#you can color pick it from any brawler if you try hard enough

[annakwashere]

Oh my god guys no way 🤯

[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.

Read more

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By Matthew Byrd

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15 Hardest NES Games of All-Time

By Matthew Byrd

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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[nickburn]

Things I Enjoyed in 2020 Despite Everything

Seasons Greetings! This year has felt like an eternity for so many reasons, and before it’s over, I’d like to take a look back on the distractions that got me through it. Along the way, I’ll occasionally point out where I was emotionally at the time and whether I got into a particular thing before or after the pandemic hit in mid March. I hope you enjoy this little retrospective of some of my experience during one of the worst years of human history!

Games & Mods

Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

When I was making my 2020 resolutions list late last year, one of my goals was to play more old games in my backlog and not buy many new games this year. That goal largely went on hold, because, well, I sought out enjoyment wherever I could find it instead of forcing myself to play one thing or another. But before Covid, I was really enjoying my new playthrough of M&M6. I’d made attempts at it before, but it was really GrayFace’s mod that made the game click for me. Modern features like quick saves and mouselook make the game much more accessible, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to try an old-school RPG. It’s a great stepping stone into a mostly-dead genre. I’m hoping to get back to it soon. I just jumped ship to simpler ventures like Doom Eternal after the pandemic hit and haven’t looked back since.

Pathologic 2

I learned about the Pathologic series late last year and have since become a little obsessed with it. Hbomberguy’s lengthy video essay on the original game really intrigued me and lead me to trying the sequel/remake in April via Xbox Game Pass. In a weird way, it was cathartic to be a doctor in an even more dire situation than our current one and still see signs of the townsfolk trying to help each other deal with a supernatural plague and little help from their local government. The game helped me express a lot of what I was feeling at the time, when I was still getting used to working from home and wondering just how long this could go on for. I’ve gone back to it recently, and I’m hoping to finish it someday, if I can find a way to stop dying. Above all, Pathologic 2 teaches you how to make choices in no-win scenarios with little information or resources and still persevere, despite the world going to Hell around you. And that’s maybe the most important thing to practice at the moment.

Overwatch

I’ve continued to look forward to weekly Overwatch nights with my friends every Thursday, and it’s really important to have something like that right now. Even if it’s just a new episode of a show airing, a new video from a favorite YouTuber, or a regular Zoom call with coworkers, it helps so much to have something to anticipate from week to week and month to month. Otherwise, it’s really easy to feel like nothing’s going on besides the entropic deterioration of the universe. Overwatch itself helps with this, because it’s such a positive, bright, and optimistic game, as only Blizzard can create. And it’s improved a ton in the past couple of years, in a lot of ways. If you haven’t played in a while, hop in and check out all the new content with your friends; I think you’ll have a great time. It’s looking more and more like Overwatch 2 is right around the corner, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Go

I learned how to play Go after watching a documentary released this year about  AlphaGo, the computer that beat the Go world champion, and I have a huge appreciation for the game now. I think it’s even more beautiful than chess, though even more insidious to learn. If you haven’t played before, start with a 9x9 board, teach yourself the basics, and try playing with another beginner friend. I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the amount of strategy and imagination that a game ostensibly about placing black and white stones on a grid can inspire. Go’s one of several new hobbies I’ve picked up this year, and those new hobbies have really helped me pass the time in a way that feels productive as well as take my mind off whatever depressing news just got blasted across Twitter.

Doom 64

Doom Eternal was fine, but Doom 64′s where my heart lies. The PC port on Steam is great, allowing everyone to easily play the game with mouse and keyboard. Its levels are tight and colorful, often asking the player to backtrack multiple times through the same areas to unlock new ones and take on whatever new twists await down each darkened corridor. It’s a surprisingly fresh experience. Unlike many modern Doom mods that strive to be sprawling marathons, 64′s levels are short but memorable, and the game is a great entry point to the series for newcomers because of that. Retro FPS’s continue to inspire and entertain me, and Doom 64 is one of my new favorites.

Golf With Your Friends

I’m not usually that into party games, but Golf With Your Friends strikes the right balance between casual tone and skill-based gameplay. The maps are vibrant and devious, the different modes are creative and often hilarious, and the pacing is near-perfect. If you’ve got a squad itching to play something together for a few nights, I guarantee you’ll have a lot of laughs trying to knock an opponent off the course or turning them into an acorn just as they’re about to attempt a nasty jump.

Quake 1 Mods

I probably sound like a broken record by now to a lot of you, but I won’t rest until I get more people into retro FPS’s. The outdated graphics and simple gameplay can be off-putting at first, but it doesn’t take long at all to get hooked after you’ve played the likes of excellent mods like Ancient Aliens for Doom 2 or Arcane Dimensions for Quake 1. And it’s only getting better, with this year marking probably the best year for Quake releases ever. The industry even seems to be taking notice again, with many talented mappers getting picked up for highly-anticipated, professional indie projects like Graven and Prodeus. And while the marketing around the retro FPS renaissance as the second coming of “boomer shooters” should be much maligned, the actual craft involved in making mods and brand new games in the genre has never been stronger. I even contributed four levels to the cause this year, but you’ll have to play them yourself to decide if they’re any good: https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/?filtered=burnham.

Streets of Rage 4

I had not tried Steam Remote Play before this year, but it works surprisingly well if you have a decent internet connection. Because of Remote Play, I was able to complete Streets of Rage 4 with my friends, and it was very close to the experiences I had as a kid playing brawlers like Turtles in Time on the Super Nintendo. The game is just hard enough to make you sweat during the boss fights but just easy enough that the average group of gamers can complete it in a night or two, which is ideal for adults with not a lot of free time.

Hard Lads

Hard Lads is a pure delight of a game by Robert Yang about the beauty of a viral video from 2015 called “British lads hit each other with chair,” which is even more ridiculous than it sounds. It made me smile and laugh for a good half hour, and I think it’ll do the same for you.

Commander MtG

The Commander format for Magic: the Gathering is one of my favorite things, and in 2020, I dug into it more than any other year. More so even than playing or watching it being played, I created decklists for hours and hours, dreaming up new, creative strategies for winning games or just surprising my imaginary opponents. I sincerely believe this little ritual of finding a new legendary creature to build around and spending a few days crafting a brew for it got me through the majority of this summer. I didn’t have a lot of creative energy this year, but I was able to channel the little I did have into this hobby. Especially during the longer, more frustrating or depressing days at work when I had nothing else to do or just needed a break, I could often dive back into card databases and lose myself in the process of picking exactly the cards that best expressed what I wanted to do for any given deck. And it’s nice to know I can always fall back on that.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

I played a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up but never had the cards or the skill to be particularly good at it. I just knew I enjoyed the game and the 4Kids show, but I quickly them behind when I got to high school. Fast forward to 2020, and the game and franchise have evolved substantially, not always for the better. But I do find it so intriguing, with a skeptical kind of adoration. It’s not nearly as well-supported as Magic, but what it does have are gigantic anime monsters on tiny cards with enough lines of text to make your head spin. And it’s so interesting to me that a franchise like that can continue to thrive alongside more elegant games like the Pokemon TCG and Hearthstone. And the further I’ve delved into how the game has changed since I stopped playing, the more invested I’ve become, going so far as to start buying cards again and looking into possible decks I might enjoy playing. An unequivocal win for Yu-Gi-Oh! is Speed Duel, which seeks to bring old players back to the game with a watered-down, nostalgia-laden format with fewer mechanics and a much smaller card pool. So if all you want to do is pit a Blue Eyes White Dragon against a Dark Magician, that’s 100% still there for you, but the competitive scene is still alive, well, and astoundingly complicated. And I think that’s kind of beautiful.

Black Mesa

I wasn’t expecting to have the tech to play Half Life: Alyx this year, so Black Mesa seemed like the next best thing. And it really is a love letter to the first game, even if it’s far from perfect. I even prefer the original, but I did very much enjoy my time with this modern reimagining. If you’ve never played a Half Life game before, I think it’s a great place to start.

VR via the Oculus Quest

Around halfway through this year, I started to get really stir crazy and yeah, pretty depressed. It seemed like I’d be stuck in the same boring cycle forever, and I know for a lot of people, it still feels like that. So VR seemed like the perfect escape from this dubious reality where you can’t even take a safe vacation trip anymore. And you know, I think it works really well for that purpose. The Oculus Quest is especially effective, doing away with cords or cables so you have as much freedom as you have free real estate in your home. I don’t have a lot of space in my studio apartment, but I have enough to see the potential of the medium, which is completely worth it. Next gen consoles are neat and all, but I’ve got my heart set on picking up the Quest 2 as soon as possible.

* Beat Saber

I was most looking forward to trying Beat Saber on the Quest, and I was not disappointed. You’d think rhythm games had reached their peak with Rock Band and DDR, but the genre keeps on giving with gems like this. It’s hard to convey if you’ve never tried it, but the game succeeds so well in getting your entire body into the rhythm of whatever song you’re slashing through.

* Half Life: Alyx

Again, I really did not expect to be able to experience this game as intended this year, and I still don’t think I really have. The Oculus Link for the Quest is admittedly a little janky, and my PC barely meets the minimum specs to even run the game. And yet, despite that, Alyx is one of my top three games of 2020 and maybe one of my all-time favorites. Even as I was losing frames and feeling the game struggle to keep up with all the AI Combine soldiers running around, I was still having a blast. For me, it is one of the best reasons to seek out and own VR and a pinnacle of game design in its own right.

Hades

For me, Hades has mostly been similar to every other Supergiant Game that I’ve played: fun and well-polished but ultimately not engaging enough to play for very long. And there’s always this sheen of trying to be too clever with their dialogue, narration, and music that rubs me the wrong way. But Hades is certainly their best game, and I can’t deny the effect it’s had on people, much like Bastion’s reception back in 2011. And I’m really hoping Hades gets more people into roguelikes, as a more accessible and story-driven approach to the genre. Timing-wise, I wish it hadn’t come out around the same time as Spelunky, because I think it did make some people choose one over the other, when the best choice is to play both and realize they’re going for very different experiences. The precise, unforgiving, arcade-like style of Spelunky isn’t fun for everyone, though, and Hades is thankfully there to fill in that gap. I’m really glad I found more time to play it this year at least to succeed on one escape attempt; it’s a fun game to think about in a game design context. And I do think the game has a lot of merit and is doing some clever things with difficulty that the studio likely could not have honed nearly so well without the help of Early Access. The most impressive part of the game to me is not the story or the music or the combat but the massive amount of contextual dialogue they somehow found time to program, write, and record at a consistently high level. All of this is just to say, Hades is obviously one of the best games of the year, and you should play it if you have any interest in it at all.

Spelunky 2

I’ve spoken a lot about this game on Twitter, so I’m not going to rehash much of that here. For me, it’s been a journey of over 1,000 attempts to learn the intricacies and secrets of a deep and demanding game that’s been as frustrating as it’s been rewarding. But it remains a constant source of learning and discovery as well as mastery and pride for me, and I still have hopes of reaching the Cosmic Ocean and getting all the trophies someday. It’s been a joy to watch other Spelunky players too, even as some fair worse than me and others fair far better. And the Daily challenge keeps me coming back, because seeing my name high up on the leaderboard just makes me feel so damn good (or at least I’ll get a good laugh out of a hilarious death). At its heart, Spelunky is a community endeavor, and I think it succeeds at that better than almost any other game this side of Dark Souls. I think it is my Game of the Year or at least tied with Alyx, I really can’t decide. If you don’t think you’d enjoy it, all I’ll say is, the frustration and difficulty are integral to the experience of discovery and surprise, and your brain is better at video games than you think.

Chess

Okay, yes, I watched and enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit, but I think 2020 had already primed people to get into chess this year regardless. Like Yu-Gi-Oh!, chess was a childhood pastime of mine that I really enjoyed and then quickly left behind as I discovered things like music and the internet. If I had to assign a theme to my 2020, it would be rediscovering old hobbies to remind myself how good life actually is. And now I’m more committed to chess than I ever was before. I’m watching international masters and grand masters on YouTube (as well as the incomparable Northernlion), I’m playing regularly on Chess.com, and I’m even paying for lessons and probably my own theory books soon. Like most fighting games, chess is a complicated form of dueling a single opponent with zero randomness, so mistakes are always on you. And modern chess platforms offer extremely good analysis tools, showing you exactly how, when, and why you screwed up so you can do better next time. Like Hearthstone, it’s a quick, addicting, tense, and rewarding way to train your brain and have fun. And it seems more popular now than ever, in part due to a certain Netflix original TV show...

TV

The Queen’s Gambit

I think a lot of people want to be Beth Harmon, even if they know they shouldn’t. It must feel so good to be the best at something and know you’re the best, even while under the influence of certain substances. It’s what makes characters like Dr. Gregory House so fun to watch, though you’d never want to work with the guy. For me, anyway, I always wanted to be a prodigy at something, and what little success I’ve had made The Queen’s Gambit very relatable to me. More so, it’s easy to relate to growing up in a conservative environment with few real friends and fewer outlets of expression, only to realize you’ve finally found your thing, and that no one can take it from you. That’s mostly what I’m going to take from The Queen’s Gambit anyway, more than chess or the Cold War commentary or the problematic relationships Beth has with her cadre of rivals/boyfriends. The show gets a strong recommendation from me for fans of chess as well as lovers of optimistic coming-of-age stories.

March Comes in Like a Lion

Similarly, March Comes in Like a Lion features a protagonist who is scarily close to a version of myself from like eight years ago. My best friend has been urging me to watch this show for years, and I’m still only a few episodes in. But I love how it portrays a young person who’s moved to a big city away from home for the first time, with nothing more than some meager possessions and the hopes of becoming the best in the world at something. And Rei is not confident in himself or outgoing at all, he’s extremely depressed despite pursuing his dreams and trying to distance himself from his somewhat toxic family. It’s a great reminder that the smallest kindnesses can often change our entire perspective on the world, and that even the people that seem the most well-equipped to handle life often still need help. I’ve been very fortunate to have people like that despite mistakes I’ve made, and I hope to be that person for others too.

Umbrella Academy

I’m pretty burnt out on superheroes, but UA put a good enough spin on them that they felt brand new. The show is rough in places, but it’s surprising in some really clever ways. And the comics are some of the wildest stories I’ve ever read, like Hitchhiker’s Guide meets Watchmen.

HunterXHunter

I binged about 100 of the 148 episodes of HxH this year, which I recognize is not a significant number in the wider world of long-running shounen anime, but it’s quite an undertaking for me to finish a show of this length. The series goes places I never expected and made me care so strongly for characters I thought I’d hate at first. It’s the smartest and most endearing show about a band of misfits going on crazy adventures and punching people for the good of the world that you’re likely to find.

Hannibal

This is the rare show that’s simultaneously comforting and nightmare-inducing if watched for extended periods. I can remember nights after binging a few episodes where I couldn’t get many of the disturbing images out of my head. Fair to say, Hannibal is not for the faint of heart, nor is it without some low points. But for those who enjoy gory thrillers or gritty detective dramas, it’s a must-watch. 

Yu-Gi-Oh! Original Series, English Sub

You can probably imagine my surprise as I discovered this year that the Japanese version of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is not only much better than the 4Kids version we got in the States, but it’s actually a decent show. The plot makes much more sense, it’s more interesting, the stakes are higher, the voices are better, and overall it’s just more enjoyable to watch. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it long enough to finish it this time, but this is definitely the way I’d do it and would recommend to others.

