#Yooka Laylee reference

[submalevolentgrace]

people will be like what music are you listening to, and i have to be like

well i am always listening to wendy carlos's 1986 microtonal synth album 'beauty in he beast' and soaking it in, you know it bothers me somewhat that she's really only remember for her film soundtracks, but also i've also been stuck on insaneintherain's one man big band cover donkey kong country jungle hijinx that quotes 'sing sing sing' and if i'm not mistaken also references the yooka-laylee casino level, although that's possible because y-l was referencing benny goodman in the first place and--

wait where are you going

[video-game-trivia]

Shovel Knight has made a cameo appearance in up to twenty-four different games. Most notably, he appeared in games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Fall Guys, Yooka-Laylee, and Rivals of Aether.

Even more games have featured some sort of reference to the game Shovel Knight. Thirty five, in fact.

[doom-nerdo-666]

Said it before but it's weird seeing Doom or id refered as Bethesda/Microsoft related because of how you'd look at them on their own.

Which is kinda like Rareware too.

And both also got different people in the studios while some creators went doing stuff outside.

Though id seems to be fine both officially and with former members too.

As for Rare, i guess some people like Sea of Thieves and i'm not sure about what else happened with former Rare members besides Yooka Laylee.

[askagamedev]

Hi, Dev! I don't know if you've worked on a Sonic title yourself. But what, in your professional opinion, would be the greatest, -unique- hurdles when designing a platformer like that compared to other fantasy action games like Ratchet or Yooka Laylee?

The main difference between a given Sonic game and other platformers is that Sonic is fast. Since you mentioned Yooka Laylee and Ratchet, I'm guessing you're referring to 3D Sonic as opposed to 2D Sonic (which have their own core principle differences in level design). In my opinion, designing a 3D Sonic level should probably be a lot more like designing a fantasy vehicle racing stage than it is designing a 3D platforming stage. 

Most platformers are approached methodically by players typically cycling between observation and engagement. The player enters a new environment, observes what is there (looks around), then enters the new space to explore it. There is this constant rhythm of pausing to look around for what is new or important in the area and planning a route, and then moving through it. This is the expected behavior for 3D platformers. Players rarely must engage with the gameplay without adequate time to prepare for it.

Sonic, however, doesn’t play by these same rules. Due to Sonic’s core feature of speed, the observe-engage cycle is often bent or broken. Sonic runs fast enough that he essentially short-circuits the observation part of the platformer gameplay cycle, instead jumping from engagement to engagement with very few breaks. This means that the player doesn’t have enough time to look ahead at what to do and instead has to hope for the best. This sort of rushing gameplay is fun in its own way, but the times where the constant engagement breaks down (e.g. suddenly getting stopped for combat or missing a jump or something) is very jarring because it comes without warning. Such situations often feel like getting the rug pulled out from under you because the player has not had enough time to mentally prepare for it. It breaks the rhythm and feels uncomfortable.

Essentially, I think the gameplay pillar of Sonic should be gameplay that feels like a platformer but without ever having to slow down. In order to iron out these kinds of rhythm breaks, I think that Sonic games should turn to other games where the player is both constantly moving and still needs to make quick decisions involving other gameplay elements. Racing combat games like Mario Kart, Blur, F-Zero, etc. have a similar situation - the player moves navigates a potentially branching path at speed while dealing with obstacles, power ups, and opponents as they appear. In these kinds of games, the observation is performed during the race - the environment is constructed such that the player can see road forks and decisions coming (often with visible signs and such to direct the player) in the periphery while dealing with whatever other elements happen relatively near them. All opponents are also constantly moving at speed, so the player never has to stop while engaging in combat. Furthermore, a key element to these racing combat games is that the player has to run multiple laps, allowing the player to put the track into short term memory and make adjustments for subsequent run-throughs of the environment. Most 3D platformers don’t send you back again unless you fail.

As it currently stands, I think Sonic in 3D tends to fall into this strange limbo where players want to go fast but designers keep incorporating elements into the game that require stopping for whatever reason. Speed is essentially the essence of Sonic, like how web-swinging is the essence of Spider-Man. Playing as Spider-Man would feel bad if he could not reasonably swing through the city very easily or quickly. Similarly, I believe the core gameplay of a Sonic game should be that the default player should be able to play through the entire game at default difficulty at speed without stopping.

Further Reading: [Game Dev Myths: Aiming for Perfect Balance]

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[fridge-reviews]

A Hat in Time

Developer: Gears for Breakfast Publisher: Gears for Breakfast Rrp: £22.99 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam) Released: 5th October 2017 Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam Played Using: An Xbox One Control Pad Approximate game length: 12 hours

3D platformers are not something I have a great amount of experience with, my history when it comes to gaming mediums is strange (at least compared to most people it seems) I had a Nintendo Entertainment System and a Game Gear, then I switched to PC for many years. After my PC became outdated and I couldn't afford to upgrade I bought a Xbox 360 which I stuck with until the Xbox One was released where I switched back to PC. Why mention any of that? Because it's the reason I really don't have much experience of 3D platformers. In fact my first experience with one was on a borrowed Nintendo DS and with Mario 64.

A Hat in time is a 3D Platformer similar to Super Mario Galaxy or Crash Bandicoot. You play as Hat Girl (and before you ask, yes that is the only name we are given for her) who has had the misfortune of losing all her ships fuel while in orbit of Earth. Luckily the fuel you use are Time Pieces which you can easily collect once you find them, of course that's the trick, actually finding them.

