#another piece for my collection of “Random collectables that are from different franchises entirely but look cool together”

[dragonsruby]

Behold: My loot.

You'd think that I'd know better to not give myself freedom that make these financial decisions, but the mall was right there and I'm never in the area, so

Spriggy is very important, which is why he gets the toof chair.

[undeath1245]

Danganronpa Survival

I decided to make a video game concept based on Danganronpa, which is based on my previous posts about the aftermath of DRV3. Danganronpa Survival: Truth of Killing Games is a concept of a survival horror-based action-adventure game taking place six months after the events of DRV3.

The game focuses on the survivors of the 53rd killing game, Shuichi Saihara, Maki Harukawa, and Himiko Yumeno, as they try to adjust to their new lives after escaping into the real world. Saihara is now a private detective, Harukawa is working at a fast food joint, and Yumeno is now a street magician. One fateful evening, they soon get kidnapped by a bunch of raving fans, and after fighting them off, forcing themselves to kill them off, they are soon greeted by the unlovely Monokuma, as he tells them that they’re now participating in a brand new killing game, Danganronpa Survival. Not only that, but they also encounter  familiar faces, who were also kidnapped and forced to participate in the new killing game, as all 15 of them must work together to solve a mystery. As they traverse from city to city in the urban region of Chuochiiki, solving assigned mysteries and facing off against deranged fans, the trio must find a way out of this crazy game for good, either they make their great escape and return to their normal lives, or they could at least face off against their oppressors, Team Danganronpa, and stop these crazy killing games once and for all.

The game is a third-person action-adventure game with inspiration from hack-and-slash games (Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, No More Heroes), survival horror games (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Manhunt, Condemned, Dead Rising), third-person shooters (Max Payne), open world games (Grand Theft Auto, Yakuza, Saints Row, Dead Rising), and action-packed shooters (Hotline Miami, Ruiner, My Friend Pedro, Maximum Action), while retaining the detective gameplay and problem-solving gameplay from the main series, as well as taking inspiration from other similar games (Ace Attorney, Max Payne, Condemned, L.A. Noire). The game is set in the urban region of Tokyo, Chuochiiki, which is based on the real-life centermost special wards of Tokyo. Similar with the main series, the game is split into two modes: Wonderful Life and Deadly Life, and the player characters are Saihara, Harukawa, Yumeno, and 12 other returning characters which I won’t reveal yet.

In Wonderful Life mode, the player is situated in the streets of Chuochiiki, which details the events between killing games and focuses on the characters’ daily lives. The setting is inspired by other open worlds, particularly Kamuro-cho from Yakuza, Stilwater from Saints Row and Saints Row 2, and Los Santos from Grand Theft Auto V. The player can traverse across many areas in Chuochiiki to enjoy some food, buy some outfits, interact with characters, do some random jobs, and unwillingly encounter random events, but the player has to unlock the entire region city by city after completing Deadly Life mode. In certain days, the player must follow a planned schedule in order to proceed the main story, like the trio’s weekly therapy sessions or meeting up with an ally who could help them escape the killing game. In their free time, they can interact with other characters and learn more about them, as some characters can offer odd jobs to the player in exchange for yen, which can be used to exchange items and presents. Not only that, but similar with Daily Life mode in the main trilogy, interacting with characters can reward the player experience points, and can also unlock skills that the player can use throughout the game. Skills are categorized into three types: detective skills, which helps the player find more hidden clues or secrets; combat skills, which helps the player better fight off against enemies and bosses; educational skills, which helps the player piece together clues in the standard exam. Just like in the main trilogy, and similar with other games like Grand Theft Auto and Yakuza, the player can choose to hang out with their classmates, the other contestants in the killing game. They can arrange a date, pick whichever place they can hang out, like clubs, arcades, or parks, and strengthen their bond with their classmate, or they can accept invites by one of their classmates and hang out with them as well. By hanging out with them, the player can unlock skills. But even though Wonderful Life serves as a grace period between the game, it can be interrupted by random encounters with thugs and rabid fans, of which the player then enters Awful Encounter mode. Similar with encounter battles in Yakuza, the player can encounter or be encountered by enemies, which then triggers a battle they can either run away from or partake in, and unlike in Deadly Life, the player doesn’t kill them, so they’re restricted with their own fists, combat skills, and whatever they see lying on the floor to battle against foes. After completing the battle, the player is then rewarded with yen and experience points, and some battles can reward the player combat moves.

In Deadly Life mode, the player must traverse across a large environment, which takes form of a building complex, and find some clues, while also trying to either avoid or fend off against rabid fans. Before beginning the killing game, the player can utilize unlocked skills to better traverse the area and solve a mystery, similar in the main trilogy before doing the class trial. The player can also scavenge for weapons, items, and tools, like first aid kits, ammo, and welders, to better focus on their task and face off against enemies, or the better to avoid them, at least. They can also search through rooms to find some clues in order to solve their assigned mystery, or they can also discover some secrets and solve some puzzles to either collect a clue, find another secret, or discover a unique weapon. However, some of the puzzles are only assigned to a specific character, for example, if there’s a puzzle with a magnifying glass icon, then it should by solved by Saihara. Speaking of which, each playable character not only has unique stats, but also possesses a unique talent that can help then find clues, solve puzzles, and battle against enemies. For example, Saihara can detect more clues and details than any other character, Maki is highly skilled in battling against enemies and disposing them, and Yumeno can cast spells or perform magic tricks to battle with, solve puzzles, or heal characters. Some areas also include a mini-boss battle the player must face in order to obtain a clue; this is appropriately referred to as Practice Exam mode. There are three ways, or paths, the player can take to deal with enemies: the pacifist path, stealth path, and rampage path. The pacifist path involves avoiding many enemies as possible without the need of killing them, but if the player couldn’t avoid them, they can always knock them clean out. The stealth path involves knocking out or killing few or more enemies in a clean, discreet, and merciless manner, and both the pacifist path and stealth path are useful for the player to focus on finding clues, since enemies mainly serve as obstacles, similar to the zombies of Dead Rising. And finally, the rampage path involves killing many of enemies as much as you can, and sometimes involves slower, yet gory and painful executions. After finding all the clues, the player must then head to the classroom and begin their standard exam to solve their mystery. The Standard Exam mode acts similar to the class trials in the main trilogy, with each one of the trio discussing about the mystery, with a couple of returning minigames such as Non-Stop Debate, Hangman’s Gambit, and Brain Drive. After completing the standard exam, the player must then head to the elevator and delve deep into the battle chambers to complete their physical exam. The Physical Exam mode is basically the main boss battle, with each chapter containing a boss the player must face in order to end the survival game and then move on to the next city. Compared to the practice exams, the bosses are highly skilled and incredibly dangerous in their own way, and not to mention that they happen to be the main hunters Team Danganronpa sent to deal with the game’s contestants, so the player must be very careful when facing them if they need to finish the killing game. And carrying on the tradition from the franchise, the boss will receive a harsh, ironic punishment after they’ve been defeated, similar to the culprits in the main trilogy after they’ve been caught. Once completing Deadly Life, the player then returns to their room, and once the next chapter begins, the player must head over to a different city to complete the next killing game.

The combat gameplay involves high action hand-to-hand combat and rapid-fire gunplay, like in Max Payne, Saints Row, Dead Rising, and No More Heroes, with the actiony mood of Devolver Digital games and the survival horror atmosphere of Silent Hill and Resident Evil. The player can only carry about six types of weapon at a time: one or two smaller melee weapons (combat knife, dagger, sai, metal pipe), a larger melee weapon (baseball bat, pool cue, katana), one or two handguns (revolver, pistol, machine pistol), a large firearm (shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle), a set of throwable weapons (compact discs, shivs, shuriken), and a set of grenades (cocktail bombs, hand grenades, flash bangs), so the player ought to juggle between these weapons as the game progresses. Enemies mainly consist of the rabid Danganronpa fanbase, who volunteered in the survival game to be part of the action and get back against the “rogue protagonist” who ruined their favorite show, while in a few levels, enemies also consist of corrupt policemen and mercenaries personally hired by Team Danganronpa to take care of the trio. When an enemy is in a dazed state, the player can perform a tackle maneuver to take them down, similar to Travis Touchdown’s wrestling moves, and when an enemy is on low health, the player can tackle them and can either knock them clean out or execute them. If the player focuses on the pacifist path or stealth path, they can sneak behind an enemy and either knock them out or perform an execution. To knock out enemies is to simply subdue them for a long period of time, but in some cases, they could always wake up later on. So, the player can also drag a subdued enemy into a closet or a chest to lock them in, or they can suppress their unconsciousness even longer with sedatives or with a blunt weapon. The player can also subdue enemies with pain, like stabbing them in the shoulder, and even though many enemies are resistant to pain, they can’t endure their injuries that long. Executions also vary depending on the character’s mood: if their despair meter is low, then they can kill an enemy in a quick, discreet, and painless manner; if their despair meter is median or high, then they can kill an enemy is a slow, loud, and gory manner.

Saihara’s combat style plays like a regular main character in a survival horror game, like the everyman characters from Silent Hill, Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil 2, and Frank West from Dead Rising, and his strength, reflexes, energy take, and firearm skills are mainly average. Like many other characters, he can wield any form of weaponry, ranging from a combat knife, to a revolver, to a submachine gun. Typically, his skills increase as the game progresses, making him faster, stronger, and more resistant or quicker to dodge from enemy attacks. He can also learn to use combat analytics similar to that of Sherlock’s abilities shown in the 2009 movie, Sherlock Holmes, in the famous bare-knuckle fight scene. His health consists of 100 HP.

Harukawa’s combat style plays like a combination of a protagonist from any action-packed video game, such as the Doomslayer from DOOM, Solid Snake and Raiden from Metal Gear Solid, and Jacket from Hotline Miami, and many of her stats are fairly higher than Saihara’s or Yumeno’s. Due to her physique, she can perform athletic maneuvers to better evade enemies or combat against them, such as a kickflip or a roundhouse kick. She is also highly skilled in many forms of weaponry, such as knives, firearms, and explosives, but she still needs help with swordsmanship. As expected from her talent, she’s also highly skilled in quietly disposing enemies without confronting one, similar to Agent 47 from Hitman. Her health consists of 150 HP.

Yumeno’s combat style plays more of a weak, yet resourceful protagonist of a fantasy video game, such as Link from The Legend of Zelda and the player characters from FromSoftware’s ultra-difficult fantasy games, and her stats are fairly weaker, mainly due to her short, meek posture, but can still increase over time. Her weapons usually consist of medieval weaponry, such as axes, swords, and crossbows, but her weapon of choice is a seemingly magical wand she finds later on in the game that can cast elemental spells and telekinetic spells. Of course, it needs to be recharged with fuel cells, or mana, and it can also help solve puzzles assigned to her, which are categorized by a witch’s hat icon. Her health consists of 90 HP.

The game also features a new “despair” system, which is based on the trust system featured in DISTRUST, the prototype version of Trigger Happy Havoc, which centered on placing trust on classmates during a class trial. The trust system also determined which classmate will be killed next, as well as how it effects the main character and the game’s ending. The despair system depends on how you deal with enemies, whether you choose to avoid them, incapacitate them, or outright kill them. If you choose to avoid numerous enemies or confront them and knock them out, your despair meter remains still, but if you choose to kill some enemies, then your despair meter reacts, resulting in your character to undergo a slight panic attack, and they need to calm down afterwards lest they need to focus on finding some clues. Your despair meter can also increase if your character gets caught in a battle, receives damage from enemies, or gets exhausted after getting chased by pursuing enemies. If the despair meter reaches critical mass, then it will unleash a mental breakdown that can make your character undergo a murderous rampage, allowing you to kill every enemy on sight. After time runs out, your character then experiences a post-despair relapse, resulting in headaches, visions, vomiting, and freak-outs, so they need to head to a quiet room in order to calm down. The despair meter varies from character to character, with Yumeno being the most vulnerable, and Harukawa being the most strong-willed.

The number of enemies you kill and how you kill them not only affects the ending, but the story and main characters as well. Let’s say that one character starts to have a dilemma, knowing that they had killed about 13 people during a killing game, so they begin to have nightmares and undergo a slight personality change. They can alleviate this by heading to the local therapist, who may or may not play a major role in the game, and vent out their feelings without going over much detail. Or if they’re hanging out with their classmates, they could also vent out their feelings to them, which would also effect their relationship with them, either for the better or for the worst. But as the game progresses, as long as the player chooses to kill, the main characters would soon get used to killing, growing more unfazed after taking away a life. Besides, their enemies, the very fans of Danganronpa, did sign up for this, right? But then again, according to DRV3, Maki did state to never get used to killing, lest they’ll lose more of their innocence for every life they take away.

