#I don’t want a permadeath I just want to be sad for like an hour!

[cardinaldaughter]

...I really, kinda... want someone to die tonight.

Like, obviously I want that player to be resurrected, but man. I want the angst of a character death.

[hopeymchope]

Persona Lite with Fire Emblem sprinkles on top

I’ve been addicted to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore on my Switch for the past few weeks, and I’m getting close to wrapping it up. I figured it’s high time I talked about it a bit.

The game that would become Tokyo Mirage Sessions (TMS) was first announced as “Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem,” which is absolutely not a good way to describe what this became. 

This title led so many people astray.

What comes to mind when you think of (mainline) Shin Megami Tensei games? An apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic setting. First-person-perspective battles. Negotiating with demons. Battles against deities. TMS contains a little bit of the third thing on that list, and none of the others. 

What comes to mind when you think of Fire Emblem? Medieval-era settings. Permadeath (either optional or mandatory). RTS-style combat. The famed “weapon triangle.” Support conversations. TMS contains the fourth thing on that list, and none of the others. 

But let’s be honest here: For most people (especially Westerners), the first thing you think of when you think about Shin Megami Tensei isn’t even the games with “Shin Megami Tensei” in the title. It’s the Persona series! They’ve grown far more popular than their parent franchise at this point.

So I suppose it was natural that TMS is, at its core, a “Persona Lite” game. The darker edges of Persona titles are removed in favor of something more T-friendly, but the basics are all there: A group of teenagers in modern-day Japan discover a strange alternate dimension that they can access which also gives them the ability to summon supernatural powers/entities. When people start to go missing in this other dimension, it falls to this group of teens to unite and save the day, ultimately leading to them discovering the reason why this alternate world has been bleeding into modern Japan in the first place and, in the end, saving humanity from annihilation. That’s totally how Persona works, and it’s also totally how Tokyo Mirage Sessions works!

However, instead of summoning Shin Megami Tensei demons as “Personas,” the heroes of TMS summon Fire Emblem characters that are “Mirages.” Each character is permanently linked to a single Mirage, so there are no “Wild Card” characters here. However, you can level the characters’ mirages up to make them take on new forms and new abilities. FE fans will notice that all of the characters here are from the Falchion/Tiki/Shadow Dragon stories - the two Marth adventures (Shadow Dragon/Mystery of the Emblem) and the semi-recent 3DS hit Awakening.

For some weird reason, all of the Fire Emblem “mirages” wear helmets, masks, or other face coverings 100% of the time. The only exception is Tiki.

The lack of the darker themes in many Persona games and the fact that there’s no “Wild Card” to manage is what makes this, in my opinion, more like PERSONA LITE. And then you get your Fire Emblem backup characters to serve as extra flavoring. The characters we meet from Fire Emblem are rarely the focus — you spend most of your time with the teen heroes — but they still manage to show off their unique personalities and carry in a load of FE fanservice. (The good kind of fanservice where it’s full of references and nods to the continuity of the series, I mean. Not the other kind where it’s softcore porn.)

Fire Emblem fanservice was one of the biggest delights for me here. If you’re looking for any SMT/Persona characters to pop up and link the continuity together, you can stop looking because they aren’t here. But if you want to see specific characters from the three source FE games pop up here, a metric ton manage to do so. For example: Tharja (from Awakening) creates two golems for training purposes, which she names Bord and Cord after the pair of heroes from Marth’s era. And then the actual spirits of Bord and Cord possess those golems. So naturally, they start bickering and fighting. It’s delightful. 

So yeah, there’s plenty of nods for FE fans to appreciate even if your favorite characters are taking a back seat to a bunch of teenagers. Fire Emblem fans will recognize the heroic mirages, the enemy boss mirages, the weapon triangle weakness/strength system and lots of musical cues. On the flip side, Persona fans will recognize the story structure, the magic spells the characters wield (things like “Mazio” and “Diarama” and “Rakukaja”), the common enemies you encounter and cameos from a few of the more famous demons found on signage around Tokyo. Sadly, there are no familiar sounds or music pieces borrowed from SMT/Persona that I noticed.

In addition to the main story, there are also “Side Stories” for your party and side quests from various NPCs. The whole game lasts around 50 hours even if you aren’t trying to 100% it.

And while the music here is mostly pretty good — especially the Fire Emblem themes — I really wish we’d gotten some Persona-style tunes in here. Persona soundtracks are absolutely killer and everybody knows it. I wanted to hear some Shihoko Hirata, some Lotus Juice, some Yumi Kawamura, some Lyn Inaizumi. Alas, that never happens. Sad face.

In fact, as far as vocal tracks go, you’ll only be hearing the performances of the main characters. See, the story this time revolves around a group of teens who are hired by a talent agency to become young starlets of the stage and screen. You meet plenty of pop idols, a cooking show host, aspiring actors, and those who do combinations of the above. There’s a lot of focus on the Japanese entertainment industry, and it’s mostly a very positive portrayal about how hard teen stars work to reach their dreams and how fulfilling it can be when they express themselves through their artistic pursuits. Speaking as someone who legitimately does not care one iota about the idol industry in Japan or Asia as a whole, I’m very happy that these characters managed to remain likable and their pursuits stayed enjoyable throughout. No one here is an ultra-deep character, but no one here is a total cipher, either. I’m additionally thankful that the vocal songs are another highlight of the soundtrack alongside the FE tunes. 

The last thing I’ll bring up is the “Sessions” mentioned in the title. It’s a battle mechanic wherein striking an enemy with a weapon or element they’re weak to will enable other characters to start jumping in with follow-up attacks. At first, it’s just one or two follow-ups, but by the game’s end, you might be sitting there for 15 or more consecutive strikes on an enemy after you initiate a “Session” of follow-ups. The greatest quality-of-life improvement built into this Switch port is that you can turn on “Quick Session” to make these attack animations much shorter and more rapid than they ever were in the Wii U original. I never had to play that one, but I can’t imagine I’d have much patience for constantly triggering 15 attack animations with every round. SO glad I don’t have to sit through that.

This is just a two-strike Sessions, so it won’t last long enough for you to take a beverage break.

So yeah, there’s a lot for RPG fans, Persona fans, and most of all, Fire Emblem fans to dig in “Tokyo Mirage Sessions.” And since we already covered that Danganronpa fans are apparently predisposed to enjoying Persona and Fire Emblem, that probably means that YOU, dear reader, are likely to dig this game as well. 

[sweetest-honeybee]

To Hell and Back

Chapter 23

Summary: Tango goes to have some cake an hot chocolate with Stress.

Characters: Tango, Stress, Xisuma (Doc, Hels, Wels, Keralis, Impulse mentions)

TW: None I don’t think?

————————

They were all in shock at the event.

Xisuma was seething.

Doc was pulling Beef and Wels out of the cage.

Tango had shot the arrow, much to their surprise.

Hels was still stuck in his other state of mind, not showing any signs of returning to his usual sadistic self. Tango’s hands were shaking from shooting his friend for any reason that wasn’t to just mess around. But again, it wasn’t Wels. It was a weird substitute for Wels that apparently had more willpower than he did and that really said something.

Thankfully, the knight was unconscious now. Only one arrow wasn’t enough to kill him and that’s what he hoped for. If Wels died and respawned, while he wouldn’t be too far away, it was safe to assume whatever that thing was had control over him and would have him flying off somewhere else in the opposite direction. Really, at some point it would come out to be a stupid plan. They’d message everyone to capture Wels on sight and given how spread apart everyone was across the map, hiding spots weren’t too evident. A search team of about twenty odd people would find him within an hour at most.

“Tango, are you alright?” Xisuma asked him. His head snapped towards the admin.

The demon exhaled shakily. “I shot him,” was all he said, still staring at the scene in front of him.

“I know, I know, but you did the right thing, Tango.” Xisuma’s voice wavered too much for Tango’s liking. He seemed just as panicked as everyone else was. Yet, his hands were balled right around his sword and his eyes showed none of the usual softness behind his visor.

