Okay, I finally finished Essential X-Men 5, so I have gone back to working on the MFO 5.0 redesign. But before I get into that, I must share with you the most amazing thing in Essential X-Men 5:

Kitty Pryde runs into some thugs who are trying to blow up Professor X with a pipe bomb. This black dude with an afro goes, "Are you a mutie?" and she replies, "Are you a nigger?"

Jesus. Chris Claremont, you were hardcore in '84.

I'm pretty surprised no one in the media has latched onto this yet. Really ballsy, and I'm glad Marvel didn't fuck it up when they reprinted it.

Right, so the MFO update. In my last update, I mentioned I was going to slack off to buy ADV's release of Megazone 23 Part One. Yeah, that didn't pan out, because Suncoast sucked and didn't have it. Nice one, guys. So instead I went and bought some used mecha games: Virtual On Marz, Armored Core 2: Another Age, and Armored Core 3.

Virtual On Marz is bewildering. I have the original Virtual On: Cyber Troopers for Saturn and spent considerable time in the arcade with the game. Great game, and the Saturn version pulled off the controls very well, despite the lack of twin sticks. Pretty straight up fighting game, though. Then I played Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram on Dreamcast. Sadly, the stupid American release cut out the online play and there were no twin sticks on our poor shores. Also sadly, the DC control scheme just plain sucked and made the game an unplayable mess. I decided not to pay money on something I couldn't control. Well, after Sega took the poor Dreamcast out back and shot it, they decided to make games for other systems, and lo and behold, here's the latest VO game, on the PlayStation 2. You know, I never even saw a VOOT arcade machine (don't think it really came out in the US), and I don't think there even is an arcade version of Marz, but it's okay, because I have the game anyhow.

I had high hopes because, well, the PS2 control has two analog sticks, which I thought would make a great approximation of the twin sticks. BOY WAS I WRONG. Jesus Christ, what a mess. That is nothing like the twin sticks. That's a soggy pile of shit. It took me 45 frustrating minutes of losing really badly to find a workable control scheme. Sega included a bunch of alternate control schemes, all of which (including the godawful Virtual Twin Sticks) were just shite. They were smart, though, and had an option make your own control scheme. Thank God. I finally found that with the left stick for direction, the right stick for looking (which doesn't work worth a shit, by the way), and L1 and R1 as dash and jump respectively, and L2 and R2 as weapons, it's playable. However, it's not anywhere near as good as the plain old Saturn setup. Jesus, Sega. What were you thinking?

Onto the game. Instead of straight up fighting, there's this dramatic mode which is this really weird story and mission based thing. You frequently fight multiple enemies, sometimes have AI partners, and occasionally have objectives like blowing up all the transports, or keeping all the transports from not being blown up. This works okay, and the repair discs (health packs), are a nice idea. There's a few problems though. First of all, the story is completely and totally incoherent. This is kind of cool in its own, Engrishy way, though. However, it's confusing because in the original VO we were told we were playing people playing Virtual Reality games, but it turned out it wasn't actually Virtual Reality and it was really remotely controlling mecha on the moon or something. Actually, now that I think about it, that story is also Engrishy and confusing. Hmm. Anyway, the storyline in Marz totally ignores all of that, and instead you are a member of Marz, a sort of police force for Mars, which has lots of "Limited Wars", which are some kind of gladitorial contests with giant robots or something. It's not very well defined. It's also hilarious that the Martian giant robot police force is called Marz. That'd be like if the NYPD were called Neu Y@rk.

Anyway, it's really weird and confusing and silly. One of your friends is a guy called Sgt. Hatter, who has an Apharmd with... a hat. It's awesome. And he gets captured and you're supposed to rescue him. And then he gets crucified. Haha. Marz is cool, but really weird.

Also weird, is that aesthetically it owes a lot to Phantasy Star Online's kickass visual design.

Now, one thing that is suppppppppppppppppper annoying. Remember those protect/kill the transport missions I was talking about? INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING. I have not been this frustrated since those fucking defend the Cat's Eye missions in Robotech: Battlecry, which I still haven't managed to defeat. Look, video game designers, these types of missions blow. Either give the piece of shit we're defending more armor, or make there be less enemies. Defending a scrap of paper from an unending supply of villains for some arbitrary time limit is the biggest piece of shit ever, and reallllllly bad design. DO NOT DO THIS. Jesus.

Other than that and the frustrating control, it's been a fun game so far. I like smacking people with my sword. Oh yeah, that reminds me, you have to earn mecha in dramatic mode, which is kind of cool and kind of annoying. I'm still waiting to get a Viper, my favorite VO mecha, but I did get my ass kicked by The Rose Sisters, who have awesome girl Vipers. Two of them are royal bitches who always piss me off and frequently beat me up, but one of them is sweet and nice, but she also beats me up. It's a love/pummel relationship.

Oh yeah, AC. I finally have enough time between me and when I worked on AC2 at Agetec that I can enjoy the games again. Which is good. I've been playing AC3 mostly, and enjoying it, but it's also harder than I remember, which makes me wonder if I'm just way out of practice, or if AC3 is just harder than AC2. Actually, it's probably just harder, because I still kick ass in Frame Gride, which is an AC game in a mideval disguise.

Oh. Right. I was going to talk about the MFO 5.0 redesign. It's veryyyyy close to being done. Just a couple more things to tighten up and we'll be ready to rock. Thanks for waiting for it!