or Go the Fuck Home


This started from square fucking one in Batman: Arkham Asylum. You got to walk the halls of the scariest insane asylum in comics. You saw a couple inmates, heard some doctors talking, and got to take in the general decay of the place. Immediately.

Only ten minutes in

While Arkham City is toned down, the immediacy is still here. You are Bruce Wayne, not Batman, which means you might as well be naked. You are being forced into a place you, again, know is not a good fucking place to be a billionaire playboy. People are already trying to punch you in the face and you get to break the arm of the motherfucking Penguin (and if you so choose, kick him in the head as he cowers in a corner after the cinematic). This is all in the first...oh five minutes of the game?

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows kind of tries to do this but manages to tip the scales too hard and not do enough at the same time. The plot of the story is thus: Peter is duking it out with Anti-Venom next to some odd portal thing, Spider-Butt 2099 is talking in your head for some reason, Anti-Venom drains your radiation powers because that makes sense, and then kills the fuck out of Spider-Man.

Woah! That is some heavy shit, right? I guess so...but not really. First of all, where am I? Its just some gray platform with a bunch of darkness around me and a portal behind me. Guess what? I don't give a pile of ant shit about where I am, I don't recognize it and I am not into it. Who is this big scary villain I am fighting? Fucking Anti-Venom. A version of Eddie Brock's symbiote suit that has only been around since 2008. Guess what again? I don't give a single fuck about Anti-Venom. His story "New Ways to Die" kind of sucked and he looks like a melted Hershey's Cookies and Cream bar. It would be heavy if Spidey was finally overcome by Venom, that would jar me. But getting killed by this fucknut? No way.

It gets a bit better when the game shifts to the second playable character, Miguel O'hara a.k.a.  Spider-Man 2099. First of all, why the fuck is Spider-Man 2099 here? He first appeared in '92 and appeared in a complete clusterfuck of 'Marvel is being a dick and firing its good writers' with his run lasting on and off again until 1998, so you wouldn't think he would be that big of a deal let alone making his second appearance as a main playable character in a Spidey game (the first being Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions).

Anyways, you start off  sneaking into Alchemax (the genetics, evil stuff lab where O'Hara works) because he thinks that Walker Sloan, a scientist dude, is up to evil scientist shit. You slowly crawl through the vents of Alchemax and get to see a few things like a robot development lab and a genetics lab. This would have been a cool set up for future areas explored much like Arkham Asylum, and I thought it was. Until you play through a bit of the game and realize due to the time travel fuckery the game shits out, you will never play through any of these areas. So no, Edge of Time, you did not properly set the atmosphere with the intro scenes.


II. Story Is Rather Important, Right?


Obviously story is important to any media, be it a thirty second commercial for ass cream or a blockbuster movie. You need something to bait your audience, hook them, and then keep them entertained for the entire duration of your chosen media outlet. Video games are the same and a super hero video game is even more crucial. You can't just crap out some characters and give them a reason to punch each other. You are carrying the weight of characters with decades of history on your back and need to treat that with respect and dignity.

Arkham Asylum was straight to the point, rather simplistic...and worked beautifully. The Joker purposefully got caught so he could take over the island while he uses a new version of the Venom super steroid to make an unbeatable army of super soldiers. Batman has to stop him while dealing with various other super inmates and the various goons transferred over from Blackgate prison. Toss in a few of the emotional problems that comes with being the Batman (generally present in the beautifully terrifying Scarecrow scenes) and the weighty atmosphere to thicken the plot without the developers needing to toss in crap filler (the fetch quests and riddles are entirely optional) or needless gimmicks.

Arkham City followed suit, the plot being rather point A to point B on paper while feeling much thicker with the proper pacing, atmosphere, and emotional hooks.

Then we look at Edge of Time and holy cow fuck, Batman! This shit is confusing. I seriously just played through three fourths of it yesterday and I have had to look at the Wikipedia article to even try and summarize the plot. Spider-man is killed by Anti-Venom when the founder of Alchemax goes back in time to create the company before it is supposed to. He does, thus changing everything: a lot of the villains are eye-rollingly put into 'surprising' polar opposite roles (learned through unlockable newspaper clippings), J. Jonah Jameson is a ranting late-night talk show host (learned through an unlockable newspaper clipping) , 2099 is a Blade Runner looking dystopian nightmare (learned from a single cinematic) , and Peter works for Alchemax (learned from a single cinematic). (As you can see from the parenthesis above, hardly any of this fucking matters)

Apparently Anti-Venom is tearing up Alchemax in Peter's timeline, Miguel makes a chronal link with Peter using Peter's DNA (because that makes sense) so that he can warn him of his impending doom. Peter simply accepts that there is another Spider-Man in the year 2099 that is now talking in his head and doesn't once wonder if he has finally gone batshit. In response to Miguel's warning, he tells him all about how he can never run away from danger and if he does than he doesn't deserve to be called Spider-Man. This goes really well for Peter as he gets the fuck-all kicked out of him, Miguel saves him by pulling him into his timeline and tossing him into a healing chamber, and then leaps into Peter's timeline to fight Anti-Venom.

