GEN - Comix Zone

Haiku-Review:

the 90s explained
through video game artwork
plus bonus CD!

Additional Comments:

Unfortunately, those who buy the game used and those who play it on emulator will likely never experience the bonus CD that originally came with the game - a collection of songs from various artists on the American Recordings label. While some stuff is typical 90s alt-rock fare, there's some great songs on there too. Still love Laika's "44 Robbers" and MC 900 Ft Jesus' "Buried at Sea." But alas, none of that has any actual bearing on the game, and after all, that's what's important.

Comix Zone is yet another game I played quite regularly in my youth. It's a unique, stylized brawler set within a comic book drawn by the game's protagonist. The stages consist of pages broken down by panels inhabited by denizens that are drawn to life by the comic book's antagonist who now exists in modern New York City. Good god, that's some heavy shit right there. It's like a nightmarish revision of A-ha's video for "Take On Me." Unfortunately, due to its caustic difficulty, I rarely made much headway back then. My best guess was I made it to the arena in Tibet, perhaps a couple panels after if I was lucky. At least that's as much as I experienced that rang vaguely familiar.

Perhaps a bit tangential, but completely relevant all the same, whenever I return to a game from my childhood that happens to suffer from notorious difficulty, it always amazes me how much more patience I used to have. Comix Zone is the epitome of a practice makes perfect game, and these days, I've found my joy for these types of games has dearly waned. Yet, I think this may be a common phenomenon among a large number of gamers.

With the evolution of game design theory and principles, we've moved from score based games to story driven games. In score based games, lives are your sole focus as you have so many attempts to rack up the highest score possible. Story driven games place emphasis on story and adventure. Lives are old fashion and have no place here. Instead, the ability to save your progress runs rampant, which many people condone as a general easing of difficulty. This has led to the popular belief that today's games are far too easy compared to yesterday's games. In many respect, this is true, but I think it's important to understand why this is true. The 8-bit and 16-bit era of video games can almost be considered the gawky teenager in the video game timeline. It was a transitional period between placing weight on score or story. As a result, developers were clumsy with how to handle key aspects of gameplay in terms of difficulty. I believe Comix Zone is one such game. Why? Because you're only given a single life in a brutally tough beat 'em up that has a fairly strong emphasis on story. It becomes disheartening to see the unsuspecting world about to endure the full wrath of Mortus' mutant villainy for the nth time.

There's no room for error in this game. Unlike, for instance, the Double Dragon series, you have to be on your A game at all times. Comix Zone requires a lot of baby steps and repetition. I remember this being the case when I was young. Come to think of it, Volgarr the Viking reminds me a lot of how Comix Zone operates. Instead of busting heads, you need to fully evaluate the situation set before you and figure out the best method to advance while losing little to no health. Unfortunately, Comix Zone places a few obstacles in your way, some literal.

The only thing that matters in this game is health and you must ensure you're doing everything possible to retain as much of it as you can. Tanking is a dangerous endeavor even if you happen to have an extra ice tea on hand. You can't afford to smash the attack button irresponsibly because you don't care how much of a dick Styx, the pogo stick monk, is; there's a pretty good chance the next panel is going to contain a heavy concrete door that you're going to have to bust down and sadly, you're out of explosives. Doors, barrels, grates, and other obstacle laden bullshit is the real bane of Sketch's existence. Unless there's a trick to destroy the obstacle or you happen to have some extra dynamite on hand, you're going to loose a good bit of health in your attempt to remove the barriers. This is so...stupid. But hold on! There's another method. Sketch has the amazing ability to rip sheets of paper from the very fabric of his new existence inside his own comic book and make deadly paper airplanes. How meta! (And what's that? Paper Airplanes? Funny how those hints work out.) Except, doing so depletes a good portion of Sketch's health as well.

So, recap. Tough as nails enemies are sure to give your health the old one two, but at the same time, you need to ensure you have more than enough not just to survive the stage, but to break down any upcoming obstacles. And for the really annoying stuff, you can always fire off a paper airplane, if you have more than enough health to handle the strenuous task of ripping apart the paper made space-time continuum. Thank goodness for a hefty helping of ice tea conveniently misplaced around the neighborhood. Except that brings up an additional level of aggravating decision.

