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radramblog · 4 years ago

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Game of the Year 2020...?

Ive scrolled the list of games that came out this year to see what my GOTY ended up being, but turns out the only game I played in 2020 that released that year was, uh…….

Fucking good game but like I’m not gonna hand it GOTY by default (That goes to Hades, based solely impressions from other people). Actually, I’m not handing out any awards, really. So I guess I’m just gonna go over a bunch of the other games I did play last year, regardless of whether or not they came out then.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition

A mate got me this for my birthday in December 2019, and unlike the other games I got then (Kirby Star Allies which I burned through that month and Octopath which I still haven’t played) I spent a fair few hours playing it last year. This was before the sequel was announced, and also a little bit after the fact- figured I should try and finish one before playing the other. Unfortunately, I have yet to purchase Age of Calamity nor finish Definitive Edition, because the former is expensive and the latter is expansive. Holy shit there’s so much fucking content in this game. I don’t think I ever will finish it to be honest, though despite the repetitiveness it never really felt boring to me. It’s the only Warriors/Musou game I’ve played, and I’d be interested in trying others based on the experience.

(I’m not playing Fire Emblem Warriors though fuck that)

Pokemon Sword and Shield DLC: The Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra

Sword and Shield felt somewhat lacking on release, and while the DLCs released this year did much to try and fix this its still a bit shit that it required an extra paycheck out of you to get the full game- outside of outsourced mobile games like Go and Shuffle, or services such as Bank or Home, Pokemon has never actually had DLC/microtransactions, so this was a little disappointing. I’d argue that it absolutely wasn’t worth it when Isle was released, as fun as the content was it was again, lacking. Crown Tundra I would argue exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations, however- the new and returning mons are cool and welcome (I despised Calyrex’s design on first reveal but their behaviour in story redeemed it more than enough), and the Max Lair Adventure offered a surprisingly replayable romp that has been great to just try and grind out with friends. I can’t say I’d recommend the DLC pack though- only if because you’ve probably made up your mind already as to whether or not you’re getting it, or this doesn’t apply to you at all. I could also put basically every main series Pokemon game on here, seeing as I’m pretty sure I nuzlocked every region at some point during the year, but I don’t want to make this *that* long.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Expansion Pass

Smash is still Smash. I don’t find myself playing it much on my own, and even in Perth get-togethers weren’t super common last year. As neat as the DLC characters released this year are for the franchise as a whole, none of them convinced me to play significantly more than usual, and I can’t wrap my head around half of them, so.

Also, I’m still salty about Byleth, and I actually really liked Three Houses, it was my first FE game. Why the fuck wasn’t it Claude????

Rivals of Aether

On the other hand, in the last few months I’ve found myself grinding match after match of Rivals with one of my best mates and the game is a fucking blast, holy shit. I still haven’t bought it for myself, but its basically 100% of the reason I have played 0 smash for the last few months since we’re too busy mashing Orcane vs Ranno over and over and not really getting tired of it. It requires a specific type of person to get into it, but if you’re in that group then its just an excellent game.

VA-11 Hall-A

I first played VA-11 Hall-A (Vallhalla, since typing that is a pain) by pirating it and playing it on my laptop in the dead of night.

It quickly became one of my favourite games of all time.

When the Switch port dropped, I felt obliged to actually pay for it this time around, since the developers had more than earned my money. And then I replayed it again, playing it on my switch in the dead of night (At least this time I had the excuse of being a nightshift worker). With the sequel unfortunately delayed into 2021, it might be time to run it back once more or drag more of my mates into Glitch City since I already forcibly exposed a few of em to it.

The post-credits title screen is still my phone background.

Fallout: New Vegas

I don’t really have much to say about FNV that hasn’t been said already, especially considering HBomberguy’s recently released video, but it is also on my top 5 list and I only got around to playing Lonesome Road and Dead Money this year. Also went out of my way to 100% achievement complete the game on Steam, which I believe is the first time I’ve done that for a game.

Zero Escape Series (Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, Virtue’s Last Reward, Zero Time Dilemma)

The Danganronpa series’ less colourful sibling, Zero Escape was a series I finally got around to finishing after having borrowed a friend’s copy of VLR back in high school and playing it wrong due to not deleting his save file (oops,). I think VLR remains my favourite, and I really hope the series continues at some point (unlikely as it seems now) considering how ZTD missed the mark pretty hard. The first 2 games are still excellent mystery games and a lot of fun, though you do need somewhat of a tolerance for words.

A Hat in Time

Oh god this game is so fucking cute. Also, just an excellent platformer. Is the DLC still on sale? I should buy that.

Fallout 4

Its just not New Vegas. It just isn’t. I really tried with this game, I really did. The gunplay is great, modding and building shit is fun, but its just not the same.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

A couple years ago I bought a SNES Mini, but until 2020 I didn’t really have a convenient way of playing it seeing as my monitor didn’t have an HDMI port. But now I do have one with one, so I got to start playing this classic! And then stopped because of uni. Should finish that, probably.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon

Shit Keara I still have your copy sorry I’ll get back to it :<

Pokemon Stadium

I also managed to get my N64 up and running, and despite being the wrong region for most of the games available in local shops, I somehow managed to get Stadium for a great price. Got to dig out my old Red cartridge and anything. Fuck me though, this game is brutal. Seriously, Gen 1 battle mechanics are tough to deal with at the best of times, having to do battle after battle with said mechanics without losing is just nuts. I still haven’t managed to get Round 2 unlocked.

God, fuck you Blaine. Goddamn fire spin Rapidash motherfucker.

Super Mario 64 Speaking of, I managed to pick up a Japanese cartridge of SM64, complete with BLJ glitches and 3 entire save files. After much effort, I managed to actually get it working, and spent most of the night of Christmas getting smashed and trying to beat Bowser in the Fire Sea. I played a lot of the DS remake as a kid, and I feel like an idiot for struggling as much I did with the original.

This is all of course a buildup to the fact that I was lying about not assigning a GOTY. Because there is only one N64 game in my small collection deserving of Game of the Year, because its deserving of Game of the Year every year since its 1999 release.

BEETLE ADVENTURE RACING MOTHERFUCKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER

#ramble #video games #retro games #pokemon #for real tho beetle adventure racing is actually good #mario kart who?

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mrslittletall · 5 years ago

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Don’t tell me where to go. Earlier I watched a video about the flaws in Pokémon Sun/Moon. One of them I heavily agreed with, that annoying red flag that indicates where you should go next. In an already very linear game. Imo, it is just unneccessary. I barely am able to explore the world and even when I am allowed to go exploring, sooner or later I have to go back to the part where the latest roadblock was. I probably haven’t forgotten about it, because I am stuck in a small area. Also, Rotom Dex is reminding me constantly where to go anyway. So why is there this red flag on the map? It’s pointless. Thinking about this, I started Trials of Mana to get the last spirit. The remake, not the original. And just like in Pokémon Sun/Moon, I got annoyed. There is always that glowing big star on the map, telling me where to go even though this game is as linear as Sun/Moon! The elfin elder told me to go the mana goddess statue in the northwest of the forest, I can press on minus and see a map with this exact same statue on it and still, a shiny glowing star points on it! It is unneccessary! I played the original, the original didn’t had a map, the map was also divided in screens because old game and guess what? I still was able to found this mana statue! In fact, even just two weeks ago because I like to play the original with my husband. Why are games so adamant to tell you where to go? Heck, even one of my favourite games, Okami, did it. Not often, but at a few points, mostly when you have to hurry (but actually have all the time in the world), a glowing red arrow shows in which direction you should run. This actually gets me out of the immersion. That giant red arrow doesn’t make any sense, especially when Okami normally never tells you where to go with a marker, you just can look into your log and normally get Issuns latest hint where to go, but you have to find out yourself just how to get there. And mostly, in this “hurry to a location” events you already know where the location is, because you have to run back to it! I am getting more and more annoyed by this... do the game developer think we gamers are stupid? That we can’t find our way? That we have trouble when there isn’t a giant marker on the map, especially in linear games? Alright, now let’s talk about Open World games. One example I play atm is Death Stranding. That game actually TELLS me where I need to go, BUT, while I know where I need to head, the way to the location isn’t clear at all. Often you can’t just cross in a straight line, the world is in your way and you are just a basic human without any superpowers (ok outside of the whole BT sensing thing and not being able to die thing), but you get the gist. The thing is, you have to go from point A to point B and have to figure out HOW you get there. Do you pack a bunch of ladders to scale the mountains in your way? Do you try to find a way around the mountains? Do you pack weapons to take out the MULE camp in your way or do you try to sneak through it? Do you try to avoid the timefall and the BTs or do you take them head on? You have a lot of choices in this game how to handle the situation and it is beautiful. Moreso, the game profits from its online features. When you are alone, you can see and use structures of other players, you can see signs that warn you and you can see footpathes that have been created by other players. It really makes it fun to reconnect the world and connect with the other players you never see but know are there. Alright, different game. Zelda Breath of the Wild. That game has a huge world. You are in a tutorial arena in the beginning, but after you got all your shieka stone apps, you are free to leave. And that is meant literally. Once you are done with the tutorial, BotW lets you do WHATEVER you want. You can literally go straight to Hyrule Castle and defeat Ganon and it is a common speedrunner thing. But you don’t have to defeat Ganon. The game gives you several objectives, like tame the titans or find the shrines or the memories. Now, the only thing that downright points to where to go are the titans and they are actually pretty easy to spot from a hight point, because they are HUGE. Everything else? Find it on your own. You get a sensor for shrine and you get quests for them. Nothing ever points to them with a marker, you have to solve the hints and find the shrine yourself. The same for the sidequest of the game. You get pointed to who gave you the quest, which is a good thing because it isn’t easy to remember where they were, but the actual quest? Read the text and figure out where to go. Normally it is near the quest giver, so just exploring a bit will help. And the memories! You have twelve photos and have to find the places they got shot at. So how do you find the needle in the haystack? There is this painter in each main town and a few stables and you can show him the photos, he then gives you a hint just where to search! I pretty much found every memory with his hints, I just needed to look up the last memory that wasn’t on the shieka stone because it had been three years since I visited that area and I forgot where it was (I still remembered that it existed, so iconic did it look). BotW gets praised a lot for his sense of freeness and I totally get why. Ok, now let me talk about the last games for now... Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro. When I started Dark Souls, I was really upset. Why? Not because the asylum demon crushed my sorry ass five times, not because I thought I had to beat him with the sword hilt, not because of the boulder trap that killed me. That game had no map! I would get so lost! I am HELPLESS without a map! To my surprise... I was completely fine without the map. Sure, in the beginning I got awfully lost and stumbled to the skeletons, but then I found the Undead Burg. I fought myself through it, explored, remembered where which enemy was when I was running back to Taurus the 20th time (I really struggled, ok?) and the gameworld... just made sense. It became a really aha-moment when the shortcuts clicked into place. Granted, the shortcuts aren’t a big part of the game anymore after the lordvessel, but the first half is beautifully done! Finding the shortcut back to Firelink, finding the back exit out of Blighttown, seeing how Anor Londo opens up, the shortcut in Sen’s Fortress, beautiful. That was what let me thought about Dark Souls as Metroidvania. That game is a Metroidvania. Sadly, Dark Souls 2 and 3 don’t have it as much anymore, especially Dark Souls 3 is a lot more linear, but still has loads of optional stuff to do for me and most importantly, never tells me where to go. Bloodborne is a lot like the first Dark Souls and also different. Bloodborne has a lot more areas that are disembodied, but they have that beauty of the Metroidvania in them. One of the most mind baffling things was finding the back entrance to Iosefka’s clinic... coming from the Forbidden Woods! And the finding out, HEY, that is that gate I saw at the start of the game and couldn’t open! Slowly, you open up Yharnam and even the other areas like the nightmares have cool shortcuts to find. It feels like your exploring got rewarded, that you don’t have to fight through all this enemies anymore, only a few, to get back to the boss. Now let me talk about the last game... Sekiro. This game opens up at a certain plot point and your only hints? You talk with Kuro and Emma and they tell you a few things they found out about. I was SO confused. I had no idea what they were talking about and where to go. So I decided to check the areas out they talked about and try to make sense of the riddles they told me. I couldn’t find a lot at first and went back often to listen to their riddles, until I just went full risque and jumped into a pit only to find out that this indeed had been the right solution! One by one, I found out how to find the other locations. The game never pointed them out for me, I followed the hints and found them myself. So, to conclude. Video games, please don’t tell me where to go.

#long post #gaming #video games

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bigskycastle · 5 years ago

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ask

Yup! I’m gonna use this ask to answer the other ones finally lol

Hehe that’s a cute idea.. that’s sort of what I imagined the “special ready” effect is, but it would definitely be cooler if instead of just glowing/moving a bit their hair cycled through a bunch of colors

Hi! Oh that’s pretty broad uhhhhhhhh id say.. well. it’s N from pokemon bw but most of the characters I end up liking are just, like, silent protags lol

Honestly? at first nervous and uncomfortable because I very much forgot how to draw humans. But i’m feeling tons better about it now and having a lot of fun with it^_^

Awh thank you ! ❤ you’re also cool

Good at the moment! Got a 4 day weekend every week now so I should (maybe?) be able to be more active here. Also FINALLY have a doctor’s apptmt today so i can see someone about my mental health shit and possibly, perhaps, potentially actually get help lol

You’re sweet, thank you❤ I’d like to redo my spectrum piece at some point just because i think i’ve evolved a little stylistically since I finished it, but I still like it despite that. And ty again! They’re very relaxing for me now lol, I’m glad we (against all odds) got a zelda game with one

I think I first saw a streamer playing it when I dropped by their twitch page on a whim, and I saw all the clothing options and immediately decided “i must buy a switch just to play this game”. The fashion aspect is still one of my favorite things about it lol.

I think my Favorite part has to be the singleplayer modes, in partic agents though (predictably), bc they’re exactly the sort of “mostly blank slate” characters+worlds I get attached to.. I’ve always rly enjoyed sort of filling in the gaps left behind in media, even if that means what I end up loving at the end is 90% headcanon stuff. I think that’s the best way 2 interact with media anyway. making it more personal.

