Another video that should have taken half the time, if not less, than it had. However, I think I’ve sorted out a number of things preventing me from properly working on videos as expediently as I’d like. Naturally, most of them are self-imposed foolishness.

Normally I’d share a sort of post-mortem, but I actually plan on recording an unscripted video that will be posted next week to discuss those thoughts. So, instead, I shall leave with a tidbit of what I learned while working on this semi-analysis of The Minish Cap.

The first was mostly my own foolishness; I had gotten into such a rush to get this video done that I did not double-check certain criticisms to ensure they were accurate. You can hear this in the guides part, where my cadence and voice are slightly different as I recorded spontaneous corrections. My memory was very jumbled by the events of playing the game, and time had passed since I had even recorded the footage in question that I ought to have double-checked everything before I recorded. I actually feel this effort to last-minute salvage and correct resulted in a weaker point being made regarding guides, especially as I was more trying to criticize the game while also begging other questions regarding puzzles and players.

The other lesson, however, was self-taught, though not without some trouble. I wanted to implement the blur effect this time around in Premiere Elements, but there isn’t a lot of satisfying, clear documentation online for the application, even from Adobe. As such, I had to do a bit of fiddling around, only to discover that animating a blur effect on video is quite easy to execute. I may make use of it more regularly from now on as a result.

It’s a shame that there’s so little out there for Premiere Elements, as it should be easier for someone learning video editing to get into. However, everyone is so focused on the full version of Premiere that it’s where you’ll get most of your tutorials and documentation. Perhaps one day, after upgrading the version of Premiere Elements and learning more tricks, I can create some videos to help out other creators like me uninterested in being a part of Adobe’s subscription service.

On one hand, this video really could have been finished in the span of the week, which is the ideal for a quick, twelve-minute recommendation video. On the other hand, two complications cropped up: the first one has me feeling like a bit of a fool.

Towards the four-minute mark, I mention several combat capabilities that I barely used. I used them so rarely that scrubbing for footage was going to take excruciatingly long just to find those abilities in action. As such, I tried to find ways to scrub through faster and more efficiently, only to realize too late I could just boot up the game, load an end-game save, and demonstrate the moves in one simple, short clip. I need to start considering these things more during the video editing process, especially while scripting.

However, while having to deal with heavy scrubbing is enough to kill my motivation to push through editing, the real problem was more personal. A lot of drama at my Church, a very important place to me, and so I have found myself quite depressed and struggling to work on things. However, I managed to finish, and have proven to myself the Ramble Recommends concept can work.

Not much more to say other than I did certainly enjoy the game, and I will likely try to play it more in the future. More importantly, it feels good to have a format in which I can recommend indie games I enjoy, and as indie games are less known than big, AAA releases, or even some AA releases, the videos are good at any time. As I try to work out how I wish to pursue deep-dives and critical analysis in the future, it’s nice to have a format for smaller game releases that works.

The Darksiders 3 video is finally complete after unfortunate delay. I am actually surprised it is nearly an hour long, and perhaps with a bit more time put into examining the level-design and each Sin’s region, it could have been as lengthy as the video for the original Darksiders. I’m glad I did not choose to make it so long, however.

I will be honest and confess to being unsatisfied with this video. While I had chosen to perform some experiments, they only made a minor impact on how I felt during the video’s creation and editing process. I won’t share my own personal critiques of my work, but needless to say, there are multiple points where it feels like a shoddy and rushed product despite the time taken.

Nonetheless, I am always my own worst critic, and I still feel like this video can stand on its own as my personal reasoning for why I enjoy Darksiders 3 despite each of its flaws. For that reason, I would not change much. Additionally, the lessons learned while producing this video were incredibly valuable, and were perhaps a very, very long-time coming.

One of the biggest issues I had faced in the past was grouping all of combat together in one chapter. Typically this turned the heftiest chunk of the video into the most difficult to edit, as scrubbing through footage would be the most time-consuming and, therefore, progress would be slow-going. When you look at the timeline, knowing you have ten more minutes left to edit but the past minute took several hours, it starts to weigh heavily upon your mind. Chopping those segments up into smaller chapters not only helped organize my thoughts better, but also made the process of creating each chapter less daunting.

However, realizing how much more of the script was left to complete began to weigh on me as a whole. It was during my time working on this video, and contemplating future videos and projects, that I realized I’d be better off making multiple videos rather than working on a long, singular deep-dive. Of course, the YouTube algorithm seems to love large, multi-hour deep-dives on specific games, but I think it’s clear that my editing style does not gel well with that sort of length. I’ve noticed many of those YouTubers will rely on long cuts of gameplay, talking over it in generalizations whereas I try to cut shorter edits fitting the specific nature of what I mean. Perhaps this is an area that I can perhaps work on, be it in my writing style or being less of a perfectionist, but I feel like it’s one of the things that makes my videos work. It’s too easy to watch an extended clip of gameplay and stop listening to the words, focusing instead on the action. When the clip is shorter and tied more closely to what’s being said, it’s easy to connect the two and not let your mind get distracted.

That said, splitting one video up into multiple is, I think, a far better decision moving forward. I won’t know immediately, however, as I’ll be taking a short break from video production to just play some games. I already have two or three videos planned for Elden Ring, and an Unscripted video I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but the games I’ll be playing this week are also intended to be used for video content. In addition, while I intend on pushing deep-dives aside for now, I’m open to the notion of working on one over an extended period of time, broken up by the smaller videos. Working on a larger video for three-to-four months without anything in-between is stressful, but perhaps working on a deep-dive for six, seven, even twelve months would be less stressful if it’s a long-term project broken up by smaller videos.

Either way, I’m excited for the future. While I may not be entirely satisfied with the end result of the Darksiders 3 video, I’m glad to have finally finished it and face a potentially new vision of RamblePak64 from here on.

It may seem unusual to apologize for how long it took to get this video out. After all, it’s only April and I’ve already released three videos this year. The last time I even released three videos in a year total was 2019. My track-record since December has generally been pretty good, and has the potential to be my best ever.

While I am glad to have maintained a positive rate of video production thus far, the Evil West analysis would have been available earlier were it not for an unfortunate case of strep throat, the sudden onslaught of depression for about a week or two, and the frustratingly timed food poisoning I suffered. Regardless of these setbacks, the greatest trial was having to edit footage for a game’s combat analysis for the first time since last year’s Darksiders critique. Such editing is a bitterly tiresome, time-consuming task, often requiring lengthy stretches of scrubbing different video clips for the particular instances of gameplay I need. The most common feedback I get regarding this struggle is to simply write down when these things happen, yet the intensity of the moment prevents me from writing down or making note of such specific mechanics. Simultaneously, I do not always know what specific moments I’ll need until I’m far into the game, or on one of my drafts of the script.

Honestly, I cannot say I am entirely satisfied with this video, but that is nothing new. It has been a year since I last completed an analysis of this sort, and even that was after being rusty for some time. Really, however, it was a matter of “rushing” the script at points, something I hope not to do with the next project.

Speaking of, I do not know how long the wait for the next deep dive will be. The script writing process has proven a challenge, but a welcome one. I plan to have an interim video, a bit of an experiment that won’t require any video game capture, but certainly will require video editing. I hope to release that video by mid-May, and for the next deep-dive to be posted some time in June.

Before I leave you, though, I wanted to share a few more thoughts on Evil West that could not fit into the video.

For some reason I didn’t really notice it during my three whole playthroughs of the game, but whoever directed/storyboarded the cut-scenes was a really big fan of extreme close-ups. Granted, I in part have started to notice this sort of thing more frequently after becoming an avid watcher of MovieWise. It seems that film direction began to rely less on skillful blocking during the 90’s, and now that I’m armed with this knowledge I’ve started to find more recent films distracting in how frequently they edit and cut, focus on just a singular character, and refrain from wide shots where the actors are free to explore the set and interact with it. On the other hand, the more older films I watch the more I notice and appreciate this style of film-making, particularly as it keeps the viewer far more invested in the conversation and moment.

However, Evil West takes it to a whole new level. It’s not just that closing cut-scene to the first level where Chester Morgan gets burned in the sun, the camera zooming in on the strangest things; the most disconnected set of sequential images that you can infer the connection easily enough, but it still feels jarring and confusing to see. Several shots focus on extreme close-ups of character faces, almost as if the developers wanted to show off their graphical models and technology. You can see every pore and hair stubble on Jesse Rentier’s face!

It ultimately does the game a disservice. Outside of God of War (2018) and God of War: Ragnarok, however, I’m not even sure which Sony first-party games demonstrate more than a general competence in the art of shot composition. It just doesn’t seem to be a skill in most video game cut-scenes, but then again, the player’s attention is often preoccupied with so much information or questions that there’s not as much brain power to focus on cinematic direction.

The problem with “wanting to look cinematic”, I suppose, is the common point of reference tends to be modern film, and even then, it is more interested in the bombastic spectacle than the simple yet meaningful moments.

Perhaps I’ll begin paying attention to cut-scenes more intently. After all, it’s an area that few critics are anal retentive about. Sounds like a good niche to fill!

With regards to writing, however, I wanted to spend a bit more time script-doctoring Bloom and his interactions with Jesse. I really do feel Bloom was a missed opportunity, and the examples of replacement dialogue I came up with for the video weren’t satisfying. They made Bloom seem too verbose, and while I think it would be fitting under certain circumstances, I also believe there is too great a reliance these days for characters to say too much.

To that end, I feel I can do a better job with the scene where Bloom approaches Jesse about the Tick outbreak in the basement due to his experimentations. So, please enjoy this brief snippet of script doctoring to a different type of Bloom, one that is more fitting for the background the character was given in the game’s lore.

BLOOM: Pardon me Agent Rentier, but we have a situation.

JESSE: Sorry, Bloom, I’m kind of in the middle of something.

BLOOM: I believe this matter to be most urgent. There is an outbreak of infected—“ticks”—in the basement.

JESSE: There’s a what?! How the Hell did that happen?

BLOOM: They were necessary for an experiment and I err’d in my calculations. Now, if you would please-

JESSE (approaching Bloom aggressively): Bloom, I swear to God I’m gonna-

BLOOM does not shirk, nor does he respond. He merely raises an eyebrow in curious confusion at Jesse’s attempt to intimidate rather than addressing the current situation. Vergil steps in and speaks in the annoying way that he does, offering the opportunity to experiment with the gauntlet repair.

The contrast of the very straight-forward, action-oriented Jesse Rentier against a variety of intellectual, academically strong characters such as Bloom, Vergil, and Amelia is not a bad one. However, the best ensembles in fiction are those that are varied in personality and therefore draw out a different brand of interaction and conflict from one another. For example, Amelia is intelligent, but she is not socially inept or awkward. Her conflict with Jesse has more to do with hierarchies and rigid authority figures that do not like being questioned. The conflicts between Vergil and Jesse are intended to be a comedic clash of personality types rather than anything dramatic.

I fear I might have overexaggerated Bloom’s eccentricities matching Vergil’s, but the fact remains that the two are just too similar to one another. By reinterpreting Bloom to better take his history of isolation into account, the conflict between him and Jesse can instead stem from Bloom’s ignorance of social etiquette and inability to understand another’s thoughts or body language. This could lead to Jesse feeling as if he is constantly looked down upon and treated like an idiot, only for the two to resolve their conflict when Bloom opens up to the agent regarding his respect for the man’s strength, combat prowess, and battle-hardened experience. He would perceive their relationship as complementary to one another, each strengthening one another’s knowledge to further advance the fight against the darkness. Yet Bloom could also apologize and confess to his limitations in understanding how others think. Unlike a book, after all, a human’s thoughts are not written out plainly. Not in words, at least, which is the only connection to another’s mind that Bloom has had for most of his life.

Such a relationship, I think, could have been very enjoyable. Now, towards the end of the game it does seem as if Bloom is developing in his own direction, but it’s sort of a background element or consideration. Additionally, I could not discuss it without also going into a greater narrative spoiler I was seeking to avoid.

That said, it’s not like Evil West is a film or television show. It doesn’t have enough time to characterize everyone and their relationship. Even so, as he is, it feels like Bloom ought to have been removed and any plot importance split between Amelia Caldwell and Vergil. Even if a full character arc between he and Jesse wouldn’t have enough space in this game with my reinterpretation, it at least would have served additional purpose and variety in regards to his personality and the interactions had with Jesse.

That concludes my thoughts on Evil West. I’m honestly interested in taking another trip on the highest difficulty. Perhaps I’ll try streaming it in the future. I hope this video helps others discover and enjoy the game as well.

I had sung the praises quite vocally and publicly of the Super Mario Bros. movie when it released in theaters last year. I acknowledged it was imperfect, sure, but I didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on this imperfections. I instead emphasized and even exaggerated the good qualities, decrying critics for either being out of touch or simply too biased in their tastes.

However, going back to its home video release, I couldn’t help but feel like there was something lacking. I often have podcasts or movies playing in the background while I complete work tasks, but some movies just do not carry as strongly when you lose the ability to focus on the visual element. When a film can only be carried by its script, you start to realize just how lacking that script may be.

Such was the case with the Super Mario Bros. movie. A lot of that joy was gone once the visual element was taken away.

When it comes to the actual production of this video, it was, in many ways, easier than usual. Editing video for film is always easier than games simply because there’s fewer video files to scrub through. With video games, you may end up scrubbing through several hours-long files just to find a ten-second clip relevant to what you’re discussing, a potentially time-consuming process when you’re discussing very specific concepts as I occasionally tend to.

However, it was also a bit more difficult due to the more “rushed” nature of the production. While I had started the script on the last day of December, my primary focus throughout January was finalizing the script on the second Year in Review video and releasing that before month’s end. With a desire to have at least one video per month, I accelerated the process to finalize the script for this analysis, which has resulted in some sections that I feel are weaker than others. I won’t go into them in detail, however.

I am technically in a better position with my script for my next video, an analysis of the video game Evil West. I am not finished it, mind, but certainly in a better position than I was with the script for the Super Mario Bros. movie. I also have all necessary footage recorded. It is possible I can do a better job spreading the editing of Evil West out throughout the month of March, but for the time being I will try my best to focus on quality than speed. Trying to release one video per month is quite ambitious for me. One video every other month would still be a suitable accomplishment.

The second part of the year in review is now done! I apologize for the delay, as things were busy not only during December, but throughout much of January as well. I also got sick during the holiday break, preventing me from being able to record the necessary audio to even begin video editing.

However, I managed to push through and beat the latest deadline I made for myself: end of January.

I’ve gotta say, working on these two videos back-to-back with a deadline on each was quite the learning experience. At the very least, I am far more comfortable working in Adobe Premiere Elements now, enough so that I am surprised it took me so long to make the jump. I was very attached to my process with Windows Movie Maker 6, but it was clear that it was time to move on to something more modern and far more capable. Premiere Elements still doesn’t have the full suite of options most content creators are utilizing, but it certainly allows for more control over what I can do in a video and how I can integrate sound than before.

However, I’ve been learning a lot of other lessons working on these.

While it was nice to do an anthology video for part one, it was less exciting for part two. In fact, the deadline felt like an even tighter vice compared to the two-to-three months of time I could afford to release part one. As a result, part two has a sloppier script and even some sloppier editing, and while I could have waited another day to make some minor adjustments, I feel it would not have been worth it. I’ve gotten a far better work flow going with layered scripting, audio editing, and video editing, but there’s only so much touching up that can be done so late in the process.

Even if I could spend some extra time touching up, however, I would not want to. A single thirty-some minute video in which I can clear my head, get into the video making process, and put out something is nice, but having to do two in a row as my desire and motivation to work on something more substantial continues to build is less nice. The past several weeks I’ve been mentally done with this video, even as I touched up the script and did my best to put it together. I don’t regret the decision to split the year in review up into two separate videos, but I can also see based on analytics that, while the first video is getting around the algorithm and making impressions, it’s also not getting a lot of clicks. What clicks it does get don’t result in folks staying around. More than view count, I care about engagement duration, and while the number of viewers that watch the whole thing are far outnumbered by those that click in and check out, the year in review has pretty poor numbers.

Still, it was not a loss. I’m glad to enjoy this hobby, and I’m glad to confirm that what I really like doing are the deeper dives. I have several scripts already in various stages of progress, and I have a priority at which I’ll be working on these different projects. However, I do have obligations outside of my channel to be focusing on now that this video is done, so I do not know when the next video will be released.

In fact, it may be best that I take about two months per video minimum, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Not every script is a deep-dive analysis, so it could be that I can get a steadier, more reliable upload schedule going by pacing the projects out wisely. I’ll be doing some experimenting through 2024 to find out.

The first part of the 2023 year in review is now live! I must admit, I’ve been having a lot of fun working on this, even if it’s meant little in the way of gaming time has been done the past couple of weeks. It’s really revitalized my enjoyment of video editing after Alan Wake nearly destroyed it. I’ve also been rethinking my approach to content creation as a whole, as doing an anthology video like this and doing smaller little reviews has been quite a blast. There may be a lot of big changes coming in 2024.

But, before I endeavor to outline those thoughts and plans, I need to finish part two. Unfortunately, I still have two games to complete that are going to be in that video. Fortunately, most of the script is already finished save for those two games, and I am nearly done with one of those titles. This means starting next week I can begin recording audio and cutting video together even while completing the rest of the titles.

Which is, perhaps, the greatest benefit to this Year in Review project: it has confirmed that the work flow I had begun experimenting with on the now shelved Alan Wake video not only works, but has increased my enjoyment of making videos by a great amount.

I also want to call attention to my secondary YouTube channel once more, where I’ve been test-piloting a new type of podcast with my friend Joey. “Rambling with RamblePak” is essentially designed to be a one-on-one conversation with one other person, either about broad topics or topics more focused to that individual. I aim to try and reach out to other content creators or folks that I know in the interest of just having cool conversations. I’ve already reached out to one, though their channel is so massive compared to mine that I highly doubt they’ll hop on board.

The thing is, I never expected Shamus Young to be interested in doing any sort of collaboration with me, and certainly not multiple times, and yet he did. They were some of my greatest moments in podcasting and streaming, and while I’ve lamented losing someone like Shamus so soon, I also would never have had those interactions if I didn’t reach out in the first place. So, while there’s a short list of content creators I’d like to send such invitations to, I’d love to do it nonetheless.

I must be careful with the frequency at which I do these podcasts and collaborations, however, as the past few weeks I’ve done many with Joey that have certainly eaten into video editing and free gaming time. It’s all still a test. As for the blog, well… I have unfortunate news there, but I’ll save that for the next year in review video.

Remember to check out the secondary channel and I look forward to seeing you all again.

Resident Evil 5 was not satisfied with its boss-rush conclusion we would be forced to endure. It had to throw in A.I. glitches and broken net code to prolong our suffering.

Though in our final write-ups, both Shamus and I reflected generally positively on the experience. On Shamus’ part, his is ultimately more positive though less in-depth due to his lacking history on the franchise. He does, however, include one of his wonderful Stolen Pixels strips and its impeccable comedic writing.

My write-up, on the other hand, was far more in-depth and still captures many of my thoughts on the game. Even looking back and rewatching, there’s a lot of elements to the final fight that leave me confused. “Wait, I remember there were a lot of steps, but… which steps did I need to follow and in what order…?” The boss design is poor in that it requires very specific rail-roading without clear sign-posting.

Still, it’s a fun game, and I’ve even found a new source of joy.

I’ve often lamented the overly serious tone of Resident Evil 5 despite being far more absurd than its predecessor. What makes Resident Evil 4 work so well is Leon’s dismissive attitude and remarks that stand in contrast to the overly serious and haughty villains. It allows the player to enjoy the story more by increasing its levity.

However, Resident Evil 5 has no levity… which I’ve just found frustrating this whole time. In truth, however, if you just let all cares go, it’s probably easier to laugh at Resident Evil 5 than any other entry in the game. Perhaps that’s the real magic of playing it co-op. It’s one thing to experience this alone, but to go back with a friend you’re able to laugh at it together. You, too, can share the RedLetterMedia mirth at the complete stupidity of the game’s story.

Anyway, this was a great series. I’m sad that Shamus and I didn’t get to play anything else, but what a game to complete with him. I’m eternally grateful I got to have this experience. I hope you’ve enjoyed watching along.

The fifth is also the shortest episode Shamus and I recorded for our Resident Evil 5stream series. He hadn’t been feeling well and, in hindsight, it is quite obvious he was having a more miserable time than usual as a result. It’s good we cut the stream short.

While his write-up on the episode was quite short and focused primarily on recovering long-lost files of his Stolen Pixels comic series (of which he shared one of his best in said post), I feel like this sixty minutes is also a nice vertical slice of the game’s problems. The environmental inconsistency, where you’ll go from high-tech laboratory to old ruins in an instant without any sense of continuity. It’s almost as if they randomly shuffled environments and set-pieces during development after they’d already styled and textured them rather than before. The pointless and clumsy cover mechanics compared to the superior Gears of War cover system. The absolutely terrible dialogue and story.

One element that only occurred to me watching this time was the Licker horde, however. I recall playing the first Resident Evil: Revelations on the Nintendo 3DS and thinking the limited enemy types in a single level was in part due to the limitations of being a handheld. One level had nothing but Hunters, for example, only for another to exclusively pit you against wolves. Later levels would better mix said enemies up, however. Here, the only time you ever face Lickers is when there’s a whole crowd of them.

Perhaps on my next playthrough I’ll try and observe the dynamics within the human opponents that feel natural and appropriate while waves of Lickers feel like a cheap, hasty development trick.

What likely feels most fitting for this game is the conflict with Wesker and Jill immediately following the unclear, overlong and under-explained boss fight with the Ouroboros. There are many aspects of the fight that aren’t clear, and this is in part due to that factor of time. The player has a limited amount of space to tackle Wesker and Jill at first, a phase in which Wesker will dodge every attack. If the player stands in front of a very specific closed door for several seconds, however, a cut-scene will trigger in which Wesker kicks the player through and expands the battlefield. This also changes they dynamic somewhat, as there are some hidden items in this newly opened passage that can only be accessed during this phase of the battle.

Once the player is through that door, however, Chris and Sheva are quick to discuss a “change in strategy”, one in which they hide from Wesker. This isn’t too bad to figure out, but the player can speed the process up dealing enough damage by hiding from Wesker and catching him off guard.

This isn’t a particularly unclear or awful portion of the game. It’s still far better than the Ouroboros fight. However, it’s clear that they’re trying to marry theme with mechanics in a way that just doesn’t work. Chris and his new partner are now pit against his ...nemesis? Rival? and his former partner. Chris and Sheva are outmatched in brute strength, so they have to rely on their wits to survive this fight. The player and their companion must work together to distract Wesker while evading Jill. On paper this is actually a great concept, but I think there are several factors that make this fight a mundane mess rather than an exciting confrontation.

The first is a combination of dialogue and voice acting. Franchise fans seem to love D. C. Douglas’ performance as Albert Wesker, but his hammy performance and fake accent just come off as grating and smarty when you hear the same handful of sound bites over and over. He only talks so much in order to communicate his current awareness state to the player, but this is the first of two battles where the player will be forced to hear his sneering snarl repeatedly.

The other issue relies on shortcuts like standing in front of a door for a few seconds to open up the next phase. Not only are there no clues to this door’s purpose, but there’s no accomplishment to finally opening it. The trick is to literally stand there and get kicked by the bad guy. It would be one thing if there were some puzzle in the environment, such as finding chains tied to weights that, when released, could raise the gate. This would reward player observation and require their own action. The cut-scene kick into the door rewards nothing.

Jill’s brain-washing boob jewel, however, is the real problem. If you shoot Jill too much, she dies. As such, it took a while before Shamus and I decided to try and shoot the jewel to hasten the fight. It turns out this works, but Jill still does take damage. She can still die trying this strategy. If the player never thinks to fire on that jewel, then it will take several, several attempts to rip that jewel off, to the point the player will wonder if they’re doing something wrong again.

It’s not as bad as the ouroboros fight since it at least doesn’t cost ammunition, but is still lacking in proper feedback to the player… and results in hearing the same handful of barks from Chris over, and over, and over again.

Next episode sees the epic conclusion.

The corresponding blog post by Shamus had already gone into great detail regarding the boss fight with the Ouroboros creature, but I am most interested in the response in the comments section. Many had made note of their own awful experiences to this boss, or referenced other streamers that had a similarly confusing time. Yet still there was the odd comment, shrugging their shoulders and saying “I don’t know what to tell ya, I found it simple to comprehend”.

I am a strong believer that true objectivity may be impossible, but it is still something to strive for when examining a work critically. You want to understand the developer’s intent and what common response players have to it. However, there is no disregarding of personal taste and whether the subjective preferences of the developer will align with the audience or not. This is where “intended audience” becomes an important factor, and while it must be taken into account for anyone seeking as objective an analysis as possible, it must also be recognized that, sometimes, one person’s experience is just that: one person’s experience.

That is to say, while it is possible to immediately understand the logistics of the fight, there are too many questionable or vague features that go against common gaming expectations to make the proper course of action clear.

The primary design flaw is the nature of the weak points themselves. In most games, if the obvious glowing bit bursts after so much damage, that indicates progress. However, if there seem to be regenerating weak points each time you access a damage phase, then it begs the question of whether any progress is being made at all. Do all weak points need to be destroyed in a single phase? Does each regenerated weak point indicate regenerated health? Without a health bar present, there’s no clear indication as to the state of the enemy’s vitals.

There are plenty of games in which weak points regenerate but the monster’s health does not. However, this fact is made clear by the health bar at the top or bottom of the screen. There are also games in which regenerating limbs or weak points are also indicative of regenerating health, indicated by green glowing numbers or, again, a health bar. That the ouroboros has no health bar means the player cannot be certain whether they are making progress or not.

The intention of the design is likely to have one player wielding the flamethrower while the other has the high-damage weapons equipped, unloading magnums or shotguns into the weak points after the ouroboros has been doused in fire. If those weak points continued to reduce in number each phase, then the players would instinctively understand the route to progress. Instead, Shamus and I felt as if we were repeating the same steps over and over again, and therefore wondering if, perhaps, we were doing something wrong. Even guides did not help align what we were seeing visually with what was being described.

This is objectively bad design, but only because of one small, minor detail. It’s a shame, because otherwise it would certainly enforce the game’s themes of teamwork. Each player would divvy up responsibility.

Woe to anyone playing single player, then, as trusting the flamethrower to Sheva may be unwise, assuming it is even possible.

I was originally certain we were near the conclusion of the game, particularly as it feels like there’s not really much story to chase. In fact, there really is no story to Resident Evil 5, when you think about it. Chris and Sheva are “investigating” suspicious B.O.W. activity at the start, but there’s no real plot to follow. It really is just one set-piece after the next with some ham-fisted sense of “partnership” thrown in as a theme. Chris and Sheva aren’t actually looking for Jill as Leon had been searching for Ashley. Additionally, once Leon had found Ashley, he had to not only extract her and get her to safety, but he had to find a way to remove the Plagas parasite from himself and her. There were clear goals beyond simply having to shoot the locals and kill the baddy.

Resident Evil 5 feels overlong because it not only lacks the clear segmentation of its game world — we go from jungle to ruin to high-tech facility back to ruin only to return to high-tech once more — but because there’s no real story to progress, either.

It’s just another way in which Capcom tried to replicate the prior game’s success but with a co-op twist, yet failed to miss all the points that made that prior game work so well.

In his connecting blog post for this episode, Shamus brought up a lot of arguments he had heard in defense of the Resident Evil franchise. I don’t think each of those defenses were intended for Resident Evil 5, specifically. The one regarding controls, for example, was likely meant for the first three games plus the Code Veronica spin-off, where the tank controls were always of controversy even at the time.

In regards to the story, however, I think Shamus is correct in that the developers weren’t intentionally trying to imitate Western B-movie shlock. There are a surprising number of fans of grindhouse style features in the older sphere of Japanese game developers, but those games have a clearly distinct style to match. MadWorld or Shadows of the Damned bear those marks far more closely than anything Capcom has produced. Instead, Resident Evil is clearly inspired by the classic George Romero series of Living Dead films and more, a variety of creature features from several decades of time, as well as modern Hollywood trends.

However, this also dismisses the nature of Japanese entertainment itself and the variety of clashing tones it can possess. Having seen a variety of live-action films in addition to anime, Japanese entertainment often has a certain tone, or combination of tones, that do not always fit the standards of Western entertainment. Or rather, you ask two people to make two desserts based on chocolate and one person presents you with a cake while the other provides a milkshake. They are both sweet and chocolatey desserts, certainly, and both will contribute to a potential diabetes problem, but they aren’t the same kind of dessert.

Japan’s sense of humor, self-awareness, and concept of “cool” can often come off like that, and when presented out of context with the intent of appealing to a global audience, it can become downright goofy or dumb.

There’s also a question of audience. I have no evidence to suggest the majority of Paul W.S. Anderson’s fans of the Resident Evil film franchise weren’t fans of the games, but I have known few fans of the games that enjoyed those movies. There’s no doubt a decent percentage, however, as I have come across scattered opinions that identify certain characters or aspects of the franchise as “cool” or “awesome” or some other inappropriately used superlative. It’s like trying to understand what people enjoy so much from Michael Bay’s Transformers. My brain is simply not wired to comprehend.

To that extent, Resident Evil 5 is going to be a combination of what Capcom, as individuals, think is cool, but also what they think a global audience will think is cool based on successful Hollywood movies, including Anderson’s own take on the formula. This is a subtle difference from the original Resident Evil, which took inspiration from Western zombie films but wasn’t trying to be a Western zombie film. This is similarly the case with the original Dead Rising. Perhaps one of the better Japanese creators capable of fusing his Western and Eastern media influences is Hideo Kojima. The man is a lover of film, plain and simple, but he never made a Metal Gear game intent on specifically appealing to Western tastes. Instead, he simply drew upon the films that inspired him in the first place, the same inspiration that led him to create the original Metal Gear Solid.

This, I think, was the mistake a lot of Japanese creators made in the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation. There was a lot of anime and film in the 80’s and early 90’s that took homage and inspiration from Western film, particularly science fiction, but it was then reinterpreted through a Japanese lens. It wasn’t intentionally trying to mimic or imitate Western styles to sell to Western audiences. However, the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation was also one where the audiences were perceiving Japanese games as being archaic. This led to a lot of studios trying to better appeal to this massive market, one that easily outweighed the potential sales in the comparatively small Japanese market.

We’ve reached a place of stability, I think, and Capcom has gotten better at walking that fine line between cultural appeal. However, Resident Evil 5 will always remain a confused product whose narrative ambitions were anything but true to its own humble beginnings.

Our adventure through Plagas infested Africa continues as Shamus and I venture back into Resident Evil 5. We had performed some experiments and confirmed that the theory of the game dropping the other player’s ammunition types was largely correct. It seems like a rather misguided method of encouraging cooperation between players, or perhaps is weighted too heavily towards providing ammo of the wrong type. This almost always guarantees that, as the player’s resources dwindle throughout a fight, they’ll have to rely on their partner staying close and navigating the inventory in order to make the trade. Not only do the game’s encounters encourage the players to split up, but the fights are often intense enough that opening the inventory will leave you vulnerable.

Obviously this system can be managed, as I have played the game multiple times with multiple different friends throughout the years. It’s more a matter of an implementation that is not quite ideal, as it often makes cooperating more difficult. Simultaneously, there’s the trouble of playing the game solo with only the artificial intelligence as your companion. After a strange disconnection, Shamus was forced to watch the stream as A.I. Sheva made strange decisions and wasted all of his pistol ammunition. My own experience recollects instances of Sheva wasting shotgun ammunition trying to shoot an enemy at a rifle’s distance, or that was intended to be shot with turrets planted in the environment. The A.I. was incapable of manning said turrets on their own, instead needing to be instructed by the player. It taught me that the A.I. will waste ammo on their own, and that constantly instructing them was only costing me time and leaving me vulnerable, so better to leave it with the pistol and let it run out of the most common ammunition, turning the remainder of the fight into a single-player experience.

I feel that the inventory’s three-by-three design was in part chosen as an easy way to map item shortcuts to the D-Pad, but in 2007 Dead Space would not only allow the player to simply set those shortcuts up themselves, but healing and stasis energy would always be mapped to two separate buttons. Perhaps it would have been worth adding an additional three slots to Resident Evil 5’s inventory and adopting the Dead Space model instead – especially if you were going to force armor to take up a slot.

Juggling inventory between two players certainly forces teamwork, but the question is whether it’s fun and enjoyable or if you’ve managed to frustrate not one, but two players with this constant chore.

It’s a shame because so much of the game is clearly a well-designed experience. Forcing one player to hold the lamp light is kind of a drag for one player, but it also allows players to swap back and forth to ensure no one is losing more ammunition. The large environments that encourage the players to split up or guard different points allow for quick, tactical thinking, flanking opportunities, and multiple other sorts of scenarios. It really is a good cooperative third-person shooter.

Yet it’s not only a confusing mess of a Resident Evil entry, it’s a confusing game based on how often it interferes with itself, and usually with little things like the inventory. When Shamus disconnected, there was no way for him to just drop back in. Granted, drop-in and drop-out wasn’t really as common then as it is now, but that would then demand more frequent checkpoints. Sadly, if I had gone forward just a little further I think I would have hit a checkpoint. We also thought we retained everything we had lost and could farm the game, but it turned out the game did not save it to our character accounts.

The rail-shooter section on the Jeep is definitely one of the game’s darker spots as well. The sudden quick-time events, dynamite and molotov tossing bikers, and overheating machine guns do nothing to encourage cooperative play. If anything, it leaves you hurt and busted up enough that, by time you reach the giants, you’ll be cursed to repeat until you’ve perfected the fight or rail shooters. For as much fun as the game can be, it takes what ought to be a nice, pace-changing sequence into an exercise in aggravation and anger.

The more I watch us play, the more certain I am that I want to make a video about Resident Evil 5. Until then, you can also read Shamus’ thoughts regarding the inventory on his original blog post.

Hopefully I’ll figure out how to fix the audio at some point in this series.

February of last year marked the beginning of Shamus and I streaming Resident Evil 5, one of my most beloved yet flawed games. There’s nothing quite like it, nor has there been anything like it since. I imagine some might point to Resident Evil 6 as being similar, but that game had so many AAA ambitions that all collapsed under the sheer weight and lack of focus to it all. Here, Resident Evil 5 seems like a simple enough proposition: take what made Resident Evil 4 so good, and reconfigure it for two-player co-op.

I had written an introduction for Shamus to try and set the scene as a brief explanation as to why this game exists, as well as propose my own mission to try and analyze and figure out what the game does well. Instead, the series was more mocking and groaning than it was positive analysis, as so many decisions end up being quite baffling and even confusing. It is a game that I think will need a proper analytical video one day.

As for this episode in particular, Shamus had many a gripe regarding the ammunition system. At first we were under the impression that the game intended certain weapons for certain characters – so the shotgun for Chris and the TMP and rifle for Sheva – but as the series went on, I began to theorize if the ammunition system is instead based around what your partner has, specifically, in order to encourage teamwork.

Such a creative decision would truly encapsulate all that makes Resident Evil 5 what it is.

In regards to the narrative, I do believe Resident Evil 5 marks a shift in tone for the franchise. There was always a sense of bombastic spectacle to the series, but it feels like this entry is where everything becomes not only serious, but gravely serious. Many of the ideas contained within feel as typically B-movie and even idiotic as ever, but the acting, production values, and “choreography” are all too high of a quality to carry that same camp and comedy.

It doesn’t help that my own personal introduction was the GameCube remake of the original. While many of the cut-scenes featuring the likes of Jill and Barry were campy and even silly, the overall plot itself was small enough in scale that it didn’t feel absurd. The “real story”, as I perceived it, was found in the relatively well-written journals and notes documenting the evil machinations of Oswald Spencer, the suffering and tragedy of George Trevor and his family, and the downfall of the Arklay Mansion. Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield were essentially just there to blow it all up. The story wasn’t theirs, they merely concluded it.

This mentality is likely why my time with the Resident Evil 2 GameCube port was so mixed. The acting was notably inferior, the presence and control of Umbrella in the city became absurd, and the documentation and narrative failed to capture that same horror and tragedy as the first game. Despite this, it at least felt like a natural evolution to go from Resident Evil 2’s camp to Resident Evil 4’s self-aware nature. Leon was the perfect protagonist, cracking wise and shrugging off every over-the-top and overly serious villain’s monologue. The game was ridiculous, but thanks to Leon, the player felt as if they were in on the joke.

Resident Evil 5 tries to be as serious as the Resident Evil Remake, but is as stupid and absurd as Resident Evil 2. This mixture was the core of my problems with the fifth and sixth entries in the franchise, and unfortunately seems to have reared its ugly head once more in Village.

I’m sure we’ll have plenty of reasons to groan at the story later on. In all honesty, however, while I’m sad I didn’t get to play more games with Shamus, I’m glad we got to play Resident Evil 5 together before he passed away. From now on, it will undoubtedly carry an even more prominent place in my heart for that reason alone.

Here we are at the conclusion of Batman: Arkham Origins, a game I greatly enjoyed streaming with friend Shamus Young despite the technical difficulties. Even in the last stretch of gameplay we were griping about story and boss design, completely baffled by the decisions that led to this end product.

Shamus’ final thoughts on the game tackled many of the justifications for Batman’s behavior in Arkham City, Arkham Origins, and Arkham Knight. It should be noted that Paul Dini, responsible for much of the animated series’ quality in writing and chief writer of Arkham Asylum, had less involvement in Arkham City and then no involvement after that. The man that came to define Batman for many had little or no involvement in the games where he feels most out-of-character.

Even disregarding the animated series, this Batman feels out of character for the one found in Batman: Year One, Batman: The Long Halloween, and Batman: Dark Victory. Perhaps it’s a matter of preferring certain writer’s interpretations, or being ignorant of other notable Batman storylines, but it feels like the chief writers at both Rocksteady and Warner Bros. Interactive Montreal have very different ideas of just who Batman is compared to some of the authors of his best stories.

Which could also explain why none of the villains feel right, either.

I noted in a previous entry that a lot of how the Joker behaves feels on brand. This is in part due to some of the writing, but very much due to Troy Baker’s careful study and impersonation of Mark Hamill’s Joker. The further along we go in Arkham Origins, however, the more it feels like the writers misunderstood the relationship between the Joker and Batman. Or, at least, they misunderstood the most interesting relationships. Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke explored how the same cruel world that created Batman also created the Joker, but it’s a concept given only a single line of dialogue in this game. It feels confusing and completely inappropriate, and once again seems to misunderstand that, even within that comic, Joker is clearly an unreliable narrator. Alan Moore truly depicted Joker as a lunatic, uncertain of what is and isn’t real.

The problem is more than the game being too stuffed, it’s too disorganized and lacking any focus. The story is supposed to be about Batman learning to work with others, but the central conflict against Bane and Joker feels like it’s trying to imitate The Dark Knight instead, challenging Batman’s principles. If the game wanted to explore the origin of Joker and Batman’s rivalry, that would be fine, as it would involve Joker testing to see if he can break Batman’s own code. Instead, by the end, once he’s getting his face punched in, Joker is instead trying to convince Batman that they’re both the same. Why? Isn’t Joker fascinated by Batman because he’s different?

In truth, I don’t think the writers had an interpretation. They’re grabbing from a variety of sources and mashing them together without a sense of theme or purpose.

I still want that exposé on this game’s development. I truly am curious how much of this was dictated by Corporate and how much came from a development team tasked to create a game while being limited to someone else’s vision and continuity. If nothing else, I applaud the team for making a game that’s now awful, and under any other circumstance would probably be received more warmly (and certainly has its fans).

Thank you for watching this series. I will begin uploading the Resident Evil 5 playthrough next.

It’s a good thing I stopped trying to stream as my primary content. I found it exhausting hearing myself talk over and over about how I was feeling sick, and if I found myself exhausting to hear then I can only imagine how others must have felt.

There was so little to say this episode that Shamus effectively gave me the post on his blog for the week. It was an opportunity to express my feelings regarding the combat in writing, though it also naturally led to some debate in the comments section. For some, these issues were not exclusive to Arkham Origins – and I would agree, they are issues that persist in the other games as well. However, there’s a polish in those games that mitigates the flaws whereas Origins manages to amplify them. Still there were others that insisted these flaws didn’t exist and it was effectively a skill issue.

At the very least, Shamus, who was far more familiar with the combat systems of all four games than I will ever be, could confirm that there was just something off with the mechanics of Origins. I take comfort in that.

I take only confusion from this week’s play session. The bridge might be one of the better set pieces of the game, but that’s not exactly a high bar to clear.

This entire distraction on the bridge with Firefly is an example of how this game is simply too stuffed with characters and plot points. The writers feel the need to explain how Gordon and Batman became allies, and so they take an entire narrative arc and squeeze it into just this portion of the game. If we reflect on the film Batman Begins, Batman and Gordon interact multiple times throughout the course of the story. Gordon is left uneasy and uncertain about the vigilante until he finally has to work together with him at the film’s climax. Their relationship is built up throughout the course of the story.

Here, the game writers and designers tried to stuff the entire arc into a few bursts of dialogue between gameplay segments, leaving the entire thing feeling artificial and forced. Batman never had a meaningful encounter with Gordon during the earlier portions of the game, and as a result this meeting between the two feels weaker.

Be it Batman: Year One or Batman Begins, most of these origin stories honed in on a few key characters and elements in order to explore how Bruce Wayne became the Batman we know today. Even last year’s The Batman made sure to mitigate the presence and importance of its many characters, honing in on the core idea of Batman fighting not for vengeance, but for justice.

In fact, everything Arkham Origins tried to do, The Batman did better.

Don’t play this game. Just go watch The Batman instead. Or Batman Begins. Or reread Batman: Year One. They’d all serve you better.

Another video, another technical problem. Aside from the poor framerate, I had also forgotten to adjust my audio delay from a prior stream. This would result in Batman punching a thug but the sound of impact coming well after it should have. Typically this audio delay was the result of my playing on console with friends, where the Elgato device I used at the time had an automatic delay in its video and audio feed. I implemented an audio delay to my voice and those of my friends on Discord, but as I was playing Arkham Origins on PC, it led to the PC game’s audio being out of alignment as well.

Fortunately I don’t have to worry about such issues with my current Elgato, but I’m also not really streaming that often these days either. Such is life.

I’m going to be honest, despite some of the technical stumbles, fumbling over our own words, and my uncanny inability to concentrate on speech and gameplay at the same time, this might be my favorite episode of streaming this game. We hit a lot of design elements, and I think actually analyzing a level with Shamus has better helped me to stop and consider a game’s environment or narrative better today.

There’s always going to be that sense of “video game logic”, or even “comic book logic”, where some of the audience are willing to buy into the most outrageous of concepts presented. Joker suddenly constructing a roller coaster within the hotel is one such set piece that no doubt sounds cool, but it does not work with the grimdark atmosphere of the game. There’s a degree of maturity and realism depicted in the game’s tone and narrative, and so such outrageous contraptions begin to feel inconsistent with what the writers wish to convey.

The same can be true for motivations. In Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of Batman and Joker’s rivalry, the Clown Prince of Crime took notice of Batman due to his popularity. Even so, there was time spent observing him first. Here, the Joker wants to send a bunch of assassins after Batman, and… for what purpose? My assumption while streaming was in order to see Batman wind up dead, but in rewatching the stream now I cannot help but wonder if it was to have some fun. If that’s the case, the game is framed in such a way that it’s difficult to parse through all the other muck going on.

Aside from those items, Joker is honestly the only thing that feels correct about this game. The dialogue feels right, much of his behavior seems appropriate, and Troy Baker did a phenomenal job capturing Mark Hamill’s interpretation of the character. If they had just simplified the plot a bit, I can see there being a concept where all of this is designed as a “Christmas present” to Batman by the Joker. “You see, Bats, I’ve been a long-time admirer of your work,” he might say, lining up a series of X-Ray photos of all the criminals whose bones have been horrifically broken by Batman’s attacks. Perhaps even showcase some crime scene photos that indicate a mess that’s been left behind. You could frame the introduction as Joker believing Batman to be an agent of chaos as well, only his target is the haughty and conceited criminal element in the city.

Then imagine Joker’s disappointment to find Batman himself is actually haughty with a stick up his bum, only to then spin it around into a fun game himself.

That’s not really what’s going on here. Their interaction is framed as a first-time meeting, but the dynamic is being kept the same.

Of course, the real crime is once again going into the whole “Red Hood” origin, complete with the blossoming of his relationship with Harleen Quinzel. It is sudden, incredibly forced, and absolutely unnecessary for whatever narrative this game thinks it is telling.

There has to be a really fascinating behind-the-scenes story of why this game is such a mess. Maybe one day Jason Schreier will write about it. Until then, you can go back and read Shamus’ thoughts at the time over on his blog.

Though we stumble into another series of bitrate problems in this stream, the real technical difficulty is my own brain. My mind is one of digressions, and it is because I am easily distracted by the smallest threads. In regards to streaming, my thoughts can immediately be interrupted by trying to work out the problem immediately in front of me. Even when I’m trying to focus on finally making my point to Shamus regarding proportions of objects in the Arkham series level design, I am frequently tugging on every little thread that distracts from my attention within the game world.

I can only imagine how frustrating it is to be the person I’m trying to speak with in these circumstances, let alone the person having to watch and listen. Over a year later I’m listening to myself and all I can think is “get to the point already!”

It really is a curiosity to see what happens when a game with a specific art team and style is passed off to an entirely different team now tasked with recreating that style, but are instructed to do so on a schedule. As we can see with Gotham Knights, Warner Bros. Interactive Montreal pulled off a far more consistent, if less imaginative, world since they were allowed to define their interpretation of Gotham from the ground up. Here, however, they may not have had enough time to properly study and consult Rocksteady’s own concept art and approach to the world of Gotham, and as such we see objects in strange proportions that result in a world that never quite feels right.

Another item that we observed, and was quite baffling to confront, was the notion that cardboard cannot be broken without explosives. I had just played Arkham City earlier that year, and so I was used to punching through cardboard and thin wooden panels with ease. To find that such thin layers of wood were treated no differently than cement in Arkham Origins was baffling, not only forcing me to question the game’s logic within its franchise, but the logic within real world plausibility. Batman can snap femurs without breaking into a sweat, yet he can’t shove his fist through this wood? He has to lay down plastic explosives? Isn’t that a bit of overkill?

I don’t want to make accusations regarding the talent of the development team. There had to have been employees looking at this part of the level and thinking it doesn’t make sense. I can only imagine this was waved off by the lead designers because they were under a tight schedule with producers from Warner Bros. Interactive HQ breathing down their necks and they just needed to hit the next milestone. Unfortunately, the end result is a large population of players that now doubt the talent, intelligence, and capabilities of the developer. This is the sort of thing that prevents someone from eagerly purchasing or pre-ordering your next game at full price. This instead communicates that the next game by this studio is best purchased on sale, if at all.

Then again, one of our viewers had found documentation stating the game was finished a year early and the final year was spent on polish. Aside from technical prowess, nothing about this game feels like it got a spare three-hundred and sixty-five days polish. If that were the case then so many of these little details would not be a present problem. That is, unless the studio really isn’t that remarkable. An odd thing to say when every game that manages to release in a playable state is a miraculous accomplishment in its own right, but the inability to decipher the map, little issues in regards to plausibility in the world design, and the frustrations of combat encounters and other little frustrations suggest a game without polish.

Of course, Arkham Origins shipped with a multiplayer mode, so who knows how much polish went to the single player versus the competitive multiplayer.

The frustrating conclusion to this stream is a battle with Copperhead, loosely recycling concepts that were used in Al Ghul’s own fight in Arkham City. Unlike that battle, however, the fight with Copperhead is just as opaque as Deathstroke’s. You must pummel these illusory visions of the boss, their health bar going down seemingly at random. If the health bar went down only after you concluded a phase by beating down the lone Copperhead left, then the message would be clear: defeat all the illusions. That the health bar can instead lose a massive chunk in the middle of a phase leads the player to believe there’s a “real” Copperhead amidst the crowd, despite there being no hint to differentiate the targets.

Then there’s Copperhead’s speedy strike in the final phase that seemingly can only be avoided by dodging, meaning interrupting any offensive action against the illusions and typically losing one’s combo. Perhaps there’s some gadget that can be used to halt her charge, but I had no memory for all the shortcut commands to test such a thing out. Even then, the game’s auto-targeting has been so unreliable the entire game that I would not trust it to strike the correct manifestation of Copperhead.

The frustration will continue next week. In the meantime, be sure to check out what Shamus had to say on his blog regarding the cut-scenes.

Our second stream is, naturally, where all the technical difficulties had arisen, with the primary one being Shamus’ blown out mic gain. We tried several times to fix his audio, but unfortunately no matter how it sounded for us, it did not sound well on the actual stream. Additionally, trying to screen share with him and Twitch led to some frequent frame drops.

This happens with every group stream I have with friends. No matter what audio settings remain unchanged between streams, the volume of friends will vary. I have a feeling there’s something going on with Discord between each call, but only because that’s the common source of the call.

It is for this reason I tend to proselytize the Elgato Wave:3 as much as I do, because no matter how loud I set the volume I come in nice and clear. Simultaneously, I don’t need to set the gain very high for it to capture my voice at a decent volume. The only thing missing are sound absorbers to reduce echo, which is barely an issue under most circumstances. It’s a top notch, “affordable” mic (compared to what most professional level microphones are asking for), and I got better quality than similarly priced Snowball and other model microphones frequently used by streamers.

On top of the technical issues, I was also forgetful to fix the audio alignment. With the original Elgato HD60, it had an automatic stream delay that would cause the video to be behind my reaction time. As a result, I would add a delay to my audio, and if I was playing a multiplayer game ahead of time then I’d also add a delay to the audio of my computer. I had evidently not bothered fixing this for a few streams at this point, so the audio of the game and our discussion is out of sync with the video, as I had been playing Arkham Origins on PC.

This is fortunately no longer a problem, as I upgraded to the Elgato HD X, which no longer has automatic latency. Instead, it’s a 1:1 signal, and therefore I can just keep all audio and animations set to their default state without worrying about anything going out of sync.

Disregarding the technical problems, it was interesting going through the original comments on Shamus’ accompanying blog post, where there was a lot of grief given to Jim Gordon’s willingness to stick to a job with such blatant corruption. There’s multiple things going on here, one of them being the notion that Gordon truly is the only good cop in the city. Despite the extremism of modern politics treating every cop as a saint or a devil, the reality is that no organization is so corrupt as to employ a horde of demons. The problem comes from the corruption being so systemic that the good are beaten down and intimidated into submission, intentionally left to feel isolated and disempowered.

