The whole walking simulator genre never really grabbed me. I remember dabbling with Dear Esther and Gone Home and neither held my attention very long. I get why the genre is well regarded, but overall, they never did much for me. I suppose Layers Of Fear could be considered a walking sim, although it also overlaps with horror so maybe that's why I played through that one. I don't know.
As I write this in early 2024, my family is an interesting spot. We moved into a new apartment a few weeks ago. Our house is currently on the market. Our goal is to buy a new house in the town that we've returned to, but alas we have to wait until our house sells and a new one pops up. It's a whole process. But we're happy to finally be back in the town that we always wanted to live in. And we're embracing a new minimalist way of living, since there's three of us and cat crammed into an apartment versus a large house. The reason I bring this up is because the minimalist living has also caused me to go about my gaming in a different way. I'm trying very hard not to spend money on games. It occurs to me that my Playstation Plus subscription gives me access to so many well regarded games that I've never looked into. So I've been going through Metacritic and looking for big hitters that I overlooked and that I don't need to pay extra money to try. Thus, I'm now playing What Remains Of Edith Finch. It's a fairly interesting setup for a game. You play as Edith, a seventeen year old whose mom just died and you're searching through the family home that you've become the beneficiary of. The Finch's are an apparently rich and very eccentric family. And also a family full of tragedy. Basically, the goal of the game is to navigate the Winchester-style home, in search of journals and mementos that would fill in the back story of all of the death and misery that this family has left behind. By the way, major spoilers follow. So you've been warned... MOLLY Molly died when she was ten years old. She left a journal entry behind describing the night that she went to bed with no dinner for punishment. She ends up eating anything edible in her room, and one of those things are some kind of berries that are part of a holiday decoration. I can only imagine that they were poisonous because she goes on to describe a dream that you play out that feels more like a hallucination. She starts out climbing through her bedroom window and becoming a cat, and then an owl, and then a shark and then a monster. The whole thing is surreal to such a crazy extent. But I can't help but feel shaken that it was the dying brain-swells of a child in distress. This game is starting out both absurd and sad. CALVIN Calvin's part is brief but bleak. He's a young boy with a broken leg, swinging on a swing. He ignores his mother's cry for dinner time to swing higher and higher, ultimately launching himself off of the nearby cliff and into the ocean. It's hard to discern if it was that whole thing where young people think that they're invincible, or if this kid actually had suicidal tendencies. BARBARA This is probably the best part of the game. It's probably the chapter that makes this game worth playing. It's inventive and memorable, especially to someone who grew up on slasher films. Barbara was a child actor who appeared in horror movies for two years and then faded into obscurity. Later in her life, her home was invaded and she was brutally murdered. The whole flashback plays out in the form of a comic book presented as an episode of Tales From The Crypt. Oh, and somehow they got the licensing to use the Halloween film score for this chapter. I mean, it's just really a perfect vibe. Creepy and cliched and b-movie shlock. Thumbs up. WALTER Walter witnessed Barbara's death while hiding under a bed. He was a child and lost his mind. And so he lived under the house in a cave for thirty years. The family just pretended he was gone. Every day he listened to tremors from above and ate canned foods. Finally, he decided to break free and get out and see the sun. He emerged on train tracks and stood there staring at the sun. He didn't even see the train that hit him. SAM Sam's story was quick but weird. He took his daughter hunting and caused her to shoot a dear. While trying to snap a picture of their trophy, the dear bucked and knocked him off a cliff. Are you starting to feel like the Finch family is seriously cursed? Me too. GREGORY As a father, I found this chapter really disturbing. You play as Gregory, who is one year old. He's in a bathtub. He's playing with toys. And he drowns while his parents are fighting in the other room. Nothing explicit is shown. Everything is just kind of inferred. And yet it's a total WTF moment. MILTON Milton was an artist, and so his death is flashbacked via a flipbook he made. It's a cool gimmick, especially given the haptic feedback of the Dualsense controller. But it was kind of an anti-climactic scene. I mean, they even just say he "disappeared." So I don't really even know what happened to him. LEWIS This is the most abstract chapter in the game. Lewis had a drug problem, we know that. I liked his "Wonderland Turbo" console which looks like a cross between a PC-Engine and a Playstation. But the chapter... you control him cutting off fish heads at a canary. The right analog stick controls the fish heads. The left stick controls the RPG that is happening in his head. It's really surreal. And it ends with him beheaded in the fantasy world. I don't even know what really happened. Did he die because he like fell asleep at his canary station and beheaded himself? Did he kill himself? Did he overdose? It's very opaque. But it's interesting. I should note that I've decided not to look any of this stuff up. I'm sure somebody's cracked all of the meaning here. But I don't care. This game is like watching a David Lynch movie. Maybe there's an obvious meaning but I don't want to know what it is. I want to just feel and experience the game and take away whatever meaning I take away. EDITH The final chapter is young, pregnant Edith. She's been collecting this story to keep track in a journal to share with her unborn child. And then you wrap up the game by playing as said child exiting her womb. And then you find out that she died, presumably during child birth. So Edith was not the final Finch, but her child was. This was an interesting game, no doubt. Better than most walking sims I've played. One of the few I've finished. I reckon it has low replay value, and I feel like I didn't love it. But I liked it and found it unique and it hit upon multiple feelings for me. It also respected my time, clocking it in at two or three hours which was plenty. I don't think it's for everybody, and I don't even think it was worth all the hype it received. But it was pretty good and I'm happy to have played it without buying it thanks to Playstation Plus. So fine.
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I can't really stress how important Maniac Mansion was to me as a kid. I mean, it's strange to think that an NES game would be my introduction to the adventure game genre, but it was the NES port that I first encountered. And so Maniac Mansion pretty much became my metric for what made an adventure game good. To a further degree, I guess LucasArts was my standard for a long time.