For every time I've ever complained of a limited inventory in which items are fairly important, I must apologize. Heck, I just did so for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Comix Zone takes limited pocket size to a whole new level. Sketch has three slots that can be filled, and sadly, Roadkill, Sketch's pet rat that is impressively useful at any given moment, takes up a slot. So really, you only have two slots to play with unless you're confident enough to make more than enough headway without replenishing your health, therefore not requiring Roadkill's ability to sniff out a few extra ice teas from the inter-dimensional page of Sketch's new reality. But even with that cocky attitude, you may still need Roadkill to throw a few unreachable switches. Decisions, decisions. Because, you know, I'd really love to haul around a superhero icon along with some explosives and an extra ice tea - three items that could likely place me on the path to victory. Do I ditch the explosives and accept the fact that I'm going to take a nasty hit to my health when I have to break down that door or leave the superhero behind and just hope that Kung-Fung isn't at much of an RNG asshole as he usually is?

Simply put, it's all evaluation, strategy, and careful repetition. Once you know the optimal method to tackle a stage it simply comes down to dealing with everything's rather clunky hitboxes. Additionally, I feel using a six button controller might have a slight advantage over using a three button controller. As a kid, I always used a three button, since that's all I had. On my recent playthrough, I briefly tried a six button setup but reverted back to a three button since that's what I always played with in the past. However, a six button controller allows to have manual blocking at your disposal which I believe may be infinitely more helpful, at least compared to the so-called auto-blocking, that honestly, I question how helpful it actually is.

Despite the game's brutal difficulty, two of the three bosses are surprisingly easy, one of which is the final boss. In fact, I'd go so far to say that Mortus may be the easiest foe in the game. It's always a shame when the difficulty ratio of level vs. boss is upended far too much in one direction or the other. Although Kung Fung is a miserably taxing miscreant to face, he balances the stage sufficiently. Mortus plays as nothing more than anti-climactic fodder. The real challenge for me was realizing that some mystery switch suddenly appeared so that I could release Alissa from her nuclear goopy doom. That's an embarrassing way to achieve the bad ending. I had to end up looking up how to achieve the good ending because I expected something far more complicated than a simple switch magically appearing next to Alissa's imprisonment. Of course, it's so obvious now, but at the time I felt like a total idiot. Well, to be fair, I still feel like a total idiot, and as such have confessed as much in words to live in eternity.

Tough or not, I still think Comix Zone is a great game. I recall enjoying the game as a kid, and I still enjoyed it today. Sure, it's not the end all be all brawler. So many other titles easily top it, however, Comix Zone does the genre fair justice. And besides, it offers up one of the most unique approaches to the genre by placing the player inside a comic book where at times he may even find himself having to bust down the white space barriers between panels. The paper and drawing elements, be it Roadkill shredding the page in search of hidden items, or Mortus' giant hand quickly penning in some new baddies, are done superbly well. Also, considering it's on the Genesis, some fabulous throaty growls, and thick, chunky riffs are to be expected, and are they ever. Some noteworthy stuff includes Episode 1, Page 1-1 and Episode 2, Page 1-2. Heck, even the Sega Logo is badass.

Rating: 3.5 100 pound mozzarella donations out of 5

GC - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Haiku-Review:

who's this Mario?
you mean Murphy? Gonzales?
Mustache? Marty-O?

Additional Comments:

Having taken this long to finally post something from the GameCube is completely unacceptable. Case closed.

Moving on: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The much needed upgrade to the original Paper Mario while somehow feeling exactly similar to the original Paper Mario. Ok, that's not entirely true, but one has to admit that there's an uncanny amount of déjà vu rampant throughout this game. Fortunate for me, the first time I played this game, back in '06 if I recall, I had zero inkling of any similarity between this game and its predecessor. For one, I never played the original Paper Mario, and two, I had little to no knowledge of its existence, period. In fact, I hadn't even played the Mario RPG grandfather, Super Mario RPG, beforehand. Therefore, everything presented was an entirely fresh set of ideas. I knew of Super Mario RPG, so the idea of a Mario RPG wasn't mind blowing, but the presentation and execution of The Thousand-Year door certainly was.

The Thousand-Year Door instantly drew me in, and I loved every minute of it. The locales were so unique, the populace, the story - you mean Bowser isn't the antagonist? Oh wait, was that a spoiler? While steeped in Mario lore, the game felt altogether disconnected from typical Mario fare, but not in a bad way. Somehow, the X-Naut army felt right at home in the Marioverse as did the Shadow Sirens, the Punis, or even an entire stage centered around wrestling. That is about the furthest thing you can get from Mario, unless you take into consideration that Mario on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was portrayed by famed wrestler Captain Lou Albano. Perhaps Glitzville has genuine purpose after all.

