#why release a game that's quite literally unplayable?

[cheriafreya]

I wish the game looked as good as the photo mode does on mobile, unfortunately it doesn't :_)

[sexhaver]

What makes Jeweled Bird so bad?

first, some context: wayyyyy back in the stone ages when dinosaurs walked the earth and MTG first released, it was envisioned as less of a serious competitive card game people would explicitly try to minmax and more of a fun little diversion for your D&D group to play while you wait for Jared to get off his shift so you can actually start your campaign. this explains a lot of design choices that seem backasswards 30 years later. for instance, yes, Richard Garfield knew Black Lotus was unbelievably busted, but figured it was fine to print since it's not like people would do anything crazy like buy up hundreds of packs/hunt down singles on a secondary marketplace and play the game competitively for cash prizes.

one of the wackiest outcomes of this design philosophy was the concept of "playing for ante", an optional game mode/modifier where each player would begin the game by putting the top card of their library directly into "the ante", a pile of cards off to the side. whoever won the game won permanent, real-life ownership of all cards in the ante. basically "playing for keeps" but in a TCG instead of with Pogs or those weird tiny cardboard Beyblade tops that came in chip bags.

as you might guess from just reading that description, it was pretty wildly unpopular with most of the playerbase at the time and only got less popular as time went on. people didn't want to risk losing their cards, especially once the game became established and some of those cards were worth, like, actual amounts of money. and then there was the variance - it was entirely possible for you to ante up your only copy of an expensive card (meaning you were even less likely to win because now you can't draw it) while your opponent anted a basic land.

partially due to this, but mostly due to WOTC lawyers learning about the concept of "gambling laws" and WOTC PR learning about the optics of getting children into gambling, ante was officially removed from all sanctioned MTG tournaments very early into the game's lifespan (in fact i think this might have been enshrined into law before the actual first official tournament) and mostly memoryholed from the comprehensive rules, outside of section 407, which leads with this literal legal disclaimer:

there were 9 cards printed before this that explicitly reference "the ante" and do something unique to the cards in it. all of these cards have been errata'd to include the rules text "remove this card from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante" and banned from LITERALLY ALL SANCTIONED FORMATS, including Vintage, the format whose entire appeal is "we never ban anything" (laughs in Lurrus).

okay so with the context out of the way we can start getting into why Jeweled Bird specifically is A Bad Card

first, the obvious: it's an ante card, which means you can't play it unless you're playing for ante, and if you ask anyone at your LGS to play for ante they will try to surreptitiously call the nearest retirement home to report an escapee from their memory care unit. so right off the bat it's quite literally unplayable as an MTG card (ante doesn't even work right in cube drafts, usually the last solace of jank-ass mechanics), which is not a great start.

now that we've established that ante cards are bad because they're effectively banned everywhere, let's assume we're living in some bizarro land where you've managed to convince a handful of friends to play in your personal MTG tournament bracket that allows ante. even then, all but one (don't worry we'll get to that one in a second) of the banned "ante cards" are just. unplayably bad. like absolute dogshit.

ok actually you know what i hadn't looked over all the ante cards in a while before typing up this post and now that i have i think Jeweled Bird is arguably the third or fourth best one out of the lot, and it's STILL unplayably bad in a modern context. it's effectively 1 colorless mana to draw a card, which is theoretically decent in some colors nowadays if you squint but would have actually been notably good back in its heyday. it actually gets pretty close to what WOTC was trying to go for with most of these ante card designs: you get a powerful effect (card draw for 1 colorless mana in an era when even blue had to jump through hoops for a rate that good outside of Ancestral Recall), but at the cost of adding something to the ante, but since the effect is so powerful, you should ideally be able to win the game off of it and completely negate the downside of adding your stuff to the ante.

you know what, fuck it, let's just go through the other ante cards from worst to best:

this card looks absolutely batshit until you get to the last sentence and realize it's effectively 6 mana to force your opponent to ante a card. if you spend 6 mana doing effectively nothing, you are not winning the game or that ante

this one is this low because in 99% of circumstances it's 10 mana over two turns to burn your opponent for 10. however, it takes the edge over Amulet of Quoz because 1. it just bypasses the ante zone entirely to literally steal the card directly, outcome of the game be damned 2. if your opponent has 9 or less life, they have to either let you steal their card or concede on the spot (which means they lose their ante) and 3. if i'm reading this ruling correctly you can set up the 9-or-less-life scenario with a TOKEN COPY of Bronze Tablet and give them a literal bar napkin with a doodle on it in exchange for their judge promo foil Elesh Norn:

so for 6 mana, you can heal yourself back to full at the cost of anteing an additional card. if that was all this card did, it would still be pretty bad, but the icing on this shitcake is that your opponent can just. also do that. but without spending their entire turn to cast a 6 mana spell. so now you're both on equal footing lifewise, but they have their entire turn to gain tempo advantage after you spent your turn healing them. and you gave them another one of your cards once you inevitably lose because of this. i guess theoretically you could run it in a super heavy control deck that aims to win via mill as a safety valve against aggro? idk man

this card effectively does nothing, but doing nothing for 3 mana is still an improvement over "doing nothing for 6 mana", "doing 10 damage for 10 mana over two turns", and "helping your opponent for 6 mana". i guess if you're really confident that your deck can win anyways (perhaps because of another card on this list) you could use this to force your opponent to ante another card for you to win? mostly this one is this high up here because "if the opponent doesn't concede the game immediately" is the funniest possible opening to a MTG card's rules text. like that's always true. you could add that to quite literally every card ever printed and it would change nothing other than making the game way funnier

okay so this is a three mana 1/1 with an ability that costs three MORE mana to activate that effectively just makes your opponent ante a card. i know it looks like it destroys and then literally steals an artifact, which would actually be a pretty good effect since it impacts the board (something none, but the entire thing is countered by anteing a card so that's what's gonna happen every time. at least this one can chump block

okay now we're starting to get into cards that at least make you think a little bit before deciding they suck (Jeweled Bird would go around here)

this scores higher than Timmerian Fiends for several reasons. obviously, a 4 mana 3/3 is a much better rate than a 3 mana 1/1, and the sac ability being free (other than a tap) makes it a lot more usable. the effect is even debateably good in red specifically: either it "draws" (literally legally steals irl) you a card, or it does 10 burn to the opponent's face. however, it does lose points due to the part where you, uh, have to give it away after using it once, win or lose. basically this is like Bronze Tablet but 6 mana cheaper and on a body that can actually theoretically do something. also lol at the "or conceding game" clause like Demonic Attorney, i really want to start seeing that wording on every card ever printed

now this might seem similar to Demonic Attorney at first glance, but the Oracle text makes it make more sense: "You own target card in the ante. Exchange that card with the top card of your library." notably, like Efreet and Tablet, this swap in ownership happens regardless of the outcome of the game, and unlike those two cards, you don't have to trade Darkpact itself for the card you're stealing. stealing your opponent's card out of the ante does mean that now both of the cards in there belong to you, meaning you have twice as much to lose, but hey, you just stole (and got to draw and cast, lol) your opponent's shit. "do what you must, i have already won" type beat

as powerful as Darkpact is, it's still only the second best ante card, and it is not even in the same zip code as the first best. ever heard of a little card named Ancestral Recall? draws 3 cards for one mana? and that's such a busted effect you're only allowed to legally run one copy in the one format it isn't explicitly banned in?

hahahahahahahahahaha holy shit sorry every time i remember this card i cackle at it a bit. what do you MEAN "discard your hand and draw 7 for 1 mana"?? discarding is an UPSIDE these days! people have unironically run One With Nothing, which is this card except for all the words after "discard your current hand". that "add the first drawn to the ante" bit might as well be flavor text because if you manage to lose after casting this then your deck was never even theoretically capable of winning in the first place. jesus christ.

[raine-world]

So Neko Atsume 2 not only sucks but has game breaking bugs. I'm extremely disappointed in the team.

I was so hype for a sequel, but it's not a sequel at all and more of an update/DLC. Same shit, a few new items and mechanics, but overall the same. Items break now and have to be fixed which is annoying. Text boxes don't go away unless you tap OUTSIDE the box, tapping the box itself keeps it up and does nothing which is very confusing. The game no longer works on Airplane mode. I loved the og Neko Atsume because it still functioned when I was out of service, but it is no longer possible here. You can't exchange silver fish for gold fish. Lots of bad decisions here.

AND my game is frozen. I have two cats that showed up and have been sitting in my yard for 2 days. No one new comes and these two won't leave. I am not the only one with this bug. The app is quite literally unplayable.

Will they update it to have more content? Maybe, eventually, but I don't really care. This is just a cash grab re-release. I'm very disappointed to see this is how Neko Atsume turned out.

