Always bet on Black

(I admit that's a terrible thumbnail to use, especially since I won't even be talking about the adapter pictured. You can sort of make out the two games on either side.)

Ever wonder why Cave applies the “Black Label” label to some of its home ports and not others? It turns out it's because the vanilla game is usually not worth talking about, and the Black Label is where the the meat is found. Such is the case with ESPGaluda II Black Label. At first, the main game mechanics seem needlessly convoluted and unintuitive. Where's my bomb at? ESPGaluda is no Mushihimesama. Where the latter is a very straight forward shooting game, the former has more in common with a “puzzle” game like Treasure's Ikaruga. The key to scoring and surviving is switching the character's genders (all the characters are magical, psychic fairies, don't ask), taking the place of the traditional bomb, which has the effect of slowing down bullets, and granting the player temporary invincibility. It's a little more complicated, but not much more than the average shooter. The fun starts when you load up one of the other modes. The vanilla Black Label mixes things up by introducing a “life” bar, letting the player touch a bullet for a few milliseconds before dying. Arrange mode takes things a little further by introducing two colors of bullets, and the ability to destroy them using either the rapid shot, or charged shot. Sound familiar? The Omake mode, which gets unlocked after clearing arcade mode, throws all that and the kitchen sink into a blender and purées that shit. Bullets change color the closer they get to the player, if one touches the player an energy shield pops up, which absorbs other bullets, and builds up energy for a powerful blast. I admit that at that point in the evening I wasn't in any condition to notice little details or bullets anymore, but I still managed to get all the way to the last level on my first try. Each mode of ESPGaluda II Black Label is essentially fundamentally different from one another, making this collection three games in one, and unlike anything that anyone's tried before. Never let anyone tell you shooting games are the same thing over and over.

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about Zangeki no REGINLEIV. Where ESPGaluda is unapologetically straight forward in execution (press start, shoot some guys, die, repeat), Zangeki is an action game that tries its damnedest to be anything but. Just starting the game is a god damned chore, having to go through three menu screens before finally getting to the playing field. (And why is the “tutorial” menu the first in the list?) Once there, the action is pretty fast and loose, but once the level's over, it's back to menu city. What the fuck? I play games to kill some ogres, not navigate god damned spreadsheets. This, I'm afraid, is what happens when you try to take a simple action game concept, and try to wrap it into a mini-game-collection-like presentation, in order to help your newly expanded audience digest it easier. This is exactly why “expanding the audience” can fuck right off. If it starts having a negative effect on tried and true genre conventions, or leads to fixing things that were never broken, maybe it's time for fans to reevaluate just how committed a developer or publisher may still be to them. Or maybe time to jump bandwagons. The choice is yours, choose wisely.

As for the white, plasticky thing in the picture, that's one of those Wii Classic Controller-to-USB adapters. It's meant to be used with a PC and Classic Controller, but I got it to try with the PS3 and the Wii Fighting Stick. At the time it seemed like no one on the entire internet had that same idea. In the time it took this package to reach me, someone did try it, and reported that it sort of worked, but I don't exactly trust the source, so I'm going to see for myself. His explanation seemed credible, though, but I still have a few tricks up the ol' sleeve. I didn't have the balls to try it yesterday out of fear my PS3 was going to eat itself. Is it safe for me to play some video games on my video game machine yet?