Though we did get a sequel in the shape of Day Of The Tentacle, the LucasArts games eventually stopped coming. In in the decades since, the adventure game has SUPPOSEDLY died. But in its wake, a new kind of adventure game was born thanks to Telltale Games. Telltale's early output was a little inconsistent, but by the time they got to The Walking Dead they had really hit their stride and perfected the modern adventure game formula. And we've seen other studios take a cue from Telltale, be it Dontnod (Life Is Strange) or Supermassive Games (Dark Pictures Anthology). The reason I bring up Telltale and the modern adventure game genre as a whole is because Thimbleweed Park is decidedly not that. Instead, it's Ron Gilbert's attempt to take everything he's learned over the decades and make a new adventure game that looks and feels just like those 80's LucasArts games that he was so praised for. To put it bluntly, if you didn't grow up playing Maniac Mansion and The Secret Of Monkey Island, then there's a fair chance that Thimbleweed Park will feel antiquated to you. If you're expecting a Telltale style choose-your-own adventure with quick-time-events, you're going to be disappointed. Instead, Thimbleweed Park feels like the closest thing we'll ever get to a Maniac Mansion 3. Although, it would have had to be called Maniac Town because this is a pretty big and meaty game. If anything, the length and scope of Thimbleweed Park is the most modern thing about it. Consider this: if you know what you're doing, Maniac Mansion is a three-to-four-hour game. Its proper sequel, Day Of The Tentacle can be tackled in about five hours. But Thimbleweed Park is easily a double-digit hours game. I'm not really commenting on whether such a length is a good or bad thing here. In fairness, all the modern adventure games like The Walking Dead or Life Is Strange are going for a dozen-plus hours. But the difference with those is that they're more linear, and they're episodic. In reality, you're really tackling a handful of two-hour experiences which tends to make it feel more compartmented. In those games, you won't need an item from Episode 1 later in Episode 5. To a degree, episodes in those kind of games feel like smaller stand-alone experiences. On the flip, Thimbleweed Park feels like it takes the blueprint of Maniac Mansion and supersizes it. The number of playable characters grows along with the story. As does the number of items (both necessary and not) to find, and to transfer between characters. There's honestly an argument to made that after waiting so many years for another game in the classic LucasArts tradition from Ron Gilbert that maybe more really is more. It means more game to dig your teeth into and relish. More town to re-explore several times over. For me personally, I guess I prefer the more stripped down mansion approach than the whole giant town approach of Thimbleweed Park. Maybe a population of 81 sounds small, but it is a lot of NPC's to meet and talk to. And there's a lot of stuff you can easily miss if you don't want to use a walkthrough, which I don't right now. But to be super fair, this is a me issue. A few years back, I'd have had plenty of time to get lost in Thimbleweed Park. Right now, being the dad of a toddler, I'm burnt out by the time I have time to devote to gaming. So maybe it's unfair to have gone into this expecting an experience JUST LIKE those older (and shorter) games. But as things went on, and I could see more and more items on my to-do list that still needed to be checked off, I just started to run out of steam. I did really appreciate the game, though. Everything is so authentic to the LucasArts style. The sprite work looks like how you remember Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island. The dialogue is spot-on. There's jokes about a corpse "pixelating." There's some amazing text flavor-areeno. There's even Grumpy Gamer style nitpicking of classic adventure games IN THE GAME. It's all so well done. It's just.. Too much, for me, right now. My history with the Tom Clancy series of games has been extremely limited. And yet, over the years I've found myself increasingly interested in it. Way back when I was in college – like twenty years ago, yikes! - I remember picking up the first Rainbow Six game for no real reason other than I needed a new game to play. I remember thinking it was cool, but also way too hard for me. I think when I grabbed it, I expected a first person shooter a la Doom with a more military theme. Instead, it turned out that Rainbow Six was way more tactical and slow paced, and I was too dumb and impatient at the time to really grasp that style of play.
I largely ignored the Tom Clancy games after that. But a few years back, I started reading about them. I guess I enjoy reading about games that I don't know a lot about. I like to broaden my horizons, or at least know what I'm missing out on. And something occurred to me. Maybe I'm completely off base here, but this is how I kind of view it in my mind. Basically, there's Metal Gear and there's Splinter Cell. The two series are sort of like unofficial sister-series. They had always competed with each other, but they couldn't have been more different. Both series are basically cinematic military games, right? But tonally, they're miles apart. But at a time, it seems like Splinter Cell existed to fill the void of Metal Gear Solid on Xbox consoles. Now, while Kojima's games were based on very ridiculous 80's action movie versions of war, Splinter Cell took its cues from Tom Clancy's very realistic novels. In that sense, both series are super interesting because they're different takes on the same thing. Of course Splinter Cell is only a piece of the much larger series of Tom Clancy games. And the more I've read about them, the more interested in them I've gotten. And I don't know exactly lead me to Ghost Recon Wildlands, exactly. But I was watching some videos of it recently, and decided I was ready to give it a go. Now I can tell you this, the Metal Gear Solid series is one that I really enjoy. And yet, I'm terrible at it. I put a pretty solid numbers into The Phantom Pain, and loved it pretty hard. But even with a strategy guide, I found it really difficult. Likewise, I beat Ground Zeroes and absolutely adored the game. But it was a really big victory for me, which is maybe sad given that it's such a short and simple affair. So with that in mind, I think I've always been a bit intimidated by the Tom Clancy games. Because in my mind, they're like Metal Gear, but way more serious and way less gamey. That said, my first impression of Ghost Recon Wildlands was extremely positive. I fired it up with trepidation. I wasn't sure if I'd like it, or if I'd even be good enough to get through the opening mission. But the crazy thing is this – it sucked me in fast. My first night with the game, I stayed up too late playing like three hours of the game right off the bat. It's just really compelling. If anything, Wildlands feels like Ubisoft's take on The Phantom Pain. It's a gigantic open world. It's bursting with missions, side-missions, and random stuff off the beaten path. And it tends to take the same approach of "here's your end-goal, go ahead and accomplish it however you see fit." As the first Tom Clancy game I'm putting any serious time and effort into, I've got to say that I'm impressed by this one. Wildlands has that classic Ubisoft open world thing going on. This is either a negative or a positive in your opinion, of course. When you start the game, you've got a pretty sizeable world to navigate. And there's a few scattered