Which the graphic novel Batman: Year One actually addresses. Jim Gordon was transferred from Chicago, and in different continuities due to stirring the corruption pot in those locations. In other words, it’s a transfer of punishment and revenge that Jim is sent to Gotham, an even more corrupt city in the pocket of Falcone. Gordon is an army veteran with a pregnant wife and infant son, and therefore he’s not in a position to simply change careers. Being both an outsider and having something to lose, this puts those in power at Gotham at an advantage. Nonetheless, despite the then-commissioner having Gordon beaten down by his partner and other corrupt officers for stirring the pot once again, Gordon sends his own message to the rest of the force by ambushing his partner, beating the man to a pulp, and hand-cuffing him naked in the snow where the other officers can see.

In other words, Gordon was no push-over and committed enough to correcting the Gotham police that he was willing to get his hands dirty.

This is what Batman: Arkham Origins is so bad at imitating. They’re taking the history of Gotham PD being a corrupt organization, but there’s no thought put into it. Gordon is hardly a character, and rather than being a story about how Batman befriends James, it’s more about how Batman is introduced to Barbara. Because Warner Bros. Montreal emphasizes video game logic over any substantial world-building logic, the police officers are all evil and corrupt and therefore it’s okay to punch and punish them.

Honestly, the best establishment of Jim Gordon and his friendship with Batman is in Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One and Jeph Loeb’s Batman: The Long Halloween, two comic series that have been hugely influential in the Batman canon but rarely improved upon.

Rewatching this stream makes me wish I had reached out to Shamus Young for such things much sooner. I’ve had a lot of great and fun streams with friends, but Shamus was someone special in that I had looked up to him for a long time, and the two of us had the same approach to analyzing a game’s narrative and design. He was far stronger than I am at pointing out logical flaws in the plot or world-building, but I always understood what he meant to convey and found our difference of perspective on game design complementary.

Batman: Arkham Origins was a perfect game to begin with because we both found it to be filled with shortcomings compared to its Rocksteady developed predecessors. It was also the perfect sort of game for a pair of fellows that enjoy constructive griping.

Listening to the two of us chatter away, it really makes me miss him and wish there had just been a bit more time. Granted, the loss of Shamus would always have been too soon, and in the end my regret is only that I had waited so long to muster the courage to reach out to him.

Still, I think he would be most honored if this memorial upload were accompanied by his most famous of activities: griping.

While Shamus Young had found the other Arkham series titles to be perfectable in combat, I had always found them a bit too finicky in regards to enemy A.I. and a lack of Batman’s own freedom. However, in Arkham Origins that freedom is truly robbed as the criminal mooks seem to behave far more inconsistently, sometimes pausing and performing no action whatsoever just when you expect to need to counter or perform some other action. Several times I lose my combo because I’m anticipating the goons to perform in a predictable fashion, their own behaviors matching the flow of my rhythmic button presses. In titles such as Arkham Asylum or Arkham City, it often felt as if the player would lose their combo due to carelessness, ignoring the incoming alerts or striking an enemy with an ineffective gadget. Here in Origins, all it takes is for a hesitant mook to stand there, or to suddenly turn around to pick up a weapon.

It’s the first indication that something about this game is off, that it’s not Rocksteady piecing this thing together. The question is, why does the Mook A.I. suddenly perform so differently from the prior two games? The best guess one can offer is that it was incomplete code from Rocksteady being worked with.

Then again, the first real indicator that this isn’t the same studio is in the opening cut-scene. The storyboard artist (or, I suppose, cinematographer? Tough to tell when you’re playing with graphics as intense as this) takes great pains for the player to see a portrait of Bruce Wayne as a boy with his parents reflected in the pristine stainless steel cover of his dinner, reminding us once more that Batman’s parents are dead. However, it is the below screenshot that I found most curious, and yet was somehow missed by Shamus and I during our stream together.

This choice of a reflection, lining Bruce Wayne’s body up perfectly with the Bat Suit, would seem like a rather clever shot at first. It’s clearly intentional and conveys a deeper meaning of… a deeper meaning that… well, you see, it indicates that…

I suppose it doesn’t really indicate anything of significance. We already know Bruce Wayne is Batman. Shots such as this are either intended to foreshadow something — for example, if this were following the continuity where Dick Grayson had taken up the cowl after Bruce Wayne’s death or vanishing, then having Dick Grayson stand before the reflection in this manner before Bruce Wayne’s passing would be foreshadowing Grayson’s destiny to be next in line. Alternatively, a similar shot could be used for the character of Nite Owl from The Watchmen, who was constantly suffering a crisis of identity and impotence as a regular, post-super hero civilian. In this instance, however, there is no context to communicate. Bruce Wayne is already Batman, and there is nothing about that which shall change in this story.

The closest I can imagine is that Bruce is still carrying the rage from his dead parents with him, and that he has not yet truly become the Batman until he has rid himself of that anger, but if that is the intent then these shots communicate that idea poorly, as does the entire introduction.

When Shamus had originally made an accompanying post to the first episode’s Twitch archive, he had also posted what were intended to be notes for him regarding the Deathstroke fight. I did not get a chance to edit the words for clarity, and so I have always felt a bit embarrassed by my half-thought out words being placed upon his blog. As such, I will now clarify some of my meaning.

The issue with the Deathstroke brawl is that there is no communication as to what works, nor when. The batclaw, for example, seems to work some of the time, but he will eventually begin to dodge it. At first I had begun pondering if maybe you need to use the claw immediately after countering his own blow, when he’s theoretically off guard. This is not the case, because sometimes he will dodge it in this circumstance, and other times he will not. Other times he will dodge any blatant claw attempt, other times it will work. At some point in the fight the player is able to successfully strike at Deathstroke after countering the assassin’s blow. Other times the player is unsuccessful.

One could sit there and argue that this is intended to simulate the player’s own ability to adapt, but that’s not what the player is doing. The player has to first figure out what options are available, and from there experiment within just those options until success is achieved. Of course, some of those options will be viable later, but are not viable immediately. This means the player cannot even permanently rule a tactic out.

If they wanted to test the player’s own wit and intelligence in such a fight, then Deathstroke would need to change his stance or posture to indicate what he’s preparing to defend against, and therefore the player can figure out how to counter that. Or, perhaps, certain attacks could be outdone by certain gadgets of Batman’s. As the fight stands, however, it feels so inconsistent and random because nothing Deathstroke does indicates that his own response to certain tactics or gadgets has changed.

There are plenty of games out there that provide clear pattern recognition and indicators of enemy attacks that the player can learn while still being an incredible test of skill. From character action titles such as the Devil May Cry series to the punishing From Software Soulsborne series, a fight is not made “too easy” by having a consistent set of rules and information with which to provide the player. This fight is not challenging, it is instead obtuse.

I have nothing more I can add regarding the explosive barrels, though. Aside from questioning why they are even there, I can only think that the intent is for the player to use their own batclaw and/or the counter button. Unfortunately, the situation is too unclear and the prompts too sudden for the player to comprehend what must be necessary for success.

There will be no set schedule when I upload these, but I will continue to upload the Batman: Arkham Origins series followed by our Resident Evil 5 playthrough. Please look forward to them.

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I wonder how first-time players to Resident Evil 4 feel about the remake. Are they uncertain what the big deal is, enjoying the game but unable to see what made it so legendary not only within the series, but throughout gaming as a whole? Or do they also find it a breath of fresh air when compared to what a lot of modern games offer? Or perhaps it’s somewhere in the middle? It’s the sort of thing I ponder, as the original Resident Evil 4 influenced so many games that it’s not unlike Ocarina of Time’s influence. Twenty or more years after the context of its release, it’s difficult to see what made it special because the influence has been carried throughout the entire industry.

It is also strange to feel less enthused about the remake than many, while simultaneously being less critical of it than others I’ve seen. Even if you’re judging on Capcom’s incredible output scale, Resident Evil 4 is one of the best titles they’ve released, and an impossibly tall order given the significance of what they’re trying to recreate. This isn’t even about the tone and atmosphere; there are so many small mechanics and secrets that it’d be easy to overlook the details that make the game so spectacular, and as a result feel somewhat empty.

This discussion is sadly incomplete, but hopefully we touched on enough of the large strokes to give you an idea of how we feel and where we stand. No doubt we’ll be coming back to this game several times throughout the year, especially once Game of the Year talks start rolling in.

What did you think of the Resident Evil 4 remake? Comment below or send us an e-mail and maybe we’ll read some of them on the next episode.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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It is interesting to examine the top rated games of 2023 so far and note how “stuck in the past” they are. On one hand, this is being touted in some celebratory manner, as if to signify to the world that we want old-fashioned video games. However, there is another potential read to this, and it is that games critics and press are, themselves, stuck in the past.

I don’t think this is wholly inaccurate, but it does open up the idea that pundits and amateurs such as myself are “out of touch”. After all, review scores are great, but it matters little if a review score fails to translate into sales. The manner in which we tally such data is also somewhat flawed, as we don’t know how often games are returned or traded in. How many copies of Elden Ring went incomplete and were swiftly sent back to the GameStop or Amazon from which they came?

Even so, I think it does games like Hi-Fi Rush a disservice to simply say they are reminiscent of the kinds of games emerging on the Dreamcast, or the sort of thing Capcom might have published from their short-lived Clover development team. To simply stick a number on Resident Evil 4 remake and refer to it in regards to its previous title is to ignore what adjustments will have been made to improve or freshen the game up. The same can be said for the Dead Space remake back in January. You then have titles such as Gal Guardians: Demon Purge that Joey and I have been playing, a game which fuses the Castlevania and Mega Man Zero franchises in a way that feels all too natural. Honestly, it feels just as enjoyable as Team Ladybug’s works Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth.

Perhaps we’re just seeing an equilibrium establish.

Good news everyone! I’ve decided on my next video and am beginning the “pre-production” phase, which is primarily recording footage and scrawling out the first draft of the script in fits and starts. This is going to be a weird one, very unlike my others, but should be an enjoyable one to put together. I also already know what I want to do after that. With luck, I might be able to squeeze four videos out this year, but I’ll be happy with three if that’s all I can manage.

What have you been playing lately? Comment below or send us an e-mail and maybe we’ll read some of them on next year’s predictions show.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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My video on Darksiders has finally been published. Please be sure to give it a watch, like, comment, and share.

I am actually quite surprised to discover just how negative much of the response to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been. Though quite exhausted by Battle Passes and live-service colored loot chasing myself, I still find the core game mechanics to look rather enjoyable. If anything, watching that gameplay has me wishing Nintendo would dare become more ambitious with the Splatoon franchise’s single-player prospects. The game is already focused on unconventional navigation through an environment, yet every single “level” is nothing more than a gray box obstacle course designed to be a digestible, five-minute arena. Perhaps it’s a carry-over of their handheld design philosophy, where such five-minute chunks were advantageous to the player that might have to shut off the device at any time.

In the end, however, I cannot say I am surprised, and I do wonder if the crowd’s turn against Sony will truly begin to shift over time. Forspoken was received rather poorly and now their center-piece of Suicide Squad is overshadowing anything positive. As stated on the podcast, I know that they have Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 in the chamber for later this year, but I also know they have about seven or eight live-service titles in the works. They’ve said as much themselves. Given EA’s shift to fewer live-service titles, Ubisoft’s current catastrophe of canceled games (the majority of which were live-service), and now this response to Suicide Squad, you have to wonder if anyone in Sony is panicking.

Personally, I do not have much confidence in their current leadership, unless that confidence is in their conceit. Their response to the Microsoft acquisition of Activision-Blizzard certainly has them frazzled, but I think it’s a distraction from the real inevitable cause of their downfall: hubris and a disconnect from their audience. I also believe they have a vision of what they want to be a success, and ignore any sign that they might need to change their thinking.

How long will Sony’s downfall take, and will they have the wisdom to course correct before they make a truly great mistake? Or, perhaps, am I caught up in my own wishful thinking?

What are your thoughts? Comment below or send us an e-mail and maybe we’ll read some of them on next year’s predictions show.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

It is not a joke to say that this video has been two-and-a-half years in the making. More, actually. Though the primary footage I used from the Nintendo Switch version of the game is dated August of 2020, I had actually decided to make a video during a random play through in 2019. It was then that I first began to notice my little, nit-picking gripes with the Twilight Cathedral, but in order to properly convey my thoughts I needed footage from the 3D Zelda games. This is what kick-started the intended Zelda series, beginning with A Link to the Past and intended to conclude with Twilight Princess, then leading into Darksiders.

Unfortunately this did not come to pass for many reasons, some of which I’ve already gone into. Getting laid off pre-Covid, depression, and undue pressure upon myself with each video made led to the lengthy absence from YouTube. Nonetheless, in August of 2020, at least, I was contemplating just cutting ahead to Darksiders anyway.

In truth, I needed that time away to make this video. The baggage dragging me down and causing each video to be more stressful than enjoyable needed to be unpacked and sorted out. There was no way I’d have dared make a video this long, and I would have been tempted to give up at the script level as I tried to condense all of my thoughts into something far shorter.

It is not perfect, but this lengthy deep-dive look at one of my favorite games is precisely what I needed it to be.

One of the more curious delays in content creation was the simple need to move away from Windows Movie Maker 6. To many it may seem an obvious move, but as I’ve documented in the past, Windows Movie Maker 6 had a method of taking a video file and automatically splitting it up between “scenes” that make it “easier” to scrub through footage; or so I had believed. To me, the idea of having to scroll through individual, several hours-long video files for what might just be five seconds of footage would make an already lengthy project take even longer.

Ultimately it became clear that Movie Maker 6 was just not going to cut it, having problems running on not only Windows 8, but Windows 10 as well. While I’d have stayed with Windows 7 forever, I needed a new machine, which meant I’d inevitably have to change video editors at some point. So, having been laid off, I decided to go with a bundle of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. The former would do everything I needed in an image editor, and the latter would be a simple enough transition to a “real” video editor.

It turned out I was actually saving myself a lot of time with this switch. In order to use a video file in Windows Movie Maker 6, it needed to be converted into WMV format. This meant every single bit of footage I was using needed to first go through a conversion process, which meant a lot of time spent waiting for hours and hours of gameplay to be modified for use. This inevitably meant a downgrade in quality as well.

For several months in late 2022 I had tried putting together scripts and concepts for shorter, easier to edit videos just to practice with Adobe Premiere. I had gone so far as to record and edit audio and then begin editing, but I never actually enjoyed the content being made. This wasn’t the same pressure as before, though. This was me evaluating the product as something I, personally, would enjoy.

It seemed crazy to make my first real project with new video editing software a lengthy, deep dive analysis over an hour long, yet, in the end, it was the right decision. There were some setbacks at times as I tried playing with that Premiere Elements could and could not do, but I not only came to find myself a rhythm, I also realized that scrubbing through all that footage was not as time consuming as I had anticipated. In fact, Premiere Elements has a lot of time-saving measures that make seemingly disastrous, little mistakes into minor adjustments. One such error was discovered at the eleventh hour, frightening me into believing I had a lengthy, risky fix to perform. Instead, it was a mere few seconds to repair the damage.

The only part of this process I’m undecided on was the new approach to recording audio. Typically I’d record the entire script in one go, edit the entire thing, and then chop it up for video editing. This time, I spread the audio recording out across several days, recording a few portions of the script before editing them down and inserting them into the video editor, where I’d cut everything together until I needed more audio. On one hand, this prevented me from getting bogged down in any one specific activity. Audio-editing is by far the most tedious process, but it can also take less time than video editing. However, there was one week in which progress was stalled because I was sick. In fact, somewhere around the middle you might be able to identify a sudden change in my voice. I decided to record audio despite not being fully recovered on that day. I could have continued editing the video while sick, but without any audio to insert, the entire project ended up reaching a standstill.

On the whole I think the process worked well. It just needs some polishing up. The only other thing I learned with this project was a simple confirmation of myself: I never would have been able to actually work in video games. Over the last two weeks I’ve been itching to move onto the next project. In many ways this was a refreshing feeling, as in the past I’ve typically been ready to move on due to losing all confidence in the video. This is one of the reasons the gaps between individual Resident Evil VI videos became wider and wider. Here, however, I hadn’t lost confidence in the video. I was just done with the analysis, mentally. I left it all out on the table. It’s been said, and now I want to move onto digging into other games.

It’s refreshing to be this excited to move on without having a foul taste for the video just made.

Not that there aren’t things I would have liked to do better. You’ll notice several different notes and corrections sprinkled throughout the video, many of which are the result of forgetting about something until I was editing, or only picking up on while scrubbing through footage. The image directly above? Of the Griever looking to the side? Despite having played through this game so often over the past few years, I had somehow never noticed she was looking towards her nest. This better contextualizes why the Griever keeps attacking War throughout the dungeon, and why she remains in one static spot the entire boss fight. Unfortunately, there’s never a moment where the player gets a good look at the nest, and therefore that connection is unlikely to be made.

This is something that I need to improve at. One of the reasons I don’t do as much research into the making of a game these days is because I simply don’t have the same amount of time that I used to. My current job is far more demanding, though also far more rewarding. I do what I can in what time available, but I just do not always have the ability to try digging through interviews for answers that may not exist.

However, when discussing narrative, cut-scenes, and puzzles, it is clear that my memory occasionally becomes jumbled together. I’ll remember things out of order, or forget individual parts of a scene. I recall Samael smacking the Watcher out of the way in the scene where War gets his Chaos form back, but I had forgotten Samael’s demonstration of power on him. Even so, it’s not like the Watcher was left powerless the whole time. He was clearly moving freely before War delivered the massive punch, and so he could have continued using his hold the whole time. It would have made more sense for Samael to hold the Watcher down for War. Besides, even if this little detail were explained away, it still doesn’t convey why or how War retains his Chaos form back. A glimmer upon his gauntlet is not an explanation.

There is one last technical hiccup as well. I did not find out about it until too late in the editing process, but I upgraded my Elgato HD60 to the new Elgato HD60 X, a mostly superior machine for capturing footage. However, every so often there’d be sudden stuttering in the recording that was neither present in gameplay nor the preview window. I have suspicions about the cause and am investigating other recording methods using it, but this is one of the reasons I stuck to Switch footage where I could. It is also why you may see some choppy footage on occasion. Hopefully this will not be a consistent problem, as it would not do to have this sort of graphical hitch for future videos.

Nevertheless, despite needing to brush up my process in the future, I feel pretty confident in this video. I know I’ve said that in the past, but I mean it this time. I think those who follow will be rewarded for their patience with some of my best work. Will I continue going this in-depth in the future? I don’t know. I have several ideas for what to do next, and technically even began a potential project already, but I think I just need some time to relax and see what lights the strongest fire inside.

Until then, I hope you enjoyed the video, and I hope you enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of my Darksiders analysis.

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Would you look at that? I’ve finally gotten around to creating a RamblePak64 Extras channel, where I’ll be uploading archives of the podcast, all video content starring the late Shamus Young, and stream highlights or other such content.

I may also do it for additional experimental content, or use it as a channel to stream to should I choose to leave Twitch behind. So, if you’d like to see what else I might get up to, go ahead and subscribe.

As for the podcast episode this week, it was a delightful one. Honestly, it feels good to just have so many games to be excited to talk about. Last year was no slouch, but something about these first two months of 2023 feel like they highlight why I was feeling so down most of last year. Of course, there were plenty of reasons far more practical to feel down, but right now, video games are just in a really good spot. There’s no shortage of quality, and there’s still more to come.

What have you been enjoying lately? Comment below or send us an e-mail and maybe we’ll read some of them on next year’s predictions show.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

It’s a mystery why it has taken so long for me to watch and read Claymore. I’ve been hunting for high fantasy anime that can scratch the same itch as the original Record of Lodoss War OVAs for years, and while Claymore is more shounen-fighting style dark fantasy, it leans closer to my craving than most Isekai or video game influenced anime currently being produced. Perhaps I missed the day my university’s anime club had played the introductory four episodes, assuming they had shown it at all, but this show has only been on the fringes of my anime radar. I’d occasionally see it on streaming services, but for some reason I never gave it a watch.

However, as much as I enjoyed finally watching the anime and reading the manga, I certainly found the earliest arcs of the narrative more enjoyable than the latter. This has less to do with the quality of the characters or plot and more to do with the prominence of that shounen-fighting sub-genre in which this story occupies. In fact, I have Claymore to thank for helping me understand why I have lost interest in arguably the most popular anime and manga genre: shounen-fighting stories are exhausting.

If you’re not quite certain what I mean by “shounen-fighting”, I’m referring to works such as Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and My Hero Academia. Much like a Kung-Fu flick, the primary draw to these works are the fights. Unfortunately, the pace of these stories is to primarily focus on fights or training arcs with barely any reprieve. All plot and character development occurs while fists and blades are clashing, or while protagonists are endeavoring to develop some new technique or surpass the current limit of their power. Once one phase ends, the next must begin. The bulk of all narrative is in the fighting, posturing, or training. If you’re lucky, there’s an episode where the characters visit a ramen shop or something, though you’re more likely to just get a beach episode these days.

By the time I was in College and Naruto was the new hotness, I found this formula to be tiresome. Now that I’m an adult, I find it outright exhausting and the one thing holding Claymore back from “surpassing its limit”.

I must first commend Claymore for having a degree of restraint compared to its peers. There is a “state” or “condition” in which some of our protagonists find themselves, one that could easily have been the manga’s own brand of the “super saiyan” from Dragon Ball Z. However, this state has multiple drawbacks that disincentivize our protagonists from reaching or achieving this state, occasionally resulting in a weighing of risk versus reward for daring to dance the line to this powerful limit. There is never a moment where this limit stops being a threat through the strength of sheer willpower or some other made up rule to justify our protagonist’s superficial superiority. It remains a persistent danger throughout the story’s duration, though the precise rules and logic are wishy-washy and feel nebulous in their execution.

It also does not prevent the all too familiar escalation of power, where every foe is some unimaginable threat that can never be defeated. Oh, wait, nevermind. They’ve just been defeated after all, and everyone stands around slack-jawed at the new, even more powerful threat that surely cannot be defeated. The escalated strength of characters is often represented as intense speed that cannot be tracked by the naked eye, and therefore fights go from having actual choreography to just being an indistinct blur of slashes clashing in the air. This is somewhat less of a problem in the manga as time progresses, as the eye can speed through the action just as hastily as the characters are moving and the panels try to emphasize more specific actions. The downside is that the exhaustion weighs heavy as the final third of the manga consists of nothing but fights, one after the next, never or rarely taking a break.

It’s a testament to the skill of the author Norihiro Yagi that, amidst all of these constant battles, the varied personalities of his characters still shine through. While you could facetiously refer to Claymore as “Berserk but with waifus”, its diverse cast of women are not such exaggerated stereotypes as most anime lean for. In fact, most of the characters are marked by a degree of stoicism, their differences illustrated by their spoken dialogue and the philosophies they express. While not every character is so subdued – in fact, the less subdued certainly stand out more prominently because they are more expressive and emotional – it reveals a more realistic subtlety that defines each character as an individual.

Which is why it’s a shame that there’s so little interaction between the characters outside of combat or under the threat of combat. It would be nice to see some of the cast interacting with one another outside of a hunt for Yoma, the demonic creatures that plague the land. Perhaps the characters could be deepened by demonstrating each one’s hunting and fishing methodology, whether they use their powers for the task or perform them as a regular human might. Given the warrior women – referred to by the human populace as Claymores due to the heavy blade they wield – have little need to eat more than a few bites every few days, the very fact that they engage in eating more than necessary or activities such as hunting or fishing could say something of their personality or their desire to remain rooted in their humanity. There are a handful of moments in which we see such things, but they are very brief asides snuck in between fights, training, or plot exposition.

Ultimately Claymore is a plot-driven show rather than character driven. Any and all conversation must move the story forward, leaving little time to indulge in the quirks, depths, and diversity of the cast.

Perhaps this is why my favorite arc involves Teresa of the Faint Smile, a character that barely features in the story and yet whose presence resonates throughout its entirety. The action is a minor footnote throughout its duration as we get a sense of who she is and what her values are, each chapter or episode building to a momentous clash with former comrades that is as much ideological as it is physical. The show and manga are never the same after Teresa of the Faint Smile, for better and worse.

Regardless of my gripes, Norihiro Yagi’s plot-driven story-telling remains compelling. If the action, despite being so prominent, is the weakest part of the story and the characters are not given enough attention to achieve their full potential, then it is the plot and its structure that propels the viewer or reader forward episode after episode, chapter after chapter.

It is why I have been so vague on detail in this entire write-up. To try and illustrate what the story does best is to give too much away. It truly is a plot better experienced blind, allowing each revelation, each death, and each moment of escalation to be a shock or invigorating burst of hype. Every event and character is an introduction to a concept or idea so that, as the plot progresses, they can merge or modify in a fashion that not only feels consistent with itself, but satisfying. A character reappearing with a surprise trait hinted at or explained a dozen chapters ago is satisfying, like seeing more and more pieces of a puzzle being placed together until a whole picture begins to take form. Each development snaps together like individual LEGO bricks, assembling a figure worth a thousand and more words of narrative whose resolution ties all loose ends together nice and tight.

However, I noted that Claymore is a pretty good anime and manga. I did not say it was great, or excellent, or a masterpiece, and I have the feeling that, in a month or two, I’ll have forgotten the majority of its details and moments that I once found so hype or surprising.

Part of this is due to the binge. I got sucked into Claymore in a way that rarely happens to me these days. You could even say it was nostalgic, reminiscent of the days in which I was first discovering anime. The plot firmly hooked and drew me in chapter after chapter, but I have seen too many shounen-fighting anime and seen the overdone tropes of power escalation so often that this binge left me mentally wiped out. What it does well, it does really well, but that adherence to certain tropes prevents it from measuring up to the most memorable greats.

Claymore remains easier to recommend than most other anime of a similar type despite this, and in part because of how it handles the power creep and its characters. While Clare is the protagonist, for example, there are huge chunks of the narrative in which she is not even present. This is truly an ensemble cast and while she is our center, she is just one piece of the greater world. In an era where anime, manga, and light-novels are drowning in protagonists written to be the absolute greatest in the world, it’s a relief to have a narrative where the rest of the cast is just as important, valuable, and, in their own way, strong. Clare is strong, but there are others who are stronger. Even if Clare has more power, she has less discipline and experience. Moreover, there are greater forces than her at work, and therefore she is not the sole hinge upon which the entire world turns.

Admittedly, I was certain at first that Claymore was a “seinen”, meaning its target audience was primarily older men. After having watched the anime and read the manga in full, as well as discovering it had been published in Shounen Jump, I’d say Claymore feels like a seinen trapped in a shounen-fighting narrative. A shame, since it could have been so much better if it wasn’t dragged down by the relentless pace of its many fights.

If you do choose to investigate Claymore yourself, keep in mind the anime is only about one-third of the total narrative and deviates in its final two or three episodes in order to provide some degree of closure. If it followed the manga it would conclude on a far greater cliffhanger, one that would have been unsatisfying since there would have been no season two. The show exists as an advertisement for the manga, which would not conclude until 2014, seven years after the anime aired. It is unlikely there will be a season two.

There is one deviation from the manga in those final episodes that I think is a good change, but otherwise, don’t go into the anime expecting a definitive conclusion. Use it to instead determine if you’re interested enough to pursue the manga. Both are a decent use of your time, especially if you’re looking for something more reminiscent of the 80’s and 90’s era of anime.

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Every week it feels like everyone’s audio levels are drastically different, and Streamlabs is of no help. If circumstances weren’t what they were we’d be meeting quite early to test audio and get everything right, but with everyone being busy as full-time humans, we’re kind of doomed to produce episodes where I’m louder than everyone else.

Which is pretty close to what it’s like to be in the same room with me, anyway.

Industry analysis and speculation is not something I’m “good” at, though I’d argue very few are. Do you remember Michael Pachter? Some of the older among you might, and you may also remember that he was consistently wrong in his predictions despite frequently getting headlines. Of course, in an era where companies are leaking information like a boat made out of matchsticks, why would you even need an analyst? So while I may not be great at trying to predict where the industry is going, I still have a lot of fun doing so.

So I wanted to take up this ritual that was started on GamersWithJobs and continue it with my friends. It was a last-minute decision on my part this week as we had been scrambling to figure out a topic, but hopefully next year we can be a bit more refined with it (and, perhaps, do as Steve requested and have a two-parter instead of squeezing it all in). Hopefully the conversation proves interesting to you as well, even if it did take some time to get off the ground.

What kind of predictions do you have for 2023? Comment below or send us an e-mail and maybe we’ll read some of them on next year’s predictions show.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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Well, 2023 is sure off to an… interesting start. I imagine for many podcasts there’s a bit of an “oh you!” reaction to certain personalities getting heated on air, but it is certainly not something I take pride in. I apologize to any listeners that felt uncomfortable or otherwise unpleasant by my temperament for the last half-hour or so. In order to reduce such outbursts from happening, I’ve chosen to take a bit of a sabbatical from certain locations on the Internet.

Which, frankly, is all for the better since I need to get my head down in order to get the video out.

Looking back on the releases of last year, it’s odd to consider how many good games there were, and yet it still feels somehow underwhelming. There was no shortage of titles worth playing, but I suppose it comes down to the biggest releases all having some sort of setback. For me, at least. This isn’t about mind-blowing or innovative experiences, either. If I had to score games like TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, Evil West, and Soulstice compared to Elden Ring and God of War: Ragnarok, it’s consistency. Those games were consistent and fun throughout, whereas the two largest games of the year were more uneven.

What did you think, however? What were your favorite releases in 2022? Anything you’re looking forward to in 2023? Comment below or send us an e-mail and maybe we’ll read some of them on the next episode of the show.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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Of all things I had forgotten to mention, it was the accomplishment of hitting 100 episodes of the podcast this year. We did, of course, reflect on the inclusion of my friend Joey, who goes by the name of HeirApparent310 on Twitch. This was also the year where I got to enjoy an increasing amount of collaboration with the late Shamus Young, whose absence is still greatly missed by me. In many ways, his passing certainly contributed to my depression of the latter half of the year, in addition to the mentioned health issues mentioned in the podcast. However, I also believe it has certainly helped to encourage me to find my own voice and direction, and to do the work I think I will be best at.

I’ll be busy trying to put together a number of things for January. I’m certainly working on a video for that month, as it will be the tenth year anniversary of the RamblePak64 YouTube channel, and therefore the RamblePak64 brand or identity. It kind of works as both, as I’ve come to enjoy hearing people refer to me as “Ramble”, as odd as it may sound. I also plan to write up a look at my own personal gaming 2022 in review for January, just as I had done at the start of this year. I was really proud of those posts, and it helped me figure out ways in which I could try and keep working on this blog.

However, I think it is sufficient to say that my primary priorities going into 2023 will be the YouTube channel, followed by the podcast. The blog and Twitch will be things I get to when I can, but I think my best work is honestly in video format, and I’d like to adjust my own efforts to better take this into account. We’ll see how things shake up, though.

Thank you for all that have continued following along in 2022, and in the event that this is my last post of the year, I hope to see you in 2023.

What are your personal highlights of 2022? Anything stand out to you most? What were your favorite games of the year? Comment below or send us an e-mail and maybe we’ll read some of them on the next episode of the show.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

There are times I have to wonder if my contrarian nature is somehow programmed into me, or if it is a mere coincidence that my tastes often rub more mainstream proclivities the wrong way. To say that I enjoyed Soulstice more than I enjoyed any lone Devil May Cry game is no doubt going to cause many character-action aficionados to scoff, and I most certainly had a better time with it than I had the first two Bayonetta titles. One might even call me “basic” for this feeling.

Admittedly, there are no doubt aspects of Soulstice that hold it back from being “as good” as, say, Devil May Cry 5 on a technical, objective level. Writing, for starters. Building upon the drama established in Devil May Cry 3 and familial lore added in Devil May Cry 4, there’s some sense of climactic finality to Devil May Cry 5 and its memorable characters that leaves fans old and recent with a level of catharsis and closure, and all delivered with a bombastic sense of style that other games fail to approach the imagination of.

Which, perhaps, would be one of the first perceived “failings” of Soulstice. It is far more subdued than its character-action compatriots, relying less on the roller-coaster zaniness and “how much more kuh-razy can these narrative loop-de-loops get?”, delivering instead a somber tale of a young warrior woman and her spectral sister’s bond. Briar is sardonic in expression and speech, contrasting with the innocent optimism and youthful wisdom of her deceased sister. Their mission is to investigate and put an end to the corruption and collapse of one of the world’s great three cities, a dimensional tear having opened above from which wraiths descend upon the populace to slaughter, contaminate, and possess.

Despite the abundance of demons or apocalyptic conflict in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, respectively, the jovial wit of our protagonists always conveys a sense of fun in the carnage and makes a mockery of the villains responsible. The characters, setting, and narrative of Soulstice do not possess such levity, but I can assure you, the gameplay itself is such a delight that I believe it deserves to be held as an equal sibling to such franchises.

I’ll begin by acknowledging that Soulstice is “easier” than either genre parent in several ways. The first is the limited moveset available to the player, with each weapon sharing the same few button combinations for similar effect. Combining jump and secondary attack buttons will always perform an upward attack move that launches the enemy into the air or, if the player is already in the air, strikes an enemy downwards. One weapon might slam the enemy directly down into the ground while another spins like a saw, but the effect follows a similar logic. With such a small number of combinations and sharing attributes between each weapon, the player is asked to remember far less than character action games typically demand.

The ranking system following each combat encounter could also be considered more generous, though it may simply be that scoring well in regards to combos and time came easy since the emphasis turned to weapon swapping rather than performing a diverse set of attack combinations. However, this also ignores two other factors found in combat rankings: damage suffered and time taken to complete. It is here that we begin to delve into the combat’s greater complexity.

If Devil May Cry 5 locking away lyrics to its music behind high combat rankings was frustrating to inadequately skilled game press, then Soulstice is bound to enrage them further by locking the “Devil Trigger” equivalent and powerful finishing moves behind “unity”; by avoiding damage and unleashing a constant barrage of offensive combos and attacks, Briar and her sister Lute become more synchronized. Once Unity is achieved, the player is free to either perform the longest string combos with any of their weapons, concluding in a powerful area-of-effect strike, or to activate Rapture, which slightly transforms Briar into a more vicious warrior capable of unleashing devastating strikes to her opponents. The benefit of sticking with the finishing moves is that the Unity gauge will still be full upon completion, allowing the player to chain one move after the next so long as they avoid getting hurt or continue dealing damage to their opponents. Rapture, on the other hand, is more capable of clearing out a lot of low-level enemies in a shorter span of time while concluding with a powerful, explosive attack. Once it’s finished, however, unity is reset and must be built back up.

This introduces a sort of “game-within-a-game” that I love so much. Even if a combat encounter isn’t very difficult, my focus instead turns to optimization. Which weapons will allow me to get the most combos that build unity the fastest and therefore allow me to Rapture or perform a finishing combo? In how short a time can I put an end to this combat encounter? Can I avoid damage, finish this quickly, and get a Diamond rank? This has allowed a return to a higher difficulty to remain enjoyable even with the earliest encounters being little challenge. It helps, then, that Soulstice is the first character action game where the prospect of getting Diamond on each level seems achievable for me.

Again, though, this no doubt sounds like an easier time for players of Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. If you have fewer combos needed to perform and just need to avoid damage and weapon swap, where’s the real challenge? That comes in with the color-coded foes not unlike DmC: Devil May Cry, but far more exciting in their execution. Rather than just have the player match the colored weapon or power with the enemy’s, Soulstice has the player project a matching colored field with the sister character Lute. Blue wraiths can only be harmed while inside of this blue field, but the catch is that the longer the field is up, the more “entropy” Lute gathers. Once that entropy overloads, the field drops and Lute is absent for a short period of time. This leaves Briar incapable of harming the wraiths while also keeping her exposed to their attacks. The same occurs when faced with the Possessed, a red color-coded foe that requires a red field to be used by Lute.

There are multiple additional complications to this seemingly simple mechanic. The first is that Lute is also capable of blocking attacks or freezing enemies temporarily should the player press the parry button when prompted. The timing can be tricky, especially when you’re mid-combo surrounded by opponents and have three such prompts appear simultaneously. Certain ability upgrades for Lute will also cause her entropy to increase upon performing specific counter-attacks when parrying, which can lead to the player overloading surprisingly quickly if they’re not carefully reading each upgrade description they purchase. Explosive hazards will also litter some of the combat arenas, with some exploding unless the blue field has been projected, or others exploding so long as the red field is projected. Managing these hazards while simultaneously having to juggle between the fields in order to damage wraiths or possessed while also trying not to overload Lute can become quite the sweaty challenge, especially when you’re then also trying to rank high for that particular battle or chapter.

This is the sort of chaotic combat that I thrive on. Rather than having to memorize attack combinations, I’m instead forced to pay attention to the situation on the battlefield, eyes aware of my surroundings as much as I am the opponent I’m attacking. What’s being tested are my reflexes and ability to make a split decision, not train some combo attacks into my muscle memory. There’s also the different traits of each weapon, such as the gauntlets being useful against armored foes or the whip against crowds, but these are comparatively basic compared to the different situations the player finds themselves in based on the wraiths or possessed present in a given encounter.

Naturally these projected fields are also used in exploration, platforming, and puzzle solving, with the player working their way through each level in order to progress. Be it invisible platforms that only manifest within the blue field, or stalagmites that must be destroyed in quick succession within the red field in order to collapse a barrier blocking the way forward, there are a series of obstacles and hidden paths that yield the way forward or towards secret treasures.

The player isn’t really going to find innovation in the level design, however. Not that these things are executed poorly, though the environments may lack some greater sense of variety. Soulstice takes place in a single city with a very clear aesthetic and visual design to it, and the differences between the lowest slums and highest heights are minimal (especially when they all lie in ruined shambles). The real evolution is within the game’s combat, and to that end it excels greatly.

As regards to the game’s story, it’s tough to really say at this juncture how I feel about it. I was certainly entertained, and I certainly like the protagonists and supporting heroes. This is despite the looping dialogue that occurs between Briar and Lute while exploring, repeated over and over even by the final game’s levels. It feels as if Lute in particular struggled to settle into her “voice”, be it due to the voice actor or the writers. However, before long I had enjoyed the whole of the main cast, with only a couple of villains sounding off (possibly due to their American accents seeming out of place, though I’m not certain).

Really, what had me so interested to see where the next game would go were the revelations of the final few chapters as well as the potential fate of our protagonists. It is quite possible that the sequel to Soulstice — and the ending is certainly left on a cliffhanger intent on a sequel — might even place the player in a different character’s shoes than Briar and Lute. That I’m left so curious as to want the sequel now is something that happens quite rarely in video games for me, but by the game’s finale I was enraptured not just by the combat mechanics, but where this setting and characters were going.

I cannot say that Soulstice is going to delight character-action fans as much as the Devil May Cry or Bayonetta serieses, nor can I say it’s more “accessible” to less skilled fans due to all the combat situations they have to keep track of. I just know the game appeals to my specific sensibilities so much that I cannot help but hype it up. This game only costs $39.99 USD, and it is far more polished and better designed than many $59.99 AAA releases these days.

It’s hard not to want to back the underdog in such a scenario and declare it as an under-appreciated great. If you like action games, then I think Soulstice deserves your time and attention.

By now you have likely heard of Scorn’s greatest flaw: the lackluster combat. I’m not about to sugar coat it for you and say it’s not actually bad, just misunderstood. Not that it isn’t misunderstood, as few players seem to realize you can just stun an opponent and then sprint on past towards safety. That is a possibility most seem to ignore! However, coming to this realization doesn’t “fix” the combat, particularly as there are some areas or encounters where this will just drive you towards a dead end with several aggro’d monsters chasing behind. It just provides an option to skip most of the combat encounters.

There are some games in which bypassing combat is the whole point, and others where bypassing combat is, in itself, a different kind of skill-based challenge. That is not so with Scorn, and if it is, then Scorn is designed doubly poorly in this regard.

Note that the developers themselves emphasized throughout their marketing that Scorn “isn’t really a shooter”. There was a lot of discussion regarding the game being more of an adventure or puzzle game with only a bit of combat for atmosphere and tension. The problem is that, as soon as combat is introduced, it feels like the game is eager to drop several monsters in great quantities at the player at nearly every turn. At first it is successful in even the weakest of critters being terrifying to run into, but before long the game has thrown so many at the player that it simply becomes tiresome and annoying.

For some, this will be tolerable as the rest of the experience will be strong enough to carry them through. For others, however, Scorn will be one of the worst games they played and, if they manage to forge through to the end anyway, are unlikely to find its conclusion to have been worth it.

It may seem as if I myself disliked Scorn, but I was, in truth, pretty entranced throughout my entire playthrough of the game. This is a world that begs to be examined and a completely wordless story that the brain yearns to decipher. It’s completely possible that there is no narrative in a traditional sense, no “point” to the story as one might expect from something leaning so hard on its artistry. It may be that the whole point of Scorn is to be experienced, to be felt, be it in the repulsive appearance of its beasts and environs to the shock and discomfort of interacting with its bio-organic machinery.

No doubt you’ve already seen and heard many an analysis of Scorn’s artistic influence from H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, but mere screenshots and comparisons undersell the ingenuity that occurs with being in this environment. Having been a long-time fan of the Alien franchise, I’m certainly familiar with Giger’s work, but before long Scorn stops looking like a familiar environment in which a Xenomorph or Facehugger might pop out and instead establishes an identity of its own. There is a tale of a downfall here, one of potential hubris, and by the conclusion Giger’s obsession with sexual anatomy is turned towards an indication of cultural value. It is hard to describe not only for fear of spoiling what the player encounters, but also due to my own uncertainty as to what was being communicated. There is certainly something to be said in regards to the body and the machine in Scorn, but the end brings about questions of the soul and transcendence.

The player wanders a shattered Babylon; the great works of a civilization brought down by hubris. That Scorn conveys this through its environment, and even introduces the concept of a conflict between body, machine, and soul, is praiseworthy. If a picture is worth a thousand words then Scorn is speaking volumes upon volumes through visuals alone.

But Scorn is not a picture book, nor is it a film. It is a video game, and a video game must be interacted with, and this is where it slowly begins to fall apart. I, personally, would have greatly enjoyed the game if it had no combat and was, instead, a “walking simulator” filled with puzzles. I enjoyed its many puzzles and brain teasers far more than even its least frustrating combat encounter. From larger, environmental obstacles such as those found in the Zelda franchise, where the level itself serves as a “puzzle”, to the smaller brain busters that force the player to twist some knobs or turn some levers in a journey to the solution, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game.

Not all puzzles were created equal, however, and the very first brain buster you come across — before the player has even been granted a weapon or introduced to a monster — can take up to or exceeding ten minutes to complete. Demanding the player rearrange a series of “eggs” so that they can guide a specific one to a specific spot upon the wall, it was another notorious source of complaint for most players. Yet it still had nothing on another puzzle halfway through the game focused on connecting circuits in which I stumbled upon its solution by luck and surprise.

Most of the puzzles are, I think, fine, but this is not like Portal where the design is less focused on creating a proper challenge and more on tricking the player into thinking they’re smart enough to figure it out on their own. These are straight out of some “1,001 Mind Bending Puzzles” booklet you’d have found in the check-out lane of a grocery store some twenty or more years ago. Isolated and alone, they’re fine enough as far as puzzles go. As something players are forced to engage with in order to progress (and then must encounter again should they wish to replay) is to instead design your game to push players towards the “Uninstall” button.

I still don’t know how I solved this stupid thing.

This, I think, is why I find Scorn a disappointment. It is less to do with my own enjoyment, as the experience of this game overcame the inconveniences of a few puzzles and the combat. What is disappointing is how, for all its years in development, the team never thought to at least tone down on some of these hard stoppers. Basic play tests would have revealed really quickly how annoying the two or three hardest puzzles were. It would have made it clear that no one was enjoying the combat and to perhaps reduce the number of monsters roaming the environment. Don’t even get rid of combat altogether! The combat is, conceptually, fine, but there’s no reward for engaging in it and it occurs so often that even trying to avoid it is a headache.

With minor adjustments and tweaking this game could have been far more pleasing and enjoyable. It would have been an easier game to recommend. Instead, even though I came away enjoying the experience overall, I struggle to recommend it to anyone.

As vague and mysterious as Scorn’s story is, nothing is so mysterious as to why the developers thought this was okay. I certainly hope being on Game Pass works out for them.

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This episode was quite cathartic for me, almost like a therapy session. I really wish I was as capable of not taking this seriously, and with enough time I most certainly won’t. At the heart of it all lies my great frustration with where games criticism, analysis, and proper industry examination lies. Once upon a time I was a member of a group of aspiring games writers, and I asked them what they considered good games writing to be. None of the answers had anything to do with the quality of the writing itself, something that all writers, regardless of their subject, ought to be prioritizing. No, the only defining trait of “good” games writing for this group was that it had something to do with a socio-political agenda.

Some of these writers later became regular contributors to some of the larger current online outlets.

I think, at this point, my personal politics have a tendency to lean a certain direction, and it is one unlike that of most “professional” games writers or social media addicts. It is one of the reasons I do my best to keep my own content apolitical. Nevertheless, it is not the reason I am recalling this little anecdote of mine. What I mean to illustrate is that many people writing in games do not consider games themselves as a topic something that can be written about well. When I see this line-up, I don’t see games chosen because the press outlets genuinely thought they were the best from a game design standpoint. No, I see games chosen by people that don’t actually care about the unique traits and capabilities of the medium and are, instead, combining those that fit their idea of “art” with their preconceived notion of “progress”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Elden Ring is merely there begrudgingly.

Video games are a medium that can provide experiences and emotional connections no other medium can. It’s a shame that the people steering the Game Awards are not only incapable of understanding or appreciating that, but are also lacking so much imagination themselves as to conceive what any of that even means.

Remember to follow me on Twitch for our live commentary of The Game Awards on December 8th, starting at 7pm ET.

What are your feelings about the Game Awards nominees? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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We’re going to be participating in Extra Life this year! Or at least, Joey and I are, joined by our friends Zack and Issuna. It will have been several years since I last participated in the charity marathon, and this year will see four of us gathered in meat space for what we’ve dubbed StruggleMania. On Saturday, November 5th, we’ll be aiming to start around 8am Eastern time to play games for twenty-four hours straight. Some of the titles we’ll be including are Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Doom ‘93 co-op, Mario Party: Superstars, and more. The action will take place over on Joey’s Twitch channel, so be sure to follow and look out for the start of StruggleMania. As usual, also be sure to donate as all proceeds go to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

Halloween is always quite the interesting season, and one that I’ve always enjoyed without necessarily loving. For various reasons I’m a far greater fan of Christmas, but it’s a holiday that is far less effectively represented and celebrated in pop culture media. Yes, networks like Hallmark and Lifetime regularly pack their schedules with all-too-similar made-for-television “movies” for the season, but there aren’t a lot of flicks that succeed in celebrating the holiday while acting as a solid, stand-alone piece of cinema. Such media may as well not even exist in the world of video games, save something like Batman: Arkham Origins coincidentally taking place during Christmas time.

October is more or less an excuse for me to indulge in some of my favorite games or cinema that have nothing to do with the holiday, but are adjacent enough to horror to fit the Halloween theme. Traditionally this has meant rewatching Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and The Predator, but I was in the mood for something different this time around. I don’t know if you would call it a discovery, but it’s certainly a confirmation that my interest is far more in sci-fi creature features than traditional horror. Moreover, I’m far more open to horror in regards to video games, but primarily if I have a means of defending myself.

Which, I suppose, indicates a lack of desire for “true” horror. In film, I actively avoid cheap jump scares, but I also avoid copious amounts of gore. In video games, gore is no problem, but the inability to defend myself is a problem. As a result, I lean more towards action-horror.

There’s no real point to this, aside from discoveries and observations towards my tastes and preferences. “True” horror games are, I think, far more interesting to watch be played than play myself.

That said, looks like I’ll be playing P.T. for the first time during StruggleMania, so be sure to tune in and check it out.

Any horror films or games you gravitate towards during the month of October? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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My return to streaming is not quite beginning yet, though largely because I’m still trying to take it slow and easy. Fortunately, it is not due to a lack of inspiration this time. In fact, I am plenty inspired! However, I really do tend to stretch myself too thin, and while I have not dropped into a breaking point of depression — at least, not due to my creative efforts — I have certainly struggled to juggle every desire and project I could want. I’ve been organizing them in part based on satisfaction, but that satisfaction was also based on ease of completion.

In the end, a series like Elden Ring Piece-by-Piece took a lot of time and wound up sloppier than most of my video scripts. As a result, would it not be more prudent to just do more videos for deep dives and leave the blog to smaller things? Of course, even this is somewhat misguided. Or, perhaps I should say, too rigid. In the end I’ve decided that I ought to just go with my gut, writing a blog post that feels like an appropriate blog post, and working on video content that feels appropriate for video.

As for streams, I’d like to share games I’m excited about on there as well, admittedly, but it may simply be too much this coming season. I’ll no doubt resume the Halo series and these podcasts will try to return to a bi-weekly schedule, but how much else I do not know. I want to fall back into a sustainable, satisfying rhythm of creation the best I can.

To that end, there will be things coming shortly. I hope you look forward to them, and enjoy this lively conversation shared with my friends.

What have you been playing lately? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

This is the final in a six-part series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the game’s end-game bosses and balance here.

I began this whole series in an effort to discuss my thoughts and feelings towards Elden Ring in greater honest detail than I had previously this year. Going by word count, I’ve at least succeeded in discussing the game in far greater detail. To what end, however? Based on that initial essay, it was to try and help illustrate why some are so pleased with this game despite exercising some of the same open-world tropes or crimes as other developers.

While I think I somewhat achieved that goal, I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion that Elden Ring is forgiven because most people playing a game such as this are simply looking to lose themselves in something fun for a few hours at a time. There is a very small population of players, critics, and analysts taking a microscope to any given game in order to figure out how it all works or could be made better. Perhaps these analytical sorts are motivated by pure academic or intellectual interest and curiosity, or perhaps they’re just trying to understand why they came away underwhelmed when so many others are claiming the title to be a modern masterpiece. There will also always be the loud voices of those that simply dislike the game because “it sucks”, or “it’s too hard”, or “it doesn’t explain anything”, though I doubt many of them even understand why they like or dislike what they do. Similarly, many of the fans on social media and Reddit that will endlessly defend it likely don’t know what it is they love about Elden Ring so much. They’ll have inklings and they’ll quote those that seem to hit the nail on the head, but in the end it all comes down to gut feelings.

When I was first playing Elden Ring, my own gut was whispering “masterpiece” to my ears. Everything just felt right, the hands of the clock seemed to speed on by I was so engaged, and every moment spent not playing the game was spent thinking about it. Uncharted corners of the map were beckoning for my attention and incomplete dungeons were turning to new objectives now that I’d powered up some. It was a game that drew me in on every level, from the moment-to-moment of playing to the idle time spent waiting for work to end so I could log some more hours.

Yet familiarity breeds contempt, and the more time I spend playing or thinking about Elden Ring the more I cannot help but feel as if it’s no masterpiece at all.

Despite my consistently contrarian nature, I do not make such a claim with the intent of pointing out the emperor has no clothes. I do not wish to pull the eyes of the masses away from their “delusion” that Elden Ring is some wonderful, Game of the Year worthy title. If anything, I believe the eyes of the developers were bigger than their stomachs, and they did their best to just dish out as much as possible to the point of belly busting gluttony.

