There's a couple of things that bring me great joy in the gaming world. For one thing, I love short game experiences. Y'know, games that don't suck up weeks or months of my time. I say this as someone who's about 100 hours into Slay The Spire right now. So to paraphrase Pete Davidson, sometimes you just really need a short-ass game. And another thing I love is the stealth sequel, or whatever terminology you want to lose. I love spiritual successors or loose shared universes.
I bring all this up because of The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit, which is a brisk two-hour experience that is ostensibly just Life Is Strange 1.5. For the record, this one has nothing to do with the first game, but I guess it's sort of a weird quasi-prequel to Life Is Strange 2. Unlike the modern adventure games we're used to playing - Life Is Strange included, this one doesn't have episodes. Instead, the whole game is basically just one short episode. But you do get a lot of good stuff out of it. The main character is Chris, a ten year old (I think) who has lost his mother to a car accident. Actually, wait - could this car accident be the same one that involved Max's dad in the first game? I hadn't even considered that until just now. But I'm not sure. Anyway, Chris' mom had been an artist turned kindergarten teacher who raised him on comic books. As such, Chris uses comic books and superheroes as a coping mechanism. He fantasizes about being Captain Spirit, a character he invented and it's both relatable and sweet. Meanwhile, Chris' dad is falling apart. Through the game's story you learn that his dad was also a teacher who lost his job thanks to alcoholism. A lot of little details are touched upon and learned throughout. The game starts with dad making breakfast on his third beer, so there's that. There's also some bruises on Chris' arm that the dad is concerned about people asking about. So... there's also that. It's an uncomfortable story to say the least. But it also seems nuanced. Like, there are old pictures and stories about when the mom was still alive and it seems like the family (dad included) were loving and great. There's also moments where the dad is really trying to hold it together and be a good dad and connect with Chris. I think that even though the dad is clearly the villain here, the developers have chosen to point out that he's not inherently evil, but rather suffering and that alcohol has turned him to the dark side. In that sense it fits the supervillain archetype. Which is to say, he's got his origin story. As a side note, there are times when the Life Is Strange series reminds me of the Unbreakable trilogy. They're rooted in a total realism, but one where comic books make sense. Heroes and villains are created in this world. They have their weaknesses and powers. The story of Captain Spirit is basically just a snowy Saturday morning in December. Chris' dad wants to watch a basketball game before they go out to buy a Christmas tree. Chris hopes his dad stays sober long enough to do so. Your tasks are mix of grounded and fantastic. You'll do chores and make your superhero costume and create fantastic villains like a snowman and talk to your toys and dig through photos of your dead mom... it's all a weird blur of really real feelings, all filtered through the eyes of a ten year old who's trying to escape it all, or at least make sense of it all. You're also trying to keep your dad from going off the deep end. Some of the puzzles are a little too opaque however. Can anyone really unlock dad's phone without resorting to Google? I couldn't! But overall, Captain Spirit has a wonderful charm to it. The feeling of being a child on a Saturday with an imagination capable of turning mundane tasks into an MCU epic is great. But on the other hand, there are some truly soul-crushing themes just below the surface here. Imagine coping with your mom's death and your dad isn't really there for you? Or is hurting you? Or blames you for her death? It's quite heavy stuff. The ending is mostly satisfying. I don't want to spoil things exactly, but even when the dad is trying to be there for Chris, he's really not. And ultimately, Chris needs to be rescued, doesn't he? At any rate it's a single-sitting adventure game with some cool imagery and some very sad topics to explore. It's also free, so there's really no reason not to check it out unless you think that the tone will be too much to handle. Although I will say that as sad as the undertones are, there's a lot of innocent fantastic fun to help you through it. I'll probably never play this one again, but I'm glad I did play it once.
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Castlevania is one of my absolute favorite series of all time, and Bloodstained is the new Castlevania series in everything but name. The developer, the music, the look, the feel. It's all classic Castlevania. And Curse Of The Moon is the intended 'prequel' of the series. It purposefully mimics the original 8-bit CV games - a trilogy very near and dear to my heart. Luckily, unlike say, what Mighty No 9 did with Mega Man, this game pulls off the feat flawlessly.
