The Tech Review: Marvel Ultimate Alliance

I would like to review Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which will now be referred to the easy to write acronym MUA, for the X Box 360.
Story: If you want to have a good video game make the story great. MUA does not disappoint and Marvel fanboys will appreciate this well thought out tale. The game begins with Doctor Doom attacking the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and Nick Fury makes a call to any super powered hero in the area for assistance. Wolverine, Thor, Spiderman, and Captain America appear in a flash of lightning (Ultimate Thor has the ability to teleport himself and others) and begin battling dooms minions. After the helicarrier is saved the heroes form an alliance to combat the Masters of Evil, a super villain syndicate led by the infamous Doctor Doom. Throughout the game the heroes travel to Asgard, Attilan, The Valley of Spirits, Atlantis, the Skrull homeworld, Murder World, and finally Latveria for a climactic showdown with Doom himself. I won’t get into the details for those of you who haven’t played but the story is believable, exciting, and well written, something a Marvel fan and almost any can enjoy.

A Marvel fanboy’s dream

Game Play: This is where MUA shines. The player takes control of a group of heroes (up to four) and then proceeds to punch, claw, shoot, kick, whallop, slam, stab, and karate chop their way to victory. Each act, there are 5, as they are called in the game is divided into two or five sub levels each taking place in a different location. The heroes go, beat the crap out of all the enemies on screen battle a mini-boss or two, and then take on the uber boss of the level who rarely disappoints. When will you ever be able to take Thor, Daredevil, Nick Fury, and Mr. Fantastic against the might of Fin Fang Foom? Very cool indeed.

The game really shines however when you are leveling up your heroes. Each hero has a different set of skills, from melee to projectiles to radial attacks and boosts that help them and their allies out in the heat of battle. Each heroes skills take up energy, the equivalent of mana, so you cannot use them indefinitely (if only then Moon Knight and his nunchuks would be unbeatable) All of these skills are upgradeable and become stronger and more potent the more points are assigned to them. Each character also has a unique X-treme attack that does massive amounts of damage to every enemy on screen.

The cool thing about the skills and point system is that you can make the same hero into a very different fighter. Say you want the Invisible Woman to be a support character, stunning enemies and protecting allies while they beat the tar out of the bad guys. You can do this. Say you want her to be an agile striker who picks apart the opponents with a grace that belies her looks. You can do that too! It all depends on where you put the skill points.

Combat is a blast. Your character can do regular strike combos, throw enemies, and use their skills. It’s a real treat to watch Captain America throw his shield, Black Panther slash an enemy to ribbons, Spider Man web up an opponent, and Thing smash someone into the ground all at the same time! Combat is usually pretty one sided except for some of the boss battles (combat favoring the player) but at the higher levels with minimal characters the fights can get pretty hectic. The powers are what make the combat for sure.

Not only are the players skills customizeable but you may also equip each hero with an item that can boost their abilities. Even further each character comes equipped with four costumes, three of which need to be unlocked, that the player can spend his hard earned S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens (the games currency) on to boost their stats as well. It’s awesome to see Captain America in his WW2 outfit or see the Ultimate Nick Fury kicking some butt, total fan service which was great.

Graphics: The graphics on the X Box look fantastic. Captain America’s shield shines with all its patriotic glory, flame billows forth from burst pipes that looks surprisingly real. The game looks so much better than X-Men Legends 2 which was awesome. They really made a good looking game.

Sound: The music, well I’ve never been one to complain about music all that often but I’ve never been one to freak out over the music either. The music suited the game and I was not ever really tired of it, nor did I notice it, however when the music cut out, some glitch in the game, I really wanted it back because when you are fighting Loki in the barren wastes of Juttenheim, you want a wicked soundtrack at your back. The voices however fit, but I thought that Captain America and Thor’s were lame. However, what was kinda cool was that the same voice actor who did Wolverine in X-men Legends and X-men Legends 2 came back to do Wolverine in MUA. Sound was fine, nothing too awesome, nothing to complain about.