It’s always very cool seeing everyone’s different takes on the agents/splat world, and it’s Very cool how I can post a pic of, like, agent 3 and have a bunch of different people each see a totally different character, you know? But yeah i like the shoes in splatoon

Honestly kinda rough but I’m trying! I’ve started college now and the people there are nice enough, plus it’s got incredibly cushy hours and is pretty light on actual “learning”, but it’s good, I needed some kind of break from academia before I straight up died

I’m happy you enjoy it anon!!!!!! I will :-)! I’ve got a lot planned for zelda art in the near future, i just have to finish some commissions and stuff before I can properly work on it

I’ve never “studied” officially, but i’ve been drawing for like, 5-6ish years now? I didn’t pick it up until I was about 10 and didn’t rly commit until I was maybe 12. The course i took at college is meant to be art-focused, however, the stuff they’re teaching is like.. not a brag! but stuff I do already know. Like, a tutor tried to explain what “pixel art” is to me on my first day. I mostly took it to try and learn some Maya skills because I do want to pick up 3D art one day!

Ty! This question’s pretty similar to the last so i’ll put it here. I’ve been slacking on my actual studying a bit, most of what I do is force myself to draw anything every day. Doesnt matter if its a wonky doodle of a face on the back of a napkin or if its a full illust, its practice, it counts. Also, trying to shove myself out of my own comfort zone by doing things like environments and very detailed things (motorcycle.). It’s very rewarding just to look at something you made and think “I thought this was impossible before right now”.

hmmmmMm... I can’t think of any just off the top of my head but my friend @nickymemer (I think?) put the idea of Zelda, whenever shes sick of link and her dads’ collective shit, just running off to gerudo town to hang out with urbosa and the rest of the gerudo court, in my head and i love that a lot

Thank you thank you! As of rn it’s botw but that’s probably because it’s the only one i’ve played by myself. I watched a 30 hour longplay of twilight princess and really loved that though. I did watch an lp of both majora and ocarina but I get the feeling i’m missing a big part of the experience of both bc i’m not playing them. (That or they’re overhyped.) If i get a bit more cash at some point I’ll probably get both on my 3ds.

Alright that’s all I think! Thank you everyone ❤

#joask #there's like 20 under this readmore I'm sorry if it doesnt work oh god #long post #just in case #Anonymous

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the-concept-fountain · 5 years ago

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What are your other favorite games?

OKAY! I have dozens upon dozens of games that bring me joy, and that have inspired/influenced my life as a whole, honestly I could ramble on for days, but I will share my top 11 in no particular order. Besides the top 3 hehe ;)

11. Dokapon Kingdom

I was into Dokapon before everyone decided it was cool to play Dokapon Kingdom, but this game is just a blast to invest time into! I have played many campaigns, and each one is a drastically different story from the last. Easily one of my favorite games of all time, blast to play and I am always looking for a reason to play.

10. Splatoon

I won’t lie, when I first saw Splatoon come out, I had no interest in it. I completely brushed it off and thought nothing of it. But then my brothers would end up getting it, and OH BOY. I feel head over heels for this game, I am in love with the sense of style the series has, I am captivated by the cool mechanics, and I bump the soundtrack in my dorm. My fashion style has changed to try and match this game! I can’t get enough of it, and I have invested hours upon hours playing matches.

9. Fire Emblem Blazing Sword

I was not a fire emblem fan, at all. I played Awakening and was mildly interested in the series, but this game put Fire Emblem on the map for me. I am sucker for the sprites in this game, having all of my units feel unique and have some type of a persona. The game play is addicting to me, and feeling of seeing my favorite characters develop into powerhouses is like no other.

8. Cave Story

I have been waiting 11 years to play CaveStory, I originally got a taste of this game on the demo off the wii shop channel. But me being forgetful, I never sought after it despite buying many other games off the wii shop channel. That would change in 2018, and I felt like I have been missing out. The story, the music, the easy to pick up hard to master gameplay, GOING THROUGH HELL! I have died many times in this game, and it always keeps me coming back for more. Everyone should play CaveStory at least once!

7. Celeste

Now unlike CaveStory, the moment I saw Celeste I knew this game was going to be fantastic! Before the game was released I would jam out to the bits of the soundtrack online, and the moment it landed on the eshop I snagged it up. Its similar to Cavestory in gameplay being easy to pick up but hard to master, but the story. I can’t spoil anything but I cried alot while playing this game, and it inspires me to bring together the good and the bad I see inside myself. It helps that the soundtrack is perfectly atmospheric, I think it is criminal if you haven’t given Celeste a chance!

6. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R

Spoilers, but this is the only fighting game I have on this list, they are all great but this game will hold a special place in my heart. Guilty Gear is an anime, air-dashing fighter that has exquisite game design. I wish I could FD in all fighting games period, but alas I can not. This is the first game that I got my behind handed to me on a daily basis, all my late bus rides home were spent playing this game and coming to terms that I did not understand this game. I sucked at this game, but getting my ass kicked just to slowly grow and become a beast with my main Ky Kiske is the kind of determination that will never leave me.

5. Mother 3

Please go play Mother 3, it is a fantastic game with an even better story. I know from friends that the gameplay isn’t the best thing in the world, but I think it keeps things entertaining enough to most rpgs. This is a game you have to play with sound on, the sound design and soundtrack is fucking great. There were many tears that fell on my keyboard due to this masterpiece which is why I can’t say too much but I got attached.

4. Xenoblade Chronicles

I still remember the day Shulk got announced for Smash for Wii U/3DS and everyone look at me like I was a crazy person for knowing who he was. Xenoblade has consumed many days of my life, just mindlessly exploring the gorgeous landscapes, and getting engulfed into this tightly crafted story about a guy who has the power to change the future. Which would lead me to take my own future into my own hands and where I want it to go.

3. GitarooMan

If any of you know even remotely what Gitarooman is, please message me because no one realizes this game exists. This is another case of me thinking lowly of a game until falling madly in love with it. GitarooMan has these wonderful little themes and a little story that just work in harmony with one another, despite being a short rhythm game. U-1 journey from his humble start to his satisfying ending resonates with me, and inspires me. It also helps that the gameplay and the music feel great to play and listen too

2. The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks

This was my first Zelda game, and the only game I have ever 100% completed everything. I originally gave this game to my best friend as a birthday gift, to only get the game myself two days later. I think the train is adorable, the story is great, the spirit flute can go burn in a fire, and I remember the feeling of satisfaction of figuring out a puzzle that halted my progress. This game would give me the courage to face my fears while I was younger, and always serves as a reminder that I can’t do everything on my own sometimes.

1. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team

Not the first video-game I ever played, not even my first Pokemon game, but this would be the first videogame I would beat and the first to make me cry. I have created many rescue teams, each with their own team names and mottoes, all of them being unique and rewarding with their experiences. My sense of adventure was created from this game, going out just for the sake of getting lost and figuring what was out in the unknown. Always having my partner, alongside my team. to keep me grounded, to support my goals, and to go on adventures with. This game is a part of the core that makes me who I am today, and there isn’t a day that goes by where I am not searching for my next partner and to lend a helping hand to someone in need

#asks #feel free to ask questions!#this was a blast to do #thank you for asking this question #this was my study break hehe #and honestly these are like tl;dr versions of why I love these games #holy orders was my theme song for all of high school #maybe I will come back and elaborate more #maybe

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superoddgaming · 5 years ago

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My Top 10 Games For E3 2019

E3 2019 is on the horizon and you know what that means; endless predictions and guesses and what the hell is gunna be going down from the 8th to the 13th apparently.

A bunch of companies are having their own showcases and conferences except for Sonyand I believe EA this year but I’m not really gunna run through all of the different conferences I’m more so just gunna run through the games that I am most excited about.

10// Session

It’s been almost a decade since we have seen a good skateboarding game on console or PC. Skate 3 released in 2010 and since then nothing has been able to dethrone it as the last well executed skateboarding game.

Tony Hawks Pro Skater sure as hell didn’t even come close. If anything that game made us have even less hope for the genre. But then along came Session, announced at 2018’s E3 slated for a late 2019 release on PC and Xbox.

I hope that we get to see more of Session during Xbox’s conference along with a look into a campaign for the game as well as a final release date.

9// Animal Crossing

I am the most excited about this one mostly because of the Switch’s portability and this will be the perfect drop in drop out game to have on the go with you.

I’m really hoping for an Island or vacation themed one this time around, I think that would be so cool.

8// Control

Control looks all kinds of bizarre, creepy, fun and holy shit the physics they have in this game is just absolutely crazy.

Destructible environments, almost everything is interact-able and they really showcased it at the end of their trailer and where she picks up the projector and shoots it at the wall and each of the boxes and papers all act independently.

I am amazed with this game both technically and from a story standpoint, it looks like a descent into madness mixed with a little government conspiracy.

I’m really excited to see where this one goes and it does look like it will be another PS4 exclusive. Sony is KILLIN IT with the single player experiences.

7// Biomutant

I have had my sights on Biomutant for what it feels like years now. I have eagerly been watching and awaiting more news and insider looks for it. It looks like so much fun, it’s got style, zany humor, really funny narration and the game play looks really promising.

Not only that but the world that your creature exists in is really fascinating with all of these spliced creatures all over the place and interacting with each of them to find out how the world went to a over-polluted corrosive wasteland is sparkin’ some interest in me.

I have a feeling we will get another gameplay demonstration as well as a release date but I’m honestly not expecting this one to come out until 2020 or 21.

This is one of those games that I’m fine with if it takes forever to come out just because I really want it to succeed.

6// Outer Worlds

Space is yours to explore, for a price. Impossibly cool looking monster combinations, beautiful unearthly landscapes and a crazy cast of characters on top of that and you got yourself a new favourite to sink only what I can assume will be over a hundred hours.

They showcased some game play for it and the writing is just awesome. The fact that they has the crowd and myself laughing without and voice acting done in the game yet is a testament to their comedic writing.

What I love most about this game is there’s no real good and evil. You play the game how you want to play it. If that means going along with the story and being a boring upstanding citizen you can do that.

If that means literally murdering actors because of a terrible performance and then disintegrating the director you can do that. Either way you are still rewarded in some fashion for your quests and I just think that is so cool paired with all the other face swapping goodness.

5// Pokemon: Sword & Shield

This will be my first Pokemon game in probably a decade. The last one I played was I think was Ruby and Sapphire.

I’m hoping that Pokemon gets some love during the E3 Direct and we get to see a little bit more of the Region and possibly a look at the starter evolutions.

Y’all know I’m #grookeygang for life. Doesn’t matter what it’s final evolution is look at that little bastard.

They look like they are introducing more RPG elements and the Pokemon franchise could use a refreshing new implication of their pattented Pokemon formula. Hence the reason I haven’t gotten a Pokemon up until this release.

Here is to hoping that they showcase more of the technical improvements beyond just content. I do have a feeling some of the millions of Pokemon IP’ currently being released might get talked about instead though.

4// Cyberpunk 2077

This will come as no surprise it’s in my top 5.

It’s in everybody’s top 5.

It’d be doing this game a dis-service to not have it in your top 5.

CD Project Red, the people who made the Witcher 3, have been working on this game for a millennia now and last year it was showcased and said to be playable from start to finish at that point.

I think we will get a final showcase of all the polishing and finishing touches they’ve put on the game and set it up for a release window.

And I mean what’s not to love about this game?

The concept of cyberpunk the style alone is already badass but a whole dystopian world set around that and knowing that Project Red can do with world building, questing, dynamic abilities and interactions.

If you ask me I don’t think it’s going to be coming until late 2020. This is a game that NEEDS to be perfected. It needs to have a good release. People have been anticipating this game for years, including myself.

My wallet is going to be so empty...

3// Astral Chain

This is what I want to see from Nintendo!

No more Sequelitis, finally an interesting fully developed IP and it looks absolutely badass.

The world, the intricate fighting system, badass robo-cop persona’s on leashes, being a cool ass detective.

This game just looks amazing. We need to see more of it. We know almost nothing about the story so far or even how expansive this game is shaping up to be.

YOU GET TO RIDE ROBO-DOG MECHS! whats not to love?

But hey it’s directed by the dude who did Nier Autmoata and that game was a hidden gem for a while. I’m really hoping this game get to bask in the spotlight a little bit more.

I want this game to be successful so bad. As fun as the Mario and Zelda games can be I know that the Switch can have some serious independent releases like this one.

Astral Chain my just be the trendsetter the Switch needs to prove that it’s not just the Mario console, it’s something that can hold it’s own up against the Xbox and Playstation.

2// The Evil Within 3

This is my wildcard.

I know next to no one is anticipating this game but I LOVE THIS FRANCHISE.

I love the world they have created, the resident evil vibes, the terrifying distorted monsters, the twisted visuals that send a chill down your spine.

The ever looming threat of always being hunted, watched or taunted. The Evil Within masters the atmosphere of never feeling truly safe. You are always on guard and that makes for very interesting game play in a horror narrative.

There was worlds of improvements made between the first and second game and I loved each of them dearly. We were left with a couple unanswered questions at the end of the second game and I really want to see the story come to a close and finish off the trilogy.

I’m not expecting and game play or even a release window but at some point during Bethesda’s conference I really really want to see this pop up. We know they’re not announcing the new Elder Scrolls so there is definitely room there for a surprise release.

This is just me being really really desperate for a third game, the second game had such an incredible world and we saw the characters grow so much it would be a shame to see all of that get stuck in just the second game.

Not to mention that this is the most fun I’ve had playing an actually scary game in a long time. Let’s make it happen Bethesda

1// Square Enix: Avenger’s Project

The long awaited and incredibly mysterious Avenger’s project form Square Enix is the cherry on the cake of this E3.

Square Enix is hosting their own panel and while I know majority of it is going towards the 7 remake and possibly a new final fantasy announcement they would be just plain dumb to not have this ready to announce.

With the MCU concluding it’s current phase with Endgame now is the perfect time to showcase this project. It has been two years since we had the teaser and people were going bat-shit then, imagine what would happen now.

The crazy thing is that this will be the first part of a multi-game deal between marvel and Square Enix which means that this game will just serve as the starting block.

We have seen Marvel make an incredible comeback into the gaming universe and they may be doing exactly that. Creating a gaming universe to pair along side their cinematic universe. This one just might surpass PS4 spidey though. It’s got some serious hype going behind it and we might just finally get to see it at E3 this year.

The Wrap-Up

Anyways that is my top 10 list for this years E3. Are they the biggest announcements or releases? Not by a long shot!

But they are the ones that as of right now I am the most excited about!

Are there anything that you think I’ve missed or forgot about? Are you one of the only other Evil Within fans that want a third instalment?

There’s gotta be someone else out there wanting this as bad as I do!!

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magic-and-moonlit-wings · 6 years ago

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Chapter 34: Making Arguments

This didn’t get posted last week because it didn’t match the theme of my April Fools’ Day prank. Thank you for your patience!