Now, this is something I’m concerned about: allowing the survivors of the 53rd killing game to kill. Knowing that Danganronpa revolves around a killing game that forces 15–16 high school students to kill each other, and that some of them will defy the game by not killing and trying to escape, I’m a bit stuck on forcing the survivors to kill. Many of the Ultimate Academy students had tried to defy the killing game and find a way to escape, while some of them had grown accustomed to their imprisonment, and some of them had succumbed to their urge to kill. And at the end of the game, Saihara, Harukawa, and Yumeno were the only survivors, and as such, they hadn’t killed anyone, with the exception of Maki attempting to kill Ouma. Now, what would happen if they were forced in a hectic situation where they had to kill someone in order to survive, basically a fight-or-flight predicament? For instance, if one of them gets kidnapped, their first instinct is to try to escape, and after doing so, they’d eventually encounter their kidnapper and get caught in a grueling fight, and the result would be the victim killing off their kidnapper. What happens after that? I know how would Saihara and Yumeno react after making their first kill, but what about Harukawa? Normally, she would shrug it off and make her escape, but long after she was revealed that her memories of being an assassin were fake, I believe she would react almost the same way as Saihara and Yumeno. I believe that making their first kill would be the start of a new despair, and gradually, it could lead to a major personality change, if they retain their cool, that is. After all, it is tradition to make the characters fall into despair, but would letting these characters kill be considered betraying the main themes of Danganronpa?

I’m also concerned about the game’s atmosphere, either to make it action-packed like Hotline Miami, somber and dreadful like Silent Hill, or try to combine both ambiences like in Ruiner. On one hand, I adore many actiony, energetic video games, and I could name many, and I would like to see what happens when the characters of Danganronpa would get roped in an actiony situation. Basically, just them grabbing the nearest weapon and bashing an enemy’s brain in, do some quick dodging and martial art moves here and there, and perform some gun fu. And considering how energetic the trilogy and spin-off was, it doesn’t seem out-of-place for this franchise to include a high-action action-adventure game. On the other hand, I also appreciate horror games with a somber feel, like Yume Nikki and Lost in Vivo, and considering how some characters fit the role of an everyman protagonist, and the franchise does contain horror traits within its stories, it wouldn’t also be considered out-of-place to include a survival horror game in the franchise. But that would also mean nerfing some of the characters’ strength and combat experience, like Sakura Oogami’s martial arts prowess, for example. Or perhaps I could mix both of these elements like I’m aiming to do now, basically keep the actiony gameplay while mixing in the somber atmosphere. I could make it as graphic as how DISTRUST was going to be, and try to explore some dark topics like dark web entertainment and corporate censorship.

So this is all I have for Danganronpa Survival. Now, I’m not trying to make it into a big reality like a fan game, as this is still a fan concept, but I could try to make a fanfiction out of this. That said, I got to improve my writing a bit more, since I dabbled in some fanfiction of Twisted Metal long ago, which are also a part of another fan concept I’m working on, but that’s another story. I could also draw some fanart of this concept, such as the characters, enemies, weapons, and maybe some backgrounds, which means I got to push myself into drawing more. There are other installments of Danganronpa Survival in my head right now, as I've already published another fan concept related to this. Although, I still love the old adventure game format in the main trilogy, and I do have some ideas for new Danganronpa titles related to this, particularly a sequel to DRV3. I could make them into a third-person perspective instead of a visual novel perspective, while still retaining the trilogy’s main features. I’m gonna see if I could post some character profiles later on, including the ones for the survivor trio, as well a a lot of new characters I wanna introduce, including the ones behind Team Danganronpa. And I’m going to reveal the other 12 main characters soon, I just need to finish a theory or two related to this and link it later on. Until then, see you around.

[bltngames]

Review: Super Mario Sunshine

Super Mario Sunshine is a weird game for a lot of different reasons. It was among some of the first game reviews I ever wrote for the internet, for one, all the way back in 2005. I was proud enough of that review that when it came time to relaunch TSSZ News in 2008, it was one of five archived reviews I transplanted on to the site. It was also a strange case where I became convinced it was a game I’d never play, originally. I was 23 years old, with no job, no money, and no prospects. I was desperate to play the game that was being sold as the sequel to Super Mario 64, but I could not envision a future where that would ever be possible.

Eventually, I reached my breaking point. Earlier that same year, somebody had linked me to something called “Quake Done Quick.” It was attached to a relatively new site, called the “Speed Demos Archive”, a hub for videos of people finishing games as fast as possible. The site was small, updated manually, and featured a list of roughly 100 games -- maybe less. This was before Youtube, so these were downloadable video files, usually in AVI or MPG format. And it was here that they had a Super Mario Sunshine speedrun. Even on my fledgling broadband internet, it took a considerable amount of time to download. But, with nothing more than two hours of raw, unedited, uncommentated gameplay footage, I watched a user named “Dragorn” play through the entire game (his old run is still viewable on the Internet Archive). Watching a speedrunner flip, spin, and trick his way across levels, I became convinced that Sunshine was incredible.

A few months later, I was surprised by my brother with $200 for Christmas, stuffed inside a greeting card. He said it was for “all the Christmases he missed” since moving out, years ago. Combined with other money I’d received in gifts, I headed to a Gamestop and purchased a Gamecube with my own (used) copy of Super Mario Sunshine. In my mind, it did not matter that I had spoiled the entire game for myself only three months earlier with the speedrun video. Watching someone else play is no substitute for a controller in your own hands. I needed to play it for myself.

In the modern context, Super Mario Sunshine is one of the games attached to the recently released Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection. Full disclosure: I will not be buying this collection, and I have not played the version of Super Mario Sunshine it includes. It’s not that these games are bad, but even from the outside looking in, the collection looks underwhelming. It’s full of basic, bare-bones ports of games that deserve more. But it does mean that these games have been on my mind, particularly Super Mario Sunshine, which I finished replaying, separately, a little more than one year ago. It was the first time I’d finished the game since that fateful Christmas of 2004, and it provided a refresh in perspective.

The truth of the matter is, brushing aside everything else about it, Super Mario Sunshine is an easy game to hate. Nintendo was trying a lot of new things with the Gamecube, struggling to figure out what could be done with the leap in horsepower over the Nintendo 64. Their pitch was a Mario that was subtly more serious and realistic. Sunshine is a game with a surprisingly large number of cinematics, and a considerable amount of narrative setup. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true: the game opens with Mario taking a long-deserved vacation on a tropical island, only to be arrested and wrongfully accused of crimes he did not commit. He is sentenced to community service, forced to clean the island of a paint-like substance its residents claim he has used to vandalize their resort town. This is accomplished with the F.L.U.D.D., a backpack-mounted squirt gun perfect for washing down walls and floors. It was the first manual labor he’d been shown doing since the NES version of Wrecking Crew in 1985.

It’s odd territory for Mario, but it leads to the game’s first real problem: Plot. Sunshine is not a game that’s packed with story -- there aren’t a lot of named characters, and there aren’t a lot of genuine story arcs to get hooked in to, but it’s way more than you got in most Mario games. Regardless, the influence of a narrative structure is definitely felt within its levels. One of the benefits of Super Mario 64 is that there was no set order to anything; you might drop in to a level with a specific goal in mind, only to accidentally stumble on to something else. You were encouraged to follow your curiosity, collecting stars more through natural exploration. Even though it’s not always obvious on the surface, the objectives in Super Mario Sunshine are following a specific plotline, which means flat, rigid linearity.

So you might reach an amusement park area, but you can’t go inside until you finish the mission where you open the front gates. Even once you re-enter the level for the next mission inside the amusement park, exploring its various rides will be a moot point, as the game will want you to focus on a specific goal instead. Want to ride the rollercoaster? Too bad, the story dictates it’s not available yet. Though you still have that go-anywhere, do-anything world design from Super Mario 64, the current mission is the only thing that’s ever active. Another example: at the beginning of the game, you open up the first stage -- Bianco Hills. Even though you have a whole village and a sizable lake area to explore, there’s little to do out there, because your mission is about reaching the bottom of the windmill. The second mission, again, doesn’t involve the village or the lake, but now asks you to reach the top of the same windmill in order to fight the game’s first boss, Petey Piranha. And so it goes: big zones to explore, but most of it useless as Sunshine slowly trickles out objectives one at a time, following a barely-visible narrative that drags everything down.

Nintendo had other intentions for the game, too. The company was known for taking its time with game releases -- Super Mario World released in 1990, and it took six years for Super Mario 64 to follow it up. Even once a game was announced, there were often months or even years of delays as the game got pushed back, and back, and back, as with Ocarina of Time. Similarly long waits happened for many of Nintendo’s other flagship franchises (Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid, etc.), and the peanut gallery was getting restless. With the release of the Gamecube, Nintendo made a vow to explore other avenues to release more games, more quickly.

The problem was, all of those delays are exactly what lead to Nintendo’s extremely high bar of quality. Rushing these games out the door meant cutting corners and finding easy ways to tack on extra play time, skipping necessary fine tuning. In The Wind Waker, this notoriously led to the last fourth of the game, wherein you must find and decode maps to dredge up half a dozen pieces of the magical Triforce. For most, this meant hours of sailing out to random, completely featureless areas in the middle of the open ocean hoping to find a single golden tortilla chip. “Tedious” is putting it kindly, but it saved Nintendo from having to delay the game too many times in order to add more in-depth content.

In Super Mario Sunshine, this manifested in a degree of repetition that is difficult to ignore. In both Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy, most mission objectives are unique. There are occasional repeated missions, like finding 8 red coins, but by and large it's things like rescuing a baby penguin, opening a pyramid, assaulting an airship, or finding your way through a gravity-bending maze. There's enough variety that you don't notice as much when you're asked to do yet another one of Galaxy's purple coin comets.

Sunshine still has unique goals like that, but they are much fewer and farther between. Instead, the bulk of the game is filled with doing the same four or five missions over, and over, and over again. Finding fruit to hatch Yoshi or hunting red coins can be fun occasionally, but Sunshine often makes you do this stuff multiple times per level. Most bosses also must be faced at least twice, sometimes up to three times, and very little changes from fight to fight. And then there are the races -- a man named Piantissimo is waiting for you in most stages, looking to race you to an arbitrary landmark, and every single level has one penultimate mission where you must chase down the hero's evil doppelganger, Shadow Mario. It’s padding, basically, and thanks to a tenuous grip on narrative, there’s few ways to skip the things you don’t want to do.

This isn't even touching on the game's blue coins. They're one of Sunshine's rarer collectibles, and ten blue coins can be traded at the shop for a single Shine Sprite (the main item central to the story). The majority of blue coins can be found by hosing down graffiti found around the island. Spray a circle-shaped pattern on one wall, and a blue coin pops out of another circle-shaped pattern on the opposite side of the level, which you must run to and collect before it disappears. Then, the opposite: spray down the second pattern, and another blue coin will appear back where the first graffiti used to be. In a game full of rerun objectives, this is the worst offender. Rarely are these blue coin graffiti spots interesting or challenging; they primarily exist to fill space and fluff up the Shine counter.

The level concepts themselves also suffer from this repetition. In any other Mario game, “tropical island” would be one theme among many other level types, like deserts, volcanoes and frozen lakes. Sunshine tries to stretch its one theme out to last an entire game, and in practical terms, this means that even after 18 years and two complete playthroughs (three, if you count the speedrun video), I still can’t remember most areas in any kind of specific detail. I remember a couple stage names, maybe a few environmental traits (like the hotel at sunset or the amusement park), but anything beyond that and it all starts blurring into homogeneous beaches, docks, and villages. Even the music -- beyond the iconic acoustic guitar of the Delfino Plaza hub world song, absolutely nothing about Super Mario Sunshine’s soundtrack stands out as memorable in the slightest. Every part of this game plays, looks and sounds like every other part in the worst way possible.

And yet, through some miracle, Super Mario Sunshine does not come out the other end being a bad game. It’s not necessarily good, either, mind you. But when I finally managed to get my hands on this game back in 2004, it made me angry. Super Mario 64 was a tough act to follow, and rather than build on those concepts, Sunshine felt like a massive regression. Nowadays, it’s easier to see the bigger picture. Super Mario Sunshine was a stop-gap as Nintendo slowly pushed Mario back to a more linear, level-based structure. Super Mario Galaxy was another step in this direction, doing away with the open worlds in favor of traditional, straight-forward level design, something that would later be perfected in Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World.

That makes Sunshine more of a curious black sheep than anything else. It’s definitely not a game worth hating -- its biggest offense is simply being dull, and there are worse fates. For my replay, it became the sort of game I chipped away at, bit by bit, over the course of nearly three years. As it turns out, the best cure for repetition is to forget everything you were doing the last time you played. It’s even fitting on some level that a game about Mario taking a vacation is best served in lazy, slow, indifferent chunks. Make no mistake -- there are better, more polished, and more engaging platformers out there for you to play. It is in no way a stretch to call Super Mario Sunshine the worst 3D Mario game, but it speaks to the franchise’s high bar of quality that even the worst 3D Mario game really isn’t so bad.