Controls: There is not much to write about the controls besides they are pretty tight, jumping, grabbing, comboing, and using your powers are all easy enough to do. However at times after a string of normal attacks the special attack won’t come out and you’ll be left hanging for a second or two. This isn’t normally a problem but just be aware that you need to time your attacks to get them to link. Computer characters aren’t overly idiotic and the orders you can give them (aggressive, assist, defensive, and normal) are easy enough to utilize and actually quite effective.

Multiplayer: I have not been able to play this game on X Box Live but the multiplayer with my friends has been awesome. Coordinating your attacks while yelling profanities at the wimpy enemy grunts is great fun and if you are playing the game in Arcade Mode the game keeps score behind the scenes and at the end of each level grades each players performance, giving S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens to the winner and assigning a most valuable hero. It makes the game that much more competitive while playing with friends. The multiplayer is great.

End Thoughts: This game is every Marvel fan’s dream. It combines the awesomeness of Marvel’s heroes and villains, the fierce hack and slash style of combat similar to Gauntlet Legends, and a great story to boot. Combined with tight controls and an average soundtrack, you’ve got a great game. If you’ve got an X Box and enjoy Marvel comics this is the game for you.

Final Post – Goodbye Japan, I hope to see you again

I kind of wanted my last post to be an homage to the awesome things that we saw in Japan, so I think that I will try and list off some of my favorite things about the country.

The Mega Mac, Todai-ji Temple, the big Buddha of Nara, the thousand golden Buddhas and their silent majesty, sprinting to get to the shinkansen in time, the traditional tea ceremony that we experienced in a skyscraper, and singing karaoke with unlimited beer, vodka, and gin.

Dr. C coming out with us and hooking up with all the ladies, myself failing at hooking up often with the ladies, getting out of the club in Shibuya to find the sun is rising, traversing the subway labyrinth on my own, getting lost, and finding my way home all by myself.

Using the beday for the first time unaware that the water pressure was turned up to maximum (to 11 for Spinal Tap fans), fighting ninjas (those of you not attuned to the fighter’s realm probably missed out on this one), looking at cartoon pornography, eating a twenty dollar hamburger and not enjoying it all that much, stealing the Apple Store’s internet to reach loved ones.

Failing at almost every attempt to go out on the town without a translator, the shrines, the deer that ate anything they could get in their mouths, hooking up with an old lady, the Nigerians, eating squid head, making our own food at a high cost, the crazy cucumber mascot in the subway we attacked, the little kids who loved us, and baseball games.

There is so much more.  I’ll add to this later.  Feel free to comment and add your own.

Number 19 – How Could I Forget About the Trash???

I think that all of us were dismayed and frustrated at Japan’s complete lack of public waste receptacles.  How can you not have trash cans?  The sheer number of vending machines and food vendors that proliferated the subway and city street was astounding, yet there was scarcely a trash can to be found.  Not only that but I do not remember seeing any sign of littering anywhere.  Maybe a cigarette butt here and there but no newspaper, McDonalds wrappers, no used tissue, no nothing!  Due to this amazing trash-less phenomenon we witnessed in Japan I have postulated a few theories I believe may be behind the reason for no waste receptacles.

Theory One: All of the people in Japan are high tech cyborgs that utilize the waste from vending machines, food stands, gift shops and such as an energy source to fuel their bodies.  While highly impractical, think about it.  How often did you see the Japanese carrying trash around?  Barely ever and if they were carrying it they somehow sensed where the nearest waste bin was and deposited their litter quickly and efficiently.  This was probably their integrated GPS at work.  Also, maybe the litter they were depositing was part of a nationalized “quota” to keep outsiders from suspecting anything.  That or the trash was something that their bio-robotic bodies could not synthesize into something useful.

Theory Two: There exists a secret society of trash disposing ninjas whose only task is to destroy, with extreme prejudice, the waste of Japan.  This honorable clan has been fighting the forces of litter and sludge for hundreds of years using their awesome karate skills and magical abilities.  They might also handle the assassinations of company officials that allow pollution to enter Japan as a result of their company’s practices.  Granted while this may seem just as unlikely, you never know.  Ninjas are sneaky.

