It's no secret that I'm a big fan of trivia. I've been watching Jeopardy every night for well over a decade now. I'm always up for a game of Trivial Pursuit. My coworkers and I spend our lunch breaks every day on the website Random Trivia Generator. I'm just a big fan of knowing stuff, and learning stuff. And as such, I can't help but want to play trivia related video games. Unfortunately, there are so few that I'd consider great.
In 2020, Microids released a new version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? for Xbox One. Obviously, there's been lots of video game takes on this popular game show over the years. Heck, I can remember playing one on the original Playstation way back in the day. But more importantly, I remember watching the original run of the show in the late 90s and early 2000s. I'll tell you what, it's hard to think of the gameshow without thinking of Regis. But alas, he's nowhere to be found in this new game. But how would I rate the game on its own merits? Well, it's a mixed bag. The good news is that it excels where it really matters. The questions are good, and the flow feels legit. Like, the first several questions are super easy, and lull you into a sense of calm. Then things pick up from there accordingly. It works well. Most importantly, the question pool is deep. There's apparently two thousand or so questions for each region (you can actually choose to play the game in America or England, amongst others), so things stay fresh. In the course of hours, I never saw a repeat question. This is really big, as I've seen other similar games – such as the Xbox One version of Jeopardy – mess this up. On top of all that, you can use in-game currency to unlock extra "expert" questions from various categories ranging form World Food to Manga and Superheroes. If nothing else, this gives you a reason to keep plugging away, and even to walk away from the game with money banked instead of swinging wildly for the million even when you're not confident. The overall presentation is fine with its recreation of the television set and its iconic music. However the voice acting is awful. I mean, it often sounds like the lines are being read by a robot at the bottom of a well. Add to that the short list of recorded lines. There's eight avatars to choose from I believe, and each has only a handful of lines. You're going to hear some repetitive robotic sentences over and over again. Julie is the default, so I've just rolled with her. She's mechanical and apparently her interest is "social," whatever that means. But the generic host of the game is the worst, and you will absolutely grow to hate being asked if it's your final answer after every single question. But, games like these are played for their trivia, and the trivia is good. I'll give it that. It's a perfectly serviceable trivia game as far as the questions are concerned. But as a video game experience, it leaves a fair amount to be desired. Which sadly is sort of par for the course when it comes to this genre.
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There's a scene in High Fidelity I've always loved. Rob's being interviewed, and the journalist asks him what his favorite album is and he's just confused at the question. Like, favorite album for the club? For chilling out? What? It's too vague a question. When you're a casual fan of music, I guess you can easily have a favorite album. When you're obsessed, how do you even answer that?
I guess I've always felt the same way about games. Invariably, when people in my life (relatives, co-workers, etc) find out I'm a gamer they ask my favorite game. But like... how do you even answer that? My favorite game for relaxing? Or for co-op? Or like, my favorite game as a kid, or now? But I came to a conclusion this week. If I really distill that question into its simplest form - my favorite game of all time. The game I've loved the longest, and played the longest, in the most versions. The game that I'd be cool with taking to that imaginary desert island? The game that could hold up to the most replays without getting old? Dudes, my favorite game of all time must be Tetris. Since receiving Tetris as a pack-in with my Game Boy in 1989, I've played so many variations that I can't even remember them all. NES, DOS, Super Nintendo, Game Boy Color, Gamecube, Dreamcast, DS, and I'm certain I'm leaving things out. Tetris never gets old to me. In 2019 we saw the release of Tetris 99 - a game that I called the game I never knew I needed. It went on to be my most played game of the year. So did I really need another version of Tetris when Tetris Effect was released? Maybe not. But I've been so into streaming Xbox games to my Surface Go that I can't seem to resist picking up new Xbox games anymore. I mean, this would be more Tetris, but on a 10" screen instead of the Switch's - what? 5" screen? - while listening to the TV. So yeah, when it dropped on sale for $25 instead of $40, it was a no brainer. Tetris Effect was developed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi. If you don't know, this is the dude that made Rez. And Child Of Eden. And Lumines. That last one is really important to me. Lumines is a pretty huge puzzle game to me. One of the few that I'd put up there in the top tier. Like, nothing tops Tetris. But Lumines and Puzzle Fighter, those games come damn close. But Tetris Effect is amazing. I say this as someone who's put like 200 hours into Tetris Effect in the past couple years. The thing about Tetris Effect is that it's basic Tetris at its core, but it's all about the experience and about the audio and visual stimulants. You've got crazy zen-like visuals going on like outer space stuff and underwater stuff, and then you've got pulsing trance music and it's all just like an insane trip. If you've played Rez or Lumines, you already know. Beyond that you've got a hugely fully featured array of options. There's a single player campaign "Journey Mode," in three different difficulties. I knocked out all three in a couple nights - no bragging. Then you've got various single player challenges like the standard Marathon or Chill Mode or much, much crazier challenges. Then there's some intense multiplayer modes to delve into. Maybe most importantly, there's a dearth of record-keeping. And I'm a guy who loves stats. I keep spreadsheet on everything. I love data. So here we are. I'm telling you that I'm biased. I love Tetris. It's my favorite game. And I've played a lot of these games. Heck, in this generation alone I've picked up Puyo Puyo Tetris, Tetris 99 and now this. And y'know what? This is the most fully featured version I've ever played. It's like the ultimate Tetris... until the next one comes out? Who knows! But I'm sure I'll check out the next one and sink way too many hours into it too. I've been wanting to play Genshin Impact for a couple of years now. It had been really hyped upon release. And it caught my eye. I mean, it's a free to play anime JRPG that pretty obviously apes its looks from Breath Of The Wild. What's not to be intrigued by? But the problem was I had no good way to play it. Although I was a big PS3 guy, I didn't upgrade to a PS4. And Genshin Impact wasn't on Xbox. I did actually try to play the mobile port, but it required a beefy tablet and didn't have controller support. So now that I've got a PS5, naturally I wanted to finally give this game a go.
