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A spoiler-lite examination into the anime Hi-Score Girl and how it presents love as an emboldening force to better oneself.
Hi-Score Girl’s alluring seduction comes first and foremost from its nostalgic representation of 1990’s arcade games. Granted, those rose-tinted goggles are specifically fit to peer into the past of Japan’s arcades rather than America’s, but many children and teenagers of the 90’s will revel in the excitement and thrill of competitive Street Fighter II and the evolution that fighting games would experience throughout the decade.
However, viewers will also have to endure the constant and feverish narration of protagonist Haruo Yaguchi. The young, shameless slacker speaks at a million words a minute and with such intensity that it can be a rare exercise in mental exhaustion just to watch more than a few episodes. If you’ve selected the original Japanese voices, that is. I’ve no clue how the English dub sounds and doubt I’ll be finding out anytime soon. Regardless, initial impressions of Haruo are not exactly positive, as he seems like a somewhat greedy, ignorant child, and definitely not the sort to find himself embroiled in a youthful love triangle.
Only he does, and no doubt many will wonder just how he finds himself in such a situation given how clueless he seems to be regarding thoughts of romance and love. That, however, is part of the magic of Hi-Score Girl. By the end of the third episode you’ll be struck in the gut to see how cruel fate can be. Episode four then shifts perspective to a far more calm and soft-spoken character’s inner monologue to not only provide reprieve from Haruo’s high speed chatter, but to better understand his appeal. It would be a mistake to confuse Hi-Score Girl with any other average love triangle romantic comedy, though. Our protagonist may start out as an immature child – what with being a child and all – but through the course of the series, the audience will watch him grow, mature, and improve himself little by little.
All because he never even realized he had fallen in love at such a young age.
A look back at what I've been playing, the benefits and detriments to pile management, and why the blog has been a bit silent.
My self-deprecating brain would most likely describe myself as a poor excuse for an adult, pointing to my history of irresponsible purchasing habits as Exhibit A. Nonetheless, by taking on the impossible task of “pile management”, I have successfully learned to stop buying as many games as when I first entered the full-time work force. I no longer purchase a game just because it looked somewhat interesting, because it has been increasingly hyped by the games press and feels “necessary” to play, or because I know I want to play it, even if I cannot play it now.
...well, most of the time. Deeply discounted sale items are still an achilles’ heel of mine.
After being burned by so many of these “prestigious” or “highly regarded” titles and finding myself with too many titles and not enough time, I’ve finally begun to purchase more responsibly and better tackle the “pile”. However, in order to tackle this “pile” I had begun to meticulously track what games I was playing, which I had beaten, and listing out all the unplayed or incomplete titles that I now wanted to “schedule” time for. It was its own form of stress, and only a few months ago did I finally break free of its hold.
In other words, my gaming time has been determined by some self-imposed sense of pressure or duty rather than my wants or mood for far too long. While it has gradually been giving way to more impulsively following desire, such as my now thoroughly developed love of replaying great titles, it is only recently that I’ve thrown any sort of pressure or schedule to the wind for the sake of playing what I want in the moment. Unfortunately for the content mill, this means there are gaps where I may not have something stirring up a desire to write or discuss it (though, to be fair, this was true even when I was intentionally trying to play nothing but games new to me). Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I have not completed something and therefore felt comfortable discussing. While Elden Ring and Ghostwire: Tokyo were strong enough contenders to fill multiple blog posts regardless of whether they were finished or not, anything else I’ve recently played has failed to make the same impact.
As such, I have decided to put together a sort of “catch-up” entry, with little mini-discussions about what I’ve played the past couple of months. Hopefully I’ll have items of greater substance for you in the near future.
Chris and Steve have an old-fashioned episode where we discuss the latest Gotham Knights gameplay reveal, what the delays of Starfield and Redfall mean for Xbox and Sony this holiday season, why even remake The Last of Us, and finally closing off with some thoughts on Stranger of Paradise.
I certainly enjoyed Ghostwire: Tokyo more than the review scores would suggest I might have. However, I can't say everyone else will enjoy it as much as I had.
I can now confirm that the combat to Ghostwire: Tokyo is not as shallow as many reviewers claim it to be. The problem, as I had suspected, is that there’s not enough incentive to make use of protagonist Akito’s full suite of abilities. It is not unlike the original Assassin’s Creed, where any player could rely upon Altair’s counterattack to progress through any combat scenario. It did not matter that there were a slew of other offensive or defensive abilities the player could learn to more efficiently slaughter a group of guards. Why would it? The bare minimum skill was good enough, and therefore the critics – all of whom are theoretically paid to explore what a game is capable of – called it shallow.
