A boxer is about to punch a man made of fire in the dick it appears, I do not think I need to explain how awesome that really is.

Nevertheless the story line behind the game goes a little something like this. There is this big company named Ultratech who has completely taken over the world and all forms of government. They decide it is in their best interest to form a huge fighting tournament to test some of the diabolical creations that they have made in their secret labs. They also invite a few regular participants, or at least that what they say, I mean last time I checked a skeleton, a wulf (made by Ultratech and yes wulf is correct spelling), a Indian, a ninja, a raptor (made by Ultratech), a alien (captured by Ultratech), a criminal who is apparently on fire all the damn time, a secret spy, and a two headed what the fuck, are not even close to what I would call normal. The one man who is normal to a certain degree is former heavyweight champion of the world T.J. Combo. I mean he technically he did totally have his arms replaced by cybernetics but at least he had the common courtesy to have them covered up with synthetic skin unlike that asshole Jax from Mortal Kombat. If the person wins they basically get promised something by Ultratech, because once again this coporation rules the world and can basically do whatever they feel the need to.

The list of people to choose from is as follows

Thunder – Indian who is trying to find his lost brother who went “missing” after the tournament the year before. He is armed with tomahawks.

Fulgore- A 1 year old cybernetic badass that the tournament is basically funded for, just to test out how much PWNAGE it can deal out. If he wins the competition then mass production will begin.

Glacius- Alien captured by Ultratech and is promised freedom is he can win. His name comes from the fact that he is basically liquid ice (sounds logical right?) and can shape shift.

Cinder – Criminal who was captured by Ultratech and was told that he can be set free if he put up with some chemical testing, which went wrong and now his body is comprised of flames. If he can kill Glacius then he will get returned to his original form.

Jago - Tibetan monk who is trying to rid himself of the evil within and somehow thinks that it is his destiny to destroy Ultratech.

Riptor- A human/raptor hybrid that was created by Ultratech and is being tested as a killing machine in this compitition.

Sabrewulf- Count Von Sabrewulf is infected with lycanthropy and is promised a cure by Ultratech if he wins. A side note on him is that he is a reference to Sabre Wulf the first game that Rare ever made.

Spinal – A skeletal warrior who fights because he loves it. I kid you not I have no other reason other than that.

Come on do you think this skeleton would love to cuddle you next to the fire in the background?

T.J. Combo- Former heavyweight boxer who held the title for 5 years until it was found out that he had cybernetic arms that basically kicked the asses of the opponents for him. If he wins the title Ultratech will let him drive around in his pink 64′ Caddy and regain the title he had lost.

B. Orchid- Hired as a secretary for Ultratech, she turns out to be a spy for some unknown corporation, and to top that off has what might be the best or ugliest rack ever…one of her finishing moves she flashes the opponent and they have a heart attack.

Eyedol- The final boss of the game. He is a two headed piece of shit who does nothing but deplete your health bar in very cheap ass ways, and can regain his health slightly when he stomps on the ground like a dumbass. Did I mention he has a club? Oh I failed to mention that? It will not matter because he will give your face and attitude a slight adjustment with it. Ultratech released him out of his dimensional prison to kick some ass.

My only real beef with Ultratech is the fact that they use all these people to try to prevent shit from happening, and they also use them to control the world. They get the people they want dead to appear at this thing and use others already in it to possibly kill them. Honestly this is sound reasonable logic until you factor in that they just want to control the whole world…WHICH THEY ALREADY HAVE DONE DUE TO THE FACT THAT EVERY PLACE IN THE WORLD HAS NO WORKING GOVERNMENT BECAUSE THEY ALREADY TOOK IT OVER IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE.

