It's Drunkard's Day!!!

Yes yes, the time to drink beer with green food coloring in it and act like a general jackass. But that's not what this is about, I just felt like getting that out of the way.


Cutting Teeth is reaching a point to where I can almost confidently say that I've written enough for a rough draft. I still have a few more scenes to write out at the end and I want to expand on my beginning a fair amount, but all in all, I think I'm ready to start porting it to a typed format.


New review type: Video Game Reviews!

I won't be doing these very often, but I feel like it's pertinent enough to talk about. The game that I've been playing lately is a crossover fighting game called Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Perhaps you've heard of it? Well, if you haven't, let me give you the skinny.


Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars

This latest addition to the Capcom crossover fighting game series is a Wii-exclusive title that pits characters from Capcom's various games against characters from the anime company Tatsunoko. Look them up if you want to know more about them, but they are probably most well-known in the United States for series like Speed Racer and G-Force/Battle of the Planets.

In spite of the line up where I didn't recognize half of the characters, I still found the game to be most enjoyable. The fast-paced, over the top action that you would expect from a superhero fight is all there in its seizure-inducing glory. Favorites like Ryu, Chun-Li, Alex and Megaman are in the line up, along with lesser known characters like Saki from a Japanese only game called Quiz Nanairo Dreams, and Batsu from Rival Schools.

Gameplay is like any other game in the series, you pick two characters to be on your team which can be a mix of characters from both licenses, with the exception of Gold Lightan and PTX-40A, which are solo selections. You can swap out characters by pressing away from your opponent and the tag button, as well as call upon them to perform a predertermined attack for you. The button scheme has gone away from the six button array that is common for most Capcom fighting games, now you have three attack buttons covering weak to fierce attacks. This does make is a lot more user friendly to the novice player, but to a fighting game veteran like myself, it took a little getting used to. All the special techniques are here in full form, from advance guarding, to super jumps, air combos, and rolling, which no longer forces you to enter a special command; you simply decide what direction you're going to roll in after falling by pressing the directional pad much like you would in a 3d fighter. Some of the new additions to the line up are the Mega Crash, which is a blatant ripoff of Guilty Gear X2's Burst move. The way it works is that you enter a command which eats up either one or two levels of your super meter and it knocks your enemy away from whatever they were doing. A nice addition that I enjoy is the Baroque combo. What that lets you do is by pressing any attack and the tag button in succession while performing a combo, you will stop your combo mid-move, even if it's a move you cannot normally cancel out of. This allows you to continue your combo from the beginning for some nice damage, since you get a boost to your output based upon the red bar your character had saved up before using the move. The move consumes the red bar that you would normally heal from tagging out, but when you're in a pinch, or you're confident enough in your ability, there's no reason not to make use of it.

The graphics are a little on the blocky side, but fit the anime feel of the game. The attack animations and particle effects on the attacks are top-notch as always, so no real complaints here. The music runs the gamut, though I have to admit, I find the tunes a lot more endearing than I did the jazzy tunes from Marvel VS Capcom 2, which always felt weird to fight to. The controls are fluid enough, but I've only ever used the Classic Controller with the game. I don't know how effectively the game plays with a Wiimote/Nunchuck combination or a Gamecube Controller, but to me, the Classic Controller seems like the obvious choice.

Mind you, I haven't used EVERY character yet at the point of writing this, but I have to say, the character I HAVE used, I've enjoyed using. Zero from Megaman X is my personal favorite for the game, though Casshan is definitely a close second.

All in all, if you love 2D fighting games and you own a Wii, there's no reason not to give this title a look. Just don't expect the sort of gameplay you'd get from a classic Street Fighter game.