Eventually, I shelved the game, unbeaten. I don't recall the exact reason, but my post on Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 has some plausible insight. Also, if memory serves, I think it also had something to do with Gloomtail. I vaguely recall struggling against him and finally said that's enough. Although, after my recent playthrough, I haven't the faintest idea why Gloomtail would have griefed me so badly. After beating Gloomtail, I questioned my rather ambiguous memories, though I specifically recall opening the Thousand-Year Door while at the same time never having fought Bowser and Kammy. Therefore, Gloomtail proving paramount in my decision to prematurely shelve the game all those years ago seems highly credible if not embarrassing. Oh well.

Nearly ten years later, I finally decided to finish the game once and for all. First thing I noticed is that save files can almost be interpreted as mini time capsules. So, that's what I was using as a gaming alias all those years ago? I'll be damned. I was aware of a few other alternates from some old game saves, but that one certainly caught me off guard. But that's all rather tangential to the greater topic at hand.

Beginning anew gave me a fresh perspective on this game. I was well aware of the similarities between Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door when I did my Paper Mario run despite it being a number of years since I last played this. As I wandered around certain areas in the original title, memories of The Thousand-Year Door would suddenly resurface. Having only been a year since I played Paper Mario, memories of that game are a bit more prevalent and I found it rather uncanny how much parallelism exist between the two games. I don't think this is particularly bad, but there are times when it felt a little lazy, for example Toad Town's sewers and Rogueport's sewers. When I first played this game, I loved the idea behind Rogueport Sewers, but after having played Paper Mario, they've sort of lost their charm because they've become cookie-cutter. A number of elements had now become cookie-cutter which in my opinion, sadly, hurts the overall panache of the game. Fortunately, The Thousand-Year Door's improvements over the original title at least allowed for this new found disappointment to fade into the background, but it was still close enough in proximity reminding me that a lot of the presented material is just rehashed Paper Mario with a sweet, succulent glaze.

General facsimile or not, I am curious about these so-called improvements. Everything...or most everything I hated about the original Paper Mario either went the way of the dodo or was thankfully improved. It was important to slip in "most" as there are a few nagging holdovers that are still beating the game down with their inane stupidity and implementation - looking at you Zess T.'s useless duplication of Tayce T.'s recipe fetch quests of futility. Why in the name of all that is good game design this still a thing? But I'll come back to that, and besides, at least they got rid of Chuck Quizmo.

The two most important improvements in this game are easily coin replenishment and experience gathering. Coins were damn near impossible to gather in the first game, but here coins are nearly a dime a dozen. I never actually had to grind for coins despite having a bevy of badges to buy in the endgame for 100% completion or even fetching ingredients to fulfill Zess T.'s recipes. Through the natural course of play I typically had a sizable bank account on my hands and if not, I could easily rake in a few hundred on a quick trip through the Pit of 100 Trials in my latest attempt to venture to the deepest unknown of Rogueport Sewers, usually without success. Shucks. But my attempted bravery came with a extravagant cash reward and some experience to boot, so I'll take it. And because of the constant increase in difficulty and a number of aborted attempts as a result, it never felt like the truly unnecessary grinding present in Paper Mario.

My other disappointment in the first title regarding experience was also duly rectified. Finally, no matter how weak an enemy is, you will always get at least one Star Point, at it should be. This gives every battle a semblance of purpose. So now, even while I'm having to trek all throughout the lands for the umpteenth time to get another fucking golden leaf or coconut, if I accidentally fall into battle with an annoying species of piranha plant, I'm cool with it because at least I know it moved me one hundreth of a degree closer to leveling up. Yea, that's still sad in the grand scheme of things, but it's better than wasting three minutes of my life for no reward whatsoever.

Another improvement was the distribution of Star Pieces and badges throughout the land. It may have just been a result of knowing that I should be on the lookout for these items with Paper Mario still fresh in my memory, but at the same time I felt like I was able to keep relative pace along the way in regards to collecting these items much better than before. It felt like I always, or at least usually, had the tools necessary to gather all imminent hidden items in a given area instead of having to wait several chapters down the road before I could collect things. Of course, I still had to return to previous areas and spin jump the floors on occasion but it didn't seem as prevalent in this game.

