Review: Rise of the Argonauts

Welcome to another review on 'Stories of Entertainment'.

Stepping back into my love of mythology, I'll be looking at a game that does a spin on a Greek tale. This is based off of the epic poem, Argonautica, with Jason and the Argonauts going off to fetch the fabled Golden Fleece. This just puts it on a different take and, well, here is 'Rise of the Argonauts'.

(Its like Mass Effect meets Greek Mythology, only suckier)

Developed by Liquid Entertainment, 'Rise of the Argonauts' tells a tale of the hero Jason, with a group of other Greek heroes, going off on an adventure to find the Golden Fleece and resurrect his dead wife. 

Gameplay-wise, lets be honest, you'll be doing a lot more running around than actually fighting. Conversations between characters will be dragged on and boring when you need to repeatedly do them. Combat-wise, the system is pretty different, allowing your character, Jason, to switch between weapons mid-fight to pull off different combos. These weapons have various strengths and weaknesses against certain enemies, which I'm sure you would've found out if you bothered to play the game in the first place.

I don't really see how the story would be able to carry though the gameplay, but lets find out, shall we?

The game starts with Jason's wedding where a group of mercenaries, lead by a Blacktongue (sorcerors who worship the titan Hecate) attack and poison Jason's wife Alceme. Jason, not wanting to let his love pass on, asks help from the Gods to save her. He gets a response from four of them: Ares, Athena, Hermes, and Apollo. They agree that the best course of action is to find the Golden Fleece, giving Jason their blessing to seek it out. Jason, with the aide of his close friend Hercules (pretty much guess who he is), get help from a shipwright named Argos, who allows them to use the newly built shit 'The Argo' for their journey, so long as he helps pilot it due to its rather advance set-up. Jason leaves his island home of Iolcus in the hands of his uncle, Pelias. Before leaving, Jason rescues a Blacktongue deserter named Medea, who agrees to help him stop the Blacktongues from achieving their goal. 

So, Jason and his group reach Delphi, home of the Oracle. He encounters a satyr named Pan, who joins the group near the end of the Delphi run, and gets his will and resolve tested to make sure he'll do what it takes to save the one he loves. Upon meeting the Oracle, Jason is told to find decedents of the gods Ares, Athena, and Hermes (coincidence?) to help open a portal to Tartarus, where the Golden Fleece is stored. So, Jason is given the choice of where to go first: Mycenae (Ares' Island and birthplace of Alceme), Saria (Hermes' Island dominated by wildlife and centaurs), and Kythra (Athena's Island bounded by her strict rules and regulations). The players can choose whichever island to start with, though for this review, I'll start with Mycenae.

At Mycenae, Jason gets thrown in jail for failing to protect Alceme by her father, King Lycomedes In order to win back his freedom, Jason must fight in the gladiator arena. He gets help from the blacksmith, Daedalus, and manages to win his first two fights. His third and final fight is against Achilles, who has never lost a gladiator battle before. Here, the two fight to a draw and Jason is free. However, news of a tournament to replace Lycomedes as king of Mycenae gets Jason's attention, as Achilles wouldn't take part it in it since he prefers fighting over ruling and the rumors of a Blacktongue who is entering. Jason discovers the truth of Docon, the Blacktongue warrior who is entering the tournament, and Patroclus, the head of the arena, are conspiring to take the rule of Mycenae for themselves. So, Jason enters the tournament and, with the of Daedalus once more, reaches the final round against Docon. Achilles makes a surprise reappearance to the fight and, as Lycomedes feeling a bit downer since his daughter's death, invigorates the king. Docon and Patroclus try to seize the thrown, but get killed for their efforts (with Patroclus getting his death at Lycomedes' hands, which is pretty damn awesome). In the end, Achilles, Daedalus, and Lycomedes (who is descended from Ares) joins the Argo to help Jason recover the Golden Fleece. With Mycenae behind them, the heroes venture to Saria.

Saria has a lot of jungle to it, but thankfully a village of centaurs where our heroes can dock. They meet up with the leader of the centaur, Lykas, and get a story about a beast that can disappear from the naked eye. Jason gets assistance from the only human on the island, Atlanta (where later, its explained how her Blacktongue father left the group with a wife and both later died on Saria), who helps lead them to a fruit that should help Jason. It turns out the beast, a manticore, has the ability to disappear from sight by going into a realm of shadows or something of the like. The beast is eventually slain, since it can no longer hide thanks to the fruit, and Atlanta discovers something on its skin: a mark that bears the symbol of a centaur named Nessus. Turns out that he breed the manticore in service to the Blacktongues, who promised him open land and sky if he worked for them. Of course, the corrupt centaur doesn't survive his fight with Jason and his fellow heroes and soon dies after a lengthy battle. In the end, Atlanta decides to join Jason and his group for helping the local centaurs. Its revealed through Hermes that all centaurs bear his blood, with Lykas volunteering to join the Argo as well. With two islands down, its time to head to Kythra.