Content warning for this chapter: the ‘farming humans as food’ concept is discussed and Changeling!Jim doesn’t quite get why the humans are horrified.

Becoming The Mask

Nomura had successfully avoided Barbara for the entire class. She hadn't been partnered with her, or even made eye contact. Now she just had to get to her car and she would be in the clear for another week.

"Zelda!"

Curse how the human had longer legs than Nomura did in this form!

"Can I talk to you?"

"Can I stop you?"

Jim leapt over a spinning blade as it erupted from the floor, and used it as a shield from the fire jets, giving him a moment to catch his breath before the floor began to tilt and he had to run again.

He was surprised to realize he'd missed training in the Hero's Forge during his week away from Trollmarket. The Forge was like a friendly rival. It didn't actively wish him harm, not having a conscious mind, but it would utterly crush him if he didn't put his all into one-upping it.

He put on an extra burst of speed to cross the path of a pendulum-axe … but not fast enough to compensate for the tilting floor. The axe clipped his calf. Jim cried out and fell on his stomach.

Barely, he grabbed a floor groove and pulled himself up and forward, so his legs were out of the axe's path on the backswing. Jim climbed to the top edge of the floor section he clung to, and slid down it to the Forge's centre.

"Master Jim!"

The arena rumbled. The training equipment returned to starting positions. Toby and Darci weren't standing alone – Claire and Mary had rejoined them, and Blinky and AAARRRGGHH were at the Forge's controls.

Jim stretched his arms and flexed his hands as he walked over. He should start doing chin-ups or handstands or something. Despite Coach Lawrence's rope drills, Jim wasn't used to suddenly having his full body weight on his hands. If you did the rope drill right, a lot of your body weight was on your legs.

"You're limping," said Blinky. "Let me see your leg."

"I don't think it's cut, I think it's just bruised from impact force."

Jim vanished the armour from the knee down on his aching leg. Blinky practically pulled it out from under Jim. Jim reeled forward and AAARRRGGHH caught him.

"Also, I'm pretty sure this is a yoga pose." Jim stuck out his arms like he was playing airplane. Toby snickered.

"You are correct that your leg isn't cut." Blinky poked and prodded at Jim's calf muscle. "Hard to tell just what condition it's in, through this material, but it doesn't seem severe enough to require that you disrobe for a more thorough examination.”

Blinky released Jim's leg and AAARRRGGHH tipped him back upright, giving Jim a gentle one-fingered tap on the top of his head as though to make sure he was properly balanced.

(Jim held down an impulse to rub his forehead against AAARRRGGHH's hand. That would be … weird. Like hugging Mr Strickler in public.)

"I thought the armour was an all-or-nothing deal," said Darci.

"No, it adjusts. I've been experimenting." Jim reconjured his leg armour and closed the helmet's faceplate. "Amazingly, I can see through this."

Reluctantly, Nomura let herself be dragged off to a coffee shop. She picked at a scone while Barbara poured out her problems, clumsily avoiding any direct mention of trolls or Changelings.

"I feel like I'm seeing things more clearly now, after talking with Walt. He explained a lot about … mmm, cultural differences. History. What I might expect from Jim, going forward. But I don't want to just base all my judgement on one source, so I wanted to talk to you, as well …"

"As fascinating as the Amulet's properties are, we have other matters to discuss. Claire has updated AAARRRGGHH and myself on certain … recent developments."

"She spilled the beans on Not Enrique," said Mary. Jim glared.

"His name is Enrique until he says otherwise. More than one person can have the same name."

Claire made a noise not unlike a growl. "He already took my brother's life, he doesn't get to keep his name, too!"

"Claire, what the heck?" said Darci. "This was not the plan!"

"Plan?" repeated AAARRRGGHH.

"We were gonna play it cool and encourage Jimbo to bring the Changeling thing up," explained Toby, "so we'd know he really had told you, like he said, and you guys weren't going to arrest him or something for it."

Blinky, standing between the rest of the group and the Forge's main entrance, stretched out his lower arms like a barrier, patting the air in a quick 'keep it down' gesture with his upper hands.

"Trollmarket at large has not been informed. It would be in Master Jim's best interests for it to stay that way." He frowned at Jim. "You arranged for Claire's younger brother to be replaced?"

"Don't sound so disappointed. This was months ago, back when I still worked for Gunmar. You hadn't even met Claire yet. Also, technically all I did was make a suggestion. I don't actually have the authority to decide who gets swapped."

"Oh – question!" Darci half-raised her hand. "If we weren't friends yet, why did you, you know … 'suggest' Enrique, specifically?"

"Mrs Nuñez is active in local politics and it's always useful to have an eye on the inside." Jim grimaced. "Sorry, that's the, ah, Changeling reason, I guess. We might not've been friends, but," he gave Claire a hopeful look, "we were at least friendly. We've done projects together, we got along. You talked about your brother so much, I thought you'd be happy he was off the menu when the Gumm-Gumms invaded and ate everyone."

"How would I possibly have known that?" She had backed up to the weapons rack but not reached for anything yet.

"Okay, that part I didn't really start thinking about until after we were friends," Jim admitted. "I had a few arguments prepped for how you'd be more useful kept alive, too, but I didn't get a chance to present them before I changed sides, so that's not relevant anymore."

"What arguments?" asked Mary.

Jim froze. He'd been exaggerating – he'd really only come up with one argument.

"I thought you guys could be … useful … for something I found out wasn't going to happen anyways. So it doesn't matter."

AAARRRGGHH must've caught on, because he stepped back, looking stricken.

"You can't just say something like that and expect us to drop it," said Claire. She had her hands on a spear now. Her back was to it, and her grip was more like she was holding a guardrail than clutching a weapon. That could change quickly.

"Well, it turns out Gunmar's primary goal is to permanently blot out the sun, which is self-defeating because then all the surface life the Gumm-Gumms want to be free to hunt is going to die off, so farming humans wouldn't work out, and –"

Jim hoped to jabber out some long string of something to bury 'farming humans' in the middle of a ramble. He didn't speak fast enough. They all gasped.

"You thought," said Claire, "I'd be grateful, that you stole my baby brother, so he wouldn't get eaten by trolls, and were keeping me alive, to have more babies, who would get eaten by trolls?"

In the interests of sustaining a genetically diverse breeding stock, they probably wouldn't all get eaten, Jim had the sense not to say.

"That," said Darci, "is literally one of the most horrific scenarios I could possibly think of."

Mary looked green. Toby was shaking his head, an expression of disgust growing on his face.

"I know I'll regret asking this but I'm not gonna be able to stop thinking about it if I don't," said Toby. He swallowed. "What about your mom?"

"All these years of secrets and sneaking around, and I want to believe he means well, and I want to understand where he's coming from, but I still get so angry thinking about it …" Barbara stirred her coffee with a biscotti. It had been in her drink for so long it was probably mush below the waterline. "What do you think I should do?"

"… Personally? I think you should let Jim come home, and go about your life pretending you never found out about any of this."

Really, what was the woman expecting from her? Nomura didn't remember volunteering to be the human's confidante.

Barbara sighed heavily and got up.

"Well, thanks for letting me vent."

"Mom's a doctor. She'd be totally useful alive."

"That's … that's messed up, dude. What made you think she'd even go along with that? I mean, what's to stop her just mercy-killing everyone?"

"Bribery," said Jim simply. "I'd go back to living as a troll full-time, and Mom could have Jay-Jay back to reward her compliance and as a hostage for future good behaviour. Which would also extend her life, because if she taught Jay-Jay medicine apprentice-style, then once she got too old to practice, he could take over, but she'd still be kept alive as his reward-slash-hostage."

"I am incredibly creeped out by how proud you sound of that plan."

"Well, I know now that it wouldn't have worked out," said Jim defensively, "but it felt totally reasonable when I came up with it." Back when he'd thought Gunmar had considered the practical concerns of running the world after taking over.

There was a rumbling noise. The Soothscryer rose and glowed.

Because of course the Ghost Council couldn't have called him in three minutes ago and let him avoid most of that conversation.

The last thing Blinky said to Jim, before Jim went into the Void, was, "This conversation is not over."

The first thing Kanjigar said to Jim, the second time Jim was in the Void, was, "I did not say that."

"Didn't say what?" Jim rubbed his head. The abrupt shift in location and topic of discussion left him with whiplash.

A vision floated in the air beside them, of Jim talking to Draal after the Trollhunter's first summoning by the Soothscryer. In the vision, Jim was claiming Kanjigar had instructed him to tell Draal that Kanjigar loved and was proud of his son, and how sorry he was for pushing Draal away.

"I did not say that," said Kanjigar sternly.

"Yeah, well, you should have. Because maybe if you'd said that to Draal while you were still alive, he wouldn't have been so damn desperate to inherit the stupid death-sentence amulet, because he'd know you valued him just as much as you valued being the Trollhunter. Forgive me for trying to give your son closure after he found out I could go chat with his dad's ghost and he wasn't invited."

"I wanted to keep Draal as far away from the amulet as possible! You have only encouraged him to endanger himself!"

"By refusing to sideline a skilled and powerful warrior for sentimental reasons?"

"You dragged my son into your fight with Bular –"

"I don't know what fight you were watching, but I did not drag Draal anywhere. He had at least two chances to run after the fight started."

"And thanks to Draal, Bular is dead." The eyes of the past Trollhunters' bodies sometimes lit up when they spoke. Deya the Deliverer, on the highest pedestal in the Forge, had her eyes glowing. "The Changelings have a point about the efficiency of fighting with backup."

"Thank you." Jim nodded to her.

"This is not why we called you here," said another Trollhunter; one who looked like Kanjigar, but had died in a fighting stance, sword in hand.

"We told you before;" this speaker had long, wavy horns that stuck out to the side, like Vendel's; "if you wish to protect your human friends, you will need to kill Bular, and Gunmar."

The wispy lights began circling Jim.

"You have defeated the son, but not the father."

"But there's no way to kill Gunmar."

"He's invincible."

"No, he's not!"

"So far as we know," the previous voice clarified.

"What do you know?"

"He may have started a cult around himself, but he's not a god," said Jim fiercely – and blasphemously, having being raised in that cult. "And besides, tons of myths involve gods being killed."

"Legend has it that Merlin found a way," said Deya. "If he did, he never told his Champions. I suggest you talk to your mentors."

Barbara knocked on the door to the Domzalski house. After a minute, she tried the doorbell. She hoped Nancy was home, and had her hearing aids on.

A cat came out as soon as the door opened wide enough. It wound itself around Barbara's ankles.

"Barbara, dear!" said Nancy warmly. "What a nice surprise."

"Hi, Nancy. Can we talk?"

"Of course. Come in. Is this about how Jimmy's been staying here for the past week? I was starting to wonder if you were out of town and I'd forgotten."

Previous Chapter (Claire tells Blinky she knows Jim’s a Changeling)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Jim and Strickler find out the human kids know Strickler’s a Changeling)

#Changeling Jim #Tales of Arcadia #Trollhunters #Becoming The Mask chapters #fanfiction #Monday is fanfic day!#Claire Nuñez #Tobias Domzalski #Darci Scott #Mary Wang #Blinkous Galadrigal #AAARRRGGHH #Kanjigar #Deya the Deliverer #Dr Barbara Lake #Nomura #Nana Nancy Domzalski #My Fanfiction

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frankly-art · 6 years ago

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Frankly-Art’s Top 10 Video Games of 2018

Also available to read on my deviantArt!

With every New Year comes another year’s worth of video games to look forward to, and 2019 promise to be a good one in that regard: the release of Kingdom Hearts III is only days away, Piranha Plant and Joker are certain to be innovative and entertaining additions to the Smash Ultimate roster, Animal Crossing is coming to the Switch… and those mark only a small fraction of the many things 2019 has in store for us in terms of gaming. Amid all of this hype, I got to thinking about the varied gameplay experiences I had over the past year; so, I figured this would be as good an opportunity as any for me to reflect on them with a bit of a critical eye and definitively rank each of the video games I managed to get to during 2018!

Keep in mind while reading that, even though this is a list featuring games I played in 2018, many of these games were ones released in years past that I never got around to until last year—so, if you were expecting a list of the top 10 games that were released in 2018, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere (but not until after you read my oh-so-important list first! I crave validation!); expect a healthy mix of new and old titles in the list below. Additionally, this list will rank downloadable content (DLC) separately from standalone titles, as I don’t find it fair to compare a DLC add-on to a fully-fledged game. I’ll be weighing the score of each DLC depending on how well it improves and expands upon the narrative and gameplay of its original game.

Without further ado (and with no better means of transitioning from this introduction to the list itself than to use a somewhat tired expression in the realm of video games), let’s-a go! (Please forgive me.)

-SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT-

Favorite Characters: Revali, Urbosa, Kass Favorite Tracks: Monk Maz Koshia (all phases)

It might come as somewhat of a shock that a game with “Breath of the Wild” in its title would rank lowest on my list, but hear me out: no matter how much fun it was to be able to return to Hyrule in this DLC expansion, in my opinion, Champions’ Ballad just felt like more of the same of what we got in the main game.

Despite the nigh perfection that was Breath of the Wild, I have to agree with critics who said that the lack of aesthetic variation between segments of dungeon crawling and puzzle solving was a monotonous bore when compared to the varied themes and aesthetics of the dungeons in Zelda games past, and Champions’ Ballad did nothing to vary the atmosphere in its new shrines and dungeon from those of the main game. This disappointment was compounded with the fact that Champions’ Ballad added no new weapons to your arsenal (aside from a risky-to-use fork that functioned virtually like every other sword in the game) to allow for new types of puzzle solving or exploration. The unicorn motorcycle was certainly a cool reward for completing the DLC (the fact that I got to write the words “unicorn” and “motorcycle” next to each other is reward enough), but I had very little use for it since I’d already combed through the entirety of Hyrule during my first playthrough of the game. I simply believe it would have been nice for Champions’ Ballad to have given players something a little fresher to explore, even if it were just an aesthetic change of scenery.

I had also hoped that Champions’ Ballad might have expanded on the lore sprinkled throughout Hyrule and, even though we learned more about the four champions, I was a little let down that they didn’t really expand on anything else (Why can’t I climb to the top of Mount Agaat? Why does the entirety of the Akkala region fill me with a confusing sense of serene dread?? What the hell happened at the Typhlo Ruins???) I appreciate that, by not explaining everything, Nintendo give players the chance to interpret these things for themselves, but, when compared to the lore provided in previous Zelda games, I feel as though Champions’ Ballad fell short in fleshing out the history of this ruined Hyrule.

