Category: Archive

2015 Gaming Selections

RKasa

January 1, 2016

Comments closed

For several years, I posted “roundups” of all of the games I played in a given year. After the 2011 edition, I lapsed on this and have not written one since. Having to remember every game I played in a 20xx and write up a little something about it got to be tedious, and didn’t play well with my inherent laziness.

All that is why, when I decided to revive this feature, it was with new restrictions. This time, I will be covering only ten games: those which left the strongest impressions on me within a given year, regardless of release date. This restriction also enables me to write a bit more about each game.

So, without further ado, here’s my ten for 2015, presented in the order in which I played them. Following each title is the developer/author, the platform I played the game on, the release year on said platform, and my obligatory summary. They are not ranked, except for my personal Game of the Year and its runner-ups, which were relatively easy choices, at least for this installment.

Mighty Gunvolt
Inti Creates | 3DS | 2014
Although I am not a big fan of anything that resembles Mega Man, this game charmed the pants off of me. Few “retro” style games that truly want to be “retro” ever come close to the faithfulness to the era that Mighty Gunvolt achieves: here, it really does feel like you’re playing an NES game. The art and music are lovingly crafted, as is the localization from the original Japanese, which sprinkles bits of “Engrish” throughout. The biggest aspect which feels “modern” is the difficulty, which isn’t as punishing as its predecessors, but that’s all for the better.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch
Young Horses | Windows | 2014
And on the opposite end of the spectrum is Octodad, which forces the player to unlearn everything they know about controlling video game characters. The player character is a giant octopus masquerading as a human surburban father, and controlling him—through a scheme where arms and legs are affiliated with analog sticks and shoulder buttons—is as difficult as you might expect, given the circumstances. Not drawing suspicion to yourself in your everyday life is the goal of the game, a lighthearted sitcom of a tale which comes complete with a catchy theme song (but no laugh track, thankfully). Although a certain part came off as slightly unfulfilling, there’s nothing else that would cause me not to recommend this.

Gone Home
The Fullbright Company | Windows | 2013
This is one of those games I put off playing for awhile due to the neverending hype and discussion surrounding it, but I finally did so this year. What it ended up being was an exploration through a massive old house that was alternately nostalgic, goofy, and suspenseful, a miniature 1990s teenage soap opera told in first-person in-between references to Bratmobile and The X-Files. That this tightly crafted, intimate little story generated as much controversy as it did is bewildering. Gone Home is—somehow, bizarrely, sadly—groundbreaking for the video game medium in its everyday mundanity and small human dramas, but it’s also good, and hopefully this sort of thing will become more commonplace in the future.

PixelJunk Eden
Q-Games | Windows | 2012
I play few platformers anymore, not so much for lack of interest (Kirby burnout notwithstanding), as that there haven’t been any really good ones in awhile. I came to PixelJunk Eden not knowing much about it, but finding within it just the refreshing sort of platformer I needed. The visual style is minimalist overall, but can get pleasantly noisy sometimes in a structured Sonic Youth sort of way, and it’s accompanied by some cool electronic music and suitable sound effects. The physics are floaty but believable; the diminutive player character moves around like it’s in water. Although the paths weren’t always clear and, thus, it became way too easy to get lost in certain late-game levels, I had a really good time with PixelJunk Eden.

You Must Build a Boat
EightyEightGames | Windows | 2015
This game, the follow-up to 10000000, almost didn’t make this list. It’s on here because I returned to the game again, months after first beating it, to go after more crew members and achievements. That’s when I fell back into its rhythms. With more tile types and general complexity than 10000000, my original feeling was that You Must Build a Boat was too overwhelming, and somewhat inelegant. Somehow, this doesn’t matter any longer. Its density and mechanics have their own kind of beauty and rhythm, and it has proven itself to be just as well-balanced and addictive. That, plus the new rooms and crew members that get added over the course of the game gives it more character than 10000000 ever had. That’s not to say that YMBAB is better than 10000000, but it is most definitely a worthy successor.

