I had heard bits and pieces about this game when it first came out. About how Level 5 (developer of the fantastic Dragon Quest VIII) was behind it and about how it was attempting to mix up the puzzle genre a bit by adding a main story and characters with drive and purpose to the game. I also remember being particularly drawn to the distinct Sylvian Chomet-like European artwork in the game which I found absolutely lovely and compelling the second I laid my eyes upon them. Yet when the game was first released, I was feeling completely apathetic about the DS as a gaming device and just couldn’t be bothered to give it a chance. A couple of weeks ago, I managed to play the game for about five minutes. The end result? Professor Layton and the Curious Village has effectively reacquainted me with a DS I hadn’t touched in over nine months and with an interest in light puzzle solving that I had long forgotten.

The premise in the game is simple: You’re Professor Layton, famous puzzle solver, and you, along with your faithful apprentice Luke, are invited to St. Mystere to help find its hidden treasure, the Golden Apple. Many puzzles ensue. The game is split into two different game modes, puzzle solving and exploration, and in both you use the stylus exclusively. Exploration is largely in first person and it works like in most point and click adventure games, i.e. you walk around, and use your stylus to tap on who you want to talk and where you want to go. In puzzle solving, you use the stylus to tap on answers, drag things around, draw lines or figures, write in answers (with the game’s really solid writing recognition software) among other things. The controls never got in the way of the game itself and that’s all one can ask from a game like this.

The game is structured so that you’ll usually have to explore your admittedly tiny world map until you come across somebody that needs you to solve a puzzle for them before they let you proceed along other areas of the map and/or advance the story. The puzzles themselves range from easy to devilish, logic-based to math-based, visual to text-driven and everything in between. It’s a nice mix of puzzles even if some of them are taken straight from grammar school (measure X amount of water by using 3 difference sized pitchers). There is also a relatively high number of “trick question” puzzles that’ll no doubt aggravate you from time to time although, after failing at a few of those, you start to learn to think just how the game wants you to think.

It’s really amazing how just adding a little bit of context and character to the perhaps tired puzzle game genre on the DS you get a game that’s as captivating as this one. The story is nothing amazing (though it’s easily better than a large percentage of games out there) but it’s well done and the characters are very endearing. As you progress through the game, you’ll come across a few mysteries surrounding the village and it was extremely satisfying and rewarding when, in the climax of the game, the Professor starts to pull these various pieces of evidence together to reveal the secret behind St. Mystere. The music, though perhaps repetitive, fits the ominous vibe of St. Mystere perfectly and the art style, as I touched upon earlier, is just superb. The modest use of animated cutscenes and sporadic voice overs certainly add to the experience as well. It’s so strange to see a complete action cutscene in a video game, from set-up to resolution, when we’re so used to cutscenes being nothing more than an appetizer before you get back control of your character and start to break some teeth.

But alas, this is a puzzle game and a damn good one at that.

I’m buying the sequel on day one.

Final Score: 9/10

They’re doing it.

They’re actually doing it.

They’re bringing Barry Allen back from the dead.

I always thought there were two characters in superhero comics, aside from origin related deaths like Bruce Wayne’s parents, uncle Ben or the entire planet Krypton (and God help whoever even thinks about bringing them back), that shouldn’t be brought back to life. The first character is Gwen Stacy, who taught us that the hero doesn’t always win and that death can be very real in these fictional worlds, and the second is Barry Allen. I sighed in relief when I read in an interview that people talked Joe Quesada, current Marvel Editor-in-Chief, out of bringing Gwen back after the events in his One More Day story arc. I felt we dodged a bullet but, soon afterwards, I started to hear rumors about DC wanting to bring Barry back and now here we are.

My initial reaction upon hearing the news was opposition. How couldn’t I? Barry Allen died a heroic death, more so than any other hero out there. He saved the universe. He is, for all intents and purposes, the first DC Universe saint. He made a few more appearances postmortem via time travel and each one of those instances was highlighted and pronounced by the fact that they were but mere sprinkles of the heroic, Silver Age Flash. Barry Allen is a more powerful character in death than he was when alive. Isn’t he? Or did I just convince myself about this?

Two of the main arguments against bringing characters back from the dead in superhero comics are that it negates the effect of that character’s death and that it’s always pointless because superhero comics somehow always manage to go back to their original status quo. The first argument is a little hard to talk about at this point because we don’t know the circumstances or events that’ll lead to Barry Allen’s return. The second point made me think for a while though. Crisis on Infinite Earths was released in 1985. I was no more than a year old when Barry died. For me, a dead Barry Allen is the status quo. Am I being a hypocrite for wanting superhero characters to move forward while insisting that big, sweeping changes to the status quo should not happen? Because bringing Barry Allen back will shake the status quo of the Flash books pretty roughly. How much change is too much change?