Favorite Characters: Prompto, Ignis Favorite Tracks: A Retainer’s Resolve, Apocalypsis Magnatus

Given how much of a beautiful mess Final Fantasy XV was upon its initial release, it’s certainly a consolation to the main game to see how well Square Enix supplemented its (rather disjointed) story and expanded upon its (frankly, lacking) gameplay through its various DLC expansion chapters featuring Noctis’ loyal Chocobros. And while I may not love Ignis quite as much as other chocobros like Prompto or Noctis, Episode Ignis was definitely an engaging and welcome addition to the enigma that is the Final Fantasy XV.

Particular highlights of Episode Ignis include its soundtrack, which features a heroic leitmotif for Ignis that really underscores the dire circumstances he and his teammates find themselves in during this segment of the story, and its addition of gameplay modes (Motorboat Simulator 2018 being one of them) are a welcome change of pace to the somewhat rudimentary battle and exploration systems found in the main game. However, a point of contention I have with Episode Ignis is with its narrative: while I appreciate that this DLC chapter finally explains how Ignis becomes blind, its multiple endings completely undermine the storyline of the main game itself. Does Ignis’ sacrifice save Noctis from having to make a sacrifice of his own in order to save the world? Does Ignis regain his sight after Noctis defeats Ardyn? Do Noctis and Luna finally realize that they’d be better off with other people (as it’s obvious that Noctis is already too preoccupied with his three boyfriends to make room for anyone else)? I need answers, Square!

Favorite Characters: Elizabeth, Atlas/Frank Fontaine Favorite Tracks: Patsy Cline – She’s Got You, Johnny Mathis – Wonderful! Wonderful!

I claimed to be a fan of the BioShock series for so long, even though I’d only ever played the first game in the series until the summer of 2017 when I finally bought a PS4 and, with it, the BioShock Collection. Now, I can call myself a fan of the series without reservation, having explored and discovered all that Rapture and Columbia have to offer. To me, BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episodes 1 & 2 are a love letter to the entire series itself, featuring elements from the three main-series games and tying together each of their narratives (save for maybe BioShock 2, which is absolutely criminal, considering 2 is my favorite game in the series) in a way that, while forced in some aspects, felt like Ken Levine actually cared about clearing up some of the more confusing questions that remained at the end of BioShock: Infinite.

Burial at Sea really came into itself during Episode 2, where gameplay was switched up to feature more fleshed-out stealth mechanics that made sneaking around Rapture and Columbia both exhilarating and terrifying. It was also refreshing to be able to finally take control of Elizabeth, one of the most iconic characters of the series after the Big Daddies of BioShocks 1 and 2, and learn more of her own personal motivations and desires as she maneuvers through hostile environments. As I already mentioned briefly, I know some took issue with the way Burial at Sea wove the first two BioShock games together with the third, but, considering the mess that was made when BioShock Infinite introduced multiverse science into its mythos (and the narrative mess that Infinite was in general—I took great issue with the way they framed the oppressed populations of Columbia as “just as bad” as the ruling populations simply because they used violence to, you know, try and liberate themselves from their oppression), I feel that Burial at Sea did the best job it could considering that the setting of Infinite differed so greatly from that of the first two games.

Also, fun fact: I studied this game as a part of my Master’s Project and played it through a total of three times: once in English and twice in French! Isn’t academia weird?

Favorite Characters: Rando, Buddy, Vega Van Dam Favorite Tracks: 666 Kill Chop Deluxe, He’s My Dad, Brokentooth March

Anyone who reads TV Tropes is likely familiar with the trope “Gameplay and Story Segregation” and its less-frequent counterpart, “Gameplay and Story Integration”. In the case of LISA: The Joyful, this DLC game (which could practically be its own standalone title if it weren’t for the fact Steam labels it as “DLC” and won’t let you play it without first purchasing LISA: The Painful) absolutely excels in the latter and completely subverts the gameplay mechanics and narrative structure of the base game, and this can all be attributed to the way both games focus on your use of the cure-all drug that makes you feel nothing: Joy.

Indeed, where LISA: The Painful makes you question your use of the drug Joy, LISA: The Joyful (Joyful) is nigh impossible to complete without taking it in nearly every battle after you’re left to your own devices when the muscle of your party abandons you. As anyone who’s played the LISA trilogy will know, Joy is a dangerous substance, mutating its addicts and twisting the minds of anyone who uses it, and that Joy is an integral piece of the trilogy’s social and philosophical commentary on the freedom and restriction of choice, the commitment and devotion one carries for a person or cause, and the inherent, inevitable grey area of any and all actions one may take. Despite these themes, LISA: The Joyful is far from a demoralizing experience: if anything, the way the game simulates the feeling of being backed into a corner and the refusal to give up despite the odds only affirms whatever moral code by which you may already live, or is at least an opportunity to feel relief that you yourself aren’t forced to make such drastic decisions for your own survivability and freedom.

That’s it for the DLC games I played in 2018; now, the real fun begins! Brace yourself for my list of the top standalone titles I played last year!

Favorite Characters: Katie

This game was recommended to me by a friend, and, as much as I wanted to enjoy it, this game wound up being my lowlight of 2018, with its simplistic, seemingly rudimentary gameplay and conspicuous lack of any compelling narrative. Put bluntly, this game was like a forgettable rendition of Animal Crossing, only without any cute animal neighbors to run errands for. The game’s environment threatened absolutely no danger to your player character, yet still didn’t offer any engaging or challenging puzzles to solve to make up for this lack of danger (most “puzzles” involved figuring out how to get to a particular point on the map… and that was it). Despite this being an open-world game that offered endless opportunities for customization, I found myself hurrying to complete the game’s main (5-hour) campaign so I could feel justified to move on to other gaming experiences. The most unfortunate part of this to me is that I know there’s still more to the game’s world for me to explore, but I’m in no way compelled to do so.

In all fairness, though, I think that I’m a little older than the target demographic this game was aiming for. This game was never meant to be challenging or stressful, it was made to be a relaxing escape for anyone looking to pass the time exploring and discovering a beautifully modeled and brightly colored world. This game also wins serious points for inclusivity, especially considering the age group this game was most likely made for; my fondest memory of this game is of a quest where a woman requests that you find her the ingredients to make a potion that stimulates beard growth because she wants to grow a beard of her own, and not once during this campaign is she ridiculed or belittled for wanting one. Since Yonder seems to be a game for kids, I believe quests such as this are an excellent step to socializing them into a world that’s less judgmental and more receptive to other people. So, despite my earlier critiques of this game, Yonder would be a great game to consider if you’re looking for a low-key and off-beat (and all-human) alternative to Animal Crossing.

Favorite Veteran Fighters: Peach, Zelda, Zero Suit Samus Favorite Newcomers: Daisy, Ridley, Richter Favorite Stages: Fountain of Dreams, Fourside, Hyrule Temple Favorite Tracks: All-Star Rest Area (Melee), Destroyed Skyworld, Athletic (Yoshi’s Island)

We all knew another installment in the Smash series was coming ever since the Switch was first announced back in March of 2017. In fact, you might even say that the quality of each console’s iteration of Smash reflects the quality of the console itself, with Melee demonstrating the power and potential of the GameCube, Brawl being a gimmicky romp on an equally gimmicky console, and Wii U/3DS (what a title, right?) completely failing to capture player interest for longer than a few rounds of Smash (the Wii U era feels like a fever dream to me at this point). It’s a letdown, then, that with the Switch being such a commercial and technical success, Smash Ultimate seems somewhat of a disappointment when weighed against the hype that surrounded it up until its release back in early December.

It’s true that Smash Ultimate really delivers in regard to the character roster (everyone is here!) and stage selection (almost everything is here!), but the cuts that were made to series staples like trophies, event matches, and the like, detract from Smash Ultimate becoming the be-all end-all title in the series that it could have been. Trophy mode was where I learned much about video game history and was introduced to obscure series I would have never discovered otherwise, and their replacement with spirits feels a bit cheap, especially since spirits don’t come with any kind of information to contextualize them. Event Matches were hybridized with Melee’s Adventure mode and Brawl’s Subspace Emissary, creating the “World of Light”; while the World of Light has grown on me the more that I play it, it’s somewhat discouraging to me that, by combining so many modes of Smash games past into one, there will be nothing left for me to do with the game once I reach its end.

Still, Smash Ultimate offers plenty to look forward to. I’m more-than-hyped about the additions of Piranha Plant and Joker from Persona 5 to the character roster, and I can’t wait to see who might be announced next (unless it’s another Fire Emblem character… please God [Sakurai] don’t let it be another Fire Emblem character).

Favorite Tracks: The Bridge, Touching the Stars, Up to the Nest

I could never have prepared myself for the beautiful-yet-heart-wrenching experience this game would put me through, but I’m oh-so-glad that it did. On the surface, RiME is a relaxing exploration and puzzle game that takes place in a beautifully rendered in-game world, with a brilliantly orchestrated soundtrack and a plethora of diverse landscapes to get lost in. And yet, every moment of your adventure is permeated by an inescapable sense of isolation and dread, making you ask questions like “Where is everyone?”, “Just who is that man in the red cloak?,” and, “Is he stalking me, or are I stalking him?”.

Indeed, RiME’s narrative unfolds wordlessly as you explore and leaves you to discover and interpret on your own exactly what tragedies transpired before the events of the game, tragedies of which are far more poignant and moving if you were to discover them yourself. I know I’ve put a spoiler warning in effect, but I highly recommend you play this game on your own (or at least watch a decent Let’s Play of it) if you’re curious to know what unfolds during the game’s narrative. RiME is a relatively short game, too, lasting only between 5-10 hours, so it would be an easy one to fit into your queue if you’re looking for a fun gameplay experience with a story that will haunt you for weeks and months on end after completing it.

Favorite Characters: Terry Hintz, Buzzo, Wally Favorite Tracks: Men’s Hair Club, The End is Nigh, Summer Love

Having already talked about this game’s DLC expansion of LISA: The Joyful, you’re already aware that I hold the LISA trilogy in high regard—it also means I can make this entry somewhat brief, since a lot of what I said about Joyful can also be applied to its parent title, LISA: The Painful. You see, it’s in LISA: The Painful where the conflict in Joyful begins, and where we learn more of how the world came to be so depraved after the White Flash, an extinction event that inexplicably killed all women on the planet (at least, as far as the characters in the game know). The game considers what the repercussions of such an event would be on our society (aside from dooming humanity to die off within a generation) and really explores the darkest depths of toxic masculinity to call into question the detrimental effects it has on our self-esteem, our relationships, and our will to survive. Gameplay-wise, it’s a fairly traditional JRPG, though as I mentioned with Joyful, LISA: The Painful integrates its story with its gameplay by permanently increasing (but mainly decreasing) your stats depending on whatever injuries you escape or sustain throughout your journey. All in all, LISA: The Painful is a truly harrowing experience from beginning to end, but a must-play for anyone with an interest in the more macabre aspects of human nature.

Favorite Characters: Aloy, Erend, Vanasha Favorite Tracks: Louder

You know a game’s going to be good when its title screen holds you in awe before even pressing start. Imagine a sunlit vignette over purple mountains and a glistening river, a haunting and triumphant melody underscoring it all, as the title slowly fades into view in white in the center of the screen: Horizon Zero Dawn. O.K., I’m in. This game just did so many things right as an open-world game during an era where the genre was oversaturated by mediocre games that rehashed the same tired tropes and mechanics in its gameplay and world building. Horizon Zero Dawn truly set itself apart from the crowd for a variety of reasons: its beautifully detailed setting (being a microcosmic interpretation of Western North America), its intricate combat system with a graciously forgiving learning curve, and its compelling and socially-conscious narrative all worked together to distinguish this game within the open-world genre.

What really sets this game apart most of all, though, is the game’s protagonist, Aloy: a rare female protagonist who is a breath of fresh air in a sea of male heroes, whose capabilities and intellect don’t come at the cost of her physical appearance and femininity. Aloy set an example for other game developers that female protagonists are more than viable (and are in fact, overdue) in the video games of today, and her status as a female character never felt gratuitous or shoehorned (e.g. Battlefield V’s inclusion of a female protagonist as an enlisted soldier in the British Army and serving in the line of duty during World War II). It’s difficult (read: impossible) to play Horizon Zero Dawn and not fall in love with Aloy for her wit, her strength, and her general stick-to-itiveness in the face of adversity (not to mention, she’s just really cute and knows how to work a belly shirt). With Aloy as the protagonist, you’ll never tire of adventuring through Horizon Zero Dawn’s 70-hours+ worth of gameplay as you explore the in-game world to learn just what happened to “The Old Ones” and their society all those millennia ago.

Favorite Party Members: Ryuji Sakamoto, Ann Takamaki, Makoto Niijima Favorite Confidants: Hifumi Togo, Sadayo Kawakami, Sae Niijima, Toranosuke Yoshida, Chihaya Mifune Favorite Targets/Boss Battles: Ichiryusai Madarame, Kunikazu Okumura, Leviathan, Yaldabaoth Favorite Tracks: Blooming Villain, Rivers in the Desert, A Woman, Aria of the Soul

I’ll bet no one saw this one coming! Just kidding—anyone who’s exchanged more than a few words with me since the fall of 2018 knows how much this game absolutely consumed my life over the span of, I don’t know, I think it was four months? Indeed, I wound up sinking a total of 123 hours into this game, and there’s still a loud part of me that wants to return to it to begin a New Game+ (you’ll even notice that it was too difficult for me to contain my favorite characters into one category, instead having to split them up in order to represent all of my favorites because of how much I love them all). I’m already a fan of JRPGs, so it didn’t take much for Persona 5 to win me over with its turn-based combat, but the addition of certain gameplay mechanics—like earning an extra turn for exploiting enemy weaknesses or improving your relationship with your friends outside of battle to unlock gameplay bonuses—prevent battles and exploration in Persona 5 from ever becoming stale. Indeed, Persona 5 was truly a masterpiece from start to finish and an experience that I never wanted to end.

