#completionist in me said to go back for round 2

[cak31ssuperi04]

2nd batch of ship reqs

[nikrei]

January Comics Round Up

Decided to do this monthly for my own edification

Green Arrow! Read a few golden age that were in the 70 year history, then the brave and bold 85, then did 70s green lantern/green arrow (76-128), then read the backups in action comics (421-458) and worlds finest (244-286). I had already read the backups in detective comics a couple months ago so just went straight to the 1983 mini and then longbow hunters (which is 1988 and therefore my stopping point).

I really enjoyed the first half of the green lantern/ green arrow run. Road trip with unlikely companions my beloved. Also snowbirds don't fly was a wildly good story for its time. Love Ollie as the activist hero for the downtrodden. It's really amusing to me that in fandom the pervasive idea of him being rich like Bruce is everywhere, but he spent all of the 70s and 80s totally broke working class. Maybe he gets his cash back in the 90s? I dunno yet. I was honestly not really a fan of the dark and gritty turn that longbow hunters took, and honestly I'm super pissed about how dirty it did Dinah.

The 70s Jubilee! Issues were read in 2 year chunks so I could stay chronological without having to switch around too much.

Justice League of America (75-186) (1969-1980)

Started reading at 75 cause I wanted to do a Dinah read and that meant JLA (having just said last month that i was Definitely Not going to read Justice League, no sir, too many other comics to read) JLA does a good job as an ensemble comic, which can get pretty confusing and surface level? the more people you add. Coincidentally my least favorite issues were the yearly crossovers with Justice Society, and it got even worse when they added a third team in just for funsies. My surprise fave is Red Tornado can't get enough of that robot being like, I can never understand human love (is a more caring partner and parent than 90% of humans). Any way when I started this I realized that as Barry was a major character I should prolly coread it with the flash...

The Flash (105-305) (1959-1982)

So I'm not really a silver age fan (bronze age woo!), it's always been a bit of a slog for me, but I couldn't figure out a good starting issue in the 70s so I decided to let the completionist in me win and started from Barry's beginning. Love this guy very much! It is wierd the sort of difference of characterization for Barry between JLA and Flash? Like JLA often has Barry being a bit more conservative and stayed, especially in comparison to Ollie. Diana has beef with him when she comes back to the team and he gets accused of being chauvinistic more than once. None of that going on in Flash.

Kirby's Fourth World!

Forever People (1-11) (1971-1972)

New Gods (1-19)(1971-1972, 1977-1978) and the finale issues in Adventure Comics

Mister Miracle (1-25)(1971-1974, 1977-1978)

New Gods and Mister Miracle were So Much Better with Kirby at helm omg. I was very very charmed by the Forever People and I'm sad that it ended like it did, shunting them off to never? be seen again. Also, I never before knew what the anti-life equation was all about! It's been mentioned in other comics and other mediums but I always thought it was a kill all life sort of thing, but it being a blind obedience sort of thing is waaay better!

The Demon (1-12) (1972-1974)

More Kirby. Fun to meet OG Jason Blood and Klarion. It's set in Gotham and a lot of the time I was wondering 'where's Bruce in all this?' The funny answer is that if it has to do with magic, He Does Not See.

Supergirl (1-10) (1972-1974)

Cute! It was sort of fun to read a comic that was clearly aimed at girls for once, even if the 4 different authors (for only 10 issues!) are all men and all have different ideas of what is important to girls. The last issue was a very inexplicable crossover with Prez (they're not supposed to be set on the same earth???? i think???)

Prez (1973)

Gave it a try. Wild and wacky is a way to describe it.

Swamp Thing (1-24)(1972-1976)

Read this one in the trade volumes so it included all of his other appearances too. Loved it, love this guy, really love the sort of bleakness but there's always hope vibes too it.

*siighh* The Joker (1-10) (1975-1976)

2 things: ha ha hacienda, and the joker RV.

Man Bat (1977)

Only two issues and I liked Kirk's stories in Batman Family so I gave them a read. Not really worth it, didn't have what I liked about the fam stories (hero for hire/private detective who has control over himself)

Black Lightning (1-11) (1977-1978) plus the trade volume that collects all his other appearances up to the 90s (except outsiders)

I already read the Outsiders so this was more backstory to me but it was good! Jeff Pierce is great i love him! The JLA did him v. dirty and he was right not to join.

Firestorm (1-5) (1978)

Firestorm started showing up as the backup in Flash so I figured I'd go read the intro comic. Ronnie is the most high-school boy ever, and the fact that he's a jock getting bullied by a nerd gives me real big dog vs little dog energy. Also rip professor stein ur life is terrible.

Got through the 70s Jubilee in January!! But that reading list only had 13 entries! The 80s Bonanza has more than twice that many!

[ethtyn]

I GET TO INTRODUCE SOMEONE TO THE WONDERS OF ETHO CONTENT SO HERE'S A POST.

i'm going to preface this by saying i adore Etho. i love him with my whole heart and soul actually. but i have also been watching his content for Literally A Decade so i have probably forgotten some of his classics. if i did, PLEASE CHIME IN!

with that disclaimer out of the way, onward! to the New Ethowatcher Primer Post™!

i think Etho is arguably best known for his Minecraft singleplayer let's play, but at the time i'm writing this post, he's uploaded 571 episodes. that's intimidating! so in my opinion, a good primer for this series is his episode 550 world tour. it's 2 years old at this point, but catching up on 21 episodes afterwards is nothing compared to almost 600, and gives you a great reference point for everything that's been accomplished in the world so far - and if you like the world tour enough, you can go back and watch from the beginning!

he was also a member of the Mindcrack SMP. Mindcrack was to people then as Hermitcraft is today; everybody wanted to be a member. a good place to start with his Mindcrack series is season 4. that being said, if you only want to watch a single episode, try episode 10 king of the ladder (the origin of "Ladders" as a nickname for Etho) or season 3 the trial ("why's he got chocolate on his knees?") for wacky hijinks, season 3 final tour for the builds he did that season, or season 4 end of season 4 for the same reason.

he is currently a member of Hermitcraft; due to personal reasons he had to stop uploading in the middle of season 8 and has uploaded only sporadically during season 9. therefore most people usually recommend his hermitcraft season 7 as the best place to start, and for good reason. he builds extremely weird shit (The Monstrosity my beloved), experiments with doing noteblock covers of popular songs, plays ridiculous amounts of Decked Out (trust me. his runs are so fun to watch), participates in a resistance even though he has no idea what's going on (him being a Lorephobe™ means i had no idea Hermitcraft did Lore™ until season 9), makes a business purely to scam people...it's a classic for a reason. oooooo you watch to watch Etho's Hermitcraft S7 so badddddd

he also does modded series occasionally! his project ozone 2 series is a CLASSIC and i highly recommend watching, specifically for Taxes (you'll find out), but also because it is SO enjoyable watching a man be incredibly technical about a modpack even though you have no idea what he's saying most of the time. (i fully zone out during full episodes of this series sometimes. but still rewatch it every couple of years or so. it's chill.)

his original terrafirmacraft series is also one i remember fondly. this modpack is essentially Minecraft, But Hard Mode; more realistic physics and crafting make things much more difficult for the player and it's super interesting, in my opinion. he was also doing a series in an updated/forked version of the pack, called terrafirmapunk, but iirc his world for that series was corrupted and he was unable to restore it, so he had to discontinue it. RIP Chester ):

his current modded series is a modpack he collated himself. unfortunately due to the personal issues mentioned above he's only uploaded a few episodes here and there, but he seems to be really enjoying it and hopefully once things stabilize a little more we'll get more episodes!

he's also building a PVP map in Minecraft! just...slowly. introducing battle bane! we get an episode approximately every year or two or four. he recently built a simplified version on the Hermitcraft server for their recent charity stream and they played a round at the end!

of course, you're always welcome to just...watch his stuff from the beginning if you're a weirdo completionist like me (/derog /j). however, be warned that he is (affectionately) known as Your Favourite Minecraft YouTuber's Favourite Minecraft YouTuber for a reason, and has been on the platform for almost a decade and a half at this point. his early content is therefore much different than his current content and sometimes hard for new watchers to enjoy. i really feel like he's hit his stride in terms of talking to viewers in the last five years and it's much easier to jump in on his newer content, BUT that's just my opinion. ymmv!

i'll add episodes or clips to this post as i think of them or as they're mentioned, so again please don't be afraid to chime in with your opinions on things you think i should have added!

and above all else: ethogirls unite 😌

--

EDIT: HOW COULD I FORGET TEAM CANADA AND BDUBS. thank you @butterflycrafting for the reminder & the recommendations! further edits are going under the cut so as not to completely overtake your dashes with this post :')

Team Canada is comprised of Etho, PauseUnpause, & VintageBeef. they're all, as you might be able to guess, Canadian! they all played together on Mindcrack as well as doing series together. some faves:

pranking OCD Zisteau is an oldie but a goodie. Zisteau logs in while they're pranking him.

their sky factory 2.5 series is great. it's been awhile since i've personally watched it but their banter is always fantastic so i'm recommending it anyway.

watch them escape the Nether, but watch pause's video because it's unedited and you get the full experience that way.

i personally LOVED their capture the monument series back in the day. it's been long enough since i've watched them that i don't remember which one was my personal favourite, but here's the first episode of diversity 3 to see if it's up your alley anyway.

edit: MORE TEAM CANADA GOODNESS courtesy of @catmaidetho - [Etho voice] labyrinth of puzzles! it has, again, been a Hot Minute since i've watched this series but also i Know it's a solid rec so it goes on the list.

edit: @catmaidetho & @fartherlands suggest team canada r.a.d.! either i never watched this one or i watched it long enough ago that it has been erased from my memory, but i trust my mutuals. do the thing.

