When Dead Rising was released for the Xbox 360 last decade, it was the game that almost pushed me to buy the console sooner rather than later. But it wasn’t long before the user reviews began to hit the net…and I thought, screwdat! The game was painted as a huge frustration that no one wanted to finish (or couldn’t finish). Even so, being the zombie game lover that I am, I waited until the price dropped significantly on the game and purchased it so I’d have it once I bought a 360 (after that had a drastic price drop as well). Meanwhile, I leant the game to a friend, who gave it back to me rather quickly, saying he didn’t have the patience for it and gave up. Yeesh? Was it really as bad as they said?

In the meantime, the game was ported to the Wii as Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop. Reviews said that, aside from lesser graphics, less zombies on screen at one time, and some bosses and other game play features being removed, plus weird additions like annoying zombie poodles and birds that dropped bombs (huh?), the port fixed everything that was wrong with the 360 version. So I got me a copy of it and blasted through it on the Wii. It was fun and bone chilling: the kind of zombie mall experience the original 1978 Dawn of the Dead movie should have been (the game coming closer to the brilliance of the far superior remake. That’s right. I said it.). Whether you’re playing on the Wii or 360, this is the way you should feel if you were in a mall filled with zombies—and I’m not talking the blue faced kinds like in the Romero farce. Dead Rising shows you what Dawn of the Dead 1978 didn’t—that being trapped in a mall with zombies would be terrifying, not laughable pie throwing, carnival music absurdity.

So these past few weeks I decided to finally take on Dead Rising 360. And all the reviewers were RIGHT!!! I can see why people hated this game. Patience and a learning curve is one thing, but this game is structured so that you are basically required to replay the beginning parts over and over and over again before you can move on. Why? Because the game only offers ONE save slot and the game is conquered by accomplishing timed ‘cases.’ So if at any time you save because you’re low on health and don’t want to have to do a bunch of stuff over if you die, you could be saving yourself into a corner—a time frame that is too short to finish the time based case you’ve already begun. Fail this case and guess what? You have to begin the game over again. That’s the most glaring problem, but there are others.

Your character is Frank, a reporter determined to get his story. So as you run around the mall trying to solve the mystery of how the zombie outbreak began while beating down zombies with everything a mall has to offer—from purses to guns–you also have to take photos, fight occasional ‘psychopaths’ (aka: bosses), and rescue survivors then escort them back to the security room while fending off hundreds of zombies. You get constant calls from this dude watching the monitors in the security room suggesting you go take care of other situations in the mall, called ‘scoops.’ These scoops are not detrimental to finishing the game, but are so tempting (because they earn you level up points to give your character a fighting chance)  that you end up getting sidetracked by them, and forget you have a timed case that needs taking care of. Add to this the fact that essentially there is no safe place from the hoards of zombies to heal yourself or switch your real time inventory, and you are talking major TV screen/flying game controller marriage… Of course, to make it all better, you can actually enter any of the clothes stores in the mall to change—and the cut scenes reflect your new threads. I squeezed Frank into a child’s size shorts and Tee with a baseball cap—he looked like he was wearing a cut off shirt and Daisy Dukes (like every guy in the 80s), which revealed his hairy legs and chest and bulging muscles. Frank’s hot and the eye candy gave me motivation to press on with the game despite the frustration.

You can’t really manage to level up your health bar, fighting abilities or inventory spaces simply by plowing through the game from start to finish, because it gets too hard too fast, leaving you at too much of a disadvantage. This was an obvious (and ridiculous) decision by the developers, because you are provided with an option when you die to either load your save OR save your current ‘stats’ and quit. What happens when you do this is, you carry over all the level ups you’ve earned so far into a new game. In other words, the game is structured so that you have to keep replaying the earliest part of the game to gain all your level ups to make you strong enough to continue into the hard part of the game. Dumbest…game play…ever (at least, until I review the next game that pisses me off).

So this is where the ‘patience’ comes in. Be prepared to intentionally replay a minimal part of the game continuously so that you can then move ahead and complete it once you’ve become more of a bad ass (and probably a hairy ass if Frank’s legs and chest are any indication…). It’s not as annoying as it sounds to repeat the beginning stages of the game, thanks to the fact that I pretty much read every fricking message board thread, walkthru, and hint I could find on the internet. I’ve never been required to do so much research before starting a VIDEO GAME in my life. So, with approximately five printouts of helpful hints and guides in hand, I began my quest to conquer Dead Rising 360, and here I share my techniques with you.

In short, these are the goals:

1)    Level up your skills, items and health by playing early stages of the game over and over again by collecting easy to accomplish PP (explained below).

2)    Get the mini-chainsaw as soon as possible and build it to maximum strength for the simplest way to defeat all enemies.

3)    Open the shortcut in the bathrooms of Paradise Plaza and Wonderland Plaza

FOR STARTERS

Note that this guide of sorts is written with the assumption that you are playing the game, so you will understand everything I’m referencing and nothing will really come as a spoiler. Before you begin the game, print out a walkthru. It is an absolute necessity. I suggest this walkthru:

Dead Rising Walkthru

The creator of that thorough walkthru does a great job of separating the ‘cases’ from the ‘scoops.’ Since scoops aren’t essential to completing the game, what I did was create a Word document with the ‘cases’ portion of the walkthru and a separate document with the ‘scoops’ portion, and then printed them out. Scoops are also where you will find the majority of techniques for defeating psychopaths, because most of the time, a scoop IS a psychopath challenge. Anyway, keep your two cheat sheets close at hand (and separate), and when you need to jump from reading one to the other, simply pause the game. For the most part, the two separate guides are chronological to the way you will handle cases and scoops while playing, but since the game has a free-roaming aspect, the scoops can become a bit jumbled—you may trigger one before the other or have them open simultaneously and they will overlap with cases. Again, if scoops are getting thrown at you too fast and you see the timer bars quickly diminishing on screen, ignore them completely and just focus on your case. I don’t think it’s truly possible to experience every aspect of this game on the first play through, because time and your lack of leveling up will not permit it. You can also prolong the initiating of a scoop’s timer countdown by simply NOT answering the phone until you have a moment to consider taking on the scoop!

HOW AN EXTRA SAVE SAVES THE DAY

Here’s a handy ‘cheat’ I used to work around the single slot save system, but this only works if you have more than one storage device on your 360. Since my 360 has a small storage space built into the console and I ADDED a hard drive to the console later, whenever I saved during this game, the system would ask me WHERE I wanted to save because it detected the two different save locations!!! So instead of ONE save slot, I actually had TWO!!! This is a total life saver in this game. While in the middle of a timed case, if I desperately wanted to save, I’d alternate between save devices so I’d always have a backup plan if one save slot was cutting it too close to finish the case. This was also great for saving right before a fight in a psychopath scoop—if the scoop took too long and depleted my case time, I could just load the alternate save to focus only on the case and just ignore the scoop completely.

DEAD RISING…AND RISING…AND RISING. LET’S BEGIN PLAYING and REPLAYING.

So let’s begin by building our stats by replaying the early part of the game a bunch of times. I know it sounds boring, tedious, and time consuming, but once you’ve leveled up enough, the rest of the game moves along quickly. Also, you become so familiar with redoing the initial tasks that you don’t have to think about it. And the replay is cut down drastically by the fact that you can skip movies. Also, this is your opportunity to truly get comfortable with the controls, inventory system, combat system and terrible firearms system. In fact, the way I played the game, I predominantly avoided using guns at all because the aiming sucks so much (and you can’t MOVE while shooting, which means you’ll more often than not end up with a zombie attached to your neck). This also means you can avoid the scoop “Shadow of the North Plaza”, in which you battle Cletus, the owner of the Hunting Shack. People do this because once you defeat him, you have unlimited access to guns. However, the best way to defeat him? GUNS! Melee weapons will most likely get you killed in this battle, and guns are few and far between UNTIL you gain unlimited access to the Hunting Shack! So it’s kind of a catch 22. Now believe me, it might be tempting to try to accomplish this, but the shooting system is SO bad that it’s just not worth using guns…and once a gun runs out of ammo…it’s useless. You have to go get another gun. No ammo collecting in this game like in games like Resident Evil. If you are afraid to try to get through the game without guns, fear not. Once we get hooked up with the maxed out mini chainsaw, you’ll never look at a gun again.

Anyway, when the game begins, you can immediately begin building your “PP” (the blue level up bar on screen) as soon as you take control of Frank on the helicopter. See the walkthru for a complete guide to getting the most out of your photos here.

Once you’re in the mall entrance with all the others and some of the dudes are trying to barricade the front door, DO NOT run to the pile in the back right corner of the room yet to get them more supplies as they are asking. First run up to all the survivors standing around and take nice close-ups of their misery for some cherished PP. Take repeated photos if you have enough film. Also, capture some great shots of the numerous zombies right outside the front entrance doors for more PP. When you’re ready, go to that pile of crap in back to trigger the cut scene and your first daring escape from hoards of zombies.

Once the game lands you in the security room (where there’s a SAVE) grab two apple healths from the floor. Your health bar and items slots are a joke at this point, with only four blocks each, so these are the two MAIN things we want to build up in this early part of the game. Unfortunately, your level ups are random, so you never know if you’re going to get a health block, item slot or fighting skill. This is why you have to replay these early parts numerous times. Here are the key things you need to do to level up fast without having to do anything too dangerous or challenging over and over again.

I HAVE TO GO PP!!!

When you first leave the security room through the duct, there are TWO survivors right on the roof!!! Get the man by the elevator to the right, then get him to follow you around to the other side on the left, where you’ll find his wife. Score some nice PP for getting them both to join you—and note the door right here. This is another way into the warehouse that doesn’t require you using the elevator—and can score you a great early weapon in the sledgehammer if you jump across the shelf tops to get it. But don’t do that yet. Take the survivors back to the security room for escort completion bonus PP. See? This is why you want to replay this part of the game over and over. EASY PP. Of most importance is learning to use the escort guide markers. To do this, hold the right trigger when escorting and you will see a blue marker on screen. Aim it to a point ahead of you and press Y to mark the place you want the survivor or survivors to travel to. They are much more likely to stay on path this way as compared to just pressing the Y button to say “follow me!” Of course, you have to make sure to be ahead of them when possible to clear the path of zombies, and once they reach the marker, you have to set a new one, which takes some quick controller usage during more hectic times of the game, which is why it’s good to practice leaving markers now with these two and no zombies around.

