Pop Quiz, Hotshot!

‘Sin’ turns the shoot-’em-up into science

I’d love to tell you that I’ve curated a complete library of games from celebrated shoot-’em-up developer Treasure, but I’d be lying.

I’ve struggled through all five stages of “Ikaruga,” played a couple levels of “Gunstar Heroes” and rented “Gradius V” once, and that’s the long and short of it. The games are famously hard, and I’m a wimp.

So I can’t really tell you whether it’s strange for Treasure titles to attack you with pods of homicidal dolphins and bionic hamsters, as “Sin & Punishment: Star Successor” does.

What I can tell you: If you like lasers and a stiff challenge, you’ll like “Star Successor,” released exclusively on the Wii earlier this summer.

You control one of two tween warriors — Isa, who has a jetpack, and Kachi, who has a hoverboard. Aside from a few mechanical differences, that’s all you need to know about either of them up front. They journey forward in three dimensions, switching occasionally to side-scrolling 2-D, and shoot everything that moves using rapid-fire laser weapons, melee attacks and a charged shot that can dispatch multiple enemies at once.

There’s a story of sorts, but if you play the game, I beg you to skip as much of it as possible. It’s nonsense of the lowest order, and even if it were Shakespeare, you’d be tempted to blow past it. The gunplay is the main attraction here, and it’s sublime.

By pinning the movement controls to the nunchuk and the aiming and firing to the remote, Treasure has developed one of the tightest action games to use Nintendo’s novelty controller. Thanks in part to a largely flawless frame rate, everything feels fluid, precise and incredibly responsive. When you get hit in “Star Successor,” it’s usually your fault, not the hardware’s.

Played start to finish on the easiest difficulty, the game takes only a few hours, but if you stop there, you’re missing the point. The real thrills come from mastering the many, many bosses, each with its own tricks and shortcuts, and eventually clearing the game without dying (or, if you’re nuts, without getting hit at all).

And the differences between Isa and Kachi are substantial enough to warrant playing through “Star Successor” at least twice. Isa’s lasers and charged shot are meant to be blind-fired for extra damage, though he can lock on to an enemy when things get hectic.

Kachi locks on to enemies automatically — a handy feature when you’re trying to boost your score multiplier, but an occasionally frustrating one when you want to select your own target.

Her charge shot, however, is much more fun to use. While holding the A button, you sweep your on-screen reticle across each enemy you want to hit. Release, and voila. Lasered dudes.

Punishment: There are a couple of wrinkles, particularly where those terrific boss fights are concerned.

Because you’ll be dying at the bosses’ hands quite a bit, it would be nice to be able to skip some of the cutscenes involved in fighting them. The end boss of the fourth stage, for instance, shouts “My blood is on fire!” after taking enough damage, shrieking as she morphs into a kind of winged jungle witch.

The process takes a few moments, and because this boss’ second form is exponentially tougher than her first, you’ll likely have to start over a few times, which means sitting through the entire sequence again and again.

Hammering on the Wii remote’s plus button will get you past most of the ridiculous story moments. (Pro tip: It even speeds up your Gameover screen.) But not the bosses. We’re talking about just a few seconds here and there, but when they’re repeated every time you die, they can make a stubborn boss all the more frustrating.

The game’s other major design hurdle isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, though it might scare off more casual players.

Most of the challenge in “Star Successor” is impossible to anticipate if you’re brand new to the game. You’ll be struggling through impossible bullet patterns and boss attacks that seemingly cannot be dodged on your first go round, and though this all becomes second nature with enough repetition, it can feel cheap initially.

If you’re a once-and-done kind of gamer, or one who’s easily set off, this might be a problem.

For example, that same fourth-stage boss — the one who enthuses about her fiery blood — eventually unleashes a flock of blue and red birds that she calls her “ravens of time.” Once the ravens reach your character, they turn into circular blobs that appear to be unblockable.

Only through experimenting will you learn that you have to use your melee attack on the blue raven blob, which will explode nearby red blobs and slow down time so that you can get in a few extra hits.

If you accidentally touch one of the red blobs instead, time speeds up, giving said boss a few free hits on you.