Bdubs (BdoubleO100) and Etho ALSO met on Mindcrack and now play on Hermitcraft together. i don't have any specific videos to share (feel free to suggest some!) but in my opinion Etho is the black cat friend to Bdubs' golden retriever friend. (that made more sense in my head, probably.) Etho is responsible for Bdubs' big eyes skin.

---

a nonnie wants me to tell y'all that Etho's hearthstone videos are worth a watch! there are five videos: just a random video, slow druid arena, consistent inconsistency, the arena dream, and beggku hunter. if you watch them, let me know - this is a series of videos i never did end up watching because hearthstone was a game that didn't interest me at the time.

funnily enough, anon suggesting non-minecraft videos reminded me that he'd done terraria is EZ with Zisteau, another Mindcracker. i remember them having a lot of fun in that series so definitely give it a try!

[thatyanderecritic]

Mystic Messenger

Title: Mystic Messenger

Media: Game. Maker: Cheritz

Yandere(s): Jumin Han, Yoosung Kim, Ray (Real name: Saeran Choi)

Yandere Scale (In order as shown above): 1/5, 3/5, 4/5

Criticism written by: Kai

Editor: Julie

The Review:

Hey there everyone! Kai here and I’m coming back with another yandere review. This time around, I’ll be reviewing the incredibly popular otome game, Mystic Messenger. It’s one of my favorite otome games out there and I’m highly opinionated about this game. Cheritz is known to include at least one yandere in their games; Mystic Messenger being no exception to that rule. For Mystic Messenger, they have a whopping three yanderes and I thankfully played all their routes on my free time for fun. Now let’s check out their yanderes, hm?

(I’m just going to assume that everyone knows the story but if you don’t, you can read the summary here)

Jumin Han:

I’ll be upfront for everyone here: Jumin is my least favorite route out of all the guys in the game. I found it to be boring, too overhyped by the fans, and Jumin’s personality to be rather lame. That being said, take some of my opinions with a grain of salt.

Now then, is Jumin a yandere? Eeeeeeh, I guess?

I describe Jumin as “baby’s first yandere”. He’s very lowkey about it and anything to suggest he is a yandere is so vague that it just went over my head. I found myself having to scrutinize everything he does and say with a goddamn microscope. Spoiler alert: if your readers have to try really hard to look for evidence that he’s a yandere, then he’s not a very good yandere. Instead, I found the other characters having to tell me that Jumin, is in fact, a yandere. Every single chatroom that have the other characters talk about Jumin in his route all go: “Oh!!! You better watch out!!! Jumin is super possessive and obsessive about you MC!!!” or “Oh man!!! Jumin gives me the creep vibes!!! There’s something unsettling about him!!!”  

I mean… I guess? Spoiler alert 2: If you have to have your side characters tell the MC that the male lead is a yandere (instead of just showing it), then he isn’t a good yandere. Like jesus Cheritz, what happened to you? You used to be pretty good in including yanderes in your games… Jumin is just… pathetic. It’s felt like they put up a bunch of neon signs around Jumin then forget to write him as a yandere. The only “yandere part” about Jumin was how he locked up the MC in his penthouse. But to be fair, the MC’s life was in danger and she willingly stays there. In fact, the whole “Locked up” part seemed rather half assed. Besides that, there wasn’t anything else about Jumin that makes him a yandere… well, besides the other characters telling me he is. Can you believe that Cheritz had the gall to compare Jumin to Jisoo from Dandelion (their other otome game)? That’s like comparing apples and oranges… just because they’re both fruits doesn’t make them the same thing.

Jumin’s route is so not worth to play if you’re hoping to “woo a yandere”. It’s honestly a waste of time and you’re better off googling Jumin’s bad end 2 CG if you want that yandere aesthetic. If you want to see some better yanderes, just check out the other two… Let’s talk about Yoosung.

Yoosung Kim:

It might come as a surprise by Yoosung was a far better and stronger yandere than Jumin. While the game was focusing so hard on portraying Jumin as a yandere, they never realize that they struck gold with Yoosung. Funny enough, I think the reason why Jumin was such a bad yandere was because cheritz concentrated on him so much that they fucked up and since they didn’t focus on Yoosung, that’s why he came out as a better yandere. But the only problem with Yoosung is that…

… He isn’t a yandere for you.

Yes, that’s right. Yoosung is a yandere but he is not a yandere for you. He is obsessed with his older cousin, Rika. Throughout his route, he won’t shut up about her. It’s “Rika this” and “Rika that”. Yoosung really tested my patients on how long I’ll stick to his route. Eventually though, Yoosung starts to the MC as his replacement for Rika. He sees Rika in the MC and start comparing the two… even thinking that they’re the same person. At some points, Yoosung really wants to turn MC into Rika. Yoosung likes you… but not THE you but the Rika version. Of course, for his good end he learns to differentiate between you two and learn how to love the MC as she is but it doesn’t change the fact that Yoosung was a yandere at certain points.

In the end, Yoosung is a yandere for his cousin. The only thing about him is A) he tries to end up with someone else by turning her into his cousin and B) he ends up loving someone else (the MC). Regardless on how you look at it, Yoosung broke our loyalty rule. I say go ahead and play his route if you want a yandere story and don’t mind being a cuck for 75% of his route. Yoosung got some pretty good yandere moments and bad endings.

Ray:

Oh my god. Ray was the best yandere I’ve seen throughout Cheritz’s games. He was damn near close to being the perfect yandere (well… my taste. But also he clicked off the ideal yandere check marks). Right off the bat, we see his clinginess to the MC, his mental instability, fear of losing the MC, and his jealousy to the other characters. He was such a sweetheart and to top it off he risked his life in saving the MC. Ray was *muah* the perfect recipe for an ideal yandere (my type). But unfortunately… Cheritz just had to ruin it.

Towards the middle Ray had a personality switch. Fearing that he wasn’t strong enough to protect the MC, Ray sort of… “killed” himself and created his alternative personality: edgy Saeran. I was absolutely heartbroken with Ray leaving for good and leaving behind that asshole. Immediately the new personality treated the MC sadistically. He starved her, spoke down to her, and was all round a piece of shit. BRING BACK MY BABY BOI CHERITZ, YOU FUCKING MONSTERS. COWARDS.

This was my last straw. I deleted Mystic Messengers right at that point and never opened it since. Ray was such a good yandere and they had to ruin it. Ray’s route is only good up to the point till his personality switch. After that it went down hill and he doesn’t even have any yandere bad endings. Fuck that.

Final thoughts:

Yoosung is the only route to play for completion if you want a yandere story. Ray was ideal but Cheritz ruined it and don’t even bother with Jumin’s route.

I have a love/hate relationship with Mystic Messenger. It was an interesting story and the concept was good in theory, but in the end the Cons out way the Pros. For one: the game is almost unplayable if you have a social life. The chatroom, phone calls, texts, and emails were a neat concept for interactive storytelling. But the issue lays in the fact you have to wait for these things to pop up. I don’t know about y’all but I have family, friends, a job, and school. Ain’t nobody got time to wait for that 2 PM phone call or that 1 AM chatroom. That’s fucking ridiculous. And don’t you tell me I can miss a couple of chatroom or phone calls. For one, it’s not like I’m missing one chatroom but multiple. I can have a pretty busy day and never have a chance to pick up my phone. Some of those chatrooms are pretty important if you want to get a good ending. There’s also the fact that I’m a completionist… I want to see ALL the content in the game. Not pick and choose what I have time for. And don’t bring up that it’s free or the hourglasses. I rather pay the game for the full price than do a microtransactions… and grinding for hourglasses is a bitch and you know it. I recalled I calculated how much it cause to complete all routes (The main cast. Not including V or Ray or the phone calls) by paying for all the missing chatroom or paying for the day… it was over $300 folks. $300 in microtransaction. Cheritz is fucking crazy. Thank god I fucking hacked this game.

There’s way more complaints about this game (like the emails. I’m tired of having three different walkthroughs up just to get through this god damn game) but I’m just talking about the main function for those interested in playing after read this review. Gameplay is really fucked and unfriendly for those with personal lives. Be ready to waste 7 days of your life to finish this game. All I’m say, Cheritz (even though I know they’re not reading), you guys should have two modes for Mystic Messenger: one where it’s like a standard otome game where the chatroom come one right after the other and you don’t get a penalty for missing chatrooms (the game actually pauses on where you stopped) for a flat rate price of what the entire game is worth… and then the free option where you play the game in the usual default state. That’s all I’m asking and it makes logical sense.

Anyways. That’s my gripe about the game and the yanderes. Play at your own discretion.

Overall Score: 7/10

(Side note: Honestly, I love the Mystic Messenger fandom but at the same time I wonder if we played the same game sometimes. The worst part is how some people won’t criticize Cheritz and their game. Like damn… some of y’all are more forgiving than Jesus Christ himself.)

[proheromidoriyashouto]

Quirkless Hero!Deku and Artist/Youtuber!Shouto AU expansion

Shouto was expelled from the Hero Course by Aizawa after the Sports Festival for his refusal to use all his might (neglecting half his quirk) when the chips are down. Shouto went to General Studies and after some serious introspection post-Hosu (he was dragged along by Ende*vore to do grunt work as punishment and happened to come across Tenya and an Idaten intern he didn't know facing off against Stain) began to find solace in art and writing classes and decided to take his life into his own hands.

Shouto started a gaming channel because Ochako- while introducing him to Super Smash Bros Ultimate- noted that he has a nice voice and he likes the story-telling capabilities of games, so why not? What does he have to lose? His striking appearance and slight fame will surely garner him a boost in viewership early on, and they do.