Theory Three (Final Theory): Every Japanese telephone has a special disintegration ray built into the design.  It only works on non-organic compounds so that the populace doesn’t go on a disintegrating spree.  The process is only noticeable by the sharpest of eyes who are actually watching to catch a disintegration in process.  This allows the business men who must eat on the go to get rid of their pesky sushi wrappers and their tedious Lemon Lemon drink bottles without wasting any time.  Once again, highly unlikely but you never know.  The industrious people of Japan are capable of practically anything.

Japan Rail Company

These guys know how to run a company. Not only do they provide exceptional transportation services but they pioneered the Suica card and they even own a restaurant chain. Talk about your vertical… vertical integration? Yeah, that’s right. They do exactly what it takes to make the money and appear everywhere they need to be to make a buck, and I respect that. The cool thing is that they do it in such a way that I would never have noticed without it being pointed out to me and I think that’s a true mark of genius.

Not only that but they aren’t just resting on their laurels. They are the largest train transportation in Japan and what is their R&D Center doing? Looking to make JR Rail Lines that much easier to traverse. Some of the things that they were building were just awesome. The touchscreen map/information booth was totally awesome. The map and pointer doohickey was also really cool. While it wasn’t as informative as it could be the physical pointing of the direction was pretty unique.

J.R. Rail Lines is pretty awesome.  I was very impressed.

Q Entertainment – Question? Quest?

Q Entertainment was one of the coolest companies that we visited, not because I have Lumines on my celluar telephone, which I do, but because of the company president’s (I forget his name, sorry sir) business sense. It was interesting to hear about the different business models that were being used in Japan. Lumines uses a monthly service fee to provide its users with increasingly cool mods, modes, and music. There are some other business models that are in use now as well such as the item purchase model. Users are able to purchase items in the virtual world with real cash and are able to gain a leg up inside of the digital realm. This is, to be honest, the most difficult model for me to understand, but I will get to that in a second.

Obviously there is a one time payment model in which you purchase the game for a set price and that is all you get, the game, no mods, no add ons, just a complete game for a set price.  Then there is a pay by use model, in which a small fee is charged every time you use the service.  This is not very common.
Lumines uses the monthly service charge where the user is charged per month for the game but every month new add ons are provided along with new material, songs, levels, etc.  This seems to be a very popular new business model, which I can understand.  It allows users to purchase and play a game they enjoy and keep paying as long as they deem the updated material worth the price.

The model that I do not understand that seems to be doing very very well for itself is the “pay for items with real money” model.  In this model users actually pay real cash for virtual items.  Right off the bat I was very frustrated by this model.  What about the poor users who love the game and can’t afford to purchase the sword with +25 Burn Damage and a 50% chance to instant K.O.?  How can they receive the same experience in-game?

Well one of the things we need to think about is that not all virtual products necessarily change the game dynamics.  What about clothing?  Or hair styles?  Or homes?  Players may just want to create a unique looking character, one that stands out, and they are able to do it under this business model.  It seems unfair at first but if you think about it those that purchase items will derive more enjoyment from the game with the added items than if they had kept the money.  Granted it would be seen as “unfair” by some but fairness is decided in-game by the moderators and designers.  If paying for items is fair to them, then well, it’s fair.

If anyone has any more information on these business models I would love to hear from you.  PEACE!!!

American Comics vs. Manga

I am getting way over my head here but I would really like to see some people flex some opinionated muscle over this topic. I am an avid reader of American comic books. It is my largest hobby and I own thousands of them from tons of different publishers. I read mainstream stuff (X-men, Batman, Hulk) and comics that are definitely off the beaten path (RASL, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Proof, Comics Obscura) but I have never gotten into manga.

Now it isn’t as though I am against manga, but I have never totally understood it. There are so many titles I get desensitized by it all, it doesn’t seem like there are any adequate jumping on points for new readers, aside from starting at volume 1. While I was researching some information about this topic I came across multiple sources that helped to clearly show the difference between the two mediums.