If we perceive game development like an equation, then we can propose that the longer a game’s length is, the more likely it is to suffer problems. The original Portal, though short, was absolutely well received because there was no wasted moment of gameplay. There were just enough puzzles to experiment with the portal mechanics thoroughly while challenging the player in continuously fresh ways, and the humorous writing gave way to the plot little by little without dragging on for an unnecessarily long amount of time. Once the game was concluded, it felt… correct. While Portal 2 was also well-received, the overall reception was less consistently positive due to the longer experience. New characters needed to be added in order to keep the experience refreshing, but the more “lore” that was added to the history of Aperture Science the more absurd it all began to feel. Bigger is not necessarily better.

One of the most refreshing aspects of playing Bloodborne for the first time two years ago was how intricately crafted its world had been. It was not open-world, but it still managed to feel quite expansive despite its “more linear” progression. The city of Yharnam, the Cathedral Ward, the burnt ruins of Old Yharnam, the Forbidden Woods, the Nightmare of Mensis, so many of these locations feel uniquely defined and yet stitched together into one consistent world. Like Portal, it does not feel as if there is a single wasted area.

Ah, yes, two of them. That certainly varies things up.

I imagine the Dark Souls trilogy feels much the same way, though I’ve never played any of them through to completion. What I have played of Dark Souls and Dark Souls III certainly feels open-ended, though also guided enough to usher a player towards its objectives. I can certainly say that they remain memorable, and I can only imagine how much more so they feel in full.

While I cannot say this about all of Elden Ring, I can say individual corners of its world are far, far more memorable than, say, the likes of Ghost of Tsushima or Horizon: Zero Dawn. I may be repeating myself here, but it’s hard not to admire what From Software has accomplished by crafting so much of its open-world into unique and memorable sections with impactful encounters. Even if one of those corners has yet another Erdtree Avatar or yet another dragon to chop at the ankles of, it is a memorable experience nonetheless.

At the end of the day, though, the size does not improve the game, and that quantity of recycled monsters acts as evidence. The open-world does not exist to make Elden Ring better but to instead pad out play time. It truly is that simple, though once again there will always be those that insist more is better. Nevertheless, I would argue that Elden Ring could just as easily have been a smaller game with an even more intentionally crafted world without sacrificing much.

Keep in mind that much of my favorite time is spent in the open-world, as that’s where the game allows the player to manage their healing and combat encounters in order to prolong their experience. It is where the player has the most control over their fun, though it is also where the player is often the least challenged. It is enjoyable, but it does not make the game better. By time the player reaches the “Legacy Dungeons”, as they were called in marketing, such as Stormveil Castle, Raya Lucaria Academy, Leyndell, the Volcano Manor, or Farum Azula, they may have come to rely on healing so much that they’re bound to have a more difficult time once their supply has become more finite. For a fanbase that is obsessed with all the things From Software “teaches” the player, Elden Ring does a terrible job of “teaching” the player how to shift from open-world exploration towards imposing and ever threatening dungeon-crawling.

Unless, of course, you count the tiny mini-dungeons such as catacombs, mines, and caverns, but even they are so comparatively short as to mean little should the player die within one. The experience of exploring all of Limgrave is jarring compared to entering Stormveil for the first time, and even then the player is introduced to a far more open zone than a traditional Dark Souls level design. It’s overwhelming what freedom these locations afford the player, and yet, unlike the open-world, there’s far greater risk of death and the loss of runes than there is in the greater Lands Between.

These are all gripes, however, and I can imagine a million and one counter-arguments to them all. I admit, I do not feel as if I ever “got better” at Elden Ring in the manner I had with Bloodborne. Being able to defeat such foes as Martyr Logarius on my first solo attempt after having struggled so many times with a co-op partner came with a real sense of accomplishment. However, I do not feel as if I truly did well in Elden Ring due to my reliance on spirit ashes. They are an example of why there are detractors to an “easy mode” being present in these games, acting as a constant temptation to ease up rather than get good. I am an impatient fellow, and rather than learn the ins and outs of every boss I instead preferred to learn just enough to get by, and only then if my spirit ashes were unlikely to survive an entire fight. My victory over this game felt comparatively hollow to that won of Bloodborne.

At the end of the day, however, these gripes and miniscule nitpicks aren’t what matter. What matters, to most players at least, is that the game “is fun”, and this is where I’ve always struggled with the open-world genre. I would rather play a short game with no wasted moments than a long game whose greatest achievements are interspersed between stretches of mediocrity. This is why I was so easily convinced last year that Resident Evil Village was destined to be my favorite game of 2021, even if it managed to be topped by Metroid Dread. I’ve played each a half-dozen times and, admittedly, have craved going back to both several times this year rather than play new games. Both of them are shorter, more linear experiences, and at this point I’d rather play either one than continue my latest run through Elden Ring. Of course, I’ve also already invested approximately 170 hours into Elden Ring, which is more than I’ve put into either Metroid Dread and Resident Evil Village combined despite the numerous playthroughs.

In the end, however, Elden Ring does precisely what the Ubisoft, Rockstar, or Bethesda developed open-world games do: provide a giant playground in which a player can spend dozens upon dozens of hours. It’s not about “meaningful” content because the act of playing is meaningful enough. That Elden Ring does not make its objectives clear adds a greater sense of discovery for much of its audience. That the game’s combat is so much more finely executed than the competition’s is, I’d argue, why the game is so successful across such a wide berth of players.

In the end, however, that’s all that makes the game “better” than its competition: that foundation I discussed in the very first piece. If Elden Ring were built from scratch, it would either have been far smaller or far more lousy to play. From Software were only capable of making a game as large and enjoyable as they were because they already had a good baseline of mechanics. Yes, there were additional intelligent decisions made in how they approached that open-world, and there were some significant additions to that combat, but ultimately Elden Ring only succeeds as well as it does by being based on combat that, at this point, is more than a decade old.

It’s hard to call such a thing a masterpiece. However, I cannot deny that I enjoy the experience of playing the game as well. There’s a thrill to starting a new character and all of its possibilities. It’s also true that no one makes a game that feels like one From Software makes.

All said and done, however, it’s hard not to deride Elden Ring as simply being “open-world Dark Souls”. It fails to properly carve an identity of its own, and many of its more frustrating moments feel as if they are far more indulgent or misguided than those made in games past. At this point, I cannot help but hope Miyazaki takes a break from these sorts of titles in order to explore something new and fresh. That, or return to something of a smaller scale rather than aiming to go bigger.

Because in terms of video games, bigger is rarely also better.

This article is the fifth in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the game’s many dungeons and bosses here.

Starting this piece I realized I may need to give myself a break before working on any further Piece-by-Piece follow-up series, writing them in full or mostly full before posting them onto the website. It’s not because keeping up with the weekly pace has been surprisingly difficult – though a sudden medical disruption threw me completely off track. I’ve otherwise been surprisingly more capable of keeping this up than any prior attempts at regular columns and series on this website! No, it’s more that my initial outline has not gone precisely where I first had anticipated it. I should have known this would happen, as it’s the same issue I frequently ran into when writing scripts for my video essays.

I emphatically agreed with Joseph Anderson when I watched his feature-length video essay on Elden Ring and declared the “final stretch” to be unreasonable. He had effectively illustrated how multiple later-game bosses were designed not for the combat stylings of Dark Souls, but Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I had also found other videos with similar titles and emphasis on the imperfection of the game. I had seen others express identical feelings regarding late stage bosses, and then would witness the mockery of these opinions in meme format on the game’s subreddit.

I would have kept on insisting that the game’s latter third or fourth is horrifically balanced, but at the same time I’ve admitted within this series that my Dex-build was an awful one. Just by swapping out to a strength build I’ve found much more success in damage scaling and poise-breaking with little adjustment to my overall playstyle and strategy. My knowledge has certainly deepened, turning a pair of once troublesome burial watchdogs into a piece of cake by disrupting one with crystal darts and turning them against one another. It’s an example of using a subtle and surprising game mechanic to make my second run through the game even “easier”, though I’m still primarily relying on basic melee attacks and spirit ashes in order to take out my foes.

Then, the Friday before this post is scheduled to go up, YouTuber NeverKnowsBest posted his Elden Ring analysis. Needless to say, it got me thinking, and it got me thinking a lot.

My demi humans may be nearly dead, but thanks to them crystal darts one of these watchdogs is about to kill the other.

I think the reason it is difficult to ascertain whether Elden Ring is properly balanced or not is because so many of the game’s fans or detractors are too busy projecting their own reader response onto both the game and the developers. As I had stated early on, the Tree Sentinel does not exist to “teach” you anything. It’s simply there, and while that placement is an intentional choice on the part of the designers, it’s not there with the ulterior motive Game Maker’s Toolkit wannabes want to believe it is. “The world is dangerous” is as vague as the lesson gets, and what the player does with that information is all their own. This, at least, is my belief.

Unfortunately, the second you try to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Maliketh’s endless combos with little-to-no opening is completely broken, you’re bound to be informed of what Maliketh’s endless combos are supposed to teach you because that’s what the fanbase has collectively decided From Software’s games do.

Once upon a time I tried playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice on a base-PS4. While I found many of its stealth and maneuverability mechanics to be satisfying, I found the parrying and blocking mechanics to be imprecise and inconsistent. Or perhaps I should say they were too precise and very inconsistent. After doing some research and arguing on a forum that the game demands sixty frames-per-second while barely accomplishing thirty, all the while suffering erratic latency between those frames, I was given some empty argument about how the game is “teaching” me some way to play it.

I cannot even begin to comprehend the mental gymnastics required to assert that a game’s technical problems are not only an intentional design choice, but a lesson in getting good.

Totally, completely unrelated picture of Gurranq here. Yup, totally unrelated.

The strange thing about Maliketh is that he was immediately followed by two fights I found far more manageable: Gideon and Godfrey. I’ve seen how much Godfrey is memed on Reddit as being one of the game’s harder bosses, and yet I defeated him in a single attempt. Did I use the Mimic Tear spirit summon? Why, yes, I most certainly did. However, that same summon did little to ease the pain and suffering wrought by Maliketh, an opponent that took multiple attempts to defeat.

I’m certain that, somewhere out there, someone would try and toss lore reasons at me why Maliketh is supposed to be harder than Godfrey, who is not only the first Elden Lord but guardian to the actual final boss of the game and therefore, on a logical scale of progression, should be more difficult to defeat, even if by a smidge. At the same time, I am certain there are other players that used the Mimic Tear summon on both bosses and found Maliketh easier than Godfrey. After all, the Mimic Tear is based upon you and your load out at the time of summoning, and therefore certain builds might be more effective against certain bosses than others.

Note that I haven’t even brought up Malenia, Blade of Miquella, who has never known defeat, and continued to never know it in my first run through the game. After a few failed attempts I decided enough was enough with Elden Ring’s optional content and to just beeline towards the game’s conclusion. As I watched YouTubers like Iron Pineapple and Ymfah show off crazy builds I began to wonder if the real problem was my inability to break games. Even going back to older entries in the Final Fantasy series I’ve never been very imaginative when it comes to load-outs or class possibilities. I’m the sort to try and color inside of the lines, and therefore I adhere to what I’ve been told and instructed of a game’s mechanics with only so much exploration done. I thought that, maybe, had I been more of an adventurous min-maxer, I’d have done far better with this game’s final stretches.

Then I watched that Neverknowsbest video and was reminded of every single debate I had gotten into with Steve regarding Destiny 2 and its Meta: that dreadful concept of a limited set of equipment that “only the best” players use. Why use weapons you like when you can use the weapons that win? I had never wielded Rivers of Blood, but I’ve certainly seen how devastating it can be in and out of the player-versus-player environment of Elden Ring. Watching Neverknowsbest evaluate the tactics of several streamers and Wikis regarding Malenia made me realize that the problem was one of balance after all, and it wasn’t just me.

I will confess that I enjoyed the actual end game area of Farum Azula quite a bit. It was challenging, but I did not find it to be unreasonable, especially after several diabolical deaths suffered in the overly large Haligtree and descent to Malenia. From the moment you arrive in the tree branches to the final step onto her battlefield, the entirety of that optional Haligtree seems designed with a gleeful desire to be everything the Soulsborne reputation claims these games to be. There are areas in Bloodborne I’d rather not revisit, but none that felt so ridiculously unfair and malicious as the Haligtree.

Once again I have to wonder if the sheer size of Elden Ring is the problem. Did they feel it necessary to amp up the difficulty for fear of the player being too high-leveled? Or, perhaps, they simply felt that their latest game needed to top their last? That there needed to be a boss even more memorable and discussed by the community as the Orphan of Kos?

I’ve been wondering for a long time if my Dex-based warrior was indeed a bad build, but when you consider how players are beating this game – and Malenia – at level one without any armor and wielding a basic club, you have to wonder just what is a bad build in this game.

I do not agree with everything that Neverknowsbest said, and given that the only other From Software game I have beaten is Bloodborne I cannot really answer whether the Meta is as big of a problem as he asserts or not. I did not go into Bloodborne blind as I had played with a friend for my entire first run, and I feel such a method is an advisable route to go for a first time Soulsborne player. However, I’ve since played the game a second time on my own, and even began to run through a New Game Plus in solitude after that. I’ve been itching to go through the game a third time, especially now that I’ve gone through Elden Ring. What I can say is that, even though I’ve seen plenty of videos by folks like Ymfah or boss advisories by VaatiVidya, I’ve never once thought any build or preference of mine was either invalid or at a disadvantage. Every weapon truly feels useful in Bloodborne.

Or, perhaps, it’s just my preferred builds work really well in that game as opposed to something like the Dark Souls trilogy or Elden Ring.

Nevertheless, while I wanted to provide a more in-depth glimpse at the final bosses of Elden Ring, I am really unfit to do so. They require far more experimentation and playtime than I am capable or willing to give. So, while I do feel I have offered some substantial observations regarding the other aspects of the game, I can only give what limited subjective experience I’ve had and seem to be shared by others: that Elden Ring gets lost in its own hype and creates some unreasonably difficult bosses towards its climax.

I’ll be bringing my thoughts on Elden Ring to a close next week.

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Firstly, I would like to apologize to those that haven’t followed the Twitch channel or my Twitter account to see that I’ve been dealing with some troublesome health nonsense. I’d like to say I’m “better”, and I am certainly feeling more hale than I had been last Friday where I somehow managed to post the latest update between trips to the hospital, but I can’t say I’m feeling quite right. It’s hard to describe without over-selling how my body feels, but something is off. Fortunately I have appointments lined up with doctors, but when you’re trying to regularly produce a variety of content for people online, it’s tough to tell when you will or won’t be feeling good enough to resume operations.

For example, I’m beginning to think resuming streaming activities so soon was premature. At the very least, my sudden change in diet and exercise regimen is going to cause my body’s chemistry to be going out of whack (and, admittedly, I’m hoping that’s all it is). I am also attempting to adjust my sleep schedule, which could lead to feeling more sleepy earlier than usual. This was the case on Tuesday for the Halo 3 stream, where I began to fall into my familiar, somewhat zoned-out performance of playing a game and losing track of my co-op companions’ comments and conversations. This week’s podcast is filled with some good discussion, but at the same time I am definitely off my game in a variety of moments.

Nevertheless, I still aim to try and resume my blogging activities next week. After all, sitting around being miserable because I don’t feel absolutely, completely 100% isn’t going to do me any good. Might as well try my best with what I have.

While I may not have been at my best this episode, it felt good to have one of my classic bickering sessions with Steve. On some level we are miraculously in agreement on Cyberpunk 2077’s quality. However, whether we enjoyed it despite its problems is where we differ, and as usual, we differ in some of the most amusing ways.

What are your thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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Just as with Elden Ring, I am bound to dedicate several more pages of words to Cyberpunk 2077 even after this podcast. It will be the next in what I’ve decided shall be a “Piece-by-Piece” series, and I will be playing the game more in order to obtain additional footage for screenshots.

In truth, I ought to be playing through any “Piece-by-Piece” game multiple times in order to be thorough. As discussed with Zach, there are evidently ways to “break” the combat as a quick-hacker that I never uncovered. Perhaps I needed to put more perks into hacking than anything else? I certainly discovered how broken it could be when my short circuit ability could one-shot a single mech.

Of course, my analyses aren’t meant to be “definitive” in any way, shape, or form. As all criticism is, it is rooted in my subjectivity. However, I try to work and see around that subjectivity to find something beyond my perspective and closer to a shared truth. With Cyberpunk 2077, I genuinely want to know what mindset or personality is required to find this game in any way even half as good as the hype had tried to make it out to be. Part of me recognizes that CD Projekt Red has potential to make a truly astounding game, but at the end of the day I find both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 to be acceptable Western AAA releases.

In other words, all the “inspiration” is mere smoke and mirrors to the otherwise bog-standard act of playing the game. As jank as the Yakuza games can be – and boy howdy was the third one jank – at least I can pick up a bicycle and smash it over someone’s head in a way no other video game permits. Even MadWorld wasn’t so satisfying, and that was a game whose entire gameplay loop was built around tossing people into turbines and shoving street signs through their skull.

You’d think I would not want to discuss the game further, but as Steve was not able to be present for this episode, we will continue our discussion into next week. Knowing him, we’ll likely have much more to say about the game’s narrative as Zach, as noted in the podcast, is far more interested in mechanics first.

What are your thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

YouTube channel Bellular News released a video this week wherein they discussed research performed regarding how video games of a certain type impact one’s mental health. Specifically, they wanted to target how “intrinsic” goals impacted players versus “extrinsic”, and therefore chose a wide selection of titles that had a series of motivators to try and encourage players to engage regularly.

To better summarize: how do live-service and similar models impact mental health?

I may find the thumbnails and titles of Bellular News videos to be unfortunate victims to YouTube algorithm manipulation, but the content is typically substantial and of great interest to me. As an independent development studio themselves, I find their insight can often be more enlightening than your average hobbyist industry commentator on the platform. In this instance, however, I feel as if they didn’t really dig in deeply enough. It makes sense that “intrinsic” goals – objectives that the player internally desires and yearns to work towards – are far more rewarding than “extrinsic” – assigned goals by the game in order to feed a progression loop. It somewhat makes sense that players that log in out of obligation would feel no sense of satisfaction or enjoyment, sometimes feeling worse for having played, than those that sign onto a game out of their own compulsion.

The problem is that there isn’t a close enough examination on how different rewards systems exploit the player rather than… well, reward them. It’s easy to try and paint battle passes and seasonal activities in a negative light due to their pressuring players with the fear of missing out; skins, cosmetics, or even activities are only active during this limited time, so you’d better log in if you’d like to earn them! However, this runs the risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

So, let’s consider these rewards systems a little bit more deeply and how some games may shift from intrinsic desire to extrinsic over time.

Let’s start by taking a look at Monster Hunter Rise, a series that Bellular News has brought up in the past as a positive example of success without ethically questionable monetization practices. While it is not technically a live-service game, it has a lot of similarities in its reward structure. You hunt a monster, and after carving it up you get materials that can be used to craft new weapons or armor. Your new, more powerful gear then allows you to go forth and hunt more challenging monsters. On paper, it’s not unlike most other games that require the player to select a mission, defeat the boss or bosses, and collect the loot. So why is Monster Hunter Rise perceived more positively?

I would first point out the lack of a battle pass, and therefore the lack of a time limit on content. The player is not being encouraged to play every day so that they don’t miss out on a temporary activity or reward. Every piece of content that is added to the game post-launch is made available for free and forever – save the expansion pack, which is a single purchase and includes new territories, story cut-scenes, gear, and monsters. One substantial update may cost money, but its content will never be hidden or removed for late adopters.

However, there’s also the question of how much it matters that a player has the latest and greatest gear. Despite having played with friends at a much higher level than me, I’ve never felt like I was failing to contribute. There are ways to mitigate the consequences suffered from having lower quality gear, but simultaneously having higher quality gear does not guarantee survival. As such, though I was perhaps more vulnerable than my friends, I was able to assist in the fight through focused damage on specific parts of the monster or providing buffs through my Hunting Horn weapon. In other games, the leveling systems tend to create larger and larger gaps as gear levels increase, and so a friend at a lower level may feel as if their contributions don’t matter or will die swiftly enough as to feel the burden placed upon their teammates.

There are many other reasons that I think Monster Hunter Rise works as well as it does beyond just the gear progression, however. For example, it’s more important to take elemental strengths and weaknesses into account of one’s armor than a basic defense value, whereas many live-service games rely on the color of the loot drop to determine its overall strength. The armor in Monster Hunter Rise is both cosmetic and practical, whereas in other games any piece of armor could be here today, gone tomorrow, limiting its value and therefore the worth in its collection.

At the end of the day, however, when I log into Monster Hunter Rise, it’s with the desire to simply fight some monsters first and foremost. The weapon and armor crafting is an optional secondary, a goal I come up with in order to contextualize the play session. Simultaneously, some of the side quests step away from the core gameplay and therefore become more of a trial or errand. Do you wish to unlock more dango with which you can buff yourself? Best get along and collect some wyvern eggs, then! Such activities are some of the least engaging, but they’re also the most optional. None of them are required, nor are they presented in a “checklist” manner for the player’s overall progress.

To that end, I would argue that a lot of live-service games are built around a loot system rather than the other way around. Recall that I mentioned “carving” from a monster in order to obtain some loot. However, the system is actually more complex than that. Specific materials will only drop if select parts of a monster’s body are broken. This means players will now have sub-objectives when fighting their chosen beast, aiming to attack and break specific body parts in the hope of getting that intended material. Such body breaks often result in the monster being stunned for a bit as well, further rewarding the player for their tactical prowess.

Such a nice, beautiful, clean break of the tail.

Compare this to, say, Destiny 2, the live-service game I have the most experience with. All of the loot fits the familiar multi-colored tier system, where the best drops are gold, next best are purple, then blue is the mid-tier, with green being mediocre and gray being the worst. A lot of these colorful gumdrops will spill from defeated foes, but the vast majority will be junk to the player. It’s possible to complete an activity with nothing but garbage drops, even if you’re at the appropriate level for said activity. This is an immediate contrast to Monster Hunter Rise, where all drops have value.

This means that, if you’d like to perform a mission or task with a lower-level friend, you are less likely to get something of value from that activity. Simultaneously, given how the leveling system works, your lower-level friend will struggle greatly to complete any higher level activity, assuming they’re permitted to do so at all. This is because the game’s progression system was designed to give purpose to its loot system, and the most obvious route is to continue making everything stronger. As the game continues on and more content is added – all of which must be paid for – the stronger and stronger enemies get so players will more eagerly get the stronger and stronger loot. Unfortunately, this has the effect that lower-level gear is all but obsolete, save the slim chance for a “god roll” with particularly good stats. Again, contrast this with Monster Hunter Rise where a piece of equipment with lower base-armor is still valuable due to its increased elemental resistance.

I don’t mean to pick on Destiny 2 specifically, but it is the live-service game that others are beginning to imitate and which I have the most experience. The irony here is that Destiny 2 itself was imitating the likes of games like World of Warcraft and Diablo II, taking their loot and quest systems and trying to plug them into a first-person shooter. It is a game whose core combat mechanics are enjoyable, but I stopped playing because everything felt like it was on a treadmill, including the developers themselves. Is it possible things have changed in the year since I played? Perhaps, but I both doubt it and do not intend to find out. I stopped playing when I no longer felt the intrinsic value to keep going and the extrinsic had lost any sign of luster.

You only have so many days to grind out all of the rewards, the majority of which require you to pay for a seasonal pass.

Now, let’s step back from loot systems for a minute and consider one of the largest games today: Minecraft. Tell me, what are the extrinsic goals in Minecraft? Are there dailies to complete whenever you log in? A quick Google seems to indicate there aren’t, save those created by players themselves. This is one of the most profitable games and recognizable brands of the past generation, and yet it does not offer a colorful loot drop system or series of time-limited seasonal events. Instead, the player is simply dropped into a world where you can create whatever you want, so long as you know or figure out how.

Minecraft relies completely on intrinsic goals, and… it became a phenomenon. Many have tried to imitate it, but they’ve only done so in the most superficial ways: simple graphics and the ability to “build” things. However, while plenty of survival games have risen and developed a community due to such freedom, none have offered the depth or longevity of Minecraft. Like Monster Hunter Rise, however, this is because everything you can create comes from understanding the game and its world. If you want to build something, you need to get the necessary materials. To get those materials you need to build the tools which themselves require other materials. You can then use those tools to get better materials to build better tools to get even better materials, and so on. At some point, you can fight a dragon and “win” the game. Hurray! Good thing it doesn’t end there, and players can keep on building.

Personally, I prefer the Monster Hunter Rise method, where there are combat mechanics that are exciting and invigorating and then happen to offer a reward to propagate continued play. However, it and Minecraft share a surprising amount in common by building their “loot” systems around the core activity rather than the other way around.

This is, perhaps, part of the reason live-service games feel like such a plague to many enthusiast players. There are a lot of manipulative, exploitative tactics employed to try and capitalize on a player’s fear of missing out, or other such unhealthy compulsions that drive players to log in regardless of their desire to do so. Simultaneously, you can’t deny that there are still players that would prefer having a daily activity to tell them what to do just so they can unwind by blasting some aliens into swiss cheese.

However, if we are going to critique the live-service model, I think it is more productive to dig deep into why these systems are received more negatively or have such a negative impact compared to other, similar games that do not negatively affect a player’s mental state. Otherwise, you run the risk of painting all reward systems in a negative light. It’s more valuable to understand what makes a reward system good and to build from there.

This article is the fourth in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the adjustments made to combat here.

We’ve now approached the most mixed-of-bags in all of Elden Ring: not just the bosses, but the dungeons that house the majority of them. While there’s enough material to discuss both in isolation, I struggle to separate one from the other. They are where the greatest joy is to be had while also some of the greatest frustration. So many are uniquely designed and crafted and yet they are also incessantly repeated. They are what leave me asking if Elden Ring is, perhaps, too big of a game.

It was impactful to cross over into the rotted land of Caelid and see monstrous and mutated canines scattered across the landscape, overseen by uncomfortably disproportionate crows perched atop the trees. The overwhelming atmosphere indicates to the player that life is unwelcome there, and what creatures exist have been mutated into a grotesque new evolution whose only intent is to annihilate that which does not belong in those rotted plains and lakes. No corner of the land feels as unquestionably hostile as Caelid, and such unique creatures are essential to that identity.

Only you will see them again in later regions, one of which is completely blanketed in snow. Yes, the chill cold of the frozen north, white plains devoid of trees or grass, are often seen as regions hostile to life as well, but there’s also a serene beauty to them. A transcendent peace that contrasts greatly with the shape of a horrific, malformed, oversized dog. While I am certain fans can dig up some lore reason that these creatures prowl such different environments, I would argue that such lore exists solely to give context to recycled content that should have remained unique.

Perhaps, if From Software had allowed Elden Ring to be a bit smaller, they could have crafted more unique foes, dungeons, bosses, and locations. Would it have been an improvement? As all things discussed thus far, it depends on your perspective.

The unnatural looking beast fits right in with the unnatural looking sky, dirt, and flora, so why is it recycled for a completely different ecosystem where it looks out of place?

Before looking at the bosses, however, let’s first consider the dungeons. The mines, catacombs, and caverns which make up the bulk of Elden Ring’s shorter content are in part relied upon to provide the player small, bite-sized chunks of challenge which can be completed “swiftly”. These are separate from the likes of Stormveil Castle, Raya Lucaria Academy, Volcano Manor, or the city of Leyndell, which are akin to entire zones of Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Whereas each of those territories is more uniquely crafted and take a far longer time to explore and complete, these smaller dungeons scattered across the world can take as little as twenty or thirty minutes.

It did not take dozens of hours of play to realize how much recycled content was used in these dungeons, however. Not just the art assets, which can be more easily brushed off. I mean whole rooms are copied and pasted from one to the next, modularly piecing together a dungeon as if disconnecting and reconnecting LEGO bricks together. Those little tiny side passages you see when going down the very first elevator in a mine you discover? Well, there is only one elevator shaft made for such locations, and therefore every elevator encountered has those very same side passages. The only question is whether they’ve been populated with some kind of treasure or not.

The only dungeon type that perhaps conceals its reuse of such chambers are the caverns. It helps that they tend to be rather dark, the lack of illumination doing a better job to conceal recycled assets compared to other locations. Even so, they seem to be where the developers will do the most experimentation, flooding some with pools of poison on the ground or littering them with bushes so that the player may sneak past its denizens. This results in some of the best and worst dungeons in the entire game, such as one filled with spirit-summoning snails and their thralls patrolling through tall grass and bush. Cautious, stealthy play is rewarded for players that sneak through and carefully eliminate the snails, simultaneously wiping out all of the beasts or warriors they called into the world.

Catacombs, on the other hand, are where the recycled assets stand out the most. I was almost immediately reminded of the Chalice Dungeons, a similar modularly constructed set of labyrinths in Bloodborne. Whereas those were constructed with a procedural element and therefore felt far more repetitive, they were still recycling entire rooms and chambers over and over again with the hope that differently placed enemies and traps would help entertain the player for a longer period of time. The end result was that players found the Chalice Dungeons to be one of the least interesting parts of Bloodborne, though also “necessary” for true, proper full completion of the game due to the presence of a hidden, lore important boss within its depths.

Catacombs are not much different, filled with traps and different foes to distract the player from how copy-paste their locations are. They are far more successful than the Chalice Dungeons in that they were made with a more purposeful hand behind their stitched together parts. One dungeon is littered with illusory walls that must be uncovered and navigated in order to complete it. Another is filled with a series of warp points that must carefully be navigated in order to reach the goal.

In other words, while each catacomb, mine, and cavern is built using not only the same art textures or objects, but entire rooms, chambers, and shafts, there is still an effort to give each one its own unique identity as the game progresses. The earliest ones have the fewest gimmicks due to the player’s lower level and reduced experience with the game’s mechanics, so the recycled art assets will make a far stronger impression to the player early on. Nonetheless, these locations still bear the mark of design with intent. Be it through interesting gimmicks, encounter design, or even platforming challenges from which to retrieve items and treasures, it’s possible to bring up a minor detail and have other players immediately know which dungeon you’re referencing. The spirit snail cavern and warp point catacomb? Chances are, most players know precisely which locations I’m talking about.

On the other hand, this screenshot could be taken from nearly any catacomb found throughout the game.

This is perhaps also due to From Software’s “show of restraint”. There are a limited amount of each dungeon type per region, with the mines specifically averaging around two for a territory. This has the added benefit of making sure dungeons are plentiful but not overwhelming in number. It’s also a bit of a balancing act as both catacombs and mines are essential locations for select upgrade materials: the gloveworts necessary for strengthening one’s spirit ashes and the smithing stones required for tempering one’s weaponry. I do believe there is a poor balance between the two, as there are far more catacombs than mines whereas far more smithing stones are required for upgrading the rather large selection of weapons found throughout the game compared to the number of spirit ashes (which also only need one glovewort to be upgrade, compared to weapons requiring multiple stones). One could again discuss lore reasons for the more numerous catacombs to exist, but it would and does come at the expense of gameplay.

To try and illustrate my point, I played a Dex-based melee warrior whose magical capabilities were practically nothing. Most of the stones I had come across went into upgrading a handful of weapons. While the game does provide methods of purchasing stones later on, the cost of said stones and limited supply within the world meant that there was a high cost to experimentation with other blades. Though I began to feel as if my build was a poor one by game’s end, a “simple respec” at Raya Lucaria would cost me time in rune farming so that I could purchase the necessary stones and then upgrade the necessary weapons compatible for a new build. If the new specialization didn’t work out, I’d have to repeat the process until landing on something that worked.

Ghost gloveworts, on the other hand, were plentiful and I often upgraded spirit ashes without thinking much about it. The player can unlock the ability to purchase gloveworts as well, but I never had a reason to do so despite cycling between more than a half dozen spirit ashes in my initial run through. Experimenting with spirit ashes is far easier and cheaper than experimenting with weapons or character builds, and yet the dungeons carrying the resource for the former are more common than the latter.

Despite this digression, I want to emphasize that these resources are a part of what make these dungeons so desirable for players to explore. It’s not just “additional content”, nor is it simply a side activity that grants a generic quantity of experience or skill points for completing. They have a specific, tangible resource that is valuable to the player, and despite the recycled assets used, they are arranged and modified in a manner that players will find several dungeons to be memorable. To that end, they also hold the promise of a boss (sometimes two!) toward the end, each granting a unique item that helps expand the player’s arsenal or even progresses a quest line.

Which finally brings us to the numerous monstrous bosses in the game. To first illustrate my point I will begin with an anecdote. When I first played through Elden Ring, I had spelunked into the depths of Stormveil Castle. I had reached an open area that looked all too suspicious, the bones of long dead warriors scattered about. Sure enough, a massive creature emerged, at first resembling some form of skinless serpent. It was an ulcerated tree spirit, and what I mistook for a lack of skin was instead a warped form of bark as flesh. The creature was intimidating and the encounter frightening, but I emerged victorious. It was a shock, but I had defeated the beast and felt as if I had accomplished something.

The next time I saw an ulcerated tree spirit I felt intimidation, but I knew I could take one on. I simply chose to return to it on my time. Then I discovered another, and another, and on they kept appearing until I felt less fear every time. After all, I had figured out the best way to avoid its giant, sweeping attacks and when to tell that it was about to unleash a massive burst of magic around itself.

The Putrid Avatar is only different from other Avatars in that it has a rot splashing ground pound attack.

I began to describe a similar process with dragons in the prior entry, where each fight became less and less fearsome. It’s not without effort on From Software’s part, as they will surprise the player with a sudden dragon appearance quite often or leave one stalking in a tricky bit of territory where a single mistake would result in a plummet off of a cliff. The same can be said of the ulcerated tree spirits, as there’s one particular rot infested wood serpent that emerges in an unassuming corner while other hostile sentries wander the area. In such an instance a familiar foe is made all the more intimidating due to the circumstances in which it emerges.

I do not wish to indicate that these separate monsters get boring. They do remain exciting. Yet despite my defense of their copy-paste nature and From Software’s execution, there’s been an objection to it all nagging at the back of my mind.

Even if From Software does a better job with copy-paste assets, are they still not copying and pasting so much, be it in terms of dungeons as well as monsters and bosses, in the simple interest of “more content”? Is “more content” really something video games need?

A lot of players have passed around the famous Photoshop of an Elden Ring screenshot modified to more closely resemble a common, AAA (and Ubisoft specifically) user interface, overloading the player with information and microtransaction advertisements so that they’ll never once have to stop and wonder where they’re going or what they should be doing. I don’t think enough effort goes into understanding what Elden Ring does similarly, though many of the above decisions are a part of what makes the game so different from your average open-world. That a boss seemed to spawn right beneath my feet as I creeped towards a single treasure in an isolated corner was a complete surprise that other developers would never allow to happen. There’d have been a marker on the map indicating a boss fight was there, and I’d have been able to clearly see them so as not to risk an encounter that could kill me. Dungeons and side quests would be clearly marked on a map to discover, and they’d all be some variant of the same objectives. The reward would be something insubstantial like experience points so that players would not have to risk “missing” an important item, skill, or other tangible object with in-game use. Instead, allow the player to simply unlock it in the menu while foes would drop different colored loot as the game progressed, always making sure the player was properly equipped with level-appropriate gear.

Rewards for defeating one of two bosses within this catacomb.

Instead, players are trusted to want to fight each boss and get a tangible reward, or to dive into each dungeon in order to collect a necessary resource. It doesn’t matter if that reward doesn’t help their particular build any, because at the very least they did receive runes from it all as well as other lesser treasures scattered throughout. The rewards are intrinsic and therefore the player feels a stronger desire to adventure into such dangerous dungeons beyond a sense of completionism or achievement hunting.

At the same time, just because From Software executes on the idea better does not mean they are designing a good open world. Or, at least, designing to the actual potential of what an open world could be. It is still driven by size and quantity of content before anything else, and as a result the player is subjected to a repeat of bosses and dungeons in order to pad out that play time. Just because From Software does it better than their competition does not mean that this is the correct or best method of going about it.

Which, admittedly, goes into a larger topic of whether we even have a good open world game, period. Those many months ago I spoke of the dungeons and their recycled assets as just a fact of open world game design. Even Breath of the Wild crafted their shrines to be minimalistic in order to more easily assemble a unique set of puzzles that they could then scatter across the world. It’s easier to build more of a thing when you don’t have to worry about waiting on assets in the content development pipeline. Final Fantasy XV similarly had an awful lot of easy-to-program monster hunts that would lead the player all over the map, many of which were just open regions where a beast won’t spawn without the quest activation.

Admittedly, I still haven’t quite gotten a handle on Evil Tweety Bird.

Elden Ring relies on tools that simplify the content creation task just like the games above, but conceals it a bit better through different gimmicks and spreading the content out across a broader variety of recycled assets. In addition, care is taken to modify some of the models to give certain repeat bosses more of an identity, or they’re given somewhat separate attack types, or different dungeons have a stand out gimmick to ensure they are a more memorable experience. There’s a lot done to keep each area from feeling as copy-paste as nearly every other open-world game.

Nonetheless, I cannot help but wonder if more restraint and a smaller world would have allowed them to craft a world that recycled less and allowed for even more unique monsters and territories. This is why I opened today’s piece with the beasts of Caelid: they were unique to that region at one point, but the further in you go the more and more such beasts become recycled for the sake of more content. Just because there’s a reason in the lore for it to happen doesn’t mean it ought to. It’s also hypocritical to forgive From Software for something done by their AAA open world competition that players claim are inferior.

Elden Ring may do a better job at recycling, but it’s recycling nonetheless.

Next time I’ll be discussing the rising difficulty curve towards the end game.

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I have a really, really bad habit of just saying the most incriminating things in these podcasts, it seems. Between last week’s rant on corporations trying to create with focus groups in mind to this week’s outright insult to English voice actors for anime and video games, I come off as a real jerk. Just like it’s hard to make even a bad game, it’s hard to act. You have to behave in a way that feels natural but isn’t. You have to be able to not only modify your voice, but also keep it healthy so that you don’t wear it out or do harm. In the case of most anime and Japanese role-playing games, you also have to do your best to match the line you’ve been given with lip movements out of sync of your language.

My silly, meager attempts to try any sort of voice acting on my stream should be more than enough evidence that I have no room to talk.

There are a lot of voice actors that do both Western and Japanese animation voice work, and some that even do live-action as well. Teryl Rothery, for example, starred as Dr. Frasier on Stargate SG-1 while also providing the English dub voice for Kodachi in Ranma 1/2. Before he was Walter White in Breaking Bad, Brian Cranston was Isamu Dyson in the English dub for Macross Plus. Clearly these are not lower tier actors, and you can even tell in their respective dub performances that they were trying their best, possibly held back by the medium rather than their own capabilities.

On average, however, it certainly feels as if anime and Japanese role-playing games have some of the lowest quality control in regards to voice-acting. Is this a fault of the talent hired? Or is it perhaps the voice directors being incapable of drawing better performances from these actors? It is likely due to a multitude of factors, and my attitude and attempt to cover it up were absolutely sloppy. Yet another example of inserting my foot comfortably into my mouth.

Regardless, I still stand by my statement that I tend to prefer Japanese voice work for Japanese games and anime due to how natural it sounds as a result. Too often a dub feels like watching a dub. Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, however, is one of those rare instances that fools me into believing English was always the intended language of the work despite clearly not being so.

What games have you been playing lately? Play anything we have? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

I was still in elementary school when I was first exposed to Doom. It was through no ingenuity or knowledge of my own that I came to witness it, but that of my high-school aged older brother. I had descended down the basement where our not-so-great computer was kept, my father believing such a machine need only be powerful enough to run Microsoft Office (a philosophy he maintains to this day). I don’t know which of his friends my brother had gotten the floppy disk from, or if he had found it on his own somehow else, but he had installed the game and been playing it that afternoon. Upon seeing me walk down the steps, around our father’s drum set and towards the cold corner in which the computer was kept in our unfurnished basement, he had reset the title so that I could give it a try from the beginning.

Of course, he then hurried upstairs, grinning that smarmy grin of his as he left me by my lonesome. I decided to start the game up, already disturbed somewhat by the Hellish imagery that would look cartoonish and absurd by modern standards. I don’t know if it was due to the lack of such state-of-the-art technology as a CD-ROM or some other crucial piece of missing hardware – were there even sound cards back then? – but none of the game’s headbanging thrash MIDI played. Instead, the Mars base was completely silent save for the cackling of demons in the next room, hurling fireballs in my direction.

Rather than being pumped up and ready to deliver hot lead into soft demon tissue, I got frightened, shut the game down, and sprinted out of our already creepy basement and up to my brother. I recall he was surprised to see me upstairs so quickly, but he was also amused that I got so unnerved by it. It was as if he had predicted my terrified response, which is why he was so glad to leave me down there alone in the first place.

I had no idea this creepy game was about to become one of the biggest PC releases ever, nor that it was giving birth to a whole new genre, or that its developers, John Carmack and John Romero, were changing the nature of game development forever. Now, almost twenty years since the book was published, I’ve been given a fresh and impressive new perspective from Masters of Doom.

I’ve got a soft spot for stories where “a group of guys get together and create something”. The first to make a long-lasting impact on me was October Sky, a film based on Homer Hickam Jr.‘s The Rocket Boys memoir. It followed his time in high school struggling to develop a rocket of his own in the small coal town of Coalwood, the hard work and determination of he and his friends causing them to beat the odds, overcome their obstacles, and successfully build a scholarship-winning rocket. While I had no head for science myself, I found Homer’s conflict with his father relatable and the story inspirational. Each viewing left me with a jittery desire to just make something.

The next several years would slowly see a trickle of documentaries and dramatized biopics creep into my attention, each a fascinating look at the creative process and how its pioneers would change the world. First would come G4’s Icons television show, one of the only bits of worthwhile programming on the channel until it began to cover celebrities unrelated to the industry (such as over-priced-clothing designer Marc Ecko). In College I would discover Pirates of the Silicon Valley, a made-for-TV movie chronicling the founding, success, troubles, and often unethical behavior of Apple and Microsoft. Following College and entering adulthood I would find The Social Network to use the founding of Facebook as a fascinating examination of how young men define success and what – or even who – they’ll sacrifice to achieve it. Straight Outta Compton wasn’t just about the founding of West Coast rap group N.W.A., it was also exploring the collision of artistry, business, and gang life. Online I had become enthralled by many of Noclip’s early documentaries, only to be followed up by the Gameumentary feature on the Darksiders franchise, Sony’s promotional making-of feature for 2018’s God of War, Raising Kratos, and, most recently, Power On, the 20th anniversary making-of documentary of the Xbox.

Masters of Doom is the first time a book has delivered on all of the above and more. It is filled with a unique perspective of games history, from growing up playing the first arcade machines to the industry-wide crash; from the surprise hit of the Nintendo Entertainment System in America to the evolution of the PC as a gaming platform. It has a group of guys all coming together to make something special and world changing. It has oversized egos and eccentric personalities clashing in dramatic conflicts that culminate in impenetrable rifts between friends.

The one thing it seems to possess, however, that many of the above films or even documentaries seem to lack is humble honesty. Many of the films above were either modified to be more palatable to general movie-going audiences – revising just enough history to make events look at least a bit more squeaky clean than they were in real life or far more dramatic than they actually had been – or would inevitably become somewhat of a marketing piece; even if mistakes or the dark sides of development were acknowledged and portrayed, the end result is often pure success.

Or, in the case of The Social Network, a flawed young man is portrayed to seem even more despicable than he likely was in reality, all because doing so made for a better movie.

Masters of Doom is a different experience, however, and likely because its nature as a book allows it to tell a more complete story without the need to remove details or modify them to fit a specific time limit. Author David Kushner is able to delve into the many aspects of Johns Romero and Carmack, exploring their positive traits as well as the negative to tell a story not of how wonderful or deplorable these men are. Instead, it’s more a tale of how youth and vigor can become the greatest obstacle to success once it has been achieved, how inflated egos can lead to one’s downfall, how the changing tide of technology can complicate that which was once simple, and the harsh conditions in which we human beings must sometimes be forced to endure so that we might learn. It is also a story that could only have occurred at this specific place in time.

To rewind back to the beginning, however, I first find Masters of Doom fascinating as it brings a portion of gaming history I did not experience under a microscope. I have a lot of general knowledge regarding the console games business, but the evolution of PC games alongside the likes of Nintendo, SEGA, and Sony’s PlayStation is more of a vague mystery. This is, in part, due to PC games having no unified history at that stage. Between Apple computers, the Commodore 64, and Microsoft DOS and Windows growing as gaming platforms, the medium was evolving and changing on the PC in a variety of different directions.

All my life I had been told that PCs were more powerful and therefore better for gaming than consoles, so it was a shock to discover that one of the reasons Super Mario Bros. 3 was so amazing to the likes of Romero and Carmack was due to the computer’s inability to render the side-scrolling map like the NES could. The machines were, evidently, too slow to handle such processing power; that is, until John Carmack was able to figure out a series of work-arounds to cause the game to more selectively render the pixels on-screen. When I read the layman’s explanation of what Carmack had achieved, I was taken back to a freshman class in College in which I was informed of how video is digitally encoded for playback or streaming. John had accomplished something similar, only far ahead of the digital age in which such compression and rendering would become commonplace.

The notion that PC’s were more powerful than consoles was not always true, and that’s all the more reason to be in awe of everything Carmack had accomplished before graphics cards were a thing. I always knew that he was a genius programmer, but more through his reputation than exact knowledge of his work. With Masters of Doom helping to provide context, it’s easy to see why id was managing to stun and surprise so many players throughout the world.

Of course, Carmack’s genius would also be his own undoing, as games were the vehicle for his exploration into graphics rendering and creating virtual worlds. With the context provided by this novel, it is no surprise that the man would leave id to one day join the Oculus team in creating a device capable of bringing humanity one step closer to the Holodeck of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This interest in worlds and engines would ultimately set him apart from the other team members at id, who each were, in some way, more inclined towards the creative aspect of building a fun game.

The greatest of those separations would naturally be John Romero, who had, at one point, complemented the programmer greatly. If this book were to have a “protagonist”, I would argue that it is Romero and Carmack is his foil. This is not to the book’s intention, of course, but even in text it is far too easy to get caught up in the long-haired gaming rock star’s enthusiasm and childlike glee.

It is also what makes the book somewhat sad to read. With nearly thirty years of industry hindsight, capable of identifying many of the wrong turns big publishers and developers have taken in the wake of the ever-changing technology on offer, it’s too easy to point to specific decisions and actions that caused everything to turn sideways for id Software. The desire to expand the games without expanding the team, for starters, while simultaneously just expecting everything to come together and work out as it always has. It is the hubris of youth, though one earned and awarded due to the hard work the young men had already achieved up to that point.

By the book’s conclusion, John Romero has far more than just egg on his face. He was high on his own supply of hype, but it wouldn’t have all come crashing down if games weren’t immediately evolving after the release of Doom. Carmack himself was ready to usher in a new age of three-dimensional polygons and rendering, and shortly after came the advent of graphics cards to push personal computers beyond what console games were capable of achieving. It didn’t help that Romero’s interest in making games was driven by his love of playing them, and therefore causing him to divide his time between work, play, and reaching out to the fans… with whom he would also play.

It’s a shame, because the obvious decision would be for John Carmack to lead a technical development group focused on pushing id’s engines forward while John Romero led the teams building games with old and new tech. As stated, hindsight is always 20/20, and the reason they hadn’t made such a decision is because they were still in their own professional infancy, not just the industry as a whole. Additionally, while it sounds good on paper, Romero was so incapable of self-restraint that he would inevitably fail to create a product capable of delivering regardless. It was just a matter of when.

So, instead, Romero clashed with Carmack because they both had different ideas as to what game development – and what being a game company – meant. Where John Carmack continued to lead id and find success, however, it was John Romero that would be forced to strike out on his own and face his own failures.

Masters of Doom left me with a lot of questions. After all, it’s been almost twenty years since the book was first published and a lot has happened in that time. Doom 3 released, showcasing John Carmack’s impressive implementation of lighting technology only to be met with criticism once players got their hands on it. Oh, the game was certainly good, but I imagine it quickly became clear that Romero’s touch – and no doubt the touch of many of the id employees left miserable or disgruntled by book’s end – was missing, even if only in hindsight. One can even theorize that the tepid-to-negative response to RAGE would indicate to Carmack that perhaps it was time to leave, hopping on over to Virtual Reality to meddle in the ability to render worlds rather than fuss about with gameplay and the like. Meanwhile, Romero’s reputation had become completely tarnished with Daikatana, and while the man didn’t disappear from the limelight completely, he certainly hasn’t been able to reclaim his status as industry icon since the 90’s. Even so, he’s at least enjoying some degree of success with his studio, who released the prohibition-era strategy game Empire of Sin last year.

It is a mere shadow of the once dominant presence of both men in the industry. Carmack is only tangentially related through Virtual Reality, and Romero continues to produce games, only they slide under the radar of most players. They are present, but they are also phantoms.

Even so, I must say I was glad to read Masters of Doom, and will no doubt go back and read it again one day. Anyone that grew up in the 90’s – and especially those with a passion for the medium – really ought to give this book a look. It’s filled with interesting tidbits about the industry, the evolution of technology throughout the decade, and the dangers of success to young men not yet ready to handle such a fragile prize. An inspiration, a cautionary tale, and an opportunity to better humanize and understand two of gaming’s greatest legends.

This article is the third in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the freedom of the open world here.

Unfortunately I cannot be as thorough as I’d like to be regarding Elden Ring’s combat. I’ve barely experimented with magic, whose reputation of being overpowered has been betrayed by my difficulty to construct a satisfying build of the mystical arts early on. I stubbornly insisted on playing a dex-based warrior on my first playthrough, which in hindsight seems to be the least efficient type of character unless you possess magical back-up abilities. In the end, I simply don’t have enough experience to thoroughly discuss the balance of classes, techniques, and spells towards particular playstyles, or which ones the game itself seems to best accommodate.

I must also confess doubt as to whether anyone could experiment with so many builds in such a span of time whilst maintaining objectivity over the game’s quality. Such players are likely already experienced in playing around with From’s systems from prior games, and therefore they are less likely to perceive potential flaws as anything but a feature. When it comes to proper, in-depth analysis of the intricacies of class builds and viable play styles, we’ll likely not see anything with depth or value for another year or two.

Despite my inability to examine Elden Ring’s combat to the most minute detail, I can still look at many of its mechanical additions and what benefit they offer to the game’s combat. In fact, I’ve already learned how difficult it can be to go back to their prior titles, having started a new game in Dark Souls 3 and fought through a few bosses. I would definitely say that, for many players, Elden Ring could be the most enjoyable Soulsborne title to be developed by From Software due to how many dynamic options are now available.