Roundabout
No Goblin | Windows | 2014
This game is unlike anything else out there. It’s got a groovy 1970s setting complete with funk music, rounded chunky fonts, trippy drug references, and suitably toned live-action FMVs. The story centers around Georgio Manos (pictured), a silent protagonist and up-and-coming revolving limousine driver. With the support of her comrades, she ferries people all over town and deals with various bits of drama. Oh yes, and as her title implies, her limo does indeed revolve around and around while she drives, which is where the challenge comes in. It’s all very silly, a little bit difficult, rather fun (and funny), and over all too quickly.

Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector
Hit-Point | iPhone | 2014
My husband and I waffled on trying this out for ages, and a patch from earlier this year which added an English-language option basically gave us little excuse. So, one day over the US Thanksgiving weekend, we each downloaded Neko Atsume from Apple’s App Store. What a great decision that was. A few times a day, after setting out food and toys, we check to see which stupidly cute, beady-eyed cats have visited us. Another aspect which has won us over: it’s free to play, with microtransactions available, but we’ve never once felt the pressure to buy any extra gold fish (the top-level in-game currency). We just take our time and enjoy these adorable digital felines at our leisure.

———

Third Place
Hatsune Miku: Project mirai DX
SEGA | 3DS | 2015
I’m afraid I might be biased when it comes to this choice: I’m a fan of Vocaloids, and Miku in particular, plus I also have a soft spot for both Nendoroid figures and tactile rhythm games. Project mirai DX features a robust selection of songs featuring music software developer Crypton’s beloved stable of Vocaloids: classics, fan favorites, and lesser-known tracks spanning a nice range of styles and BPMs, from many of the best producers in the scene. There are even a few songs with additional vocals supplied by special guest GUMI (aka Megpoid), a Vocaloid published by Internet Co. Ltd. All of the characters are represented in their chibi Nendoroid forms, thanks to a collaboration with Good Smile Company, and have a certain lively appeal to them that the blander, regularly-proportioned Project DIVA models lack.

The touchscreen-based gameplay mode is a joy to play (the button-based one isn’t too shabby either, though not as much fun), and there are several diversions—a room to decorate, character outfits, reversi and Puyo Puyo minigames, a music player, etc.—that are entertaining ways to take a break from the main rhythm section every so often. Despite the rare misstep (such as a certain pair of popular but overly repetitive songs), it’s a must-have for 3DS-owning Vocaloid fans, and probably the best rhythm game on the system overall.

Second Place
Analogue: A Hate Story
Love Conquers All Games | Windows | 2012
Stories with a strong sociological bent are still relatively hard to find in games. While my 2015 manga slate was filled with brilliantly humane works like Vinland Saga, My Love Story!!, and Assassination Classroom, there hasn’t been much like those on my gaming one. Analogue: A Hate Story is one of the rare exceptions. Like (the absolutely amazing, seriously it’s a masterpiece) Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Analogue is a feminist examination of a specific period in Asian history. In this case, it’s an extremely repressive Korean society recreated on a long-lost starship, whose story is told through the logs maintained by, and the commentary of, a pair of AIs named *Hyun-ae and *Mute.

What follows from there is a dense, intertwined tale of family, hierarchy, social expectation, doomed romance, dashed expectations, and horrific violence, with the occasional bits of humor, which helps lighten the mood from time to time and rounds out the characters. It’s a gripping tale, one as fine as in any good comic or prose story I read this year, and I’m looking forward to playing its sequel, Hate Plus, in the year ahead. In fact, Analogue was all set to be my personal Game of the Year, but then something else came out…

First Place: Game of the Year
The Beginner’s Guide
Everything Unlimited Ltd. | Windows | 2015
I really don’t know where to start with this one without giving away what happens during a certain scene, a scene that matters so much when it comes to how this story is ultimately interpreted. When that scene happened, I understood much more, but only to a point. By the time the game ends, there’s at least two apparent large plot holes and some uncomfortable unanswered questions, which aren’t helped by the fact that the entire thing has been narrated by Davey Wreden, the creator of The Beginner’s Guide, seemingly playing himself. There’s also that cryptic dedication…

I’m going to dig further into this now, and although I won’t reference anything too specifically, there might be some parts that could be considered spoilers, so turn around if you need to.

Okay? Good.