This game is different from other fighting games for a few different reasons but I will only mention the ones that actually matter. Instead of fighting in “Rounds” you have two health bars that you have to deplete to kill the enemy. To explain that better if you were fighting and depleted the enemies first health bar without getting hit, now they have one health bar to try to kick ass while you still have both of yours. The fighting is continuous which is a good thing for this game. Next up is the combo system which is not like others at all. In Mortal Kombat for example you might have to do something like “High punch, Low kick, Low punch, High punch” to do a four hit combo. Well Rare said “Fuck that shit” and decided to make combos have a much more automatic feel. They do this by you hitting a certain button, or even preforming a special move that will have a string of hits to it. Everyone has special moves but one special move for each character specifically can be performed in the complete opposite direction to enable its use to maximize combos. If you were using a character that had a move such as “Hold Back for two seconds, press forward and medium punch” well you could also do it by “Holding forward for two seconds pressing back and then medium punch.”

Back to the combo topic, the goal for the most part is to do as much damage at one time as possible so the bigger the combo the better the damage. Each combo you do will have a specific name based on the number of hits it has, all you really need to know is that 8 is Awesome and anything from 12-17 is a Killer combo, which will be shouted at you by the manliest announcer in the history of games. Another cool feature is that if your enemies second life bar is flashing red you can either 1: End the match with a combo that ends in a “No Mercy” move which makes the combo a “Ultimate” combo. Or 2: You can actually do an automatic super combo simply known as an ultra, which will range anywhere from 18-80 hits if you are a badass, or can glitch the game out. There is not a better feeling in this game than when you kick the ass of your friend and end it on an ultra, once the ultra hits you can sit back and watch the destruction which for me is usually me throwing the controller to the ground as to say “I DA SHIT” as I look at my friend letting them know that yes they did get owned, and yes they can do nothing to stop it.

Alright if you are not new to the Internet then I guarantee you know this game for one thing alone and you probably had no idea where it came from. In the middle of owning face with combos, or if you are the one getting owned with combos, a combo breaker (pronounced “C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER) can be done and it will automatically disrupt the attacking party with a move that will make them take damage and embarrass them at the same time. It is effective, and the computer uses it all the damn time just to get under your skin. I dare you to try and beat the final boss without having him break one combo and then take half your life with a 5 hit combo. When fighting you have to make a choice, do you do huge combos with the hopes that your opponent is retarded, or do you do small ones knowing that a combo breaker can not be used unless you do a combo of 6 hits or more. The choice is yours and honestly you will live and die by the choices you make in this game. Speaking of dying  just like other fighting games at the time there is a time at the end of the match to kill your fallen comrade with what they call a “No Mercy” move. Honestly alot of them are terrible, but there are a few that are pretty awesome. Fulgore transforms into a turret and shoots the shit out of the other person, even Orchid flashes some titty. Other than that they are pretty bland. They do have a few stages that can allow for some pretty cool falling to their death….deaths. All you have to do is hit them into the air when they are right on the edge and boom, instant gratification.

The graphics to this game are simply mind-boggling, this game was the first to use a Hard Disk Drive which allowed them to basically make this game the prettiest game that had yet existed on the fighting game market, and do yourself a favor play Virtua Fighter, and then play this and tell me that this game does not blow the other out of the water. The sounds are perfect for this game. The sound effects that they use really are fitting and its very good that they actually took the time to not make every male character sound the same and every female sound the same as well. They use different noises based on what character is getting rocked and that’s the best part. Every character sounds pretty much like you would expect them to. The music is badass and had a CD that came with the SNES version when it came out in 1995 called Killer Cuts, and yes I do own it thanks for asking. The difficulty for this game is adjustable just like most fighting games back then but its hit or miss. It is either really easy or completely bat-shit insane.

Eyedol is such an asshole. Good luck trying to deal with any of his bullshit he is about to pull on you.

I played this game first at an old pizza place, but I really got good at it when it made its jump to the SNES. I can say there is only one person I have yet to beat the game with and that is Jago, I am just not good with him at all. Everyother person is at least moderate for me but with him I am nothing short of a huge piece of shit. My favorite character personally due to his combos is easily Sabrewulf, but am probably best with either Combo, or Fulgore. This game was so groundbreaking a popular, they did make a sequel Killer Instinct 2 that had alot of differences which I will get to in a review of it eventually. Hell the main man from Rare said he would not mind either putting the original out on the Xbox Arcade, or making a third if he could get the backing of some company to actually help them. I swear this shit needs to happen so badly, I mean let me say this much, KI 1 was one of the best games ever made for the arcade, and it’s port to the SNES is one of the best games on the system. Then you have KI 2 which was not bad in its own right but was not the same as the first, so they need to make a third and push the envelope as much as possible. By the way did I mention this was also popular enough to actually have a card game in the same setup like Magic, which I have never seen but that’s simply amazing.