The game is separated into 'chapters' and 'acts', each chapter contains multiple acts that upon completion can be replayed at any time in order to find all the various collectibles. I find this a bit of an odd choice of wording (calling them chapters and acts) because in some cases you can't complete an act in a previous chapter until you go to another act in a chapter further on and unlock a specific ability. You can select the chapter and act you wish to play by finding the right telescope on your spaceship.

Each chapter is a different location with various acts to be found within. The variety of tasks is impressive. In one I had to sneak through a haunted mansion without getting caught, in another I was leading a parade band and in another I was solving a murder in a western themed film noir murder mystery.

Hat Girl gains different abilities depending on what hat she is wearing, you can create these new hats by finding the specific yarn for it out in the world, for example; you need at least one Sprint Yarn, before you can make the Sprint Hat. You can change what hat you are wearing quickly through a radial dial that when accessed slows the world down to allow you to pick what hat you think is right for the occasion without overly rushing you.

Scattered throughout the acts of A Hat in Time are 'pons' these are small collectibles that (depending on which one you pick up) will act as currency, heal you or open a specific exit. The green pons, which are the currency, are used to purchase badges, unlock new acts as well as certain bonuses upon your ship. Badges are items you can add to your hat that will usually grant some passive ability such as absorbing pons from a short distance but in some cases they can be used to make the game more challenging (if you so wish).

Like every game, this one isn't without its flaws. Such as what I can only refer to as 'non-platforms' what I mean by this is an object that looks like somewhere you can jump to and stand on and yet for no real reason at all, you can't. It's not all the time but just often enough to make a some puzzle areas more challenging than they would be simply from the confusion.

On the whole I really enjoyed my time with this game, it's (for the most part) light hearted and whimsical and such a joy to play through. Honestly if you enjoy 3D platformers I highly recommend giving this game a look!

If this appeals to you perhaps try; Yooka-Laylee Crash Bandicoot N'sane Trilogy Spyro Reignited Trilogy

[spongicx]

A Sonic the Hedgehog reference in Yooka-Laylee

[blazehedgehog]

top 10 games of the decade?

This has been going around a lot, and honestly my problem is I don’t keep super close attention to what games came out in what years. So 2009-2019? What came out in that time period that I’ve played? I have no idea.

At best, we could use the new Steam interface to sort by release year, which gives a rough picture of some of my gaming habits, at least as far as the PC is concerned, but it tells me nothing about consoles or portables.

So let’s start narrowing down a list, I guess, of games I played a notable enough amount of time (and maybe even finished) to even consider for a list like this.

I’ll link it, because it’s kind of big.

So… narrowing that down to ten. Hm. I won’t number them, but:

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence (2013) Platinum Games’ finest hour, as far as I’m concerned. It’s typical Metal Gear absurdity cranked to 12. It’s hard to believe Hideo Kojima considered this a canonical piece of the Metal Gear timeline because it’s just so knowingly silly and over the top. It’s also Peak Platinum Games as far as having an intensely good-feeling combat engine goes. Just, all around, an outrageously fun game.

Sonic Generations (2011) For a brief moment, the world agreed: maybe Sonic could be good again? It didn’t last, because of course it didn’t, but even though I personally consider Sonic Unleashed a better game, I can’t rag on Sonic Generations too much, because it’s still a surprisingly well-rounded, enjoyable game, and still the best 3D Sonic game of the last 10 years.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) Any game I put 300 hours in to over the span of a year is probably worth putting on a list like this. Zelda games were getting so stale and Breath of the Wild effortlessly shakes off all the rust and dust and just goes hard on reinventing everything in such a smart, elegant, enjoyable way. Everything works together so well that it almost doesn’t feel fair for how effortless Nintendo makes it look. Like you handed them a rubik’s cube and they casually solved it in record time while everyone else is over in the corner still trying to line up the first two green squares.

Forza Horizon (2012) I like racing games, but I got really tired of racing games that take themselves too seriously. You either had the endlessly repetitive street racers of Need for Speed or the clinical blandness of games like Gran Turismo and Forza. Horizon came along and made me love Forza for finally injecting a bit of fun personality in to this series. By wrapping a shred of real humanity around all of this car culture stuff, it all clicked in to place.

Super Mario 3D Land (2011) Super Mario 3D Land kind of reinvented what a 3D Mario game even was. There was always a sense with Nintendo’s 3D platformers that they were kind of holding back, or at least designed in a certain way to help players stay oriented in 3D. To me, 3D Land, felt like finally ripping the training wheels off and getting back to 2D-style level design… while still being a 3D environment. Maybe my favorite 3D Mario game.

Super Mario Maker (2015) Nintendo finally gave us what we wanted: an official Mario level editor. It’s missing a lot of features you’d really want, but the fact that it exists at all still feels like kind of a miracle. And for as backwards as some things about it feel, enough of it is modern enough that it kind of doesn’t matter. You can make and share Mario levels! With your friends! Officially! That’s amazing!

Doom (2016) Controversial opinion: I think iD Software made more bad games than good. More mediocre games, at the very least. After Doom 2, the only game of theirs I’d say even approaches good was Quake 3 Arena, and even then, I’m not so sure that game was what I was really looking for, then or now. Doom 2016 is not only the comeback story of the century, but it blows the doors off of everything else so well that I didn’t even really care about how bad the game’s ending was. That’s just how good the rest of the game is. Doom 2016 succeeds where Quake failed, where RAGE failed, where Doom 3 failed. It’s “just more Doom,” but in the best ways possible.