What The Beginner’s Guide is ultimately about (or at least it seems so to me) is audiences, the great bugbear of creators everywhere, and how uncontrollable they are. It left much the same impression on me as The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki’s final film, which dealt with a similar theme on multiple levels. In that film, which is based on true events, an inventor does amazing, innovative work but finds that his lofty ideals don’t line up with reality. Such is the situation in The Beginner’s Guide, where Davey takes us through a tour of the works of “Coda”, a friend who has dabbled in game development before suddenly stopping. Who Coda is and what their works really mean is beside the point. It is Davey and his presentation of Coda’s games which really matters here.

The result is a fascinating, but somewhat worrying, journey through all sorts of unfinished first-person games. There are a lot of dialogues that go nowhere, enclosed spaces, and strange surprises. Davey is not wrong to have interpretations of these creations. The wrongness that is present becomes evident later on, and, in the end, I don’t blame Coda for their actions, though perhaps they were somewhat naive in how they handled their games. It’s an interesting and ultimately heart-wrenching story about creation, interpretation, modification, and everything in between. I wonder if anyone who isn’t a creative type of some sort would get it. I wonder, like many others, if this is based on something which really happened. I do not wonder if this sort of thing continues to happen in the real world, because I know it does. It sucks, but it still happens. It happens to a lot of us, and though it might take awhile, things will be okay again.

Presenting Brainscraps Holiday Card no. 2

RKasa

December 18, 2015

Comments closed

Last year’s Holiday Card was a ton of work. Despite this, I wanted to do something similar again. I didn’t come up with a good idea until the middle of the year, and an incredibly awesome Japan vacation interrupted production for about three weeks, but I managed to get it done more or less on time. The total production time was around two and a half months, on and off (not counting that Japan trip).

Thus, I present to you all this year’s Brainscraps Holiday Card: Senpai Simulator. The title pretty much says it all: play as Senpai and either notice or ignore underclassmen to your heart’s content. This year’s game engine of choice is the wonderful Ren’Py, and this time, all of the visual and sound assets were created by me, using a variety of tools including Sketchbook Pro, Clip Studio Paint, Pixelmator, and GarageBand.

As before, this Holiday Card can be found year-round under Projects. Please let me know as soon as possible if you run into any bugs or other issues, and I’ll fix them for a later release. As for future such Cards, I really can’t say what next year will bring, but in the meantime, look forward to one or more year-in-review type posts within the next week or two. Enjoy, and hope everyone has a great holiday and an even better 2016!

PAX, Picks, and Pokemon

RKasa

August 27, 2015

Comments closed

(…though not necessarily in that order.)

It’s the day before we leave for Seattle for yet another awesome late summer weekend at PAX Prime and, as usual, what this means still hasn’t completely sunk in yet. Part of this is likely due to poor sleep and being kept busy with various things, mainly the chores and errands that always have to be done pre-PAX. However, this will likely change on PAX Eve, as it typically does.

In the meantime, I’ve been finishing up a few games and such. First off was the most frustrating Tropico 5 DLC I’ve yet encountered: “The Supercomputer”. The mission included here starts you off in the next-to-the-last era with the regular, bare-bones starting buildings—which is fine. What isn’t fine is the strict time limit to reach the next era, plus the expensive building and maintenance requirements involved. I had a lot of trouble balancing these tasks with keeping my economy from imploding and making sure all the citizens were happy. Eventually, I got through it on my regular difficulty settings, but it took at least a dozen restarts until I found the magic formula.

Next up were an unusual pair of portable games: one was a Game Freak game that didn’t have “Pokemon” in the title, and the other was a non-Game Freak game that did. That first one was HarmoKnight, a downloadable 3DS rhythm game which I beat yesterday. It had been on my radar for quite awhile, and I finally picked it up in the form of a Club Nintendo reward. It was an enjoyable mix of platformer and rhythm game, though some of the harder levels made me wonder if I’m still cut out for this sort of thing. I guess I’ll find out for sure sometime after Hatsune Miku: Project mirai DX gets here next month via Play-Asia.

