FC - Exed Exes

Haiku-Review:

to battle insects,
chance a marvel suggestion?
insect repellent

Additional Comments:

Exed Exes? What the hell is Exed Exes? Well, from the best that I can make out, it refers to a minimal variety of extra-terrestrial arthropods - well, that and the obvious: an arcade port for the Nintendo Family Computer. Huzzah! After picking up a classic red & white Famicom, I naturally had to get my hands on some games as fast as I could. I found a couple CIB games for cheap, one of which, Exed Exes, caught my eye purely for its primitive STG style.

Ever since the Touhou series educated me to the brilliance of the shooter genre as an instant classic, I've gone bananas over any STG I can get my hands on. Still to this day I can't understand why I begrudged them so much over the years. They're just loaded with mindless excitement. Well, that is except for those titles that just somehow miss the target. And unfortunately, Exed Exes is one of those titles.

First off, there's a lot of issues with the game, however a good chunk of it can be written off thanks to its 1985 release date - we're talking the very beginnings of the NES here. Flat, boring graphics? So what? Mediocre enemy patterns with minimal count? It's to be expected. If this came out in 1990, then I'd question the standards, but for '85, it's looking pretty good. Ok, maybe it's not as beautifully rendered as the original arcade: Savage Bees, but again, it's to be expected. Did we seriously expect to see a pixel-perfect port? The problem is that the game tries to replicate the original arcade with all the wrong reasons in mind - much like Alien Syndrome. Then again, it's a fault of early gaming, relying far too much on high scores. In the arcade, the concept works wonderfully. In fact, it seems strange to give an arcade game an ending. But on a console, it comes off as vacuous; tedious even.

This is the single biggest culprit of Exed Exes' downfall: tedium. For the first few levels, it's passable as a mediocre shooter; even with the sluggish control, lack of weaponry, and constant feeling of déjà vu. Of course, any shooter can fall victim to constant repetition, but it's never felt as apparent as here. If the game at least offered some variety of weapons, or hell, even backgrounds, I could probably tolerate the fact that every level is basically the same thing over and over - the same variety of insects in the same boring patterns. And despite what some might call a difficulty increase as the game progresses, it's hard to claim as such. Sure there's added insectoids fluttering about, or more bullets slowly ambling across the screen, but with history consistently repeating itself from level to level, the supposed increase is negated by total predictability. Within the levels, most of my deaths were a fault of laziness more than anything. When you have infinite continues that resurrect you right at the moment of death, or even a little later on down the road if you let the timer ride for a bit, why not? The game promotes sloth. Maybe I'm just taking advantage of the situation and I should actually try for those high scores - see if I can produce some of those absurd scores that would have won me a special label back in the day. But considering that every level is pretty much identical and there's no end in sight - fuck it.

Endless games on consoles are just...bleagh. While I can tolerate the idea on the earliest of systems, it's hard to swallow on the third generation of games and beyond. There's no sense of fulfillment, and Exed Exes is a prime example. While popular opinion places the end of the game, from a definitive sense, at Round 16, it seems to be one of those situations where aggravation likely gets the better of the player and saps the will to continue on. Placing the end at Round 16 does make sense though since it's just boss after boss after boss and starting with Round 17, the levels start repeating - as if they haven't done so already. I played up to level 25 (I think it was) out of curiosity, at which point I ran through another gauntlet of bosses. "That's enough for me," I groaned in exasperation. In Savage Bees, the game ends when the player reaches ten million points. Seems like an odd way to end a game if you ask me. So what, our insect overlords decided enough is enough and pulled out? But Exed Exes doesn't appear to even allow for ten million points considering the maxed offering referenced in various locales is 9,999,900. Well, that's a ripoff. Can't even win via the arcade's nutty high score method. Oh, but I could have won a special Royal member sticker...in 1985. Bah!

One of the other biggest factors to Exed Exes' miserable drowning in sub-mediocrity is the total lack of upgrades and additional weaponry. From personal experience, I only ever came across two types of weapons besides the default solitary bullet: a dual "spray" and a triple "spray." I use the word spray lightly as they weren't sprays at all - just a simple trick of appearance to make you think you're firing a spray when all you're really doing is just firing an improved shot. Unfortunately, I only saw the triple spray once, and it's very possible I was imagining it, and if that's the case then I only ever saw a single upgrade type. Pathetic. In addition to the nearly, non-existent upgrades, the chance to score an upgrade is even more remote. The chance for a weapon upgrade seemed to only show every second or third round, and only once in a given round at that. However, weapon downgrades seems to be all the more plentiful. What fresh bullshit is this? It's Fester's Quest all over again! First off, the game is incredibly stingy with weaponized gifts, and most of the time they're floating within a plethora of bullets and nearly invincible dragonflies - well, nearly invincible against the plane's default bullet. As a result, I pretty much lost any upgrade immediately. And if I didn't I was guaranteed I'd snatch up one of those god forsaken downgrades by accident. If the game's going to be such a dick regarding additional weaponry, why bother?