[miximax-hell]

As always, it’s been a hot minute. But, uh, hey! I hope you’ve all been fine!

Can you believe that this is actually my 20th reference sheet? That’s crazy. I am hecking slow, but I honestly thought I’d have stopped doing this (way) before I reached the double digits. But, hey, I’m still kicking!

And, to honour such a number, it was about time to add another Raimon baby to this blog, so I’ve gone for one of my very favourites. Shishido is very dear to my heart for a variety of reasons (that I will make sure to explain thoroughly when the time for it comes) and I’ve had this miximax in mind for a very long time. In fact, I’ve been ruminating on it since @raynef-art (btw, today’s Raynef’s birthday, so go and wish her a happy birthday if you can!!) and I talked about Shishido on Skype years ago. When was that, even? 2016? 2017, perhaps? In any case, it sure has been extremely long. But, thankfully, all of that ruminating led to one of my favourite pairs in this whole project! Katrielle Layton is a fantastic fit for Shishido, and I will do my very best to explain why this is the case in this post.

So, for more on ShishiKat, please check under the cut!

As always, I like to use this first paragraph to talk a bit about random stuff, so feel free to skip it if you want. Long story short, I’ve spent the last few months (since mid-May or so) job hunting like a beast. Big ol’ companies from all around the world, like Rockstar, Revolution, The Creative Assembly/Sega or Build A Rocket Boy have shown interest in me, but it’s led nowhere so far, which is extremely frustrating. Heck, there’s a company who contacted me first and they still didn’t give me the job in the end. >:| But I did an interview last Thursday and I should get an answer soon, so let’s hope that goes well...! It’s an awesome job, close to where I live (so I wouldn’t have to move), the company is super successful and two friends are already working there. It’d be incredible to join them and keep progressing in my career. And, well, money doesn’t hurt at all either. Gotta get into the wheel of capitalism. Anyway, job matters aside, I’ve recently finished some games that have become personal favourites of mine, like Valkyria Chronicles and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star (even if the first one was arguably better), but the one that undoubtedly takes the crown is Marvel’s Spider-Man, which shaped up to be a game as brilliant as Insomniac’s previous titles, if not even more so, and has become one of my favourite games of all time. Sadly, Spider-Man isn’t originally a videogame character, so I won’t be including him in this project (as much as that pains me). So we’ll have to take other routes if we want to have a Marvel miximax here... I’m on it, but suggestions are still accepted.

So, Shishido! Who doesn’t love Shishido? He’s just so lovely. Look at him! Look at him right now! How can someone without visible eyes be so PRECIOUS? Don’t you just want to channel the annoying aunt within you and pinch his cheeks and nose? Well, we still can’t do that, but we can try and do him justice by giving him a truly awesome miximax. (The quality of the art that accompanies said miximax may vary in quality, but that’s not Shishido’s nor Katrielle’s fault--it’s entirely mine for not being better.)

So, friends who have been here for a while and have a good memory may be thinking, “Hold on a minute, you! The Professor Layton franchise has already been represented within this blog--you miximaxed Fudou with Hershel Layton himself!” And you’d be right. You might even be thinking I’m betraying my own rules by using two characters from the same franchise. Well, that isn’t the case, as PL is a Level-5 franchise and I may (and tend to) use up to two characters from each franchise made by L5. It’s all here. But, even with all of that, there’s still a question that remains and that I figure many people might have in their heads: if Fudou is already miximaxed with Hershel, isn’t Shishido basically a copy? Does Katrielle really add anything to the table?

I’m glad you asked. Well, I’m glad I asked, because that’s what led to all of this. ww And, thankfully, yes. Yes, she does. But before answering that question, we have a much more important question to ask:

Who is Shishido Sakichi?

Hino, that lovely piece of work, is actually really fricking good (when he actually tries) at something I’m unable to name, hence why I will refer to it as “scattered storytelling.” It’s similar to environmental storytelling in the sense that we’re never directly told many things, but we can still figure them out thanks to the looks of a character, the scenarios we see, audio queues, etc. Video games offer many resources to build up rich environmental storytelling, but what Hino (and probably many others--it’s not like he invented the wheel!) does is give us hints scattered across different pieces of media to try and figure out what some of his undeveloped characters are all about. And let’s be real: original Raimon is a lovely collection of undeveloped characters. So let’s check out a few things about Shishido and see where they take us.

Shishido was one of the first members of Raimon, being one of the 7 players the team had before they were forced to look for more people to have a match against Teikoku. He was, however, replaced by Kidou when he joined the team, and he stayed as a benchwarmer until he got injured by Gemini Storm. Then, as he joined the Dark Emperors, if you talk to him in the game before the match, he mentions how he’s been pushing himself past his limit for a long time, only to keep feeling like he’s mediocre. Finally, during the match between Raimon’s older and newer members, he is shown facing Kidou and getting past him despite how afraid he was of engaging directly with such a big rival.

On top of that, his in-game descriptions go like this: “He is becoming the team’s key-man by developing his own pace,” (IE1) “His laid-back personality can make him the butt of his team-mates' jokes“ (IE2) and “The Aliea crystal has given him an invincible self-belief“ (IE2 DE). Let’s admit that it’s not a lot to go by, but maybe we can get something out of all of this.

As usual, I explain this better in the heat of the moment while talking to someone who’s ready to listen, so Raynef or my girlfriend probably got the better version of what I’ll be trying to explain now. However, those conversations are so old that I'm having trouble retrieving them, so... welp. ww Let me try anyway.

Judging by what we know about Shishido, we can try to figure out what his character development has been like. We get his first in-game description as soon as we can see him in our in-game menu; that is, before the first Teikoku match even takes place. At this point, aka at the very beginning of the game, Shishido is a player that is “becoming the team’s key-man.” Slowly, perhaps, but he is on his way. However, this process is halted abruptly when Kidou joins the team, as he replaces him as a regular first-team player. Now, a valid question would be, “why did Kidou replace Shishido and not any other midfielder?”

It would make no sense to get rid of Someoka or Kurimatsu to let Kidou in the pitch, as he’s not a forward nor a defender. But, among all the midfielders in the team, why Shishido? Why not Handa, Shourin or even Max (who is technically a forward, but has been playing as a midfielder, so it’d make a lot more sense to bench him)? The most obvious answer would be that everyone else has abilities that Kidou can’t properly replace/mimic/make up for; or, in other words, that Kidou is like an upgraded version of Shishido more than he is an upgraded version of any of the other characters. And what is Kidou, exactly? A brilliant midfielder with incredible control over the ball and a great strategist overall. It’s this last part that we’re most interested in: he’s a strategist. A game-maker, that is. What one could easily call a vital part of a team or, even, in more poetic words, a key-man. What Shishido used to be, or was going to become, before Kidou showed up to steal his spotlight. Not to mention the incredible pain one must feel upon being replaced like that... (This was best explained by @mimiflieder on her fic, Change of pace--it’s about Handa and Ichinose, but the same thing applies. I totally recommend checking it out!)

This theory is further supported (in sad ways) by his in-game description in IE2. His personality remains the same (laid-back and doing his at his own pace), but he has gone from being a key-man WIP to the butt of his teammates’ jokes. Sure, the jokes are blamed on this laid-back personality, but something doesn’t quite add up. Check out his quote while he’s a Dark Emperor: he’s been pushing himself too hard to achieve nothing. Is that really what you’d call ‘laid-back’?

In the best case scenario, everyone sees him as being laid-back and chill to the point of being funny: he’s not making a fuss about being replaced in front of his teammates. However, he’s been trying as hard as possible in secret to become the best he can possibly be... only to still be eclipsed by Kidou and the other talented members of the team in every sense.

In the worst case scenario, his attempts to improve are very much obvious to his team, and the lack of results or the gap between the two key-men not becoming any smaller is what makes him the butt of jokes (but I hate this scenario because Raimon babies are all sweet and supportive boys who’d never do this. I DON’T CARE IF TEENAGERS ARE CRUEL AND STUPID BY NATURE. RAIMON BABIES ARE BETTER THAN ACTUAL TEENAGERS, OKAY, AND THEY’D NEVER DO THIS. THEY ARE PRECIOUS LITTLE ANGELS.)

In either case, he was destined to be--heck, he might have already been in non-spoken parts of the game--Raimon’s game-maker, but when Kidou came around with his superior skills, Shishido became, simply put, obsolete. That made his self-esteem sink and eventually threw him in the arms of Aliea in a desperate attempt to finally be better and stand up to Kidou. That’s why his in-game description as a DE talks about his boosted self-esteem, much like Handa’s talks about how that jack-of-all trades is using the meteorite to become master of all.

And, of course, this makes that scene during that final match ALL the more relevant: not only does it signify the triumph of hard work and resolution over sheer talent, fleeting as it might be, but it’s also the end of a long, long journey of self-deprecation, self-improvement, guts and sheer fear. Shishido was literally SHAKING when he saw Kidou running towards him, but he pulled himself together and won. He was no longer the inferior one, the replaceable one, the laughing stock. Little and unexplained as it may be, it’s a truly emotional finale to his personal and unspoken journey.

(Another and more positive way to look at it is that Shishido is meant to become Raimon’s game-maker and key-man AFTER KIDOU LEAVES, so all this time by his side has been a massive training camp of two years to learn his ways and then add his own twist to everything he’s learnt. This leaves some issues hanging, but it will at least let me sleep tonight.)

What we have here is a pretty solid theory pointing at Shishido having what it takes to become a game-maker. But, hey, that’s just a theory! A GAME THEORY! ...And what this means is that there’s evidence supporting it, but we have no way to confirm it unless one of you guys can go and casually interrogateview Hino (and if you do, that’d kind of come in handy, actually). However, the pieces fall together a bit too well to be just a coincidence, right? At least, I think so. And even if they don’t, we don’t have much more to go by, so... it’ll have to do.

Anyway, we’ve (somewhat) answered the question about who Shishido is. It is, therefore, about time to answer the main question this post laid on the table: is Katrielle a good aura to use when her father is already part of this project? And, even if she is, why would Katrielle be the best match for Shishido? Let’s start by explaining what makes Katrielle non-redundant despite bearing her father’s surname and being very similar conceptually.

In essence, Katrielle and Hershel fulfill very similar roles: a smart person who likes puzzles and is hired to solve mysteries no one else can solve. But anyone who knows anything about these characters will know that, really, they are absolutely nothing alike.

Hershel is the perfect gentleman: well-behaved, modest, calm and cold-headed regardless of the situation, polite to a fault, boasts perfect manners, and he manages to get along with even the most unfriendly people in the world thanks to his infinite patience, unwavering kindness and the smile he has on his face whenever he greets someone. Not to mention that his investigation process is long-winded and meticulous, and keeps telling Luke to not make quick assumptions when he jumps into conclusions ahead of time.

Meanwhile, Katrielle is pretty much the polar opposite: proud (heck, the first episode of the anime has her saying her skills are better than her father’s!), funny, dramatic to a fault, jumps to crazy conclusions so fast that everyone around her is always surprised by it and doubts she even put any thought into them, has a quick temper sometimes, she works as a detective just for funsies (and glory, to some extent, as she’s constantly struggling to be taken seriously by people who’d rather talk to her dad), she’s easily swayed by yummy food, instinct and imagination move her much more than hard evidence... This alone is enough to make the personalities of ShishiKat and FudoLay totally different, but, of course, this train doesn’t run on personalities, but on powers and skills. So let’s discuss not what Kat offers, but what Shishido needs.

We’ve established that Shishido was a game-maker in progress. Now, let’s keep in mind that this project includes all of the main characters from IE, IEGO, IECS and IEGalaxy, and they could all potentially be sharing a side of the field with Shishido, so let’s see whom he is competing against.

Of course, we have Kidou, the genius game-maker, the absolute commander of the pitch and, well, a living legend trained by another living legend: Kageyama. He has a miximax too, but you guys have not seen it yet. In due time.

We have Fudou, whose natural intelligence is (arguably) on par with Kidou’s and has received some training by Kageyama as well, even if he didn’t reach the same level of legend nor acted as a game-maker nearly as much as Kidou did. Fudou is, however, enhanced by Hershel Layton, whose influence upon mixitransing helps Fudou stop being such a little shit. That allows him to focus enough on the game and on his teammates to surpass Kidou as a serious and cold-headed strategist who is able to treat every situation as a puzzle and find the precise moves needed to solve it. Not to mention that, of course, Layton boosts Fudou’s intelligence as well.

Shindou has his miximax, which turns him into a "gamemaker of truth who can appraise people and the general situation, while combining both stillness and motion." Pretty self-explanatory.

Taiyou and Hakuryuu, upon mixitransing, become "midfielders of unparalleled accuracy, who can see into the future and attack the enemy's weak spots with their analytical reasoning." These two aren't technically game-makers in Chrono Storm, but Zhuge Liang was a frigging strategist and these two are given analytical reasoning through their miximax. Not to mention they were probably game-makers when they were part of their original teams.