First is the price. American comics range in price from $2.99 to around $5.99 these days. The price is usually dependent on the size of the comic which actually means the number of pages contained, around 32-64 pages.  Manga here is around $10 a book and can be over a hundred pages along.  Also, manga usually only have one or two story lines that happen chronologically.  American comic book story lines can become incredibly convoluted and may happen throughout many alternate universes, something that rarely happens in manga.

Also the art styles are very different, with manga being very exaggerated while american comics have very realistic art styles.  The last major difference is that American comics deal with a limited number of genres while manga has almost one story line for every imaginable type of story.  I like American comics for their deep character development and extensive story lines that sometimes involve characters from other titles, such as the most recent marvel summer epic “Secret Invasion.”  Manga might be alright and I’m not averse to reading any of it, so if there are some good titles out there that anyone could recommend let me know.

Hello Kitty

I have always been curious about the whole Hello Kitty “craze.”  I know next to nothing about Hello Kitty besides it is sickeningly cute, very Japanese, and there was a video game made based on the universe that I saw a review for on G4.  That is the extent of my Hello Kitty knowledge.  After a little bit of research, well I realized that the world only gets disturbingly more cute.

Hello Kitty was created in 1974, that’s when the magic started.  Since then she has appeared on almost every imaginable piece of merchandise, from hair dryers to computer mice to DVD players to chess games to wallets and Christmas ornaments to purses and even sewing machines!  I kid you not, this little kitty knows how to make a buck.

She lives in a perfect world, she herself living in London, England with her family.  She is kind and generous and everyone loves her for it.  But really how can she be so cute, so lovable, so perfect?  It just isn’t natural!  If you guys want to check out a very funny site based around the belief that hidden inside the cute and fluffy exterior of this pretty kitty lies something so fundamentally evil if you saw it you might lose your soul, check out this website.  If anything it’s good for a laugh.  http://www.kittyhell.com/.

The Hello Kitty universe is incredibly expansive.  It seems like there are tons of characters, locations, and items scattered throughout the universe that fans can learn about and visa vi purchase.  At the Hello Kitty official website – http://www.sanrio.com/ – a fan can read about a bunch of characters that were not shown in any of the animes.  I think that right now my personal favorite is a mischievous little penguin named Badtz-Maru.  He lives in Gorgeoustown (I am not even kidding) and has a pet alligator named Pochi.  He’s the almost bad seed of the world and I respect that.

GIANT BUDDAH ATTACKS CITY!!!

Honestly, the giant Buddha at Nara could totally create this headline for CNN if it decided to get up and throw down.  If it was going to be a battle between it and every other inanimate statue in Japan I think it could hold its own for quite a while, though I when the thousand golden Buddhas and their guardians entered the fracas, well then I’d put my money on the thousand Buddhas.  This is neither here nor there, I wanted to talk about the giant Buddha of Nara.

The Todai-ji temple was one of the coolest site visits that we made on our trip, in my opinion.  I think that it is worth noting that while we went to see the giant Buddha, the temple itself is the largest wooden building in the world, something that I just learned.  It is 57 meters wide, 50 meters deep, and 48 meters tall (http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/birushana.shtml).  Impressive as it was, it’s actually 2/3 the original size!

The Big Buddha stands, well, sits an amazing 15 meters high.  Using the handy unit converter on my cellular telephone (first time ever) I calculated that to be equal to 49.212 feet!  And the Buddha is sitting down!  Imagine if this guy decided to get up and go for a stroll!  His head alone is 5.3 meters high.

Awe-inspiring and majestic the Big Buddha is actually the Cosmic Buddha, the central Buddha of the universe, according to Esoteric Buddhism (http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/birushana.shtml).  To be honest, I have gotten really confused by all of the different Buddhas, I mean they seem infinite, but this guy is apparently the real deal, the head honcho for a certain sect.  It has seen many battles and has been scarred hundreds of times throughout its long history, construction was finished in 792 a.d.  It has been rebuilt, remastered, rebuffed, but even after all of the work, even after all of these years, it still brings a feeling of calm and peace (once you forget about all of the other tourists that is).