Fargo Season 4

It’s a miracle we even got another season of Fargo this year, let alone on time and of the same high quality as the first two seasons. It has a great setting, cast, and conflict. I love Chris Rock, and it was so cool to see him act so well in such a serious role. There’s a Wizard of Oz homage episode that is nearly flawless. And the post-credits scene at the end of the season is just the cherry on top. If you haven’t checked out Fargo by now, you are really missing out on some of the most interesting stuff happening in TV. I can’t wait to see what Noah Hawley does with the Alien franchise.

Movies

Cats

I had to include this one because it was the last full movie I saw in theaters before the pandemic hit. I technically went to Sonic too, but my friends and I walked out after about 30 minutes. The less said about that movie, the better. Cats, though, is a strange and curious beast (pun intended), adapting an already unruly animal (pun intended) to the big screen and yowling to be recognized (pun intended). But for every awkward or embarrassing scene, there’s one of pure joy and magic, like the extended ballet sequence or Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. The film knows exactly what it is and leans into it hard, like a familiar yet slightly insane feline begging to be stroked, which I imagine is exactly what fans of the musical wanted.

Children of Men

There’s not much I can say about this film that probably hasn’t been said better elsewhere. I was intrigued to watch it when I learned it was one of my friend’s favorite movies. And I have to say, it’s really profound in a prescient way. Clive Owen gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. You should watch it, but only when you feel like taking a severe hit to the feels.

Basic Instinct

Vertigo is probably still my favorite film, so when I learned this year that Paul Verhoeven made a bloody, sex romp homage film to it in the 90s with Michael Douglas starring, I simply had to watch it. And you know, it’s not bad. It’s nowhere near as good as Vertigo, and you can see the ending coming a mile away. But what it does have is the immaculate Sharon Stone, who you cannot take your eyes off for the entire movie. And the movie knows it, making her look as alluring and suggestive as her character is to the detective investigating her. You could do worse than to watch it, just don’t expect any of Hitchcock’s subtlety or looming dread to seep into the final product.

Books

Dune

I finally finished Dune this year, and I can genuinely say it lives up to the hype. It’s not the easiest book to get through, but it’s by no means one of the most difficult either. I’m still bummed that the new film was delayed, but it might give me time to read the rest of the original book series.

The Fifth Season

Another fantastic piece of fiction, I cannot recommend this book enough. N.K. Jemisin is one of the best living authors of our time. If you want an original setting with a brilliant magic system and complex, compelling characters, look no further.

Video Content

Northernlion

I’ve been a fan of NL for years, though I’ve never been that into The Binding of Isaac. He just has a charismatic intelligence to him that sets him apart from most “Let’s Play” YouTubers to me, and he’s very funny to boot. I guess I’d say he seems a lot like me or the person I could picture myself being if I were a professional video content creator. So I was really excited for NL’s series of Spelunky 2 videos, and I still watch them every day, months later. And now he’s teaching me how to get better at chess, being a good 600 ELO higher than myself at the moment. His sarcastic and improv-laden banter have withstood the test of years and gave me some much-needed comfort and laughter in 2020. Somehow, the man even found a way to keep up his prolific output this year while raising his firstborn child. There are those who said it couldn’t be done...

The Command Zone - Game Knights

Josh Lee Kwai and the rest of the crew at The Command Zone continue to put out some of the most well-produced tabletop gameplay videos on the internet. It’s perhaps no surprise, seeing as how Lee Kwai created trailers for such blockbuster films as Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Jimmy Wong had a supporting role in the live action remake of Disney’s Mulan. But the crew around the two hosts are just as important and talented, and it’s clear that they all share the same singular vision for the channel’s future. They’ve carefully crafted a team of expert editors, animators, cosplayers, and voice actors to deliver one delightful video after the next at a consistently high level. If you’re into Magic: the Gathering at all, you simply need to watch Game Knights.

Cimoooooooo

I found Alex Cimo’s channel shortly after the algorithm learned I was interested in Yu-Gi-Oh! again, and at first, I was less than impressed with him. But it’s clear to me now that he not only loves what he does, he’s an expert Yu-Gi-Oh! player and analyst. Plus, he’s very good at explaining some of the more complex concepts in the game in a way that newcomers can understand. I’ve watched every new episode of The Progression Series and The History of Yu-Gi-Oh! so far, and they’re the best way I’ve found to learn how the game developed and changed over the last 20 years.

Team APS

This is another great Yu-Gi-Oh! channel, focusing more on skits, gimmick videos, and casual games rather than analytical or theoretical content. Mostly, they seem like a really great group of friends that just have a blast playing Yu-Gi-Oh! together, and their love for the game makes me want to play more too.

Tolarian Community College

Somehow, a community college English professor’s channel went from a quirky little deckbox review platform to the most popular Magic: the Gathering channel on YouTube in only a few years. But it’s easy to see why when Brian clearly loves what he’s doing more than most people ever will. He’s not only a fantastic reviewer and MtG scholar, he’s one of the most outspoken voices for positive change in the community and the game. Is he too hard on the Magic team at Wizards of the Coast? Perhaps, but without his measured and well-reasoned takes on all things Magic, I think we’d be much worse off.

IRL

Cooking

Even I get tired of eating the same things every day, so I’ve taken it upon myself to learn how to make more dishes, mostly out of sheer boredom. And I know I’m not alone in that, but I have to say it’s been a rewarding and fun adventure. It’s really surprising what you can throw together with a decent recipe and a little creativity in a modest kitchen when you decide to break away from the microwave for once.

Chinchillin’

Like many people, I felt that I needed a pet to survive this year, and I’ve always wanted a chinchilla. So I took a risk and bought one from a seller on KSL a few months ago, and my life has definitely changed for the better. No longer simply alone with my thoughts all day, I have a furry little companion to commune and bond with. And it’s more difficult to find time to feel sorry for myself when a basically helpless tiny creature depends on me for almost everything. Not to say it’s been a perfect experience however, people don’t say chins are difficult to care for for nothing. And I have learned more about them than perhaps I ever cared to know before, but that’s only made them more interesting to me as a result. Overall, I would recommend them as pets, just be prepared to give them a lot more time and attention than you would to say, a fish or a hamster. I’ve seen the commitment compared to that of a large dog, and I think that’s fair, though chins seem far more difficult to train and are far less cuddly. Basically, imagine a fluffy, super fast squirrel that can jump half your height, shed its fur at will if grabbed too tightly, that sleeps all day and bathes in dust, and that cannot get wet or too hot or eat 99% of human foods without serious complications. And they get lonely, and they all have their own surprisingly distinct personalities, some shy and mischievous, others bright and social, and everything in between. But I’m glad to be part of my little buddy’s life and hope to make it a long and enjoyable one for him. Part of why I wanted a chinchilla so badly is they typically live between 10-20 years, much longer than the average rodent or even many cats and dogs. And they’re sadly endangered in the wild, poached for their incredibly soft fur, which is why I believe it’s critical that we care for and learn more about them now. And above all, I adore my chinchilla’s antics, even when he continually tries to dig up and eat the paper bedding below his cage when I’ve provided perfectly edible hay and pellets for him in much easier to reach locations.

And that’s all, folks...

If you’ve read this far, know that I really appreciate it and hope you learned something new about yourself, art, or the world. And please do let me know what’s kept you going the most this year too, as I suspect I’ll still be searching for new distractions next year, even after I’m able to get a Covid vaccine injection. As Red Green would say, we’re all in this together, and I’m pullin’ for ya. <3

[sidmillervp]

Introducing Sid Miller !

T H E   B A S I C S

NAME :  Siddharth Miller

NICKNAME :  Sid

AGE :  38 Years Old

BIRTHDATE :  November 30th, 1981

OCCUPATION :  Owner of Scorpion Studios & Street Fighter

OREIENTATION :  Heterosexual

MOTHER :  Ingrid Miller 

FATHER :  Owen Miller

SIBLINGS :  Two Sisters 

PARTNER :  None 

CHILDREN :  A daughter (21)

HEIGHT :  6′2″

EYE COLOR : Dark Brown

HAIR COLOR :  Darkest Brown

RECOGNIZABLE FEATURES :  Stubble or a slight beard at all times, 

TATTOOS :  TBA

B A C K G R O U N D

TW : PROSTITUTION, DRUG ADDICTION, CHILD NEGLECT

Born in San Bernardino, a string of misfortunes followed Siddharth in his early years of life. His mother was a prostitute and druggie, ‘owned’ by a a pimp whom she was paying off her drug debt to though really only falling deeper into the hole as he encouraged and facilitated her addiction more. Sid was born a few weeks early and not exactly the healthiest considering his mother took a fix over a proper meal for herself and her growing baby more often than not throughout the pregnancy. The years as an infant he has no memories of he can’t speak for but his earliest childhood memory was waking to find his mother hurt and fast asleep, not waking up no matter how loudly he wailed. Sid had been just four years old when his mother was beaten to death by some faceless john.

The other women his mother ‘worked’ with tried looking after him rather than leaving him on the streets. This was only because the pimp they worked for had other plans for him. By the time Sid was maybe six or seven he’d already more grown up than most kids have to be, he already had to worry about how he was going to eat any given day, how he was going to avoid a beating, and just how to survive another day. It made him smart and quick on his feet. One of his regular gigs was pick pocketing, and passing on information about the happenings of the area his ‘boss’ had him at. That day when he’d met his would be father, was the first time he’d gotten caught while trying to slip a sizable bundle of cash from a harley side saddle. When faced with the hulking man, the VP of the Devil’s Disciples, cut and all, Sid stood his ground. He showed no fear, and even attempted to stab the man in the femur to make his escape.

Owen Miller was impressed by his show of force, and bravado. He asked if he was living in the streets, and after some resistance he admitted that was close enough to the truth. He hung around them through the duration of their stay in the area. Come time to return home, Owen asked him if he wanted to come with, with the promise of a less shittier life in Charming. With nothing to lose and harbouring growing respect for him and the other bikers with the way they carried themselves it was an easy answer. And that is how Sid landed up in Charming all those years ago. Owen with no kids of his own at the time though newly married, officially adopted him a year later. Sid can’t imagine his life going any better, he’s never once regretted his decision to go with him.

Having pretty much worshipped his father from day one, the club was always Sid’s biggest aspiration, so much so that he chose to give up other opportunities for it. Always a brawler, Sid took up wrestling in high school and did really well in it, so much so that his coach began giving him MMA lessons on the side, in hopes to prepare him for the pros. His senior year he was already eighteen as he’d been held back a year when he was younger since he’d missed kindergarten and first grade. That year along with wrestling championships, and beginning to prospect for the club, his coach was having him get a feel for the minor leagues. Managing all three of those with some semblance of a social life he was run ragged. He’d be done with wrestling once he graduated highschool, but he knew things would only get more intense if he stayed the course for fighting pros, he might even have to leave Charming for extended periods of time. The choice wasn’t hard. He chose the club, his family, and his town over a shot at the pros.

His dedication and loyalty to the Devil’s has taken precedent over nearly everything else in his life, he likes to say he’s married to his cut when asked why he never took the plunge. Outside commitments were never really his strong suit, the one time things did get a little serious he ended up breaking things off when she nearly got in the line of fire, he chose to run from the possibility of ever carrying such a guilt on his conscious and made sure to keep things simple from then on. The shorter the romp the better. He has his flaws but doesn’t have a bad heart and has never tried to intentionally hurt someone, or make false promises he knows he has no intention of keeping. 

A bit of a crazy bastard, Sid is pretty reckless with his own safety at times, always the first to put himself on the line of fire, out of love but also the thrill he gets out of the chaos. He wouldn’t think twice before taking a bullet for any of the guys in the club or anyone in town for that matter, he has plenty of love for the small town and it’s people. His overall laidback demeanor makes him pretty accessible, and people never hesitate to come to him if they ever have a problem big or small. In his late twenties he took over ownership of the Tattoo parlor in town, though no one should ever trust him with a needle in hand. He has little to no artistic talent and gladly leaves the day to day run of the shop on his crew. The investment just made sense to him at the time and he learned quickly he has a knack for the business management side of things. At one point he got so into his role that he even took a certification course at the community college for it.

Now and again you’ll still see him in a ring, far from the pros but still a force to be reckoned with. Overall he’s pretty chill guy, with a wicked sense of humor, maybe a little too comfortable with violence and throwing himself into any fight without a thought for his own wellness. Though still a decent man with morals, and deep love for his family and community.

W A N T E D   C O N N E C T I O N S

Close Friends - People outside the club he’s tight with.

Sponsored Prospect - Could be someone whose currently prospecting or has already been patched in as a member. He would see this person as almost a protégé! 

First Love - The relationship I briefly mentioned in the bio, the first person things were getting a little serious with until she almost got hurt cause of some club business. He ended things right away citing it could never work out and she’d be better off, and that was that. It’s probably been at least 6-10 years since that relationship ended.

FWBs - Casual, friendly, and most importantly mutually satisfying. Only rule to keep things going is not to catch feels.

Past Flings - Some scorned lovers maybe? Or amicable, and anything in between it can be as dramatic or chill as you want!

Literally anything, just hmu and we can work something out!

@charmingintro​

[gamex2020]

Best SNES Games

    List of All SNES Games Based on Movies

Here are the best SNES Games of all time. Check out our picks for the best SNES games!

3 Ninjas Kick Back

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $60-$70

This is an action-platformer with co-op gameplay and great sound design. The graphics and controls are a little lackluster.

The Addams Family

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $14-$17

Mediocre SNES platformers can often be saved with great mascots, and this is no exception. You only get to play as Gomez, and the only levels are in the family’s mansion, but it’s worth a play if you’re a fan.

Addams Family Values

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $14-$17

This is A Link to the Past, but with Uncle Fester and friends. The password system is infuriating, but the game itself is solid. Bonus points to the developers for making an action RPG with the license instead of a platformer.

Aladdin

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $15-$17

Aladdin is often considered one of the best licensed platformers of all time. The SNES version and the Genesis version have obvious differences, but they’re both masterpieces.

Alien 3

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $18-$20

Ripley makes her way through a passable run-and-gun adventure. This port is leagues ahead of the NES version, which was only released a few months earlier.

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $70-$75

Fievel gets to take down some 16-bit bosses with decent gameplay variety. The colors are sharp, and the levels aren’t too long are hard; this title is very kid friendly.

Batman Forever

Release Year: 1995

Current Value: $8

This is a truly terrible game that’s great fun to watch during speed run conventions. Notably, there is a “training mode” that attempts to be a fully-fledged tournament fighter, but it fails miserably.

Batman Returns

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $18-$20

Unlike Batman Forever, this is a creative side-scrolling action game that uses the Animated Series’ aesthetic effectively.

Beauty and the Beast

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $40-$45

This side-scrolling game is rather generic. You play as Beast and try to save Belle, but there’s little to separate it from other games in the genre.

Bebe’s Kids

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $33-$37

This is the slowest beat-em-up of all time. Walking is slow, attacking is slow, and enemies have seemingly infinite health. Stay away.

Beethoven: The Ultimate Canine Caper

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $8-$10

A simple platformer where you can play as a dog that barks at enemies for damage. No, it’s not about the composer.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $8-$10

This is a semi-sufficient replacement for gamers that crave more Castlevania. The graphics are a little gaudy, but you came to fight Dracula, and fight Dracula you shall.

Casper

Release Year: 1996

Current Value: $85-$100

This plays kind of like A Boy and his Blob, with Casper tethered to Kat Harvey. Oddly, the Japanese Super Famicom Casper is different, with the roles reversed in an isometric perspective.

Cliffhanger

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $5-$7

There’s less cliffhanging and more bad-guy punching. It’s a simple brawler based on a simple movie. Missed opportunity for a cliffhanger ending, of course.

Cool World

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $10-$13

Although a mediocre adventure game, this stays pretty close to the source material. It’s a lot more kid-friendly, though, and appropriate for Nintendo.