Curse Of The Moon looks absolutely stunning. I'd say that of the original trilogy, this game leans hardest into Castlevania III, which is cool with me. I've always felt that one was underrated. Most notably, Curse Of The Moon has you recruit three other characters that you can swap between - each with their own unique skill set. Also, even though the levels are pretty much linear, there are alternate paths through them, some of which are only accessible to certain characters. I'm bad with names. But the main dude is your standard Belmont type. His main weapon is a little dagger thing sort of like when you start out in Symphony Of The Night. But he can get some whip sub-weapons. Then there's the girl who's my favorite to play as with her higher jump, longer range whip, and slide ability. There's an alchemist who feels less interesting to play as offensively, but has a cool little forcefield thing he can use. And then there's a vampire dude who... well, you've played Castlevania III. You get it. Oh, real quick: the music is amazing. So good. Classic Castlevania soundtrack right here. Love it. The first level starts out as a throwback to the first level of the original Castlevania and feels so authentic. Then you're on a train, and it concludes with a boss fight against a big train thing. His patterns are really easy to figure out and he's mostly a pushover. Though I should note that the inclusion of these last sort of desperation attacks the bosses throw at you are interesting. The second stage is sort of an icy level and you fight a big turtle thing at the end. Third stage feels like some kind of labyrinth and the boss fight is against... a big pile of money or something? It's weird. But unique. The fourth stage concludes with a fight against a giant two-headed serpent that takes up most of the screen. It's amazing. I love this boss fight. And I loved the game enough to see it through to the end. Which is something I've had a tough time doing with classic 'Vanias at times due to their intense difficulties. Well, I mean, I beat the normal mode. There's still Nightmare Mode and all that. But hey, that just means replayability for later. Curse Of The Moon is such a fantastic "new Castlevania" game. It really nails the feel of those early 8-bit entries. And I thought that the four characters were really unique and interesting enough that it made swapping between them actually feel like it mattered in how a level was approached. There's a boss that's pretty clearly just Elizabeth Bathory, and that part was AWESOME. The last level that had the swarm of bats chasing you was pretty tricky at times. Tense at least. And the last boss was interesting and challenging enough that it took me a few tries to figure out what I even needed to be doing. And I LOVE the art design of all the bosses in this game. Super impressive stuff. It was just announced that Ritual Of The Night finally has a release date for next month, and I'm pumped. I don't even know why I started playing Paladins. I think it was because I saw an announcement that it had been released on Xbox One so it was fresh in my mind again. I had forgotten all about it since it had been in Early Access for quite a while, and I normally shy away from playing "unfinished games." But I don't know. Coming to consoles meant - to me at least - that the game must be pretty finished. Yeah? So I figured I might as well check it out. If nothing else I thought maybe if it was decent then I could convince all my friends who didn't want to spend money on Overwatch to at least play this free alternative.
A couple of spoilers:
Apparently Hi-Rez were the ones that made Smite. I don't know anything about Smite. So while some of these characters may be familiar to Smite players, they were all new to me. But that's fine. It meant I had no preconceptions going in. The game gives you a handful of freebies to get started with and there's many more to unlock. A single payment of $20 will do it all at once (at least while the game is still in Early Access) but I've had a far better time slowly unlocking the roster one by one using the in-game currency I've earned from just playing the damn thing. At its most basic, Paladins really does feel very Overwatch with its bright colors, diverse roster, and various objectives. But there are some defining differences - the most obvious being the card system. As you complete various daily quests or level up you'll receive loot boxes; and in these loot boxes you'll get cards. Basically, you build various loadouts of five-cards that will augment each character. And you can choose which loadout to use for each character at the start of a round. So you can think of these as perks, right? And it's a hugely interesting way to make each character personalized even down to deciding which loadout makes sense given the characters that your teammates have chosen. The card system gets even deeper thanks to the in-match credits. Just staying alive will slowly grant you credits. But more importantly, you'll get way more credits if you play well. Killing enemies? Sure. But you're also encouraged to - get this - pay attention to the objectives. So getting on the payload will instantly start throwing more credits at you. Healing teammates will do the same. And so on. What the credits can do is then further buff the cards that you've got in your current loadout. This feature can make for some interesting turn-arounds by allowing you to further tweak your character in-game. It also makes Paladins feel way closer to a first person MOBA than Overwatch really does. Paladins has done a great job in encouraging me to try new characters. Actually it was able to kick me in the ass more than Overwatch ever managed to. In all my hours with Overwatch, there has been a hugely disproportionate number of them spent with just a small handful of characters (Hi, D.Va!). On the flip, Paladins doesn't open up Competitive play to you until you've leveled a whopping TWELVE characters up to level four. This creates a nice incentive to get experimental. And it pushed me to keep buying new characters, and trying classes I didn't think I'd like. Which is a good thing as it resulted in me having favorites (Fernando) that I wouldn't have thought to even attempt on my own. It took me 40 hours to get twelve characters leveled up enough to unlock the competitive mode. And chipping away at each of those characters was actually a lot of fun and kept me feeling like I was making progress while offering up some real variety. Of course actually playing competitive mode was a whole other thing. That's serious business! But in a good way. I only played a few rounds to see what it was like. It took much longer to get in a ranked match, and picking characters is something you do in turns. And one team cannot have a character that another team has already picked. Plus each team gets one ban. So it certainly helps to have knowledge of a larger share of the roster, and their various positions. The few ranked games I played were far from toxic. But they were indeed serious. And that's not exactly what I'm looking for right now. So I'm mostly giving up Paladins for the time being, calling it 40 well spent hours of fun anyway. There is one exception that's kept me coming back. Remember those stubborn friends I talked about? Well, one has decided to at least try Paladins so I've been playing some matches with him sporadically. Do I see Paladins as some kind of Overwatch killer? Nah. But is it super fun? Is it something that's unique enough to complement Overwatch as a palate cleanser? Is it perhaps possible as a free gateway to Overwatch? Yes, yes and yes. ...but wait, there's more! After I wrote that last paragraph I've spent about a month now playing nothing but Paladins. I've unlocked all the characters. I pretty much only play competitive mode. And I love this game. It's still not perfect - and to be fair, it's still in Early Access - but I love it. So maybe you should have just jumped to this final paragraph huh? Oh well. I've honestly never had any interest in the God Of War series. It launched back in 2005 on PS2 and my eyes completely glossed over. I mean, it just looked like a pretty vapid action series that was inspired heavily by Greek mythology. It seemed like a dumb action game based on The Clash Of The Titans. I was into way more hipster games at the time. And honestly, I guess I still am. But it's hard to resist all the critical praise that the 2018 reboot has gotten. And it's also technically "free" to me via Playstation Plus, so I figured eh, why not give it a shot?