Once you go back out into the mall after dropping off the first two survivors, make sure to remember where this door to the warehouse is (note it on your map), because this is your only entrance to the safety of the security room (after you pass the dozens of zombies that eventually fill the warehouse and elevator EVERY time you go through it). Anyway, just to the right of your character after entering the mall is the camera shop where you can reload your camera at any time. A little further on are steps. Look at your map for an S. That is the bathroom, which is down the halls behind the stairs. That’s a good emergency save when you need it. However, up those steps to the left you’ll find the Colombian Roastmasters. A few necessities make this a great place to stop frequently. On the counter are pizzas if you need a desperate health boost. But you’re better off running right past them to the orange juice at the end of the counter. It gives you more health, not to mention you can take TWO orange juice containers and stick them in the nearby blender to create a stronger health juice. Wahoo! Try to always have one of these on you. Finally, just to the right of where you got the OJ, you can jump OUT the window overlooking the mall to land on an orange awning—where you’ll find a Katana every time you reenter this section. This is another great early weapon to use until we get to the ultimate weapon…which I’ll tell you about in a little while. You can do a little exploring, but before long you’ll get the “Cut From the Same Clothe” scoop. You have time to do this one, at least the first part of it. It takes place right in Colombian Roastmasters, gives you practice taking photos, scores you PP, and lets you practice killing zombies without being swarmed by them. See the walkthru for details.

Soon you’ll be getting the first case, “Backup for Brad” in the Food Court, but while you’re waiting for that  to happen, you’ll have time to do some other things that score you great PP very easily. For starters, any time you enter a place that serves food, see if there are any frying pans around. If so, take them, place them on a stove and let them heat up until they turn red. Sure, they make a ‘hot’ weapon, but they also score you PP!!! Awesome. You can also stick meat or pizza in microwaves for free PP. You’ll sometimes have some serious zombie problems, especially in Al Fresca Plaza, which is always overrun by them, but just remember, if you die, just save your stats and start over to go after more easy PP. Here are other PP bonuses to watch out for in this part of the game (and actually, at any point in the game, it’s just easier to do early on when there are less zombies and cases):

Back in the Entrance Plaza, if you enter Jason Wayne’s Sporting Goods and melee each clothes rack, you’ll eventually score PP points after a few hits on each. Melee all of the racks for bonus PP. Also, in Wonderland Plaza, as long as you aren’t about to face off against the chainsaw wielding clown (Eek! More below on that scoop.) you can go up on the platform for the Space Ride at any time, wait for a car to come to a stop, jump in, and then let it take you for a ride once around the plaza for some free PP.

Meanwhile, in the horrifying Al Fresca Plaza, if you go into “Flexin”, the gym, the zombies won’t follow you. Here, you can save in a corner and heal yourself with no distraction, but even better, you can score major free PP. First, grab a dumbbell and beat the hell out of the sandbags hanging in the back of the room. Each one will deflate after about 5 or 6 hits. You get PP for each one, plus bonus PP for destroying them all!! Next, go to the front of the room and run on each treadmill. I’m not kidding. Get on the treadmill and just push up on the left stick until you get a good flow going. Once rewarded with an onscreen PP bonus, move on to the next treadmill and do the same. If you run on all the treadmills until you get PP for each one, you get even more bonus PP for doing them all. Now, another thing that might happen in Al Fresca this early on is that you’ll get  the “Barricade Pair A and B” scoop about some guys in a store right across the way. I tried, foolishly, to go save them, but the odds are stacked against you. First of all, the door is blocked, so you have to try to move everything out of the way while you’re being surrounded by zombies. Once you do get inside, if you don’t manage to drop something in front of the door to re-block it, zombies just start coming in before you can even talk to the two guys trapped inside. On top of that, you have to FIGHT one of the guys, who has gone a little crazy and begins beating you senseless!!! If you manage to take him down (I did it in a few tries with a metal shelf that had been barricading the door) you can grab some healing items in there, talk to the other guy, and get him to join you for PP points. Unfortunately, you have pretty much no chance of getting him out of Al Frecsa alive because of the amount of zombies. Save yourself , save the world! Let him die I tell you! At least you get PP for getting him to join you.

So, yeah, Al Fresca is tough to get through, but if you want to risk it, you can take that route to get to your “Brad” case. Otherwise, you can run through Leisure Park, where you can easily avoid all the zombies by running around them. As soon as you enter the Food Court, the first battle begins. I’d suggest you save somewhere nearby before going into the Food Court. Brad gives you a gun, and then you have to help him shoot down the gun toting loon up on a platform above. This is where you have to learn how to use this mess of a firearms system, and you might die on your first few tries. Avoiding the gun fire, bombs he throws (yep, bombs), and staying close to healing items scattered throughout the food court are your main priorities. Oh, and making sure Brad doesn’t die. Your next priority is to shoot the bastard trying to kill you! If you run out of ammo as you struggle with the aiming system, make your way over to Brad as quickly as possible and he’ll actually give you another gun!

Once the fight is over, it kind of sux, because you’re immediately escorting Brad, but you’re not told that. If he gets too far ahead of you (he’s leading you), he gets into major zombie fights and will eventually die so you must keep up with him, which doesn’t give you much time to do another freebie PP right in the Food Court, but you can do it later if not now. For this free PP, go into Cris’s Fine Foods. Look for a wall display of plates. Practice your aim with your gun while you still have one, and shoot out each of the upper plates. For the bottom row of plates, you can jump on the table and melee them to conserve ammo. You get PP for each plate, plus bonus PP for all of them. Of course, if Brad dies in the meantime, the case goes cold and you can’t officially complete the game even though you can keep running around the mall. Who cares? Save your new stats (hopefully you’ve leveled up) and start over. Really, you should NOT play much beyond the fight with Brad without starting over, because then you are getting too far into the game, and having to do it all over again would suck. So what you CAN do is either run around killing zombies to build PP and then save your stats when you get bored, or you can just let the zombies eat you and then save your stats.

IF YOU ONLY GET ONE SCOOP…MAKE IT THE BIG ONE WITH THE CHERRY CHAINSAW ON TOP

After Brad, your next big fight is with the chainsaw wielding clown in Wonderland Plaza (right next to the Food Court) for the “Out of Control” scoop. This scoop is a MUST and the key to you conquering this game without much fuss. I actually played this part several times as well because of the PP and because I really needed to figure out how to kill him. Actually, the solution is SO easy. So, when you are ready to take him on, you can move ahead with the game and be done with all the restarting nonsense.

FIRST, when you get a call about the “Out of Control” scoop, as long as you’re not in the middle of a case, head to Wonderland Plaza. But there are some crucial things to do before you go into Wonderland Plaza and up onto the Space Ride platform. You really MUST have firearms with you for this one, as well as some health, because melee is just not strong enough yet, and it’s too dangerous to get too close to him. First, definitely get some wine from the Food Court next door to Wonderland Plaza (you can also do the Cris’s Fine Foods plate task here if you have a gun, or you can at least throw items at most of the plates to destroy them—you might even level up before this battle). Also, if you have two SAVE slots like I did, locate the bathroom on the first floor of Wonderland Plaza and SAVE. Then go back upstairs.

If you’re looking at the steps of the Space Ride on the west side of the map, head to your character’s left. At the top of the stairs nearby, you will see at least FOUR cop zombies. If you beat them to death with a melee weapon, they drop HANDGUNS!!! I’d suggest getting at least two guns, although, once you learn the clown’s patterns, you really only need one gun with 30 bullets. Go back onto the Space Ride platform and operate the controls on the left. After the cut scene, you are in a battle with the clown. First thing to do? Fricking run!!! Get AWAY from him, off the Space Ride platform. Let him chase you up and down the second floor of the mall. Avoid his attacks and wait for the perfect opportunity to aim and fire (while avoiding zombies no less). The best time to strike is when he is blowing up his balloon and doing a little dance. If you get him right, you’ll pop the balloon, he’ll start coughing, and you’ll be able to deplete a fair amount of his life bar—if you don’t pop the balloon, you have to then stay away from it or shoot it when he lets it go, because it has some crap in it that hurts you when it pops. You can also get the clown when he’s winded after throwing knives at you, but be prepared to run after he regains his composure. Other than that, absolutely avoid his chainsaw spins and other evil moves. If you shoot at him when he’s not in one of the vulnerable moments I just described, he will block your bullets—meaning you are WASTING THEM. Be patient and take as long as necessary to shoot him at the right times.

Here are the two GREAT things about the clown—the two key ingredients to making this game a breeze from here on out. First, no matter where you kill the clown, when the cut scene is over, he will be dead on the platform of the Space Ride. Next to him will be the ultimate weapon in this game. The mini chainsaw. Actually, there should be two of them. Even better. EVERY time you leave Wonderland Plaza and reenter, a mini chainsaw will have respawned. Which means unlimited mini chainsaws, provided you can make it to them—and usually you can’t unless you still have a working chainsaw, because after this, the platform is always FILLED with zombies. But fear not. We have a way to make these things virtually invulnerable to breaking. As is, they will break after a bit of zombie slashing, so we want to build them up fast. But more on that below. First, we need to lock in the second crucial part of beating this game.

When you beat the clown and get his chainsaws (you can drop the guns at this point to make room for them), immediately go back to the Space Ride controls and operate them again. This is your first step in opening up the shortcut!  See the walkthru in the “Out of Control” section in scoops for more details. In short, you save a guy who takes you to the bathroom downstairs to show you the short cut to Paradise Plaza, which is kind of through the mirror in the bathroom!  This shortcut will be your friend for the rest of the game. It allows you to escort survivors closer to the security room MUCH easier and it is the ONLY safe route to get from one side of the mall to the other. As we know by now, Al Fresca Plaza is a place you pretty much never want to pass through because it is crammed with zombies so you’re just asking for defeat by heading through it. The other important thing is a problem you will have from here on out in Leisure Park, and believe me, you will NEVER want to cut through there again. There are respawning convicts in a jeep, with a machine gun attached to the back of their jeep. Unless you fancy yourself a true gamer, SKIP THIS CONFRONTATION. You will sacrifice some chick they are harassing, but who cares? Because you pretty much will NOT be able to defeat these guys. Guns take too long to aim and leave you open to tons of zombies that roam Leisure Park. Plus, by the time you get a sight on these guys, they will have already shot you numerous times AND run you over a few times. You will be dead, and you will have to start the game over again (or reload your last save). You don’t have time to even stop and eat food, because again, if they don’t get you (which they will) while you’re stopped for a snack, the zombies will. It is a NIGHTMARE. Just trust me. SKIP IT. Especially since these dudes magically return later even if you DO kill them. Pointless. Don’t be a hero. Be a survivor. Just use the Wonderland/Paradise short cut permanently.

Okay. Whether you can get shortcut dude to the security room or not, at least he’s opened up the shortcut for you. The other great thing is the shortcut being right next to SAVE points in each bathroom. Love it. You should actually leave shortcut dude in the safety of the bathroom while you go right back out into Wonderland Plaza and begin the chainsaw building process (I’d SAVE first).

