Film Review: The Clone Wars

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

• Publisher: Warner Bros.
• Production Studio: Lucasfilm Animation
• Release: 15 August 2008
• Genre: Action, Fantasy
• Director: Dave Filoni
• Producer: Catherine Winder
• Writers: Helen Ginroy, Stephen Melching, Scott Murphy

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, finally wrapping up the Star Wars prequel trilogy.  But not quite... as the great philosopher Yoda once said, "There is another".  That would be Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a 3D-CG animated movie serving as an inter-quel between Episodes II and III, and as a prelude to the TV series of the same name.  Which confused me, because I thought there already was a 2D cartoon of the same name and concept, but apparently that one doesn't have a "the" in the title.  But no, they decided to start over with a 3D cartoon, because [verb] it, everything has to be 3D these days.  ...I don't want to do this.  Even people who have found something to like in either The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones struggle to say anything worthwhile about this thing.  But, I set out to review all of the Star Wars movies, and since I already spent my "Get Out Of Review Free" card on the Holiday Special (Maybe some other time...), here we are.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you... Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

We open not with a text crawl, but with a narrator (Tom Kane) giving us a newsreel-style introduction of the titular Clone Wars.  I don't know about you, but speaking from a future perspective, I can't help but be reminded of the radio intros from The Legend of Korra, and subsequently, that I'd rather be watching Korra now.  But we're dropped into a battle in medias res, so at least The Clone Wars starts off better than most of the prequels.  Jedi knights Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter), with their clone trooper unit, have scored a small victory against the separatist droid army, only for their gains to be double-backsies re-taken by enemy reinforcements.

As the Republic soldiers regroup, they are joined by a messenger from the Jedi Council, in the form of Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), a teenage Jedi trainee who introduces herself, by decree of Yoda, as Anakin's new apprentice.  Ahsoka has a thing where she frequently argues with Anakin over their next course of action, and nine times out of ten, she just so happens to be right.  I would get annoyed over her personality, but considering that she's dealing with Anakin frickin' Skywalker, I'll give her a pass.  Oddly though, while a lot of the performances in this movie are totally phoned in, even from what few actors were willing to come back from the main movies, the guy who plays Anakin has a more engaging performance than either of his flesh-and-blood portrayals thus far.  He's no great shakes, but he at least does have an actual range of emotions, something like what real humans possess!  Funny how his new actor was also the guy whom Disaster Movie joked about ruining Star Wars, but I digress.  Anakin and Ahsoka Metal Gear their way under the shield -- no, seriously, they hide inside a box as the shield passes over them, in plain sight of the marching battle droids, no less.  They fight the droids, shut down their shields, and one again the day is saved, or something.

On a scale of "Jar Jar Binks" to "Han Shot First", newcomer Ahsoka Tano scores... an Ewok.  Not great, but could be worse.

So, why was the Republic in such a tight spot?  Well, there was a sub-plot which kind of becomes the main plot in the second act.  Chancellor Palpatine (Ian Abercrombie) and the Senate are trying to negotiate with Jabba the Hutt, the slug-like mob boss from elsewhere in the series, for use of his territory's airspace, for lack of a better term.  (Space-space?)  Thing is, Jabba has lost his infant son, Rotta the Huttling, who was kidnapped by the Separatists in order to have Jabba join their side.  So Anakin and Ahsoka are dispatched to the jungle planet Teth to find the Huttling, while Obi-Wan goes to Tattooine, to negotiate with Jabba and buy them time.  It starts out promisingly enough, with a fight scene in which our heroes defend a walker-tank climbing up a vertical wall.  They also try to set a lighter tone with comedic moments presented by some of the battle droids, of all "people", and the results are mixed.  Here's one of their better moments:

Droid Commander: Concentrate fire on sector 11374265!
Droid Sergeant: 1137... what was that, again?
Droid Commander: [pointing] Just fire right there!

But then our heroes actually find the Huttling, and we witness this film for what it really is... a baby-sitting plot.  They stress out over keeping that... thing alive, and they call it "Stinky" because... you figure it out.  I want to die.  Also, Anakin keeps calling Ahsoka by the nickname "Snips" because... it is the will of the Force, I don't know.  On their way out of there, they run into Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and his new apprentice, Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman)  They escape the monastery aboard alien dragonflies, accidentally inspiring James Cameron's Avatar in the process, and a spaceship which the Huttling contrivedly managed to point out for them.  Meanwhile, Dooku and Ventress pay a visit to Jabba and convince him that the Jedi are to blame for abducting his son, thanks to a few contrivedly-captured voice clips of Anakin offhandedly expressing his dislike of Hutts.  With this, they hope to bring the Hutts' trade routes under Separatist control, and disgrace the Jedi in one fell swoop.  Good luck with that...

Ziro the Hutt?  More like Ziro out of ten!  ...I'll see myself out.

Meanwhile meanwhile, fearing the failure of Anakin and Ahsoka's mission, Senatore Padme (Catherine Taber) and the senate form a backup plan.  Coincidence of all coincidences, Jabba has a nephew, named Ziro the Hutt (Corey Burton), operating on the very same planet as her.  So Padme pays him a visit and appeals for Ziro to put in a good word, but her pleas fall on deaf ears, assuming Hutts even have ears in the traditional sense.  After leaving, she eavesdrops on Ziro holo-chatting with Count Dooku, confirming their conspiracy to frame the Jedi for the Huttling's disappearance, but is captured for her efforts.  In an escape attempt, she tricks one of the battle droids -- with reverse psychology, no less -- into activating her communicator, letting her send a distress message to C-3PO.  If Ziro had any common sense, he'd have had Padme blasted right then and there, but this is not that kind of movie.

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, Anakin and Ahsoka crash-land on Tatooine.  They would've had a smoother landing, but he had her turn off the ship's shields, making Ahsoka right for, oh, the five hundred-seventy-third time in this movie.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention: the Huttling has been down with a sickness this whole time, but Ahsoka cures it with the help of a medical-droid-hologram which just so happens to be on the ship which they just so happened to fly out on!  But anyway, since Dooku and Ventress are on their tail, our heroes split up, with Ahsoka taking the Huttling in her care.  Anakin turns himself in to Dooku, only to reveal that he's been carrying not the Huttling, but a decoy.  And then... everything just resolves itself!  Ahsoka storms in with the real Huttling.  But when Jabba orders our heroes to be executed anyway, a hologram from Padme comes in, exposing Dooku and Ziro's plot against him.  Jabba states his intentions to discipline Ziro for his treachery, and to sign that space-space treaty with the Republic, while our villains plot ominously.  You are now free to turn off your TV.

This is supposed to be Count Dooku, not some creepy wooden Christmas decoration.  Could've fooled me.

You may have noticed that the flow of this movie's plot feels episodic, and that was by design.  These were actually meant to be first few episodes of the new TV series, but when George Lucas saw them, he was somehow pleased enough that he had them stitched together into a feature film.  It reminds me some anime OVAs from back in the day that did the same kind of thing.  Just off the top of my head, I can think of Sonic the Movie, a failed attempt at creating a Sonic the Hedgehog anime series, but that's a review for another day.  The show which spawned from The Clone Wars, on the other hand, was quite successful, lasting for six seasons and a follow-up series, Star Wars: Rebels.  I haven't seen either show, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but based solely on this movie... what do people like about The Clone Wars?