Recently I had tried to play Persona 5 - another game that had been on my To Play list for years. And as much as I was impressed by it, I also lamented the fact that as a dad to a young child, I'm often too tired to get involved in heavily story-based games lately. The first time I fired up Genshin Impact it was a very different situation. This is not a story heavy game. I mean, there's some story. But this is a JRPG that is mostly about exploring and going on to the next quest. It looks and feels a lot like Breath Of The Wild, except the action feels faster. All that I can tell you is that I started the game on a Sunday night around 8:30 and before I knew it, it was 11:30. Genshin Impact is that immediately gratifying. You're running around, killing stuff, heading toward the next waypoint, finding loot, leveling up. It's just immensely gratifying. It has the same constant stream of dopamine hits that you might find in something like Diablo. But instead, it's an action JRPG that honestly feels like it could have been a full fledged $60 retail game instead of a free-to-play thing. Of course, being a free-to-play game means that there's some level of microtransactions and gacha and all that. And people are going to hate that. I get it. But when it comes to games like this, my metric is always really simple. I just ask myself, can I play this game and enjoy it without spending a cent? And the thing is this, I stick to that goal. I mean I genuinely play these kinds of games without spending money and the fun only lasts until I hit some kind of pay-wall. The beauty of Genshin Impact is that I just keep going and never find the need to open my wallet. Which is perfect, because I won't. And I'm almost baffled how this game exists. Obviously there are enough players out there spending serious money to keep the constant updates coming. But I don't know why they need to. This game is incredible for free. The pacing is what makes this all work. There's a story full of main quests that keeps you going. And when you inevitably hit a spot where you need to level up to open up the next story quest, there's a huge backlog of side-quests and exploring to be done, all of which earns you more XP to keep going. On top of that, it feels like there's near constant upgrades going on. I'm almost always opening a menu to upgrade character stats, weapons and skills. There's an insane amount of playable characters to meet and recruit. I have to be straight up here, I think I legit love this game. It hooks me the same way that something like Slay The Spire does. While they are completely different games in execution, they have the same ability to make me think about them throughout the day. Genshin Impact is one of those rare games that has me legitimately looking forward to just sitting down and diving back in, even if I'm not quite sure what my goal is for the night. Should I continue the story? Should I do some side quests? Should I grind for XP? Should I just pick a direction and open up the gigantic map? Every option is viable and I love the wide open possibilities of Genshin Impact. And then sort of sums up the appeal of this game for me. I'm constantly digging deeper. I'm constantly finding something else I want to google. I'm thinking about what I want to accomplish the next time I play the game even when I'm not playing it. There's also constant tweaks to be made. Which is to say that there's a steady stream of new characters, new skills, new weapons and so on. Given that you don't play as a single character, but rather a party of four that you can swap between on the fly, there's always the allure of mixing up the party composition to best suit your playstyle. Lately I've been rolling with Lumine as my main up-and-close fighter and augmenting with an archer for long range attacks and two different spellcasters depending on the situation. But there are so many characters available to unlock that there's always some new loadout to mess around with. I'm not going to say that Genshin Impact is better than Breath Of The Wild. Obviously that's subjective. But I can say that I feel way more sucked into this game than the other. Maybe it's the quests or the characters or the fact that the world just feels more alive. I can't really say. But I mean, there's no breakable weapons, and Genshin Impact even managed to make a cooking-based quest feel fresh and fun. So who knows. What I do know is that I really enjoy the flow of the game loop. There's so many quests to head off into. Then there's upgrades to be done. At times, it feels like basically anything you do can offer up XP, which makes you feel like anything you want to do is actually progress. Your characters level up, their weapons level up, and then there's the main adventure rank, which effects which quests are available, the rank of enemies within the world, and the rarity of items you might find. It's all just so compelling. Hitting level 15 felt like an important milestone early on, as it opened up way more upgrade abilities for characters and weapons. After hours in the double-digits, I still feel like I'm very early in this game. And yet, I'm loving every moment. Genshin Impact is a top-tier time waster game. The sort of game I can see myself leaving installed for months or years and revisiting often between other games. In that regard, it sort of belongs in the same tier as some of my most beloved recent-ish games like Slay The Spire or Tetris Effect. They say that before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That's the premise of Arise: A Simple Story. Of course, the "simple story" here is a human life. And while we are all complex beings with twists and turns in our own stories, when you boil it down, we probably all share some common milestones – both big and small, that sort of define the plot points of our own stories.