WHO WROTE THE BOOK ON DEFEATING DEAD RISING?

Other than the mini chainsaw, the shortcut, PP, and health, your other best friends are books in this game. Annoying thing about books is that they take up slots in your inventory, however, they also make life SO easy. Books scattered throughout the mall have added effects on stuff in your inventory when you hold on to them. Most importantly, using three slots for books to beef up the mini chainsaw is the key to winning this game, even if you don’t get any other books. By now, you should have a larger number of slots in your inventory (hopefully at least six), so the three books should be doable. It’s nice to have a second mini chainsaw on hand, but if you have all three books, one mini chainsaw at a time will do—you just want to make sure that when it eventually begins blinking in your inventory, you get back to Wonderland Plaza soon to pick up a fresh one. You might only have to do this about 4 or 5 times throughout the remainder of the game if you have the three books (as compared to like, every FEW MINUTES without them). Having these three books in your inventory adds little purple symbols next to your chainsaw that give it a super longevity. You can use it to mow down gangs of zombies and psychopaths for numerous cases and scoops with no worries about it breaking. And it cuts everything like butter. Psychopaths can be taken down in 5 or 6 hits. Sure, they might have guns, but the amount of times they can shoot you when you run up to them and saw away is minimal. You most likely will NOT die or lose even more than two bars of health before they are dead. This is the key to defeating this game.

So let’s get back to getting these books. Conveniently, one of them is in a bookstore right near where you defeated the clown on the second floor of Wonderland Plaza. Find Sir-Book-A-Lot on your map and get to it. There will most likely be two men in the store because you probably already got a call for the “Japanese Tourists” scoop. IGNORE them until you locate the book “Criminology” amongst the shelves. Grab it and you have immediately built up your mini saw a bit. Just make sure to ward off any zombies who may follow you into the book store. Now, provided you have a slot to do so, pick up the Japanese language book so that you can talk to the two men in the store. It takes a lot of talking to convince them to join you, but it’s worth the PP—just keep an eye on the front door for zombie ambushes. Once they join you and you are…um…on the same page, you can drop the Japanese language book to free up space in your inventory. If you want, you can equip these two with weapons…for instance, you can go back to the zombie cops at the top of the stairs, saw them in half, grab a gun for each guy and hand it to them will fending off the zombies. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough slots to pick up the guns without dropping something else. Simply exchange the item for the gun (provided the area is free of zombies), hand the gun to the survivor, then pick the item back up. If you have time, get these two to the bathroom downstairs to join shortcut dude, and whisk them all to Paradise Plaza to escort them to the security room. It’s tricky getting them through the plaza and warehouse, and you may lose one or two on the way, but at least you tried. If you don’t want to save them, then screw it. Let them all die. But you also have to get the other two books for the chainsaw power-up. Those books are in Contemporary Reading right in Paradise Plaza, across from the door to the warehouse. You can either lead your survivors in there, or just get the survivors up to safety then come back down for the other two books, depending on how confident you are in your escorting skills. Either way, once you are in Contemporary Reading, grab “Entertainment” and “Engineering.” Your mini chainsaw is now maxed out with three purple symbols and should last you for a LONG time. SWEET. Like I said, as long as you have six slots, you should be good. Have at least one chainsaw, the three books, and at least one health with you at all times. You will very rarely need a gun from this point on, and I’ll point out below when you do. Eventually, when you really DO need  guns much later in the game, the shop owner is gone from the Hunting Shack so you can raid the place.

If you have the slots free, there are some other books that are beneficial to have on you. I’m only going to cover the ones you can easily pick up without having to beat any psychopaths.

HEALTH BOOSTS: Also in Sir-Book-A-Lot in Wonderland Plaza is “Health 1”, which increases the healing effect of food items by 50% percent!!! The same goes for “Health 2” in Sinister Read in the Entrance Plaza.

INCREASE PP BONUSES: If you want to level up faster and have the item space to hold another book, some books will help with this. In Sinister Read is “World News”, which gives you more PP when you escort survivors. “Horror Novel 1” in Sinister Read gives you 25% more PP for killing zombies, as does “Horror Novel 2” in Bachman’s in Paradise Plaza. Finally, “Camera 1” in Contemporary Reading in Paradise Plaza gives you 25% more PP for photos. Personally, until I had significantly increased my inventory slots, I only carried the mini chainsaw boosts, then the health boost, and finally, held onto a PP boost book for a little while. Obviously, the zombie boost is most logical since you can easily kill plenty of them for PP points with your maxed out mini chainsaw. Since escorting is a bitch, the chances of using the book’s powers enough to make the slot sacrifice worth it are minimal. And photos—well, after a while, taking photos is really the last thing on your mind. There ARE a bunch of randomly placed items in the mall you can photograph for easy PP, but finding the time to do that is not easy.

WHAT THE WALKTHRU MAY WALK AROUND…

From this point on, with your maxed out mini chainsaws, you can pretty much zip through the cases in this game with a walkthru. However, here are some major tips for later in the game that aren’t mentioned in the walkthru I used. This is pretty much chronological and will save you some heartache during other Psychopath Scoops.

1. At some point in the game, you will walk right into trouble in Paradise Plaza involving a huge group of cult dudes in yellow raincoats. With your maxed mini saw, this is a BREEZE and will score you huge PP. After the movie, your goal is to simply kill them all! It takes like ten seconds with the chainsaws. SO easy. You then save some chick from a box and can escort her back to the security room. Great news. After this, every time you return to Paradise Plaza, there will be dozens of Raincoats standing motionless and praying amongst the zombies. Saw them all every time you pass through here for major PP. Just beware, if you don’t do it fast enough, one of them may blow up, and you’ll get damaged if you’re too close to him. Yeah, they’re like a suicide cult.

2. DO “MARK OF THE SNIPER” scoop!!! When you get this scoop, seriously try to find a way to squeeze it in because it scores you a sniper rifle to easily handle the scoop “A Strange Group” shortly after. In Mark of the Sniper, you have to avoid the gun fire of a father and his two sons on the upper lever of the Entrance Plaza. Try to have a health or two on you (but at this point, your life bar should be pretty large). Chainsaw in hand, just run right up to each on of them and slash away—4 or 5 hits will kill him. Yes, you will get fired on, from close range even, but the damage is going to be minimal. You can take out all three in like 30 seconds. Just try to heal if need be before chasing the next sniper down. Once they are all dead, you absolutely want to grab ONE of their sniper rifles.

3. “A STRANGE GROUP” scoop. This is the ultimate way to rack up HUGE PP, because when all is said and done, even if you don’t escort all the survivors you rescue back to the security room, you will have gotten PP bonuses for getting them to join you, along with slashing dozens of Raincoats for more PP. But there IS a catch to making this an easy battle, and it is the reason you need the sniper rifle. Also, make SURE you save in the Paradise Plaza bathroom right before going into the theater. When you follow the guide arrow to the movie theater, take your time once you’ve entered the theater (you’ll kill a bunch of Raincoats outside the theater, but this isn’t the challenging part). Down the hall of the theater there is an alcove on the right where a bunch of other Raincoats are standing. Thing is, and I learned this the hard way, if you brazenly run right in and start sawing away at them as you do out in Paradise Plaza, things don’t quite work out as you’d expect. Somehow, one of them manages to grab you and knock you out!!! When this happens, you wake up in a box in another room, wearing ONLY underwear and having had ALL your inventory stripped from you as well. You have to quickly grab one of the very few items in the area, because the other side of the room is FILLED with Raincoats!!! And you have to take them ALL on. Only when you kill them do you get a passcode to open the door out of the room. Unfortunately, you still don’t get all your items back—at least not immediately. I let myself die once I’d escaped and restarted from my save point in the Paradise Plaza bathroom right before entering the theater because I didn’t want to miss out on all the survivor PP, so I don’t know what becomes of you if you fail this scoop.

Here’s how you kill these guys so you can get into the room they are protecting to kill their leader and save the survivors. Very SLOWLY walk down the hall, hugging the LEFT wall, until you see the alcove coming up on the right. Walk just far enough to see maybe one or at most two of the praying Raincoats. Pull out your sniper rifle and try to aim for their green masks. Don’t waste precious bullets here. Usually two bullets take them down. It also wakes them up and they begin walking towards you. Blow them away quickly if this happens, because if not, they could pull a suicide bombing on you. Once you’ve taken down the first two, again, move slightly closer along the left wall until you see a couple more and repeat the procedure. Just keep doing this until ALL the Raincoats in the alcove have been defeated. As long as you do it swiftly and quietly, you’ll only have to take out two at a time because the others remain still in their praying positions.

Enter the theater for a cut scene with their leader. He’s supposed to be a bit of a challenge with his big sword. But do I even need to say it? 5-6 shots with the mini chainsaw. EASY. After that, Raincoats will stream into the theater down only ONE aisle. Take them out with your chainsaw as they approach you for the mere purpose of being slaughtered! It’s ridiculously simple. Once they are all gone, run to each of the chairs to untie the survivors and get some more PP. Now you can try to escort them all back to the security room for mega PP. The halls of the theater will now contain some zombies. Grab the dead leader’s sword off the floor and give it to one of the survivors. Then run out into the hall, where you will see several cop zombies. Saw them to pieces along with the other zombies to clear a path, grab the weapons as they drop them, then run back to the room and hand each survivor a weapon. You can usually equip everyone with a weapon and then have a better chance of getting more of them back to the security room in one piece.

4. BOMBCASE. This obligatory case can be a bitch—unless you have your mini chainsaw and a few strong healing items. Yes, you have to go into the parking tunnels that are absolutely FILLED with wall to wall zombies, and locate five trucks with bombs in them that you have to collect (they don’t take up inventory spots). Initially, there is a truck you can get in to drive quickly to each bomb truck. Unfortunately, the truck takes damage the more zombies you run over with it (but you do score plenty of PP by doing this), and eventually the truck dies, leaving you ON FOOT in the midst of all these zombies!!! And no, the trucks with the bombs are not useable. My truck only lasted me for TWO bombs!!! The bigger concern is that you are being chased by Carlito in his own truck! This isn’t so bad when you have a truck as well, but once you are on foot, it’s brutal. Carlito will run you over, back over you, and even throw bombs out his window at you…all while you are being swarmed by zombies!!! That’s why it amazes me that I had to learn the simple key to completing this case on my own without hints from the walkthru. Here’s how. First time you come foot to van with Carlito (usually it’s when he runs you over by coming up behind you) he’ll most likely crash into a wall as he tries to turn the truck around to run you over again. Circle the truck, being careful not to get backed over and that he doesn’t get you with one of his bombs (run away from any of those too). All you have to do is run up to the driver’s side of the truck and slash at Carlito in the window with your mini chainsaw. Yep. 5-6 times and he’s DEAD. After a cut scene, you can then do the rest of the case, still on foot, without worrying about being run over!!! Zombies are a piece of cake with your chainsaw in hand, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. Also, if you want, there are zombies pushing shopping carts if you want to hijack one of those and just mow the zombies out of your way with that. Either way, this case will be over before you know it. I did it in one try despite learning how to accomplish it WHILE I was doing it.