I let these thoughts swirl in my head for a while and then I actually went out and got DC Universe 0, the issue where Barry Allen’s death is teased. Needless to say, my fears where put to rest after reading the issue. It was but a small tease of things to come but the way it was delivered was nothing short of brilliant and has me completely psyched about the potential of this storyline. I don’t know why I doubted Geoff Johns considering the mastery with which he handled Hal Jordan’s own return from the dead and subsequent Green Lantern issues. I do have a couple of things I’m worried about, primarily regarding the fate of Barry’s successor, Wally West, but I’m sure Johns has something planned for him. Killing him off to make room for Barry would be a mistake and three Flashes running around is perhaps a bit of overkill so I’m curious as to how that’ll be handled.

Whatever happens, I’ve grown to accept that American superhero comics are a malleable medium, always changing yet always staying the same.

These characters are bigger than us and we’re just along for the ride.

Bring on Barry Allen.

When I first bought Suda51′s Killer7, I was so frustrated by the game that I had to put it away and move on to other things after playing it for no longer than one or two hours. A couple months later I tried to play it a second time and started over from the beginning and even though I got farther than the first time I played it, I still became ultimately annoyed by it and put away to once again move on to other things. Many months later I decided to commit myself to actually finishing this game that had been laying in my shelf for some time and I actually did and I walked away from it thinking that, even though it wasn’t a perfect game, it was one that was absolutely worth playing. This is what first piqued my interest in Suda51′s next game, No More Heroes.

Released for the Wii on January of 2008, No More Heroes is a game with a far more American flair than the vast majority of games that come out of Japan, yet it still manages to include elements that are innate to Japanese culture resulting in a mishmash of locations and characters that is strangely enthralling. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the main character, Travis Touchdown, who is an otaku that fights with a lightsaber he won in an online auction.

Set in the fictional city of Santa Destroy, No More Heroes is the story of Travis Touchdown as he kills his way through the top ten ranked assassins in the world with the simple goal of being #1. The story is extremely straightforward though it does provide decent twists towards the end. The game’s structure is straightforward as well: after you kill the Rank 10 Assassin at the beginning of the game you’ll need to earn some money completing odd jobs and assassination missions to pay for the next match’s entry fee after which you’ll enter a closed area, defeat a number of enemies, reach the next ranked assassin and, upon his defeat, you’ll be sent back to the “No More Heroes” motel to repeat the process once again.

Santa Destroy itself serves as a hub for all this craziness and comes complete with a GTA-like map as the city itself is relatively large and you could easily get lost without it. This is where you complete your odd jobs and assassination missions and there’s a few more places you’ll want to visit every now and then including a gym that increases your strength and health, a place where you can upgrade your beam saber and a shop to buy clothes among others. Santa Destroy itself is rather sparse and there’s unfortunately not much to do outside of earning and spending money. You can ride a bike to ease travel and look in dumpsters for free t-shirts and cash but that’s about it.

The combat system is really solid and has good Wii remote implementation. You attack with your beam saber by pressing A, lock into enemies and block by holding Z and dodge in any of three directions by pressing the respective button on the D-Pad. One of the more original game mechanics comes in the form of a high and low stance based on how you hold the Wiimote, vertically or horizontally, that determines where you’ll hit the enemy and the Death Blow which is simply a prompt that asks you to swipe the Wiimote in a specific direction after you’ve drained an enemy’s health resulting in an always satisfying death to that enemy, and any others in the way, by decapitation, being sliced in half and whathaveyou. Add to that beat attacks (punches and kicks that stun after a few hits), charge attacks, roulette based power-ups and wrestling moves (with specific Wiimote motions and all) and you have a deceptively deep combat system. Unfortunately, some of the more nuanced elements in the combat, like the super Death Blow, counter and shadow dodge (which I didn’t learn about until the very last boss fight), are never explained fully, if at all, which hurts the game when you think all there is to it is just button mashing.

The highlights of the game are undoubtedly the ranked fights themselves as they happen to be where you’ll encounter some of the strangest and most memorable characters ever put in a video game. I don’t feel like ruining any of the surprises but rest assured that they packed a lot of character and personality into characters that barely appear for more than 20-30 minutes each. I think the order in which these characters are ranked could’ve been better as some of the later assassins aren’t nearly as good as the early ones but that might be purely subjective on my part. Also worth noting is that the sections that precede these boss fights tend to become shorter, simpler and just plain forgettable the further you get along. I was expecting a huge battle royale with dozens of enemies before my fight with the Rank 1 Assassin but that never happened.