Cutthroat Island

Release Year: 1995

Current Value: $8-$10

Lukewarm swashbuckling action is backed up by nice graphics and music. It’s button mashing, but hey, swords are cool.

Demolition Man

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $15-$18

Mediocre platforming sometimes switches to decent top-down shooting. Don’t you wish it was one or the other? This could have been a decent Contra clone.

Dennis the Menace

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $8-$10

You have to collect all of Mr. Wilson’s coins and find two of Dennis’ friends. Notably, there’s a timer; it’s just as anxious as the movie.

Dinocity

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $13-$15

It’s based on the movie Adventures in Dinosaur City. The graphics and worlds are fun to explore, and the dinosaurs you choose actually affect gameplay.

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $9-$12

Bruce Lee gets a well-deserved tournament fighter, but almost every aspect of the game is poor. At least Bruce Lee was given recognition by getting a character in every other fighting game series.

The Flintstones

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $10-$13

This game uses its overworld as a sort of board game, where landing on a space decides the level you play. Sometimes it’s shops, sometimes it’s bosses, sometimes it’s a normal platformer.

Home Alone

Release Year: 1991

Current Value: $8-$10

Not only does it not follow the movie, but this game can be completed in less than half an hour. Even Macaulay Culkin hates it.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $6-$8

There’s powerups, and this has a little more going for it than the first game, but it’s not a significant improvement. It’s a bit nice to powerslide into enemies.

Hook

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $23-$26

The gameplay is standard platforming, but the graphics are outstanding for the time period. It almost looks like modernized pixel art made with decades of experience.

The Hunt for Red October

Release Year: 1991

Current Value: $6-$8

There’s side-scrolling and underwater action, with Super Scope bonus levels. If you enjoyed Jaws on the NES, this might catch your fancy.

Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $30-$35

Few movie games effectively used the Mode 7 functionality on the SNES, but this game is a joy to look at. It’s the second most iconic sidescroller featuring whip-based combat.

Judge Dredd

Release Year: 1995

Current Value: $7-$9

Run-and-guns don’t often give you the option to arrest the enemies instead of blasting them to bits. There’s hard bosses to make it worth strolling through the brightly-covered comic book levels.

The Jungle Book

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $5-$7

This game picked up where the original Pitfall left off. It’s platforming with vine-swinging, so of course it’s satisfying. Is there any game with vine-swinging that isn’t?

Jurassic Park

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $5-$7

Grant has a chibi sprite in this game that utilizes alternating perspectives. Top-down shooting with explosives and tranquilizers switches to first-person gaming when entering a building. No continues and no passwords; you have to beat the whole thing in one go.

Last Action Hero

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $8-$10

Most of the Arnold Schwarzenegger games are shooters, but this one is a beat-em-up. The final boss of the game is the final boss of the movie to boot.

The Lawnmower Man

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $8-$10

Nothing to do with the movie, and nothing to do with the book. Yet, it’s just as weird as both. This is a first-person platformer, a first-person shooter, a sidescroller, and a shoot-em-up (with two different perspectives and three distinct styles) all at once. Each level is different.

Lethal Weapon

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $8-$10

It’s a platformer with shooting elements where you can play as Riggs or Murtaugh. Oddly enough, the developers opted for a more cartoony style than what you’d expect for an adaptation of the movie.

The Lion King

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $8-$10

One of Disney’s best games, this sold over a million copies in the U.S. alone. It’s really hard, but not terribly unfair.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $18-$20

Thank goodness you get to play as the monster and not some boring human. You can attack all of the vengeful townspeople to your heart’s content; the plot closely follows the 1994 film it’s based on, rather than the book or the old-school Universal movie.

The Mask

Release Year: 1995

Current Value: $35-$40

Gamers would pick this up for the humor and goof factor, and The Mask delivers. It’s a side-scroller with whacky attacks and ammo meters to manage.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie

Release Year: 1995

Current Value: $40-$50

Beat-em-ups suit the Power Rangers cast. Much like other games in the genre, it’s repetitive, but great for fans of the series. There’s six characters, though they do play relatively similarly.

No Escape

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $11-$13

No Escape’s graphics are really, really good, and it has awesome cutscenes to boot. Unfortunately, it controls really poorly. Something good got lost along the way.

Outlander

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $10-$12

Outlander was originally developed as a Mad Max game before the developers lost the rights. There’s driving and shooting, and walking and shooting. It’s a bit repetitive, but maybe it would have sold well with an actual license.

The Pagemaster

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $7-$9

Another Macaulay Culkin game with platforming, this time with magic combat and literature worlds. It’s not bad, but he hates this one too.

Pinocchio

Release Year: 1995

Current Value: $13-$15

Old-school platforming with an emphasis on puzzles. There’s storybook cutscenes too, which are a nice reward for finishing each level.

RoboCop 3

Release Year: 1991

Current Value: $13-$15

He’s slow in the movie, but does he have to be so slow in the game too? It would be funny if it weren’t so hard, though fans will get a kick out of it regardless.

The Rocketeer

Release Year: 1991

Current Value: $6-$8

Like many other games on this list, Rocketeer tries to mix genres; it’s half flying, a quarter shooting, and a quarter brawling. The flying segments would be interesting, but it asks you to look at a tiny camera window at the bottom of the screen instead of the big landscape that takes up the rest.

Snow White: Happily Ever After

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $23-$25

Targeted at casual gamers, this sidescroller has three difficulty levels. Though the gameplay isn’t extremely unique, you have to give credit to developers that knew their audience.

Stargate

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $10-$13

Though it controls decently, this is a run-of-the-mill platformer. They played it super safe with this one, considering Stargate lends itself to any number of genres.

Super Godzilla

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $12-$15

Super Godzilla is hard to classify; half of it is a slow one-on-one fighter, and the other half is tactical tile movement. The bottom half of the screen shows tiles you can move Godzilla to, while the top half shows the actual actions Godzilla is taking. It’s methodical and appropriate.

Super Star Wars

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $10-$12

Luke starts off with a blaster, and eventually upgrades to a lightsaber! There’s even more action than the movie for this sidescroller, plus a playable Han and Chewbacca. Even though it’s not subtitled, the game is based on Episode IV, clearly preparing for sequels. Don’t worry, there’s vehicle combat too.

Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $11-$13

Episode V follows the gameplay of its predecessor, adding new weapons and special moves for the characters. Plus, there’s double jumping and a final boss fight with Vader. However, the story isn’t finished…

Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $14-$16

Once again, this follows the Super Star Wars formula, but adds Leia and Wicket as playable characters. There’s more content and action-packed levels, and this is about as good as it gets for licensed games of the 16-bit era.

T2: The Arcade Game

Release Year: 1991

Current Value: $9-$11

This is a conversion of the lightgun arcade game; don’t bother playing without a Super Scope or a SNES Mouse. If you have either, this game is a super fun novelty.

The Terminator

Release Year: 1992

Current Value: $32-$35

Difficult side-scrolling with no continues are punctuated by fun driving segments. It’s harder than it is long, but you’d wish it was all driving.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $32-$35

It’s a sidescrolling adventure game, but half of it is escort levels. Plus, it’s not always easy to tell what you’re supposed to do. In short: quite frustrating.

Toy Story

Release Year: 1995

Current Value: $10-$13

Believe it or not, this is one of the best platformers on the system. It has awesome graphics, controls nicely and has fun levels. It sold so well, they ran out of chips to make more cartridges.

Toys

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $5-$7

This game is seriously unimpressive. You have to collect toys to fight the enemy with, but most of the screen is covered up by isometric tiles coated in eye-straining blue paint.

True Lies

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $30-$35

Reviews for this are polarized. It’s a top-down shooter almost reminiscent of modern games like Hotline Miami. It’s short, but very sweet.

Warlock

Release Year: 1994

Current Value: $10-$12

It’s repetitive and you won’t want to finish it, but the puzzles and spells of Warlock are impressive for a couple hours.

Wayne’s World

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $10-$12

It’s hard to be accurate to a movie like this, but the Wayne’s World game is goofy and fun. The graphics are pretty good, but it’s hard to pay attention to them with the game’s difficulty.

We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $6-$8

It uses the movie’s characters, but has a new plot to follow. The graphics are nice, but it’s a rather simple platformer. Great for kids.

The Wizard of Oz

Release Year: 1993

Current Value: $20-$25

It’s got some cool ideas; the main cast is all playable and there’s new locations to visit in the World of Oz. Unfortunately, the platforming is broken and the foreground and background blend together.

[recentanimenews]

Akudama Drive – 01 (First Impressions) – Too Much is Not Enough

From its opening moments when it presents a stark futuristic urban landscape a la Blade Runner 2049, then the camera dives into an impossibly lively and kinetic future cityscape, I knew we’d be in for a lush eyefeast. The gaudy visuals are always on the cusp of causing sensory overload, but the direction wisely finds “rest spots”, such as when the camera angles stay level at an alleyway takoyaki stand.

It’s there where our unnamed female protagonist is grabbing a bite to eat, and the course of her night—and the rest of her life—is suddenly changed forever, all thanks to a ¥500 piece dropped by a gray taciturn young man on a purple Akira superbike. He refuses the coin from the girl, saying “dropped change is bad luck”. After what happens to the girl, I really can’t dispute that!

We learn Mr.Poutybike is really Courier, whose bike is equipped with omni-directional mobility gear to essentially Spider-Man his way over and through Kansai’s endless labyrinth of concrete canyons. We also meet Brawler creating an impressive, ever-growing pile of busted-up police bots; Hacker, hacking into the Kansai Central Bank; and sultry sadist Doctor performing an impromptu heart bypass in public transit airship.

These four super-cool, ultra-colorful characters (none of them named; their jobs are their names) each have centuries worth of estimated sentences for their myriad crimes. After they show off their stuff, each receives a mysterious text for a new job: Whomever of them rescues the murderer Cutthroat from his public execution later that night will be rewarded a cool ¥100 million.

The four criminals, designated S-Class Akudama, converge on Kansai Police HQ…where our Ordinary Girl ended up after being arrested for not paying for her takoyaki. The fact she didn’t pay when she had the ¥500 coin suggests to a police bot that she may be a Swindler. When Brawler starts throwing bots through windows, the Girl is caught in the middle of the fray.

When she spots a black cat—the same one she saved while almost getting hit by a car earlier—she chases after it and protects it, because between those selfless acts and not feeling right spending Courier’s ¥500, Ordinary Girl is a good person—maybe the only good person in this whole insane city!

That, however, doesn’t save her from the bad luck of picking up that dropped coin, which puts her literally in the crossfire of all four Akudama, who had been busy fighting each other until she presented them with a mutual target to kill. She manages to save herself (for the moment) by lying about being an Akudama like them named Swindler, so-called because she even tricked the computer system.

Before they start pressing her for proof, a giant police robot emerges from the elevator, missiles firing. Cutthroat was only a second or two from being beheaded by guillotine when the other four Akudama, the megabot, and Ordinary Girl all spill out into the public execution arena, much to the police cheif’s chagrin. They also end up destroying part of the underground prison, freeing, among others, the D-Class Akudama Hoodlum.

Courier leads the attack on the megabot, winding his bike around the giant overhead scoreboard display, sending it plummeting on top of everyone else. At first Ordinary Girl can just watch gobsmacked as all this chaos happens around her with the cat in her arms, but when she spots Courier about to be killed by the bot, she remembers her duty to get him back his coin.

She distracts the bot by pointing out Hoodlum, giving Courier enough time to activate his bike’s built-in railgun (but notably not activated with the coin—a missed opportunity to be sure). The bot is destroyed, the cops are in disarray, and all the Akudama are still breathing. Courier refuses to thank the Girl for helping him. Dick!

But how long will each of them be breathing? When Cutthroat emerges free from his binds and is given the briefcase by Courier, he immediately fits its contents (necklaces) on himself, the Akudama, and the Girl, and a guard. When the the guard tries to pry it off his head explodes, indicating the chokers are bombs. Then the theretofore silent cat finally speaks up—apparently the mastermind of this job and the scenario in which the criminals and Ordinary Girl find themselves.

You may not find a more indulgently EXTRA show than Akudama Drive (AKA “A.D.D.”) this Fall, and its first episode surpasses even K in pure delicious eye candy. I knew going in this had the same director as Persona, the character designer of Danganronpa, and Railgun’s composer.

Kurosawa Tomoyo (Sound! Euphonium’s Kumiko, Amaburi’s Sylphy) does a tremendous job infusing Ordinary Girl with a crisp, bright, expressive voice. So there’s a ton of talent here. One of my favorite unnecessary-but-awesome flexes are the transitions between parts of the city in which the different layers of the landscape are fitted together like Tetris pieces.

One thing that may turn some off besides the visuals that border on too cool and trying too hard: the fact there’s no attempt to give dimension to any of these characters, who basically start and end at their names and are embellished with their individual style and methods. No amount of intricate spinning signs can distract from the fact there’s not much below the surface.

That said, I found Ordinary Girl an effective and sympathetic audience surrogate, and whatever deadly game into which she’s stumbled backwards is one I can’t wait to watch unfold…even if it may be best to switch off the ol’ brain and enjoy the empty neon calorie airship ride.

By: braverade

[irkallanprince]

Jason the Hunter

Fandom: Power Rangers (2017 movie) Rating: T/PG-13 Warnings: Awkward flirting. Implied violence. Vampires. Also dead bodies but... eh.  Relationships: Jason Scott/Billy Cranston 

Jason is a monster hunter investigating the strange deaths of criminals. When he finds the person responsible he doesn't quite have the heart to punish them.

Basically I’m trash and that crappy practice doodle about a vampire hunter au I did a few weeks ago inspired this. Maybe it’s a new series? Not sure yet. Also sorry for clogging up the PR and Cranscott tags but like... Cranscott needs more love.

(read on ao3)

Three bodies. All drained of blood. Strewn about Angel Grove Park like abandoned child’s toys. Not dead very long from the feel of it. Jason crouched at the foot of the body nearest to him and stared at the neck wound when he noticed markings peeking up over the collar of the man’s shirt. He reached down and lowered it a bit to see a swastika staring back up at him.

“Nazis… I take back every time I said poor bastard.” He said with an audible cringe in his voice. He looked up at his partner from the corner of his eye who was taking pictures with her Institute-issued phone to log for the attack database. They’d go straight back to Alpha in the command center so they could study them later.

“Yeah. These ones are no big loss but sooner or later an actual innocent person is gonna wind up on the wrong side of the fangs. Just remember we’re trying to do something good here.” She said, slipping the phone back into her pocket and slinging her crossbow over her shoulder.

Jason stood, shoving his hands in his pocket. He’d been hunting for most of his life now. He grew up in a family of hunters, but they were killed by a wild pack of Wendigo a few years back. That was when the Institute took him in. Trained him at the Academy. He was no longer a vigilante monster hunter, rather an official licensed one. They’d paired him with Kimberly Hart, who was a master of archery and stealth and kicked his ass far too many times to count. She was a better technical fighter than him, all skill and perfection in one lithe frame. Jason? Well he was just a brawler. The kind of guy who learned what he could by watching his daddy get into bar fights when he was a wee thing. It got the job done.

Still, it never got any easier staring at corpses. Even the gross nazi kind.

“Been tracking these murders for weeks now and I gotta say, Kimmie… I kind of feel like we should let it alone. Like… all the bodies we’ve picked up have been legit bad dudes? These white supremacist guys? That sex offender about a week ago? A couple of dirty cops? It feels almost like these guys are… kinda alright?” Jason said as he surveyed the scene. It was the work of vampires, that much was clear. But it seemed the vampires in question were targeting genuinely awful people. No real loss, and if anything these human ’victims’ were doing more harm to people than they were. Still, Kim was always the more stalwart of the two.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right. Besides, we let this slide, there’s a lot of other things we might have to consider overlooking. Job’s easier when we don’t have to think about it.” She said, picking up her equipment.