5. THE FINAL HOURS. The weirdest part of the game, here is your opportunity to just roam the mall, simply waiting for the helicopter to come rescue you with no missions to complete. Sure, it’s a great time to slash zombies for PP points, but not quite. The place has been infiltrated by special force soldiers whose job it is to make sure the secret of the zombie mall never gets out! They plan to kill every zombie and human in the place, which means you have to try to stay alive while killing time. You get sweet PP for each soldier you kill. Sure, they all have guns…but you have your chainsaw!!! I simply stayed in the ultimate spot to have all the bare necessities at my disposal. Wonderland Plaza has the bathroom with the SAVE plus an extra mini chainsaw on the Space Ride platform if I should need it, while right next door, the Food Court has all the food items I could need. I ran around taking on the special forces, scoring some PP, then saving on my secondary slot in the bathroom in Wonderland Plaza. Yeah, you’ll take some hits from these guys, but again, just suck it up, run right up to them, and slash them in two hits. They usually travel in packs of two, and there aren’t tons of them, so it’s not all that hard. Once you’ve cleared them all out, go right next door to the Food Court. There will be zombies and more soldiers in here, but you can easily sneak up to the bars on the left and grab healing items to rejuvenate. Then take down every soldier and zombie you see here and return to the freshly respawned Wonderland Plaza to start the whole cycle over again. Rinse and repeat until it’s time to move on to the next part of the game (keep an eye on your clock). When all is said and done with this part, you will have leveled up quite a few times, will have a fresh mini chainsaw in hand, and a couple of healing items as well, plus a fresh SAVE.

6. OVERTIME MODE. As long as you spoke to Isabela and made it to the helipad above the security room in time, you’ll get the ‘first ending’ of the game and unload Overtime Mode, which is the way you get the ‘true ending.’ Overtime mode is ANNOYING, and pretty much just filler so the game can be considered longer. For starters, you have to find a bunch of ingredients for Isabela to use in an experiment and bring them back to her. Follow the walkthru above to know the best order to get the items—and set the Guide Arrow!!! You have plenty of time to get each ingredient, it’s just an obnoxious cat and mouse game that turns into a repetitive fight/heal/fight/heal task. Save frequently in bathrooms. The items don’t take item slots, which is great, but you don’t want to have to keep starting over with this task.

After you bring all the items back to Isabela, the REALLY annoying part begins. Well, first, she needs you to go out into Leisure Park to get a generator from the clock tower. Not too hard—except for the Helicopter flying overhead shooting at you and dropping bombs. Just do this as quickly as possible. Once you’ve brought the generator back to her, she will now need you to go collect TEN queen bees. This means hunting down those zombies with the flailing arms. But here’s the catch. The queen bees DO take up inventory slots, and you won’t have many open. You really need your saw and all its books for zombies and soldiers, health, and at least one soldier’s machine gun at all times to take out the annoying toy helicopters that alert soldiers of your presence. You will make numerous trips to the hideout to hand Isabela the queen bees. I had to do it about 7 times. The good news is, you never really have to leave the North Plaza (where Isabela’s hideout is) to find the zombies, because every time you reenter it from the hideout, there will be new queen bee zombies in the vicinity, often as close as the hallway right outside or the alcove down the end of the hall where the gun shop is. Do expect to get into fights with some soldiers though and those pesky toy helicopters. And if desperate, you may have to go on food hunts to keep yourself alive.

After you’ve handed over all ten queen bees, you end up at the last part of the game, and thankfully, a SAVE. SAVE before moving forward. Now, remember that part in Hitchcock’s The Birds where they had to walk past all the birds really slowly so as not to get attacked? You now have to do that through a tunnel filled with zombies. Isabela has concocted a perfume that repels zombies (no joke) and as long as you hold her hand, the zombies kind of part for you, creating a path. Unfortunately, glitches tend to happen, and you sometimes separate hands. This isn’t really that big a deal. Whip out your saw and slice away. In reality you could take out ALL the zombies, but you risk losing health, and you can’t waste it at this point. Chances are you’ll also saw at Isabela a bit, but she won’t take that much damage and just has to deal with it. Plus, in the crowd of zombies there’s usually one that drops a queen bee!!! If you grab it quickly, you can just throw it ahead of you and immediately kill all the zombies in the vicinity to clear a path for yourself! Follow the walkthru above until you reach the ONE LAST CHANCE to SAVE before the final TWO battles!!! Follow the walkthru to complete the section. When you get outside, you’ll be faced with more zombies and a couple of soldiers!!!! Drop Isabela and kill as many as possible, especially the soldiers. You will find apples behind a cement block where the soldiers were, so heal up.

7. FINAL BOSS. Use the waklthru to learn how to defeat the army tank for the first battle. When accomplished, you are immediately thrust into the final battle. This boss is just a man, and he’s on top of the army tank, as are you—with NO weapons and NO healing items. Zombies are swarming either side of the tank, so whenever you fall off of it (and you will) smash that A button to jump your way back up on it as quickly as possible. As for the boss himself, you are supposed to use your melee skills to defeat him, but he’s easily defeated thanks to a glitch. SWEET! When the battle begins, he is on the top swiveling part of the cannon. You are on the lower level. STAY on the lower level, and quickly move to the edge of the tank (don’t fall off). Wait for the boss to come running at you. Press A to jump and quickly hit X in midair to perform a flying kick, and you will boot the boss right in the face! The wimp will run right back up where he started from!!! In essence, you just have to keep repeating this process to kill him, but timing is everything and you’re sure to screw up. You can do some hand-to-hand with him (aka: button mashing!). He’ll sometimes get in cheap shots, you’ll sometimes fall off the tank. Just do what you must to get yourself back into the flying kick groove as soon as possible. I even got in some cheap shots of my own a few times when he was on the top level and I was on the lower level. I think I busted the guy in the nuts with my fist!!! Either way, I was just persistent, cool and in control, and I defeated the guy without losing more than three of my life blocks—which had been leveled up to nine blocks by the end of the game.

And that’s it. That’s how I conquered Dead Rising. Can’t WAIT to start Dead Rising 2 when it’s released next month.

The 2006 horror film Silent Hill immediately became a favorite of mine when I first saw it. As a long time fan of the video game series, I felt it totally captured the atmosphere of the games but also stood on its own as a tense and suspenseful horror film. Naturally, many ‘purists’ of the video game series say it’s trash and ruined the storyline of the game. Kind of funny, because while I love playing the games for the immersive horror experience, the only problem I’ve ever had with them is that the plots are a convoluted MESS! The movie actually untangles all the confusion and streamlines it, removing the thick fog of speculation: does the evil of Silent Hill really exist or was the main character dreaming? Was it all a physical manifestation of the dark side of the main character’s psyche? Was a crazy cult to blame for releasing the horror? Was the main character involved with a drug ring and simply tripping??? Or was it that pesky UFO that is a possible ending in each game in the series (yet an ending I’ve yet to ever get while playing)?

Actor Sean Bean played the husband of a blonde wife looking for her daughter in Silent Hill, so one night while flicking through the cable channels, I caught a glimpse of a film with Sean Bean as the husband of a blonde wife looking for her daughter. I was perplexed. It looked sort of like Silent Hill, yet things were…different. Was this an alternate reality Silent Hill, just like in the game??? No. In actual reality, it was 2005’s The Dark. Yes. Within a year’s time, actor Sean Bean pretty much played the same role in two very similar movies. But make no mistake. The Dark could practically be a Lifetime movie of the week compared to Silent Hill.

Let’s consider the similarities. Both movies open with cliff scenes, waves crashing on rocks below, a blonde mother chasing after her daughter following a road trip. The mom spends the majority of each movie calling the daughter’s name to the point of nagging. I’d stay lost too if my mother had been on my case that much. The daughter is all Village of the Damned/Children of the Corn-like even before the horror begins, so you can’t really understand WHY the mother loves her so much and doesn’t just let her fall into the hellish abyss for eternity, where the devil child clearly belongs. Both films involve some sort of wacky religious leader creating a cult mentality that involves sacrifice. There’s a frequent need for use of a flashlight to reveal gnarly visuals of decrepit rooms, eerie empty chairs, bathtubs of sludge…you know, when good rooms go bad. And then, there’s Sean Bean trying to bring his family back together but actually being pretty clueless as to the truth of what’s going on. And finally, both films involve mom ending up in some sort of alternate reality.

While Silent Hill takes place in, you know, Silent Hill, The Dark is set on a sheep farm on a mountainside overlooking the sea below. In fact, at times, The Dark feels like it’s borrowing visual and conceptual elements from The Ring. Considering The Dark was released a year before Silent Hill and is based on a book, I don’t think its parallels with the game adaptation are intentional, just REALLY coincidental. Like, freakishly coincidental. So freakishly coincidental that when Sean Bean was offered the script for Silent Hill, he probably exclaimed out loud, “WHOAH. This is freakishly coincidental!”

There’s very little in the way of gore, scares, or horror in The Dark, so it won’t stick with you, it isn’t worth a rewatch, and is definitely not worthy of a blind buy for your horror collection. There are some ‘ooh, creepy!’ moments involving a blonde girl appearing and disappearing (compared to the nightmarish creatures of Silent Hill), a couple of evil sheep shots that won’t even make you gag on your lamb chop dinner, but instead make you wish you were watching the all-out sheep gorefest Black Sheep, and even a classic library microfiche scene so mom can get to the truth while allowing viewers to get a better understanding of what’s going on. This is like an old school Amityville Horror exposition technique (aka: cliché).

My favorite part of the film is the ending. And I don’t mean when the credits role signifying the film is finally over. I’m talking about the twist on the mom stuck in an alternate reality twist. There’s one more final revelation that almost makes the whole movie worth watching. And the funny thing is, the DVD contains an ‘alternate ending’ to the alternate reality ending (confusing!). Luckily, the better of the two endings was used for the final cut, because the unused ending would have taken the film from a passable time killer to a ‘time to kill these filmmakers for wasting my time!’

Next time you’re flicking through the cable stations and you think you’ve entered Silent Hill, turn on your flashlight and take a closer look. Because you may have stumbled into The Dark instead. And there’s just not much to see there.

