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Choco
Making My Way Downtown, Shooting Fast, Zombies Pass, Shit, Magician!
I have a strong feeling that Dio and Decon are going to kill me for that. ANYWAY, back to the intro to this article ^^;
You have a lot of series with various re-occurring bosses/enemies. You've got Wild Dog from Time Crisis, the T-Rex in the Jurassic Park games, and you've got Gilgamesh from the Final Fantasy Series (seriously, that guy gets around!). But NONE of those are House of the Dead related (and the last one isn't even a shooter!), n' we knee deep in dat right now! So I really wanted to talk about my experience with probably one of my favorite bosses to fight to date and someone that's be touched upon a few times this week: The Magician.
For the purpose of this article, I'm gonna talk about my experience from House of the Dead 2.
I remember the first time I played this game, the Strength fight drained the FUCK outta me. Running around in a stone maze with a giant chainsaw-wielding horror wasn't a fun time, largely because he was hard to friggin kill (he ate a quarter or two). So I was expecting a bit of a relaxed time with the next stage. Nope, first you have to fight through zombies, then face off against the first boss, Judgement, then,, as you drive over a bridge (with zombies that drive), you have to fight up against the 2nd stage boss, that being Heirophant. Once you get past it, and a few other zombies, you roll up in front of Goldman's spot, where the near second to the top floor explodes! Something floats down with maggots coming out of various holes in its body, including it's right eye socket. It's muscles are pulsing with anger and fury and it's voice (In the most terrifyingly well done way) low and angry as a shocked James realizes who it is.
“I have been waiting for this time to come…
You have NO future.
Either I get you, or The Emperor will.
Either way...your fate is in our hands.”
Then his music kicks in, and you're in for one hell of a fight.
I remember when I first fought him and I was like “SHIT, this guy is HARD!” He floats and dashes, and even though his first attacks are somewhat easy to counter, the fireballs come out surprisingly fast. You only have a couple of seconds to shoot them down, and even less time to shoot at his weak points, which, despite them being visible, are listed as “UNKNOWN” in game. As you damage him, he gets pissed, and his dashes become faster, almost to the point of teleporting, as you have a hard time keeping up. When you focus on him, he's charging you with his flaming fist.
After you do enough damage to him, he floats up into the air, which gives you a clear shot of him. However, as you shoot him, you realize you aren't doing any damage...until he starts charging his attack. He rears for a moment before unleashing a torrent of fireballs onto you. They are all coming at various speeds, but the ones in the center are the fastest, and WILL hit you, if you aren't careful. The good news of this is that by this time, he's desperate, and will to go all out and expose himself in order to finish you; however, your damage on him is enough, and he is eventually destroyed. Granted, nowadays, I can do that fight pretty handily, but it still rests as one of my favorite bosses for a light gun game (Sorry, Decon XD; I need to find a working cabinet and a partner to reach THE WORLD for HOTD4.) and a sharp change of pace to the bosses that you've been fighting (and by no means a slouch when it comes to fighting.). It was also at this point that I didn't realize that it was the 2nd time that the AMS team fought him, which prompted me to go back to the first HOTD game and face him...damn was that hard.
That pretty much wraps up my experience with the Magician. And now I have that song stuck in my head.
No, not the song in the title,
his song.
Dio
Cogito, Ergo Sum Armatus: I Think, Therefore I'm Armed
When I was in high school, my boyfriend Rune (name changed to protect the innocent as well as sound awesome) took me with him to Nickel City a lot. NC was one of those mythical places we used to call "cheap arcades" and the machines, true to the franchise name, were paid with nickels rather than quarters. Besides NC we would frequent what the kids these days call MGL, otherwise known as Milpitas Golfland, which had been quite the hub for practitioners of the sacred art of fighting games (before the face-lift, SJSU also had a thriving fighting game community as well as Initial D racers and the handful of rail shooters). See, my first lightgun game was Area 51, and the name says it all. Rune and I would spend a few hours playing that until the two of us knew it like our own house plans. To say we were experts is an understatement, but the couple that kills together usually games together (case in point: Doc Tran and I hunt monsters on a weekly basis and we're practically married so there's that to consider).
One day we try out House of the Dead, and we find all the skills we learned in A51 are bupkiss. Accuracy? Not my best front, and headshots, even harder. Heads are tiny compared to the human torso. While we didn't clear half of level 1 (and to this day I struggle making it through most of level 2), we certainly did see that there was a whole other level of lightgun gaming we had to learn. Even to this day, I still remember fondly dumping nickels into the machine as he's yelling at me to hurry out cuz he's getting mobbed. Good times.
This was also where I learned the "cover the sensor with your hand instead of facing away" technique I still do out of habit and believe me, in HotD 3, I want to even though you're supposed to pump it (and because of Doc, we have the terrible time-wasting habit of releasing the gun, and shaking it by the pump action to reload; yeah its bad for the gun and its terrible for time, but damn if it don't make you look cool). Yes. My college had a HotD 3 machine. I felt it was a good use of my tuition money. Doc considered the franchise to be the last of the classic, traditional lightgun games because it values the accuracy over hitting your target, and damn if they don't make you work for it with the tiny weak points.
Yesterday, after a bunch of snafus to get the game working, Doc downloaded Typing of the Dead Overkill for his laptop. And I gotta say, watching him play was a lot of fun. The grindhouse, sex/blacksploitation flavor was very appealing, like someone who was cheating off Quentin Tarantino's test sheet in class, and was a better study. XD Music is so much fun, and the mechanics are solid for teaching typing accuracy. The box flashes colors to indicate how close to you they are, and
hitting the backspace will clear a word if you need to redo or change targets (which is weird for me, since I want to hit the backspace for every letter instead of clearing the whole thing). The zom--excuse me, mutants (G insists I shouldn't use the Z word), tend to slow and get stunned while you type their word, excepting when they're going after civilians, where they're faster. This is also where I fully realized: DIO IS A LOUSY TYPIST. I don't hunt and peck persay, but I can't look up from the keyboard, so I need to glance up and hope the word I read can make it to my fingers. The US-UK dictionary choice normally works, but a few words with extra u's break in, to my discontent. I also am amused by the word choices, like "man boobs" for a fat mutant, or "lover" for a female skanky type. At one point the words "I can fly" appeared for the mutated Jasper, which made me laugh.
For a HotD game, its beautifully gory, so that alone, plus the cursing and the grindhouse humor makes for a fun experience for the keyboard.
Just make sure you know the homerow.
--Choco & Dio (10/22/16)
Image references: houseofthedead.wikia.com/wiki/Magician for Magician Images; nickel city from yelp.com, and additional images from wikipedia and wikia.
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