On second thought….maybe Glacius is actually cooler than most people think he is….COOLER GET IT?

Then again hes getting his face melted by Fulgore…I guess the verdict is still out on this one.

To provide more information on this game I will refer you to the definitive Killer Instinct website on the Internet.

http://killerinstinctonline.net/KIARC.htm

I also wanted to add the Roms, but the Internet decided to give me the middle finger and refuse to upload what I wanted. Sorry for the inconvenience but I think the readers are big enough boys/girls/boy-girls to find them on their own.

]]> http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2010/03/22/killer-instinct/feed/ 1 http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2010/02/28/february-2010-they-keep-coming/ http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2010/02/28/february-2010-they-keep-coming/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:51:48 +0000 admin http://seventytwopinconnector.com/?p=2526 Perhaps not as glorious as January, but still, February has been an excellent month for the gaming world, as well as our little site.  Let’s look at some of the new releases from the month:

Releases:

This month we’ve seen some interesting new IPs come out of the wood works.   The long awaited PS3 exclusive “Heavy Rain” brings adventure gaming to the next generation of consoles.  “The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom” for the Xbox 360 acts as this months “must get” indie game, with puzzle platforming to rival that of Jonathan Blow’s “Braid.”  “Star Trek Online” adds another frontier to MMORPG gallery.  And “Bioshock 2″ (a much talked about game on the site) brings us back to Rapture for another adventure; this time as a Big Daddy.

So it’s been another month that will be favorably looked upon throughout history, if history judges the past solely on monthly video game releases.

So what were we doing?:

This month Rob discussed his experiences with “Mass Effect 2” and “Bioshock 2.”  Speaking of “Bioshock 2,” Skizz also brings up his play through of the game and also talks about “WET.”

Chad plays some more of The People’s Games, this time featuring: “depict1,” “Cosmosa,”"Starfeld,” “Balloon in the Wasteland,” “Vatn Squid,” and “Nuclear Baby.”  He also reviews “Vanitas” and “Noby Noby Boy” for the iPhone and retrospectively looks at “Feel the Magic: XY/XX.”

And Tom plays for us another Battle Tunes.

Jason Rohrer’s latest game, “Sleep is Death,” is now available for pre-order!

Jason Rohrer the name behind indie gaming classics “Passage” and “Gravitation” has announced that his newest game, which was featured at the Art History of Games, can now be pre-ordered for 9 dollars (or you can wait and buy it for a 14 dollar price).  Pre-Ordering the game also gets you an early copy this April 9th.  Most of his games have been a pretty serious bunch, but this game seems to have an aura of light-heartedness about it.

Just imagine a game with an AI that reacts perfectly to your every statement and action.  Impossible with this technology you say.  Well, not now!  Find out why at the LINK to the game’s site (for an entertaining explanation).  It looks like a lot of fun, and I’m pretty excited to play.

PRE-ORDER “SLEEP IS DEATH” HERE.

“Nuclear Baby” is a browser game by Andrew Brophy playable HERE.  It’s a simple sort of shooter, press Z to shoot left, X to shoot right as hordes of mutants try to kill you.  Nothing in the way of depth, but some good fun while it lasts.

I’ve been exceptionally busy as of late, so you’ll notice that nothing’s been posted on the site for about four days.  There are at least 3 more People’s Games coming this weekend, so keep an eye out, and there has been some news recent worth mentioning when I get to it.  I’ll probably do that in the monthly summary we do now.

Anyway, “Vatn Squid” is a pretty fun shmup for your PC by Ted Lauterbach, consisting of nothing but boss fights where your little crab ship takes on an extremely dangerous underwater creature.  There are 8 bosses in all and veterans of the genre should breeze through.  I’m not exactly great at shooters, but I still managed to win after about four or five tries, so the difficulty isn’t too brutal and patterns are easily visible.  Not too hard, but plenty of fun.  Give it a try at this LINK.