It’s not fair for me to push all the blame on writers and reviewers, for they did what most players would do: rely on the most simple, basic strategy necessary for a positive outcome. The blame I lay is for the critics’ failure to fully explore the game and give a more informed opinion than your average poster on Reddit. The problem with Assassin’s Creed is the emphasis on broad appeal, designing a game so that the less skillful players could still complete it with minimal resistance. Ghostwire: Tokyo has done the very same.
I believe it was Steve, my podcast co-host, that was trying to coin a term regarding “minimal viable strategy”; a concept executed to varying degrees throughout games of the past. Do you know how many people can beat Bloodborne, any of the Dark Souls entries, or Elden Ring without capitalizing on status ailments or equipment resistance? Though punishing, From Software specializes in a difficult combat design that makes minimum viable strategies possible. There are also a slew of more complex, highly skill-based tactics, strategies, and builds available, but you do not need them to complete their games. What’s more, the minimal viable strategy still involves studying the enemy’s behavior, dodging, guarding, or parrying at opportune times, calmly striking only when the opponent is vulnerable. This is still more complex than the “wait to press the Y button” minimum viable strategy of Assassin’s Creed, and as a result is perceived as being more deep and rewarding. Despite this minimum viable strategy, however, the game is still difficult enough to incentivize players to explore the deeper mechanics in order to better combat and outsmart their foes.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is not as easy as Assassin’s Creed, but it’s also not as difficult as a From Software game. It sits in this strange limbo where a player must consciously ask themselves if it’s worth exploring those additional yet unnecessary combat options.
If they do, then many of the tasks throughout the rest of the game will prove more rewarding… but is it still enough to make the game worthy of recommendation? That’s a difficult question to answer.
Who would expect Chris, Steve, AND Shamus to all be so negative on what is generally a pretty solid movie? Perhaps it's that it's Spider-Man? Or, perhaps, Marvel fatigue truly is wearing on our hosts?
I will look for any excuse to talk about this show. In fact, I'm going to use the fact that I spoke about it on a podcast as an excuse to discuss it further here on my blog.
I was invited onto a podcast to discuss the first season of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU!, a rather unfortunate name for a series far more intelligent than its title would suggest. However, it is properly misleading since even some of the light novels are graced with a degree of cheesecake to lure unsuspecting viewers in. It is an unfortunate double-edged sword, where the audience that would likely find the greatest appeal might be dissuaded to watch due to the title, whereas those looking for something more average will be surprised to discover substance.
Some may recall that I had written about this show once already, just before the final two episodes had first aired. I’ve since watched it a second time, and viewed the first season a third time for the sake of my colleague’s podcast. I’ve learned a lot more about these characters during these viewings; what makes them tick, and what makes them interesting.
Despite a two hour conversation on just the first season, I have notes of character quirks, lines of dialogue, and potential themes that I was not able to thoroughly address during our recording. As such, I hope to address them now: in particular, Hachiman Hikigaya’s and Yukino Yukinoshita’s conflicting perspective on change, and how the former’s attitude gradually begins to shift.
Every time I try to compliment Ghostwire: Tokyo, it's more like I'm defending the game. This is silly, because the game needs no defending.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is a flawed game. Some of those flaws jump out quite obviously during gameplay, ripping the player out of the experience if even for a moment. Some are as elusive, immaterial, and yet ever present as the yokai that confound or trap a number of spirits throughout the game’s urban environment. Some of these are perceived flaws based on an open-world design philosophy that is becoming increasingly tiresome and outdated to many in the gaming audience.
It didn’t take long, then, for me to begin spitting out words of back-handed defense while playing on stream. “It’s not great, but it’s still pretty good!” It was as if I was more afraid of over-selling the game than I was under-selling it, or reflexively trying to explain why I was having such a good time playing a game with such middling reviews. I had forgotten that there’s a reason I do not trust most game reviewers these days, particularly if they rely on numbers to summarize and assess a game’s quality.
Instead of trying to defend Ghostwire: Tokyo, as if it does not have the right to be as enjoyable as it is, I should instead be digging into what makes the game so engaging for me. Not only could this provide proper feedback to the development team by acknowledging its strengths, but it would help us better understand why some games in this tiring open-world “genre” are still able to be fun. Or, perhaps, it can simply help us understand what it is we enjoy and appreciate the most.