The Walking Dead: Season 1 (2012) I have a lot of adventure games I’ve never finished. I finished The Walking Dead Season 1. This is the game that saved Telltale Games. It got me to watch part of the TV series. I felt emotions while playing this game that I don’t think any game has ever made me feel, before or since. I have a distinct memory of seeing these guys get an award at the VGAs, and as they came out on stage, they played the “Alive Inside” theme and just hearing that music again was like a lead weight in my chest. Even now, years and years later, it’s… heavy, hearing it again.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) The first, and possibly only, truly “good” Batman game. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with the sequels to Asylum, but I don’t think any of them reach the same highs, from what I understand. This game put a lot of people, and things, on the map. A good, multi-directional combat system (so good that games are still referred to as having “Arkham combat”). A fully 3D Metroidvania that wasn’t necessarily an actual Metroid game. Reuniting the voice cast of Batman: The Animated Series. It’s not a perfect game, but dang if it isn’t still great.

Mario Kart 8 (2014) I debated on saying this was a tie with Sonic Racing Transformed, but that wouldn’t be fair, I guess. Mario Kart 8 is hands down my favorite Mario Kart, I’d say. It’s absolutely gorgeous, it has tons of tracks, and at least as far as the Wii U version goes, it’s actually balanced and fair in a way you don’t normally expect from a Mario Kart game. While I still love Sonic Racing Transformed greatly, there’s no denying that Mario Kart 8 is far more tight and polished than that game ever will be.

Honorable Mentions

Sonic Mania

Freedom Planet

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Bayonetta 2

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze

Dishonorable Mentions

Rocket Knight

Turtles in Time: Reshelled

Sonic Lost World

Parappa the Rapper Remastered

Yooka-Laylee

[retiine]

Video Games in 2019

* Repost, don’t reblog!

What video games did you buy/play in 2019? (link for reference)

Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Code Vein, God Eater 3, Onmyoji, Astral Chain, Devil May Cry 5, The Witcher, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Pokemon Sword, Spyro: Reignited Trilogy, The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Persona 5, Sky: Children of the Light, Bayonetta 1 & 2, Untitled Goose Game, Yooka-Laylee, Just Dance 2019, Frostpunk, Stardew Valley, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, ... and probably a giant chunk I’m not remembering from my Switch.

What video games did you beat in 2019?

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Devil May Cry 5, Code Vein,  Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Pokemon Sword (still working on the dex...), Persona 5, Bayonetta 1 & 2, Astral Chain, probably some others but I’m bad at remembering if I beat them in 2019 or before.

What video games did you want to play in 2019, but didn’t?

Cuphead, Slay the Spire, Outer Wilds, Cadence of Hyrule, Yakuza 5,  Catherine Classic, Control, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Disco Elysium, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Bastion, Transistor, My Time at Portia.

What was your favorite video game(s) of 2019?

CODE VEIN hands down, that shit was so fucking good. Music? Dope. Gameplay? Dope. Character customization? Dope. Story? I was up till fucking 3am on the last stretch to finish that shit. IT WAS GOOD. SO GOOD. GOD, I love it so much, the gameplay is fun, the character customization is fun, sure the characters fall into anime tropes but I honestly loved the story and I cannot wait if they make a second installment.

What video game did you play in 2019 that you weren’t expecting to like as much as you did?

I can’t keep saying Code Vein, but I guess ... Onmyoji? I’m not one for gacha games but this game has snagged me in for ... well, beyond 2019. It’s one of the few I feel like I’ve gotten far in without busting my wallet and it’s very f2p friendly. That and I’m a slut for the yokai aesthetic, plus they have pretty husbands.

What video game(s) was your biggest disappointment in 2019?

Pokemon Sword/Shield ... it’s not that it was bad, I enjoyed it, but compared to the other games I’ve played it falls on my disappointment meter. I’m still doing as much as I can in it since I like being a completionist, and to do it before the DLC hits, but yeah ...

What video game would you consider a “sleeper hit” of 2019?

Code Vein, mainly since the title was initially hyped when it was announced years ago but went under the radar; I know I was super hyped when I heard about it but promptly forgot about it. I’m glad it got very good ratings, but it does still feel like it’s a very unknown game even after a couple months of being out ... at least I haven’t seen it around too much outside of some people on my twitter feed, and even then it was 3-4 at the best. I suppose Astral Chain falls under this, it’s another underrated game on the Switch that was super fun.

What video game would you consider the most overrated title of 2019?

Pokemon still falls here for me. I guess overrated in mostly the drama behind it.

What video games are you looking forward to in 2020?

Cyberpunk 2077, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Bayonetta 3, Persona 5 Royal (to watch walkthroughs cause no PS4), Boyfriend Dungeon, and probs some others I don’t remember.

Tagged by: @guildleader Tagging: anyone who’s got an itch for games

[fridgewheatfield]

Fridgewheatfield 2019 GOTY Awards

Normally I would go through the TGA nominations and give my thoughts on who the winner of each was for me. But 2019 kinda sucked for games imo, and I didn’t play very many. So instead, I want to highlight 5 games I really loved this year and give them each their own award. So here they are:

Best AAA Game: God of War (2018)

This game really took me by surprise. I got it in the Summer for 50% off and hoped it would scratch an itch that I knew a 3rd BOTW playthrough wouldn’t quite scratch. I didn’t expect much from it except for maybe some fun gameplay, since I had never played another game in the series, but it won a lot of GOTY awards in 2018, so I figured it was worth a try for the discount.