Arise is at its heart a 3D platformer – a genre I tend to not care much for. However, the game's main gimmick is the ability to rewind and fast forward time a brief bit. Given that you're basically in limbo, living out the major memories of your life before slipping away, the ability to play with time makes sense. It also makes for more of a puzzle-platformer than your average Mario 64 clone. In some ways it reminded me of Journey in its arty lean, but it also felt way more "game" than just an experience. In some ways, Arise feels a bit like "Midlife Crisis: The Game." And here I am, about to turn 41 in a few months. So there's that. But yeah, the game certainly hit me in the feels at times. Both good and bad. The first couple of stages revolve around simple and lighthearted memories. You relive a first kiss with the metaphor of snow melting come spring, and the simple pleasure of flying a kite as a child utilizing some beautiful imagery of sunflowers. Then... your boyhood crush's family moves away, and the game steers into heartbreak for your first experience of loss. In this stage the point was driven home by the landscape literally being split apart under your feet. Then things take a darker turn in tone. The stage called "Alone" was legitimately creepy at times, with shadowy figures swarming around you. Keep in mind, this is a game devoid of combat. It's all about solving the environmental puzzles to march forward in time. I think this chapter was about the scariness of striking out in the world on your own. Then there was "Romance," in which you're constantly spinning and flying, sometimes with dreamy images of the full moon behind you. It's actually a bit trippy, but sweet. Moving on, was "Flower," which was filled with egg/sperm imagery and seriously looked like the stage took place in a womb. Love and everything that comes with it certainly makes sense for defining moments in ones' life. And then we're greeted by a total gut-punch. The next chapter is about the death of your newborn child. I really didn't see that one coming. And with a two-year old running around my house, it actually knocked the metaphorical wind out of me. Just as brutal was the follow up chapter "Solace," in which you must deal with your wife's grief. This one had some amazing metaphorical imagery, and definitely pushes the old "games as art" argument forward. The stage was all about putting the literal world back together. At times you were repairing the land beneath your feet, repairing an actual rift between you and your wife. It's heavy stuff. And then it gets worse. "Alone" is a chapter whose title should have been a spoiler for me, but again, I was saddened by realizing it was about losing your wife. Game-wise, this by far the most frustrating chapter with its classic "ice level" mechanics of sliding around on ice, and easily dropping into frozen water. I had to replay parts of this level many times. Finally, the game ends with "Hope." Given that we all know the ending of the game before it even starts (you die), it actually had a happy ending that I won't spoil here but instead just say that it did briefly warm my little heart. Alone: A Simple Story was a cool and well made little indie game. While its themes have certainly been done before in other games, and while other games have hit me harder on an emotional level, I was impressed with it. I think my biggest surprise was that instead of leaning so hard into the emotion and story, the developers did actually put work into making this a game that's fun to play. Sure it was frustrating at times, but it was overall a fun and unique experience. My biggest complaint would be the lack of replayability. I mean, the story is the story and I feel like I've seen it and don't need to see it again. The gameplay was solid, but not so compelling that I'd want to subject myself to it again. In that sense, it feels like a genuinely good but not great game. Something I'm glad I played, and definitely something worth talking about. But not quite great enough to feel the need to replay. I'm a longtime fan of card games. Not real cardboard card games, though. No. I've never really had a group of friends interested enough in those to get me interested. Once, when I was in junior high a friend of mine spent an afternoon trying to get me to understand how to play Magic: The Gathering. It didn't catch on with me. But over the past couple decades I've been easily sucked into video game card games. Big time. Hearthstone was the biggest time-suck for me. When that game came out, I played it nightly on either my tablet or PC at the time. This went on for... well, years. I got into all the expansions and everything. So for me, most card games will be compared against Hearthstone. So with that bouncing off point, I'll address Slay The Spire - a game that I've probably dumped somewhere in the range of 60 hours into over the past year. It's not really like Hearthstone at all. But what it DOES kind of remind me of is those single-player expansions for Hearthstone. A single player card game seems kind of shallow in this day and age. But somehow, Slay The Spire makes it super compelling. Like other deck-builders, you pick a class which limits your pool of cards. But what makes it unique is a couple of things... 1. Slay The Spire's map is randomly generated. And so you must choose your route wisely. You'll want to battle grunts to gain cards. You'll want to battle elites to gain bigger perks. You'll want to get to shops to buy (or remove) cards, but you'll need enough money to do so when you get there. You MAY want to hit up ?'s depending on what you're looking for. 2. You build your deck in real time, and then it's gone forever when you're run is over. This makes the card game feel like a total roguelike. You can come up with an idea of how you want your deck to work, but you need to find those cards. Or more importantly, you need to ADAPT to the cards you do find. All of this makes Slay The Spire feel different than your usual deck builder. There's no long game to think about here. Instead, you need to make wise decisions in the now, and you need to be flexible. It's a combination that really works. I've actually beaten the game at least a half-dozen times. Always with the Silent. All my successful runs came from using a strategy I like to call "poison-shield." Basically, I stock up ONLY on cards that either (A) inflict poison, or (B) give me shield. If I get a chance to ditch a card, I get rid of standard attacks. Then it's all about putting up my shield, and inflicting as much poison as I can each round. It's death by a thousand cuts. And it's super satisfying when those multipliers start increasing and you're watching 100's of points of poison compound upon a boss. For the past couple weeks I've been trying to beat the game as the Ironclad. I can make it to the last boss, but can never quite succeed. Here I've been trying to build up shield, and then dole out damage via strength buffs or inflicted damage based on shield strength. It's fun - not AS fun as the Silent. But fun. The point is that what is superficially a simple single player experience, is actually pretty deep, and very addicting. I've unlocked all the cards for those first two classes, and have dabbled with the third (a robot, who I don't care for as much) and the fourth (a newly released ninja who switches between attack and defense buffs, and is kind of fun). On the surface, Slay The Spire seems like the kind of game I'd have played for maybe a dozen hours, beat once, and moved on from. But instead, it's something that continues to suck me back in. Great game, this one. UPDATE: Today is my last day of summer vacation, 2022. I've played Slay The Spire for 193 hours on Xbox. And I just beat The Heart. I feel like a champ. It's a rare achievement apparently with only 2-3% of players pulling it off. I've been trying like hell for weeks, myself.
