Games that are Metal: Darksiders

This guy is a horseman of the apocalypse from the recent beat-em-up Darksiders. Check this mutha out:




He's like some grunge-loving The Crow fan's fever dream (read: I would love to look like this IRL). Not much of a surprise, because the awesome artist Joe Madureira also drew the X-men in the mid-90's.


This is the first image that comes up when you google his name:




YOU OFFICIALLY WIN THE INTERNET, GOOD SIR.

The return of Games that are Metal

Today marks the return of an early feature of the site that I haven't revisited in a while: Games that are Metal. I was inspired by the following image. For maximum viewing pleasure, please imagine a kick-ass wailing guitar solo in your head while viewing:



Glorious.

Not only does Mega Man have a gun for a hand, but he's using his free hand to hold another gun, and using that other gun to fire blind at an attacking robot while he shoots his gunhand into the air, all while clearly screaming an ultra-high hair metal note. And there is a robot dragon in the background, firing his torso-cannons wildly into the air.

It just doesn't get more metal than that.

Friday Games That Are Metal: FF7

Fact: Final Fantasy 7 is the most metal game ever made.

Sure, there had been metal games before, and there have been metal games since. But none can compare to this magnum opus of metallity. As Wayne would say, it's intensity in ten cities. It can wail.

While Super Mario 64 brought us into the world of 3-D gameplay, Final Fantasy 7 brought 2-D gameplay into 3-D, and took game appearance and production values into a new, mind-bending realm that we'd never seen before. 3-D full-motion video cutscenes! 3-D battle sequences! WTF is a polygon!?!

The gameplay didn't do anything that couldn't have been pulled off in FF6's 2-D SNES engine. But it just looked so good. And what did Square choose to do with all of that production value? Bring to life the most metal world you've ever seen. Here, in no particular order, is why FF7 is the most metal game ever created:


1) The hero and villain have impossibly large swords. easily twice the size of their own bodies.

2) The hair. Many games have tried, but none have succeeded in creating better hair than Cloud's. It was scientifically formulated out of pure Cool Molecules.

3) Sephiroth looks like he's from a hair metal band, only more androgenous

4) Everyone is wearing tight leather outfits with lots of zippers

5) The game takes place in a dystopian steampunk future where the main villain is an evil corporation that is literally sucking the life force out of the earth. Again, a smaller entity doing the right thing and combating a much larger evil has a totally metal, revolutionist slant to it that I can't help but be charmed by.

5a) The entire setting. Swords and guns coexist. A city made of metal plates. It's just metal.

6) That city is actually a giant gun.

7) The protagonist's best friend has a gatling gun for a hand.

8) The hero uses his giant sword to battle hordes of soldiers while riding a motorcyle at top speed down a highway.

9) He follows this up by demonstrating his prowess as a master Xtreme snowboarder

9) One of the hero's other friends can transform into Frankenstein, a Werewolf, and a Demon.

10) At the end of the game, the villain uses an attack that shoots a giant laser beam through every single planet in the entire solar system, obliterating them.

10a) This planet-vaporaizing laser beam barely hurts your party.

11) And finally and most decisively, the music ROCKS. It sounds like it was written on electric guitar. Battles are conducted to headbanging riffs.



And this is just a partial list I came up with off the top of my head in the past ten minutes.

What, you expect me to put actual work into a post for Friday Laziness?

Friday Laziness = Top 5 List (vol 1)

You know why I grew up liking video games? It had nothing to do with lethargy or shyness (I spent most of my childhood riding bikes with friends), it was because, at a young age, I loved things that were Fucking Metal. I was the child who played air guitar to his dad's Led Zeppelin records when I'd had to much sugar, and I was the also the child that routinely combined my medeival and outer space legos into new, warped creations, because a spaceship covered in swords piloted by a blaster-weilding cyborg knight was more metal than a plain old spaceship.

So because on Fridays I am way too lazy to post anything that's actually constructive, I'd like to usher you into the weekends instead with a top 5 lists of why x awesome old-school video game was fucking metal.

We begin with what very well may be the most fucking metal series ever to grace consoles: Mega Man.


I mean, look at the box art for Mega Man 9. It's not enough that Dr. Wily is apparently now a cyborg who has reduced the earth to a smoking, post-apocolyptic wasteland. It's not enough that Mega Man is apparently being pursued by a giant robot with buzzsaws for hands. He's got a giant cannon for a hand, and what do you think he uses his other hand to hold?

Another gun.

Fuck yes.


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Top 5 reasons (of MANY) that Mega Man is fucking metal:

5) He's made of metal. L. O. L.

4) His real name is Rock. His sister's name is Roll. Get it?

3) This is a guy who has a gun for a hand. He's not fucking around.

2) The games had a feeling of solitary heroism to them. It was just you, a single robot, against an army of evil themed robots and wave after wave of their minions and traps. You played a rugged individualist standing up against the corrupt system with the odds stacked high against you. And you would have to conquer them alone.

1) The soundtrack. I can still remember many of the levels' tunes, many of which pumped intense techno beats accompanied by epic guitar licks. I would seriously listen to a CD of these things. Every time someone on the internet does a remix or instrumental version of this stuff, I am THERE, pouncing like a hungry panther. A hungry cybernetic panther covered in swords that shoot lasers.


EXTRA AWESOME WEEKEND GIFT BONUS WHOA!: Listen to The Protomen. They've set the saga of Mega Man to a series of original epic rock songs with a revolutionary air. You've been doing a disservice to yourself if you haven't already listened.

Go!