This game floored me. I was enamored from start to finish. The environments, the story, the characters, and especially the gameplay had me glued to this game for 10 hours a day for almost a week. I have never felt such guilt from shafting irl responsibilities in order to play a game. The graphics are among the best of this generation. The world building and main quest line kept me interested and actually listening the entire time. The relationship between Kratos and Atreus was strangely relatable, but never had me siding with one character over the other for too long. And the combat is probably the most immersive, diverse, and fast-paced of any game I’ve played. I fought thousands of enemies and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were only a few enemies that I actually killed in the exact same ways. This game was a huge pleasant surprise for me, and the ending pushed its hypothetical sequel near the top of my list of most anticipated games. 10/10

Most Satisfying: A Hat in Time

A Hat in Time finally came to Switch this year after what felt like an eternity. I was waiting for this game to come to Nintendo since the Kickstarter was announced. Before we knew about Mario Odyssey or Yooka-Laylee, it was refreshing to see that anybody still had interest in reviving the genre of game I loved most as a kid.

This game is EXACTLY what I wanted it to be: A love letter to every Gamecube game I played ad nauseum. A Hat in Time masterfully blends the freeform movement of Mario Sunshine, an art style inspired by Wind Waker, and the charming dialogue of Thousand Year Door to create a game that starts at a 10 and never lets you down. There must have been 20 times during this game where I said to myself, “I hope this game [does this],” and the game followed through with shocking consistency. With customization, easter eggs, references, and humor stuffed into every mission, this game reminded me of everything I loved about the games I grew up with. But this game isn’t just bells and whistles, it also features some of the most engaging level design of any 3D platformer I’ve played. A train murder mystery, a free-roam around a cruise ship paradise run by uwu-speaking seals, and genuinely one of the scariest segments in any game I’ve played were some of the highlights. But none of this game’s 30+ main missions ever disappointed. While the graphical quality and technical performance were less than stellar, everything that the game WANTED to be more than made this game an easy 9/10.

Funniest Game: Untitled Goose Game

I never understood all the buzz about this game leading up to its release. You’re just a goose? What do you even do?

I was skeptical, but this game did not let me down. There was something strangely hilarious about stealing everyone’s stuff and annoying them for no reason other than to cross off a to-do list. Maybe it was imagining the humans’ perspective. Maybe it was the spastic piano score that only played when you did anything. But whatever it was, this game had me cracking up for its entire 2 hour duration. You can’t deny that the price is a bit steep for such a small game, but the amount of enjoyment I got from an afternoon with this game left me satisfied with my purchase. And with fun secret challenges to discover along the way and to struggle with after the credits, leaving me saying “Ohhh I didn’t think to do that!”, Goose Game is just enough of a game to justify everything that it has going on. 9/10

Most Fun Bad Game: Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

The OG followers will remember when this was a New Leaf blog, and you best believe it will be a New Horizons blog when the time comes. I hated this game when it came out in 2017. I thought it was a boring, empty waste of time that did nothing for fans of the series. But after numerous updates and quality of life changes that I totally missed the boat on, Pocket Camp actually became worth spending time on. I jumped back into this game following the post-E3 hype for New Horizons, and I’ve logged in every day since.

I won’t mince words, this game is bad. It’s nefarious, predatory mobile game practices at its most kawaii. But damn if I don’t love these new furniture sets they introduce every few weeks. I love piecing together the new items I get from each set or event to make a camp that I’d enjoy spending time in. I’ve spent more money than I care to admit on Pocket Camp’s take on loot boxes (not bank-breaking, but more than I’m proud of). But I honestly can’t say I regret any microtransaction I’ve made. I’ve had a lot of fun with this game in the past few months, and getting everyone I know back into it alongside me made it even better, just like previous Animal Crossing games. The crux of the enjoyment is still sharing your designs and collections with your friends, just like always. And that was Animal Crossing enough for me. Not giving this one a score because its still a scummy mobile game, but if you haven’t played this game since launch, redownload it and give it a look-through.

Best Game I Played in 2019: Banjo-Kazooie

Everyone knows how good this game is. I played it as a kid, and I’ve known my entire life that this game is great. I’ve reminisced with friends about this game, I’ve watched countless Let’s Plays, and I’ve sung its praises as the best 3D platformer there is.

But I hadn’t ever actually beaten it until this past Summer.

And it turns out that I didn’t even know how right I was all these years. Banjo-Kazooie is a perfect game. Every level is meticulously crafted to be unique, interesting, and just big enough to where they’re fun to explore, but small enough to where there is no empty space. Banjo (and especially Kazooie) control like a dream. The dialogue is the textbook example of charming video game dialogue. And the game is just long enough to feel full, but it never overstays its welcome by retreading old ground for the sake of making the game longer. And don’t even get me started on the soundtrack. There’s a reason Grant Kirkhope left the 2000s as the only household name that came out of Rare. This game could not be improved, and its stood the test of time against the other greats of the genre like Mario 64, A Hat in Time (imo), and Mario Odyssey, to maintain its spot as the game that every 3D platformer wants to be. It’s the best game of the genre, the best game I played this year, and it’s now among my top 5 favorite games of all time. An obvious 10/10.

-

Thanks for reading this. Feel free to respond, send a message, or send an ask with any of your thoughts on these games, or even some of your games of the year. I’d love to read them. I’ll see you next year for my 10 page review on New Horizons, which will surely double as my GOTY post.

[killscreencinema]

Yooka-Laylee (PlayStation 4)

Is nostalgia pointless when in the process you’re introducing new characters for what could potentially be a new successful IP?  It’s hard to say, as take for example Shovel Knight, a game that shamelessly wallows in nostalgia, yet like Quentin Tarentino, manages to weave a tapestry of pop culture references that it borrows into a new, fresh experience all while introducing a cool new character in the form of a knight whose primary weapon of choice is a shovel.  Even talking about it makes me want to replay the game (or at least finally play through the DLC that has subsequently come out since its original release). 