Half a decade ago, a survival horror game called Obscure was released for the PS2 and Xbox. A simple takeoff on the original Resident Evil formula and 4-years ahead of the re-vamped Resident Evil series in that it was two player survival horror, Obscure was also a ‘teen horror’ about a bunch of high school kids. It was fun because of the two player aspect, but also completely forgettable. Didn’t leave any kind of lasting impression like when the first zombie dogs smashed through the window in Resident Evil or the first hideous creature skulked out of the fog in Silent Hill.

It wasn’t until recently that I discovered there had actually been a sequel released maybe 2 years ago for the Wii and the dusty PS2, which is the system for which I purchased it. I still can’t get into the whole Wiimote experience when it comes to survival horror, not to mention that my video game partner would probably fling one of the Wiimotes through my television screen in frustration if the controls got too difficult. So this weekend, I did indeed dust off my PS2 and we played the overlooked sequel Obscure: The Aftermath.

We really could not recollect anything about the first game (luckily, it’s recapped in the sequel’s manual), but the gist of the sequel is that the survivors of the first game are now in college. You start the game off in the dorms, which means sex, drugs and raves! Getting a ‘look’ prompt wherever you walk and finding funny bulletin board posts about sex and partying in the dorms is funny at first, but soon gets REALLY annoying since it adds nothing to the game—except to hit you over the head repeatedly with the simplicity of the plot being about the two moral decisions college kids should make so they do NOT turn into hideous deformed monsters. But you instinctively click on ever look prompt for fear of missing some more important aspect of the game—and there just really aren’t any important aspects other than to go off and look for some scares and monster bashing fun.

The two player experience is definitely what gives this game its charm, but also makes it a hassle many times. While it should be better to have a real person controlling your partner than AI (which is the case if you play a single player game), the camera refuses to comply, especially if you both walk off to separate sections of a room to explore. Instead of keeping you both locked on the screen until you come closer together and opt to go in the same direction, the game chooses one character’s perspective, leaving the other character as nothing more than an identifying arrow graphic on the side of the screen that signifies that ‘your character is over here somewhere.’ Now imagine having your character lost off screen in the middle of a big monster fight or boss battle, which is exactly what happens in this game. Your friend takes the spotlight in the center of the screen kicking scaly, slimy monster ass while you are just mashing buttons hoping that your character, completely in TV lala land somewhere, is actually accomplishing something.

That’s bad enough, but there are also times when the game REFUSES to switch perspective to the character that NEEDS to be able to see. Take for instance a part in which both characters have to carefully time their movement because giant fan blades are passing over the path ahead. When the first character runs across to safety, the game STAYS with that character and no matter what button you press, the game does not let you revert back to the partner still stuck on the other side of the blades. I had to blindly push my stick until my character appeared on the screen, right as a blade was sweeping by, which means bye bye health bar. At another point, a character with a jumping ability had to swing on a pipe on a wall to get across an electrified floor, but as he makes progress, the camera NEVER shows you where he is, instead staying on the character that is just waiting behind, who has no way of changing his camera angle to bring you back on screen. I had to use the ‘let go’ command when it appeared, jiggle my stick around hoping to get a “take” prompt for the items that were supposedly on the other side of the electrified floor that I couldn’t see and didn’t want to accidentally step on, then ‘feel’ my way back to a ‘jump’ prompt to again grab the pipe. I ended up missing out on an item as a result because my health bar was too precious to waste on a blind scavenger hunt. At times, we actually opted to have one player drop out of the game (which you can do at any time) just so we could get past a section with the AI doing what needed to be done on its own, and then bringing player two back into the game once we were in the clear. Kinda defeats the purpose of a co-op experience.

There are some other major issues. At certain times, you must change to another character because each has different abilities that are needed at specific points in the game. The downside is, unless you’re using a walkthru, you can find yourself standing in front of the single door that takes you forward in the game, only to discover it requires the lock picking pro you left in a safe spot a while back, so you have to backtrack to get him. The game also often fails to give you any indication of how to solve a puzzle the way the cryptic ‘files’ you find in Resident Evil actually hold the key to solving the puzzle if you’re patient enough to decipher them, which means you have to consult a walkthru for the answer frequently in Obscure: The Aftermath.

The biggest problem for someone as save-horny as me (the game could crash at any time!!!) is that every save in the game can be used only once (oh the humanity!), so you are forced to go forward in the game to save again. So if you save then collect a bunch of items or fight a bunch of monsters, you can’t quickly save your progress again. You have to forge ahead and hope the next save isn’t too far away and that you don’t get taken down by more monsters before you get there. The variety of creatures in this game is fairly limited and cliché, and the amount of ammunition and health is also limited, making the game frustrating at times. You can use melee weapons to conserve ammo for boss battles, but you get super damaged every time you do take on a room full of monsters with melee weapons, which means you immediately have to use up the small amount of health you have on you.

If you can overlook some of these glaring problems, the game does have some positive game mechanics as well. First of all, you can fire a weapon WHILE you’re moving—a hugely important feature that not even the hugely action-oriented Resident Evil 4 or 5 bothered to implement. Your inventory of non-weapon items is also just a quick key away. If you’re good with using multiple controller buttons simultaneously, you can actually HEAL yourself while in the middle of a boss battle without having to bring up the official items menu that essentially pauses the game. In fact, you don’t have a choice, since you can’t USE health items while in the items menu. Weird.. The official items menu is only good for switching weapons with your partner or changing weapons, which is a very user-friendly feature. Plus, you have four quick keys on the controller specifically for favorite weapons you want to grab on the fly. Of course, between non-weapon quick key graphics on screen, weapon quick key-graphics on screen, and action prompts on screen like ‘take,’ ‘look,’ and ‘open,’ the screen can get pretty dang full and crowded.

There are also some exciting co-op moments that make it feel like you’re really in a movie and working together. For instance, you at one point climb up to the second level of a library, and as you reach down to pull your partner up, monsters burst into the room below! If you pull her up fast enough, you can avoid a fight, but if you don’t, you have to jump down and help her. Also, during a boat rowing sequence across a lake, one of you has to paddle while the other fights off flying monsters to make sure you both stay alive.

The game also doesn’t offer difficulty settings, but you can get through it without much of a problem, even if there are a couple of stumbling blocks along the way. We reached the end credits of the game in one day—but almost didn’t ‘finish’ the game. Why? Again, if you don’t have a walkthru on hand, you would never know this, but you fight a fairly easy boss and all of a sudden the game’s credits begin to roll and you’re like, “WOW! We rock!!!” However, you can’t skip past the credits to return to the main menu, and for good reason. Once they end, you have almost another two hours of game playing left! Can you imagine how many gamers simply turned the game off after completing the ‘faux’ final boss??? Well, I guess not many since this game is so not popular and probably didn’t get much play by anyone.

But anyway, when you finally do reach the official final boss, it doesn’t matter how much you conserved ammo or health earlier in the game. Why? Because after the faux ending, you continue the game having lost ALL your items. You spend a bit of time running in terror with no way to defend yourself before picking up a few lame weapons and just enough health items to get you through to the end of the game. Then, RIGHT before the final boss, you find a satchel filled with health and weapons to use to fight him! Which means you go into the final boss with no advantage or disadvantage, regardless of how well or poorly you played earlier parts of the game. Who ever heard of a preset inventory to fight a final boss? And how much does that suck for not so-good gamers who find they can’t defeat the final boss with only the items they are given?

Of course, the sex and drugs plot makes the game entertaining in a cheesy way, but it is simply a means to delivering a ridiculously lame plot. This game will most definitely be as forgettable as the first in that regard, but what won’t be forgettable are some of the infuriating game mechanics I’ve already spoken of—not to mention the most annoying of all…the lock pick situation. Yeah, I’ve got to nitpick about the lock pick. The lock picking parts are @#~!%$* infuriating!!! Okay, let me calm down and rephrase. The lock picking parts seriously slow down the momentum because they can take quite a while to accomplish. You simply have a screen graphic of a lock and a pick, and you have to insert the pick into the various gaps in the lock and move them up and down to try to get all the gaps to line up so you have a direct line to the unlock mechanism. It’s tedious and causes serious blurring of your eyes. One of the most obnoxious ‘let’s piss off the game players’ moments the developers programmed into the game has you working on picking a lock RIGHT before a boss battle. Now, there’s a save right before the lock, BUT, once you’ve picked the lock, instead of having an ‘open’ prompt for the door, you are automatically thrown into the room with the boss!!! In other words, if you don’t save BEFORE picking the lock, you simply forfeit your opportunity to save before the boss battle…which would mean being sent back to an earlier save if you die during the battle!!! BUT, saving before picking the lock that leads to the boss battle means…die in the boss battle and you have to, of course, reload your save…right BEFORE the lock pick. Which means picking the lock ALL OVER again. ARGH!!!! And it’s not like you can actually memorize the pattern of the lock pick. You really have to re-figure it out every time. So annoying.

Finally, the game totally sets things up for a second sequel, but let’s consider. The first game was on Xbox and PS2 and wasn’t a hugely successful game. The sequel was on the Wii and the essentially defunct PS2, and was more ‘obscure’ than the original. So are they really going to develop a THIRD game, and for which consoles? Since the series has always been a ‘budget title’ series, I guess they could slap something together for the Wii now that the series has carried over to that platform. And I would play it, despite the weaknesses. Sure, it’s not the intense two player experience Resident Evil 5 is, but it definitely captures the key element that this generation’s survival horror games lack…and that would be the HORROR.

Since there are absolutely no walkthrus for this game out there as far as I can tell, I thought I’d post a few tips on defeating the bosses in the two best new games on the disc: Galaga Remix and Pac N Roll Remix. Not even sure if this blog posting will come up if people Google help for these bosses, but I figure I’ll put it out there in cyberspace anyway.

GALAGA REMIX

This weird game has you shooting Galaga formations like in the classic arcade game as they sweep onto the screen, however this time, you’re using your Wiimote sort of like a lightgun—and you have the annoying task of protecting Pac Man as he rolls down a very long outerspace slide—which end up having some obstacles on it that you have to make sure to blow out of the way as well. But the real challenge is the one and only boss at the end of the third and last level of this relatively short game.

Galaga Remix Boss

It’s a tough, but here’s what you have to do. As the Dragon goes to strike at you, you have to jump Pac Man (push up on your Nunchuck stick) just as the Dragon swoops to avoid getting hit. Also, keep shooting the skeleton bombs and eventually they turn back on the boss and hit him. Of course, if you do this enough times, eventually, he dies and you beat the game.

PAC N ROLL

This a pretty involved and lengthy platformer with five worlds and about 25 levels. The game gets increasingly more challenging. Some of the levels took me numerous tries, including walking away from the level for a few days and coming back to it refreshed because they get REALLY frustrating!!! I have a serious love/hate relationship with platformers. They’re so fricking ANNOYING…but I can’t help but play them. Anyway, on to the boss battle tips. Joyously, World 1 does not have a boss! So let’s move on to World 2 Boss.