On the technical side of the things, the game looks extremely dated sadly. Jaggies hurt the look of the game more than anything but appealing character designs and models, along with those fountains of blood, stop the game from becoming a complete eyesore. The HUD has this intentionally pixelated look that is strangely endearing and the game has so many odd interface choices that somehow work extremely well and never cease to surprise you. When was the last time your character saved his game by taking a dump? As far as sound goes, the main theme starts to get repetitive after a while but the music itself goes all the way from good to excellent, the voice acting is terrific and the sound effects are fitting and work extremely well.

No More Heroes is a game that is ultimately more style than substance but it’s hard to not lose yourself in the world of Santa Destroy. No More Heroes is not a perfect game but, in spite of this, Goichi Suda’s latest manages to be the most thoroughly enjoyable game I’ve played on the Wii yet and, like Killer7 before it, it’s a game that is absolutely worth playing.

Final Score: 9/10

This isn’t a review per se of the recently released direct-to-DVD animated feature as it’s a little difficult to dissociate myself from the comic book it’s based it on and look at it objectively. There are, however, a number of things that sprung to mind as I watched the movie that I feel are worth discussing.

The first and foremost thing I noticed is that this adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s story loses a lot of character because of the removal of internal monologues. These internal speeches are an important element that’s inherent of superhero comics and Darwyn Cooke uses them to great effect in DC: The New Frontier to explore these characters and to really get in their head as they react to these fantastical elements they are presented with, such as Hal Jordan trying to make sense of how his power ring works soon after Abin Sur relinquishes it. These elements don’t translate very well to film and the story loses a lot of emotional impact because of this. This is visible early on when Hal Jordan lands in the trench with the Korean soldier and is forced to kill to ensure his survival. It’s an intense read in the comic as Hal tries to figure out how to deal with the situation but it ends up being rather bland in the animated feature. Another good example is towards the end when Barry Allen/The Flash starts to cover The Centre with light from Ray Palmer’s device where he ends up looking perhaps a little less heroic than he did in the comic book.

Since I’m comparing scenes nearly side-by-side here, I think this is a good point as any to mention that the movie is very faithful to its source material, as long as you acknowledge and accept the fact that it’s called Justice League: The New Frontier and not DC: The New Frontier. What this means is that the focus here is given almost entirely to the Justice League side of the story and that a lot of cuts were made to the “big picture” originally presented in DC: The New Frontier. The Losers are not there, the Challengers of the Unknown are not there, John Henry is barely mentioned (sorry, ‘Duf), and so on and so forth. They mix characters and events if needed (Hal Jordan goes to space instead of the Challengers) so as to not create plotholes but what is left is very close to what is presented in Cooke’s novel, sometimes even word by word. I did feel like the mystery of The Centre was driving the story for a while though, instead of it being completely character driven where The Centre ends up pulling all the different elements together like it did in the comic. And, of course, the 70+ minute run time ends up hurting the movie as it jumps from event to event with no pauses and little character development. It’s almost like the movie is trying to hit all the beats in the story without worrying about the character aspect of it, which was such a big part in DC: The New Frontier.

The last thing I want to discuss is perhaps of less importance and has less relevance to the project as a whole but it’s something that, just as it was in the Justice League animated series, I’ve come to notice time and time again: The Flash cannot be accurately represented in any sort of film medium. The concept of a man traveling at the speed of light is almost too abstract to work in a medium where time, real world time, is of such importance. In film, the director handles exactly how and when you receive information whereas in comics it’s ultimately more up to the reader to interpret as a single panel can take place in a year’s worth of time or just a single second. In Justice League: The New Frontier, they attempt to show how fast the The Flash is by slowing down time for every else and letting him move in-between what look like statues of human beings. In the end though, all that’s doing is showing how fast The Flash is relative to regular people. They’re not showing just how fast The Flash really is. The Flash, I guess, is ultimately a concept that works best in comic books.

That’s pretty much how I felt about DC: The New Frontier as a whole after watching this movie: just like Watchmen before it, it’s a story that was made for comics and one that ultimately works best when it stays in comics. The animation is passable, the music is passable, the voice acting is really solid as usual (thank you, Andrea Romano) and the story works but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. If anything, I’d recommend DC: The New Frontier and then, if you liked that, come back and check out this movie to see how it holds up to one of the greatest superhero stories released in recent years.

As much as I understand the importance of writing a review based solely on a video game’s own merits and accomplishments, I find it very difficult to talk about Devil May Cry 4 without first mentioning the previous game in the franchise, Devil May Cry 3.

To put it bluntly, I think DMC3 has the most enjoyable, open and flexible combat system out of any other action game out there. Look no further than the combos videos of the game, something usually associated with fighting games, sprinkled around YouTube and the web. Whereas Ninja Gaiden is strictly dial-a-combo, DMC3 lets you cancel nearly any move into another. As you progress through the game, you eventually gather 5 Devil Arms (melee weapons) and 5 Ranged Weapons (guns) and you can carry two of each and switch between them in real time, essentially doubling your move list and the ways in which you can dispose of your enemies. You also pick a “style” at the beginning of each mission which only affects the use of one button yet it strongly changes how you play the game from being able to block to dashing maneuvers to having more attacks with either your guns or your swords. Needless to say, the variety and experimentation than comes with having so many tools in your hands is nearly unrivaled in the action genre.