Meanwhile, here comes Yooka-Laylee to capitalize off the nostalgia for Banjo-Kazooie and other classic 3D platforming collect-a-thons like... Bubsy 3D? 

Okay, well, maybe not so much Bubsy (although the fact a new Bubsy game was released is proof positive that nostalgia has gone TOO FAR!  ...and yes, I will probably review that game in the future when I can find it for 5 bucks...)

Anyway, Yooka-Laylee was successfully crowdfunded and released by Playtonic Games in 2017.  To the game’s credit, it is one of the few crowdfunded video game success stories wherein it delivered on what it set out to do within a reasonable time frame.  As mentioned above, the game set out to follow in the footsteps of Banjo-Kazooie, to the point of even involving many of the creative talent behind that game, including now legendary video game music composer David Wise.  The results are... dubious at best.

The game begins with an evil corporation, lead by the villainous Capital B, hatching a scheme to steal all the world’s books.  The heroic due of Yooka the lizard and his pal Laylee the bat catch wind of this plan after their magical book is sucked away from them, spreading the golden pages... or “Pagies”... all over the land in the process.  Now it is up to them to recollect all of the Pagies before Capital B can use their power to reshape the world! 

The rest of the game plays out exactly like Banjo-Kazooie, in which you explore a “hub world”, in this case the baddie base of operations Hivory Towers, to find gateways to other worlds to explore.  These gateways take the form of huge tomes, which you must have a certain number of Pagies to enter, and even after that you eventually need to invest more Pagies to “expand” the world in order to find more stuff.  To advance further in the game, you also have to collect “quillies”, which can be exchanged for new moves with a ssssssshady snake salesman named Trowzer.  The vicious cycle of collecting objects to get further in the game continues until it eventually, mercifully ends. 

I wouldn’t know that because I didn’t bother finishing the game.  I got pretty bored by the redundant gameplay fairly quickly, reaching the apex of boredom and frustration when I reached the casino level.  By that that point I felt I had experienced everything the game had to offer and I simply felt no motivation to push forward to what I have heard is an incredibly aggravating and difficult end boss battle.  After nearly losing my goddamn mind finding Grumtilda at the end of Banjo-Kazooie, I have learned to take these warnings seriously.

Not that Yooka-Laylee is necessarily a bad game - it’s just very middle-of-the-road.  Sure, it delivers on the promise of nostalgic adventure platforming, but for the worse in my opinion.  Games like Banjo-Kazooie were great back in the day as part of the vanguard for a new genre of gaming.  However, the genre has since evolved, so going back to that particular style of game feels like an irksome trip down frustrating memory land as opposed to a dip in the warm, blissful hot tub of nostalgia.  Even David Wise’s replication of the Banjo-Kazooie “tone” in his soundtrack, and the nonsense speak of the characters, comes across as more irritating than endearing for me.  Did we really want THIS???

Other than that, the mechanics of the game are solid, which is impressive for an indie company with little in the way of quality assurance to work out the kinks, though the controls felt a little slippery to me.  The graphics are beautiful and colorful, which is a major component to what drew my interest in the game anyway.  In a sea of games that use too many earthy browns or grimy grays, a game that has vibrant primary colors stands out to me in an appealing way.  Plus, for all my complaints about redundant gameplay, I mostly enjoyed Banjo-Kazooie, so this game HAD to be somewhat enjoyable, right?

Eh, not so much.  Even the level design felt kind of uninspired and boring.  The first tropical world was alright, but then you get to the second level, the snow world, and it’s a snoozefest.  You’ve seen some variation of “the snow level” in every game ever made and Yooka-Laylee does nothing to put an interesting new spin on it.  Ultimately, that’s my main gripe about Yooka-Laylee - unlike Shovel Knight, this game wallows in nostalgia... but doesn’t make its own mark, like Shovel Knight does.  If you’re a fan of Rare’s N64 era, and believe the Banjo games to be sacred, flawless pinnacles of gaming goodness, I think you’ll get some enjoyment out of this... before ultimately wishing it were just another Banjo-Kazooie game.

[guardiansguidance]

Viridi: "Seriously what's with you? Do you think Ratchet and Clank is a Kid Icarus rip off?" Pit: "What's that game about?" Viridi: "Shooter battles where you blast away creepy enemies with creative weapons-" Pit: "How did we let them get away with that?!"

(This convo is slightly a reference to the Yooka-Laylee convo)

Hat Kid from A Hat in Time

Requested by Anonymous

[smashmusicideas]

March 15: an Indie Character in Smash

Back in the halcyon days of 2015, when myself and other Smash fans were debating on who should get in, and who would get in, one of the more interesting movements in the fanbase was in the interest in indie characters as fighters. I was a bit dismissive of the idea then, and I don’t think it was wrong to be. Many of them are only recent, and tied to western iconography. And deciding on which are “important” or worthwhile is a hard thing to figure out, and very much dependent on the writer. I mean, Mega Man is functionally a Nintendo icon, the series’ actual owners aside: it was an icon of the NES whose success has often been tied to Nintendo, it’s known around the world to at least some degree, so many tropes of the game are emblematic of the era, and the title character was even on a terrible Nintendo show. It’s hard for a series to have that kind of power, especially smaller projects.

In the past two years, though, I’ve started to come around on this idea a bit. Not entirely, mind - I don’t think we’re “due” or “likely to have” a guest fighter from a smaller company - but there is definitely a value in representing indie games. By and large, the most prominent ones were influenced a lot by Nintendo games, particularly of the NES and Super NES era. They don’t represent the company itself, but they represent how many of Nintendo’s best and strongest ideas have endured and been explored by other companies.