Nifflas‘ classic freeware game, “Knytt Stories,” has been ported to the DS by RRC2Soft.  LINK HERE…

“Knytt Stories” is one of the best freeware games out there and I’m right now playing through this DS homebrew of the game, and it is a great port.  So if you have an r4 or some other flashcart this is one game definitely worth getting on it.  If not, then you can still always play the original.

Odd Glitch: I noticed an interesting/aggravating glitch which I don’t recall happening in my first runthrough. When using the “Scout” Plasmid to scope out an area to strategize an attack, I found myself unable to use Plasmids afterwards. I let mself die to so I could reset when I came back, but the same result came up after doing certain things (such as zooming with guns). I had to start the level over just to avoid using “Scout” so this wouldn’t happen again. At first, I figured it might be part of going the “Evil” route. But this game is really good at notifying you of such handicaps. I don’t know if that was just a colossal mistake or if it just comes with the territory of being bad.

Enemies: There seems to be quite a bit taken into account when it comes to the overall look at AI actions of Rapture’s spliced up population.

This time around, the “Spider Splicers” look the same and are all male. However, this look is definitely one that will make you flinch upon your first encounter. Psychotic and ugly to boot, these bastards will utilize the old “climb on ceilings and chuck hooks at you” tactic.

The “Big Daddies” pose the same threat they did before, but with the drill and and a hand full of electricity will take care of them. After softening them up with some frag grenades or heat-seeking rockets, of course.

The “Brute Splicers” are a bit of a pain if you find yourself low on the necessary ammo. They collapse (although don’t immediately die) if you hit ‘em with the Solid Buck for the Shotgun. Zap & repeat and you’ll find they aren’t much trouble. Just zap them before they throw debris at you.

The “Big Sisters” are troublesome, so gear up when you hear their ear-piercing screech. These bitches are quick, but manageable. Keep a step ahead of them, make sure when they gather debris to throw or grab a Splicer regenerate that you zap them immediately. Armor-piercing rounds are very efficient in taking them out.

The “Evil”: The ending for the evil plot is similar to that of the “Good,” only with a much darker tone (obviously). It makes it kind of difficult to tell what role Eleanor will play in the next Bioshock (if she even has one). I’ll avoid telling you what happens at the end, you’ll have to earn it. Just know the “Good” plot is feel good, and the “Evil” is cryptic. Pretty obvious.

Multiplayer: Multiplayer on this game is actually not too bad. It starts out with a room you can walk through and customize “Load Outs” (What guns, Plasmids and Tonics you can use) and change your character’s appearance. You can only use two Plasmids and two guns. But, guess what, THAT’S TWO PLASMIDS. Thus, sweetening the deal and obliterating any negative aspects of that statement. Can CoDMod2 do that? Neg. Granted, it’s not nearly on the level CoDMod 1 or 2 resides on, but it’s actually pretty fun when you get the hang of it. It sucks a bit having to go back to just two plasmids, but it’s either that or choppy gameplay (which is never fun online). The more you play, the more ADAM you acquire, giving you new Plasmids, new weaponry and, eventually, Tonics.

“Noby Noby Boy” for the Playstation 3 is was a damn hard game to describe, and the iPhone port might be even harder.  The original game was “kind of” a 3D platforming, exploration game where you play Boy who goes around a small panel of earth with lots of strange objects and cute caricature of people and cows, or what-not.  You stretch, and eat any object, growing bigger to eat bigger things.  When you eat too much you poot it out your back end…you can fly, kind of… And why do you do all this?  Well, there’s one vague goal: Help girl grow bigger, so she can stretch out across the universe.  The only other goals are to experiment, have fun, and play around.  It was actually a lot of fun, and worth the 5 dollar cover.