It’s one of hundreds of unpredictable risk-reward scenarios littered throughout the game, and it isn’t unique to the bosses. Do you use your melee attack on an incoming missile to fire it back at your target, or do you dodge the missile to keep your score multiplier safe?

How this sort of thing rubs you could decide whether “Star Successor” is your kind of game. I found it exhilirating and well-crafted, but I’m a patient, nimble masochist. Your mileage may vary.

— PETER MERGENTHALER

Survival of the Dead: More than the zombies are lifeless

Guest blogger Andy Shaw, who writes about reality TV over at Real Blogger of York County, decided to review George Romero’s latest, “Survival of the Dead.” He wishes his eyes could unsee what he saw.

I consider myself a zombie connoisseur.

I like my zombies any way I can get them:

* Vintage, creepy and horrifying, as in the original “Night of the Living Dead,” filmed, I should note, not too far away from my western Pennsylvania hometown.

* Somewhat humorous, very aggressive but relatively plodding, as in “Dawn of the Dead” with Sarah Polley and the guy now on Modern Family.

* Very funny and yet scary, as in “Shaun of the Dead.”

* Not really a zombie, but fast and furious, as in “28 Days (and Weeks) Later.”

How I do not like them:

In any form on “Survival of the Dead,” the latest from “Night of the Living Dead” brainchild George A. Romero, a director so inherently connected to zombies that he basically is their king. I just wish the king had decided not to insult his zombie-loving audience with what quite possibly was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in the past year, zombie or not.

“Survival of the Dead” is connected to “Diary of the Dead,” a documentary-style zombie movie about teens filming the outbreak of zombie attacks, as teens are prone to do in such situations.

In “Survival,” Sarge “Nicotine” Crocket, a name I can’t even make up, is leading a rogue band of pseudo-soldiers across the Eastern seaboard; the crew was briefly featured in “Diary.”

This time, they are pillaging and plundering and whatnot as they try to survive the post-zombie apocalypse. They eventually decide to go to an island off the shore of Delaware (Delaware?!?!) for the remote possibility of zombie-free living.

Of course, Romero has stockpiled the island, Hatfield v. McCoy style, with two feuding families: The O’Flynns, who have a strong Irish accent despite ostensibly living in America for quite some time, and the Muldoons, who are cowboys, which are, as you know, common on Delaware’s shoreline. The two families hate each other. The O’Flynns, led by patriarch Patrick (Kenneth Welsh), think zombies should be kept alive in case there’s a cure, while Muldoon patriarch Seamus (Richard Fitzpatrick) thinks zombies need to die … uh, well, die again.

Patrick is forced off the island, where he meets up with the Crocket crew and they sneak back onto the island via ferry boat. Yep. That sets up an epic showdown … OK, a showdown … OK, some poorly executed back-and-forth shootings and zombie attacks … between the two families.

Spoiler alert (as if it matters): Patrick has a daughter who’s a zombie, and Seamus has captured her to see if she’ll eat a horse. Again, I cannot make this up. Seamus figures if the zombie eats an animal, they won’t be hungry for human flesh, a silly mistake because humans taste so goodjustkidding.

The zombies in “Survival” aren’t terrifying or particularly funny, and they at least need to be one of those. Romero relies on doing quick cuts and surprise entrances for the scare factor, and it’s too obvious to scare. It’s as if the world of horror films has passed him up, and he refuses to move with it as if he’s above it all.

He does do a fun trick of killing a zombie with a fire extinguisher, but that’s it as far as memorable zombie moments. At no point do you truly fear for the characters, in part because the backstories are just haphazardly put together to the point that you wonder if they were an afterthought. Simply saying “I have a family” or “I don’t want to die” doesn’t equal compassion on the part of the audience.

There is no particular reason we should care about the feuding families, either. Maybe the point is making us think about how we think of our loved ones in a euthanasia context - if someone was really sick, would you let them die or keep them alive with life support? I get it, but Romero has always said people look too deeply into his movies for the meaning, instead of just realizing it’s about zombies and horror and whatnot. So it’s more of a face value thing.

Well, that’s not good for “Survival,” because the zombies are otherwise forgettable, the acting at some points is laughable, and the script, which doesn’t have a clear focus or tone, seems like it was written by college kids who wanted to do a zombie flick. Considering this wasn’t a bare-bones budget kind of movie, the expectations were at least for a mediocre experience.