One thing I do hate is reboots that reuse a title, though. I hate that I have to say I'm talking about God Of War (2018) and not God Of War (2005), but whatever. The series would have probably stayed off my radar had it not been for the 2022 Game Awards. Yes, I'm one of those weird guys who actually watches the Game Awards. Every year since launch, I've made it an actual event. It's dumb, sure. And honestly, it's more of a reason to show trailers than a proper awards show. But some people watch the Grammys and some people watch the Oscars. I've never suffered through either, but the Game Awards actually goes on my calendar every year. And who can forget Christopher Judge accepting the award for God Of War Ragnarok? It's a long moment that has lived in infamy. At the time, I remember my wife and I just baffled that his acceptance speech was going on for so long. And yet, looking back there was something almost endearing about it all. It ate up a bunch of time, and the 2023 show was pretty much ruined because the producers were so serious about preventing such long speeches. But I mean, this guy was seriously excited about his award and he just lost focus and rambled for what felt like an eternity. It was kind of what these award shows should be about to begin with and it was also just a beautiful mess. So I started up God Of War (2018... sigh) and I really didn't know what to expect. Again, I'm a guy who's never played a single game in this series. And honestly, I didn't expect such an emotional story. For those that don't know, the mythology has shifted from Greek to Norse and the whole thing starts with Kratos and his son ("boy") preparing Kratos' wife's deceased body for cremation. It's heavy stuff. And right out of the gate, the story tackles some deep stuff like dealing with grief and anger. Burning her body was heavy enough, but right after that Kratos teaches his son how to hunt. The duo tracks a deer and then Boy has to reluctantly euthanize him and Kratos struggles to console him. It's all a bit much. But it's nuanced, and I wasn't expecting any of this. The tone immediately shifts into a big ridiculous battle with another god and the whole thing gets drawn out and overboard in an almost Dragon Ball Z kind of way, just filtered through Norse mythology. My point is, there's all these crazy shifts in tone and yet the whole thing feels grounded and well... fun. One minute you're dealing with some very real feelings about death and life, and the next you're punching a dude through a mountain. And thus, this is the flow of the game. And if I'm being honest, I think I'm a bit hard on God Of War, even when I'm enjoying it. I find it impossible to not compare it to Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) because that game came out only a year earlier and was also a Playstation exclusive and is also an open world game with lush landscapes. Although the two games are also rather different if I'm being fair. Horizon is a truly open world whereas God Of War is vast, yet similar. Horizon plays into sci-fi tropes (which is my preference) while God Of War is based on Norse mythology by way of Greek mythology. But the need to throw in RPG elements like XP, skill trees and armor upgrades definitely gives me the feeling that this game was pitched as "what if God Of War was like Horizon?" That's not a bad thing, but because I can't help but compare the two games, I am going to say that I certainly prefer one over the other. And spoiler, I adore Horizon Zero Dawn. There's no denying that this is a good game, though. And the story gives way to some solid dad vibes. (Yes, that was a Limp Bizkit reference). I mean, the part where Atreus (aka "boy") kills an enemy for the first time in self-defense and just stands there with tears running down his face while Kratos embraces him - that's heavy stuff. And I like it as a gamer and a dad. Ultimately, Santa Monica decided to take their franchise that was known for being kind of dumb fun and add a whole lot of levity. And I do always appreciate when developers are willing to take some big risks by shaking up the formula. The combat is definitely satisfying. I enjoy throwing axes and parrying with the shield. It's not exactly Dark Souls, mind. But it's fun in an almost arcadey way. "Keep in mind, though/hot dad riding in on a rhino." There's some good action stuff. You direct Atreus to shoot arrows at stuff. You get new skills and some are cool. You solve puzzles to get through areas. You (of course!) pick up materials to craft crap. You upgrade weapons. You have puzzle-ish rooms where spikes are around you. You clear out hordes of enemies. So basically, it's a pretty cool and heartfelt story wrapped around the bones of a rather typical action game with some RPG elements. Have you ever watched a movie that won a whole bunch of Oscars and you're just kind of sitting there at the end thinking, "well yeah, it was a fine enough movie. But I don't really know what all the hype was about?" That's kind of how I'm feeling about God Of War. I guess my best analogy is Titanic in this case. Look, I'm a huge fan of James Cameron's work. I can totally admire all the work that went into Titanic. I can see that it's a quality film that I understand why people would enjoy. But when I sat in a theater surrounded by people sobbing I just kind of felt like I must be missing something. It's fine. It's a fine movie. Maybe Titanic is a terrible example, though. That was a movie about a real thing. A horrible and sad tragedy. It also had a rather shoehorned love story. I wanted to use The English Patient as an example because of that Seinfeld episode where Elaine hates The English Patient. But I've never seen The English Patient. And I don't hate Titanic, nor do I hate God Of War. But at this point, I've gone too far down this hole of trying to make a good analogy and I'm coming up short. But I admire that I somehow managed to talk about Titanic and Limp Bizkit in a piece about God Of War. I'm a strange dude. So let's just