#gamerjak

[anderjak]

i'm just gonna be a hyperfocusing goober for today, so let me have this

so i really like the pikmin games. for the longest time, i was no good at them, because my brain was a disorganized mess. however, by god, i tried, mostly because there is something inherently infectious about the core of this franchise that hits right on a mechanical point, and i mean this about every game (except Hey! Pikmin, because we all kinda quietly agreed we wouldn't talk about that one, which, hey? c'mon. it's good. it's just a weird spin-off.)

so, lemme talk about each game, and how the developer decided to approach each title.

it's a long one, and i don't expect anyone to be, like, hanging on to every word, but I CARE A LOT ABOUT STUFF LIKE THIS OKAY

okay you got warned so here you go:

pikmin 1 was a launch-window game that popped in a little under a month after the release of the simultaneously maligned and dearly beloved Gamecube. those of you with a big ol' trivia brain will remember that the old Super Mario 128 rumors, including its tech demo of all the li'l marios running around to show off the Gamecube's processing power, would act as the seed idea for what would eventually become Pikmin: The Game. alongside the bizarre and fun Super Mario Sunshine and Luigi's Mansion, it was one of those games that showcased how early on Nintendo didn't really consider itself in competition with Sony or the newcomer Microsoft, cuz, like, who was making a game like pikmin. nobody in major publishing and development, that's for sure.

it's a simple concept: you're a li'l guy leading 100 li'ler guys around to collect ship parts from your very destroyed spaceship that got you there in the first place. natch, the nature of the world is largely out to kill you and all your diminuitive minions. whereas Overlord would take this concept for the purpose of murdering everything in sight and generally causing chaos (which would itself be the seed idea for a PS Vita game built on the inbetween point of Overlord and Pikmin, and it was aggressively okay), Pikmin was more about structure and strategy and planning and, on occasion, taking a chill moment to build up your numbers to lick your wounds and make up your losses.

taking its camera angle low to the grass to present the mundane as gigantic was an inspired move, clearly showcased by just how lush the world was for its time, and how simple a concept it is to make the everyday seem larger than life and fantastical. y'know, like Honey I Shrunk The Kids, but you're managing a hundred kindergarteners who are all weirdly just obedient enough that you can have 'em fetch stuff for your own singular ends. (who doesn't envy that JUST a little?)

add to that the three different pikmin suited for different situations, and you have a game with some nice, unexpected complexity. your bog-standard rank-and-file red pikmin have the added benefit, apart from being adorable, of being completely and utterly fire resistant, and are the strongest attackers in the game. yellow pikmin have great big ears and are lightning-proofed, alongside being incredibly chuckable, able to reach areas others cannot. blue pikmin, however, can handle water just fine, able to walk underneath as easily as on land. each areas' challenges are built around ensuring you have and use the right pikmin for the job, as sending the wrong pikmin can mean that heart-breaking death rattle that everyone wants to avoid.

the game was notoriously short -- one could spend about eight hours on first play if they figure out the controls and strategies early on -- and so for many, it acted as a neat launch window novelty. for me, the concept carried it for multiple playthrough attempts; as terrible as i was at it, the core mechanics, limited though they were, seemed primed for teasing out a near-limitless well of ideas. and, well, clearly, that novelty continued for many, as it would get a sequel not too terribly long after.

one thing to point out is, with its short length, it actually has an in-game timer -- not just the day cycle, where you gotta get yourself and your li'ler guys aboard your respective ships before sunset, but also a 30-day timer. if you couldn't manage to collect the critical parts in time, it's game over, buddy. try again.

it's semi-roguelite in that way; it was perfectly possible to beef it so terribly that you weren't guaranteed to wind up finishing in time. however, the game… really isn't terribly tough, so most managed pretty well. the 30-day limit felt like an arbitrary limitation, especially on additional playthroughs, which, apparently, Nintendo agreed with.

enter Pikmin 2. now, for the record: i don't… love this game. however, how it approaches being a sequel is utterly fascinating to me, as I think I understand why it chose to handle its new mechanics.

gone is the day timer, and new is the extra partner: Louie. with the ability to swap between two leaders or have them work in concert, multitasking became the backbone of this game… well, I mean, in theory. we also swap ship parts for treasure, as the crux of the game is paying off Olimar's employer's massive, crippling debt. thankfully, you have all the time in the world, because Hocotate Freight, the aforementioned employer, doesn't have continual interest applied to their loan. weird. but acceptable. (god, can you imagine a constantly ballooning debt goal to clear for this? someone mod the GC original, I wanna know how impossible it would be.)

there's also new pikmin: purple pikmin, who are large, can shake the earth when they're tossed (thus doing quite a bit of damage as an opening gambit), and have the strength of ten pikmin when carrying stuff; and white pikmin, which are tiny, great at finding and digging up hidden treasure, and also they'll fucking kill you if you eat one, being highly poisonous. they're also heavily poison-resistant, so feel free to send these tiny children into gaseous areas free of worry. balancing out when to yoink out these new ones -- which can only be created from specialty flowers where you exchange one of your core three pikmin, rather than growing them naturally -- becomes an additional hazard, so it's easy to be incredibly precious with these new types.

alongside that, bombs are added, which can be exclusively carried by Yellow pikmin. great for blowing up stone walls, and great for blowing up a nasty enemy in your way if you're not too precious about those bombs -- which do go away if you collect 'em all, and you gotta wait another day to pick up more.*

(note: it's been pointed out that bomb rocks were a Pikmin 1 feature, not 2; also, electricity wasn't really a feature in Pikmin 1 at all! thanks to folks tagging for this correction, though it's funny how inconsistent the games are about these sorts of things -- not that it's a huge deal.)

what's also added… are dungeons and a mission mode. dungeons, in theory, are fascinating, as they are sectioned off portions of the game meant to challenge the player. while the overworld segments are largely identical to the first game in basic scope -- one of the areas is even reused, though much expanded -- the dungeons add an honestly overwhelming amount of content.