The funny thing is I didn't even feel like I had a winning deck. I did it on Ascension I, and battled a fair amount of Elites in Acts 1 and 2. So that probably helped, because the relics I grabbed did help me out a bit. But it wasn't an ideal deck, nor ideal relics (those would all be poison and block in my book). I managed to slim down my deck quite a bit. I only grabbed really good blocks, and as much poison as I could. I had a couple of Caltrops and a Thorns relic. And somehow I managed to grab three copies of Noxious Fumes which was nice. But I had no cards to multiply my poison. I had no way to conserve block between turns. I don't know, it just didn't feel like an ideal enough run. Certainly I've done runs with a better loadout. So I was in total shock when I approached the Heart with only like 30 health remaining and somehow watched his health tick down rapidly between turns. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe I've just put in so much time with this game that I could just play with a higher IQ. I don't know. But I felt like a total boss, and it was an awesome way to end my summer vacation. Slay The Spire was released for consoles in 2019, and will go down as one of my favorite games of the 2010's, no doubt. The Samurai Shodown series has been around since 1993. And I'm fairly certain that the last game I played was the original. I've certainly been more than a casual SNK since the early 90s. But the Samurai Shodown series never really grabbed me. I was always more of a King Of The Fighters guys personally.
Of course SNK has had a long and rocky history themselves. In the 90s they were the cutting edge. The MVS was a technological marvel in the arcades. I can remember plopping many quarters into various Fatal Fury, Art Of Fighting, and yes, Samurai Shodown games back then and being blown away at the presentation. And the AES was the stuff of legend on the playground. In sixth grade, I can remember it being something to lust after. It was a console that everyone talked about, but nobody could actually afford. I always thought the original Samurai Shodown looked cool. But I never loved it. It was definitely a showpiece in the arcades. But when I finally played a home port of it (Sega CD), I wasn't really impressed. And I can't even exactly say why. In fairness, I've never been entirely keen on weapons based fighting games. I mean, the Soul Calibur series is fine, I guess. But I can't say I've really delved much deeper into the sub-genre. To me, Street Fighter II was the major entrypoint into fighting games. And I guess as such, I've always been drawn to games that build off that template. So The King Of Fighters makes perfect sense. But Samurai Shodown felt weird. But back to SNK. As a publisher and developer, SNK was riding high through the 90s. And then the millennium hit and things went astray. Even though they were delivering some amazing home ports on new hardware (namely Dreamcast and PS2), bankruptcy hit in 2001. Things got messy, Sammy got involved, and then the company was relaunched as SNK Playmore. I don't know what the general consensus was of this era, but to me it seemed pretty solid. Playmore focused on putting out lots of legacy collections of older SNK games, making them highly affordable. And eventually we even got some cool new games like The King Of The Fighters XIII, which was legitimately incredible. Then things got weird. In 2012, Playmore released the Neo Geo X, which was sort of like SNK's take on the Switch (but five years before the Switch). It was a handheld that played cartridge collections of old SNK games. The handheld even had a clicky analog stick like on the Neo Geo Pocket. And it could be docked and played on a TV using replica NG arcade sticks. The problem was that the hardware was straight up awful. I actually bought one of the NGX arcade sticks to use via USB on other hardware and sold it after one use. It was that disappointing. Things got quiet after that until another 2015 acquisition. This third iteration of SNK (no longer Playmore) finally released a new game in 2016's The King Of The Fighters XIV, which got pretty good reviews. They followed that up with SNK Heroines: Tag Team Franzy in 2018 and it was fairly terrible in execution. And a year later they delivered a reboot of Samurai Shodown to much acclaim. Unlike The King Of The Fighters XII and XIII, all of these new games used a new engine and visual style. It's best described as polygonal 2D. Which sounds bad, as it probably brings up memories of things like Castlevania: Mirror Of Fate. But honestly, it looks good. Given all the weird history, I can't help but root for SNK and want to see what these new games are like. I mean, sadly I even pre-ordered SNK Heroines because I hoped it would be a worthy sequel to SNK Gals Fighters. It wasn't, but I was still glad I gave it a shot because I wanted to vote with my wallet as they say for new SNK games instead of a steady stream of re-releases. Yes, the legacy of SNK is important. But I want to continue to see new games in these series. And it looks like that's happening given that we've now been teased with a Garou sequel in the future. So I've said, I'm more a fan of SNK than of Samurai Shodown itself. But I do appreciate the small-ish roster in Samurai Shodown 2019. The base game has just sixteen characters to choose from. I like that. Don't get me wrong, the huge rosters of games like the KOF Ultimate Match games can be fun. But there's something sort of simple and perfect about the slim rosters of games like Garou: Mark Of The Wolves that just screams 'balance.' Nakoruru is probably my go to here. And that makes sense. Outside of this series, she's appeared in The King Of The Fighters 2002, Capcom Vs SNK 2, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum and other games that I've enjoyed. So she's familiar to me. Charlotte is kind of badass to me, although her fencing style feels like a weird juxtaposition against so many samurai. And then Hanzo Hattori is cool, because ninjas are cool. Though he's got much more weight to him than someone like Nakoruru who's so light and fast and more my style. There are also several seasons of new characters to add to the game, some of which are guests from other series. This is interesting because yeah, you get Last Blade cameos. But you also get guests from Ubisoft games and Arc System Works games. It's pretty weird. I haven't bought any of those additions, nor do I see myself doing so because I'm just not into this game enough to do so. But I like that