Chris, Steve, and Joey have a Conversational Grab Bag episode where they discuss a whole assortment of topics, from Game Pass versus the new PlayStation Plus to Elden Ring to Yakuza Games and more. Tune in and have your ears tickled with a whole slew of gaming discussion.
A contemplation on the nature of heroes and villains, what we, the audience, connect to in each, and what we also aspire to.
Every so often YouTube recommends the latest Film Courage video featuring Chris Gore, co-founder of Film Threat, to me. I have generally enjoyed his takes on movies on that channel, though this latest video on the popularity of villains felt limited to me. I think the topic of why people are drawn to both heroes and villains is a fascinating one, and often for different reasons or impulses.
Simultaneously, I’ve also felt that the obsession with villains has avalanched from the late eighties and into the nineties, culminating in massive corporations like Disney not only trying to reinvent many of their classic antagonists, but creating a young-adult dramedy franchise with the villainous progeny.
Perhaps the best way to perceive the obsessive counter-cultural identity of the early-to-mid 90’s was not through the rise and fall of Grunge Rock, nor the release of recontextualizing novels such as Wicked. Instead we need only look at the career of Tim Burton, a man whose entire filmography centers on the misunderstood misfit and the awful and imposing values of traditional Americana. While Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice would put him on the pop culture radar, it was Batman in 1989 that really captured Tim Burton’s fascination with the outcast by focusing more time on the villainous Joker, interpreted excellently by Jack Nicholson. Films such as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, and The Nightmare Before Christmas would solidify not only Tim Burton’s trademark preference for villainous – or at least villainous looking – characters than what society considered pretty and prim, but it would also embody a lot of the tone of the 1990’s.
Which is why it is fitting the new Millennium begins with his awful and embarrassing take on The Planet of the Apes, but that is a digression for another day.
Despite coming in with very clear goals to discuss The Batman, Chris and Steve manage to also discuss a barebones examination of film history as well as Batman movies in general.
Though the game is not quite perfect, Elden Ring is still an incredible achievement few games manage to come close to.
It’s been a month since Elden Ring released, which is about enough time for the honeymoon phase to be over. Theoretically, at least. Crawling through the Elden Ring sub-reddit, it’s easy to find a number of still-obsessed players turning their experiences into memes to share, discussing the New Game+ experience, and even new players to the “genre” expressing their love for the game. There has been no shortage of controversy, what with the poor PC performance at launch leading to review bombs on the Steam platform, only to turn around and be critized by developers of Ubisoft and Guerilla Games in a rather unprofessional manner. The ensuing discussion could have led to the possibility of Horizon fans review bombing Elden Ring with dishonest intentions.
Of course, nothing has stopped the game from selling over twelve-million copies worldwide. Elden Ring was lauded by many websites, publications, and communities as the most highly anticipated game coming in 2022, but rarely do the niche opinions of an enthusiast audience cross over into the mainstream in this manner. While we cannot calculate the number of players trading the game back to GameStop after just a few hours of struggle, we can occasionally see a first-timer post in the aforementioned sub-reddit a joyful celebration of taking down their first few bosses or, at times, the entire game.
It may seem odd to say, but the aggregate praise, the sales numbers, or the nit-picking complaints of a handful of disgruntled developers and journalists don’t mean anything to the actual quality of the game. Is it a “masterpiece” as many have lauded it as? Well, obviously not, but… yes, actually. It’s a complicated issue, as Elden Ring is the culmination of over a decade of refining a flawed game-type, or style, in a flawed engine, by a flawed development team. Comments regarding the inability to adjust text-size in the UI as regards to accessibility are legitimate, and is an issue the studio should have sorted out years ago. That this game cannot hit a stable 60fps on the most up-to-date console hardware and has myriad performance issues on PC is inexcusable. It still baffles me that I cannot compare my current gear’s stats to that which is available in the shops. None of these issues have anything to do with the silly “difficulty argument” and therefore would not change the core of the experience, save for improving it. It is, without a doubt, an imperfect game.
At the same time, I am nearly one-hundred hours into Elden Ring, have crawled through every cavern and crevice I’ve been able to find thus far, and not only still have several more hours of content ahead of me, but have continued to miss little paths, quests, or details throughout my adventure. I’ve continued to be surprised and gasp at various revelations and discoveries. Unlike Breath of the Wild, where I stopped around some seventy-to-ninety hours due to feeling as if I’d seen enough and was ready to be done, I am continuing to plumb the depths of Elden Ring because there is so much to see.
It’s kind of difficult not to perceive such a game as being a masterpiece when that is your experience with it. Nonetheless, I certainly am inching ever closer to that feeling of being absolutely done with Elden Ring... for now, at least.