“I’m heading back to Command. You coming?” She asked, blowing a dark curl from her face. Jason gave a shrug and looked around the area.

“I think I want to do one more sweep before I go. Just see if we missed anything.”

Kimberly raised an eyebrow and offered a shrug.

“Keep your comms on. Don’t do anything stupid. So like… just most of the things you would do.” It came off biting, but the hint of a smile on her face showed she was just ribbing him. He gave a sarcastic smile and dismissed her on her way before heading into the treeline of the park himself.

He used his sword to hack at the shrubbery in his path, making his way through the wooded area as he looked around for tracks or blood splatter or anything that could lead them to their guys. So far nothing was coming up but trash, discarded condom wrappers, and crushed empty beer cans from the rowdy teens that used these woods to party on the regular.

“Uneventful as fuck.” He clicked his tongue to himself as he kicked one of the empty cans into the bush nearest to him. To his surprise the bush shook and an exasperated ’OUCH!’ rang out from it. He watched as a dark figure fell back in the clumsiest manner, rolling back into the dead leaves before looking up with wide, glowing yellow eyes and a nervous laugh. Jason pursed his lips and cocked his head to the side.

“A vampire hiding in the woods not far from the scene of a murder. Committed by vampires. Must be my lucky day.” He said with a quirk on his lip, dragging his sword in the dirt as he slowly approached him.

“I gotta tell ya, I’ve been hunting creatures for about five years now. Dusted a bunch of guys like you before. This’ll probably be short. Got any last words?” He asked, raising his sword to the dark skinned vamp’s chin. The vampire gulped and kept his hands up in the air.

“Please I got separated from my group I… I don’t mean you any harm.”

“But you killed those guys, right?” He asked bluntly, tipping the vampire’s chin with his blade. He shivered a bit and winced, but he was having a hard time coming up with a response.

“...we have to feed. We only go after people that are bad.” The vampire responded, still hoping that if he were compliant, he would live through this. Jason gulped a moment as he gazed into his eyes, and he found them to be honest and true. Yeah, Kim was right. It wasn’t right, but at the same time it was justice.

“We? How many of you are there?”

“I uh… it’s me and my brother and sister. N-not real brother and sister just… we were all made by the same person. She… isn’t really around anymore.” The vampire explained. Three young, scared, homeless vampires? Made sense.

“You know I’ve been tasked with hunting you down and killing you right?” He said, studying the boy as he cowered in fear. But honestly, in Jason’s heart he couldn’t bring himself to finish it. These vampires had morals. He… liked that. Respected it even. So he instead removed his blade from the boy’s throat and sheathed it on his back.

“I’m Jason. What’s your name?” He said, looking him over once more. Now that he was free of danger, the vampire boy adjusted his knit cap and cleared his throat.

“Billy. B-Billy Cranston. I’m… new here. Everywhere really. I… we were taken by this woman a few months ago. Said she wanted children of her own. My sister calls her La Llorona but really she goes by Empress Rita. She… turned us. Then abandoned us here. I… don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Maybe just so you don’t kill me?”

Jason’s stony expression changed to a gentle smile and he removed his hand from his pocket and extended it. Billy studied it for a moment before taking it and shaking his hand.

“I’m a hunter. Work for an organization called the Institute of Guidance. We’re like… a secret police for monsters if you will. And you have been raising quite a stink in Angel Grove. You’re sloppy. But you swear you only go after criminals?” He asked, crossing his arms as he went on.

“You ever thought about like… I dunno… robbing a blood bank or something?”

Billy shoved his hands into his blue hoodie pockets and kicked at the dirt on the ground.

“It’s not the same. It’s… It’s like eating stale bread. It can make us sick if we drink blood like that too long. I don’t know if you know what it feels like to have a vampire tummy ache but it’s… not great.” He said, chewing his bottom lip nervously.

“I mean… okay what about like… Consensual feeding? I know vampire groupies are a thing. We call ‘em blood dolls back at the Academy.”

Billy just chuckled and shook his head. “It’s hard enough to find someone that don’t run screaming when they see our glowing yellow eyes, man. Plus I’m still relatively new at all this. I don’t know all this undead slang.”

Jason shrugged a bit.

“I don’t. I mean… I guess ya want a meal you could always call me. So long as you don’t like… kill me of course.”

The idea of feeding on Jason entered his mind and honestly? It brought heat to his cheeks. Heat he wasn’t sure he was capable of being a cold dead thing, but heat nonetheless. He shuddered a bit, licking his lips as he honed his eyes on Jason’s neck, how beautiful and pink it was. It almost…

“...U-uh but then what would my siblings eat?” He asked, hands discreetly pulling his hoodie down lower to cover the tenting in his pants. Jason just gave a shrug and ran a hand through his golden locks.

“Look, tell you what. Give me a few days and don’t murder anyone else and I will see what I can do about getting you a fresh blood supply, okay? Here.” He said, pulling out his wallet and tugging out a business card with his number on it. They might be a secret society of demon hunters, but they were also professionals. Of COURSE they had business cards.

“Call me when you need something. Preferably before someone dies. I know this is new for you but you don’t have to be alone in it, okay?” He said. Their fingers brushed momentarily as the card was handed off, and Billy once more felt the heat well in his cheeks.

“I-I...y-y-yeah okay.” Billy nodded. Jason gave him a brilliant smile and shoved his hands back in his pockets once more.

“I’m glad I ran into you, Billy. Now that we know what the problem is, we can try to fix it.” He said reassuringly. Then he gave him a little salute.

“I gotta go. Stay good, Blue.” He said, nodding to the color of his hoodie before turning and disappearing for the park again. Billy smiled a bit, then gazed down at the card.

“Jason Lee Scott…” He said under his breath. He then pressed the card to his non-beating heart and watched the boy walk into the night with his incredible night vision. It was ridiculous because when he died he never thought he would feel this way again, but this vampire was getting a crush. And on the one person he definitely probably shouldn’t. Someone who killed his kind for a living.

Dammit, Billy.

[bearpillowmonster]

Yakuza Kiwami Review

Welcome to a japanese 'The Game Plan', the video game adaptation. (Kind of) I wanted to start this review with a first impressions, so I'm writing this after playing the first few chapters of the game.

First off, I like the atmosphere, the town is nice, I like learning the street names and seeing all the people on the road and talking to them. There are even drunks running about (more like stumble about) which is such an odd little feature.

There are plenty of battles, including street fights and each one increases your experience, however if there's a person who wants to pick a fight, they will chase you down at times until they can get close enough to talk to you, you "can" outrun them and cheese it by walking in a nearby store or something then walking back out. I'm not going to complain because it's a remake of a game on the PS2 (which I try to take into account for this review) but some of the models are janky at times with the way the models jerk but again, no big deal. There's a sprint system but he'll get tired and stop to catch his breath but you can reuse it right after, no bar to refill or anything but I will say that the health bar doesn't refill itself unless you die or get something to eat, so be wary if you're going into a fight.

There's a pretty decent skill tree like stuff to increase your health, tech, etc. I'm sure you already know that you can pick up random items like chairs, motorcycles, traffic cones and such to fight with but it really is fun to mess around with, just adds to the world building. It also has a play-style system with Brawler, Beast, Rush, and Dragon to fit however you like to play (I like Brawler best). If you played FF7 Remake, it kind of reminds me of the Operator vs Punisher mode, I wonder if they were inspired by this game. I know I'm going to offend some people here but this is what the Arkham franchise's combat wishes it was (as far as Asylum and City go, I never played the other ones) I just like this more. 

Now the story is pretty simple but pretty decent, I still can't believe this is the same guy who made Super Monkey Ball. I could see where it might build for the future games, I wanted to start with Yakuza 5 because I hear that's the best besides 0 and I don't normally care for continuity and do it with plenty of game series and don't have any trouble for the most part but the 5th entry in the saga seems a little more steep than say the 2nd or 3rd so I'm happy to settle on the first.

First impressions over, let's get into the thick of it.

The story is pretty cutscene heavy. Goofy at times but I still dig it, especially seeing Kiryu and Haruka interact.

How are the bosses? Well, the first proper boss is Shimano. There are some mini bosses before it but he's the big one. In the first Kingdom Hearts game, if a boss has a good amount of health, they'll stack the health bars into different colors, such as green, yellow, and orange, this is very similar to that. Shimano isn't what you should base the bosses on because he's a tough first boss, he's very strong and drawn out, but in a way kind of reflective because Kiryu is meant to be a bit rusty after all that time and this dude is huge on top of it so of course he's going to have a rough time with him. Narrative-wise, it makes sense but it's still a hard, kind of unforgiving and annoying boss battle. (also why didn't Kiryu just point out the hole in the window or have Kazama say otherwise??) Just know that they aren't normally like that.

I will say that the Akai break-dancing trash of the bloody eye were also super annoying though. You can't even approach the older brother, one is fine, but two? And a buncha goons? 

My actual worst enemy is falling over though...

Majima is more of a rival but you fight him frequently. He reminds me of somebody I know, and that's what makes him funny but I don't like him, you're not really supposed to like him. He does have one of the best fights of the game though and if you’re dedicated then you can upgrade your dragon abilities through him. 

One thing that I know may put people off from this game is the localization because for one, "Yakuza Kiwami" actually sounds kinda cool but it's very japanese which means, there is no dubbing, which is kind of rare for big games such as this, you just rely on subtitles. If it doesn't bother you with anime then it's fine. It's actually really fun. Now I have the PC edition but that's mainly because it was on sale (then it was on sale on the PS store a few weeks later which made me pretty salty) but I easily just plugged in my PS4 controller and it was all good, especially since "Real Yakuza use a gamepad". I personally wouldn't recommend the keyboard and mouse setup though as it can seem kind of tedious.

Random Section! Each dude has a name so I know who I'm trash talking. You ask Shinji for money early on but never pay him back and that really bothers me. I will say that the weapons and items you buy should have a stats chart so that you can tell if an item is stronger than one you have (how is an umbrella stronger than a revolver??) you kind of just have to take a shot in the dark based on price. Now once does Kiryu place the blame on anybody even after his 10 years and everything he's been through, it's really honorable, mad respect but it might've saved some hassle at certain points...

One thing that surprised me is just how easy it is to get a lot. I mean it makes sense because you're a yakuza, but I'm not used to getting so much CP after just a few fights and money out the wazooh (not always through fights, but sell a few things and see where you get). There are side missions but are they interesting? I mentioned the random people wanting to beat you up, but there are those that chase you and the ones that are beating on somebody else where you can choose to intervene, like how you would do basic stuff like taking someone to the hospital or stopping a robbery in Spider-Man. But then there are the ones with more context. A homeless man that needs a coat, a girl being harassed by men but then she takes you for a drink, none of them stand out a whole lot or lasts too long (because there are so many) but they're interesting little side things. There’s obviously lots to do, so I know I haven’t even experienced everything.

I mentioned atmosphere and how I liked exploring, you can take a cab, but I would say at least learn the area first, you find tons of little stuff like locker keys. Was it worth losing Super Monkey Ball over this? Not really but you can get an AiAi plush in the claw machine! Was it a good game though? Yeah, I'd have to say so, I'll be moving on to more in the series, Kiwami 2 seems like the next logical approach.

[scottynada]

3 Predictions for Amonkhet Remastered Draft

NOTE: This is written based off an unofficial card list from this MTGA Zone article.

0.) Card evaluations and strength of archetypes will be different than before.

This isn't really a prediction. It's more like a disclaimer. Amonkhet Remastered is an Arena only product that is a cut and fusion between Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation. That means there are subtle, unique tweaks in terms of how frequently cards show up and what cards are missing entirely. Drafts are defined by commons and uncommons, so a shift in these cards can drastically change the power level of certain strategies. I am guessing that a lot of the interactions will feel similar to those of us who have played the previous sets, but the way we prioritize moving into decks during the draft will differ greatly.

1.) The format will be fast since all the great common Exert creatures are back.

Exert is a mechanic that gives you a bonus for keeping your creature tapped for an additional turn. The mechanic is vague enough to be used in different ways, but the primary way it is used on Amonkhet is to bolster aggressive creatures when they attack. Amonkhet was littered with these common Exert creatures that were nearly impossible to block effectively on curve. If your opponent dropped an Exert creature early, there was barely any way around taking a couple hits besides just straight up removing the creature. Even if you are able to assemble a squad of blockers, your opponent takes very little risk by just Exerting to make their attacker huge while you have to take all the risk while multi-blocking into a potential combat trick. Amonkhet Remastered didn't just take half of the Exert attackers from each set, they pretty much just jammed them all in there. Looking at each color's curve of creatures, there really isn't anything that can block efficiently at all. Just imagine trying to cast Ancient Crab and trying to block an opponent who went Rhona's Stalwart into Hooded Brawler.

I should note that a part of the reason that the original Amonkhet set was so fast was also due to a lack of efficient removal. Amonkhet Remastered on the other hand has a much higher removal density. I don't think this will be able to keep pace with the Exert creatures since attacking and blocking is still the core of Limited and most removal spells will trade inefficiently versus the cheap Exert creatures, anyway.

2.) The Cycling Deserts are still strong early picks.

The Cycling Deserts were a prominent feature of Hour of Devastation draft. They don't seem to stand out at first glance, but these did a lot of work in smoothing out gameplay for the format. Flooding just happened less often since you could Cycle away these Deserts if you drew them later in the game. People started running more lands main deck since they would flood less, which led to less games being decided on missed land drops.There are a couple of context changes in Amonkhet Remastered that are worth a look at. First of all, as I said above, I think the format will actually be pretty fast since blocking is very difficult. In fast formats, it might be too much to ask to spend two mana doing nothing to the board. On the other hand, the value of utility lands goes up when the number of playables in a set goes up. You can afford to spend early picks taking these awesome lands since you know you will wind up with a full deck of playables anyway. This is especially true in Arena Best of One where there is no sideboard to worry about. Amonkhet Remastered really is an all-star list of the two Draft sets. Almost every archetype got meaningful bonuses and a lot of the filler cards that didn't quite get there were removed. This means I would love to end up with a couple Deserts to improve my mana over replaceable cards that might end up in the sideboard anyway. The speed of the format is probably a knock against these, but the strength of the individual cards makes these more appealing. Overall, I think it roughly balances out and these will be pretty much just as strong as they were in Hour of Devastation.

3.) Five-Color Green is strong and double-pip splashing is possible.

Green actually has a ton of color fixing at Common and Uncommon in Amonkhet Remastered. There is not a whole lot of color fixing outside of Green, giving the color a unique advantage of being able to splash aggressively. Traditional knowledge says that you shouldn't splash for double-pip cards like this one, but Amonkhet Remastered has a couple of key commons that enable easier splashing. Oasis Ritualist can make double off-color mana on its own and Naga Vitalist on the field means you only need one splashed basic land to cast double-pips. Both of these cards at common will show up more often than in the previous HOU-HOU-AKH Drafts. You theoretically have one additional pack to pick up Oasis Ritualist and two additional packs to pick up Vitalists, meaning this splashy archetype has even more support. Another thing going for this deck is that the rares in this set are kind of bananas. The Eternalized Gods are all here and ridiculously strong and most of the rares are just super strong Draft picks. You might just get rewarded hard by being able to take and play off-color bombs.

4.) All Cartouches are playable and Trials are quite good.