these bits are interesting: you can't get more pikmin, so if you lose one, that's it (with, like, one technical exception). all enemies picked up after defeat are converted into a pittance of in-game currency. thankfully, the timer of the overworld is completely absent, For Reasons. (and thank goodness for that.) you're down there to find new treasure and maybe the occasional ship or suit part, get into scraps, and that's it.

i'd sort of figured, three years after the original's release, they took the claim that the first game was too short and too easy to heart, as this feels much more of a white-knuckle game. dungeons also feature unique enemies not found elsewhere, including that motherfucker the WaterWraith, an invincible steamroller that chases after one of your two leaders relentlessly. i hate this guy so much as he is sorta representative of the issues i have with this game.

now, this game was critically acclaimed, and for good reason: it was more of a really neat idea for a game, expanded with new stuff that made it highly replayable. what's not to love? however, an issue i kept running into is that there are two hundred plus treasures in the game to find, and, after eight hours (roughly the length of Pikmin 1 on first play), you'll be in good shape if you get half that. there are a lot of dungeons, and you can hit the game's first clear condition well before you've even found a good handful of dungeons.

since each treasure has a set amount of currency attached to it, you would naturally (and, largely incorrectly) assume the most dangerous dungeons hold within them the most lucrative treasure. in reality, it's a pure numbers game: most treasure, save for in the final dungeon, are worth a fairly small amount that still adds up quick. instead, the deepest dungeons, which ironically are also the most dangerous for many reasons, hold the most potential for treasure, and these bits… i will be honest, wear me out.

the volume and frequency of these dungeons do an interesting thing to a game that is otherwise fairly short and concise: it brings about fatigue. it puts a quantity-over-quality aspect to the game that works in its detriment, though the designs of these dungeons, by and large, are tight and concise, with just enough randomness to make even samey-looking areas still feel just fresh enough. you don't always start in the same area on each floor, and enemies aren't consistently laid out in set positions.

this is probably the only game in the series so far that instills in me a sense of dread when I reach a new dungeon, and it has a lot to do with pikmin 1: each day has a set length that's easy to predict, and dungeons throw a huge wrench in that. you don't know how deep things go until you're done, so you wind up setting aside time some other day to tackle them -- and you should do it that way! because those dungeons will chew you up and spit you out if you let 'em!

anyway it's great and i don't like it. you should play it. just don't go in expecting the experience to have the same satisfying loop as Pikmin 1, because it does, but it does so in sneaky, exhausting ways if you aren't prepared. it's a game meant for replays, where the first play is the worst.

now i get to talk about how much i fucking love Pikmin 3.

gone are dungeons, for the most part, and we wind up with a game much more in line with the original. the narrative is more front-and-center, focusing on three squad members who reunite after getting separated during a crash landing, and are trying to find a way off the planet while also conveniently harvesting the planet of its fruit and seeds. the central macguffin is juice: every time you collect a piece of fruit, it's converted to juice to be placed in a growing stockade of vials, each one giving a whole day's sustenance shared amongst the whole squad. rather than a hard deadline, your task is merely to make sure you don't eat more than you gather, changing the first game's hard time deadline into a more casual affair where each day can be taken on its own. considering you'll ultimately wind up with more juice containers than there are pieces of fruit to gather, it's a decidedly less stressful affair.

new pikmin naturally are added here, including rock pikmin -- craggy li'l guys great for dropping on enemies, and especially good at breaking glass and crystal -- and flying pikmin -- the only other type capable of moving over water alongside blue ones, and capable of uprooting the strange pink vines which have grown all over the place. unlike pikmin 2, these new types can be grown the same way as the standard three, and they had the big brain genius move of combining all the sources of pikmin, the Onions, into one device, making team management and composition infinitely easier.

the name of the game for Pikmin 3 really is sanding down all the friction of the first two, and making a modern entry that felt like it was learning how to provide more fun with better, more intuitive controls and more complex tasks. the world is filled with more puzzles, so the game provides a new Charge, which sends all pikmin in a group toward your target, and the ability to swap between entire teams of pikmin without accidentally tossing an errant one. GAME CHANGER. you can also send your other squad members out on their own on automated paths (one-way, sadly) so you can stay on the move at all times.

with the dungeons gone, Pikmin 3 isn't a particularly long game -- though Mission mode returns, as well as mission-like Side-Stories starring Olimar and Louie from Pikmin 1 and 2, going over the events before and after the main game in a bit of a comedy duo-style cheap excuse to play some tightly constructed timed missions that are frankly more fun than they have any right to be. it's a generally well constructed package which seeks to fatten up its stores with a variety of modes rather than attempting to pack in everything all in the story, which works massively to the game's benefit and maintains its core loop incredibly well.

its final dungeon is also worthy of note: while it is a dungeon in all ways similar to Pikmin 2, it maintains its time crunch, and adopts a roguelite mechanic of maintaining your progress, even if you fail and have to retreat. any shortcut created is retained in future plays.

i mentioned the WaterWraith in Pikmin 2 earlier, and while there is a similar creature here that I won't spoil (you should play pikmin 3, it rules), the rules and conditions are very different. while it's ever-present and looming, it more acts as a slow timer to keep you mobile. it can crawl up walls you can't, and take shortcuts otherwise unavailable to you, but it isn't particularly keen on killing you, just impeding your progress. it can be damaged and stunned temporarily, but it's utterly unkillable during this dungeon phase.

with those two elements, I figured out why I didn't have a great time with Pikmin 2, and it really just has to do with very different goals. Pikmin 3's final area is a dungeon in a lot of ways, with a focus on time management, multitasking, and puzzle-solving, but it mostly acts as a stress-test for the skills you've learned so far. meanwhile, Pikmin 2's dungeons almost feel like you have to flip a switch in your brain: you can move as slow as you want, which means the game is allowed to crank up the difficulty and create some unique challenges not faced anywhere else. pikmin 3's final area is a test of everything you learned: pikmin 2's dungeons are a new skillset you have to build on the fly.