World 2 Boss

The basic goal is the same in every boss battle—eat three power pills in a short amount of time so you have enough power to gobble up the boss, who shrinks once you’ve eaten the three power pills. BUT, he has a three segment life bar, so in each case, you have to perform this task three times to defeat him. What sux is, if you die at all, you don’t start where you left off—you have to repeat the entire process. So for instance, if you knock off two pieces of his life bar and you die, you have to start ALL over again. Also, if you don’t eat three consecutive power pills fast enough, you lose the power and have to start eating them all over again.

Anyway, for this first turn with the boss, it’s pretty easy. Simply stay away from him, follow the path, and eat three power pills along the way (there’s a power pill gauge on the right that fills with one power pill each time you eat one). When all three are eaten, the boss temporarily turns small and you can eat him. Repeat two more times to kill him.

World 3 Boss

1^st Phase:

Power pill locations are: platform West (with wind and a trampoline to challenge you), North (annoying walls that you bounce off) and East (safe spot). The boss follows you, trying to blow a fan at you to knock you off (press Z or B to stay in place) and swinging a guitar at you. If he hits you, you lose a segment of your life bar. And of course, if he blows you off the platform, you die.

2^nd Phase:

Same as before, only now the power pill locations are West (wind and trampoline), North (bouncing walls) and South (safe spot).

3^rd Phase:

Immediately head South to grab the power pill when it appears! This turns the two ghosts blue. Eat them because, they have the other two power pills on their heads! The boss will shrink and you can eat him. Battle finished!

World 4 Boss

Don’t forget, if you lose all four of you life bar pieces at all, you have to start the boss all over. You’re on a circular platform that moves and tilts, and the idea is to grab 3 power pills and then head to the boss’s platform at the top of the screen and eat him before beginning the next phase. Falling into the goop that surrounds your platform causes you to lose a life bar segment.

1^st Phase:

If you act quickly, you can run to the right and wait for the platform to rise on that side to get pill one. Then hurry to the bottom of the screen and wait for that side to rise for that pill, and finally rush to the left to wait for the side to rise so you can get the last pill. Then carefully move to the boss’s platform and gobble him up. When he’s gone, hurry back onto your platform.

2^nd Phase:

Basically, this one’s really easy if you quickly get to the top most part of the platform after the boss tilts it, which should be near the top of the screen (where the boss is). If you stay at the highest part and just put on your brakes and sit there, the platform rotates you right over all three pills. Hurry back to the CENTER of your platform after you’ve gotten them all and gobbled up the boss.

3^rd Phase:

The platform sinks a lot more here, so just try to move to stay on it if the section you’re on starts to go under. The best pattern is to immediately get the pill in the middle of the platform, then aim for the left pill (making sure to stay centered on your platform as it sinks), then hurry to the bottom pill. You may have to use your energy burst to rush up to the highest points in time (but be sure to brake so you don’t fly off the other side).

World 5 Boss

This is a dreaded TWO PART boss with 3 phases in each part. And since there’s only an automatic save system between levels, if you defeat the first part of the boss battle then lose all your lives on the second part, you have to start all over at the first part again! UGH! Expect to be repeating the first part many times. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy and you can blow through it pretty quickly without losing a life once you’ve done it a few times.

Part 1, 1^st Phase:

Pretty easy. There are 6 turning, interlocked platforms…Two big ones in the center, two smaller ones up top, and two smaller ones at bottom (closer to the screen). You’ll start on the big platform closer to the screen. One power pill is on the small platform on the bottom right of the screen. The other two are on the small top left platform and the right of the big platform closer to the top of the screen. Just be aware that the boss sends a target out—if it lands on you and you don’t move out of its sights, it’s just a matter of time before he jumps onto the target and squishes you.

Part 1, 2^nd Phase:

This time, the power pills are in the lower right small platform, upper left small platform and upper right small platform, but the boss blows wind to try and knock you off. If you eat the three power pills fast enough, you can pretty much prevent him from ever blowing the wind at you.

Part 1, 3^rd Phase:

This time, the pills are on the bottom left platform, bottom right platform, and at the top right platform. Get them all and eat the boss.

NOW we go on to the second part of the final boss—and a much harder part.

Part 2, 1^st phase:

Now you’re on spinning platforms with bounce pads. The first power pill is right there on the main platform. To get the other two pills, you have to use a bounce pad to get across to the other smaller platforms at the top of the screen AND to bounce up to catch each power pill, which is in the air, and then bounce BACK to the main platform to continue on, which means you have to be FAST in each case! A good idea is to first bounce to a platform, get the power pill, wait for the bounce pad to spin closer to the large main platform, bounce back, eat the power pill on the main platform so you extend the life of the power pill, which gives you time to bounce onto the other platform to get the last pill. Then quickly jump back to the main platform to get the shrunken boss as he quivers somewhere nearby. Just be aware that a couple of ghosts are on the main platform to get in your way—spinning around in these little annoying bumper car thingies.

Part 2, 2nd phase:

A little more challenging, with more ghosts in bumper cars, but the deal is pretty much the same as phase 1. However, you need to rotate your camera to see the other small platforms surrounding the main platform, initially out of sight at the bottom of the screen, so you can locate the platforms with the power pills. Two are on the smaller platforms and one, again, is on the main platform.

Part 3, 3^rd Phase:

The power pills are all on smaller platforms surrounding the main platform this time so you really have to use camera work to find them because they only appear one at a time. After you get to the platform with the first one, you have to rotate your camera to find the second, then do the same for the third. To add to your troubles, the boss is much more aggressive—more wind, more guitar smacks. PLUS, you have targets on you, flinging bombs at you, and now there are four ghosts spinning around in bumper cars and getting in your way. VERY challenging. Honestly, the only way to beat this section is to be REALLY good and fast at using the bounce pads. Most frustrating is that, just like on all levels, if you don’t grab all three power pills in time, you have to start all over again collecting them, which means repeating the tedious bouncing from platform to platform—the reason you want to collect them as fast as possible to eat that shrunken boss one last time and defeat the game.

Memories…like the corners of my television screen…

Way back in the day—like 1983/1984—me and my friends on my block would cram into my bedroom on the hottest days of the summer, in front of a fan, and have serious sessions of the classic arcade game Warlords on the Atari 2600. What made it such a cool game was that it was a four player game using the paddle controllers. So everyone took a corner fortress of the screen in this multiplayer Breakout-style game, and we’d battle it out, using the bouncing balls to try and destroy our enemies’ walls to cream the kings behind while protecting our own wall from being destroyed so our king wasn’t vulnerable to a ‘pong’ attack.

Twenty years later, in the heat of the retro gaming craze, the company Infogrames, responsible for making about a dozen modern remakes of classic 80s video games, took a shot at Warlords for the PC. However, instead of selling it on its own, they pulled a money-making scam and packaged it in the “Atari Revival” package with two games that had ALREADY been released individually, Combat and Missile Command. Although I had already owned those two remakes, I HAD to rebuy them just to get Warlords.

Well, here it is about seven years later, and I finally took the time to play and complete Warlords remake. And in theory, I loved it. Unlike other major 3D arcade remakes such as Frogger and Centipede, this ‘remake’ is mostly just a visual update with a few new gimmicks in game play.

The Visuals

The archaic block graphics on a black background from the original Atari 2600 hundred have been replaced by a very unique concept. Each of the walls in the four corners is represented as a top down view of a colorful and finely detailed castle wall. Inside the wall stands a knight (appearing to be caged in) who is very active, looking around and responding emotively to the action going on around him (or sometimes her) as the walls are bombarded by fireballs. Yes, the old skool Pong ball has been replaced by flame streaking fireballs. These fireballs are released by none other than a dragon that flies around the empty area in the center of the screen. Said dragon releases the fireballs sporadically until players are eventually juggling FOUR fireballs at once. Good thing is, your shields (which truly look like shields) can catch a fireball and hold it until you decide which enemy you want to fling it at. And when you hit the button to catch a fireball, your shield reaches out in the form of a big metallic knight’s hand! Pretty cool. The game mixes things up graphically as you proceed through the levels, because every four levels or so, you are actually placed in a NEW environment! There’s a typical castle/moat environment, snow, even outer space! Hey, if Jason and Leprechaun can go to space, why can’t Warlords?

GAMEPLAY

Aside from the traditional practice of moving your left and right to block fireballs and aim them at other players’ walls, there have been some new tricks added to the mix. First, not only does the dragon shoot out the fireballs, but as he flies around during each level, he also releases these floating shields that have symbols on them. If you hit one of these floating shields with a fireball, it usually works to your advantage. Depending on what symbol appears when your fireball makes contact, a variety of things can happen for a short period of time. You can shrink your opponents’ shields, enlarge your own shield, give yourself temporary invincibility, get an automatic wall repair, reverse the directional controls on your opponents’ shields (totally messed up), give everyone invisible walls, or slow down the balls. Of course, none of those tricks is convenient when you’re not the one who hit the floating shield. And a couple of other tricks are not particularly helpful no matter who hits them, such as one that turns all players’ walls invisible, one that turns the fireballs invisible, one that speeds up the fireballs to the point of chaos, and one that SWITCHES your castles for the REMAINDER of the level. In other words, say you’re castle is in the bottom left corner. You may be tossed up into the top right corner. Depending on where you are switched to, the position can actually reverse the direction of your controls, again, totally messing you up, only this time for the remainder of the level (which always ended in me dying).

There are also ‘bonus levels’ every four levels or so in which you go one-on-one with the dragon. It’s just your castle and the dragon, who spits his fireballs at you and then just flies around so that you can try to hit him with them. He’ll become smaller (which, based on the top down view, represents him swooping closer to the ground—in essence, INTO the screen) at which point you can’t hit him, but once he’s back to full size, you have a few seconds to nail him. The goal is to hit him a number of times with fireballs to kill him before the bouncing fireballs destroy your castle. Good news is, if you do ‘die’ in the bonus level, you don’t lose a life.

In total, there are 40 levels, and then you are treated to a short and sweet movie that ‘ends’ the game. Even though you have a set number of lives (and can earn extra lives through points as the game progresses) there are really no worries about not being able to complete all forty levels. If you get a ‘game over’ because you lost all your lives, the game simply asks if you want to continue, at which point it picks you up on the very level you were last playing. So in essence, you have ‘infinite’ lives. You can also pause and save the game at any time, so you don’t have to play all forty levels in one sitting.

I played the game solo, so all other players were computer controlled. The only real competition was the ‘player’ diagonal to me. Since the other two are right next to you, all you really have to do is catch a few fireballs and throw them repeatedly at the same spot in the opponents’ walls, quickly creating an opening to nail the knight within. You don’t have such direct aim at the diagonal opponent, so you have to rely on ricocheting balls to bust through the wall and nail your target. My diagonal opponent beat me one too many times, so I actually began letting the other two opponents live a bit longer so THEY could create a clean opening in the diagonally opponent’s wall from their positions!