icons to investigate. Me personally, I mostly stick to the yellow stuff, since that's the story missions. But of course, the open world means that you'll head off the beaten path whenever something strikes your fancy. After a few hours, I killed my first cartel boss. And then you suddenly realize that this sizeable open world was just the tip of the iceberg. Suddenly, there's a whole overwhelmingly huge open world to go out into. The choice is yours to decide which direction to head next. This gigantic game could easily come off as tedious. The thing is, it's so well designed. The world is gorgeous to look at. And the sandbox holds everything you need for some great stories. I'm not talking about the in-game story. In fact, the story here is super grim and not exactly "fun," per say. I mean, this is a game about taking down drug lords. Outside of NARC, how fun could that subject matter be at face value? But the world itself creates all these opportunities for awesome anecdotes. It's miles away from the super silliness of something like Saints Row, or even Grand Theft Auto. But I've had some amazing moments right from the get-go. Some random things... Using the ability to have your squad take out soldiers you've tagged feels amazing. I love just hanging back, scoping out targets, and giving the order. I've watched whole camps of bad guys fall to this approach. It feels low danger, but there's still tactics involved as you don't want the hit to be witnessed, triggering the rest of the gang. Then there was the time I was on my way to break into a cabin to gain intel. The driving in this game can be pretty sloppy, especially depending on which vehicle you're in. Right outside the road to the cabin, I swerved, and hit a car head on. It happened to be full of patrollers who were instantly on to me. The gave pursuit, so I aborted the cabin mission for the moment, and sped off up a windy mountain road. Eventually, I hid my damaged car in some woods, car-jacked another ride, and made my way back to the cabin undetected since I was in a completely different car. These are the kind of awesome moments that really make Wildlands so compelling. And the real hook is that these moments are near constant. Something ese that's immensely gratifying in this game is the night vision goggles. I mean, it's such a simple thing to add. And yet, it makes such a huge difference. For one thing, it adds to the aesthetic. Like, when everything turns green, it feels like "oh yeah, this is a Tom Clancy game." It just has that cool look to it. But more importantly, in this age of dynamic lighting and uber realism, it totally bothers me when things get so dark at night in a game that I can't even see where I'm supposed to be going. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that comes to mind, where I was having a good time, but the game was so dark that it actually kind of ruined things for me at times. At any rate, the more I played, the more I really got sucked into Wildlands. I stole a car; I rescued a doctor; I did a whole bunch of missions. One that really stuck out early on was a mission where I had to blow up a boat, and get the heck out of there in thirty seconds, lest I be blown up with it. Exciting stuff! Or how badass I felt when I infiltrated an entire base – in the daytime – without ever getting spotted once. I'm infamously terrible at stealth, so this was a big deal for me. I used my sniper rifle, and orders to my squad to take out everyone before they even saw us. I made my way up through the hideout and came in behind one last guy who was just chilling on the couch unaware. I hit him up point blank from behind, grabbed the intel I needed and hauled it out of there. It's interesting, because many missions are quite similar on a superficial level. You grab something, or destroy something, or rescue someone, or whatever – but the tactics of it all are constantly influx, and I'm loving it. I also love that there are actually beats in the game that are throwing me for a loop. A big example (and major spoiler, maybe?) is that the second drug lord I went after was this young up-and-comer who had taken over for his grandfather. So I spent all this time in his province completing missions and obtaining intel, and finally made it to his mansion. A whole lot of gunfire happened, and I finally rushed in and made up to his bedroom for the big showdown, only to find that he had hanged himself. I mean, that’s some unexpected video game stuff right there. Who expects to enter a boss fight only to find that the boss is already dead? Was Monster Party (NES) the last time this was done? It's pretty awesome and surprising. Later in the game, I found something amazing that I didn't even know existed prior to playing it. There's a full on Splinter Cell mission in the game. I don't mean it's LIKE Splinter Cell. I mean it's an actual crossover featuring Sam Fisher. At first, I thought this was amazing. I was excited. I love this kind of shared universe stuff. And yet the mission itself proved to be a bit too hardcore for me. Up until this point in the game, Wildlands was relatively smooth sailing for me. Sure, I had my moments of panic, but I was always able to reassess a situation and find a way to move forward. But not here. The mission in question is called "Operation Watchmen," and it was brutal for me. The big brick wall is the fact that a necessity to complete the mission is to (A) not be detected, and (B) not kill anyone. I put in about a half-dozen attempts and found this to be near impossible. I tried many different routes into the enemy base, and got detected no matter what I tried. Oh, and there's a time limit. To be fair, it's a pretty generous one, but still. I literally timed out the mission on one attempt. It's bittersweet, though. On paper, this should be the coolest mission in the game for me. But in execution, it was pure frustration and I eventually gave up on it. But that's just one small piece of the game. The open world is so huge, and there's so much to do. By my own calculation, I've only gotten through about an eighth of the story, which sounds slight but this is a damn big game. And while I can't imagine I'll see it through to the end, that's par for the course for me. I just don't have the time nor attention span to stick with gigantic open world games like this for as many hours are actually required. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that I've learned to love a Ghost Recon game. I've grown even more attached to these Tom Clancy games. And Wildlands is a rather incredible experience. It's a gigantic sandbox, full of amazing moment-to-moment gameplay and intricate systems. It scratches a very specific itch for me. Like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, this is a game that I really loved to spent time with and will mostly dip back into over the years, but I have no real delusions that I'll find the time to beat it. But that's okay, because as long as I'm getting hours of fun out of the game, then it's certainly served its purpose as far as I'm concerned. Playstation 4 was the first time I didn't buy a Sony console right away. Instead, I opted for an Xbox One. In hindsight, it was such a weird choice for me. For one, I've always been a huge fan of Japanese publishers, and Microsoft didn't exactly have a high showing of them. But what had convinced me to buy an Xbox One wasn't the games. I liked the backwards compatibility that Xbox was showing. I liked the Remote Play feature that they were rolling out. I liked the HDMI-input on the console. I had friends who were playing on Xbox.