and I suppose this is where my friction is with 2: it feels like two otherwise very good games smashed together, without as much consideration toward maintaining the skills and understandings developed over casual play between those two modes. if you're like me and keep going into pikmin 2 with the thought, "oh boy! more pikmin!" you'll get your face smashed into the floor. fun! and pikmin 3 simply isn't that kind of experience: it has its own goals which feel distinct from both, and it also makes me realize how good Pikmin 2 is, even if it's my least favorite so far, for one simple reason:

it is its own game. much like pikmin 1 and 3 are their own games. they each hold an interesting "spirit" of the core mechanics, and try to find new challenges and interest which make them feel less like subtle iterations and more like distinct flavors. they're all ice cream, but sometimes you're in the mood for chocolate, vanilla, or rocky road.

but what if you want butterscotch in a waffle cone

pikmin 4 ain't out yet. but it DOES have a fairly extensive demo containing the first portion of the game, and hoo boy does it take some liberties. somewhat similarly to 3, you don't play as Olimar or Louie, but a whole new crew, out to rescue folks who landed on the planet… only for your ship to crash and now you need rescuing. the game takes a more "survival" approach even when compared to Pikmin 3, but not in a resource management way; instead, it's more like a base builder-lite, with iterative upgrades and unlocking features which alter your play in micro- and macrocosmic ways.

this entry allows you to create and name your own li'l guy, and even drops the other squad mates as functional on-field components in favor of a dog who is less capable as a squad member and more capable as a transportation/assault vehicle. seriously, Oatchi rules. there's a home base where time doesn't move and you can talk to all the folks you rescue and navigate menus exchanging gathered resources for new abilities, gear, and more. it sounds intense, but honestly, it's all boiled down into accessible and simple systems that are pretty easy to read and interface with.

they also weirdly changed the camera; gone is the more isometric approach in favor of something closer to a third-person shooter, though it never quite feels like, say, Gears of War. while you can zoom out for a nice top-down approach, I kinda love how this game handles its camera: everything feels way more massive and intimate at the same time, and with the upgraded visuals (even beyond Pikmin 3), everything's got that umami that Nintendo is known for when they apply their efforts to, say, food or nature. they're alarmingly good at it, and it's weird.

however, they also did something i got scared of initially: dungeons are back. and in much the same form as they used to be. sssssort of.

the thing is, they did a lot of quality of life upgrades, allowing you to select which pikmin you want at the entrance before diving in, and not requiring you have everyone in arm's reach before moving on. the dungeons also feel, so far, more like puzzle areas than combat zones, so in spite of the timer being eradicated for this one (it's still around for the regular overworld segments), I haven't gotten the inclination that this title is going to commit some of the same exceptional and unique challenge that Pikmin 2's dungeons offer.

what's more, they're also used for transportation: many dungeons lead you to new areas in the overworld that are otherwise inaccessible, which means dungeons are no longer just a conveyance for weird enemy bullshit or an excuse to get a whole bunch of treasure (though you very much collect treasure in this one, much like 2). the added functionality and lessened reliance on combat makes 4 feel cozier initially, and, while the controls are still Nintendo Weird (seriously, they will never be satisfied making a control scheme that everyone is satisfied with, because they will never let us remap things ourselves, the fools), they largely stay simple and more than get the job done.

it's an experience that, unlike pikmin 2, made me immediately go, "oh, i canNOT treat this like pikmin 1." i was constantly reevaluating my relationship with the game and what it was expecting of me, and, by the end of the demo, i was more enraptured with the idea of sitting and enjoying the experience longterm than i was prior.

i don't know how well the final product will shape up: i'm worried about dungeons because i do not like pikmin 2 very much, and i worry that the upgrade systems will feel needlessly tacked on and make the game feel arbitrarily longer than it should be. i worry it'll be a much longer game than it needs to be! however, its core loop comes off as far more satisfying, and the new systems like gathering castaways and fellow crew members, building bridges with your own materials instead of relying on clearing paths to arbitrary piles of shards, and Oatchi are all things i want to keep playing with.

more than i think any game prior in the franchise, Pikmin 4 feels like a toybox. however, it's gonna live or die based on how readily it lets you play with its toolset, and if it doesn't strike the right balance, it's going to falter in a lot of the same ways as most weird experiments Nintendo's done to its flagship franchises: otherwise fine but ultimately creating unnecessary friction between itself and the players it hopes to please.

[anderjak]

more on this, for reasons:

so, it’s a timeloop game wherein you are given a seemingly decent-sized house and a few in-game hours, and you’re replaying the same evening over and over again, carrying over your memories of each loop, cataloguing hints, clues, and puzzles and so forth, and its design made me kinda infatuated for a bit

not really a critical analysis, but maybe a review for anyone who thought this game looked interesting (it is) and whether you should play it (i think you should)

it doesn’t have an inventory to speak of, instead relying on light notetaking, observation, a little math, a will to explore, and a solid memory to make your way through, since once you solve a puzzle, you’re given a snapshot of its solution for the rest of the playthrough that you can observe at your leisure

with the house being basically a moderately labyrinthine puzzlebox that is both much larger and weirdly smaller than you’d initially expect, it makes for an incredibly nice six-hour experience (a great length for a horror game) that weirdly hits like a truck by its final moments

one thing that horror does well is bring personal fears and experiences to the forefront; likewise, what makes horror work best is that very same quality. and, as someone with OCD and trauma, it manages to make things feel strangely relatable while also still being over the top, fantastical, and unnerving

however, rather than focusing on jumpscares and so forth, it frankly makes one of its most common occurrences — getting murdered super bad — a mundane experience, practically by design. i think it really works, since getting killed isn’t… really that big a deal. it’s a timeloop game. but the fear of losing that loop’s progress, the fear of not landing a sequence because you’re rushing yourself or worried you won’t have enough time (an issue the game doesn’t really have, actually!), does a great job of standing in the place of being scared the boogeyman is gonna getcha with their big scary knife.