He initially has to run the channel from Tenya's home since Ende*vore would never allow it. He starts off playing multiplayer games because those are what his friends introduce him to so they can play together, but he inevitably shifts toward single-player games that devote quite a lot of time into compelling story campaigns and exploration. His first delves are into Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, the Fallout series, Portal 1 & 2, the Witcher series, and the Last of Us since these are the most prominent games at the time (remakes of games in 22XX tend to release in the same year and order the originals did to get the most playtime out of fans). He’s not good at it to start. He reads from a script and he’s stiff and uncomfortable in front of the camera. He thought he was desensitized to that given his time in the limelight thanks to his name but there’s something about talking to a small webcam that feels, well, silly, and... intense. Personal. It’s a serious detractor, and the comments he receives about it are almost enough to shut down the channel for good. His friends’ support gets him through though and he starts to develop a considerable following.

Before he realizes, he’s spending all his free time playing games with purpose, creating new videos on a nearly daily basis, brainstorming how to structure  theory and lore episodes, and worrying about how his uploads are perceived. He runs charity live streams, plays fan-picked hero games, scours every last hint of lore from side-quests, get those sweet sweet completionist Platinum trophies that only like 1% of players get for every game.

Ende*vore cuts him off from his money, and inheritance. Shouto tentatively starts support pages and is surprised by the number of people willing to shell out for him. He starts to really feel the burn-out as he struggles to create more video content for awards before Momo suggests making things. Real, physical things for awards that will give him a break for the grind, and that he can use to improve his art skills. He smacks himself when he realizes that he can also use art as a way of re-connecting with his mother.

Visits at the hospital become days spent drawing, painting, sculpting, and knitting. His mother shocks him in a display of lace-making and he feels a pang of grief when he learns that it was a tradition in her family that she hadn’t been able to pass down to him. She’d taught Fuyumi and Touya a bit but Ende*vore found out and put a stop to it, saying that his legacy was the only one they needed to concern themselves with. She was too afraid of the harm her husband would bring upon the children if she tried again with Natsuo and Shouto. After hearing that there’s nothing more Shouto wants to learn (lace-crafts are his awards for months, and then on occasion for years to come).

His channel, SpicyHeathenGaming, steadily grows over the years and once he graduates from U.A., he devotes himself entirely to running it. By the time he has the formal encounter with Deku, he has millions of subscribers and has become quite comfortable in the public persona he’d crafted (it’s easy to slip into given his natural penchant for straight-man-esque dry humor). He’s almost 25, successful in a precarious field, and... happy. Genuinely at peace. There are days when he misses the rush of a fight, the satisfaction of post-rescue, and on bad days, he thinks of all the people he never saved. He schedules an appointment with his therapist and moves on.

Deku is the one to note that the Day They Met wasn’t at the construction site as he thought, but during the battle of Stain vs Team Idaten Round 2 (and U.A. Students) as the media has labelled it. Shouto is shocked but not for long. The similarities to his then-Idaten costume are prevalent in Deku’s short white mask, midnight leg guards, and heavy black soles but the rest is substantially changed. He’s vaguely reminiscent of a teal/aqua All Might- especially with his cowl on- rather than the Ingenium line now.

He’d become infamous for becoming a hero “the old fashioned way“ through interning and shadowing directly with Pros for years, foregoing hero-high school altogether.

While none of the schools outright forbid quirkless students from applying, Deku had said in his debut press conference, despite passing Ketsubutsu, Shiketsu, and U.A.’s entrance exams, I was denied admittance. They all said something to the effect of ‘I had a “weak constitution”’, ‘my “supposed passion” had been deemed insufficient hot air,’ and ‘my “heroic spirit” wouldn’t be enough to match the rigor of a top-rated hero-course’s training.’ A good friend of mine, Tenya Iida, had been at the same U.A. entrance exam as myself and after learning about my struggles put in a word for me with his family. I didn’t ask for a handout, but when the legitimate options are not truly available to you, what choice even is there? I wasn’t going to turn down the one chance I had left. Team Idaten was good to me and I wouldn’t be the man I’ve become if not for them. In all honesty, Deku shrugged, an almost apologetic look on his face, almost. I was starting to fall into a pretty dark place. I might have become a villain.

Deku had faced ire from Pros, alumni and non-alumni from the schools alike for those remarks, and public opinion had been torn between disdain for slandering the institutions of hero education or support for him having become a hero despite all the odds against him- a true, old-school origin story. All Might had surprised many by showing Deku support, and many U.A.-borne Pros had followed in his example. Ketsubutsu and Shiketsu had not been nearly as kind, with few exceptions. Deku’s rivalries with Dynamic Blitz (one-sided feud in reality), Magnitude, Cloudburst, and Sideburn Tress were almost as well-known as All Might and Endeavor back when they were heroes.

Deku was a world-wide icon for the roughly 2 billion quirkless people in existence, only one of a hand-full of quirkless Pros throughout the world since the dawn of quirks, and the first ever in Japan’s history. He was leagues above Shouto. Shouldn’t have paid him any more mind than any other civilian he’d saved. If not for Shouto’s disastrous inability to handle situations like anything resembling a normal person. He’d seen a strong, handsome, trend-setting, status-quo defying, internationally known hero up close in person, who not only recognized him for his channel but his private art blog and shop, reaching toward his evidently panicking self and had activated his right side as though it was the neglected half, and frozen their hands together.

He’d made a fucking fool of himself... but still... wound up with a number in his pocket and a wink emoji. He never got such lascivious flirting sent his way. Curses, that wink emoji. Not with his scar and eye-straining coloration and lack of proper skin and hair care. No way. What if Deku winked at him in real life? In public? Scandalous. What was he going to do?

Fuyumi. Tenya, help me.

Um, sure?

With what?

...kill me.

-Shou-!

W-why would you-!!

Please, just, vaporize me right now, I’m staring at the moon just take me by surprise, I’m begging you. Actually call Aoyama I have money.

Little brother! What’s brought this on?

That’s not an explanation! If you need help-

I... I have a date.

(Shouto is verrrr out of practice with his powers and dating and is a complete disaster gay. Izuku’s kinda suave and you can thank Tensei’s Big Brother Influence for that. Izuku saved Eri and Kouta okay I promise I have an explanation. All Might was a dick and never found Izuku to apologize. Izuku’s kinda bitter about it but he’s living his best life so :///////. OFA? Never met her. Mirio would be OFA’s 9th in this AU after losing Permeation. Will expand into a proper fic and post to AO3 when its done- I already have too many AUs at once going on.

Population estimates put humans stabilizing at about 11 billion in the 2200s - BNHA was already in modern day when quirks came and its been 200 years since then as per canon- and 20% of the population is slightly more than 2 billion. 2 billion quirkless people.

Dynamic Blitz is that motherfucker. You know who Magnitude and Cloudburst are~. Three guess as to Sideburn Tress’ identity. He wasn’t outwardly hostile but something about him set off red-flags for me. Also strikes me as having a lot of school pride.)

[listoriented]

Burnout: Paradise

1. Burnout. Spinning wheels without moving. Antipodean slang. The smell of burned rubber.

The blank word document is another rounded bend. A few cars here and there loaded in. Driving these virtual streets is seeing ideas, tangents, discourse, thoughts spill off. In front is always nothingness. An inability to grasp on to anything coherent. Yes this is synecdoche, yes this is consumerism, a shiny shell of petromodernity – an actual critical theory term that I now take seriously - yes this is me, my life, my phd in miniature, the imperfect totalising open-world game, or yes this is a microcosm of the entirety of trying to play through the letter “B” of my steam library, stop-start, hopeful then despairing, takes longer than it should, yes this game is a magnum opus and I wish so hard to fill my lungs and release until my fingers are pinching some inflated balloon perfectly full of a graspable idea, or yes this game is fundamentally empty, a comment on a comment; at the bottom of all searches for purpose we find searches for purpose, etc. 

So I start and I start and I start again. I drive I drive I drive. Event after event ticks down, my license goes from learner to D to B to A and then I hit my goal, “Burnout license”, and still I don’t know what I’ll write. Something about driving, in general; driving as notionally relaxing, driving while thinking about other things. How do people write? Write things? My PhD is in pieces on the floor and in the computer and in my head. I drive around Paradise City and terrible emo from the mid-noughties plays, interspersed with long bouts of classical. Days pass, and in the game the day turns into night and back again, and I adjust the clock to make this happen slower, and the weather changes in Paradise City, a little – cycles of rain and cloud and sun - and here in Melbourne the weather changes too. It was the tail end of summer when I started, and we’ve been through the surprising highs and lows of autumn, now settling into winter, doing it all again. There are no roads leading in or out of Paradise City, and it’s a long drive back from the hills.

2.      Burnout. A series of arcade-style racers made for various platforms by Criterion Games [official site] between 2001 and 2011.

It’s a little uncanny, this pocket of 2008. It just looks real good to my rusty, unfussy eyes, like in visual terms it hasn’t aged in ways other games from that year age (though my friend James vehemently disagreed). It does the trick. It does lots of tricks. And it seems rare too, to say of a 2008 game that it’s a masterpiece, that it’s the best of its class, though of Paradise this is surely true, if all reports are to be believed with regards to all other open-world arcade driving games that have come since, including everything else made by Criterion.

Any doubts about its age are firmly put to bed by the soundtrack, though, which despite prominently featuring that Guns N’ Roses song from 1987 just screams mid-2000s at me, abundant “rock” guitars, masc whine and all, very of its time, salvaged by one timeless Avril Lavigne banger, a chunk of classical, and (to a certain extent) personal nostalgia for a time when this sort of soundtrack just seemed vaguely synonymous with “driving game”. There’s also the dated blemish of inane unmutable advice-slider DJ A(u)tomica, who at least has the good grace to (somehow) avoid repeating himself, even after seventeen hours of driving, at a clip of one quip every few minutes or so. There’s also the very 2008 nod to renewable energy via Paradise’s wind farm, harking back to that post- An Inconvenient Truth moment of progressive euphoria when we really all believed we could build towards a sustainable future that would also accommodate our oily desires, before another decade of resource-industry funded filibustering hadn’t proven this, again, impossible.