Tango shook his head, disregarding that statement. “I shot Wels, X.” He gestured vaguely at the knight. In the spur of the moment, he forgot that it was Wels simply being controlled, firing at him instinctively. But after it all, it was still his tiefling friend.

“Yes, you did. But you also just saved Beef from being hurt more than….that.” He gestured vaguely and then put a reassuring hand on Tango’s shoulder. “You can leave if you like. You don’t have to be here.”

Well thanks, Tango wanted to say bitterly. Not quite what he wanted to hear, but Xisuma had a point. A shaking mess of a demon who could now barely hold his bow wasn’t too useful in this situation. Before Tango could accept the invitation to leave, the admin was already typing into his communicator, presumably asking for more help. His hands dropped to his sides defeatedly.

“Okay,” he muttered, taking one last look at the unconscious pair. “Keep me updated?”

“Will do.”

With that and a quick pat on the back, the demon rocketed away from the sandstone building. While he flew, he took out his communicator to see who was coming to help in his place. Preferably more than just one person, he thought. Probably someone fairly close by. Thankfully, he doubted Stress would be accompanying them and her hot chocolate sounded quite good right now.

<Xisuma> We need some backup at Beef’s base

<ImpulseSV> I can lend a hand

<Keralis> Me too

<Keralis> On my way

Well, at least they had people who Wels didn’t just try to kill an hour earlier. Tango was still a bit shaken up by that. So, he decided to visit Stress, seeing as she wasn’t accompanying them. Rather than taking the Nether Hub, he opted to take the long route to think and simultaneously clear his head. He kept thinking about Evil X for some reason, but that was justified quickly when he thought back to Xisuma.

Knowing the admin, he could probably just ask about it later, but he didn’t really want to press into matters that weren’t his, jokingly or not, given what’d happened earlier on from doing so. He also wondered about Evil X and how nervous the guy looked before flying off to his base. Poor dude, maybe Tango should’ve at least tried to understand what happened. After all, Xisuma was rare to anger and when he was, Tango didn’t imagine that it was pretty, be it cold silent glares or outright rage.

Nonetheless, it would probably leave you upset with yourself more often than not.

Slowly, he crept up on the familiar giant butterflies crawling around on the jungle trees and the pink topped buildings. The butterflies glanced at him but continued their activities. He landed on the glass rainbow to get a better view of the surrounding area. The demon looked around, not initially finding Stress, but after a few more seconds his eyes landed on the familiar pink cardigan. Strange, he thought she’d still have the T-shirt on, but who was he to judge when that landed him in a mess on its own.

At the sight of her, he grinned and glided down to the pathway where she was.

“Hey Stress!” He waved.

She turned to him. “Oh, Tango! Fancy seeing you here. I thought you were with Xisuma.” She tilted her head in question. “At least I thought anyways. Saw something goin’ on, I assumed you stayed with him.”

“Uh, yeah, I was. Then things got a little heated so I left,” he answered.

Stress nodded. “I saw they needed some backup. Mind telling me what happened? Nobody really knows what’s going on besides the few of you.”

That’s right, they hadn’t really explained in chat, or to anyone else really, what was happening with Wels and Hels. Tango grimaced at the thought that Wels would probably be waking up soon and lash out again. He didn’t want more people to be hurt, especially not Beef. Beef was such a nice guy and genuinely wanted to help both knights. He didn’t deserve how much he was hurt by it. And Impulse was there too now, and that was an accident waiting to happen. He didn’t want one of his closest friends hurt.

“Tango, you alright there? You’re spacin’ out a bit.”

The demon shook his head, ridding himself of the previous thoughts, and coughed awkwardly.

“Well uh, you know how Beef has that cloning machine, right? And Wels used it?”

“Vaguely, but yes.”

“Well, something’s gone wrong recently. I mean, not that it hadn’t before after he used it but worse this time.”

Stress began leading them inside her brewery, nodding along to him. “What happened the first time?”

“Ah, apparently it made this evil clone, I dunno if he met you yet-“

She perked up happily. “Oh, you mean Hels! Yes, yes, he’s a very interesting fellow. Very cooperative, too, I had to care for him because he came in from HelsCraft lookin’ like a mess.”

Tango raised a brow, suddenly interested in what she had to say instead. “Looking like a mess? Nobody really mentioned anything about that when they came over. Just said Hels wanted to meet me and moved on.”

“Oh yeah, had a dagger in his stomach and everythin’. Looked real painful but he’s a tough cookie.” Stress smiled as she sat the demon down on some stairs near a small kitchen she had built earlier on. Not too great for the overall area and stuck out against the few stands but she apparently recently put one in each of her builds in case of events like these, or just to keep baking convenient. “Care for some cake and hot chocolate? No offense, but you look like a mess, too. Could use some sugar.”

And always prepared with sweets.

Tango snorted. “Sure.” He sighed, continuing his story. “Anyways, so after all that, apparently he and Wels began like….switching places? Hels is becoming nicer and Wels….” he trailed off, grabbing Stress’s attention.

“What about Wels?” She leaned against the counter thoughtfully.

“He….came over because he shut himself off from everyone and I pestered him with some trades. But, after telling him that his offers were crap, he tried to kill me.”

Stress fumbled with the cake knife as he said that, her face twisting into worry. “Kill you?! Why on earth would he try to kill you over a trade?!”

The demon shuddered, the knight’s smirking face burning into that back of his mind. “It wasn’t him, Stress. He keeps being taken over by this….weird dark force or something. You should’ve seen his eyes, Stress, they were as red as mine!”

“Oh, goodness. Are you….alright? I mean, we all saw earlier that Evil X killed you, though. We just assumed he was causing some mischief.”

Tango shook his head. “Wels nicked my wing and I just,” he pushed his hands away from him, conveying a falling motion,”fell right into one of the towers.” He circled his arms around himself. “He didn’t help me. I couldn’t speak ‘cus I was hurt. But, I guess just by coincidence, Evil X came over and just….he said something about just going ahead and killing me and after that I was in my bed.”

Stress had momentarily forgotten about the cake and mugs sitting next to her, invested in his story. She had a hand over her mouth in sad surprise. “Did- did anything else happen?”

“Ah….Evil X came in, said Xisuma needed me to come with them. We go back up and Wels has these nasty red marks on his face but he’s still all evil and whatnot. Doc had him tied up and they just left. Suma wasn’t looking too good though.”

The lady eyed him curiously. “Not looking too good?”

“He was looking like he was gonna pass out. He said something about how he apparently hit Wels, something else about not affording to lose another Hermit.” Tango perked up. “Hey, do you know anything about that? I mean, I’ve been here for a while and the servers changed and stuff. Some people left, but he said it like….someone died or something. Like permadeath.”

Stress shook her head with pursed lips. “No, sorry Tango. Is there more to the story or do you want to eat some cake now.”

Slightly, Tango smiled. “Cake first.”

With a grin, she cut him a slice and moved to get some milk and cocoa beans for the hot chocolate. The two fell silent while she worked, pouring the milk in a small pot and placing it on top of a furnace where some heat began growing. She began to hum absentmindedly and cut herself from cake as well. Within a couple minutes, the milk warmed and she finished up grinding the cocoa beans with sugar.

“You like yours with whip cream and marshmallows, luv?” She looked up at Tango who was busy picking at something on his shirt, probably just to pass the waiting time.

“Hm? Oh yes, that’d be nice. Thanks, Stress!” The smile on his face grew and Stress couldn’t help but to warm at the sight of it. At least she had a knack for cheering up her friends with her recipes.

“Right then, they’re done!” She placed the cake and hot chocolate on a tray and had the demon follow her to a lounge-like area through a painting. Well, he’d never seen this before. Looks like she had a whole bunch of surprises.

“This is my private room to chill out once in a while, don’t tell anyone. I have a bunch of these.” She sat on a pink sofa tucked into one end of the long, thin room. “Given what on earth happened to you, I’m deeming you worthy to see it,” she added with a smile. Tango sat on the sofa as well, feeling how plush the cushions were.

