So, one night, I was drunk-cruisin' the PSN-webz, lookin' for demos, when I find something that looks silly. White-haired guy punching shit until it explodes? How good of a game can it be? OH WAIT, I FUCKING LOVE STUFF LIKE THIS.
The easiest way I could explain how amazing this game is, is by comparison. It's like S-Cry-Ed, Fist of the North Star, and Tenjou Tenge had a bukkake session on Gurren Lagann.
Let me back up. The main issue that I just could not--for the life of me--wrap my head around Gurren Lagann was because for as manly as they all tried to be, the male lead is the most effeminate guy in any anime of the genre I've seen thus-far. He has a lot to live up to: Kazuma, Kenshiro, Kyo (that's a lot of K's)? I mean, they're manly. They're drawn with manly proportions. They have manly facial expressions. They, very normally, punch people in the face so hard that things happen besides the face gets punched.
Now, I get that Gurren Lagann is all about robots and drills and stuff, but what was manly about that show was the emphasis on the theme, rather than the characters themselves. Kamina pales in comparison--hell, I'd say he pales in comparison to Onizuka--but, it was still an over-the-top, hypermasculine anime because the presentation of the theme.
I'm not, by any means, knocking Gurren Lagann. It's its own show, and whereas I haven't actually gotten around to watching it all (I skipped a lot of the middle--my friend was showing me the "highlight episodes"), I can tell that it just isn't really my cup of tea.
So, this game.
Put it this way: you're fighting you old master on the moon, when he takes his sword out and slashes so hard at you that it cleaves the moon in half. After a tussle, he thrusts! You grab the tip of the sword with your 8 hands, but he lifts you up with it like a pole-vaulter and runs, jumps, and plunges off the moon, down towards the Earth to impale you on a sword that only extends further.
Upon entry, your arms blow off, until you're impaled between the crater you've made, with one hand still grasping the sword. DO YOU GIVE UP?! HELL, NO, YOU GET ANGRY! YOU PUNCH THE SWORD (which has extended so far it's broken through the other side of the earth) SO DAMN HARD IT SHATTERS, ALONG WITH YOUR HAND, YOU KICK THAT FUCKER OFF YOU, GRAB THE SWORD IN YOUR MOUTH, AND CUT THAT FUCKER'S GUTS OUT.
THIS SHIT HAPPENS.
Next scene? You find your old rival and he's trying to kill you. You have no arms, but you're not going down without a fight! You headbutt him so hard that the kinetic force blows THROUGH HIS HEAD AND CREATES A SHOCKWAVE THAT CLEAVES A ROCK AT LEAST A KILOMETER BEHIND HIM IN TWO
AAGGHAGHAHGAHGHA MANLY
So, I downloaded the demo but didn't pick the game up immediately, because I heard some horrible things about the endings (being a Capcom game and all), and I'd like to address some issues that I've ran into thus-far:
- After beating the game, you're given the task of finding the "True Ending," which leads you to believe that there's SOMETHING MISSING THAT IS VITAL to the canonical story. It isn't. It's actually a set-up for the DLC that Capcom released two months after the game, "Nirvana," which tells a purely auxiliary story. Now, I've always had an issue with the gamers in this right. The complaint is that Capcom intentionally withheld the ending and that you need to pay $6 to find it. Personally, I feel like it's an expansion-pack: you don't NEED to play it, and the story wraps up extremely well without it (I actually liked the normal ending much better than the "True Ending," because the "True Ending" wasn't a "True Ending" at all--it was an "expository ending for the DLC"). Expansion pack. Not completely canonical to the story at all. Play through and you'll see exactly what I mean.
- The gameplay is too short, and there are too many cutscenes. Essentially, some of the gamers who played it say that the 6-minutes of gameplay in the 20-minute episodes are too short, and they get tired of watching it. Lemme preface the rest of this with the statement that this is less of an action-RPG (as some have tried to liken it to) and more of a graphic novel. You will watch events unfold, and you will watch people get beat up. There are quick-time events that aren't pivotal at all to the storyline, and don't change anything if you fail, but you do get rated based on it, and the higher rating you get, the more you unlock (art and different perks), and you need 5 S-ranks in order to unlock the "True Ending" (it took me a play-through and one more episode to achieve that, so it's not entirely hard).
- The fighting can be repetitive. I mean. I won't even get on this one. It's a simpler system but it's a fun and fast-paced system. Plus, you get to see people get punched in the face. I'd liken it to the Naruto fighting games if I could, but I've never played them (only watched).
- $60 is steep for a 6-hour game. That was, anyway, the original complaint a lot of people had. It's $16 now. Go get it.
Much to the disavail of many a Hindu, the game is a bastardization of the telling of some story or another. Essentially, though, Asura and seven other generals comprise the generals of some super-army that's meant to stop the Will of the Planet from destroying humanity. It keeps coming back. It really hates us. Anyway, so it opens up by you killing Vlitra (the Will thing), and then a convoluted scheme turns into a betrayal when they frame you for the murder of the emperor, kill your family, then straight-up wreck yo' shit. Essentially, anyone would get angry, right?
Well, Asura gets really angry. 12,000 years later, he wakes to find that the other seven generals have rose to power as "deities." They feed off people's prayers (or Mantra) for their power, and they really don't like Asura. The feeling is mutual, however, he goes on a giant, fist-for-words tirade all up on dey asses.
The game itself, as I said earlier, plays like a movie with QTEs, with fighting (beat-'em-up-style, but...camera behind you), and with rail-shooter segments that seem like a pissed-off version of Rez. You're judged on the time it takes to complete different parts, your style in battle, and your "synchonicity" with Asura (I'd fail because I'm not nearly as mad as him). The combat is extremely stylish, in a way that only Capcom can present it (DMC-esque but much more brawler-type).
The audio is splendid, the music being a compromise between Chinese folk music, Japanese anime music, with Indian instruments thrown in for motif. The sound effects get pretty old, because most of them consist of punches landing and a bunch of different shouts (seriously, I'd say that there are probably around 40 for him, so it is varied, but it's also still just a bunch of shouts). The voice-acting is probably the best I've heard in a video game, and suits everyone extremely well.
Let me reiterate something that everyone has already said, though. It's hard to compare this game or judge it because it's really like nothing I've ever played. It's like I'm playing an anime. Main point here.
It's not without its flaws, though, and some of them are really big flaws. On more than one occasion have I been unable to time something because there's so much going on on-screen that the PS3 lags out for me. The rail-shooting sequences can get extremely busy, and the beam-weapons are especially hard to figure out where they're actually firing on screen. For the most part, neither of these are bad.
Until the DLC.
Don't get me wrong, I just beat the DLC, so I wanna rest on it before I mention anything about it (get off the high), but if you so happen to grace yourself by the amazingness of this game and its DLC, wait until the fight towards the end with Yasha. OH LOL YOU LIKED SEEING THINGS NAH.
All-in-all, buy this game. It'll take you a day to beat, which, if you're a college-kid, you'll love. Maybe a week to perfect everything. I won't say there's a lot of replay value, but there is a lot of feels falcon-punched.
Seriously, though, did anyone else see that? I totally just falcon-punched his head in half.
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