And yet Paradise stands up in ways that surpass the non-ironic soundtrack of fragile masculinity and the very 00’s DJ Atomica, despite or because of the people-less world, the flat and drab urban interior, the hardly even tokenistic ways of engaging with the city as function rather than form. I particularly like how B:P has not even the faintest hint of story, how even in terms of progression it purely becomes a game of exploration, winning events, checking boxes. It melds (excuse me for a second) form and function and manages not to get in the way of itself – the story is what the player does in the game, where the player goes. It’s kind of breathtaking, rare for any game before or since. (Hopefully it’s clear that I’m not advocating for the dissolution of narrative in games, only that the lack of narrative pretence here is very suited to this particular game, and very preferable to the kinds of irrelevant and bloated narratives that are thrown over e.g. other driving games).

Ah, 2008. It was just there! And yet so far. I played Burnout Paradise for a running total of seventeen hours over nearly three months. During this time, I also played forty-two hours of Tetris99. Everything in its place. Criterion recently announced they’ll shut down the Burnout Paradise’s online servers in August, though Paradise lives on in Remastered (2018) glory, Origin only. 

3. Burnout. The act of refuelling the boost capacity of an engine by running out of boost.

Despite the time I’ve spent with it, the fact that I managed to complete its main in-game objective, and the running thoughts on time and place and representation of cultural norms, I feel I’m struggling to say much of definition about Paradise that fits easily into the scrapbook nature of this blog. Perhaps in some ways it's too close to life; a series of arbitrary checklists through which feeling happens (nebulously) around. I "liked" it but do not feel moved to thought, and I'm aware that that is the point – it’s a game that allows you to drive, endlessly, if you want to, think and do whatever. It won’t get in the way (barring DJ Automica butting in every couple of minutes – he literally cannot be switched off).

I do not drive much these days. Last year when Lauren and I moved to Canberra, we drove nearly 4000 kilometres across the country. The landscapes wound by, at the time fleetingly, but they piled on and left deep rivulets in my head, and though it was just five days and nothing really happened – we leant on the accelerator, stopped every hour, listened to music, stayed in nothing-motels quite literally hundreds of kms from anywhere else and ate forgettable takeaway - it feels immense, now. Driving is funny like that - you are never quite in a place, separated from it by machine noise and windows and infrastructure, the one activity you can do to facilitate thinking about something else. Still, impressions, motion, the sense of having moved, of having journeyed. Here in Australia, the fossil fuel lobby has won its third straight election in a row. Hope is eroding into nothing.

Probably my favourite hour or two in Paradise City was spent mucking around in the online section with Roy and James, trying to check off a few of the game's multiplayer challenges. These involved such serious exercises as trying to do barrel a series of barrel rolls, or try and land on top of each other, or smash into each in mid-air, or drive on top of a parking lot to jump a ramp onto a shopping centre. It was very good, if a little eerie and dystopic, strewn with outdated real-and-paid-for advertising billboards, branded vehicles, quaint echoes of paused time and uncanny dilapidation.

The mill of the game I could never quite settle on - I “liked” it, I think, but it wasn’t without problems. I found the single-player events to be mindlessly enjoyable, ploughing other cars into crash barriers, or effortlessly holding down "boost" to accelerate down a straight and into a finish line, celebratory cutaway shot ensuing. Sometimes I crashed into too many grey girders that my eyes hadn't picked out and got frustrated, or sometimes I missed a critical turnoff and got frustrated. Sometimes they just felt like chores, and it was certainly sometimes annoying to not be able to restart events that I had botched, and it took me ten hours to learn you could opt out of races, stunt runs etc just by letting the car idle for a few seconds. And knowing this probably would have saved me a lot of time in the early game, because like I said it’s a long way back from the hills, where like three out of eight events end up at, and committing to staying in a race which after a couple of botched turns and unseen barriers you’re definitely not going to win, whose distant finish line is going to land you a long way from the nearest event (once you finally get there) can feel pretty dire, really, though there was also part of me that admired how Burnout refused to let you jump around the map, forced you to drive, take your time, see the city, see the sights.

I did appreciate the cracky coloured collectms of Paradise City, how they brought the city to life, sort of, or gave it the impression of being a well designed and thought-through playground, though I never got too completionist about them, the core exercise of the whole thing. Both John Walker of RPS and Chris Donlan of Eurogamer have written about Paradise’s fluoro crash gates, the impulse to reinstall the game every year and knock them all down from scratch. Along the way to getting my “Burnout license” I unlocked 36 of the 75 vehicles, jumped 35 of the 50 super jumps, broke 79 of 120 neon red billboards, and smashed through 353 of 400 aforementioned glowing yellow crash barriers. The game puts me at 55% completed. No steam achievements (woulda been nice, perhaps, given that Burnout Paradise is fundamentally a collectmup; nothing but metres and percentages). I’ve driven a little over 1000 miles, supposedly, which is certainly more than I’ve IRL driven over the past few months.

4.  Burnout. noun Physical and emotional exhaustion; breakdown caused by overwork. Commonly associated with ���crunch”, “the video game industry”.

But here there is also pure hesitation. Procrastination. The fear of moving on, even at the end of this little step of what has ballooned into an impossible project. I can see the next letter waiting there, a new chapter, a chance for renewal. The one disappearing behind us has drawn out so far, encompassed a few years and a fair bit of change, and now almost petered into nothing at the final gate. I want to hit the ground running but I'm not sure I'm ready, and in the meantime various other deadlines swirl around, make it difficult to see the clear path ahead that I crave. And so it is that the temptation has been there to keep driving the streets of Paradise, its anonymous suburbs and abstract goals, continue delaying the inevitable, or the nearly inevitable, or the not-inevitable-at-all of writing this post and moving on to the next chapter, because it turns out this is a project I once made a choice to begin, and could at one point choose to stop.

There are nagging questions, of course. Who blogs, anymore? Who reads blogs anymore? How does one find a blog they like and then continue to follow it for the span of its natural life? Does anyone use “bookmarks”? What’s an RSS feed? I'm not even sure, in a broader sense, that I know where to find the kinds of writing about games that I want to read at the moment, at least not reliably, outside of say the occasional check-through of Critical Distance or Unwinnable. I look at the slate of games coming out and find it hard to be excited by anything much, the hype and the saturation. It is bountiful until it is not. The guilt element of playing games – something inherited from childhood that I’ve never been entirely able to dissociate - has become more and more prominent. I've increasingly used games as a tool for procrastination and a coping mechanism, a distraction from various (work/study and other) anxieties. I've also been aware of myself doing this, and in turn the kinds of gaming experiences I've relied on have been more focused on short term, low-investment distraction (hence the sudden unyielding devotion to Tetris, which really was just filling the hole left by an earlier act of self-discipline AKA uninstalling Rocket League; more recently, as I’ve managed to put the Switch away for longer periods, I’ve turned back to another simple but deceptive time-filler in Mini Metro. Choose your poison, basically). For a while it seemed Burnout would not only fill this role but do it responsibly: it seemed great for dropping into in short bursts - win a race or two, unlock a new car maybe – without quite the same dangerously addictive pull for me as those other games. But then I heard the GnR song "Paradise City" one too many times (it's mandatory with startup), or got sick of the menu loading times, and it lost this specific part of its appeal.

And then there's the subjective nature of this particular Sisyphean project - the knowledge that here I am pushing a rock up a mountain of my own making, one that exists only for me, entirely built out of and defined by the games and bundles I chose and continue to choose to buy, the rules I chose to set. Life is short, this task is absurd, and at the moment it's not even a joke I feel particularly happy about sharing. Sometimes I get to play great games here, games I may never have gotten around to; at other times I am playing shit games for this blog, and in the process there are inevitably other things I'm not doing. One choice erases another. Increasingly it feels like an isolated pursuit - playing games in general, not just the writing and making of this here blog. It seems like I know fewer people who play games these days, between falling out of touch with friends, seeing lots of other old friends give up games in one way or another, and playing games less frequently with those who I still know. I’ve accidentally become something of a game hermit. For years I've loved the camaraderie and easy familiarity of social gaming experiences even when I haven't loved the games that conduct them - the feeling of being connected to people even in a transient, shallow, goal-oriented sense, but even these I'm not sure I believe in anymore, or I find myself less and less willing to invest in the "right" titles to facilitate it.

I’m into my thirties now, and maybe this is just a feeling of age, life, I dunno, priorities finally shifting to where people told me they should’ve years ago. One of my oldest friends is about to have a baby, though he more or less quit video games over a year ago now. I'm extremely happy for him. Two of my younger cousins just had children, several hours away by plane – my uncle, a new grandfather to two babies, makes posts on facebook claiming climate change is a socialist hoax, and I can’t help but think of the kind of world his grandchildren are going to inherit. I'm mulling over a missed deadline that's been a thorn in my brain now for months, the single-largest hitherto unsaid reason why this post has taken so long to dig its way to the surface. This month marks the five year anniversary of another cousin’s sudden/unexpected passing; he was five years older than me, and though I’ll never be able to make sense of it, I feel like I get that there’s something sort of vulnerable about this age, when the things you want don’t quite work out, or when you’re a bit aimless and stuck in your patterns and feel like things aren’t going to change. He was so kind and gentle, a beautiful soul and a terrible Zerg, and I miss him so much. And one year ago I drove from Canberra to Melbourne and slept on the floor of this house I now call home while I waited for a truck with rest of my stuff to arrive. I’m very aware of the calendar, of change and inertia, of patterns and decay, of newness sprouting underfoot, but I don’t know how games fit at the moment, or I’ve lost the thread of feeling like they’re actually important, or why, amongst all the noise.

