Sampler platter: Games I started and couldn’t be bothered to finish

Despite the financial woes of Blockbuster Canada killing my beloved monthly game deal that allowed 2 games out at a time for a flat fee of $39, I am still trying to try as many games as I can. Gamefly has no presence here, and the only mail-order game service is not well regarded to say the least.

Got me by the demon curlies- Shadows of the Damned (360)

Lined up next to each other, Shadows of the Damned and Duke Nuken Forever have extremely similar tastes. Both games are shooters, one 3rd person, one an FPS, both contain relentless puerile humor, degradation/victimization of women, and leads that spout corny one-liners in an attempt at comedy (though SOD’s are usually funnier).

The difference seems to be in the DNA of each game. Duke is an industry joke that took over a decade to make and shows it, moving from defunct 3D realms to be purchased and completed by Gearbox. SOD is a co-production by two of the darlings of the Japanese game industry, Suda 51 (No More Heroes) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil), developed by perennial underachiever Grasshopper Manufacturing.

Full Disclosure: I don’t get most Japanese games. The last Japanese developed game I finished was Vanquish, and that was purely due to gameplay. Plot, dialogue and acting seem to be frozen in amber from the 80’s despite localization efforts and I find the results trying. I have no nostalgia for Sega’s heyday and when presented with the caliber of presentation a Bioshock, Mass Effect or Batman:Arkham Asylum deliver, I find the intentional melodrama of Japanese games exhausting.

Wielding a gun made of bone called the” Boner” and accompanied by a floating flaming skull named “Johnson”, Garcia Hotspur chases his soon-to-be-raped-for-eternity dead girlfriend into hell to battle Fleming, lord of the underworld. Using better but still clunky RE4 controls, Hotspur is required to shed light on the darkness by firing charged light bolts at goat heads to brighten an area. These same bolts remove the greasy black protection on enemies allowing the player to then re-kill these demons. Dick jokes are plentiful and continuous as you upgrade the Boner and move from area to area by feeding brains, eyes or strawberries to baby heads.

In line with No More Heroes, SOD is a deeply strange game. Fighting a control scheme that needed to be more Gears and less RE4 and a wall of juvenile humor I eventually gave up a couple hours in.

Transcendental: Child of Eden (Kinect)

Kinect games to date have been a poor mixed bag with literally a handful even working properly much less creating a compelling game experience. Following the path of Rez, Child of Eden is a surrealistic and beautiful fusion of rail shooting with music and wire-frame inspired graphics creating a bright rhythmic experience.

The story such as it is deals with the purification of a digital archive containing the soul of the first person born in space, and eliminating the corruption that threatens it. The gameplay is relatively simple, fire a locked-on beam with one hand, a less powerful but rapidfire beam with the other, and unleash “Euphoria” by raising your arms. Color-codes identify which weapon does more damage to what enemy backed by rhythmic and varied music.

After about an hour I was frustrated by a control scheme that was demonstrably more accurate and easier with a controller. With no real taste for the music, and no compelling reason to continue, Child of Eden was returned.

A beautiful experiment, it is horribly overpriced and would have been better suited as a $15 Xbox Live Arcade title. By attempting to assign premium value to this title and it’s Kinect functionality, one wonders if the obscene price only serves to devalue both.