rewind. Pretend the last two paragraphs don't exist and I'm not too lazy to delete them or edit them into something far more readable and relatable. Okay, so God Of War is a fine game. It looks good and it plays good. But outside of the kind of good story about a father and son bonding over grief, I can't really say I understand all of the hype. I get some of it, but not all of it. Let's use The Game Awards as an example here to illustrate my point, mostly because I started this whole thing talking about The Game Awards. So, the 2018 Game Awards saw God Of War win Game Of The Year while beating out Assassin's Creed Odyssey (I guess this makes sense), Celeste (a frustrating but interesting 2D indie), Spider-Man (which seems to be one of the best superhero games since Arkham Asylum), Monster Hunter World (which is a way more interesting game to me, though probably more niche), and Red Dead Redemption II, which honestly should have won because it basically bests God Of War in every way - story, scope, visuals, music, and so on. It's like I get it, but I don't. I feel like God Of War could have been a toss up between Assassin's Creed Odyssey but really any of the other games seem more interesting and more innovative. So maybe it was the hype that it hurt the game in my book. All I know is that a few hours in, I started to find myself less and less compelled to boot the game back up, instead opting to log more and more hours into Slay The Spire - a game I've been playing on a weekly basis for like five years now. If a game can't distract me long enough from my fall-back comfort game, then it's not really a hit in my book. Horizon Zero Dawn was able to do that - I couldn't stop playing that game. But God Of War? Eh, it's fine. I get why everyone likes it. But it doesn't really grab me the same way. I've often said that the first entries in Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are the most important RPGs to me, because they were my two firsts. I mean, I don't think I'm unique among gamers of my age. And while I still hold both series in very high regard, when I was a kid those 8-bit NES RPGs eventually gave way to Sega's 16-bit series.
In the days of ye olde console wars, I quickly jumped camps to Sega's side. I admit that their advertising just hit my young mind at the perfect time. There was blast processing, and Sonic's tude and all. And the RPGs on the Genesis just seemed so badass. As such, I'm a pretty big sucker for Phantasy Star and the Shining games. I bring this up because in the later years Sega rolled out two more RPG series that really don't get the same kind of love as the Square Enix stuff. First there was Sakura Wars, which was huge in Japan. I'll admit that there was a time in my life where I owned all of the Sakura Wars games on Dreamcast mostly because I thought the limited editions were cool looking. I mean, I couldn't actually play them considering I can't read Japanese. Even though there's six mainline Sakura Wars games, to date only the last two even made their way to the US. And neither really seemed to make a dent in either the press or in sales, unfortunately. After that there was Valkyria Chronicles, a series that started on PS3, then made way to PSP before its fourth entry finally saw another console release on PS4. These games are critical darlings. But I honestly don't think they bring in the kind of dollars that Sega would like to see. I mean, the third entry never even left Japan, sadly. So that's got to tell you something. The Valkyria Chronicles games seem to pick up where Sakura Wars left off. Only their set in a (kind of) more modern setting. Gameplay-wise, they feel a bit like XCOM. But they're even deeper. But they also have a very European flair to them, though it's through the filter of a Japanese developer. Valkyria Chronicles 4 was released in 2018 and it felt like a big deal. It was the first mainline game in the series to be released on all of the current consoles. That's a big deal given that the last two games had been relegated to a portable system, and the third title was never even localized. It seemed like Sega wanted to make a grander push for the fourth game. There was even a big collector's edition release, which I almost pulled the trigger on multiple times, but I was already drifting towards a more minimalist digital-only game collection by then. The art and tone and style of Valkyria Chronicles 4 is incredible, though. While it tells the story of a fictional European war with tanks and guns, it does so in a very anime way. Although everything has a really pretty pastel color pallet. Oh, and then there's comic book style lettering to indicated onomatopoeia. And the soldiers tend to swear a lot. I guess what I'm saying is that the juxtaposition of basically everything in this game is unique, and should maybe even come off as jarring but instead is just charming. It should ultimately come as no surprise that the Valkyria Chronicles series is for me, though. I mean, I love anime games and I love turn-based tactics games. It's pretty much a match made in heaven as far as I'm concerned. The flow of the game is excellent. It's linear, sure. But when it comes to strategy games, that's what I want. I don't want to explore an overworld or anything. I just want to go from mission to mission. But between missions here you'll get lots of story cutscenes. And y'know what? Normally that might bother me. Plenty of games have worn out their welcome with me because off too much story between the action. I don't know what it is, but I actually find the story and voice acting here so compelling that it just works for me. As far as anime games go, the characters here feel really well written. I enjoy watching the story unfold. I feel for the characters. I understand their motivations. It's all really good stuff. I also find the tone immensely interesting. I mean you've got these beautiful watercolor visuals, and yet there's a total darkness to the story. This is a game about war, and as such there's