Perhaps the most useful addition is that of the crouch, enabling the player to sneak about undetected even when rubbing up against the back of a sleepy sentry. Though stealth aficionados would be correct in pointing out the simplicity of the system, that simplicity is necessary for it to be such an enticing and effective option for the player. Foes in Elden Ring have three separate awareness levels: complete ignorance to the player’s presence, alert to something suspicious, and complete aggro. Again, it’s not overly complicated, and if the player manages to flee far enough or hide out of sight long enough, then all enemies will go right back to their patrols or places of rest, ignorant of the player’s presence. They don’t remain alert, they don’t respond to friends that weren’t quite so dead just a moment ago, and if the player were to alert them again, they’d behave no differently from before.

This is not a “new” mechanic so much as a much needed expansion upon the prior games’ use of enemy A.I. and aggro. The player could always slowly creep up behind a relaxed sentry, but there was always a chance the target would take notice before the player had an opportunity to stab them in the back. This was especially true for more powerful foes. Now, no matter how slowly or swiftly the player is sneaking, their presence goes unnoticed so long as they remain crouched.

Is it simple and exploitative? Certainly, but the point isn’t how in-depth the stealth mechanics are. Stealth isn’t presented as a binary A or B choice throughout the game’s environments. It is always an option, and should you get caught you aren’t locked out from further sneaking around. You can try to take out each foe one-by-one or you can slip on through as if you were never there. In fact, there are many zones in which sneaking past a super powerful beast or iron clad warrior is the preferable option.

This little guy is going to investigate the spot where I just back-stabbed his buddy. The action took place far enough away that he was alerted, but not set to full combat mode. This made it easier to sneak around his cone of vision for an easy kill.

Which is why I think it is actually implemented greatly in Elden Ring. Oftentimes I’ll simply sneak up to an enemy in order to take out a decent chunk of their health with a back attack, and other times I’ll seek to clear out an entire zone or room by silently assassinating everyone present. It’s not really done with the mentality that certain sections are designed specifically to be snuck through. Instead, it’s simply another option available, and players are just as likely to be baited into an ambush by a seemingly oblivious patrolman should they get too carried away. Regardless, it is a new tool that fits into the long-time philosophy of From Software’s difficult games: cautious behavior and clever tactics can turn a seemingly impossible encounter or location into an easy yet bloody walk through the park.

Throwing knives, loosing arrows, and utilizing other small traps or tricks to lure foolish foes from the greater mob is a similar long-term tactic that experienced Souls players have long relied upon. Whether they’ve been used to bait out the bait of an ambush or reduce the size of the crowd in the next room, the Soulsborne titles have provided a great host of items with which to turn uneven odds into a series of one-on-one skirmishes.

Such tactics are far more prevalent in Elden Ring through the ability to craft one’s own equipment. While some might not consider it a combat mechanic specifically, the freedom to collect and combine ingredients into an assortment of sidearms, explosives, and medicines allows for a greater freedom to experiment. You only have seven fire pots with which to throw? Good thing you can instantly craft seven more, so long as you have the materials to do so. Flaming arrows? Poison bone darts? Sleeping potions or dragonwound grease? All available to be crafted anytime, anywhere.

I could craft 450 poison bolts if I wanted, and I don’t even really seek these ingredients out. Such a wealth of crafting riches with which I can experiment and test enemy susceptibility with!

The finite quantity of such tools and the cost to replenish from a merchant actively discouraged me to experiment so often in Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 3. There was a considerable cost to each item used, and if used at an inopportune time it meant being unable to utilize that weapon in a more opportune moment. During any such cost-benefit analysis, most players would rather choose to save their rare commodity rather than risk wasting it. Elden Ring eliminates that calculation by allowing the player to create such materials themselves. Be it plucked from the bushes of the overworld, carved from the walls of a cavern or mine, picked from a catacomb, or gut from the wildlife of the lands, there’s a whole assortment of useful items scattered throughout the Lands Between. Every cookbook discovered is a prize, an expansion to one’s arsenal and therefore a greater assortment of tactical possibilities.

In other games, crafting materials are often a sort of gameplay crutch, an effort to insert more dopamine hits into a gameplay loop by giving the players small little collectibles to chase that can then be reconstituted into a useful tool. In Elden Ring, however, it plays into the illusion of a living world filled with flora and fauna, all of which can be harvested and utilized for your own combat purposes. There’s less need to purchase these items when you can just craft them, and since it makes sense for the materials to “respawn” throughout the world, your resources need not be finite. It is a minor addition, but the impact made upon how a player engages with their enemy increases dramatically.

There are two more additions to Elden Ring’s primary combat repertoire, and those are the jump and the guard counter. Leaping into the air and striking down hard upon one’s foe is an additional “poise-breaking” tool for every character build, though it is naturally most useful for strength-based weapons and classes. Attacks that break poise can not only interrupt an opponent’s action, they steadily stun them, causing them to drop down to their knees or belly and expose themselves to a critical strike. Most lighter, dex-based weapons have less poise-breaking capability, but jump attacks will increase the ability to stun or interrupt a foe.

The jump can additionally be used as an evasive maneuver should the player learn and adapt to each enemy’s attacks. Earth-shattering strikes can be avoided by timing one’s jump correctly, allowing the player an opportunity to close with a heavy strike rather than trying to dodge or flee away in time, often resulting in being knocked over or hurt by the wider area of effect. Sweeping attacks can also be avoided with a leap, though it can be troublesome determining which of these is able to be leaped over and which might catch you in mid-air. Nonetheless, just as it is an additional offensive option, it also makes for a defensive maneuver.

Guard counters, meanwhile, are a more “newbie friendly” alternative to the shield parry. Throughout the Souls series players have been able to deflect an incoming attack with precise timing, catching their foe off guard and leaving them vulnerable to disembowelment. It can be difficult to pull off, however, and requires the player to study and often fail at attempting a parry before learning the correct moment to deflect. The guard counter, on the other hand, simply requires the player to use a strong attack after an opponent’s blow bounces off of their shield. It does not guarantee a critical strike, but like the leap attack it increases the odds of stunning the opponent or breaking poise. However, most tricky foes will have not just one attack, but multiple blows with which they’ll come at the player, and the attempted guard counter may leave them vulnerable to interruption if activated too early or too late in the onslaught.

The Soulsborne series has always had a satisfying combat design predicated on moments of caution and moments of aggression. A player should never be a specialist in one or the other, instead trading defense for offense based on their opponent’s attack phase and vulnerability. There have always been smaller tricks to assist the player offensively, such as knowing how susceptible a boss might be to poison or similar status ailments, but otherwise Soulsborne games, at their root, have been about the dance between player and foe. With Elden Ring, these options have greatly been increased through the addition of stealth mechanics, a crafting system with which to expand their arsenal, and the fusion of defense and offense in the jump and guard counter mechanics. None of these changes convolute the game design, but instead offer more ways in which the player can trade off between caution, defense, and aggression.

That flash around my character’s shield is joined by a high-pitched, bell-like sound to indicate a successful activation of the guard counter. However, just because you succeeded in activating it doesn’t mean the blow will land or go uninterrupted.

As many have said about Nintendo games, it’s simple to learn but takes time to properly master. Anyone should be able to pick up a controller and, after some experimentation, be capable of using any of these new changes intuitively. The real trick is whether the player can learn to judge the appropriate time to utilize these mechanics on a macro or micro level: across an entire room or dungeon or within a duel, respectively. For this reason it is difficult to go back to some of the prior Soulsborne games, as these additions feel so natural and valuable that there is a distinct something missing once they’re gone. It’s not that these mechanics are “better” than what is available in the old games, and those titles still retain their old dance of dueling blades. It’s more a matter of building up rather than replacing, and they all feel like such a natural evolution that those prior titles, fun as they may remain, now feel incomplete or too restrained.

Now, while these are the bulk of the changes that have evolved the core of From Software’s combat, they aren’t the only additions to have been made. One of the most advertised new features is Torrent and the ability to combat on horseback, which has seen a lot of mixed response from players. Initial impressions are often negative, either regarding Torrent’s imprecise movements and limited evasion or the simplicity of combat options. Torrent has no proper evasive maneuver like the player’s block, parry, or dodge roll. You can try and increase Torrent’s speed, but it provides no temporary invincibility and is not fast enough to escape certain blows from larger creatures or bosses. While there are some attacks that can be avoided with a well timed double-jump, they are less frequent than those capable of outpacing Torrent’s stride.

This is likely due to Torrent being designed for a more hit-and-run style of combat. Charge in, unleash a few blows, then hastily make your temporary retreat. Pick away at the outer edges of huddled enemies, circling them and chipping away at their health rather than trying to eliminate them one-at-a-time with multi-hit combinations. Always be on the move. These are the primary principles of mounted combat, and it makes sense in regards to how most cavalry might have fought throughout history. Under the right circumstances, charging forward on horseback and taking out a few wolves, demi-humans, or soldiers with a single swing can be an invigorating, empowering experience. Under others, however, Torrent can feel like more of a burden than an advantage.

Most of all, mounted combat is overly simple. Whereas typical combat is easy to learn but takes time to master, there is little to master on horseback. There’s just not enough depth here.

This doesn’t mean that a fight cannot be entertaining while riding upon Torrent. As stated, there’s something empowering about dragging your blade close to the ground, cutting into a group of frail soldiers before concluding with a mighty swing into the knight leading the patrol. Such is a reward for considering your approach carefully and then making your escape just as swiftly. Careless players might easily find themselves caught in the middle of a crowd, struck down from all sides until Torrent despawns. This, I believe, is the game responding to the player now caught in a bad situation, removing their mount from the equation in order to allow for some defensive mobility on foot. Unfortunately, such hordes can be numerous and aggressive enough that the player dies, regardless. Hopefully a lesson is learned not to charge into a group of well-armed opponents.

Once such harsh lessons are learned, however, there’s nothing more to experiment with. Once you know to stick to the outer rim of a group, taking swift swipes before coming around for a second pass, then all such encounters will involve this repeated action ad nauseum. As for larger overworld foes, as soon as the player learns the attack patterns of a dragon or a tree sentinel, for example, they know the secret to defeating that foe. Each attack has a pattern, the beasts have body language indicating which attack is coming next, and so long as the player has learned how to dodge said attacks, they can easily avoid getting hurt while striking out at a foe’s legs. It could still be enjoyable enough for many players, as the slightest mistake could result in deadly consequences for the player, but each fight with such overworld beasts becomes a rehearsal for the next.

I do believe these sorts of challenges were a necessity for players, breaking up the game’s action and formula to provide something somewhat different from what they’re doing in caverns and catacombs and fortresses. It is part of what makes the overworld as enjoyable as it is. However, these encounters all become less memorable and gradually blur together. The mounted combat doesn’t really build upon the Soulsborne mechanics like the previously discussed iterations.

Melee fighters, get used to this view. You’ll be seeing it a lot.

This isn’t to say it is a bad addition. On the contrary, I find that charging into battle on Torrent far more enjoyable than in most games with mounted combat. I’ve also never grown tired of facing off against dragons. At the same time, I can honestly say that I no longer fear dragons in Elden Ring.

The final combat mechanic I’d like to discuss is perhaps its most contentious: spirit ashes. These incorporeally corporeal compatriots are capable of assisting in combat in a fashion summons never could. While all prior Soulsborne titles allow you to summon assistants into a boss arena, be they real players or NPC contributors, it came with the added cost of increasing that boss’ health. Summoned players are also given debuffs, such as reduced health. Spirit ashes, on the other hand, do not increase the health of a boss once summoned, and they can be made quite powerful depending on how much you have upgraded them.

I confess to utilizing the spirit ashes, and I also admit their use is, in some ways, overstated. They aren’t the most clever bunch, taking more hits than they evade and often wading right into hazardous environments such as magma. They also don’t deal much damage, requiring the player to do most of the heavy lifting.

Yet it’s far easier to deal damage when the boss’ back has been turned away from you, exposing them to heavy strikes, leap attacks, and potential backstabs. There’s no real need to learn a boss’ patterns when you have a spirit ash or group of spirit ashes there to draw the enemy’s attention. Just be sure to back away after getting your licks in, as the boss will refocus their attention on you.

I have mixed feelings about the spirit ashes. After all, I use them, and there are some bosses that it feels were designed with the belief the player would be utilizing them. Additionally, it felt rare for my spirit ashes to survive the entirety of many of the game’s battles even when maxed in level. It was at such moments that I had to learn the enemy patterns regardless, or at least figure out when to best summon assistance to ensure survival of the latter stages of the fight.

Part of me feels that the spirit ashes are a detriment to the player. If the player fails to learn patience and caution during boss fights, then the moments those spirit ashes are unavailable will only be more difficult to progress through. At the same time, I’ve watched enough streamers of varying skill levels to know that the spirit ashes cannot save a player from their own inadequacy. It simply lowers the bar necessary to achieve victory.

As you can see, the contribution of the spirit ashes were negligible in this fight… and this is before they took a magma bath.

As such, I can only ascertain that the benefit or detriment of spirit ashes is purely up to the player, and as the player is free to use them or lose them, there is no concrete judgment which can be made. The game is still difficult even with spirit ashes, and for some, it is only able to be completed due to the inclusion of spirit ashes. Perhaps From Software would have designed some of the bosses differently if the spirit ashes weren’t there as a crutch?

That, perhaps, is a topic to delve deeper into next time. For now, I would just like to conclude this discussion on Elden Ring’s combat with the observation that so much has been iterated upon and added that the assessment of the game being “open-world Dark Souls” is being disingenuous. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that From had technically added stealth and jumping to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, though that game had been in development alongside Elden Ring. Nevertheless, Sekiro itself has a very different sort of combat than Elden Ring, and while fighting as a Tarnished bears similarities to fighting as a Chosen Undead or Ashen One, it also differs more or as greatly as fighting as a Hunter in Bloodborne.

At its core, I would argue that Elden Ring has better combat than its predecessors. However, what mechanics are available to the player are not the whole story. Next week we’ll discuss the game’s monsters and the dungeons that house them.

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There’s a slight scuff in the recording of this podcast, but it’s a subtle one. Can you tell what it is? I certainly can! No fixing it now, however. If you can figure out what mistake I made before going live, drop a comment below and tell me!

You might recall earlier this year that I wrote about why it is so difficult to love Square Enix. A few months later and I feel as if there is no more love for the company as a whole. I still love what Squaresoft meant to me as a child, and I can still enjoy and love individual products that they release. However, there is just something about their top level executives that frustrates and even disgusts me.

I cannot help but wonder if there are greatly differing opinions in the upper echelons of Square Enix’s brass, with folks like Yoshinori Kitase coming from a creative background but now placed in a high-level role away from the creative tasks. Does he try to encourage products driven by the mind of individual creators while holding back committees seeking to exploit their customers of every nickel and dime? Or has he succumbed to the corporate mentality that all products are wickets, and they are simply the means to a profitable end?

I look at Square Enix’s autumn release list, and I feel as if I should be excited. Truly, this is a new golden age of Square Enix and JRPGs! Instead, however, I cannot help but view it pessimistically, as if the company is just trying to clear out a bunch of lesser projects in order to make room for something more profitable; an all new trend for all the top level executives to hop on board with and force their lower-level employees to work towards.

Who can say? At least, by chance, they occasionally release something worth devoting time towards.

What do you think of Square Enix lately? Do you still get excited whenever their logo pops up before a trailer? Have they left you pleased or sour as of late? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

I don’t know where I stand in regards to the notion that Western corporations are starting to put their fingerprints all over the Japanese anime industry. It’s not like there’s a complete lack of evidence or sources, but aside from the hefty bags of money companies like Netflix and Crunchyroll use to persuade studios to make what they want, it’s uncertain whether they’re having a visible impact into how the shows are made. I already have a healthy distrust of Western translation of video games, anime, and manga due to the “I Made This” attitude of many of the industry’s translators, masquerading liberal reinterpretation and modification as “localization”. Of course, that is an incendiary topic all its own, and one filled with ignorant arguments and perspectives on “both sides” of the fence (which, like so many things these days, shouldn’t even be about “sides”).

Intricacies of localization and arguments of accuracy aside, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 is just one of those shows that leaves me wondering whether it has such Western meddling involved due to such additions as one particularly pink-haired member: Purin Esaki. I’d say that she is the Jar Jar Binks of the show, only I feel as if my meaning would be too misunderstood. It’s more like she’s a character from the Star Wars sequel series dropped into the straight-laced world of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there to appeal to the young crowd and their TikToks and Instant Grahams. She’s also super special and magically talented with computers and hacking because of course she is. Everything about her screams “audience self-insert” in a way that feels out of place for Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045.

Which is a shame, because in the latter half of the series, she could have been a far more suitable exploration of Ghost in the Shell’s best themes.

This essay will immediately go into some pretty big spoilers for the show, so be alert in case you plan to read onward.

I should note that I accept the possibility of her being an audience self-insert. She could just as likely be there for modern Otaku sensibilities. Either way, she’s out of place.

Purin Esaki dies. Or at least, her body does. She is infected with some Post-Human program that feints the viewer into believing she had become a bad guy. However, she was, in fact, never evil. Of course she wasn’t! Our pink-haired wunderkind is the first and potentially only Post-Human capable of being infected without also becoming evil. Or what everyone assumes is evil. I’ll get to some of that later. All that you need to know is that she tried to stop the real bad guy from enacting their dastardly deed, but in doing so was gunned down by those she was trying to assist.

Oddly enough, this was the catalyst for Purin Esaki to become an actual character. In the episode following her death, the mascot-like Tachikomas investigate Purin’s history and uncover her motivations for joining Section 9. It was strange that they’d wait until after she had died to give her some real depth, and for a moment I was wondering if, should her presence have been a mandate from Western Netflix after all, this was the team’s way of sticking it to the demands of their foreign interlopers while still giving the character a proper send off.

It would certainly fit in line with the rest of the narrative, where the American government is an oppressive force trying to throw its weight around while making veiled threats and keeping secrets. Rarely have I ever seen the United States portrayed as such an antagonistic entity in Japanese media, and while I know enough of the nation’s post-WWII history to understand why the United States government would be portrayed as one big bully, I also could not help but wonder if it was an allegory for larger American corporations trying to dictate what Japan’s entertainment should be.

Mr. Anderson…

Unless the creative team speaks on the matter themselves, I will likely never know what is or isn’t the reasoning for a big bad American government. What I do know, however, is that those Tachikomas are able to gather Purin’s memories and all data regarding her, compiling it (and, of course, the AI responsible for this Post-Human mess to begin with) together into a fully synthetic android body.

For a moment I thought Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 was going to do some actual speculative science-fiction, asking questions of not only whether Purin was truly alive, but whether she counts as a continuation of the original Purin or is a new, individual entity all her own. After all, it was through such contemplative and pensive character examination that Mamoru Oshii explored in his seminal 1995 film that made Ghost in the Shell as a franchise so iconic. The perception of anime in Western culture changed not only due to the “mature” presentation of its animation, but due to the existential questions that plagued protagonist Mokoto Kusanagi. With her brain being the only organic portion of her body, how could she prove she was real? After all, you cannot see your own mind.

This intellectual and philosophical perspective was the driving force behind the Ghost in the Shell movie, and it would influence Stand Alone Complex writer and director Kenji Kamiyama’s direction with the televised series that would follow. Kenji also wrote and directed SAC_2045, but it feels like he abandoned Mamoru Oshii’s substance and instead continued with a superficial style pretending to be speculative and philosophical.

This single tear drop is the closest we get to reflection on the fact that Purin died, no longer inhabits her original body, and does not even have an organic mind.

I say this because the show never really addresses such obvious situations as Purin being reborn as an android. Yes, characters are startled to see her alive, but they act as if she’s the same person that had died filled with bullet holes. Her memories aren’t even wholly her own, but a collection of data she had stored on hard drives combined with other materials about her. Nothing physical of her former self exists. Her potential existential crisis is a step beyond that of Kusanagi’s from the original film. She is also separate from the Tachikomas, machines that became self-aware on their own. There’s a lot of room to explore here, and…

...she instead sheds a few tears before charging ahead towards a Matrix-style fight against one of the primary antagonists.

Which is the other red flag for the series as a whole. Central to the plot of SAC_2045 is the Post-Human, an evolutionary step taken through digital modification of the human mind to exceed one’s typical limits. Despite the show’s direction and presentation having that cold, pensive approach to make it seem intellectual, the actual execution is purely shounen simplicity. Hardly any explanation into how this is possible is provided, save maybe an over-reliance on implants and artificial limbs. It doesn’t matter how some advanced code is capable of empowering a woman in her thirties to leap great distances between rooftops regardless of the organic or artificial nature of her legs (and all other muscles and body parts necessary for the act of jumping). You are instead expected to accept this because it looks cool and characters are saying things that sound like something smart people would say.

Why?

What is it all for?

This Post-Human reveal was effectively directed and the ensuing set piece was entertaining, but it was all style with little substance.

The only aspect of the show worth giving any intellectual thought to is the heavy influence of George Orwell’s 1984 on the antagonist. His entire goal is to become Big Brother and secure peace across the world, regardless of who wants it or not. It’s not revealed until the final episode, but the entire purpose of his plan is to effectively force everyone on Earth to behave in a manner that will maintain peace and, supposedly, provide equality. In other words, rather than take inspiration from the revolutionary philosophy found within 1984, the young man decides Big Brother had the right idea. The notion of someone seeing the frightening vision of an oppressive regime masquerading as a protector as a good thing rather than bad, and that it is the impression of a young man who had lost something precious, is somewhat worth examining.

Only the show itself, again, offers no time to explore these concepts further. The first half of the show meanders on the Post-Humans who, ultimately, are just a plot device to get us to the show’s conclusion. While there are some interesting possibilities peppered throughout the latter half, such as Purin Esaki’s new life as an android or the antagonist’s inspiration from 1984, no time is spent exploring what such possibilities could mean.

If we’re grading on a scale, then Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 is still better than the majority of the anime out there. It has loftier goals and tries to actually be about something more than escapist, consumer-driven fantasy. I can’t help but commend it for that very reason. Additionally, as strange as its choice of art style is, looking more like a video game cut-scene than an actual animation, it’s not completely repulsive and ...well I can’t say it will grow on you, but it certainly is tolerable. So, yeah, it was pretty good.

Unfortunately, “pretty good” is also pretty damning when it comes to what Ghost in the Shell as a franchise can be. I don’t know what SAC_2045 is trying to be, but it’s certainly not speculative science fiction living up to the standards of even Kenji Kamiyama’s former work within the property. It fails to ask questions or to explore the possibility and consequence of a technologically over-saturated future. It instead uses these things as an aesthetic, screaming loudly and stylishly without forming any words of meaning.

What a disappointing waste of potential.

This article is the second in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry here.

Ever since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild released I’ve found myself debating what makes a “good” open-world with my friend and titular podcast cohort Steve. After five years and an additional one-hundred and fifty hours in Elden Ring, I think I’ve come to recognize just how much of that debate is over the unimportant specifics. While icons on a map are a part of the problem to someone such as myself, it does not get to the heart of what I enjoy about an open-world. Towards the end of our ninth conversational grab bag, I asked a simple question:

What is the point of a giant, open world if you don’t even engage with it?

Of course, this question itself could easily lead to more semantics and unimportant bickering over minor details. From my perspective, however, if I’m following the GPS on the mini-map or looking for icons rather than topography, then I’m not actually engaging with the world. It simply exists to look good on screenshots and pad time between linear missions or mini-game style activities.

Again, this is from my perspective, and I’m not even sure what forms the foundation of that perspective. All I know is there are some activities that exhaust me when exploring an open-world, and others that do not. When I played Breath of the Wild, I found it refreshing to explore a mountain range only to discover a hidden shrine or, even better, a dragon roosting upon its peak. There was no icon on the map saying to go there for that thing specifically. It was… well, it was a discovery, and it was driven purely by my own curiosity. When there’s an objective marker present, I tend to look at the mini-map more than the environment around me. When no such marker is present, my eyes are instead scanning every bit of the world, and this activity allows me to appreciate the world even more.

It is this same sense of discovery that embodies Elden Ring, but unlike Breath of the Wild, the Lands Between are far less accommodating than even the harshest corners of Hyrule.

The player is free to go wherever they want once they step out into Limgrave for the first time. Yes, you are free to attack the Tree Sentinel, inadvisable as it may be. You can completely ignore the Lost Grace or White Masked Varre before you, and can even choose to head East towards a swamp or forest instead of West to the sanctuary of a ruined Church. Most of these decisions are likely to result in the player’s death, but they are possible nonetheless. Players can even avoid making a pact with Melina altogether, forsaking not only the ability to level up, but the faithful steed Torrent who expedites travel across the vast continent.

This sort of freedom is one of the secret ingredients to the game’s success in the open-world genre, though it can simultaneously be a detriment to impatient new players. There are complaints across social media and Reddit of players that kept trying to fight the Tree Sentinel, failing, and declaring the game is unfair and utter garbage in so many colorful words. Others will exclaim how genius the Tree Sentinel placement is, “teaching” the player that they are free to flee or avoid confrontations, be it in their entirety or until they return better equipped and far more powerful. Similarly, should the player follow the guidance of grace directly to the bridge before Stormveil Castle, they’ll be “taught” by Margitt that they don’t have to keep banging their head against a challenging boss: they can turn around and explore the world instead.

Only these aren’t really lessons to the player in the typical sense. A lot of YouTube essayists trying to sound academic and insightful have made such claims about these two particular bosses, but Elden Ring isn’t actively instructing the player of anything. The player is free to choose; it is up to them if they choose to “git gud” and bang their head against the wall of a difficult foe or turn around and seek what armor, spells, or lesser challenges the Lands Between have to offer. If these bosses were to represent a test, it would not be an evaluation of knowledge so much as an observation on patience, stubbornness, personality, and thought processes.

It is far more accurate to say that the Tree Sentinel conveys a simple message of awe-inspiring danger to the world. It is not a monstrous creature that stalks the wilderness of Limgrave, but a gold-clad knight riding upon a decorated steed, conveying a sense of pride, renown, and honor. You, however, are Tarnished, and evidently that means you are an intruder to the Lands Between. So, players may choose to fight the Tree Sentinel, or they may choose to avoid it. The latter is the most likely choice, and by doing so players will begin their first act in engaging with the world of Elden Ring. How does one avoid the Tree Sentinel? Which bushes does one sneak through to evade detection? How about running a bit far to the North or South-West to just circle around the Sentinel’s territory? Maybe just sprint right through and hope the majestic rider doesn’t run you down?

This hilltop statue stands out no matter which direction you approach it from, ensuring the player’s eye will be drawn to it.

As the player evades the Tree Sentinel, it is possible their eye will be drawn to other potential landmarks. There’s a pathway down there, towards ruins and a beach! Perhaps there’s a secret down the — oh, nevermind, there’s a mighty large troll creature with a giant sword on its back climbing up that hill. Perhaps we’ll come back another time. Oh, what’s that statue up over yonder? Ah, upon further examination it creates a pale blue light illuminating a path towards the distance. Oh, but there’s a fire within that ruined Church, which… ah, yes! This is the next point of grace, where the previous had been directing me! Excellent, I’m now officially past the Tree Sentinel and have guidance to my next destination, while simultaneously having uncovered other potential paths I could explore now or save for later.

This opening experience is effectively a bite-sized introduction to the game proper. The world is littered with foes, secrets, and sanctuaries alike, and the player is able to decide how to engage with these things however they want. Or, at least, almost.

In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you can collect korok seeds by completing minor puzzles scattered throughout the world. These seeds are currency with which one can expand their inventory size. However, in order to trade these seeds for carrying capacity, you must first find the large woodland creature Hestu. If you follow a specific route through the beginning of the game, then you’ll inevitably stumble upon this character. I, however, did not follow this route, and therefore found myself with a very limited inventory for twenty-some hours of gameplay. In fact, I might have taken down the first Divine Beast without having met with Hestu.

That you can only meet the character in one specific place in a game that boasts freedom was, to me, always one of Breath of the Wild’s flaws. Unfortunately, Elden Ring is somewhat similar, though not nearly so restrictive. Melina will not appear before you until you reach a specific grace or number of graces activated. In addition, the player is unable to access the Roundtable Hold until they’ve at least encountered Margitt, activated a specific grace or graces in Caelid, or headed for the Weeping Peninsula. This puts a limit to how much a player can upgrade their weapon while exploring Limgrave. Additionally, if players wish to enhance their Spirit Summons, they’ll not only need to speak with Roderika just beyond the Gatefront Ruins, but will have to infiltrate Stormveil Castle quite deeply to uncover the item necessary to send her to Roundtable Hold herself.

Just leap forward and you’ll be on the path to Liurnia, bypassing Stormveil Castle and its overlord Godrick the Grafted.

Such specific step-following goes against so much of what makes the game work otherwise, especially on repeat playthroughs. As stated, this game has a lot of freedom, and some of that includes being able to sprint past the exterior walls of Stormveil Castle to find a narrow passage skipping right towards Liurnia to the north, or to march right into rot-infested Caelid to the east. You can even use a teleportation trap in the Weeping Peninsula to the south to skip right into the city of Leyndell, though I do not recall just how much freedom is afforded the player (I was too cowardly to stick around and teleported “back home” as soon as I could). If the player has a weapon, armor piece, spell, talisman, or any other item they know the location of, they are free to head directly there as soon as they wish. There is literally nothing stopping them from accessing the majority of Elden Ring’s content early.

Yet in order to upgrade weapons or spirit summons, they must follow more rigid steps that interfere with that same sense of freedom. It’s not as bad as Hestu in Breath of the Wild, admittedly, as the game does manage to take the player’s multiple possible paths forward into account. Nevertheless, too much is still predicated on following specific steps, and this is especially true in regards to Roderika. To some, this will be a major problem. To others, I no doubt sound like I’m nitpicking, digging for something to complain about.

Regardless, the game is not entirely free anyway. Unlike Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring does not permit the player to charge right into the den of the final boss. There are a few necessary steps that must be taken, typically in the form of felling a requisite number of key bosses before accessing a portion of Leyndell Capital. Whether this is a flaw or not is up for debate, as the primary method of engaging with the Lands Between is by looking for fights. It is the main draw of the Soulsborne legacy of games, after all, and that continues here. In addition, given just how free the player is to explore the rest of the game world, it truly does beg the question of whether it really matters that there are a few progression steps necessary for beating the game.

Even then, I find the freedom itself to just be one component of the game’s open-world being such a success. Another is certainly not new to Elden Ring, nor was it new (or as rigidly executed) in Breath of the Wild: constructing the world so that it is divided between biomes or zones. Many prior open-world games, such as inFamous and even the recent Ghost of Tsushima, would lock a player into a single zone with a set number of activities available to complete, only to allow them access to the next after completing enough story missions.

Elden Ring is constructed similarly, only there are no icons or percentage markers informing the player of just how “complete” a zone is. Nevertheless, it still has a similar effect on the player, allowing them to compartmentalize each chunk of land into a sort of progression-based zone. Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula are the early-game zone, followed by Liurnia as the next, and from there to explore Caelid, Altus Plateau, or a potential third zone down a curiously located elevator. Unlike inFamous or Ghost of Tsushima, a player isn’t exploring for the sake of completionism or unlocked trophies, but for the sake of discovering new treasures or foes so that they might be strong enough to challenge the next region.

At least, this is the logical process for a new player. Experienced players, however, are once more free to cut through to whichever zone they desire, taking on advanced challenges with the foreknowledge of a prior playthrough, or simply taking a shortcut to the most ideal gear for their desired build while leaving all other trinkets behind. This knowledge, however, is gained by… well, if we’re being honest, it’s most likely gained through Wiki guides and YouTube videos, but even without such things a player may loosely remember quests, upgrades, or locations from a prior playthrough. I myself had done just such a thing to collect more smith-stones, skipping from Limgrave to Liurnia and Caelid so that I might upgrade my blade to better tackle the foes in Stormveil Castle.

To that end, the world is as large or small as you need it to be, and without an obvious series of icons to clutter my map, I was encouraged to study it and the world in order to learn how it all worked. In comparison, I am currently playing through Cyberpunk 2077, whose entire city has been accessible since before I even concluded the prologue mission. There are portions of the city I remember, but not necessarily how to get there because I’m constantly following my GPS. Similarly, due to how huge the city and its outer badlands are, I feel too exhausted by the very idea of exploring it all to bother doing anything but use the GPS.

Do I think Cyberpunk 2077 should be more like Elden Ring? Not exactly, though that discussion is beyond the scope of this already monstrous post. Instead, I think it is more accurate to say that Elden Ring, despite being a massive game world itself, is more inviting to the player by keeping the map small and focused just on Limgrave at first. Though the world already looks massive, it doesn’t look nearly as intimidating when viewing that first zone in isolation. By time the map has expanded further and further, the player might have already explored a large chunk of Limgrave and be ready to move on.

Despite being accessible early on, everything about Caelid says “maybe later”.

It’s surprising just how much of game design is based on player psychology as it is on the mechanics themselves. Had the player been able to see the full map of the Lands Between from the start, I don’t think there would have been as much excitement to uncover and explore every corner of the game world. Players would instead have likely suffered some analysis paralysis, less eager to explore the game in full as they saw just how long it took to fill just a portion of the map.

Instead, the map is revealed bit by bit, and each icon pinned on by the player’s own exploration feels like a self-driven discovery. This, again, is psychology. While there is a level of satisfaction to be gained from checking an item off the list, it simultaneously feels as if the player is guided by another’s agency rather than their own. So, having a portion of an empty map slowly filled and expanded upon sells the illusion of being an adventurous explorer more successfully.

This, again, is still just two out of three major elements that contribute to the open-world being so well received. To reiterate, the player is free to choose not only where to explore, but how to explore. Guidance is somewhat provided through enemy placement, the shining rays of grace pointing to locations of importance (many of whom are “optional” but will lead to a separate ending than the “default”), and meetings with Melina and the Round Table Hold, but the player is never restricted in how they choose to make this progress. In addition, the world is revealed to the player in pieces, preventing them from becoming overwhelmed and intimidated by the size of the game world.

The third factor, however, has been spoken of quite frequently in pre-release interviews by director Hidetaka Miyazaki. Throughout the press circuit of 2021, he emphasized the mobility of Torrent and the changes that leaping had brought to the game world, but also stressed the restoration of one’s flasks. Just as the Souls series provides the player with Estus flasks, Elden Ring grants the player flasks of Crimson and Cerulean Tears for restoring health and magic, respectively. In a traditional dungeon, the player has a finite number of these flasks to use between sites of grace. The only method of refilling one’s flasks in such locations is to rest at a site of grace, which would simultaneously respawn all surrounding foes.

The red, wispy trail following my character indicates the foe I just dispatched was the last in a group, restoring one Flask of Crimson Tears with which to heal myself and prolong my exploration.

On the open-world, however, the player is able to restore these flasks by defeating clustered groups of enemies. One might think of them as specific “encounters”, such as a group of soldiers patrolling a road, a pack of wolves running across the hillside, or an ambush of demi-humans waiting for unsuspecting travelers. Any one of these can restore a portion of a player’s healing flasks upon defeat.

It may seem like a small adjustment, but it allows the player to prolong their exploration before needing to stop, rest, and revive all opponents in the surrounding region. Even if the player were to stumble upon a surprise boss encounter on the open field, using nearly or completely all of their restorative flasks in the battle, they can continue with their open-world exploration by simply slaughtering a frail group of zombie-like wretches huddled together by some ruins. Sure, they’ll only get one or two flasks back, but hunt down enough of these easier encounters and you’ll be right back to full capacity in no time.

I truly believe this simple adjustment to the Soulsborne mechanics are a large reason why exploration is able to be so enjoyable for so many. A player can reset themselves to full health and magic without resting at a site of grace, instead cleverly choosing targets on the open-world and rejuvenating their resources back to maximum. This also gives the player reason to engage with the world even when at a high level, as weaker enemies make for excellent restorative fodder.

Which is the most important aspect of an open-world being engaging. An adventurer in the lands between is always scanning the horizon, be it to study the foes cresting the hill just ahead, seeking out potential treasures or landmarks to uncover, or perceive what resources might be gleaned from the flora, fauna, or unfortunate locals unequipped to deal with a high level warrior eager to recover some flasks. It is a world where not an inch goes to waste, players are frequently rewarded, and, most importantly, they are constantly encouraged to engage directly with the world rather than the user interface.

For some players, this is not ideal. They only have one hour of time to play each day and they’d rather not spend it riding into new territory only to discover they are so low in level as to minimize survivability. Perhaps they can only play a few hours each week, and as such they can’t spend hours exploring all of Limgrave and have to bang their head against Margitt or Stormveil Castle if they hope to roll credits one day. Still others may simply get more satisfaction seeing a task list mark their completion percentage of a zone than they do finding a new location, always wondering if there’s something in those starting territories they missed.

More realistically, I think the majority of players are open to both methods of exploration. In regards to Elden Ring, I think it manages to handle the more free, player-driven exploration in a manner that developers truly ought to take note of.

Next time I’ll be discussing the game’s combat.

Direct Download

Episodes like this are a perfect example of why I don’t go in with a plan or outline anymore. I had a series of thoughts and questions prepared I wanted to discuss, and then it went so far off the tracks that it forged a path for a brand new railway to nowhere. Nonetheless, it was a good discussion, and one that ultimately had me feeling better about Nintendo.

My Switch doesn’t gather dust these days, so to speak, but it certainly has become less frequently used than my PC or Xbox systems. It’s my PS4 that goes largely ignored, despite having titles like Sakura Wars and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim on there ready to be played. In the end, I think it really is a matter of just what sort of game speaks most to my sensibilities, and while Triangle Strategy and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes certainly do, they are competing with the likes of Elden Ring, A.I. The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative, and, surprisingly, Cyberpunk 2077. Even if the latter is, on paper, not my biggest cup of tea, it grabs my attention something fierce.

However, on top of being the multiplayer platform of choice, Nintendo does have plenty of games coming down the pipeline that have me excited. It’s just different when you watch a Nintendo Direct and see three or four games announced at the same time, ready to make you salivate and glad to have been an adopter of the platform. Splatoon 3, Bayonetta 3, and Breath of the Wild 2 were all announced a while ago. They’re “old news” at this point, even though each one will likely be pretty great experiences. The question is what comes after, and that’s a great mystery.

I was skeptical of a new Nintendo platform being announced in the future, and I still am. However, Nintendo’s tight-lipped marketing seemingly running on fumes would make all the more sense if they did have new hardware incoming. While Nintendo is not in a position where they need to release new hardware, there’s certainly a question of taking too long and missing out on the enthusiasm. In any other year, I’d be certain a new system were incoming. In a year where a single tank of gas is costing me as much as a brand new video game, hardware shortages persist, and an even greater loss would need to be taken to release affordable hardware, I have to wonder if now is the time.

We’ll have to wait and see, but at least next week there will be no ambiguity regarding how much we’ll gripe about Square Enix.

What do you think of Nintendo’s current place in the market? Does your system gather dust or are you regularly playing games on it? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Exoprimal is a childhood dream game made real. It’s the figurative mashing together of plastic power armor against mouth breathing dinosaur models whose joints lack proper flexibility. The very premise is ripped right out of B-movie havens such as The Asylum, distributor of the intentionally bad Sharknado, but executed with a decently budgeted spit-shine polish that can only come out of a video game studio like Capcom. The network test’s introductory news reels and exposition indicate that the developers are self-aware enough regarding their silly, stupid, and ridiculous premise, but they execute upon it with a straight face.

It’s that Venn Diagram of dumb and cool, where a concept is so bizarre or implausible yet captures our very fantasies like no other. The sight of raptors literally raining from the sky, smashing and splashing onto the hard ground only to stand back up and charge forward in a flood of gnashing teeth and slashing claws, is simultaneously funny and yet wonderful. Despite the impossibility of a Tyrannosaurus Rex leaping into the air and performing a flying kick, the very animation and depiction activates just the right neurons in the brain to generate excitement. The logical parts of our brain clash with our most primal or childish, and in the end, it’s that youthful exuberance that wins out. Reject reality and accept the fantasy of robots fighting dinosaurs as the jovial dream that it is.

Despite this overwhelming sense of joy that the test delivered, there are still plenty of question marks left hanging over one’s head. Just how diverse will the final game modes be on release? Prior trailers, interviews, and marketing materials insinuated that there will be a story mode that follows some uniquely designed characters, but how exactly will they pull it off? Will it be a lengthy tutorial for the multiplayer disguised as a single-player campaign, or will it be a unique experience all its own? Does every game mode have a competitive element to it? What sort of monetization can players come to expect? Does Capcom plan on providing regular content updates to keep the community coming back?

There’s no doubt that Exoprimal made for a fantastic two hours of gameplay, but does it stand a chance of lasting for two-hundred hours?

From a perspective of pure polish, the answer is yes. Though I’ve grown to have great faith in Capcom, I was worried that the silliness of Exoprimal’s concept would have led to a smaller or lesser team being assigned to develop it. The game is visually stunning, but I was also concerned that it would feel janky, clunky, or outright awkward. Instead, I was immediately satisfied with how smooth the movement felt and how snappy button input response was. This is definitely Capcom at their finest, making sure that the player is able to act and react in a fast-paced game without having to think about the controller in their hand. It becomes an extension of the self: latency between the human brain, the thumbs and fingers gripping the controller, and the game have been kept to an imperceptible minimum.

I admittedly wasn’t expecting it to feel so good with at least half a year remaining to work on the game, but it’s clear the development team has gotten the core experience to a more-than-satisfactory level. That, no doubt, is one of the reasons for the Network Test: to get the game into the hands of more players and see whether the net code itself is up to that same standard. I, personally, did not run into any network connection issues, nor did I perceive much in the way of lag. I have a pretty decent cable Internet with a medium-to-high range computer, and I was streaming at the same time, yet I did not notice any obvious discrepancies regarding ping, delayed response, and so on.

In fact, for a Closed Network Test, it felt surprisingly “finished” in most respects. The greatest indication that the game was incomplete were the occasional dips in frame rate and audio drops, occurring seemingly at random and mostly in the earlier stages of gameplay. There was also the occasional glitch, such as not being able to apply my character’s desired beard or the pack of raptors that failed to die or despawn in my final match. My anonymous companions and I had tried to attack or kill them, but they suffered no damage. Just the same, they did none to us. We simply moved on to our next objective, the vicious dinosaurs hounding our every step until we were warped into the final phase of the match.

Which is where my real concern is. Given how rarely I ran into problems with performance or network connection, I’m more than confident they’ll have the technical aspects of this game polished to a sparkling shine by its 2023 release. The question is just how many more game modes do they plan on including, and do they all conclude with a head-to-head confrontation with the other team?

I was disheartened to learn during the game’s announcement that its primary game mode would focus on teams of players competing against one another. While so many players celebrated Gambit as this wonderful new mode when it premiered in Destiny 2, I had simply longed for a new Horde mode to take the place of the original Destiny’s Prison of Elders. I didn’t want to compete with real players, especially if they could invade my arena and disrupt potential in-the-zone moments. While there was certainly joy to be found in seeing who could summon their Primeval first, a “meta” would swiftly appear that allowed teams in-the-know to quickly pile on the motes of light, keep the opposite team at a minimum, and summon their boss-level monstrosity before their opponent was even halfway towards their own goal.

Exoprimal is more appealing than Gambit for certain, in part because it has an actual variety of objectives and scenarios. While most of the players’ time will be spent mowing down different raptors and specialty dinosaurs, they’ll occasionally have to defend an objective from taking damage, defeat a rather large T-Rex, Triceratops, or Ankylosaurus, collect energy resources scattered throughout the environment, or guide a payload towards a goal. This prevents each match from feeling exactly the same, though there’s a clear formula each round follows: race to see who can get to the final challenge first, and then confront the enemy team head on. I even began to notice that the losing team will be granted a “Dominator” – one of the larger dinosaurs controlled by a lone player – before the winning team, giving them the possibility to catch up to their opponent and turn the tide.

While this game mode is certainly an improvement over Gambit, and being able to watch silhouettes of the opposing team combat dinosaurs or sprint on ahead gives a sense of urgency or progress to the proceedings, it runs the risk of growing stale or isolating certain players. By the end of my two hour session I was getting sick of having to worry about another team. Regardless of how well you can tackle the dinosaurs, the real deciding factor was whether you could outgun your opposing team. Once players discover “the meta”, it will become an even less satisfying conclusion to an otherwise crazy fun session of blasting dinosaurs back to the Cretaceous. At some point, players will begin wondering why they’re even bothering with PvE if the deciding factor of a match comes down to PvP instead.

I do believe the developers have tried to implement a lot of small details and adjustments to help the teams remain neck-and-neck rather than allowing one side to completely dominate the other. The aforementioned gift of a Dominator to the losing team is just one example. However, one of my favorite modes was to simply join up with nine other players to tackle an outrageously difficult mutation of a T-Rex, complete with Godzilla style death breath and Dark Soulsian pustules of glowing purple. It felt more like a Raid boss in an MMO, and it had me curious what other sorts of transformations were available for other dinosaurs. Unfortunately, it was the only match of the sort I had run into while playing, and the only break I had from direct competition with other players.

If Exoprimal wants to succeed, then I definitely believe they need modes that eliminate the direct competition aspect. This doesn’t mean they’d always have to remove the race with another team, though doing so could open up more possibilities of mode types. Just one team, the enemy dinosaurs, and the need to survive. Perhaps allow the players to crank the difficulty up so they have to tackle multiple giant dinosaurs at once, or have to focus on other objectives than merely mowing down dinosaurs. The point is, there will be players that want to drive the murderous stampede of raptors back into extinction without the pressure of having to also perform against human opponents.

Variety is the space of life, they say, and while it seems to me that Exoprimal aims to have a lot of variety within its base game mode, I hope to see them keep players less inclined towards PvP in their thoughts. Similarly, I think there should be a game mode that is strictly PvP, as I think the variety of suits works well for some old-fashioned throwdowns.

Naturally, I have no clue how many more modes Capcom are developing or planning for the game. It could be that alternate modes without PvP are already in the works, or that the story campaign will allow for co-op against the A.I. without worrying about an opposing team. On that note, there’s a whole host of suits that were not available in the Network Test, each which could have addressed some of my other concerns. For example, Roadblock was the only Tank unit in the test, and while he was fine for the majority of situations, he was not the greatest PvP unit nor did he seem to stand much of a chance against certain larger dinosaurs. Even though the game allows players to hot-swap which class they’re playing as, it would be nice to play a Tank unit whose primary mode of defense can perhaps last longer against a powerful lone dinosaur rather than shattering like glass when trying to defend the rest of the team.

Other suits will no doubt fill a greater variety of situational roles, but there’s far less indication that the situations themselves will be more varied than what we’ve played. Admittedly, having taken Capcom’s post-game survey, I can certainly say that they seem to be checking with their testers as to what other types of game modes they would like to see. This could also explain why the release date is a vague 2023 despite the actual mechanics feeling solid; they need time to figure out what additional sorts of match types to invest in based on player feedback.

Regardless, I look forward to playing in the next two network tests as well. I’m afraid the longevity of this lone game mode will also be tested in this time, but I have a feeling Capcom knows they have something here and want to make sure they don’t screw it up. Additionally, while I may harbor doubts at the longevity of the current solitary game mode, I can confess to desiring to play more Exoprimal the day after. Capcom is onto something with this game, and I hope they manage to knock it out of the park with the final product.

Back towards the end of March I wrote some glowing thoughts on the quality of Elden Ring. It was planned to be the first of at least two pieces, expecting to have at least a bit more to say once I had finished the game. The thoughts and opinions expressed in that post are, admittedly, a bit dishonest. They were rationalizations of things I recognized as flaws for other games, but twisted around to sound like compliments.

In other words, I wanted to try and convince myself why I’d been so light on this game despite committing crimes I’d otherwise be critical of elsewhere. The box art for Elden Ring might as well have the emblem of a recycling bin on it given just how much content is rehashed. Even Godrick, a unique character and the first of the Rune Bearers most players will likely face off against, has a clone locked away within one of the Evergaols.

There is a lot of recycled content in Elden Ring, but to simply point that out as a criticism is, I think, doing the game a disservice. This is partially due to the nature in which other games littered with recycled content are built, and by more closely looking at the manner in which Elden Ring is designed, I hope to highlight why so many more players are willing to tolerate it from From Software than they are the likes of Ubisoft or Activision.

Before we get that deep, however, we need to look at one of the earliest mixtures of praise and critique from the From Software fans themselves: core mechanics that are over a decade old.

Once the gameplay trailer released last June there were observations that the game “looked just like Dark Souls”. Now, this isn’t too surprising for multiple reasons, the first of which is that everything looks like Dark Souls to someone these days, whether the comparison is warranted or not. The other is that this is From Software, and Elden Ring is going to be following the same general pattern as their prior games. Of course the gameplay would look similar.

Only it wasn’t just similar. Much of it was the same, all things considered. Players were pointing out specific attack animations and directly connecting them to carbon-copied special attacks from Dark Souls III. As it turns out, nearly every Ash of War, as we’d learn they were called, that was showcased in the trailer was lifted right out of Dark Souls III. Art assets and textures were recognized as well, and soon enough it became clear that From Software was recycling much of their prior work for this new title.

Though this, too, was nothing new. Even in Bloodborne, a game with a completely different setting and a new trick-weapon system that required every blade, whip, battle axe, halberd, and so on to have two alternate forms, had recycled animations and assets from Dark Souls. The most unique game From Software had produced in years was Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and that was in part due to the drastic departure the combat and mobility had taken from their past decade of works.

So the question becomes whether this is a problem or not, and I don’t think there’s a consistent answer. While you can point at some sequels that seemed to wipe off the table and start fresh, such as going from Resident Evil 3 to Resident Evil 4, you can point to plenty more such as the Mega Man or Street Fighter franchises, each seeming to gladly reuse code and assets from one game to another. Sports games have been pointed to for decades as an example of charging full price for a roster update every year, clearly reusing graphic assets with minor touch-ups to release the same game annually. However, in the world of video games, these simulations for jocks are more likely to be the victim of bullying rather than the other way around. We could point to the annual release of titles in the Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty franchises, but their sales numbers betray how much these recycled assets actually factor into the sales or perception of each individual title.

What makes Elden Ring different, I think, are a combination of its core audience and the amount of time it has taken to develop the game. On one hand, the core audience of From Software’s recent output are looking for a very specific gaming experience, and therefore any deviation poses great risk. It makes sense to keep with a foundation they know and love. At the same time, that core audience is primarily made up of hobbyists and enthusiasts, dedicating more time to challenging and niche games than the “normies” or “casuals” that regularly spend their cash on Assassin’s Creed titles, Call of Duty releases, or Skyrim ports. The expectations are different, and with Elden Ring having been announced in 2019 and whose gameplay was finally revealed two years later, players were hungry to see what would be new and fresh in Hidetaka Miyazaki’s latest release.

Rather than see a drastic evolution like Sekiro, players were instead introduced to something… familiar. Or at least, in part.