The way the canon tried to keep Shindou and Taiyou/Hakuryuu from overlapping was by casually disregarding Zhuge Liang’s strategist side and focusing on her Keshin and ability to see the future/what no one else can see, so we can scratch Taiyou and Hakuryuu, as they won’t easily be taking the role of game-makers anymore. We can also discard Kidou, as FudoLay completely outclasses him for the time being. (Look at me, I sound like I’m writing an article on Electrode for Smogon--) So, ShishiKat’s only real challengers are FudoLay and, uh... does Shindou’s miximax have any kind of fandom name? I heard people refering to Kirino’s miximax as Kirino d’Arc, but that’s about it. Anyway, to keep it simple, I’ll call it ShinOda until someone brings up something better.

So, yeah, ShishiKat is competing against ShinOda and FudoLay. ShinOda focuses on a complete control over when to move and when not to move, arguably to preserve his teammates’ and his own stamina and maximise what everyone can do with their natural reserves of energy. FudoLay, on the other hand, uses analytical thinking to find the most efficient moves in any given situation. As I mentioned, he treats every situation as a puzzle, and, as Layton would say, “every puzzle has an answer.” One specific and perfect answer that FudoLay excels at finding, using the minimum number of steps necessary and turning the solution into pure art. He is, however, still Fudou, so he’d probably push his teammates to the limit in rough ways in order to achieve that perfection he is aiming for. And it’s still Layton, so we can expect some long-winded thought processes that take long to pay off--but when they finally do, HOO BOY.

It's good being analytical and smart, but perhaps, just perhaps, Shishido could use a little something to make him different and stick out among his peers. Something that is a bit more... proactive. Unpredictable. Slightly impulsive. But still as witty as one can ever be. He needs to combine the brains with the brawn, and blend it all together with much-needed cheerfulness, since all the game-makers we’re dealing with here are cold or outright pricks.

Shishido needs to improvise to the point of making things up for no reason and eventually making them work in almost miraculous ways. Focus less on what’s in front of his eyes and more on what other possibilities could be there. Act more on instinct than on careful observation. Give commands that are a lot more roundabout that those of Shindou, Kidou or Fudou, but end up paying off in ways that not even he could always predict. Jump into the problem head-first and solve it in-situ instead of looking at it from afar and pondering for long periods of time. And, of course, among all of that, he needs an enormous self-confidence to pull it all off, as his premises may seem utterly ridiculous and he must believe in them whole-heartedly to convince everyone else.

Katrielle Layton checks every single one of these boxes. It’s Katrielle, and Katrielle alone, who can turn Shishido not just into a replacement for the times when Kidou and Fudou aren’t around, but into a true force of nature that can assist the team at all times. It makes Shishido useful and non-redundant--which is, of course, much more than the anime did for him. Let alone the manga, where Shishido didn’t even appear. (I mean, the manga gave us Tamano bby, but still--)

And the best part is that they don’t step on each other. ShinOda is fantastic (and I won’t comment on my own ideas), but no one is objectively better at being a game-maker than the rest. Different situations will call for different approaches, so their relevance will shift as the rivals change or as the rivals adapt to one style or the other. Or, heck, they can simply all work together to keep their rivals guessing and come up with even greater strategies that combine everyone’s fortes.

Also, I’m watching Katrielle’s anime with my girlfriend and that is what made me consider her for this project in the first place, so props to her! (But sorry for butchering the design, dear ww)

[andrewuttaro]

Is the Stanley Cup worthless?

Let’s start out with some disclaimers. For one, the Stanley Cup certainly isn’t worthless to the hundreds of players who fight through two months of grueling hockey for it. Those guys often play through injury and sacrifice their long-term health just for the chance to lift the Stanley Cup. Their meaning vested in the Stanley Cup is thoroughly established and that is almost an entirely different topic. Another disclaimer: this is not about my team’s inability to accomplish the feat of winning a Stanley Cup. I am not here to complain about the Playoff format, the seeding or even the Sabres inability to make the playoffs the last eight years. This question has nothing to do with any of those problems. No, this question is actually remarkably difficult to answer because it’s a question about the fundamental makeup of the highest-skill hockey league in the world.

I openly asked this question on twitter as the first round of the 2019 edition of the Stanley Cup Playoffs drew to a close. I got the answers you’d expect. You’re a cry baby, it’s about grit, its tradition, and my personal favorite: It’s the randomness that makes it worthwhile! There were actually some decent answers toward the end, but I’ll admit there was some venting going on about my bracket getting absolutely demolished by the postseason of upsets in the first round. The root of this is simple: We all venerate and remember who wins the Stanley Cup. That’s where the lore and honor of the NHL game comes from: but why? If it is a tournament of randomness and chance then the team that survives is just the luckiest survivor, no? Twitter was tough on me, but I guess one expects that from social media. Lucky for us, real experts have addressed the question and tried to come up with answers of their own.

Sean McIndoe (Down Goes Brown) at The Athletic wrote a smart piece on it. It’s called “The 2019 playoffs are total chaos. Is that good? It depends on your door.” You should absolutely go read this article. The paywall for The Athletic is a pretty short wall if you have any kind of income and I’m not going to spoil their paid content in my free content. The basic idea however is that we generally look at the Stanley Cup Playoffs two ways: Door One and Door Two. Door One is the best team always wins the Stanley Cup no matter what. Door Two is the best team may not win the Stanley Cup but its fun and that’s all that really matters. Read the article for the full breath of McIndoe’s analysis. It’s very good. These two doors are the convenient and most common ways we look at the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Before we go on here we have to note that many NHL professional writers, those who make a living off of analyzing this league, don’t even want to bother with the middle question here: Is the playoff chaos, particularly in this 2019 go-around, good for hockey? The why there I think is pretty straight forward: its nonsense. Individual things are good or bad for hockey. Whether this incredible Tampa team wins a Cup before it is blown up is ultimately secondary to real stuff like… I don’t know… is the league going to get real about long term head trauma and damage to its players or any number of actually meaningful problems that will be touched on in the next collective bargaining agreement? Those are the real problems and phrasing what we’re talking about today as a big issue is ultimately unhelpful for those dealing with the real problems with this league. There are many. Knowing NHL writers don’t care for the middle question answers part of my question: the way we judge the worthwhileness of the Stanley Cup for fans and Front Offices is more a theoretical question about what we want out of our sport than what actually matters in the politics of the league. Until we have that conversation the folks selling us the NHL product will continue to tell us the same thing about the playoffs.

The NHL says the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win in sports for a few reasons: for one, its great marketing. Two, a cursory look over the playoff format compared to the other major North American Sports will seem to reveal with some degree of objectivity that it is in fact very hard to win. Once again, I’m not diminishing the players or coaches’ sacrifices; that stuff is very real indeed. But even if the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win by the playoff structure, does that mean it goes to the best team when it is finally hoisted in the air? In the McIndoe visual of two doors I took Door Two. In my opinion the Stanley Cup simply does not go to the most skilled, complete NHL team at the end of the postseason. If it doesn’t go to the best team than is it actually worth anything to us Cup-hungry fans? If its not worth anything, why are fans and front offices judging teams, historically and present, based on winning it?

The answer to the first question is that it’s worth approximately 20K purely by its silver content if the market is booming. That was a joke, don’t @ me. Let it be clear that I love the Stanley Cup. I have some of my fondest memories with my father watching the Stanley Cup playoffs back in High School. I was not born and bred into hockey, I’m not a good olde Canadian boy, I’m not even Canadian; but the last decade of my life has been very enriched for having had it in my life. I care about NHL Hockey and the survival and growth of the sport if for no other reason than entertainment and sentiment. The reality is the affection is deep. I write fan fiction about that hunk of metal. I’m not kidding. I would love for there to be some secret history of the Stanley Cup connecting it to the Last Supper so I could venerate it like a religious relic and call it the Holy Grail with a seriously face. That trophy is my jam.

Then again, what about the Vancouver Canucks? I’m not a Canucks fan but that 2011 Stanley Cup Final is seared into my memory. The Canucks of that season and the one after were the best team in the league and yet that organization and all those fans will remain relegated to the ranks of teams without Stanley Cups just because the Final didn’t bounce their way. The unfairness there is palpable. They did get their trophy, the President’s Trophy for the best regular season team. The Lightning got it this year before getting swept in round one by a wild card team. However, the point remains those guys don’t deserve to be thought of as less than just because they weren’t lucky enough between April and June. How many other clubs are similarly cheated out of the status in the hockey history books they deserve? There is a whole rabbit hole I can go into about deserving. The good-old-boy culture of hockey will always respond to this “deserving” argument with the old adage: “The Stanley Cup is earned, not deserved.” God bless you, but the deeper question remains: why are fans judging teams, historically and present, being on winning it?

“Well, what do you prefer instead, Mr. Hockey-Philosopher who never even played the game?” I hear you. I don’t want the NBA postseason. I cannot imagine cheering on a basketball team in a league that has so little variance in who takes home titles. The higher seeded teams in that league are far more likely to win it all and upsets are far rarer. Let me be clear: I don’t want the Stanley Cup title to be a forgone conclusion in April. I am also not advocating for the Soccer world’s solution of not having playoffs at all. The answer to the problem I’m posing is not one we’ll find anywhere else in sports right now. The answer, again, is more about what we want as hockey fans.

The President’s Trophy is essentially the soccer solution. You get that trophy for being the best team of the regular season. Nowadays we talk about the trophy being a curse. In recent years the winner of that trophy fails to obtain the Stanley Cup far more often than not. It was however, instituted in the mid-1980s. If you know anything about hockey in the 1980s you know it was time dominated by high-scoring dynasties. Two teams won 70% of the Stanley Cup titles that decade. The league had to reward all the folks who weren’t the Edmonton Oilers or the New York Islanders who were relative Nuclear Superpowers compared to the rest of the league. Hockey of the NHL variety is not like it was in the 1980s in many ways; most notably there is enough parity in this league that, while there are still dynasties (probably), the variation of teams winning the Stanley Cup or getting close is a lot wider. So, what’s your problem then, you ask? If Stanley Cup titles are more equally distributed than ever and you even have a President’s Trophy to reward regular season greats, what’s the problem? Well outside of the President’s Trophy being viewed as a cursed object you don’t want to win, my problem is really with how we judge the clubs and players in our sport based on luck between April and June.

Before Alexander Ovechkin won the Stanley Cup in 2018 he was on track to be viewed as the greatest player ever to not win the Cup. He was getting gray in the beard and the media was beginning to roast him for it like the memes had been doing for over a decade. The articles written on him read like think pieces on what a trade would look like. Winning trophies is the prime focus of any real sports franchise. If you don’t do that, well maybe we should trade you! You can’t trade fans and the endless merry-go-round of front office ineptitude in Edmonton these days leads one to believe its fairly hard to successfully organize a winning Front Office as well. If you look at teams with the highest salary cap commitments it was all the lower ranked teams winning playoff series this year. The rich aren’t getting richer, it’s more like everyone is poor. And yet, we as fans demand our clubs bring us pride in the form of Stanley Cup banners! We value the Stanley Cup so much in an environment where no matter how much money our team’s decision makers throw at the roster problems we’re no more likely to get one of those oh so valuable Stanley Cup titles than had we done nothing and lucked into a few wins and fortuitous bounces in the Spring.

Clearly the Stanley Cup isn’t worthless. I’ll admit click-bait when I do it. But the reality is us NHL fans need to chill the F out about the Stanley Cup if we want to have any semblance of peace-of-mind. It’s not easy to win and its not supposed to be but its also not a measure of the overall quality of your franchise in the big picture. It isn’t the end-all-be-all of franchise success, it’s a measure of playoff success and that’s really it. Winning is what matters in this league and it should stay that way; but us fans need to reset the way we look at the Stanley Cup if this postseason chaos is going to become the new norm. We’re not prepared for this chaos now but we can be if we start thinking reasonably about what the Stanley Cup is worth.

[tsukifairy]

Avengers 4

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Well aware of the advantages that come from reading comics. Which Marvel comics must you learn before (or after) Captain Marvel? Repetition. Return to your every day newspaper and glance at the comics’ web page. The cartoonist is utilizing repetition to establish the character. Therefore, we may say that it has nothing to do with a changing trends, whatever is new and trendy, picture to pop artwork print remains within the midst of its identified usability in discipline of art. I looked, and there earlier than me was a pale horse! There actually is one thing for everybody. Cosplay additionally means costume play and the fans usually come to the comic conventions dressed in costumes. Eight delectable Expansions that adopted added to the joy of the sport play. Then by all means, use it. By means of the use of those exaggerations, it doesn’t matter what other particulars I include. The possessed doll first hit the screens in the 1988 horror traditional 'Child's Play'. Corey Haim, the lead of the unique horror movie, and Corey Feldman, the two Coreys, reprise their unique roles. Nonetheless, in 2003 Hasbro would relinquish control to Batman's rights to Mattel. You additionally get preferential treatment in some circumstances and access to particular occasions and performances. Taking Care Of Your Comic Book Collection An entire Indian generation has come a long way today, and also this reviewer is one of which. From playing that DataEast game which announced 'The Avengers' inside a baritone that could make Amitabh Bachchan look puny, to watching them in true blue 3D for the giant screen - we've survived. This week, we review The Avengers, a unique movie that has more than five superheroes, and does justice to everyone of which. Here is the complete review of The Avengers.