“Guess I’m just that messed up now, apparently,” he chuckled. “Thanks again, Stress.” He took the cocoa happily.

“Anytime! If you need a sit, just come right on over.” She took a sip of her cocoa. “I really do hope Wels gets better though. And Hels too. Can’t imagine being kicked out of your own dimension.”

“Me too, Stress, me too.”

[lightandwinged]

So I saw The Movie. Spoilers--good, bad (or neutral), and ugly--below. Spoiler-free: not as good as the first Avengers, but better by far than AoU. 

The Good

This film made me even more furious with Joss Whedon, solely because it proves that the problems in AoU were of his own making, namely his inability to handle too many characters and therefore incompetence when it comes to a film of this type. The Russo brothers took a very smart approach to this, in that they knew they couldn’t take the time to give all of the good guys the characterization they’d have gotten in a film with a smaller cast, so they basically made Thanos the main character, which is really what should’ve happened with Ultron but inexplicably did not happen. 

And man, what a joy Thanos is as a character. So many superhero villains are so kind of... one dimensional, tbh. Or not one dimensional, but rather, they seem to have an understanding that what they’re doing is evil or, if they don’t have that understanding, a lack of real conviction. They’re nascent Sith, in a sense, running on either the sheer joy of being cruel or on a heightened desire for vengeance. They can be a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong, but they seem, for lack of a better word, like cartoon villains. 

They’re fun, like I said, and the world is full of people who are just... evil for the sake of being evil (as we’ve found out in the last ~2+ years more than a lot of us realized, I think), but they get tired when they’re the villain of everything. Chaotic Evil, in other words, gets less compelling when it’s all you see. It becomes the same person with a different mask, 9/10 times, which I’m sure contributes a lot to superhero movie fatigue. 

Thanos, though, I enjoyed because he was 100% convinced that what he was doing was for the good of the universe. Ultron was trying to go there, I think, but Whedon handled it with about as much delicacy as a bull in a china shop (Ultron is mostly redeemed by his being played by James Spader, who is a delight at all times, but that also ends up being his downfall because you get the feeling that he’s winking at the audience the entire time... “I’m saying this with conviction, but here’s a quip to show that I know I’m evil.”). Thanos actually felt real. He felt like he believed everything he was saying, like he truly thought he was doing the universe a mercy, that he was the good guy. 

And that doesn’t redeem him by any means (incoming people screeching about how I’m downplaying genocide or stanning because dude’s evil, y’all), but it makes him infinitely more compelling, and GOD, that is refreshing. It’s the same way that Killmonger was refreshing because, even though you don’t agree with it, you see his point. I mean, who among us that’s worked retail hasn’t wanted to snap our fingers and make half of humanity vanish? It’s been more than a decade since my last retail position, and I still have those days.

On a different level, it’s that garbage that gets pushed by freshman level philosophy students who are like “people should stop having babies” because that, not a mismanagement of resources by the wealthy and powerful, is why there’s scarcity. It’s rubbish, absolute rubbish (and it doesn’t work because science tells us that the universe, that all of existence, is infinite... and fuck, the movie’s science tells us that as well--Bananabread Cabletelevision had his little moment of hunting for spoilers and only got through about 1.4 million of the unending possibilities that exist BUT I DIGRESS), but at first blush, you ask yourself, “Wait, does he have a point?” No, he does not.

A rundown of other Goods:

Look, Thor in lightning form is the sexiest creature in existence. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Also I appreciated him getting another smushface. And then the immediately following Battle of the Chrises (all I’m saying is that if there’s not a threeway Chris standoff in Part Deux, I’ll be very sad. Also, someone please cast Chris Pine in Captain Marvel, he needs to spend the rest of eternity watching powerful women heroes in awe).

The people who were allowed gave fantastic performances. RDJ will be sorely missed as Iron Man (because if y’all think he’s living past the next film, I’m sorry for your loss), and of the good guys, I felt like he came the closest to being the main character here. Which has been true of the other Avengers films as well, so that’s nice to see. Ultimately, these first three phases of the MCU were Tony Stark’s story, and that finale will be really... well, painful. 

Other great performances: Tom Holland (darling baby child, I wept for you), Mark Ruffalo (good at constipation), Bagels Cucumbers (that hurts to admit, he’s the Worst, but damn if he isn’t a good actor), Zoe Saldana (you’d better come back), Chris Hemsworth (as always), Paul Bettany (NOOO), and Elizabeth Olsen (poor darling). 

The humor was nicely balanced, not fourth-wall breaking like you get in the Whedon Avengerses, but logical. It was kind of like exhaling: inhale the action and serious stakes, exhale the humor. It allowed breathing room in all the intensity, so that was great.

Also how can I have missed Wakanda that much if it’s only been like... not even two months since I saw Black Panther?

Look, if the next movie involves just one scene--just one!--of Okoye, Nat, and Wanda fighting together, my ticket will have been worth its price.

Related, Proxima Midnight is (a) literally the coolest name for anyone ever, and (b) my wife now.

The Neutral-Bad

Or, really, more the expected. 

In any ensemble movie, you’re going to have a lot of characters whose purpose is just to step on scene, state their name and allegiance, and then fade into the background. This ended up being the case with pretty much all of Team Cap, and it was to their detriment. They had their shining moments (”Earth just lost her greatest defender” made me ship things like FedEx), but as opposed to the group above, they didn’t really have a lot to do? Or even really much in the way of reactions? They just sort of... came and saw and fought and that was it. 

It felt a lot like nobody knew what to do with those characters, which is fair enough, but it also felt like they were wasted, and they shouldn’t have been. If I had to guess, I’d guess that the writers had to pick and choose which good guys they wanted to focus on and which new Avengers and old Avengers would get the attention. Tony because these films have been basically a huge Iron Man series. Thor because I think? the plot requires him to be Important, as per comic books. But as much as I adore Thor, I wish there had been a focus on Steve more. With Tony, you’ve got the plot of “oh my god Thanos, the thing I’ve been afraid of since 2008″ but maybe Steve could’ve had more of a reluctant plot, like he’s been heroing all this time but all he’s gotten for it is locked up and exiled and shit? I don’t know, point is that if Captain America is going to be so prominent in the MCU logo, he should get a bigger slice of the plot pie.

Also I’m annoyed with Gamora’s passing, though I wouldn’t call it a complete fridging because it wasn’t just for mangst. It was just mostly for mangst. Either way, though, I think that’s the death (besides the end ones) that bothered me the most. It didn’t feel unnecessary and was probably the most shocking, when you look at it objectively (more on that in a second), but... I don’t know, it bothered me, but I can’t 100% put my finger on why/how. I do appreciate, though, that it gave Gamora a decent arc in the film. 

Anyway, to the deaths. The presumable permadeaths (Heimdall, Loki, and Gamora) were, for the most part, unsurprising. The Thor trilogy is over, so Heimdall and Loki end up being kind of extra weight, the former because he doesn’t have a lot to do that’s not in a role filled by another character, and the latter because the only other way he could’ve worked in this film was as an eleventh hour heroic sacrifice, and that feels almost too woobie-ish, like beyond Zuko levels of woobie. 

The Great Dust Rapture at the end was also fairly unsurprising, mostly because there’s no way a good chunk of those characters aren’t coming back. At least two have sequels literally named after them coming out sometime in the next couple of years; as I also pointed out to Kyle, “Look, Gamora may be dead forever, but if the rest of the Guardians remain dust, GotG3 will just be The Adventures of Rocket Raccoon Being Very Sad.” The non-dusted bunch are the OG Avengers, plus or minus a few friends; the stakes for the next film are, therefore, a LOT higher, since all the OG Avengers have finished their trilogies and, should they survive, will probably only ever show up again in cameos. We know T’Challa and Peter Parker and the Guardians of the Galaxy and probably Dr. Strange and everyone still have Things To Do. 

But the OG Avengers do not, and they couldn’t really kill off the main characters of the franchise with one film to go, so...

(also, calling it now: the next film is going to be The Avengers: Rebirth. I will put money on it)

The Ugly

But HNNGH. Okay.