This is "prediction" number four, but I make the rules here and titles are meaningless anyway. If you missed the original Amonkhet Draft set, these may seem like more of a meme dream than reality. A lot of the power from these cards come from the fact that all of them are pretty much playable on their own. Even the White and Red Cartouches are fine in a world where you may just want to get your opponent dead as quickly as possible. The Black Cartouche was pretty important for the midrange decks to eventually stabalize versus aggro. Some people heralded the Blue Cartouche as the best common in the color. These cards are just fine, and when you can sometimes get some great value by double dipping a Trial, even better. I see no reason for this not to be the case in Amonkhet Remastered as well.

5.) Zombies are a big winner with Amonkhet Remastered

Triple Amonkhet hosted a very potent, aggressive Zombie aggro deck that was difficult to block due to Binding Mummy at common and some strong payoffs for the tribe. If you had enough tribal support, it didn't even matter if you played some junkers along the way. When Hour of Devastation was added to the Draft, Zombies took a sizable hit from losing consistent access to a lot of great cards. A lot of the deck's power was based around all-in chucking flying Zombies with Unconventional Tactics. The card certainly lived up to its name. Now that we have Amonkhet Remastered, the consistency of the Zombie payoffs is back in full and you get access to the Zombie catapulting card. Watch out for the skies because the forecast is a fierce mummy shower.

6?) Archetypes Blurbs?

I don't know if this is a prediction, but I have no idea what I'm doing anyway, so here's a list within a list:

Blue/White - Embalm and Eternalize matters. Grab Vizier of the Anointed and grind out value with your creatures that return from the graveyard.

Blue/Black - Cycling and Discard matters. This is nothing like Ikoria degeneracy. You'll mostly be playing a midrange deck with a lot of consistency from Cycling. A lot of the great payoffs are Rare, but Horror of the Broken Lands is a really strong common.

Black/Red - Stuff, really. These colors have tangential synergy with Blue/Black discard triggers, but I'm pretty sure this will just be a mash of creatures and removal. Original Amonkhet had a "heckbent" one or less cards in hand subtheme, but it really doesn't show through here.

Red/Green - Curve out and Exert. Forget real themes, these colors have four great Exert commons. As the young kids say these days: SMOrc.

Green/White - Exert Again. There are some midrange options here, but I can't image they are better than just taking Exert creatures and finishing people off with Appeal // Authority. Remember that Vigilance creatures can Exert for "free".

White/Black - Zombies! I talk about this above, but yeah, Zombies are rad.

White/Red - Hello Exert Again. Kind of typical for these colors that you probably want to be faster and more 'all-in' than the other colors.

Red/Blue - Half-hearted spells. The signpost uncommon for these colors is Enigma Drake, but there doesn't seem to be a surplus of spells to fill the graveyard. Importantly there is also a lack of Instant/Sorceries that create creatures. Cycling exists, but I don't think that is how you want to be fueling your few payoffs.

Blue/Green - Ramp and Splash. You have access to some nice in-color high drops in Sifter Wurm and Lay Claim, but as I mentioned before Green is also really good at splashing.

Green/Black - Counter Management? There are some creatures like Ornery Kudu that are 'overstated', but enter the battlefield shrunk. You need to do a bit of work to use the -1/-1 counter or remove it, but then your creature still sometimes can't block other creatures exerting themselves to punch you in the face.

[raeliyah]

Exalted Secret Santa 2017 Character Journal

Three options this year! First, snippets, with full descriptions, reference pictures, and links under the cut. Anon-asks should be enabled so feel free to ask me anything if you need more info!

V’Neef Pyrrhus, called Lightbringer Zenith Caste Solar Exalt of the Blessed Isle; Lama of the Immaculate Order; Master of Path of the Arbiter Style; zen paladin of the Five Virtues; reluctant warrior; Oathbound; husband and father.  Caleb “Wraithshot” Raith Dawn Caste Solar Exalt of the South, longrider lawman, Righteous Devil, Badlands Gentleman, giant flirt Lysistrata Starborn, the Rising Cobra Chosen of Battles Sidereal Exalt, One of the Seven Scarlet Veils, bearer of the Tsunami of Leaping Stars and Monsoon Sunrise, shameless Chooser of the Slain who forges her own path.  ~Lys has no Art of her yet~

V’neef Pyrrhus, called Lightbringer

Zenith-Caste Solar Exalt, Martial Artist/Scholar

Gallery of Previous Art of Pyrrhus

Pinterest Inspiration Board

Physical Description:

Pyrrhus is taller, at 6′3″, broadly shouldered and well-muscled. He’s a superb martial artist and athlete; it shows in his build and posture. He can do stuff like This 

He’s in his late 40s/early 50s but looks about ten years younger, if not more, since he was Exalted in his late 30s.

He wears his white blond-to-gold-to-red hair in a mane-like style, shaved on both sides of his head but long in a wide stripe down the middle of his head from forehead to nape. It’s currently cut short, the longest strands just hitting the tops of his shoulders.

It’s either constrained in a Sokka-style ponytail at the back of his head or braided down to the nape of his neck. (If he’s having a really bad day it hangs loose and bedraggled). (See Pinterest Inspiration Board for more examples)

His eyes are medium-blue like bleached indigo.

Pyrrhus is from the Blessed Isle, and so has the olive-y southern Mediterranean complexion common there, with an undertone of ruddy bronze (it was expected he would exalt as a fire-aspect and they tend to very fiery complexions; he didn’t).

Here is a range of inspiration/examples from the Humanae project:

(7515-C) (71-4 C) (67-4 C) (64-5 C) (58-5 C)

I usually describe his face as a cross between Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister) and Collin Chou (the Seraph, Matrix series) - or Godfrey Gao.

Linked gallery, above, are the only drawings of him I’ve managed I’m partway happy with.

References for Godfrey Gao (img 1 - Google Image Search)

He’s got a Resting-Sad-Face, in that his neutral face looks pretty broody or sadly contemplative, mostly due to the natural curve of his eyelids and brows.

Pyrrhus has a set of orichalcum tattoos (actual metal embedded in his skin but is ‘living’ and moves with him) - a line of script in High Realm set between two enclosing lines (see here for script/lines reference) - looping from one shoulder, down his chest to the top of his sternum, up to the other shoulder, and across his back in the same fashion. It lays on him like a chain of office.

There’s an old burn scar/brand on his sternum just below the tattoo which looks like an eight rayed zierscheibe. His forearms and lower legs are covered in old, faded tiny white linear scars, nearly invisible. On his back, from knee to neck, are lash scars. They are criss-crossing wide white lines, faded but still visible, from old torture. The only reason any of the scars are even still visible is that they were inflicted with Necrotic-essence-fueled weapons 

Clothing:

Pyrrhus can usually be found wearing the layered undyed robes of an immaculate monk even though he’s on “Retreat”/sabbatical, with a red dragon-embroidered obi/sash knotted on one hip, and sturdy boots good for both walking and riding. When he is training, he goes barefoot and shirtless.

But really, have fun with clothing design! Make something up!  Anything that looks like it’s from Avatar:tLA (or LoK) or vaguely Jedi or Asian-themed is pretty good; he tends towards simpler styles and solid, muted colors. He does have to attend official and ceremonial functions however, so fancier clothing does exist in his wardrobe. His wife, Angeline, is much more fashion conscious than he is, and so also makes sure he has more elaborate garb as well.  

He can summon Arbiter armor made of Essence/hard light when he needs to; it is made following the pattern of scale maille, but looks closer to koi, snake, or dragon scales than true historical scale maille. It’s translucent and golden, and fits close to his skin and clothing. The plates of the armor are bigger where he doesn’t need as much flexibility, smaller on the joints. They’re sleek and clean-looking. Being magical, the armor doesn’t actually need to follow physical limitations or practicality concerns, but they’re made from Pyrrhus’ will and intentions, so they are as practical as he is. He can also summon a pair of Chinese-style slightly curved dao swords of the same translucent golden hard light.

Accessories:

He sometimes wears a dragon-headed torc of red & gold metal and/or a masculine-looking ear-cuff of orichalcum wire and fire agate. Both are magical artifacts.

The torc allows him to emulate a Fire-Aspect’s anima, both on demand and transmuting the lower overflows of his own anima. (Mechanically, anything up to 10-mote peripheral usage will transmute to a Fire-Aspect anima. Beyond that it’s regular Solar bonfires).

The ear-cuff was a gift from a fellow Solar, and allows subvocal communications with wearers of other linked ear-cuff artifacts within a short range (thirty miles). 

In non-magical accessories, he often has a set of stone mala prayer beads, usually looped around his wrist.

Anima:  

Pyrrhus’ anima banner is a charred, sooty, raggedy-plumaged phoenix, with fire showing underneath the black, like magma with a cooled broken crust. It shadows or echoes his movements, wing to arm, head to head, etc. Before he went into the Underworld the phoenix was brilliantly fire-colored and impeccably feathered. Both versions are translucent, ghostly gold-tinted.

Full Description Including Personality, History, Fanfic and Character Playlists Here.

Caleb “Wraithshot” Raith

Dawn Caste Solar Exalt

Caleb’s Pinterest Inspiration Board

Caleb’s easy. Think of every western trope and smash them all together. He’s a cowboy bounty hunter; a self-proclaimed lawman in a land where there is no law, riding circuit on a handful of towns in the South he considers his and protecting them from whatever evils lurk in the desert.

Physical Description:

Caleb stands at 5′11″ and is on the leaner side at ~185 lbs. He’s fit, like a brawler (been in significantly more than his fair share of bar fights) or a ranch hand - someone who works at hard physical labor most days.

Caleb looks like he’s in his early 30s

Being the son of Northern immigrants, Caleb’s complexion is mostly pale, a reddish-burned tan anywhere the sun would shine - arms to the elbows, back of the neck, face mostly.

He’s also freckly across his face, shoulders and upper back, mostly from sun.

His eyes are clear honey-colored brown, more gold towards the pupil from the influence of exaltation.

Hair is black at the roots, growing out into sun-streaked brownish blond. He usually keeps it cut pretty short but if it goes too long without a trim it gets curlier. He likes a clean-shaven face but given his lifestyle he’s pretty much always got a day or three of scruff.

Caleb… basically looks like Chris Pratt. 

He’s always got a smile of some stripe - warm, mischievous, leering, insincerely-wide - something.

He’s also very mouthy, and usually has something to chew on, whether it’s a piece of straw, a match, a toothpick, a cigarette (50% chance of it actually being lit), a twig - something. He’s never met a lollipop or chewing gum but he would love them.

Caleb dresses in layers - shirt sleeves, a vest/waistcoat, and either a faded blue or red serape tossed over his shoulders or a brown longcoat. Pants are either canvas or faded denim, and boots are less cowboy-style and more combat- or motorcycle style with a heel for riding. He does wear spurs, but they’re blunted. He’s usually covered in trail dust and sweat, sometimes blood, despite efforts at cleanliness. Feel free to embellish the standard Cowboy gear with arabesque/middle eastern ornamentation, because it is Exalted…

He always carries two modified flame pieces (six-shooters… he’s got six-shooters) on his hips, and the belt’s buckle is large and obnoxious, mostly because he keeps a couple extra rounds of ammunition within it. He also has an artifact rifle (based on a Winchester M1873; lever action, but otherwise unspecified) named Medicine Man that is either slung across his back or is in a sheath on his horse’s saddle. He makes his own ammo for all his weapons. He is a student of Righteous Devil Style, having mastered up to the form charms, but his sifu disappeared and he’s not found another, nor is he skilled enough to pick it up without tutelage.

He does own chaps but whether or not he wears them on any given day depends on how hot it is and how much hard riding he’s anticipating. He has a hat he’s rather fond of, but it’s not anything truly special. 

There may or may not be a bandana around his neck/on his person at any given moment, and he often wears a chip of blue crystal with an antelope petroglyph etched on it around his neck on a leather cord. It’s a token from his friend, a springs goddess named Rivela, and a reminder of a partner he lost.

He rides a buckskin warhorse named Dirt who he pretends not to be particularly attached to, but in fact he really really is. Dirt is his horse. Dirt adores him and is always trying to steal his hat. Dirt will also steal anyone else’s hat nearby, but he prefers Caleb’s.

Anima: Caleb’s anima banner is a hailstorm of bright burning metal, like large forge sparks, raining down on him and even appear to bounce off his skin and clothing. Golden smoke and flame rise from the ground at his feet wherever the sparks fall.

Full Description including Personality, History, Art, and links to Fic and Character Playlist Here.

Lysistrata Starborn, the Rising Cobra

Chosen of Battles, Sidereal Exalt

Lysistrata was one of the many Sidereals whose Exaltations slipped through the cracks, and began her career as a Chosen of Battles by engineering a successful slave revolt in a Firedust mine in the deep South. She subscribes to no factions, believing such nonsense to distract from the true job of Sidereals.

Lysistrata’s Pinterest Inspiration Board Lysistrata’s Character Playlist

Physical Description:

Lysistrata is slightly below average height and well-proportioned, at about 5'5" and 140lbs. She is an excellent martial artist (Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Stylist) and strong for her size. 

She is tanned but not dark, definitely lighter than most Southern natives, with shining black hair that reaches her ankles when left loose and arched brows. She could have walked straight from a bollywood film.

About that hair. She usually keeps it piled on her head in complicated braids and loops, secured by stiletto daggers and other small weapons that, coincidentally, look like beautiful hair sticks and ornaments. Her Fellowship jokes that one can tell how bad a fight was by how flat her hair is after, as she pulls more and more sharp things out of it.

Her eyes are a shade of red so dark they might as well be black, shining with scarlet highlights in bright light: like looking into a glass of merlot wine. She uses dramatic eyeshadow (see Pinterest board) and cosmetics.

Lysistrata is busty and curvy enough to attract any number of eyes, and uses her attractiveness as a weapon when it suits her. 

Lysistrata is known for wearing red silk gowns - always. Sometimes it’s in heavily brocaded Chinese style, sometimes in flowing saris, but always always scarlet. She loves jewelry and the finer things in life. 

She has a firesnake familiar - a cobra-like snake of clear living crystal- who helped her in the battle that granted her Exaltation. 

Lysistrata is, much like her Greek namesake, a calculating soul, using exalts and mortals alike as tools to further her (the Maidens’) goals. This is not to say that she is not passionless or devoid of emotion, merely that her priorities are a little skewed. She has her favored weapons in steel and Exalt alike (...like Caleb). 

She dons identities and emotions as easily as clothing and is an excellent actress. She is confident to the point of arrogance, shameless, and cares exactly nil for what other people think or expect of her, so long as the Maidens are pleased, and takes perverse pleasure in occasionally flustering people and flaunting societal expectations. 

She has two main “identities”. 

The first as the founder and one of the Scarlet Veils, a bower of very expensive, exclusive courtesans who cater to the military and other elite of the South. Lysistrata, along with six hand-picked mortal women who could be her twins (Nikostrata, Androstrata, Sophiastrata, Demostrata, Philostrata, and Xenostrata), use the group to influence the outcomes of battles and conflicts in the region by influencing the key players. Sometimes it’s by pampering and relaxing a general or soldier so they do their best, and sometimes it’s by seducing and bewitching a politician or warlord until they think of nothing but the Veils, bumbling their job and losing a conflict. 

The other Destiny, the Rising Cobra, is a mysterious figure who shows up as a harbinger of victory. Lysistrata used this Destiny the least, feeling it too conspicuous. As the Cobra, Lysistrata wears a set of red-enameled star metal Celestial Power Armor (Monsoon Sunrise) and wields a dual-bladed star metal artifact glaive (Tsunami of Leaping Stars), and fights directly in support of the side she wishes to win. Often just the sight of the armor is enough to turn the tide, as she’s turned the Cobra into something of a mythological figure in her domain.