this is something games do REALLY well that isn’t possible in other media: create suspense and tension by way of threatening your resources (including, for instance, time!). you’ve already seen this in early Resident Evil (including the remakes), any horror game with an explicit health system, that sorta thing. it’s a common aspect in the general survival genre, as well as roguelikes/roguelites, but we rarely factor time as an aspect. with each death, you’re rolled back to the same point in time wherein you first walk through the door at 7PM on the dot, and whatever you’ve done, whatever your progress, is gone… well, technically. you’ve still got your memories, and, weirdly enough, it’s what DOES carry over which adds to the mystery and suspense. but, well, that’s more for folks to find on their own.

it’s not really without its faults, of course: some of the puzzles are a little obtuse, and a few environmental locations are needlessly easy to completely miss, unless you’re pretty thorough. nothing that really stops the game in its tracks, but they’re elements of negative friction that are very difficult to predict without extensive testing. as a for-instance, the game often utilizes bespoke camera angles for each area, much in the style of games with pre-rendered backgrounds, just with a little bit of tracking and moving to make use of the fully 3D environments… some of which were altered and adjusted post-release for the purpose of making certain elements clearer and harder to miss. (ftr, this is a good change, as it keeps much of the difficulty on the puzzles and managing to evade the game’s key monster.

i’ve talked about this for a while without mentioning Clock Tower, a game franchise with the similar feature of running from a singular entity who comes and goes seemingly on their own whims, who you need to evade or hide from. stealth and evasion are… well, pretty simple, as sprinting will alert the monster, and hiding in closets work well, as long as they don’t see you do it. it’s not a stealth game, nor does it try to be, so if you’re worried about poor implementation or anything, eh, it doesn’t matter, it’s fine. besides, again, death is kinda a necessary and common element, so you spend a surprisingly small amount of time actively avoiding the monster. again, sometimes it’s better to just run up to the dude, arms spread wide, going, “C’MON YOU COWARD, STAB ME ALREADY SO I CAN MAKE USE OF A PASSWORD I JUST DISCOVERED WITHOUT YOU BREATHING DOWN MY NECK”

anyway. all of these elements come together in a thing which feels like a great kind of game to hand to those who are a little more squeamish about horror games but still want the kind of depth of narrative a good personal small-scale horror story can wield. it’s good and fun and i like it a lot, and while nothing’s really topped Signalis for me in this retro-throwback approach, Homebody makes a really nice home for itself and accomplishes what it sets out to do incredibly well.

hey:

Homebody is actually a pretty good li'l horror game

[anderjak]

I really like Final Fantasy XIV

I’ve been playing FFXIV since its 2.0 launch (I played the beta for 1.0 way back when), and, after a long hiatus, I started from scratch thanks to Stormblood being released this past month or so.

God, I love this game.

I’m not a fan of MMOs, despite having played a bunch of ‘em. WoW was engaging for a time, but narratively felt pointless, and I always felt like I was on autopilot -- which isn’t a bad thing, if you’re looking for a decent way to pass the time and get that feeling of regular small rewards, but WoW as a whole package didn’t really sit with me. Wildstorm was fun but essentially had nothing that felt “new” by the end. I think I bounced around some free-to-play stuff, too, but they all felt like there was a lack of engagement unless you were willing to put in the extra effort before you even started playing -- reading wikis, trawling message boards, using the various chat channels as much as possible, that sort of thing.

FFXIV really wants you to care about the story and its characters. Maybe it’s the way you can get Minions (little pets that follow you around for cosmetic purposes) based on characters in the main story, or the variety of mounts you can acquire, or even just having the story be such a requirement to unlock various features. I’m not sure exactly what it is.

What I do know is, when it works, the game feels so good. It enjoys having its fun, it enjoys feeling dramatic and high-stakes. While the base game’s story is a typical run-around of “resist the evil empire,” there are side-stories and little moments where you wind up working with people who have a myriad of convictions and motivations, and, after the base game’s main story, the political intrigue ramps up significantly.

Of course, you can just skip all the cutscenes and watch ‘em whenever you want, that’s fine. But if you enjoy context for all that, you start to find villains coming back to briefly join the side of good, long-standing wars between dragons and elves over a history that no one remembers, duplicity, regicide, arms getting cut off, outfit changes, long drawn out discussions about the responsibility of nations toward refugees from warring states, ninjas, uncovering the history of Moogles, and who knows what the hell else because it is buck wild.

And for some reason I actually give a shit about characters like Minfilia, Alphinaud, Raubahn, Merlwyb, Estinian, Tataru, and more. Like, I know their names. It’s an MMO where I know a story character’s name. I still could not tell you who anyone was in WoW, and I literally played it since launch through two expansions before I finally gave up. (Thrall, I think, is a guy? Maybe an orc?)

Much of it is bias; XIV carries its lineage up on its shoulders for all to see. Malboros, chocobos, flans, Bahamut, Shiva, it’s got it all. Hell, they brought in the Urusan-Yensa from FFXII’s sand-sea as its own species within the narrative. Like, there’s just a lot of these moments of series fandom payoff that only something like FF could do.

However, I do think that there’s something oddly special about the story, and I think it’s largely because it’s Square-Enix kinda dialing it back on these huge sweeping world-ending narratives and instead making stories about politics, individual characters, and moment-to-moment concerns in a way that feels a lot like an old PS2 RPG in a good way. While I enjoyed a lot of FFXV, its story, when it finally started, blitzed through everything and became a dizzying mess punctuated by lengthy stealth levels and Sonic Adventure 2 boss battles. (And I love it for that, but that’s not the point.) 