The problem was that I watched an entire console generation of Playstation exclusives roll out that I wanted to play, but didn't have access to. I was fine with my decision at the time. I played a ton of Overwatch and Madden and XCOM 2 and other games that were platform agnostic. But I also played very few Xbox exclusives. Sure, I tried a Halo and Forza and Gears and none of them really blew me away. Meanwhile, PS4 was releasing things like Until Dawn and JRPG's and shmups and the PSVR and a bevy of Arcade Archives, none of which I had access to. When both the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters and Final Fantasy XVI were announced as Sony exclusives, I finally picked up a PS4. This was at the time when the PS5 was out, but not really available anywhere. I fell so in love with the console that I upgraded to a PS5 as soon as I possibly could. But this is all a long-winded way of saying that I'm finally catching up on PS4 games I missed out, like Horizon Zero Dawn. Horizon is a single player open world action RPG. Its setting is full of lush nature, but enemies are all robotic. Also, the game had the unfortunate situation of being released at the same time as Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, a game which pretty much fits the same bill. Only it had "Zelda" in the title so got a lot more attention. Don't get me wrong, Horizon was a hit. My understanding is that it ended up like the fourth best selling PS4 game of all time. But it was a hit overshadowed by Zelda. I do strongly feel that had Horizon beaten Zelda to the punch, it would have been even more applauded and appreciated. One thing it has that Zelda does not is storytelling. Don't get me wrong, BOTW has lore. But Horizon has an actual story. It's a true old fashioned single player RPG in that regard. That it starts with our hero Aloy as a child is truly effective. It makes you feel like you know Aloy. You root for Aloy and all of the victories that she gets through. The story is also emotional. When she and Rost part ways, I truly felt sad for her. When a gang shows up and attacks Aloy and her tribe's young folk during their initiation tournament, I felt tense. The world of Horizon really grabs me as well. Now, I'm a sci-fi dude, no doubt. And I lean towards cyberpunk. I tend to like anything that reminds me of Blade Runner. This isn't that. On the surface it looks like, well, Zelda. But it takes place far in the future after an apocalypse of some sort and all of the wild life is robotic. So it's both futuristic and not. There's cybernetics, but they're often shunned by humans. And that sets up a very interesting nature versus technology theme for the whole game. I kind of love it. It's an incredible world, that I'm having a blast exploring. But what I love the most is the combat. My god, the combat is satisfying. Truth be told, I tend to not really like action RPGs. I'm old school, and I like my combat turn based. But this game's combat is so great that I really get into it. I especially love using a bow and attacking from afar. I love that you can craft new elemental arrows. I also think the skill tree is top notch. I'm not good at stealth, for instance. But I can work on maxing out my stealth skills to augment my lacking performance. Meanwhile, the Trinket perk allows you swap mods in and out of gear, which turns the game into a sort of Final Fantasy VII reminiscent exercise in attempting to break the game through creating incredible builds in the moment. Most of my strategy involves setting everything on fire from afar, though pulling off stealth skills when you're horrible at stealth feels really good. Even crafting works in this game - something I can't say about BOTW. There's no pots to find to craft, you can just do it on the fly. It's so streamlined and trivial that it never slows me down. Oh, and weapons don't have durability, so you don't have to worry about breaking your favorites. I should also take a moment to shout out Ashly Burch. Her performance as Aloy is incredible. Likewise the actress who mocapped the perfect facial expressions. I know Ashly was lauded for her performance, but I have to really say that I was impressed with her work here. She just sells the character of Aloy so well. Horizon Zero Dawn is clearly an expensive game. And yet, I can't pretend it's glitch free. I had multiple cutscenes where audio just dropped out completely on dialogue. But whatever. There were other more interesting bugs, though. There was one raid that involved a bunch of NPCs on my side. Somehow, I was thrown into the scenery and got caught in an invisible wall. I was able to sit there and wait and watch the NPCs take out all of the enemies and actually finish the quest for me, while I waited in safety. It was weird and amusing all at once, and even saved me some effort to finish a quest. I always assumed I'd like Horizon, but I didn't really think I'd love it. I definitely love it. It doesn't do anything new exactly, but it does mash up a bunch of wonderful things with truly amazing results. There's the obvious open world Zelda comparisons, sure. But the huge robots land somewhere between Metal Gear and 13 Sentinels. Although you could also say that dealing with titanic bosses is reminiscent of Monster Hunter or Shadows Of The Colossus. There's so many cool influences here and yet the result feels like such an original work. You've seen every one of these systems before and yet, it feels undoubtedly Horizon. But I love the flexibility of the gameplay. I love slowly acquiring skill points and making a build that plays to the strengths of how I want to approach the game world. I love the gradual feeling of becoming an unstoppable killing machine. The more I plugged away, the more I decided to focus on fire attacks, so that's how I leaned into my build. Any mods that augmented fire were priorities and anything that wasn't was scrapped for shards to buy better stuff. Likewise, putting skill points into stealth helped me approach situations I'd normally be nervous about. Instead of worrying about being discovered, I put points into stealth kills and hit robots before they knew what was coming to them. Admittedly, very few games of this breadth hold my attention to the end. And yet, I couldn't stop myself from playing Horizon Zero Dawn. I'd often stay up too late to squeeze in just one more quest. Developer Guerilla Games had an incredible level of confidence here. They created something so magnificent that I'm just in awe. I mean, prior to this they spent nearly two decades churning out Killzone games, which aren't like Horizon at all. It's impressive that a first attempt at a new genre could result in something so pristine. And I loved every second of my playthrough. I loved exploring the map. I loved the combat. I loved looting and crafting. I loved the story. I loved upgrading my fire mods and pumping flaming arrows into robots and stepping back and watching them slowly burn to a crisp. I genuinely struggle to think of any open world RPG like this that grabbed me so hard. I end by saying this: every console generation has its defining games. I truly think that Horizon Zero Dawn is just that for the PS4. It is a masterpiece that was certainly appreciated upon release, but should be celebrated even further. I can only hope that the series will continue on and have a long and prolific life. Its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West is already a thing as I type this, and I'm looking forward to seeing Aloy's next adventure. I finally played Nier about a year ago when it was remastered under its original Japanese title, Nier Replicant. And back then, I summed up the experience by saying, "I don't even know if it's a good game, but it's so original in its own weird way that it's definitely highly recommended for any gamer even casually interested in the genre." Which I suppose is a decent way to describe the work of Yoko Taro (Drakengard, etc) altogether. This is a guy who's ambitious and has some incredible ideas, but they have to be taken on his terms. There's no spoon-feeding in a Nier game, and there's certainly no stopping to edit out the bad parts. There's only the goal of a unique experience.