It can't be for its looks.  George Lucas said he didn't want to have a realistic style of animation, as with Pixar or his own live-action Star Wars movies, for the sake of being different.  Instead, he did claim to draw inspiration from Japanese anime (pfft, yeah right) and British supermarionation, a la Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. [1]  ...Actually, that last one sounds about right, and not as a compliment.  The character models have this angular look to them, and there's a jerky stop-and-go flow to their movement, which make for decidedly unimpressive, even unsettling, animation.  You know, for a studio which goes to such lengths to make CGI creatures which kinda, sorta look and move realistically, they really weren't pitching their A-game this time around!  And yet, surprising as it may sound coming from me, I don't think the 2D animation of the 2003 Clone Wars was that much better, since it also had problems with over-stylising characters and moving them as little as possible.  You know, for a director who brought us the likes of Samurai Jack, he really wasn't pitching his A-game and didn't I just say that already?  Oh well, that's a review for another day.  Also, what's with all the Dutch angles?  I just noticed that all three of the screenshots I plucked for this article have them.  What is this, Battlefield Earth?

In conclusion, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a big, fat waste of time.  For all the bad stuff in the "real" prequels, there was interesting stuff in them, too.  Even Attack of the Clones had that "death sticks" scene!  But what do I remember The Clone Wars for?  Babysitting, and a sissy villain.  That's about it.  Yeah, maybe there are a few better bits here and there, but they aren't strong enough to elevate this movie out of its mire of mediocrity.  It's not Holiday Special bad, but unless you're a major fan of the TV show and absolutely need to know how it starts, there's no real reason to try this.  And don't tell me that this movie was aimed at children, because our Padawans deserve better, dangit!

Positives:
+ Visually-striking settings.
+ Anakin has better acting here than in any of the other prequels.

Negatives:
- Lame plot elements for much of the movie.
- A whole lot of problems simply resolve themselves.
- Lousy low-budget animation, by Lucasfilm's own standards.

Writing: 1 Huttling out of 5
Acting: 2 Huttlings out of 5
Animation: 1 Huttling out of 5
Visual Design: 3 Huttlings out of 5
The Call: 40% (F)

[1] Weprin, Alex. "George Lucas Talks 'Clone Wars'". Broadcasting & Cable, April 3, 2008.

Film Review: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones

• Publisher: 20th Century Fox
• Production Studio: Lucasfilm
• Release: 16 May 2002
• Genre: Action, Fantasy
• Director: George Lucas
• Producer: Rick McCallum
• Writers: George Lucas (screenplay & story), Johnathan Hayes (screenplay)

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace.  I finally posted it about a month after it would've been relevant, partly because I crammed it with enough words and thoughts to make it one of the longest reviews I have ever posted on this blog.  But its sequel, Attack of the Clones, is a different animal entirely.  Next to its predecessor, I remember very little of it, which could be indicative of its own unique form of failure.

I suppose I should start with how the plot starts.  A whole bunch of planets are withdrawing from the Galactic Republic and forming their own army, with the help of the Trade Federation from The Phantom Menace.  ...Yeah, if the political doldrums from that movie didn't do anything for you, then you ain't seen nothing yet, my Padawan.  It even slogs down the opening text crawl.  But the short of it is that with the growing separatist army threatening the Republic, Queen-turned-Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman) survives a couple of assassination attempts, and recruits Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan MacGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) as her bodyguards.  The two Jedi Knights chase one of the assassins across the cities of Coruscant, and we finally get shades of what these prequel movies should have been all along: swash-buckling adventures of the Jedi in their prime.  That said, my vision of this dream movie does not include Anakin at odds with Obi-Wan over his rebelliously rash decisions, but work with what you've got, I guess.  They chase her across flying cars and through alien bars, during which we get the only passage of dialogue throughout this whole film which stuck with me from day one:

Hustler: You wanna buy some death sticks?
Obi-Wan: [Using a Jedi mind-trick] You don't want to sell me death sticks.
Hustler: ...I don't want to sell you death sticks.
Obi-Wan: You want to go home and rethink your life.
Hustler: I want to go home and rethink my life.

That's our Obi-Wan!  [laugh track]  So anyway, he and Anakin corner the assassin, only for her to get silenced by yet another bounty hunter.  Obi-Wan goes off to track this mysterious new-comer across the galaxy, but before we get to see that, we have to join Anakin as he escorts Padme back to her home planet for safe-keeping.  And by "safe-keeping", I mean going on dates while exchanging dialogue that would make even the sappiest chick flick gag itself with a spoon.  Perhaps you're familiar with this infamous line:

Anakin: I don't like sand.  It's coarse and irritating and it gets everywhere.  Not like here.  Here, everything is soft and smooth.

Although, given his dialogue in the last movie, this is something we should have been prepared for.  Remember that one about angels on the moons of Iego?  ...Well, I do.  Between all this sickeningly-sweethearted purple prose, Anakin whines about how Obi-Wan doesn't respect his decisions all the time, and exposits how Jedi aren't supposed to fall in love with other people, except not really, maybe, it's complicated.  I suppose he's trying to set himself up as a tortured soul for fangirl bonus points, but his angsty charms are wasted upon me, as I keep thinking of him as a Twilight Saga reject.  Also, miss Amidala used to be a queen in the last movie, but apparently she was democratically elected, ran out her term, and then became a senator.  Umm... aren't kings and queens supposed to be kings and queens... for life?  Is Naboo a monarchy or a democracy?  Make up your mind, you dotty bint!

Anakin and Padme's so-called romantic dialogue is unbearably lame.

Meanwhile, over in the fun part of this movie, Obi-Wan tracks the bounty hunter to a mysterious factory on the water-logged planet Kamino.  The hunter, Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison), has lent himself as the template for an army of clone troopers, secretly being built for the Republic.  The two have a kerfuffle, on foot and in their respective ships, as they chase each other to the arid planet Geonosis.  There's a bit in the asteroid field where Obi-Wan hides his ship behind some debris to play dead, getting Jango off his tail.  Jango's clone-son Boba Fett, on board with his father, notably does not fall prey to the same ploy in The Empire Strikes Back.  It's a little moment, but I thought it was a clever bout of continuity.  But, in the present, Obi-Wan discovers a meeting of the separatists, led by a Sith lord named... Count Dooku (Christopher Lee).  Not the most dignified-sounding name, I tell you what.  I mean, yeah, he does get some epic points for being played by the former Francisco Scaramanga, but how can you appreciate that when his name reminds you of... your favourite Green Day album?  (What did you think I was going to say?)  And he's got a perfectly good other name, too: Darth Tyranus.  Why couldn't they just stick with that?

Meanwhile, over in the not-fun part of this movie, Anakin takes a break from glurging it up with Padme to witness a Force-fueled nightmare of his mother in pain.  Against Padme's wishes, he flies off to Tatooine, meets up with his future brother-in-law, and learns that she was kidnapped by Tusken Raiders.  He makes it to their camp, too late to rescue his mother from death by... plot convenience, and blinded by rage, slaughters the camp's remaining population.  This is a distinct turning point in Anakin's character, as his retrospective bout of wangst makes none-too-subtly apparent, but in the context of the rest of this movie, it sticks out like a sore thumb.  (An expression which I don't quite understand, but never mind.)  The generally lighter-and-softer Attack of the Clones has not yet delved into Anakin's turn to the dark side, so this scene would have fit more congruously into its sequel.  But, that's a review for another day.  For now, let me just state that the line-read he did for this scene, and quite frankly 99% of all his scenes, was simply embarrassing.

This film loves using CGI where it isn't even necessary, like entire settings for even slower scenes like this.