plenty of sadness and despair about. Valkyria Chronicles 4 is miles away from your typical western military game, that's for sure. The underlying message here seems to be that war is hell. Even when you're victorious, there's a certain sisyphus vibe to it all. A certain sadness. Things do get truly dark as well. Like any good tactical strategy game, death actually means something. And the story is just as heavy. The horrors of war unfold both within the campaign itself, and through flashbacks. And it's important to remember that our squad is made up of young folks. There's plenty of death, even outside the actual gameplay. There was a moment where a neighboring city was bombed with napalm, and it felt really rough because Riley exhibited signs of PTSD. But that's the kind of weight that this game throws at you. Whereas something like Fire Emblem can feel brutal, it's still pretty fantasy themed. Valkyria Chronicles feels even darker because it's more grounded. Yeah, sure it's an anime game. But it's one that tells the story of the devastation of war. Of course the meat of a game like this is its battles. My goodness, the battles are fantastic. You position your squad on the map. You move each one based on how many turns you've earned in your player phase. An important difference here versus most games like this is that if you've got five turns, you could technically choose to just move the same character five times. Though they will have less stamina each successive turn. It's a small penalty for the added freedom of something like, well, every other strategy game which forces you to move each and every character, but only once. There's no grid to adhere to for movement. So again, it breaks the mold. Shining Force, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics... they all stick to grid movement. This game allows for free movement and one attack per turn. You can move, shoot and then move some more until your energy is used up. There's just a ton of freedom and I love it because it allows for some interesting play styles, and also because it gets away from hand holding. Instead, it gives you a set of rules and allows you to handle a situation as you see fit. Another big difference from my beloved XCOM is the lack of manual overwatch. In XCOM, I often end most character turns by setting them up strategically and triggering overwatch instead of taking a shot. Here, instead it's all about positioning. Even after you've taken a shot, if you leave a character in a spot and they get closed in on, they will do some reaction fire once an enemy gets within a certain range. It simplifies things, sure. But it also means you can do more in a single turn this way. Which again, feels like it creates a more open system. Between missions you'll want to visit the headquarters which is where you spend all your points. You've got experience to put into character classes. Upgrading classes opens up more passive skills and direct orders that your commander can make during play. You'll spend money on researching new weapons and armor, or new upgrades for your tank. You'll assign awarded gear to specific characters. There's a real deepness to all of this, and again I just love it all. As for the classes, you've got... Scout - These are your pawns of war. They can move great distances, but have pretty basic attacks. They are great for opening up the fog of war on a map. Shocktrooper - Like Scouts but upgraded. These are your heavy hitters. They go in loud and hard. Lancer - They move slowly and in short distance, but are key at taking out tanks and strongholds. Sniper - My favorite class. Self-explanatory. They can take shots from far away and are absolutely lethal. Engineer - The support class. They're there to fix tanks and reconstruct cover and heal. Grenadier - The new class added to this sequel, Grenadier is awesome. They set up mobile rocket launchers and send out death from above. ...This might not seem like a lot of classes, but again there's a lot of upgrading and customization to be done, so that each of your characters feels unique within these templates. The more you play, the more you'll find an affinity to specific characters, not unlike what you might get from playing the Fire Emblem games. I can honestly say I've had some rather stressful missions because I really didn't want to end with a victory that saw the death of a soldier I'd become attached to. After a week of being completely enthralled, I can say that Valkyria Chronicles 4 is an absolutely brilliant game. I love everything about it - the gameplay, the strategy, the characters, the story, the art style, the setting and tone. It's honestly just such a unique and incredible game that I'm actually baffled why I didn't get around to playing it earlier. I mean, I've meant to play it since release, but it turns out that it's just such a game that's suited for me. I really think that this is one of the best games of 2018. People seem to be really into Monster Hunter World. It seemed like the first big game to come out in 2018. I think it looks okay. But me, I was looking forward to another game that was coming out the same day. For me, the first "big game" of 2018 was Railway Empire. Not that I'm some big train fanatic or anything. I mean, I think trains are fine. But I've never built a model train myself. I don't own a conductor's cap. Heck, I don't think I've ever played another train sim in my life actually. But I have found myself immensely enjoying builder-sim type games over the past few years. I cannot even tell you how much joy I've gotten out of things like Cities: Skylines for instance. I approach these sorts of games like I would a zen-garden: it's all about gradual tweaking for continual feelings of happiness, and relaxation. Unfortunately my time with Railway Empire has been far less meditative than I had hoped. Booting the game up the first time I decided I'd try out the campaign since it was basically a glorified tutorial that would teach me how to play. Daunting is the word