I also have to commend the improved mini games. Is improved the right word? Let's just say the mini games and leave it at that, because in my opinion, the mini games in Paper Mario were a joke. Here, they play like actual mini games and for the most part, are enjoyable to play. And on the subject of mini games, this brings up the obvious innovations of Mario's new found acquirable skills: Paper Mario, Plane Mario, Boat Mario, and Tube Mario. Although their initial wow factor wears off after several hours of play - why does Tube Mario's directional controls suck so much? - their implementation is so perfectly fitting. Plane Mario and Boat Mario is especially awesome, and in many ways, I wish they had done a little more with each, well at least Boat Mario. Although, the final slog through the waves outside Pirate's Grotto is simply delightful. But what makes these four skills amazing is how they further reinforce the whole paper-thin notion. A paper airplane in a game based around paper? Last time I saw this level of logical cleverness was in Comix Zone (hint hint).

Story depth is another area that's been greatly improved, and I don't mean the general plot that Mario's working his way through, but the level of backstory connected to the world. In your average Mario game, I'd find this unnecessary and frankly, unwieldy. But given that this is an RPG, backstory can only help. It enhances the immersion factor of the overall game world be it Grifty's tales of historic tragedy that lays the foundation of the Thousand-Year Door and Crystal Stars, or Luigi's negligent exaggerations of his own adventure to save Princess Eclair. Without adding extraneous gameplay, the world has suddenly become so much more interesting. Instead of just whipping up a handful of generic Crystal Stars needed to safeguard impending doom or whatever, they instead have a tale of woe that's not only connected with them but with the world at large. This gives a much needed importance to the Crystal Stars as opposed to collecting another set of seven "things" just for the heck of it because otherwise gamers might realize the plot is nothing more than thinly veiled gobbledygook to tide over forty hours of gameplay.

But there are a few miserable quirks that managed to find their way into the sequel as well. The game still has a general sluggishness to it. However, I didn't find this to fault the game anywhere near as bad as it did in Paper Mario. In Paper Mario, slow was the word of the day and damn near every single element of the game dragged. Here, traversing the word felt slow at times, even with Yoshi, but it was never exactly a nuisance. And although the battles played out exactly as they did in Paper Mario, they never felt anywhere near as lethargy induced, especially once you started making use of some very convenient badges that sped up battle tenfold. The only element that truly felt reminiscent of the slow tedium of the first game was the micro-game actions that were used to either boost or make use of a specific attack or special in battle. Some of them are just so annoying that I never bothered using that particular move; some are aggravating, like Vivian's Fire Jinx, a move I relied on quite often thus having to bear the awfulness that is that move's micro-game far too many times. Stuff like that turned battles into ventures of exasperation. At least I'm getting my single Star Point for these sufferings. Hmm, I'm starting to think a solitary point is merely a slap in the face.

One of the worst offenders of the game, as mentioned before, is Zess T. Tayce T. was already a horrible design decision that existed in the first game, and for some reason it was carried over into this game and slightly expanded upon. As I mentioned in my write up for Paper Mario, the concept of recipes in and of itself is not so much the issue as it is the hours of hoofing it around the world over and over again to collect the necessary ingredients because my goddamn inventory can only hold ten fucking items...unless I managed to pick up the Strange Sack in the Pit of 100 Trials. Even then, twenty slots isn't exactly a godsend. Why can't items stack like in any normal, well-designed inventory system, or is that simply far too logical? I could easily live with a limited inventory if item stacking could exist. Please, let me place all those necessary cake mixes into a single inventory slot instead of filling my entire sack to the brim. I get it, we can only hold ten (or twenty) items no matter what they are, but it's asinine in my opinion.

What makes things worse is Zess T. uses dishes as ingredients more so than Tayce T. This is just annoying as the potential ingredient list grows exponentially. Without a guide in hand, there's no freakin' way I'd experiment with countless possibilities for hours on end. Hell, it takes hours on end just to collect all the necessary ingredients and complete all her available recipes even when using a guide. A far more convenient way would be able to dump a boatload of ingredients off at Zess T.'s house whenever I'm in the neighborhood which would then stock her pantry from which I could pull whatever ingredients I might want to make use of. Sure, it wouldn't solve the blind experimentation, but it would cut down on necessary travel time and allow me to stock certain items for key dishes that I might wish to prepare. Otherwise, the whole system is rather pointless. Why bother jumping from locale to locale on an epic fetch quest time and time again just to make the only useful dishes Zess T. has to offer when I can just buy some Ultra Shrooms and Jammin' Jellies and make a few Jelly Ultras? Well, I guess Whacka Bumps and Golden Leaves are free, so there is that, but do I really want to travel through Twilight Trail again? Even if there's a chance to pick off an unsuspecting Amazy-Dayzee? Eh...ok, but expect a good amount of grumbles to accompany the excursion.