I 100% understand the choices they made with the dustinatings, but like... there’s no suspense whatsoever. If Marvel didn’t release their film titles 6000 years in advance, maybe the stakes would’ve been stakier, but as it stands, it’s like... come on people. 

You know what would’ve worked way better and made for stakier stakes? Don’t kill off the main characters from franchises that still have sequels coming out. Kill off sidekicks. T’Challa doesn’t die, but maybe M’baku or Okoye does. Spare at least three of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Leave Peter Parker’s fate uncertain (though his death scene was literally the only one that made me tear up because TOM HOLLAND IS JUST THAT GOOD, DARLING FROG-IN-MOUTH BOY). Bucky, Sam, Nick Fury, Maria Hill--they can remain dusted. But if you want to keep the stakes for the second film while actually letting us believe that there won’t be any resurrections this time, maybe don’t kill people who we know will be back in various MCU films at future dates. 

It’s like I keep thinking when I watch trailers for Solo or literally any prequel anything: the problem with 99% of prequels is that we know who lives and who doesn’t, so giving us trailer shots of Chewbacca in danger, for example, is like trying to play peek-a-boo with an adult. We have object permanence, it’s not surprising when you pull your hands away and your face is still there. It’s not surprising that Chewbacca isn’t going to get his face bashed away by a rock. It’s not surprising that somehow, in Avengers Four: You Asked For More, all the dusted people with eponymous films coming up will be back. 

Another big plot hole: why didn’t Dr. Strange go and do his future vision the second a giant green man fell into his living room? Bruce, as Bruce, tells him “Thanos is coming for the macguffins” and then he goes and spends the next 5 minutes going through possibilities and then figures out the very easy way to solve the thing. 

That easy way? Just have Wanda destroy the time stone. Now we’re not panicking about taking out Vision’s brain as fast as we can (point: that scene was unrealistic, Shuri would’ve actually had it done in about 13 seconds flat) and Thanos has lost and maybe he goes around killing people manually but at least he can’t rewind time if things don’t go his way. 

The movie didn’t do this, obviously, but it’s one of those things where it’s like “if your audience can figure out a better way of doing things before the credits even fucking roll, maybe revise your script.”

(if Carrie Fisher had been alive to script doctor this shit, we wouldn’t have this problem, universe)

Other big frustration: does every Avengers film really need Thor to go on an epic quest away from everyone else for half the film? Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty cool to see him jumpstart a sun and see Peter Dinklage being huge (all I’m saying is that if Disney ever acquires the rights to the X-Men, things are going to get very confusing) and see a new Mjolnir-like-object, but oh. my. god. Every time those scenes were happening, I felt like it was a bathroom break. Like legit, that fucking ax had better cleave Thanos in half in the next movie because otherwise, that was so much wasted time that could’ve been devoted to literally anything else. 

Final Miscellaneous Thoughts

Maybe this means that GotG3 will be about Peter Quill actually growing up and dealing with his issues. I hope it does. 

Also, Nebula/Tony Stark road trip back to earth? I’m all about it. 

Wonder Woman would’ve ended this all in about 30 seconds flat, which is why Captain Marvel can’t show up until the next film. 

The next film is literally going to be at least 90 minutes of Thanos refusing to interact with anyone trying to kill him because he’s on vacation and fuck you. 

Literally why does anyone still live in NYC in the MCU? The first movie would’ve been enough to convince me to move to a cornfield in Nebraska and just stay there for eternity. 

“Thanos will return.” Along with literally everyone else SERIOUSLY THIS IS NOT SUSPENSEFUL MARVEL AAAAAAUGH.

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

Nimbatus- The Space Drone Constructor

I’m one of the small minority who actually really enjoyed the Gummi Ship parts of Kingdom Hearts. Yes, the interface was clunky and there was basically zero benefit to building anything beyond the standard design, and after a certain point in the story you never needed to use the ship again as you could just teleport between places. Still, for this Star Fox veteran, the chance to build your own ship (yes, entirely out of guns) was too much to pass up, and I always left the experience sad that there wasn’t more to it.

Ostensibly a roguelike, Nimbatus’ main game mode sees you traversing the galaxy gathering resources with which to build bigger and better drones, all while being chased by the Corp, who inevitably will catch you and kill you and you’ll have to start all over with nothing to show for it. Normally that’d be a Bin by itself, but it turns out Nimbatus’ developers are super cool people who also included a Sandbox mode with huge customisability, which essentially lets you play the main game while removing the permadeath mechanic. The breadth of options available in sandbox mode are praiseworthy and let you tweak pretty much every facet until you find the game you want to play. You can, of course, also play in full sandbox mode, with every item and upgrade available to you immediately with no cost or penalties, for those of us who just want to build the biggest scariest spaceship imaginable.

Drone building is fun, but there needs to be a purpose to it, and that’s where Nimbatus lets me down. All the planets and missions are procedurally generated, which I typically dislike. It’s used in games like this to ensure no two planets are the same, but in practice it often results in every single planet feeling the same. The story is no different here- when you’ve recovered one black box, you’ve recovered them all, and there just isn’t enough variance to engage me.

Fin or Bin:

But the planets aren’t the fun part, building a giant spaceship entirely out of lasers and rocket engines is the fun part! And that’s what I did, for the last 20 minutes of my hour. I did enjoy it, but I’ve done it now, and I don’t really see much reason to come back and do it again. For a player who enjoys receiving scraps and putting together the best machine they can out of the scatter there’s a lot of fun to be had here, but for me it’s time to disassemble all the parts and put them back in the Bin.

(Steam) (Comic - Awkward Zombie “Gunship”)

[sazorak]

What I Thought Of Every Single Game I Played In 2016

I played a bunch of games in 2016. Here's what I thought about them, in a ranked order! This is my list, and if you have problems with me putting games released in previous years on it: fight me.

[2015]

Honorable Mention: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - DS - ★★★★★ - 2011

Apropos of nothing, I replayed Ghost Trick this year. Man: Ghost Trick is still reaaaaally goddamn good. It's got style, it's got charm. Its bypasses the miserable scavenger-hunt aspects of traditional adventure games by focusing on self-contained environments with limited, obvious points of interaction that put the focus more on sequencing and logic than "well, I guess I'll use the banana on the duck." You spend a lot time thinking about umbrellas, how to knock umbrellas around, and the different shapes umbrellas can take. It made me understand why people like dogs that bark all the time.

This replay has definitely cemented it as my all time favorite adventure game. It's a shame we'll never see another of its ilk. It's some small consolation that the lack of interest in making a sequel prevents Capcom from ruining it with an ill-advised, poorly constructed follow-up. Let them keep milking Phoenix Wright half to death while their masterpiece rests on its mighty laurels. Oh Nick, your poor, poor teats. You don't deserve that kind of treatment.

Coast Guard the Video Game - Steam - ★ - 2015

I have never been so disappointed in a video game.

I admit: this may seem a bit extreme. No one in their right mind would have any kind of expectations for Coast Guard: The Video Game. It's a bottom-of-the-barrel budget release created to capitalize on the fact that there's been literally no other game about the Coast Guard – the point where they literally were able to call the game "Coast Guard." A bunch of Germans made it on a shoestring German-game budget, and sitting on the title screen for longer than 30 seconds causes the whole thing to go haywire. I knew all this going in, and it filled me not with antipathy, but hope.

All I wanted was a game that was not only shitty, but also stupid; I wanted something that would be worthy of showing my pal Chorocojo, a member of the US Coast Guard, so that I could get some real good goofs. It didn't need to be good; it just had to be entertainingly bad and on topic. I just wanted to recapture the kind of inane shittiness that we I loved about Man vs Wild the Game.

The Man vs Wild game was bad. It was cheap. It was stuuuupid. But Man vs Wild was structured in a way that fit the experience. It's a budget title created by a team that knew that even budget titles need some bare minimum of production and gameplay. It doesn't waste your time. Coast Guard, for its stupid story and writing, has absolutely no respect for your time. It suffers the ultimate sin of media: being not only bad, but also plain boring.