Jesus. This is the first half hour of the game. The first fucking half hour of game play should not be ridiculously difficult to explain! And it just gets even more fucking confusing as you go on! I honestly have very little idea as to what is going on.

Oh, and you know how I said that Batman had very little gimmicky crap nor padded out game play? Well fuck that, says the developers of Spider-Man. There are sequences where you have a certain amount of time to accomplish something in the past (usually fetch-questy or otherwise on the tediousness scale) to change something in the future, tons of back tracking, and a whole lot of pointless platforming forced down your gullet.


III. Let's Talk About Punching Dudes In the Face

Holy shit is the combat awesome in the two most recent Batman games. Again, simplistic on paper but surprisingly deep with patience and practice. You are encouraged to time your attacks to develop a real rhythm, rather than mashing the attack button as quickly as you can (in fact, you a lot of times can get absolutely punished for this). Toss in just a few special enemies to push your reflexes and keep things fresh, a shit load of gadgets you can freely mix into your combos, and some neat combat upgrades and shit can get really crazy (in a good, 'I am in control of this' kind of crazy). With practice, you can clear entire waves of bad dudes in one flawless fifty something hit combo.

The developers of Spider-Man take the idea of a super hero fighting dudes and then shoves it up their ass. It falls back on the age old, 'Mash buttons as fast as you can to succeed' concept. And that isn't what is bad, I can dig an old school style beat-'em up. What is absolute shit, is how needlessly difficult it is.

Apparently, part of the time changing story is that the Spider-Men now have wet noodles for arms and bags of baked beans for fists. These guys are so hilariously under powered that it feels like a little kid in his Spider-Man pajamas is actually trying to fight robots and security guards. I have seriously racked up sixty plus hit combos just flooring five basic enemies. The last time I had a sixty something combo in either of the Arkham games, I had erased the basic education of twenty shit heads with my fists and boots.

Also, the fights get fucking crazy (in a bad, 'Jesus! Fuck! Everyone just calm down and let me figure out what the fuck is going on here' way). Guys are punching you, robots are shooting lasers and machine guns, a giant brute of a robot is erasing a fourth of your health per second, something is exploding, and I think Spidey has pooped himself.

I felt like this, a lot. 

But there has to be a way to get stronger right? Well yeah, by collecting orbs from your fallen foes. Oh wait, nope, those can only upgrade your basic combo strength (this makes a mouse fart of a difference, by the way) and your special attacks. Well, how the fuck do I upgrade my health and shit? By finding secret, hidden golden spiders. What the fuck on fire in Midtown? I have to fucking track down the fucking hidden fucking items just so I don't fucking get the fuck killed out of me every fucking five minutes? Fuck! To make it worse, your health isn't increased every time you find one. No, you have cash in five or more of the fuckers for a health boost.

However, I found a way around this. Simply run. Run like the wind. Run like the devil is behind you. I discovered in many, many situations you aren't actually required to kill all the enemies. Just as long as you kill the one guy with the key/press the button/destroy the thing, the game lets you continue. This is doubly hilarious when you remember Peter lecturing O'hara on never running away from danger at the beginning of the game.


IV. Conclusion 


Now here is why I am mad at the two Batman games; if this was made prior to August 25, 2009...it wouldn't be that bad! Super hero video games (if you didn't know) used to always be awful and occasionally, mediocre. This would have been a neat-ish Spidey story (if a bit confusing and including an odd character choice), with difficult but forgivable combat (hey guys, at least it works!), and a kind of cool place to explore.

Now though, all I see is a pointlessly drawn out and confusing story, hilariously weak combat on top of needless padding, and a boring ass 'oh look, another abandoned lab' for a setting.

Arkham Asylum/City, congratulations are in order. Congratulations for giving a pedestal to stand on and look down at every other super hero game. You have ruined everything. 

I like to imagine the dude is Spider-Man: Edge of Time and Batman is doing his able best to rip his balls off.