There’s no surviving “Survival.”

May the force be with you, Adidas

In a continuing celebration of the World Cup, PQH! offers this “Star Wars” and Soccer mash-up. Sure, it’s just an Adidas advertisement, but it’s a hoot for “Star Wars” fans.

The clip, or an edited version thereof, has been appearing after most of the World Cup games on ESPN.
PQH! admits it doesn’t recognize all the humans in the clip, but David Beckham, Mos Def and Snoop Dog are there among Greedo, Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

– JOHN SIMCOE

Shakira, Drop Dead Fred sing for soccer

Believe it or not, but the world outside the U.S. is excited about the start of the FIFA 2010 World Cup this weekend.

In what is essentially the most watched competition in the world — even beyond the Olympics — the soccer tournament to end all soccer tournaments is being hosted in South Africa this year. … And yes, the U.S. team is indeed in the mix, so it’s worth keeping an eye on.

In every nation but the U.S., fanaticism for the game they know as football is comparable to releasing rabid beavers in a balsa wood factory.

In fact, people are so crazed about the World Cup that they write songs about it. They write oodles of songs about how they can cheer their country on.

Some of the songs are made by big names, like this one by Shakira.

That video, I believe, is the 100 percent official World Cup song.

But being official doesn’t mean a thing, because like we said, everybody’s getting into the act, including Rik Mayall, the guy most people know as “Drop Dead Fred.” His song fuses a spirited reworking of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” with some English national pride.

Lots of English performers are vying for their countrymen’s support, and the Daily Telegraph offers this list of some of the best and worst.

Fans from around the world are further rallied by World Cup Song 2010, a Web site dedicated to collecting all the anthems it can.

And the U.S.? Well we’ll just stick with our own football song.

– JOHN SIMCOE

Summer TV preview: Neighbors from Hell

PQH! likes a good concept. And when we first saw the “Neighbors from Hell” trailer at our local multiplex, we were kind of amused. And since it was going to be on cable, I wouldn’t have to shell out nine bucks to see it.

The setup: Satan, the netherworld’s biggest bad guy, ships a family of demons from Hell to raise a little bit of it on earth. As a drama, it wouldn’t be anything PQH! would be particularly interested in unless it was on pay-TV. But an animated comedy for basic cable? Now that ought to be gold.

The animation style was fun and amusing looking  and perfect for skewering suburban hypocrisy. The voice cast (Molly Shannon, Will Sasso, Patton Oswalt, Kurtwood Smith) offered some real talent.

But “Neighbors from Hell” ended up falling short. It was irreverent, sure, but not enough. It crossed some boundaries, but they seem like they’ve been crossed before. It even had a healthy dose of zaniness, but heck we can get that by watching “Tom & Jerry.”

Maybe it was just trying to hard, but the devil is in the details and it’s clear “Hell’s” script needed some extra work. Where “The Simpsons” shines for clever plots, this kind of sputtered along. Where “The Family Guy” goes all out for a laugh, this kind of just putters along. Where “South Park” points out our fallacies, it offers far too many of its own.

Despite all this, don’t put a pitchfork in “Neighbors from Hell” just yet, PQH! can see that this show ought to be better than what its pilot offers. We’ll give it a few more episodes and see if they can turn up the heat.

It premieres at 10 p.m., Monday, June 7, on TBS, but PQH! wouldn’t advise you stay up for it.

– JOHN SIMCOE

‘Red Dead’ among May’s must-buys

By any measure, May was a bountiful month in gaming. But when comparing it to previous Mays — a historically dry month at retail and the traditional start of the summer dry spell — it was absolutely astonishing.

Week after week, gamers’ checking accounts — still reeling from an unusually strong start to the year — were pelted by dazzling releases from Nintendo, Rockstar, Remedy, Bizarre Creations, Black Rock Studio and other proven corners of the industry. Let’s take stock of some of that greatness and prepare for what looks to be a quiet, affordable June.