With all of the feature film success being enjoyed by both these companies using this summer's blockbuster releases of THE AVENGERS and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, they've got each taken the reins of the publishing arms with more confidence than we've seen in years. Marvel's marriage ceremony concentrates on their main movie franchises, the X-Men and The Avengers. Fresh off their Warner-mandated corporate reorganization and rebranding, DC Entertainment is following suit by centering their summer event on a single of their big films from modern times.

If you are not acquainted with Larry Winget, the self-described "Pitbull of Personal Development," this is a great destination to get a taste of his teachings, and if you trust him, start working on his books. Personally, I do trust high of what he says, and have enjoyed all his books, and that's why I enjoyed this short comic. The jacket of Tony Stark was obviously a unique and classic piece alone. Unlike the traditional jackets, his jacket had a side zipper. This new means of zipping accentuated the selling point of the jacket. Even the design of the pockets of his jacket was exceptional. Away from the traditional pocket cuts, his jacket were built with a diagonal zipped pocket on the chest. There was another diagonal pocket about the stomach in the other way. The collar a snap with two metallic buttons which added intricacy on the jacket. The fitting of his jacket looked neat, along with the cuts were extraordinarily stylish. The back had an inverted T-stitch which made the jacket look distinct. The sleeves had no extra leather hanging which awarded an exclusive look to his jacket. The details in the jacket spoke themselves for exquisiteness. The structure of his jacket was well-defined from the stitches which fulfilled every one of the needs from the character to appear muscular and athletic. The outer shell of leather utilized in his jacket was black and had a rough touch which complemented his appearance. If you've only ever seen the Iron Man movies than you're at least knowledgeable about Tony Stark regularly using a drink as part of his hand, even going in terms of for being heavily intoxicated within the Iron Man suit when he thinks he's dying of palladium poisoning. That is only the end in the iceberg which has a long history within the comics.

[redbladereviewing]

Breath of the Wild VS Twilight Princess: Open World or Guided Goals?

Open World Action Adventure games. They’re all over the market and there’s likely no chance of them going away. It’s pretty easy to think that these games take no effort, but designing a gigantic map with different landscapes, biomes, towns, and proper enemy spawn locations takes a lot of time, money and manpower to create. And The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of those games that certainly took a lot of time to make. Originally planned for Nintendo’s best dust collecting device, the Wii U, the game was met with a multitude of delays from 2014 to 2017, and even being released onto their newest console, the Nintendo Switch, with Shigeru Miyamoto famously saying “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is forever bad”. While this quote would later be mocked with the heavily delayed release of Mighty No. 9 later in 2017, Miyamoto was right. Breath of the Wild, despite its delays, was met with universal critical acclaim, winning Game of the Year at the annual Game Awards 2017, and even having a direct sequel announced and in development at E3 2019. But as time went on, as it always does, opinions towards Breath of the Wild started to sour. With people presenting complaints for its barren open world, brittle weapon durability, and complete lack of character from our main protagonist, that people were starting to cast doubt upon whether it was even good in the first place. Now this is nothing new. Game franchises that have been around for decades are likely to have people question the quality of some installments. Just ask Sonic the Hedgehog fans today what they think of Colors compared to Black Knight then when those games came out. But Zelda fans are a bit different. The Zelda franchise has had a set formula for almost about a decade since Ocarina of Time was released in 1998. A simple dungeon full of puzzles to solve, some monsters to deal with, and a special weapon that helps with defeating the boss of said dungeon. It’s a formula that worked for a long time, and only was Breath of the Wild released itself from that cycle its forefathers created. However, while some cycles should be broken, the one that Zelda was in wasn’t really in need of a change. People will say that you often have to change up a series’ gameplay to keep it fresh, but I don’t think that’s true. Call of Duty has been keeping people invested in its games for decades, and it doesn’t change much outside of minor additions, for better and for worse. But the core of the gameplay stays the same. Twilight Princess, in my own humble opinion, was the game that took the most advantages it could with the set Zelda gameplay formula. With the best dungeons in the series, and a story that had a lot more depth than most other entries before and after it. Meanwhile, Breath of the Wild went so far away from the set formula you’d be mistaken for thinking it was a completely different game. So between a massive open world and a set structure of events, which of the two is a better direction for the Hero of Hyrule to go down?

Breath of the Wild has itself set on breaking its formula from the very start. You aren’t a village child or a farmhand; you’re a random dude in his undies waking up from a century long slumber in a water bed, and being given an alien looking smartphone. Complete with a map, camera, and telescope to help you explore this massive world. Even as you enter into the open world, you’re situated atop a plateau, complete with everything you’ll need to learn about how this world works. From weather climate, to resource gathering, to even cooking meals and sneaking past fights you can’t win. It’s quite the departure from what we’ve come to expect. That is, if you’ve only played major Zelda games after 1998. In interviews, the developers said they wanted to go back to the roots of how this series started. With a big world that you don’t really know how it works, but steadily guide you towards what you can do, what you need to do, and how to do things. It certainly has that feel, with the entire intro of the game setting up everything that you’ll be doing in the game. From dealing with enemy camps that hold helpful resources, to climbing towers on loan from one of Ubisoft’s old open world games, to going through Shiekah Shrines to learn the basic abilities your smartphone can use. Such as freezing objects in place, picking up metal boxes, and blowing stuff up with two types of bombs. It’s a lot of stuff to learn that’s steadily leading to you learning more about the state of this version of Hyrule. In this version, Ganon has technically won. The world is in ruins, the people are isolated, there’s monsters running around everywhere, and Zelda is keeping Ganon locked away inside the castle as best she can. It creates a serene, but almost horrifying apocalypse where giant spider bots are roaming the world and blasting people to ashes. It’s quite a daunting adventure ahead, and the gameplay reflects this. Weapons are incredibly brittle, almost as if they haven’t been maintained for a century. Even the most legendary of Royal Guard armaments break after constant use despite looking so expertly constructed. From a narrative perspective, it makes sense. The world is in ruins and you have to find what you can to get an edge against the monsters that roam the world. But from a gameplay perspective, it creates the unfortunate result of collecting a lot of powerful weapons that you will never use because you wanna save them for when you need them. Except you never really will need them because you can run past most enemies in the game and they’ll give up chasing you, especially when fighting enemies into the mid-game doesn’t give you rewards that feel worth it. Oh wow, a shiny rock. I’m glad I used up my Soldier’s Greatsword on those Bokoblins to get it. I’m sure that’ll be worth something to someone. Turns out, it might be, but only to upgrade your armor with pieces of junk you collect from the open world to make yourself tankier. Combat in open world games often has to exist to give the player something to easily do when they start up the game, or create some kind of challenge. But when you can literally go anywhere, even to the final boss right away and fight them with only the weapons you can carry and whatever you found in the castle, it makes the combat in Breath of the Wild not all that worth it. Even when many high skilled players discover new ways of breaking the games physics and mechanics to get themselves some massive combat advantages, it doesn’t really feel satisfying when the rewards aren’t worth it. While its certainly worthy of praise that Nintendo have made an extremely open world with all kinds of directions you can go, it’s not nearly as satisfying to beat a game when the challenge keeps going down and down, and there’s not enough story motivation to get character invested players to keep going. Combat has to have enough of a satisfying reward for players to seek it out. It can be anything from a sense of character progression, to just the satisfying feeling of combat itself. Breath of the Wild struggles with these two things so often simply because combat has no direct changes outside of dodge, flurry attack, repeat, that all those special methods of combat feel like too much effort. Dominant Strategy dictates that players will always use the most effective method of overcoming obstacles in a game, and Breath of the Wild’s Dominant Strategy is basically playing Dark Souls for little kiddies. Stat buff meals and potions don’t mean anything if the combat doesn’t have a satisfying feel to it that makes it worth seeking out, or rewards that encourage facing greater threats.

By contrast, Twilight Princess is so much of a Zelda game it’s dripping with Ocarina of Time’s Happy Ending massage aftermath. The game starts out with Link living in a small rural forest village with his horse, working as a farmhand who herds goats, and even enjoys spending time with the village children, indulging in their praise of his super cool sword and slingshot skills. Twilight Princess does a good job of setting up a status quo. Almost too good of a job. A common criticism of the game is the entire intro before the first dungeon. It goes to great lengths to establish what your home was like before the twilight began to spread, and it even has a few dumb story moments. Like your village crush Ilia taking your horse away because of a minor injury it took from jumping over a fence. Despite Epona not even being her horse. Then there’s Link giving his training sword to a child just to get your horse back. Would’ve been helpful to fight back against those invading Bulbins if I had that glorified stick. Thanks, Talo, you little twerp. All that ends up happening to you and your friends is entirely your fault. The giant wall of Twilight that cuts off the forest? Well, I can’t blame a child for encroaching darkness. That would be too far. However, that same darkness is also where another criticism of this game comes up. “Oh no! Link’s been turned into a furry! Guess this game is responsible for my diaperfur fetish.” Obvious joke against a community that the internet has yet to accept as just another part of itself aside, Wolf Link’s gameplay is not really all that well utilized. It’s fairly simply exploration in an animal form that will be responsible for a number of young folk’s sexual discovery. It has you exploring the segments you’ll later explore as your normal form so that you can get some idea of the state of that region. After getting the Master Sword, the wolf form becomes something that you can use for easy fast travel through the portals you’ve unlocked, and going through areas that would be too difficult for your normal form to travel through. There is, however, one big thing that Wolf Link helps you unlock. Before you enter the first dungeon, you have a run-in with a golden wolf that lunges at you and sends into a foggy void where a Stalfos named Shade teaches you a number of combat abilities. While they appear to be situational to some extent, they do a lot to spice up the combat and give you more available options when fighting monsters. And the only way to get these special combat moves is to find special Triforce Wind Stones around the map where you howl along to old classic songs from the previous Zelda games. With these moves, you’ll have much more combat options when fighting enemies like the Darknut, who acts as the mini-boss of the Temple of Time dungeon, but becomes a common enemy in the final dungeon where they appear in almost every room one after another. It’s a great escalation of challenge while giving the player the skills that they have to find for themselves without making the fights easier, as the Darknuts are tanky fights that you can’t so easily cheese like the toughest of enemies in Breath of the Wild.

Which reminds me. I haven’t actually talked about the dungeons in Breath of the Wild. Though honestly, the dungeons themselves don’t have a lot to talk about. It’s basically running around a giant mech and activating four panels before fighting the boss of it which can be easily cheesed with enough bomb arrows and rushdown attacks. As well as making use of the dungeon’s special environment controls to change one thing about the environment. While it’s likely they made the dungeons all follow the same rhythm to give players the option to explore each dungeon in a different order of their choice, it doesn’t really help these dungeons not feel like a bit of an afterthought compared to the real meat and potatoes of BotW. The Shrines. These suckers are all over Hyrule and each reward you with a Spirit Orb. Said Orb can be used to get either Heart Containers or Stamina Boosts when you give four of them to any Goddess Shrine in the world. These Shrines can have you solving a physics puzzle, going through an obstacle course, solving a memory puzzle, or just straight up fighting an enemy of specific difficulty. While these can be fun little challenges, the major reward you get from them can become extremely predictable and somewhat tiresome. Early game, I was finding shrines to help level up my health so I can better face the enemy, but about halfway through the game I grew tired of doing the shrines because they just weren’t worth it when I already had a lot of health and stamina. Yet if you want to get the classic iconic tunic that Link has always worn without having to search through amiibo scalpers for Legend of Zelda amiibos that give you Links tunic, you have to go through all 120 Shrines to get it. So while you will be jacked as all get out when you get all the shrines and you’ll have a classic tunic for when you fight Calamity Ganon, the final boss fight itself ends up being way easier than most other challenges you’ve faced up to that point, so the effort of leveling yourself up and getting all these big upgrades doesn’t feel like it’s being used against a foe that really deserves the kind of punishment you can dish out.

Despite all my negativities surrounding Breath of the Wild, I do think it’s a good game and an admirable product. The scale of the world is impressive, with so many moments when I just stopped moving and took in all the beautiful scenery. It’s a good game and a good Zelda game. I just feel that the difficulty balance, the lack of protagonist characterization, and very basic dungeon design keep it from being my favorite of the series. As for Twilight Princess, it will always be my personal favorite of the franchise. From its characters, to its dungeons, to its sword combat, to just the whole experience as a whole, it’s what I immediately think of when I think of Legend of Zelda. And if you feel the same way about Breath of the Wild, I think that’s great. I just wanted to share what personal issues I had with BotW now that it’s been three years since it came out.