Fuck this game.

Sayonara Umihara Kawase - Steam - ★★ - 2015

I picked up the latest title in this reel old series of fish-avoidance fishing-pole-platformers because, frankly, seeing the older games on Game Center CX piqued my interest to see where they've taken the franchise in the intervening decades. Turns out? Not very far. The game is almost identical in every way to the older titles, just rendered in a more modern 3D engine. But boy is this package rough.

The controls are a nightmare. It crashed on me several times. I literally could not figure out how to beat the first boss. You'd think a platformer whose only point of interaction with enemies is "use fishing pole" would have a relatively simple to deduce first boss, but man, you got me. I tried hooking the thing, I tried going over the thing, I tried jumping the thing, I tried pulling the thing. After a half an hour of trying, I realized I really did not care for the game anyway so why bother? There are better uses of my time.

#19: Death Road to Canada - Steam - ★★★ - 2016

Death Road to Canada is... OK? It has some neat procedural design. It has the varied, challenging gameplay you'd expect from a zombie-shooting rogue-like. It's real goofy and doesn't take itself seriously, which is really the only way to handle zombie-apocalypse themed games in 2016. But man: I do not like how this controls. The two-dimensional sprite character look neat, but with how combat operates on a three-dimensional axis, it's frustrating. The forced perspective made it hard to just hit enemies directly above my character, and I fell prey too frequently to damage that arose less from misplay on my part as from an inability to predict how hit boxes work on what feels like an inappropriate aspect angle.

I think part of the issue is that I came to this game less from the perspective of "Hey, I like zombie games!" or even "Hey, I like roguelikes!" (though I've been known to enjoy both of those) but more "Oregon Trail II is a fucking dope game." I think what I wanted out of this was less "2D zombie loot brawler with Oregon Trail II" themes, and more "Another Oregon Trail: I guess there's zombies an anime in this one?" Wait, shit, someone should make an Anime Oregon Trail. Or an Oregon Trail Anime.

Never Alone - Steam - ★★★ - 2014

I appreciate what Never Alone is trying to do. Conveying the folklore of a culture an artistic video game is a brilliant idea, and the atmosphere that they create is fantastic. There's also a lot of interesting documentary material built in.

Problem is: the actual platforming isn't all that fun. Kind of frustrating, really. It's like a low-rent version of Brothers. What they've done is admirable and fine as an experience, but as a game it ironically left be rather cold. Worth experiencing if you're interested in the folklore side of it, but not really otherwise.

#18: Fire Emblem Fates - 3DS - ★★★ - 2016

I'm beginning to suspect I don't actually like Fire Emblem that much.

Here's the thing: My first entry in the series was Awakening. I enjoyed the tactical combat well enough, and the notion of managing the interactions of a really diverse, anime-ass cast was like a weird, omnidirectional relationship magician was neat! Combat scenarios were challenging but not too bad by and large, and the characters and writing were fun— if somewhat shallow. I managed to get through the combat with judicious reloading to keep everyone alive (which I blamed on my inexperience), though I was rather frustrated with just how little they actually managed to do with the cast. The way they had so many characters but none of them really interacted with each other unless you were setting them up to bone down— and none of them really had anything to really do with the ongoing plot beyond being another interchangeable unit in your altogether too oversized army.

After playing through the entirety of Birthright and most of Conquest, and with them really doubling down on the elements I didn't really like in Awakening, I'm really beginning to doubt what I thought I liked about this series. The difficult of combat scenarios are so dependent on minute variations of motion-capability and enemy movement which seem utterly unpredictable without either tons of iterations (ie, retrying a scenario over and over) or by plotting out actions with painstaking detail. The sheer amount of damage that can be done in a single turn is absurd, a reality made trickier by the game's love of introducing enemies in such an unpredictable way that you can be royally screwed if you don't know it's coming. Oh, you left a healer over near this tree? Surprise idiot, apparently a dozen wyvern riders were living in that tree! Birthright swung wildly between trivially easy / too simple missions and frustratingly badly constructed ones. Conquest had more interesting mission design, but they rewarded less tactical expertise and understanding of the systems than the constant-reload mindset required to keep everyone alive – and to ensure your party got enough experience to keep everyone alive down the line.

The writing for Fates is real fucking bad. The story is the most generic, milquetoast-ass warring kingdoms plot, and the way they attempt to throw a twist at is so surface level obvious that the existence of it was baked into their damn marketing campaign. An evil dragon is up to no good and causes a king to go do evil shit and there's literally nothing else it. Not a single twist along the way. I don't need deep literature here, but they need to do SOMETHING with the story beyond what they've been doing. The two games having diverging takes of the same story could have been interesting if it weren't for the fact that it's constructed on so flimsy a framework that in order for it to work it requires the cast to be biggest most stubborn morons imaginable— which really doesn't make me like them at all.

And boy do they really, REALLY struggle from their character's own mortality. Because any character— bar a few crucial exceptions— can die, characters cannot have any writing devoted to them outside the missions where they're recruited, certain character-specific missions, and their ten paragraphs of support dialog in the castle. Because everyone can die at any given point, writing conditional dialog that may not be used would be a waste of the developer's resources / potentially alter the plot- meaning no one actually has any time to build any real character. This is made all stupider by the fact that the game for whatever reason also maintains Awakening's children-generating mechanic, which is spuriously supported in this game by using fast-time bubbles your children are raised in so that they can fight in your army within a day of you getting married / them being born. It's fucking stupid, and they refuse to even tip the tiniest hat to acknowledge it.

The sad part is, I don't think there's much hope in much of this being changed going forward. Permadeath is considered a "core feature" of the Fire Emblem series that grognards love to argue about, and the fundamental combat system has become increasingly more frustrating the more and more I learn it, rather than the other way around. This whole series and paradigm feels like it could learn a lot of what BioWare has done with its own relationship-heavy RPGs, and maybe dial the cast back a bit and put a bit more time into increasing the quality of the writing. Not going to happen though.

Azure Striker Gunvolt - Steam - ★★★ - 2015

Here's a secret about me that you may not know: I like anime. Quite a bit, actually. I've watched a lot of anime. I devoted perhaps too much mental energy during crucial years of my life towards anime. My brain is irreparably wired for it. I cannot escape it. I am anime.

And as much as the anime ideal in my head differs wildly from the style of Azure Striker Gunvolt, I don't dislike having a really stereotypical-ass neon-colored anime romp now and then. That being said: Azure Striker Gunvolt is not an especially good one of those. The story is Mega Man meets X-Men meets Idol music numbers, with very little of what would make all of that any good. The bad guys you face somehow have less character than even ostensibly mindless Mega Man bosses, and the story is way too sparse (and no good) for as much weight as it wants to give it. The music numbers are pretty OK though.

The tag-and-zap system of Gunvolt and its interplay with platforms and dodging enemy fire is interesting and certainly more complex than Mega Man's old run-and-gun, but it's ultimately Gunvolt's downfall as well: it actually requires a bit too much deliberate thought and action to work well. Mega Man, across so many of its platforming-focused instantiations, has been less about precision and more about flow. While the platforming may occasionally be very precise, and they are definitely not mindless games, you still ultimately spend most of your time just holding right and dealing with challenges as they come. It's platforming by gut and feel. Gunvolt rewards precision and punishes slack. It rates you at the end of every mission and basically yells at you if you can't maintain a combo and dodge fire the entire mission. The game expects you to replay the missions and aim for perfection, but I don't feel the mechanics of Gunvolt are good enough to even consider putting that kind of time of mine in. Good for those that do, but nope.

Also, for some reason the US version had a bunch of story shit cut which makes the game even more incoherent. Bizarre.

#17: Worms W.M.D. - Steam - ★★★ - 2016

It's still really fun to import art into Worms and then blow it up. WMD isn't substantially different from Reloaded (which I also liked well enough), but it has enough quality of life improvements and new features that I still enjoyed my time with it playing against my friends. This is about all I want from it. Congrats Worms, you managed to make it this far just from "I enjoy fucking around with my friends".