If you buy one game from May, make it “Mario Galaxy 2” for the Wii, which was reviewed in this space last week. But if you get two, pick up “Red Dead Redemption,” the spiritual successor to a competent but unremarkable open-world Western from the PS2 and Xbox era. “Redemption” builds on that game’s ideas and applies the same polish Rockstar Games typically reserves for its “Grand Theft Auto” titles, emerging as a strong contender for game of the year.

It would be disingenuous of me to tell you precisely how faithful “Redemption” is to the tenets of classic-westerndom. In that respect, I can offer only this — I’ve seen “Tombstone,” I’ve seen “The Wild Bunch,” and one of my favorite TV shows of all time is “Deadwood,” a sprawling, 36-episode dissection of frontier life as civilization creeps in.

Set about 40 years later, when telephones and power lines are making cowboys irrelevant, “Redemption” touches on many of the same concepts. And while Rockstar’s prose is hardly the flowery genius of David Milch, it does the job.

But how’s the shootin’ and stuff? Well, the game was put together by some of the fine people at the developer’s San Diego studio, which builds sturdier, better-looking games than its cousins do. The vistas and weather are absolutely the graphical stars of “Redemption,” lending real credibility to virtual sunsets and thunderstorms.

Guns carry real kick, too, adding some gravity to how you decide to dispatch the desperate, thirsty schlubs that litter the land. Do you lasso and hogtie your bounties, returning them to lawmen for due process? Or do you administer some frontier justice, blasting them off their horses and watching them flail about as they get caught in their own stirrups?

Thanks to some fancy software, people gyrate and stumble believably. If you shoot a guy in the shoulder while he’s running at you, his momentum will carry him forward even as he whips around and falls down. In “Redemption,” bullets hurt.

To-do list: There’s an absurdly generous amount of content here. Aside from the entertaining and varied narrative missions, which take you from Mexico to the mountains and all points between, you have scads of sidequests, jobs and collections to complete, all at your leisure and in any order you please. Treasure-hunting, which forces you to rely on faded clues drawn on in-game maps, is my favorite distraction of the bunch, and it’ll last you five hours or so on its own. Provided you don’t cheat by looking up all nine treasures on YouTube, of course.

Know that the game is stacked with technical quirks — some graphical, some more serious — but they’re as forgivable as they are eye-popping. The gunplay, for one, is functional enough, but “Redemption” occasionally calls upon you to brain bad guys more quickly than is possible.

For instance, while going about your business in Armadillo, Chuparosa or one of the game’s other towns, a prostitute will scream for help as a scorned client tries to knife her to death. This all happens before your eyes, and if you train your sights on the attacker quickly enough, you’ll get the good lady’s thanks and a few bucks for your trouble.

If you’re too slow, or if you can’t be bothered, you watch a hooker die in the street. And if you try to shoot the bad guy after the fact, you’ll confuse the game’s morality system, which decides you’ve committed a crime.

Hardcore, hardly appropriate, hilarious, or a little of all three? In any case, it’s not a dealbreaker. “Red Dead Redemption” is a true milestone for sandbox gameplay, and it cements Rockstar’s reputation as one of the best in the business.

‘Alan Wake’: I’m only about halfway through this single-player shooter from Remedy, but it’s too good not to tease here.

You play Alan Wake, a schlocky thriller writer struggling to put out another mass-market hit. Just as your vacation in the Pacific Northwest begins, shadowy figures kidnap your wife, knock you unconscious and leave you scrambling to account for a missing week.

Shortly after that, you’re burning zombies with a flashlight and picking up pages of a book you don’t remember writing.

The combat controls aren’t as tight as I’d like, but the story more than makes up for the flawed running and gunning. And a well-conceived episodic structure gives you places to pause while leaving you ready for more.

‘Blur’: Bizarre Creations is positioning their latest racer as “Mario Kart” for grown-ups, but it’s more like “Wipeout” with wheels.

The game can feel a little soulless at times, but it pairs solid racing mechanics with versatile power-ups (missiles, shockwaves, nitro boosts and the like) to great effect, and the attractive courses and multiplayer unlocks don’t hurt, either.

— Peter Mergenthaler writes about games for the York Dispatch on Thursdays. Contact him at pmergenthaler@yorkdispatch.com or 505-5439, or follow @Peteybird on Twitter.