So why is this important when talking about Devil May Cry 4? Well, a good sequel must remain true to the original game but still expand upon the concepts introduced therein. It’s important to mention DMC3 to more easily see where DMC4 fails in this regard.

At the outset of DMC4 you’re put in the hands of Nero. He looks and plays very much like Dante, the main character in the previous games, so if you’ve played a DMC game before you’ll feel right at home with him. He does bring something new to the table in the form of his Devil Bringer arm which, among other things, allows you to execute a powerful throw on any enemy. It works as a third element in combat alongside your gun and melee weapon and it’ll grow on you, especially the ability to pull enemies towards you. The use of your gun however, is quite dimished because of this and most of the time you’ll be fighting up close though they do throw a couple of enemies that need to be shot first which is nice and keeps your gun from being completely useless. The first few missions of the game are a blast as you get more and more accustomed to your devil arm and the Exceed system which allows you to charge up your sword to release a more powerful strike. The level design is typical Devil May Cry fare which means there’s beautiful architecture and slight backtracking inside levels. But then as you reach Mission 4 or 5, the first big issue rears its ugly head when you realize that you still haven’t gotten any new weapons.

It’s not that Nero’s sword, gun and Devil Bringer don’t offer a lot of options, especially as you purchase new moves and learn to implement them in combat, but there is this feeling of repetitiveness that starts to creep into the game the further you go along. It’s disappointing because the aforementioned DMC3 gave you your very first new weapon at the end of Mission 3. Unfortunately, this lack of new elements to experiment with continues well into the game until you receive Yamato (which isn’t really a weapon as it only unlocks your Devil Trigger form which allows for more powerful strikes) and even drags on to Mission 11 where things just go completely downhill in the game.

It’s at this point that you stop using Nero and switch over to Dante and it’s here that you start to see some huge development issues in the game. Dante starts off with his two pistols, Ebony and Ivory, his sword and a shotgun and you gain two melee weapons and one gun by the time you switch back to Nero at the end of Mission 18. You also get access to all 4 of the styles available in DMC3 and you’re able to freely switch between them in real time via your D-Pad. These styles, great as they were in DMC3, are directly copy and pasted from that game which gives DMC4 a big feeling of déjà vu the moment you get your hands on Dante. The feeling of déjà vu doesn’t stop there as Dante’s moveset is very similar to the one in DMC3, much more limited compared to Nero’s in spite of being able to change styles midfight and the first melee weapon you gain is an exact copy of Beowulf from DMC3. The biggest offender however, is that you’re forced to backtrack through all the levels that you played through as Nero with Dante, including bosses. This manner of artificially extending play time has been seen before but when half of the game if recycled you’re just being slapped in the face by the developer.

There is a saving grace in the whole Dante section though and it’s both Lucifer and Pandora. Pandora is the 3rd gun you get for Dante and it’s easily the one you’ll want to stick with for the remainder of the game. It’s basically a briefcase from hell that can transform in many different forms (666 according to the description though you only really get a handful) including a missile pod that you actually sit on as you fire rockets all over the place. It’s brilliant, it’s inventive and it’s just a blast to experiment with. Lucifer, on the other hand, is the 3rd melee weapon you get for Dante and it’s basically an infinite dagger dispenser. You constantly throw these daggers out, albeit with a limited range, and those that hit the enemy will stick on him until they eventually explode after a few seconds. Those that miss will keep floating in the air until they explode and you can call any and all daggers that haven’t exploded back at any time and launch them all towards the enemy in one fell swoop. You can also detonate every single dagger around with a simple command move. Stabbing an enemy with a dozen or so daggers and them seeing fly up in the air as you detonate every single one of them is as good as video gaming gets.

And that’s when you realize how great this game could’ve been. I don’t understand how a game that’s been in development for over two years can end up with so little content. Some bosses you fight three times, you have to replay half the stages and Dante is basically a copy and paste job based on DMC3 Dante. The game does have a nice difficulty spike as later enemies and bosses will force you to slow down a bit and the graphics can be pretty inspired at times. The music and story are serviceable, though they did manage to find a nice middle ground between the silliness of DMC3 and an actual video game story that doesn’t make you laugh at how bad it is . A few more levels, a couple more bosses, a couple new weapons for Nero and getting rid of Dante altogether. That’s all this game needed to be great. As it stands, it’s merely half a game that falls very short of the bar set by DMC3 and is not worth more than a rental.

Final Score: 6.5/10