The non-Game Freak Pokemon game was Pokemon Conquest, which I’d started the day before HarmoKnight and beat today. Aside from some random rounds of Pokemon Stadium at a friend’s place back in the day, it’s the first and only Pokemon spinoff that I’ve played. It also happens to be one with an unusual lineage: made by Tecmo Koei, Pokemon Conquest is a strategy RPG crossover between the Pokemon franchise and the extremely niche Nobunaga’s Ambition. It’s a game that, when it was first unveiled, I thought was never, ever going to be released in the US, but somehow, Nintendo made it happen. I’m kind of glad they did, though; the setting is strange, but it’s a pretty decent all-ages SRPG that happens to feature Pokemon.

Now that I’m through those, I should probably get back to Picross DS, which has continually overwhelmed me with its massive amount of content. Fortunately, I don’t have many more puzzles left to go (I think), and then I don’t plan to play anything else this series for awhile, not even after Picross 3D 2 comes out here (at least, I hope it comes out here). However, part of me also wants to start up a proper Game Freak-made Pokemon again with Pokemon X. This is the last Pokemon game I need to play in order to consider myself caught up with the series; as much as I love Hoenn, I’ve no plans to play Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire. Also, after X, I will have played a game in every major Pokemon setting except for the first generation’s, though I suppose I can always check out Kanto in SoulSilver‘s postgame if I really want. I’m still not 100% sure I should be playing a new main-series Pokemon game less than a year after beating SoulSilver, but hopefully it won’t wear me out on the franchise too much.

Finally, I suppose I should explain the “picks” part of this post’s title. For some time, I wrote annual “Gaming Roundup” posts where I listed everything I played in a given year and some brief impressions. Unfortunately, these posts took a lot of work to compile and I slacked off on them after the 2011 edition. I decided a little while ago that I’m going to bring back year-end wrapups, but do them differently: this time, I’m only going to talk about my top ten favorite games that I played this year, and maybe a few others that left strong enough impressions. Recently, I went through the games I beat so far this year and put together a preliminary list, and it’ll probably be rewritten a few times before 2015 bows out. I can’t say this has been a fantastic year, gaming-wise, though there have been a few really great games that I’ve played. Of course, there will be more about said games, and others, around the end of the year.

So Long, My PS2

RKasa

August 7, 2015

Comments closed

Sony’s PlayStation 2 is one of my favorite dedicated gaming platforms of all time. There’s a wealth of amazing games for that system, including ICO, Kingdom Hearts, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Katamari Damacy, and several others which I am glad to have experienced. Over the years, I’ve gone through two consoles. My first, a “Phat” bundled with Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, developed disk read issues; instead of attempting a repair, I sold it on eBay. The second, a Slim, eventually saw problems with the disk drive’s hinged lid, which I fixed by setting a hardcover copy of The Simarillion on top of it whenever I wanted to play a game. Oh, and the controller’s left analog stick sometimes becomes stuck in a certain direction, but not enough so that it’s unusable. Plus the switch from a old-style TV to an HDTV some years ago introduced noticeable lag into a handful of games, but that’s not the PS2’s fault. We have a third PS2, our second Slim, brand-new and packed away in storage, just in case we should need it.

However, the first Slim might be joining its sibling soon, as I recently beat the last PS2 game I had planned to play. This game, appropriately enough, was also one of the last major North American releases for the PS2: Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love.

So Long, My Love is the fifth main entry in Sega and Red Entertainment’s Sakura Wars franchise, and the only one ever to have been officially localized in English, albeit by NIS America (however, a fair number of the anime spinoffs have seen release here since the late 90s). Why this series has stayed in Japan for so long is not a surprise once one starts up the game, as it has a very heavy visual novel/dating sim component. When this game was released in the US in 2010, English-localized dating sims were extremely niche, and typically the province of adult PC game publishers. Though the situation has improved since then, they still occupy a small and specialized corner of the overall Western game market.

A typical ground battle in <i>Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love</i>. Source image from GameSpot (gamespot.com). — The battle system is simple, yet enjoyable.