It is at this point I should note that those displeased with these familiar animations and attacks were a minority. Whether they recognized these assets from a prior Dark Souls title or not, most players were excited. You can jump! You can ride a horse! Look how bright and beautiful the world is while still retaining that hint of melancholy! Check out these huge bosses! What are those ghostly figures that fight with you? Just how big is this world? How brutal are all these bosses?

Elden Ring was not a massive leap in terms of its mechanics like Sekiro had been, but it is also rather diminutive to say it’s incremental. Additionally, many fans had bounced off of Sekiro’s increased and precise difficulty, thus leaving the familiar gameplay of Elden Ring to be a relief. However, I think it is important to note that the changes here aren’t as simple as adding a few gimmicks. The open-world adjustments, in particular, heavily impact the feel of Elden Ring compared to its predecessors, and I’ll be getting more into that in the next entry.

Really, one of the things that makes Elden Ring work as well as it does is the cautionary combat that From Software has become known for. There are many games that try to imitate what From does, but keeping a random enemy tucked away in an invisible alcove is misunderstanding From Software’s approach to environmental and encounter design. They certainly wish to “punish” the careless player, but in the majority of these situations it is the player’s panic that punishes them most. Many bad situations and ambushes can be escaped, so long as the player keeps calm and recovers.

It is the developers’ attention to detail that makes the Soulsborne games so enjoyable to explore, examining the environment closely for potential traps or ambushes. More often than not, the player can then turn this knowledge to their advantage, luring the game’s hostile forces into the path of these traps or getting the drop on those in hiding. It’s not just about punishing careless play, but rewarding clever and intelligent tactics.

Granted, it doesn’t always work out, and some environments can feel cheap or malicious. In Bloodborne, for example, the exterior of Mensis bathes the world in a maddening gaze that the player must hide from, all while being hunted down by vicious lycanthropes that give birth to carnivorous worms unless defeated in a specific way. Once the player escapes the range of the Sauron-like gaze they must endure a gauntlet of boulder throwing giants leading into a hall infested with giant spiders. Such segments feel as if the designers have a grudge against the player, perhaps taking out their crunch time frustrations by conceiving a slew of tortuous pathways.

These sections are never quite impossible, however, and with enough time and experience across the separate From games you might notice the many ways in which the developers are generous to the player. Enemies will typically give off a visual or audio cue that they’ve spotted the player, waiting at least a moment before lunging forth on the offensive. With very specifically scripted exceptions – again, ones that can often be spotted by observant players – most enemies can easily be sprinted past, and all foes have a range in which they stop pursuing the player. In comparison to a game like, say, Darksiders 3, where foes will continue chasing you down for great distances, the From Software games are designed for players to speed by familiar territory in order to grab lost souls or blood echoes before charging onward.

Such generosity can be picked up on in combat as well. Most encounters can be handled carefully by kiting individual enemies, and even beasts that attack in swarms have obvious tells and lengthy recovery. Once more, the game punishes the careless but rewards the observant or cautious. As the games progress forward they will make it more difficult to kite and intentionally match more difficult foes together, but rarely does the game seem to mash encounters together without a proper sense of balance.

Note that I say rarely, not never.

At the end of the day, however, I think it’s the tit-for-tat nature of the combat that really gives From Software their legs. No matter which game you play, it’s always about the cautious exchange of blows. Enemies may be designed to strike with confident, sweeping or crushing attacks that convey an intimidating amount of power, but they will inevitably leave themselves open. It’s not just about “learning the attack pattern”, it’s about learning the patience and judgment to wait for your opportunity. If you slightly flub a dodge, for example, then do not feel so desperate as to rush in and get a hit before missing your chance. Such actions will result in being caught up in a counter by the opponent. Similarly, do not be desperate to recover one’s health. Be willing to risk a death while focusing on getting some distance instead.

These are general, basic rules, but they apply equally to Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring.

Keep in mind that the games don’t all have the same precise combat system, nor do they all feel the same. I’ll go into greater detail later, but Bloodborne is, again, a good example. From the start the player is able to hold twenty blood vials for restoring health, indicating that the player is expected to get wounded and need to heal often. Simultaneously, it creates a reliance upon the blood that leans into the game’s narrative themes and the downfall of the Hunters. The same can be said for rally, where a player has a limited amount of time to regain lost health by violently retaliating against their aggressor. The player can swiftly dodge without worrying about encumbrance, but the lone buckler shield in the game is all but worthless compared to the value of a riposting pistol, let alone the other heavy duty projectiles or experimental spells.

While Elden Ring has far more in common with the Dark Souls lineage than either Bloodborne or Sekiro, it still diverts from the popular trilogy enough so as to carve an identity of its own. The advantage to building upon these prior games, however, is that the developers already have a good basis from which to deepen their scope while increasing the breadth.

Which is, ultimately, my point in this introduction. I’ll be returning to discuss the combat in more detail later, but in respect to how Elden Ring’s adjustments have positively iterated on the past while simultaneously making some foolish decisions. As I examine the different aspects of Elden Ring that make it so enjoyable – or frustrating – it is important to note that it could only do these things by starting with the decade-long experience that came before. At the same time, much of that experience will prove to hold Elden Ring back in its own ways. Additionally, though From Software were able to build one of the largest games available to be played, there’s still the question of whether or not it was too much.

I hope, in the coming weeks, to give a full breakdown and analysis of this game and give a fair evaluation of all of its positive and negative qualities. That I am not a die-hard From Software fan should, I hope, allow readers of all kinds to understand my perspective as well. The conversation surrounding these games tends to be in the extremes, and I hope to appeal to those that would meet in the middle. Some may enjoy the games more than others, but hopefully my own perspective and arguments will be understood.

Next time, we’ll be looking specifically at the open-world and the importance of a player engaging with the game’s setting.

Direct Download

Apologies that this has been a quiet week for the blog. Despite having a long weekend due to the holiday, I did not manage to provide the backlog of content I had desired. As such, the Elden Ring series will begin on Monday, and I will start to try and change the podcast posts to Fridays rather than Saturdays. I am also going to try and change our podcast to being closer to once a week, though the schedule will inevitably be loose due to the busy lives of adults with day jobs.

Trying to keep myself focused on a select handful of games has, admittedly, been rather difficult. It’s not necessarily due to a shortage of good games, however. In any other year, I’d have likely completed many of the titles that currently sit unfinished on my physical and digital game shelves. Instead, all of the games are good, but Elden Ring has sort of taken over as that perfect title for me to just fall into and relax with. That may seem odd given the game’s reputation and the occasional deaths here and there, but the open-world truly is a masterfully assembled series of environments, keeping me engaged in ways that most open-world games do not. I will, of course, be going into greater detail on Monday, but it really isn’t as simple as “engaging with the world”, though that’s a good chunk of it. Despite hardly being new or revolutionary, there really is no open-world like Elden Ring.

I hope to also have something focused on Masters of Doom next week, as it was a truly delightful book to go through. I also aim to make more time for the latest Monster Hunter Rise expansion and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. It will just require some willpower to step away from Elden Ring.

What have you been playing lately? What do you enjoy in an open-world game? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Once upon a time, when I was a member of forums and had a community I felt at home with (sort of), I enjoyed creating or participating in mid-year review discussions and evaluations as June gave way to July. By then E3 would be over, many of us would have had an opportunity to catch up on some older titles we fell behind on, and the releases ahead would be etched more clearly in stone and intimidating for our wallets.

Now that I am no longer a part of a forum and am looking to plaster some content onto this blog while I prepare more interesting works, I figured it’s as good a time as any to look back on what I’ve enjoyed most this year, what’s looming ahead, and how I’m generally feeling as a content creator. It might be a bit of a long read, but hopefully it’s varied and interesting enough to keep your attention.

This year has been a rather interesting one, so let’s waste no time in kicking things off.

Best Games of the Year (So Far)

Last year I had predicted that Resident Evil Village would be my game of the year, despite still having another six months to go. While it would eventually be ousted by Metroid Dread, it was only barely so. Towards the end of the year I typically go back and replay bits of every release to make sure I’m not under the influence of recency bias. Experiences tend to stand out more strongly when they’re fresh, and therefore games that are enjoyed in the early months of the year tend to feel less exciting when compared to the new hotness of the closing months. This was not the case with Resident Evil Village, as I continued to return to and enjoy its gameplay with each playthrough as the year wore on. Metroid Dread had the same impact, it merely appealed to me a bit more.

Though these titles are from last year rather than this one, I mention them in order to illustrate that my prediction of Elden Ring winning my top slot of 2022 is likely to come true. Even now, after more than 140 hours in the game and having rolled the credits, I keep wanting to go back, experiment, and play. I not only dabbled in the New Game Plus and started a new game under a different class, I have since purchased the game on Xbox Series X where I have begun a fresh quest as a Wretch. While our big podcast episode on Elden Ring was filled with more criticism than praise, it is a game that does so much so well. I will be starting a series on the game next week, analyzing it piece-by-piece so that I might more fully explain why it works so well while doing my due diligence to examine its flaws.

Of course, one might wonder if Elden Ring has had any proper competition. The only other new release this year to have made a similar impact on me is Ghostwire: Tokyo, a title which is not as bad as its reputation and yet certainly not for everyone. Perhaps what made Ghostwire: Tokyo so appealing was how comparatively relaxing it felt beside Elden Ring’s far more harsh and hostile world. Encounters weren’t nearly so dangerous and I spent most of my time gliding between rooftops looking to collect trinkets, cash, and spirits. It was a nice way to unwind and destress compared to From Software’s more hostile caverns, hostile mines, and treacherous catacombs.

Aside from replaying some older games or streaming titles such as Onimusha for the first time, however, I’ve largely been more of a gaming tourist in the first half of 2022. I’ve started and failed to complete many titles this year, be they old repeats or newer releases. Pokemon Legends: Arceus became incredibly repetitive rather swiftly, and any charm and appeal wore off as the tedium increased. I returned briefly to Triangle Strategy, but I am completely torn as to which direction I should go with its forked narrative. One route requires me to bang my head against the wall of a difficult battle in order to achieve a more desirable outcome, while the other fight was far easier but resulted in a foul-tasting consequence of choices. The game’s New Game Plus should theoretically give me confidence to return later, but unfortunately all the enemies will be advanced in level themselves. So, I’m sort of stuck wondering where to go.

Really, it has been a combination of streaming and following my impulses that has led me to having so few games finished and so many played. I own Mario Strikers: Battle League but have yet to boot it up. I also have Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, a game which I had streamed once, but have not yet jumped back into. A.I. The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative has instead taken precedence, lowering all other titles down a few steps on the priority ladder and booting Cyberpunk 2077 off almost completely. If any other game would be a contender for Game of the Year rankings, it would certainly be Nirvana Initiative, as it is just as charming, comedic, and mysterious as its predecessor. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge has also made a place for itself as a potential favorite, though it is a shorter experience and best played among friends. Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak released today and threatens that cooperative appeal, while a recent sale on Dark Souls III, an older game, also demands my time and attention.

In the end, Elden Ring has been the obvious top contender for four months with Ghostwire: Tokyo making for a decent runner-up. While it’s true that any real competition only recently began hitting the shelves, the greater obstacle is my ability to choose a game and stick with it for an extended period of time.. save, of course, Elden Ring.

The Games Ahead

I’m starting to feel as if I could really use a year of nearly no releases due to how much I already have to catch up to. I blame myself, obsessed with playing older favorites as much or more than I am the new hotness. In addition to the games listed above, I’ve been craving, for example, a return trip to Gransys in Dragon’s Dogma; a desire that has increased even more so with the confirmation that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is real and in development. There are also still many games without release dates, such as the many indies I tallied for Steam Next Fest or highlighted in the Summer Game Fest trailer round-up. Any one of those games could be given a surprise release date, squeezing into what is already becoming a rather packed autumn.

Specifically, an overstuffed month of October. Just this week Square Enix revealed that Star Ocean: The Divine Force is releasing on the 27th of the month, the same day as indie-horror release Signalis that I am greatly looking forward to. Scorn and A Plague Tale: Requiem shall both be hitting Game Pass the week prior. While I am not exactly invested in it myself, I imagine titular podcast co-host Steve will be aiming to purchase and play Forspoken, meaning I may have to try and adventure through it for the sake of a spoilerific episode and discussion.

Thus far, the months prior all seem to be easier in decisions of what to cut and what to play. As I have yet to remove the shrinkwrap from my copy Xenoblade Chronicles 2, I am unlikely to purchase the third game brand new in July. Though I should wait on Live a Live, the fantastic visuals and promise of old school Super Nintendo baits me like a plump worm on a hook tempts hungry fish. A demo has fortunately been released, though it was just such a demo that pushed me head first into buying Triangle Strategy, and look at how that turned out. Soul Hackers 2 is also of interest, but I have too many other RPGs on Switch and Steam to play first: Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, Caligula Effect 2, and Shin Megami Tensei V all join Triangle Strategy in the pile of incomplete or unplayed JRPG’s I’ve acquired. That being said, there’s something to the temptation of supporting a game like Soul Hackers 2 at launch to communicate interest in such titles, particularly if I am purchasing them on Xbox, a platform that needs greater Japanese development support.

Splatoon 3 is the big highlight of September, though Warhammer 40K: Darktide and Evil West are both equally intriguing in their own right; the former being a four player horde-mode co-op shooter available on Game Pass day one, and the latter being a supernatural Western themed shoot-and-melee title that feels mechanics driven like the games of twenty years ago. I’m not sure I’d drop a full $60 on it, and thus my saving grace might just be waiting on a sale rather than sweeping it up on release day.

The remainder of the year fortunately calms after the whirlwind of October. As the Pokémon series has failed to charm me over the past few years, I am unlikely to pick up the Scarlet and Violet pairing hitting shelves this November. I am more likely to give Square Enix’s Rune Factory competitor Harvestella a try, though it’s rather clear that the time investment of RPGs are a major problem in my schedule. Things close off with Callisto Protocol, a horror-themed spiritual successor to the Dead Space franchise headed off by the original creators. I will actually have the week between Christmas and New Years Eve off from work this year, so perhaps that is the perfect time to indulge in some creepy body horror action on a snow covered moon.

As I had stated, however, indie games tend to confirm their release dates far closer to the actual day of launch. Any day one of those titles I previewed or played could be hitting the digital shelves. There are a lot of games out there, and trying to schedule them all is… well, it’s tough, and I suppose it leads into the next segment.

The Life of a Part-Time “Content Creator”

I hate terms like “content creator” because of the abuse the word “content” has taken. The entire strategy has been one of quantity over quality in nearly every sphere. Audiences want quick headlines and snippet videos to trigger their pleasurable brain chemicals before moving onto the next hit. We’ve effectively turned commercials into the primary mode of entertainment, only the brands being marketed are individuals on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Independent game pundits have stopped scripting their videos in order to just talk at a camera, while politically charged pop culture warriors read entire articles for the viewer rather than just link the article they’re discussing in the description. After all, making a script, editing audio, cutting video together, that all takes time, and time is precious when you need to make sure you have at least one video per day to post. Even translators and highlight clippers of VTubers chase the ad money dragon by creating five or six not-even-two-minute clips of a single stream rather than compile them into a single, ten-to-fifteen minute highlight reel. Make sure the clips are exclusively sexually charged moments taken out of context for maximum clicks.

I try not to be the sort of person that claims things “used to be better”, as there was once a time I would not have been able to share my thoughts regarding games, anime, or film anywhere at any time. I could speculate on what an Internet-free life might look like for me, but such speculation is pointless because my theories would be biased towards an experience informed by the Internet, how it has impacted me, and guesswork based on a more mature mind rather than the youthful conceit I had possessed in my teens and twenties. Nevertheless, even if things aren’t easily defined as better or worse, it is depressing to acknowledge that all the traits and bad habits of humans the cyberpunk genre had warned us about are not coming true, but are true. Even Futurama’s satirical perspective on the future turned out to be on the mark more often than not.

Gripe as I might, I also cannot deny the fact that I have never gotten as large a following as desired due to a lack of consistent “content”. Or, more precisely, I’ve always had a tendency to spread myself too thin rather than have a clear focus. Trying to update the blog interferes with trying to update the YouTube channel and both of these interfere with trying to keep up with games. Let’s not forget that I have a day job, meaning any form of content creation is going to struggle to keep a consistent schedule. However, for the past several years my biggest opponent has been myself, my lack of self-confidence, and my lack of discipline. Rather than spend an hour typing up a blog entry I’d go spend an hour or two posting lengthy replies on a web forum. Instead of hammering a draft together to force myself through a fit of writer’s block, I’d leave the document empty and switch over to play a game that I’d inevitably not write about.

I’d like to say that things are somewhat different this year. Things got off to a strong start in January, filled with my retrospective on the year prior. February, however, was completely empty, and March and April were decently populated while May was rather pathetic looking. There are a variety of reasons for this. Some of them involve a greater investment in streaming on Twitch while others are simply due to a bout of depression. Going into June, I had made a decision: I was going to take inspiration from Shamus Young and figure out how to write about games in a far more varied way. This is, after all, how I had decided to do my annual retrospective in January. While Shamus would be my inspiration, my methods and perspectives would still be in my own voice and in my own style.

So too would I write about the Summer Games Fest in my own way, and I was fortunate enough to also have the Steam Next Fest to fall back on. As a result, June has been a busy month for the blog, and while it has not resulted in an increased volume of comments or anything, it has certainly been satisfying.

The last (and only) game I played with Shamus Young. Never expected it to hold a place in my heart for such a reason.

However, almost as if it were fate, just as I chose to take inspiration from Shamus and his incredible ability to consistently update his own website, he had passed away. Despite appearing on my stream and sounding hale and healthy the weekend before, he was suddenly whisked off this Earth and taken to the hereafter that early Wednesday morning. I’ve discussed it plenty in the Eh! Steve! Podcast and blog entries, but his influence and inspiration meant a lot to me and I am still in the process of grieving this loss. Nonetheless, I am also using it as a sort of motivation. I want to make more content, but I want it to be quality over quantity. I cannot fill the void left behind by Shamus Young, but I suppose I feel as if his legacy will live on if I do my best to have that same work ethic and consistency that he had possessed. It might sound strange, selfish, conceited, or emotionally tone-deaf regarding the loss of him, but the only other option in my mind is to keep on going as I’ve been, wishing I could be like Shamus rather than putting in the effort to aspire to be half as good as he was.

I cannot guarantee a schedule, but I am certainly hoping to get at least one post onto the blog per week (that is not an Eh! Steve! related post). However, I also don’t want to just force content out. I want to write about games in a manner that provides some sort of insight or food for thought, which likely means going back to how I used to write; back when I was far more confident in the quality of what I produced. Which, I suppose, leads me to the concluding section.

Looking Ahead to Future Content Creation

Despite never fully giving up my writing, I have recently come to feel out of practice. I realized this when I sat down to try and write about Elden Ring again, concluding that I had been trying to summarize too much in a single post. Yes, my prose and actual writing was gradually improving as time progressed, but to combine it with a thorough examination of a game and its mechanics? That had regressed. So, I made a decision to split my evaluation of Elden Ring into several posts, with the first currently drafted up and ready for next week. While not every game demands such a deep dive, I would like to be able to consider each title and figure out which ones I can more thoroughly dissect and analyze across several posts. For example, when I get around to discussing Shredder’s Revenge, it’s unlikely that I’ll need more than a single write-up to discuss all that I have to say about the experience. For other titles, well, who can say? It turns out I had two posts worth of content for Ghostwire: Tokyo, and if I go back and replay it, it’s possible I could have another one or two lined up on things such as the story, or a more thorough takedown of the open-world collect-a-thon.

The secret is to simply have confidence in what I’m saying, which I’m finally starting to regain.

I am also trying to enjoy content other than just games, as rare as it is. The occasional dive into non-Godzilla kaiju films, for example, or the reading of books on game development. You can most assuredly expect a piece on Masters of Doom, a nearly twenty year-old book that I should have already read and reread multiple times in my life by now. It’s possible I’ll also have a piece on Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 on Netflix, depending on which angle I choose to write about it from.

What does this mean, however, for other forms of content? Well, were it up to me, Eh! Steve! would have a new episode every week at this point, even if we didn’t have a specific topic to discuss. However, my co-hosts all have jobs, responsibilities, and hobbies of their own, so it’s not exactly something I can guarantee.

Streaming, however, is a side-project I’ve decided needs to be toned down. I certainly enjoy it, and it can provide a clearly scheduled time to get through certain games on the backlog. However, if this mid-year evaluation has made anything clear, it’s that I have a massive stack of titles to go through, and relegating my gaming time to something as rigid as streaming isn’t always going to be helpful. So, for the time being, I will continue to support my Twitch channel with quality over quantity: fewer streams, but always a fun and enjoyable collaborative effort with a friend or friends of mine.

Which, lastly, leaves the YouTube channel. Despite not having been updated for about two years now, I have still somehow surpassed the 550 subscriber mark. Theoretically, if I wanted to center my content on what is most popular, I would focus primarily on making YouTube videos.

I honestly don’t think this is the best route for me to go, however. Not that I wish to abandon it, though I’ve insinuated as such in the past. It’s more that I simply enjoy writing a lot, and it requires far less work to put out more thoughtful pieces for the blog than it does to put out a video. Perhaps this sounds lazy, but to me it’s more about efficiency and mental health. Every video took months of work, and watching the analytics and waiting for comments was almost a testament to how undesirable my content was. As such, I’d rather the YouTube channel be supplementary. I do already have a script, audio, and recorded gameplay footage assembled for a new video, waiting to be cut and edited together. I am ready to begin and work on this process. However, so much of my time this month was dedicated to the blog and, on occasion, art, that it fell by the wayside.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is a game I’m tempted to do a deep dive on, but it might be better to just do it in writing than the months-long process of making a video.

I plan to resume that project, but I don’t want it to come at the cost of the blog. I don’t know if I’ll ever create a lengthy deep-dive of a game again, though it certainly has its advantages over the written form. At the same time, my shorter video experiments may prove to be lackluster and working for months on a single analysis video, secondary to the blog, will prove to be the best route going forward. All I know is the blog is where I want to focus my primary efforts, and I want to exercise discipline in doing so.

Which means my next hurdle is to figure out how to grow the audience to this thing so I actually have people engaging and commenting. Unfortunately, I’ve never been really skilled at that sort of self-marketing. I have enough charisma to get by but I’m still somewhat socially inept and don’t completely understand how others think. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’ve made so many friends that disagree with me on a variety of topics, even if it frustrates me at times; by listening to those that disagree, you come to better understand alternative perspectives to your own. Regardless of my mental capabilities or ineptitudes, however, the greatest help would be for those of you reading this to not only share my blog, but comment on it and suggest that there’s perhaps something else going on here, too. That would be a big help.

For now, however, that’s my aim for the website, and my aim for the “brand” that is RamblePak64 as a whole.

Direct Download

The podcast slides in a little bit early today as I shall be at a convention with friends and family over the weekend. May it entertain you on your work day or commute.

I will have at least one more post regarding Elden Ring in the coming week or two, though perhaps this is one cow I could milk for several weeks more. In fact, it would perhaps behoove me to consider the different aspects of Elden Ring and to discuss them one at a time, attempting to dissect what I love and dislike about it in greater detail rather than summary. Over one-hundred hours with the game should certainly allot me that time, and it has been a while since I’ve truly dug deep into a game’s mechanics and gameplay to a satisfying extent.

At the same time, I may slow down some of my content for a week or two. I’ve got plenty I wish to write about, but, if I may be candid for a moment (as if I’ve had trouble with that before), I’m still shaken by the loss of Shamus Young. Every time I think I have myself stable and back together, it all comes falling apart and I become an emotional wreck. For this reason, I could probably use more time to just sit down and play games. At the same time, though it has been a lot of work, I’ve greatly enjoyed sitting down and hammering out the Summer Game Fest and Steam Next Fest pieces every week.

To that end, I might slow down on the streaming for a week or two to allow for more time spent gaming for fun, but I would also like to increase the pace at which we record the Eh! Steve! podcast and keeping the blog updated at a steady rate. Only time will tell, of course. In the meantime, you can do me a favor by sharing my content and commenting on it. Let me know I’m being heard and that you like what you see and hear.

To that end, what are your thoughts on Elden Ring? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Read up on Part Two.

There Is No Light

I’m not sure the top-down hack-and-slash is quite for me. Perhaps if they took greater inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but these games tend to go for something else (and, more often than not, it’s that “Souls-like” tag on Steam). I cannot say that There Is No Light is without promise, but there’s just something about it that failed to hook me.

The narrative establishes plenty of intrigue and curiosity, for sure. There’s something going on in this post-apocalyptic world where humans live underground, an oppressive theocracy enforces its rules, and children are gladly offered up to a faceless, hand-shaped creature revered as a god. A horrific creature resembling a reaper and plague doctor combined has saved our protagonist and given him powers to combat this supposed god, though this supernatural Industrial Metal mascot keeps his reasons closely guarded. Narratively, there’s definitely a hook.

The combat is what gives me pause. It seems the primary gimmick is to wait until an enemy is preparing an attack before striking out and interrupting them while they’re vulnerable. The nature of enemy mobs makes such a strategy more difficult to pull off than I’m sure is intended, and as such it’s easier to just dodge, strike once, dodge away again, strike once more, and so on. Guerilla-style hit-and-run tactics are far more effective than attempting the game’s far more risky mechanics. There’s also a meter you can build up to unleash an ability, potentially releasing a health gem that will heal the player once shattered. The problem is that, even with a successful interruption, foes rarely seem vulnerable enough to make filling up that bar and unleashing an ability possible without suffering even more damage. The timing is incredibly tight and the risk-reward balances far more on the “risk” category.

Or, perhaps, I’m just not very good at the game. The top down nature also made it difficult to determine where certain hit boxes were, whether they were based on the x-axis or y. Nonetheless, it was still an enjoyable enough experience with an intriguing narrative hook. It would not be the worst of the demos I’ve played, for certain. When surrounded by the promising games that had a far more enthusiastic response, however, it suffers the misfortune of seeming to lack the special ingredient each of those titles possessed.

Nonetheless, I may keep an eye out to see what shape the finished product is in. If another demo is released, I would likely check it out and see if they managed to tweak or polish the mechanics a bit further.

Moonscars

I imagine this game will no doubt get the “Souls-like” description attached to a lot of previews and reviews, but I think that will be an oversimplification of what Moonscars is doing. The inspiration is certainly there, but this game is one of those rare gems that tries to reinterpret the concepts presented to be their own thing. This is most clear in the healing mechanic, which draws from the same pool as your magic. Using powerful spells in combat means you’ll lose your reservoir of healing energy.

In addition, there’s also a “rogue-like” inspiration despite not being a rogue-like. After defeating enough monsters and foes the player will be able to select a boon to apply to their skills or stats. This could range from a healing bonus, to an “extra life” of sorts, to damage buffs, and so on. These are lost once the player chooses to rest at a “Dark Mirror”, the game’s equivalent to a bonfire. However, due to the game’s golem-focused narrative, each trip through the Dark Mirror also disposes of the “shell” you’ve been using, leaving a hostile and empty doppelganger husk behind. The player will have to face this doppelganger in combat, an intense fight where they possess the same abilities you had.

If I had any complaint, it is the lack of clarity in a successful parry being executed. The game informs you that performing a parry when an enemy’s eye flashes red will result in a counter-attack, and this often seems true. However, there are moments where damage is taken despite a successful counter-attack, indicating an unsuccessful parry. Are some attacks unparryable? Is it a matter of timing? Can you chain parries together due to the bum rush nature of some of these enemy attacks?

Despite these questions, I was surprised to find myself as enamored with Moonscars as I was. Like Signalis, I was caught off guard by the demo’s end, ready to keep going and play some more. I had seen the trailer during Steam Next Fest, but getting my hands on the title is what really left an impression on my mind. Had I only been so hyped for this rather than VergeWorld! Regardless of the ineffective nature of trailers and blitzing audiences with one pixel-art Metroidvania Souls-like after another, I look forward to the final release and have wishlisted the title with gusto. They say seeing is believing, but in the world of games, it’s all about playing, and playing Moonscars made all the difference.

The Tarnishing of Juxtia

After five minutes with this demo I was ready to throw in the towel. “That’s it,” I thought to myself, “not only is it another Souls-like, but it’s the most derivative to boot”. Last February I had lamented the inability of Salt and Sanctuary to do anything interesting with the Souls-like genre, merely recreating the experience on a two-dimensional plane. The Tarnishing of Juxtia was accomplishing much the same task, delivering the familiar Dark Souls experience but as a pixelated side-scroller.

Thirty minutes later I was checking the time, eager to keep going but knowing I had to stop so I could meet up with a friend. By the time I returned home later that afternoon, I booted the demo back up and resumed my save. Despite being the most Souls-like title I played all Next Fest, it had some secret ingredient that drove me to play on.

Perhaps it was the platforming elements. While not as old-school and complex as what you’d get from Hollow Knight, it made traversal around the world a bit tricky; rickety platforms would crumble beneath the player while others would sport whirling buzzsaws circulating around their surface area. Maybe it was the placement of shortcuts and treasures across its map, rewarding exploration. It could also have been the emphasis on magic, a skill I typically neglect in role-playing games to focus more on melee action. Or perhaps it’s something far more simple: boss fights that consistently had me succeeding by the skin of my teeth, their tough timings and punishing damage leaving me satisfied to have succeeded. Or, whereas Salt and Sanctuary seemed to revel in frustrating enemy placement and near-impossible to dodge attacks, The Tarnishing of Juxtia allows the player to roll past and flee certain encounters, its enemy strikes always having moments of vulnerability. It could be that Salt and Sanctuary was more enamored by the reputation of Dark Souls whereas The Tarnishing of Juxtia is a more careful study of its mechanics.

I’m not even sure I reached the end of the demo, if I’m honest. I consistently kept crashing out upon interacting with the “final” fountain, a programming error popping up on my screen to inform me something had gone wrong. Still, I was sure to wishlist the title after, fully confident that I wanted more of this game. It’s the opposite of Moonscars, a game whose inspirations are clear but mechanics are wholly their own. The Tarnishing of Juxtia is a Souls-like in the most obvious definition, and yet it succeeds on delivering those same highs in ways that similar games like Salt and Sanctuary had failed to manage.

Destroy All Humans 2! Reprobed

It felt a bit strange to conclude my tour of demos with Destroy All Humans 2! Reprobed, a more AA budget project standing beside all of these smaller scale independent titles. You might even call it unfair! However, it was more unfair to THQ Nordic’s attempt to revive this old franchise with remasters, if anything. It is not only a product of a strange era, it is a product of unfocused ambitions juxtaposed against a group of independents with tighter focus, leading to tighter gameplay and polish.

Admittedly, there’s a time capsule nature to Reprobed and its open-world “sandbox”, though I’m not even sure “sandbox” is the correct term. You can’t necessarily just do what you want, especially in the early levels where the game is trying to dictate your path. You can’t just speak with a certain character, you must be wearing a specific disguise to do so. You can’t fly around your space ship yet! You have to first go across town grabbing disparate parts before you can hope to take off.

There’s an unquestionable freedom here nonetheless, where I mostly just had military and police dancing like crazy rather than directly engaging in combat. Rather than wander the streets, I used my jetpack to soar to the rooftops and take shortcuts directly to my destination. The “open-world formula” had not yet been concretely established by the likes of Ubisoft, so there was no map littered with icons of side quests and collectibles to waste my time with. Nonetheless, none of the tasks I was performing were engaging, and when the demo was still going after the one-hour mark and defeat of my target I’d been pursuing for the last forty-five minutes, I had decided enough was enough and shut it down.

Perhaps part of the problem is also the “comedic” nature of the game. Its sophomoric gags about hippies were obvious and the wrong kind of absurd. There was far too much dialogue and the missions were simplistic and generic. Outside of the cut-scenes, there wasn’t anything to really suggest humor was the goal of the game.

Which, honestly, is how I felt about the first game more than ten years ago when I played it in College on the original Xbox. I loved the premise and had been looking forward to its release, but at the end of the day I was failing to have fun. I couldn’t quite place it at the time, but it’s just an experience that provides no real challenge, fails to coax a single chuckle out of me, and can’t even provide a more relaxed atmosphere to complement the lack of challenge.

That old-fashioned, platformer-like open-world freedom is no doubt a breath of fresh air for many, however. If nothing else, Destroy All Humans 2! Reprobed does not follow the Ubisoft formula. There’s value in that in a modern setting. For me, however, I’d rather something that’s far more mechanically focused.

Final Thoughts

I missed out on the Steam Next Fest last year, failing to make time to play the many demos in the short window that they were available. I’m glad I managed to rectify that this year, as it not only allowed me to test out some games I was already interested in, but discover titles I otherwise might have missed and shedding others from my wishlist.

The primary highlight is Signalis, whose mood, mechanics, and atmosphere are all something that gaming has been missing for a while. That old-fashioned survival horror of the PlayStation rather than the first-person jump scare factories designed for streamer reaction highlights, or the action-horror that the Resident Evil and Dead Space franchises have evolved into. Similarly, Selaco captures a lot of that old-school “boomer shooter” feel in its pacing and mechanics, yet possesses intelligent, flanking A.I. and some modernized mechanical adjustments without sacrificing the slick speed and action of the older games. If it could get some gamepad support, I’d gladly give it another spin to see if it was just my discomfort with the keyboard and mouse that made it so difficult or if it was truly designed to be that way.

Other than those two, it’s hard to decide since the remaining games to have left an impression are all quite similar. Ghost Song, Glimmer in Mirror, Moonscars, Nine Sols, and The Tarnishing of Juxtia are all side-scrolling games that draw from either Metroid, Castlevania, Dark Souls, or all three. Nonetheless, each also felt unique in their own way, providing a different sort of experience from one another. From the more relaxed of Glimmer in Mirror to the slower paced Ghost Song, the high speed Nine Sols and the inventive Moonscars, or even the familiar yet well-executed Tarnishing of Juxtia, each game had me hooked and ready to play beyond the demo’s boundaries.

Clearly I myself have made my preferences known in terms of what sort of indie game I’m drawn to, but perhaps that’s also why I feel like we’re living in a good time for the industry. Regardless of what the big AAA studios are doing, my preferences are well-stocked and met, with this Steam Next Fest proving it. However, there were also plenty of other titles outside of my wheelhouse that I’ve been hearing positive buzz about, and even one title I Kickstarted I was unaware had a demo available: Lost Eidolons. In the end, I think Steam Next Fest proves that there’s something out there for everyone, should you be willing to seek it out.

I hope I helped you find yourself a little something, too.

Read up on Part One.

Ghost Song

There are a lot of game comparisons that came to mind when I booted up Ghost Song, each of them undoubtedly a source of inspiration. Metroid, Dark Souls, Hollow Knight; be it mechanically or atmospherically, I could tell each of these titles was informing the design of Ghost Song. However, it is the best kind of influence, for while I was reminded of each of those games, the mechanics and gameplay possess their own unique feel and atmosphere. It feels more unique and individualistic despite that combination of familiar inspirations.

I think much of this comes from the game’s combat, which is more slow and methodical due to both the enemy health pools and the protagonist’s arm cannon overheating. While the player’s rate of fire is at first rapid, it slows down as the cannon grows hot. However, that smoldering red gun barrel becomes a more powerful melee weapon, applying greater damage when striking a close-quarters blow. This developed a sort of careful rhythm to the game’s combat, where you’d focus your rapid fire on one or two enemies before carefully beating another one or two to death with the sizzling hot metal of your gun.

Checking the current feedback for the demo, it seems there are a number of complaints regarding how long it takes to kill foes. I have mixed feelings, as I am certainly not a fan of damage sponges soaking up so much weapons fire. At the same time, without those sponges, there would be no need to vary up your tactics between projectile and close-quarters melee. The demo also barely gives a taste of the modules scattered about the game world, providing the player with additional secondary fire and other boons and bonuses to customize their play style. Perhaps it would be more prudent to modify some enemy health pools while leaving others as they are, working with a scalpel instead of a chainsaw.

My only complaint was getting stuck at one point, though it’s partially my own fault for not experimenting. The dash ability the player unlocks can also be used in mid-air, though I never thought to attempt such a thing. For some reason I had assumed I could only use it while grounded, and thus found myself wandering around for several minutes without a sense of where to go. A single, additional line of information being added to the in-game explanation of the upgrade could fix any potential confusion, however.

Otherwise, Ghost Song is currently one of my favorite games to have played this Next Fest, and I was eager to venture deeper into its depths when I had reached the demo’s end.

VergeWorld

Last week I listed VergeWorld as one of the titles that caught my eye during Summer Game Fest. Seeing it available for the Steam Next Fest, I excitedly booted up its demo to see what a classic-yet-modernized style of Star Fox gameplay might feel like.

It doesn’t feel very modernized at all, it turns out.

Yet another translation needing some editing and polish aside, VergeWorld is certainly trying to play with ideas from two separate Nintendo games – at least, that’s the impression I get. The player can gain a major speed boost by flying low to the ground, creating a sort of F-Zero vibe of intense speed in a futuristic vessel. Everything else is certainly in the style of Star Fox, but the ship feels sluggish compared to the speed it moves at. Even if you’re holding down on the brake for half the map, the high-speed fighter’s response is so delayed that collisions with rocks and obstacles feel inevitable. Attempts to take down opponents while flying through the canyon trenches is less exciting and more of a chore as the targeting reticle feels detached from the movement of the ship. The player’s attention ends up being split between bogeys and obstacles.

The promise of VergeWorld is interesting, but I think the first issue it needs to address are the game’s controls. They don’t feel responsive and as a result you’re just fighting against your ship instead of the enemies speeding ahead of you. The second issue is that the game’s design seems torn between being an arcade rail-shooter and racing game. The end result is that it is neither, and what it is just isn’t responsive, intuitive, or enjoyable. It’s frustrating instead.

Perhaps this is my fault for projecting influence that may not even be there. I saw the gameplay and Star Fox leapt to mind. I still have a feeling that’s what the developers were going for, but as of now, they are sorely missing the mark if that is their goal.

Signalis

Another title I had been looking forward to from Summer Game Fest, Signalis was the exact opposite of my experience with VergeWorld. The trailer gave off vibes of Resident Evil without being a direct imitation, and sitting down to play the demo, I found my initial impression to be on the mark. This is the sort of game you play with the shades drawn, lights out, room lit only by the glow of your monitor or television as you creep through its silent, unsettling halls.

It’s not a very long demo and only gives a taste of what to expect, but that is what has me so eager for the final release. By the time the demo ended I was almost upset. That was it? Half an hour and I was finished? I wanted more! Yet that desire for more is precisely what had me smiling. This was going to be a good game.

The inspiration no doubt extends beyond Resident Evil, giving off psychological and puzzle vibes of Silent Hill as well. Nonetheless, it manages to be its own thing. Yes, you have limited inventory space as in Resident Evil, an identical health monitor to inform you of how much damage you’ve taken, and even a storage bin to deposit items into that are no longer necessary or should be saved for later. There are documents hinting towards the preceding disaster and offering insight into the game’s mysteries, journals characterizing the deceased before everything went belly up, and clues scribbled on photographs and slips of paper. There were puzzles to solve and keys to obtain in order to leave the small vessel serving as the game’s tutorial zone, and a need to resort to desperate melee strikes in order to save on ammunition.

While it mechanically sounds identical to its zombie-infested-mansion influence, I cannot help but think Signalis has something unique going for it. Perhaps it’s the top-down perspective that separates the game from its inspirations, or the science-fiction aesthetic with some anime character art thrown in. Maybe it’s the story itself, delivered with subtlety instead of B-movie camp. Ultimately, however, I think it’s about the vibe, and the vibe of Signalis is nostalgic while retaining its individualism.

Regardless, fans of the old-school survival horror games from the PlayStation owe it to themselves to wishlist this title. It’s definitely one to watch out for.

Nine Sols

I almost forgot that I had already wishlisted the next title by Red Candle Games, creators of the “controversial” (in certain territories) Detention and Devotion. Nine Sols is a departure, more of an action-oriented and parry-heavy Metroidvania Souls-like, a pairing of genres that is becoming more and more vague and ridiculous the more of these games I play. As you’ll see towards the end of this series, “Metroidvania Souls-like” is a description of many games, but they are all different in their own right.

With Nine Sols, the emphasis is less on both of those genre-definitions and more on narrative and action. This game is heavily invested in its story and is surprisingly effective at getting the player interested in the fate of what is, ultimately, a barely-character placed into a dire circumstance. The actions of the protagonist at the moment launch the player into the demo proper, shoving the player into action. If you want to survive in Nine Sols, you need to get good with the parry mechanic, and to get good with the parry mechanic you need to learn enemy behaviors and judge when it is best to try and block and best to use the dodge ability (protip: when you’re about to get mobbed).

In hindsight, I’m not even certain “Souls-like” is an accurate description, as I cannot recall if you are capable of picking up the currency you lose upon death. Scanning the footage recorded, I know you can lose it, but it’s also separate from the more traditional level-up mechanic of experience gained through combat. If there’s anything “Souls-like”, it is in the emphasis on respawn points, health regeneration based on a finite resource you can refill when resting, and a high difficulty. Save for that second one, these are all common game mechanics or traits that predate and are not unique to the Souls-like genre.

Regardless, the game feels incredibly polished, smooth, and possesses responsive controls. I even tackled the bonus beast that you get for completing the demo, though I gave up when I realized there were multiple tough phases to the fight. The question looms whether this game will actually be too difficult for me; it is a fast-paced, highly skill-based title that I found myself greatly enjoying, but I also struggled here and there with proper parry timing and swift response. So I would not recommend trying it if you’re a fan of Metroidvanias or Souls-likes. Instead, I’d recommend it if swift, intense battles that require quick reflexes and fast thinking are what you crave.

Touhou Blossom Soul

Though I’m not familiar with the greater Touhou universe – a massive multi-media project developed by a single man in 1995 and still on-going – I did enjoy Touhou Luna Nights, a fangame made by Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth developer Team Ladybug. While I’m not big into the Bullet-Hell Shooter genre that makes up the majority of Touhou Project titles, Blossom Soul looked to fit the same sort of side-scrolling action that Luna Nights had hooked me with. So, I downloaded the demo and decided to give it a spin.

From what I could gather, the demo had no English language option. Nonetheless, I was able to feel my way about its menus and get started with… a straight up boss fight with very limited combat capabilities and a very, very repetitive boss A.I.

I wish I could offer a more informed opinion on the demo, but all I did was jump, dodge a fireball, and then try to get a hit or two in on the boss before she dashed across the screen again. A very primitive strategy came to mind of just sticking to one side of the stage, waiting for her to cast the fireball, dash, and then for me to jump, dodge, and try to hurry and pierce her with my spear. The window to deal damage was tight and I took enough hits myself to die anyway. It wasn’t worth it.

I’m curious if the Touhou Project can branch out into more genres than Bullet-Hell and Fighting as it had with Touhou Luna Nights, but it seems like not all fan games will have the polish and ambition of Team Ladybug. This one is a pass for now.

Continue to the next entry in this series.

Last year I did not get to properly take part in Steam Next Fest, a veritable buffet of in-development indie games featuring a slew of playable demos. Part of the problem was my lacking awareness of the time limit; you only have so long before the demos become inaccessible. As a result, I have endeavored this year to set time aside to try over a dozen demos that captured my interest. Over the next few days I’ll be writing my impressions of each demo I played within the available time frame.

Note that this is not necessarily a recommendations list. While I came away feeling positive about most of the games I played, there were a few I bounced off of pretty quickly. The interest here is more in sharing my experiences with the different games I tried so that you, personally, can decide if you’d like to keep your eye on that particular title or not.

As can be expected, this series will be divided across several posts throughout this week. Please look forward to following along, and feel free to leave a comment beneath if you happened to try one of these games out yourself.

Elsie

I briefly mentioned this during my Summer Game Fest round-up as a game that almost had me interested, but was missing a special something from its trailer. Something about the animations suggested a lack of polish of sorts, though it’s difficult to tell when you yourself don’t have your hands on the controller. The Steam Next Fest demo was the perfect opportunity to get my fingers on those buttons and analog sticks to see for myself if it felt like how it looked.

While it was certainly more interesting than I had anticipated, it also managed to meet my expectations regarding the feel of playing it. Just as Smelter’s controls were lacking some responsiveness, so too Elsie seems to have some odd “sticky buttons” feeling regarding its input detection. With a design clearly inspired by Mega Man X, I expect the character to move and behave as slick as the speed-dashing blue bomber does on the Super Nintendo. Instead, the timing of dash jumps feels more delayed and imprecise. Jumping itself carries an odd inertia that was never present for the titular X, and therefore precision-based leaps require additional jittery course correction to keep from plunging into the depths. The most responsive control is the parry counter-attack, though I was always just a millisecond too soon to trigger appropriately. It figures the one area that responds as immediately as typically desired might, in fact, be too sensitive or precise.

Though Smelter was somewhat more polished than Elsie currently is, I was also largely willing to play through and complete that game on stream because it had a definitive end. It was a typical single-player campaign that you could finish. Elsie, on the other hand, is tackling the rogue-like angle where you repeat runs through different levels, snagging temporary upgrades and abilities to push further than you had previously. There seem to be some permanent improvements as well, but I do not yet know what they are or what they do. Nonetheless, a rogue-like does not demand a single, short playthrough and then you’re finished. The mechanics need to be strong enough that you want to come back for hours upon hours upon hours, and to that end, Elsie needs to compete with the likes of the upcoming 30XX in regards to Mega Man style rogue-like action.

I don’t think it has what it takes. The parry mechanic is an interesting one, but the counter-attack seems to do absolutely nothing compared to how it is demonstrated in the tutorial. It’s supposed to be a core part of the game, but its value and timing are inconsistent. The lack of immediate response for the dash jump prevents the player from being as mobile as they ought to be for a game of this pace and challenge. The enemy design is varied and many of the power-ups offer neat possibilities, but it doesn’t amount to much if the basic actions of moving, leaping, shooting, and parrying all feel stiff, delayed, inconsistent, or even pointless.

The game will no doubt have an audience, especially as it seems the popular YouTuber The Completionist has attached his name to the project. If I, personally, were to go for a Mega Man inspired rogue-like, however, I’m sorry to say I would more likely wait for 30XX. My advice to the Elsie team would be to dig deep into that code and see if there’s any way to smooth up the controls, going back and forth between playing your own game and playing Mega Man X until it feels identical. That would make a huge difference.

Shred & Tear: Explosive Kajun

Friends, be very, very careful not to just blindly download a demo without taking a closer look at it. Rather than visiting the Steam page for this title proper, I simply scrolled through the list-view of games with demos, seeing brief snippets of a trailer and checking the fan-provided tags. I either missed the “ecchi” in this Shred & Tear’s genre descriptions or it was not present, but not one minute into the game I was becoming worried I had made a grave mistake.

Fortunately I did not bear witness to anything too salacious, lascivious, or downright degenerate, but the poorly localization dialogue littered with typos, grammatical errors, and punctuation problems suggested that the target audience was of a particularly thirsty variety. That it referred to its graphical settings as “thin”, “medium”, “thick”, and “extra thick” contributed to the depths of self-aware innuendo and suggestion.

How could I be so oblivious, one might ask? Well, it helps that the brief snippet of trailer and graphic I saw had concealed just how well endowed our heroine is. More truthfully, I was blinded by the potential of an anime-style hack-and-slash action brawler and wanted to see what the independent scene might be cooking up.

Jank. They’re cooking up jank. The game can’t even decide if it wants you to be using keyboard and mouse or the controller, and it certainly doesn’t provide many button prompts to assist in learning some of its controls. Itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow bolts of laser plasma hurtle to you from all directions, and ideally you’d time your strikes to send each laser ball back to its sender, but there’s no hope of skillfully deflecting them since they are the least noticeable thing on screen. All the art direction went towards creating a new fap-tastic waifu (whose level of clothing is also customizable in the menu, by the way) rather than clear feedback for the player and visual communication.

I gave this game less than ten minutes of my time. I am simply not horny or thirsty enough to deal with this kind of jank. I’d like to commend those who are, but I cannot help but wonder if there are far better ways to quench one’s thirst than a game like this.

Glimmer in Mirror

So many of the Metroidvanias I’ve played these days – and, as it turns out, will come to play – have focused on intense action and platforming. It was a breath of fresh air to play a Metroidvania with a far more relaxed pace and combat system, and one that doesn’t sacrifice engagement for a chill experience. There’s definitely potential for Glimmer in Mirror to ramp up its challenge and difficulty, but for what this demo offered, it was the gaming equivalent of sitting on the porch on a breezy spring day with a cozy book, allowing me to destress from the concerns of life.

Admittedly, there are two bits of feedback I directly mailed to the developer. The first is the most obvious and common: brush up the translation and perhaps hire a native English speaker to spitshine this script. The endeavor is admirable, and the use of a word such as “coquettish” was surprising to see beside some of the grammatical and punctuation errors. It’s a commendable translation effort, but many of the item descriptions felt vague and meaningless while some of the dialogue failed to convey the narrative in a clear or consistent manner. Such issues could hamper a potentially excellent game.

Which leads me to the second bit of feedback I provided: fix the jump timing. The game feels smooth and precise to play, especially after having followed up on Elsie and Shred & Tear. For a game whose developers and publishers seem to have no website or social media presence, the game does a surprising job standing out on its own mechanical prowess. However, the protagonist has a static height to their leap regardless of how long or little the player presses the jump button. A light tap should result in just a little skip while a long press should allow for the full jump. The player ought to have more control on the height for the sake of platforming and action challenges. In fact, the demo’s boss creature was only so troublesome due to my inability to control jump height as much as I would have liked, preventing me from making quick corrections to unexpected changes on the battlefield.

If these two adjustments can be made, then Glimmer in Mirror could be one of the better independent Metroidvanias around. Something more chill than its contemporaries and perhaps even a bit more accessible. Definitely a delightful experience and a new addition to the wishlist.

Selaco

I’m not sure I had ever heard of this game before I skimmed over it in the Steam Next Fest list. What glimpse of the gameplay I saw looked intriguing, so, much like Shred & Tear, I decided to download the demo on a whim. Unlike Shred & Tear, this is an expertly crafted game experience whose emphasis is on the mechanics rather than titillation and juvenile jokes.

Beginning life as a Doom mod, the team’s vision and ambition outgrew their tools and encouraged them to form a more traditional development team to create the game they wanted. If the quality of the demo is any indication, they are succeeding. Selaco feels reminiscent of not just the original Doom or Marathon titles, but it even took me back to my first experiences playing Aliens vs. Predator 2 on the PC. Despite having iron-sight aiming like many modern shooters, Selaco has that fast-paced movement and high-damage intensity of the shooters of yore. Enemies may drop quickly, but so can you.

I wish I could provide a more detailed breakdown of my experience, but the shame of it is that the gamepad support was not yet available and I find little-to-no comfort playing with a mouse and keyboard. I managed to complete the content of the demo, but not before banging my head against the wall towards its final stretch of content. Was it due to my inability to comfortably move and shoot down the sights at the same time? Would I have slid and leaped around more if I had a comfortable controller rather than having to stretch and contort my fingers for the proper key bindings? It could be that mine is a very subjective experience as I know few others that dislike the keyboard and mouse as a gaming interface as much as I do. It could be that the game’s balance, even on Medium difficulty, is slightly out of whack, or it could be that I’m just less skilled and capable relying on a less comfortable input device.

