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Mild progress in Umihara Kawase DS, Shun SE mode.  83/128 on the counter now, and a new clear acquired via F43.  One of the consequences of the near-arbitrary routes through the game is that there are multiple exits that result in a win.  Oddly, the high score screen does not differentiate between the various clears, so a quick clear via the easiest route will always rank above far harder accomplishments.  The rewards of achievement in this game are personal.

My map screen as it stands now:

Not the easiest of reads.  It’s not obvious, for instance, that the quick route to the F30 clear goes 02 -> 05 -> 25.  Still, a far piece better than the Playstation map.

That dead-end on F45 looms large.  That’s up next.  I used a handful of boost jumps in the F43 clear, so I think I’m ready for the 45 route again.

Doing that thing with Umihara Kawase DS (Jun SE Kanzenban or some such jibber-jabber).  I’m a fiend for wire action games, and the PSX Umihara is probably the best of them.  The straightforward take on that is the mode I’m playing on the DS port, which also has the SNES original and a remix mode of Shun.

It is not trivial to describe progress in the game, if you haven’t played before.  Winning the game is nothing worth mentioning.  You’ll probably do it within your first hour of play, and you’ll only see a few fields in the process.  Less than 10 of them, out of the almost 50 in the game.

Most fields have multiple exits.  And roughly speaking, the harder the exit is to reach, the harder the stage it takes you to.  The numbering of the fields is a poor indicator of difficulty, and the various paths to clear the game don’t follow anything like a sane order. This map should give some sense.

What all of this means is that you decide how hard you want the game to be.  The easiest clear takes just a few minutes and you’ll never break a sweat.  Clearing via F55?  Beyond mortal ken.

It also means that you have to be fairly familiar with the game to interpret any accomplishment.  To know, for example, that reaching F42 is quite a feat.  I haven’t, by the way.

If you duck into practice mode from the DS menu, it shows all the stages you’ve reached so far, and the paths linking those stages.  There’s also a counter, XX/128 in the Shun SE mode, which I’m guessing is the number of different paths you can unlock.  It’s not the number of fields, because there are only 50-ish of those.  (EDIT: It’s not counting paths either.  See first comment.)

Once you’ve got some mojo working, reaching the deeper stages becomes the real goal, so raising that counter in the Practice menu is probably as good an indicator of progress as any, even if it’s nothing like linear.    And assuming I’m understanding it correctly.  In any case, I’m at 64/128 right now.  I’ve forged a fair bit further on the PSX disc, so I’m still in the scraping off rust phase.

I game-overed on F36, so that’s probably what I’ll work on next.  You can reach it via the alternate exit on either F0 or F7, and then the second exit on F35.  7->14->15 is easier than 0->11->23->14->15, if you’re looking to try it.

Every once in a while you come across a game that shows you the value of having a well-crafted demo. Because the demo manages to mask the flaws in the complete game and as a result your customers end up wasting their money on the full version. Today’s example is Zombie Apocalypse (XBLA/PSN). The game is basically a higher-than-average-budget arena shooter that has you mowing down wave after wave of hungry zombies. Note that this is not intended as a review, rather this is me venting about wasting time with a shit game.

I want to go ahead and get the positives out of the way: it has zombies and lots of ways to kill them; the presentation is quite slick as far as HUD, menus, “modern” HDR bloom graphics, some limited physics and stuff; also the demo was pretty fun and I kind of liked screwing around in co-op multiplayer when I tried it.

Ok there, now that that’s done, let’s get on with why I hate this game (and trust me it takes a lot for me to actually hate a game with zombies). The game is incredibly fucking long. The regular campaign is 55 days, that’s 55 separate levels. Too bad there are only 7 unique arenas. Of course that’s not all, once you get even a couple of weeks into the game, a single level starts to take approximately forever to complete. Most of these levels are fairly poorly designed as well once all of the gimmicks (weapons, zombie types, radioactive zombies) have been revealed. I can’t begin to count the number of times that I’d thin out the zombies and suddenly more would spawn and I’d wish the damn level would just end, already.

The game starts out generously easy, with levels full of zombies from whom you can escape being grabbed and therefore never die and rack up tons of extra lives. Then it gets to frustratingly hard as levels consisting of waves of zombies that take lots of damage and kill you in one hit begin to appear. By waves, I mean spawn the same type of PITA zombie for 5 minutes straight while you try to credit feed your way into more favorable circumstances. Lets not forget my special favorite, the “Granny” zombie that throws knives. Light colored knives that kill you in one hit and travel in an arc and are therefore difficult to determine the path of, and are easily lost sight of in patches of bloom lighting effects.

Obviously the additional weapons help power you up and take out these more threatening zombie types, right? Not quite. The weapons that are spawned seem to be at least semi-random, and there’s nothing quite like accidentally picking up the slow-throwing and difficult-to-aim molotov cocktail when being faced with a wave of exploding kamikaze zombies. The chainsaw melee attacks aren’t much of a backup in that situation. The game actually feels a lot like the first Postal in a lot of ways, but unfortunately the weapon system isn’t one of them. Being able to pick up a lot of different types of weapons through the campaign and then switch between them at will later (depending on ammo availability of course), as well as back to your default melee chainsaw and infinite-ammo submachine gun, would have made a lot of sections much more managable.

Finally, the scoring system is sadistically aimed at people with lots of free time and very large bladders. Leaderboard entries are only saved for games starting from Day 1. Scoring is based heavily on a multiplier that goes up by 1x for every 5 zombies killed, and adds 3x for a zombie killed with a “chainsaw execution” attack that leaves you vulnerable. If you die, the multiplier goes back to 1x. This makes death have a score-ruining effect of around Deathsmiles Mega Black Label level. More forgiving is the 5000 point bonus for zombies killed by being forced into an environmental hazard. Anyone who wants to play straight through all 55 long-ass days of that kind of shit just to get #1 on the SP leaderboard is quite welcome to the honor as far as I’m concerned.

Oh yeah, the boss (there are three boss levels, but it’s all the same thing) is retarded and clearly tacked on. Also, I personally wish harm upon whoever decided that those dumbass flying things could one-shot a character, and have additional ones able to be spawned between player deaths. I’d bitch about the lack of story or the unlockable modes being equally lame, but I’ve wasted enough space on this crap already.

tl;dr – this game has too little content spread too thin and taken as a whole has almost no redeeming qualities as a single-player experience.