Playing Nier Automata, I'm having extreme deja vu. Yes, it looks and feels like Nier Replicant, but it's also very much its own thing. Even if you're a fan of JRPGs, Nier Automata should be divisive. Maybe you've dumped so many hours into Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Shin Megami Tensei, Tales and Trails games, so you're ready for whatever tropes come your way. But Nier isn't any of those games. Nier isn't really any other game. As a JRPG, Nier Automata hits the ground running. It immediately throws you into a section that switches from a vertical shmup to a horizontal shmup and then to a kind of After Burner feeling thing. This is the opening of a JRPG. I can't help but think that Taro started the game this way just to really see who was on board. Like, if you think this is too weird a way to start a JRPG then you definitely want to turn back now before you've invested any more time into it. The game that follows is just as absurd as you might hope. You've got sexy androids fighting against mechs. You've got flashy combat juxtaposed against bleak and desolate landscapes of a civilization long forgotten. The remains of buildings create new natural bridges across empty stretches of nothing. You'll watch as perspective, dimensions, color schemes, and even genres are switched out on a fly. You know that things are unhinged pretty early on when an entire cutscene is devoted to your playable android character, B2 being shown how to set the in-game settings. And this sort of fourth-wall breaking is just the tip of the iceberg. Yoko Taro has an auteur vision, no doubt. And his scope and aspirations are grand. I'm sure there are many folks who bounce off his games. At least as many who worship everything he touches. I personally lean only ever so slightly toward the latter. Which is to say, I'm a fan of his work, but tend to find it way more interesting than I do fun to play. If I'm being honest, I don't love the combat in Nier games. Sure, there's tons of depth and strategy to be had, but it also includes constantly going into menus to swap out weapons and skills and the truth is that "cheating" by just turning on auto-combat is actually more fun to me. In that sense, the game becomes a lot more about the story and set-pieces than about the action itself. My bigger issue is that Nier Automata pads its incredible moments with stretches of the blandest JRPG fetch-quests. To be blunt, it can get fairly boring to go off and grind for robot parts when you have to do so in an almost empty area of the map where the labyrinth of fallen buildings all just looks the same. And all of this might be an easier pill to swallow if Taro didn't have the tendency to make replaying Nier games multiple times pretty much a requirement if you want to actually see the whole story. Replaying a JRPG campaign multiple times is a tall order, if if the base game isn't incredibly long. But like Nier Replicant, I'm happy to have played Nier Automata. It's a fascinating experience and one that won't likely be matched anytime soon (unless we get a Nier 3). I'm sure I've said it many times but I'd always rather play an interesting game than a just good game. And Nier Automata is a truly interesting game. Double Dragon IV seems like the sort of game that should be a home run for me. While I'd say I'm a fairly casual Double Dragon fan, I'm a huge fan of its Japanese sister series, Kunio-kun. I was enamored with Renegade long before I played Double Dragon. Though, I was really into Double Dragon II as a kid. Of course I'm talking about the NES versions of all of these - and they remain my preferred ports to this day. But I digress.
With Double Dragon IV Arc Systems gathered a bunch of original devs and had them make a new entry in the series that disregards everything after the NES trilogy. The game is designed to look like a long lost NES game, albeit in widescreen. And they even go so far as to toss in reference to a new gang called The Renegades, which to my mind is a way to more concretely tie in the two series. There's even a visit to Japan, which again seems to be pointing out that Double Dragon was always just meant to be sort of the Americanized spin-off Kunio-kun. So how did Double Dragon IV turn out so meh? I'm not exactly sure, but my guess would be budget or time. This one feels like a total rush job meant to cash in on nostalgia. While certainly it's nice to see a throwback like this, it feels like the game works better on paper (or screenshots) than in actual execution. Sure there's some modern niceties that are well appreciated like button mapping and a full range of buttons to go along with it instead of the two-buttons the NES games had to utilize. And I'll admit that the cut scenes are a fun little addition. But ultimately the level design is so uninspired and poorly thought out that it just kills the game. In Double Dragon II you had cool stuff like knocking enemies out of the door of a plane. There's nothing like that here. Instead, it's just the tired trope of walking right, clearing out a screen, and walking right again. Sometimes you climb up a ladder. That's about the extent of the variety. And this would be fine if the levels felt fair. But instead you have a 16:9 screen that's mostly vacant because the swarm of enemies is surrounding you tightly. You nary have a second to get on your feet before you're swallowed up by the offending gang. It's just... not fun. I do think it's cool when you see the cut scene where it says "meanwhile..." and cuts to Marion getting kidnapped from the original Double Dragon, though. I will say that that's a neat touch. So again, it does feel like they were at least trying to make this a fun entry for fans. But truth be told, I've only been able to make it to Stage 8 (out of 12) and the blandness of the levels makes replaying them a total slog. This really juxtaposes harshly with how awesome the levels were in classics like Double Dragon II and Renegade on the NES - nevermind bonafide masterpieces like River City Ransom. So I'm calling this one quits without seeing it to the end, which is a bummer because apparently beating the game unlocks "The Tower" which is a kind of endurance mode that unlocks new playable characters. Oh well. When Animal Crossing was released back in 2002, I had never played anything like it. My friend, Mark got it for me as a Christmas present and I got really hooked. Of course I was living alone in a little shack in the country at the time. I didn't have cable. High speed internet wasn't really even a thing yet. And I was 21, so my disposable income was meager. I wasn't much of a PC gamer, so I hadn't played things like The Sims. So Animal Crossing seemed like a total revelation. It was a game about... nothing. You just kinda lived in this little town and did tasks to make money and pay off your home and improve it. It was novel, at least to me at the time.