Joey joins Chris and Steve to not only reminisce over the last five years of the podcast, but to also look back at the state of the games industry and our evolving tastes. Then we get lost discussing things like how people define words like "geek" and "nerd" for some reason.
After trying out several of their games in the month of March, I've been driven to contemplate this strange company of Square Enix and whether I truly like them or not.
From a layman’s perspective, it makes little business sense to release your game anywhere close to February 25th, 2022. While some titles such as Horizon: Forbidden West are big enough themselves to sell regardless, most other titles are doomed to loom in the shadow of Elden Ring. It has been over two weeks and only now are players starting to lose some degree of steam from what has become one of the largest launches of the industry. The game was not only incredibly well hyped, it actually managed to deliver in comparison to recent disappointments such as Cyberpunk 2077.
So why did Square Enix release a demo for Babylon’s Fall, a game already struggling to find an audience, on the same day that Elden Ring released? Why did Babylon’s Fall release a week after while their “Souls-like” reimagining of the original Final Fantasy, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, is launching three weeks after and bound for comparison? In fact, why is Square Enix releasing four different games clustered together throughout March, all competing for audience attention and retention?
The answer most likely resides in Square Enix’s fiscal year concluding in March. As I am no investor nor business man, I can only speculate that Square Enix is releasing these titles all within the March window in order to meet some form of sales expectations or promise to investors. Would it have been better to delay some of these games out further? It once more seems that way from a layman’s perspective. Now that Forspoken has been delayed to the Autumn, its original release slot in May could be better filled by Stranger of Paradise. Games such as Triangle Strategy and Chocobo GP seem to be targeting different demographics than Elden Ring, but if From Software’s latest adventure is truly hitting Red Dead Redemption 2 numbers, then it is clearly appealing to quite the broad audience of players. Even fans of tactical RPG’s may find it difficult to slot time in for Triangle Strategy as they scour the lands between. As for Babylon’s Fall, it is doubtful that a better release window would have saved it, though it may have at least done a tad better than its current peak numbers.
I’m not writing this to speculate on Square Enix’s reasoning for such a condensed set of game launches, however. I am instead writing this because I’ve played demos of three of their four releases, and can only shake my head and groan at the news coming out of the fourth. In some ways, I think the media is being unfair. In other cases, the looming presence of Elden Ring has deterred me from what might otherwise be a somewhat risk-taking purchase. Instead, I want to take a moment to look at these titles, recent reveals, and additional business decisions that the company has been making lately.
I clearly don't hate Resident Evil 5 seeing as I keep going back and playing it with friends. So why do I keep getting so negative about it every time I play it?
When Shamus and I had decided to play Resident Evil 5 on stream, we both had a goal to be as positive about the experience as possible. I, in particular, didn’t want it to just be a “hate play” where we did nothing but criticize the experience. On my part, this is partially due to having played the game enough that I know I enjoy it. It’s not “bad” in the sense that it has little redeeming value beyond a lesson of what not to do.
However, standing in the shadow of Resident Evil 4, it’s easy to find little mistakes or frustrations that drive one’s perception towards a great sense of inferiority. In comparison to its predecessor, Resident Evil 5 is bad. Compared to other games, however, is it really as bad as the game’s reputation suggests?
Well… yes, but, no. The Gears of War trilogy managed to provide a consistently good experience across all three games around the same time period. Imperfect, as all things are, and with their own number of frustrations, but ultimately Gears of War “feels better” to play simply due to a more consistent experience (and we don’t talk about Gears of War 4... erm, beyond that time I spoke about Gears of War 4). The same is true for the Halo franchise in this time period. Halo 3, ODST, and Reach were all consistently good experiences for connecting online with a friend to combat alien hordes. Resident Evil 5, meanwhile, chose to step into the co-op arena in a franchise not only known for its isolation and focus on single-player experiences, but using the mechanics and design of its solo-play predecessor instead of crafting a co-op experience from the ground up. It’s no wonder it was immediately condemned by a good chunk of the series fanbase.
Most of that audience bought it anyway, of course, because that’s just how fandoms are these days. Resident Evil 5 is still one of Capcom’s best selling games, and combined with the sales of its ports and remasters, is the top selling Resident Evil title altogether. I don’t think these numbers can be chalked up simply to brand loyalty. I think that, while Resident Evil 5 stumbles, it is a good game. It just… invites insult and criticism so easily.
Chris and Joey get together to just spread the love of Elden Ring like oh so much love jelly.