The other 20-30% of the game is, of all things, a strategy RPG, and not a bad one, either. Not including the endgame, battles take place roughly twice per chapter, typically with one being ground-based, and the other focused on aerial combat. The battle system plays like a simpler version of the one in Valkyria Chronicles, which is not a surprise considering that many Sakura Wars staffers went on to work on the later series. Nearly all actions, including moving, healing, defending, joint attacks, and special moves, cost a set amount of action points (and sometimes SP as well), and the lack of a grid means that units can move freely around the maps. There is a bit more to it, but in general, if you enjoyed the gameplay in Valkyria Chronicles, there’s much to like in So Long, My Love‘s battle system.

To get to those battles, however, requires going through lots and lots of text. The main story takes place in an alternate-universe version of the 1920s, where steam engines have become so advanced that they’re used to power airships and mobile suits. The player character is Shinjiro Taiga, a fresh-faced young officer who is shipped from Japan to the US to join the New York Combat Revue, a troupe of Broadway performers who moonlight as peace-keeping pilots of mechs called STARs. This wacky intersection of professions is justified in that not only does the Revue have to keep the peace, they are also charged with spreading happiness throughout the city with their performances, in order to ward off negative energy.

The full explorable "world map". Source image from GameSpot (gamespot.com). — Bizarro New York has a “Bay-area” instead of a “Financial District”.

Despite the thought put into the Combat Revue’s role and other such plot concepts, the world-building is by far the weakest part of the game. Forget about the sometimes odd musicals the Revue puts on; more importantly, the New York City represented here is not so much the real thing as a dreamlike idea, and contains a number of inaccuracies. A library building that resembles the main branch in Midtown is in the Village. Wall Street is north of Chinatown. Fifth Avenue is on West 59th Street, and so on. There’s also the lack of steampunky elements—besides the NY Combat Revue’s equipment and facilities, there’s not much other fancy gear save for a few pipe-heavy cars and the occasional public fixture—and the odd anachronism such as the graffiti in Harlem. The most jarring flaws of all surface late in the game: it’s December, and the city’s bushes and trees are mostly still leafy and green. You wouldn’t know it was a Northeastern winter at all if it weren’t for some mentions of Christmas and the light snowfall that occurs during one battle.

Sagiitta and Subaru ponder Shinjiro's words. Source image from GameSpot (gamespot.com). — The sharply-dressed Sagiitta and Subaru.

The characters have quite a bit more thought put into them. Besides Shinjiro, there are five other STAR pilots who are already a part of or later join the team. Main girl Gemini is a cheery Texan with big dreams who shares an apartment with her horse Larry. Sagiitta is a proud and intelligent lawyer (yes, she actively maintains a third profession) and, surprisingly, one of the best African-American characters in all of video games. Fellow Japanese expat Subaru is an aloof genius type who is identified as female, but whose actual gender is a mystery. Energetic little Rikaritta (aka Rika) is a performer and bounty hunter who loves to eat. Finally, there’s the girl whose ending I went for: Diana, a kind and sickly young woman who studies medicine and loves birds and nature. Rounding out the cast are the non-performing staff of the Revue, plus a handful of lesser characters, including a boutique owner, a jazz musician, a grocer, and a couple of mobsters. Most of these characters are well fleshed-out, with the STAR pilots/girlfriend candidates getting the bulk of the development. Each of these girls has a distinct story arc, with some of them better written than others, and developing close relationships with them affects your party’s strength in battle. The romance that results is chaste to the point of being practically platonic—a good thing when you consider that the youngest of the bunch, Rika, is only eleven years old. In general, although the basic story is fairly simple and rarely original, the highly likable characters and their tales nicely make up for it.

One of the more complex actions required while interacting with characters. Source image from GameSpot (gamespot.com). — Get these moves right for a happy Rika.

Unlike with other visual novels, the choices you are given while interacting with these characters are usually timed, and some tasks, such as an early one where you help Gemini clean the Littlelip Theater, involve successfully pulling off series of analog stick movements. When you’re free to move around, you can explore the city both to further the main story and get to know various characters better, and also play around with a combination radio/camera called the Cameratron, which seems to be mainly there for an ongoing picture-taking sidequest. There’s also a log feature, standard in many VNs, which is useful for going back and checking bits of previously read text, as well as a quick save option for non-battle sections. Still images of the heroines can be collected, though there is no standard CG gallery, unfortunately. Overall, the visual novel end of So Long, My Love is solid where it counts most, though there’s a bit too much of it compared to the battles.