Sometimes it’s just nice to end a warring conflict only to find people lying in wait for that moment of peace to enact their own plans, and feel that payoff happen on a slow burn rather than it feeling like the end of certain FF games where you fight Actual For Real God For Some Reason. (A JRPG trope I love but only when it feels even remotely prescient.)

Sometimes it’s just nice to see these government bodies unsure of what to do, to be left in uncertainty, and grope for some semblance of stability in trying times as they pick up the pieces of a war only recently passed.

Sometimes it’s just nice to see some main characters sit down and cry for a second because they were too prideful to see their own blind spots and only after things have become worse do they truly see it, and for their friends to rouse them from their slump with a solid “ganbatte” and a swearing of loyalty.

It’s a fun game, too. I have a chocobo that can fly. That’s neat.

[anderjak]

Hey! Pikmin - An exercise in reduction

Pikmin is a game that stresses me the hell out. You can have a hundred Li’l Guys following you, and they’re grouped by different colored Li’l Guys who can do Different Stuff like Be On Fire And Not Die, or Be Electrocuted And Not Die, or just Be Heavy. And it sucks to hear their woeful cries and li’l ghostly spirits ascend to the heavens when they get squished or eaten. Not only do you get the crushing blow of your team getting wiped in a good RTS, but you get the emotional impact of “no, they were too cute to deserve this fate, I’m a bad pet owner”

Hey! Pikmin seeks to reduce on the stress by focusing instead on the series’ penchant for environmental puzzles and more precise handling of your Li’l Guys. Put in a 2D plane, the game plays much more like an old-school platformer... except your Big Guy can’t really jump so much as he can hover in the air, and his only major actions he can commit to are throwing your Li’l Guys and whistling at them to make them come back or out of hiding.

The puzzles are often pretty simple; the game uses symbols in really strong ways that tell you exactly what the pieces to the puzzle are, and what you can do, and you generally can see where it is you want to go, thanks to the fact that both screens display the environment you’re traveling through. (This mostly means you see way up above you, which is good because this game oftentimes gets very vertical.)

However, the puzzles can also block you off from secret passages (by way of hidden passages that aren’t very well hidden, or doorways only accessible as long as you don’t drop a block in that spot for the third time goddamnit why didn’t I whistle to get my Li’l Guys to stop pushing the block), and those secret passages can lead you to great treasure that fills up your Macguffin Meter (necessary to “complete” the game, rather than fighting a specific end boss), or they can lead you to secret areas that get you more Macguffin for your Macguffin Meter.

It’s a really pleasant game to look at and listen to, as well; Pikmin make motivated little noises when they march, they have little yelps of surprise when called in, and they’re practically filled with glee as you toss them onto unsuspecting (or very suspecting) enemies (who might eat them). The music is a series’ staple of low-key ambience with light melody that is endearing and calming even as you’re tossing twenty of your Li’l Guys onto the backs of Big Jerks and praying they don’t get knocked off because you’re out of Li’l Guys to throw and the Big Jerks might stop for a second and eat ‘em all. Because these combat scenarios end up being only a few moments long, it makes the Biggest Jerks, the bosses, feel more impactful, despite their patterns being, at least in the early game, fairly simple and easy to read. The bosses are much more about knowing how Pikmin react to the way you move and toss ‘em, so you don’t necessarily need to know any serious strategy; you just need to know you.

It’s a really cute game, with lots of stuff to collect and adorable (if unmemorable) levels that you’ll probably be replaying a few times because I swear to god I will not push that block in front of the secret passage entrance like a dum-dum for the third time this time I mean it.

If you like Pikmin but wanna chill out with them, or if you like the idea of Pikmin but frankly the main franchise is way too stressful to get into, Hey! Pikmin taps into what’s fun about the Li’l Guys and even features a lot of the same sorts of progression, while trimming away the more stressful bits except for that stupid block you keep dropping in front of the doorway i hate that block.

Anyway it’s good and I like it a lot.

[anderjak]

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is the XII I always wanted

Okay, so I know XII isn’t exactly revered but fuck you

No wait that’s mean

I really like Ivalice. It’s an enjoyable setting often given locomotion by way of political turmoil, and its stories are centered around a complex plot of clashing motivations, lies, half-truths, contradictory behavior, honorable betrayals, and more. It’s not so much that I think character-driven stories like in most Final Fantasies are bad, but they are pretty typical for the franchise and it’s nice to step out of those shoes and not worry about romance in a literal sense and instead focus on romance in the classic literature sense.

When I first played XII, I never beat it. Despite buying Dragon Quest VIII on PS2 just for the XII demo, and despite getting the special edition of XII in the steelbook case, I just never beat it. Yet, I loved it. I loved the characters and setup, and I loved the Gambit system, which, much like FFVIII’s junction system, I still consider criminally underrated. 

The problem, though, is that it was incredibly hard to stay invested mechanically in the characters thanks to the license board being exactly the same for every playable character. I’m not a strategist by any means, but a Dominant Strategy player (Dominant Strategy is basically “if there is a way for the player to take the easy route, no matter how tedious or mind-numbing it may be, expect them to use it” -- think grinding, exploits, etc, that are easy for the player to accomplish). I tend not to shift my strategy if it means something is working even a little bit; I’ll suffer no small amount of tedium and frustration if it just works, even if it’s poorly. And, unfortunately, the generic license board exacerbates that to an extreme, and does a lot to do the game a disservice. When every character can wind up the exact same, and you spread yourself out too thinly, it’s hard to feel emotionally or mechanically invested in anything you’re doing.

Now, The Zodiac Age is, in fact, an upgraded version of the International Zodiac Job System release which the US never got (which Square-Enix got kinda bad about at times). In IZJS, you could unlock one of twelve unique license boards for a character for more focused development. Most of the classes are pretty typical, with time mages, black mages, knights, samurai, et cetera. The downside is that, because only one character could have one class, at least six jobs would wind up completely unused in a single playthrough, thus really hammering in the idea that you have to be very particular about how to develop your characters.