Frankly, any drawbacks I could mention about this game feel almost nitpicky, like the way the status ailment “Envy” is represented during the final boss fight by the color indigo instead of green, or how Kawakami can only manage to make me one cup of very useful, SP-restoring coffee over the course of an entire evening. Still, Persona 5 isn’t without its faults: for one, Persona 5 loses significant points for its questionable representation of LGBT groups (the camp gay men who openly harass Ryuji on multiple occasions being the most glaring example), and this isn’t helped by the queerbaiting that’s prevalent in a lot of character dialogue and relationships. Additionally, the fact that you can’t romance any of your male confidants comes across as erasive at best and homophobic at worst, especially considering that 1) all but one of your female confidants are eligible girlfriends, 2) you can two-time all of them at once if you so desire (which isn’t just disrespectful, it’s also flippantly misogynistic), and, most importantly, 3) one of this game’s main themes includes rebelling against oppressive societal norms (a theme that will resonate deeply with any LGBT+ player). Female representation in Persona 5 is also somewhat of a mixed bag: while the game features a large cast of diverse female characters, its constant and blatant objectification of Ann is not only creepy, it’s incredibly obtuse considering the sexual harassment and abuse she suffers by one of her teachers during the game’s first story arc. Fortunately, each of these drawbacks is easy enough to ignore when discussing the game as a whole, but I hope Atlus improves upon them in future installments: considering how incredible an experience Persona 5 was, imagine how much more incredible Persona 6 could be if these issues were fixed!

So that’s it for my top 10 games of 2018. What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with any of my commentary? What were some favorite games you played during 2018? I’d love to hear your responses and start a discussion, so please, leave your comments in the notes!

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kaorei-endgame · 7 years ago

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Fast Karate Game of the Year 2017 #1: Gravity Rush 2

I think about falling a lot.

Well, falling, floating, whatever. That part in Perfect Blue where she's in the bathtub, or in Ghost in the Shell where she talks about what would happen if she just ended up going down, and down, and down.

Kat doesn't fly; she falls. It's really just a semantic difference.

I suppose there's not much of a game to Gravity Rush, which I always suspected would be the case, which is why the overwhelming praise coming from even personal recommendations like @kidfenris and @psikick never got me perked up. The combat's pretty rough, even with the band-aid of Homing Kick Works On Everything. And for many interminable stretches, this game that is not a stealth game and has no mechanics/UI elements to allow for stealth gameplay, will throw you into back-to-back-to-back Pass/Fail stealth sequences and then when you finally clear them, ask you to do them again as side missions.

But damn, you can just fall.

I suppose this game has objectives. It definitely has cute side quests where long-suffering Kat uses her awesome powers to do decidedly unheroic things like deliver newspapers, shill for a cafe, rescue a lost puppy, and take on day labor as a mover for a rich asshole. Her peppy Can-Do! anime girl attitude-and her put upon resignation with the asinine-yet-humorous requests of every townsfolk she comes across-sands the corners of friction, such that I didn't mind when I realized this was a super hero game, even though super heroes have always sucked. It has a nice story. It has kind of a bittersweet story, in a meta way, in that the best part OF the story is the last hour or two that encompasses what would probably be the whole of Gravity Rush 3 except while playing this they definitely realized they would never get the chance to make a Gravity Rush 3.

So my game of the year for 2017 is a game I started playing on January 1st 2018, because it was half-off on the online store and we'd finished whatever we were streaming for the night and Graz had to go out to walk the dog. There could be no better kismet, and, across the two weeks where I spent most of my free time playing this game (and its DLC, and its predecessor) I feel somehow as if my brain reset. I found a rare video game where my objective was not to have an objective (despite the fact that Gravity Rush has almost as many objectives as any open world game does), but just to be. To feel the movement of my fingers as I double-tapped the shoulder buttons to readjust my trajectory. To feel, as if in my body, and not just my hands, that moment when you deactivate Kat's powers at full speed, that split-second where she hangs in the air like a clueless Wile E Coyote before gravity-real gravity, inescapable gravity-takes hold and sends her plummeting to earth. To work my palm against the rumble of the controller as she pancakes into hard stone, over and over, because, I don't know, falling animations are a wonderful thing about games, and this year, with Nier and Zelda, has been very good for goofy-ass falls. It's so frustrating, in Dark Souls, when you're so concentrated on a battle that you roll off a bridge and to your death, right? If it weren't, the Anor Londo archers wouldn't be the thing that bristles the whiskers of every player, big or small, when they reminiscence.

But it's hilarious, too, right? It couldn't not be. The way the camera seizes and locks in place halfway down, but your character just keeps falling, and falling, until they're nothing but a tiny speck. I've always liked the shock of realization that an accidental death by falling produces in Dark Souls. The flare of anger and indignation is so pure and justified and so deep-rooted in your core, this ancestral memory of what unfairness looks like, in the moment that you just throw yourself into your outrage at this bullshit, this theft-only to snap back to your senses a minute later, maybe somewhat quietly chagrined, and try to laugh it off, under your breath, like "ahahaha… yeah, that one was on me."

What I like about Gravity Rush is Kat can be that speck, but nothing hurts her, no matter how far she falls. It is a game with no consequence, but it's also a game that tells you there are no consequences, which is a much rarer thing, where the Call of Duties and Assassin's Creeds are concerned.

While I was playing this game, I posted a lot of videos to twitter of sending Kat falling to earth. Those videos don't even represent even a hundredth of the times I crashed her into rock, grass, asphalt, ponds, enemy battleships, church steeples, a fire-breathing elephant statue or a ferris wheel. Partially I did it so much because I think video game characters smashing into the ground is hilarious/fucking rocks, but it's also because it feels like the most efficient way to get around the world, a lot of the time. It's like the game has schooled you in subtle Trigonometry. Gradually, your holds mold to a game that at first felt unplayable. I am an apologist for this, like I am an apologist for Resident Evil. These feel like games to me, a synchronization of the limitations of the player with the limitations of the game. What I crave from games is resistance. It's a completely worthless skill--a didactic lesson with no real bearing outside of video games. But let me tell you a secret: that's true of all video games. They're all stupid. They're all a waste of time. So is most of human life. I'm trying to find ways to be fine with that. I'm hoping I'll do that before anxiety makes me explode.

What I've pretty rarely craved from games is passivity. Even when I enjoy it, I don't enjoy it. When I'm mining my thousandth copper ore in World of Warcraft, there's a cognitive dissonance: the acceptance that I might need this brainless play, with the frantic, rabid desire to not.

But I never felt that pull here. It was the rhythm of it. The constant micro adjustments of flight. The swoops, crashes, and soars. You are moving, and the shining purple gems that upgrade combat skills you never actually need are there like signposts to guide your descent. So are the sidequests. So are the races. So is everything. An excuse for forward motion, a series of tasks with no real bearing on anything, except instilling in me a peace of mind. In exploratory games like these, every outcropping is peppered with something to pick up that secures you a fractional bit of an incremental upgrade. That's what exploratory games are bad, because they incentivize exploration with garbage, because everything is a Piece of a Heart but now instead of 1 of 4 it's 1 of 400. For me, the one Assassin's Creed I played to competition was this ludicrous Lucy With The Football shit of seeing a chest on a ledge, climbing to that chest, and being rewarded with, like, 70 lire every time. So when I started this game, and saw giant, hovering pink diamonds twinkling from every outcropping I felt the swell of that instinctual revulsion towards collectibles, my superego vainly protecting me from the pull of my id, which always says "get those things, it will feel good. It will feel even better if you imagine getting all of them." But lurking behind that is always this tacit notion of, "every one of these things you pick up is a page of a book you didn't read or a word you didn't write."

For an hour at a time, basking in the music, all I would do was exactly that. I spent a lot of hours that way, suffused with the relaxation, basking in the float.

2017 was a bad year in a lot of ways. Specifically, for the purposes of this writing: personally, creatively, I did not exit it feeling super great. Christmas break was my last-ditch effort, and I flubbed that. And, playing through Gravity Rush 2, and its DLC, and the entire first game too, over the first couple weeks of January, I thought "well 2018 is off to just an awesome start," even as I acknowledged that maybe I was allowing myself space for my brain to reset.

What's cool, and I say this as someone who has never definitely felt like their brain has reset, to pull them out of a slump in that way (just in case you are also a person who has felt this way) is that this time: it actually did. The plans I'd deferred from the end of December started falling slowly into place at the end of January. They still are. Slower than I'd like them to, but at least they're moving. It's the first time it's happened to me, in this way. It's really bizarre, to feel like this is the first time I'm experiencing that. So I'm, at this point, almost two months late on finishing my Game of the Year, and nearly a month out from my #2 game (and I assume anyone who cared just guessed it was this anyway, I wasn't trying too hard to keep it a secret). But that's just a personally inflicted timeline anyway, so who gives a shit. 2018, I wanna get things done. That was my desire for 2017 too. But I'm approaching the idea that 2018 can be about getting things done in the speed that they're going to get done, instead of the speed I desperately need them to. I am making myself believe that is a possibility, and something about that seems possible, this time.

Tap-tap, goes my finger on R1. And move the analog stick ever so slightly. Hear the rush of air, and the distant strands of peppy music. Tap-tap, again, and I'm off, somewhere else. Even if it's the second half of the game, which is the whole of the first game, where the music is nowhere near as good as the initial town music, which was so raucous and so buoyant that often it inspired in me a desire to do nothing but fly upwards, testing how far I could fall into the sky before my power ran out, and then seeing how far I'd fall before it came back. That song, that song that was so peaceful and felt so kind. Touching upon these gems, triangulating among landmarks for a treasure chest hunt, and skidding to a magnetized stop on the craggy underside of a floating castle. And basking in the nature of the character on screen doing it, looking cool or clumsy, or both. Falling forever, until you are a speck, and the game doesn't even kill you when you run out of flight power over the vast abyss, it just teleports you back up wherever, and lets you try again.

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#gravity rush 2 #goty #game of the year #fast karate game of the year #goty 2018 #in 2018 maybe we'll let a secret go

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blessuswithblogs · 7 years ago

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Top Ten Videocons of Twenty Seventeen, More or Less

2017 has, by all accounts, been a fantastic year for Video Games. Unfortunately for me, it has been a not so fantastic year in Having Money. So while in a perfect world my now annual game of the year list would have been a terribly contested and dramatic affair of cutting games I thought were good but just didn't make it, in actuality, I had to scramble and cheat a little to just find 10 games to slot in and talk about. I did at least manage to find them. Mostly.

10. Destiny 2

Destiny is a franchise with a troubled history, which feels weird to say about something that came out in late 2014. Nevertheless, Destiny 2's shooty looty gameplay loop finds its way on to my list. The story is tepid and the characters, with a few exceptions, are scarcely worthy of memory, but the visuals are good and the core mechanics of shooting and using abilities are a solid foundation to build upon in the inevitable flurry of DLC packages and expacs. It's all quite reminiscent of Borderlands, except without the unmistakable caustic ooze of Randy Pitchford's involvement. That in and of itself is praiseworthy.

9. Gravity Rush 2/Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Okay so I maybe didn't actually play this one myself. I usually try to exclude stuff that I watched and enjoyed but in this case I was sitting on the couch with other people playing it so that's basically the same thing as playing it myself right? I think I held the controller for a little bit. Anyway this game is super weird and charming and a little nauseating in parts because you sort of go flying off into the stratosphere randomly? But the aesthetic and Mood the game goes for is very unique and fun, it even has its own cute little made up language I mistook for French at first until I heard some Japanese and Spanish sounding words in there as well. The main characters Kat and Raven are dating I think? They're happy and alive girlfriends. Raven is a little broody I guess but they're definitely not the Sad, Dead Lesbians I have grown to detest. Raven is not Velvet. Just reminding myself. Tropical Freeze is just really good and while it maybe came out like years ago I only got to play it very recently on my friend's Wii U. The music is super good fuck you Jeff Gerstmann I will fucking fight you and your shitty opinions about video games you god damned grumpy old man.

8. The Surge

My Thoughts on the Surge are well documented on this very website. It's flawed and frustrating in a lot of ways, nonsensical in others, and the story never quite commits to its original conceit which is a real shame. All that said, I respect the game for what it was unabashedly trying to do: be Dark Souls but with cyborg powerloaders and robots. Like, you gotta live your bliss, right? Lords of the Fallen was utterly miserable and the improvements that The Surge demonstrates gives me cause for optimism in future games from the developer. Anything that gives me cause for optimism in 2017 has to be worth something. That said, the inevitable The Surge 2 is probably going to be kind of by the numbers and unnecessary but that's just how you make games in the 21st century.

7. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

To begin with, BotW would be much higher on this list if I had not only come into owning it and a Switch yesterday. It is by all counts extremely good, an open world game that's actually pleasant and charming and has meritorious mechanics outside of Todd Howard style "you can go fuck that mountain" nonsense. I mean don't get me wrong you can fuck plenty of mountains in this game. Link is fucking Spider-man in this game, the only surfaces he can't mysteriously latch on to are inside the puzzle shrines so you can't just cheese them. Weapon degradation is maybe a little excessive? I feel sort of like Bayonetta in the first cutscene where she keeps yelling "Guns!" when she runs out of ammo except I'm yelling "shitty wooden sticks!" when the one I'm using breaks into a million tiny pieces. I understand the reasoning behind it, I do. It establishes a certain rhythm to the game of exploring, fighting, stocking up on shitty wooden sticks, and repeating. When you find like, an actual sword or spear it feels like an occasion to celebrate, and the whole thing demands that you use a variety of different weapons and weapon-like objects. I'm not nearly far in enough to give an honest, comprehensive picture of the game. I just really like what I've played so far so I'm just compromising by putting BotW relatively low on the list.

6. Cuphead

It's Cuphead! Everybody knows Cuphead by now. It's gorgeous, the soundtrack is great if somewhat lacking in variety, King Dice is really cool but has extremely unfortunate racial undertones, the game is pretty hard (not that hard?) and Cala Maria is a babe. It's a singular game that is extremely worthwhile and hopefully paves the way for future games in a similar style of aping specific styles and eras of animation. I really want a game that goes hard on the 1950s Looney Tunes aesthetic where you just drop anvils on people forever. Cuphead isn't perfect, as a lot of the game's difficulty and length comes from bad checkpointing. It's a necessary evil, because if the game did not blatantly disrespect your time in a lot of the later fights, the game would be like, two hours long. I'm not a proponent of the "git gud" philosophy but I can't help but feel like I really want to say that to the various bad-at-games journos who got bent out of shape about Cuphead being hard. This is your damn job. You can suck it up for one game, especially when it's really very good and unique like Cuphead. Also my mom came in while I was playing it and thought I was watching a popeye cartoon so that was kind of cute I guess.

5. Civilization 6 (CHEATING AGAIN)

YEAH I KNOW THIS GAME CAME OUT LAST YEAR AND IM A HUGE IDIOT FUCKER but hear me out Civ6 is really fucking good because of the fact that Wonders take up physical space on the map and districting does the same thing. Like just this single mechanical change basically doubles the amount of thought and planning you need to put into playing the game even on low difficulties to optimize your output and production. Like it's a civilization game so there's not really anything too groundbreaking here but I fucking adore this game. Really looking forward to Rise and Fall, which will be early 2018. With the initial release being late 2016 I feel like this is like, an honorary 2017 game. Don't @ me.

4. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is another game I wrote about previously on the blog, but unlike The Surge I had basically nothing but good things to say about it. Hollow Knight has gorgeous hand drawn graphics and environments not entirely unlike Cuphead, but obviously goes for a much more reserved mood. Hollow Knight is a rock solid Metroidvania game with strong aesthetic and musical chops to back it up, as well as some Dark Souls-esque flourishes to give the game a bit of bite and a haunting narrative arc. A fantastic indie game and I can't wait to see what Team Cherry does next. I need to get around to doing the Halloween DLC, come to think of it. Did you know Zote actually has as many precepts as he says he does? I listened to them all. Some of them aren't too bad.

3. Nioh

Geralt the Witcher's moonlighting adventure as a samurai came out quite early in 2017, but remains one of the best games of the year due to its complex and rewarding combat system, beautiful Warring Kingdoms era Japanese architecture inspirations, fun mythological monster designs, and genuinely well done historical fiction backdrop. Coming into it, I fully expected "Dark Souls except the bosses are like Tengus and Nues and shit", but that description does the game a pretty big disservice. It's much more than that, both from a narrative standpoint, which is a fantastically tinged retelling of the Warring Kingdoms period, and from a gameplay one. The combat in Nioh is much more technical than in Dark Souls, with more pretensions of a combo based character action game than the deliberate, heavily customizable experience of the Souls games. Nioh is still quite hard and has the whole death-recovery mechanic, but it makes sense diegetically due to Guardian Spirit system and remains distinct. There are times when it tries to have the best of both worlds and just kind of ends up feeling like it doesn't do a good job at either, but for the most part, Nioh is tremendously fun, and at times infuriatingly difficult, especially in some of the post game optional battles that pit you against multiple bosses at once. Also, finding Kodamas is extremely rewarding because they are so damn cute. I love them. Find them at all costs.

2. Nier: Automata

Nier: Automata, Yoko Taro's latest brainchild, is, well, what it is. It's a hauntingly weird story about what it means to be human, and if that definition is really even adequate. It's a game with a lot to say, which is why I regard it so highly. The core gameplay is fun and serviceable, which is much more than I can say for its predecessor, the first Nier, which was memorable and affecting but played kind of like butts. 2B's android adventures are much more fluid and stylish, and you have a surprising amount of customization options available (though some arguably make the game a little too easy at points, like regenerating health) and there's enough variety in the little Machine Life form enemies (and the big ones, too) that fighting never felt like a chore to me. Of course, others have disagreed, but I think that the tedium really only sets in when you play as 9S, who has a much reduced arsenal of fighting moves in favor of his hacking skills. I liked the little shmup minigames that hacking entailed, so even 9S's story never felt too dull in the actual mechanical execution of it. People tend to have a misunderstanding of how the game works, that you need to complete it 4 times to get the whole experience, but that's not actually true. The 4 endings separate the game into acts more than anything. While 9S's story has a lot of overlap with 2B's story, endings C and D are just entirely new content where you play as A2, who has some tricks of her own distinct from 2B and 9S. It's not perfect, but it's not like you have to play the same game 4 times. It's a very story focused game, so much so that I would say experiencing the narrative is the main draw, but it has the decency to also be varied and fun to play. I love the parts where you get in the transforming flying robot and shoot the dudes. Especially the big dude. You know the one.

1. Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

The latest Final Fantasy XIV expansion, Stormblood, is super good. I wrote a bit about it earlier, and how it has improved upon Heavensward in almost all respects. Stormblood is a superlative MMO expac, with well designed and amazingly presented raids, dungeons, and trials. It's full of "holy shit that's dope" moments, like when you get into a blade struggle against the primal Susano's gigantic Ame-no-Murakumo in an active time event or storm the fortress city of Ala Mhigo. Ultimately, though, what really makes me evaluate Stormblood as my game of the year is how surprisingly thoughtful it is. FFXIV has, since the relaunch of 2.0, been a game that has not shied away from complexity in its narrative conflicts. The juxtaposition of the mythically strong Warrior of Light and the surprisingly mundane issues even she cannot seem to fix has always been the game's most interesting element to me, and as you spearhead revolutions against the Garlean Empire in two different countries, you learn a lot about how imperial colonialism has made things too complicated to be fixed simply driving out the oppressors. You do, eventually, of course, but the story is quick to remind you that this is only the beginning, and a lot of key issues remain unsolved, both in the newly liberated provinces and back at home. Also the Dark Knight questline from 60-70 is basically the best the game has to offer. It feels to me like that Dark Knight is the unofficial Job of Stormblood, despite the promo material and opening movie having you believe it to be about Monks. Monks, as usual, are boring. The themes explored in the Dark Knight questline, about regret, about shades of gray, about self-destruction, all align perfectly with some of the subtler narrative arcs of the main story. It's just really good and I love it. I still really want to write a piece about it on its own. I probably will soon. But for now, I name Stormblood my game of the year, for reminding us that we are still heroes. That we are still good people.

#2017 #goty #breath of the wild #nier automata #the surge #hollow knight #ffxiv #nioh #cuphead

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destiny-smasher · 7 years ago

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E3 2017 predictions/hopes

Feeling more exhausted than usual around this time of year, but...here’s some of my thoughts going into E3.

Microsoft:

Microsoft is the one I’m least invested in, and they have the most room to take people by surprise and prove themselves. I don’t follow XBox news close enough to really have any good predictions. For the sake of competition, though, I certainly hope they bring something good to the table. Seems like all of their big efforts the past couple years have sorta flopped when contrasted by Sony’s work.

I anticipate Microsoft will try to shove some kind of tech in there no one’s really interested in -- maybe VR or stuff like that Minecraft thing from...last year? I don’t even remember. They’re in a tricky spot where they’re doing well enough because they can spread sales from PC, but, like...what can they do to really draw people in from the Sony vortex? At the very least, they can make their fans feel like their loyalty is being rewarded.

Sony:

Sony’s been kind of rocking the console game, seeming to get more momentum with each passing year since the PS4 released. They’ve revealed a lot of big hitting games over the past year, and I was honestly surprised with the God of War reveal being such an extended gameplay demo.

This year, I expect they’ll take some time to highlight some more refreshing indies, like usual, probably remind us of what’s coming up on the summer horizon. Usually we get one or two brand new indies in there, but they rarely ever focus long enough on any to really let them shine -- they expect you to follow up on your own time with those.

We’ve barely seen Detroit: Become Human, but if it’s going well, now’s kind of the time to really blow the lid off. Show us what will differentiate it from its spiritual predecessors. Give us a release date.

Death Stranding? I certainly hope it’s gonna be there. We haven’t seen any gameplay yet. Get on those shit. We know it’s gonna be trippy as balls, but what will it PLAY LIKE, or are all you big boys just strutting your stuff so hard you hope that’ll carry it?

God of War is sure to show up again, too, though I’m not sure in what capacity. Maybe a more cinematic trailer revealing more of the story? Maybe gameplay that is totally different in someway from last year’s demo? Maybe something that more directly shows the tie between the older games and this one? Hard to say what they could show that would really impress, though slapping us with a 2017 release date would certainly be pleasant. Kratos was such a boring character past GoW1.

It was very nice to see his character so different last year in the reveal, but what direction is it going in? Are we gonna control the kid after Kratos dies, or something? And if so, how would that maintain that without it feeling like something that’s been done before?

Last of Us Part 2 will probably be the show-stealer if it has a meaty gameplay demo, unless there’s just some bonkers high-profile secret reveal. It would really knock it out of the park if we got a gameplay demo and then a brief cinematic trailer to really hype it up, but they might not be quite that far into dev yet. I expect Naughty Dog will also give us one more trailer for the Lost Legacy to remind us how it’s coming out soon. There is a chance, though, that LoU2 isn’t far enough along for a big reveal, but if that’s the case, I wonder why they revealed it the way they did when they did.

I can’t help but figure Sony will have some kind of cool demo-drop next week. Maybe Death Stranding? Gotta love those E3 demo stealth drops. Probably some bigger thirdy part exclusivity thing, whether it’s DLC for a big game or some kind of timed-exclusive release.

Part of me thinks Sony might go a little lax this year with how good they’ve got it, but if they’re smart, they’ll keep that pressure up, even if it means teasing and announcing things a bit too early. E3 is the place to do that, if only to make yourself look good.

When I try to think of what big reveal Sony could pull that would make sense, I...can’t really think of one.

They’ll probably try to shill more VR stuff, maybe during the indie sequence? VR is cool but it’s just too expensive an investment for the average consumer at this point. Maybe they’ll announce a PS4 Pro w/VR bundle for the holiday to try and help remedy that.

Nintendo:

Nintendo is always in quite an unfair position when it comes to these things, as more than any other company, they’re expected to deliver on rumors that are often made up just because they...make sense. Nintendo has too many franchises to juggle, which they haven’t been doing a great job with lately, which sets up those unrealistic hype trains to get derailed. Just this week, everyone’s expectations of Sun/Moon on Switch were callously dashed, despite what a seemingly obvious decision it seemed like. Before that, the Smash Bros. on Switch fake leak once again felt like “Oh, duh, this makes so much sense and would be such a smart decision” -- only to be fake.

Add on top of this Nintendo’s mum on Virtual Console, voice chat, online services, and all of these 3DS announcements, and a lot of folks are frustrated and bummed over them not delivering on things they’ve never promised. And do I need to remind about the supply issues with NES Classic and Switch? It’s all a bad spot to be in that makes them look weirdly stingy.

The “Rabbids x Mario” game leak probably hasn’t helped things, because it’s such a “WTF why?” that if there’s no follow-through that shows they’re listening to their hardcore fans, it’ll come across as a bizarre business decision (when really, I bet it’s more Ubisoft wanting to cash in on their relationship with Nintendo).

The Switch has some great momentum, but symptoms of Nintendo’s recurring tone-deaf choices linger. They have a lot of room to build on the momentum for the Switch, and I think they really should lower focus on 3DS -- they need to keep that ship sailing, of course -- and double-down on Switch announcements. It feels like we already know basically what to expect of them for the rest of the year, and I really hope that’s not the case. They’ve got a lot of great first party stuff for a launch year, but where’s the DLC games, the indies, Virtual Console, online functionalities? There’s gotta be some surprises in there despite the leaks, I just wonder if they will resonate with that core gamer base the Switch has quickly found.

What is Retro Studios working on? Where is Metroid? Are we finally going to get a new entry in some of the neglected series everyone keeps harping on? Or is it just more Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and Kirby for the next year? Where the fuck is Virtual Console?

I’m sure we’ll get a more detailed look at the first batch of Breath of the Wild DLC for the summer, but this would be a great place to drop a trailer for the new story content coming in the winter.

Personal hopes are for something authentically Metroid as well as a SSB4 DX for Switch reveal. Combine the modes and stages of the Wii U and 3DS versions, throw in a couple new characters/stages -- or even just announce more is coming as DLC after launch -- and I think that alone would hype a lot of people, myself included, especially if it’s coming sooner rather than later. I predict we’ll get more Wii U “deluxe” ports to Switch. A lot of great games on Wii U missed an audience due to the platform itself. Would be easy money and simultaneously please people to have some of those great games on the go.

Reggie teased earlier this spring that hardcore fans would be pleased by what they had cooking, and E3 is THE place to show that stuff off.

As usual, I also expect Treehouse Live to be surprisingly good, with its own genuine news dropped and even some games announced outside of the “spotlight.” The fact that Nintendo is calling it a “spotlight” and not a “presentation” like usual kind of worries me that it might not have many “megatons” but I sure as hell hope that Rabbids thing was not THE surprise they were banking on.

Last year, it felt like Nintendo had nothing to show besides Breath of the Wild. They saved tjhat stuff for January. That ended up working out well because LoZ actually lived up to the hype. But with a new piece of hardware just on the scene, after the failure that was the Wii U and the 3DS showing its age, now is not the time be stingy with announcements.

Of particular note, Nintendo could make a big splash now that they have relatively powerful hardware -- powerful enough to run a LOT of what is on the other platforms. Question is whether or not they are courting those third parties.

I’ve argued in the past how third party support for Nintendo is often irrelevant, but Switch is different -- having fully portable access to a lot of popular third party games, like the Souls series, would in and of itself be an easy and smart play in so many cases.

Either way, like every other year, Nintendo always has the greatest potential to win folks’ hearts and excitement over. Last year was a letdown in general terms, though Zelda was of course fantastic, but I hope they’ve really stock-piled some good content this year. Mario will probably take the spotlight, and I’m excited to see its new features, but I really hope they can surprise us -- not just with a literal shock, but by formally confirming things that just make sense.

DontNod:

I feel obligated to make special note of these guys given my investment in the Life is Strange fandom. I’m honestly very lukewarm on Vampyr, but maybe they can finally turn me around on it.

While DontNod said Life is Strange 2 is in dev but won’t be at E3, some NEWS on it of some sort would be nice, but I suspect they want to wait until they can show rather than tell.

While not being made by DontNod, if the LiS prequel is real, I am very curious as to how we’ll see it. Maybe at Sony’s conference? I have no idea. Doubt it’s the sort of thing they’ll just “drop” onto the net. I’ve already expressed dozens of times how troubling the idea of a prequel is and many of the ways it could easily go wrong, but I would love to be proven incorrect and fall in love with the same characters all over again under a different studio. I just can’t shake the sensations of “Fanservice money-milking” from the concept, which doesn’t settle well with me for such a personal story-focused game.

I think that either way, this is the time to clarify what is going on with the series. Are we getting TWO new games, or not? When is Vampyr coming, and what has been done to help prevent it from finding the same fate that Remember Me did?

Everyone else:

What is Bethesda up to? Fallout 4 didn’t seem to take off like they wanted.

What about BioWare? DA:I did well, but Mass Effect seems to have flopped. They’ve got to already be too invested in ME:A to give up on it, so what’s the play? Keep cooking on a sequel, wait until next year? Drop DLC in the meantime and hope it somehow adds a draw? Maybe tease the next Dragon Age?

Will we get a new TellTale reveal? They just finished TWDs3 and just started Guardians of the Galaxy. But they’ve already teased Batman s2 and Game of Thrones s2. Will we get our first look at either of these? Or maybe something else entirely?

