Clay Fighter and Capclave

Yeah, been a little bit of a gap in updates. I was gonna do one yesterday but I couldn't stay up too late cause I ended up going to that literary con (focusing on fantasy and sci-fi) I mentioned to Chris, Capclave 2009. It was sorta interesting, it definitely felt like it was too small to be a 3 day con (I only went on Saturday cause I didn't feel like paying for a hotel and didn't expect it to be that that great). Since they didn't have enough stuff to fill a normal con for three days they decided to just have 5 or 6 rooms with stuff in it so some of it had to be done on Friday or Sunday. It took place in a Hilton hotel in Rockville Maryland which is a little north of D.C. and a couple hour drive.

Of course it rained all day which bogged down the drive there and back and made it longer (I hate driving at night in the rain in the city cause all the lights reflect off the pooled water and make it harder to see then if just one or two of those conditions exist) as well as a traffic snarl about 10 or 15 miles outside of Rockville but once I got into the city I found the Hilton and a parking lot easily enough.

Right off the bat the differences between this and game or anime cons was apparent in the older average age group (most people were 30-50 though I saw a sprinkling of people my age) and the lack of costumes though I saw a handful. They did still have a dealer's room and panels and it took place in a hotel so there were a few familiar aspects. The Dealer's Room sold mostly books which wasn't a big surprise though I saw a few shirts on sale (less in-joke/witty things and more cute cats and stuff) as well a few little nick-nacks like necklaces and stuff. There was also a room for messing around as well as to Chris's delight: board games. Wish they had listed it in the little con schedule (I saw people with a more in-depth con program but never saw where to get one myself) but they had it in the middle of all the main con rooms so it was easy to find. I didn't have anyone to play a game with and I didn't recognize any of the games (though I heard a woman say she wished she had brought Flux) and felt a little weird going up to a group of 50 year olds and ask how to play.

I went to three panels: New Media, Battles in Space, and No Trespassing in Space. All three had the same format of 5 or 6 "experts" at a table in the front of the room discussing the issue and occasionally taking a question from the audience. The New Media one was pretty interesting and was a group of various people that had some sort of radio or blog or book they did and all of them discussing how new techniques had arrived from the new technology and where they thought it might go. It was better then I thought it would be, I originally went in there to waste some time til the more exciting sounding space panels. The Space Battles one wasn't bad but it wasn't as good as I hoped. They spent the entire hour either talking about how Show/Book X didn't have realistic Space Battles because of whatever or talking about how hard it would be to have Space Battles in real life. When they were asked what was there favorite space battle their only criteria was how realistic it was. Wish they could have gotten over that and talked about other aspects of Space Battles. The last panel I went to was No Trespassing in Space and was about the decay of the American Space Program. It would have been interesting but they had this one Japanese guy there with an accent so thick you could only understand like 10-20% of what he said. He kept trying to take over the panel too, his intro to who he was, was longer then the other 4 guy's combined and he kept going on 10 or 15 minute rants that no one understood and the guy moderating it had to wrestle control away from him. And you could tell the Japanese guy was pissed about that, he looked like he was gonna start a fight the entire time. A shame really, cause the other guys had interesting things to say.

They had an Erfworld party in Room 824 (I heard about the con from the webcomic and they were having a little party for the fans) but I didn't drink anything cause I don't drink much and I had to drive back right after that. They had some shot of various liquor with a candy corn in the bottom you had to chew before you could swallow, everyone seemed to think it packed quite a punch. There was a dude there that looked just like Parson.

Now, getting down to game review business today I'm doing the SNES game Clay Fighter. I am also trying something slightly new on request. In addition to the normal review I'm gonna list how much each aspect added or detracted from the score. Ideally this will pin down how strongly I feel about each point. This is just on a trial basis, if it proves to be a pain in the ass to do I'll go back to the old way. The game starts at 7 (average) and gains and loses points along the way til it gets to the overall score.

Clay Fighter

Overall:

This is a 2D fighting game for the SNES (not that the SNES had 3D fighting games) with a focus on quirky oddness and weird often non-human characters. In fact all the characters are made out of clay and you see bits of it fly off as a censor friendly fill in for blood. It was a bit of a cult classic but the sequels were not as well received and the series soon died upon their release.

Pros:

The game does a decent job of standing out from other fighters of the time with it's unique art style and some of the characters will probably bring a smile to your face the first time you see them(+1.00). Your basic fighting game moves are here so game play wise nothing is missing. The little things you hear the characters say when they win or lose are kinda cute, especially for the time period(+0.25). The music was good and fit the different themed stages for each character as well(+0.50). They do have a fairly varied selection of characters (though not a large amount, they're just mostly different from each other) and they do give them a few unique moves(+0.50). +2.25

Cons:

The story is pretty lame and while I often use the term paper thin in a case like this, I'm not even sure this game's story deserves that(-0.50). Also while I mentioned the basics of a fighting game exist here, that's all you get, the basics and nothing fancy to keep you coming back besides its style and a special move or two for each character(-0.25). The computer is also rather cheap at times, pulling off moves and moving with speed that seem a little beyond the set limits of the characters while other times they'll act rather lackluster and not do much at all(-0.75). I beat it as a kid by playing as Bad Mr. Frosty and sitting in a corner kicking until I got lucky and beat them and that seemed to work better then most other strategies I used(-0.25). The game also doesn't have much long term draw as it's not exactly deep and after a play through or two you've seen what it has to offer(-0.75). -2.50

Overall Rating:6.75/10

Closing Remarks:

Not a terribly long review simply cause there isn't a lot of intricate things to talk about. The game ends up just shy of average due to lack of any long term draw and some cheap AI which taint a game that does bring a unique style to the table. The bad story hurts it, but only a little compared to how bad it is because fighting games are a genre that don't rely heavily on them and if they even exist are just a reason to fight. The hit I gave it due to lack of variety of moves was also minor because they did give each character a few special moves.