What Zodiac Age does specifically, however, is allow for a second job board per character. This busts the Job System wide open to allow for things like class synergy, more team balancing options, and more. I mean, think about it: Why not have your Knight also be a White Mage, so they could absorb lots of damage while healing your weaker allies? Why not have your Red Mage be an Archer, too, so you could hit enemies from afar even when you’re tapped out of MP? Being able to pick up a job that covers the weaknesses of another is a huge boon to the flexibility of development.

It’s great, because while it still encourages you to focus on how to develop your characters, it also is a great way to make a competent, powerful character without too much stress; there’s no “bad” combination, just ones that aren’t ideal or maybe lack synergy. A lot of people I’ve found on message boards sort of stress themselves out overmuch about ideal job setups, but by and large, it seems like a system that is built around “play what you want and enjoy”. Because of the way it’s built, you simply wind up more powerful and specialized than you would have been with a generic board, even if you were super-specific about your builds in the vanilla version of the game.

Zodiac Age also has a bunch of other quality-of-life upgrades, like changing out Quickening cost to a separate gauge instead of using your MP, adding a fast-forward button for easier grinding, and auto-saving per room rather than enforcing the classic save system (though there are still save crystals and such). They also removed the cryptic requirements to get weapons like the Zodiac Spear, so you’re free to open any chest you want (thank fucking god). Mostly because now there are even more powerful weapons than the Zodiac Spear, so, uh, guess it ain’t so important to build an entire save around getting a specific weapon.

On top of all that, the game is fully reorchestrated. And it’s phenomenal. I have a hard time explaining how good sound is because that’s definitely not my field, but it’s a gorgeous score given an orchestra with a strong sense of dynamics, and the tracks blend together so seamlessly it feels as though there’s a for real orchestra just waiting for you to move to another zone so they could elegantly make the switch without you noticing. You COULD play with the original score (and a score using the OST, which is its own recording, if you got the special edition), but honestly, the reorchestration is so good you should just stick with that.

Because of this game, I’ve been playing a lot more carefully with my gambits and my licenses; every choice feels a little more substantial than before, and with the speed-up options helping to take the tedium out of the longer exploration segments, it becomes a much more ideal way to play the game.

It’s really good, is what I’m saying. I get the problems people have with this game, but if you ever felt like you COULD enjoy it if it weren’t for some of its pacing problems and the boring license boards, this version might actually really hook you.

[anderjak]

random fact: i do livestreams of game stuff every once in a while, and i’m trying to make it a more frequent thing

if you dig that idea, i’m at twitch.tv/anderjak

it’s not a lot of screaming, anger, and joke-times, tbh; it’s mostly Q&A, game design talk, that sorta thing. i try to keep it chill, something people can get involved in via the chat or just doing whatever

right now i have a LOT of Final Fantasy XV, about 30 or so hours worth, up on the videos page, and i’m buying some equipment to make this process a little easier and higher quality, so if you’re interested, maybe check it out? it’s something i like doing and it’s a lot of fun, and i’d like to do it more regularly

i’m starting to include the chat into the videos themselves so people can see what the heck i’m responding to, but for the most part it should be pretty easy to follow

plus i am occasionally joined by @sqoozh, my partner, so hey that’s cool too

[anderjak]

The stream starts officially at 2pm PST -- 20 minutes from now! It'll also be available on demand from my channel for the next two months, so be sure to check it out and follow!

[anderjak]

I played the World of Final Fantasy Demo

This is not a game I expected to Legitimately And Unironically Enjoy.

While I didn’t go in with super-low expectations, the trailers have been very oddly cut to feel SUPER-janky in the dialog; imagine all the pseudo-complex and pseudo-deep elements of Kingdom Hearts’ storytelling, and transplant it in a very similar looking but far cuter game, and you have what I was fearing.

However, the ACTUAL game does the impossible: It is so impossibly sugary and whimsical that it somehow managed to be earnest in its charm. I’m willing to be wrong about this in the long run, but WOW, I enjoy it.

The thing which grabs me the most is the Stacking mechanic. For the uninitiated: There are three size classes of characters, being Small, Medium, and Large. You can stack any Medium on top of a Large, and any Small on top of a Medium, and any Small on top of a Large, up to three characters at once. The advantage here is that all stats and abilities are pooled together into one tower, which acts as an aggregated single character, while still allowing access to every single ability, including extra abilities the main characters can equip via Magijewels. (There’s a lot of portmanteau in this game, so be wary.)

The disadvantage comes with the game’s hidden weapon: Stability. A lot of physical abilities can “stagger” stacked characters, and, if struck enough with staggering abilities, will topple the stack and leave all those characters dizzy for a set amount of time, unable to act. Once all the characters in the stack recover, they can be restacked as before, but they’re left vulnerable and down to their individual stats, weaker than before, so it’s imperative you find your balance between stacked and unstacked characters and abilities. (Sometimes, there’s an advantage having more weak characters in battle than in having just two really powerful ones.)

Each monster you Imprism (told you ‘bout those portmanteaus, bro) can be enhanced and transmogrified into new monsters which can fit different size classes, and a vast majority of monsters can even learn how to walk with you on the overworld -- and, in the case of large monsters, can even be ridden for greater speed! Unlike pokemon, though, you can only catch ONE of each monster (as far as the demo is concerned, anyway), but you can swap out your team at every save point pretty easily. Since each monster has its own elemental affinities and abilities, it’s important to create stacks that can accommodate for many different situations. And, since the main characters can change from “Lilikin” to “Jiant” (or just Medium to Large characters), you actually have access to four different stacks you can swap between outside of battle at the press of a couple of buttons.

It’s a game really geared toward those who have a love of the franchise as a whole, sort of in the same vein as Dissidia, but is decidedly less convoluted in its mechanics and therefore way more accessible and fun. (Seriously, that battle system in Dissidia is just... it’s the pits, dude.)