SNK is doing this. Especially the Arc Systems stuff, because in many ways, Arc Systems feels like a more punk rock version of SNK. Also of note here is the blood. My god, the blood. It's not Mortal Kombat levels of gore, but it is more realistic and less campy which kind of makes it feel more extreme. There's something really unsettling about seeing your fighter drenched in blood after a victory that feels equally awesome and gross. But I mean, these fighters are literally hitting each other with swords. Of course things would get visceral. Matches in Samurai Shodown are short. But also very tense and strategic. Even though it's not quite the reality, hitting someone with a sword makes you feel like a fight could be over before it even starts. Depending on the range of the weapon, though, some matches seem like they end in seconds because some big hits can chew through HP really quickly. Because of that, fights are played out in a less fast and aggressive cadence that I'm used to. It almost turns into a more calculated ballet bloodbath. And I appreciate that, even if I'm not good at it. With unlimited continues, anyone can run through the story mode rather quickly. Of course any good fighting game is made to be played against human opponents. I'm just not nearly versed in this game enough to even attempt such things. All these years later, the Samurai Shodown is much like the original game it's named after. It's great to look at and it's well made and it's well balanced. It's also designed for patient and strategic gameplay better suited for high end fighting gamers. And I just happen to be a lower end fighting gamer. When Bloodstained was originally announced, it was a super big deal to me. Castlevania has long been one of my favorite video game franchises. And I'm talking about this going way back to when I was under ten years old. I've always loved the series. The original NES trilogy was just a huge part of my childhood. Castlevania: The Adventure was one of my first Game Boy games. These were super formative years for me as a gamer. And so, Castlevania is very much in my DNA.
It should come as no real surprise that Symphony Of The Night is a favorite of mine. I mean, even gamers who aren't big Castlevania fans tend to love that one. It – along with Super Metroid – pretty much defined the Metroidvania genre. It's a hallmark if ever there was one. Of course other games followed. But the Castlevania series became very splintered as the generations went on. If you were a console gamer, then the series probably came off as sort of dour. I mean, Castlevania 64? Or those PS2/Xbox games like Legacy Of Darkness? They were cool, I guess. But Castlevania didn't really belong in the 3D realm. So instead the true follow-ups to Symphony Of The Night were found on portable hardware. Maybe it was sort of a secret hidden in plain sight, but the GBA and DS had a super solid run of new Castlevania games that carried the 2D torch. These were great games, and they were all pumped out in quick succession. And things kept going in this manner, but Konami started getting... weird and/or lazy. Castlevania was once again reborn, this time under the Lords Of Banner subtitle. On console, these were two games that borrowed heavily from God Of War. In fairness, they were pretty damn good 3D games. They just weren't your typical Castlevania games. And on the portable front there was one new 2.5D game called – wait for it – Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow – Mirror Of Fate, which was released on the 3DS (later ported to consoles). This one was developed by Mercury Steam who would go on to work on Metroid: Samus Returns and Metroid Dread – totally bringing the Metroidvania thing full circle. But here's the thing; Mirror Of Fate was pretty underwhelming. In the almost decade that’s followed, we've still yet to see Konami continue what was at a time one of their most lucrative series. But Igarashi who had helmed Symphony Of The Night decided, "hey! Why don't I just make some new Castlevania games and call them something else?" Which brings us (finally) to Bloodstained. Ritual Of The Night was a Kickstarter success. Enough so that it even received an 8-bit prequel ahead of release, in the form of Curse Of The Moon. That game is awesome by the way, but I've already written about it. I pre-ordered Ritual Of The Night as soon as it was possible to do so. And by the time Best Buy sent me my game and fancy steel case for it, my daughter had been born. She was about two weeks old when it finally released. Yup. I was a brand new dad, with a newborn who cried all day, and barely slept at night. How on earth could I be expected to digest a new game like this? Simple. I couldn't. So I played a few hours of Ritual Of The Night when I could, and then I declared it an awesome game that I'd fine more time to dig deeper into once my daughter slept through the night. Then I slept myself for like six months straight and moved on to other games when I woke up. Here we are, almost three years later and I'm now giving Ritual Of The Night another spin. Possibly, finally giving it the attention it originally deserved from me. Which is funny, because at this point there's even been a second Curse Of The Moon, making Bloodstained an honest-to-goodness franchise In the meantime. These spiritual successors by original creators can go either way. Not too long ago I tried to play Mighty No 9, which was another big Kickstarter success – and it was a terrible Mega Man game. Likewise, I delved into Phoenix Point last year only to find that it's got way more technical issues than any XCOM game I've ever played. But luckily, Ritual Of The Night feels like a real successor to Symphony Of The Night. And while Merriam isn't a Belmont, it's hard not to see her as a relative of Shanoa from Order Of Ecclesia, which is a good thing. Order Of Ecclesia (originally released on DS in 2008) is hard not to mention here. Although the easy point of reference for this game is Symphony Of The Night because it's the one that everyone knows and loves, really Ritual Of The Night feels like an Order Of Ecclesia sequel. I mean, make no mistake – the Shard system in this game, in which you learn to augmented skills by picking up "shards" and attaching them to you is totally just the Glyph system from Ecclesia with a new name. And I'm fine with this. Look, Symphony Of The Night is a stone cold classic. But ignoring all the GBA/DS games would be a disservice to the series. All of those games were part of the journey that got us to