The script itself is a little repetitive at times, but generally all right, and the localization is servicable. Aside from some poorly-drawn fingers, the character art is pleasant to look at. I’ve already complained about how New York City is represented, but as far as basic quality goes, the background art is average, as is the sometimes-earwormy music. Cutscenes are lovely cel-animated affairs that are sometimes decently blended in with the gameplay sections. The voice acting—a fair amount of the game is voiced—is, however, not as good as the rest. What made me buy the PS2 version of this game in the first place was Gemini’s cringe-inducing English voice in this trailer. The PS2 version comes with both Japanese and English VO options, as opposed to just the latter for the Wii, but in the end, it might not have made that big of a difference. Even with my limited knowledge of the language, I could tell that the Japanese voices were frequently light on charm (with the exceptions of a few characters, mainly Ratchet) and heavy on melodrama. Also, given the US-based setting, there’s a not insignificant amount of Engrish sprinkled throughout. Finally, the oddest thing about the game’s audio is that Shinjiro is not voiced at all outside of the rare animated cutscene.

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is quirky as hell, much more so than the last such game I wrote about. It also might be a fitting swan song for the PS2, home to so many unique, colorful games for all types of audiences. So Long, My Love is an odd intersection of high profile and low budget, the traditional and the innovative, East and West. It’s unlike anything that had been localized before and is most definitely not for everyone, but the fact that it was released here at all is one of those things that was great about the PS2 era. Thanks for all the good times, PS2, and I hope to visit your games again in the future.

Heavy Metal Thunder

RKasa

June 20, 2015

Comments closed

There’s a few styles and genres I tend to shy away from. Heavy metal music certainly fits that category, and so do open-world games. Given those facts, I’m not exactly sure why I picked up Brütal Legend on Steam, besides the circumstance of one of their big sales going on at the time and it being, therefore, quite cheap. Perhaps it was the fun-looking setting and aesthetic, or the famously mis-marketed RTS elements, which sounded kind of interesting to me. Whatever it was, I finally got around to actually playing it this month and found it to be a worthwhile game indeed.

The most impressive thing about Brütal Legend is how seriously and thoroughly it treats its theme. For instance, upon starting the game, the player is treated to a live-action intro movie, where actor/musician Jack Black takes them to a record store and shows them a rare album tucked away in the “Forbidden Metal” section. This LP is titled Brütal Legend and has a “Press Start” sticker on the front; doing so opens up the album’s gatefold cover, with “New Game” to the left and “Continue” on the right. This awesome opening menu continues on with the back cover, inner sleeve, and both sides of the record itself.

As for the actual game, the world is one where, to put it succinctly, metal rules. The landscapes seem ripped straight from album covers, the “Fire Tributes” earned by doing various tasks take the forms of silhouetted hands holding up lighters, and most every human sports varying degrees of spikes, leather, black clothing, and/or big hair. The men are shirtless, the women are busty, and the beasts have chrome-plated fangs. It’s the kind of universe which is only possible with a heavy metal theme—other musical genres, such as country and hip-hop, have similarly strong iconography associated with them, but are too grounded in reality to make a truly fantastical world out of.

The main character, the Jack Black-voiced Eddie Riggs, winds up in this place by circumstance. While doing his job as a roadie for a shitty nu-metal band, tragedy strikes, and the next thing he knows, he’s somewhere much darker. Soon, he’s got an axe (as in, an axe), an axe (as in, a guitar), a little coupe called The Deuce, and a sidekick named Ophelia. He winds up in Bladehenge, where the siblings Lars and Lita are planning a rebellion against their oppressive rulers. Although the writing is often witty and the optional backstory bits are inspired, the main plot is one of the weakest parts of the game. It’s corny at times, in a Hollywood blockbuster sort of way, and certainly not as original or interesting as its setting. (There were also some spoilers in the Steam Trading Cards which, even with certain predictable story elements, was kind of annoying.) Considering the expense—and, therefore, risk—that went into the production of this game, this lack of originality in the plot does not come as much of a surprise, but is still disappointing considering the rest of the game’s uniqueness.