But after the novelty of that original Animal Crossing wore off, I never got all that into life sim games. Hilariously, I wouldn't buy another Animal Crossing game until I heard Brie Larson talk up the 3DS one on a podcast... but I never actually played it. Finally, I picked up New Horizons in the midst of pandemic era lockdowns. It was THEE game that everyone was talking about at the time. And I was really into the idea of building an aquarium. And over the course of a week, I did just that and grew incredibly bored and never looked back. But Stardew Valley is a whole other beast. It's an homage to the 16-bit era Harvest Moon games. But it's also completely modern. It looks like an old game, but it plays like a new one. And it's way darker than anything you'd ever see in Animal Crossing. Sure, you could point to Tom Nook and say he's the personification of the housing market, or the banking system, or student loans. But at the end of the day, Animal Crossing is a Nintendo game. It's light. In Stardew Valley you have Joja Mart, which is totally just Walmart with an Amazon logo. And people die there while wasting away their corporate lives. It's really dark, and not subtle in the least. You've also got a town that is clinging to their simple ways, watching the internet and global corps suck them into a black hole. You've got alcoholics and Blue Velvet level messed up stuff happening just beyond those pixelated picket fences. As much as Stardew Valley might be a chill farming game, it's also an example of the creeping agony of existential dread. As such, I think I kind of like it. That said, a lot of the darkness is just under the surface. I don't want to paint Stardew Valley as something super edgy. It's not. In fact it's so colorful that my wife asked why I was playing a Zelda game on Xbox. The truth is that a lot of the wider tone of the game is like Walden Pond. It's about moving to the country and getting off the grid and embracing small town dynamics. It's about pushing away the burdens of our digital world. And as much as I'm not the outdoor type, I can kind of get the appeal. As some cool band once said, "modern life is rubbish." My arrival in Pelican Town was inconsequential. And I honestly had no idea how to even get started. So I took the Minecraft approach and just started whacking away at overgrown shrubbery and cutting down trees. After a few (in-game) days I noticed that there were actual tasks to complete. So I started following those. I started to understand the flow of the game: work hard in the morning until your energy has diminished a bit, then take it easier in the afternoon so you can go off exploring and completing tasks. I’d talk to folks and familiarize myself with the island. When Friday rolled around I went drinking at the bar to make some new friends. Oh, and I guess I was looking for love. That's something you’re able (supposed?) to do in this game. But I don't know. Romance is pretty low priority for me in a game. I guess Abigail is cute. She's got purple hair and comes off as a kind of moody goth nerd or something. But I just don't care enough to figure out what kinds of gifts she wants or whatever. I just want to be by myself. I started crafting a bit – something I'm not terribly fond of. And then, I started looking into the Community Center. That's when the game really opened up to me. The Community Center is a rundown abandoned building. Jujamart wants to buy the land, but the mayor can't bring himself to sell it. But you start to realize that you can fix it up and restore it to its former glory. There are many various tasks you need to complete to do that. And that's what makes Stardew Valley cool to me. As a farm sim, it's wide open. Do what you want. Plant stuff, forage, fish, make friends. It's a great alternative to the somewhat stale Animal Crossing formula. But with the Community Center, there are actual GOALS. There's a whole checklist of stuff to do. There's concrete progression. I like that. My only real problem with Stardew Valley is the genre, not the game. When I first played Animal Crossing in my early 20's, I had no real responsibilities in real life. I was a college student. I was working a part time job. I lived in a one bedroom apartment. My life revolved around hanging out with my friends and going to bars. So yeah, something like Animal Crossing was a huge time-suck for me. I could screw around with no real end goal in mind. I also had less money, so less games. Now I'm in my 40's. I work a demanding a job. I have a toddler. I have many responsibilities. So a game that's all about – y'know – working, is just less appealing to me. It's not exactly chill time if I'm worrying about repairing my farm and earning money. As a game, Stardew Valley is fantastic. It's actually more appealing to me than Animal Crossing since it's people instead of animals, and it has a dark streak, and mysteries, and the whole Community Center thing to unwind. But it's also a tremendous amount of WORK and frankly, I don't need a whole lot of work in my games right now. I need real deal escapism. So while I respect Stardew Valley, and while I appreciate and applaud the work of a single developer, this game just doesn’t fit into my life in a meaningful way right now. I can see myself coming back to it now and then to mess around – not unlike Minecraft. I got a solid week out of playing this one (on Game Pass, no less). But I think I'm ready to move on. I. I am NOT good at stealth. But I like to keep an open mind. I like to be optimistic. I also like to be cheap, so I spent a few days in search of the cheapest way to play Dishonored 2. I eventually landed on a copy for $15 from Game Fly. I feel no shame in telling you that I started the game on Easy mode. I don't care. I'm not good at stealth. I'm not good at Dishonored. I'm not good at "immersive sims." So I don't care. I just want to give this thing a fair chance and spend enough time with it to either see what it is that I'm missing so that I can form a solid opinion from first hand experience, or become a converted fan. My money is riding on the former. So now I'm Corvo's daughter. Which is cool. I like when games have the balls to mix things up like that. The game starts with you locked up. Of course there are open windows so it's not exactly high security. I make my way downstairs, peep out the bad guy target. I have the option to kill him, hurt him or sneak by him. I'm not good at stealth, though remember? So first he sees me and his guards kill me. So I try again. I hide behind something for a while and then he sees me so I kill him and then his guards. I make my way outside. My next goal is to make it to a boat. So I try my best to take things slow. I'm creeping as best I can on rooftops and high up stuff so guards won't notice me as I go down the street. But nope, I get spotted. So I have to take out more guards. I'm too crap with the swords so I just start shooting dudes in the face. Three in one building. Then a couple more in the middle of the road. I realize I'm out of bullets so I just start hauling ass as fast as I can. I run until I see water and make a jump towards the boat. I swim out there - staying under water so guards don't try to snipe me. I climb up the side of the boat and trigger a cut-scene ending the chapter. Well, that wasn't so bad. If the rest of the chapters are this condensed then I could possibly really enjoy this. But I doubt it. I'll plan to give it at least a week before trading this game in. II. For a moment there I was almost feeling excited about this game. Like "hey! Maybe I CAN enjoy an immersive sim!" But that feeling seemingly washed away in a moment. I start up the next chapter and it's that same thing from the first game - a weird otherplace with a watcher being giving me gnarly powers. The powers are fine. Well, I mean the heart thing was always kind of tedious to me. But the thing that lets me jump great heights? I love that thing. That was definitely the fun part of the first game for me. So okay, maybe I can have fun with it again for a while. Next I'm waking up in that big boat I had escaped to. I stumble around the ship for a while and burst through a door and - wait! Who's that! Oh... I just killed the woman who gives me missions. Game over, then. I'm just too jumpy. I feel like games like this where I get anxious because of the stealth stuff, it means I end up with an itchy trigger finger. Alright, so apparently this boat is the new central hub then. I see. Alright