Jonah Hex goes retro

PQH! was going to really lay into DC Comics. We were gonna offer a major complaint about their new graphic novel “Jonah Hex: No Way Back,” especially since this ought to be a top-grade product with a big budget Jonah Hex movie coming out in June.

The film, starring Josh Brolin, Megan Fox and John Malkovich, does seem to take a few liberties with Hex, but it still looks kind of fun.

So we were all ready to complain … and then we felt guilty about not liking it as much as we think should.

The 136-page hardcover about DC’s malformed cowboy, which hit stands early next month, is written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti. And for us, a “Gray and Palmiotti book” is as good as gold. PQH! has loved them on books such as “Monolith” and “Power Girl,” so we didn’t have any doubts.

But then we looked inside, and the art by Tony DeZuniga was really .. uhm … underwhelming.  Perspectives were awry. Characters looked squashed.

In fact, one has to seriously worry about DC’s decision-making: Why would they hire a C-Grade artist for a book that can score some major sales on the coattails of “Jonah Hex” movie?

Then we flipped to the back and read the creator profiles — lo and behold, Tony DeZuniga isn’t just some “C-Grade artist” — he’s the guy who co-created Jonah Hex and illustrated the character’s original adventure back in 1972.

So for that, we certainly can give “Jonah Hex: No Way Back” a little slack. Reconnecting readers to an industry veteran gets high marks in my book, and something that always appreciated.
However, DC did itself a disservice by not  marketing the book that way. Modern readers will be put off by DeZuniga’s style, and older readers won’t ever hear about it because DC offers far too little context about DeZuniga’s influence on the character and the industry.

And honestly, reverence for a veteran artist aside, this art just doesn’t cut it. It’s more 1980s underground zine than modern big publisher.
As for the story, “No Way Out” offers a few details on the cowboy’s early life and introduces us to Hex’s until-now-unknown half-brother, and the two make some attempts at being all family-like.

But as happens with any Jonah Hex story (and most modern Westerns) things go south, and they never truly recover. Hex tries to rally the troops, but unless you’re a veteran gunfighter, a rally can only go so far.

Yes, it is familiar territory. And that’s about all “Jonah Hex: No Way Back” has to offer: Art that you feel you ought to like (but don’t particularly) that’s coupled with the kind of Western story you’ve seen far too often.

– JOHN SIMCOE

Read John’s comic reviews on

Twitter at twitter.com/johnsimcoe

Galaxy 2 stands among Mario’s greatest

As Americans, we’re rightfully choosy about which mass-media entertainers we allow to use single names.Think Madonna.

Beyonce.

Chyna.

Gallagher.

Best of the best, right?

But one diminutive Italian dude towers above them all.

Since he arrived on the princess-rescuing scene in 1981, Mario has needed no introduction. You know this guy. He wears blue overalls and jumps on stuff. He likes mushrooms and coins and warp pipes and, above all, shiny things. His best friend is a dinosaur.

And perhaps it’s that universal familiarity that has prompted some videogame writers to pepper their otherwise exclamatory praise for “Super Mario Galaxy 2,” the latest title in a franchise that has sold more than 220 million units, with hints of fatigue.

“Superfluous,” “unnecessary” and one of the best Mario games of all time, declared Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo.

“We should, by rights, be well sick of (the Mario formula) by now,” said The Escapist’s Susan Arendt, “but it’s hard to be cranky when the level design is this good.”

Better than ‘good’: If the cognitive dissonance sounds weird, that’s because it is.

We’ve become such a preening, entitled bunch of babies that most of us can’t bring ourselves to start by saying what ought to be said: “Galaxy 2″ is one of the very best platformers ever made, and it’s certainly the best game on the Nintendo Wii.

There are blemishes — those chintzy star bits from the first “Galaxy” return, for one — but they’re wee ones, and we’d be lucky to get titles this good five times as often.

Pretending as if the first “Galaxy” (and every other game in the Mario canon) never existed, “Galaxy 2″ begins with a five-minute tutorial to establish the ounce of narrative context you’ll need for the next 20 hours or so — Bowser is as big as a planet and steals Princess Peach, but Princess Peach has promised Mario cake.

Time to jump on stuff!