[operationrainfall]

Title Simulacra 2 Developer Kaigan Games Publisher Another Indie Release Date January 30, 2020 Genre VN, Horror, Mystery Platform PC, Android, iOS Age Rating Teen Official Website

Simulacra 2 is the newest addition in the budding mystery horror franchise by Kaigan Games. After the success of Simulacra, the series continues as players are once again tasked to unravel the truth behind a murder mystery full of distrust, misdirection, and the paranormal.

In Simulacra 2, players take on the role of either a rookie detective or a tabloid writer tasked to investigate a prematurely closed case involving the demise of a social media influencer. This victim, named Maya Crane, is reported dead by heart attack, yet Detective Murilo, your contact within the police bureau, speculates far more is afoot than what is initially concluded. Going behind his superiors’ backs, he recruits the player to dig deeper into what he suspects is foul play and hands over the most critical piece of evidence, Maya’s cellphone. It’s through the cellphone that players search for digital clues, recover, decrypt, and analyze crucial evidence, interrogate Maya’s closest colleagues, and decipher the cryptic trail that leads the players’ decent into the paranormal.

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The story of Simulacra 2 is fairly amusing, one which possesses plenty of twists and miscues that will not only keep players guessing, but may lead them to several different endings. Depending on how much evidence is collected, how you interpret and use that evidence, and how you interact with the suspects, players may end up drawing conclusions prematurely or even make false accusations, leading to one of these false endings. I appreciate the similarities here to real investigations and research, as staying away from biases and not jumping to conclusions will allow you to uncover the truth and achieve the real ending. I also appreciate the overall tones the narrative manages to create, instilling perceptible feelings of mystery, urgency, and fright. These tones definitely helped in driving my desire to find out what happened to Maya and how the mystery is finally resolved.

Despite the intrigue of the overall story, the narrative and delivery aren’t perfect. For one, the game can severely drag and test one’s attention. This is mainly due to the writing quality, as I found it to be often bland and listless, only serving to move the plot along. The conversations, too, are mostly stiff with hardly any emotion. The writing for Detective Murilo is an especially egregious example, as his entire script is dry and predictable. His conversations boil down to clichés and uninspired hints at what to do or where to look next. I will say the conversations and arguments with the three suspects are the standouts, as some of the fear, doubt, and suspicion they have for each other is palpable and may lead you to a wrong conclusion should you be swayed. Unfortunately, these conversations can also go in the opposite direction, with over exaggeration and painfully predictable reactions. Overall, I wish the writing were stronger, with more balanced levels of emotion throughout rather than the bland, emotionless text with the occasional overreaction.

As for Simulacra 2’s characters, I found them to be mediocre at best. Rather than fleshed out personalities, they instead have obvious personality types. While this does play into the tonality of the questions you choose to ask and decisions to make regarding your interrogations and possible endings, that’s really the only contribution their character qualities make. And so, I found it difficult to emotionally invest in any of them because of their sheer lack of depth. Rex is supposed to instill feelings of anger and disgust, Mina, initial feelings of sympathy. Yet, the feeling I feel most strongly is indifference. Even after facts come forth and when perspectives of the players should shift regarding these characters, I remained disinterestedly impartial to them, their situations, and any of their possible outcomes. And their personalities remain painfully static, never growing or evolving, nor gaining additional qualities as the story progresses. They remain one-dimensional, which not only comes off as shallow and bland, but their overall effect feels both scripted and empty.

I also took issue regarding the main antagonist of the game, for I was expecting something more plausible. The direction the writers take with the antagonist, though surprising, did take me out the story a bit and I found myself unimpressed. Fortunately, this reveal come towards the end, yet, I am still underwhelmed, given the degree in which the tones of mystery and the aspects of traditional detective work had initially meshed with the horror elements of the plot. Perhaps not playing the first game affects my opinion, as they supposedly share a common antagonist and so perhaps I would have been more receptive to its return. Regardless, I found the fantasy aspect of the antagonist to clash with the realistic qualities of the characters and the narrative up to the point of the reveal.

One last note regarding the characters, I will say their acting isn’t as terrible as I had first feared. I felt the cast had managed to portray their characters beyond the level of budget horror films, so I give them credit. Regarding your decision making, they all convincingly conveyed the characters’ worst aspects, potentially skewing your perceptions of possible evidence and even leading you to form biases. The fact that all three characters have such striking flaws in relation to their character types makes it even easier to assume their guilt. However, this also thoroughly reminded me of my personal disdain for influencers, for just like in real life, these influencers are only capable of spouting complete nonsense. I’m sure many of us get enough of that in real life already. Yet I cannot deny the potential impact of how players play the game and mistakenly draw a wrong conclusion, so I appreciate the misdirection this can cause.

Some choices are inconsequential, others will set you on a definitive path…

Moving on to gameplay, the entirety of Simulacra 2 occurs through the victim’s cellphone and I found this to be rather clever. Searching through social apps, scouring through Maya’s past SMS and email messages, and recovering her deleted gallery and videos, all of these play into the investigative elements of the game and help to drive the story. Everything works exactly as you would expect it, meaning scrolling through it all, starting conversations, reacting to messages, all in similar fashion to handling a real device. As for its execution, I found much of it well implemented, such as finding hidden clues in available reports or conversation chains. I also liked that vital clues were spread across different formats as well, ranging from deleted pictures to catching people in lies during conversations. These clues you find, in turn, reveal or unlock access to more content to move the story along and this procedural method of revealing the narrative, and thus the mystery, is both solid and impressive.

Not only finding them, pairing clues together will reveal the complete story

However, the actual process of finding that one piece of vital information or moving the story forward involves the scouring of tons of fluff content. It’s a lot, to the point of overwhelming, and it’s also all written and designed to be as close to real social media posts, conversations, trolling, and the like. This means much of this fluff is as asinine and brainless as in real life, making me want to do what I normally do when I see it; stop and do something else. Yes, I realize the plot involves internet celebrities and influencers and the themes of the game rely heavily upon this aspect, as do the characters’ background and personalities. Yet, when we’re discussing a traditional game, visual novel, etc., I should want to pursue the story and unravel the mysteries. Simply put, this want of mine to continue playing was interrupted far too often. There’s so much I found to be unnecessary that it overwhelmed and felt distracting. I understood what I was getting myself into from the start and I do believe the creativity and the style were there, but execution in this regard leaves an obnoxious feeling, one that hurts the overall experience.

There is also a hint system that will guide you, but relying on it defeats the purpose of the game, so I suggest using it only when truly stuck or when your patience is long gone…

Fortunately, Simulacra 2 does have a few bright spots that manage to make up for its shortcomings and these can be found in its aesthetic quality. The visual and audio presentation of Simulacra 2 is fantastic, definitely the spotlight stealer and the element of the game that will leave the greatest impact. As the game is played through Maya’s cellphone, everything looks and feels like the real thing. In app interactivity, switching between apps, all of this looks and feels real. As I played this on PC, I can only imagine how much more depth could be gained by playing this on an actual mobile device because it’s that accurate. I also thought the use of videos and audio clips was a unique direction to take. It departs from the traditional usage of static pictures and drawn or rendered assets seen in most other visual novels. However, the use of videos and scripted sound bites also means enduring the acting quality. Still, the innovation here stands out.

Clues can be anywhere. For example, you’ll need to perform databank searches using those red transcript numbers…

Much of the horror is delivered via the visuals and the results are pleasantly frightening. Jump scares are the common method of adding that horror element, yet they aren’t completely random either. Rather, you are provided cues when they may occur, which I felt only makes the scare much more terrifying. The anticipation that comes from these cues, in the forms of static, glitching, or subtle changes in pictures or screens you’ve seen previously, all add to the build before the scare. The soundtrack and use of sound effects also add to the heart-pumping feel of it all, keeping you tense until the thrilling payoff. Speaking of the audio, the soundtrack fits well with the events on-screen. You won’t be humming the tunes outside of the game, but they amplify the tone of the events and atmosphere well. The purposeful use of silence at times also adds to the drama. The sound effects are equally impressive, driving both the feel of playing through a phone and adding to those shocking moments. Again, the aesthetics, directly tying to gameplay and the horror, are where Simulacra 2 shines brightest; I am thoroughly impressed.

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Simulacra 2 is an intriguing experience, with plenty of mystery and innovation. Navigating the game via a phone is clever and its departures from a traditional visual novel are apparent. The flaws in both its story and writing quality are noticeable, however, and add to it the less than stellar acting and you have conditions that can easily break immersion. After a first playthough of about five to seven hours, there will be few reasons, other than achieving the true ending, to revisit the game. The shock value will wear away, differences in bad ending paths are insignificant, and the changes between playing a junior detective or a journalist are minimal. Clever and unique, Simulacra 2 still has much room for improvement.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”2.5″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: Simulacra 2 Title Simulacra 2 Developer Kaigan Games

[recentanimenews]

A New Way to Experience the Classic Link's Awakening

  Zelda-mania seems to be at an all time high lately, with new games in the lands of Hyrule leaving fans with plenty of amazing choices, from the wandering majesty of Breath of the Wild to the arcade action of Hyrule Warriors. As if replicating it’s original oddball release, the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is here to confuse the matter a bit, dropping players into a graphically updated version of the 1993 classic. But how does the game itself hold up aside from the beautiful new coat of paint and colors? Link’s Awakening is a fairly “old” LoZ game, coming briefly after the release of A Link to the Past, and before many of the later Game Boy outings that would be far more experimental with their gameplay, and as a game that doesn’t take place in Hyrule, the oddball Link’s Awakening has always held something of a cult-classic spot in many older gamers hearts. 

For our review, I decided to approach the title from two angles: How is this game for returning players, and how is it for gamers who have never tried an older LoZ game, or frankly any LoZ game at all? Does Link’s Awakening stand on its own, or does it fade into memory for not being as revolutionary as some of its cousins? 

In Link’s Awakening, players take on the role of ubiquitous series hero Link, adventuring at sea sometime after the events of Link to the Past. After a nasty storm at sea, Link finds himself washed ashore of a small island called Koholint, saved by a girl named Marin and brought back to her house to recover. The charming town of Koholint holds the real secret to Link’s Awakening’s enduring charm: it isn’t set in Hyrule, and is instead set in a town populated by odd, interesting characters who all need Link’s help to accomplish something. For much the same reason Majora’s Mask earned its reputation as a weird and wonderful LoZ spin-off, Link’s Awakening is perhaps the first game in the series to have introduced a “side” adventure for Link, one that doesn’t involve Ganon and the Triforce, and instead takes familiar gameplay ideas and expectations and places them into unfamiliar settings or contexts.

  For new players, this can be something of a boon: You aren’t required to know any of the Zelda lore, or where the game falls in the grand timeline, or even who “Link” even is: you just need to know that you’re on a quest, and these people need your help. There is also a fair amount of unexpected freedom in how Link’s Awakening plays out compared to other LoZ games, as many of the quests are optional from the main quest, meaning players are welcome to do as much or as little as they choose while figuring out the mysteries of Koholint. 

    Let’s get something out of the way: This game is beautiful. The newly updated graphics and the unique style Nintendo aimed for in this game really hits the mark. The characters all burst to life in their new iterations, and the world pops with color and quirk. The almost toy like nature of Link and the world surrounding Koholint village really do feel vastly different from any other version of LoZ so far, and reminded us a bit of the way Wind Waker experimented with cell shaded graphics, helping to set the game apart visually. That said, I have to arrive at one of the biggest negatives out of the gate: the framerate of this game suffers very badly. It isn’t constant, but when it happens, it is distracting, and mars the otherwise beautiful world Nintedo’s created; the issue is also a bit baffling, because while the game looks great, it isn’t particularly challenging or technical, so why it has such constant framerate issues is something I can’t really understand.

I really do want to get this out of the way first because I have only a few other reservations about the game, but the framerate issues are far and away the biggest bummer in the entire package. For people interested in more technical discussions, the fine folks at Eurogamer did a great deep dive into what might be the root of the problem, but I'll leave the technical talk for experts and simply state that if you are expecting a smooth gameplay experience, you may be in for a bit of a surprise, and not a good one. The issues never really impeded us from actually completing the game or really getting in the way of enjoying the game, but they were constant and consistent enough that it was fairly impossible to ignore them as a hiccup or other random issue; these were consistent, repeatable issues that marred the visual beauty and flow of the game. 

Framerate issues aside, the gameplay in Link's Awakening is simple and clean. Being a far older game than newer LoZ games, there are a lot less moving parts, and what is here has been refined and updated from what the original Game Boy was capable of in order to make the newer experience feel far smoother and enjoyable in comparison. Otherwise, there aren’t really any new or exciting changes to the gameplay here, with the exception that you are far less burdened by a 2 button control scheme, allowing you to equip multiple items and not have to constantly swap things to do actions.