Burnout: Paradise is at the start, in the middle, and right at the end of all these things. It's a great game, part of me feels, or wants to say I feel. Playful, irreverent, childishly violent, simultaneously full of stuff and empty of matter. I'm happy I've played it, happy I can say that I've played it, happy to understand on an experiential level most of what it offers, happy I'll be able to remember it later, nod in some hypothetical conversation where someone brings up Burnout: Paradise and say I know what they mean, yeah. I get it. When we were playing it online together briefly, a couple of months back now, Roy told me that Burnout Paradise is the only game he ever one hundred percented twice - once on 360, once on PC - and that it was almost three times, because the first time he was almost done with it, someone broke into his house and stole his Xbox and all his games, and that Paradise was the only game that he re-bought with the insurance money, so determined he was to tick every box the game left open to tick, even if it meant doing it all again.

But maybe – counterpoint - I don’t get it. I’m finding it harder and harder to make good sense of this kind of experience, or feel like this kind of thing is (in some arbitrary way) a net positive, or that it’s okay to keep glossing over the emulation of destruction that games of so many different kinds fundamentally rely on. Outside there is so much suffering, so much to be upset about, and I no longer feel like there is time enough to sink into mindless (rather than meaningful, perhaps?) distraction. Or I’m finding it harder to get beyond the thought that this is an extension of the distraction/avoidance behaviour that I realised might actually be a problem in my life.

“Burnout” is, you’ll know, here in the great mess of the year 2019, a buzz word, particularly in the games industry. Games company employees have perpetually been expected to work unsustainable hours out of some sort of devotion to the industry, creating a cycle of talent depletion and toxic work cultures. But as is often the case with games, it’s a tip-off of what happens elsewhere, across the board. The mass casualisation of careers across all industries, the gig economy, pressures caused by un- and under- employment, the dissipation of viable faith, social-media and political stresses: all of these are leading to burnout, everyone has burnout, we are inundated with burnout. There is something ripe about the words or the idea of Burnout: Paradise, the very conceptual juxtaposition that seems to be two sides of the same coin, that feels very reflective of this moment, what we are all experiencing versus what we were promised. But what does this have to do with Burnout: Paradise, the game in which you pretend drive fake person-less cars around a virtual city, have horrific, visceral crashes from which you immediately respawn and “beat” by achieving a long series of arbitrary victories, collecting all there is to collect? Something, nothing, I don’t know.

“Burnout” means a lot of things, and the meaning of “burnout” the game adopts isn’t the other ones I’d associate with cars – a burnt out engine, or the smell of burning rubber - but one that exists only for the series, so far as I can tell: getting to keep using your boost because you’ve been continually using your boost. Keep going at all cylinders or bust, basically – except not, because the consequences for interrupting the boost are slim even on the relative scale of things that can go right or wrong, in this game where there is never really all that much on the line for the player anyway.

Paradise. n. Heaven. A place to await judgement. An enclosed park. Eden.

In Paradise City the grass is trim; the girls (all humans actually) are non-existent, unless you happen to be riding a motorcycle, presumably because a motorcycle without a rider would look very weird.

In Paradise City the cars are peopleless and drive themselves, so maybe it is an early vision of the tech bro version of Paradise. Or maybe the cars are driven by people who can only exist on the outside of the world of Paradise City, looking in across the matrix. Or maybe in Paradise City the people are the cars. This is Cars, the movie, sans dialogue.

In Paradise City all the cars emulate brands and models that exist in "the real world" but are called by names that exist only in the Burnout franchise.

In Paradise City all the cars ostensibly run on petrol, which is infinite but unnecessary, because going through a petrol station merely refills the car's boost capacity, whatever that is, rather than imply that your car would stop running if you at some point failed to “fill up”. It's very important that you know, though, that the cars run on petrol, because otherwise it wouldn't be a realistic representation of cars. Even in Paradise.

In Paradise City cars exist and then don't exist.

In Paradise City a lot more cars suddenly exists if someone decides they want to flip their car over and see how much monetary damage they can cause.

In Paradise City cars crash and crumple in a hyper-realistic way, but it's okay because the cars have no drivers and anyway all cars are all miraculously fine again after a few moments.

In Paradise City the railway has been shut down to give cars more places to hang out. 

In Paradise City the whole city runs on wind energy, because it's important to care about the environment too, because you can have both, promises the radio, though seeing as there's nobody there in all of Paradise's buildings it's unclear, anyway, what such energy would actually be running.

onward to Caesar 3

[professorprophetess]

Companions in Video Games

Within games, especially RPGs, you will inevitably come across companion characters for your protagonist to interact with or have a starting party that you are with or will gather. These side characters all have different aspects to them and add stuff to the gameplay experience over all. How this has changed over time is interesting. Going back as far as the fourth generation of games on the SNES there is Secret of Mana that comes to mind. Next I’ll just jump ahead and across platforms to Kingdom Hearts for the PS2, and finally we round this out with two more modern titles: Diablo 3 and Persona 5. There are countless games I could have chosen, but for this these are the ones I’ll use.

With Secret of Mana the player character—Randy— starts off alone after getting kicked out of his village. Then after the first few quests he gains Primm—the female warrior— and Popoi—the sprite child— as companions. Along the way the party characters do have some plot relevance here and there but from then on, that’s who are in Randy’s party through the conclusion of the game (Secret of Mana). The companions are given their own motivations as they adventure with Randy helping him on his quest, and they tie in, but much of what is done is story mandated and the companions are there.

This is similar to how companions are handled with Kingdom Hearts. This time player character—Sora—not only starts off alone but ends up having to fight a major boss alone and then ends up on a new world before he is paired up with Mickey Mouses’s sidekicks: Donald Duck and Goofy. They do have interactions throughout the game, and there are guest party members that can be swapped out for one of the pair since the party is limited to three characters. However, a lot like Secret of Mana the interactions between Sora, Donald, and Goofy doesn’t have much impact on the game that the characters can really affect. They’re just there, as friends because the game says so (Kingdom Hearts).

Whenever we jump ahead to the modern games I’ve selected —one a Western RPG and one a JRPG—things are a little different with the JRPG than the Western One but not by too much. With Diablo 3 you still gain companions when the game dictates that you will, especially those that will accompany you into battle. Another departure between Diablo 3 and the prior games is (unless you’re playing online in a multiplayer mode) you are limited to only one companion character. Each of these characters have an initial quest that is played with them and afterwards they are free to be chosen. They even have other specific side quests related to them depending on what part of the game the player is in. Also given time are the three artisans that can be recruited to the hero’s cause. Covetous Shen, Miriam the Vechin, and Haedrig the Blacksmith. Not only are these three also quest activated (through the first play-through that is) but as artisans they can be leveled up and occasionally there will be side quests that can be undertaken to expand more about them. e.g. Haedrig’s apprentice disappeared with his hammer, if one explores one of the first maps enough, they’ll find his apprentice met a sticky end. Speaking with the companions can also reveal more about them and unlock new bits of dialogue if one had been a bit lax in doing so prior (Diablo 3). However, as interesting as all of this is, beyond the initial things, none of these are mandatory. The player is given a choice on whether or not they want to continue grinding through the side character dialogue that isn’t banter whenever they’re with whatever hero the player’s chosen to play (in my case, I’m always a female wizard). You can unlock an achievement for taking the time to talk to them, but beyond completionists seeking achievements, the game leaves it up to your choice. Whereas with the prior games mentioned the companions’ stories really don’t go beyond whatever the main plot demands but you also were sort of given an easy way to resolve most of the pertinent threads to these characters. Which leads to the most recent game Persona 5. Like Diablo 3, the party member companions are unlock able through story based missions from which they’re permanent members of the party afterwards. Certain other companions (or confidants as they are in Persona 5) are also unlocked by story events—e.g. Sae Nijima. However, beyond that, the player has to go out and make the choice to find all the other confidantes that they can unlock and level up certain abilities to even start on that confidant bond. For instance, the character of Haru Okumura is one of the last party members to join the party in the main story of the game. Yet, in order to even start her confidant bond the player character needs to have specific levels of Charm and Knowledge to even start with her. Now, the player doesn’t have bother with these but it will severely hamper their game later on as the stronger the bonds between the protagonist and the other characters he can have relationships is, the more abilities cheaters can unlock—especially those in the main party (Persona 5).

Persona 5 is not the first game to have this be an option by a long shot, but it’s become more common as of Persona 5’s release to have a system where the player has to recruit characters to be friends or even recruit party members in some cases of games within the prior generations, e.g. Star Ocean. However it has become more common and understandably more complex in how you go about interacting with companions and/or recruiting them. See BioWare’s two most popular RPG franchises for instance: Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I think this evolution in party member recruitment is partly due to technology growing to allow this and a way to make games more immersive as well as add some variability to game play. e.g. In Persona 5 my first play through I had the protagonist romance Ann but in my second play through I had him romance Haru. I also, in my first play through, missed out on a lot of the companions because I didn’t know to look for them and the five social stats—knowledge, charm, guts, proficiency, kindness— had areas that were lacking for those relationships. It gave me something to work on to open up new options for companions and later new side quests. Same could be said for Diablo 3’s companions. The difference between them is in Diablo 3, the companion quests were added by Blizzard to occur after merely talking to the companions as opposed to grinding out the relationship in different outings like in Persona 5. When looking back to the past and to the present, companion relationships are getting more sophisticated in RPG games because it is both a trend that players seem to like this, and it adds more depth to the games. “Do you think an RPG do without these relationship aspects and still be fun” one might ask me and the answer is: yes. Not all games have to do this, take the most recent Kingdom Hearts title for instance. It’s certainly an RPG but it does not do any of that and is still a very well received game (Persona 5, Diablo III, Kingdom Hearts III) . In short, as games change and evolve, so do many aspects of game play. The companion systems are just one of those.

Works Cited

Diablo III. Blizzard, Windows, 2012.

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Collection. Square Enix, PS4, 2017.