The two stories finally converge when Anakin picks up a transmission sent by Obi-Wan, who was captured for his efforts.  Anakin, Padme, and the droids fly over to Geonosis to rescue him, sneaking through a droid factory's assembly line in the process.  At this point, I'd like to comment on this film's over-reliance on CGI backgrounds.  The Phantom Menace had a few, but mostly saved them for more outlandish settings, such as the Gungans' underwater city.  In contrast, Attack of the Clones goes overboard with this trend, in the most unnecessary of situations.  They do this for several scenes around the Jedi temple on Coruscant, even for scenes where characters are just walking and talking in a normal hallway!  And that library set looks like it could have been built for real, and would look really impressive if that were the case, but again, it's fake.  Couldn't they have just built part of these locales physically on the set, and saved the CGI for extending them into the background?  And those steadily-swooping camera angles they use don't help these scenes look any more real; quite the opposite, somehow.  As for the factory scene I'm now coming back to, I get that it would have been dangerous to have the actors interact -- or hopefully, not interact -- with all those deathtraps, but again, couldn't they just add the smashy bits in post-prod, while building everything else?  This problem goes back to the old special editions -- the creative power offered by CGI is only as good as what you do with it, and Lucasfilm has shown a distinct lack of restraint in that regard.

Speaking of a lack of restraint, there is yet more political wrangling we have to sit through.  With the help of the newly-appointed senator Jar-Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), because [verb] you, Chancellor Palpatine (Ian MacDiarmid) is appointed emergency powers, and forms a new Army of the Republic with the aforementioned clone troopers.  They are dispatched to Geonosis, but until they can get there, Anakin and Padme get captured in turn, and are brought out with Obi-Wan to a colosseum, where they are to suffer death by space-animals.  Their escape actions are quite improbable, and their CG-assisted stunts are quite more fake-looking, but soon enough, the cavalry arrives!  Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), the Jedi Master who was sadly relegated to a non-action cameo in the last movie, finally comes into his own in Attack of the Clones.  He slices droids and blocks blaster bolts with the other Jedi, and even kills Jango Fett, all the while wielding a pimpin' purple lightsaber.  It is cool because Samuel L. Jackson is cool; that's just how it works.  Oh yeah, and C-3PO got his head swapped with a battle droid's while he was following our other heroes.  I thought it was worth a chuckle, at least until he started delving into cliched one-liners to describe his situation.

The early 2000s were a simpler time, where all a gal had to do to make herself lustfully attractive was show a little bit of midriff.  Padme shows us how it's done.

We also get more scenes with Yoda (voice of Frank Oz), who was portrayed as a computer-generated character for the first time (not including later re-releases of The Phantom Menace).  Far-removed from the over-acting floppiness of Jar-Jar Binks and the other Gungans from before, Yoda's animation is quite more subdued and refined, befitting of the character's old age.  That is, until he and Anakin square off against Count Dooku for the final fight, where the diminutive creature leaps about to clash with his human foe at eye level, occasionally breaking to deflect objects thrown his way by the Force.  It's actually quite awesome to see Yoda, a character whom we've grown to love in other ways, get an action scene all of his own.  But, in the end, Dooku manages to hold them off and escape, the Chancellor ominously oversees his new army, and Anakin and Padme get married.  You are now free to turn off your TV.

As with the last movie, Attack of the Clones has its own fatal flaw that I picked up on, and it is one of not having its priorities in order.  It wastes so much of its 2 hour and 20 minute runtime on politics and romance, both handled as ineptly as your average stormtrooper handles a blaster.  All the while, there are hints of other, more interesting stories, both existing scenes and throwaway bits of dialogue, that aren't developed nearly as well as they should have been.  For example, this film does mark the beginning of the Clone Wars, which was referenced all the way back in A New Hope, but it doesn't actually take place until near the end.  To quote Zero Punctuation (yet again), "Is this the most exciting part of our character's life?  If not, why aren't we witnessing it?"  But for what we got, I just don't feel any interest for Attack of the Clones.  Yeah, The Phantom Menace was bad; I've finally started to internalise that concept.  But it was a more engaging kind of bad, the kind that stuck with you, so I can't really stay mad at it.  A lot of the bad James Bond movies were like that too, as I have extensively documented.  But Attack of the Clones lacks anything that sets it up as "so bad, it's good".  Really, it's just "so bad, it's... meh".  And that can be even worse... from a certain point of view.

Positives:
+ A few good action scenes.
+ A decent performance from Christopher Lee's Count Dooku, name notwithstanding.

Negatives:
- Grating dialogue and performances, especially from Hayden Christensen's Anakin.
- The incessant political intrigue fails to... intrigue.
- Too many fleeting glimpses of what would have been a much better story.
- Overuse of unnecessary CGI, especially on backgrounds.

Acting: 2 Clonetroopers out of 5
Writing 1 Clonetrooper out of 5
Special Effects: 2 Clonetroopers out of 5
Visual Design: 3 Clonetroopers out of 5
The Call: 45% (D-)

Game Review: Mighty No. 9

As you may have noticed, I've taken a hiatus from the SDP over the past year.  I've kind of been focused on other projects, especially my other blog, the Sekai Ichi Japan travel blog.  But I've finally reached a point where I can put that on hold and return to this.  To herald my long-awaited comeback, I'll start off by reviewing a couple of games that came out just last year.  I've had these reviews in the oven for quite a while longer, but haven't found the inspiration to finish them until now.  Maybe I should have published these reviews when they were still relevant, but putting enough time behind me gives me the benefit of cooling down any passions that may influence my criticism for better or worse.  ...Sure, let's go with that.  Now with no further ado, I present to you...

Mighty No. 9

• Publisher: Deep Silver 
• Developer: Comcept / Inti Creates 
• Release Date: 21 June 2016
• Systems: PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, XBox 360, XBox One, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS
• Genre: 2D Action (Platformer)
• Players: 1 
• Cost: US$20

Yup, almost three years since its debut announcement on Kickstarter, Mighty No. 9, the second coming of Mega Man in-all-but-name is upon us. And seeing as how I wrote an editorial on this game, in addition to funding it when it was on Kickstarter, I feel an obligation to review the finished product. I endorsed said project back then, but in retrospect I'm not sure why. In that very editorial, I even said I had gotten bored of the original Mega Man formula embraced by its spiritual successor. In fact, I'm actually more of a Sonic and Legend of Zelda kind of guy. (Which explains why I took to Mega Man Legends the way I did; it's basically Zelda with guns.) My expectations weren't the highest, but thankfully I managed to stay out of the drama concerning its repeated delays despite the inordinate amount of money thrown at it by its backers ("Beckers", if you will).

Mighty No. 9 is a jump-and-shoot platformer developed by Comcept and Keiji Inafune, the co-creator of Mega Man.  In other words, Mighty No. 9 is a jump-and-shoot platformer developed by Comcept and Keiji Inafune, the co-creator of Mega Man, or at least as close as it can be without the keys to the licence.  In a world where humans and robots live together, a mysterious event causes robots across the country to go haywire, including the Mighty Numbers 1 through 8, created by Dr. Light Dr. White. But some robots were unaffected, like our player character: the titular Mega Man Mighty No. 9, a.k.a. the not-so-titular Rock Beck. And faster than you can say "soy un perdedor", Beck and Dr. White are on the case to, respectively, restore the mad robots and get to the bottom of all this. In case you haven't figured it out now, the plot is exactly like any given Mega Man game, with the names changed around a bit.

Beck needs to dash into enemies to finish them off.

And so is the gameplay: Beck jumps among platforms, shoots enemy robots, and collects special weapons from defeated bosses. But even this formula gets shaken up, ever so slightly, by Beck's new ability: the dash. This move can be used with the press of a button and is unlimited in use, so if nothing else it is deeply incorporated into the game's design. Dashing is used not just for platforming, but also for attacking: shooting enemies enough turns them unstable, at which point you can dash to finish them off, and get a temporary stat buff in the process.  These boosts not all that noticeable however, and something like extra health or ammo would be much more appreciated.