Bloodstained. So in a lot of ways, it feels good to see this carried over. At least from a Castlevania fan's perspective. Ritual Of The Night opens up on a ship. And it's a great little tutorial level that introduces you to most of the major aspects of the game that you'll have to understand. Be it the Shard system or equipping gear, or utilizing the map, or whatever. Basically, most stuff works as it does in Symphony Of The Night and beyond, right down to save rooms. Early on I found weapons that immensely changed the feel of the game. I was tempted to switch to a whip when I found it just to have that genuine Belmont feel, but truth be told, I was so into the Alucard style short sword by that point that it was tough to let it go. By the way, that whole ship section that works as the game's tutorial is awesome. It's a great setting; it throws everything at you that you need to learn to get a grip on the game; and it ends with an excellent boss battle. Once you make your way to the castle, a lot more opens up to you. There's a shop where you can buy or sell things. There's a guy that lets you craft items or prepare foods or upgrade weapons. You can even cash in or upgrade shards. In this light, the game is actually somewhat deeper than even Ecclesia. In the sort of peaceful hub area, you'll also find NPC's to give you side-quests. While this is certainly a modern take on a rather old school formula, these bits do make it feel a bit more current. But some things never change. The fact that save rooms are still a thing in this game means that death does have some actual penalties. If you can't keep track of save rooms, then you'll most definitely be losing some progress should you fall. And you will fall. You'll lose whatever bits of the castle you've opened up since last save, as well as your experience and loot. Sometimes this is no big deal, but if it's been a while since you were able to save and you accidentally walk into a boss battle you weren't quite leveled up enough for, well, be prepared to swear at the realization that you just lost a bunch of your time and hard work. What a horrible night to have a curse, indeed! Having now been able to spend a much larger chunk of time with Ritual Of The Night, I can say one thing for certain: this game captures the essence of what made Symphony Of The Night so compelling to begin with. Which is high praise! That original PS1 game is not just a masterpiece in my own Belmont-loving eyes, but in the collective consciousness of gamers as a whole. If you were a fan of Symphony then you need to play this game. If you were a fan of the follow-up portable games, then you need to play this game even more. Ritual Of The Night modernizes things to a certain degree, but it stays in its lane when it's important to do so. And by doing so, we have an honest to goodness 2D Castlevania game that draws hard from the Metroidvania pool of things. It does so with both experience and reverence. If you love exploring the castle in little bits, or experimenting with weapons or skills or accessories, or fighting intimidating bosses... This was made for you. I've still yet to beat the game myself. But I'm okay with that. That's not really what I care about. What I care about is that there's a new game that stands proudly next to Symphony Of The Night that I can come back to and pick up my save and keep plowing through in years to come, much the same way that I've revisited Symphony Of The Night at various points in my life over the years passed. When I say that I love the Wonder Boy series, it's really an understatement. As an amateur game historian, I've had a long fascination with the Wonder Boy series and everything tangentially associated with it. I love the mainline series that Westone developed for 8 and 16-bit Sega systems. I love the Monster World sub-series. I love the Adventure Island spin-offs that Hudson created. I love the kinda sorta semi-sequel that became Whomp Em. I love the modern HD remakes, and I even love Shantae which is most certainly a spiritual successor to Monster World IV.
I love Wonder Boy so much that the original game was the first video game I ever introduced my daughter to. And it means a lot to me that she even gets what's so cool about this series. The HG101 Patreon postcard for Monster World IV is displayed in her room (her choice, not mine) and she proudly tells people that "Asha is Wonder Boy's friend" when they ask about it. Of course the Shantae games filled a gap. The last official game in the series was Monster World in 1994. From there, the series went dormant until the remakes began with Wonder Boy Returns in 2016. And then in 2018 we got an honest to goodness new Wonder Boy game with Monster Boy And The Cursed Kingdom. I wasn't just a little bit excited about it. The development and buzz seemed to take forever. The game originally started as a sequel to a mobile game by a French developer, and had nothing to do with the Wonder Boy series, outside of maybe being an homage. Eventually, the developer Game Atelier connected with Wonder Boy creator Ryuichi Nishizawa and things started to happen. I can't remember the timeline, but I know that I saw screens of "Monster Boy And The Wizard Of Booze" (working title) at least a couple years before the final game was released. It seems fitting that Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap was remade in 2017, though. Coincidentally, it was another French company, Lizardcube who did that one. They were also known for their excellent Streets Of Rage 4 sequel later. At any rate, of all the Wonder Boy games, The Dragon's Trap is the one that Monster Boy feels closest to. If anything, it feels like a sequel to the Dragon's Trap remake. Let's take a second to walk through the mainline Wonder Boy games and make sense of some of it. The original Wonder Boy (1986) is an arcade platformer. This one was cut from the same mold as Super Mario Bros, and went on to inform the entirety of the Adventure Island series. Then Wonder Boy In Monster Land (1987) was more of a side scrolling RPG - think Zelda II or Castlevania II. Wonder Boy In Monster World (1991) and Monster World IV (1994) closely follow this trend, and make up the "Monster World" sub-set. Strangely, there were two Wonder Boy III games. The first was Monster Lair (1988) which was actually kind of a shmup thing, and to so kind of the black sheep of the series. Meanwhile, The Dragon's Trap (1989) was a Metroidvania that did harken back to the Monster World games, but also used changing forms into various