It's funny, this feeling of disregard and raging apathy seems to be a common theme in this game. It's like the developers didn't even try. I haven't played Savage Bees myself, but based on what I've read, it's far superior to this. And if that's the case, how could they have fucked it up so bad? It's one thing for an arcade port to feel lackluster thanks to hardware limitations, but again, much like Alien Syndrome, hardware limitations cannot possibly be at fault here. Exed Exes is a disgrace to the shooter genre in general. It plays slow and clunky and is run amok with exhaustive level design. I could possibly see some merit in the two player mode...maybe - not much, but a slightly improved experience over single player, and that's about it. Even the music becomes this abrasive entity drilling away at your ears. Actually, it's not that intolerable. There's a certain enjoyable quirkiness to some of it, but after hearing the same three pieces ad infinitum it become incredibly grating. Overall, it's a bland game that added absolutely nothing to the genre.

Rating: 1.5 member stickers out of 5

PC - Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

Haiku-Review:

to judge in blindness
is to judge negligently
despite contention

Additional Comments:

I feel it's only obvious that I'm treading a thin and dangerous line by not only playing, but admitting as such and commenting on the so-called "trivialization of a heinous act" that is Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. But I also feel that the aforementioned line is a product of highly presumptuous naysayers who refuse to see the forest through the trees. Regardless, the controversy that surrounds this game nearly alienates it from any other controversial title before or since. The title alone is enough to trigger disgust over such a concept - that anyone would dare recount the events of April 20th, 1999, never mind that it's all done through the eyes of Harris and Klebold themselves.

I'm not here to smear or praise the work as a product of entertainment showcasing a terrible event in recent history, although I do have to question why that's the first avenue taken by so many considering other forms of media appear to be perfectly acceptable means of deliverance. I can hypothesize two plausible reasons: media as art vs. media as entertainment and presentation through inspiration vs. presentation through factual events (despite the copious amounts of artistic license rampant throughout the game).

Common opinion seems to be that video games are generally accepted as pure entertainment - video games masquerading as anything else is just unheard of. To a point, I've held the same belief pretty much my whole life. Video games depicting abstract reasoning and/or expressionism is simply ridiculous. They're fundamentally tools of an entertainment industry which could never be perceived as art. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! may very well be the first game I've come across that's genuinely made me rethink how I view video games within the multimedia world. This game is unlike anything I've ever played, and it not only made me think, but it affected me in ways that no other game has. I'm not talking about pure disgust over the appalling nature of the beast. There was a certain surrealism to it all that stirred up a bizarre duality of emotion. Surely it takes more than pure entertainment to cause such a reaction. But then, those who are quick to judge could certainly rank offensiveness as such a model that could trigger some degree of emotion outside of simple recreation. Perhaps, but it certainly wouldn't subject the player into a strange existential breakdown as they try and make sense of the odd love/hate relationship with the game thanks to the terrible unease, yet curious exhilaration of gunning down room after room of high school students. In a way, the game not only forces us to reinvent our boundaries, but to also question why we would or wouldn't blur the line to one side or the other.

But disregarding any philosophical bullshit that can be shoveled on, there's an obvious black mark that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! suffers from as opposed to some other media releases that can essentially trace their roots to the same event. Unlike numerous movies, such as Elephant, which is a work of fiction inspired by the events of Columbine, Super Columbine Massacre RPG! relives the actual events - well, as much as a 16-bit RPG can. But then, given the amount of artistic license including numerous conversations, quips, and alternate reality depictions including a foray into a Hell populated with assorted denizens ripped straight out of the Doom universe, is it truly factual? So there's a number of authentic photos and the like, but is it really that much different from the "inspired" works of the film industry involving school massacres? It makes me wonder if the game would have squeaked by with minimal fuss if Ledonne had released it without ever showing pictures of Harris and Klebold as well as removing any conclusive evidence that the game is a recreation of that particular shooting. Honestly, the game would probably be lost in the dark recesses of the internet; never having raised a pip despite the obvious representation of a school shooting.