Sometimes, it's not even worth the effort, especially if an enemy you've just stunned is hovering over a bottomless pit or other trap.  Try tp give it the ol' coup-de-grace, and there's a good prospect that you might mis-time your dash back to the starting platform, and fall to your doom.  But the thing is, you're pressured to do this anyway, since dash-killing baddies right after you disable them builds up a combo counter, which leads to extra points, which lead to... nothing in particular.  So much for that, then.  You could say this approach does help the gameplay stand out among the many other Mega Man titles, but when you get right down to it, is it just extra busy work, when we used to be able to just shoot targets into oblivion? Yes, yes it is. But who am I to complain about new mechanics? Lord knows we had enough Mega Man sequels to prove that making so many games without such a unique selling point isn't the way to go either.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Of course, getting through the stages themselves is only half of the battle; the other half is knowing -- I mean, fighting the bosses. Like in Mega Man, Mighty Numbers 1 through 8 yield their weapons when you defeat them, allowing you to exploit the weaknesses of other bosses with them. Once again, this give the player the challenge of figuring out which boss is weak to which weapon... except not, because you can have the game straight-out tell you what their weaknesses are!  But the thing is, every so often, you have to hit them with a dash to finalize the damage you've just dealt, and if you fail that, they heal that chunk of health you worked so hard to chip off! There are even a number of bosses who possess instant-kill attacks!  Speaking of, there is no reason why spikes still need to be an instant kill, as they are in this very game. To quote the Zero Punctuation review of (the admittedly superior) Shovel Knight:

"We've got bottomless pits for a perfectly functional, if slightly ambiguous, instant kill; we don't need spikes muscling in on their turf! Five minutes ago, a bloke the size of a pregnant bus jumped down and hit me with the metal windsurfing sail that he seems to think is a sword, and it didn't even take off a whole health point. Now I'm being splattered across four dimensions because my elbow brushed against the stucco ceiling. I'm a trifle miffed! I think it's only an instant kill because spikes were an instant kill in Mega Man, but it was just as unnecessary then, too."

That may be true of both games, but you know what Shovel Knight has that Mighty No. 9 doesn't? Infinite lives! Let me quiz you readers on this topic:

Q: Where did lives systems in video game come from?
A: From arcade games, to let the next person in line play (and subsequently, pay) as soon as possible.

Q: Why do console games have lives systems?
A: Because they were ported from arcade games.

Q: Ah, but what if the console game in question was not an arcade port? Why would it have a lives system then?
A: ...I got nothing.

Dashing and precision platforming don't mix, especially when insta-kill spikes or bottomless pits are involved.

See, if you must include a lives system in your game, don't make it mandatory; just include it as an option, like Arcade Mode in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. (Incidentally, why haven't they ever brought Arcade Mode back to CoD? Was their Special-Ops mission mode from Modern Warfare 2 just so revolutionary that they couldn't look back?) And sure, losing all your lives just forces you to restart the level in question, not the whole game, plus you can set your lives to as many as 10 right off the bat. But that's just putting patches on the problem instead of addressing the root cause.

But even if the game did offer infinite lives, there's one more problem which grinds my gears. Each time you die, the game docks you a penalty of 3,000 points. And by the game's standards, 3,000 is a lot of points. This matters because you get grades for your performance upon completing a level. And if you get killed enough that your score ends up at 0, all you get is a meager finishing bonus and a D rank. I guess the idea is that you get better at the stage so you can do it without dying even once, but getting that D the first time around does not leave a good impression of the game, and could very well discourage players from trying them again.

Let's change the subject to something which doesn't cause frustration. In comparison to the old Mega Man games, which couldn't afford a detailed story due to space constraints, Mighty No. 9 does a great job in building up its setting.  The boss characters all have some sort of utility purpose they could have been used for before turning evil, a concept which hasn't been explored since Mega Man 1.  The levels all take place within appropriately-themed industrial sites throughout the USA, plus a level set in the White House, of all places.  Then again, this same level has you chasing down a sniper in a long, looping corridor without checkpoints -- but with more insta-kill spikes, of course -- so they might as well not have bothered.

The limited character animations make most cutscenes feel unfinished.

World-building is one thing, but the graphics which bring that world to life fail to impress.  Sure, a game like this doesn't need too many visual gimmicks to work, but it's still well behind the times. On the one hand, animations like Beck's walk cycle are expressive and bouncy. On the other hand, the animation in cutscenes is considerably more limited, as characters don't move their mouths when they talk! Like, at all!  Even Mega Man Legends, a game that came out two decades ago, animated the character's mouths, and that was just with 2-D textures!  And yet despite it all, the game is somehow a bit poorly-optimised.  Maybe it's just on the PlayStation 3 version I played, but there are quite a few instances of slowdown and frame-skipping.  One such instance even made me miss a ledge and fall to the death!  It's these sort of thing which gives the impression of a game that's only half-baked, and make us wonder where the heck all that money we backed it with went.

In conclusion, Mighty No. 9 is basically this generation's Daikatana, for there are many coincidental similarities between the two games.  Both were developed by brand-new studios started by game designers with quite a bit of pedigree behind them.  Both were announced three years ahead of their eventual release, during which time their developments were plagued with accusations of mis-management amidst vast budgets, not to mention some insulting advertisements.  And when the actual games came out, their almost-admirable attempts at world-building were overshadowed by game mechanics which work against the player, graphics which seemed a whole generation behind the times, and were general disappointments at best.  Not to mention, they are both tangentially related to actually good games by developers who had their heads screwed on tighter.  For Daikatana, it was Deus Ex, by the "good" half of Ion Storm.  And for Mighty No. 9, that would be Azure Striker Gunvolt by Inti Creates, who coincidentally also did work on this game.  Perhaps I should review Gunvolt myself one day, but in the meantime, I think I've got the perfect tagline to describe this whole affair: "Keiji Inafune is about to make you his b!tch."

Suck it down, ladies and gentlemen.  But until next time, this is IchigoRyu.

You are the resistance.

Positives:
+ Promising world-building.
+ The bonus challenge missions.
+ Expressive characters and animations.

Negatives:
- The dash-to-kill mechanic is an unnecessary addition forced upon us.
- Relentlessly difficult, even without the lives system.

- Extremely basic graphics and sub-par optimisation.

Control: 3 spikes out of 5
Design: 1 spikes out of 5
Audiovisual: 2 spikes out of 5
Value: 3 spikes out of 5
The Call: 50% (D)

You might like instead: Azure Striker Gunvolt, Shovel Knight, Strider

SDP Music Awards 2015 (Part 2)

Previously on the SDP, I kicked off the inaugural SDP Music Awards, leaving only two categories aside for a second post: the Worst Song and Best Song of 2015.  As explained earlier, I did this setup instead of my usual top-tens to explore some alternate options for evaluating the year's audio output, and to hopefully cut down on the writing I'd have to do (which sort of backfired).  But as I was compiling nominees for the worst and best lists below, I found myself adding more and more until I hit ten for each, at which point I decided to myself, "You know what?  Let's just do top tens anyway!"  And thus I ranked them all up from 10 to 1 with a little description for each, although shorter than usual because like I said, I tried to do less work with this.  As a reminder, all entries must have made it onto the Billboard year-end Hot 100 Songs chart for 2015, and songs which appeared on said chart for previous years are disqualified.  So, sorry Ed Sheeran, it's great that "Don't" made a return appearance on their list, but I already got around to praising it this time last year.  With that out of the way, let's get the SDP Music Awards wrapped up and over with.

Worst Song

10) "Post to Be" by Omarion, Jhene Aiko, and Chris Brown (#24)
First of all, it's "supposed to be", not "post to be".  Second, Chris Brown.  Third, produced by DJ Mustard.  Fourth, the line "eat her [noun] like groceries".  Enough said.