animals as huge part of the game. The Dragon's Trap was a brilliant game. Originally released on the Sega Master System, it should have been a huge hit. But so should the Master System have been. In my opinion, that was a brilliant console, and The Dragon's Trap was one of its killer apps. And strangely, the Wonder Boy games that followed on the Genesis abandoned the whole character-swapping mechanic in favor of going back to the Monster Land formula. For many years, the closest analog we had was some of the Shantae games. But the remake of Dragon's Trap really reminded why that original game was so amazing, but now in HD. Monster Boy In The Cursed Kingdom picks up where The Dragon's Trap remake left us. And it's full of references to the series that came before it. Characters you turn into are the eye-patched pig who used to be a shopkeeper in Wonder Boy games, a snake not unlike the ones you've fought many times in the series, along with a lion and a frog. If you played and loved The Dragon's Trap, you'll be right at home here. Pepelogoo, your flying friend from Monster World IV shows up early in this one and makes some other cameos to help you out. The heroes from the first four Wonder Boy games are also idolized in stained glass on a temple here. Throughout your adventure, there's no shortage of throwbacks. But nostalgia means nothing if the game isn't good. I've seen countless attempts at reboots that fell flat. Double Dragon IV comes to mind. And luckily I can say that Monster Boy And The Cursed Kingdom succeeds on every level. Look, I don't know who Game Atelier is or where they came from, but this is a team that totally gets Wonder Boy. It's a team that clearly grew up loving these games and understands why they're so beloved by a small but passionate fanbase. I don't care which Wonder Boy game is your favorite, there's something here for you if you love this series. The platforming is tight, the swapping between characters is interesting, the puzzles are challenging but fair, the RPG elements work, the Metroidvania map design is great. This is a game that took a long time to simmer and perfect. But in fairness, resurrecting a decades old property that has been both adored and misunderstood is a lofty proposition. Monster Boy And The Cursed Kingdom is a fitting new entry in this series. It is worthy of its inclusion in the pantheon that is Wonder Boy. It's also stunningly gorgeous and a good starting point for anyone that missed out on these games and wants to dive in in the modern era. Most importantly, it's a game that gives me hope as a fan that even though Wonder Boy went quiet for so many years, maybe, just maybe this could be the start of a whole new series of games. One can only dream. I have to be honest, I've never been a big fan of cowboy movies. Sure, I think the work that Morricone did some amazing work scoring the old Spaghetti Westerns. But I was never all that keen on watching the movies. I can't really explain why. Historically, the Wild West is certainly an interesting time period. But to sit down and watch a western? I was just never that into the genre. The closest I've gotten have been sort of genre-adjacent fare. I mean, Back To The Future III was fun. And I thought The Hateful Eight was fantastic as a sort of The Thing x Cowboy mashup run through the old Tarantino filter. And Westworld is awesome, sure. But I guess Westworld is a good example - I'm way more interested in something with a sci-fi spin than I am in something that's just a realistically grounded western.
I'm definitely rambling here. But listen, I am a fan of Rockstar. Vice City pretty much sold me on 3D open worlds. And Grand Theft Auto V was a total masterpiece in my book. One that I spent so many hours exploring aimlessly before finally plowing through the story. So a few years back I decided I'd actually play Red Dead Redemption, but the only way I could really make it interesting to me was to just pretend it was Westworld: The Game and just explore it with that in mind. I had fun, for a while. But I never really bothered with the story. I did play a lot of poker, though. At any rate, Red Dead Redemption II came out a few years ago now, and has gone down as one of the highest rated games of the Xbox One generation. And while details are now leaking about Grand Theft Auto VI, I figured now was as good a time as any to delve into this one for myself. It was on sale for a decent price in the Xbox Summer Sale, so why not? Starting up the game was a positive experience. The opening chapter is very linear and high on story. And I must say it was fairly riveting. You play as a member of a gang that's been sort of forced to the fringes of society. Everything felt realistic. Everything looked fantastic (oh, that snow!), and the score and ambient sounds are engrossing. I actually felt like, y'know what? I might stick with this game. There was definitely some cool beats throughout the story. That first cabin raid? It's gripping. Or when you first get into Valentine and see the impressiveness of the living town. I mean everything from getting into saloon brawls to watching old movies, it's good stuff. Even the way that decisions seem to matter to the story is cool. Like, I had the option to help a guy who was hanging off a cliff. If I let him die, I'm a bad guy. If I let him live, then I'm a good guy, but he could make things tough for me later, maybe. While I'm considering my options, he falls to his death. I took too long. It added realism. But again, I'm not really into old westerns. The setting - while interesting - is just not exactly the kind of game that's going to suck me in. So not long after I got into Chapter 2 I decided to just cut loose and start exploring the map for myself. It was time to make my own fun. And I did. Except for when the game started fighting against me. Now it's no secret that one of my favorite activities in Grand Theft Auto V was hunting for UFO sightings. So once I found out that UFO's existed in Red Dead Redemption II, I was on my way. My first stop was an old shack that had a creepy scene inside. Apparently, it belonged to some kind of doomsday cult or something, and all their skeletons were still there. After reading a note the leader left behind that references visitors coming on the second hour, I knew I had to come back at 2AM. I did so, and found myself back in that creepy shack as it was surrounded by a green glow. I ran outside and caught only a glimpse of the craft exiting the sky. It was cool, though. Apparently the second sighting took