CONTROLS…if you can call them that

Now for the bad news. The really bad, truly tragic news. Warlords is absolutely, without a doubt, meant to be played with a paddle or spinner knob—which this game does not support. The original arcade version of Warlords is included as a bonus with this remake and it DOES support the awesome Stelladaptor that lets you use original Atari 2600 paddle controllers on your PC. But, what makes NO sense is that the updated version itself does not support the Stelladaptor, which SUX. Your only options are the mouse or keyboard. Naturally, quick and accurate left/right blocking is a challenge with keyboard presses, and the mouse is only slightly better. I got by, but I definitely wouldn’t have had to continue as much if I’d been using a paddle. The other issue with these two control options is that they pretty much makes a multi-player game out of the question. Your options for multiplayer are one player using the mouse (and having the advantage) and the other three players crowding their fingers together on the keyboard like it’s a Ouija board. Absolutely horrible and it basically makes the entire release of this classic game in an updated version pointless unless you like playing with your imaginary PC friends…

If you know that reference, then you are truly a Frogger junky like myself. Me and a couple of friends spent a majority of the decade from 2001 – 2009 playing the numerous modernized versions of Frogger for everything from Playstation One to the Gamecube, getting into the whole 20-year anniversary of the 80s. Yet, throughout all those releases, never once was there the inclusion of the original arcade game (while the original Pac Man landed on about a dozen Pac Man remakes).

I thought that had all changed when I discovered Konami Classics Volume 1 for the Xbox 360. I FINALLY just got an Xbox 360. It took my friend long enough to cave and spring for it as a gift for me, but I guess I should forgive her since she was out of work for a year and purchased it for me like the day she found out she actually was about to be hired into a full-time position again.

So, when I hooked up my Xbox 360 to my HD television with and HDMI cable and digital optical audio cable for full 5.1 surround, the first game I popped into the system to experience all the technological advances it has to offer gamers was…Frogger.

That’s right. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to at last experience the original classic arcade game on a gaming console. So I popped in Konami Classics Volume 1, navigated the menus past the other two pesky ‘classics’—Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Contra—and prepared to leap into Frogger.

But…wait. This Frogger looks DIFFERENT. The general board layout is the same, but the graphics…they’ve been…updated. And the music—this isn’t the Frogger theme song! WTF??? I hit pause, flipped through the game manual, then Googled the hell out of this game. Sure, I found numerous places where it was mentioned that Konami Classics Volume 1 offers you the opportunity to play the games on the disc with their original graphics or modern ‘enhanced’ graphics. Well guess what. EVERY single person on the internet is a liar. Except me. Because I’m here to tell you the truth. Frogger is the ONLY game on the disc that absolutely does NOT give you a choice between original and enhanced graphics. In fact, it doesn’t even mention that it is subjecting you to enhanced graphics. It just slaps them onto your screen after tricking you with a title screen that looks very much like the one you would have peered at while dropping your quarters into the arcade machine in 1982. I’ve been bamboozled, ribbit! (I mean…dammit….)

Well, I was determined to get through the game since it’s so short and would have been the only game in the Silent Hill canon that I didn’t complete and keep in my collection, all on account of the “Nightmare” scenarios. During a Nightmare scenario, the game’s environment turns to ice (as opposed to the bloody and fiery changes in the other titles in the series) and you are forced to RUN from the creatures of Silent Hill through dark locations, using just neon blue borders that mark doors, wall and ditches as guidance to a possible way to escape the nightmare. If the creatures jump on you, you have to wildly gyrate with the Wiimote and Upchuck to get them off before continuing. There are no weapons to fight back in this game, but once in a while you run past a piece of furniture you can knock over to slow the pursuing creatures. Health and a health gauge are also a thing of the past. As you continue to get attacked by creatures, you start to run slower, then limp, and eventually die and there’s nothing you can do about it. There are only six of these Nightmare scenarios in total, but if you read back to my old post, you’ll see how incredibly infuriating they are. That is unless you figure out a way to beat the system.

Nightmare scenarios are not linear—you have to find the correct route to escape this hellish maze yourself. Pulling up your map doesn’t much help because it does not reveal any of the obstacles you’ll run into, nor does it pause the game, which means that while you are standing there trying to read the map, you can easily be attacked by creatures. In order to stay alive, you’re basically never going to reference the map at all. Which means just running around randomly through environments and blue-glowing doors that all look the same after a while when you are in such a panic, causing you to run in circles while being assaulted regularly by evil inhabitants of the Nightmare world. The environments are extremely dark unless you keep your flashlight turned on, but this is Silent Hill, so keeping your flashlight on in this hellish environment is the same as going to a football game wearing a cut-off shirt and Daisy Duke shorts. In both situations, you become a prime target for a beat down by a bunch of monsters.

Instead of this situation creating an adrenalin rush of fear like all the other games in this series and others like Resident Evil or Fatal Frame, games in which you want to be immersed in the experience, the Nightmare scenarios in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories are all about just wanting to get OUT of them as quickly as possible and back into the scare-free and danger-free experience that is the rest of the game. There is no even pacing of the horror rush in this game. You are either skipping carefree around the daytime town meeting other characters and collecting clues to the game’s story for stretches of time, or you are racing through the horror as fast as you can to return to the dull parts of the game!

The basic plot outline of the re-imagining is the same as the original. You are Harry Mason, you get into a car accident, your daughter is gone when you awake, and then you have to roam the town in search of her. Other than that, this re-imagining is completely rewritten. An interesting aspect of the game is the way your responses to questions and tests by your therapist to some extent affect what you see and do as well as the ending you get. That’s right, you have a therapist in this game: a very distinguished and attractive man who can be somewhat aggressive in his analysis of you. If you are honest in your answers to his questions, at the end of the game you get one final reading of how he profiled your personality. It was very much on the mark in most cases for me. However, even though I spent most of my time on his couch just staring at his crotch, the game didn’t conclude that I was gay (although it will label you as a pervert if you stare too much at the breasts of any of the female characters during the game). So the game is entertaining the first time through, but it doesn’t seem worth a second play because it simply doesn’t deliver that constant edge-of-your-seat experience the original game did. The dread you feel throughout the entire original game is gone, replaced with the dread you feel having to get through the clumsy mechanics of the Nightmare scenarios.

So how to smoothly get through these moments so you can at least complete the game once and learn the whole story? For starters, crank up the brightness on your television all the way. By doing this, when you enter a Nightmare, you can actually keep your flashlight off throughout the entire Nightmare without having any problems seeing where you are going! Keeping the flashlight off drastically reduces the amount of creatures that actually find you and chase you, which is a huge relief. Next, go to YouTube and search for a video walkthru of whichever Nightmare you are about to enter—the way to know one is coming soon is to follow an online written walkthru and read ahead to see exactly when you are close. Next, carefully watch the entire video walkthru of the Nightmare. If you are a longtime player of horror survival video games, you’re most likely good at memorizing environments and paths quickly, so the layout of the Nightmare will be fresh in your head when you move back to your Wii to start it. Add to that a navigator—a friend who starts the video walkthru just as you begin it and basically DIRECTS you as you run the path (“turn left into the next door,” “run straight to the set of double doors ahead,” “Climb the wall to your right”). You must communicate with each other, and you should basically repeat the navigator’s directions as you accomplish them so you know you’re both on the same page. This way, if the navigator’s video gets ahead of your progress or vice versa, the navigator can pause the YouTube clip or move it ahead a little to stay with you. Using this process, we managed to get through each Nightmare in about five minutes with barely ever a need to redo them because of a death.

Sounds like fun, right? And there you have it. That’s how you cheat your way through Silent Hill: Shattered Memories so you can at least say you played it once. Now let’s hope that Konami gives up on this horrible new format of a classic series and returns to form on the next installment. Because if we get another game like this one, there will be no more returns to Silent Hill for anyone.

A couple of months back I stumbled upon this game that I didn’t know existed for the PS2, so it only cost my 10 bux—with the game pad—instead of the new release price of like 50 bux. Being a huge collector of the Dance Dance Revolution games, I’m always excited to add a game with new songs to my arsenal.

Well, this High School Musical game is very different. Instead of the usual DDR scheme of left/right/up/down arrows scrolling up from the bottom, side by side so your eyes can easily keep them in scope, this game is set up so that there are ‘brackets’ to the North, South, West and East of the television screen. Green balls appear from the center of the screen and move towards the four different brackets—which means, in order to hit the up/down/left/right steps on your dance pad at just the moment when the ball hits the bracket, your eyes seriously have to jump ALL OVER the screen. This isn’t so bad in easier stages (Sophomore and Junior years—don’t know why there’s no Freshman year), but by Senior stage, your eyes are doing some serious Marty Feldman Young Frankenstein Igor shit.

Eventually, you do sort of get used to the alternate screen layout, but you’re definitely at a disadvantage when too many balls are releasing from the center of the screen at once. Your timing gets thrown off as you try to look from one side of the screen to the other quickly to determine exactly which ball is closer to the bracket towards which it is heading. Argh! On top of this, there are no ‘half note’ colors or syncopated color variations, the way the arrows in DDR are distinguished. You simply have to guesstimate when the green balls are going to hit the brackets. Ridiculous. There are, however, purple balls that leave the center at the same time, moving in different directions. These signify that you have to jump on two direction arrows in unison, a concept similar to the DDR series. And finally, there are occasionally these “wildcat” balls that give you more points, and from what I could tell while playing the game, if you don’t hit each one in the series at exactly the right moment, they convert back to plain old green balls, forfeiting you the bonus. For added fun, there’s an outline of a star in the upper left corner of the screen that fills up with color as you get continuous combinations of steps right. When the star fills up completely, an ‘X’ and ‘O’ symbol appear very subtly under the star. This is your chance to simultaneously jump on both of these corresponding keys on the dance pad (sort of like an extra dance step in the middle of your game) to start a timer that runs down as you continue doing your dance moves for added bonus points.

The graphics are great in this game—song are from all three films (29 songs in all, playable in every difficulty level) and are presented along with a rather faithful video game version of the cast singing and dancing to the song just as they did in the movies. It gave me a good chance to get to know the songs better, because I only watched each film once on cable and although I own each soundtrack, I’ve only listened to each one once! For shame. Take away my gay card. But really, doesn’t buying this cheesy game make up for all that??? But back to the game. The big problem with the game is the dance step programming. It’s TERRIBLE, most often lacking any sense of actual flow like real dance moves. This game couldn’t possibly have been programmed by anyone with a sense of rhythm and dance aesthetics. DDR, even when it follows, let’s say, instrumental nuances or vocal syncopations instead of the songs’ beats, does so in places that make sense and are clear accents in the structure of the actual song. In this game, it’s very often completely random very often and lands on illogical, non-rhythmic syllables in the vocals! Plus, the pacing of the dance steps is often just ‘off’ and not fluid. You find yourself WANTING to move to the groove of the song, but suddenly getting tripped up with your foot hovering in the air as you try balancing one leg waiting for that next lagging dance step to hit at one of its bizarre moments. Seriously—what songs were the programmers of this game listening to, because it sure wasn’t the songs in the game.