9) "Hit the Quan" by iLoveMemphis (#83)
This iLoveMemphis guy, whomever he is, sounds like a yowling maniac, and repeatedly fails to keep the beat while rapping.  Although to be fair, I don't think any rapper or singer could have salvaged this dumb material.  If nothing else, at least it's only the second-worst dance-rap song on list!

8) "Marvin Gaye" by Charlie Puth & Meghan Trainor (#75)
Charlie, just invoking the name of Marvin Gaye without adopting any of his musical stylings will not rub his greatness off on you.  Instead, it just leaves you with the dorkiest and un-sexiest sex song since "Afternoon Delight".  As for Meghan Trainor, this only cemented her status as an emotionally disconnected dork only your mom could love.

7) "Girl Crush" by Little Big Town (#63)
Little Big Town made a song about a lesbian romance!  ...Not really.  For example, "I want to taste her lips / Yeah, 'cause they taste like you".  The fact that country radio stations turned their back on this song, when it wasn't really all that racy, speaks volumes about their conservative society, but this song's so boring and toothless anyway, so I'll take any excuse!

6) "No Type" by Rae Sremmurd (#70)
The boys of Rae Sremmurd are quick to boast they have no type in women, only to immediately contradict themselves by adding, "bad [noun]es is the only thing that I like".  And the rest of the song has nothing to do with that statement whatsoever.  The only reason this isn't higher is because they also made "No Flex Zone", which I missed last year but is somehow even worse.

5) "Dear Future Husband" by Meghan Trainor (#74)
Much has been made about how this song self-imposes a domestic role for women, and they're not wrong, but to be honest, it doesn't have an uplifting message for men either, and Meghan comes across as nothing short of catty and demanding.  Bottom line, this song was a mistake for her image.

4) "Ayo" by Chris Brown & Tyga (#86)
I already railed on "Ayo" in the "Most Generic Rap/R&B Song".  The jist of that spiel was that Chris Brown is one of the least likable figures in all of music.

3) "Worth It" by Fifth Harmony & Kid Ink (#23)
Combining the horn riff from Jason Derulo's "Talk Dirty", an barebones beat a la DJ Mustard, a hook consisting of a single repeated line, and a rap verse from Kid Ink which he ever so slyly copies verbatim later in the song, "Worth It" is not.

2) "Only" by Nicki Minaj, Drake, Lil' Wayne, and Chris Brown (#51)

Between the disgusting lyrical content, the creepy four-note beat, and half the performers, the song reminds me most of is Weezy's own "Love Me" (no), which as you may recall clinched my bottom spot a couple of years ago.  And while "Only" didn't leave me feeling quite so unclean, it did so more than any other song this year.  Except perhaps...

1) "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" by Silentó (#8)

Holy crow, did I finally manage to do a bottom-ten list without putting Lil' Wayne and/or Chris Brown at the "top" spot!?  This calls for a celebration!  How about a dance party?  Wait, DJ, don't put on "Watch Me"!  FUUUU--

Out of all the nominees, this is the only one which I could not get through all the way. I mean it, literally, I could never bring myself to finish listening to this song. And it's not a long one either; it clocks in at a shade over three minutes.  See, as I described when awarding Silentó my Worst New Artist "award", "Watch Me parentheses Whip slash Nae-Nae end parentheses" consists entirely of him asking you to watch him do the Whip.  And the Nae-Nae.  And all manner of other dance steps that people have been using in Vine videos and such that have until now totally passed me by.  He ya jerk, don't you know that ignorance is bliss?  I usually drop out when he brings up the Superman from Soulja Boy Tell'Em's "Crank That", which as I recall, was a previous title holder for "Worst Song of All Time".  Well, that throne is now occupied by... "Love Me" (no) by Lil' Wayne.  I just... I still can't get over that song!  But "Watch Me" is still really freaking terrible, so much that I had to christen it the worst song of 2015.

Best Song

10) "Honey, I'm Good" by Andy Grammer (#25)

"Honey, I'm Good" is a folksy, hokey, but charming song about a man who's in a relationship and denies the advances of another girl, which is a message I can get behind.  I don't mean to be a Moral Orel or anything, but in the midst of all these other songs about stealing YOUR girlfriend, dang it, somebody has to take a stand against that [noun]!

9) "Time of Our Lives" by Pitbull & Ne-Yo (#39)
Pitbull has finally learned that if you're stuck with a painfully limited palette of topics to rap about, you might as well be genre-savvy about one of them.  Having Ne-Yo and a euro-house groove on hand help this song's standing as well.

8) "Can't Feel My Face" by The Weeknd (#12)
The Weeknd managed to channel none short of Michael Jackson for one of the most engaging musical performances of 2015.

7) "Love Me Like You Do" by Ellie Goulding (#13)
Between Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, which "Love Me Like You Do" comes from, what is it with horrible romance movies having such great soundtracks?  Maybe it's just my tastes, but I was attracted to "Love Me Like You Do" for its epic pop sound that I thought we had lost after Phil Collins retired from music.  As was also the case with...

6) "Take Me to Church" by Hozier (#14)
I know I nominated this for Most Boring Song, but the quiet parts of "Take Me to Church" manage to accentuate the louder parts, already powerful with their cathedral-like echoes, even more.  Hozier knows how to build an atmosphere with music.

5) "Style" by Taylor Swift (#29)

After so many years of dissing ex-flames with the power of hindsight, Taylor Swift finally switches it up and presents the romance of a relationship in medias res.  It was also the first single from her 1989 album which even remotely sounded like it belonged in the year the album was named after.

4) "Downtown" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, and Grandmaster Caz (#84)
Somewhere between "Thrift Shop" and "White Walls" in its subject matter, Macklemore wrote a song that made going out on a moped sound awesome, and the chorus of golden-age rappers adds some well-deserved vintage street cred.

3) "Hello" by Adele (#35)
A heartfelt, if inconsistently passive-aggressive, reunion song that even manages to serve as a sequel to her breakup singles from her 21 album.  And unlike Sam Smith's works, it actually builds up its slow start over the course of the song. into something that's not short of grand.

2) "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars (#1)
Mark Ronson's '80s-funk production and Bruno Mars's Morris Day-slash-James Brown delivery make "Uptown Funk" one of the most positively unique songs of the year -- or the past few years, even.

1) "Shut Up and Dance" by Walk The Moon (#6)
Whereas picking the "winner" for the worst song of 2015 was a cinch, settling on a best song was considerably harder.  For much of the year, I was torn between "Uptown Funk" and "Shut Up and Dance".  "Hello" made a strong case for itself later on, however its slow start may turn off some listeners (myself excluded, thankfully), and Adele sort of wavers on whether she truly wants to make up with the guy she's calling, or whether she just wants to flaunt their breakup in his face.

So, going back to my original dilemma, "Shut Up and Dance" won out in the end.  It and "Uptown Funk" had a lot of the same things going for them.  They were packed full of bouncy energy which allowed me to give them many, many repeated listens.  But in the end, the deciding factor was their lyrical focus.  "Uptown Funk" was all about Bruno Mars esentially boasting about his swag.  Of course he could still back up his claims, but there was a little more to "Shut Up and Dance", which recounts a dance-floor date with some Manic Pixie Dream Girl, with just enough detail to make it feel real.  Basically it's like "Best Song Ever" by One Direction, only not made by One Direction, so bonus.  Like I said, this was a tough decision, and all of the songs in this top-ten deserve mounds of credit, but only because I have to pick just one to rise above them all, I pick "Shut Up and Dance" as the best song of 2015.  Don't like it?  Shut up.   ...And dance!

And finally, the winner of the award for Best Animated Movie is When Marnie Was There by Studio Ghibli.  I know that doesn't have anything to do with music; I just wanted to pre-empt the Academy before they blindly give it to Inside Out or some [noun].