Side note, why is it impossible to transfer your Neko Atsume date from one device to another?? I got a new phone and lost years of my og Neko Atsume. This is so ridiculous. What a quick way to make sure no one picks up your game ever again.

[alteredsilicone]

ranting about gaming

since yesterday i posted that thing about WF's numbers, i wanna add more onto the discussion on what totally sours me about complaining about games is... that even games that update frequently get the same exact complaints.

Genshin Impact has a constant event and content grind (we are talking HUGE maps with places to explore and quests and what not), releases a new unit quite frequently and people still act like there is nothing to do (I shit you not).

another similar complaint - if a unit doesn't murderkill an entire room of enemies in 0.5 seconds it is LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE

the exact same complaints for completely different games is mind boggling

>ree powercreep >ree why isn't this unit powercrept

and ofc youtubers/"content creators" setting the tone for discourse (extra bad points for genshin creators who make "guides" about unreleased units based on leaks and fan the flames of "OMG THIS UNIT IS MID", then again this could also be the problem of YT clickbait economy)

at this point i'm convinced gamers actually want what they pretend to hate e.g. if a game isn't a literal dopamine addiction factory (in the case of live services/mmos) then it will be a source of endless ire, god forbid you tell someone "hey if this game fell off just stop playing" which is seen as somehow defending the devs and not yknow... trying to point out how someone might have an unhealthy relationship with their hobby

tho this is funny coupled with the fact a lot of gamers think like they really Vote with their Wallet and Speak Out about scummy business practices but...

nothing is really changing.

tbh in some ways im waiting for the 'gaming bubble' to finally burst.

ok this rant went off the rails and idk what im saying anymore PEACE AND LOVE

[thedude3445]

current irons in the current fire

Before I get to start new fun projects to kick everyone's asses, I gotta finish the stuff already out there, so let's remind ourselves what those are:

(gonna make a readmore cut thing because this got too long, as rambles often do)

Systemless, the very silly very gay epic that's wrapping up finally after 3 years, I'm aiming to finish in April. Honestly this book is super up the Tumblr alley and even has BL romance but I forgot to promote it on here lol. I'll do that when the ebook versions come out

Golemancer, which really bombed compared to my original expecations, but it's still a pretty well-liked story honestly. I am going to wrap up Book 2 since it's already almost done, then publish ebook versions, and if those do well I'll finish the series later on. I should have done this over a year ago...

Japan Romance, the codename for a long-gestating project I've been working on since 2019. It was a novel, then a comic, now it's a visual novel, and yes I'm intentionally adding these comma splices why do you ask? When this project comes out someday you are gonna flip out, I promise. It's gonna be my ultimate early career project.

Project U, a collab with Ktalaki, the actual mspa prophet and not me actually. This project will never see the light of day, on purpose.

Game Jam. Quinlan Circle is gonna do a week-long game jam during Golden Week. Unless the game is literally unplayable, we will post that online afterwards.

Project Z, this is a codename that's actually just the impending release of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, a game that I suspect will take up an entire month of my life. Still working on creative projects even while this game is out is going to be my life's ultimate challenge. When Fire Emblem Engage came out I totally failed at doing anything but playing that game (and also dealing with various life crises throughout February but that's a story for another time AKA an actual blog essay not this thing)

MSPA Reread 2023, a project that's semi-creative because it's unlocking entire spheres of my brain I forgot even existed. The sheer nostalgia that came with reading Homestuck Act 5-2 took up multiple days of my life reminiscing about old projects and long-dead forum thread. I'm on Act 6 Intermission 3 now as of today, and I think my friend group will finish around the end of April. Later, I'm gonna read the Epilogues and Homestuck 2 for the first time and see why people hate them so much lol. I know they're not "strictly canon" but I'm a long-time Star Wars EU fan, so fluid canonicty in layers is totally normal to me. Maybe not to other people...

(also I guess Psycholonials counts here? And the visual novel games? IDK about those quite yet)

Anyway there's one thing that I'm building to, and that's a project codenamed Really Big Story. You might be able to guess the story concept based on the codename. Quinlan Circle has been going for almost 5 years now, and we're getting ready to work on something super ambitious. But we can only work on it after we're all in better spots creatively. For me this means finishing (or quitting) all the stuff I've built up over the years. I have too many projects!!!!!

If you actually read this whole thing, send me an ask for which of these you want me to ramble about in my next mini-blog. I'll do that tomorrow or something (the mini-blogs will never be as long as this one, at least I hope so lol because this took like 20 minutes)

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (2017) Review [Part One]

The past days I've been slowly going through the world of Crash Bandicoot as I reviewed Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2, Crash Bandicoot 3, and Crash Team Racing. All of which was based on their original Playstation releases. I highly recommend reading those reviews first for context. However, only focusing on the Playstation versions of these games isn't really being all that helpful due to a pair of releases that came out comparatively recently. But first, let's take a step back and see how we even got here.

Crash Bandicoot was a game published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and the titular character later became a mascot of sorts for the console it was on: the Playstation. The original Crash games were developed by a studio called Naughty Dog, however they eventually quit making Crash games. Despite that, the series kept going. On all platforms too.. what? Why are Crash Bandicoot games coming out on Nintendo consoles, Xbox consoles, and even PC? What’s happening? Did Sony do this? Well, no. You see, despite Naughty Dog creating the games and the characters and Sony publishing them, Universal Interactive (yes that Universal) owned the series. Ok, so a long time ago Naughty Dog made a weird fighting game called Way of the Warrior for the 3DO. Despite it's obscurity, this game is shockingly important because after finishing it, Naughty Dog displayed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in search of a publisher. After a bidding war, Universal Interactive won the rights to it. Universal liked it so much that they contracted Naughty Dog to make three more games for them. Those three games ended up being, of course, the Crash Bandicoot trilogy. Before that though, Naughty Dog needed to pick a console to develop the next game on. They thought the Playstation looked “sexy” so they started development for that. After a demonstration from Naughty Dog, Sony agreed to publish and partially fund the game. But Naughty Dog made 4 Crash games right? If they already made an extra one, they could just make more, right? Well in theory, but Naughty Dog thought that Universal was too difficult to communicate with. They had a great relationship with Sony Computer Entertainment though. They were so close in fact that only two years after CTR, Sony outright purchased Naughty Dog, firmly establishing their place as part of the Playstation family. 

After Naughty Dog quit, Sony published one more Crash Bandicoot game: Crash Bash. I haven’t really played Crash Bash personally, but from what I’ve heard it’s just a sub-par party game. After that, Universal decided to stop letting Sony publish Crash in favor of publishing the series on all platforms, with the first one being Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. People didn’t like that game, and I didn’t either. I’m not going to talk too much about this game mostly because it's already been mocked to death and also because it’d be kinda redundant. That’s because Wrath of Cortex is literally just a one to one ripoff of Crash Bandicoot 3, even down to the hub world. Except it’s like they saw my review of Crash 3 and said “Hey, what if we took every problem Crash 3 had and made them even worse?”. The platforming is worse because the camera is awful and they messed up the slide somehow. You have to like release the slide button and THEN jump, which is just awkward. Other than that the platforming is playable, but you rarely get to do it. Even more of the game is random bullshit now. Well over half of your playtime will be spent in those vehicle segments. While I didn’t care for the vehicles in Crash 3 because they distracted from the platforming, they were mostly just tolerable filler. In Wrath of Cortex, they all suck soo much ass. They all fucking suck and they're damn near unplayable. I kinda like the ball rolling, but that’s it. They also brought back Crash 2’s awful jetpack. They not only brought back Crash 3’s abysmal underwater stages, but 1. There’s even more of them. and 2. They’re even worse! You get this submarine which is so slow you can’t dodge the obstacles! Anyway, enough ranting. Wrath of Cortex sucks, but that’s no hot take. Everyone knows that, and it’s not just this game. Most Crash games after Naughty Dog left were less than stellar. Even the best one, Twinsanity, was so incredibly rushed that the final result was unpolished and had a lot of cut content. Needless to say, Crash fans weren’t happy, and after a disastrous reboot, they just wanted a simple return to the classics. 

Meanwhile, Universal was eventually merged with Vivendi, who owned a bunch of studios including Blizzard Entertainment. The combined new studio became known as "Vivendi Games". Fast forward to the late 2000s, Activision was foaming at the mouth over the idea of microtransactions and other recurring fees to the gaming consumer, and therefore were dying to get their hands on World of Warcraft, a Blizzard game. Vivendi Games was struggling at that time, so the two companies merged, forming into the public menace we now know as Activision Blizzard. But what about our favorite orange marsupial? Well he had games throughout the 2000s, but after the merger he slowly grew silent. In 2011, Activision Blizzard released a game called Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. Poor Spyro, but that’s a story for another day isn’t it? Skylanders was made by Toys for Bob alongside other companies, most notably Vicarious Visions. In 2016, the final Skylanders game was released, and it had the long awaited yet melancholic return of Crash Bandicoot. His portion of the game was developed by Vicarious Visions. Announced alongside his inclusion however was a full from the ground up remake of the entire classic Crash trilogy. Months later we got a trailer and a name: Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy.