Apparently, Kythra was once home to the Golden Fleece before it disappeared and when the Argonauts first arrive, just about everyone they see has been turned to stone. As Jason and his friends venture through the island, they discover that it was home to two descendants of Athena, the brother and sister Perseus and Medusa (didn't see that coming, did you?). It turned out that a speaker named Phaedon convinced Medusa to focus more on her beauty and his own goals rather than that of her brother's or Athena's. It resulted in the island turning everyone into stone and Medusa becoming the hideous gorgon monster she was known as in the original mythology. The other inhabitants of the island get returned to normal, and Jason reveals that Phaedon is just another Blacktongue, who promptly gets killed for tricking Medusa. They also encounter Perseus, who asks to help save Medusa by breaking the symbol of her selfish beauty: a golden statue from before her gorgon state. This is about the only time I saw where your choices demonstrated who would come back to the Argo with you. If you decide to destroy the statute, Medusa returns to normal and she joins you willingly. If you decide to kill her instead, the statue remains as what she was before and Perseus joins you in her stead. Regardless, you get your descendant of Athena and make your way back to the Oracle. Unfortunately, a Blacktongue sneaks onboard the Argo and kills Argos, forcing Jason to steer the ship long enough to reach the Oracle's island (at least until Daedalus takes over).

Anyway, Jason and his argonauts manage to breech Tartarus and retrieve the Golden Fleece after battling several Blacktongues, including some enemies they recently killed like Docon and Phaedon. Once retrieved, the heroes head back to Iolcus, where they discover that Jason's uncle has started slaughtering his people. The heroes push through the hordes of Blacktongues and Jaosn himself manages to reach Alceme's resting chamber. In one final clash, he kills his uncle and resurrects his wife with the power of the Golden Fleece. Finally, the two can be married.

...and that's the game. I don't think it should really be called a game. It felt more like a movie: a very long, overly talkative movie. Pacing tends to slow to a crawl in several of the conversations taking place and there is far more of that than combat. When combat does happen, its pretty interesting to say the least, but nothing really worthwhile. The story seems to drag when going to each island and ends with a conclusion that is pretty lukewarm. Overall, if you ever see this at a bargain bin, save your money.

Until next time...

Rise of the Argonauts was developed by Liquid Entertainment.

Review: Lollipop Chainsaw

Welcome to another post of 'Stories of Entertainment'!

Oh, Japan, somehow, you manage to create some strange and wonderful things. From your ground-breaking anime to that tentacle hentai, its hard sometimes to figure out what fits in the 'awesome' category to 'just plain strange'. This is because some things tend to overlap one another, like 'Lollipop Chainsaw'.

(...wha?)

Yes, 'Lollipop Chainsaw' is an action hack and slash game with you playing as a monster hunter with an overly cutesy chainsaw killing zombies left and right. With the colorful cheerleader going around slicing up zombies in such candy coated fashion, it'll probably make you want to puke rainbows...or just plain puke. Seriously, with a lot of disgusting zombie stuff that will happen over the course of the game, I have no hard feelings if you just want to take some time to vomit before continuing.

Anyway, the game starts in the bedroom of our protagonist Juliet Starling (awkward), a cheerleader for San Romero High School, and it happens to be her 18th birthday (less awkward). She talks about her family, the fact that they're all monster hunters like herself and how she is late at meeting her boyfriend, Nick Caryle, at the start of the school day. It gets worse when the zombies come around and Nick ends up getting bitten. To save him, Juliet enacts a ritual by cutting off his head and reviving him. I know, weird.

The pair manage to meet up with Juliet's sensei, Morikawa. He explains how someone has breached a hole to a dimension called Rotten World, home to demons and zombies, with explosives and dark magic. They manage to track down the source, who is apparently a gothic emo guy named Swan. The guy decides that he's had enough of his sucky life and decides to destroy the world by summoning a group of powerful zombie demons known as the Dark Purveyors. Morikawa tries to stop them, but gets his ass kicked. Juliet steps in to take on the first Dark Purveyor, a foul-mouthed punk rocker named Zed. Despite his power, Zed gets cut down and killed, though uttering a weird incantation during his death. Morikawa appears, though id dying from the injuries he has sustained. He warns Juliet about the other Dark Purveyors and how they must all by stopped before passing on.