This change really does help, because while it may make the game seem “easier”, it really just makes the game far more streamlined and accessible; this is a big help with the consideration that Link’s Awakening has a lot of back and forth questing for townsfolk and searching for collectible items to hit 100% completion. Ironically, this may be the biggest draw to the game for most players: the dungeons in Link’s Awakening are certainly fine, but they are nowhere near as memorable as some of the dungeons in Link to the Past or other LoZ games, and the main gameplay hook is helping out the people of Koholint with their odd requests and storylines to help break up the dungeon diving. That is, with one new exception: Chamber Dungeons. 

Chamber Dungeons are the new addition to Link’s Awakening, and... well, they’re bad. Evidently an idea built around giving players the chance to create their own dungeons, these Chamber Dungeons end up feeling very dull and repetitive. One of the charms of LoZ dungeons is their theme and approach to puzzle solving; here, you’re generally asked or challenged to build a dungeon following some specific parameters, and then complete it. Sadly, these never end up feeling as good as the originals, and they also don’t offer anything new or interesting to discover when doing so.

While these are also totally optional, players looking to get 100% in the game will be stuck going through the Chamber Dungeons like I did, which really slowed down our overall completion of the game due to just not wanting to do it. Still, this is a fairly minor gripe, and thankfully they don’t end up taking too much space in the game, but overall it is another small flaw on an otherwise nearly flawless package. This is especially frustrating considering the charm of Koholint’s inhabitants: many of their quests are fun and interesting, but the Chamber Dungeons don’t really possess any of that.

So, the real question is: Who is this game for? Does it make for a good entry to the LoZ series for new players, or is it worth it for LoZ fans who perhaps missed the original release over 20 years ago? For new players, or perhaps gamers whose only exposure to LoZ so far has been Breath of the Wild, I feel that it’s a resounding “yes”. While the game has a few flaws, this is a fantastic, tight package of LoZ goodness that delivers a unique take on the series that also requires none of the prior knowledge or lore. In all honesty, one could argue that this is the perfect style of LoZ game: a self contained adventure where Link travels around a new world and encounters people who need his help, rather than part of a grand narrative. Link’s Awakening is simple and fun, and doesn’t ask too much of the player. You’ll face challenges and puzzles, but the game runs a tight ship that rewards hard work, and won’t leave newer gamers or inexperienced LoZ fans scratching their heads.

The graphics are also an amazing entryway into the series, with bright and inviting colors that are unlike many of the other offerings on the market. The quirky nature of the people of Koholint is also a bonus. Director Takashi Tezuka cites David Lynch’s immensley popular Twin Peaks as a bit of an inspiration for the game, and that enduring legacy has helped make Link’s Awakening retain its oddball character. As the holidays are approaching, if you’re thinking of getting that new gamer friend of yours something, or are looking for a way to spread the LoZ love, I think Link’s Awakening will make a fantastic choice, especially if you pair it with the adorable Link amiibo that accompanied the game. 

But what about returning LoZ fans, or even gamers who played the original back in the 90's? Is there enough here to really invest in a remake? Well… Yes, I think so. Look, the game isn’t perfect, but I only remember some bits and pieces of playing the original game on our Game Boy over 20 years ago. Playing through for this review was like reliving some parts of our earlier childhood as a player, and the weird world of Link’s Awakening burst back to life on the Switch.

A lot of LoZ games lately have focused on the grand, mythic narrative that Nintendo has heavily invested in following Wind Waker, but frankly my favorite LoZ games were the handheld ones like Link’s Awakening, Minish Cap, and Story of Seasons (Majora’s Mask also rates really high, but that doesn’t really count in that list!). Being able to play Link’s Awakening on the go on my Switch rekindled a lot of that joy, and brought out the magic of the game I experienced all those years ago. If you’re a big LoZ fan that somehow didn’t get to play Link’s Awakening, you really do owe it to yourself to play through one of the most odd versions of the Zelda franchise; I assure you, no other LoZ game lets you have a pet Chain Chomp or fight “Anti-Kirby”. And yes, that’s exactly what that sounds like. 

    Link’s Awakening feels like what a remake should be: a colorful and loving update to an original that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or change what made the original so successful in the first place. That said, this isn’t a perfect game, and between the framerate issues and the Chamber Dungeons, I’ll say that there are things this game certainly could have tried to avoid or remove to have really been perfect. In the end, I still feel very strongly about how charming, fun, and memorable Link’s Awakening really is; whether you’re a brand new gamer, new to LoZ, or a returning fan, there is a lot to love about this game and plenty to explore and discover. So put on your tunic, get your boots, and prepare to journey to the magical town of Koholint: I promise you won’t forget it!

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Graphical update and change is gorgeous and brings the game to life in a new way. 

+ Updated controls help the game flow far better than before. 

+ The “Twin Peaks” of Legend of Zelda retains its weird charms and stays one of the most unique games in the series, let alone in general. 

+/- Dungeons aren’t quite as inspired as other Legend of Zelda games. 

- Chamber Dungeons are an absolute drag, especially if going for 100%. 

- The framerate issues really do bring the game down as an experience overall.

  Are you a first time Legend of Zelda player, or know someone that you’d recommend this game to? Or are you a returning veteran? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments! 

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Nicole is a features writer and editor for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[heythatsarvind]

Puzzles are some of the most popular logic games for mobile devices. In case you didn’t know, the trendy game franchise Angry Birds is also a puzzle.

Touchscreens in modern smartphones and tablets open up incredible opportunities for mobile gaming, providing us with a truly immersive experience. Some five years ago, mobile games were quite rare, and whenever one was released, it became quite an event. Today, the mobile gaming industry is rapidly evolving, with game developers constantly coming up with new and exciting products.

Puzzles are easy to play on smartphones and tablets, which is why so many of us do that on a daily basis. Some of them, such as Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and Cut the Rope!, have become household names. They are really cool, but sooner or later they will have to give way to new games because the worst thing that can happen to the mobile gaming industry is stagnation.

So, let’s take a look at some of the best gaming products that are now available on Google Play.

BEST PUZZLE GAMES FOR ANDROID IN 2019 

River: Ambiance Puzzle

[appbox googleplay com.ivnkhr.river ]

River: Ambiance Puzzle is a puzzle game, which requires the player’s utmost concentration, as well as excellent visual and auditory memory. Though the game’s locations are quite minimalistic, it has truly some stunning graphics and animations. It also features great background music that can help me write my case study.

The concept behind may seem a bit weird: we play for a piece of ourselves after the death of our physical body. Using this small energy cluster, we should bring something significant to the other world, which isn’t really impressive outwardly. Our ultimate task is to help our companion get across a fancy-looking river, and for that, we will need to build a bridge.

The problem is that no one explains to us how to build the bridge. We need to collect puzzles, activate some sophisticated mechanisms, press unusually-looking buttons in the right order or find pair objects. The most challenging thing about the game is to understand what we should do and how to complete this or that task.

For instance, we should pick the same colour for the river and one of the nearby cliffs, following which we can get across it without building a bridge. To do that, we should mix three different colours, making them more saturated or less intense. Also, we should walk through a kind of a minefield by following signs that appear only near the main character. It only takes one awkward move to lose all your progress and start from scratch.

One of the control buttons looks like a four-position joystick, while the second one (which is not always available) is used for activating switches. Overall, the game is pretty good; its only drawback is that it has no trial version.

The Room: Old Sins

[appbox googleplay com.FireproofStudios.TheRoom4 ]

This well-known series of puzzles can provide players with hours of fun. The Room is very similar to the classic point-and-click quests, such as Myst and Syberia, and it features one of the best graphics on the market.

The latest game in the series is The Room: Old Sins. The storyline is briefly as follows: a brilliant engineer and his wife, who are both British aristocrats living in the late 19th century, go missing after a mysterious accident in the attic of their scary-looking house. There’s a dollhouse in the attic, and we should explore it with an enigmatic-looking magnifying glass. Once we have found all the secrets hidden there, we can uncover the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the engineer and his wife.

The game’s locations, which look like a children’s playground, remind one of the Chinese caskets that are locked in one place and unlocked in another. Nearly all the time, the players find themselves in tiny rooms, halls, and vestibules featuring hidden mechanical puzzles. Everything in the house is interconnected, and as soon as you move a little further, the entire location changes.

Although they look pretty simple, the puzzles in the game represent sophisticated “engineering” pieces, featuring holograms and projections. The player’s inventory consists of seemingly random things, but all of them can be used in different ways to solve the puzzles. After the player is stuck trying to figure out what to do next, the game gives them a vague hint. All in all, the game is one of the best puzzles released in 2019. It has extremely convenient and intuitive controls and is optimised to run on not very powerful smartphones.

Hocus 2.2.0

[appbox googleplay air.com.gamebrain.hocus]

Hocus is a surrealistic puzzle game based on the drawings by Maurits Cornelis Escher, a Dutch graphic artist known for his optical illusions. The goal of the game is quite simple — you need to navigate a bright red cube through an intricate maze as quickly as possible. By swiping their finger across the screen, the player can move the cube around randomly placed obstacles.

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They can also use a kind of a navigation panel with directional arrows at the top of the screen. The player’s task is made even more complicated due to the optical illusions the maze is rife with. Once the cube crosses the finishing line, the level is considered completed.

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This minimalistic and addictive puzzle game will surely put your spatial thinking to the test. Being a perspective-based game, Hocus is more complicated than it might seem at first glance. The game has over 100 different puzzles, and you can even create your own versions to challenge other players. Hocus also features stunning graphics and relaxing music.

It has no ads, timer or restrictions on the number of actions. So, it is worth remembering that unsolvable and impossible tasks do not exist.

3 Hardcore Puzzle Games For Android (2019)! Puzzles are some of the most popular logic games for mobile devices. In case you didn’t know, the trendy game franchise Angry Birds is also a puzzle.

[bruddahme]

Super Mario Party review: the most tactical Mario Party game yet

Nintendo really needed Super Mario Party to be good. While the Nintendo Switch console has been selling like wildfire for the past 18 months, many of the tentpole releases we were waiting for – Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2 – have come and gone, and there’s a lot of pressure to keep up the console’s early momentum.

Thankfully Super Mario Party is the game to do just that, and feels as much a refresh as it is a tightening of the series’ well-worn mechanics.

As a multiplayer party game, Super Mario Party won’t be a necessary purchase for a lot of players, but for couch-based co-op and casual minigame fare, this is exactly the game the Switch needed. So what exactly have Nintendo done differently, if anything?

If it ain't broke

There have been a lot of Mario Party games now. Super Mario Party is technically the 11th for a mainline console – and the first not to use a numbering system – though there have been a handful of DS entries along the way too.

Most games see similar criticism for reusing the same repetitive board game mechanics, and in a console generation that saw complete overhauls of traditional Zelda and Mario game design, that wouldn’t have been good enough.

This is still a Mario Party game though, and most of the action takes place on 3D boards, with a host of Mario characters rolling die, playing mini-games, and collecting stars to try and crown themselves the best of them all. Think Mario Kart, but you’re all playing some kind of in-house, home-brew family Monopoly.

There are a host of secrets on each board, like a melting ice cream cone or ticking Bob-ombs that shake things up if you land on the right spaces enough times – and unprompted visits from Mario baddies that add more risk to landing on random spaces. These alone are an incentive to revisit old boards or play out a full 20 turns instead of a mere 5 or 10, and as always it’s the combination of chance and strategy that makes Super Mario Party so enjoyable to play.

Mario Party 9 and 10 lost a lot of the series’ competitive streak in its main board mode, which packed all four players together in a single cart that was pulled around the map, rather than letting each player roam for themselves. But Super Mario Party smartly goes back to the old formula here, along with a host of new tactical elements that expand the possibilities for gameplay.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

  Anyone familiar with previous games will see a number of entirely new faces for the series, including Boo, Goomba, Koopa Troopa, Hammer Bro, Dry Bones, Shy Guy, Diddy Kong, Monty Mole, Pom Pom, and Bowser Jr – as well as the big man Bowser himself, previously only playable in Mario Party 10’s ‘Bowser Mode’ but now able to walk the boards like the rest of them.

What makes these more than cosmetic choices, though, is the die. Each character has a unique die with custom numbers, which they can choose to use instead of a simple 1-6 roll. This means you can try for higher numbers, but usually with the risk of hitting a 1 or 0, depending on who you’re playing. (Bowser has a handful of tempting 10s, but can also sap away your hard-earned coins while leaving you stuck on the spot.)

You can also collect ‘support’ characters along the way, which act a bit like Assist Trophies from Super Smash Bros – but instead of attacking other characters, they add their own die to your roll each turn, stacking up the numbers and often saving you from a low roll, or making you overshoot the nearby space you wanted.