Most people these days play this games in the N. Sane Trilogy, rather than their original Playstation releases so I feel I have to cover it. I'm not going to go super in depth with each game, because I already have done that with my reviews of the originals. Instead, I'm just going to focus on what makes the N. Sane Trilogy different.

Let’s start with the obvious: the graphics. Obviously they’re higher fidelity and they can certainly look quite nice at times, however they're far from perfect. Firstly, I simply don’t think that this realistic artstyle fits Crash Bandicoot. These characters were designed with a low poly, low resolution PS1 game with a far off camera in mind. Crash has big eyes, big eyebrows, and a big mouth so that he can be expressive in a way that still reads when looking at the game from a crappy CRT television. When you put this character in HD with realistic graphics where you can make out every hair on his little bandicock he just looks awful. He looks far better when he's very stylized, ala Crash 4. Even the rest of the graphics just look wrong to me. Something about how some of these levels look just feels off. It doesn't help that the game is also locked to 30fps on every console. For a modern day release, that's not acceptable. Especially considering that neither N. Sane Trilogy nor Nitro Fueled (which trust me I'll get back to) got PS5/Series X upgrades. Considering that even a modest computer like mine can hit 60fps on the PC port of N. Sane, there's absolutely no reason why next gen consoles couldn't also hit that same benchmark. Overall the N. Sane Trilogy only came out like 6 years ago and it already looks really dated to me. I honestly prefer the more timeless look of the originals. Well graphics aside, let’s go through each game one by one:

[Continued in Part Two]

[af1899]

FEH - update notes [5.10.0] + thoughts and reactions

So, I.S. posted the release notes for the Fire Emblem Heroes 5.10.0 software update with quite the delay, but you can see them here.

I'll comment on each point of interest right below, skipping on less relevant stuff Imo.

Tfw you were saving for the merge but it'll come at you for free the same month

I was planning to save for Halloween Kagero (and use the opportunity to perhaps get a merge on either/both Halloween Myrrh/Mia) but her first merge is literally coming my way with enough participation in events and I'm excited to get it of course, I'm definitely gonna work my way through it. My plan now is to summon all but blue in her rerun banner in the first round, then wait for whatever banner could be of my interest before deciding if I wanna keep trying... at least this free merge will help me...

If you're looking to fodder her, she has [Bottle Juice+] (always active [Guard] positive effect) or [Bold Fighter 3] as noteworthy fodder, you'd probably prefer the former since it's seasonal and somewhat useful, but the latter is also great.

This time, both 5★ [Combat Manuals] are seasonals, the other is Halloween L'Arachel who has a bunch of nice fodder options, I'm taking [Madness Flask+] (grants same effect as [Fury 3]) and [Rally Atk/Spd+] as I think they are among her best comboes (as for who will get those, it's been decided to be Female Robin... I don't really like at all the Lv.2 {Tactic} effect and I'd daresay Cecilia is better for colorless/blue checking overall, so I'll delegate that role to her and do something else with Female Robin... who should start to get some premium skills), but should you need to plan ahead who needs some of her skills, she has the mentioned ones plus [Swift Sparrow 2] and [Spd/Res Ruse 3].

You may also be able to get that Young Innes, a good practice is to save all {Divine Codes: Ephemera} of the month until no more are obtainable, then pick the [Combat Manuals] you need, otherwise you may be risking to lose one of the free 5★ ones or even the [Heroic Grails] one — which you shouldn't — but with active participation you should get something over 700 to get those.

The red refines batch

This time, everyone is only red, like... why? But at least, some units that have been waiting on those refines will finally get them, Soleil has sure been waiting for long, hasn't she? I'm not excited for her at all but I'm glad for her fans.

I'm moreso looking forward to Laevatein's refine, even though I don't have special admiration for her, she's still an interesting character indeed, I actually have her but never built her properly... and I'm glad I did wait this long since a refine should give me a better direction on how she should be built:

Bridal Tharja was also due her refine since she was the next seasonal with preference weapon waiting on a refine, next should be Summer Tana, which I'm hyped about!

I'm also curious about Julius too, sadly I foddered one of the free copies but I still have some around should I end up building him someday, hopefully his refine will give me a "oomph!" to get on it.

Wrapping things up

Gonna start to finish this post talking about this new feature, from the looks of it, the [Memento Events] (cinematics you watch to get [Rapport] and rewards) can be now obtained by choice using a specific resource that's locked to the current season of the [Heroes Journey] event, so you should use them before they vanish...

[Memento Events] can now be watched anytime, instead of when [Heroes Journey] is around.

I think this is a nice feature, it doesn't do much to improve the event's overall rating Imo, but it's nice that at least, I.S. allows us to somehow relive it anytime.

I realized I've never gave my opinion on this event... I'll rate it at 7.5/10, it's nice to have more interaction with our units, we can even hang out with our favorite character by bringing along [My Summoner] in a growing variety of sceneries, some of them being really heartwarming, but the rewards are slightly underwhelming barring [Orbs], and asides the cutscene stuff you have to partake in [Heroic Ordeals]-esque battles that cost [Stamina].

Aaanyway...

...Yes, I consider this part important, I'm still waiting to put "No Justice" (whichever version) from Fire Emblem Fates everywhere in the game, best track of the game hands down.

This is more important though:

...There'll be a maintenance period, we've been notified before I believe, neverthless, it doesn't hurt to add the periods here and remind you the game will be unplayable during this period, the seasonal banner comes the 7th.

Use this clock for reference... so you can have an idea of when maintenance starts; for me, it starts at 9 p.m. the 5th and ends the next day at 2 a.m. (PT is 4 hours behind GMT-3), it's likely we'll get the trailer in-between, and the update roll out at 8 p.m. (GMT-3) at the usual day before the banner, do note they don't say when the update will be out.

As for you, use said clock to determine what's the difference between the PT timezone and yours, then use that difference to go forward/back in the time periods that appear above.

For example, it's 10/1 11:50 p.m. in PT, and 10/2 3:50 a.m. in GMT-3, I can see there's a 4 hour difference, so I add 4 hours to each timestamp I.S. gives me: "10/5/2021 10:00 p.m." in PT is "11/5/2021 2:00 a.m." in GMT-3. (The date format in my country is DD/MM/YYYY but normally I'll use the American format here, to avoid confusing the English-speaking community)

The update details are now in the bulletin board in-game but figured you could keep this advice for the future, the in-game notices already convert the timestampts to your timezone.

In any case, that's all for this post and I hope the info here has proven to be helpful to you!

Btw... I just spent 4 [Orbs] on [Performing Arts] revival banner (had a circle with three red stones, 1 colorless and 1 green, chose the latter first then the former) and got nothing special on either, just some random low rarity units... meh, I'll just keep saving.

[pestopascal]

While I will absolutely agree that CB2077 isn’t the ONLY game doing all this bullshit, or that other AAA studios don’t deserve the flack CDPR is getting, I have to say that this is absolutely the perfect storm and I think people are FINALLY seeing the problems in modern AAA gaming. CB2077 might be fun to play, may have a good story, but it’s almost impossible to see because of the glaring issues. Which, honestly, is a good thing. I hope games change after this.

under here

AAA studios have been like this and this sort of release has been completely normalised on all accounts by both the businesses themselves and fans because of the inherent reliance on modders (bethesda at the forefront of this), as well as the pushback every time companies actually go ‘uh we need a lil more time’ (although... they just shouldnt announce potential release dates, im even of the camp they shouldnt even start releasing the game until like 6 months out from their official date because they fuck it up every time. borderlands 3 being the only game i know of being in “secret” development and then announcing itself in march for a september release. game itself aside, thats how companies should do it). easily i can remember a lot of 2011 release games which have had the exact same issues as cp77′s release, and then every other game in between since. very rarely do you actually have a game that isn’t a fucked up mess of a pile of pixels. and it is always the customisable character ones that are honestly, genuinely, ugly looking at release. but you can definitely say its been happening looooooong before 2011, with unrealistic expectations, word limits, 11 month time frames, offloading sequels to smaller companies so they can suffer if it fails, etc etc. the entire system has been like this for so long... they dont know any real different nowadays.