And what the hell is Capcom up to? I’m sure we’ll see more MvC4, which would be good. Will we get weird new Mega Man shit crammed down our throats that misses the point of what people want from new Mega Man? Will we get some new Resident Evil thing? Will they reveal some new entry into something else?

EA and Ubisoft tend to have conferences without much for the hardcore gamer, but they do occasionally pull a crazy surprise out of left field this time of year (Ubisoft in particular with their indie stuff).

It’s almost E3 time!

#E3 #E3 2017 #E3 2k17

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jacksgamediary · 7 years ago

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What I’ve been playing lately

Hey there, internet, especially the three of you reading this. I’ve wanted to start a game diary for a while now, chronicling my experiences through different video games (and who knows, maybe tabletop games and other stuff too) as I play them. I love using Letterboxd to keep track of what movies I watch when, and as far as I have seen, there’s nothing out there as good for video games. So I started this tumblr instead. Because playing games is a series of unique experiences, more so than with passive media like film and TV, I figured it would be a fun and hopefully worthwhile experience to not just keep track of what games I play, but also how I experienced them.

I’m already in the middle of a few games right now, so I thought to start things off I’d write up a short post detailing what I’ve been playing recently and my thoughts on them.

Let’s start with my most recent playthrough:

The Turing Test (Bulkhead Interactive, 2016, PC version)

This is a game I’ve had my eye on for a while, since it encompasses a lot of things I love - science fiction, puzzles, first-person exploration and environmental storytelling - but I didn’t get around to playing it until a kind user over at the /r/GiftOfGames subreddit sent me a Steam key. (Awesome subreddit, go check it out if you have some spare Humble Bundle keys that need a loving home.)

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the experience - it felt a lot like a cross between Portal and The Talos Principle, with a lot of philosophizing about artificial intelligence and the nature of free will, and the player moving from room to room solving puzzles with laser bridges and balls of electricity and whatnot. The story was pretty much your standard “AI gone rogue, and also it’s in space” plot, albeit with a few clever twists I didn’t see coming. Gameplay was pretty standard first-person puzzle solving a la Portal and the dozens of games it inspired, and while it was fun and challenging, it wasn’t terribly original, and the puzzles started to grate on me after a while. I wanted to get on with the story but had to force myself through the last couple puzzles to make it to the end.

Ultimately, The Turing Test wasn’t really anything we haven’t seen before, but it was still largely very well executed and enjoyable. If this sounds like your kind of thing, I certainly recommend it. Favorite part: all the extra-challenging optional side puzzles that reward you with more story details.

Grow Home (Reflections/Ubisoft, 2015, PC version)

Grow Home is delightful. It’s a gorgeous game with a clean, low-poly art style and some unique platforming gameplay. You play as a robot named B.U.D., who is the best. He makes silly robot noises.

Your goal is to grow this giant plant from one floating island to the next and climb it until you can reach your spaceship. Gameplay consists entirely of walking, jumping, climbing, and (almost always accidentally) falling. To climb, you push the right stick in whatever direction you want to go and alternate pressing the left and right triggers, which lifts and sets down each hand. It can get tedious after a while, but has the advantage of making you really feel like you’re climbing, since it’s an actual gameplay challenge and not a throwaway “hold forward to climb” mechanic. Plus, there’s nothing more thrilling and satisfying than falling from a vine, reaching terminal velocity, and saving yourself from certain doom at the last second with a well-timed grab of another vine.

All the while, your AI protector M.O.M. is cheering you on with little messages of encouragement, and making comments about the plants and animals you meet along the way. SPEAKING OF WHICH:

He is my friend. My adorable sheepy friend. We will be together forever.

It’s a pretty short game, and the controls can be a little unwieldy at times, but overall I had a great time. Recommended.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions, 2014, PC version)

Pictured above: an orc who was born in the darkness, molded by it, and when Mordor is ashes, you have his permission to die #goodjoke

I got Shadow of Mordor for like $4 during the Steam Summer Sale a few weeks ago, hopeful for a worthwhile experience but not expecting much. For the first couple days though, I was pleasantly surprised, and played it pretty much non-stop (or, whenever I could). I liked the Arkham-style combat (I’ve played all the Arkham games and completed Arkham Knight to 100% three times over), the open-world setting, the option to be stealthy, and some of the abilities you gain over time - especially the teleport-to-an-enemy-a-hundred-feet-away ability. That was cool.

After a while, though, everything started to feel the same. It got repetitive pretty quickly, and while the nemesis system was really cool for a while, there wasn’t enough to differentiate each of the Uruks from each other, so it felt like a gimmick more than a real or personal narrative connection. On top of all that, the world of Shadow of Mordor seemed like a duller downgrade of the world I saw in Peter Jackson’s films and read about in The Hobbit, and the revenge-driven plot seemed really out of place for the LOTR mythos - not that I’m an expert or anything, it just felt tonally wrong. Plus, I really didn’t care about Celebrimbor and whoever the protagonist was. I don’t remember his name, all I remember is that he was Troy Baker. And I knew his wife and son for all of three minutes before they were killed off. Not the strongest introduction.

If you love open-world fantasy action games, or Rocksteady’s Batman games, you’ll probably like Shadow of Mordor. If you’re just a huge fan of LOTR, I’d guess that the plot would probably just make you angry, or at least annoyed. If you like hearing the dulcet tones of Troy Baker talking with a British accent to an elf ghost who sounds kinda like Hugo Weaving, you’re in for a real treat.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - DLC Pack 1 (Nintendo, 2017, Switch)

After hearing all the great things about Master Mode and the Trial of the Sword, I finally caved and bought the Breath of the Wild Expansion Pass. And the minute I entered Hyrule again with something new to do, I had this feeling of comfort and euphoria - like, “ah, it’s good to be home.” To be back in Hyrule with new goals and challenges ahead, it brought Breath of the Wild back to life in a wonderful way.

So far, I haven’t tried Master Mode, but I have collected every DLC item and cleared the Trial of the Sword (after several tries). The third and final set of trials was far more difficult than the first two, and it was only with a lot of patience and careful resource management that I was able to eventually complete it. (Protip: don’t move on to the next level until you’ve found every useful item in the room. And save your Ancient Arrows for the end. Also: when you get to the white-maned Lynel, that’s not the final level. Not at all.)

The Trial of the Sword was almost more of a test of endurance and strategy than a test of skill. It reminded me a lot of The Challenge caves from The Witness last year - which was my favorite part of that game - in that it was a long, arduous process full of trial-and-error and figuring out new strategies, and which ended with a feeling of utter triumph and joyous pride at my accomplishment. (For the record, The Challenge took me a lot longer and I found it much harder. Still can’t listen to “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” without getting a little anxious.) I’m disappointed that none of the DLC outfits are upgradeable - I really wanted to beat Ganon wearing the Switch t-shirt and Tingle pants - but they’re still nice to have.

If you loved Breath of the Wild and wish there was more to do, the DLC pack is worth it. Plus, there’s still the story DLC pack coming later this year, which you also get if you bought this one. Definitely worth the twenty bucks, if you ask me.

Welp, that’s it for now. Here’s a list of the games I’m currently playing:

Final Fantasy VII (I have some THOUGHTS on this one. So so so good)

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Maybe? Not sure if I want to finish it, I played a couple hours and got bored. Might just not be for me.)

VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Shovel Knight (my second full playthrough, this time on Switch; eventually I’ll play Specter of Torment and Plague of Shadows, too)

Sound Shapes

I also need to finish Luigi’s Mansion (which I borrowed from a friend like six months ago or something - sorry @nierlaw), Bastion, The Talos Principle, Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, all of which I’ve gotten at least halfway through but haven’t played in months. Plus, I’ve got a long list of games that I own but have yet to play, including Ico, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Spec Ops: The Line, Broken Age, L.A. Noire, Valkyria Chronicles, and Beyond Good and Evil. Thus is the struggle of a man attempting to be games-literate, whatever that might mean.

See you soon with a much shorter post!

#the turing test #grow home #shadow of mordor #breath of the wild #trial of the sword #video games #gaming #game diary #journal

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sammisincostumeagain · 8 years ago

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Finally beat Breath of the Wild today.

Spoilers belowwwwww

Read my review.

Okay, so I eagerly awaited this game for years and now that we finally got it and I finally finished it, I’m ready to go over it.

I tend to judge games based on three factors: story, effects, and mechanics. Everything else is just a bonus, so here we go.

STORY - 7/10

I have a LOT to say on this. Personally, story is perhaps the most important factor in a game. I play for a good tale and I’ll tolerate a lot for one.

First of all, I want to say that the story had an amazing amount of presence for how few cutscenes it actually had. The story was told as much by the environment as it was by words. There were several locations that begged many questions, like Fort Hateno and the Forgotten Temple. The damage from the calamity 100 years ago is evident throughout the map and it’s easy to draw conclusions from what you see while wandering around. It all has a very grave and mysterious feel to it.

The general concept was also very unique and surprising for a Zelda game; more than any previous game, this story really was about Zelda herself. It’s a tale of Zelda we’ve never really seen. I love the way they explored this through the visions, too; you were playing Link, but the whole time the story was more about what happened before you came around. It was a really clever twist on the whole “hero awakens with no memory of the past” trope.

But more than any other game in the series, this game let us get to know Zelda and really explore her character in detail through her tragic “failed princess” backstory. As much as her technical manner annoyed me, she was still relatable and I found myself very sympathetic to her. We’re used to a game in which Link is a farm boy or other citizen one wouldn’t consider ideal for heroic work and he has to just get the gist of it as he goes. In Breath of the Wild, Link actually is a trained warrior and is better prepared for his destiny than Zelda herself. You start the game as a badass; Zelda spends over 100 years trying to fulfill her destiny, and she has a lot of poignant lines about it in the Recovered Memories.

This is Recovered Memory #11, Shelter From the Storm.

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The characters were, generally, very likable and this is where I feel like the story begins wanting. The Champions, of course, are dead; their only presence with you is evidenced when you use their powers and their voice calls out to you. As you travel around and free the Divine Beasts, you meet several new and interesting characters, but your involvement with them is limited to the time you conquer their respective Divine Beasts and then they lose relevancy. This is a great shame, as they were all characters I found really engaging and would have loved to further explore.

I had sort of hoped that they would pilot the Divine Beasts as new Champions, and that they might assist in your assault on Hyrule Castle. I was rather disappointed to find that Hyrule Castle was one solo quest, and I found myself feeling sort of lonely by the time I was prepped and ready to conquer it.

In addition, the side quests offered are shallow and do little to promote a relationship between you and the other, maybe, 50 citizens on the entire map. They do not expand or contribute to the story in any way, and seem to just be a way to earn a little extra change or some weapons. They’re good for that, but otherwise unfulfilling and I never felt compelled to finish them.

EFFECTS - 8/10

I’ll say this now: while effects are really important to me, I don’t grade this on a scale of realistic graphics or crap like that. I actually really like animated and cartoony games. The only thing I want to be realistic is the soul of the characters, so I’m not judging the quality of the graphics here.

What I WILL say is that Breath of the Wild has beautiful graphics. Everything was watercolor magic and looked beautiful. The glittering of obtainable items was subtle enough not to be irritating. The change of music and atmosphere on the night of a blood moon was eerie. The music that accompanied Guardians--and only Guardians--was what anxiety is made of.

The silence at certain times and in certain places in this game was very appropriate and had a real effect on the mood. Dead silence with only restless crickets for company at dusk or midnight was great. The enemy music could have been a little creepier, but I’m a major horror fan so I’m a little biased. Every sound is creepy when it’s dead silent and you thought you were alone in an area. I had a particularly frightening encounter with a Lynel before I knew what that was a month ago. The light piano music on the overworld also gave the world sort of a Studio Ghibli feel and I was reminded of Castle in the Sky and Howl’s Moving Castle (Zelda even sounds like Sophie).

The background music was nice, but when it wasn’t playing the world felt really empty and cold. It felt like a substantial amount of music was missing. This brings me to another major complaint I have about this game: the lack of a real soundtrack. Almost every game in the series boasts a large range of original tracks that are catchy and inspiring. The music for the villages was just unmemorable, and kind of felt half-assed. There is also no music at all in any of the “dungeons”, and many of the most popular songs from the series are songs from dungeons.

The most interesting tracks are at the very end of the game. I do like that some elements of the theme from Link’s Awakening were present in the intense track on the exterior of Hyrule Castle, but that’s hardly enough for a game I spent over a month playing. It’s the only song I can remember other than the theme in Kakariko Village.

MECHANICS - 9/10

I really don’t have a lot of complaints here; even without a complex storyline at the forefront, this game totally delivered on the “exploration” front and was a blast just to play for weeks. I loved floating around on the paraglider and basically just spent the whole game climbing on absolutely everything. There was treasure just about everywhere you thought to look, and I’m a treasure hunter at heart. Every time I went out on a limb and tried someplace new, I was rewarded for the effort.

I liked the way they set up the heart container situation in this game too. The temples taught you how to be creative in solving problems and a lot of them were really clever puzzles that gave me ideas about what to do out on the map. They weren’t all hard, and some of them had the puzzles on the outside. It was great because you could hunt them down at your own pace and get just as many hearts as you needed. It bothered me that you needed so many more Spirit Orbs to get a decent boost in stamina, though. I didn’t really feel like I had enough until I had a second bar, which was 12 orbs later. It was really cool that you could trade them back and forth though.

In terms of learning the mechanics, this game had virtually no tutorial, but I was able to figure everything out on my own. The first thing I learned was that I am an idiot who apparently enjoys doing everything the hard way; I would frequently spend a bunch of time, materials, or hearts to accomplish something, only to get past it and realize there were approximately 1,000,000 easier ways to do that if I had just gone a little farther up the hill or remembered all of the applications of Magnesis. I also liked the way that the Divine Beasts moved within, allowing you to change the geography to access new areas. Breath of the Wild had an extremely dynamic environment even by modern standards that was incredibly fun to dick with.

The addition of so many weapons was great too, although to begin with I felt like the durability on the weapons was way too low. Once I got about halfway though, I found myself encountering more and more weapons and then it was more an issue of space. Upgrading space was not difficult either. Koroks were behind every blade of grass.

I also loved the various armor sets. The Sheikah set was my favorite, and upgrading armor was really easy. By the time I reached the Great Fairies I had more materials than I had any idea what to do with. It’s easy to make money if you mine daily around Death Mountain, so you can buy a lot of the materials you need from Beedle at any stable. There wasn’t anything I felt was unachievable in that respect. Even by the time I got to Robbie’s Lab I had so many parts from Guardians that I was able to get most of the armor and weapons in a single go.