With Morikawa put to rest, Juliet and Nick continue their fight against the zombies, finding a giant flying Viking ship steered by another Dark Purveyor: the black metal zombie known as Vikke. They managed to get a bit of help from Juliet's older sister, Cordelia, a very talented sniper. Once having boarded the giant flying vessel, Juliet fights against Vikke and tears the zombie apart with her chainsaw. Weirdly enough, he utters the same incantation Zed had said when he was dying.

As Vikke's boat falls after his death, Juliet and Nick run into Juliet's younger sister, Rosalind, who is very dangerous when driving a vehicle. Hitching a ride, the trio try to find the location of the next Dark Purveyor. To Juliet's surprise, she finds Rosalind being possessed by said Dark Purveyor the whole time, launching the trio into an alternate dimension. This Dark Purveyor is a hippie named Marishka, who has taken Rosalind hostage. Juliet manages to fight off Marishka, decapitating her and landing back into the real world. Marishka chants her incantation as well upon death, while Juliet gets a phone call from an autotune guy (the next Dark Purveyor) who explains that he's holding Rosalind hostage now. While trying to figure out how to rescue her sister, Juliet gets a surprise visit from her father, an Elvis look-alike named Gideon.

They both come up with a plan to rescue Rosalind: while Juliet distracts the Dark Purveyor (a funk-loving zombie named Josey) and fight them, Gideon would rescue his youngest daughter in all of the chaos. For awhile, Juliet is successful in taking on Josey, but the funk zombie tries to double back on their deal and warns Juliet about killing her sister if she tries to kill him. Fortunately, Gideon manages to rescue Rosalind in time, leaving Juliet free to kill Josey once and for all. And, like all the other Dark Purveyors before him, he chants some weird chant as he dies. I'm pretty sure Chekov had a hand in writing this.

Anyway, Juliet, her sisters, father, and boyfriend go tackle Swan and the final Dark Purveyor: a rock and roll zombie with a guitar/gatling gun named Lewis Legend. With his death, Swan explains how he tricked Juliet into killing them to summon the lord of the zombies, Killabilly. Swan kills himself to complete the summoning and brining forth a massive, blubbering zombie who resembles a dead Elvis impersonator. With a sacrifice blow to Killabilly by Gideon (he gets better), Juliet manages to stop the monster at the cost of her boyfriend. However, with Morikawa's spirit, he returns alive and in a new body...which happened to by Morikawa's. Still, the world is saved and such...

...also, depending on how many people were saved during the game (forgot to mention that earlier, sry), u get a scene of either the Starling mother being alive or a zombie in a cutscene. Awesome.

And with that, so ends Lollipop Chainsaw. God, what a crazy-ass game.

Until next time, watch out for zombies and cheerleaders with chainsaws.

Lollipop Chainsaw was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture.

Review: Brutal Legend

Welcome back to 'Stories of Entertainment'!

I have always had a spot in my heart for music and many of its genres: classical, rock, alternative, jazz, rap (sometimes) and even metal. Lot of game companies try to work off of this by making games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band that allow people to play some of their favorite songs with color-coded button mashing. There haven't been too many that have dedicated a game towards a genre until this came out. Welcome to the world of 'Brutal Legend'!

(The Age of Metal lives on!)

Channeling the spirit of everything that is 'metal', 'Brutal Legend' pays tribute to the music genre of heavy metal and its various subgenres. The game plays out like a hybrid between action, adventure, and real-time strategy games, with the factions of Ironheade, the Drowning Doom, and the Tainted Coil battling it out for the control of the ancient world of Metal. The only one who could change the course of history (at this point) is a simply roadie named Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black)

In the beginning, Eddie is considered one of the best roadies in the business, capable of building any set, tune any instrument he finds and capable of organizing one hell of a show. The only downside is that he somehow got roped into helping a band that is basically a mix between Linkin Park, Justin Bieber, and the worst aspects of pop rock music. They end up accidentally killing him when they were goofing around with the set, getting some of his blood to drip down to his belt buckle and summoning a metallic beast. The beast ends up sparing Eddie and killing off the band (much to our enjoyment).

Eddie wakes up, alive and well, in the ancient land of metal. He ends up killing off several cultists of the Tainted Coil (demons who have bondage tendencies) with an axe he found and a guitar that manages to summon powerful magic. He also gets help from a girl named Ophelia and builds a hot rod car he called the Druid Plow that helps them escape the Tainted Coil at this point. However, the Big Bad of the Tainted Coil, Emperor Doviculus, learns of that Succoria, a powerful demoness, as returned when he examined one of Ophelia's dropped blades.