Kingdom Hearts III. Square Enix, PS4, 2019.

Persona 5. Atlus, PS4, 2016.

Secret of Mana. Square Enix, SNES Classic, 2017.

Works referenced

Dragon Age: Origins. BioWare, Windows, 2009.

Dragon Age II. BioWare, Windows, 2011.

Dragon Age: Inquisition. BioWare, Windows, 2014

Mass Effect. BioWare, Windows, 2007

Mass Effect 2. BioWare, Windows, 2010.

Mass Effect 3. BioWare, Windows, 2012.

Star Ocean: The Second Story. Square Enix, 2009.

[aurimeanswind]

Fearful Endeavors—Sunday Chats (1-29-17)

To Disclose Up Front

So. I’m afraid. It’s a thing I think goes without saying as a very empathetic United States citizen. I’m really, really afraid. 

It may seem crass, or tone-deaf, or ignorant, but I don’t genuinely have the energy to enter in the national dialogue against the seemingly facist regime that is beginning to plague my great nation. I have a lot going on in my life, and not a lot of time and resources to compromise in order to assist in this thing I also care greatly for. That may make me a bad person, or at the very least, a worse person than who I could or aspire to be.

I’m aware of that, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry most specifically to the people who are directly affected by this disgusting situation we find ourselves in.

It is not excuse, but as I’ve talked about multiple times before, I have a very overactive sense of self-empathy, and seeing this torment has begun having a very detrimental effect on my personal well-being and health. It is absolutely in no way and excuse, but it is very much the honest reason I find myself shying away from the dialogue and discourse that is plaguing many of my social media feeds, my friends’ conversations, and beyond. I can’t be a part of that, as a selfish, 20-something year old, who wants to make his dream come true, and wants to figure his life out.

I wanted to put this here, up front, as a full reveal of my position, as Sunday Chats is and always has been your peak into my psyche, my well-being, from worst to best, and what my week has been.

This has been my week. I will attempt to keep reading, to keep learning, to keep watching, and stay attentive. 

With this said... Onto the game-talk.

Twitter in the gaming space has blown up in a fun way recently from this little piece that’s been making the rounds:

I managed to get over 30 likes when I tweeted this out, and I didn’t want to bog-down my followers with all my replies to this, but I thought it was fun, so why not participate! I did the first 9 of these on Twitter, and here is a link to that thread to see those replies and those first 9:

THREAD

So for my editorial today, and I’ll try and keep this succinct, I am going to do my 10-30. STRAP IN!

30 Likes, 30 Games

#10

Best gameplay is tough. I may ultimately have to give it up Spelunky. But Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix is a close second. With Persona 4 being a close third.

But Spelunky is a game I continue to play and play, not for any particular reason, save for the fact that it plays so damn well.

#11

My current gaming system of choice is the PS4. The Dualshock 4 is maybe my favorite controller ever made, and the system is a comfortable, easy to use and navigate platform with a bunch of great deals and exclusives. Where the Super Nintendo or PS2 are probably my favorite platforms of all time, the PS4 is a comfy go-to right now.

#12

Journey is by no means hard, and is in no way off-putting. It’s beautiful, and simple, and it’s mechanics and gameplay are a great showcase of what video games can do. If I were to say a game of my all-time favorites that everyone could and should play, especially those who have no context for video games as an art form, and what they can accomplish, it’s unquestionably Journey.

#13

A game I’ve played more than five times? Haha, that is actually not a short list.

The big ones, though, would be The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. Played each of those at least six times each. A Link to the Past maybe 12 or so times, to completionist levels of finished. But the big one, because of how much time it is in my life, is Kingdom Hearts 2. I’ve “FULLY FINISHED” that game maybe five or so times, with a couple additional playthroughs on top of that. Love those games

#14

I have multiple desktops on my computer, and for the past quite-a-few months years the first three have been Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5. On my phone Rise Kujikawa also occupies my lock screen, as she has since I first finished P4G in 2013.

#15

Since I can’t play until I finish this

#16

Easily it’s The Last of Us.

#17

This one is actually really hard.

For all of his dumb BS, I do love Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts. He is a great antagonist.

In the same vein, Liquid Snake/Ocelot is right up there from Metal Gear.

But maybe ultimately it’s Duke, from Tales of Vesperia. He is a really great villain, and such a wonderful contrast to Yuri, the protagonist.

#18

Maybe not my #1 favorite but always an inspiration to me and one of my all time heroes: 

Samus Aran

#19

Never Not the Normandy

#20

JRPGs

All my anime boys (and girls!)

#21

Persona 4 Golden. Best story, about finding the truth and true friendship along the way.

#22

This one hurts. The biggest for me is easily Alundra 2

The first game was masterful, and it’s sequel had literally nothing to do with it and was a total cash grab on the cult following of the original.

Breaks my heart :(

#23

Plenty of things fit here. I mean, Uncharted 4 or The Last of Us or Witcher 3 could hit here on a technical level, but Journey, Kingdom Hearts, or Tales of Vesperia could also hit in the style department.

Pick your poison.

#24

Does Super Nintendo fall under classic? If so, then A Link to the Past.

If we’re trying to go older and older, than probably Mario Bros or Pac-Man.

Sooner than that, Super Mario Bros 3

#25

Haha, how about all of them. A game I plan on playing is all of them. A few at the top of my mind: Battlefield 1, because people won’t shut up about it. Nier, the original, because I’m really curious about it, and 999, because Nabeshin really loved it.

#26

Persona 4, Mass Effect 1-3, The Witcher 3, The Last of Us (the best of all 4).

#27

Two here:

One, the final battle with Xemnas in Kingdom Hearts 2.

But even bigger is the FIRST FIGHT ON TOP OF A BATTLESHIP FROM METAL GEAR SOLID 4 HOLY SHIT.

The literal definition of “epic” distilled down to a video game scene. Holy shit. The music from all the games. The style changes. My heart is racing just thinking about it.

#28

The Zelda team and Naughty Dog are close behind.

#29

Honestly probably something weird like Dead Space or P.T. I used to hate horror so much, but those two are some of my absolute favorites of the last handful of years. Dead Space is a bit older, sure, but I adore that game.

#30

No words need to be said. Not an original statement, but I stand by it.

Whats on Tap

Resident Evil 7

Hey why don’t you just watch me play this game!

Loving it so far and I talk about everything I’m loving in that video!

The Division

Once more you can look so i don’t have to tell you. Got dragged back into this weird nightmare by friends and I’m having a blast.

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage

Other than having maybe the best worst name ever, HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS

KINGDOM HEARTS 3

I BELIEVE AGAIN

It’s really good.

Tales of Zestiria

This is becoming a bummer of complex, weird emotions.

It really feels like a mostly-misstep for that series, and the open world parts of it are contrived and actively bad.

But I want to finish it. There are cool, interesting parts about it.

Questions

Weird. It’s very physically exhausting, because I have to walk a lot. And I have to drive a lot to get there. And I’m not used to that.

It’s really stressing me out.

I don’t have a lot more to say about it right now, but we’ll see how things develop.

Hi Roger.

Clearly you’re asking the wrong person.

Thank you for your follows.

Love you, brotha.

SO EXCITED.

But seriously, PAX East is my favorite show, as you know Harold. Can’t wait to go again, talk to folks, make some connections, and really work that show again. It’s the only show out of the year I get to work, and it’s a ton of fun.

Heh, well, about that.

I’ve never played Resident Evil 2! Or Resident Evil 3! Or Zero! Or Code Veronica!

I’ve only ever played 4, 5, and about half of 6. I have recently for the first time EVER been playing that Resident Evil 1 remake on PS4, which has been FASCINATING. Resident Evil 7 seems super great so far though!

Uh, to go? Hopefully? I mean, I am going under the assumption that I am approved for my press badge, which is the only way I can make it.

I don’t know who all is going, but I sure hope it’s a bunch of cuties like usual! Right now, myself, Tony, maybe Scott, Jarrett, and Logan Wilkinson are going for IrrationalPassions.com. More stuff on that soon. I know Kaylie is going because she told me so! I really hope Joey Noelle goes. Danny Juarez really wants to go. Trevor Starkey will be there!

Sure we can hang out Xyger. 

I personally don’t like pineapple on pizza. But I love pineapple! I’ve had it before and it’s not like I hate it or anything. Like what food you like! Im not a fan of mustard but a whole bunch of people really like that, so people can just like different things and enjoy them and that’s great because it makes us all different and that’s a good thing! 

Uhh... I don’t know?

Danny you need to pay all your debts off first. I’m worried about you. Like, on a near constant basis I am worried about Danny Juarez. For sure.

But yeah maybe we can do that sometime. I don’t know. You keep saying “when I come visit” to Vegas and I have no clue when something like that could happen, but we’ll see!

Okay, I think that’s all I have in me, emotionally, for today.

Shoutouts

Shoutouts to all these incredible people that give me hope:

via The New York Times

That’s all I’ve got. I’m gonna go play Kingdom Hearts now byeeeeeee~~!❤️

[operationrainfall]

Title Luminous Avenger iX Developer Inti Creates Publisher Inti Creates Release Date September 26th, 2019 Genre Action platformer Platform PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One Age Rating T for Teen – Blood, Fantasy Violence, Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Tobacco Official Website

I’ve been a fanboy on the Gunvolt bandwagon long before Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX. Not only did I play the first two games, but I also reviewed them both on the site. So in case there was any concern about my credibility talking about the series, let’s put that to rest. The initial question I had when I heard about Luminous Avenger iX was how far after the second game it took place. As I played, other significant questions came up, though there’s not much I can discuss for fear of spoilers. That said, I will do my best to touch upon those issues for other fans, as well as tackling the gameplay itself. While I’m still a fan of the Gunvolt series after Luminous Avenger iX, there’s also a few bumps in the road I need to address.