then. We get on a little boat and she brings me over to land to start a mission. Just like in the first game. The city looks just like the first game as well. I start walking toward the right and am told that it's a dangerous area because there's some like... wall... thing. I think it's some kind of surveillance system that I have to take out or get around or whatever. I didn't really read the explanation, I just turned and went the other way instead. I meet a woman who says she can help me get to where I need to go but I'll need to do her a favor. She wants me to go sneak into a certain building and find a corpse and bring it back to her. Sigh. Basically, this early in the game she's asking me to do the exact kind of crap that I hate doing in these games. She's basically reminding me WHY I hate these games. I don't want to sneak into a building. I don't want to sneak back carrying a corpse that's basically a sign that says "Hey! Look at me! I'm bad at stealth!" I quit the game. III. It took seven seasons but we finally got to see who the "slutty pumpkin" was at that Halloween party. And it was Katie Holmes! That was a great surprise. I've been a fan of hers since I was in high school. Actually, she and Sarah Michelle Gellar were my two big high school crushes. Anyway, it was a fun little cameo. To put it another way: every night this week I've considered actually firing up Dishonored 2 and giving it another chance, but doing so is just so unappealing to me. I'm actually dreading it. It's possible that I'd be more open to really trying if it weren't so recently that I played the first game. It's as if the wounds are too fresh. I know that this is more of the same, and I'm just not interested in more of the same. So instead I've been watching old episodes of How I Met Your Mother. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sell this damn game. There was a pretty big gap between classic 2D Metroid games for a while there. Metroid Fusion (Metroid 4) was released in 2002. And then... that was it. So apparently indie developer Thomas Happ got tired of waiting and went ahead and made his own homage. Axiom Verge was released in 2015 to much applause. Ironically, a year later we'd see the release of AM2R – a fan remake of Metroid II – and a year after that, Samus Returns which was Nintendo's own (inferior) remake of Metroid II. But the real important thing to note her is that as far as 2D Metroid games go, we had Fusion in 2002, and didn't get a proper Metroid 5 until Metroid Dread was finally released in 2021 – a nineteen years later. Perhaps even more ironically, 2021 was also saw the release of Axiom Verge 2. But I digress.
The point is that there was a real reason why Axiom Verge was such an indie hit. There was an actual market for this game. I mean, it's not like there was any lack of Metroidvania style indie games out there. In fact, they were a dime a dozen. But Axiom Verge actually looked and felt like a real Metroid game. It looked like an NES game, if the NES had much more impressive hardware under the hood. On top of that, Happ really seemed to understand what made a Metroid game worth playing. It wasn't just someone who wanted to make a game that looked like Metroid, it was someone who wanted to make a game that felt like Metroid. Who is this Thomas Happ guy, anyway? I looked him up because I got curious. I mean, the dude that made AM2R received a cease and desist letter from Nintendo, but was smartly picked up by Microsoft and went ahead and worked on the Ori games. So I couldn't help but wonder what was up with Happ and why was he still chugging away as an indie dev? Well, I think I may have gotten my answer. It turns out that Happ has already worked in the AAA space, with his name attached to projects like Crash Nitro Kart, Outlaw Golf 2, Outlaw Tennis, NFL Street 3, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08. Interesting. Anyway, that was a real digression. But I wanted to say that Metroid is an interesting series to me. Over the years since I was a kid, Metroid has been a series I've always kind of wanted to like. It's one that I like a lot on paper. And I've played a lot of them. I mean, they've always drawn heavily from Alien and all. So I'm drawn to them. But I think I like the idea of Metroid more than I like Metroid. Here's my own brief rundown of the non-3D games... Metroid – The original was one I remember seeing adults play as a kid. It felt too confusing and difficult to me. I was more of a Castlevania kid growing up. I did eventually play the Zero Mission remake and thought it was way better than the original thanks to some quality of life improvements. Metroid II – I loved this game as a kid. It was a Gameboy staple for me. Feels pretty antiquated now, but I did play AM2R when it was released, and was pretty impressed. And I played Samus Returns and thought it was awful thanks to the inclusion of the parrying. Super Metroid – I missed out on this one back when it was originally released. I tried to play it numerous times in the past decade, but I've never been able to really love it. I don't know why. I can't put my finger on it, but it just doesn't grab me. I know I'm in the minority. Metroid Fusion – I liked this one a lot, but I haven't played it in years. Metroid Dread – I don’t know. I bought it when it was released, and never played it. I have to admit, I have a Switch but haven't played it in well over a year now. ...that was another big diversion. And I know Axiom Verge isn't Metroid, but I feel like it's impossible to talk about it without talking about Metroid. While Axiom Verge is its own unique thing, I genuinely feel like your love of Metroid is going to drastically alter your opinion of this game. Especially 8bit Metroid. But before I dig into the game itself, I want to draw special attention to the sound design here. My God, the sound design is great. And I'm not talking about the music – I'm talking about the ambience. It's incredible. It's unnerving. It's super impressive. Anyway... Axiom Verge. I have to say that Axiom Verge is a pretty incredible game. It feels like a classic Metroid game in the best way possible. It has the vibe and the look down perfectly, but there's some quality of life improvements like an auto-map and the fact that you don't lose upgrades when you die. These little things have helped to push me further into Axiom Verge without the frustrations I've had playing some of the (earlier) Metroids. The balance seems super fair as well. Obviously you will be challenged and punished if you try to visit an area that you're not quite ready for. But honestly, if you've unlocked whatever item you need to access an area, then you're probably ready. And boss battles are tough, sure, but they never feel unfair or like you're bashing your head against a wall. On top of all that, Axiom Verge messes with your expectations in a unique way. Somewhat early on you'll receive an item that lets you mess with glitches in-game. There's garbled sprites, and, I don't really want to ruin it for you, but it's super interesting. The only complaint I'd really have is that well, this is an homage. And as such, there's something missing from the original games. Like, your main character – Trace – he's just not as interesting a protagonist as Samus. It's missing the incredible Metroid lore. And yeah, it looks like Metroid – it's got a kind of Geiger influence for sure, but that doesn't exactly make it stand out on its own either. But what can you do? And honestly, it does feel legit. But also super-charged. There's tons of new skills and weapons to unlock, and the rate at which you find them is exhilarating. I have to say that Axiom Verge is truly impressive. The past few times I've fired up an old Metroid game, I've done so with a walkthough close by. Here, I'm finding the thrill of just picking a direction and exploring. This is an exceptionally good indie game, and while many games jump on the Metroidvania bandwagon, Axiom Verge just does it all right. I can't even believe Persona 5 was released all the way back in 2016. That means that as I write this, it's been a game I've wanted to play for seven years now. That's insane. But I'm a pretty weird dude. I mean, here in the US the Persona games have been a pretty big deal as far as JRPG fans go. And I've been super interested in the larger Megami Tensei series since I first discovered it around 2009 or so. And yet somehow, I've only played Persona 2 and that was back in 2011, I think.