Meanwhile, Ophelia manages to lead Eddie to the resistance group, mostly comprised of herself and the brother-sister team of Lars and Lita Halford. Apparently, Lars is an excellent motivational leader, but can't handle the logistics of war planning and the like. Eddie decides to help them out, seeing as they need a roadie to help with the planning to take on the Tainted Coil. They manage to recruit several human factions to the resistance, including a healer named Killmaster (voiced by bass player of Motorhead Lemmy Kilmeister) and the Guardian of Metal (voiced by Ozzy Osborne). They form the army of Ironheade (which pays tribute to the early history of Heavy Metal, mostly the 70s and 80s) and take on General Lionwhyte, a human whose hair allows him to fly, his voice that can shatter rock, and leads an army of human subjects in Doviculus's name (which are basically Ironheade units if they were paying homage to Hair Metal). 

Partway through the war, Eddie somehow sprouts wings and develops more demonic features (albeit temporarily), with Ophelia believing that the Tainted Coil must've poisoned Eddie somehow. Course, this just pops up every now and again as Ironheade recruits more soldiers and takes the fight straight to Lionwhyte's fortress, taking out his army and having the General killed off (though that last bit was his own fault. Apparently, shattering glass with his voice was his own undoing). They celebrate their victory a bit, but know that the Tainted Coil is next to fight.

Speak of the devil, Doviculus comes in to survey the destruction  with Ironheade hiding and watching to see what the demon is up to. Mostly, he monologues about Succoria's reappearance and the destruction of Lionwhyte (though really, he doesn't give a crap about him), saying how she was supposed to infiltrate the humans and take them out. Eventually, Lars has had enough and takes the fight to Doviculus with another speech. The Emperor, in a show of being Genre Savvy, mortally wounds Lars on the spot and summons monsters to take down the rest of Lionwhyte's castle. Ironheade manages to escape, but Lars dies of his injuries. Lita takes her anger out on Ophelia, believing her to be Succoria. Lita believes that the power of the Black Water may've manipulated her into helping Doviculus. Eddie is surprised at this (mostly because he was starting to fall in love with Ophelia) and doesn't like how Ophelia was hiding secrets from them. So, the group abandons Ophelia and heads north to avoid the Tainted Coil until they can replenish their strength.

Cue to several months going by, with Ironheade trying to plan out what to do next. They soon find themselves ambushed by the Drowning Doom, a faction who is inspired by Gothic Metal (not Emo, as many would believe). Ironheade manages to beat them, but discovers that the army was sent by Opheilia, since they bear her mark. When trying to pass over a bridge, Ophelia greets them, though now completely under the control of the Sea of Black Tears. She destroys the bridge, forcing Eddie to retrieve supplies from Bladehenge to build another one. Once they do, Eddie finds some animals to try and recruit to Ironheade, but gets captured by a group of Amazons known as the Zaulia. They try to execute Eddie, but he manages to use his guitar to reveal an ancient relic. From here, he learns that his father, known as Riggnarok, came from the past to the future (modern time) to stop the Emperor. He reveals that the belt buckle belonged to him and how he found it after his father passed away. Seeing this, the Zaulia join up with Ironheade as they continue their journey. 

They end up crossing paths with Ophelia again, this time revealing how she went back to the Sea of Black Tears after feeling so depressed about the group abandoning her. She still launches an attack against Ironheade, which manages to get repelled with some effort. Their next stop: the Sea of Black Tears itself. The army attacks, with Eddie threatening to kill Ophellia to get the Emperor. Ophellia laughs it off, fleeing before Eddie could attempt a finishing blow.

Eddie tries to confront Ophellia again, but Emperor Doviculus enters. Here, its explained that Succoria was the previous Emperor before Doviculus, fleeing to the future and apparently having a kid with Riggnarok, making her Eddie's mother. Just to twist the knife, Doviculus pulls out Ophellia's heart and stores it within his body. Ophellia dissolves (weird) and Eddie heads back to the Ironheade army when Doviculus starts summoning a massive monster from the Sea of Black Tears. Still, Ironheade manages to fight it off, as well as Tainted Coil forces while Eddie takes the fight straight to Doviculus (who happens to be inside of said beasty). In the clash, Doviculus is decapitated and Eddie tries to retrieve Ophellia's heart, but it ends up dissolving as well. The beast collapses and Eddie falls into the Sea of Black Tears, finding the real Ophellia (the other one was just a copy of sorts). He manages to pull her out and they are reunited.

In the end, the Tainted Coil is defeated, Lars gets a statue while Lita gets praise for helping to lead Ironheade, while Eddie just sticks to the shadows as a roadie (something he doesn't mind doing). He decides to stay in this world, with Ophellia as his girlfriend and everyone basically lives happily ever after.

...and that would be Brutal Legend, a video game tribute to the age of Heavy Metal. From what else I learned, the game was supposed to be focused on the multiplayer, with story mode basically being one big tutorial level. Still, I found the whole pretty fun and different in a good way. 

Until next time...

Brutal Legend was developed by Double Fine and published by Electronic Arts.