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As I stated above, it’s unclear how long after Gunvolt 2’s events that Luminous Avenger iX takes place, but things have definitely taken on new urgency. Now, Adepts are completely in power, and go so far as to hunt down and execute un-powered humans, referred to as Minos. Whereas I used to think of the Azure Striker Gunvolt series as a nod to Mega Man, now I can’t help but notice the similarity to the X-Men. In a way it’s a reverse of that comic series, a world where the super powered rule over the weak with cruelty. At the head of this dynamic is the Sumeragi Institute for the Promotion of Human Evolution, which is a group that should sound familiar to fans of the games. It’s not clear how this came to be, nor where Gunvolt himself is, but Copen’s not about to sit back and watch this atrocity continue. While his primary goal is to find the source of something called the Butterfly Effect, he also elects to protect a group of young street urchin Minos. Despite his often caustic and emotionless exterior, I found this was consistent with his personality. After all, he himself is technically a Mino, and his hatred has always been against Adepts. The key difference between him and your average Mino is his technical genius, which let him build Lola to copy and utilize Septima powers through mechanical means.

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Much like Inti did with previous series such as Mega Man Zero, each installment of the Gunvolt games has become slightly less hardcore and more welcoming to players of various experience levels. That is true in Luminous Avenger iX. An example of this is that the game has gotten rid of individual achievements. You still get graded after each level, so worry not if you’re a hardcore completionist. It’s just now you don’t have to worry about satisfying other arbitrary requests. Much like the last game, I found it somewhat easier to get a good score than in the original Gunvolt game, but not so easy I ever felt I wasn’t working for it. I got plenty of B’s, a few A’s and even one shining S+. The reason it’s still a challenge is that the gameplay is pretty similar to the most recent game, meaning that the bosses are still quite challenging.

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In case you need a refresher course, the game keeps the trend of tagging and then blasting foes. For Copen, you tag foes by literally dashing into them. You have a small window of invincibility when you connect, so you’re encouraged to be aggressive, but don’t be so aggressive you accidentally wander into enemy fire. When you tag a foe, it uses up a Bullit, of which you have 3. Once you’re out of Bullits, your Prevasion turns off, meaning you can take damage again. So combat is a tight balance of dashing into foes, hitting them with homing rounds, avoiding getting hit and rinsing and repeating. One nice new change is if you reload your Bullits in mid-air, you’ll charge down to the ground with a crash capable of breaking objects. Though you’ll have to be careful using it, since if you don’t land on solid ground, it’s game over.

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I’ve said previously how much I enjoy playing as Copen, and that’s still true. He’s fast, furious and frankly brutal. Coupled with Lola’s Septima EX weapons, he’s a veritable Swiss Army Knife of mayhem. Even then, playing him requires great reflexes and better strategy, especially against the bosses. One thing that’s changed from previous games is Copen can’t use credits to buy new active combat abilities. There is a Customize screen, where you can buy things like additional Bullits. You can also buy passive modifiers, such as Regenerator, which restores Copen’s health when he uses his SP Skill, or OD Guard Up, which halves damage when in Overdrive mode. If I sound a bit uncertain about these, it’s cause I didn’t purchase any of them during my playthrough. I like playing a game in as pure a form as possible, and for me that meant learning to master Copen without any extra helping hand. That said, if you’re the sort that likes to tinker, there’s a multitude of options for you to try out. If you’re feeling brave, you can also try out Lola’s new Darkness Trigger, which puts her in berserk mode, attacking with random EX skills until her meter depletes.

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While the combat is most definitely one of the biggest draws in Luminous Avenger iX, it would be meaningless without exhilarating boss fights. This game assuredly carries on that tradition, as it does the pattern of having 7 main Adept bosses you confront. While I normally don’t cover these in detail, I feel I should touch upon all seven Falcons real quick. First let’s talk about Rebellio. He’s on death row for crimes he committed, and Sumeragi decides to offer him a deal – kill Copen and live. His Septima is Energy Wool, which lets him create crimson constructs out of thin air, such as mace balls, gatling guns and more. As for his appearance, he looks like nothing so much as a very angry Ram. Then there’s Crimm, a psychopath who loves explosions and considers himself an artist. His Detonation Septima lets him rain pure destruction wherever he desires, gesturing with crustacean limbs while protected by a circular shield. Then there’s Stella. She may look like a floozy and talk like a sailor, but she’s actually the president of an electronics manufacturer. Her Septima is Gravity, which not only gives her the power to alter your movement, but to also manifest dangerous buzzsaws and energy beams. Of all the Adepts in this game, her transformation is the most mechanical, making her look like a living blade.

More Falcons on Page 2 ->

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If you think Stella’s a hard case, then you should see her android manservant, Dystnine. He’s the only robot capable of using Septima, other than Lola, and his is particularly strange. His transformation makes him look like a mix between a unicorn and a bullfighter, and his Vectored Cloth Septima allows for some very interesting tricks, such as blocking attacks and tangling you up. Beyond just being a skilled fighter, he’s also completely loyal to Stella, to almost a romantic degree. Or take one of my personal favorites, Isola, who is essentially an evil Idol. Think Hatsune Miku but pink and insane, and you’re on the right track. Her Septima is Companion, and while you might not think she’s that dangerous, you’d better watch out before Isola shatters you with bright pink lights and holograms. If you feel like a tough guy, you can try on Bakto for size. He’s essentially a Yakuza boss, and his Spiral Septima turns him into a fierce, blue lion man. Lastly, there’s Blade. Blade is incredibly powerful, and doubly so when outraged and in berserk mode. Unlike the other Falcons, Blade seems to not be entirely in control of their actions. But don’t let that lower your defenses, since you’ll need all your skills to beat this recurring boss character.

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Frankly, I really enjoyed all the Falcons in the game, and felt they added a lot of personality and depth to the story. Especially since they reveal how diabolical Sumeragi has become. Most of the Falcons are only working for Sumeragi cause they’re forced to. Hell, Rebellio is on death row unless he can finish the job. Despite being in power, this shows how out of control and desperate they have become, a fact which becomes painfully apparent very late in the game. I can’t say why, but once you find out the truth behind the Butterfly Effect, you’ll hate Sumeragi with a burning passion. And by the very end of the game, you’ll question a good many things about the Gunvolt universe.

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As much as I loved the Falcons, I’m not sure I can say the same for all the Minos. They’re all adorable, especially self proclaimed pixie leader, Kohaku, but they just don’t feel that relevant in the game. Sure, Kohaku and her history serves a purpose, but the rest of them kind of feel like kawaii Charles Dickens knockoffs. Maybe if they got a bit more development I wouldn’t feel that way, but frankly I feel this is a pattern in the Gunvolt series. We get introduced to a new band of side characters each time, and very few of them actually matter. Which is a shame, since there’s so much I otherwise enjoy about the games.

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Visually, I can easily say Luminous Avenger iX is the most beautiful game in the series. Everything is bold, colorful and full of detail. Though I would never call the original 3DS graphics ugly, everything is so much better on Switch. Even the menus are attractive, and I really like the portrait art as well. As for the sound design, it’s also fantastic. The music is dynamic and draws you in, and the sound effects pop with personality. One of my favorite changes here is that now dialogue happens at set points in the level, and NEVER during combat. This is such a great improvement, and shows Inti Creates listens to fan feedback. It doesn’t hurt that all the voice actors in this game are tremendously talented. If we were grading this game just on the artistry, it would easily get a perfect score.

I know typos happen, but they still take me out of the experience…

Sadly, there are a few areas I feel Luminous Avenger iX falls short. Firstly, it really bothers me that I’m not sure if this game has different endings, as is tradition. While I can’t go into reasons why this bothers me, suffice it to say that some of the late game revelations really have me scratching my head. I would almost go so far as to suspect this game takes place in an alternate universe, it’s that big. But without knowing that for sure, it’s hard to ascertain how much I enjoyed the story at large. Another area that my lack of clarity irritated me was with the Bonus Medals. There’s 4 in each stage, and I’d love to tell you what they do, but I have no idea. While it’s true I did apparently unlock some Special Missions at some point in the game, I’m pretty sure that had nothing to do with the Medals. A more substantial gripe I have is with the translation. I usually don’t point out this sort of thing in the games I’m fond of, but it’s unavoidable here. Not only do some characters have very awkward grammatical flubs, there’s also some weird Westernization that occurs. I mentioned Bakto early, and how he’s essentially a Yakuza boss. I said “essentially” since in the game, he’s called a Mafia boss. Problem is, everything about him screams Yakuza, from his name to his demeanor. This wouldn’t bother me, except for the fact Inti Creates usually waves their Japan flag pretty high and proud. It just struck me as awkward to change that sort of thing, especially since fans of the series can tell what’s up. Lastly, a recurring issue I have is with the leveling system. It still feels too passive and unnecessary to me. It’d be one thing if leveling up did more than increase your base health, such as opening up modifiers you can equip or something. As it is, I just don’t feel that’s necessary at all for a game this fast paced and frenetic.

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I did truly enjoy Luminous Avenger iX, but I can’t help but feel it wasn’t consistently awesome in every regard. The plot left more questions than it answered, and while the combat was definitely a lot of fun, I wanted more of it. Perhaps that’s because the last game had two protagonists instead of just one, but regardless there should have been something more to keep me playing. I managed to beat the entire game in a little over 3 hours, though I spent another 2 and change to try and find a secret ending. While I didn’t succeed in unlocking any new endings, there is still a bit of replay value. Those who like to tinker can unlock a lot of customization options, and truly hardcore fans can try and get an S+ for each stage. There’s also the aforementioned Special Missions, which are basically remixed forms of stages with harder boss fights. For $14.99, you still get an amazing game with Luminous Avenger iX. I just hope that the next adventure does more to explain the setting of this title, as well as to expand on the areas the series already excels.