Even with all these obstacles, the game is still actually quite easy even at its most difficult level, simply because it’s pretty forgiving, essentially because it was made for 14-year-olds, not 41-year-olds…. As a result, even in Senior level, it simply isn’t much of a workout and you don’t break a sweat like you do in DDR games. And once you’ve worked your way through the Senior year (you have to play easier levels to unlock the more difficult levels), all you can really do is continue to play the 29 songs on Senior level for any sort of challenge. So if you want to dance to some High School Musical songs but retain that traditional DDR feel, you’re better off buying the Disney edition of Dance Dance Revolution that was released for the PS2.

I got into the classic video game retro scene in about 2001 when I finally got a home computer. Within a matter of months, I loaded my computer with pretty much every video game for every console released between the Atari 2600 and Super Nintendo, as well as all the original 80s arcade games on the MAME Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. For the full arcade experience, I splurged on a HotRod Ultimate Josytick Control, which basically looks like the joystick dashboard of an arcade machine, a steering wheel, a trak ball and a light gun for my PC. But the one controller that eluded me was the classic ‘paddle’ or ‘spinner’ control. For years after getting back into classic gaming, I lamented the fact that no company had created a control that mimicked the Atari 2600 paddles, the ONLY way to play games like Night Driver, Breakout and Kaboom!

My retro arcade flashbacks reignited my love of video gaming, and soon my TV was overloaded with a PS2, Gamecube and Xbox, so my focus on the retro games waned. And that’s why I somehow never heard about the “Stelladaptor,” the ultimate USB adaptor for PC that hit the market in about 2004. Well I’ve discovered it, purchased it online, and am in love with it. This is what I’ve been waiting for. The idea is so simple. This USB adaptor lets you connect your old Atari 2600 joysticks, paddles, and driving controls to your PC so you can use the proper controllers when playing your Atari 2600 emulators.

And that’s what I did until like three in the morning last night. This simple and brilliant little adaptor, which is recognized as a PC USB joystick, is supported by Atari 2600 emulators like Stella (hence the name of the adaptor) and x26. FINALLY, I’m playing Circus Atari and Kaboom! with a paddle, while the driving controllers work perfectly with Indy 500.

I also fired up my old Atari joystick for rounds of Space Invaders (a port I’ve always preferred to the original arcade game), the atrocious but endearing Atari 2600 Pac Man disaster (I whined for weeks when it first came out and was immediately sold out at every store), and one of the best non-arcade shooters ever, Imagic’s Demon Attack. What an unbelievable game. While I’ve had it on compilations on my PC and Playstation 2, playing it with an old Atari joystick brought back the memories. Memories of how SORE your thumb would get being placed on the top of the joystick for hours to control your game. Memories of how sweaty your hands would get gripping that piece of black plastic with the orange button. And memories of how the little rubber pads on the bottom corners of the joystick would start to ‘melt’ as a result of your sweating hands, leaving a smear of black on your hand. Gross! Those rubber pads have been absorbing my sweat for nearly 30 years!

Using the Stelladaptor is a beautiful plug n’ play experience with Atari 2600 emulators, and it also works somewhat with MAME. Unfortunately, while MAME supports the controller, it isn’t quite as simple or effective. It took me a while to figure out how to get it to work with arcade versions of Super Breakout, Circus Atari and Arknoid. It involved quite a bit of tweaking of the controller options hidden within the ‘properties’ menus of each individual game ROM because I could find no helpful explanations on the setup online. While those three games worked, I had no success with the arcade version of Night Driver. And while it would be a beautiful thing to finally play Tempest with a spinner control, the catch is that the Atari 2600 paddles have a ‘stop point to both the left and right of the spin, while Tempest requires infinite 360 degree rotation of the spinner in each direction. So I thought I was being smart when I hooked up the Indy 500 driving controller, which does spin 360 degrees infinitely, but when I did that and configured the controller for MAME, Tempest went all screwy. It just wouldn’t work. Bummer. But all hope was not lost. I next turned to my Atari – 80 Classic Games CD-ROM compilation after installing a patch online that offers Stelladaptor support. It works fantastic. And not only that, but it lets you CHOSE to use the driving control to play Tempest! And there you have it. The original arcade version of Tempest the way it’s meant to be played.

I tried several other CD-ROM games. The Activision Anthology Remix CD-ROM offers an option for Stelladaptor AND Stelladaptor as a paddle controller, yet playing Kaboom! was a disaster. Response time was terrible, the controller completely lagging behind my spinning movement. I then fired up the Infogrames modern remakes of Breakout and Pong. Breakout recognized the paddle controller when I switched the in-game controller option to joystick, but again, the controller would not respond in time with my movement of the spinner. And forget about Pong. You can’t even navigate the menus when the paddle controller is plugged in. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find patches for any of these games. Finally, I tried the Stelladaptor with the updated version of Warlords, but the game does not recognize it because it only offers mouse or keyboard control (AWFUL). But I must say, while the remake of Warlords plays mostly the same as the original (aside from the crappy controls), it is a visually astounding update. Ironically, the ‘classic’ arcade version of Warlords is available on the game CD-ROM, and when you choose to play it, the game actually RECOGNIZES that a Stelladaptor is connected and offers it as a controller option in the setup menu! WOW. Now why didn’t they offer it in the Warlords remake setup menu??? Oh well. The only other thing I really have to test now is connecting TWO Stelladaptors to see if I can play a four player game of Warlords, which is supposed to work according to the Stelladaptor manual.

The last generation of game systems was treated to “Activision Anthology,” a collection that had dozens of original Activision and Imagic classics from the Atari 2600 days. If you hooked up an arcade stick to your system, you had a pretty good gaming experience that brought back memories—as long as you weren’t playing a paddle game. See, you just can’t get that same paddle experience using a game pad or joystick. Therefore, on the Activision collection as well as other Atari compilations, games like Breakout, Night Driver, Circus Atari and Kaboom! just don’t work as they should and most people will most likely skip these games completely.

As a collector of all this nostalgia, I was excited when I saw that four Activision games were included with the Wii compilation called Arcade Zone. Sure, all the other games looked like lame video versions of old school ‘hands-on’ arcade games like bowling and hoops, but the four Atari classics, Atlantis (originally an Imagic game), Freeway, Megamania, and Kaboom, were promoted as having updated graphics with classic game play. So, not even sure how the Wiimote would be implemented in the playing of Kaboom, one of my all-time favorites, I purchased the collection.

Well, guess what. My all-time favorite has to be UNLOCKED by literally playing through EVERY other game on the collection and getting a ‘high score’ on each. Ugh! So I set out on my quest to unlock Kaboom! I played the Hoops game, the Bowling game, an annoying ‘wheel of fortune’ game, a whack-a-mole game, an annoying tower building game, air hockey, and many more. Then there were these REALLY annoying games where you had to prepare carnival food like pizza, corndogs and smoothies. These challenges were SO clumsy, but once you understood what you needed to do (basically by watching the AI opponents on screen as they prepared their food), you could usually get the high score in one or two tries.

As you continue to get high scores on each game, you get awards that unlock MORE games that you have to defeat before you can unlock the “Master Arcade Zone” where Kaboom! awaits. I ended up blasting through and conquering all the games in one night. But my hopes for Kaboom! were dashed early on because of the experience I had with the other Activision classics, which are open from the start. The graphics weren’t all THAT updated, but the real problem with the games is that it’s not a “free play” experience. The point of each game is simply to get the high score! Once you beat the high score, the game ends!

Therefore, you don’t get to shoot at one wave of Megamania food invaders after another (yes, Megamania is basically Space Invaders with attacking junk food). The controls are never all that much like the originals either, and a Wii arcade joystick controller is not supported. Megamania and Freeway both work okay because you hold the Wiimote sideways and use the pad like a standard game pad. Actually, Megamania is closest to the original experience, but the graphics aren’t very different at all, so you’re more likely to just play it on one of your older compilations with a real arcade stick.

Freeway, in my opinion, has been improved but still gets repetitive. Originally a knockoff of Frogger (most Activision games were knockoffs of one arcade game or another), Freeway’s big drawback was that you simply had to get across a highway by moving up or down on the screen. There was no weaving through traffic as in Frogger because you couldn’t move left or right. That has been changed on this update. Even so, the chicken is still basically just a flat, one dimensional outline of a chicken with no independent movement (like the hopping legs of the frog in Frogger).

Meanwhile, Atlantis looks visually the most updated (maybe bumped up about as high as an Atari 5200 version would be compared to an Atari 2600 game), but instead of shooting from your bases on the ground level to protect your cities from the threats in the sky (Missile Command, anyone?) the update simply has you point the Wiimote at the screen to shoot them down, making this essentially a light gun game. Yawn. If I’m going to play a light gun game, it’s going to be House of the Dead.

Finally, let’s get to Kaboom! Visually, the bomber is now hanging over an actual brick wall instead of what used to look like a wall made of green grass, plus there’s a cityscape behind him at the top of the wall (which was also in the Atari 800XL computer edition of the game I had in the 80s). While the graphics look only slightly different, the game mechanics are glaringly different. For starters, YOU don’t decided when you want the next wave of bombs to drop by pressing a button as in the original game. Instead, the waves just come one after another with simply a slight pause between waves. Also, in the original, you’d have a wave of bombs that were spaced out across the screen as they dropped, followed by a wave of closely dropping bombs that actually allowed you to sweep across the screen in a specific ‘clean-up’ rhythm to catch them all. Those alternating patterns are gone, replaced by random, generic bomb assaults that force you to wave your Wiimote wildly. This type of control system effectively denies the intense accuracy needed in this game. With a paddle controller, you felt like your buckets were literally attached to the paddle by an invisible string. With the Wiimote, your buckets aren’t as ‘locked-on’ to your controller so it’s more of a hand-waving exercise than an actual test of hand-eye coordination. I remember back in the 80s my eyes would practically be burning holes in my television screen as I watched the bombs fall while my brain absorbed the visual knowledge and sent the instructions to my hand to spin the paddle with great precision left and right across the screen. It was a wild test of concentration that used to seriously put me in the zone. Those were the days. But hey, while the Wiimote might not be the same, anything’s better than using the upchuck Nunchuck.