“Noby Noby Boy” for the iPhone is even more abstract and aimless.  Instead of being in a section of the world, Boy is a black void and you can play with him by stretching him around and having him grab onto the random objects you can pop up on the screen.  The goal of growing Girl is still there, and it’s actually the same girl as the one on PS3 (right now she’s reached Jupiter).  It’s a fun little time waster, but there’s no “deep” story or far reaching goal to compliment the gameplay.  It’s just an interesting little toy you can play with when bored.

The graphics of the original “Noby Noby Boy” are still pretty much all there.  It’s cute and brightly colored, complimented by charming music.  But unlike the Katamari port that came to iPhone, “Noby Noby Boy” doesn’t try to be the same game.  It’s an iPhone exclusive through and through.  You don’t control Boy, you play with him.  You can use your fingers to flail him around and see how he interacts with the environment.  You can create a giant robot on screen that will play the music on your iPod.  You can update your facebook or twitter with how much you stretched girl.  And there are a lot more little fun things you can do in game, instead of doing something progressive with your time.

So this is a recommendation for the app.  I’m not sure if everyone will like it, but it’s a fun little toy and well worth buying for the 2 dollar asking price.  Also consider this an endorsement for the original game.  They might not be the most sensible games out their, but you will never play anything like them.  That even goes for their sister games.  They share a name, but they’re both wonderful bizarre in their own special way.

“Balloon in a Wasteland” is a defense browser game by Armor Games, where you play a tiny man with a gun who crash lands his hot air balloon in a dark and stormy wasteland (hence the title) and has to repair while hordes of flesh rending monsters try to kill him.  It’s a fairly simple concept, and not very hard to beat, but it’s a lot of fun.  The goal is not to outlast the waves of creatures; it’s to repair your balloon as quickly as possible.  The creatures come in numbered waves like in most defense games and you can buy new weapons, traps, or fortifications to help defend yourself.

The core problem I had with the game was that I always would get the balloon up and go before getting any of the coolest items.  That’s not a bad problem to have.  So I just wasted time instead of fixing the balloon.  Each run felt pretty fun, and it’s just a good waste of time.

Give the game a try.  It has a unique art style and some fun gameplay.  You can play it: HERE.

WET puts you in the boots of Rubi, a gun-for-hire who is duped into bringing the son of one Mr. Ackers to who she thinks is Mr. Ackers. Bamboozled by a doppleganger, she seeks revenge when they aim to take her out of the picture. This results in a Kill Bill-esque rampage full of bloody revenge.

Your weapons include dual pistols, dual shotguns, dual SMGs, and dual crossbows. The weapons in Rubi’s arsenal come in twos to utilize the “Split Targeting” system. It’s what it sounds like. While you’re in slow-mo (triggered by jumping and shooting or sliding and shooting), you automatically target one enemy while manually targeting another. Making for a fun and efficient way to bring cronies to the other side.

The car chase scenes remind me of The Matrix: Reloaded, full of far-fetched jumps and improbable dodges. But this is all a part of WET’s over-the-top antics, which get old quickly for some. I played this game all the way through in two sittings I was so entertained. It’s by all means a rental unless you get a good deal on it. It goes by quickly and you find yourself doing similar things from time to time, but they find ways to change up skill use throughout.

“Rage Mode” is triggered by the same cutscene in different levels. You’re minding your own business, all of the sudden a lacky will run at you like they have a chance against Rubi’s brutal fury. She guns him down in a single shot, blood splatters on her face and BOOM… Rage Mode. The level turns red and the enemies turn into faceless black and white clones which become fodder for your guns/sword.

The formula of every level is the same, with an occasional surprise car chase scene. All tied together by a grindhouse feel, grainy film which becomes increasingly more grainy as you take more and more damage. This can be a little distracting when you find yourself in a pickle. But this is one of those occasions where you have to man up.

Again, WET is a rental if you have other games you want to buy. The acrobatics are quite impressive especially when combined with the combat of split-targeting. Health comes in the form of increasing your combo-multiplier in “Arena Mode” or chugging a bottle of whiskey, tossing it in the air and shooting it. Rubi is a badass voiced by Eliza Dushku, the dialogue is nothing to write home about, but if you’re looking for a revenge tale that you can complete quickly, give WET a try.