The Amiibo were pretty useful too. I got Epona my second time using the Smash Bros. Link Amiibo and I got the Tunic of Twilight. It was also a good way to acquire materials.

What DID irritate me was the shooting star feature. I cannot count how many times I saw a star fall in the distance and it was so far away that I couldn’t reach it and the little beam of golden light didn’t appear. I was able to acquire 2 over the entire month and a half I was playing. It was stressful to watch them drop and know I couldn’t get them, even after I gave up trying.

Another complaint I have is that there really doesn’t seem to be any reason to continue playing this game after you’ve beaten it. The bosses in this game were all pretty easy; it had to be fairly hack n’ slash to allow for any weapons you have to be useful and allow multiple play styles, and that’s something I’ve wanted for Nintendo to do for a long time. Oftentimes you can even just use the environment to kill monsters, and I really like that. I pretty much killed everything with Bomb and Ancient arrows. But there’s not really any reason to replay the game once you’ve done all of this stuff once.

If you’re a completionist, you’ll probably feel compelled to complete everything before you beat Ganon. If you wait until afterward, there’s no really satisfying reward for all your hard work. Something I didn’t do was construct Tarrey Town, but I feel like that’s really only fun before you beat the game. Otherwise, it’s just another means to amass wealth and an arsenal. Nothing changes after you beat Ganon, so it just kind of feels like deja vu.

The good news is that we have DLC coming. I’m not too interested in the Hard Mode or Cave of Trials, but there is going to be a new feature and this Holiday Season™ we’ll be getting some new story, and that’s motivating for me. I’m really excited for that, and seeing as it’s May in a day we’re nearly halfway to Christmas already. Fingers crossed that it’s good!

OVERALL: 7.5/10

Recommendations

I like to add a section for recommended adjustments to future installations of the series based on what was lacking in the present game. It’s pretty subjective so I don’t expect everybody to agree with it, but I like doing it anyway so here we go.

1. Incorporate supporting characters more fully into the storyline. 2. Provide fewer, but more engaging and emotionally rewarding side quests. 3. Provide some content that is strictly post-final boss. 4. Develop a more thrilling soundtrack. 5. Maybe give us another companion character.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with this game. Its story and characters are on par with Twilight Princess, the exploration is reminiscent of Wind Waker, and the appearance and mood of the world reflect that of Skyward Sword. It possesses elements from all of my favorite games, I just think it could have used a finer polish and maybe even another year of development. With that, it would have been the perfect game.

As it were, what Breath of the Wild DOES do, it does phenomenally and playing this was certainly an experience that has raised my standards for Nintendo. I hope the next game is only better, no matter how many years I have to wait for it.

#the legend of zelda #breath of the wild #botw #gaming #review #opinion

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summer-fire · 8 years ago

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Okay here's a big ol compilation of thoughts about Breath of the Wild now that I've finished the game and have had a few days away from it!

It starts out a bit slower than I actually expected, they did a good job at not hand holding at all though so I found the first hour or two on the plateau to be enjoyable. After that it became pure exploration with the option to go do story quests which was absolutely wonderful. Exploring the world was so fun and rewarding.

Lots more after the cut

Okay I'll get the bad out of the way first;

I had some issues with the voice acting for some characters, mainly I felt that Impa's voice did not fit her very well, and Mipha's voice actress did not put enough emotion into it... I just generally dislike characters with her particular infliction so I may be biased though.

I am playing on the Wiiu version and occasionally while fighting moblins I would get full-stop freezes. Not too bad, but annoying nonetheless.

I’m not the first person to bring this up but I think the mission to get into the gerudo town could have been handled much better... we got what could maybe be considered zelda's first trans character but poor representation isn't exactly good so... I'm not the best person to talk about this but it rubbed me the wrong way to say the least. I did appreciate that (as far as I remember) all the gerudo accepted her identity, but it was kinda undermined by the fact that it was implied that they were all being “deceived.”

And I suppose it's actually pretty minor but the final boss was a bit lackluster in how much fighting went on. It does mean that avoiding the dungeons will lead to a really good boss rush though. Beast Ganon had really good music and was a really good boss story-wise, I just wanted a bit more of a challenge. A chase through all of Hyrule would have been so cool but I understand why it really couldn’t work.

As for the good;

I could sing this game's praises to the heavens forever probably. This game is downright fun to just move around in. I feel like I'll never discover everything and I love it. It’s made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions, and the character's stories actually made me very emotional, they feel very real. Hell even the non-story characters feel unique and realistic. It feels like there was a Majoras Mask level of care given to every character really. I absolutely love Zelda’s story and personality, and her relationship with Link feels really nice. Skyward Sword had them close sure, but the relationship between them in this game feels so much more real, it’s nice. It’s also nice to get a bit of Link’s side of things, even if it’s just one small bit of optional reading. That felt very right to me.

I have heard complaints that the story is simple and predictable, which I can agree with to some extent. The set-up is fairly simple, "the tech was turned against us so you have to go get it back and finish the job!" But that gives more room for the player to be curious about the character's lives and the world around them. It puts more emphasis on figuring out HOW to get from point A to point B rather than keeping players guessing what point B is going to even be, which is something this game does really well. The world often acts as its own puzzle, and it constantly keeps you on your toes, but also gives you the option to follow the paths that have been laid out for you if you don’t feel like taking the short-cuts.

The shrines are a really nice feature. That and the memory quest really encourage exploration. I also like how the "main quest" objectives can be done in any order - not just dungeons but things like the memory quest where you go to the Hateno tech lab. Any other Zelda game would have you stuck in the quest of finding all your memories before going on to your next quest (remember the owl statue quest in twilight princess...?) it's also nice to have a multitude of ways to complete certain puzzles and quests.

Aaaaand it all looks stunning to boot. The textures do get a bit blurry sometimes, though I suspect that is mostly my old tv being terrible. The style was handled perfectly with emphasis on things like color and lighting, keeping things simple but not overly cartoony. It's an illustrator's dream lmao. The faces of Zelda and link specifically are extremely expressive for their simplicity and it's really quite wonderful. I find myself replaying memories just to study the subtleties of their expressions...

Over all this game has me floored and I’m sad that I’m going to have to wait until summer until I’m back home to play it again, because there are so many shrines I haven’t been to, and so many side quests I still need to find/complete. The more time I have away, the more things I realize are less than perfect about this game, but I also realize more and more how much I love it.

#Botw #Breath of the Wild #LoZ #botw spoilers #not really it's mostly spoiler free!!#I mention the final boss but not it detail #and some names of characters and places but otherwise it's mostly just my experience with the story and game itself

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aurimeanswind · 8 years ago

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Quick Thoughts: Switch & Breath of the Wild

Editor’s Note: the first half of this was written early in the evening with just hands on time setting up and playing around with the Switch. The second half was written later after time with Zelda.

So I got my Switch a day early today. The graceful lords over at Amazon Were kind enough to bestow it upon me just a full day ahead of schedule. I got to get some hands on with it, just pretty much set it up before work but of course I had to run off to work and will be seeing Logan, so by the time this posts I will probably have already done a stream and played around with it. I thought it'd be fun to just give my first raw impressions of it, and then add on a bit after I've played some stuff on it.

First thoughts: wow, this is some good hardware. It was like the first time I felt the Dualshock 4 or had the PS4 added to my set up. Right out of the gate, it just felt like some excellently made first generation hardware. The only thing that surprised me or threw me off were how small the analogous sticks were on the Joycon. Aside from that, it was all excellent.

One of the first things I needed to know for myself was: how is the Joycon Grip. I am not lucky enough to have gotten a pro controller, so I needed to know if my primary means of play was going to be good enough. It was actually a lot better than I thought. I have medium-to-large sized hands, so it was a comfortable middle ground for me. Not too narrow. Not too odd either. I haven't played any games with it yet, but I'm excited to, which is more than I could have said before.

I also love the interface. As a console, navigation is slick and easy to understand, with really great visuals to go with it. I wasn't surprised; this stuff has been online for weeks, but the tactile response of it all was just great. It's the first time I think I have ever felt “great” about a Nintendo interface.

Some time later...

Okay, so I’ve spent a little under four hours playing on my Switch, primarily in TV mode, with The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. When I was playing I thought of essentially the perfect way I would want to start my eventual review of Breath of the Wild, talking about all the importance of the series, the fanboyism, etc, etc. I don’t want to give that away here, since I think it’s pretty good, but I’ll just establish this out of the gate: I am a massive fan of Zelda. A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds are some of my favorites, with Majora’s Mask representing probably my favorite 3D Zelda game. It’s the Dark Horse answer, I know, but it was the first 3D Zelda, having gone back and played through all of them again recently, that really broke the format. (note: to be fair, it was the second 3D Zelda just in general)

Suffice to say, Breath of the Wild has completely changed everything.

There are the two halves of me; the one that loves Zelda and the kinds of innovations it brings to video games, and has brought to games in the past, mixing with the critic in me that doesn’t want to get too carried away too quickly. There isn’t a Zelda game that I dislike, even Zelda II, but I try and approach everything from a critical standpoint. I am going to discuss Zelda in some pretty blanket terms, as I’ve read quite a few reviews from some of my favored writers, and I want to actually talk about the game. I will keep this as spoiler free as I can, of course, but bear in mind everything I have seen has been from absolutely only the first area, and I know a great many things about the format beyond that that I won’t even discuss here.

So I just wrapped on The Great Plateau, which for those who don’t know is the starting area. Link awakens from some resurrection chamber, is sprung into the world, and that’s it. You meet a mysterious old man who starts giving you tips, and complete a few things on the plateau, and then it’s off to the open world.

Some things about this that I didn’t expect: it can really be as guided or not as you want. I spent a lot of time talking to the Old Man, and he serves as a sort of optional tutorial, but not on trivial things like how to Z-Target, shit we’ve known for almost two decades of video games thanks to Zelda, but system stuff, like lighting fires, cutting down trees to make bridges or gather materials (things that have never been in Zelda games before) and most importantly, COOKING. I could imagine totally missing this, but I poked around in the Old Man’s house, which didn’t occur, mind you, until I had been running around the Plateau for over an hour fucking up Bokoblin camps, and discovered his diary. In his diary he wrote about cooking up some meal that made him warmer, so he wouldn’t need some old clothing he used to have that kept him warm in the colder areas of the plateau. He ends up forgetting the last ingredient, only remembering two of the three parts to it, and upon inspection, the Old Man can give you a full cooking instruction. But only because I probed around a bit!

Past this, you can find the Old Man getting up to a ton of shenanigans through the world. He was hunting boar, cutting down trees, gazing from a mountain top, and by talking to him in these instances, he’d give me different contextual hints. I knew going into this cooking and heat-control were important mechanics, so I spent the next hour or so trying to find this damn missing ingredient. Mind you, it was very obvious, I just forgot one important clue, but upon experimenting and recreating his recipe, I was joyous! I did it! And I got the warm doublet as a reward, meaning I could venture into the cold peak of the plateau without the need for warming food. Awesome!

This wasn’t some formal sidequest added to a questlog (though there is a quest log for the first time[?] in a Zelda game), it was just something I decided to make my goal. And I dicked around a ton in this one area alone. Fighting monsters. Dying a handful of times. Just experimenting, finding treasure. It was genuinely adventurous and fun. It may be preemptive to say, but it’s the most wonderous feeling a game has gotten out of me in a while.

Horizon, the other game I’ve been primarily playing this week, is very different. I’ve been enjoying the combat in that game the most. Fighting stuff and learning their weaknesses has been massively rewarding. This? This feels like an adventure. It feels lighthearted but challenging in a way that that game doesn’t bring out of me. Two different things that I am enjoying a great deal, but this just immediately has me much more. Part of that may be the Zelda name, but really it’s the quiet, wide wonderment. I don’t want to make some uncouth comparison of the two too early, since they are soooo different, but I’m already thinking in my head what one is doing and the other isn’t. But enough about that.

The goal of this starting area that the Old Man gives you is to find the treasure in the four shrines on the plateau. Each has an item that it gives you, totally to four, which represents, from what I understand, your complete arsenal for the whole game. That’s kind of nuts. They’re cool tools though, kind of a reimagining of items from past Zelda games (both 2D and 3D) with wholly new concepts thrown on top.

Now I decided to pop this bad boy out of the dock and play one of the shrines in handheld mode and whooooooa boy. That was magical. I legit, out loud, to no one said, ‘holy shit this is amazing,’ just at the marvel of holding this massive game I had on my TV in my hand. I have toted that I will probably not play the Switch very much in handheld mode, and this is true, I have a lot of trouble getting comfortable playing handheld games. It’s just my whole life. I love my Vita to death, and I play it way more on planes than my 3DS, even if it is half-broken, but I just get super uncomfortable with it. This feels sturdy and hefty in a way that I want to lug it into my bed and curl up with it like I did with my Vita and the very first Danganronpa. The mere idea of Breath of the Wild anywhere I go, and past that other major Nintendo games (Mario Odyssey, Fire Emblem in a glorious console form) has me stoked. Again, I probably won’t use it that much, but the magic of taking it out and putting it right back on my TV again was genuinely impressive.

Okay, this is longer than I’d hoped it would be, but the only other thing I wanted to mention is minorly story related. I won’t spoil it, but I understand if you want to avert your eyes. After finishing the Plateau, a task that could easily take an hour and a half, which I turned into almost four (thanks to dicking around), you’re treated with the first fully-voiced cutscene of the game, which was great, but like... They laid out a whole lot more right away than I was expecting. You need the paraglider you get after the scene to get off the plateau, so it is a mandatory scene, unlike just about everything else in the game, but I was taken aback by how the world, who you were, and what happened was generally explained. I mean, there are still a ton of lingering questions in my head, don’t get me wrong, but now I’m filled with all of this story info that I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT just a few short hours into the game. You know a pretty good deal right off the bat, so I’m impressed this stuff hasn’t crept out there. It was more of a what happened, but not a how it happened, if that makes sense? I’m very curious to see the arc of this game.

Well anyway, I have today (Friday) off, so I’m just gonna forgo sleep and lose myself to Hyrule. I am really, really enjoying my time with this game. Playing it in TV mode, I will say there have been a great deal of framerate drops. Nothing major, no full stops, but it happens. It’s noticeable. Doesn’t really bother me, because it hasn’t ruined anything for me, but I wanted to throw that out there too. Anyway, back to Hyrule I go.

#nintendo switch #nintendo #zelda #the legend of zelda #breath of the wild

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