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  • Trailer Review: Bayonetta



    You’d think that with time and experience and the accumulation of knowledge, a man would move past certain things. He’d start to develop more refined tastes that reflect a growing passion for life’s finer stuff. You’d think he’d exhibit a predilection for more metered explorations of the human experience, subtle meditations on adult relationships and history. You’d think that witches who have guns built into their shoes, who get naked while attacking monsters with their hair wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would interest him.

    Nope. Bayonetta is about as cultured as I’m likely to get.

    Read More...


  • MadWorld: Actually a Pretty Even-Keeled World



    Unlike Bayonetta, Sega were all too happy to let me try out MadWorld yesterday. After a quick tutorial in the controls, I was thrown, for lack of a better phrase, into the deep end of Varrigan City. I walked away from the game thinking three distinct things:

    One: Ultra-detailed black and white games are as cool in practice as they are in theory, but I can see why there aren’t too many of them.

    Two: Platinum Games took Suda 51’s No More Heroes combat model and improved its accuracy and versatility in significant ways.

    Three: MadWorld’s kind of… boring.

    Read More...


  • Bayonetta: Not As Gratuitous As You Think



    Nah, I’m playing. Bayonetta is totally as gratuitous as you think. Sega came to NYC today and they brought Platinum Games’ Xbox 360/PS3 debut with them. I wasn’t allowed to get my hands on the controller, only a guided playthrough of the game’s first stage, but that was enough to say that Bayonetta’s every bit as over the top as its initial trailer made it out to be. It also looks like a hell of a good time.

    Read More...


  • Wet is All… Oh, Nevermind

    While it was certainly distressing that promising games like Ghostbusters: The Videogame and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena fell into no-publisher limbo following Activision’s axing of Sierra Games’ line-up, we knew it wouldn’t be long before some intrepid business would give those wayward titles a home. (Of course, Sierra’s most promising game, Brutal Legend, is still homeless. Boo.) Some games lost in the fire sale, however, should probably stay lost. Take, for example, A2M’s ludicrously named Wet. Wet trades in the same bombastic violence and stars the same sort of big breasted protagonist as Hideki Kamiya’s Bayonetta, but has, from the looks of this game footage, none of that game’s humor or eccentricity. The game actually looks very similar to the John Woo and Midway collaboration Stranglehold, with an almost identical slow motion trick-shooting system. The difference? A Quentin Tarantino-style soundtrack and grainy film filter! Oh yeah, and Chow Yun Fat has been replaced by a lady in impossibly tight clothing.

    Read More...


  • Cursed Mountain: Namu Amida Butsu Get



    Sometimes, though not often, I’m exhausted by the preponderance of violence in videogames. Fret not, I’m not about to go on some tirade about the ten billion plus war simulators available on every game playing device known to man corrupting the world’s youth, turning them into desensitized monstrosities. Hell, if you’ve ever glanced at this blog before, you’ve probably noticed that I’m something of a glutton for the ol’ ultra violence. But still, sometimes I long to turn on a game and not have to destroy, break, mangle, or kill things. Variety tends to cure these murder-doldrums, though. For example, when I look at Bayonetta, I think, “Why, sure, that precocious young woman has guns. Many guns. But killing things with hair sounds quite refreshing!” Or take the original Klonoa! Nothing says change-of-pace like using a disembodied moon prince as a projectile to inflate doofy but malicious critters until they explode. This is why I’m getting excited about Cursed Mountain.

    Survival horror’s not new to Wii. In fact, Wii’s Fatal Frame 4 is another great example of alternative fighting, what with its camera based ghost-defeating. But in Cursed Mountain you humiliate ghosts with an ignoble second death through the power of Buddhist prayer. Buddhist. Prayer. That is awesome.

    Read More...


  • Face-Off: Bayonetta and the Merits of Exploitation, Part 2

    John: Explain to me how Barbarella is more innocent than Bayonetta.

    Pete: The innocence of that movie comes from it being forty years old, so, whatever the authorial intent, it will always be perceptibly innocent. But beyond that, I think the innocence mostly comes from Jane Fonda's performance. There's just a sort of goofy sweetness to the sex, it’s more playful than smirkingly gynecological. Barbarella makes me feel like Jane Fonda is the subject, a "relateable" character, for whatever that's worth. Bayonetta feels like I'm molesting a Barbie Doll.