Both these artifacts were made late in the Primordial War from the remains of forgotten gods who, hand in hand, sacrificed themselves in a bid to turn the tide of a battle. It worked, and the Sidereal who at the time bore Lysistrata’s exaltation, honored their memory by creating the artifacts to continue in their preservation of Creation. 

Image below is inspiration. 

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

Our Favorite 7 Of 73

For ID@Xbox Summer Game Fest, Microsoft released 73 demos for upcoming indie games on Xbox One. The demos are all free but they'll only be available to download and play until Monday, July 27.

It would be quite the ask for any one of us to play through all 73 demos in order to tell you which are the best ones, but as a team we've managed to check out a hefty sum of the games made available. The demos detailed in the following gallery are all of the ones that stuck out to us the most--some left us nostalgic, others offered something brand-new we'd never seen before, and still more just scratched an itch that we've been looking to satisfy for a long time. Regardless of our reasons, these are the demos that made us the most excited to play their respective full games when they release.

We haven't listed the demos in any particular order. This is just a list of demos that we think are cool or at the very least hint towards an exciting game. Maybe they'll all meet expectations, maybe they won't. We'll just have to wait and see.

Xbox Series X And Xbox One News

Halo Infinite Is A Platform For The Next Ten Years Of Halo

Halo Infinite Gameplay Debuts At Xbox Series X Stream

Xbox Series X Event: Every Game Announced

New Fable Announced During Xbox Event

Xbox Series X: Release Date, Specs, Price, And Everything We Know

Kaze And The Wild Masks | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

You'd be forgiven for not knowing if you didn't happen to grow up in the early 1990s, but following the breakout success of Sonic the Hedgehog there was a veritable flood of me-too 16-bit mascot platformers that never quite caught on. From Ristar to Acro the Acrobat to (deep sigh) Awesome Possum, it was the battle royale of its era. Everyone wanted to make one.

Playing Kaze and the Wild Masks brought me right back to those heady days, sitting on the carpet and playing the latest copycat rental from Blockbuster. That's not a slight against Kaze, because these platformers weren't actually bad, just oversaturated. Almost 30 years removed, it's as comfortable as your favorite sweater. The art style is beautifully vibrant and colorful, the platforming is familiar and accessible, and it's just a great nostalgia trip. I love a lot of recent games that have taken a fresh look at modernizing classic platformer tropes, but Kaze is the much more explicit throwback I didn't know I wanted. -- Steve Watts

ScourgeBringer | Xbox One, PC

ScourgeBringer is already out on Steam Early Access but the Xbox Summer Game Fest demo is the first time we have the chance to play it on console--it was also my first time actually trying the game after oohing and aahing at trailers for the past few months. I love it a lot.

I've always been a fan of video games where you're encouraged to fight quickly, especially if you're further rewarded for being skillful enough to fight without touching the ground--games like Titanfall 2 and Hollow Knight. ScourgeBringer goes a long way towards scratching that itch for me. Though you can platform between enemies, ScourgeBringer rewards players for playing aggressively and doing midair dashes between foes. You remain airborne while slashing or shooting so you can reasonably clear out entire rooms without touching the floor if you're good enough.

I also like ScourgeBringer's hard but fair gameplay loop. Enemies can kill you quickly if you can't pull off deflections and dodges, but there was never a moment where I died and thought, "Dammit, how the hell was I supposed to counter that?" The game is harsh in its punishments--it's a roguelike where you pick up temporary power-ups with each run and slowly unlock permanent abilities over time--but it's fair. It also helps that the game reloads relatively quickly, so you can just jump into another run upon death. -- Jordan Ramée

Haven | PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

More than most of the demos I dabbled with, Haven defies easy categorization. At first blush it's a visual novel telling a futuristic love story between a couple of stranded spacefarers. Even in the course of a relatively short demo, though, it opens up considerably and blends together a few disparate genres and mechanics, which all illustrate a sense of duality and interdependence.

Cooking a meal is performed by coordinating ingredients from the left and right sides of the user interface. Similarly, the RPG-like battle system appears simple at first, but it quickly becomes clear that coordinating your attacks to perform them together is the only effective way to fight. When you do defeat a monster, you pacify it rather than killing it, a sign that this pair are ultimately peaceful scientific observers.

Inside the ship you're a first-person observer, a choice that seems self-consciously voyeuristic in a story about a romantic couple. Outside of it, though, Haven's best feature shines. Movement through the world has you float through the tall grass with balletic grace, with the ability to swerve, u-turn, and drift with ease. It's all based on just a few simple commands but it's so well-executed and intuitive that floating around the world is just a joy. -- Steve Watts

SkateBird | Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

After playing a lot of the hardcore skateboarding simulator Session, in which both thumbsticks control each individual foot on the board, Glass Bottom Games' charming SkateBird is a sigh of relief. Not just because it's far simpler to control than Session, or even the Skate and Tony Hawk franchises, but also because it's incredibly cute and cozy. The small demo available on Xbox One as part of the Summer Game Demo Event, while lacking in variety, had me hooked on its aesthetic. And though I wish there was more to do in its limited sandbox, SkateBird makes skateboarding approachable.

The vertical slice strips everything away--story missions, alternate locations, bird customization, etc--and left me with two activities and a fully skateable "park" on a desk. The cute little skatepark consists of kickers made of office supplies, ramps and quarter pipes with bendy straws as coping, and various other obstacles using Thrasher magazines. The controls are simple and the trick list is much more contained than other skateboarding sims, but watching a tiny bird push around on a tiny board before busting a hardflip into a front crooked nosegrind never gets old--no matter how limiting or restricting the demo is and how many times I performed the same eight or so tricks.

While there's a lot left to be desired in the demo, what's currently available had me itching for more. It'll be interesting to see everything SkateBird has to offer when it launches in 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. -- Jeremy Winslow

The Vale: Shadow Of The Crown | Xbox One, PC

Frankly, I've never played a game like The Vale: Shadow of the Crown before. Or, I guess I have--it's technically your run-of-the-mill fantasy RPG with towns to visit, side quests to fulfill, weapon and armor to buy, magic to learn, choices to make, and plenty of battles to be had. But the game flips a lot of that on its head by putting you in control of someone who's blind.

In The Vale, you have to navigate the world, fight enemies, and interact with NPCs all while looking at a nearly completely black screen. There are a few flashing lights on the screen, but they don't help you. It feels like they're just there to give your eyes something to look at. So you're forced to interact with the world via sound and touch--the former via headphones and the latter via controller rumble.

This makes tasks that are almost trivial in most RPGs, like sneaking past a group of enemies or navigating a busy market square, into daunting endeavors. But it's also a rather interesting and novel way to play a video game. The Vale might not be much to look at, but the demo is pretty fun to play and I'm intrigued to see how the gameplay will evolve throughout the full release, which I assume would crank up the difficulty after the tutorial. -- Jordan Ramée

Freshly Frosted | Xbox One, PC

Freshly Frosted brings together two of my favorite things, donuts and conveyor belts. The donut-factory based puzzle game is focused on making zen-inducing factory-lines that automatically make a variety of donuts. I love puzzle games that focus more on relaxing the brain than frustrating it, and Freshly Frosted is incredibly relaxing. It's very easy to adjust the factory lines whenever I make a mistake or miss a topping for my endless line of donuts.

I also appreciated how Freshly Frosted takes a very simple concept of a donut factory and continuously adds more and more steps or ideas to create a puzzle game that feels fresh throughout the demo. Having to feed three different types of donuts through all of the different toppings is a cute and fun experience that is definitely worth playing if you like puzzles and relaxation, or just need an excuse to order some donuts. -- James Carr

9 Monkeys Of Shaolin | Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Despite being just two and a half levels long--with the half being a tutorial introducing the controls and story--I found myself growing a little bored during the 9 Monkeys of Shaolin demo. Developed by Sobaka Studio, the Russian team behind the underrated isometric twin-stick brawler Redeemer, 9 Monkeys of Shaolin has this staunch air of familiarity to it: The story--in which Japanese pirates invade and pillage a remote Chinese country--echoes a similar set-up to Ghost of Tsushima and the control scheme is eerily reminiscent of (yet surprisingly simpler than) Redeemer's. Even the enemy types and environmental backgrounds are familiar and generic.

And yet, after finishing the short demo and re-watching the 2018 announcement trailer, I was still intrigued by the RPG elements and excited for what's to come.

9 Monkeys of Shaolin is a side-scrolling beat-em-up that put me in control of the fisherman Wei Cheng. The combat is simple yet fluid, with the controller's face buttons performing one of four actions: kicks, slashing strikes, thrusts, and dodges. Every action can be canceled into another--for example, the three different attack types can be combined together or immediately interrupted by a parry move--which allows me to remain aggressive and reactive when surrounded by multiple enemies. Though the arsenal was limited, the short demo seemingly belies the depth 9 Monkeys of Shaolin has buried within it. There's also online and offline co-operative play, which should make the combat even more chaotic during later levels, especially when you acquire new moves and better gear and magical spells.

With being a small, vertical slice of the final game, the 9 Monkeys of Shaolin demo is by no means indicative of how the game will look and play when it drops on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. But the demo does make the case that, if anything, 9 Monkeys of Shaolin will be an enjoyable action romp when played with a friend. -- Jeremy Winslow

from GameSpot - All Content https://ift.tt/30FMC9D

[operationrainfall]

As an old school gamer, I was instantly drawn to 99Vidas – Definitive Edition because of the art style. I knew less than nothing about it at the time, but I later found out it had previously released on PC, PS3, PS4 and even the Vita. Now it’s available on Switch with more content. For my purposes, I just wanted a simple, fun brawler to take me back to the nostalgic days of yore. The question is, did 99Vidas – Definitive Edition succeed in that goal?

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The basic premise of 99Vidas is about as serious as any game from the NES or SNES beat-em-up days. A magical artifact called 99Vidas, which can supposedly grant immortality, has been taken by an evil “mastermind” and it’s up the the Guardians of said artifact to get it back. As Guardians, they are empowered with elemental attributes to fight evil – fire, water, lightning and earth. While the dialogue is technically sound, the grammar in the game is pretty awkward. Which wouldn’t be an issue if there weren’t so many sections where the villains got gabby. It didn’t ruin the experience, but it made it feel significantly cheesier throughout.

Great! Now which one is punch again?

After watching the introductory sequence, you can select from a variety of modes to play. I went with Story, since that is usually the most pure mode in this genre. That was when things started to fall apart. You’re quickly presented with a tutorial to show you the ropes. I’m totally fine with that, except that this tutorial was pretty much useless. Reason being, though it does tell you to do specific sequences of punches and kick inputs to do combos and throws, it does not tell you which buttons control which inputs. So I was unsure if X, Y, A or B did a punch, kick or whatever. Further complicating the tutorial is that you’re not allowed to try out any of the moves during it. You’re merely a passive observer, and the tutorial goes on and on for a couple minutes. Once it’s over, you’re instantly thrust into action with no real idea what to do. I muddled through, but then I encountered another issue – the enemy AI.

That looks familiar…

My first attempt through 99Vidas I was trying Normal. That turned out to be a mistake, since the enemy AI is very, very aggressive. They will rush you, interrupting you with attack combos and throws to keep you off balance. Granted, you have lots of characters you can pick from, starting with the initial 4 Guardians and a couple others, and can unlock even more. The problem is that pretty much all the characters play the same, regardless of their stats. Sure, some are a bit faster or tankier, but they’re all practically as different as color swaps, despite the lovely pixel art. I had trouble getting through the first level with all 5 of my starting lives, so I decided to swallow my pride and give Izzy (or easy) mode a try.

Things definitely improved with Izzy mode. I had more breathing room from encroaching enemies and was able to enjoy the game more for the basic combat. Unfortunately, the word basic also applies to how the combat works. It’s very simple. You have a punch and a kick attack, a throw and a super meter. That’s pretty much it. You are able to chain moves together for simple 3-4 hit combos and in between stages you can buy upgrades to your combos, making them more potent and adding elemental attributes such as lightning strikes that stun foes. Though I appreciated the upgrades, especially since they are permanent regardless of the mode, they didn’t do enough to make the combat stand out. It’s very old school, and I really wanted a bit more nuance. For example, though super attacks are all good and well, I would have given my left arm for a block or dodge move. It got irritating when foes would interrupt my simple combos and force me into the corner. And though you can find weapons to use against enemies, they don’t last long and aren’t varied enough. It’s not reminiscent of classics like Final Fight where you have a shit ton of different weapons with different uses. Here it’s just a bat, knife and broken bottle, aside from healing items.

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I wish I could say the boss fights make up for it, but sadly they’re pretty much more of the same. Unlike regular enemies, they have a variety of attack patterns, but most all of them boil down to the following – avoid boss until they get winded, attack while you can, rinse and repeat. It’s often not clear how to avoid them properly though, so I ended up spending a lot of lives just inching through these battles. On the plus side, the designs for all the bosses was pretty spectacularly crazy, and totally original. Which brings us to the next section, the aesthetics.

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The one area I found the game excelled was with the design. Both the audio and visual components are great, exuding a lot of charm for the character designs. While they aren’t that different looking, they all have lots of personality. The color choice for the game was also pretty vibrant, and kept me from getting bored. By far my favorite sections were stages that played with the design, such as one that looks like a handrawn notebook and another with inverted colors. The music sounds like you would remember from beat-em-ups of yore, which is another mark in 99Vidas‘ favor. Unfortunately, looking and sounding good can only take you so far.

I should mention here that I only played 99Vidas – Definitive Edition on single player mode. Many of my issues with the combat and balance might be alleviated by playing with a friend or two. I should also say that there is a lot of content in the game for those who want to unlock everything. Just by beating Story mode once, I unlocked a new playable character, stage and mode. Even before that, there are options for local and online play, as well as modes like Remix, Arcade and Survival. If you’re an achievement hunter, there’s also plenty you can try to satisfy that itch. But unfortunately for myself, I just didn’t enjoy the game enough to bother. I don’t hate 99Vidas – Definitive Edition. I can respect what I think they were trying for here, but without several small fixes and improvements, it’s hard to recommend.

IMPRESSIONS: 99Vidas – Definitive Edition As an old school gamer, I was instantly drawn to 99Vidas - Definitive Edition because of the art style.

[nimuesbar-blog]

Nimue’s Bar Chapter One Transcript (A1:C1)

Chapter One: The Entirely Forgettable Girl

In the lobby of a rundown apartment complex, a man hands you your room key. The key is crooked and rusty, and is attached to a battered tag reading number 714. As you take it, you catch a whiff of freshly turned earth, and notice that the landlord's hands are covered in dirt.

In the middle of a twisting street, a bespectacled woman stares proudly at a small brick building, paintbrush in her hand. A crude sign by the door drips with orange paint. The woman turns, and the moonlight sparkles in her blue eyes, neither of which have pupils.

In a refuse-filled alley, a hulking, bearded young man vaults over a trashcan as gunshots rip through the air behind him. He ducks behind a dumpster, and a moment later a large gray tomcat slinks away from the scene, blending in with the shadows on the wall.

In an empty parking lot, a sobbing young woman dials number after number on her phone, searching for someone who remembers who she is. Her blue dress is soaked with blood, but she does not seem to notice. Even though she is bathed in moonlight, she casts no shadow on the asphalt around her.

Above all of these moments echoes a forceful, hypnotic aria, drawing you deeper into the heart of the city.

You're listening to Nimue's Bar.