This is IchigoRyu.

You are the resistance.

Game Review: James Bond 007: The Duel

James Bond 007: The Duel

• Publisher: Domark / Tengen (NA) 
• Developer: Domark 
• Release: Sega Genesis/Game Gear, 1993 
• Genre: 2D Action 
• Players: 1 
• Save: None 

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed 007 Legends, which apparently performed so badly in retail that it killed off Activision's license to kill -- I mean, make James Bond video games. So my dreams of the second coming of GoldenEye were killed off -- until I brought up the Google Play store one day, and chanced upon the latest 007-licensed "game" called James Bond: World of Espionage (not worth linking), and my dreams of the second coming of GoldenEye were killed off once again. Glu Mobile, whomever they are, have turned this once-mighty brand into naught but a Clash of Clans clone. Let me guess, does it trade off actual gameplay in favour of micro-transactions? Well, pardon my French, but [verb] that [noun]! ...Oh sorry, I did that wrong.

But as bad as times may seem now, you know what time really sucked for James Bond fans? The early 1990s. The film series was in the midst of a record six-year hiatus, due to a legal battle which I touched upon in my Licence to Kill review. As for what we did get during that time period, well, it wasn't pretty. There was that awful cartoon show James Bond Jr., and the subject of today's article: the video game James Bond 007: The Duel for Sega Genesis. Released in 1993, The Duel is not tied into any one James Bond film or novel, despite the likeness of Timothy Dalton on the box art. Oh, but he does also show up in the title screen below, except...

Dear goodness, Timmy, what have they done to you!? ...Anyway, title screen abominations aside, Mr. Bond's in-game sprite lacks sufficient detail to specifically resemble Timothy Dalton or any of the other actors. For all you know... hold on, let me think of somebody random... got it! For all you know, you could be playing as Andrew Lloyd Webber in this game. But on the subject of graphics, I do appreciate the animations in this game. For example, you can make a little dance out of the animation of Bond passing his gun from one hand to the other (by tapping left or right on the D-pad). The music's kind of cool, too, in a Jan Hammer Miami Vice kind of way. The title screens and pre-game demo use a Genesis-friendly rendition of the James Bond theme, but thankfully it isn't recycled by the rest of the soundtrack, as is the case with GoldenEye, for example. The sound effects do not reach the same high notes, pardon the pun. The most annoying examples are the loud and hollow footfalls and Bond's grunting, which reminds me of the Frankenstein monster grunt Master P makes in his song "I Miss My Homies".

So graphics are one thing, but what is the gameplay like? Well, The Duel is a side-scrolling shooter/platformer. Mechanically, The Duel reminds me most of Rolling Thunder, an arcade side-scrolling shooter made by Namco in 1986. You walk, jump, shoot, and duck to avoid enemy shots. They even share a mechanic where you can hide in doorways, in the (vain) hope of letting an enemy forget about you and pass by. But while Rolling Thunder's control was far too stiff, The Duel goes a bit too far in the opposite direction. It's a little hard to describe, but there are lots of little things that feel off about the controls. Bond has only one jump height, and the horizontal distance is often either too short or too long for the precision platforming you need at the moment. As for walking speed, he's slow for about half a second when you press and hold a direction, but fairly zippy afterwards. And here I thought the Genesis's "blast processing" was just a meaningless marketing boast, but what do I know? Seriously, folks, if you're used to better physics engines like in Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog, you're going to have a bad time.

Gameplay revolves around rescuing hostages.

Your objective in The Duel is to explore each map searching for hostages to free, who all take the form of blonde ladies in little blue dresses. And feminism marches on... without them. Once you've found them all, you're not done yet. You have to find a time bomb, set it, and reach the exit before time runs out. Along the way, you are hounded by guards who will respawn if you take so much as a few steps away after killing them. With the high speed of the gameplay, it can get annoying to be walking along and keep taking damage from enemies you don't have the time to react to. In order to stay alive, you'll most likely take to firing blindly every few steps, which renders the flow of play as smooth as a rollercoaster on the fritz. While you do have limited ammunition, the game is very generous with it, at least. Enemies will always drop spare magazines until you're maxed out, and although there's no indicator of how many rounds you have left in your gun, each mag can last you quite a while.

As it turns out, there are only four levels to this game, not including the final boss arena: a ship, a jungle, a volcano, and a rocket launch site. In other words, the settings of a generic "spy" adventure. If I were feeling generous I would say they are rather sprawling levels for a 16-bit platformer, but either way it's still bloody short by any reasonable standards. And just as you're getting the hang of things on your journey across the island of Dr. No-One In Particular, the third level presents you with a wall of difficulty. For starters, getting around much of the place revolves around waiting for elevator platforms, side-to-side moving platforms, and side-to-side moving platforms that you hang from, which all take so long to get from one end to the other that you may very well assume you've reached a dead end at some point. Some of these platforms add irregularly-timed flame jets which are virtually impossible to avoid, and you have to go through at least one of these gauntlets in order to find all the hostages! And of course, this being a volcano-themed level, most of those scrolling platforms hover over magma pools, which of course results in instant death upon contact by 00 agents. But the third level aside, this game is still unforgiving. You get five lives and five hit points per life, but only one continue. And even those life points can leave you quickly due to the aforementioned steady stream of soldiers. Enemy shots can knock you quite far back, and there's falling damage to deal with, too; even a couple of stories down results in, you guessed it, an instant death. Also, mercy invincibility apparently was one luxury which slipped the programmer's mind. The lack thereof ruined Milon's Secret Castle before, and it ruins The Duel in turn.

Most bosses have a spot you can stand in where they won't hit you.

Every so often you'll come across a level boss plucked from one of James Bond's earlier adventures, like Jaws, Baron Samedi, Mayday, etc. because "Canon? What canon?". There are two problems with these bosses, however. One: they are optional, as it turns out. For example, you can easily skip Baron Samedi in the second level by going through the base instead of over it. And two: with one exception, each and every one of these bosses can be bested without breaking a sweat, by standing in a certain spot where they won't bother to reach you. For example, in the first level you fight Jaws, but if you stand on the left-side stairway in just the right spot, he'll just turn around as if you weren't there. Even the final boss (it's Jaws again) can be conquered in such a manner.

I should mention that there is a Game Gear port of The Duel out there as well, so I will. I don't feel it's worth devoting another full review to, however, so I'll describe it in brief. It's longer than the Genesis version, both in the sense that it has more levels (that's good), but also that the action runs incredibly slowly (that's bad). And for some reason, you can choose to have either music or sound effects play in-game but not both. What? I've played a bundle of Game Gear titles in my days and never once before has being able to play both music and sound effects been an issue! So yeah, don't bother with this version unless you consider yourself a man or woman of patience.

As for the Genesis version, you might need just as much patience to make it through this one. It's got that old-school difficulty schema where they instead of making more levels, they just made it harder to get through them. Still, it's the kind of difficulty where you can still conquer it once you've had practice, and you know where to find the hostages, and where to encounter enemies as they respawn ad nauseum. But still, four levels is still anemic for a 16-bit video game. And I did praise the animations and music a few paragraphs ago, but they do just about nothing to build up the context of being James Bond. As it stands, it's just another licenced hack-job of the side-scroller age, and one best left ignored.

Positives:
+ Fluid character animation.
+ Cool music.

Negatives:
- Generally unforgiving difficulty.
- Awkward motion physics.
- No story to speak of.
- Overly short length.