i mean look. tlou2 released under crunch conditions this year, and was rewarded. it was ALL over the social media feeds, it was quite the controversy because, surprise surprise, the company promised they wouldnt do it uwu and then. bam ! crunch conditions. literally around that time too, bioware employees came out with a statement saying ‘man we wish dai FAILED so that back in 2014 we couldve proven crunch was a wrong practice’. they say this as well after having to produce da2 in 14 months, which just suffered from fans and journalism for reusing environments, because it was produced in 14 months, and honestly? no one pointed that out back then, bioware themselves pointed it out again this year, 6 years after release, that that game was produced in 14 months. rdr2′s release was hounded by stories of crunch, and they all disappeared into the night because... it was heralded as the best game of all time. that was 2018, 2 years ago.

i think too is that some people get kind of ... morally and ethically concerned. which is understandable. can you consume something when you know it was made under conditions like crunch? and i think one of the most confronting things about it is that 9/10, not only has your favourite company engaged in crunch conditions, they almost actively choose to continue with them. and then that’s a whole other bag of issues blown up over there when it comes to what is able to be consumed what isn’t etc etc

i think also like a mix of marketing, promises and then the expectations of what the game will be like have really had cdpr earn the ire of fans which is just like... you don’t believe what these companies are saying. you never should, esp when it’s their ceo’s saying it who don’t work on the actual floor. bioware itself is the main culprit of doing this to the point they finally came around with all the da4 concept art and teasing to be like ‘ummm but actually dont get invested?’. remember all that qunari lady fanart that bioware management was like ... please dont get attached? yeah. yeah. like at what point as well is there going to be heavy level of apprehension to approach this? and i can’t really talk either, i cracked open the door for mass effect again. i know exactly what kind of shit bioware will pull, i know they are teasing it already on social media, but mass effect is my ride or die series. that’s why people keep opening the door on letting these companies get away with it. and you can’t fault fans entirely either because this is down to a science of how to get money. i mean, fuck, mass effect andromeda’s entire advertising campaign HINGED on the n7 logo. for the nostalgia value. and i see text posts in the same vein of both ‘guys, disney isnt gonna fuck you if you consume every remake for nostalgia value’ and ‘its understandable why people do it’.

so then you have to go ‘well are fans as just to blame’ and then that’s a whole other argument.

i think also like. i personally havent run into aaaannnyyyyyyy of the issues that you see posted online. which is ironic bc 1) i play on ps4 and 2) its an old dusty ps4. in fact a lot of ppl i have spoken to who have had issues have played on pc. does this mean the glitches dont exist? ofc not, the vids and screenshots are right there. but like... ive had a basically unhindered experience so far, and i get where ppl are coming from (i do, i promise) where theyve basically found the game unplayable. is there also a standard of what ppl consider unplayable because ive played most AAA games at launch when they basically rushed to slap the box label on the game and called it a day until they work on patches. when ppl consider unplayable is also just... different per person. some people have a slight blur on the screen when turning too fast even in an MMO and decide the game is horrible and unplayable. some people can have broken quests and npcs not loading and falling through maps and still be fine. there’s no agreed statement of what makes a game unplayable either, which is why you read threads on twitter and someone goes ‘yeah this npc t-posed so i quit in the first hour’ with a dozen replies. everyone has different levels of it.

it’s a mixed bag of issues. im not excusing cdpr, but the ppl who worked on the game are honestly likely not the ones who pushed for a release. you’ve gotta look at sony and microsoft and ceo’s with bonuses coming up and the investors and shareholders and people who sit behind computers and read numbers detailing interest and demand and supply and how every single time they had to delay this game, the loudest (but smallest) bunch of assholes on like reddit and in the twitter threads complained that it was delayed AGAIN even though back in what 2015? they said it’ll come out when it’s ready. and yeah there are times when game delays result in a mismatched half assed sort of story (kh3... p5... ffxv... dai...) and then there are times when, if they need to delay the game... they probably need to delay the game. sometimes delays are bad sometimes theyre good sometimes you are sitting there like whew if you only didn’t try to be like THIS TIME this is the release date.

the ONLY WAY this will stop happening is, quite frankly, unionising. and everyone is allergic to that whole concept so like... this is “the perfect storm” as you put it. but it’s also not. people have been so disappointed over the last 2 years alone for gaming companies, the final product, the attitudes from higher ups, that i think cdpr is receiving a good few years worth of anger. i think theyre also on the receiving end of misdirection from american fans who still don’t fucking get the company isn’t american, because that’s another bag of issues as well. like we’re holding at least 8 bags of groceries out of the back of the car now, and we don’t want to take another trip, because there are so many little bits of this entire situation to look at. there’s so much back and forth.

i think the worst, but most realistic thing is: games won’t change. how they will social media wise will. maybe. assuming bioware gets their heads out their asses but... they’re going to be a lot more careful. i mean, hell, sony offered refunds. that was just a publicity stint. they dont give a fuck if the game was bad. as i said before, if they did, they would make all companies fix trophy problems, starting from like 2010 or whenever the trophy system first came out. they just don’t wanna fall in alongside cdpr being thrown on its sword. but the companies are gonna learn from this, get smarter, still do the same shit to their employees, still pay off journalists, still do media blackouts, etc etc. and we’re gonna be here in another year’s time, with another game, having these same roundabout arguments, and cp77′s issues are gonna fade into just a wikipedia article.

[aion-rsa]

15 Worst NES Games of All-Time

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The worst NES games of all time are a truly special breed of bad video games. Say what you will about the downsides of the modern video game industry (and there is certainly a lot to say), but there is, in most cases, a baseline standard of quality ensured by better, cheaper technology, experience, and more controlled distribution channels. You may get the occasional indie game that is basically a scam, but when it comes to major releases…well, even Cyberpunk 2077 was pretty good in a lot of ways.

That wasn’t the case during the NES era. At a time when console gaming was basically the digital wild west, it was incredibly difficult to tell good games from bad ones, and developers often exploited that fact to get us to buy titles that refuse to leave the deepest, darkest parts of our nostalgia all these years later.

That’s the thing about these games. Are they among the worst NES titles ever? Absolutely, but years later, there’s something about remembering the pain of playing them and sharing those memories with others that is strangely enjoyable. 

15. Tag Team Wrestling

Even with all of the other bad wrestling games for the NES (and there were many), Tag Team Wrestling manages to stand apart largely by virtue of being fundamentally unplayable in nearly every way you can imagine.

In a dream world where you manage to overcome this game’s all-time bad animations and unresponsive controls, you still have to deal with the fact that there are times when the opponent A.I. difficulty is raised to such a degree that it becomes quite literally impossible to win. If it weren’t for the fact that this game eventually inspired Homestar Runner’s Strong Bad character, it would be entirely worthless.

14. Friday the 13th

There are some who will credit Friday the 13th for being unique and ambitious. We shall not speak their name in this house of truth where we recognize that the Friday the 13th franchise was never scarier than the moment you tried to play this game as a child.

This game’s bewildering map and unforgivable controls were practically designed to eliminate the possibility of fun. It’s easy to love Jason’s weirdly stylish purple jumpsuit in this 8-bit nightmare, but much like Patrick Bateman, no amount of style can hide the monster beneath.

13. Super Pitfall

There’s no shortage of NES games that are difficult to the point of being fundamentally unenjoyable, but Super Pitfall may just be the king of that particular trash heap.

Super Pitfall‘s developers seemed to believe that the reason people love video games is that they offer the chance to listen to repetitive music while dying all the time to obstacles you have little to no chance to avoid. Just in case that level of abuse wasn’t enough to make you love their project, the developers decided to just go ahead and fill their game with essentially invisible items that no sane person would ever find organically despite the fact that they’re required to progress. To it’s credit, this game does recreate the sensation of being trapped in a dank underground cave.

12. Operation Secret Storm

While it almost feels too easy to pick on developer Color Dreams (the studio responsible for many terrible unlicensed NES games, many of which were based on the Bible), Operation Secret Storm is really on another level in terms of all-time bad games.

Even if we can put aside the often blatant racism and bizarre Gulf War storyline, we’re left with a game where control commands are more of a polite suggestion and hit detection is a bug, not a feature. From top-to-bottom, this may be the “best” example of just how bad those old-school unlicensed NES games could be.

11. Where’s Waldo?

You know, it’s pretty amazing that Where’s Waldo? the video game can’t offer an experience comparable to the Where’s Waldo? books considering that the books weren’t exactly the great American novels.

Beating this game will either take you five minutes or 50 years. It really all depends on your ability to determine which of the blurred on-screen figures the game is trying to pretend is supposed to be Waldo. It’s truly impressive that this game manages to botch a concept this simple, but that’s the magic of the NES era. 

10. Back to the Future Part II and III

The first Back to the Future game for NES was bad, but at least it followed basic video game logic in terms of its level structure. Back to the Future Part II and III, meanwhile, somehow beats Primer for the title of “most confusing use of time travel in entertainment history.”