It comes out next week and seems really cool, and has the potential to be one of the more straight-up fun titles to come from Square-Enix in a while.

Plus, apparently, it’s like a hundred hours long. So you’re getting a pretty decent amount of stuff for your money, potentially. (Maybe. We’ve been duped before. Many times.)

[anderjak]

I played the Pokemon Sun & Moon Demo

A thing I learned: That whole thing about events being set on certain days is technically incorrect! It’s set to the day you first played the demo. So if you started the demo today rather than yesterday, the dates a lot of sites listed for the events are going to be off by a day. Bear that in mind.

Anyway: I liked the demo. I think, mechanically, it’s the smoothest game in the franchise yet, as far as battles are concerned. A dedicated button for pokeballs, and a new way to look at move info easily, is really handy. Z-Moves definitely feel overpowered, but should be great for single player mode. There are also some neat surprises, like being able to “rent” ridable pokemon, which is a great replacement for bicycles and skates. I’m also in love with the idea of being able to swap out pokemon in your party for newly caught ones, rather than constantly moving back to the PC; I REALLY hope this will be available in the final release, as this was only for a minigame relegated to a single area in the demo.

I really like that they went with upsized characters, instead of mixing tiny and large sprites between overworld and battles. For the most part, this works; however, accommodating for this switch leaves towns feeling almost barren compared to previous games. “Wild” areas, like routes and caves, feel WAY more organic and fun, but towns themselves become oddly harder to navigate. Imagine Lumiere City but like ALL THE TIME. Considering where we’ll be spending a majority of our time, this seems like a small complaint as long as there aren’t too many huge cities, but this is some clear evidence of growing pains.

Also, though I think this is largely relegated to the demo: The dialog is awful. It feels clunky and overly telling; previous titles tended to have very simple but very catchy and flowy dialog, so it’s weird seeing so many affectations added to the dialog which halt the flow immediately. It honestly gives me a headache. The localization team has been pretty consistently great in the past, however, so I’m not convinced this is indicative of final quality, but it’s disappointing in the here and now.

The only thing left I’m curious about is Trials: They seem like a great new wrinkle to the formula, and a good justification for the more gimmicky elements, like the simplistic Pokemon Snap minigame, but I’m hoping they become more extensive and utilize exploration in a heavier sense. It’s the one non-combat element that has me the most excited, as it has a LOT of potential to be done well.

[anderjak]

Dragon Quest VII is a showcase of slow burn and delayed payoff

I’ve been toying with the recent 3DS remake and I’m absolutely loving it... with some heavy caveats.

It’s not so much a grand overarcing plot kind of game, but a BUNCH of smaller stories with plot threads that resolve seemingly quickly. It takes around five hours to unlock each major gameplay mechanic (hell, it takes 20 hours just to get the job system, and 40 hours to get a steady 4-member team!), and, in any other game, I’d be throwing this aside pretty quickly.

Yet, each story is oddly compelling. Plot threads are often short at first, but many times they’ll cross over in unexpected and compelling ways. It’s thoughtfully assembled, even if it’s incredibly slow as an overall product and perhaps lacks in narrative depth. But it’s not about depth! It’s not about a lot of complexity. It’s about these small stories, these small cities and territories and how they interact with each other; how each culture knocks against the other, and how one area’s problems can bleed into other areas.

Plus, you can dress a wolf and kid in a sheep outfit, so. Like. Tennouttaten.

I’m closing in at around 40 hours, and I think I’m only a little over halfway through the game; it’s incredibly long, often in the range of 70-100 hours for a casual, non-completionist run. With monster catching, advanced job classes, mini-medals, and lots of downloadable mini-dungeons, it’s not exactly light on content.

Seriously, if DQ is your kind of franchise and you never played 7, and you don’t mind a (very (very)) long prologue -- brief flashback to Kingdom Hearts II -- I heartily recommend it.

Of course, it’s not for the weak of patience, so. Factor that in.

[anderjak]

A Neat Game: Inside

I haven’t fully collected my thoughts on Playdead’s followup to 2010′s Limbo. Limbo itself was an interesting puzzle-platformer which leaned too hard on providing mystery through vague visual storytelling to the point where it often felt narratively flat or thin; Inside, however, presents a much stronger visual story while relying on the same level of minimal controls and storytelling hooks, and manages to be a much stronger game as a result. Whether it was worth the six year wait isn’t really a concern of mine after beating it for the first time; it’s honestly just a fresh, bizarre, clever game that filled a void Limbo didn’t quite manage those six years back.

It’s not particularly long; the twenty dollar cost will give you maybe three to four hours of gameplay on your first runthrough, provided you’re not terribly thorough. That’s expected for Limbo fans, though, who largely understand that the quality of the product can often make the cost far easier to swallow in the long run. (I mean, my usual argument is that Metal Gear Solid can be beaten in 3 hours if you know what’s up, and that game was full-priced on release, but...) It’s also got a fair wealth of secret areas, which provide unique puzzles slightly separated physically but mechanically married tightly to the core content, offering an extra layer of challenge on top of rewarding exploration.

It’s a visually stunning game mostly for how reserved it is. Colors are often muted but bold to strike a great mood, leaning toward cool colors for all except the main character’s red sweater. The lighting and effects do a lot to carry the low-poly look and give everything a robust, substantial feel, especially when paired with the excellent animations. While Limbo often had some legitimately creepy moments like with giant spiders, the animations are more nuanced and smaller scale, so even in failure sequences, comparatively minor deaths have more impact than you’d expect. Altogether it has the color palette of 80′s kid gang adventure films -- pulling from the same sort of stuff the Netflix series Stranger Things -- and creates a visual experience that never feels referential, but uniquely nostalgic in a way that nerd culture is too brash and blunt to manage.