that came immediately to mind. Put it this way, I had to restart the first chapter twice before I even got the hang of some of the most basic of the basics. But okay, fine. At least I started to wrap my head around how the systems worked. And soon enough I was finishing up the first chapter and moving on to the second of five. This is where stuff started to get bad. After a solid six hours into Railway Empire it was still frustrating me. At least the campaign was. There's just so much to juggle. Each chapter offers you a list of tasks to complete within an allotted time frame (in-game years). Oh, I should at least make note of how great everything looks in this game. It's not super overly detailed, but it's pretty. And the variety of camera angles is appreciated. I loved "riding" my trains in first person mode. The music is... there. Sometimes. Sometimes it just fades out and leaves you with not much to hear at all. Hmm. On my first attempt at Chapter 2, I had knocked off most of the tasks, and was working on the one that said "deliver 20 shipments of clothing to New York." Seemed easy enough. By that point I had cotton going to Pittsburgh; textiles going from Pittsburgh to Baltimore; and clothing going from Baltimore to New York. But NY wasn't getting the clothing! At first I thought it was the stops between Baltimore and NY... I thought other towns were intercepting the deliveries, but on closer inspection, nope. Baltimore grew too big. They consumed all the clothing leaving empty trains going to NY. On my second attempt I fixed that and got all the clothing to NY first before expanding any further to fulfill other tasks. Everything went swimmingly, although I had to take out some loans early on to just get the stuff to NY right away. I worked my way down the list of tasks, checking off each one. Except the last. The last one was to own 20 shares of stock in another railroad company. Except I'd given the other companies like two solid hours to expand while I was focusing on these specific tasks. I had also gotten myself into a bunch of debt, so I couldn't afford more than two or three shares of another company, never mind twenty. Ugh. And then after reading some reviews of Railway Empire it turns out it's not just me. And because Rock Paper Shotgun is much smarter than me, they even took the time to notice that the AI is a cheater! And I'm not talking about taking some advantages. I'm talking about how the AI literally does not have to conform to the rules of the game that you're playing. So like the big one is this: you have to be bothered with the reality that two trains can not occupy the same space at the same time. So you have to make side tracks, and add switches and direction/stop signals. Your trains will have to wait for your other trains to get out of the way. But the AI? They get to just drive their trains through each other like ghosts. So yeah. A strategy game where only one of the three players (you, the player) has to be burdened with strategy. This revelation is a huge ball-drop in what should be a fantastic game. And sadly not my only complaint. The controls took me hours to get comfortable with; the menus and pop-ups are overly complicated. Even though there's a wealth of tutorials and in-game "hints' and videos to watch, there's still a lot of rather poorly explained systems. I mean, I'll keep the game around for pure sandbox mode, but as a game with a goal... I'm all set. And disappointed. At the start of the year I had started doing this thing that I've always been interested in. Basically, if I'm not sure what I feel like playing, I check Metacritic's list of highest rated Xbox One games of all time and just let that list pick for me based on whatever I haven't played already. Generally speaking you'll see a lot of titles in there that you'd expect: your Grand Theft Autos and your Witchers and so on. But it's always sort of surprising and exciting when a new release pushes its way into the list. Especially since I'm still working on the Top 10 right now.
I'll be honest when I say that I wasn't actually all that excited about Monster Hunter World when it was first released. I hadn't bothered with any of the previous entries. I don't know. It's just hunting monsters right? It sounds like Pokemon for grown-ups or something. Plus I've heard that the fights are long. So just one long battle? I don't know. It just sounded so tedious to me. But it turns out I was super wrong. Although there's no doubt that the early hours of the game are filled with what amounts to tutorials and lots and lots of reading and poking around menus and well... confusion, it doesn't even matter because the game is just so absolutely compelling so immediately that you can't help but get caught up in it all. Before actually starting you're given access to a rather deep character customization system. I like this. And what I like even further is that you're granted access to this system even after you've started playing the game so it's totally possible to continue to tweak your character's physical appearance as you see fit throughout the campaign. This is a nice touch. Me, I always do the same thing. Back when I played the first Dragon Age game I really liked the default character name/appearance that was generated for me, so I always just recreate her in any other role playing game that I can. What I did not expect was what came next: The ability to make my cat. See, each player has a little cat who accompanies them to help in battles. Oh, and they also have a little raft for water sections. It's adorbs. So yeah, I made my oldest cat, Pierce in the game. And then I got my ass out there; first tackling the obvious tutorial bits and then piecing together how to upgrade my armor and skills and how to interact with other players in the game. Of course a big part about what makes this game so brilliant is exactly what makes Phantasy Star Online or Destiny so brilliant: The blurred lines between a single player story campaign and the open world anything-can-happen