There are many words that could be used to describe the outside of the bar located at the end of Eversion Row, but principal among them would be ugly. It is built out of chipped gray bricks, which are only barely visible beneath a several inch thick layer of graffiti. The graffiti itself has long since overtaken any sort of signage, leaving most patrons unsure as to what the name of the bar actually is. The roof looks as if it could fall in at any second, and noticeably sags in the center. Perhaps most striking is the door, which is made of beautiful polished wood and has an enormous knocker in the shape of a spider built into the front of it. Rather than improving the state of the building, the door looks out of place, as if it was stolen from somewhere much nicer and hastily screwed into the hinges of the bar's open frame. The broken screen door shoved in a nearby garbage bin does little to change this impression.

And yet, the windows of the bar are lit. People pass in and out of it near constantly, and raucous yelling can be heard from inside. Normally, it is difficult to pick out an individual conversation from the multitude. Tonight, however, one is clearly audible above the rest.

“All I'm saying is that the new laws are designed to harm those of us who go hybrid!”

“I know, but there's nothing we can do about it! The Circle isn't exactly known for being merciful.”

From her position behind the bar, Kaia begins cleaning the glass she's been polishing a little bit faster. She tries to block out the conversation of the two shifters, and focuses instead on the sharp antiseptic smell of the rag in her hand. Keeping the bar clean has become something of an obsession for her during these past few years. The lacquered wood surface of the bar is so smooth and dark that it seems to absorb the light that hits it. The bottles behind her are ordered from smallest to largest, and organized within sizes by color, within color by shape, and within shape by brand. At least, assuming Nimue had put things back in their correct places for once. At the moment, the only thing visibly out of order is the enormous gray tomcat curled up on the end of the bar, shedding steadily.

The scuffing of chairs and sound of yelling brings Kaia back to the moment. The two men arguing about shifter rights have gotten up from their table and are circling each other, fists raised. She glances at her watch and sighs. Just another ten minutes and Nimue would have had to deal with this, not her. With exaggerated slowness, she sets the glass she has been polishing down on the bar, loud enough that it makes an audible clink. Most of the patrons do not notice, but the regulars begin edging away from the fight and looking down, as if all of them have suddenly found very interesting things in their drinks. Kaia clears her throat as loudly as she can, but the two brawlers do not acknowledge her, instead continuing to shout threats at one another. Her throat tightens, and she takes a few quick breaths. She can do this.

“Gentlemen,” she says, as loudly as possible, doing her best to sound intimidating. Given the timbre of her voice, this is easier said than done. “There's no fighting in this establishment. Take it outside.” The entire bar looks up at her, save for the pair of angry men. They're barely three feet away, so she knows they can hear her. One of them slams his hand against a table, and Kaia notes that his fingernails have morphed into serrated yellow claws. Kaia looks imploringly at the gray tomcat, but naturally he is still fast sleep. This one is hers to handle. She makes a big show of rolling up her sleeves, and one the regulars actually dives for cover. She's not quite sure how to feel about that, but at least they're out of the way. “I warned you,” she says, raising an arm.

The first man isn't even looking at her when she grabs him by the hair and yanks him toward her. His head hits the bar with a sickening thud, leaving a sizable dent in the wood, and he crumples to the floor. The second manages to turn around, and Kaia hits him in the face as hard as she can. He goes down as well.

The bar is very quiet. All of the regulars go back to their business as if nothing has happened, but many of the other patrons stare openly at her, or begin eyeing the door. Kaia pretends not to notice, and goes back to polishing the glass she was working on. She knows that almost everything she just did was nothing more than theatrics; most shifters are strong enough to shrug off a shotgun blast, provided the shot isn't laced with silver, of course. The two here just happened to have had a lot to drink. She privately hopes her customers do not realize this; she has been trying hard lately to build up a reputation.

To her left, the tomcat's eyelids flick open and it jumps off the bar, transforming mid-leap into a hulking man. He is nearly seven feet tall and sports an enormous gray beard that obscures most of his face. He seems human enough, but his eyes are still the same bright yellow of the tomcat's. “Sorry, K,” he rumbles, scooping up the two brawlers in his massive arms. “Must have fallen asleep. Looks like you took care of things though.” “Just throw them out, Dirk,” she mutters, flipping him off and examining the dent in the bar. That would be coming out of her paycheck. More important to Kaia is that it looks awful, and utterly ruins the symmetry of the surface. She flashes a glare at Dirk. “You're the bouncer here, why don't you actually do your job next time? You know how much I hate doing that.”

Dirk takes her previous request entirely literally, kicking open the door and bodily flinging both of the men out into the night. “Maybe I should be the bartender, and you should be the bouncer,” he rumbles. “We've been doing this for years; maybe it's time to switch off. Everyone's seen a shifter before, we're not that scary. You, on the other hand...”

Kaia can feel herself redden. “Shut up, Dirk.”

Before Dirk can retort, the door to the bar opens, and a young woman saunters inside. She has thick glasses, and her hair is done up in a tidy bun. Neither of her eyes have pupils, but instead hold deep blue irises, the same color as deep water. “Hello, everyone!” A clamor goes up from the crowd, and several of them wave to her. She greets them all individually, enquiring about their jobs, relationships and families, before approaching the counter. “Hello, K, how's my favorite bartender? Have a good night?”

“Yeah, Nimue, it was just peachy,” Kaia says, allowing Nimue to take her place. “I'm going to bed.”

Nimue puts on an affected pout. “Leaving so soon? Come on, stay and have a drink with me!”

Kaia listens to the room for a moment, taking in the voices around her.

“Who was she?”

“Never seen her before, maybe Nimue just hired her. Not much of a looker, is she?”

“I wouldn't want to cross her.”

“Wait, cross who?”

It's nothing that Kaia hasn't heard a hundred times before, but it gets to her tonight. She glances over at the portrait of employees of the month. Nimue insisted on taking a picture of her best workers and hanging it on the wall to “improve morale,” despite the fact that Kaia and Dirk are the only employees. Kaia remembers being excited when she saw the photograph for the first time; Dirk smiling sheepishly with his arm slung around her, and her glaring at the camera in irritation. She thought that it captured both of their personalities perfectly.

Now, several weeks after being taken, Dirk is unchanged in the picture, but Kaia's profile has devolved into an unrecognizable blur, as if water was dripped on a very specific portion of the photograph. It happens in every photo she appears in, and just like her lack of a shadow it serves as a grim reminder of what she is.

Kaia shoves open the door, and does her best to ignore the open stares of some of their customers. “Sorry. I've got better things to do.”

[sad-ch1ld]

via RSI Comm-Link

DAY 627: THE JOURNEY ENDS

DAY 627: THE JOURNEY ENDS

2947.12.12 SET

by Sean Nazawa

The final part in a series following a class of recruits moving through the Navy’s training system.

A business executive has been abducted while in transit from a trade conference in the Xi’an Empire. Advocacy investigators were able to identify and track the kidnappers back to an abandoned comm relay. Intel suggested that they had hollowed out the interior, pressurized sections and transformed it into a small hideout. From a strategic perspective, the hideout was a nightmare: complete visibility against any approach, homemade proximity mines, and multiple bulkheads inside that could quickly be triggered to lock down and trap agents. The Advocacy has turned to the Navy for assistance in rescuing the hostage. A flight of Avengers were deployed to resolve the situation. They were currently keeping a wide berth of the relay, their trajectory insinuating that they were simply passing by.

A harrowing circumstance, for certain, as this type of scenario could easily prove deadly for everyone involved.

Thankfully, it’s not real.

This staged event is the final test that this group of Naval recruits will face before graduation. Although they don’t know this, their performance in this exercise will be reviewed by the Navy and even the Marines to determine where these recruits will be assigned. Intended to be as close to a real world operation as possible, the military have spared no expense in orchestrating the illusion.

The ‘outlaws’ are members of the Navy’s 208th Squadron, recently redeployed from active service on the Vanduul front, and many of them are enjoying this bit of entertainment. Bravo Flight leader Commander Harold Rifke spent the days before the exercise coming up with extensive backstories for the other pilots and capturing fake ransom demand vids that he’s been sending sporadically to Divisional Officer Edward Aino, the conductor of this simulated chaos, to forward on to the recruits.

I’m standing with Aino onboard a C&C ship, overseeing the entire wargame play out. Analysts and comms officers coordinate both sides of the engagement. The outlaw chatter is considerably more colorful; the 208th are really getting into their roles.

I watch the recruits’ ships disappear from the hologlobe. Under acting squadron leader Toulo Chalke’s orders, they’re breaking towards the comm relay. Aino listens intently as they relay their positions to each other. He shakes his head and takes a sip of sujin tea.

“Tell Rifke to hack their comms,” he yells over to the comms officer coordinating the outlaw channel, then glances at me. “They shouldn’t give away their positions.”

Over the course of the exercise Aino will continue to throw what he calls ‘surgical handicaps’ against the recruits. He wants them off-balance, to be the underdog.

I pick out the specific recruits among their brief clipped exchanges:

Callum Weaver is confidently adjusting the approach vectors of his flightmates. This scrawny kid from Aremis has really come into his own since beginning flight training and now acts as the number two for Chalke.

The acting squadron leader is a bit of a celebrity around the Forges. Even though his father is Beo Chalke, legendary sataball player for Jata SC, and his mother is Valina Razari, award-winning star of Tears of Time and Last Stand of Lidenvald (to name a few), to the recruits he’s just ‘Paladin.’ The nickname born from an incident that occurred three months ago where Chalke jumped in to help several recruits who were being bullied in the commissary.

“Sir, Rifke’s moved two flights to their position. He says they aren’t there.”

Aino grins.

Suddenly the outlaw comm channel explodes. The five ships that stayed back to guard the relay start calling out targets. The recruits drop the pretense and transition into combat updates. I hear Lyssa Vale, the brawler of the recruits, immediately mixing it up with the outlaw pilots.

Talkative on the comms, Vale is one of the most dedicated recruits I’ve seen. She is constantly pushing herself to a ridiculously high standard, putting hour after hour into sims, perpetually drilling herself and whoever she can loop into her training regimen. It seems to be paying off though; she’s ferocious in a fight.

The outlaws at the relay hold their ground as long as they can until virtual laser fire from the recruits finally take them down. With Vale providing cover, Weaver exits his ship and leads a pair of pilots into the relay to secure the hostage. They hope to finish their risky EVA before Rifke and two flights of outlaws race back.

The rest of the exercise is a single protracted brawl. The recruits do their best, but eventually the seasoned combat pilots of the 208th turn the tide. Weaver’s the last holdout, but he gets taken out just after he gets the hostage back to his ship.

Seven outlaws remain, the hostage is dead and the entire recruit squadron has been eliminated.

Two hours later, the recruits have gathered in Aino’s classroom for their debriefing. The room’s drenched in silence. Lyssa Vale is still wired from the op. Her leg bounces up and down as she glares ahead into space. Weaver aimlessly flips through his mobi. Even Chalke looks disappointed until he finally settles back in his seat and breaks the silence.

“Well, we almost had them.”

“Almost isn’t good enough,” Vale mutters.

“C’mon, Vale, you took out what, six? Seven?” Chalke seems intent on raising the spirits in the room.

The door suddenly opens and Aino strides into the room. He cuts a path to the front, powers up the system and loads all the captures of the exercise. He’s got everything: individual pilot cams, hologlobe recordings, comm chatter. For the next four hours, he walks them through the wargame, step by step. He grills them on each decision, why they made the choices they made, and what they would change in retrospect. There was no chastisements. No judgment on the actions of his recruits. It was purely objective analysis.

The recruits, however, seem locked in the loss.

Aino suddenly stops. He looks over the glum faces of the recruits in the room and shakes his head.

“You all need to grow the [redacted] up,” he mutters, tossing his pointer onto the desk.

That gets everyone’s attention. Aino draws out the pause and sits on the corner of his desk.

“Let me tell you all something. This job? The missions that you’ll fly? Any one of them can be a one-way ticket. It doesn’t matter if it’s the most routine patrol in the world, there’s always a chance that something could go wrong and one of you won’t come home. Now, I know you’re all sitting there, pissed off that you didn’t succeed. Let me let you in on a little secret: you weren’t supposed to. We did everything we could to stack the odds against you. Wilkes, remember your missile pod jam? I did that. Teague, your weapon overheating wasn’t an accident.”

The recruits exchange confused glances.

“You all saw failure, but I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw a squadron, working together, executing orders with precision and excellence. Chalke, you broke an engagement with an easy kill to drop flares and protect Kelso. Vale, you’d pick fights with pilots to get them away from teammates that were in trouble. Hell, feeding us the wrong position over your comms was genius. I thought we were gonna lose the op because of that.”

The recruits chuckle. Weaver gets some pats on the back. Aino smiles at them before he continues. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile at his recruits.

“You all did good. Yeah, you didn’t succeed. You lost people. But that’s the real lesson here. As a Navy pilot, you’re gonna be in these circumstances a lot. What we’re trying to do is condition you to act rationally in impossible situations. That doesn’t mean you’re always gonna make the right call. The real trick though, you gotta learn how to keep going. I know a lot of pilots, some of the finest pilots I ever flew with, who would rather be the one who gets punched out then have to go on without one of their squadron. You gotta be smarter than that. You gotta do your best. You got to look out not only the people beside you, but also for the civilians you’re protecting. Sometimes it’ll work out. Sometimes it won’t. Either way, you gotta pull yourself together and hit the next mission with a clear head. Now, I wish I could tell you how to do that, but you gotta figure that out for yourself.”

Aino studies the faces of the recruits.

“I’ve trained a lot of pilots, but I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen a class help each other as much as you do. I hope some of you get assigned together, but if you don’t, I hope you take that attitude to wherever you land because you all have something special.”

The room is silent for several moments. Someone gently knocks on the door.

“Come in.”

Rifke pokes his head in.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s all right, commander,” Aino says as he stands and grabs his pointer. “What can we do for you?”

“Well, sir,” Rifke opens the door and steps inside. Some of the other pilots from the 208th are outside. “We were wondering when you were done debriefing these Rorys, if we could treat them to some drinks. Vanduul don’t fight as hard as they did.”

Aino looks at his class. He gives a quick motion with his head for them to go. All the recruits slowly file out of the class to the cheers of the combat pilots outside.

Weaver lingers by the door, then turns back to Aino.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

Weaver smiles and leaves.

I wait as the door slowly clicks shut. Aino starts to quietly collect his things. I feel I have to say something.

“That was a nice speech, sir.”

“Was it?” Aino finishes packing up, then looks at me. “What I said should have terrified them. The other DOs like to say the Rubicon is the first moment they land on Kilian, but if you ask me, it never stops. Doing this job every day will challenge you to your core. The Navy has been my single greatest pride and has broken me in ways that even I can’t see.” Aino pauses. “But they’ll see. Everybody does.”

* * * * * * * * *

The class of 2947 graduation ceremony is held in the late summer on Macarthur and features over two thousand graduates in a variety of capacities. The flight academy alone is responsible for over two hundred. Aino surprised me and arranged for me to sit with the rest of the Divisional Officers for the ceremony.

I can see Arley Finn and Yen Hardigan, the two DOs from that first day on the tarmac that introduced me to the intense journey that Naval recruits faced. As I watch the proceedings commence, I can’t help but reflect on the variety of people I’d met on this incredible journey. All committed to the core tenets of the Navy and protect people like me.

The entire graduating class stands and repeats the same Oath that has been uttered by every Navy member for centuries:

Hear and witness that I do solemnly pledge, mind and body, that I will serve and protect the United Empire of Earth against all who would seek to harm it and its people.

That I will faithfully discharge the duties asked of me, and when called upon, I will defend the Empire with my life.

That I will be the sword and the shield. That I will not falter nor fail, but fight and win.

That I swear to do all in my power to act as a guardian of freedom and justice, as a champion of honor and valor, and as a true and proud member of the UEE Navy.