To be honest, I still don’t know what this game expects from me. It’s supposed to offer a time travel adventure that spans the scope of the last two Back to the Future films, but I dare you to play this for more than 20 minutes without feeling tears in your eyes and the words “What do you want me to do?!?!” escape your lungs. If it’s not the most unintuitive bit of 8-bit game design, it’s certainly one of the most unenjoyable.

9. The Adventures Of Gilligan’s Island

There are two things worth remembering about Gilligan’s Island: the theme song and how annoying Gilligan was. To its credit, this game nails both of those elements.

This game is basically the result of escort quests and bad comedy games forming an unholy union. Imagine being dropped into a hedge maze and being forced to endure the constant jeers of the dumbest man you’ve ever met while trying to figure out where to go. Also, your legs are tied together. That’s basically the Adventures of Gilligan’s Island experience. 

8. Bad Street Brawler

It’s tempting to overlook the golden age of beat ‘em ups for their seeming simplicity, but as Bad Street Brawler shows, it’s very much possible for those kinds of games to go incredibly wrong.

Bad Street Brawler was designed to be used with the NES Power Glove, which should probably tell you everything that you really need to know about what it’s like to try to “play” this game. Manage to master its nearly unplayable controls, and you’re left with a beat ’em up with bewildering visuals and fundamentally unsatisfying gameplay that leave you wondering how the industry lasted this long.

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7. Mario is Missing

Look, there are a lot of bad video games on the NES, but there’s something especially insulting about a terrible Mario game on NES that passes itself off as an educational experience.

This game feels like it was made by a dentist who wanted to give young patients a way to pass the time in the waiting room while also making them less afraid of the impending pain. Nothing in this game makes sense, and the fact it fooled young gamers into thinking it was an actual Mario game makes it that much more infuriating.

6. Ghostbusters

You know, it really shouldn’t have been that difficult to make a respectable Ghostbusters game. Honestly, the only way to go wrong is to pass up the more obvious genre opportunities and try to do something weird and stupid that nobody ever asked for.

As you probably guessed, that’s exactly what we have here. Ghostbusters has the audacity to try to be this strange combination of various gameplay concepts when the fundamentals of controls, visuals, and logical progression so clearly elude it. It’s genuinely hard to believe someone had the chance to make a Ghostbusters video game and came up with this.

5. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

There are some who say that you really need to learn to play this game before you can judge it. The fundamental flaw of that premise is that it assumes that there’s a game here that’s worth playing in the first place.

I genuinely can’t imagine what Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s developers were going for when they concocted this unintuitive blend of confusing mechanics, overwhelming (yet unimpressive) enemies, and controls that only seem to work seconds before you convince yourself to give up on the game entirely. You can read every guide about this game that’s ever been written to try to understand how its needlessly complicated mechanics work, and they still wouldn’t answer the one question everyone has about this title, “Why are you like this?”

4. Action 52

It almost feels bad to pick on Action 52 considering that it is an unlicensed collection of 52 small games that were clearly made by underfunded and inexperienced programmers working on a project that legally probably shouldn’t have been “released.” Then again, that’s perhaps all the more reason to make fun of it.

Against all odds, not one of Action 52’s 52 games manages to be even remotely playable. These games would have been embarrassing even if they were released for the Atari 2600, but in the age of the NES, they offered young gamers the chance to quickly realize that the world is full of scammers and they will try anything to part you with your money.

3. Deadly Towers

Every NES gamer has that one game they just couldn’t beat and never seemed to understand no matter how hard they tried. Well, Deadly Towers is all of those games of your respective childhoods rolled into one.

There is not a single aspect of this game that makes any kind of sense that I’m familiar with. Imagine you’re trapped in the maze from the movie Labyrinth, but instead of getting to meet sexy David Bowie at the end, you have to listen to Eric Clapton tell you what’s wrong with your generation. That’s about what’s it like to play Deadly Towers. Even if you bother to learn the game’s structure, you quickly find you don’t want anything to do with the “rewards” that follow. 

2. Dragon’s Lair

How do you take a game like Dragon’s Lair (an innovative arcade experience that combined FMV visuals with QTE gameplay) and port it to the humble NES? Well, if this port is any indication, you…don’t.

I don’t know if there’s ever been another game that inflicts so much pain on its first screen. I’m willing to bet that 90% of Dragon’s Lair players never figured out how to cross that first bridge and actually enter the castle. That’s probably because the solution to that “puzzle”makes no sense and is fundamentally unenjoyable to execute. Those 90% will be happy to know that the game only gets worse from there. 

1. The Uncanny X-Men

Imagine how easy it would have been to make a decent X-Men game for NES. Just take Batman, Mega Man, Castlevania, or any number of the other great NES games, throw some X-Men designs on the whole thing, and you have a game most of us would probably fondly remember to this day.

Infamous NES developer LJN decided to go a different route, though. They decided to make a top-down action game where hit detection is basically non-existent, the music constantly assaults your ears, half of the characters are essentially useless, the graphics are so bad that you quite literally can’t tell where you are or what you’re supposed to be doing, and the AI is useless to the point that I”m pretty sure the in-game characters have become aware of the game they’re forced to exist in and are doing everything in their power to get out.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

There’s no shortage of bad NES games (clearly), but when it comes to wasted potential, this is truly the worst of the worst. 

The post 15 Worst NES Games of All-Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[chaoat]

Post Mortem Madness 1

It was brought to my attention recently that I've published over the last years 19 different games on Itch. That's a lot of games, almost too many. Most of those are game jam entries, and although I've always held with the idea that smaller vertical slice projects were better for learning design, with that much released I can't possibly have really analyzed and taken everything I could get from every one of them. And in truth, I have been neglecting postmortems and that kind of thing. I did used to do them for a while, but I lost that habit a long time ago (around about the point I was 4k words into one of them and lost interest), and haven't in a long time. So, with this body of work behind me, and coming up to my 20th release (it's going to be LD46 btw), I've decided to go through everything I've created and write a short postmortem for each one. Not just for my Itch releases, but for everything. Every half finished wreck of a project, and every idea that I wrote a line of code for and then abandoned. Without further ado, let me begin with...

Aqua Mechanus

Completion Date: 22/05/15 Engine: Löve Jam: None

I wrote this a loooooooooooooooong time ago, and although I had written stuff before it, this is probably the best place to start. Everything before this is so horribly unfinished and unplayable that it isn't really worth looking at. This, on the other hand, is very finished. I remember my main objective creating it was to try and finish something, that being quite the challenge at the time, and I've gotta say it definitely did get finished. The idea was a simple arena shooter, where you play as a mecha squid that shoots torpedoes out of its head. You had to fight against a myriad range of robot opponents (three different types), until you were eventually overwhelmed.

It plays pretty okay, though some of the mechanics are pretty unintuitive, and it encourages some pretty terrible play styles, but it's fun enough. Those colours though, man, why did I think that would work for a background. And it's also kind of confusing to tell what's going on, overall visual clutter is pretty bad. I finished it though, it's fully playable with the enemy waves and everything, and that's the important part.

I was also looking through the code to see how much I'd improved. There were a lot of global variables and stuff around, and the enemy behaviour was literally just one giant if statement, but other than that it didn't look too shabby. I did come across this gem though.

Beautiful.

Anyway, in summary.

Good stuff

Simple gameplay loop, implemented kind of okay.

It's finished.

Bad Stuff

Awful colour choice, and the aesthetic is generally pretty cluttered.

It's got some music. It's not very good.

The mechanics encourage really unfun ways to play.

So yeah, I'll try and do one of these maybe like once a week or something. Might be longer next time, might be shorter, we'll see.

[thefloatingstone]

What's imscared about, and what makes the ending so effective?

imscared is one of the original horror indie games. It also most likely inspired some of Undertale as Imscared was the very first indie game to have you do things OUTSIDE the game to affect the game itself. Such as text files popping up on your desktop with instructions, JPEGs creating and deleting themselves randomly and various other unwanted activity outside the game on your computer.

The game itself is DEEPLY integrated into your system once you install it, and you essentally have to play it all the way through or it’ll honestly just keep making txt files and stuff as far as I know.

The game itself is about wandering a 3D inviornment with pixel-like graphics being pursued by a being called “White face”

(incidentally, White Face has more than a little in common with Chara in its animation and tendency to glitch out graphically as well as its actions. Chara is almost definitely based on White Face at least in part.)

as well as various other horrors in the game. Some of which are not even hostile and don’t even do anything to you... but they’re just..... there.

White Face is described as a “curse” and by installing the game, you have essentially cursed your computer. Your job is to get rid of the curse the game has caused. You also get txt messages from someone claiming to have been unable to lift the course and who is actively trying to work with you to get rid of it and white face on your machine.

White Face itself is extremely aggressive and malevolent, however, despite its clear desire to harm you in the game, as well as infect your computer, White Face itself seems confused about itself. A lot of the messages it sends seem to contradict its actions and often conflict with each other.