The game cuts you loose with the quickness. In the first 10 minutes, you’ll have careened around asteroids, leapfrogged black holes, hopscotched across disappearing elevators and slaughtered a baby piranha plant.

To the races: And you’ll have driven the laws of physics into humiliating exile, such are the gravity-defying heroics you’ll pull off in “Galaxy 2.”

The sequel keeps the spherical levels of the first game, but just as often, it stretches, perforates and bedazzles them with grouchy turtles, rope swings and other sundries from the Mushroom Kingdom.

These worlds — you travel between them on a spaceship styled after Mario’s face — are the most hazardous, creative, candy-coated obstacle courses ever

And fortunately, they bear revisiting. As with the first “Galaxy” and other 3-D Mario games, “Galaxy 2″ has you tromping about 40 or so stages in pursuit of 120 stars. Collect all of those, and you’ll unlock the privilege of finding 120 more.

Collect all of those, and you unlock a final world — something I’ve not accomplished yet — for a crack at two final objectives, bringing the total star count to 242.

Not alone: Yoshi, Mario’s anatomically puzzling dinosaur companion (he lays eggs), appears in “Galaxy 2,” and he’s in fine form. By eating special fruits purposefully strewn through certain levels, he turns into a blimp, a lantern or a red-hot bullet that can scale vertical walls and run across water.

The fruits are fun, easy-to-use additions to the game; it’s just a shame that you’re given little license to experiment with them. Each power-up is placed conspicuously close to the section of the level where you’re meant to use it.

That makes some sense — unlike the fire-flowers of Marios past, each fruit expires after 15 seconds or so — but you’re never at a loss for what you’re supposed to do.

The same goes for Mario’s four new power-ups. The best of them is a suit that lets you conjure three clouds mid-air, bridging otherwise un-jumpable distances.

You’ll also play with a rock suit and a giant drill; ice flowers, fire flowers and the ghost and spring suits return from the first “Galaxy.”

Again, little room for experimentation, but the mechanics are so tight that you likely won’t complain. The game challenges your fingers more than it does your brain, which will be plenty busy chewing on the finer points of jumping upside-down or running inside a sphere.

There’s so much more to love — the outstanding orchestral remixes of old Mario tunes, the streamlined world map, Yoshi’s heart-melting repertoire of grunts and squeals — but it’s best left to discover on one’s own.

Trust Nintendo, and trust Mario. If you’re looking for a reason to put down “Red Dead Redemption” or “Alan Wake,” you’ve found it.

I don’t assign stars or scores these days, but if I did, “Galaxy 2″ would get a babillion out of five. So there.

We’ve discovered the beavers’ secret plan

Pardon our ignorance, but PQH! isn’t really all that well versed in why beavers make dams or how they do it, but that does not stifle the pure awe we have for this particular beaver dam.

Recently discovered in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park, the monster-sized lodge is said to be the world’s largest, is more than a half-mile long and researchers theorize construction on it began in the 1970s. (In comparison, the Hoover Dam is just a mere 1,200 feet long.)

They say it can be seen from space, and the mere thought of that has PQH! wondering why beavers need to make anything seen from space.

Just who are these tree-hating rodents trying to contact anyway?

– JOHN SIMCOE

Malice in Wonderland

Being a pop culture junkie, PQH! naturally has a certain fascination with the greater Los Angeles area.

If you watch enough movies and TV shows, you actually get familiar with all sorts of L.A. landmarks from the La Brea Tarpits to the Griffith Park Observatory.

Those places are pretty nice and PQH! would actually want to visit them if we ever vacationed in the City of Angels.

But until now, that’s all I could do for those landmarks. Just visit.

That all can change now, because I’ve found a L.A. landmark that you can rent and even live in.

Here’s the listing of a lovely home in Laurel Canyon.

Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. Off-street parking. Not bad for $2,500 a month in one of the U.S.’ most expensive communities.

The only problem? It was the scene of a quadruple murder, and not just any quadruple murder, but the infamous “Wonderland” murder — the one that involved legendary porn star John Holmes and a gang of drug dealers.

According to this forum post, the place has been on the market since at least mid-April and the owner has already dropped the price by $300 a month.

It’s a deal for L.A., but it’s certainly a deal with a one heck of a catch.