place on a mountain referenced in that same cultist note. So I made my trek out to that mountain, scaled it, and found the weird little rock formation that let me know I was in the right place. I tried numerous times to get the UFO to show up at 2AM again, but nothing. After my third attempt, I felt like I was wasting my time. Beyond that, the balance of my time was spent just smelling the digital roses. There's no doubt that this is a beautiful open world. The whole nature aspect is gorgeous. The wildlife is believable. The sounds are so lulling - especially the chirping birds. Also, I struggled with some actual technical and systemic points of the game. I suppose that things like having to retrieve your bag on your horse to change weapons is realistic, but is it necessary? For me it feels like an annoying waste of my (precious) time. Remembering to change clothes as weather changes throughout regions also just feels like it's an annoying mechanic borrowed from Breath Of The Wild. The sluggish pace at which you walk is also a personal pet peeve. But for me, something that felt like it was always teetering on game-breaking was the lighting. I cannot tell you how much time I spent in menus dicking around with HDR settings and googling pointers on how to lighten things up. But it just wasn't making things better, and over time I started to often dread nightfall. But this isn't Castlevania II. There was no curse... I just couldn't see what the hell was happening! Thus, I'm feeling a weird disconnect with this game. I'm not even really sure how to explain it. Imagine playing a game that you can recognize is great in most every way. The story seems great. Take for example the train hijacking mission that really kept me on my toes. But overall, I just don't feel all that compelled to stick with the missions because as I stated up above, the wild west just isn't a setting that sucks me in. The open world is beautiful and awe inspiring, but to spend time exploring aimlessly also means coming to terms with my complaints about the slow walking and the inventory management and overly dark nighttime exteriors. There are parts of this game that are genuinely great - lots of them in fact. But there's also enough annoyances that weren't present in Grand Theft Auto V that just stops Red Dead Redemption II from being the same kind of joyful virtual vacation that I had hoped for. There's been a lot of talk about Dead Cells lately. Some of it was actually oddly peripheral due to some controversy surrounding plagiarism in reviews. But no press is bad press as they say. And so people were talking about Dead Cells. And then more and more they were talking about how damn good this game was. I don't know. I felt a bit burned out on these kinds of one-man passion projects lately. Celeste was a pretty big disappointment for me this year, so I was reluctant.
But man all that talk was saying some things that I found intriguing. I know that the whole Rogue-like thing is slightly played out these days. But it does still appeal to me at times - mostly because of that year or so I spent obsessed with Spelunky. I guess there's a part of me that's always looking for "another Spelunky" just so I won't go back to playing Spelunky again. So you take that element and mash it up with a game that looks and plays a bit like Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night and now we're cooking with fire. I kind of HAD to try this game. I'll tell you this... I expected to LIKE Dead Cells. I figured I'd have some fun with it and that'd be that. I did not expect to LOVE Dead Cells. But I do totally love Dead Cells. The best way to describe it is that my initial impression was sort of "oh, this game seems pretty good." And then I looked at the clock and realized that two hours had FLOWN by in what felt like twenty or thirty minutes. It's exactly that kind of game that does the "just one more game" thing so solidly that you forget how many one-more-games you've played. Progression works well in Dead Cells. Your early runs will be very difficult, but slowly you'll start to unlock some global perks that will stick with you in later runs, making the experience a bit easier to get through. You might unlock the ability to keep some of your gold at death, or the ability to hold extra potions that refill your life. There's also weapon blueprints scattered around that will eventually give you the option to unlock those weapons in game. This game definitely handles its Rogue-like inspirations quite masterfully. Those weapons and perks eventually become sort of second-nature to how you'll approach them. For instance I've never bothered to unlock a shield because it makes no sense to my play style. I prefer using a lot of projectiles and just keeping the best sword or knives I can ready for up close action. If I can help it, I'll always have a wolf trap and some kind of projectile turret that I can put down as secondary weapons as well. It makes progressing further down a level easy when you can drop this combo to help clear out the floor below you. But that's just me. There's also scrolls you will find throughout levels that will give you extra damage or health perks based on the color of your weapons. Oh, and there's mutations (temporary perks) you can add between rounds. OH! And there's also modifiers you can buy for weapons. To put it lightly: the game offers a shitload of depth that becomes further evident the more time you spend with it. Soon enough I found myself not just trying to make it out of a level, but rather hoping to explore every inch in an attempt to find the best gear and kill enemies to grind for cells (which is how you unlock all those other perks). And now I'm finding that runs that would take me ten minutes at first, and then maybe twenty after a while, are now taking me upwards of an hour. As such, it's clear that I'm making progress (and possibly getting better). It feels good. It's also extremely exciting to find something new in a run - maybe it's some hidden area or maybe it's finally seeing a new level for the first time. I've played a lot of Dead Cells since it was released, and I don't see myself being 'done' with it any time soon. This is just one of those kinds of games that you'll want to keep chipping away at for months. I'm not obsessed the way that I was with Spelunky - but that's a rarity anyway. What I can say is that Dead Cells is easily in my top tier games released this year. And I really wasn't expecting that at all. |
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