Transformers: Devastation - Steam - ★★★ - 2015

One of the weird twists of a kind of strange, sort of shitty year was me being exposed more to and getting really into Transformers. I really like the Transformers. I used to not give a Cybertronain shit about these guys but man I get it now (thanks entirely to IDW's great line of Generation 1 comics). Transformers: Devastation is just a big ol' fanservice send up to Transformers from Platinum Studio's B team. Luckily for me, I really like Bayonetta and similar titles from Platinum's menagerie, so a Transformers game with those mechanics sounded pretty great!

And for what it is, Transformers: Devestation IS pretty great. But that "what it is" really just amounts to a budget tie-in game that slaps a mediocre weapon looting system and a simpler version of the Bayonetta combat onto the old generation 1 Transformers license. If you're willing to accept that for what it is and march through four hours or so of somewhat-repetitive encounters so that you can have Optimus Prime punch Megatron in the face in low-earth orbit, it's a good time. It's not exactly something I'd recommend to anyone not into either Transformers OR character action games, but if you like either (both?) of those things, this is a decent enough.

Theatrythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call - 3DS - ★★★ - 2014

I liked the previous Theatrythm Final Fantasy game for the 3DS well enough. The Final Fantasy series has catchy tunes, playing through them in a vaguely Ouendan manner is fun. This game adds a whole heap of new songs from across the series that wasn't in the previous game, and adds another heap of new characters for exploring the expanded RPG elements (particularly, their quests). The music and rhythm parts are fine, no real objections with those. My big problem with this game is that the RPG elements still have no purpose. Yes, they allow you to get "further" through enemy sequences, get more points or prizes, or stumble through badly performed sections longer - but to what end, really? The major driver for the game when you get down to it is the desire to unlock the characters from across the different series by collecting colored crystals, but there's not a lot of point to this past a desire for completion or to see your favorites. I got my favorites rather quick, and after that the act of actually using and improving those characters felt... empty? It's rather shallow and short lived because they don't really do anything. Each character's unique traits and skills don't serve any other end beyond the numbers getting bigger and bigger, or allowing you to hobble your way through higher difficulties that you may not be able to keep up with.

The RPG aspect is a tacked on element to make their rhythm game more "Final Fantasy", when the game would have been much better served as an RPG that integrated rhythm-based execution of songs into its combat / navigation structure. Their quests play at this kind of idea, but don't actually implement the mechanics in such a way that makes it anything beyond just another way of presenting a randomized sequence of the three different rhythm mini-games— and those mini-games just aren't nearly as well executed as the kind you encountered in Ouendan or Elite Beat Agents in the first place.

Steamworld Dig - 3DS - ★★★ - 2013

Steamworld Dig has a very simple but effective draw: digging deeper to get materials to upgrade your tools to dig deeper to get materials to upgrade your tools to dig deeper to get materials to upgrade your tools is a fun gameplay loop. It's a huge part of what makes Minecraft and its ilk appealing. It targets the weird portion of our lizard brains focused on letting us know that even menial labor can be appealing if you feel like you're slowly accomplishing something.

Steamworld Dig is a great example of how that loop can play out, but that's about it. Its plot is essentially a placeholder, and while it has a mild amount of platforming mechanics for handling its occasional puzzle side levels, none of it really helps it get past being just a digger game. But for a short, cheap game, it's good enough.

#16: Forza Horizon 3 - PC - ★★★ - 2016

It's good to drive a car now and again. I'm not really into these sorts of games much for the racing; it is fine, I don't dislike doing it. Driving faster than other cars in a loop and getting ahead because I drive like a fucker is good. But really I just want to drive around a world far-too-fast and just look at it. Forza Horizon 3 is pretty good for that. The driving feels real good, the cars are fun, and the environment is diverse and interesting.

... but unfortunately, given what I wanted out of the game has less to do with racing and more to do with the environment itself, it is a bit lacking in terms of the longer-term appeal. It actually didn't take long to see all of what they had going on in their tiny Australia; while the environments are diverse, they're actually pretty small. I guess I just wanted something bigger. Forza-style driving in a The Crew-sized world would have been amazing, for example. The big attraction of Forza Horizon 3 is its online features, but frankly I don't have any real interest in that kind of thing; I'm here to treat it as basically a podcast game.

As a side note: the special unique racing events you unlock over the course of the game are actually not that great? As it turns out, racing a train, or some boats, or a helicopter really isn't all that different; they're just time trials with some neat set dressing. The fact that they're basically your reward and motivation for winning a bunch of races is kind of daft. They could do better.

#15: American Truck Simulator - Steam - ★★★ - 2016

Speaking of liking-to-drive while zoning out: man is it fun to drive a truck around the southwestern United States. As I talked about last year with Euro Truck Simulator 2, it's good to have a low-impact simulation that you can just load a podcast or some music on and drive. Problem is: there's way too little of it! If you want me to enjoy driving around you gotta give me more of the country to work with.

Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition - Wii U - ★★★ - 2013

I really wanted to like Guacamelee more than I do. It's a Metroidvania, which is possibly my favorite gaming genre. It has a great aesthetic. I fucking adore Mexican culture as an aesthetic for fantasy, and Guacamelee has that in spades with its luchador hero-myth, its underworld cast, and its overall world design. It's just got a great, unique feel that jives great with their combat system.

But I REALLY dislike the writing in the game, especially their attempts at comedy. Apparently this is the version where they toned down the amount of meme-y billboards and game references, but holy shit are there still WAY too goddamn much. It feels like nearly every single screen has a reference to old video games taped to the wall, and every single time it takes me completely out of the experience. Games NEED cohesiveness to sell you on their world, and each element should ultimately serve that cohesive whole— or at the very least, not detract from it while doing their own thing. The sheer amount of constant reference-based humor combined with overall just generally mediocre writing, made me cold on the experience.

While the combat was certainly unique and it worked overall pretty well with their arena combat, it just didn't feel all the way there. After a while it just got dull, and instead of varying my moves I started to just rely on tried-and-true combinations to get it done. This was in part due to a number of mechanics being introduced which, while certainly making the combat more dynamic, weren't actually all that fun in the actual flow of things (looking at you, dimension hopping bad guys). Towards the end it began to remind me of the Wolf Link segments of Twilight Princess, which isn't the most ringing of endorsements.

The game as a whole is decent with glimmers of brilliance—, it's just a real shame that there are so many weird inclusions that prevent it from achieving a truly timeless greatness. As a side note: the requirement for getting the "best ending" was stupid and, ultimately, really not that fun to do. Then again, the bad ending is arguably a better one than the "best ending", so that may be beside the point.

#14: SteamWorld Heist - 3DS - ★★★★ - 2016

It's absurd that this game works. The very notion of a 2D XCOM-like just seems like a bad idea? Or just be too simple? SteamWorld Heist is not a super complex game, but what's there is actually incredibly fun. The different class-based abilities paired with the weird guns and hat-removing laser-sight-aiming combat us super interesting. The story and world were pretty forgettable, but the actual combat and missions were varied enough and interesting that I had a good time with it. The hat collection mechanic is such a stupid good idea; the risk reward of "wow that's a different hat, do I take a turn off to shoot that hat off to try to collect it while I'm being shot at?" is both goofy and an interesting complication to the tactical combat.

#13: Inside - Steam - ★★★★ - 2016

Inside has a very effective and affective atmosphere. It's dark, it's mysterious, and while playing it I had absolutely no fucking idea what was going on. Hell, after finishing it I still have no fucking idea what was going on, and I'm usually pretty good at sussing out this kind of thing. While it is nominally a puzzle-platformer, the puzzles and platforms really only exist to sell the mood and setting and get you asking what's going on, until you reach the final twist where they really throw the whole thing for a loop. It's a good, self-contained experience, though I did not find it nearly as affecting as others did.

The final twist seems like it'd be more impactful if you are particularly susceptible to that style of horror; to me it was mostly just a cool thing that ended a bit too soon, with too many answers unanswered. A microcosm of the game as a whole, really.