A the end of the game, you reach a point where white face has been trapped in a room via things you and the previous cursed person have done outside the game in windows files. Before entering the final room, there is this message left outside it;

Welcome to the door.This is your last choice.If you enter this door our game will end for real.

Please, please, pleasePick up the flower and give it to me. I will reset everything we did until now.”

I you pick up the red flower White face will appear and if you give it to it, White face says “You’re so kind to me. So kind... Play with me forever. I love you.” and the game crashes.

Reloading the game reveals that everything has been deleted and you need to replay the entire game to get to the final door again. If you go through the exit door without picking up the flower, a glitched version of White Face appears, and you end up in a looping hallway with White Face chasing you and the following written on the walls, flipping and changing.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

YOU MADE THIS GAME UNPLAYABLE

I MADE THIS GAME UNPLAYABLE

I DON'T WANT YOU TO KILL ME

I WILL LIVE HERE FOREVER

I WILL LOOK AT YOU FOREVER

I DON'T WANT TO DIE

I'M SCARED"

And then White face will attack you and crash the game. If you load the game you will be locked in a loop for a while, with white face continuously attacking you and causing the game to crash, yelling phrases at you in text form. partly to insult you, but also mostly about how much it doesn’t want to die. And trying to bargain with you so you won’t kill it. “I begged you and you ignored my request.” “You broke my heart.” “Just die already” “I’m scared.”

Eventually, if you load enough times, a hear white heart will appear in the final room and a txt file will appear on the game’s folder that reads;

“I suppose you’re satisfied.

I’m scared.I am scared at the point that I cannot hide my heart anymore.

Destroy this file. Move it. Change its name: The game will end, and so will my curseLeave me here. I beg you. I want to stay here with you just a little more just a little more

But I do know

Farewell.”

If you delete this txt file as it requests and load up the game again, it will e completely normal. No final room. No glitching graphics. Nothing chasing you. Nothing hostile. No scary music. Nothing.

All you’re left with is an empty map with absolutely no gameplay at all. It becomes an empty game with nothing in it. Because you have literally killed White Face. Forever. And the game is now unplayable and there is no way to fix it (like there is with DDLC which allows you to replay by deleting your first run file)

The game is just.... nothing. And never changes ever again.

The ending is extremely anticlimactic. There are no credits. There is no final battle. There is no ending. And after the entire game which was a bunch of anxiety inducing horror and unsettling visuals, you get no release and ease of tension. It just.... stops.

The commentors on John Wolfe’s playthrough put it best, I think;

“This game didn't have a story or characters in the traditional sense, but in some ways Whiteface seems more real to me than most characters I've encountered. Because now that you've killed him, he's just gone. You can't restart a new game, he'll always be missing. Just like a real person would be.“

“It's such a fitting ending to such a unsettling game. You can either eternally play with white face, or kill him forever. It's why the map goes back to normal. The curse ends and it's just a regular map. No tricks, no traps, just an average boring map with nothing to do. It's almost saddening really.”

For a game which the entire experience is terror and anxiety and jump scares, for the ending to quite literally just be NOTHING. For this thing that terrorised you through the entire experience to just.... not exist any more. Because you simply killed them. Without drama, without violence, without climax, without any kind of proof that you have done so apart from the creature now just being.... missing.

It’s an ending that truly and honestly upsets me. It upsets me and makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable and unsetting.

I often like rewatching let’s plays of horror games I’ve watched before. But I only watched the Let’s Play of “imscared” once. Because the ending really really bothered me. And the lack of closure disturbed me on a level that just, simply, wasn’t fun. And I do not wish to experience those feelings again.

[blastoisemonster]

Keitai Denjuu Telefang: Speed Version

Here’s Power’s brother cartridge, Speed. As I’ve previously talked about Telefang’s origins and their unfortunate fame as Pokèmon bootlegs in the western world, allow me to elaborate a few personal thoughts on the games themselves; and, again, if you want to try the series out for yourself (which I actually reccomend, if you like this genre!) head over to Wikifang to get your translation patch!

First off: while Telefang surely does fall into the collect-a-monster genre of RPGs, it should be said that it doesn’t feel like a Pokèmon game at all; if anything, the only similarities might be the (obvious) presence of monsters and overworld’s aerial view. Monsters in Telefang are not “caught”, there isn’t a “Pokèdex” nor a “Box System”; all creatures the player battles with are heavily sentient and antropomorphized, to the point that they talk just like humans, and comunicate with them via cellphones (yes, each monster has a cellphone); infact, during a battle, the player doesn’t simply send out their monsters in battle, but literally gives them a call and invites them to join the brawl. This... allows the game to have a rather peculiar battle mechanic: the player could potentially call into battle any Denjuu they’d like (ah yes, Denjuu are the creatures; Telefang instead refers to the actual battle that happens between Denjuus), but, depending on their original location and nature, Denjuus might arrive late, get lost, or simply decide not to partake at all.

And here we arrive to my second point: there are a lot of details which have appeared in Pokèmon games released after Telefang: in short, this series has predicted quite some future mechanics! Telefang has an internal clock and the overworld does show cosmethic changes between day and night, just like in Gold and Silver (which came out in Japan one year before Telefang), but the transition between these changes is smooth and gradual, just like it happens in Diamond and Pearl. Secondly, each individual monster has a nature, which will only appear from GBA-based Pokèmon titles forward, and battles in Telefang can involve up to three Denjuus at a time, a thing that was unthinkable in Pokèmon until Black and White showed up! While there are way fewer types of Denjuu available and therefore, less battle combinations, the same can’t be said about their evolutionary lines: very few monsters evolve via level-up and most final stages are achieved by gifting special items to your Denjuu, most of which can be bought in in-game stores and some of which are very unusual... why would you need a monster when you can buy a gun? Denjuus’ evolutionary lines also often consist of at least four forms and a lot of them branch out: Pokèmon instead have always preferred a simpler 3-stage evolutionary line and only recently more branching or extended lines are showing up.

And third/last point... yes, it’s a silly game, like, Japanese-kind of silly. The main fact that monsters befriend, battle, and can be called via phones (called D-Shots) is already as quirky as it sounds, yet it’s just the iceberg’s tip: Telefang’s main villain is a human who aspires to bring a dictatorship government in Denjuu’s world (where politics doesn’t exist) and your first encounter with him is during a public speech, in which no Denjuu understands what’s going on; one of the villain’s plans, furthermore, is to monopolize Denjuu’s economics by opening up... curry shops and restaurants all over the Denjuu world. It’s just such a weird game, and it’s clear that some of these themes might’ve been the reason western publishers decided not to import it. There are also some minor glitches overlooked by developers which might hint in a rushed development history (probably pushed forward by Kodansha), but they certainly don’t make the game unplayable.

Telefang’s still a rather enjoyable game if you like collect-a-monster RPGs, if you want to take a break from more famous franchises or if you want to revive your GBC library for a while. So please, allow it to get the attention it deserves and give it a shot -or should I say D-Shot? xD

[bonerhitler]

Three bad games that are good

You know what's always interesting? Bad, but creative games. I don't just mean the disappointing big-name affairs like your bioware blah-fests or no man's whatevers. I mean games that set out to do something unique or new but whether it's because they're done by small-time studios, unpopular names or just never got the attention and budget they deserved they didn't come out quite how they deserved to. So, that being said I'm going to talk about three titles from three different consoles that were objectively bad games in varying ways, but in other ways were completely awesome and I feel the world desperately needs more games like them.

1. Drakengard. Better known as the prequel to Nier (which was the prequel to Nier: Automata, because lets face it the first Nier wasn't even that popular at the time of its release), Drakengard is a deeply, deeply flawed game featuring dull, repetetive “Dynasty Warriors” style gameplay, muddy graphics prominently displaying a pallete of reds, browns and greys and a soundtrack resembling a symphony stuck in a tornado. Sounds like a real treat, doesn't it? That's not even the worst of it. You see, the game had a special malevolent spite for completionists. Anyone who wanted all of the endings had to be prepared to not only play through the game like four-odd times, they had to do all kinds of arbitrary and esoteric things to unlock a variety of weapons as getting all of them was required. Some of them had requirements as obtuse as standing still in a specific room for over a minute, and then guessing where the item spawned in the map. So what could possibly be redeeming about this game?