Aside from Jack Black, the cast includes a few famous metal musicians; although some are worse voice actors than others, one particularly good performance is Ozzy Osborne as the Guardian of Metal, a robed gent who trades Fire Tributes for upgrades. Ozzy’s character model, like those of at least a couple others, resembles the real thing, and all of them have a rounded, cartoony quality about them which has aged considerably well. Much the same could be said about the various fighting units (which range from headbangers with amazingly huge necks to hot rod war machines), wild animals, and environmental elements. Eschewing the hyper-realism that has long been the fashion in big-budget games has paid off in dividends; for a title which was originally released on consoles in 2009, it still looks really good.

As for how Brütal Legend plays, as I said earlier, this is both an open-world game and an RTS. As the former, it involves a good deal of driving and general action, with escort missions and car racing sidequests, and plenty of opportunities for putting both axes to work. There’s also, naturally, a few types of hidden things scattered throughout the world and the associated rewards for finding and interacting with them in the right way.

The second genre this game fits under, real-time strategy, is what sets it apart. More complex than Pikmin but (thankfully) not as much as something like StarCraft, Brütal Legend‘s system involves a handful of different unit types along with resource collecting (in the form of “fans” siphoned though the use of “merch booths”), base upgrades, and a simple set of commands. This is all on top of having the option to control Eddie “normally”, i.e. as you would when exploring the world, and once you factor in the usefulness of the special guitar solo moves during these battles, things can quickly get hectic. Compared to the rest of the game, these battles can be overwhelming for someone who isn’t used to dense management-style tactics; outside of the heavy metal theme, this is the best case for Brütal Legend being a niche title. For those of us who like—or at the very least don’t mind—this sort of gameplay, these battles are interesting, though sometimes fiddly, challenges.

A different sort of challenge lies in keeping track of Eddie’s health. Though there is a user interface for things like battle commands and guitar solos, there is no health bar for our hero. Instead, whenever he is near death, the sound of a beating heart is heard and the screen tints slightly redder. While I appreciate this less-is-more approach, there were a few times when I wish I’d had further information about the state Eddie is in.

Finally, I absolutely must mention the music. In addition to a handful of atmospheric instrumental tunes (and the nu-metal band’s song from the opening), Brütal Legend is jam-packed with metal tunes from a wide variety of subgenres. Among others, there’s legends like Black Sabbath, 80s hair bands such as Mötley Crüe, and more modern groups, including Mastodon and (of course) Tenacious D. New songs can be unlocked throughout the course of the game and played via the Deuce’s “radio”, the Mouth of Metal. Switching between songs can be done on the fly with the d-pad, a nostalgically chunky click of a tape deck separating each track.

Like heavy metal music itself, Brütal Legend is not for everyone, but it proved to be very much for me. I have a soft spot for games that are polished yet sufficiently quirky: the types of “b-game” projects that have, more and more, become the province of indie studios as the bigger ones either go out of business or focus more heavily on titles that warrant three A’s, minimum. Sure, offbeat games like Brütal Legend sometimes have questionable design decisions, but the best ones also have a way of shining through with good ideas and execution, and tons of character. That this game had as big of a budget as it did helps give it an especially rare sheen. Sometimes, I wish more people loved these sorts of games, so that more of them could be made.

Revenge of What You Hated About Old Games

RKasa

May 27, 2015

Comments closed

Since my last post, I played through two more games to completion. The first one that I finished was Gone Home, which is one of those kinds of games where its best to go in as cold as possible, so I won’t discuss it here other than to say that despite some problems I had getting certain graphics settings (which I know my computer can handle) to run smoothly, it was worth playing. However, I have a lot of opinions about the second game, which I beat yesterday afternoon. Said game is Shantae: Risky’s Revenge – Director’s Cut.

Risky’s Revenge is a Metroidvania platformer, and also a sequel—the original Shantae was a late-in-its-lifecycle Game Boy Color title that is especially prized by collectors. I have never played the latter, and have only been aware of it by reputation and the apparently offbeat, in a good way, title character. A friend gifted me a Steam copy of Risky’s Revenge after seeing it on my wishlist, so I dove into the game expecting a polished platformer with a fun heroine.