#12: XCOM 2 - Steam - ★★★★ - 2016

XCOM 2 is... weird. In so many ways it's XCOM But More, which sounds great. The increased customization in terms of character designs, loadouts, and team composition, and the increased variability in mission-style, enemy types, and the overall flow of combat should have made it just an immediate total improvement on XCOM 1. But the story as executed really wasn't different enough (or interesting enough) compared to its predecessor, and the overworld strategic element ended up being more frustrating than I think they intended for.

The real crux of this seems to come down to their focus on ticking clock elements to solve the gameplay problems of the first game. There are just too many time-based fail states, both in and outside of missions. I get why they're there: to force you to keep moving forward and take risks rather than playing it totally safe and defensively, as the game's mechanics would otherwise encourage you to do. The natural inclination when you can be surprised at any given moment and lose valuable soldiers is to play it careful and wait for the enemy to come to you, so making that not an option by forcing to keep moving towards the exit is a great idea in principle. But the actual result is so punitive if you fail to adequately perform due to any number of XCOM-esque unpredictable events ("SURPRISE YOU WALKED INTO AN AMBUSH OF 20 DUDES", "Surprise you got bogged down and lost your whole team before you could evacuate", "Surprise you misjudged the arbitrary overworld clock and just lost the whole game!") that it narrowly misses the point of XCOM. XCOM is supposed to be punishing, but XCOM is more about coming back from the brink than it is supposed to be about avoiding punishment. You're supposed to keep soldiering on. The timer-elements put too much focus on punishment avoidance than on just pulling through the constant struggle. It addresses people playing too safe by forcing them to play risky in order to play it safe. The end result is that gameplay is often times stressful, and not necessarily in a good way. Which is a shame; the actual improvements to base XCOM are by and large GREAT. I had a fantastic time playing XCOM 2, but I am not exactly itching to go back for another run like I was with XCOM. If they had just made some different design decisions, and had more time to polish the game and bug-fix, I could have seen this game much higher on my list.

#11: Firewatch - Steam - ★★★★ - 2016

Firewatch has some very interesting character writing and storytelling, but it mostly made me really want to go camping. It's a great representation of what it's like to be in the wilderness around Yellowstone National Park, and just what it's like to hike around and just look at beautiful nature general. I really want to go back to the area now. Damn it.

People give a lot of guff towards these "walking simulator" style narrative-driven games, but I like them an awful lot. They're an interesting approach towards interactive storytelling, and the effect it has on immersing you in the role of its characters is interesting. That being said, Firewatch struggles between making Henry an established, known character, and you "playing" at being Henry. Henry makes a lot of decisions and conclusions that I, personally, would never do. He comes across as a real fuck up at times. Which is fine, I like flawed characters. But when I'm expected to deal with the repercussions of his decisions from a first-person perspective where I even have some amount of dialog choices, it's a bit weird. That's the nature of the medium, to be sure; you can't just let me decide to not go into the wilderness in the first place because then there's no game. But there's still this struggle between the narrative and our place in it that I don't feel like Firewatch necessarily gets wholly right. The contextual handling of decisions is crucial for Firewatch to work (turtle adoption included), but it seems in conflict with the story that they're trying to tell.

I enjoyed the narrative ride by and large, but the ending is abrupt on multiple levels. It feels deliberate and intentional, but I just didn't care for it. Some of that stems from a desire for more closure, but I also think their technical limitations may have caught up with them as well.

#10: Titanfall 2 - Origin - ★★★★ - 2016

Titanfall 2 is a lot of fun, but the experience is in many ways emotionally shallow.

The campaign has an abundance of really interesting design. Bouncing from the shooter equivalent of Powerhouse to committing egregious technochronomancy to what is in essence a HL2 gravity gun sequence to LOADING AUTOAIM DOT EXE, you can tell that the chapters were probably conceived independently of each other. While this might seem like a risk to a coherent overall flow, it results in a varied experience that doesn't dwell too long on any one idea. Mechanics as specific as "time travel" and "AUTO GUN" are introduced, explored, and then discarded before they can grow tired. It's a neat outcome of what must have been several teams prototyping a variety of gameplay designs, then building a framework to tie them all together. And it works!

The unfortunate side effect of this is that it was hard for them to layer a good, well-written, and evocative story over it. Because the game is haphazardly structured between these different extended sequences, there's not a lot of room for its cast and the narrative to breathe. The quality of writing leaves a lot to be desired. You'd think, "Weird gimmick mercs in giant robots challenging you one by one", Snake Eater meets Gundam, would write itself, but the game's refusal to take the time necessary to develop the cast makes each encounter emotionally empty. The lead is a shmuck best defined by being good at shooting men with robots, and his robot body is underutilized and then killed off.

The gameplay, both in singleplayer and in multiplayer, is challenging and fast without being too hectic, but it doesn't achieve the kind of flow I want in a shooter. I suppose that's what you get from a game that's essentially a Super CoD when all things are said and done. Still, I can crush people with a robot from orbit, which is pretty great.

#9: Rhythm Heaven MEGAMIX - 3DS - ★★★★ - 2016

#8: Overwatch - Battle Net - ★★★★ - 2016

Say what you will about Blizzard. Maybe they always play it safe. Maybe their writing is always terrible. But man can they polish the hell out of a game. Overwatch is an immaculately well-polished team-based shooter. Each hero plays and feels really good and different. Where writing fails them, art and setting design triumphs. Blizzard has some of the most killer creative and art designers in the business.

While they certainly deserve the praise they get for the way they mesh TF2 and MOBA-style hero mechanics, I don't think they get nearly enough attention for how smart they are avoiding the feel-bad elements of those games. The way Overwatch lauds praise on players without surfacing negatives, even in defeat, is a fascinatingly effective bit of smoke and mirrors. Relentless surfacing individual successes without even showing the FPS standby of the kill/death ratio works to the game's benefit, and I can only imagine it has a lot to do with their success in shepherding in a more diverse audience that may not have a background in shooters.

Personally, I got a little bored with it after putting a few dozen hours in, but that's a pretty reasonable amount of time from a multiplayer shooter in my book. It's good. D.VA #1.

#7: Stellaris - Steam - ★★★★ - 2016

Stellaris is so close to being a truly great 4X game. The UI is phenomenal, the writing is good, and the varieties of weird things that can happen and that you can do are great. It's easily the most accessible game Paradox has ever made; as someone who has bounced off Crusader Kings 2 and its ilk every time, I easily picked up Stellaris and have put well over a hundred hours into it. As they continue to increment on it, I can see myself putting over a hundred more. The baseline gameplay loop is just VERY, VERY GOOD, and it's caused me to 4X time travel an embarrassing amount of times.

It's so close to being truly great, but there are a number of major issues Paradox still needs to address. Ship combat needs refinement; there's no real tactics, and barely any strategy. War is a slog; the current war goals mechanic makes it painstakingly slow to eke out a victory, even with an overwhelming power disparity. The game needs to support more variety in its playstyles; after a certain point it's kind of rote. Politics, both inside and outside of one's empire, are paper-thin; factions just don't matter at the moment. My xenophilic empires of weirdo alien delights are not nearly weird enough yet; let my race of dirty nasty boys give the xenophobes something to really hate.

I guess I'll have to live with it being a mostly great 4X game for the time being. This is one I'm in for the long haul.

#6: Abzu - Steam - ★★★★★ - 2016

Like Endless Ocean before it, Abzu is one of the few games that really captures the experience of diving; not so much the technical, grounded experience (which Endless Ocean, while quite fantastical itself, embodies more) but more the emotional experience of experiencing the majesty of the oceans. Abzu is an experience. While there's not much to it beyond just moving forward and looking at fish, the moving forward feels good, the fish look great, and there's some real good visuals and music throughout the ride.

I'm not entirely sure what all happened in it, but it was a relaxing time that made me want to dive more. Good work. Now I've spent hundreds of dollars on new diving gear.