I finally spot Weaver, Chalke, Vale and the rest of my friends all clustered in the crowd, relishing each word of the Oath. And when they finish, their journey (and mine, I suppose) is over.

They are official members of the UEE Navy.

I talk briefly with Callum Weaver after graduation, just a brief conversation while he waits to receive his first posting, but I ask him about that first day on the freezing tarmac of Kilian. When confronted by DO Hardigan, Callum said that he was joining to “not feel helpless.”

“So,” I ask. “Do you still feel that way?”

This scrawny kid from Plantock River, only a couple hours from my house here on Aremis, who survived the horrors of the Vanduul attack, thinks about it for a few moments.

“I don’t think that feeling ever goes away … but now I know I’m not alone.”

[starcitizenprivateer]

via RSI Comm-Link

DAY 627: THE JOURNEY ENDS

DAY 627: THE JOURNEY ENDS

2947.12.12 SET

by Sean Nazawa

The final part in a series following a class of recruits moving through the Navy’s training system.

A business executive has been abducted while in transit from a trade conference in the Xi’an Empire. Advocacy investigators were able to identify and track the kidnappers back to an abandoned comm relay. Intel suggested that they had hollowed out the interior, pressurized sections and transformed it into a small hideout. From a strategic perspective, the hideout was a nightmare: complete visibility against any approach, homemade proximity mines, and multiple bulkheads inside that could quickly be triggered to lock down and trap agents. The Advocacy has turned to the Navy for assistance in rescuing the hostage. A flight of Avengers were deployed to resolve the situation. They were currently keeping a wide berth of the relay, their trajectory insinuating that they were simply passing by.

A harrowing circumstance, for certain, as this type of scenario could easily prove deadly for everyone involved.

Thankfully, it’s not real.

This staged event is the final test that this group of Naval recruits will face before graduation. Although they don’t know this, their performance in this exercise will be reviewed by the Navy and even the Marines to determine where these recruits will be assigned. Intended to be as close to a real world operation as possible, the military have spared no expense in orchestrating the illusion.

The ‘outlaws’ are members of the Navy’s 208th Squadron, recently redeployed from active service on the Vanduul front, and many of them are enjoying this bit of entertainment. Bravo Flight leader Commander Harold Rifke spent the days before the exercise coming up with extensive backstories for the other pilots and capturing fake ransom demand vids that he’s been sending sporadically to Divisional Officer Edward Aino, the conductor of this simulated chaos, to forward on to the recruits.

I’m standing with Aino onboard a C&C ship, overseeing the entire wargame play out. Analysts and comms officers coordinate both sides of the engagement. The outlaw chatter is considerably more colorful; the 208th are really getting into their roles.

I watch the recruits’ ships disappear from the hologlobe. Under acting squadron leader Toulo Chalke’s orders, they’re breaking towards the comm relay. Aino listens intently as they relay their positions to each other. He shakes his head and takes a sip of sujin tea.

“Tell Rifke to hack their comms,” he yells over to the comms officer coordinating the outlaw channel, then glances at me. “They shouldn’t give away their positions.”

Over the course of the exercise Aino will continue to throw what he calls ‘surgical handicaps’ against the recruits. He wants them off-balance, to be the underdog.

I pick out the specific recruits among their brief clipped exchanges:

Callum Weaver is confidently adjusting the approach vectors of his flightmates. This scrawny kid from Aremis has really come into his own since beginning flight training and now acts as the number two for Chalke.

The acting squadron leader is a bit of a celebrity around the Forges. Even though his father is Beo Chalke, legendary sataball player for Jata SC, and his mother is Valina Razari, award-winning star of Tears of Time and Last Stand of Lidenvald (to name a few), to the recruits he’s just ‘Paladin.’ The nickname born from an incident that occurred three months ago where Chalke jumped in to help several recruits who were being bullied in the commissary.

“Sir, Rifke’s moved two flights to their position. He says they aren’t there.”

Aino grins.

Suddenly the outlaw comm channel explodes. The five ships that stayed back to guard the relay start calling out targets. The recruits drop the pretense and transition into combat updates. I hear Lyssa Vale, the brawler of the recruits, immediately mixing it up with the outlaw pilots.

Talkative on the comms, Vale is one of the most dedicated recruits I’ve seen. She is constantly pushing herself to a ridiculously high standard, putting hour after hour into sims, perpetually drilling herself and whoever she can loop into her training regimen. It seems to be paying off though; she’s ferocious in a fight.

The outlaws at the relay hold their ground as long as they can until virtual laser fire from the recruits finally take them down. With Vale providing cover, Weaver exits his ship and leads a pair of pilots into the relay to secure the hostage. They hope to finish their risky EVA before Rifke and two flights of outlaws race back.

The rest of the exercise is a single protracted brawl. The recruits do their best, but eventually the seasoned combat pilots of the 208th turn the tide. Weaver’s the last holdout, but he gets taken out just after he gets the hostage back to his ship.

Seven outlaws remain, the hostage is dead and the entire recruit squadron has been eliminated.

Two hours later, the recruits have gathered in Aino’s classroom for their debriefing. The room’s drenched in silence. Lyssa Vale is still wired from the op. Her leg bounces up and down as she glares ahead into space. Weaver aimlessly flips through his mobi. Even Chalke looks disappointed until he finally settles back in his seat and breaks the silence.

“Well, we almost had them.”

“Almost isn’t good enough,” Vale mutters.

“C’mon, Vale, you took out what, six? Seven?” Chalke seems intent on raising the spirits in the room.

The door suddenly opens and Aino strides into the room. He cuts a path to the front, powers up the system and loads all the captures of the exercise. He’s got everything: individual pilot cams, hologlobe recordings, comm chatter. For the next four hours, he walks them through the wargame, step by step. He grills them on each decision, why they made the choices they made, and what they would change in retrospect. There was no chastisements. No judgment on the actions of his recruits. It was purely objective analysis.

The recruits, however, seem locked in the loss.

Aino suddenly stops. He looks over the glum faces of the recruits in the room and shakes his head.

“You all need to grow the [redacted] up,” he mutters, tossing his pointer onto the desk.

That gets everyone’s attention. Aino draws out the pause and sits on the corner of his desk.

“Let me tell you all something. This job? The missions that you’ll fly? Any one of them can be a one-way ticket. It doesn’t matter if it’s the most routine patrol in the world, there’s always a chance that something could go wrong and one of you won’t come home. Now, I know you’re all sitting there, pissed off that you didn’t succeed. Let me let you in on a little secret: you weren’t supposed to. We did everything we could to stack the odds against you. Wilkes, remember your missile pod jam? I did that. Teague, your weapon overheating wasn’t an accident.”

The recruits exchange confused glances.

“You all saw failure, but I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw a squadron, working together, executing orders with precision and excellence. Chalke, you broke an engagement with an easy kill to drop flares and protect Kelso. Vale, you’d pick fights with pilots to get them away from teammates that were in trouble. Hell, feeding us the wrong position over your comms was genius. I thought we were gonna lose the op because of that.”

The recruits chuckle. Weaver gets some pats on the back. Aino smiles at them before he continues. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile at his recruits.

“You all did good. Yeah, you didn’t succeed. You lost people. But that’s the real lesson here. As a Navy pilot, you’re gonna be in these circumstances a lot. What we’re trying to do is condition you to act rationally in impossible situations. That doesn’t mean you’re always gonna make the right call. The real trick though, you gotta learn how to keep going. I know a lot of pilots, some of the finest pilots I ever flew with, who would rather be the one who gets punched out then have to go on without one of their squadron. You gotta be smarter than that. You gotta do your best. You got to look out not only the people beside you, but also for the civilians you’re protecting. Sometimes it’ll work out. Sometimes it won’t. Either way, you gotta pull yourself together and hit the next mission with a clear head. Now, I wish I could tell you how to do that, but you gotta figure that out for yourself.”

Aino studies the faces of the recruits.

“I’ve trained a lot of pilots, but I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen a class help each other as much as you do. I hope some of you get assigned together, but if you don’t, I hope you take that attitude to wherever you land because you all have something special.”

The room is silent for several moments. Someone gently knocks on the door.

“Come in.”

Rifke pokes his head in.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s all right, commander,” Aino says as he stands and grabs his pointer. “What can we do for you?”

“Well, sir,” Rifke opens the door and steps inside. Some of the other pilots from the 208th are outside. “We were wondering when you were done debriefing these Rorys, if we could treat them to some drinks. Vanduul don’t fight as hard as they did.”

Aino looks at his class. He gives a quick motion with his head for them to go. All the recruits slowly file out of the class to the cheers of the combat pilots outside.

Weaver lingers by the door, then turns back to Aino.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

Weaver smiles and leaves.

I wait as the door slowly clicks shut. Aino starts to quietly collect his things. I feel I have to say something.

“That was a nice speech, sir.”

“Was it?” Aino finishes packing up, then looks at me. “What I said should have terrified them. The other DOs like to say the Rubicon is the first moment they land on Kilian, but if you ask me, it never stops. Doing this job every day will challenge you to your core. The Navy has been my single greatest pride and has broken me in ways that even I can’t see.” Aino pauses. “But they’ll see. Everybody does.”

* * * * * * * * *

The class of 2947 graduation ceremony is held in the late summer on Macarthur and features over two thousand graduates in a variety of capacities. The flight academy alone is responsible for over two hundred. Aino surprised me and arranged for me to sit with the rest of the Divisional Officers for the ceremony.

I can see Arley Finn and Yen Hardigan, the two DOs from that first day on the tarmac that introduced me to the intense journey that Naval recruits faced. As I watch the proceedings commence, I can’t help but reflect on the variety of people I’d met on this incredible journey. All committed to the core tenets of the Navy and protect people like me.

The entire graduating class stands and repeats the same Oath that has been uttered by every Navy member for centuries:

Hear and witness that I do solemnly pledge, mind and body, that I will serve and protect the United Empire of Earth against all who would seek to harm it and its people.

That I will faithfully discharge the duties asked of me, and when called upon, I will defend the Empire with my life.

That I will be the sword and the shield. That I will not falter nor fail, but fight and win.

That I swear to do all in my power to act as a guardian of freedom and justice, as a champion of honor and valor, and as a true and proud member of the UEE Navy.

I finally spot Weaver, Chalke, Vale and the rest of my friends all clustered in the crowd, relishing each word of the Oath. And when they finish, their journey (and mine, I suppose) is over.

They are official members of the UEE Navy.

I talk briefly with Callum Weaver after graduation, just a brief conversation while he waits to receive his first posting, but I ask him about that first day on the freezing tarmac of Kilian. When confronted by DO Hardigan, Callum said that he was joining to “not feel helpless.”

“So,” I ask. “Do you still feel that way?”

This scrawny kid from Plantock River, only a couple hours from my house here on Aremis, who survived the horrors of the Vanduul attack, thinks about it for a few moments.

“I don’t think that feeling ever goes away … but now I know I’m not alone.”

[recentanimenews]

Etrian Odyssey Nexus Is A Great Game That Might Destroy You

A few hours into Etrian Odyssey Nexus, I figured that I'd gotten the hang of things. The game does a pretty good job of explaining its ins and outs, and you never feel overwhelmed by the complications of its mechanics. I've never been a huge fan of old school dungeon crawlers (though I did spend a month trying to convince myself that I was definitely a Shin Megami Tensei kind of dude,) but Etrian Odyssey Nexus won me over with its colorful adventurers, simple world building, and lavish customization options.

  And then a big monster killed me, and it was Game Over. Wait, what? That came out of nowhere. There must have been some mistake. It's too early in the game for this to be happening. I'm supposed to be in the "Feeling Awesome About Myself And My Abilities" stage, not in the "Oh God Why Can't I Retreat?" stage. So I grinded a little bit and bought some new weapons and armor, and then I went back to face that same monster, a large, killer panda thing. And I whooped it. I remember pacing around my kitchen with my 3DS and throwing one of my hands in the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club.

  And then I met another killer panda across the map and it was Game Over again. Because Etrian Odyssey Nexus is less about winning all your battles and more about choosing them. 

    The final Etrian Odyssey game for the Nintendo 3DS, Nexus is love letter to fans of the series, a Greatest Hits collection of the franchise, and a rad starting point for newcomers. I know that those first two things seem to contrast against the third one, but you'll see what I mean when you gaze upon the nineteen classes of adventurers that you can choose from. In RPGs, building your team can be less of a fun activity and more of something that's based entirely around utility and functionality. You need a long range guy, a magic guy, a healer, a brawler, etc. It's goes from being about choosing the characters that YOU want to just knocking stuff off a checklist so that the game doesn't pummel you into submission later.

  Nexus combines the best of these two things. Obviously, you want to create a balanced team, but the customization options are deep and interesting enough that you're not really thinking about turning it into some sort of bland equation. And in the end, how you build your characters and use them ends up becoming much more important than just picking out the right classes based on your existing knowledge of how RPGs are supposed to work. As I mentioned, the turn-based battle systems can wreck all of your dreams if you expect a linear system of "I beat this labyrinth with my perfect team, so now I can easily walk into this next labyrinth" progression.

      Instead, as time went on, and as I mapped out the various dungeons, I began to choose a specific plan of attack or lack thereof. In this labyrinth session, I'd grind some and raise my levels against smaller enemies. And then I'd leave, head back to the inn, heal myself, and my next session would be about collecting all the little treasures and discovering all the events hidden in the various nooks of the map. Then I'd go back in and try to take on some of the larger enemies. Then I'd start plowing through the side missions available. Taking on every aspect of each dungeon in one swoop would leave me bedraggled and get my whole party killed. Giving each dungeon run a specific purpose added way more hours to my play time, but also left me significantly less dead.

  I've gone this far in the review without mentioning a single thing about the story and I've done that for a specific reason: It didn't really matter to me. Obviously the game has a narrative, one about the Princess Persephone inviting adventurers to come check out the world of Lemuria and the mythical Yggdrasil Tree, but as you make your way through the dungeons, crafting your own heroes and strategies, the plot falls further and further into the background. The NPC characters that you meet can be sort of important, but when it comes to an emotional impact, they have very little. They're mostly around to exclaim about the cool stuff that you're about to explore or warn you about upcoming dangers. 

    You might get more out of the plot and the people that inhabit the world of Nexus than I did. Heck, it would be hard to get less out of it. But in my opinion, it's mostly just window dressing. Etrian Odyssey Nexus makes no attempt to hide the fact that its draw and main focus is the obsessive dungeon crawling. If you can remember the names of any of the NPCs in the fourth second after meeting them, you're either awesome or a liar. 

  In short, I can't recommend Etrian Odyssey Nexus to everyone. However, I can recommend it to everyone that's ever thought about trying an Etrian Odyssey game before and passed the series up. I remember looking at the covers of the games many times and thinking "Eh, not now," and honestly, I kind of wish that I'd given the series a chance, if only so that I could've seen it grow into the game that Nexus is. So if you're in the mood for an RPG that you'll obsess over and one that absolutely refuses to hold your hand, give Etrian Odyssey Nexus for the Nintendo 3DS a try. Better late than never, ya know?

   REVIEW ROUNDUP:

+ Plentiful amounts of character customization options breathe new life into the standard "pick a balanced team" RPG mechanic

+ Exploring labyrinths and crafting maps rarely gets old

+ You never really have to worry about losing track of the plot or the NPCs

+ Forces you to play smarter if you want to win

- If you're looking for an enthralling story, pick literally any other game

- There are some weird difficulty curves that come without warning

  Are you an Etrian Odyssey fan? Will Nexus be your first attempt at diving into the dungeon-crawling genre? Let us know in the comments!

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  Daniel Dockery is a writer and editor at Crunchyroll. He, like you, has a great Twitter. 

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  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com