That's enough picking, prodding and debating over the game's existence as a highly contentious piece of reenacted history. What I would like to know: for all the controversy the game created, is it even worthy of it all? I'll be the first to admit that I wanted to play the game after watching Machinima's Top Ten FTW Most Offensive Games EVER video. Of all the games they showed, Super Columbine Massacre RPG! instantly piqued my interest. There were two things that immediately caught my attention about this game. First, it was based on the shootings at Columbine which has always intrigued me in and of itself because of how the media and numerous other collectives tried to alienate and damage the reputation of so many things that at best could have been culled as inspiration - at best. For example: violence in video games, violence in music, and gun control laws all befell a contemptuous eye as they were all targets that could easily be smeared without just cause. Secondly, the game was presented in a 16-bit overhead RPG format. This was enough to draw me in. If Ledonne had made it as an FPS, I would have skipped right over it - not interested. Now, you want to talk about an incredibly offensive depiction of Columbine, an FPS would be the way to go - not a Final Fantasy inspired RPG. Heck, if it weren't for the abominable FPS format that was utilized in another top ten offensive pick: Ethnic Cleansing, I'd probably give that one a go too, if not for anything else; the gall that it actually exists. I have a sneaky suspicion that makes me a bad person, but whatever.

There was one little hiccup that had me worried though. The game was created in RPG Maker. I've seen some impressive work done in RPG Maker, but we're also talking about software designed with a novice game maker in mind allowing for simple script creation. As a result, the game more or less plays exactly as I imagined. As far as top-down RPG's go, there's no wow factor to set it apart. There's nothing that we haven't seen before in say, the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Warrior series, or even the Phantasy Star series. It's all very recycled and even becomes monotonous, almost tedious, especially when you're sparring against Doom's likenesses in Hell. The battle system is far too unbalanced and almost comes off as hokey. Yet I feel as though I can't actually complain about the issue. For the sake of story, the battle system has to be unbalanced which unfortunately makes for an incredibly easy game. Granted, depending on how you approach the first half of the game, the initial battles in Hell can either be an absolute handful or a anticlimactic cakewalk. Suggestion: kill every damn kid you see!! Oh god, did I really just say that? *runs away*

As lopsided as the game is, which just completely drains the game of any hope of fun, RPG-y goodness, there is one thing this game not only did right, but damn near perfected. Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, if not for any other reason, is a game I'd recommend for its incredible sense of mood. I don't know if it just me being a  product of the 90s and getting all teary eyed listening to Thirty-Three (no matter how midified it is), but this game nailed it. The overall atmosphere of the game - never mind the 16-bit graphics, the egregiously composed midis, or the horrific storyline - gels like no other. Ledonne's artistic vision, whether intentional or not, matched music to imagery so seamlessly and really struck a few chords emotionally. If anything, it helped push the game over the undefined line between art and entertainment in regards to the video game industry.

So the question still persists - is it worth it? As a game, no. There's a certain enjoyment about the first half despite it being wrought with juxtaposed emotion, pathetic ease of play, and very non-intuitive situations. The second half's a bit more of a bitter pill to swallow. If you've acquired the proper weaponry or upped your stats enough, it's playable, but unfortunately crosses the line of ease far too quick, and by that point, the denizens of Hell become nothing but an annoyance, especially since Hell is a giant, unforgiving maze. Essentially, there's far too much dragging it down to call it enjoyable in the sense of a game - disregarding the whole Columbine tie-in. But as something that rises above the preconceived notion of "video games equal _____," it does so brilliantly. I could never recommend Super Columbine Massacre RPG! as a game, but can easily do so as a psychological excursion that proves to test one's limits on popular opinion concerning entertainment-based media, artistic expression and offensive disrespect - not to mention an introspective assessment of one's self in regards to the inevitable clash of enjoyment and disgust. Basically, if you want to hate on it, play it first to understand why exactly you should or shouldn't hate it; if you want to play it, don't. It sucks.

Nano-Rant:

Looking at it purely from a gamer's perspective, I can't even begin to express how pissed I was after reaching Nietzsche without the required copy of Ecce Homo. Worst part is, there's no way to rectify this flagrant misuse of item requirement without restarting from the beginning. The problem is, at no point is it made clear that an item will be needed to progress, and unlucky for us, a little exploration is required to find said item. Hell, I didn't even know items held any merit in my first attempt - you mean that copy of Doom and Mechanical Animals served a purpose? Sure did. Dammit....

Also to note, because I had to start over at the beginning to track down Nietzsche's book, the game unfortunately lost all its charm on the second go 'round. Now it could partially be thanks to my newly annoyed state, but everything that made the game pop emotionally the first time now felt blasé. Even the outrageousness of it all came off as nothing more than sterile indifference. And it's a shame too as it more or less tainted my perception when it came to the game's ending.

Rating: 2 boxes of Devil's Food cake mix out of 5*

*Please note that I'm rating this game purely from a gaming standpoint.