#5: Drawful 2 / Jackbox Party Pack 3 - Steam - ★★★★★ - 2016

I get the feeling that some permutation of Jackbox Games' party games will exist on my favorite game lists for the remainder of time, just because I really enjoy joking and drawing with my idiot friends. These games are fantastic if you hang with a crowd with like-minded senses of humor. The actual content of Party Pack 3 is a bit hit-and-miss, though TKO is such a standout that I don't care. The drawing ones typically are.

#4: Dark Souls 3 - Steam - ★★★★★ - 2016

It's kind of funny: one of my biggest complaints about Dark Souls 2 was how it didn't give a due amount of respect to its predecessor in its setting and story. Dark Souls 2 made the events of the first game into just the first in what is apparently an indefinite cycle of people-turning-into-assholes as death loses meaning and the world going haywire. I think part of my distaste stemmed from how it completely cast aside the religious undertones of the first game. I enjoy stories of gods and men, men stabbing gods as the world ends, and then men beginning a new dark age with really tall serpents with too many teeth. As far as I was concerned, that was the canon ending for the first Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2 didn't really explain how we got from there to, well, Two.

Dark Souls 3 does a much better job playing tribute to its origins, through a lot more explicit explorations of the nature of the world, the mechanics of how the setting works, and the place of larger-than-life figures in it. Where Dark Souls 2 felt like Dark Souls More, Dark Souls 3 feels like Dark Souls Chapter 2: This Time It Ends. And end it does.

Thematic stuff aside, it's also just a good Souls game. There are some really fun location designs and boss fights. It doesn't have quite the absurd amount of interconnectedness that Dark Souls 1 had with its locations, but it was still kind of mind-blowing to come out of a swamp after a few hours and realize I'd looped back to the first area of the game again. I found myself also enjoying the very explicit Dark Souls 1 cameos, though it got a bit stupid in a few places. If you've played the game, you'll know the ones. Knights of Catarina continue to be great, though. Shine on you dullard onion sons.

If there's one real problem I have with the game, it's what they did with the poise mechanic. Whereas in the past it was a viable strategy to wear heavy armor, wield heavy weapons, and go to town because there was an invisible "poise" meter for resisting stagger (offsetting your own slowness to a degree), now EVERYTHING staggers. Fast weapons and low armor are the law of the land and the correct way to play. Their new invincibility-frame interpretation of poise outright sucks, and being Estoc'd to death again and again is a miserable way to go.

Tabletop Simulator - Steam - ★★★★★ - 2015

I don't actually have a lot of first-hand experience with tabletop games of any kind. I've certainly played the occasional board game, but I never really ran with that crowd for most of my life, and my parents have never been much in the way of the game-playing type beyond Scrabble. My exposure to tabletop gaming has a lot to do with my current circle of friends, and I've enjoyed them an awful lot.

Tabletop Simulator's strength is that it is any tabletop game that anyone takes the time to import into its engine. Which includes a lot of really, really good tabletop games as it turns out. It's a bit cheating, but that's the strength of it: it's hundreds of brilliant games in one, so long as you have the friends to play it with.

A lot of goofy improv, card games, and trivia have gone down in Tabletop Simulator for me over the last year. It's probably the game on this list I want to revisit the most, too, as it's a sure-fire way to have a real good time. I really want to play more Snake Oil. Snake Oil is a very good game.

#3: Final Fantasy IX - Steam - ★★★★★ - 2016

Final Fantasy IX is REALLLLLLY GOOD. Like yes, I had heard this for ages, but it was never on a platform I owned. Finally it has come to Steam, and finally did I play it. And man: real good!

The gameplay is pretty standard JRPG fare for its original era. It's serviceable, but rather unchallenging and doesn't have much in the way of mechanical depth. But the quality of the characters and writing in the game make up for it in spades. I really enjoyed the main cast an awful lot, and liked how much more playful it was than its 3D predecessors (and successors). It's got a sweet love story, meaningful explorations of mortality, loss, and sacrifice, and you at one point save a tiny rat prince from a rather pissed off antlion.

The only thing I really dislike about the game are the oodles of strategy guide hooks that still remain and don't have much meaning in 2016. There are so many weird hidden things that are essentially impossible to divine without a guide (or, in my case, a helpful friend). None of them are mandatory or even crucial, but many of them are actually pretty interesting to the point where missing them would kind of stink. It's bizarre that beating the extra super boss (which admittedly I didn't do) rewards you with an in-game version of the strategy guide that just sits in your inventory as a final fuck-you note of "THERE'S ON WAY YOU'D HAVE MANAGED ANY OF THIS IF YOU HADN'T LOOKED IT UP HUH, THANKS FOR P(L)AYING".

I also could go the rest of my life never having to play Chocobo Hot-and-Cold again because man. MAN.

#2: Pokemon Moon - 3DS - ★★★★★ - 2016

Pokemon Moon is one of the best games in a franchise I adore. It, like its predecessors, is not a particularly challenging RPG. But building a team of weirdo goofball monster friends, raising them up, then doing battle with them against my friends, is really fun!. I am also the kind of weirdo with sincere opinions on the quality of Pokemon storytelling; namely, I want it to be really good AND really stupid.

Pokemon Moon diverges from past Pokemon games by dropping the badge-and-gym system and replacing it with a series of combat-adjacent trials. The switch allowed them to explore alternate ways of presenting Pokemon-based challenges while better using the gym-leader-stand-in trial captains and kahunas, who are all great. The fire island-challenge made me cry laughing. The cast is phenomenal, easily my favorite in the series.

The plot is not nearly as goofy or weird as some of the previous games (to be fair, it's hard to top X & Y's insanity), but the cast is sooooo much better and more likeable that it's hard to really care. The new faces are a diverse, eclectic bunch, and the cameos from old faces are also fantastic. I did not expect to find Grimsley, amateur Dracula, waiting on a beach wearing a kimono so he could give me a shark.

Mechanically, there's also a ton of quality of life improvements that eliminate much of the lingering frustrations that the series has been carrying with it for years now0. The elimination of HMs, the streamlining of breeding and IV stats-checking, and other minor improvements to the interface and menus make the game so much better than its predecessors.

Really, my only complaints about the game are tied to some issues with post-game grind, a much worse online interface system than the deeply integrated one in X&Y, and the fact that the Battle Tower and Battle Royale continue to be imbalanced, poorly structured, and huuuuge cheating pieces of shit. That's Pokemon for you.

#1: Doom - Steam - ★★★★★ - 2016

DOOM is power.

DOOM is flow.

DOOM is violence.

DOOM is finding yourself surrounded by thirty dozen demons, each more capable of killing you than the last, and then just tearing them apart. DOOM is the lizard brain, the id, knowing how to murder everything around you while the ego is just barely hanging on for the ride.

DOOM gives you the tools and the means to take on everything that they put before you, and then says "Go." The cycle of killing enemies with your arsenal, using the melee takedowns to regain health, and then using the chainsaw to get ammo when you're running dry is beyond satisfying, it is... complete. It is mechanical perfection. Everything is as it is; everything is as it should be. It is combat as a dance, it is violence in motion. The music blares, it screams. The bass is your heartbeat.

Who would have thought DOOM could have a great story? That they would take one of the oldest, most generic franchises in history and turn it into something wonderful? It's the tale of a soulless corporation making the very logical decision to frack Hell so as to provide Earth with clean energy, turning their corporate infrastructure into a cult before awakening the DOOM Marine when it's far too late. The DOOM Marine is re-imagined not as some shmuck with a gun but instead a divine avenger, violence incarnate. The demons write scripture about your coming. Imps tell their kids scary stories about you. Hell announces your arrival on its infernal doorsteps with a rumbling, simple message on the dimension-wide intercom: "He's here." DOOM revolves around Hell doing ANYTHING to try to stop you, not because you can stop their plans, but because you will stop their plans. And that feels awesome.

I don't give a shit about their multiplayer, I don't care about snapmap. DOOM is the ultimate power fantasy. Play it on Ultra-Violence. Demonic presence is at unsafe levels, and we've got the double barreled shotgun needed to make things right.