    (We then consulted this original trailer for
    Barbarella)



    John: I see a pretty strong corollary here, just in the first forty seconds. "Did I tell you what I would like?" *flash to the vixen* "I think I know." I think you're splitting some serious hairs.

    Pete: I disagree. I think the corollary is facile. I'm smiling just watching this. I think there's an earnest quality to Barbarella—which is an artifact from a pre-knee-jerk-irony world—that is absent in Bayonetta. Subtleties are important.

    Read More...


  • Face-Off: Bayonetta and the Merits of Exploitation, Part 1

    61 Frames Per Second was born long before it went live in May of 2008, though it existed in a far more nebulous form than the blog you’re reading now. It actually began in the fall of 2005, when Peter Smith and I began working together here at Hooksexup and we engaged in daily spirited debates over the intricacies of design and the virtues of numerous games. It’s sometimes horrifying to go through instant messenger histories and find page upon page of arguments over whether or not Ocarina of Time or Symphony of the Night are enduring works of quality. Pete is both a staunch pragmatist and a stern aesthete, demanding to the point that he plays only select games at this point. While I fancy myself an aesthete as well, I am also an unabashed enthusiast, often times to a fault; I adore trash nearly as much as I enjoy art. Much like the rest of the internet today, we found ourselves coming to blows over Hideki Kamiya’s new exercise in action and sexploitation, Bayonetta.



    John: You need to watch this trailer.

    Pete: Is this the chick who has a gun foot?

    John: It so is. It is going to be hilarious and rad and absurd. It is the videogame equivalent of those Paul Kenyon’s Baroness pulps from the ‘70s.

    Pete: Whoops, my eyes fell out and rolled around. Jesus, dude. Just watching this makes me feel like I'm wasting my life every time i even think about videogames. You don't find this even slightly depressing?

    John: I find it hilarious.

    Pete: Such a thin line.

    John: I think it looks ridiculously fun. I also don’t think it’s being earnest.

    Pete: It would be less depressing if it were earnest. Sometimes i just find it wearying when people phone in some lousy bullshit under the auspices of camp. Where's the heart, John? Can't we do better?

    Read More...


  • Independent at a Price: Sega and Platinum Games



    Image courtesy of IGN.com

    Last week’s reveal that Platinum Games, formerly of Clover fame, was making four entirely new videogames was one of the most exciting moments of the year in gaming. The return of powerful creative voices is always reason to sit up and pay attention. Brendan Sinclair of Gamespot sat down with Sega America VP of marketing Sean Ratcliffe and president Simon Jeffery to discuss Sega and Platinum’s new publishing relationship. Interviews like this tend to not be very revealing about the content or creation of the games being discussed; these aren’t designers talking, they’re marketers, so they market. Buried beneath the glad-handing here, though, is some scary insight into what independent developers without the resources to publish and promote their own work face when getting their games onto the world stage. Take a look at this excerpt:

    Gamespot: Is this (publishing) deal exclusive, or can Platinum work here and there for other publishers?

    Simon Jeffrey: It's completely exclusive.

    Gamespot: Do the intellectual property rights for these brands stay with Sega or Platinum Games?

    Simon Jeffrey: Sega.


    No matter what Platinum Games creates under this agreement, they don’t get to own it.

    Read More...


  • Clover Returns, Heavy as Platinum



    While the final months of 2006 were exciting times – the Wii and Playstation 3 were released mere days apart while the Xbox 360, DS, and PSP really started to heat up content wise – it was also a time of mourning. Just after the release God Hand and Okami, Clover Studios disbanded. Parent company Capcom absorbed much of the staff while the designer trinity of Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil), Hideki Kamiya (Devil May Cry), and Atsushi Inaba (Viewtiful Joe) went off to form a new independent studio. Clover’s games were true rarities in the industry, each one an artistic ziggurat built on a foundation of violently colorful worlds and idiosyncratic mechanics. Viewtiful Joe’s comicbook world of an empowered movie buff that found the player manipulating the action with VCR commands, Okami’s sumi-e fantasia that allowed the player to literally exert their will on the world through painting; truly special stuff. That’s why it’s so exciting that yesterday’s rumors about their new games turned out to be absolutely true.

    Read More...



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about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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