Control: 1 hostages out of 5

Design: 2 hostages out of 5

Graphics: 3 hostages out of 5

Audio: 4 hostages out of 5

Value: 1 hostage out of 5
The Call: 35% (F)

You might like instead: Rolling Thunder 2, Contra: Hard Corps, Vectorman

Top Ten: Worst Hit Songs of 2014

I’ve had a lot on my mind this past year, namely in the area of anime and its perceived lack of penetration into American pop culture. Specifically the Academy Awards. But enough about that. With my mind being clouded up so much, I’ve actually been looking forward to doing my traditional top-ten and bottom-ten lists of the year’s hit music. The bottom-ten because these songs are easy and fun to make fun of, and the top-ten because I get to promote the kinds of songs I like. You know the rules by now: only songs that placed in Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 chart are eligible for either of my lists, songs that already made the chart in years before are disqualified, and multiple songs by the same artist may occupy the same spot. So, ladies and gentlemen, let the mental rehabilitation begin!

10) "Animals"
by Martin Garrix
from Gold Skies [EP]
Year-end position: #71

As longtime readers of this blog, specifically my previous year-end music lists, may recall, I have a thing for electronic dance music (EDM).  But now that it's gone mainstream, there seem to be an awful lot of people contributing (to use that word sarcastically) to the genre who just don't get it.  For example, Martin Garrix, a newcomer Dutch DJ who had a minor hit this year with "Animals".  To give my honest opinion, it starts out alright enough; it's dark and tense enough for an instrumental techno song.  That is, for the first minute and a half, for after then, the repetition starts to set in.  See, this song's got three movements -- a soft part, a buildup, and a hard part -- which do not change throughout the song.  And considering that the full version runs over five minutes long, that's a heck of a lot of repetition.  Even "Turn Down For What", despite making a maddeningly worse first impression, gets this right.  It has the decency to switch up its beats for each "verse", and even within the "verses" themselves.  "Animals", not so much.

9) "23"
by Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, & Juicy J
non-album single
Year-end position: #90

Technically, producer Mike Will Made-It took top billing for "23", but screw that, I say.  You may remember him from some of last year's duds like Miley's "We Can't Stop" and Lil' Wayne's "Love Me" (no), and while he wasn't the deciding factor that made me hate those songs, his slow, dingy beats did not improve their standing.  "23" is no exception.  This song is named after Michael Jordan, presumably because of a line from the chorus which goes "J's on my feet", which I assume refers to Air Jordan shoes.  Oh great, product placement right off the bat.  And it only gets worse from there.  I'd like to say I'm through with being shocked by Miley Cyrus, but in this song, she raps.  And not well, either.  Both she and Juicy J (Wiz Khalifa gets a pass, at least) suffer from a stuttering delivery which got annoying real fast.

8) "This is How We Roll"
by Florida Georgia Line & Luke Bryan
from Here's to the Good Times
Year-end position: #49

Huh, I've never put any country songs on one of my bottom-ten lists before.  I guess it's just ignorance on my part.  I don't really listen to the genre, but at the very least I've treated it with a live-and-let-live attitude.  But these days... hoo boy.  These days, country music has been cross-breeding with mainstream rap.  Pretty much like most glam-rap these days, albeit filtered through the lens of a different sub-culture.  Although I have a poor track record of predicting popular trends, I'd like to think we've reached critical mass in this regard.  How do I know?  It's not just the frequent references to alcohol, girls, and Hank Williams and Drake sharing space on one's playlist, because that's become the new normal.  No, the red flag for me was that on "This Is How We Roll", one of the guys raps.  Yeah, the two men who call themselves Florida Georgia Line are already un-dignified enough, but as if the drawling lustfulness of their last hit "Cruise" did not make that evidently clear, they had to pull a stunt like that on us.  If you like hearing white-trach country boys using outdated hip-hop slang, holla at ya boy!  (No seriously, he says that last part at one point.)  It almost makes me thankful for Luke Bryan's guest verse later on.  I have no idea who this guy is, but I appreciate any change in the texture of this song.  Also, there's a remix version which replaces Luke Bryan with Jason Derulo, of all people.  That version didn't make the Billboard year-end list and thus doesn't qualify for my own, but don't worry, I'll get to him later.

7) "Drunk In Love"
by Beyonce & Jay-Z
from Beyonce
Year-end position: #35

What a fitting title we have on our hands -- "Drunk In Love" is the perfect musical interpretation of an inebriated state.  The momentum is all over the place.  There are so many repeated lines and awkward pauses that every moment, every line in this song, feels like the singer’s stalling for time.  I'm getting mental whiplash here, is what I'm trying to say.  There is a consensus, if not evidence, that indicates that much of the song was ad-libbed by both Beyonce and Jay-Z, which would explain my previous arguments and other bizarre moments such as when Beyonce abruptly stops her verse at the word "surfboard", and repeats it a bit, thus bringing awkward attention to the word, a word not typically encountered in pop music lyrics.  And yet the sad part is, it's pretty much the only interesting thing about this song.

6) "Black Widow"
by Iggy Azalea & Rita Ora
from The New Classic
Year-end position: #26

I actually respect Iggy Azalea as a rapper and a performer, but her songs just don't do it for me.  Maybe it's not her fault that she keeps getting saddled with lazy beats and generic lyrics, but if a song sucks, it sucks.  And "Black Widow" may be the worst case of this for some time to come.  The chorus builds up a tense atmosphere, to its credit, thanks to its subject matter of Iggy and/or Rita Ora taking revenge for a hypothetical relationship gone wrong.  But then... the momentum built up by the chorus is discarded immediately upon the start of each new verse, in lieu of a barely-there music-box tinkle.  I suppose it could work as being creepy, but it bores me more than anything else.  And no amount of hyper-syllabicity on Iggy's part can rescue that.  What this song needs is a drum-and-bass or jungle-techno beat.  Heck, I'd settle for DJ Snake!

5) "Show Me"
by Kid Ink & Chris Brown
from My Own Lane
Year-end position: #43

I would be remiss in discussing 2014’s stinkier musical moments without mention of DJ Mustard, or as he goes by in his audio watermark, “Motha’ on that E!”. (NB: I have been informed that he is, in fact saying “Mustard on that beat”. But seriously, you try digging through his thick, slurry ebonics to get to those words.) Hoo boy, Heaven help ya if you ever turned on an urban-format radio station this past year, because his works were everywhere. All his works sound the same: the same tempo, the same gang-vocals half-heartedly shouting “hey!” in the background from time to time, he’s really annoyed me, I tell you what.

This entry, in spirit, represents all of DJ Mustard's production works, but because of its lyrical qualities, “Show Me” is in a different class of bad.  You know you're in for a trip when the first line in the song, sung by Chris Brown, no less, is "Let me put your panties to the side".  May I ask you, reader, does this sound like a smooth gentleman who will treat the ladies with respect?  If so, then you may need to be quarantined in the off-chance that stupidity is contagious.  And then the hook of the song is as follows:

You remind me of something
I don't know what it is
You remind me of something
Girl, you gotta show me

Making up a sleazy pick-up line is one thing, but you can't even manage to finish your own comparison?  Now that's an epic fail right there.  Not that Kid Ink, the lead artist of this song, manages to save it either.  Let me sum it up for you: "Blah-blah-blah, I'm gonna get you drunk at a party, blah-blah-blah, let's start a three way.  Also watch out for my other girlfriend."  ...Boy, that escalated quickly.

4) "Summer"
by Calvin Harris
from Motion
Year-end position: #33

Again, although I consider myself an EDM aficionado, the more mainstream stuff like David Guetta and our current subject, Calvin Harris, just doesn’t do it for me. While his stuff has clicked every once in a while, “Summer” is no such exception to the rule. It’s got one riff for the verses, and one for the instrumental chorus, both of them hardly ever changing, making for a repetitive listening experience. Also, unlike many other songs of its kind, the DJ du jour sings the song himself instead of hiring a random guest. I appreciate Calvin Harris trying to earn his featuring credit for once, but in the end it wasn’t worth the effort. He is just too dull of a singer to save this track. The same was true of his last self-fronted single, 2012’s “Feel So Close”, which apparently was so bland that I forgot about it when the time came to write that year’s bottom-ten list, so I might as well rectify that matter in spirit.