Well, it was interesting. Without getting too much into my love for Yoko Taro and his games, especially since it's a pre-Nier game, it's main character is set up as an exploration of what kind of horrific monster a person would have to be to fit the role of your typical ~warriors type game protagonist. Rolling into a battlefield, slaughtering hundreds and taking off to the next one. So you play as Caim, a psychopath who cares about nothing, not the world nor the war at hand, beyond his personal goal of saving his sister and doesn't especially care who or what gets destroyed along the way. You pick up a motley crew of party members along this trip including an even more unstable woman who eats children, a blind pedophile who acts as the group's moral compass and an immortal child who's only there because he has a minor beef with the main antagonist over who their parents loved more. The characters aren't functional people, there's no ~destiny~ guiding the main character to save the world or anything. It's just a story about one bloody minded jerk who goes from point A to point B doing the only thing he knows to do; kill.

The game is graphic and the plot goes completely off the rails halfway through and every ending beyond the first one just gets more and more unhinged. Someone playing the game for their first time could be told, in complete detail, exactly what the final ending of the game is and without any prior knowledge of the game and its developer, probably wouldn't believe the would-be spoiler fiend. It's an unpredictable ride and I tentatively recommend it to anyone who can look past the utter trainwreck the actual game is to see the juicy morsel of weirdness it is inside.

2. Deadly Premonition. All internet memes and flavor of the month youtube popularity aside, I love Deadly Premonition. I love it right down to it's wanna-be Twin Peaks soul. You can see the game's budget while you play, but the game is just oozing with charm and a certain detailed heart to it that makes it really feel like it was a labor of love as if the developer, SWERY, really wanted to make the game and tell the story even if the game its self had to be cobbled together. The gameplay is dated, featuring classic survival-horror style tank controls and floaty third-person over the shoulder aiming it feels like a poorer version of Resident Evil 4 except with actual melee weapons instead of just the combat knife. Visually the game is extremely dated. It came out on the 360 and looks like it could have been an early Xbox or even mid-PS2 game. Textures are often just straight up photos of things applied to models, or otherwise just generic tessellations applied to landscape you're not supposed to look at, while the animations are incredibly limited and the same few are used for almost every situation through the entire game for every character. I could keep going on, but I think I've nailed it. The game looks, and feels, like it's several generations out of date and hasn't aged well. It felt out of date when it was first released.

However the sound track is amazing, at least if you're not off-put by the limited number of tracks, the voice acting is pretty decent  and the writing is great. The plot, however, is where the game really shines. It's a fairly predictable murder mystery wrapped in survival horror trappings. You play as Agent Francis York Morgan, an FBI agent who can apparently see Shadows, weird ghost/zombie-like creatures, and sets out to investigate the murder of a young girl in a small town out in the woods called Greenvale. The game tries very hard to be Twin Peaks. Early beta screenshots and videos of the game were almost literally Twin Peaks. It's probably the best deliberately twin-peaksy game I've ever played because it feels like SWERY got it, and ultimately rather than just doing the Twin Peaks thing, he put his own spin on the whole thing.

I could go on more, I want to. But it's very hard to talk about this game's plot without spoiling it, and that is arguably it's strongest and weakest point. You can't really replay it. Once you know the story and solve the mystery, there's nothing really driving it. There's no particular reason to replay it. But it -is- a very nice self contained tale and for that, I love it.

As a final note I'd like to say avoid the ports. The 360 version is the “best” version available, the least buggy and most complete. The PS3 port introduced a ton of strange new bugs and removed a lot of neat visual features and the PC version is borderline unplayable with the number of crashes and other issues.

3. Illbleed. Here's a game a lot of people might not have heard about before. Or maybe you have, I don't know what's popular on the internet anymore. Illbleed was a survival horror game on the dreamcast. Or at least it wore the costume of a survival horror game, in reality it was a complete and loving mockery of everything Survival Horror typically stood for at the time. The game whole heartedly embraced all of the weirdness about horror games of the decade and rolled around in it like a dog just gleefully rolling in its own feces. The game took place in a giant haunted house themed amusement park and your characters wore goggles that let them mark traps at the cost of energy. If you spotted a trap, nothing happened and you gained energy back. If you failed to mark one, you'd get a goofy jump scare and your character would incur a health penalty. If any of your stats got too high or too low you would die. If you ran out of energy and were unable to mark traps, you would get hit too much and die. Illbleed was a mockery of horror games that expected you not to panic and rush through an area, but to slowly and methodically crawl through an area and predict where obstacles would be. You were expected to avoid the surprising and quote-unquote scary elements by diffusing them and even the characters were largely in on the joke in knowing it was all a fake trip through an amusement park.

The biggest downside to this game, is also it's biggest upside. It's hilarious, it doesn't take it -or its genre- seriously. It was, however, advertised as a serious horror game and it's all too easy to see why people didn't like it. Frankly, I would love to see Illbleed make a return as a port on Steam.

[switchindiefix-blog]

Owlboy Review

Over the last few years there hasn’t been many games that have got me to boot-up my old gaming PC. I’m predominately a console gamer (and now solely a Switch gamer) and like playing my games on the comfort of my sofa. However, when Owlboy from D-Pad studios was released back in 2016 with raving reviews, I spent my Christmas break back in England trying to play through the game. Unfortunately, I never managed to finish the game because of a corrupted save file, but I always knew one day I would go back and finish this chirpy little game. Flash forward a year and a half and Owlboy is on sale with 20% off on the Nintendo Switch. Finally, finally I get to beat Owlboy…. but is that a good thing?

The Story

You play as Otus, a mute Owl who is in the middle of his guardian training. In Otus’s floating island village of Vellie, Owls are protecters. They are highly trained to defend their village from the marauding Sky Pirates that lurk around in the open air. However, because he is a mute, Otus is seen as the but of every joke and is treated horribly by his master.

On a routine task, Otus and his companion Geddy are investigating a mischievous stranger in the village. As they follow the stranger, the pair stumbles across a hidden ancient Owl Temple. Upon entering the temple, the two friends find an ancient device that lets Otus teleport Geddy to his position (which is very convienient for puzzles).

After making it to the main vault of the ruin, Otus and Geddy realise that the mischievous stranger is working for the evil Sky Pirates. The Pirates’ plan is to steal one of the Owls’ ancient relics. After an intense battle the pirates are defeat, causing one of them to join your team!

The three companions set off on an adventure to stop the pirate Captain Molstrom from finding the Owls’ remaining two relics. Nevertheless, a deeper plot unravels as the story progresses. It is not just the Pirates Otus has to worry about.

The story in Owlboy was a little confusing, as what seemingly starts off as being a typical ‘save the world from the bad guy’ story soon becomes tangled in overly complex subplots and lore. I could see that some parts of the story were there as lore to build D-Pad Studios’s universe. And I also think a lot of the random story was there to lay the foundations for the next game. However, when mixed together it made for a choppy and overly long story which by the end, I didn’t enjoy.

On the other hand, what I really liked was how D-Pad Studios developed their main characters in the game and really gave them clear and concise motivations for wanting to help save the world and stop the pirates. Otus for example, is always seen as a fool or worthless by his peers and therefore has a point to prove. Geddy is loyal and wants to be their for his friend Otus, whilst also protecting his friends and family in Vellie. Alphonse the Pirate’s sense of dignity and pride has him fight for the good side instead of the bad. The final character (who I won’t say because it’s a spoiler) is an outcast from his family and was betrayed by the pirates, forcing him to side with Otus. I thought it was great how fleshed out each of the main characters were in the story, which is not always seen in other indie games.

The Game

The game is a 2D side-scrolling platform puzzler with some very light metroidvania elements. Otus can fly, run, roll and spin but he cannot use a weapon. Therefore, each of your companions has a specific weapon which only they can use. Otus has to fly around and carry that character to use their weapon. The game is a twin-stick shooter with the left joystick controlling Otus and the right aiming his companions’ weapon.

So for example, Geddy has a basic pee-shooter type gun and Alphonse has a shotgun which is very slow to reload. It can also be used as a torch and a means to burn the environment to open up new areas. Furthermore, he is very heavy so Otus moves slower, but it also means Alphonse can be used to hold down bigger pressure plates, which help solve puzzles. The third character has a grappling hook which helps Otus platform through tough winds and warp through enemy attacks.

In addition, Owlboy also has a significant amount of boss battles that the player must overcome. I liked the visual design of every boss but the actual mechanics behind the battles were pretty standard. They reminded me of some of the ‘bullet-hell’ bosses from The Binding of Isaac but were much easier to understand and beat.

I enjoyed the twin-stick aspect of the game but the combat really took a rear-seat compared to the puzzles in the game. Each puzzle was well designed, fun and made you think. Many had that aspect where the solution was simple. Nevertheless, they made me over think so much that I was trying to do Rayman-Like equations in my head, only to realise all I needed to do was look bit harder or try something a slightly different way. I find this aspect great because it always shows how well designed a game’s puzzles are and how bad at puzzles I am!

As I said above the Metroidvania aspects of the games are very light. For players that wish to just play through the story, there is no real need to back track. The only collectables in the game are coins and a few special tokens which don’t have that much of an effect on gameplay. The coins can upgrade Otus’s health, but I would argue they are mostly there as distractions for players.