I also failed to find a good chunk of the game’s secrets and hidden items, though perhaps that’s by design. Part of the replayability of the older shooters was in hunting down every nook and cranny, seeking out hidden doorways or invisible buttons to press. Alternatively, as excellent as the art style is, it could be that some of these items and objects fail to stand out as intended and therefore are easy to miss even when a player is hunting them down.

What I can say for certain is that the art-style manages to throw back while simultaneously touching up the graphics for modern resolutions. The environments and textures look retro while being more complex and superior to what players had in the 90’s. The enemy A.I. is also capable of flanking and more tactical behaviors than their monstrous predecessors in the likes of Doom or even Quake II. For these reasons and more, I’m glad to add Selaco to my wishlist.

Earth’s Shadow

It is difficult enough to try and be honest and critical with indie games given that they are often passion projects built with limited resources and budget. If the developers happen to be working day jobs as well, then time itself becomes the most costly of currencies with which to build a game. It is even more troublesome to be critically honest when playing a game by a single developer.

When the Earth’s Shadow demo concludes, a splash screen appears informing you of its creator, William R. Fisher, who has been releasing games since 1990. His credits include the Last Half of Darkness series as well as recent dungeon crawlers Bloodlust and Vampirem. I have heard of none of these games, and upon looking up footage of the latter, I could see that there was a reason for that.

It may sound as if I am implying Earth’s Shadow and its predecessor are bad games, but I honestly don’t think that’s the case. A truly bad game is broken, frustrating, and leaves you wanting to do anything but play that game. Earth’s Shadow has enemy A.I. that never seems to behave like an actual living creature, with hostile beasts and aliens that aggressively attack one moment only to suddenly turn and hike around other parts of the map. Why? Beats me. It’s also too early to determine if the level design is any good as well. The sprint function is odd, more of a “toggle” mode with an inconsistent duration. One’s targeting reticule rarely seems to match up with where the bullets are going, and yet enemies take damage nonetheless.

Despite these issues, I was not wondering when the demo would finally end. You could perhaps argue that the game is greater than the sum of its parts, as its role-playing systems were functioning well. Chests were scattered about the environment with new gear and keys to other chests or doors. Some of these chests and doors had puzzles that helped break up the exploration and often rewarded the player with new loot. The player could boost their stats based on which higher level gear they desired to equip, steadily improving their stats and prowess. Despite being technically inferior to what most players expect, it was the systems of the game that succeeded in properly engaging me. I was additionally pleasantly surprised to discover that my character could not only air dash mid-jump, but would grasp onto ledges and hoist themselves up. This opened up my exploration of the world, feeding into that loop of hunting down hints and chests so that I might obtain more gear.

Earth’s Shadow is like the video game equivalent of a potboiler or penny dreadful, a type of creative work that has no chance of achieving mainstream success yet will undoubtedly find an audience. This audience will ignore the fact that the protagonist’s dialogue is presented in the UI as a dialogue choice, but it is only ever a singular choice. In fact, the user interface is easily the worst portion of the game. But it is playable, and while I wasn’t really enthralled or invigorated, I was engaged with the systems and delighted to experiment with the platforming and movement.

Earth’s Shadow is not a game for me, but it is certainly a game for somebody. I can only hope that the audience found its demo during Next Fest so that the author’s work can be appreciated.

Continue to the next entry in this series.

Direct Download

Apologies for the month-long delay, as circumstances of illness and other problems had frequently arisen. I really do wish to have as many episodes as possible and have been considering going weekly rather than our attempted bi-weekly (which is more often “hopefully we can get at least one in this month”), but we are victims of circumstance.

One of the reasons I wish to pick up this pace is the passing of Shamus Young, who had featured multiple times on my podcast and streams. I was first led to his blog through his DM of the Rings comic, and would follow his writing and comedic talents through to his short-lived Chainmail Bikini, Stolen Pixels and Experienced Points on The Escapist, and even having purchased his original fiction books while reading along his gaming adventures on his blog. I was lucky to have the chance to tell him how much I admired his ability to put out so much work on a regular schedule before he passed away, and am glad I was able to let him know how much of an influence he was. If you want to understand why I wrote out my games of the year this January, or why I’ve been going so hard at putting out the Summer Game Fest round-ups this week, it’s because I want to stop making excuses and emulate his ability to just write out his thoughts and put it out there for the world to see.

I wish I could say I will carry on the torch, but even if I had a fraction of his audience, there is no carrying his amazing talents forward. The man was a programmer, a composer of music, and an author. He was multi-talented in ways I had always hoped to be but never could, be it due to limitations in my natural born capabilities or my complete lack of discipline. However, Shamus had impacted and influenced so many that we, the collective of fans and friends inspired to work harder on our own projects, will be shining his light in some fashion in multiple corners of the world. At the very least, I want to stop making excuses and simply work harder. I don’t know if there will be anything here folks will notice that will be different, but I am keeping him in my heart to inspire me to be even a fraction of the reliable content creator he was.

There are so many words I’d like to say, and may put something more substantial together later. Obviously there’s still a lot of processing going on. Additionally, I don’t think there’s anything I, alone, could do that would feel worthy of the man’s memory and legacy. Nonetheless, even if it is a month late, don’t be surprised if I have an entire post dedicated to him and his impact.

As for the podcast itself, we didn’t exactly go in with a plan, which I fear could have hurt its overall quality. I hope you still enjoy our discussion, though it’s barely focused on the Summer Game Fest itself. YouTube channel and frequent Blizzard commentators BellularNews had a video yesterday on Overwatch 2, and I think it’s a fairly balanced perspective on how Blizzard is seeking to improve while also providing cautionary insight and observations into the plan. The nine-week season, for example, is not very long and most teams that attempted such short seasons have found themselves stretching those out. Additionally, they point to Halo: Infinite’s battle pass system as one to emulate, as you can go back and work towards that content at any time.

I, personally, am rather wary of seasons and battle passes and so on and so forth, as they rely on a treadmill that is far more concerned with the obsessive player. I’m no longer certain that these companies are trying to compete for your attention to become your sole gaming hobby, but are instead frightened of the player that does nothing but play their game every day getting bored. I think this is a mistake, as the systems are clearly designed with a manipulative hamster wheel mindset that leads even casual players to feel pressured to log in and do their dailies or whatever challenges they come up with, all for the sake of some skins and bonus currencies. I’ve referenced back to the old days when players would just log into Unreal Tournament every day because they were having fun, but those were also days before match-making algorithms took care of finding servers and games for you. If you look back at a lot of older PC gamers reminiscing about the old days, one of the common gripes is that there was a greater sense of community in those server lists. You’d start to recognize names, develop rivalries, and even build friendships. Was that social element a part of the reason that players were encouraged to keep playing the same game? Once match-making ensures that you’re playing with strangers every week, does that mean you need another incentive to keep logging in every day?

I was never a competitive PC player myself, so I’m curious if anyone out there could ponder this and let me know their own thoughts.

Finally, the “E3 is Dead” essay I mention in the podcast can be found over here. Feel free to give it a read.

Do you miss the E3 of old? Do you prefer this new format better? Are there any games you’re hyped up about from the Summer Games Fest? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Read previous round-up impressions.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox

Like 9 Years of Shadows, I found myself immediately curious about The Last Case of Benedict Fox because it was a Metroidvania doing something a bit different. This game stands much further apart due to being a Cthulu-inspired period piece, of course, and is largely why I remember it more than many of the games I had seen at Microsoft’s showcase.

I must also admit that it feels a bit more fresh for an obviously Lovecraftian narrative. Our protagonist seems to have a voice haunting and guiding him through the adventure, immediately breaking from proper convention by allowing him to communicate with the unknowable. It feels far more interested in the aesthetic of Lovecraft than the actual descent into madness, though obviously it’s too early to tell either way.

Regardless, it looks to be a Metroidvania focused more on narrative and exploration than combat, and every so often those can be refreshing. I do wish I had more to say about the gameplay demonstrated, which looks to be some decently polished platforming over action. In the end, though, I’m afraid it’s the game’s style that wins me over more than the mechanics. I look forward to spinning it up on Game Pass early next year.

Daymare 1994: Sandcastle

I was completely unaware that Daymare 1998, the project born from the canceled Resident Evil 2 fan remake, had released. Imagine my surprise to see that Daymare 1994: Sandcastle, a prequel to that game, was not only in development, but gearing up for release.

Admittedly, Daymare 1998 looks a bit rough around the edges. The Resident Evil inspirations are worn on its sleeve and therefore beg comparison to the official Resident Evil 2 remake. Daymare 1994, on the other hand, looks to be quite the improvement in regards to visuals and gameplay. It also speaks very much to that action-horror I enjoy so much, keeping the player armed while refraining from giving them too much empowerment. Moreover, the paranormal sci-fi elements and opponents seem much more interesting to me than zombies or mangled monsters of body horror. This one has my curiosity, for sure.

I may give Daymare 1998 a chance if it’s on sale one of these days, but I am just as likely to skip right over to Daymare 1994: Sandcastle as it looks far more polished and interesting. We’ll have to see, as both games could make for excellent streaming fodder.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy

Every so often I wonder if a trailer can be improved through the removal of the narration. The dialogue here is awfully generic sounding compared to the visuals, and it is the gameplay that intrigues me. If I were judging purely based on the dialogue, this would be a hard pass.

However, proper stealth and ninja games can be hard to come by, and this one seems to throw in some interesting platforming challenges. Melting into the shadows is already a neat gimmick, but then creating a series of obstacle courses and pathways that encourage the player to skillfully weave their way through the shade and darkness is a substantial addition to gameplay possibilities. In other words, this won’t just be a stealth murder game, but a platformer of sorts, too.

This was also a surprise from Microsoft’s showcase, and while it wasn’t a very large one, it was certainly a pleasure to see. I look forward to seeing and hearing about more, though this one was without a date or release window.

Ravenlok

I don’t much care for the voxel art-style popularized by Minecraft, but Ravenlok manages to execute on the idea in a way that blends boxy digital characters, papercraft, and other miniature-style works into a pleasing and consistent design. At the start of the trailer, I was wrinkling my nose. By the end, I was ready to see more of this world’s unique rendering.

This is a game where the mechanics are only part of the draw. It has some decent looking action combat, but there’s not enough to determine how smooth, polished, or complex the gameplay is. It could be a sort of “beginner’s first Devil May Cry or Dark Souls” given the game’s appearance, which has good or bad implications. The game could be simplified so much that it is a snore to play through. On the other hand, it could offer just enough challenge while being a nice, comparatively relaxing break from those other, more complicated and difficult titles.

In addition, I’m really digging the Through the Looking Glass homage and inspiration. The game does not seem to be a direct retelling of Alice in Wonderland, yet all of the hallmark symbols and tropes are there. The looking glass itself, the white rabbit, the red queen, so much rendered and reimagined in a way that makes Tim Burton’s film look like the Hollywood cash grab it is. I’m eager to see what comes of Ravenlok, though it is another that won’t see the light of day until 2023.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

I typically don’t go for purely cinematic trailers without any hint of gameplay, but Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty was certainly doing it for me. Opening up with Team Ninja’s logo, I immediately began speculating a possible Nioh 3 only to be surprised by a fresh new title.

Of course, the game’s producers both have past credits in Nioh and Bloodborne, and recent video interviews have effectively confirmed that it is another Souls-like in the making. Nonetheless, the trailer itself was able to deliver enough excitement to remind me of how E3 used to feel despite the lack of gameplay.

During the reveal of Redfall, Shamus, Joey and I discussed how the Left 4 Dead cinematic trailer was perfect. It represented all the core mechanics of the game, gave each character just enough personality, and also used the same sound effects, musical cues, and logic as players would experience in the game. While the same cannot be said of the Wo Long trailer, it certainly showcases potential foes, hints at mechanics, and reveals a dragon boss I ache to fight. It’s not much, but I’ll take it for now.

Scorn

I think it was 2020 when I first saw gameplay footage of Scorn. The artwork bears such a striking resemblance to H.R. Giger’s work that you’d swear the man himself was the concept artist. One could mark it as derivative as a result, but the style is so on-point you have to respect their ability and dedication to do the man’s unique visions justice.

What really keeps me invested in the game, however, is that it feels as if it is delivering on the promise of the original Prey. The world is truly alien, but more importantly, it is truly hostile. Biomechanical creatures and environments are the labyrinth through which the player must navigate and escape, utilizing the living weaponry as a last resort and engaging only when necessary.

That’s the promise, at least. We finally have a release date, and I am thoroughly tempted to purchase the game despite its release on Game Pass. However, I’d rather make sure it lives up to my expectations first, especially as rumors are swirling that playtests were rough. I eagerly await the release, but am going to hold off until I’ve played it on Microsoft’s service before making any purchasing decisions.

Exoprimal

I know I had technically outlined this as a game I am excited for towards the end of part one, and had not planned to outline it here due to how cautious I remain for its overall quality. That the main gameplay mode demonstrated is Player versus Environment versus Player, the same style established by Destiny 2’s Gambit mode, had me feeling rather deflated. When I watched Capcom’s extended gameplay demonstration, however, all of the caution began to give way to optimism.

It is difficult to describe how exciting it is to just watch a horde of raptors run into an energy shield, their bodies pushing and shoving one another like water attempting to break over a dam. Pay close attention and you’ll notice that the seemingly singular hive mind of this herd is actually made up of individual thinkers, the occasional dinosaur redirecting and seeking an alternate path or target from the rest of the group. This is a big bucks AAA effort dedicated to a game where armored suits combat against dinosaurs.

I don’t know how else I can summarize the appeal. That sentence ought to speak for itself. Nonetheless, there are some concerns, such as a potential lack of game modes and the potential damage sponge nature of “special units” like explosive and sniping dinosaurs. I fortunately have enough friends interested in the game that I shouldn’t have to worry about finding teammates, but multiplayer-focused games are always a big ask nonetheless since they rely heavily on an active community.

Still, Exoprimal is now one of the titles I am most excited to play, and I have signed up for the Closed Network Test taking place later this year.

Everything Else

Obviously I am also interested in Callisto Protocol, though it’s status as a spiritual successor to Dead Space diminishes the excitement somewhat. Blasting the limbs off of horrifying, mutated monstrosities was part of its genius, and many of the creatures were uniquely designed to encourage unique and varied tactics from the player. Thus far, Callisto Protocol has no such gimmick, and as such monsters all look to be handled in a more straight-forward manner. Nonetheless, it looks pretty slick, and arrives just in time for… Christmas.

It was similarly great to see more of Hollow Knight: Silksong, but without a release date it’s kind of pointless to rejoice in its mere existence. The news, of course, was its availability on Game Pass day one, but this is a title I think I’d like to purchase nonetheless. As I stated yesterday, the Resident Evil 4 remake comes with as many concerns as it does excitement. I’m obviously looking forward to Final Fantasy XVI, but such hype is swiftly squashed by the knowledge that it is currently a PlayStation 5 exclusive.

What I am most excited for, in all honesty, is the fact that Dragon’s Dogma II is real and in development. Hideaki Itsuno and his team are back on board working on the sequel, though they had nothing more to show for the time being than t-shirts with a logo. I highly doubt we’ll be seeing the game release before 2024 at this rate, so there’s nothing more to do than rejoice in the knowledge that it’s happening.

There’s also not much to say of A Plague Tale: Requiem. It looks like the first game but more, which means all that’s left is the release date, which is being held ransom for Focus Entertainment’s own showcase. Will Nintendo announce a new presentation in the coming days? Will Sony reveal the release date of God of War: Ragnarok shortly after? Who can say.

Nonetheless, these are the games I choose to highlight from this Game Fest. With luck, I will have plenty of titles from the Steam Next Fest to discuss next week as well.

Read previous round-up impressions.

It’s difficult to determine what games to outline as highlights of the show given how many of them were known quantities. Many of the unreleased games living rent free in my mind, such as Crimson Desert, DokeV, and Lies of P, were nowhere to be found. Microsoft’s first-party games in development such as Hellblade: Senua’s Saga and Avowed were also absent from the publisher’s showcase. As a result, most of the games that have stood out are primarily games I already knew about and have been following for some time.

Additionally, I was not capable of following all the showcases as they streamed this year. This left me scrambling to see what they revealed, the majority of which were outside of my wheelhouse. There are plenty of games that certainly look interesting, such as Nivalis, but I have no real interest in playing a cyberpunk-themed slice-of-life. Not outside of VA-11 Hall-A, at least.

It also doesn’t help that I’ve grown more picky as time progresses. While a game like Morbid Metal checks all the right boxes on paper, the lack of enemy flinch or proper feedback gives it a tedious, damage-sponge look. Those that read my Beta impressions of Marvel’s Avengers know that the feel of combat and tactile feedback in an action game are very important to me, and it is the one crucial ingredient this upcoming game seems to be lacking. My impressions are similar for Elsie, a Mega Man styled action platformer whose mechanics look just a tad jankier than Smelter, an indie game I overall enjoyed but found lacking in tightness of control.

This leaves me with a lot of games that caught my interest or had me curious, but aren’t really generating excitement or a desire to add to the wishlist. Nevertheless, I have been able to sift through enough trailers to pick out some highlights of this year’s Game Fest.

PalWorld

This game should fill me with far more fear given how plagiaristic (I can’t believe that’s a real word) it looks. Everyone has already pointed out how similar many of these creatures look to very specific Pokémon, and the iconic yellow-and-black fuzzball is an obvious fusion of Electabuzz and Totoro. However, the protagonist herself is a complete redesign in the style of Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn. The color palette is the exact same and only differs in hair style. I don’t know if I should blame the artists themselves or the game director(s) dictating the art direction, but there was a lot of homework being copied on this one.

Despite the lack of visual originality, there’s something charming about the cute and cuddly fusion of pocket monsters and heavy artillery. Perhaps what Pokemon Legends: Arceus was lacking was the ability to strap a pair of heavy duty missile launchers to a Lapras before mowing down a whole herd of Bidoof? I’m not sure, but this game is mashing up all kinds of mechanics into something looking bizarrely enticing.

The question is what the actual flow of gameplay is going to look like. You catch monsters, use them on a farm, and go shooting slavers and critters alike, but to what purpose? What’s the story and what is the end goal? Does the game even have a release window? It’s a frequently showcased title at these events, and yet it is starting to feel like we’re seeing nothing new. Perhaps it’s time to hold off until you have something worth showing?

Signalis

What makes this game so appealing is the manner in which it can evoke the feeling of those old survivor-horror games of the original PlayStation without directly imitating them. The graphics maintain that low-poly and texture look while portraying the environment and action clearly. The camera is static but not in the same manner as the original Resident Evil titles. The experience has a nostalgic vibe while managing to come off as a fresh take.

I am a sucker for action-horror, but only because I am enough of a coward to want a proper weapon in these sorts of games. This makes Signalis an ideal throwback for me as the majority of the genre has either gone fully into the unarmed runner stylings of the indie scene or back into the full-fledged action of Resident Evil Village. These nice, in-between titles are the sweet spot I eagerly look for.

Admittedly, I have no clue what the story could be about, but the artwork and design give off the vibe of a 90’s science-fiction anime. This, too, speaks directly to my interests. It has a Steam Next Fest demo, so I will likely be playing and reporting on it next week.

9 Years of Shadows

The best pixel art is that which seeks to supersede the best of the old days, rather than just match or imitate it. There are a lot of pixel-based side-scrolling Metroidvanias, many of which minimize the detail to save on time and budget or emphasize the gore and blood to fuse the Castlevania of old with the Dark Souls and Bloodborne of today. The trailer for 9 Years of Shadows feels as if it offers something refreshing from the rest by focusing instead on a vibrant color palette bursting out from the monochrome opening, only to then showcase its protagonist in a variety of functional outfits. The art design here is excellent.

However, I also think it’s the promise of each outfit serving a separate utility, introducing a somewhat Mega Man influence to the gameplay rather than strictly Castlevania, Metroid, or Soulsborne. While watching the trailer I found myself wondering how these outfits might be acquired and in which ways they might be implemented. I immediately wanted to know more about this game.

This is the sort of indie game that can grab my attention these days. The classic roots of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are plain to see, but the deviations and attempts to surpass what has been established are what allows the game to pop. I definitely look forward to finding out more, and wish it was one of the titles that had a demo in the Steam Next Fest.

Wanted: Dead

Every time I see this game I can’t help but think of WET, an incredibly janky mid-budget third-person action shooter whose demo convinced players to not even bother with it. The casting of Eliza Dushku, one of the most bland actresses seen on television and in film, acted more as a repellent than the marketing highlight the developers had hoped for.

That, however, was that. Wanted: Dead, on the other hand, looks to have promise. The trailer itself is a bit odd, interrupting the action with occasional strange asides such as the “one hand” remark. As oddly placed as these little interruptions are, they clearly suggest a narrative somewhat reminiscent of Robocop and its protagonist’s rediscovery of a former life. WET had little more promise than a “strong” female protagonist kicking butt and taking names, but the end result was a lack of imagination and personality. Wanted: Dead, on the other hand, already feels like its creators have a story they want to tell and that this character means something to them.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is what has me cautious. It looks fine enough in the trailers, but this attempt at fusing high-speed melee action and third-person shooting has been done before and with hefty budgets. So far it looks fine, but there’s that trepidation that it will feel awful in execution. There’s no telling with regards to enemy A.I., either. As a result, my interest is piqued, but my hackles are up.

Eternights

Possibly the first true surprise of the season, I had no clue what this game was when it premiered at Sony’s State of Play. Assuming it was another mid-budget title from a smaller Japanese studio, I was surprised to discover it is actually the passion project of a guy that quit his job after playing Persona 5 to make a game of his own.

I’m not sold on the actual combat mechanics yet, in part because there was very little demonstrated in the trailer. More time was devoted to a quick-time event than the regular rough and tumble melee action I’m supposing makes up the gameplay. Instead, the narrative and dating-sim elements take center stage here, with such lascivious content as hand-holding on full display.

Really, there’s not enough to go off of yet. It’s an impressive looking title for such a small development team, and it certainly has potential to be interesting. To that end, the trailer did its job and got me curious. More information is needed, however, before a real decision is made.

VergeWorld

I’m not the biggest fan of rogue-likes or procedural gameplay, but I’m definitely a fan of Star Fox on the Super Nintendo. It’s possible that randomly-generated levels are the perfect sort of tool to recapture the spirit of those summer afternoons blasting away the forces of Andross. At the same time, memorizing those maps and learning where enemies spawn from in order to tighten up one’s play and chase a better score were essential to the game’s staying power.

VergeWorld looks as if it could capture the spirit of Star Fox for a modern age, at least far more than any of its sequels. The question is whether those procedural maps – and therefore constantly changing obstacle courses and enemy spawns – can match the carefully considered design of the original. No more subpar Landmaster, Submarine, or Helicopter vehicular segments to worry about, just straight up trench running through an on-rails level to blast all the bogeys at twelve o’ clock. The promise is certainly there.

I have the demo from Steam Next Fest downloaded, so hopefully I’ll be able to give greater feedback on this one next week in addition to Signalis. Keep an eye on the blog next week to hear what my highlights were from Steam Next Fest and if VergeWorld remains one of the highlights of Summer Game Fest.

Summer Game Fest impressions continue here.

It is the morning of Monday, June 6th, as I begin to cobble together these thoughts and drafts. There is a headline in which Geoff Keighly, host of Summer Games Fest and The Game Awards, warns viewers that the event will focus primarily on announced games. It is an understandable word of caution, with crazy and unfounded rumors flying left and right as eager consumers hope for some slew of colossal surprises.

This has generally been the state of things for several years now, and was something I had picked up on in Sony’s State of Play. Aside from the opening trailer for a Resident Evil 4 remake – long-rumored but never officially addressed by Capcom – every game showcased was a known quantity. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as last year’s Elden Ring reveal was for a previously announced title and yet managed to be the talk of the summer. Sometimes, the best source of marketing available is to answer a question, and for many games this year, that question is simply “what will it be like?”

It is now Monday, June 13th, a week after having written the above two paragraphs. I have deleted a page and a half of text I had written a week ago, abandoned after having been inspired to declare E3 dead. The majority of the Game Fest has concluded. Unlike last year, I’ve missed approximately half of the shows. I have not seen the Guerilla Collective showcase nor have I consciously seen anything aside from the PalWorld trailer from the Future Games Showcase. Capcom’s stream begins in less than two hours, Microsoft has an extension planned for tomorrow, Ubisoft has just scheduled a live stream focused on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Square Enix and Blizzard aim to have streams focused on Final Fantasy VII and Overwatch 2 on Thursday, respectively, and Focus Entertainment has also just announced today that A Plague Tale: Requiem won’t be getting a release date until their own stream on June 23rd.

E3 is most certainly dead, and Summer Games Fest is no festival of games.

I do not mean to be melodramatic, nor do I mean to say things are now worse than they were before. It is all a matter of perspective, first and foremost. There were certainly detriments to the old methods of E3, and ultimately there are far better things to do with one’s time than celebrate commercial excess of luxury items. Simultaneously, my rose-tinted glasses are most certainly forgetting the volumes of snark and sarcasm that dripped from my lips and the mouths of many others. I may miss the old E3 now, but I certainly did not appreciate what I had of it.

When I wrote about E3 in 2021, I observed that the event had become the first of many trade shows spread across the summer, and therefore a part of a multi-phase marketing strategy for every game and publisher throughout the industry. Geoff Keighley is simply trying to put a label onto the entire season, but no festival lasts for several weeks, let alone months. Part of the joy is how densely packed together all of that excitement and hype is. Stretching it out simply means the best announcements and information are spread further apart. The intense blitz of media is no longer a constant, in-your-face slew of trailers and announcements, but the occasional news break in the middle of your work day.

As I stated last week, this makes the most sense for the larger publishers and platform holders. They get to dominate more of the conversation rather than being forced to compete and be compared. This is fine, but those of us old enough to remember those old days – even if we forget how many jibes and jabs we gave to the tie-wearing suits scanning the teleprompters up on stage – will always feel empty in comparison to how it used to be. It’s a shame to have lost that.

With that out of the way, let’s get to some of my thoughts on corporate strategies and what games I’m looking forward to.

Microsoft & Sony

I was surprised to see PlayStation fans mocking Microsoft for many of their game announcements being available on their chosen console platform as well. Part of it is because I’m shocked to see the console wars taking the exact same shape they had twenty years ago. There are reasons I have chosen a bias towards Microsoft this generation, but I do so in part because I want Sony to suffer the burden of competition so that they might improve their strategy and services. I do not perceive any boon to Microsoft as a “victory”.

It was more surprising, however, because it seems to completely miss the point. Microsoft is not flaunting exclusivity, they are celebrating the presence of these games on their Game Pass service. A few days before their showcase Microsoft announced that Samsung Smart TVs would start shipping with the Xbox App, allowing customers to stream games straight to their TV. If you have a subscription to Game Pass, then you can play games on your TV without an Xbox or PC… and, by extension, without a PlayStation or Nintendo Switch.

Will this be a successful move? I don’t know, though word is that Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming is far better than their competitors in regards to quality and latency. Nonetheless, this further confirms that Microsoft is more interested in subscribers to their service on any platform possible rather than exclusively tying them to the Xbox console ecosystem.

To that end, one must wonder if Sony’s strategy will be successful in the long-term. On the surface, their revamped PS+ is incredibly competitive to Game Pass. Many of the recent generation games overlap, but there are also plenty of third parties that either left Game Pass or were never on there. The list of PS3 titles is even more impressive, but restricted to Cloud streaming. Nevertheless, combined with Sony’s own legacy first parties and classic titles stretching back towards the original PlayStation, one could argue that the new PS+ is offering a far better selection than what Microsoft has.

However, there’s a question of recency, and it is clear that Microsoft is looking to future releases while Sony leverages its own past. We already know that Sony has no interest in releasing their first party titles on their revised PS+ service in order to “preserve” their “virtuous cycle”, whatever that means. We also know that new games on the PlayStation 5 are going to increasingly sell for $70, which is becoming a larger ask as the economy causes the basic necessities to hit the wallet harder. If Microsoft succeeds in offering more and more recent titles on day one while Sony can only offer back-catalog titles, then Microsoft could have an edge.

Note that I only say could, because only time will tell. Additionally, Sony’s library may be impressive, but it is also only available on the PlayStation 4 and 5 ecosystem. Xbox Game Pass is, as already iterated, available not just on Xbox platforms, but PC, phones, and now, televisions. Sony is clearly beginning to release more of their first-party titles on PC, but will PS+ be available on as many devices and platforms as Xbox Game Pass?

One must also wonder if Sony is somehow ashamed of their legacy catalog. Yes, they are certainly willing to use their old titles to coax players into subscribing to their service, but it’s almost as if PlayStation’s first parties before The Last of Us are irrelevant to the company’s future path. Many frustrated players have already voiced all the PS3 or earlier franchises that could use a modernized remake or port more than The Last of Us, and the idea of having to pay $70 for a game that can already be enjoyed with a suitable, good-looking remaster on PS4 and PS5 is… well, I won’t say it’s greedy, but it’s certainly exploitative.

If Microsoft is doing anything well with their first-party efforts, it is the sense of variety in games being provided. Unfortunately, there is hardly anything to see or be said of whether these first-parties even exist, as not a single one seems destined to release this year. Hellblade: Senua’s Saga was nowhere to be seen during this recent showcase, nor was the rumored Avowed by Obsidian Entertainment. Bethesda’s new big game Starfield finally revealed its gameplay, but had to be delayed into 2023. While Microsoft’s Forza Horizon and upcoming Forza Motorsport present an excellent alternative to Sony’s microtransaction infested Gran Turismo 7, Halo Infinite remains an incomplete mess compared to Demon’s Souls, Returnal, and Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart. If Sony ships God of War: Ragnarok in 2022, then one must wonder if Game Pass will be enough to convince players to opt for Microsoft, be it on Windows or Xbox.

In this day and age, a third-party console exclusive will eventually make its way to other platforms. First-parties, however, are something that can be leveraged, and Microsoft needs a library worth leveraging. After all, that’s part of the reason PS+ is so appealing, and that’s why Nintendo can continue to sell gangbusters despite having weaker, more restricted hardware.

CAPCOM

Before I jumped into individual game releases, I wanted to take a moment to discuss Capcom now that their showcase has come and gone (Note: obviously this portion was written after the 13th, when I had finished drafting the opening paragraphs). Every year there are players demanding sequels to all of their favorite and forgotten franchises. However, I think it is important to keep in mind that Capcom is far more selective in projects these days, and also incapable of developing the sheer volume they once could.

I do not believe Capcom has anything major slated for 2022 outside of Monster Hunter: Sunbreak and, now, the Resident Evil Village expansion content. No doubt they will be focusing their hype machine on those two releases rather than any singular new title. Yes, they have smaller releases such as Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium and Capcom Fighting Collection, but their next slew of major releases are all slated for 2023. Exoprimal, Pragmata, Street Fighter VI, Resident Evil 4, each of these will be shipping in 2023, and it is possible that those are the only major releases we’ll see next year.

Which, admittedly, is a good year for a developer. Games are expensive and take several years to develop, and as of late, Capcom has shown that they are willing to take the time to make their games really good. Resident Evil 3 is the closest to a major failure, and despite being a disappointment it’s not a bad game. This does not guarantee all future endeavors will also be good (and, if anything, causes concern they’ll become complacent), but I have confidence in Capcom’s decision to spend more time developing fewer projects to ensure better overall quality.

That said, both the Monster Hunter and Resident Evil franchises are by far Capcom’s biggest earners. As such, the only titles we can be sure of Capcom working on are a new entry to each series at any time. I have no doubt that they have a team working on a follow-up to Monster Hunter World, and it should be obvious that Resident Evil IX is in early stages of production. This means there are only so many other teams that can be working on new games and content.

So, don’t go expecting announcements of a Devil May Cry 6, a new Breath of Fire, another Mega Man, or – much to my dismay – Dragon’s Dogma 2. I would love it if any of these were to exist, but Capcom only has so many resources and none of these continue to be successful franchises like Monster Hunter and Resident Evil.

As for which games I’m looking forward to, well, pretty much everything Capcom is working on right now gets my interest. I will be purchasing the expansions for Monster Hunter Rise and Resident Evil: Village, I have put in my ticket for the Exoprimal closed network test, and eagerly await to hear more of Street Fighter VI and Pragmata. I may have misgivings towards the Resident Evil 4 remake, but there’s no way I will miss out on it.

I’ll write about all the other titles that caught my eye this Games Fest next time.

I am not reacting to the recently reiterated promise by the ESA that E3 shall resume in 2023. I am sure they will be holding an event that bears the name of E3 while Geoff Keighley and so many other companies continue to do their own thing. Last year, I spent many words lamenting the current state of E3, what it has evolved into, and what it has failed to evolve into. I also concluded that it was the Internet that had driven it to change both for better and for worse.

Despite knowing that Keighley’s Summer Game Fest was still going to occur this year and many other presentations would be happening, I had failed to muster the same type of excitement I had last May. Now that we’re approaching, there’s some degree of hype and anticipation. On the whole, however, I’m not really expecting much.

I couldn’t really put my hand on why until YouTube had suddenly recommended me this look back at E3’s 2004 showfloor. I was specifically seeking out one of Valve’s Half-Life 2 presentations when it popped up, and it led me to reliving the highlights of the 2004 press conferences of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. I was suddenly back in my College dorm room, just a couple weeks out from summer break, watching low-resolution videos and clips from the conferences over and over again in excitement.

We’ve theoretically come a long way since the early 2000’s in terms of video streaming and access to information. In fact, if you look at the Summer Game Fest schedule, we’ve never had such access to so many streams and presentations at once. There’s bound to be announcement after announcement after announcement, a veritable media blitz for the gaming consumer to drown in.

So why is it that I long for the days of low-resolution video and requiring three or four separate media players in order to watch a two minute clip that took thirty minutes to download?

The first reason is simple: too much of a good thing. Despite several years of taking off from work for E3 and its myriad conferences, I’d never felt the sheer exhaustion I had experienced last year from following every smaller publisher or publication’s event, primarily focused on indie-level game darlings that had all begun to blur together. So many games with the very same pixel-art styles inspired by the same handful of childhood favorites or modern classics, embodying a new form of trend-chasing wholly separate from that of the AAA publishers. If the intent is to try and give indie games more of a chance and platform, then the sheer quantity of events doing the same thing within such a short span of time is not the way to go about it.

This, I think, is a problem. In the wake of Sony and other large publishers taking their games and going elsewhere, we’ve had a vacuum instead flooded by games of a limited budget relying on the same rogue-like and simple pixel models in order to cheaply generate a game with dozens of hours of content. Ironically, the best way to stand out is to have far more polished art and gameplay developed by comparatively larger teams. We’ve managed to not only fail to help indie games stand out, but also create the same quality discrepancy that already exists when comparing indies to their AAA counter-parts. Any title developed by Supergiant Games, creators of Hades, Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre, is going to overshadow anything by a smaller, two- or three-person team working part-time.

Indies, however, aren’t why the E3 of the past is dead. It’s just a symptom of the times. Indie games have arisen due to the ease of access to tools and knowledge, widespread broadband Internet, rise of digital distribution, and increase in information outlets. It is only natural that those same reasons for indies to have arisen is also why so many more publishers or outlets are able to put together shows of their own. You no longer need to rent physical space in high demand, competing with the deep coffers of larger publishers that are guaranteed a hefty chunk of showfloor before you’re even able to see what’s available. No floor space necessary when you can just stream it all!

That limit in floor space was, perhaps, a necessary limiter on the event. One of the reasons old E3 was exciting was certainly the vast quantity of news on a huge number of titles, but there were only so many titles you’d have to dig up and learn about.

Pragmatically speaking, and also commonly known at this point, E3 began as a trade show targeting retailers, investors, and media reporting on the latest trends and products. It wasn’t designed for consumers primarily, and I think that might have honestly been to the benefit of the old shows. When Reggie Fils-Aime takes the stage for the first time in 2004, he’s taking shots at both Sony and Microsoft in a way that investors and retailers will understand. To a consumer it might sound like console war marketing, but when you’re perceiving these presentations as opportunities to earn, then it’s a somewhat different story.

That competition meant it was a great way to get a handle on each company’s strategy going forward. In 2004 Microsoft was showcasing their prototype concepts for expanding Xbox Live, online communication, and downloadable content. Very little of it resembled the reality of Xbox Live’s evolution on the Xbox 360, but it was still exciting to see what Microsoft was working on.

Compare that to today, where Sony announced their PlayStation VR2 on their own blog and their latest State of Play has failed to even provide a release window, let alone a date. The greatest sense we have of what Sony is working towards comes from an Investor call a few weeks ago. Even the Nintendo Switch was revealed out-of-season, beginning with a trailer in the Fall of 2016 before receiving a live, isolated presentation in January of 2017, one month before the console was to launch.

These isolated moments can still be exciting moments, but it was the combination of them together that made E3 feel like a proper festival or holiday. Sitting down and watching all three press conferences from 2004, it left me with the impression that it was an incredible year to be a gamer. Sony cut the cost of the PlayStation 2 in half and were showing off Killzone, Gran Turismo 4, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, God of War, Jak 3, Sly 2, and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. They showcased their PlayStation Portable and its release schedule, and revealed their Cell Architecture, the core technology that would define the PlayStation 3 system. Microsoft followed this up with the release date reveal of Halo 2, Dead or Alive: Ultimate, Doom 3 (a game no one would have believed at the time could hope to run on a console), Jade Empire, and the announcement of a brand new racing IP, Forza Motorsport. This was all following their reveal of face-cam focused voice chat with friends over Xbox Live and “upcoming” downloadable arcade games (that would fail to manifest until their next gaming console). Nintendo would then close out the conferences with a showcase of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, StarFox Assault, Resident Evil 4, and a concluding reveal of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. These announcements bookended their handheld strategy, where they provided updates on the GameBoy Advance’s sales (which exceeded the PlayStation 2’s within a set timeframe) and revealed their upcoming Nintendo DS, taking more than a few jabs at Sony’s freshman attempt to enter the market.

You cannot look at that list of titles and claim it’s lacking in big hitters. More notably, it was also filled with a series of titles exclusive to those platforms. There were other highlight reel games as well, such as Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia, and Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door on GameCube, or Sudeki and Star Wars: Republic Commando on Xbox, but in the end you got a sense that each platform had a unique identity not just in its appearance or operating system, but in the games it was advertising.

This, I think, was also important to the time. Which console(s) you owned spoke to what your interests were as a gamer. There were always plenty of multi-platform titles, but what platform you owned had an implication regarding the types of games you preferred. It also meant a lot to see a company like Capcom choose to release a title like Resident Evil 4, a franchise that had gained its notoriety on the PlayStation, on Nintendo’s GameCube instead.

Now, however, any lone third party is going to be multi-platform anyway, and platform exclusivity is perceived as anti-consumer. I can’t say I fully disagree, as the idea of having to purchase a PlayStation 5 to play Final Fantasy XVI is not an enticing one to me as an individual. Yet there was a sense of real competition between the companies, and E3 gave the audience the opportunity to bear witness and evaluate things on their own.

Perhaps it is E3 2005 that everything began to go downhill. That was the reveal of the completely artificial Killzone 2 trailer, coinciding with Square Enix’s high-resolution rendition of the Final Fantasy VII opening cinematic that would conjure theories and demands for a remake. A year later Sony would embarrass themselves with their PlayStation 3 conference featuring the Ridge Racer meme, giant enemy crabs, and five-hundred and ninety-nine US dollars. In time we’d see Microsoft embarrass themselves with an incomplete Kinect reveal and Nintendo’s Wii Music presentation would be one of the most awkward displays put on by Shigeru Miyamoto and company. This is nothing to say of celebrity guest hosts for Ubisoft that were clearly not sober of mind or Konami’s cramped room filled with unenthused press struggling to listen past their developer’s thick Japanese accents. Companies understandably got sick of facing the wrong kind of buzz from their expensive presentations.

God bless ‘em but these poor developers were trying…

I’d say the wrong lesson was learned, choosing to remove the possibility of being an embarrassment altogether rather than correct their presentation style. From a pragmatic business perspective, however, they made the right move. This is why the E3 of old is truly dead: because it makes no sense to share the Internet’s attention with your competitor, and it makes no sense to spend so much money to put on a show that could end in disaster. In 2004, people were not done reading Nintendo Power or Game Informer magazines yet. It was still the best place to have all of the media, retailers, and investors come, look at what you’re doing, take notes, and then report on those products throughout the year. Everyone would get a fair shake over the coming months to have their items seen, and any embarrassing displays during press conferences could be swept under the rug. By 2014, however, Twitch and YouTube were alive and well and any one company could release a trailer or presentation at any time, anywhere.

Geoff Keighly is trying to muster the same excitement we all had back in 2004 for an event like E3, but it’s not going to work. It well and truly has become the sensory overload that the old show had always been accused of. You just swap out the booth babes and neon lights for pixel-art rogue-likes. The biggest hitters have little incentive to partake. Nintendo and Sony are too busy doing their own thing rather than sharing the spotlight. No corporation wants to stand up and discuss strategy to a live chat demanding impossible games or niche products only they, the handful, desire.

What made E3 work so well was its position as an industry-first event. Yes, it was always a consumer industry, but E3 was not designed to please the consumer. It was meant to generate excitement among the games press, the retailers, and the investors so they could then communicate that excitement to the customers. Now that we’ve cut out the middle man, it’s all raw marketing and no strategy. It’s several hours of hypnosis and trailers without a real chance to breathe.

I know this likely sounds silly, but it truly can be difficult to quantify why E3 once felt like a celebratory holiday. Part of it is just what the games industry was producing. Looking back on 2004, it feels like the last stretch of real polish and creativity from the AAA industry. All those good developers and brands would either become usurped with the rise of the Xbox 360 or steadily decline.

Part of it, however, is simply the manner in which the Internet changed everything. Nevertheless, while I fail to go into this Summer Game Fest with nearly the excitement as I had last year, I can also take solace that I still managed to rewatch trailers for Elden Ring and Metroid: Dread, just as I had repeatedly rewatched the trailers and demonstrations for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Halo 2. Even if I’m not as excited, it’s not like there’s literally nothing to be excited about.

I’m not the most competitive of gamers. I enjoy going head-to-head with friends and strangers in competition to an extent, but I’ve never been skilled enough to regularly be a “top gamer”. The closest was during my teenage years where my brother and his friends from College would invite me to play some fighting games with them. I came off like some sort of prodigy, adapting to any new game’s systems within a few matches and becoming a top contender. I thought I was “skilled” until I began attending a university filled with fighting game fanatics that lived, ate, and breathed joysticks, frame counts, and combos. Simultaneously, my favorite modes during LAN parties of Unreal Tournament 2K4 were the PvE focused Invasion and the objective-driven Assault. Anything that counted on twitchy reflexes to stack on the kills was far less enjoyable because I would rarely break into the middle rankings.

I think Destiny 2’s competitive Crucible mode had left me feeling bitter towards any player-versus-player activity altogether. Games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe notwithstanding, I was sick of going toe-to-toe with players far more obsessed with Destiny 2 and its systems than I was, all while chasing bounties and quests that required me to stack up kills. It’s bad enough that I knew I wasn’t on top of the rankings, but to demand a specific kill-count with specific weapons is to effectively punish anyone that fails to measure up with the wannabe digital athletes that live on those maps. Crucible effectively killed my interest in anything that wasn’t player-versus-environment.

Then, on a whim, I decided to start playing Splatoon 2 on Saturday mornings. I wasn’t quite feeling the hype for its upcoming sequel yet, and I had long since abandoned it as my friends were all gaming elsewhere. Nonetheless, I wanted to brush my skills up a bit for the sequel and so decided to dip myself back into its reservoir of chromatic ink.

I can’t believe I had forgotten how much I loved this game.

I’m still somewhat nostalgic for the original announcement of Splatoon and the general response to the game. It was an idea no one had seen coming from Nintendo, and yet it seemed so perfectly fitting in execution. Word from players and press at Nintendo’s booth was how fun and exciting the game was. Despite a degree of trepidation from Nintendo’s first foray into developing a competitive shooter, it was still absolutely thrilling to see such a unique idea emerging from the younger creative minds at the company. I enjoyed it so much I had even made a video for it. I would spend my mornings before work sitting down and getting a match or two in, simply wanting to start my day with a little bit of the joy that it offered.

Somehow, on the Nintendo Switch, it feels like I instead lost that same joy, and I’m not sure how or when. In fact, I was surprised to see I had clocked over 40 hours into the game before my return to it. Where did those hours come from? I suppose many were on-and-off from the Octo Expansion, which I’ve still yet to complete. Nevertheless, I know I stopped signing onto the game as I had no friends to regularly play with.

Which is why I’m glad I decided to jump back in anyway. Yes, it certainly does stink to not have anyone else to stack up with on the regular. Whereas I can easily get some friends together for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, or even Mario Party Superstars, I don’t have many friends with flexible schedules capable of just signing on and playing Splatoon 2 with me. Nonetheless, Splatoon 2 is a rare game in which I’m fine being matched up with randoms.

I tend to be overly-cautious when I play, seeking high ground to hang back and cover specific territory. It’s not a bad strategy, but I’m working on playing more aggressively.

It’s not without its problems, as you’ll occasionally run into situations where players are regularly disconnecting at the start of a match. Though not impossible, there’s almost no hope for a team that’s down a player to win a match. Odds are if you’re down a squid kid then you’ve already lost, doomed to be overwhelmed and possibly backed into a corner. If there were anything I’d want Nintendo to improve for Splatoon 3, it would be providing a solution to even the odds a bit more when such a thing happens. Perhaps ink is spent more swiftly for the team with the advantage, or recharges faster for those at a disadvantage? Something subtle, but able to make the match worth competing in for a team that lost a member through no fault of their own.

Despite such issues, I’ve found most players at this stage to be highly skilled and of pleasurable demeanor – at least, as much of a demeanor as one can have without any open chat. It’s not like there’s no possible “teabagging” equivalent, but such mockery does not really show up in this game in any way. It certainly could be done, as players will always find a way to be crude or vulgar against their opponents. It just seems as if the players themselves have no interest in such things. Why waste time mocking your opponent when there’s plenty more territory to ink?

This extends even to the sweaty PvE mode of Salmon Run, whose… unique approach I have since come to terms with. The game mode is only available at certain times for whatever reason, though it seems like those times might be more frequent than they had been at launch. If you’re fortunate enough to jump in when it’s available, you’ll be tossed into a hectic horde mode that chooses the player’s weapons for them, swapping who holds what gun every round. This, I think, is a good idea on paper, but too often leads to players being given something they’re not really suited for.

The Heavy Splatling Gun is useful in very select situations. Situations it is less useful in can easily result in one’s demise.

Each weapon has its own advantages against certain enemy types. By randomly assigning weapons to the different players, it encourages them to fulfill different roles, change their playstyle, and shift their focus to where they can best serve the group. The problem is that not all players will be able to pick up on these adjustments when they play, and even if they know where their weapon would best be used, they may not know how to best position themselves or squeeze out of a dire situation. To provide an example, I am no good with the charge rifle, Splatoon 2’s equivalent of a sniper weapon. I understand that certain boss creatures are more vulnerable to the charge rifle than other weapons and that I should target them. I also understand that the gun is best used at a distance.

Unfortunately, I always tend to get surrounded by the lesser Salmon creatures that attack in swarms. Without the ability to communicate with my teammates, I’m unable to try and get someone to watch my back while targeting, say, taller foes whose weak points are only visible for a short period of time. Or I fail to notice that I’ve become the target of a series of missiles or am about to be swallowed up by a large, carnivorous fish because I’m too busy trying to aim down the sights of my rifle while charging that perfect shot.

I understand the role I am supposed to serve, but in the end I feel more like dead weight to the team. If I happen to do Salmon Run on a day that two of the guns in rotation are charge rifles, then I am guaranteed to be dead weight.

It might be better to try and provide players a limited choice of role, highlighting what class of weapon they perform best with. Perhaps it’ll be no guarantee they’ll get a certain weapon, but there ought to be a bit more control on the part of the player as to what they’ll get so that no one on the team shall be dead weight.

Each “boss” Salmonid needs to be taken out in a different manner. This one requires you to toss a grenade into each of its missile launching canisters once they open up.

Regardless, Salmon Run still manages to be an incredible time due to its combination of objectives. The first is simply to survive, which is pretty much the only goal in most Horde style gameplay modes. However, the second objective is to secure a quota of golden eggs that only appear when a boss creature is defeated. This creates a new variable, forcing players to perhaps take a risk swimming into dangerous territory to obtain an egg, immediately turning and fleeing away from the battlefield to store the egg in a basket. Time away from the battlefield means time for the salmon creatures to begin swarming part of the map, and the more salmon flooding the map the more chaos the player must sift through.

It’s an excellent, hectic, and exciting mode, and one that certainly appeals to a player such as myself. However, it does not quite run on the same philosophy as the competitive modes. The magic of Splatoon 2 and its predecessor are that you don’t have to be good at player-versus-player competition to contribute to your team. It is just as effective a strategy to flee enemy players, swimming your way to a less populated part of the map so that you can spray some ink elsewhere. While defeating other players contributes by removing them from the field for a time, avoiding death is just as much a contribution for your own team. Players do not win through kill count, but through the amount of territory covered.

Of course, it can certainly help to have both a decent kill count and a lot of territory covered.

This is the magic of what makes Splatoon 2 so accessible and enjoyable for all ages and skill levels, but Salmon Run loses some of that by forcing the goal to be direct confrontation. Sure, the hordes of Salmon have a far dumber A.I. than the actual intelligence of other players, but there’s so many of them, multiple bosses will be launching their special attacks at once, and the golden egg quotas encourage the player to jump right into the fray and put themselves into danger. It’s a mode where a player just trying to paint territory will barely contribute, and as such does not fit the accessible nature of the rest of the game.

Nonetheless, I wouldn’t really change that aspect of Salmon Run. It works because of how intense and sweaty it can become, and if you made it easier to succeed then it would not be as satisfying to complete. In addition, the quotas are usually low enough that you can rely on two or three other players to fill the basket with golden eggs quite easily.

The last factor I have not discussed in regards to my Splatoon 2 return is simple: I’m streaming it this time. I may not be playing the game with friends very often, but I am often with friends while playing. I believe I stopped playing Splatoon 2 in part because I was feeling more isolated during my sessions of it. I was playing other games with friends instead, and Splatoon 2 felt like a treadmill of loneliness. By streaming it, I now have friends that I can converse with while playing, and that I can hope to encourage to look at Splatoon 3 when it comes out.

Which I am now looking forward to more than I had before. While I still don’t understand why a Splatoon 3 is needed, I’ll gladly be purchasing the game on day one of its release. Hopefully I’ll have more friends willing to give it a try themselves so that I have someone to play with. I love this game, and I’m glad I’ve rediscovered the joy it brings me.