The two guardians that protect the Buddha exude a feeling that can only be described as the antithesis of peace.  They are known as Nio or Benevolent Kings, that have chosen to protect the Buddha.  In Todai-ji temple the two 26 feet tall guardians are Agyo and Ungyo.  If these guys were helping the Big Buddha out, well maybe my money would go back to the Cosmic Buddha.

While here’s to hoping the Big Buddha of Nara never has a good reason to stand up and throw down, if it does I really hope it’s on cable.

Totally Biased View of Anime – NO GOOD – Created to Foster Comments

The only good anime is anything by Miyazaki, Outlaw Star, Street Fighter, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ninja Scroll, and DBZ.  That is it.  Everything else is a shameless re-hash of something else in which there are innumerable close ups with the characters stuttering in disbelief at the power exhibited by the most recent villain.  Or vice versa, sometimes the villains are stuttering in a close up at the newly powered up hero.

I have not seen an anime that I have enjoyed in almost 7 years, since the removal of Outlaw Star from the Toonami line up.  I used to be a big fan of anime too.  Cowboy Bebop was cool, Blue Submarine Number 6, Vampire Hunter D, Spriggan, Hellsing, but then it all got old.  The only recent anime that I thought was cool was that show on Adult Swim, Death Note?  It was extremely cool, at least the idea was, not a physical battle between good and evil but a battle between two minds, one trying to solve a crime and bring a criminal to justice (whose crimes include exclusively the murder of those that have avoided justice) while the other is trying to trick the hero into giving up his life through paranormal means.

Shows that I have never been able to enjoy are things like Full Metal Alchemist, Naruto (though the super fast kid with the bullcut is pretty cool), Akira, Blood, Bleach, One Piece, Yu Yu Hakusho, none of them are very cool.  Not only that but with the exception of Akira the art styles are extremely similar.  Most of the characters are extremely one dimensional, though at times I have been surprised at some of the character development, especially in Evangelion.  Stories are similar and often convoluted.  I am just not impressed.

Alright guys, this is your chance to attack back!  Defend your favorite animes if I have listed them here as something I don’t enjoy.  Let’s see what you’ve got!  Make good points and I’ll give you props for sure.

The Number Twelve Shall Deal With Religion

While exploring the shrines of Japan I couldn’t help but wonder what the Japanese people think about spirituality.  What are their beliefs about the afterlife?  Is there one god, many gods?  What do they believe?  Visiting the shrines didn’t really help with any of those questions, though I was privy to the beauty of ancient Japanese architecture, so I decided to look it up.  On Wikipedia.  Here is the link that I used – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_religion.

If you decided to read anything you would know that there are two majors religions in Japan.  The first, the original religion of Japan is known as Shinto.  It is a religion in which believers worship many gods or ideas, and have a strong love of nature.  Something that I found incredibly interesting is that Shinto doesn’t have a holy book, a founder, or a canon.  It is almost as if the belief system was present in the Japanese from birth.  Very interesting.

The other belief system is obviously Buddhism.  Buddhism made its way over to Japan sometime in the 6th century and it definitely left a lasting cultural influence.  How many Buddhas did we see while strolling the shrines?  Well we know that we saw over one thousand, the thousand golden Buddhas, and how many tiny stone Buddhas did we see on Miyojima while making our way up the temples?  So many!  The life of Buddhism in Japan, after having read the wikipedia page, seems incredibly complex and convoluted.  It is as if whenever someone didn’t agree with one of their teachers they went off and formed their own sect.  While I’m sure that this isn’t the case, it seems like it.

Shinto and Buddhism were practiced together without many problems for almost  their entire existence.  There were never any major confrontations between Shintoists and Buddhists and they seemed to have thrived together for hundreds of years.  The page also points out that Japan guarantees all of its citizens religious freedom.  It seems that the Japanese do not have much of a problem with religion and are really tolerant, something that I definitely noticed while in Japan.  The tolerance thing at least, not so much religion tolerance because there weren’t many instances in which that could be tested.  Regardless, Japanese religion is really interesting and I advise you all to research it a little bit.