multiplayer game. Monster Hunter World is the sort of game that gives you a world and a series of systems and lets you go and make your own anecdotes. There will be naysayers whose biggest complaint about World will be its repetitiveness. And that's valid I suppose, though no more so than in the aforementioned Phantasy Star Online or Destiny or Diablo III. And in fact that repetitiveness may well be its biggest selling point for some. There's a certain compelling comfort that comes from getting into a kind of groove in a game like this. It's like each new quest - each new monster - is different, but the same. There's also a very constant progression, it's just so much more gradual than in something like Destiny 2. Rather than being overburdened with choosing from a dozen new guns you picked up in a single mission, here it's all about finding parts to craft new gear. Between missions you might have enough materials and money to slightly upgrade one piece of armor. It's a different kind of gearing-up, with tougher decisions to make. And it takes a long time to really feel like a badass. Which is good. You're constantly reminded that YOU are the underdog in each battle. Perhaps that's why it feels so great when you finally find yourself the victor. I'm just now a little past the midpoint of the main story quests, and am about ready to start treating Monster Hunter World like Destiny. Which is to say that instead of focusing solely on this one, it's be a game I continue to come back to making gradual progression throughout the year (and looking forward to the various seasonal events). Not to mention I've barely touched any of the optional side-quest stuff yet. So as it stands now, I know it's still early in the year but Monster Hunter World is probably the first game to have a shot in the running for my 2018 GOTY. I've been a pretty big trivia buff for a long time. Really, all my life. When it comes to stuff I'm into, I love knowing random trivia. So it's no surprise that I'm a pretty big Jeopardy fan. For about a decade I watched the show every night. This past year (2023) that schedule couldn't really be kept up. The show airs at 7:30, and my daughter goes to bed right around that time. For some strange reason, I still DVR the show every night. But I don't know, I don't really like watching it after it's aired. So I end up missing it.
But I do love trivia. Me and my work crew do trivia every day on our lunch break. We've kept this up for as long as I can remember. My wife and I will tackle a round of Trivial Pursuit when the mood hits. And me, I love my digital trivia games. As I write this, not only do I have Jeopardy installed on my Xbox, but also Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Trivial Pursuit. And I've been playing Jeopardy video games since I was a kid. I started on the NES back in the day. I didn't know much then, but I still thought it was fun to try. Over the years, I've owned editions on everything from PC to Playstation 2 and DS and 3DS and Wii and various mobile ports. What can I say, I'm a fan. I bought the Xbox One version of Jeopardy as soon as it was released. It came bundled with Wheel Of Fortune, but who cares? That's just Hangman. It's not a game of knowing THINGS, it's a game of guessing words. My wife and I played this Xbox One Jeopardy game quite a bit when it was released. We had fun, but I wasn't impressed. But this week I figured maybe in lieu of watching the show, I'd redownload the game. Maybe my initial impression was wrong? Well... not really. Look, Jeopardy is fun. That's always going to be true. But this iteration does a lot wrong. First off, it starts you with a small pool of questions, and you unlock more thought progression. That's fine, in concept. But really, the space for text on an HDD is so small. They could have started you with a bigger pool. I ended up seeing repeat questions quickly. The format is all wrong, too. On the NES you had to know the answer because you had to type it out. Here, every question is given an option of three multiple choice answers. That's not Jeopardy! That means I can buzz in every time and have 33% chance of getting the answer right even if I'm not really sure. That really pulls a lot of the pub trivia vibe right out of the game. Having said all that, I still dumped in over ten hours because again, I just like Jeopardy. I've never been a guy who cares about achievements in games, but I figured... well, why not just try to unlock them all? If any game makes sense for me to do so, it's this. And then I hit some kind of bug where achievements stopped unlocking. Ugh. First up, there's an achievement for unlocking all of the questions in each category. Well, I did that but never got an achievement for it. Instead, all of my progress on categories was reset to 0/1000 and every time I finished a round it'd say that I added points to each, but nothing got added. Then I scored over 75,000 in a single game, but no achievement for that either. It's annoying. I'm hitting these requisites, but not getting credit for them. I don't care, but I do. Mainly, because it's sucking out my reason to continue playing Jeopardy over any other trivia game on Xbox. I could have looked to see if anyone was playing online so I could tackle the "play ten games online" achievement, but now, why bother? Basically, as a big fan of the show – sure, this is fun enough. But it just fails on so many levels. There's not enough variety of questions, there's no realistic recreation of the show, and on a technological level, the game feels broken and under-developed. I've played a fair amount, but there's not much to write home about here. I've never been into the whole Kickstarter craze. This is important to know, because Friday The 13th is the only game I've ever Kickstarted. I mean, it wasn't even a question. The only question was to what level do I back it? And how many copies do I want? I settled on one copy (for the time being) along with the soundtrack, because OMG, Harry Manfredini!