Even with the few nuisance carryovers from the first game, the improvements in The Thousand-Year Door over Paper Mario are palpable. Everything that makes this game work helps it shine far and above its predecessor, even if the game feels like a near facsimile of it 90% of the time. They realized (most of) their faults and tidied them up giving the game life. Unlike Paper Mario where I had to step away for a few weeks while working my way through Shy Guy's Toy Box, I tackled The Thousand-Year Door without break. I never hit a rough patch, even while fighting my way through some of the torturous errands in the end game to obtain 100% completion. Which reminds me of one final, and glorious improvement over the original: the ability to carry on after you beat the game so you can tie up any loose ends. I wasn't aware this was the case at first and only found out when I wondered what would happen if I clicked on my save after finishing the game. Considering I had one final element to complete, something I thought I flat out missed during my playthrough and accepted as such, I was finally able to cross off that final item even after I beat the game. Happy days!

All in all, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a great game, a massive improvement over the original, and generally a must play game. It still feels a bit too unique to be considered a proper RPG, but the elements are there, so even a die hard RPG fan can appreciate the game. More than anything, and it's possible it's nothing more than my imagination cleverly tricked by all the appealing elements of the game, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as slow as Paper Mario. That alone is a massive selling point for this game. And guess what? It's got some great music and atmospherics as well. But why would that ever be challenged? Personal favorites include Rogueport Sewers, Glitzville, and X-Naut Fortress.

Nano-Rant:

I do have a couple additional gripes. One's out of personal stupidity while the other's out of straight up developer stupidity.

As mentioned, there was one final thing left on my checklist that I failed to cross off by the time I beat the game. I had one final entry left in Goombella's tattle log. It was frustrating the hell out of me, especially since I looked up online what I was missing and ended up misreading it thinking I was missing an alternate Bowser fight. As I said, my own stupidity. Turns out I was overlooking Gus - a potential battle that is literally planted in front of you from the very beginning of the game. Expecting some sort of story tie in, I just kept paying him his stupid toll and never bothered to pick a fight. Boy, did I ever have egg on my face.

But then, there's the real crux of evil lying in the underbelly of this game. It's not Bowser, or Sir Grodus, or even the Shadow Queen. It's the goddamn Trouble Center. Fuck that place. Everything I hate about Zess T., and her inability to hop on down to the local supermarket for some fresh ingredients despite living right next door to the fucking store, the Trouble Center takes that entire experience and kicks it up a notch, or rather a ton of thorny, rash-inducing notches. Fortunately, most of the troubles are pretty tame and quick to finish, but then there are some troubles that make you want to pull your hair out, like Bub-ulber's sudden gluttonous urges or General White's wanderlust. Are you seriously going to have me trek to every single locale in the game to find this asshole? Wait, he even revisited Goldbob? Are you fucking kidding me? This entire trouble has essentially become moot, except wait, I have the package. Fetch quests are one thing, but having the player bounce around the game while adding zero merit, even as a side quest, is flat out garbage. It's a waste of time and nothing more. Side quests, while purely optional, should at least enliven the overall experience in some way. This enlivens crap. Seriously. This is the developer running out of ideas and saying, "Hey, let's make the player visit every location again for the nth time because we already know they'll never tire of zipping in and out of Rogueport Sewers or making use of Cheep-Cheep Blimp because they already have to do this tiresome bullshit for countless other meaningless side quests." Brilliant!

Nano-Win:

But fear not. I won't end this post on tidings of misery. There's a couple unexpected surprises that came with this game as well.

First, a bit of a personal surprise because I realized I missed a number of things during my initial playthrough back in '06. One such thing was Ms. Mowz. I had no idea Ms. Mowz could become a partner, but what really fascinated me about her is that she's a complete overhaul of what was essentially the I Spy badge in Paper Mario.

Secondly, I love the 2-D Bowser levels. Even if they're short, easy, and add no real value to the game, the premise of them is just awesome. I wish there was one for every chapter.

Rating: 4.5 crickets out of 5*

I combed through Hooktail Castle on multiple occasions throughout the course of the game, including using Ms. Mowz, trying to find this mysterious cricket because I'm too thickheaded to realize it's a byproduct of a SFX badge. I don't use them and therefore would never put two and two together. Oh well.