Also, indie games are an important new part of the gaming landscape. In an environment constantly under threat of a few blockbusters cannibalizing the market, that games like Affordable Space Adventures or What Remains of Edith Finch or Cuphead can actually do well commercially is pretty cool.Plus, it’s also worth noting that Nintendo’s relationship with indies has been increasing and expanding over the course of a decade (hey, I actually wrote a thing on this!). Without as many larger, Triple-A companies’ ware on the online market, there’s a lot of room and space for games like Stardew Valley, Snake Pass, or Golf Story. Plus, the Switch’s design makes it an ideal way to play smaller games

Of course, the question of “which” series would best represent the concept of “indie games” is hard, and it’s not one with a real answer. For my money, I’d go with Shovel Knight; it’s a game about nostalgia for the NES era, and it’s helped make a lot of the best tropes of that period more accessible. This is a super weird comparison, but Shovel Knight kind of reminds me of two of my favorite “nostalgic” stories: All Star Superman and Black Dynamite. None of them are one to one recreations of (respectively) NES games or Silver Age comics or blaxploitation, but they’re recreations of how playing or reading or watching them felt at their best; they accentuate their best qualities, minimize their weaker parts, and add worthwhile modern ideas. And while they have a litany of references to the things that inspired them, they aren’t dependent on an audience of fans hungry for stuff they’ve loved for years by any means.

Of course, if Shovel Knight is a fully nostalgic game about holistically expressing older values, then UNDERTALE - which would be my second runner up - is about taking those values and running with them as far as it can go. It’s so very, obviously inspired by one source, the EarthBound / Mother games, but it goes in its own direction. In this case, the “values” of those games were about humor, but also tragedy and horror, and especially an element of concern about violence and destruction. So what UNDERTALE does is ruthlessly interrogate that question. In that sense, it’s a worthy successor to Shigesato Itoi’s trilogy because of what it does differently, and how imaginative it is in every regard. Though I also do have one small problem, which is whether or not it’s right to include in a fighting game a work that uses mechanics and storytelling for the purposes of presenting pacifist themes. Then again, it’s probably not a big deal in the end.

After those two, my interest in indie characters is admittedly far more muted. Quote from Cave Story was in many ways the progenitor of the indie boom, and Shantae existed during the time where the scene’s only presence on consoles was often through unlicensed foreign projects, but the field is a lot less interesting after them. A lot of that just comes from my dislike of titles like Mighty No. 9 and Yooka-Laylee, which decided that everything - especially the worst qualities of the games to which they harkened back - deserved to be included solely for its own sake. That’s a big part of my frustration with the idea, though I’m not exactly expecting Beck from MN9 to be in there in any fashion (or really for him to have a sequel at all). I guess for me, at the risk of yet again going on a damn soapbox, is that I feel that indie characters have an incredible value to the world and community of gaming, and I think that should be referenced in the interactive library that is Smash, but perhaps in a specific way that’s maybe too close minded.

So I don’t know, really. I guess I could just say “Shovel Knight and ‘someone’ from UNDERTALE” would be deserving and worthy characters” and have done with it. But I am into the idea of representing the best of indie gaming.

(Link to my writings on Smash Bros for Nintendo Switch)

[chelseacatgirl]

What I got for Christmas

I had such a wonderful Christmas with my family, and I also got presents too.

A $50.00 Nintendo eShop prepaid card and bought Yooka-Laylee for the Switch and save for Pokemon Crystal on 3DS Virtual Console for next month/year, being January 26th, 2018. Since I'm playing Yooka-Laylee, NO SPOILERS PLEASE!

A Water Fang Creation Crystal: I got all 3. Finally made Tidal Wave, my final Water Imaginator and final Sentinel, so there she is. https://chelseakittygirl.deviantart.com/art/Tidal-Wave-Rererence-722162038 https://chelseacatgirl.tumblr.com/post/168987219135/i-decided-to-show-references-of-my-imaginators-i https://sta.sh/0y3um8q4mko

Tri-Tip

Solar Flare Aurora *Exclusive to Target*

Candy-Coated Chopscotch *Halloween themed*

3DS AC Adapter

Nintendo Switch Horipad Wired Controller by Hori *I can now play PC games with it and also play the Switch in TV mode with it too*

USB Wired Keyboard

Plus, I'm planning to use the Christmas Advent Calendar to countdown to the 3DS Virtual Console re-release of Pokemon Crystal for the Game Boy Color that I wanna get, mainly because it's the first Core Pokemon game where you choose gender for the player character, why it wasn't release for the VC alongside Gold and Silver at the same time is because Nintendo and Game Freak are afraid that the two will suffer the same as Red, Blue and Green when everyone else picked Yellow, which I picked because of Pikachu.

Although bad news is our mail key won't open our mail box, but my Dad used the lubricant spray to fix the key and our mail box's lock  so we can open our mail box, the lock is old. Nothing special is in there, but I hope I get my gift cards from my maternal grandmother and from my maternal Uncle Sam and Aunt Susan, because if I do, then I'll use them to get something I want.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!

[lennythereviewer]

Okay let’s get something out of the way and cleared up Yooka-Laylee was not a scam. 

As a backer myself I can admit the game was far from perfect. Anyone who’s being honest with themselves have to admit the game was flawed, the worlds are empty, the camera was wonky, ect. But it makes me sad when I see people refer to it as a giant scam because Mighty No. 9 poisoned the well. 