The 2v2 Partner Party mode goes one step further, ditching the restrictive one-way board for an open map you can roam in any direction you please. It allows for far more strategy in your movements each turn, not least because you share turns with your teammate, and need to communicate to make sure you make the most of the stars, items, and surprises of each board. 

It’s not just a different mode, though – it’s a smarter one, and one that will keep bringing back adult players who have tired of the simple formula of the games’ main Party Modes.

The competitive play has really been focused, with enough feel-good charm to still make you feel like you’re all in it together. Players have the option of high-fiving each other at the end of each minigame for a reward of +3 coins, which makes even breezy minigames feel like triumphant team efforts.

The once-infamous cart from the last two games, however, lives on in spirit in the River Survival mode, which puts four players in a raft, plunging down rapids and playing minigames to extend how much time they have left to reach the end. Naturally this requires everyone to paddle somewhat cooperatively – in a smart use of the Joy-Con’s motion controls – and the various twist and turns to the finish line give it plenty of replay value.

Minigames for all

And we haven’t even touched on the mini-games. In usual Mario Party style, there’s a whole new 80 minigames created just for the Nintendo Switch system – with the promise of more unspecified content if you manage to access them all from the main game mode. 

Many will feel… familiar to fans of the franchise, as they use the same randomized selection and 1v3, 2v2, 4v4 formulas to try and out-mash, out-smart, and out-collect your opponents.

Few are truly difficult, but the short and combative nature of most of them keeps tension high, and the selection is smart enough to utilize the specific strengths of the Joy-Con controllers. The HD rumble makes for tense balloon competitions, while the motion controls allow you to reel in nets, operate wind machines, and high-five each other in intuitive but surprising ways.

This is the first Mario Party game to offer online play, in a dedicated ‘Online Mario-thon’ mode that connects you with players around the world. It does, however, only extend to the minigames, allowing you to play a best-of-five with strangers online and compete for the top spot on various leaderboards.

For a multiplayer game that doesn’t seem like much, especially since the Nintendo Switch Online paid service has just launched, and more could have been done here. But playing 20-turn board game with online matchmaking would also bring its own problems, which we don’t entirely blame Nintendo for avoiding: what’s the incentive to stay online with a stranger if it’s clear you’re losing halfway in?

Much has been made of the Toad’s Rec Room mode, which lets you pair up two Nintendo Switch screens for a number of compatible mini-games. Cue 2v2 tank combat that shoot cannons from one screen to another, or halved pieces of fruit that need to be reconnected. It’s fiercely fun and makes the most of the console’s capabilities, even if it requires you to have two $300 systems to hand.

Our verdict

Super Mario Party is exactly the party game the Nintendo Switch needed. While online features are sadly limited, there’s a host of different modes all offering a unique take on the Mario Party formula, and gamers of all ages and abilities should find something here for them – just as a Nintendo game should be.

The added strategic elements and wide range of gameplay modes make this, perhaps more than any other, a Mario Party game for everyone.

Super Mario Party: the 5 best minigames from Nintendo's Switch party game

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https://bruddah.me/super-mario-party-review-the-most-tactical-mario-party-game-yet/

[thesffcorner]

Dishonored Retrospective Part 1: World Building and Characters

If you know me at all (or if you came here from my main blog), you know that I’m a huge fan of the Dishonored franchise. For all intents and purposes, the original Dishonored is what got me into mainstream gaming; I played it for a Video Game Writing and Narrative class in my senior year of college, and I’ve loved and played each game since.

It’s an excellent series, and while there is some debate around this, in my opinion, every single expansion of the game has been an improvement on the original. So I wanted to do an overview and talk about how the series changed and improved, and the overall story that it tells. I will touch upon every aspect of these games, including story, characters, world-building, mechanics, and gameplay.

So, what better way to start than with a quick overview?

Story and Overview:

Dishonored is a 2012 first person stealth/action-adventure game developed by Arkane and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was followed by 2 pieces of DLC released the following year, the Knife of Dunwall and the Brigmore Witches, and then a sequel game, Dishonored 2 in 2016. The final piece of the franchise was Dishonored: Death of the Outsider that came out summer 2017 and for now concludes all the plot-lines and character arcs from the characters we have been following since the first game.

Dishonored is set in the fictional Empire of the Isles, a fantasy world loosely based on the UK. The setting is a mix of late 18 century politics and aesthetics, combined with early 20 century costuming and technology. The Isles are ruled by the Kaldwin family from the capital of Dunwall.

In the first game you play as Royal Protector Corvo Attano, Empress Jessamine Kaldwin’s closest ally and lover. When Jessamine is murdered by the Whalers, assassins lead by Daud and her daughter Princess Emily is kidnapped, Corvo is framed for the murder and set for execution.

The game proper starts 6 months after the assassination. Corvo is broken out of prison with the help of the Loyalists and the rest of the game follows his quest to save Emily, clear his name and thwart the plan of the people who orchestrated the whole thing from taking over Dunwall.

The story of the original Dishonored is, in my opinion both the weakest and the most ‘video game-y’ in the entire franchise. It’s not bad, but it’s a rather simplistic, straightforward revenge plot, the kind that you would find in the standard Liam Neeson/Jason Statham action films. Corvo gets framed for the murder of his family and spends the rest of the game trying to save his daughter and either kill or dispose of everyone who was involved in framing him. There are a few twists here and there, but the plot is otherwise indistinguishable from dime-a-dozen other action stories. Where the first game really shines is the world-building, gameplay and character writing.

World-building:

Like I said the world is very loosely based on the UK, and this much is apparent in the design of Dunwall. It’s an industrial port city, build on a traffic heavy river, with lots of grey, metal buildings that tower over the narrow, crime infected streets. It’s a city of factories, poverty, gangs, assassins, and disease. It’s a harsh world made even harsher by the backdrop of the Wheeper plague; the rich throw lavish parties while the poor are terrorized by supposed law enforcement as well as the gangs; corruption is rampant and we see this immediately with the scene where Corvo is tortured in the prison by his captors who, only a few minutes ago in game-time were his closest allies.

I absolutely love the setting. Dunwall is a gorgeous place that feels like a real city; it’s clear the developers spent a lot of time making sure the levels correspond to different parts of a city and fit together in a cohesive way. This is why most of my favourite levels are the ones that take place on the Dunwall streets.

Despite the abundance of grey and black industrial buildings, sewers, prisons and factories, the setting is still beautiful, and there are enough locations in the game that are bright and colourful to break up the monotony. You can enter random houses and apartments, and find letters and remnants of the people who inhabited or still inhabit Dunwall and even interact with random non-aggressive NPCs on the streets.

The Wheeper plague is another incredibly effective way of linking you to the world. The first time I actually saw a Wheeper was terrifying; they mindlessly charge at you, scream and puke bile and flies at you and look like the first stage of a zombie transformation. Even the noise they make when they are close by and not aggressive is eerie, this quiet sobbing and retching. They are the final product of the rat plague that has swept Dunwall and are a pitiful and yet still horrifying enemy.

Many sections of the city are blocked off or seized by the government because of the plague and you even explore the district where the plague started, the Flooded District. Like its inspiration, the bubonic plague, this one too is carried by rats which are also aggressive enemies that will attack you in swarms. The sectioned off areas form natural boundaries to the levels and I found this a clever solution to keeping the player confined to where the developers wanted you to be.

Additionally, there are tons of notes, posters, books, journals and letters to discover that give even more character to the world. My favorite are the various posters, general notices and advertisements plastered all over the city. I especially love the smaller details like the cancelled signs over concert announcements or the plague warnings. Likewise, you get to hear the thoughts of both important characters and random NPCs by either listening to their audio-graphs or pointing the heart and listening to their secrets.

Speaking of the heart, the other thing that makes this world fascinating is the presence of magic in conjunction with the technology. Dunwall, and by extension the Isles are powered by the use of whale oil; in fact we spend an entire level in the Knife of Dunwall in a whale oil refinery. The oil is used as fuel for electricity, which in turn powers trams, tallboys, streetlamps, machinery and various weapons like arc pylons, guns, electric bolts and mines.

However, people also use whale bones to craft and collect bonecharms, which are supposedly blessed by a chaotic neutral demigod called the Outsider who marks people and gives them superpowers and lives in a place outside of time and reality called the Void. And the best part? It’s all true.

One of the very first things you do after escaping Coldridge Prison is meeting the Outsider who marks you, giving you a variety of superpowers. This also facilitates the collection of runes and bonecharms that upgrade these abilities and award you more of the same.

Fascinatingly, not only does the official religion, the Abbey of the Everyman know about the Outsider, both the Sisters of the Abbey and the Overseers also consider him a heretic and a tempestuous trickster. They aren’t entirely wrong; the Outsider marks very few people and those he marks are crucial to history in some way, but that way can be highly destructive. We see time and time again throughout the game that the poor and downtrodden turn to the Outsider often as they build shrines to him, but it’s hard to tell (at least in Dishonored) how much he responds, if at all.

Speaking of the Outsider, let’s quickly go over the characters, which also happen to be one of the point for which I have the most complicated feelings.

Characters:

Our silent protagonist is Corvo Attano, and he’s an excellent character. Depending on how you play him, he’s either a vengeful violent man who is willing to avenge himself in very violent ways or a clever if somewhat petty man who takes the violence the world dishes at him and doesn’t let it destroy him. Even though I love the fact that he gets a voice in the sequel, I think a lot is delivered about his character from how he reacts to certain things, or rather how you, as a player think he should react.

Like any silent protagonist, Corvo is what you want him to be which is a good thing in terms of the first game, because then the experience of playing as him feels better. But in terms of the franchise overall, it gets complicated, especially when we get into the games’ ‘canon’.

One thing I don’t quite understand is his relationship with Emily. In the first game, it’s pretty clear that Emily doesn’t know Corvo is her father; yet in the sequel it’s common knowledge that he is?

Likewise if Jessamine is unmarried and the Empress, and there is no law that forbids her from marrying commoners, why aren’t they married? And if it’s a secret that Corvo is her lover/Emily’s father, than how come no one thought it was super weird that the Empress suddenly has a child without a husband? I feel like I missed something.

Other important characters (some of which we’ll touch on later) are: Princess Emily Kaldwin; the Royal Spymaster/Lord Regent Hiram Burrows; High Overseer Campbell; the Pendleton siblings Custis, Morgan and Treavor; the assassin Daud; Admiral Havelock; Overseer Teague Martin; Granny Rags; the Bottlestreet Gang Leader Slackjaw; the Boyle sisters; and inventors Anton Sokolov and Piero Joplin.

Let’s start with my number 1 complaint; the female characters. There are 8 named female characters with speaking roles. Those are: Jessamine Kaldwin, Emily Kaldwin, Calista Curnow, Granny Rags, Lady Boyle, Lydia, Cecilia and Madame Prudence.

Prudence and Lady Boyle are killable NPCs who have about 2-3 lines. Lady Boyle is especially egregious as she is an assassination target without having done anything wrong; the alternative to killing her is actually EVEN WORSE than just killing her (Dishonored does that a lot).

Cecilia and Lydia are likewise characters that have about 10 lines total and though Cecilia does serve a purpose, neither is very necessary or interesting.

Calista is a lot more relevant, but she doesn’t exactly have a lot of personality. There is also a scene in which you can spy on her taking a bath (?) which like…. Isn’t a thing that Corvo would do? At all? Especially not to his daughter’s governess?

Jessamine Kaldwin is killed immediately, and spends the rest of the game as a LITERAL spirit guide to Corvo, her soul trapped in the heart by the Outsider. We never really get to see what she was like as Empress, only that she was ‘good’. She’s a pretty bad trope of a character.

Emily is the precocious child character who honestly could be quite annoying. The fact that she constantly needs to be saved and protected doesn’t help, and some of her lines are outright terrible (and Chloe Grace Moritz’s voice acting is… not good. She’s not good at playing a precocious child).

The only female character that I legitimately loved is Granny Rags. She is an old witch who in her youth was so powerful and impressive that lords and royalty fought for her hand, but she rejected everyone because of the Outsider. In the DLC we find out that her name is Vera Morley and she is one of the marked ones.

She is voiced by Susan Sarandon and has pretty entertaining dialogue. Her side-quests are quite good and fucked up (poisoning the entire Bottlestreet Gang?) and the fact that she turns out to be a pretty dangerous antagonist if you reject her was a nice twist.

So to recap, out of the 8 characters, one is actually good, isn’t in need of rescuing, isn’t sexualized, and isn’t killed immediately. Nice one, Arkane!

To be fair, a lot of the male characters are killable or even supposed to be killed, some in rather gruesome ways. However, the fact that literary every single person who is a villain is a man, and the one female target is on the list purely out of coincidence is really frustrating in a game series that’s otherwise pretty progressive. There are also no female hostiles, but both are moot points now, since even the DLC improves on this. I still feel like it’s worth mentioning.

Part 2 will be a breakdown of the gameplay and level design, as well as a closer look at the first three levels. 

> part 2