My wife and I are HUGE fans of Friday The 13th. I don't know how to properly convey that. Many of our first dates involved rewatching those movies (in order) together. I can't even fathom how many times we've seen them all over the years. Heck, I can't even count how many times we've watched documentaries about the series. It's just a huge deal for us. I played that original Kickstarter release back when it launched on PC and had a great time with it. It was one of my favorite games of that year. However, since then I've moved away from PC gaming and bought an Xbox One copy as well. Though you could view Friday The 13th as just another asymmetrical game a la Evolve or Dead By Daylight - and that would be fair - it's a total love letter to the series. I had been following the game long before it even had the license. It used to just be called Slasher Volume 1: Summer Camp, and I was all for it as an homage. But being able to play a game where you actually get to explore locales from the movie is mind blowing for a fan like me. They totally nailed the feeling of the movies big time. My wife generally hates any game where she has to play with other people online. She won't touch stuff like that as it makes her really nervous. But when I said "hey, play this Friday The 13th game," she was happy to give it a shot. What makes the game so incredible is that each 20-minute or so match feels like it's a mini-movie where you can relay the plot of what just happened. It's actually exciting. For instance, I remember playing one where I teamed up with another player and we spent a good deal of time together finding weapons, setting traps, and making our way through the map. When Jason found us we were on a bridge so we jumped into the lake and tried to swim off. He followed us. Just as he got to us another camper showed up on a boat and I hopped in. The camper sped off in the boat leaving my original partner in the water as bait. I felt horrible, but it was memorable. This is the sort of game that's as fun to watch as it is to play. As such, I'm having a lot of fun just watching my wife give it a try. She entered Camp Crystal lake and immediately was like "wait, I'm Shelly? He's the worst character in the whole series!" Haha. I never told her what to do - just watched. It was great. She made her way through some cabins, and found a weapon. She decided to go solo - like maybe Jason would go after the big group of teens and leave her alone. Well, no. He detected a straggler away from the group and acted as a true predator. But damn, this game is fun. The funny thing is that even after dying it's fun to watch the survivors and see what they do. Seriously, I'm underselling it here. This game rules. An indie developer called Locomalito created the PC freeware, Hydorah in 2010. It was meant to be a pretty obvious homage to Gradius. Over the years it gained steam as a bit of a cult classic, and eventually the popularity lead to a bigger re-release to consoles in 2017, published by Abylight Studios.
It's pretty impossible to talk about Hydorah without talking about Konami. For my entire gaming life I've been a pretty big fan of Konami. I mean... Ninja Turtles, Metal Gear, Castlevania, Contra, Silent Hill, and on and on. And yet, I've never really loved their shmup output. I've played a lot of Gradius games over the years, and none of them really hooked me. The Salamander/Lifeforce games were pretty cool, though. And at least Parodus gets points for originality and silliness. But let's talk about Gradius specifically. I get why some of the later entries have their fans. Like, Gradius III has some great looking stuff going on. And Gradius V obviously pushed some limits given that it was developed by Treasure. Gradius Gaiden is brutally difficult, but stunning to look at. But the series as a whole has always been tough for me to get into. The original game feels so sluggish until you really power up, and then one hit pushes you back to an earlier point in the level, and you have to start all over with a pea shooter. And I think really, that's always been my issue. I don't care for the methodical level-up system, and I don't care for losing all that progress because of a single mistake. As I said, Super Hydorah is an homage. Big time. It doesn't feel as if it's trying to the fill the gap with the absence of modern day Gradius sequels. Instead, it feels like it wants to capture the spirit of those early 8- and 16-bit entries. Yet, it does do some solid modernizing here and there. First up, Super Hydorah looks the part. It has an unmistakable late-80's/early-90's look to it. You can even add scanlines – something I've started to really appreciate oddly now that HD visuals have gotten to such an impressive level. I appreciate the simplistic throwback of the controls as well. You've got two buttons – a basic attack, and a special attack. But there's a spin on it. After each boss battle you get an upgrade to one of those, which means that at the start of each level you can choose your basic shot, special shot, as well as a passive option. It's a neat way to do it. Remember when I said I disliked Gradius' approach to powering up weapons? Super Hydorah does something interesting with that, too. Orbs dropped are either green or red – conveniently coinciding with the A and B buttons on the Xbox controller. So you pick – power up the basic shot or special shot. Unfortunately, Super Hydorah disregards modernization when it comes to dying. The went all in on purity here, so one hit equals death and your sent back to the start of the level with just your basic weapons. I don't care for this. At least you can save your progress. Oh, and there's branching paths. So that's something interesting. There's enough routes that every playthrough can be slightly different, and you'll get some different endings. That would appeal to me more if the game wasn't so reliant on learning the levels well enough to get threw them without damage. On my first attempt I had no problem flying through the first level (which resembles Gradius enough to border on copyright infringement). But as soon as the second level, things start getting overwhelming. Super Hydorah does some neat things to try to make the Gradius formual more appealing to modern gamers. I have to give it that. But it also sticks to classic Gradius purity enough that it's a turn off for me. But I'm probably not quite the audience to begin with. When it comes to shmups, I've always been more of a bullet-hell guy anyway. These old school shooters rely much more on memorization, and I’m just not as into that. |
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