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[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX Title Luminous Avenger iX

[operationrainfall]

Title Neo Atlas 1469 Developer Studio Artdink Publisher NISA Release Date April 9th, 2019 (Switch) Genre Simulation Platform(s) Switch, PC Age Rating E10+ for Everyone 10+ Official Website

Neo Atlas 1469 is a game about mapping the world’s uncharted oceans and making some sweet trade money along the way. Is the Earth round or flat? Are there really waterfalls at the end of it? Do other landmasses exist outside of Europe and northern Africa? Only you can decide. Generally speaking, it takes two factors to influence my decision to purchase a new game: music and story. This time around, I found myself drawn to a game based on the art design alone. Neo Atlas 1469’s artwork is interesting to say the least. A quick search through NISA’s recent tweets yielded an image similar to the one seen below. Going off of that alone, I knew that this was going to be a weird and wild ride. What I didn’t expect was to walk away feeling both impressed and wanting more.

The Neo Atlas series actually extends its roots all the way back to 1998 with the release of The Atlas on the NEC PC-9801. These games all share similar gameplay concepts, namely the ability to chart the entire world map (outside of Europe and northern Africa) and the ability to approve or disapprove of the results. Other shared ideas include trading various goods between cities and nations, developing new goods through these trades, discovering artifacts and oddities, and battling pirates and monsters. All of this is done with simultaneously expanding, upgrading, and managing your various fleets. While I can’t speak for the execution of these features in previous series entrants, I am happy to report that they all marry quite well in this newest one.

One of the largest draws for many players will be the cartography aspect of the gameplay. As previously alluded to, your main goal in Neo Atlas 1469 is to chart the entire world map. At the onset of the game, you begin as the manager of a trading company. You’ve been commissioned by the king of Portugal and your trading advisor Miguel to explore and expand the rather lacking map of the world. While Europe and the northern tip of Africa are already defined as they are on the real world map, the rest of the world is covered in a thick blanket of fog. You can remove this fog and add segments to the map by sending your company’s admirals on exploration voyages through it. When they return to their home ports, new pieces of the map will be revealed to you. This is where the real work begins.

The entirety of the uncharted map is procedurally generated. This means that no two voyages and no two playthroughs will be the same. While your initially defined European region is historically accurate, the rest of your world doesn’t have to be. Additionally, if you find that you are unhappy with the results of a particular voyage, you have the ability to disapprove the generated map segment. If you send one of your admirals back into that same area again, they will return with different results. On some voyages, your results may look similar to the real world and on others you may end up with a series of islands where Australia is supposed to be. As both a completionist and someone who enjoys diagramming, this felt like a dream come true. I didn’t disapprove of as many voyages as I probably should’ve, so my map ended up looking largely the same as it does in real life. I will say though that southern Africa and South America looked rather strange for me. Perhaps during your playthrough South America won’t exist at all.

Once your map begins to take shape, it’s time to explore those newly discovered areas. As your uncover more pieces of the map, you have the ability to zoom in and out with a great deal of precision. Zooming in all the way makes it hard to keep track of where you are on the map, but will sometimes reveal secrets treasures, new locations, and new bits of information. Overall, I appreciated this concept. Having said that, it did make locating new trading locations a bit of a pain. Keep in mind that depending on how close you zoom into segments of the map, some objects and locations may or may not be visible.

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Mapmaking certainly seems to be a staple of this series, but that means nothing if all you’re doing is repeatedly generating new map segments. This is where the baton gets passed to the trading portion of gameplay. With the exception of the main trade center in Genoa, Italy, each location that you discover will specialize in just one type of good. Lisbon, Portugal for example specializes in grapes. London on the other hand specializes in producing oak barrels. If you establish a trade route between these two locations, a new product will be produced as well (in this case, wine). Since this is merely a byproduct of the first trade route, you can establish a new trade route using the wine as a separate good. While both of those locations are set to always produce those products, over 90% of the other locations are not. If you’re lucky, you might find yourself with a myriad of different combination options all clustered together in one little area. The more that you experiment and trade, the more profitable that your company will be.

More Maps to Chart on Page 2 ->

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Profit is indeed an item of great concern in Neo Atlas 1469. Employing admirals, upgrading/repairing their ships, and establishing new trade routes all costs money. If your expenses ever exceed your revenues, your company will go bankrupt and the game will be over. Therefore, it’s important to monitor the condition of your ships, make sure that you use the correct types for the correct types of voyages, and keep track of how much profit is being handed over to your admirals. Depending on who you choose to send out with a fleet at any given time, some admirals will cost you more than others. Some of the earlier admirals that join your company will have fairly low salaries. The salary of each admiral is actually based on a percentage of your total profits. In the case of the earlier admirals who charge 4% a piece, their salaries are among the lowest. These salaries will continue to climb though as you rake in more profits. If you want a quick piece of advice to help alleviate any money troubles, I’d suggest sticking with two specific admirals through the majority of the game. Those characters would be Maria Almeida and Francisco Peres. You may need to involve more combat-oriented admirals at points, but Almeida’s abnormally high charisma and Peres’ knack for observing across long distances will help you chart the world map much faster.

Several admirals setting out on exploration voyages

Those last few sentences really segue me into another neat aspect of this game: the character stats for the admirals. Different admirals will be good at doing different things and can use those skills to help you in different situations. Admiral Almeida should really be your go to for visiting distant locations where the locals distrust outsiders. Other admirals will be barred entrance into such locations if they lack decent charisma. Admiral Baldi on the other hand is a superior combat expert and is great in situations where pirates or monsters need to be dealt with. As you send different admirals on different voyages, their skills will increase depending on what actions they took and how far that they traveled. By the end of my game, I was able to transform admirals Peres and Almeida into well-rounded exploration/combat experts (with some additional help from stat-boosting items). Despite each character having his or her own strengths and weaknesses, those can be overcome with enough time and gained experience.

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One of the final pieces of gameplay comes in the form of story missions or “episodes”. The game has some loose overarching stories related to completing the world map and discovering Zipangu, the “land of gold”, but these are really just small pieces of the overall story. Peres for example has a goal of proving that the Earth is round despite the prevailing idea at the game’s onset that it is flat. Admiral Gomez on the other hand is bent on searching for his missing friend, Admiral Solis. Every admiral has his or her own big objectives, but there are also a number of random, seemingly unrelated ones. These pop up from time to time as different episodes are completed and new areas are discovered. Most of the events in this game require the use of one particular admiral, but the game won’t always tell you which one. Sending different admirals to investigate will often provide different results. No matter how you handle them though, these little side-segments offer a nice change of pace and are very enjoyable to watch unfold.

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So with all of those positives, I did have one minor concern towards the end of may time with Neo Atlas 1469. Namely, the gameplay started to feel a bit repetitive at that point. The episodes and different treasures spread throughout the world continued to entertain me right up to the end, but the world exploration piece started to drag on a bit. This issue really only existed once I had mapped the basic structure of each major continent. At that point, it was just a matter of repeatedly sending out each admiral to explore any residual dots of fog spread out across the map. While this wasn’t a huge deal for me, I think that it’s an important note for players who may be looking for constant engagement.

In terms of sound design, I haven’t much to say. On the whole, the music was nothing to write home about. I can’t say that I walked away with any strong feelings towards any of the tracks, but I will say that they all complimented the gameplay quite well. Each major landmass that you uncover (including some that don’t exist on the real world map) unlocks at least one additional background track for you to listen to. These tracks loop constantly in the background as you traverse the overworld and I honestly never found them repetitive. You can change currently playing tracks at any time via the menu screen, but I was content to switch between them pretty sparingly. This is because the other gameplay segments include music of their own. For example, each admiral has a different track specific to them that plays as they recount the results of their exploration voyages. Any investigative voyages that are taken also have their own music. I don’t believe that Neo Atlas‘ soundtrack would make for a good CD release, but it certainly works well here.

The last topic of importance here is the one that made me pick this title up in the first place. Let’s discuss this game’s rather unique art style for a moment. Right off the bat, the assortment of different styles here is incredibly eclectic. With the exception of Miguel, the character portraits are all really detailed and have an almost hand-drawn look. These contrast with Miguel’s portrait which is notably more cartoon-like and exaggerated. Both of these styles contrast further against the style of the world map and the game’s HUD. The map itself is nothing to write home about, but it looks nice and is meant to somewhat resemble an atlas of the era. The HUD though is a bit strange. I’m sure that this too was meant to take inspiration from the illustrations often found on old atlas’ of the time period, but it can seem a bit jarring at first. There are multiple little cupid babies adorning your screen at any given moment of time. Perhaps the most unsettling part of this is the fact that they are animated to move ever so slightly and have a really uncanny, semi-realistic look to them. After my brief reservations with these though, I came to find them both charming and funny. It’s worth noting that this Neo Atlas 1469 is actually based on Neo Atlas II, but it does appear that this is the first time that these graphics are being used.

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If one were to judge Neo Atlas 1469 on its title and cover art alone, it might be tempting to categorize it as just a generic eShop title. That couldn’t be further from the truth, though. In my roughly 27.5 hours playing though it, I found it to be a very enjoyable and entrancing game. The core gameplay was admittedly a bit repetitive at times and lacked much difficulty, but I found myself on multiple occasions thinking “just five more minutes” only to find myself saying the same thing five minutes later. With its procedurally generated world mapping system, it’s weird clashes of different styles, and its ability to prey upon my completionist instincts, I walked away feeling very satisfied. Without having paid the full $49.99 price tag myself, it’s hard to say if that is a reasonable price or not. What I can say is that this is one of the more unique titles that I’ve played in a good while and it offers a great deal of replayability. Everyone has different tastes, but if you enjoy mapping things out or playing games that involve a fair bit of micromanagement, this one’s worth taking a look at.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″]

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

REVIEW: Neo Atlas 1469 Title Neo Atlas 1469