I have other thoughts, but by and large, if you like Interesting Games, and you are the type to wring out a good game as thoroughly as humanly possible, Inside is a great fit for that. There’s not a lot of content, but what is there is carefully crafted to provide an experience that will provide more closure than Limbo ever had, and give you reason to go back and explore to find anything new to enlighten your understanding of its context.

Yeah. Four guard dogs who are just ever so slightly faster than you out of Five.

[anderjak]

Hey, so, basically, really interesting games like Gravity Rush 2 are sorta being ignored by bigger publishers because they don’t think they can make back the money they’d invest through heavier marketing. This is a pretty popular risk-averse tactic for “risky” games like Gravity Rush, so it’s hardly a surprise.

However, despite its flaws, the first game (now available on PS4 with a cheap and beautiful remaster) was unique, fresh, and dizzying. If you have a PS4 or know someone who does, talk games like this up. If you’re not seeing ads or articles anywhere for it, word-of-mouth is one of the only tactics to keep games like this from dying as soon as they hit store shelves.

It’s not a dire situation, but just a look into how publishers will often overlook their own games because they don’t believe many people will catch on even if they did make big marketing pushes. Games like Gravity Rush 2 are worth it, though.

Keep it on your mind.

[anderjak]

Having owned both, it’s really interesting seeing the differences between Battleborn and Overwatch play out. They’re two very different games within a similar niche, with different metas about them.

After a bit of time with both, I can’t say one scratches the same itch the other does. OW has tighter gameplay in general, but its current lack of content pales compared to BB. What’s more, it’s far easier to play favorites in BB, sticking to a character you like and working with it long-term, as a lot of the higher level play involves gear loadouts and skill selections which can dramatically alter the way a match plays out. However, OW rewards nuanced understanding of each individual character and practically necessitates it.

Overwatch definitely has a more refined “TF2 with all the bullshit cut out of it” feel, and Battleborn is basically “Bite-sized Borderlands with a dozen more flavors added in.” 

The only things really selling OW for me over BB is that it’s quicker to just jump in and play, but there’s so few WAYS to play that sometimes the variety of BB is more appealing. 

It’ll be interesting to see how post-release content affects these games going forward, especially considering each company’s history with that sorta thing, and how neither have really dipped so hard into this kinda territory.

[anderjak]

I don’t really care to spoil much, but the last fight in Dark Souls 1 sold the whole experience for me. I mean, Ariamis was a GREAT area and getting to Anor Londo for the first time was such a memorable moment, and the Oolacile DLC really was some intense, mesmerizing stuff (especially the Chasm of the Abyss near the end -- I was floored by it, to be honest), but.

That last fight starts with little fanfare. You know where you are, you know who you’re fighting. There’s no cutscene, there’s no gigantic boss breathing fire on your face. It’s just you and the last dude trading blows in a surprisingly large arena.

I went with the “good” ending, so it was a very brief end to what was a pretty long journey (I’m still trying to decide if I wanna go for the “bad” ending later), but it still somehow felt satisfying. A lot of the pieces fell into place just right to allow for it, and being there was reward in and of itself.

Anyway. I’m really glad I could finally put myself through it. I’ve tried countless times to get into the games, and this last run really stuck -- likely because my anxiety is in much more control than before, and I was able to discipline myself more to the game’s expectations. I wouldn’t say anything I was put through was ball-bustingly hard; it really just boiled down to trying different stuff, seeing what worked, focusing on a sort of goal for a character build, and just applying the basics in new ways to every new situation.

It’s a game that is horrifically complex at the start, but it becomes second nature really nicely by the end. Any time I wanted to complain, I found something new in the game which illuminated my own weaknesses, and it made me want to try more, to try new things. A lot of challenging games don’t really build up a way to ask that of a player in a particularly compelling way, so it was a good change of pace.

[anderjak]

I’m further along in Dark Souls and I’m officially obsessed.

I’ve gotten the Lordvessel and have just completed my favorite area so far, the Painted World of Ariamis. (I probably spelled it wrong.)

Pretty sure Solaire has a crush on me. And I’m pretty sure the Darkmoon Knightess doesn’t even notice I have a crush on her. (It’s the silent stoicism and the fact that she seems like she could kill me if I’m remotely out of step that both appeal to me and let me know she might not be into me.)

Mostly, though, I’m mad they made the giant puppy limp at the end of the boss fight.

That was mean.

[anderjak]

I bought Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls at launch, despite getting nowhere with either of them, and even got Bloodborne when it launched and still haven’t beaten it despite it being what I consider a much more streamlined experience (at least, in terms of understanding what the hell I was supposed to do).

While I kinda gave up on Demon’s Souls entirely -- seriously, how does the objective progression go? I have no fucking clue -- Dark Souls always just seemed like I was missing something simple. And I was.

They’re bizarre Metroidvania games, where you see how far you can go down a path til you die, then you revive and push back to where you were or try a different path. There’s a lot of instances where you’ll just run headlong into enemies who can one- or two-shot you like it’s nothing, and that’s generally a good sign that you went the wrong way.

But the thing is, there’s benefit to going down those wrong paths; sometimes you can nab something pretty powerful, or gain a few items that’ll make the “easier” paths even more manageable. Sometimes you’ll even unlock a shortcut to an area, making navigation far simpler.

This is the clincher that really made me “get” Dark Souls; while the challenge and bosses are fun, it’s more the idea of knowing that if there’s an area I can’t handle, there’s probably one that I can handle, and it’s not far away. The game reads well enough that you can tell when it’s either too tough for right now or it only requires a little learning, which probably makes replays and New Game+ more interesting as a result. Knowing that the game will communicate whether stubbornness and resilience will pay off or not is probably the saving grace of the whole thing.

If I manage to beat this and I get up the desire to play Dark Souls II (I have the updated Scholars of the First Sin version on Steam), I may actually plunge into DS3 as well. But, eh. We will see.