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.

Video games are something of a Trojan Horse to get certain members of its audience interested in Hi-Score Girl, but it can simultaneously act as an unfortunate repellent. Those opening episodes are so deeply invested in the mechanics and tricks of the old retro titles that I imagine anyone disinterested in the medium would struggle to stay awake. Haruo is an especially tricky protagonist, reducing his relatability to anyone unable to comprehend his obsessive attitude towards games. However, the video games themselves are essential to the lessons Haruo learns in life, and how other characters approach games can often reveal their own shortcomings or advantages.

Enter Akira Ono, a mysterious and silent girl born to a wealthy family in charge of a large, international corporation. She seems to excel at everything she does, including being a prodigious video game player. Everyone admires her and showers her with compliments… except for Haruo. Our protagonist would pay her no mind were it not for a fateful encounter at the arcade, discovering her surprising talent and resorting to cheap, exploitative tactics in order to secure a win.

At first blush, Akira Ono is the fantasy girl of a typical gamer boy of the 90’s. She’s pretty, she’s demure, and not only does she like video games, but she’s good at them! Her only “flaw”, if you could call it that, is her absolute silence. All of these traits make Ono out to be a girl too good to be true. As the series develops, however, the audience is drip fed more and more of who Akira Ono really is. She is completely isolated, forced into intense studies in which she is required to excel, and her fate has already been planned out for her by her parents and tutor. Video games become an escape, a source of perceived rebellion, and a window into her empathetic, open-minded personality: overhearing the arcade denizens tear down the “worthlessness” of Street Fighter II’s Zangief, she chose the Russian bear wrestler so that he would not know the same isolation or loneliness that she feels. A sort of camaraderie, one might say.

Nonetheless, I cannot help but wonder if Akira Ono is somewhat of a… I don’t want to say fictional or imaginary, but certainly an idealized girl. Koharu Hidaka acts as her female counter, becoming our second perspective protagonist in episode four so that the audience gets to witness the character of Haruo from outside the young man’s inner monologue. Whereas Ono is a girl of many talents and whose skill at video games causes her to shine (in our eyes, at least), Koharu is a plain young girl that behaves in school, gets decent grades, and then watches television with her family or reads. There’s no particular passion or fire to her, and therefore nothing to help her burn bright. She simply exists, and only by chance does she cross paths with Haruo.

This is where we slowly begin to get interesting glimpses into what makes Haruo himself so special, though. Yes, he is often clueless to romance and he is most certainly oblivious to the possibility of girls having feelings for him, but he is increasingly considerate in regards to sharing or treating others, and, most importantly, is always willing to share his passions with others. He is certainly shameless about being a gamer, but it isn’t shamelessness that drives him to share these passions. It is that very passion that drives him to share, to get others to understand the magic and amazement that he himself had discovered.

Koharu is afraid and intimidated by games at first, insisting to instead look over Haruo’s shoulder as he plays, but he refuses to allow this for long. He encourages her to try games herself, to face those challenges and early failures, learning from her mistakes and growing ever stronger.

Which, I imagine, is one of the reasons why fighting and arcade games feature so prominently in the story. Not only are they challenging, but they pit player against player in a test of skill. Those motivated to improve themselves will continue playing, practicing, and competing in order to overcome obstacles and face new ones. This adventure is not only true for Haruo’s desire to compete with Ono in video games, but his desire to try and keep up with her in life. He finally begins to study so that he might get into the same school as her. He gets himself a part-time job so… well, it’s so that he can buy more video games, but he also does it so that he can be more independent and contribute some of his earnings to his family. He studies to earn the license to drive a moped around town, granting him greater freedom and mobility.

All of these achievements are met with setbacks, however. Be it in his gaming skill or some external factor interfering with Akira Ono’s life, the gap between them never seems to close. Perhaps it is a bit of a spoiler to address it in such a way, but this is what makes the love triangle so interesting within this story. Koharu is “the easy route” in comparison with Ono. She has no obligation to a wealthy family to render her captive. She eventually throws herself at Haruo, offering her love and more as she is caught up in teenage angst and hormones. She yearns to cross territory that the comparatively chaste Akira Ono does not. If Haruo chose Koharu, then there would be less pain suffered for sure.

He’d be no different, however, from Koharu’s younger self insisting on watching the game over someone else’s shoulder.

True love is worth fighting for, and Koharu’s love has exclusively led her to being better at video games. However, there is nothing else she has striven to discover on her own. She makes very few decisions on her own, led instead by others guiding or suggesting to her. Love drives her, but it doesn’t necessarily drive her to improve herself or her standing.

Which no doubt sounds like I’m coming down hard on Koharu. In truth, I’ve always sympathized with the girl, and I am glad to see that her own story seems to continue fittingly in Hi-Score Girl DASH. However, I believe the theme of Hi-Score Girl as it relates to Haruo is quite clear: true love drives you to be better.

The ending of the series is left rather ambiguous, but I think the message it leaves the viewer with is a positive one. Just as Haruo will never stop playing video games and striving to get better at them, he will never stop working towards improving himself and chasing his one true love.

I do not like many romantic comedies or sappy love movies. I found Love, Actually to be one of the most over-hyped, overrated films I had ever seen, its race to the airport breaking believability and drowning me in cheese. Yet when Hi-Score Girl does the same thing in an over-the-top manner, I believe, and I believe because what this series has to say about love is far more realistic and relevant than Hollywood’s escapist consumer trash. For that reason, I highly recommend Hi-Score Girl.

Just… try to tough out those first three episodes.

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.

Yakuza 3, 4, and Lost Judgment: The Kaito Files

I’ve admittedly been wanting to write about the Yakuza franchise for a long time, but any draft I come up with just feels incomplete or lacking somehow. I have played over half of the games released in the United States now, and never have I felt as if I wasted my time. If you recall my list of games enjoyed most in 2021, I found Lost Judgment to be my first disappointment in the entire franchise. However, this was primarily due to the game’s narrative as opposed to its mini-games and mechanics, which were largely the best the franchise had to offer.

This rang true for The Kaito Files, the narrative-driven DLC that put the player in control of protagonist Yagami’s sidekick for a smaller, more compact adventure taking place after the events of the main game. It’s a potential farewell to the spin-off series, or an effort to branch off to yet another game series due to licensing disputes with the lead actor’s talent agency. Lacking in any of the franchise’s trademark side-quest antics, The Kaito Files are a focused, eight-to-ten hour adventure through Kaito’s past and potential future.

It is also representative of how far Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has come in terms of combat design. I had played this DLC in the middle of my time with Yakuza 3, a port of the PlayStation 3 game whose combat was far more frustrating and janky. Most of my success with boss fights relied on cheese and the guzzling of health restoration items rather than mastery of mechanics and observation of enemy attack patterns. In contrast, I barely used healing items in The Kaito Files because the combat had evolved far enough that you could block, dodge, and time your attacks like a proper action game. As much as I enjoyed Yakuza: Like a Dragon and welcome the JRPG approach to the franchise, I desperately hope that the action brawler format will continue in spin-offs now that they’ve properly mastered the design they had been going for.

If The Kaito Files puts a satisfying narrative cap on Lost Judgment, then Yakuza 3 is… let’s just say it is most fortunate to simply be a middle chapter in Kazuma Kiryu’s life. The game was at its best when it was acquainting the player with the protagonist’s orphanage and the children in his care. Kiryu is a man that has chosen to leave the Yakuza life behind, though the Yakuza life refuses to let him go. It is no surprise that the game is at its most comfortable and cozy when involving the player in the lives of the orphan children, helping them through their difficulties in school and youthful melodrama, only to become threatened by Kiryu’s violent and antagonist history. The game asks the pertinent question of whether one ever can be free of the clutches of the Yakuza and earn themselves that life of peace.

As much as I enjoyed this aspect of Yakuza 3, however, it really is difficult going from the more polished sequels and remakes to the state of the PlayStation 3 era titles. The combat is far more scuffed and janky and turns boss fights into an irritation rather than an exciting climax to a chapter. The final moments of the game’s narrative are also somewhat disappointing and leave a bad taste in the player’s mouth when all is said and done. Characters make decisions that feel guided more by the writer’s pen than their own internal logic, all so that certain emotional beats might be struck. That the game’s pace was so much quicker than the recent games was, perhaps, to its benefit, as it means too much time was not spent leading to disappointment.

I have since started Yakuza 4, but have done nothing more than complete the first chapter. I hope to resume my journey through the series soon.

Triangle Strategy

I fully intend to get back to this game imminently, in part so that I can continue progress through so many other Nintendo Switch games I’ve got on “the pile” afterward. It truly is a breath of fresh air in both mechanics and tone, a return to the wonderful era of JRPG’s on the original PlayStation system. It felt like that was the era where the genre was truly coming into its own, legendary titles emerging not just from Square, but multiple different companies to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Obviously Triangle Strategy is a throwback to the works of Yasumi Matsuno and the tactical RPG’s of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, though perhaps not as brutal in its execution. Allies do not permanently die on the battlefield, and one’s ranks are able to easily be over-stuffed with potential companions. Nonetheless, skirmishes are difficult and violent, filled with risk-taking maneuvers in the hope of capitalizing on terrain and probabilities. It could very well be my favorite Japanese role-playing game I’ve played in a long time.

Unfortunately, though the circumstances are many, I stopped playing. One of the reasons was due to making a choice I was no longer certain I wanted to live with. I actually perceive this as a strong point to the game’s writing and design, that you could force yourself into a decision you might later come to regret. However, I am a coward and have multiple save files as back up, so I will likely go back and make a different choice when I resume my campaign.

If you have been yearning for a role-playing game with old-fashioned turn-based mechanics and a narrative with less of an “Otaku” leaning, then Triangle Strategy is by far an easy recommendation. I look forward to playing more of it and providing more thorough feedback in the future.

Onimusha

If I had played a game like Onimusha when it was new on the PlayStation 2, would I perhaps have had a more positive perception of the system as its competing consoles released? The decision to leave Sony’s console home with my brother while I went to College was an easy one, as at that point my time was primarily spent on the Xbox and GameCube. Though Onimusha is a short title, would its Metroid-style collection of upgrades and items have introduced a new favorite?

I was able to complete Capcom’s action-horror title across two streams, my total playtime less than four hours. Nonetheless, I felt tempted to jump right back in and try for some improved game time or more complete item collection. It’s a game designed for replayability and mastery, an old-fashioned approach to value. Unfortunately, it was during this era of the early 2000’s that more and more games were shorter in length, and therefore games press and audiences alike were beginning to gripe.

How would I have felt at the time? I’m not sure. After all, it would have been $50 for a new, “next-gen” game, and it would have been completed in less than four hours. It also would have been my first experience with tank controls, so I might have easily rejected the mechanics and abandoned the title altogether. Something similar had happened with Armored Core 2, the first title I had owned on the PlayStation 2 system. It was far more difficult than I expected and I could not wrap my head around all the more simulationist aspects to customizing your mech, so I simply set the controller down one day and never went back to the game again. It is possible I could have been just as stubborn with Onimusha after finding its controls unusual and the combat counter-intuitive to a brain accustomed to RPG’s and side-scrolling action.

Either way, like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, I had missed out on something I easily could have loved during my foundational years. I only hope Capcom will continue to port the rest of the series, or perhaps even revive it with a new entry.

Elden Ring and Darksiders 3

It may sound strange, but I might be more afraid of my gaming skills deteriorating with old age than I am my physical body. Granted, my body is already deteriorating and therefore I’m already pretty used to it. I am still capable of taking on challenging games with less effort than some of my peers, however, and that means more to me than having to use a seat cushion specifically designed to prevent lower back pain. I am not great at video games, but I do believe myself to be above average, and as such there is an odd sort of “gamer pride” whose fragility has come into light during the late stages of Elden Ring. I have finally made my way to Malenia, whom you are likely familiar with as the Blade of Miquella due to all of the memes circulating social media and YouTube, and I have kind of just… stopped playing. I do not know if Elden Ring’s sense of challenge has become indulgent or not, but it no longer feels balanced in the way Bloodborne had. I was starting to sprint past more battles than I was partaking, and the joy to frustration ratio was becoming ever more unfavorable.

For this reason I decided to swap over to Darksiders 3 on my Xbox Series X. It is, perhaps, my favorite non-From attempt at a Souls-like that I’ve played so far, and one that I thought I had already beaten on its Apocalyptic difficulty. Imagine how disheartened I was swiftly becoming as I found myself struggling with the first two hours of gameplay on a fresh new save file. Has it begun? Nearing my thirty-seventh birthday, have my gaming skills finally started to deteriorate? Would I one day fail to enjoy my favorite genres? Would I, too, be cursed to gripe about the lack of easy modes like so many before me?

It turned out I had just been confused, as my previous save file had elevated its difficulty for the New Game + “Armageddon” mode. I had completed Darksiders 3 on its “middle” difficulty, aptly named “Challenging”, perhaps the best balanced for fans of character action and Souls-like combat combined. Nonetheless, I decided to go back and try out that New Game +. Expect me to (try and) write about it in the coming week, for it has allowed for an interesting return trip through a game I already enjoyed.

At the time of this writing I’ve also returned to Elden Ring, abandoning Malenia and instead tackling the Fire Giant. I’ll be endeavoring to sprint through towards the final gauntlet of bosses, all so I can feel comfortable watching those credits roll before starting anew and experiencing a far more enjoyable adventure in Limgrave once more.

It’s just as likely I’ll begin a new save in Bloodborne, though.

What’s Next?

I did not write about it, but I’ve also been dabbling in a New Game + of Scarlet Nexus. I have agreed to do a podcast episode on it with the chap that invited me on to discuss an anime, so that should be happening inside of a month or two. At some point we also anticipate a discussion on Code Vein, so, clearly there’s a bit of a long-term view going on.

In the short term, however, I’ll finally be starting Cyberpunk 2077, that much discussed CD Projekt Red title with a disastrous launch. With expectations thoroughly tempered, I’m curious to see how I feel about it, especially after looking back at The Witcher 3 as a game I enjoyed but also did not love. I will attempt to play this side by side with Scarlet Nexus and Triangle Strategy. On the stream I’ve been playing Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and expect to also have a write-up regarding my thoughts on that game as well. I also hope to post my thoughts on Summer Games Fest as it happens, so the month of June should ideally be quite full of content.

At the very least, the blog should hopefully not be as silent as it was this past May. Be sure to bookmark the home page, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter for more updates.

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It’s an old-fashioned episode featuring just Steve and me this week. After a couple of silent weeks the rumor mill has been churning more and more, confirming that we are getting closer to “E3 season”. Of course, it will instead be “Summer Game Fest season” this year as E3 takes another break and Geoff Keighley remains to pick up the pieces. All this really means is a series of other smaller organizations are holding their own digital events, such as the Guerilla Collective hosting their vast numbers of indie titles and debuts or the PC Games Show continuing to be the most cringe-worthy and bloated of presentations.

Nevertheless, now is the time for companies to either announce their upcoming projects or release dates ahead of the storm, or for droplets of leaks and teasers to signify the hurricane of trailers and press releases coming our way. I wrote about this period of anticipation last year, as the month of May is often when I become fidgety for some major announcements. I am not nearly so excited this year, however. Perhaps I’ve come to feel as if titles like Crimson Desert and Dokev are vaporware and therefore expect nothing exciting from them? Maybe the sheer onslaught of similar-looking indie titles smacked and slapped across my eyes was enough to develop an overloaded sensory exhaustion during last year’s E3 and Summer Games Festivities. Just as I had written about the digital-only expo in anticipation, I also wrote about my displeasures and misalignment with what was on display. I’ve taken a couple days off for E3 and plan to do commentary streams to some of the larger presentations, but I’m not really hyped this year.

Regardless of that hype, there’s at least plenty of industry news to chew on, and that makes for good content for the podcast. If there’s anything that is exciting about the coming months, it is getting a clearer picture of what the holiday season will look like for the games industry. Maybe some of the games I care about will get some release dates? Maybe Nintendo will pull out another delightful surprise like last year’s Metroid Dread? Only time will tell.

Have any thoughts regarding the delays of Starfield or Redfall? What of the Gotham Knights gameplay reveal? A Last of Us remake? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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.

Cash rules everything around me

Let’s take money, for example. There’s not much incentive to walk around collecting cash in Ghostwire: Tokyo if you’re not making use of all your talismans or arrows. As a result, the desire to slip down alleyways or glide across rooftops to collect more money will swiftly be reduced as you find yourself with hundreds of thousands of currency and nothing more to spend it on than cosmetics or music tracks that you’ll barely ever see or use. You could purchase food, but food is so cheap as to barely put a dent in your wallet. This is nothing to say of how freely available food is throughout the overworld, be it in abandoned convenience store bags or mysterious nether-variants of common Japanese snacks and treats. Odds are you’ll find yourself maxed out on most food items within the first few hours of the game.

Money only has a purpose once you’re constantly replenishing talismans and arrows, the former of which cannot be found in the overworld and the latter which is barely provided unless the story necessitates it. This puts the player into a decision-making predicament: use a limited resource that costs money to restore or not? Is it worth using finite and costly tools in an encounter such as this? Or would it be better to just resort to standard means?

This is why I am harsh on critics and claim they have not suitably done their job. To claim the combat is “shallow” is not constructive feedback. The developers have designed their combat system and encounters to take stealthy executions, long-distance archery sniping, and area-of-effect talismans into account, but the only feedback they have is that just firing away while walking backwards from enemies gets stale. Well, yes, they clearly know that, which is why all these other tools are available. The problem is the lack of appropriate incentive (which, admittedly, they are likely aware of now because clearly no one has made use of these tools).

My concern is that the lesson learned will be to make more drawn out tutorials, or change it so that there are foes that are only vulnerable to the stun talisman or cannot have their core exposed without the exposure talisman. In other words, rather than rely on the player to make use of their arsenal as they see fit, forcing the player to use specific weapons or equipment on specific enemies at specific times. This is not necessarily a bad form of game design, but it would remove the freedom of choice and planning that makes Ghostwire’s combat engaging.

Every shrine has one of these prayer boxes that you can drop cash into and receive health, elemental energy, or clues to different collectibles. Why not also include something that restores talismans and arrows, too?

A more subtle way to perhaps steer players into using these items more would be to place ink and parchment at the shrines, allowing the player to create their own talismans without spending money. This creates a reminder within the world that these options exist and that the player may not need to worry as much about replenishing them with a finite resource such as money.

Just as I had theorized in my prior post – which, if you recall, I had written before I had begun experimenting with all these talismans – I found that the real pleasure of combat is in trying to sneak attack or expose multiple cores in order to eliminate groups of foes swiftly. The decoy talisman is useful in these circumstances, gathering many of your targets together in a huddle before launching a stun or exposure talisman together, or charging a fireball and launching it into the crowd. What would have been extended, boring encounters of backing away from foes while rapid-firing the wind elemental power have now become swift skirmishes where the majority of mooks are eliminated immediately.

Where the talismans helped the least were the mandatory encounters filled with waves of already aggroed foes. Decoy was ineffective against already aggressive enemies and therefore made bunching them together more difficult. Stun and exposure talismans were still useful, but without knowing how many waves you’ll face or what powerful opponents lie ahead then each talisman remaining in your inventory becomes more and more precious. The thicket talisman is similarly only useful if the player is trying to be stealthy and therefore has no use in an already frantic fight. Arrows are slow and near useless once enemies have been alerted, which makes the “hangman” spirits particularly frustrating. I believe those monstrosities are vulnerable to headshots, but they move so quickly and have such volatile projectile attacks that “mastering” their encounters is a general pain in the rear.

Once more, however, this still depends on how many talismans the player has stocked up on, and whether they’re willing to part with them. As soon as you enter a story mission or side quest, it’s possible you’ll find yourself pushed through multiple encounters with no store in sight. This means any non-elemental resource you spend is gone until the quest is over, leaving the player to decide whether to use or save their talismans and arrows. Given how much of a running joke it is in the JRPG community to save your cure-all items until the final boss, only to never use them in the final encounter, I’d imagine most players will just end up holding onto their tools and relying on that minimum viable strategy instead.

A well-placed Stun talisman leads to an opportunity for either an Exposure Talisman or a Fireball. Either way, it’ll make quick work of this crowd.

Now, I’ve spent a lot of time discussing combat so far, and I think that’s because I didn’t really like it until I began to experiment more. Once I started using all the tools in Akito’s belt I found combat more rewarding and was more likely to engage with the spirits and ghosts loitering Shibuya’s streets. It’s also the one aspect of the game that is easiest to break down what is and isn’t wrong with it.

When it comes to everything else, however, that’s a little more difficult because it really is the most subjective aspect of the game. I don’t like most open-world titles, and I especially favor games like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring where you’re not chasing icons across the map. In fact, I’ve come to realize that my preference is to be given an empty map that I fill with icons. There’s something more satisfying in seeing the vague shape of a thing etched into the topography, voluntarily venturing off to explore what it could be, and then having a name and identity attached once you’ve arrived or plundered its treasures. The icon becomes a memory of a discovery rather than the next stop on your errand list.

Ghostwire: Tokyo, on the other hand, is the opposite. It’s not necessarily completely filled with icons – there are some things that don’t show up on the map – but it certainly has a grocery list of activities for you to complete. Theoretically, I should dislike Ghostwire: Tokyo because it has so many traits that I’ve come to dislike in the open-world “genre”. Instead, I actually enjoy the game and find its take on the open-world mostly relaxing.

That’s an absurd amount of icons on that map.

It could be that I’m coming off of over one-hundred hours of tense and sometimes frustrating exploration in Elden Ring, where death was common and setbacks frequent. In contrast, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a welcome world of absolute chill, where conflict could be avoided in favor of climbing to some rooftops and snatching some spirits. However, I also think it’s because Ghostwire is a smaller, densely packed world as opposed to a sprawling continent miles and miles long and wide. Most open-world games focus on being absolutely massive, but here the district of Shibuya is comparatively smaller and quick to cross. This not only prevents the player from being overwhelmed by the laundry list, but makes it easy to simply jump from one objective to the next.

I discussed this last time as well, but I think there’s something appealing about a smaller world you can just stroll through and accomplish things within. If I could turn combat off, I’d simply wander the world collecting spirits, spotting hidden tanuki, smashing money pots, and snatching up valuable trinkets desired by the many cash-hungry cats strewn throughout the city.

Is it a good open-world? I honestly don’t know how to answer that. On one hand, I feel like each activity has some sort of a purpose. Spirit rewards are converted into experience which allows you to increase your combat capabilities, and money allows you to purchase healing and talismans. Side quests, tanuki spotting, and trinkets all contribute to these rewards that then feed into the gameplay. Is there simply too much, however? Are there too many spirits strewn across this small world? Too many trinkets? Are there too many combat encounters?

For me, the answer is “not really”, but it’s because I’m not engaging with Ghostwire: Tokyo in the same way I engage with other games. For me, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a chill, relaxing, satisfying collect-a-thon broken up by occasional combat scenarios. When you combine my combat strategies with the swiftness of most open-world activities, I’m not spending too much time on any one thing. I’m getting a steady dopamine drip whilst my mind is engaged through the navigation of the world and the swift dispatch of foes from hidden positions.

Apologies for the blurry image, but did I mention how great it is to just conjure a Tengu out of thin air and grapple your way onto different rooftops? It’s probably one of the best abilities you could unlock in the game.

How does one recommend such a game, then? To whom do you recommend this game? I’m not quite sure how to answer that. If we look at the games I compared Ghostwire to last time, I’d say it is overall better than Gravity Rush, but the heights of Spider-Man’s gameplay are superior. That said, Sony’s Spider-Man also frustrated me far more frequently. Ghostwire: Tokyo has the edge for me, personally, if only because I had far fewer gripes with the experience than I had with Spider-Man.

There is value in that, I think, and it is what encourages me to defend this game more than it probably deserves. I want to make it clear that this game is not great, and my entire thesis last time was that the game is good enough that it does not need defending. I still stand by that statement, yet I feel compelled to defend it nonetheless.

If you are going to assemble yourself an open-world game that has a laundry-list of activities to complete, I’d rather you do it like Ghostwire: Tokyo than any Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry title. It is a smaller but dense location whose collectibles all fulfill a purpose of progress, uniquely interpreting the lore of the world with combat unlike other gaming contemporaries.

I can’t promise this game is worth the full $60 for you, but I certainly believe the game is worthy of more positive attention than it seems to be receiving.

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I did not at all expect our Spider-Man: No Way Home podcast to come off as negatively as it did. In fact, I anticipated Steve would be the one that enjoyed it most, with Shamus and I having varying degrees of critiques or nitpicks. Instead, it turned into a great sharing of gripes among all three of us.

Well, I say all three, but I feel like I began to dominate the complaining and critiquing in a most unfortunate manner, as always.

Still, it’s not like the film is actually bad. I can still look back at several scenes and feel enjoyment in their execution. If you were to tell me this film was a miserable experience for everyone on set, be it actors, special effects supervisors, the directors and writers, I’d be absolutely shocked. Regardless of the corporate purpose this film serves as a regularly dispensed product, I cannot help but get the feeling this was a film made by people that wanted to be there and had fun doing it. The film is a delight in regards to the mood it sets and vibe it gives off.

Yet it’s that schmalz, I suppose, that leaves me feeling as if this film’s attempt at heart is mere imitation. What is the true lesson learned? What is the message here? Not that all films should have a message, but it is difficult to understand what Peter’s actual arc is. We don’t even know if Tom Holland will continue as Spider-Man. If he does not, then the bittersweet tone of the film’s conclusion does not suggest the tragedy that is Peter Parker failing to learn what his strength is: working with others.

Most viewers will probably watch the credits roll with a welling of emotions and ultimately conclude that this was a good movie. They may even rewatch it multiple times, never questioning the film’s own logic as they delight in Otto and Osborne’s interactions or Jamie Foxx’s villainous charisma. For some of us, however, the more we think about the film, the more we’ll see just how manufactured it truly is.

Nothing breaks immersion like seeing the hands of executives and, admittedly, fandom stitch and duct-tape something together. Spider-Man: No Way Home may be one of the best portrayals of stereotypical comic book narrative, indulgence, and action on screen – and I mean that in terms of execution rather than accuracy, as I find most comic book efforts to feel mediocre and amateurish – but at the end of the day, once you get past the fun of it all, you’re left feeling hollow.

Maybe that’s why so many still look back on those Sam Raimi Spider-Man films so warmly. The first two were certainly products of a studio yearning to make money, but in the end, they still feel like the work of Sam Raimi specifically, and it’s hard to ignore the heart of a work when such a set of auteur fingerprints have been left all over.

What did you think of Spider-Man: No Way Home? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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.

It should be noted that the first season of the anime did a poor job of understanding the source material. Just as I mentioned the first time I wrote about the series, a lot of fans continue to reference and quote Hachiman’s “nice girls” speech as if the man is dropping truth bombs left and right. While I continue to believe there is some truth to his observations, it is his conclusions about those truths that are misguided and reveal how incorrect he is. Yet the first season of the anime fails to make it clear that Hachiman is not a hero. I can understand outcast teenagers missing the point just as they had so often with Evangelion – myself included – but any adult outside of high school and especially outside of College should be able to recognize that Hachiman is in need of help. The grown audience of this show should be on the same wavelength as Hachiman’s teacher, even if the students and their struggles are relatable to the individual viewer’s personal experience.

To that extent, I want to specifically focus on Hachiman Hikigaya’s insistence on refusing to change. In essence, his decision to outcast himself by his own volition is to protect himself from further embarrassment and social ostracization. If he’s going to be shut out, then at least he can do it by choice rather than the collective rejection of those around him. His decisions are all rooted in that fear of rejection, and any possible action or gesture that could give him hope otherwise is immediately shut down. The most obvious of these is when Yui Yuigahama’s phone rings: she is ready to ignore it now that she’s mustered the courage to speak her mind, but Hachiman addresses the phone which ruins the moment and confronts her with social etiquette and expectations. After all, it’s rude to leave your phone unanswered, is it not?

This fear of rejection is itself a product of another truth, however: that Hachiman is simply not like other people. While he had stumbled through a number of social faux pas in his childhood, he has now figured out the underlying rules that govern people’s behavior. While he could theoretically read the room and others’ interactions in order to be more socially accepted, he has developed disdain for those very social norms and therefore has chosen to reject them himself. Does he have to shut himself out in the process? No, and Yukino Yukinoshita is an example of that. He shuts himself out due to his inner fear.

So, combining his fear of rejection and his disdain for social dynamics, Hachiman is left with the philosophy that changing yourself for the sake of society is undignified, while simultaneously believing it’s impossible to change society itself. On the other hand, Yukino Yukinoshita believes in change, no doubt due to her own upbringing. In Japan, it’s not uncommon for children of wealthy parents and business owners to have their lives planned out for them already. To explain further would go into spoilers for the latter seasons of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU!, but suffice to say Yukino has plenty of incentive to believe in and work towards change (coincidentally enough, Hi-Score Girl deals with similar circumstances). Yukino’s service club is, in many ways, an endeavor to change herself and improve her abilities.

Also an important moment in their arc… also the first time we see Yukino dressing casual, her preference in hair style and taste in fashion being surprising and yet her demeanor being as polite (or cold) as ever.

Yukino, however, has her own fair share of problems, even if they aren’t quite as apparent as Hachiman’s. After all, he is our perspective character, and we not only bear greater witness to his own faults, but his placing of Yukino on a pedestal.

The arcs and challenges of the first season do a good job of setting the stage for the conflicting philosophies of all our characters, however. Not just Hachiman and Yukino. We not only learn more about our protagonists, but we get to see how all of the side characters are themselves navigating the crazy social dynamics of the world. Kawasaki Saki has already matured beyond the day-to-day drama and cliques of high school because she’s effectively had to in order to help support her family. Hayama Hayato is able to ease through all of the social dynamics and therefore tries his best to maintain harmony, oblivious to the manner in which those around him wear a bright, smiling mask for his sake and only when he’s around. Ebina Hina and Zaimokuza Yoshiteru have both chosen to dive into their fantasies and crank their idiosyncrasies up to eleven.

By involving the side characters in all of the different conundrums, the audience is able to hear multiple different perspectives and approaches to solving a problem, and even how they may fail to address the core issues. This is particularly true in the summer camp arc, which is perhaps the most important in the season. It is the first time the rest of Hachiman’s class is presented not as some sort of antagonistic presence, but as collaborators trying to achieve a common goal. In this way we are not only given a chance to see inside the minds of these characters more fairly, but are also witness to the flaws of our own heroes. Yukino cuts so deeply into another girl as to make her cry, and is completely caught off guard by the response. We see how Yukino’s upbringing and experiences have hardened her heart towards others to such an extent that she’s unaware of how much damage she’s causing.

Which is, perhaps, one of the reasons she takes a shining to Hachiman. Early on she lashes out at our dead-eyed protagonist with a condescending tongue, but by the end of the season their tête-à-tête is less malicious; it is replaced by the sort of back-and-forth jabs friends might take at one another. Though Hachiman’s ability to take her verbal assaults is in part due to his own self-esteem issues, that he can take the hit and (often ineffectively) dish back sets him apart from others.

The dynamic, however, is still Yukino on the offensive and Hachiman on the defensive. Perhaps that itself is reflective of their personalities and shortcomings, or simply how Hachiman looks up to Yukino and looks down upon himself. In the end, however, the season concludes with Hachiman’s solution to problems coming at a cost.

Hachiman decides to force the world to change for Yukino’s sake. However, in order to do that, he must disrupt harmony and force the individual or group to confront the truth of a situation. Nevertheless, he continues to “play by the rules”. He allows others to save face by turning himself into a villain. First, he addresses the cause of conflict while making it sound as if he’s just being selfish and lazy. The group gets to take a glimpse at the truth of the situation, but no one has to be called out. By the very end, however, he breaks the facade and speaks openly and honestly to his target… or does he? He cuts down an individual that had been two-faced and manipulative the entire arc, but he does it in the most destructive way possible. This still labels him as a sort of villain, therefore allowing his target to save some degree of face while accomplishing his goal. He says those cruel things because he’s already chosen to be an outcast, and therefore what does it matter if the entire school hates him for a little while? Harmony amongst the rest of the school is maintained while forcing this individual to stop hiding behind masks and social etiquette. She is forced to face her true self and the reality of the situation, and Hayato, the handsome young man that all the women love, plays right into Hachiman’s hands by being the tough hero that shuts him up.

Yet the question remains if, perhaps, he went too far? If there was still another way to achieve his goal while holding back?

This is the face of someone whose whole being is being verbally cut into… at least, by an animation studio that’s adequate, but not the best for adapting the material they’ve been given.

The beginning of the second season makes it far more clear than the first that Hachiman’s decision was not heroic. If anything, it was indulgent and maliciously cruel. He cut past the truth of the individual’s actions and instead began to strike at her insecurities.

Which, at the end of the day, is why I love My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU! It is filled with deep, believable characters, but it is not intended to be some escapist fantasy. Even though the audience no doubt feels catharsis in watching Hachiman break down this young woman’s entire ego – in part because of how it was directed – the aftermath makes it clear that this decision was not without consequences. Hachiman believes himself to already be outcast, but what we see are all of the other characters – many of whom consider him a friend – offering their disapproval or discomfort in his choices. Hachiman is not an outcast at this point, and therefore his decision has not only hurt himself, it hurts those that know he could be better – better, and without having to compromise who he truly is.

I look forward to continuing my rewatch, and returning to the podcast to more thoroughly discuss my thoughts on seasons two and three. I only hope that I can convince those of you that have not seen the show yet to give it a chance. It’s not one to sleep on.

Just don’t expect it to be your typical teen romantic comedy anime.

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.

I can tell you right now that my primary enjoyment of Ghostwire: Tokyo is navigating around the environment. A combination of the parkour found in Assassin’s Creed and the flight of Gravity Rush, the many collectible spirits in Ghostwire: Tokyo are spread throughout the rooftops of the urban sprawl. This invites the player to observe their surroundings carefully, plotting a series of potential routes to navigate and further explore Shibuya.

There are two reasons these collectible spirits are so enticing: the first is the completionist factor. They are a thing which I can obtain and therefore I feel compelled to get more of them. This is not a shared bit of gamer psychology, but it is certainly prominent in those that grew up playing certain kinds of console games. Being a child of early-90’s side-scrolling platformers, as well as the collectible-laden Zelda and Metroid franchises, I have been hardwired since childhood to crave such things when littered across a level or landscape.

The second reason is far more universal, and that is in the practical purpose of experience points. The most common collectible in the game is also the greatest contributing factor to leveling up. After filling up dozens of the katashiro paper dolls with lost spirits, the player can transmit those collected spirits through a paranormal telephone wiring service to earn money and experience, thus allowing them to level up for more health and skill points. In other words, the player is incentivized to collect these spirits, and while many of them are on ground level or guarded by foes, they are also cleverly dotted across the heights of the city’s buildings to encourage more thoughtful exploration and navigation.

I think this is one of the most important aspects of a successful open-world game: to invoke the question “how do I get there?” from the player. In a Zelda or Metroid title, that answer may be something as simple as “after I get the right tool or ability”, but in an open-world game the gated answer may not be as obvious. If the player is capable of reaching a point with minimal upgrades but plenty of skill, then the world has been successfully designed for the player to forge their own path. No longer is the map a collection of linear obstacles with a specific route laid out, but is instead a playground for the player to plot a course of their own.

With Ghostwire: Tokyo, it seems after the first few hours the player will have all they need to navigate most of the environment. Any inaccessible rooftop or building is typically locked away for a side or story mission, which, unfortunately, is not always so clear at first glance. Additionally, it’s unclear whether the spirits are intentionally spread across the city or are dynamically or procedurally placed, either. Admittedly, this is a common issue in many open-world games, where a player may be able to explore and complete a checklist of tasks throughout an entire zone, but one or two seemingly unimportant icons cannot be reached due to a story gate blocking the path forward. It is not as true in Ghostwire: Tokyo, but that’s what makes it all the more head-scratch inducing when seemingly confronted with an inaccessible rooftop littered with hovering spirits.

Most important is that the player is not stuck doing primarily one activity, and it is the hostile ghosts and yokai wandering the now empty streets of Shibuya that the player will find themselves fighting. Or, in some cases, avoiding. I think this is one manner in which reviewers overlooked how Ghostwire: Tokyo’s open-world design effectively engages the player. Hostile prowlers make for an additional obstacle in trying to navigate around buildings while simultaneously encouraging the player to seek the rooftops rather than the mean streets. The alleyways are similarly good paths to sneak and slip through in order to avoid altercations.

However, I must somewhat agree with the critics that I wouldn’t be avoiding combat in Ghostwire if it weren’t somehow feeling lackluster. This is where it’s a bit more difficult to pinpoint what the flaws are because I don’t think it’s as simple as a “lack of combat depth”. On top of the three separate spirit elements with which to combat, the player is also capable of employing talismans and arrows in order to tackle the numerous foe and ghost types. The player can perform a perfect block to deflect certain blows and, with the right skill tree upgrades, absorb spirit energy back to fuel their elemental “ammunition”.

The use of arrows and talismans, however, feels somewhat disincentivized due to having to purchase them under most circumstances. There aren’t a lot of (obvious) spots to find spare arrows or talismans, and while money is in great supply – especially if you’re doing every side quest that pops up in the game – not all players will be willing to part with their cash so swiftly and frequently. Many of these talismans, however, are no doubt how the player is intended to make use of their different tools.

As of this writing, I have yet to try many of these strategies, but I imagine one can use the Decoy Talisman with the Stun Talisman to trap a group of ghosts and then either purge them from behind or explode them with a charged up fireball. The thicket talismans are intended to simulate shrubbery in which to hide, potentially useful for sneaking by enemies or stealthily purging them from behind.

At this stage, I am never one to criticize a developer for providing a player tools without also forcing them to make use. I don’t think it’s wrong to, say, have enemies that are only vulnerable to a certain element or weapon and therefore lock the player into a singular strategy, but I cannot help but wonder if players – and journalists in particular – have become too trained in doing things that way as to misunderstand what “depth” means in regards to mechanics.

Nevertheless, that the game supplies so much elemental energy and makes it so difficult to stealth through an area successfully seems to incentivize direct conflict using just the three elemental powers rather than making use of their complete arsenal. To that end, the powers at the player’s disposal can feel limiting, the opponents thrown their way overwhelming, and the skill tree inadequate for increasing damage dealt. Nevertheless, I would like to perhaps revisit this topic after having experimented more during my next stream or two.

Keep in mind, however, that I just listed out a lot of tools and mechanics that permeate this game, and have even explained how I’m having fun despite failing to properly use all the equipment I have been provided. Should that not communicate something of the enjoyment it provides?

So why is it that I felt like defending it? Perhaps some of it is a sense of hypocrisy. This is “yet another” open-world that has me finding collectibles, many of which dot the map with icons, revealing more and more as I clear shrines rather than climb towers. Side quests are occasional tutorials for chasing down certain Yokai that occupy the open-world, or recycle powerful foes or bosses with a slight change in their colored wardrobe.

Perhaps what makes Ghostwire: Tokyo more favorable to me is its similarities to Marvel’s Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4. After fourteen hours of gameplay I feel as if I’ve accomplished a lot on the map, having made decent progress into the story. I feel like I don’t have to keep playing for another forty hours in order to finish it off. Spider-Man was rather short for modern open-world expectations, and Ghostwire: Tokyo seems to be following the same conventions.

I view this as a good thing as it means the player can accomplish a lot of little things in the span of an hour. Or, to perhaps put it another way, the city is densely packed with activities that engage the player’s mind, be it in regards to exploring the tops of its buildings, squeezing through alleyways for hidden trinkets, or sneaking around some hostile ghosts before slapping a purging talisman on their back for a quick execution. No single activity is dragged out in Ghostwire: Tokyo, and even the multi-wave combat arenas end up having a sort of predictable rhythm to them. While in many instances this would be perceived as a potential bad thing, it also means the player can know when they’re nearing the conclusion of a fight.

There are a lot of other positive attributes that Ghostwire: Tokyo possesses, but I think the open-world exploration and the combat are two elements that have drawn that urge to “defend” the game rather than compliment it. Are these things truly handled “poorly”? Is this game really “middling”? While sitting around the 70-some percentile range of review scores is hardly “bad”, it also misrepresents and mischaracterizes the imagination present in the game’s design.

I think Ghostwire: Tokyo deserves better, and perhaps I feel so because it’s not the sort of game that your more mainstream audience will immediately latch onto. Despite seeming to dabble in standard open-world gaming tropes, there are a lot of cool ideas I continue to run into as I progress through the game. It sits somewhere around the Yakuza style of urban exploration, where a foreign Japanese city is made all the more mythical by the supernatural events occurring. Looking at the clothing scattered across the street, sometimes in clumps on a park bench or piled at the bottom of an escalator, it tells a story of a city typically crowded yet now silent, save for the moaning of grudge-laden spirits from the Other Side.

We’ll see what I think after I finish the game, and perhaps after I’ve experimented more with its combat options. In the meantime, I want to stop feeling so wishy-washy when describing why I enjoy the game, almost as if I shouldn’t be having a good time. I can think of nothing more insulting to the hard work of Tango Gameworks than to compliment their game with guilt and uncertainty in my voice.

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Apologies for the one day delay in this audio episode’s release. I performed some idiotic upgrade experiments in-between file uploads and wound up breaking the site. I needed to contact my host for a rollback. I’ll certainly be more careful in the future.

Episodes such as this are fun and, quite frankly, sorely needed by me in these times. I do not have as many opportunities to go outside, touch some grass, and interact with fleshy friends as often as I once could, and so a simple episode where we just talk about anything and everything is very welcome. Having always been a fan of podcasts that sound like friends just conversing at a diner late at night, or the corner booth of a pub, almost inviting the listener to come sit down and be a part, my goal is to deliver podcasts with just the same atmosphere. These conversational grab bags are probably the closest to achieving that feeling.

It is Easter Sunday, but next Sunday I aim to have a new series on my Twitch where I dive a bit deeper into recent gaming news and other topics that have proven difficult while playing a game. It’s going to be a bit of an experiment, as I often want to dive into these things but rarely have the opportunity to do so. I won’t be starting with co-hosts, and it won’t have an audio-only format. In fact, I don’t intend to archive it since it will be a regular weekly thing, and much of the discussion will likely go out of date rather swiftly. Nonetheless, I also aim to interact with anyone in chat more, should anyone show up and comment. Sunday afternoons are a rough time to gauge such interest, so we’ll see. If I spend too many Sundays clearly talking to myself, then I’ll either change the date of the stream or drop it altogether.

Joey and I will also be starting a Monster Hunter Rise stream series tomorrow, Monday April 18th. We’ll be working towards higher ranks every Monday in order to catch up and be ready for Sunbreak. Hope to see you then.

What have you been playing lately? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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.

Nevertheless, I think Tim Burton reveals a part of what can make a villain so appealing, especially in contrast to what kind of characters have historically and traditionally been perceived as heroes. From my perspective, many of the greatest heroes are aspirational while our greatest villains are indulgent.

Chris Gore identifies Hans Gruber, the villain of Die Hard played by the late and great Alan Rickman, as one of the more popular villains across pop culture, and he is, I think, a perfect example of what I mean. Yes, Hans Gruber is cunning and intelligent, but his indulgence in thievery and the manipulation of the law is perceived as morally wrong by the norms of society. For good reason! Such indulgence not only costs lives, it is an entirely selfish act that does harm to others for the sake of one’s own gain.

Yet there are other dimensions to the character as well, such as the bond he shares with those on his team. This is not the sort of villain that does away with his own henchman. He is a leader, and his work and respect for those in his care earn him that position while also humanizing him. It is an element of the film rarely spoken of, and yet the camaraderie between the henchmen is crucial to what makes Die Hard work. They are many and hero John McClaine is just one, yet each thief taken down by our lone hero has a visible impact on the morale of our group of antagonists.

Ultimately, however, John is the hero we aspire to be, and I think a good villain really helps draw those aspirational qualities out. That John is bloodied and bruised more and more as the film progresses allows the audience to connect and sympathize with him, but it also provides greater and greater obstacles for our hero to overcome. That he struggles and even has doubts are crucial to that aspirational quality, as we all face trials and struggles throughout our lives. Yet John is able to muster the strength not through ease, but great willpower and cunning in order to overcome.

I want to make sure it’s clear why I chose the words “aspirational” and “indulgent”, however, though the latter is not always the case in describing great villains. It certainly helps explain why certain antagonists have become popular, however. As I see it, a hero ought to have qualities that we ourselves wish to work towards: positive, often altruistic properties that put the good of others before the self and a willingness to suppress or overcome their own faults and weaknesses so that they might come out the other end successful. Even if the hero barely succeeds by a thread, they never give up and have often come away stronger or wiser for having suffered the ordeal. We members of the audience ought to yearn to face our own trials with such strength, no matter how difficult it is to muster.

Which is where a villain’s indulgence can serve not only as a challenge to the hero’s values, but a contrast to what makes the hero so aspirational to begin with. This is one of the reasons I consider Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight to be the perfect Joker film, as it best illustrates the contrast between Batman and the Clown Prince of Crime. Joker’s entire goal is to find the breaking point of every individual in Gotham. We witness many characters perform supposedly altruistic actions, such as Harvey Dent claiming to be the Batman or James Gordon feigning his death after shielding Gotham’s mayor from a bullet. However, true altruism requires sacrifice and loss, and once Harvey’s lost his love – and, admittedly, half of his face – all of his good will is broken. Bruce Wayne loved the very same woman, but is still willing to continue fighting on. He still does not give up on the people of Gotham.

It is this true altruistic nature that the Joker latches onto and becomes so fascinated by, which in turn allows him to indulge in all the things Batman chooses to repress. He cracks a joke before shoving a pencil through a man’s eye, laughs maniacally as his own toady electrocutes himself trying to remove Batman’s mask, burns a mobster’s money just to sow more chaos, and lets loose bloody violence throughout the city. It’s easy to do such things when everyone’s lives – including your own – hold no value compared to the thrill of the moment. Batman can only be so aspirational because he must face an indulgent, selfish, twisted villain like the Joker.

Of course, such defined villains are not always necessary to provide such an obstacle for our heroes, nor is success. Frodo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings is a beloved hero not just because he is played by the charming and charismatic Elijah Wood in the films, but because, in both the page and the silver screen, he is always willing to stand for what is right despite the heavy burden and horrific dangers cast before him. Author J.R.R. Tolkien never spends much time characterizing the villains as the entirety of the story is spent in the perspective of our protagonists, yet the seemingly insurmountable odds are enough to challenge our heroes and elicit empathy. Nevertheless, Frodo still fails at the end, but the audience does not think less of him for it. He still tried, and he got further than many seemingly more impressive men would have. Frodo is still an aspirational character.

Note that I have not really emphasized any sort of aspect of power fantasy in our heroes, and there are multiple reasons for that. For one, such characters are rarely interesting. Yes, we may laugh at a film like Commando, but Predator is the far more popular and enjoyable Arnold Schwarzanegger film due to how out of his depth the protagonist Dutch is. The Predator itself, however, is beloved due to how clever it is. While it certainly has the technological upper hand, the audience gets to see it acting in an adaptable manner, and even honorable as it removes such high-tech weaponry to fight Dutch with little more than bare fists. The ability to find such appealing qualities in a villain – even an alien one – can cause the audience to relate to the protagonist and antagonist together.

Regardless, I do think there is a power fantasy element when it comes to the appeal of certain villains to certain audiences. When you consider the indulgent nature and status of power, a villain can come off as quite a power fantasy until that scrappy little hero comes along to ruin everything. If I may be allowed to be an old man yelling at clouds, I cannot help but wonder and be troubled if the obsession with villains over heroes has emerged from a difference of aspirations. However, it’s not enough to just want to be the villain. Instead, the villain must be misunderstood, and it is instead society that is the true evil. If only society would be more open-minded, then this villain would not be a villain at all!

Or, at least, that’s how it comes off to me. I’ve never read Wicked, though aspects of it and the musical have been described to me, where those “good fairies” are not so good after all. This sort of treatment of legacy heroes and villains leads to characters such as Cruella de Vil being reimagined to possess a tragic backstory where ferocious dalmatians attacked her and killed her mother. Now her cruel willingness to make a coat out of a particular breed of dog has been explained! Y’know, aside from Cruella simply thinking it would look gorgeous to have such a coat and having no scruples against killing an animal she has no emotional attachment to. No, dalmatians must instead be represented as having been cruel to her and earning her detachment for their life for the sake of fashion.

I do not believe it to be a cultural pandemic, but such films existing indicate to me that there’s a decent amount of people that perceive the villains as being more aspirational than the heroes, but simultaneously understand that these characters require a sympathetic quality or reinterpretation in order to make them less evil. Note that this is not the same as redemption, which I think is something audiences should want for good villains. Darth Vader made an impression on audiences for his stylish appearance, intimidating posture and mannerisms, and James Earl Jones’ excellently deep voice. I would assert that it was the reveal of his parentage to Luke Skywalker that made the largest impact on audiences, as it established a desire for Luke not to defeat the man, but spare and redeem him. The plot twist of Empire Strikes Back recontextualized a villain audiences first wanted Luke to defeat into someone they wanted for him to save.

A villain choosing evil due to tragic circumstances can be redeemed, and I think that is a worthwhile villain to write. However, there are many that forsake redemption in life just as they do in art, and such villains can continue to provide interesting moral quandaries and challenges for our heroes. Sometimes, such as in the book trilogy A Song of Ice and Fire and the television show Avatar: The Last Airbender, the hero is able to find a solution that does not compromise their values while still bringing the conflict to an end. Other times, the hero has no qualms about letting the villain die, though Hollywood often refrains from giving the protagonist the final killing blow. Once again, it was not Luke that took the life of the Emperor, but Darth Vader, a man that had already fallen to the Dark Side. Luke was spared that final dark act and permitted to maintain his place as a Jedi rather than Sith.

...not that it stopped him from killing plenty of Jabba’s mooks, of course.

Marvel’s most boring villain in a film that didn’t need one: the protagonists were all their own obstacles to overcome. Ronan exists only to give them a reason to stick together.

Sith may deal in absolutes, but I want it to be clear that I do not wish to do that myself. Sometimes heroes really are just simple power fantasies, and other times villains are two-dimensional cut-outs of bad people doing bad things because they are bad. The Marvel films have gotten plenty of criticism for their villains because they rarely have enough screen time to explain or justify their motivations in a manner that’s satisfying. It works for most of the Marvel films because the heroes are the real star of the show, and the villains mostly exist to serve as a reflection of that hero’s flaw, and the overcoming of that flaw is the backbone of the film’s narrative. Sometimes our favorite heroes are one step away from being villains themselves, straddling the line of indulgence and aspiration while encouraging us to root for them to perhaps become a bit more heroic.