There were no lies or mishandled money during the campaign, no drama, no bullshit. Even if the final product turned out to be less than stellar, they delivered exactly what they promised; an old school 3d platformer

Not only that but they’re still continuing to update it, whereas Mighty No 9 seemed to more or less set it and then forget about it with backer rewards being mailed out a YEAR late.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is you can not like Yooka-Laylee, hell you can even hate it... but I feel like referring to every crowdfunded game as a scam thanks to No. 9 hurts other more promising projects and creators

[midnightclubx]

A rant about A Hat in Time’s story, AKA, “WHERE DA PLOT AT?!”

Before I begin, I must make a couple of disclaimers:

1. This post is going to contain massive spoilers for the game’s plot (INCLUDING THE ENDING), so if you haven’t played it yet, or you haven’t reached the final area of the game yet, then you should probably go and do that ‘til you’ve done so!!

2. This is, in no way, meant to imply I hate this game! In fact, I really liked a lot of the game, and it’s easily my favorite platformer of the year, so far! Consider this more of a spotlight to the biggest criticism I have about an otherwise fantastic first project that Gears for Breakfast made, and how they can easily improve upon it, should they make new content in the form of patches, or even a sequel! 

With those discretions out of the way, now I can start getting to the nitty-gritty about why there was a ton of wasted potential in making the player care about this game’s characters and world.

The game, as those who have played it know by now, starts off with Hat Kid being sucked out of her ship and landing in Mafia Town, then finding Mustache Girl looking at you before you decide to chase her around. The first few acts/objective of Mafia Town shows her and Hat Kid being friends for a while, up until you beat the mafia boss, where she tells her about wanting to rid the evils of the world after finding out she can tamper with time via the Time Pieces.

Mustache Girl offers Hat Girl to be her sidekick, to which she refuses by not saying anything (despite the fact she’s able to talk, and could simply say she needs them to get home). This, understandably, upsets Mustache Girl and thinks she’s against her cause and therefore, is a villain just like the Mafia. 

I was hoping there was going to be an explanation, or some form of reasoning, behind her vendetta with the Mafia/bad guys in general (either in the style of the optional art you collect from the pink time rifts, or by showing off cutscenes showing what she’s been up to behind-the-scenes, while Hat Girl is adventuring), but nothing like that is never shown. In fact, you don’t see Mustache Girl again until the very end of the game. The only time you even get a reference to her before World 5 is unlocked is from a spraypaint graffiti showing “*Mustache sign* was here” in Battle of the Birds.

So you play up to the point you have enough Time Pieces to unlock World 5, and then she suddenly shows up, being able to break into Hat Kid’s ship without setting off the alarms (though that is never shown), and opening the vault containing all the time pieces, and stealing them all to form World 5. You then enter World 5, where you see all the people from the previous 4 worlds lined up to enter this obstacle course filled to the brim with lava. This could have been fine, since Mustache Girl said back in the beginning of the game that she wanted to rid the world of bad guys, but sadly, It’s never shown nor explained how she was able to kidnap them in the first place. Was it because of her manipulating the time pieces? Even if that were the case, how was she able to capture people up to 5 times her height and weight, and teleport them all the way to her castle from Hell? Does she have a ship that we never see?

You make it to the throne room where Mustache Girl is sitting atop a mountain of time pieces, and talks about how Hat Kid’s (at first) free to go because even though she’s “against her cause”, she has done nothing bad compared to everyone else. At this point in the game, I didn’t feel any different about the “antagonist” from the beginning of the game. In fact, I was actually siding with Mustache Girl because she’s wanting to do something admirable, and she seems like the kind of girl who could give the time piece back to Hat Kid when she was finished with ridding the world of evil. Hell, if anything, Hat Kid’s more  the bad guy than her, if anything, because she doesn’t tell people about her problem nor explain the predicament she’s in to anyone. It also doesn’t help that the people she’s “befriending” have that, “Oh, these weird things fell to the ground from the sky for some reason. Why did time mess itself up whenever I touch it? Lolwhatever it’s mine.” mentality.

Anyway, the focus characters from the previous four levels all join up with Hat Kid and tell her to “Get lost”, which you could easily make into a drinking game for every time you heard those words. Pretty sure you’ll pass out. Most of the people who showed up in the first place don’t even make sense why they are helping the girl that kicked their asses, especially the Subcon Prince-turned-demonic-spirit who basically wanted to be left alone after you get the last time piece from him. 

You fight Mustache Girl, which is in some ways, actually easier to do compared to the earlier bosses, and you knock her out unconscious. At this point, do you think Hat Girl and Mustache Girl have a heart-to-heart talk about how the latter’s heart was in the right place but her method of going about was wrong, and then later being friends again? Nope! You just walk past her unconscious body to collect the last time piece, and just like that, you’re jet-setting back home. 

Back in the Hat Ship, you then look out the window and ponder whether or not to give one of your time pieces away Mustache Girl by dropping it down on the planet (hopefully it lands in Mafia Town! You could’ve just handed her one, or left behind one when you were grabbing the final time pieces!) 

Regardless of what choice you make, they both have the same conclusion: Hat Kid’s “Friends” plead with her to not go, Hat Kid  then sheds a tier for a brief second, and flies off towards home... or close to home if you gave one measly time piece away. THE END.

You see why this game’s story frustrates me to no end? For a game that was developed for 5 years, more than twice the length it took for similar Kickstarter-backed-platformer Yooka-Laylee to be developed, and a team that constantly prides itself to having their game being similar to the 3D Mario games/Banjo-Kazzoie/Psychonauts, you would think, with all this time, that the team (and especially the writer/creator) would have came up with a much deeper story that could’ve set up the characters to be much more relatable and overall have deeper backstories on the game’s lore. 