3) "Lifestyle"
by Rich Gang feat. Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan
from Rich Gang 2
Year-end position: #71

"Lifestyle" is technically credited to the collective Rich Gang, or as I like to call it, "Young Money 2.0", but the dominant force is Young Thug, and... he sucks.  Young Thug chops and slurs his words... nay, syllables so badly that, combined with his voice drenched in Auto-tune, he is virtually incomprehensible.  For example, near the beginning of the first verse (At 0:47, if you were foolish enough to play the song from that Spotify widget above), he's got a line that goes, "Hundred bands still look like the [adjective] ???".  I blanked that last word out because the way he pronounced it, it could be anything.  So far I've got "tires", "times", "titans", "TARDIS", or "tards" as in retards.  Heh, might as well be that last one.  (Actually, my money's on "Titans", since right afterwards there's a little voice in the background going "Football player!")

But even in the hands of a rapper who didn't just stick marbles in his mouth, this song is still... stillborn.  So he "did a lot of [noun] just to live this here lifestyle", in his words.  Does he ever describe what this lot of [noun] entails?  Of course not.  He started from the bottom, and now, he's here.  Literally now, as if there were no time in between.  But what he lyrics he does choose to ooze out of his mouth cross the line into awkwardly funny.  For example:

I won't do nothing with the [noun], she can't even get me hard

I mean, what else is there to say about a guy who can't get it up for one of his many groupies?  Or a guy who brags about rocking Chanel products, despite nearly all of said products being designed for women?  Young Thug can best be described as a clown.  Laugh at him if you wish.  But it would be better for the whole world if we just ignored him.  As I should have done in the first place.  ...[verb].

2) "Talk Dirty" and "Wiggle"
by Jason Derulo & 2Chainz / Jason Derulo & Snoop Dogg
from Tattoos [EP] / Talk Dirty
Year-end position: #6 / #40

So, we meet again, Jason Derulo. Somehow you’ve managed to ruin every year of the Obama administration -- if only in terms of music -- and with 2014 you’ve presented your worst batch of singles since your unforgivable debut “Whatcha Say”. First off is “Talk Dirty”. One of the things that first hit me about “Talk Dirty” was its horn-led bridge. ...That was, until I discovered it was, in fact, a sample. This part comes from a song called “Hermetica” by the eclectic Israeli-American band Balkan Beat Box, and for “Talk Dirty” was remade by its producer Ricky Reed. So, over time, “Talk Dirty” managed to grow on me a little, and perhaps knowing about where that sample came from had something to do with it.

But as I tolerated the song’s musical qualities, I started paying more attention to its lyrics -- which only made me even more disgusted. See, at its core, this song is about how Mr. Derulo gets love from girls all over the world. And I’m like, if you want to make a song about that, then do it! I’ve got no problem with that concept in and of itself. But whomever wrote this song did it all wrong. He does name-check the odd destination once in a blue moon, but he doesn’t spend any breath on what he likes about those places, much less the foreign honey to be found within. Such lyrical space is instead wasted on his own ego, in lines like:

Our conversations ain’t long
But you know what is

And then there’s the refrain, at least, the part that precedes that unholy sax riff:

Been around the world, don’t speak the language
But your booty don’t need explaining
All I really need to understand is
When you talk dirty to me

So, we can add “knowledge of foreign languages” to the long, long list of skills which Jason Derulo does not possess. And hold on -- he can’t understand what the girl du jour is saying, but he’s apparently turned on by naughty pillow-talk? How does he know she isn’t just talking smack about his sex technique or something? Man, I can barely imagine the quantity of egg to be delivered to his face. Oh yeah, and 2Chainz is on this track as well. Might as well not be.  His part's nothing offensive, unless this new wave of glam rappers offends you by their mere presence.  Which does to me.

And then, there’s “Wiggle”.  Yet another stuffy old song about the buttocks, and egging girls on to shake theirs.  And he can't even do that with any grounding in reality or common sense.  I mean, when he says "your booty [is] like two planets", one would get the impression that he means it literally.  Furthermore, despite the beat not having been produced by DJ Mustard, it may be worse than his output, crazy as that may sound, because the standard barely-there drum track is accented by naught but some lame whistling.  Snoop Dogg’s guest verse is, at least, my favourite part of "Wiggle", much in the way that Luke Bryan was my favourite part of "This Is How We Roll". It doesn’t rescue the song, by any means, but I’d be willing to replace the Jason Derulo in my musical diet with anything, at any chance I get.

1) "Loyal"
by Chris Brown, Lil’ Wayne, and Tyga
from X
Year-end position: #30

And yet somehow, the combined force of not one, but two songs by Jason Fricking Derulo was not enough to clinch the top spot.  For that, we have to return to some repeat offenders: Chris Brown and Lil' Wayne.  Okay, so maybe Lil' Wayne does have a couple of clever lines in his verse...

But she ain't got her ringer nor her ring on last night
[...]
Why give a [noun] an inch when she'd rather have nine?

...and his degree of misogyny isn't worse than his usual fare, unlike what I had to deal with last year.  So "Loyal"'s pole position is due to, once again, Chris Brown.  "Loyal" happens to be a song about women who unfaithful in relationships, if only in theory.  A strong concept, I must say; in fact, some of my favourite songs deal with the subject.  But "Loyal" just doesn't work for me.  First, the message of the song is, in practise, all over the place.

Come on, come on, now why you fronting?
Baby show me something
You just spent your bread on her
And it's all for nothing

Second, Chris Brown and company, I would be more inclined to trust your character if you didn't constantly refer to men and women as n****s and b****es respectively.  Third, I would also be more inclined to trust your character if if you at least acknowledge the presence of women who aren't just in it to take the money and run.  And finally, I would be more inclined to trust your character if you didn't strike your real-life girlfriend all the way to the hospital YOU STUPID DOUCHEBAG SON OF A--

...Sorry, that got weird on me.  It's been almost six years after the Rihanna assault, so you think I should've forgotten it by now.  Oh well, some people just never learn, both him and me.  I guess the best thing to do now would be to end on a so-bad-it's-good note, and that's where the Wildcard slot comes in.  For your lol-ing and trolling pleasure, I have picked out some prime cheese that didn't Billboard year-end list and therefore didn't qualify for mine.  Ladies and gentlemen... "Selfie."

Wildcard) "#SELFIE"
by The Chainsmokers
non-album single

Oh wait, I meant "hashtag-selfie", because how better to annoy me personally than with an arbitrary hashtag?  Well, by making an annoying song, that's how.  This is bad even among the lower-class EDM acts, especially since its bass drop (apparently, there's now a technical term for what I used to call a "dirty bit" moment) seems like a weak clone of the one from "Gentleman" (PSY's failed follow-up to "Gangnam Style").  But "hashtag-selfie" sets itself apart by having this young lady club-goer blabbing over the "verses".  She's narcissistic, judgmental, stupid in several places, and not someone I, personally, would wish to associate myself with.  Then again, I suppose she could be of worse character *coughchrisbrowncough*, because crimes of annoyance are victimless in the long run.  No, I guess the real reason this landed on my hate-list is because what fame it managed to garner was not truly viral in nature.  It was promoted by celebrities behind the scenes thanks to a marketing company called theAudience.  "Harlem Shake", I forgive you.  For all your weirdness, at least your rise to fame was natural.