Like I said, I'm a weird dude. Way back when, I went down the Shin Megami Tensei rabbit hole and played a bunch of random games. I played Revelations: The Demon Slayer and Demikids for starters. I played Shin Megami Tensei III and IV. I played the fighting game Persona 4 Arena. And I even thought that Soul Hackers 2 was one of the most overlooked games of 2022. And yet the only Persona game I played was the second one on PSP and that was over a decade ago. I'm not sure how I held out so long on playing Persona 5, a game within a series that I'm interested in, and which has been re-released multiple times and often lauded as possibly the best JRPG of the decade. But here we are. Upon first firing the game up, it became immediately clear that Persona 5 is staggeringly impressive. If you're a fan of Megami Tensei, and Persona in particular, then you know what you're getting into. But Atlus has spent decades perfecting this kind of game. And they really know what they're doing. The visuals, the music, the cut scenes, the dialogue, the combat - it's all a cut above the rest. So what even is Persona 5? Well, the Persona games are part of the larger Megami Tensei universe of course. The original Megami Tensei was actually adapted from a Japanese book about demons possessing computers. It's awesome and ridiculous and also quite ahead of its time. I've always been a fan of science fiction and technology. But I love that these games take science fiction (computers, internet, etc) and merge them with theology from various cultures. Imagine something like Neuromancer or The Matrix but with angels and demons. It kind of reminds me of when I was in college and friends pitched the movie Event Horizon to me as "Alien crossed with Hellraiser." Anyway, Persona started as a spin-off from the main series that took place in a more modern day Japan and featured younger students as the main cast. So between all the techno dungeons and demon fusing you've also got school work and dating in the mix. It's such a bizarre mix, but I mean, I'll happily delve into The Matrix X Hellraiser X One Tree Hill. Whatever. Persona 5 tells the story of a young man who interferes with a woman being assaulted one night, and is charged with assault himself by the man he stopped. He's then whisked off to a private school under foster care while on a one year probation. It's an interesting set up. But obviously things go off the rails quickly when an app shows up on his phone which works as a sort of GPS to the demon world. Soon our young protagonist is Joker and all the friends he makes are helping him explore an alternate version of the school and its surroundings while finding their own Personas to fight alongside him. Over the years, the Persona games have become far more popular than the games they spun off from. Persona 5 no longer even mentions "Shin Megami Tensei" in its title. And I guess that makes sense. The modern day setting certainly makes them feel unique in the JRPG space. Personally, I think all of these games are great. But if I'm being honest, I do think I might like the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games more. They're generally a little less story intensive, and because of that I feel like they rely more on their battles and demon-fusing to carry the games. Which is not to say that I dislike Persona 5 or its story or battle system. I actually like or love everything about this game. The storytelling is solid and the visuals are awesome and creepy. The alternate reality dungeons remind me quite a bit of the dream world of Catherine. And because this is still a Megami Tensei game, that means that the battle system is without rival. My only real problem with Persona 5 isn't really a problem. This is a huge game. I mean really huge. And at this point in my life, I just don't really have a hundred hours to pour into a single game anymore. Back before I had a little one in this house, I had no qualms about picking a game and sticking with it until I saw my way to the end, however long that took. But nowadays, I often have trouble sticking with one story based game or more than a week or two. It's a personal issue, and obviously very specific to my exact moment in life. Last year I played through Soul Hackers 2, which was a pretty perfect length for me. It was the kind of game I could get sucked into and tackle in about two weeks. Persona 5 is incredible, and yet it just keeps nagging at me that no matter how much time I've put into it recently, I've just barely scratched the surface. There's so much more game ahead, and I have trouble keeping focused. My daughter is four right now, and after a long day of work, then dinner and her whole bed-time routine, my wife and are beat pretty early. I still want to spend a lot of time gaming, but far too often my brain is mush and I have trouble focusing for long stretches. It's unfortunate that I can't fully commit to a game like Persona 5 right now. But I got a good taste of it and I'm glad I did. I can recognize its genius, and honestly even the small percentage of it that I did play makes me feel like this is a modern masterpiece of the JRPG. Maybe one day I'll get back to it. But of course, there's always so many games begging me to play them. As a guy who started playing games in the 80s, I can easily say that the 2020s are an amazing time to be a gamer. There's so much access to so many incredible games and new ones just keep coming out every week. |
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