Shantae jumps around in the Magical Hall of Boobs. — BOOBS EVERYWHERE.

As it turned out, Risky’s Revenge is polished in the most obvious ways, while remaining dull to a fault in a more subtle, yet pervasive, fashion. The animation shows the most spit and shine, as it’s extremely fluid and lively, though there are other high points as well, such as the fitting music and smooth controls. The colors pop brightly on the screen, helping to make most of the game’s areas reasonably easy to get around in, and the cutscene graphics are clear and sharp. If nothing else, and despite the startling male-gazey fanservice that regularly crops up, this game is a pleasure to look at and listen to.

Some other parts could’ve done with the same amount of care put into them, though. For starters, there’s Shantae herself. This half-genie, half-human guardian is the grouchiest protagonist I’ve ever encountered in a platformer, especially one so visually appealing. While her pixelated sprite defaults to a bouncy, smiling expression, her three cutscene portraits are neutral, skeptical, and outright surly, and her dialogue often reinforces these visuals. With her personality represented as such, I wondered what her friends thought of her, and didn’t think much of her disagreements with the town’s mayor. Her grouchiness wouldn’t have been a problem if there was something deeper behind it, but there didn’t appear to be anything. In short, at least in this game, she’s not a very good main character, and certainly not one that I’m itching to go adventuring with again.

Shantae absolutely hates fetch quests. Just can't stand them! — Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen.

On a similar note, the game’s writing leaves much to be desired. The story begins when Shantae goes to see her uncle, who is showing off an artifact which the pirate Risky Boots comes along and steals. This artifact has a dangerous secret, which, as it turns out, Shantae would’ve been better off knowing about in the first place, but her uncle refuses to tell her what it is, even after it’s been stolen and she has decided to do something about it. The dialogue is straightforward, though the flow is somewhat off; it feels as if the script was localized from Japanese with cartridge limits taken into account, particularly given how sparingly certain types of punctuation, such as commas, are used. The pacing of the dialogue is most maddening when it comes to progressing through the game. There was one hint given to me by a certain character which led me on a wild goose chase since I hadn’t yet unlocked the ability I needed to follow said advice. Once I had figured this out, an obscure alternate usage of a certain ability—one which had not been needed before and would not be required again—stymied me for a bit longer. Communication missteps like these are a major pet peeve of mine; they often leave me feeling as sour as Shantae herself.

Sequin Land, the world in which this tale takes place, is just the right size for the game’s scope, though it can be a pain to get around in. The map is crude and difficult to parse at first, and some of the most useful bits of information—such as the locations of previously encountered, unopened treasure chests—are missing altogether. Yes, I realize this was originally a downloadable DSi game, but even by those standards, the map could’ve been much more useful than it was. Getting around this world is done by activating warp statues, which are separate from, and often in different locations than, save points. The main hub is a seaside town (which, inconveniently, does not have a warp point of its own) filled with NPCs; a few of them tell you bits of gameplay info, while the others are there for local flavor and nothing else. The platforming itself is fine, though old fashioned in certain respects; the common technique where one can “fall through” platforms can barely ever be used here. On a similar note, the utilization of items is similarly simplistic; although this is not a problem when it comes to most items, having to de-equip one of the game’s optional-but-useful weapons in the menu, equip one of two different types of potion, go back to the game to use the potion, return to the menu to de-equip it, and re-equip the weapon just to heal up and get right back into battle is more than a little clunky.

I have no problem with games that are true to their roots, and Risky’s Revenge, with its spritework and Game Boy-esque aspect ratio is certainly one such title. However, video games have come a long way over the decades, and the lessons learned by dozens of studios over those years need to be taken into account, not ignored. There are ways to do “fake retrogames” right, such as the cannily-designed likes of Cthulhu Saves the World and Mighty Gunvolt, and then there are those games which choose, however consciously, to keep the warts of the past intact. Shantae: Risky’s Revenge is one such example of the latter, an exercise in selective memory that could’ve really done with a bit more self-awareness and empathy towards the expectations of the present.