That stuff could have been more fleshed out rather than just be tucked away in a computer in the hub world, or briefly showing it off in an optional series of slideshows.

Instead, we only have one character that had a lot of setup in the form of the “antagonist” in the beginning, and then you never see her again until the very end where she just ends up just brushed off.  So much potential, wasted due to who knows why... Maybe he forgot to add those details in as he was making the game? In any case, I would have rather he took a tad bit more time to add a more detailed plot and the game be released in 2018 rather than get the game now and be left with thinking, “That’s it?!”.

So, with two more worlds being added on as DLC, I have but one wish: In either of those worlds (or both), we get the plot details the players who have grinded to 100% completion deserve, in the form of showing Mustache Girl’s past, a climax that shows the consequences of your actions from Chapter 5/ the “ original ending”, and it ultimately end in a “real ending” where both Mustache Girl and Hat Kid make up for lost time and the former tags along with her back home to fight evil or something like that. I don’t believe that’s too much to ask for, nor is it an unreasonable request. 

The fans get their lore/possible setup for a sequel, the plot gets the resolution it deserves without receiving any of the scorn Gears for Breakfast might be getting right now (and therefore more people recommending the game), and everybody wins.

Hopefully I’m right (or maybe they will exceed my expectations), but if they aren’t, then there’s only one other way to fix the problem: Make a massive patch a la No Man’s Sky where you have brand new cutscenes/overall story elements, as well as tie the upcoming levels together, some time after the DLC is released. This way, it will feel like a more completed game as a whole.

Again, this isn’t, by any means, meant to hate on A Hat in Time nor to tell people not to buy it. In fact, I want the opposite to happen where everyone buys it, enjoys the game, and tell Gears for Breakfast what is wrong so they can fix it, be it glitches they missed out, missing story elements, or even some overall Quality of Life enhancements (like maybe a map for the Alpine level)!

[bradamantium]

Haven’t logged on to tumblr in ages. Maybe the end of an era. Maybe not. Instead, I’ve been on twitter reaching new heights of being Uncomfortable With The Whole Notion Of The Internet and Playing Lots Of Video Games. I’ll talk a little about the latter, because the former just gives me the chills.

Cuphead! Fantastic, from start to finish. Felt like I finished it in a couple quick sittings. It was actually a half dozen sittings of grueling uphill battles that left me off at about 10 hours of gametime and wishing it was a hundred. I think there’s something to be said about the emergence of cohesive aesthetics in video games over the past decade or so - there was stylish stuff since way back in the day, but the indie boom has meant so many more diverse looks, so many distinct themes, so much more adherence to singular visions across a wider spectrum than Ye Olde AAAs really managed. Of course, there’s more to Cuphead than its looks - they’re what brought me in, but what had me stay through a few dozen repetitions before I could topple its more difficult foes was a perfect, fair difficulty, a push for me to execute the way the game knew I could. And I did! And every time, I whooped with delight, and I moved hurriedly on to feast my eyes on the next boss that would spend an hour grinding me into dust.

Ruiner is a similar-but-different thing, in that it has a Look, but it likes pissing me off and having nothing much to do with its Look. Was a time I pined for cyberpunk to have more of a presence in games, now I find myself wishing there was less of it. Too many games with not enough allegiance to what cyberpunk is past neon, silly haircuts, and 1980s fashion. Ruiner has plenty of neon and mohawks, not nearly enough of anything else that makes up the genre’s secret sauce. And it’s one of those games that revels in difficulty, even though its difficulty is less interesting than just looking at the thing and performing its squelchy, bright red super-violence.

A Hat In Time got touted as a Better Yooka-Laylee for awhile, which I absolutely resented because I loved Yooka-Laylee, I know Yooka-Laylee, and you, hat, are no Rare spiritual successor. The game is, however, the best Mario Sunshine follow-up out there, after its rough first impression - the good kind of bright, colorful, mission-based hop’n’jump’n’grab-a-MacGuffin. The comparison to Yooka-Laylee irks me the same way the comparison between Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie irks me - similar games playing with similar parts, but the former is focused in on giving you one challenge at a time to solve, whereas the latter is about whole worlds of Stuff and the tools needed to collect it all. Still prefer the latter, and excited that Mario Odyssey looks to be a Nu-Nintendo (NuTendo? You heard it here first) take on a more Rare-inclined design.

The best part of October is horror. The worst part of October, as a horror fan, is having already gotten to all the good stuff and wanting so much more. So bless The Evil Within 2 for being a New Horrifying Thing in October. Loved the first game, much more than everyone else, so expected the praise lavished on this sequel meant I’d go crazy over it. Haven’t quite, not yet, though it’s v. good. I have to confess some disappointment, though, that its introduction wasn’t more reflective of the game to come. Blatant Lynch references, fantastic visual design somewhere between Tarsem Singh and Guillermo del Toro at their best, an aesthete psychopath of Hannibal proportions out the gate...this, I thought, would be a kind of horror we rarely see in games. Giallo-infused perhaps, a little Argento in its vividness and hysteria. Then I ended up shooting monsters a bunch in concrete corridors and that dream evaporated, though the game touches on it here and there. Suspect I’ll have more to say.

Destiny 2 is great and I wish people would quit complaining about it so much. I have my complaints - namely, that they discarded the first game’s mysterious, austere backstory in favor of a, uh, I guess front-story that’s all empty wit and too many jokes. Great to know Nathan Fillion can have so much fun in so ridiculous a role, not so great that his tone became the predominant tone by virtue of being so approachable. BUT it’s still the best damn sci-fi shooting in gaming, and I shit you not there’s an enemy type whose soul visibly leaves its body when you nail a headshot.