Art and Music

Anyone who knows anything about indie games can tell you Owlboy is famous because of its art style. It’s pixelated graphics are stunning, there’s no two words about it. The animation is always flawless and the art direction in the game’s world is beautiful. Each environment is varied, rich and colourful.

The music too is up there with some of the best. Orchestral sounds swoop and swoon as Otus flies around Vellie, with slower more melancholic tones at the sadder parts of the game. The sound design too it fantastic. I love Otus’s whistles of approval and the evil laugh of Captain Molstrom. Put it all together and I have no problem saying that Owlboy is the best presented indie game on the Nintendo Switch. However, because of its immaculate presentation I feel some things may get overlooked by reviewers.

Problems

Firstly the game crashed on me four or five times. Again like The Adventure Pals, it was always close to the end of the game when it happened. One boss battle in particular (the metal snake) was so framey it was almost unplayable. I was mostly guessing where the snake might be and shooting, hoping my bullets would hit and end my framey nightmare.

As I said above, the combat was lacklustre and too easy. The only challenge came when you were up against multiple enemies. However, what tended to happen was that you would get pin-balled between enemies and killed. So when you get hit once, you may as well reload your game. This made combat always feel like a chore, which was very disappointing.

Finally, my biggest issue was that the jump and glide function were both mapped to the same button. Throughout most of the game this was fine. However, close to the end there is a platforming section where you have to masterfully time your jumps and glides. This literally took me 45 minutes to beat because the controls weren’t tight enough. There was times when I’d want to glide but instead I’d jump (and vice versa). I really wish there was an option to change the control scheme in the game!

Summary

To conclude, the excitement I had for Owlboy was definitely over exaggerated. Though the game’s art and music are a masterpiece, its choppy story and somewhat boring combat make it a little bit of a drag to play. There are some definite highlights such as the puzzles and depth of the four main characters, however, for its quite expensive price of $24.99, I feel there are a selection of simply better indie games you should play first. Maybe do what I did and wait for it to go on sale before picking it up.

That’s why I give Owlboy by D-Pad studios my rating of 

What did you think of my review? Did you love Owlboy and think I don’t know what I’m talking about? Let’s have a conversation over on Twitter or join the Switch Indie Fix Discord Server.

[cellerityweb]

“Escape from Tarkov – Live, Loot, Die, Repeat”

“Escape from Tarkov” is a dream come true for hardcore gamers, gun fanatics and fans of ultra-realistic survival shooters. The title, developed by Battlestate Games, entered Closed Beta not too long ago – the perfect occasion to talk to Battlestate’s Project Lead and COO Nikita Buyanov about the game, its monetization models, future content plans and balancing.

Hi Nikita, thanks s o much for joining us. “Escape from Tarkov” made it into Open Beta, it’s constantly growing and it looks better every day. How is the overall resonance so far?

The game really is on the rise, and somehow it gets discovered – and appreciated – by large groups of players, streamers and their followers, sometimes even new countries. Escape from Tarkov tends to create some sort local “popularity explosions”, despite the fact that there is still much to do and the game is not yet in Open Beta.

To my understanding, during Alpha people had to buy the “Edge of Darkness” edition for $110 edition to get an invite. As for Beta, the size doesn’t matter in terms of getting access, meaning all players, even those deciding to only buy the starter edition, get in. So far, which of the four different packages sold best?

  “Edge of Darkness” still sells the best. We have a great community and we believe that since we’re in the Early Access stage, people really want to support us in the best way possible – in this case by getting the topmost set. Needless to say, that all the content that is offered in it, also facilitates a deeper and quicker dive into the game through trying out all the things that are available from the start.

Will these different editions also be available after release?

The “Edge of Darkness” edition is, most likely, to be removed on release, or replaced by another set, but we still haven’t reached any ultimate decision on this.

Looking at the these packages, the content clearly differs a lot and keeping in mind that you lose your loot after dying, having an arsenal of different guns and fully loaded clips seems (!) like a clear advantage. I have to ask, because to gamers this is or at least will obviously be an issue: Aren’t you afraid that these packages feel like they’re “Pay 2 Win”?

Hah, no way. Everything that these packages include, can be quite easily lost – and looted by some other player. And what can’t be lost – like stash size, for instance – will also be attainable in the game by any other player. It may seem like Pay2Win, but only until you go into the raid. There you feel absolutely vulnerable, no matter how well equipped you are, sometimes even more so, as you’ve actually got way more to lose.

How did you decide what to put into each of these editions?

In most cases, we just put in content that we already had in the game. As soon as new items appeared – should we have considered them useful – we put them in as well. Also, we always took our players’ reasonable requests into consideration.

There’s always two sides of gamers: those who condemn these different editions and those who defend them, saying it might seem like an advantage, but in the end you can lose all the high-class stuff just as easy as everything else and once it’s gone, it’s gone. Which of these two sides is currently trending?

There was a number of such concerns early in the development, but, as more players joined and played the game, the opinion I see in chats and on forums became almost unanimous. Whatever player has at start, can be lost in just a few raids, depending on skill and luck, giving no advantage at all.

“Escape from Tarkov” is super-detailed and highly focusses on realism – gameplay- and visuals-wise.

Way more players actually seemed to complain about the differing stash sizes that come with these editions, or perks like reputation for certain merchants and them being way more of an advantage. Are there any plans to adjust these editions’ contents in the long run?

No, there are no such plans. After all, sets have to be different and provide certain advantage – not an unbeatable pay2win advantage, but still, more versatile options for novices. Otherwise, we would have only created one package. Everything – including stash size – can be achieved by playing. Reputation can already be earned by performing quests. Everything that packages contain is within grasp – literally, without many hours of grind – if there is enough skill to grasp it.

What sort of a challenge is balancing a game like Escape from Tarkov, which obviously puts a lot of focus on player skill? And how does offering these editions with their differing contents make this process more difficult (or maybe easier)?

There are many things that can be balanced about Escape from Tarkov, but they all depend on one cornerstone aspect: the balance between realism and playability, which is indeed a challenge to maintain. At first, we aim to make every feature of the game as realistic as possible, but if we understand, that in its realistic form it’s unplayable, we take the necessary steps to make it easier. This approach has, so far, paid off – we have next to nothing to balance in terms of combat. Players adjust their own skills, equipment, weapons and tactics for themselves. We just try to give them as many opportunities as possible and let them adapt and balance themselves, that’s our concept.

“No plan B, no microtransactions, only good old buy to play!”

What’s your plan on financing the game in the long run? Considering that the “Edge of Darkness” edition offers a season pass, will there be regular DLC? What exactly can people expect from a DLC and how much will it cost? Also: how about microtransactions and if so, in what shape? Weapon skins, uniforms, avatars maybe – the usual cosmetic stuff?

Yes, there will be several DLCs per year, and, of course, they will cost significantly less than the original game. As for what they will include… the current plan is not yet final, so I won’t make any promises. But one thing is certain – there will be no microtransactions whatsoever, not even cosmetic ones

Is “Free 2 Play” completely off the table or may it be a viable plan B, should your initial marketing plans fail?

Completely. No plan B, no microtransactions, only good old buy to play. Failure is not an option. Moreover, there are no conditions to indicate it – the current trend says we’re going in the right direction, so we’ll just stick to the plan.

They game feels great and already did so quite a lot of months ago. The attention to detail you guys put in the game is enormous, especially when it comes to the guns as well as gun handling. However, what – in your opinion – is Escape from Tarkov’s biggest edge towards competitors like “Player Unknown’s Battlegorunds”, “H1Z1” or “DayZ”?

It may come as a surprise, but we don’t view these projects as our competitors. PUBG is totally different in gameplay and concept, and, at the moment, very simplistic, with very little to boast in terms of hardcore realism. The same can be said about H1Z1, which is, however, even more simplified and less realistic. DayZ is the closest, but not close enough, it just feels completely different. Right now I can’t think of something to compare EfT to – and that’s fine with us. We’ll stay true to our concept of hardcore realism in everything, and we see no point in trying to tag along some other projects’ success. We like what we’re doing now, we’re good at it, and, most importantly, our players like it too.

“Going it alone without a Safety VALVE”: Why did you decide to do all the pre-orders via your own web site, and what sort of e-commerce tools did you use to put it all together.

Well, that way we’re not giving a cut to Valve, that’s probably the main reason. Moreover, from the start we had an idea of creating our own distribution platform that would fit our own needs and make us independent from any other third-party requirements. Essentially, we managed to do it – we are using a well-known payment system, but everything else was written from the scratch, and we see it as a big advantage that gives us independence.

Thank you very much for the insights, we wish you all the best for Escape from Tarkov!

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