I don’t necessarily think it is a problem when the villain outshines the hero, either, but it depends on the reason. To return to the character of the Joker, he works as well as he does in The Dark Knight due to what he represents to Batman. His indulgent and sometimes comedic antics are far more charismatic than the brooding contemplations of Bruce Wayne, but without the bat, that Joker would be less of a character. Tim Burton’s Batman, on the other hand, is far more interested in the comedic indulgence of the Joker than it is in… well, anything focused on Batman. Our hero exists, and his tragic past is slowly revealed with a sloppy and loose connection to our villain to further incentivize the conflict, but the only reason Batman wins in the end is because that’s what is expected. That Tim Burton zooms in upon the grinning corpse of the Joker at the end has me wondering if he was calling back to King Kong, whose final quote suggests it was beauty that had killed the beast.

Only this time, it was the bat that slew the clown, and to Tim Burton’s camera lens, that may have been the real tragedy of it all.

Not that I’m about to write a whole thesis on that theory. At the end of the day, I think a good story requires both a hero and a villain we can relate to, as the one allows us someone to aspire to while the other allows us to fantasize a wicked indulgence… or, perhaps, yearn for the redemption of. At the end of the day, however, I’d rather we not go and aspire to be our villains, or else we lose sight of that which makes good heroes… well, good.

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I’m sincerely curious what sort of discussions and confusion are going on over at Warner Bros. right now. You have films like Aquaman that were a commercial success and therefore indicate chasing the Marvel tone might be a good idea. At the same time, though I’m uncertain of its numbers, I don’t know many people that were as warm to Wonder Woman ‘84 as they had been to the original. Aside from some cross-promotional advertising on television, I’ve not really seen or heard much of the film at all since it released. At the same time, the Snyder Cut of The Justice League was received largely positively.

What I find most curious is that both Joker and The Batman are not only darker in tone, but are also heavily inspired by older and iconic films that had come before. Steve clarified that “Art House” was a bad term to use, but Joker is clearly paying homage to films such as Taxi Driver and King of Comedy while The Batman is heavily drawing influence from David Fincher’s Se7en and Zodiac. Is this the secret to DC’s success? Or is it more that Batman and his rogue’s gallery are far more fitting to draw from these classic thriller inspirations?

I must confess that there, while it is refreshing to see such filming being done in modern Hollywood on the big screen, it would also be nice to see these directors branch out and explore more. I know Matt Reeves is capable given the surprising direction he had taken Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, but is it simply too risky to take an original angle with a high profile superhero film?

Regardless, we know DC is thus far invested in their sillier universe, though who knows what direction The Flash will go, and how it will compare to Spider-Man: No Way Home. Both will feature multiverse shenanigans that pull together a variety of cameos from across their respective properties’ film history, and word is No Way Home had managed to do such a thing with some real heart rather than relying on a gimmick. Hopefully I’ll be able to see for myself soon, and we’ll be able to podcast about it.

Did you get a chance to see The Batman yet? What did you think? Feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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.

Despite having unlocked the ability to respec my character since the… thirty or forty hour mark? I have largely stuck with my melee-focused build throughout the entire game. I have not experimented much with the magic as I’m too much of a numbskull to trust in spells over raw muscle power. Despite lacking any trait that would contribute to being an excellent fighter in real life, I have always been drawn to swift-striking melee classes throughout my video and tabletop gaming life. Nonetheless, I’ve continued to ponder what it might be like to start a new save file as a Confessor or Prisoner, whose base-stats and starting equipment allow for some melee adequacy but emphasize the power of sorcery and incantations. It is very rare that I’ve spent so much time on a game and thought of how I could go back and do things differently. Yet Elden Ring is a game that players will be returning to – and already are – over and over again. Be it for the increasing difficulty of From Software’s New Game Plus or going back in right from the start, many players are testing out speed-run tactics and low-level builds in order to further challenge themselves. There’s a lot of customization and mechanical depth here, and players of all kinds have much to sink their teeth into.

More than that, however, is just the variety of zones and dungeons there are. I was originally dismayed to recognize chambers and assets being recycled across the various catacombs, caverns, and mines, as each repeated room or elevator shaft would break the illusion and paint a picture of the level editing software in my mind. I could see the designers grabbing a pre-built room for a catacomb, flipping it, and clicking where to place the impish gargoyles so that they might gleefully pounce the player from behind or the side.

Yet the further I progressed, the less frequently I found myself in such environments, and the more often I found myself exploring a wholly new and unique labyrinthine location. Be it castle, city, fortress, or manor, there are so few recycled assets in this game that… well, it makes those few that are stand out all the more. Unlike Breath of the Wild’s minimalistic, near-featureless Shrines being the primary location for puzzle-solving that drives much of the game’s exploration, these catacombs, caverns, and caves perhaps make up the least amount of locations and time that the player will find themselves exploring.

Perhaps more noticeable are the number of recycled opponents used as bosses. However, even these are spread out enough so as not to become tiresome. Some difficult bosses become standard enemies, some standard enemies are powered up to become bosses, and many repeated foes are given additional powers, status effects, and move-sets in order to provide a remixed challenge. There is also something to be said about the manner in which these foes appear, often coming as a surprise and sometimes when you’d least expect. The typical response is more likely to be a startled “oh crap!” and rush to either flee or prepare one’s buffs and summons than it is a tiresome groan.

Note that I bring up all of this repeated content not to disparage the game. Open-worlds are effectively built off of repeated and easily remixed content in order to provide as much gameplay as possible for players to see and experience. What makes Elden Ring so impressive is not only how little repeat content there is, but how much what repeat content is there is modified and remixed. No two catacombs or caverns are completely alike. Naturally this is somewhat less accurate for bosses and beasts, as they’ll largely rely on higher levels and stats to continue providing a challenge. Nonetheless, it’s not uncommon to face a familiar opponent only to suddenly find yourself fleeing an unexpected cloud of the scarlet rot status effect, or to find yourself evading your new nemesis in a lake of poison or beside a lake of magma. Sometimes these fights will be in claustrophobic chambers, and others they’ll be on horseback in the open-world.

Nevertheless, I have continuously found dozens of enemies and environments throughout the game that are all uniquely crafted together and coded. It was perhaps some twenty hours in that I realized the wolves themselves must have been granted new artificial intelligence in order to run about the open-world, leaping up to and down from boulders, rocks and ruins that dotted the plains they called home, and flanking the player as a pack for the taking. They did not behave like many of the domesticated rabid dogs of the world, who themselves behave little differently from the foul curs that wandered the streams of Yharnam in Bloodborne. For all of the recognizable animations taken from prior Souls games, there’s still so much new content in Elden Ring that continually surpasses my expectations.

As reductionist as it is to claim that Elden Ring is just Dark Souls in an open-world, it is not wholly inaccurate. Unlike other open-worlds, Elden Ring’s mechanics are built upon a decade of refinement. The pacing of your attacks and the rolling of your dodges are all very similar to the other From Software developed games in this “genre”, which begs the question of whether it’s the genre that fans love. Many games have replicated the loss of experience and/or currency upon death, the bonfires, the respawning enemies, the fatigue bar, and other superficial elements that act as recognizable icons of the Soulsborne. However, is there not also an appeal to the brutal manner in which weapons strike through opponents, the audibly wet splash of blood soaking the player’s senses in imagined viscera? Is it not found in the clanking of one’s armor as they try to sprint away at a pace more comparable to a morning jog? Is it not the pounding chime confirming the success of a lethal backstab? The mood setting drone as the player respawns in any zone, reminding them there is no such thing as a truly safe haven?

Though Bloodborne deviated from some of the base mechanics of the Dark Souls franchise, it was, in its heart, still very similar in technology, presentation, and pacing to the other games. They are similar in a fashion that other developers would be – and have been – called lazy for. So why is it that Ubisoft has been criticized for the legacy of games such as Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, or Activision for its constant churn of Call of Duty titles, when From Software gets such a pass?

There is no simple answer, though we can at least begin with the core mechanics that embody Dark Souls and now Elden Ring being solid. Much like players can continue playing Destiny 2 on a weekly basis for satisfying first-person combat with few peers, there aren’t many games with challenging-yet-accessible combat systems like From Software’s action-RPG line-up. Yes, I did say accessible, though not in terms of features designed with disabled players in mind. I mean that From Software’s games, even Bloodborne, are slower-paced than franchises like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, and also do not rely on mastery of combos or movesets in order to succeed. Though Bloodborne is filled with fancy combination attacks utilizing the trick weapon transformation abilities, I primarily kept hacking away at enemies without adjusting the state of the trick weapon because… it worked. I’ve encountered many that refer to a game like Devil May Cry as a “button-masher” when, in truth, I’ve mashed more buttons in From’s games than I ever had in one of Capcom or Platinum’s brawlers. No, you cannot just keep hacking away carelessly at a foe in any From title, but I don’t know of any action game worth its salt where you can.

Nevertheless, even if it’s just a handful of swings, you can button mash your way through a From Software game so long as you can also avoid taking damage. This means the combat is based around very simple concepts of dodging, blocking, and striking. Are there also deeper considerations such as poise or status resistances? Of course, but once again, knowledge of and adherence to these things are not necessary. However, they do make the game easier, and still do not require the quick-thinking response of combos like a Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. It’s the RPG mechanics that both provide depth while simultaneously being accessible enough for less experienced or enthusiast players to grasp onto.

It is in this spirit that From Software has only increased player options without also increasing complexity in Elden Ring. Magic is used no differently than a standard weapon, yet is also more powerful than prior From Software games. It does, however, require a sacrifice in the strength of other attributes. Players can now summon Spirit Ashes, allowing for additional cohorts to appear on-screen to deal minor damage and draw enemy aggression without also doubling or tripling a boss’ health in the manner that co-op summons will. The speed of the player’s horse, Torrent, means some over-world foes and bosses are far easier to avoid and dispatch than if they were on foot; of course, the same is true for the reverse, where some larger foes are actually easier to dodge and avoid while on foot. None of these mechanics are overly complex, yet they continue to add depth and customization to the player’s experience.

Which, I think, brings us to why Elden Ring isn’t just an open-world Dark Souls. Leading up to the game’s release, director Miyazaki was frequently discussing how little mechanics were added in order to increase the amount of time the player spent in the game’s world. Slaying a group of foes would reward the player with replenished health or magic flasks, for example. The ability to craft was added so that the player didn’t have to purchase new ammunition or explosives, a decision that not only gives more purpose to the space in the open-world and exploring it by scattering materials throughout its terrain, but also encourages the player to more freely use the bone knives, arrows, and bombs in their possession. The horse and ability to jump were also included in order to improve the rate at which the player could explore the sprawling open-world.

I highlight these adjustments because it goes to show that the development team weren’t thinking as simply as “Dark Souls, but open-world”. Instead, they knew they would be bringing their current, base-level design forward into an open-world, but also considered the limitations of their current design in this new context. Thus, abilities to prolong a player’s time wandering and exploring were increased, additional methods of respawning were added, and certain enemies and their A.I. were designed or updated to work and behave in a far larger and more open environment.

So, yes, Elden Ring still feels like a Souls game at its core, but it has also expanded into a playstyle informed by this far larger environment the player is now able to explore. Crafting materials are always worth snagging since they’re used for so many different recipes, and every cavern and catacomb is home to some form of reward, even if it’s merely in the runes that can help you reach that next level up.

That world acts as both a method to keep the player invested in the gameplay while also creating a reason to explore further and further. Limgrave is the peaceful, beautiful landscape you’d expect an open-world to contain, but the player is swiftly roaming through foggy swamps, drowned academies, Hellish landscapes corrupted by the crimson blood-colored rot, and plunging into starlight stricken depths of impossibility. Each of these areas will introduce the player to new foes, new treasures, new bits of lore if they pay enough attention, and even unique combat encounters crafted exclusively for that environment. There are mysteries to be uncovered and puzzles to be sorted out.

I suppose what I’ve done here is illustrate why someone might feel underwhelmed by Elden Ring. I have made note that the game is not only based on decade-long mechanics, but also utilizes familiar reusage of assets just as any other open-world game. However, to only look at those items is a disservice to the harder to grasp achievement that goes into this massive, uniquely crafted world. As I mentioned earlier in this essay, by this point in time I had finished playing Breath of the Wild because I felt as if I had seen all of it had to offer that mattered. With Elden Ring, I continue to explore and squeeze out every droplet of content I can find because I feel as if there’s still more being kept hidden from me.

To that extent, Elden Ring truly is a masterpiece. It is imperfect, but it also feels as if it is a game that should not exist; a game that the industry has convinced us cannot exist. Yet here it is before us, after so many years of development. Even if it is not perfect, it is a type of game perfected, and that is not a feat to dismiss carelessly.

It also acts as a beacon of hope to the most skeptical of players. There are no loot boxes, there are no invasive microtransactions, there are no appeals to the mainstream here. Yet the game has managed to obtain mainstream success nonetheless. While it only happens every so often, it is reassuring to know that a game that treats its players with enough respect to anticipate and request they learn, improve, and explore can appeal to so many.

Which means it’s time for the most hardcore of the fans to finally stop evangelizing. If Elden Ring can accomplish that, then it truly is a masterpiece.

Direct Download

It’s interesting to look back on the last five years and realize that not a lot of time has passed, while, simultaneously, many things have changed. I’m now working a new job, almost half of this podcast’s life has occurred during Covid, brand new consoles have released, Destiny 2 is no longer published by Activision, Bungie has “been acquired”, in the strangest sense, by Sony PlayStation, Microsoft now owns not only a ton of smaller, AA level studios, but has swallowed up the likes of both Bethesda and Activision, and more. I think the most difficult change, however, is how rarely Steve and I are in sync in regards to the media we consume.

I’ve stepped further away from the mainstream popular culture, save for a few video games here and there. I’m not nearly as interested in keeping up with whatever Hollywood is pushing out, most of the AAA industry disinterests me outside of a handful of studios or companies, and what little anime I’ve continued to watch these days has typically been older instead of the more popular series discussed on social media. It feeds a bit into our somber discussion on terms like “geek” and “nerd” and begging what these terms even mean.

Ultimately, however, it is not in the specific media we consume that drives our friendship. I can be a jerk, and I can also lose sight of the fact that what someone likes is different than their reason for liking it. More than that, though, Steve and I became such good friends for a reason, and that is because we have far more cross-over of interests than just games, television, and anime. Music, for one, but it is our moral values and ability to reason and discuss all kinds of topics, including political, religious, and social, that has allowed our friendship to last as long as it has, and why I wanted to do a podcast with him in the first place.

I’m glad to have added other friends to the podcast as well to help fill the episodes with more opinions and topics. However, at its core, this is still a show founded for the purpose of giving my busy married dad of a friend an excuse to sit down, hang out, and just talk about cool stuff for a while. Sometimes I myself lost track of that, but after hitting 100 episodes and five years, it’s a nice reminder of why this podcast exists.

How long have you been listening for? Remember any of our old, cringe-worthy episodes? Please don’t listen to them… But, please do leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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.

Rather than start with one of the games, I’d like to first highlight the Square Enix Music Channel that just opened last week on YouTube. While there are only a few videos on the channel itself, it compiles entire series soundtracks, both obscure and high profile, into easy to find playlists. Rather than fight the myriad number of users uploading music tracks onto YouTube, Square Enix has gone in and created an official one-stop shop for very same music, allowing them to snag ad money in the process. They’ve even uploaded the above Lo-Fi mix that is the current soundtrack to the writing of this post.

This is a smart move by Square Enix because it allows them to profit off of how their audience engages with YouTube for music, while simultaneously looking like a generous gesture towards the fans. Look at all of these classic and recent soundtracks made available for free! It seems especially in tune with the modern audience in comparison to Nintendo, who recently put out a huge copyright strike on one of the largest soundtrack uploaders on the platform. It should be noted I am not commenting on whether the copyright strikes are or are not justified. However, Square Enix’s new channel has the potential to earn the good will of their fanbase and could set a positive precedent for similar companies with legacy soundtracks fans delight in listening to.

Which is why the seemingly desperate greed presented by a game like Chocobo GP seems so bizarre. A child-friendly cart racer and successor to a niche PlayStation original favorite, Square Enix had cynically stuffed the ol’ bird with microtransactions and premium currency. It was designed like a mobile game rather than a $50 retail package, though this is perhaps in part due to the digital-only “Lite” version of the title. You’d think stripping features from the Lite variant would be enough to encourage players to spend cash on the full version, but instead they try and coax microtransactions out of their players.

What’s more is the game is filled with bugs that impact the player’s ability to fairly race online. While Square Enix has already promised some bug fixes and changes, this is still a pretty bad look when you’re not only competing with the microtransaction free Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but are now overshadowed by Nintendo’s forty-eight new tracks costing half the price of a “full”, microtransaction laden release.

Nintendo may look like the bad guy in terms of making their game soundtracks readily available for purchase or listening, but their flagship cart racer is far, far more customer conscious. The idea of gradual DLC and content down the line is not a bad thing, but adopting mobile phone strategies to try and manipulate your players into spending cash or grinding races out is the wrong way to go about it.

Oddly enough, however, it is Babylon’s Fall that has become the games media punching bag. As seen in the above link regarding the game’s peak player count, pundit and professional leaker and rumor monger Jeff Grub went so far as to say the game made the worst first impression of a full-priced, $60 game he’s ever played. This seemed unusual to me, as playing the demo for Babylon’s Fall seemed no more or less offensive than time spent in Destiny 2. Maybe Bungie gets a free pass due to offering some of its experience up for free, but it is also embroiled in its own controversy as the company continues to take paid expansion content offline to make room for new expansion content, all of which requires money to purchase and could still be pulled offline some day. If Destiny 2 has anything that Babylon’s Fall does not, it is top-of-the-line gameplay.

This, perhaps, is the truly lamentable aspect of Square Enix’s efforts to have PlatinumGames make a live-service title. Contrary to what some press have been claiming, Babylon’s Fall is not the worst title Platinum has ever made; that credit goes to either The Legend of Korra or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan. At the same time, there is definitely something of Platinum’s signature style that feels missing from Babylon’s Fall, and it certainly impacts how good the gameplay feels.

Perhaps it is simply lacking the mobility that most Platinum titles are known for. Even Vanquish, a third-person shooter with cover-based mechanics, is best experienced by dashing, sliding, and leaping across the battlefield. In contrast, the characters in Babylon’s Fall feel slow with a barely perceptible dodge animation. There also seems to be no “dodge cancel”, a horrendous crime given how little wind-up the mob of foes have for most of their attacks. Perhaps the worst crime is the overall effectiveness of button-mashing. Why memorize combos when it is just as, or more, fruitful to let your fingers asynchronously jab at whatever attack buttons are on the controller?

Keep in mind I only played up towards the first major, raid-style boss, which is where I had expected the demo to end. If Square Enix has learned to do anything properly, it is in providing substantial demo packages that often transfer save progress to a full purchase of the game. If I had so desired, I could continue to play Babylon’s Fall until I truly ran out of content. However, it was the first boss that convinced me this is a game I am unlikely to purchase. Even if it goes on deep discount, it is designed with multiple players in mind, and I had been playing the demo as a solitary experience. This turns most of the opponents into damage sponges, but most significantly, that major, raid-style boss has an attack that cannot be stopped if you’re flying solo. This means you must either play with randoms – something I am certainly averse to doing – or you play with friends. Even with a free demo available, I have few friends interested in giving this game a try.

As of this writing, Square Enix has put out a feedback survey for improving Babylon’s Fall. Unfortunately, the survey is far too preoccupied with the game’s graphics and visual fidelity rather than the mechanics or weakness of a live-service model. Babylon’s Fall is the third desperate attempt by Square Enix to launch a Games-as-Service title, with Outriders being the closest to success. I don’t begrudge large publishers in the industry trying to score their own live-service money generator, but this is also the company that’s been putting out the highly successful Final Fantasy XIV. It’s not like live-service and MMO’s are that different from one another, and the blueprints for creating a service that respects and commands loyalty from its consumer base are already present within their portfolio. It’s so bizarre to watch them crash-and-burn three years in a row, all because they tried to rush several products out the door rather than experiment with just one single title.

I’d also be lying if I claimed that I wasn’t curious to see if someone could make a melee-action live-service title that took inspiration from Final Fantasy XIV much like Destiny has famously taken cues from World of Warcraft. I think it would be quite fascinating to see how the model could evolve, especially as there’s just some evenings you want a title with a simple treadmill to log into and make some progress in. Unfortunately, Babylon’s Fall is not that game for me.

Oddly enough, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin makes for a comparatively decent case for a co-op action adventure with constant loot drops. The very premise continues to hurt my brain as I weep for the “Souls-like based on the original Final Fantasy” envisioned in my head by its rumored announcement. More closely resembling Elden Ring, that take on the original, D&D-inspired grandfather of the franchise could have been better than the product we’ve received. But “if wishes were horses” is a saying for a reason, and if I had my wishes, Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima would be restrained and confined to only working on original properties rather than corrupting pre-existing ones. I am convinced they are two of the most overrated and over-rewarded creatives to ever work at Square Enix, but at least Team Ninja is around to save this game’s story from itself with solid mechanics.

Or so I would like to hope. Unfortunately, Stranger of Paradise is a stark contrast to the lack of tutorials present in Elden Ring, revealing that the latter’s obtuse nature is possible in part due to its overall simplicity. Stranger of Paradise immediately throws a series of complex combat controls at the player, with the star of the show being two different types of blocking and the different features they possess. In the end, it feels like the game could have managed most of these ideas with a single block button, perhaps focused more on parry timings than opting for one block function over another, separate block function.

It’s not really the lack of simplicity that’s the problem, though. Once you’re up against Garland, for example, it feels like the game is starting to really shine. If you master the blocks and evasion, whittling down Garland’s own stagger gauge until you can sock him in the face, then you find yourself confident and satisfied. Yeah, you figured out how to approach the game! You trashed that boss! Let’s see what’s next!

What’s next is an optional side-mission featuring multiple foes and a whole lot of… well, a whole lot of chaos. The player in particular seems to draw the majority of the aggro, even while hanging back trying to better position themselves for a heal or to cast a spell. Combine that random aggro draw with a limited periphery and multiple opponents with powerful ranged attacks, and the player is bound to suffer greatly for… well, for trying to understand what the heck is even going on, for one.

If there is anything a game seeking the difficulty of From Software’s franchises should take to heart, it’s the ability to kite foes and isolate them. You know what Stranger of Paradise has that From Software games don’t, however? Difficulty levels, and I have a feeling many will be knocking this one down to Story or even Casual difficulties.

I, in the meantime, do not plan to get it upon release, and don’t even know if I’d get it on sale. Once more, this is a title that suffers due to how closely it releases to Elden Ring and therefore invites comparison. What is more shocking is that this is the same team that worked on Nioh, and while I had lost patience with that title, it certainly felt more carefully designed than Stranger of Paradise has felt. Combined with the end result that is Babylon’s Fall, it really is enough to wonder if Square Enix knows how to leverage their outsourced studios, as both PlatinumGames and Team Ninja can do far, far better than this.

Which leaves one final demo that I managed to play: Triangle Strategy. I played the first chapter of the game and was convinced it deserves my full and immediate purchase. True, one single battle at the game’s start is not properly indicative of the full experience, but it felt properly balanced to provide a tough enough challenge to get me thinking about my tactical decisions. It felt good to play, and I had few qualms with it.

Which is why I find Square Enix so strange. Babylon’s Fall and Chocobo GP are cynical models of modern AAA game development, and while Stranger of Paradise is not nearly so greedy, it is a worthless bastardization to the singular title that saved the Square half of the company. Not to say that the original’s time-traveling nonsense of a narrative were anything to write home about, but at this point it feels as if Tetsuya Nomura absolutely loathes anything that remotely resembles the fantasy genre. The man’s sense of cool feels perpetually trapped in middle-school, and Kazushige Nojima’s inability to convey Jack’s single-minded obsession with any subtlety is… well, it’s a perfect fit with Nomura’s sense of cool, I’ll give it that.

Perhaps, most of all, Stranger of Paradise is indicative of Square Enix’s seeming aversion to turn-based combat. While some titles, such as Dragon Quest XI and Octopath Traveler, are bastions of old-fashioned turn-based RPG combat, upcoming titles like Valkyrie Elysium abandon their more turn-based, traditional roots in favor of a copy-paste action-RPG build that could have come from any mid-to-low-budget developer of Japan. While Triangle Strategy is a love-letter to Yasumi Matsuno works such as Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, it seems even The DioField Chronicle must move somewhat towards real-time action. It at least remains tactical, however.

Ultimately, Triangle Strategy is why I cannot hate Square Enix. They’ve almost completely botched their management of Eidos, and while I greatly enjoyed the reboot of Tomb Raider and its sequel, it took until Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy for them to put out a game that feels like everything Western AAA development could be. They’re still taking risks and green-lighting titles that aren’t guaranteed to develop a massive following, and Final Fantasy XIV managed to dethrone World of Warcraft in the perception of the gaming community through sheer force of being good.

Yet they then turn around and stuff Chocobo GP, of all games, with mobile phone microtransaction garbage, ask their audience if improving the graphics of Babylon’s Fall will make them more likely to recommend it, and introduce an action-oriented spin-off to a turn-based franchise fans have long been awaiting a proper sequel to.

Honestly, I was going to be more fair to Square Enix when I started writing this, but I find it a bit difficult now. Their decisions just seem absolutely bizarre to me. Every so often they release a game or trailer that reminds me why I’m still following them and look forward to their digital presentations, but then… well, then they have E3 2021, a presentation that pleased almost no one and were ratio’ed hard on YouTube. Y’know, back when you could see the number of dislikes a video had.

What a bizarre company to try and like.

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.

The first episode of my playthrough with Shamus

If I had to chalk it up to anything in particular, it’s that the closing chapters of Resident Evil 5 get progressively more frustrating. This is the first game in the mainline series to feature a large quantity of enemies with guns (not to be confused with the select chain gun wielding opponents of the prior game, or those wielding crossbows whose bolts can be deflected, shot down, or more easily avoided), and as a result introduced cover mechanics in the most slap-dash manner possible. It’s not even an imitation of Gears of War in that the player is locked into place, unable to move whatsoever until manually choosing to disengage or being struck out of cover by an enemy blow. Gears of War, in the meantime, had permitted its players to slide along chest-high walls and swiftly shift from one piece of cover to another, allowing the player to reposition without being exposed. The duck-and-cover mechanics as presented in Resident Evil 5 are not only far more limited and primitive, they are the antithesis to the excitement established by Resident Evil 4. The player was typically expected to keep on the move if they wanted to survive in Leon’s European adventure. The multi-laned design of the environment is a double-edged sword, providing routes through which foes can flank you or that you yourself can use as a quick escape. On occasion it is advantageous to find a bottleneck through which to force all of your foes, but these are tactical uses of the environment that can prevent flanking. However, if the player is poorly equipped to handle a large group in a tight space, then they will quickly come to regret the decision and be overwhelmed.

When you pin yourself to a wall in order to combat enemies that are also pinning themselves to walls, the dynamic of combat changes drastically. It either becomes far too unreasonable because three or more different foes are shooting at you at the same time with high precision and rates of fire, or you have ample time to wait for them to pop their head up and line up your shot, taking them out with a glorious melon pop of blood and gore. The cover mechanics actively make the game less exciting to play because the base design and mechanics it is built off of are balanced for one powerful player against a horde of foes, not ducking behind walls waiting patiently for a chance to pop skulls.

No doubt this is why the earlier moments of the game tend to be more enjoyable. Just as in Resident Evil 4, the player has to keep on the move or force the enemy into bottlenecks in order to try and maintain distance and control. While not all environments are easily accommodating for two players, Shamus and I often found ourselves splitting off and dividing the enemy forces, which were plentiful enough without being overwhelming in most instances. Unlike many other co-op games, Resident Evil 5 is balanced for a second character to always be present, though they unfortunately are not always a living person. It is widely recognized that this game is suboptimal to play with the A.I., and best to be played with an additional human companion.

Which, undoubtedly, is part of the reason for its bad reputation. The Resident Evil franchise, much like the Metroid series, is known for that haunting, isolated feel. When you’re no longer alone in a dangerous environment, you no longer feel as vulnerable. You have someone else to watch your back, someone to speak to, and someone to keep firing while you reload. Before 2017, this was a major problem for the franchise. Even the Revelations spin-off games focused on A.I. or co-op partners, meaning the player was rarely ever isolated. Now, following the release of Resident Evil 7, Resident Evil 2 Remake, and Resident Evil Village, this lack of isolation is no longer a detriment to Resident Evil 5. To me, at least. Now it is a welcome anomaly that provides a one-of-a-kind experience.

Because, as flawed as it is, there are few games with that “what makes a Resident Evil” mentality that also allow for co-op play. It may seem a little thing, but the ability to shoot a grenade strapped to an enemy’s chest so that they explode is such a small detail that feels distinctly Resident Evil. Like shooting the dynamite in the hand of the ganado in Resident Evil 4, it’s an additional tactical opportunity that conserves ammunition, but only if you’re skilled enough to make the shot. Resident Evil 5 is filled with little tactical choices like this that become so second-nature that players stop thinking about them.

Unfortunately, I think it’s because all the problems just stand out more in comparison. When a game is working, you’re too “in the flow” to think about why it’s working. When the game yanks you out of your flow with some nonsensical decision or major inconvenience, however, you immediately recognize it and feel frustrated.

This is likely one of the reasons the boss fights are never really viewed favorably. Save for fighting the giant bat beast that relies on one player acting as a decoy and the first encounter with the ouroboros, there is no boss in this game that makes a good impression. They are all insufferable bullet sponges that often demand such specific requirements for completion. I had completely forgotten about the rocket launcher in the penultimate battle with Wesker, which turns out to be the shortcut to taking him out swiftly and early. I happened upon that rocket launcher by chance because I more clearly remembered shutting the lights out, an action I only remembered as being essential through past playthroughs where I desperately tried to shoot Wesker to death.

Admittedly, there’s a part of me that has been playing Elden Ring that wonders if I’ve been unfair to Resident Evil 5. It is quite unclear what the player has to do to defeat certain opponents properly or efficiently, and the current discourse surrounding From Software’s latest open-world has players either condemning or praising the game for its alleged obtuseness and opaque sensibilities. With the sense of praise for not holding a player’s hand, one can consider the rocket launcher and light switches rewards for the player observing their environment and performing experiments with the tools available. The question, I suppose, is one of precedent. In my time with Bloodborne and Elden Ring I’ve never encountered anything that cannot be handled by dodge rolling or swinging your weapon. On the contrary, the player is pitted against Wesker, a powerful opponent capable of Matrix dodging any incoming fire so long as he’s aware of the player’s presence. This is a boss fight with a powerful foe, and in order to even consider shutting off the lights or finding the rocket launcher, the player needs to focus their attention away from their very powerful objective intent on killing them and instead look around the room and think “what does that do?” Note that there’s nothing to indicate that shutting the lights out are a good idea until you’ve begun turning them off, triggering a brief little cut-scene where Wesker indicates he’s lost track of you. There’s nothing that indicates he’s too stupid to remove his shades in the dark and will instead attempt to turn the lights back on instead.

Maybe you’d find the heroes easier if you stopped wearing shades at night.

There are some things I can praise a game for in terms of creativity, and I always love a game that doesn’t hold your hand, but these fights are multi-step processes that require the player to act counter-intuitively to the threat and signals presented.

This is why the second encounter with the ouroboros monster is so frustrating. If you incinerated it the first time, then you know it is weak to fire. That’s good! It also has big, glowing orange spots on its body that invite weapons fire. That is also good and obvious! However, there are secret hidden weak points that the player will only discover on certain conditions, and those seem to require using incendiary grenades (of which there is a very limited supply in the environment and no guarantee the player will have stock of), or very specifically timed use of the flamethrower. It is a battle that can’t really be shortcut (unless you purchase the rocket launcher in the store), but it can certainly be prolonged. Even now, I’m not one-hundred percent certain what triggers its actual weak points. My best guess is that you must use your weapons to destroy all of the glowing pustules, then use the flamethrower on the remaining stalk until the orb-like tendrils emerge. Then you shoot those with the most powerful gun you have, as there’s not a large window of time to deal significant damage.

If the flamethrower were perhaps a weapon used to bypass the pustules and reveal the weak points at any time in the fight, that might feel like a reward for the player spotting the flamethrower on the wall in the first place. How you’d inform the player that they ought to shut the lights off without directly telling them, however, is a far trickier thing to do, though they did place boxes filled with potential ammunition nearby. Of these final fights, however, I feel like the strongest was against the giant, magnificently huge ouroboros beast. Observant players will likely spot the laser guidance weaponry capable of raining death from above, and if you’re better at communication than Shamus and I then you might even have one player focus on destroying the little blobs of tentacles while the other emphasizes laser targeting. It’s a good opportunity to shortcut the fight while also allowing the players to sort out combat roles themselves, and therefore is the least offensive of the battles to me towards the end.

That they’re all at the end is also, I think, part of why I consistently feel so sour every time I finish playing. The beginning of Resident Evil 5 is certainly lacking in setting the tone like its predecessor, but at least feels competent enough that I wonder why I was ever so negative about the game. It’s only as we plunge deeper and deeper into Tri-Cell facilities and face opponents armed with military-grade weaponry that I once more feel that frustration and criticism welling up inside. It’s why I shared the below image with my friends on Discord as soon as I was done streaming.

I know this isn’t the last time I will play Resident Evil 5. I know I will go back to it, either to play with friends or to play by myself. I will want to experience its gameplay that differentiates itself not just from the rest of the series, but from its contemporaries. Perhaps some of it is so I can hunt for blue medallions and unlock infinite ammunition and cosmetics. The game certainly has “replay value” in terms of hamster-wheel rewards. However, I truly think it’s because Resident Evil 5 is mostly a good game. It just happens to be brought down by a lot of bad decisions, and many of them are clustered together at the end.

Of course, the story is probably the worst decision the team had made, but I don’t think there’s much more I can say regarding it. There are moments that Shamus and I laughed out loud over because they felt almost satirical or like a parody. The game plays itself so straight-faced despite the absurdity of its villains or characters. Neither protagonists nor antagonists ever seem to be making intelligent, common sense decisions. That I finally noticed Chris and Sheva were pointing their guns at a mutating, hostile Wesker with a flesh-and-shrapnel infused tendril arm and still not firing only adds to the absurdity of the writing. I don’t believe this is a matter of something being lost in translation, either. I feel like there is a greater tolerance for camp and melodrama in Japanese live-action cinema than American based on what I’ve seen, but I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing with Resident Evil 5. Nonetheless, despite the over-the-top nonsense of the game’s story, it completely lacks the same charm of Resident Evil 4’s narrative.

At this point, I am “over” the shallow silliness and foolishness of the game’s narrative. I would have skipped every cut-scene were it not for the fact that we were streaming the game, and laughing at the cut-scenes is one of the reasons Shamus’ followers voted for it. At this stage, I don’t really play Resident Evil games for the story, though they can occasionally surprise me. In most instances, I simply play them for their mechanics and challenge.

And, to reiterate, there is still nothing that quite feels like Resident Evil 5, be it within or without its own franchise. I just wish it were easier to focus on the good rather than the disruptive, mind-boggling problems that continue to rise so frequently throughout its duration.

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I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about Elden Ring for the past week. Each time I do, the title changes from “My First Twenty Hours in Elden Ring” to “My First Twenty-Five” hours, then “My First Thirty Hours”, and now “My First Forty Hours”. I have a feeling this won’t be a game I can succinctly write a piece on as I’m playing. The only consistent thing is that I have not yet been struck by open-world exhaustion. The core gameplay loop that From Software has mapped onto an open-world game is compelling, but it also works because each dungeon I go into feels like a uniquely crafted space. Even the caverns and catacombs that exhibit the greatest amount of recycled assets feel as if they contain new challenges and surprises, and I’m maybe one-third through the game. This is not like most open-world titles where it feels like abilities that ought to be available from the start are held onto for the sake of a skill tree, and its many side-missions copy-pasted from start to finish. Just as every open-world game had to compare itself to Breath of the Wild and its freedoms after its release, every open-world game will now have to compare itself to Elden Ring... including the sequel to Breath of the Wild!

Unfortunately my conversation with Joey was cut short, and while we discussed another Elden Ring podcast to follow, I had forgotten that we were in fact recording episode ninety-nine. That is one episode short of one-hundred. I will undoubtedly be contemplating what we can do for our one-hundredth episode, should anything special be done to commemorate the occasion. Regardless, I will try to have something written regarding Elden Ring in the coming week so that the blog may continue to have content. I am still adjusting to working full-time while wanting to create content, particularly feeling the itch to get back into making videos again, and all while Elden Ring beckons.

When you’re not thinking about Elden Ring, you’re thinking about playing Elden Ring. It is one of those rare gems that only comes about once in a blue moon. I do not say this easily, as both Resident Evil Village and Metroid Dread came close to this same level of dedication and enthusiasm. I played those games five times over, and could continue to play them even now. The only reason Elden Ring occupies my mind more, perhaps, is simply due to how huge it is and how much depth there is to dive into. This, friends, is truly the game we dreamed of playing when we were still young enough to wake up in time for Saturday Morning Cartoons without the need of an alarm clock.

Are you currently playing Elden Ring? How deep has your addiction run? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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The Pokémon franchise is such an odd one to consider, given its rather humble origins as a GameBoy game with limited graphics and a great number of programming issues. The number of glitches and exploits of the original Red and Blue (or Red and Green for Japan) variants is fascinating. Yet the janky little mess of an RPG managed to make such a splash, and undoubtedly because the anime was there to put it on children’s radar. As a middle-schooler, it provided an escapist world of adventure like my boring school life failed to provide. We never thought to question the notion of a game where ten year-olds were encouraged to drop out of school to become vagabonds getting into dog fights with complete strangers. It was an appealing idea, and launching the anime first was honestly the best method they could have chosen to drive interest in the game.

It is with that perspective that I wonder if it’s even worthwhile pondering the quality of these games. Naturally the ones developing the titles care, though they are certainly beholden to a far greater machine. It is not really the games driving this property, however, nor its popularity. If anything, the games are popular because the idea spoke to a lot of children, and continues to speak to that spirit as they grow older and share with children of their own.

What will Pokémon look like twenty years from now, when I’m in my mid-to-late fifties? Will it look much the same? Perhaps what I really should have brought up was the idea of Pokémon as a Metaverse? With all the other publishers eager to invest and hop on board, it is possible that The Pokémon Company is the one best primed to develop a successful platform by giving fans of all ages the escapist fantasy that hooked them in so early: the possibility to jump in and go on that adventure yourself.

Until then, I will continue picking away at Pokémon Legends Arceus, which is certainly enjoyable but also becoming repetitive for me. Also somewhat frustrating, admittedly, though for a reason that I struggle with many newer Pokémon games: I cannot seem to settle on a team that I like, and therefore I’m constantly rotating Pokémon out, which leaves me needing to constantly grind them up to a higher level. It leaves me feeling under-leveled as I jump into a new territory. On the other hand, this has provided me with new challenge, though I’ve also yet to pass out and find my satchel lost in the wilds. Perhaps I should revel in a Pokémon game that’s actually a challenge?

What do you think of the latest Pokémon games? Where would you like to see the franchise go? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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I write this towards the end of the day, body aching and stiff in parts from shoveling snow and salting driveway and sidewalk alike. This laborious chore was bookended with the assemblage of a brand new desk, followed by reconnecting every electronic device necessary to perform the majority of my daily activities and hobbies. It is for this reason the episode appears so late.

There’s not much else to say on the topic of the acquisition for now, as we exhausted two full hours with our own theories and guesswork. A very enjoyable discussion, I might add! I hope you get to listen and enjoy as well.

What are your thoughts on the acquisition? Do you anticipate Microsoft to be evil with this move going forward? Or will we ultimately benefit? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

It came close. It came really, really close in terms of my favorite release in 2021. At first glance, Metroid Dread doesn’t seem to do nearly as much as Resident Evil Village in terms of honorary “favorite of a whole year” status. The latter has a far greater variety of set pieces and gameplay, higher production values, and the upgrades and unlockables make for a better incentive to replay the game than Dread’s selection of artwork.

This is also why it is understandable that others might choose Resident Evil Village themselves. What I’ve learned discussing the latest Metroid title with others is that it has very specific goals in mind, and those goals don’t appeal to all fans of the franchise. Village, on the other hand, more broadly caters to a variety of players, regardless of whether they’re a franchise fan or not. Even if the focus on action has increased from the previous entry, it is better balanced between different set pieces and locations. Horror fans can experience more harrowing or terrifying moments; some environments are linear and straight-forward or amusement park in style while others focus on that puzzle-box building of the original entries in the series; there are also plenty of treasures, collectibles, and optional bosses for fans of exploration to discover.

On paper, Metroid Dread is a really good game, but has less to offer in comparison. However, there’s a lot of stuff going on underneath the hood here that, for players of a particular nature, not only begs a return to its extraterrestrial world of ZDR, but to further master and improve on one’s abilities. It is for this reason that Metroid Dread inches its way past Resident Evil Village for me, earning the crown of my favorite game released in 2021.

Admittedly, this is not the side-scrolling Metroid game I had envisioned as my “perfect” sequel. Looking back on my video analysis of Metroid Prime: Echoes, I discussed my thoughts on how one might improve the map design for both a 2D and 3D Metroid game. The ideal solution I had proposed is to create a central “hub” region which allows for multiple routes and shortcuts between each zone, as well as linking each zone together directly where possible. It’s a nice idea, but is easier written on paper than it is implemented in a fully functional game. Nonetheless, when I created that video, I held the belief that any game relying on tools such as quick travel was either insisting on building too large a world to sustain the genre’s explorational concept, or failing to properly connect its disparate zones together in a skillful manner.

Now, having played far more Metroidvanias and experienced Dread’s own use of fast-travel in points, I better understand the purpose. In fact, I was initially disappointed by each zone in Dread being separated and self-contained. Was it really so different from Metroid Fusion splitting its different zones apart from one another? I can confidently say that it is. The inability to physically lock each zone together is more a technical limitation than it is a design flaw, and it has existed even in Super Metroid, which itself relied on elevators to connect the separate sectors to one another. The game needs to swap textures and assets in memory based on which zone you are present in, and therefore the elevators, transports, and even teleporters are workarounds to link zones together while allowing for a loading screen, just as the elevators served in Metroid Prime on the GameCube. What Dread avoids, however, is creating specific fast-travel points that link to a central hub point, or that cycle around to other fast-travel stations in a loop. Dread still relies on the player studying the map or memorizing the region’s layout in order to make their way around. In other words, each sector has multiple connections to its surrounding sectors, generating more points of access for back-tracking and navigation around the world.

From here, we can begin to see the evolution that side-scrolling Metroid’s map design has taken. In Super Metroid, the player would occasionally be locked onto a forward path. The first time you descend from Brinstar towards Norfair, the player is unable to pass by a gate without the Wave Beam, or to ascend a pit without the Ice Beam and High Jump. This lock had prevented players from getting lost in a new zone, forcing them to seek out every hidden passage or destructible block to obtain all necessary upgrades and to find the critical path forward. Had those doors behind not locked, then the player would have been able to backtrack far more of the map and possibly increase the time spent trying to figure out the path forward.

Metroid Fusion removed the organic nature at which these locks would appear by modifying the world to (often permanently) close the route behind them, or by literally locking all other doors to set the player on a singular path. The A.I. companion Adam is narratively responsible, locking all doors but those that lead to the objective marker he desired to place. One could perceive this as a potential thematic choice, representing how limited Samus feels with a stripped down suit and her powers robbed from her. The game does open up more as Samus gains more powers, objective markers becoming more vague or relying on the player figuring out the route forward on their own. Once Samus has obtained the final Screw Attack ability upgrade, however, Adam will completely lock the station down. Only the path towards the final confrontation and conclusion will be permitted, despite the fact that the player is now capable of finding and unlocking a variety of collectible power-ups scattered throughout the game world. The player cannot hope to 100% Metroid Fusion without already being aware that they must avoid accessing data rooms, going so far as to obtain one specific power-up last: otherwise, they’ll be forced to step into one of the aforementioned data rooms and lock access to any missile packs, power bombs, or energy tanks scattered elsewhere.

As a result, one of Fusion’s main features – the ever-changing world – felt more like a detriment to players used to Super Metroid’s comparatively more free-form exploration. Metroid Dread takes that notion of a changing world and executes it in a manner more in common with Super Metroid’s progression locks. Just as a player could only backtrack so far in parts of Super, the player can only wander set portions of the environment after progressing so far in Dread.

The cloaked beast slithering into what looks to be a drainage pipe is the first major boss of the game, and is here foreshadowed to the player for the second time as they progress through a hallway they’ve gone through before. The cloaking ability obtained from the boss will be necessary to pass through the door Samus is currently leaping away from.

For the most part, this change in the world’s design is not a problem. It is often used to foreshadow incoming bosses or to illustrate how the world is responding to Samus’ presence. We see this early on in the starting zone, where the player will completely loop back through their progress only to see hints of a monster slithering through the background. The game is simultaneously informing the player that they’ll not only be able to open more and more pathways with each power-up they’ll gain, but also that the world itself may not necessarily be the same next time they go through a hallway or room.

If the player is simply looking to push forward on the critical path, following the map onwards towards the next upgrade or boss fight, then the map design and the changing world guide them through masterfully. After obtaining certain abilities, the player will be placed directly where they can use said ability to open doors or break through walls which lead right to locked doors or passages they previously had to pass on by. It not only helps first-time players make their way to the next objective without being directly instructed to do so, but it keeps speed-runners from wasting time wandering from one corner of the map to the next.

Which reveals the higher priority of Dread’s design team at MercurySteam: to design for speedrunners before you design for explorers. I’ve played through the game multiple times now and have collected all items on the map twice, and each time I found back-tracking through certain zones to be a bit of a pain. Some of those environmental changes cannot be undone, and several passages will forever be locked. This means what looks to be an optimal route can instead be an impossible route, forcing the player to find a more roundabout pathway to get to a specific portion of a zone. Some harder-to-find shortcuts can be unlocked, but often from one specific direction. This means if you’re hunting for any missile packs or energy tanks you passed by on the trail, you might approach from the opposite direction necessary to open the path forward.

This is why I think there are some players that have found Dread more frustrating. For me, personally, the only region that is truly bad with this sort of design is Ghavoran, but it can certainly happen elsewhere on planet ZDR; especially if you’re trying to hunt down items before you’ve approached the final stretch, where many pathways will remain locked until you’ve retrieved several late-game upgrades.

Moving this mechanical block forward is required to progress, but you permanently close what could be best route back to Ghavoran’s elevator from most other zones. MercurySteam should have considered placing destructible blocks that the player could Power Bomb or Screw Attack through to create an alternate shortcut for late stage exploration.

I imagine this would be less of a problem since both Metroid and Zelda franchises benefit most from saving the globe-trotting item sweep for the end-game, but Metroid Dread is also the most difficult (2D) entry in the franchise thus far. Though Samus is the most mobile and acrobatic she’s ever been, her every movement silky smooth in response to player input and surpassing all other Metroid games to come before, she’s also pitted against equally swift and deadly foes that are far less forgiving than prior bosses and beasts. Even when a bosses’ pattern is clear and repetitive, there may be tight timing and specific responses required in order to avoid each devastating attack.

For most skilled players, there are enough items scattered across the critical path to keep the player well stocked. In fact, speedrunners can easily obtain almost as many health tanks as players taking time to peer into and spelunk every corner of the world, only falling one or two behind before the game truly opens up towards the end. This means any player having a rough time is unlikely to go back and get as much assistance from health boosts or an expanded arsenal of missiles as prior entries, leaving them to “git gud” by learning not just the patterns, but the timing required to dodge and strike the colossal creatures.

What most players may not realize is that there is more than one way to skin a cat in Metroid Dread. The most obvious shortcut to defeating the bosses is to keep an eye out for moments to counter-attack, but upgrades such as the speed boost will allow them to inflict incredible damage that can do as much as half the length of a battle. This is also true of enemies out in the world, where sometimes it’s better to just swing your counter while sprinting forward to kill or knock an opponent backwards, or to keep holding onto the charge beam while spinning through the air to kill weaker foes.

Which, I think, is why I myself find the game so incredibly satisfying. No doubt this write-up does not sound like the incredible praise you’d expect of my favorite game of the year, but it’s also an examination of how Metroid Dread is an evolution of the franchise direction rather than an attempt to recreate what Super Metroid had already done. After five or so runs through Metroid Dread on both Normal and Hard mode, with full completion on both difficulties and a speed run on Normal, I’ve begun to discover more and more efficient ways to sprint through its corridors and tackle or skip by the monsters populating the depths of ZDR. I’ve seen many players and writers lament the number of familiar and “safe” power-ups that the game provides, but I don’t think they quite grasp the more subtle ways in which Dread has evolved as its own thing, separate from the direction of the rest of the Metroidvania genre.

This is just one of several bosses whose fight can be shortened through use of the Shinespark Dash.

Let’s consider that Metroid Dread is the first entry in the whole franchise to start in the depths of the planet already. Rather than land on the surface and dive deeper and deeper into a steadily more threatening world, Samus is climbing up higher and higher in order to reach her ship. Rather than immediately grant the player the morph ball and power bomb at the start, the player is left to explore without those franchise crutches for a while, familiarizing themselves with the physical prowess of Samus’ acrobatic abilities. Certain opponents early in the game rely more on the counter ability, but it can still be used to quickly annihilate others or to knock certain larger beasts backward so that Samus can unload her arm cannon upon them.

With Resident Evil Village, I am having a lot of fun playing it, but I’m not really discovering more tricks or mechanics each time I run through. There’s no doubt that there is more to discover, but on my fifth playthrough I only found one overlooked trick for a boss. Otherwise, it was mostly the same experience as before. With Metroid Dread, I feel as if I am still noticing and observing new things, be it in terms of game mechanics, tactics, or simply the manner in which the world is designed to steer and guide the player a certain way.

This is most true with perhaps the most controversial inclusion of the game: the persistent E.M.M.I. robots. They are quite a hassle on a first playthrough, especially when a player is unfamiliar with the environment they’re about to jump into. In truth, they actually are not that difficult to outsmart or avoid, and the more tricky an E.M.M.I. becomes the more exits their zone has to act as a checkpoint. So, even if an exit leads directly to a dead end, it allows the player to restart from a door closer to their overall objective.

Which makes the E.M.M.I. a unique factor, regardless of whether you’re attempting a speedrun or just making your way through on a normal replay. Not unlike Mr. X in Resident Evil 2’s 2019 remake, the optimal routes and tactics of a player are tested with a persistent opponent that cannot be killed by conventional means, and whose A.I. the player must adapt to in order to proceed forward. The E.M.M.I. each follows specific rules that can be exploited or worked around, but it takes experimentation, trial, and error on the part of the player.

Which is, perhaps, why I’ve come to love their inclusion more and more. With each new run through the game I’ve found myself caught and defeated by them less and less, even as I find my memory of their zone and the critical path forward foggy. Which, perhaps, also acts as a sort of representation to my experience with the game as a whole. I have found myself good enough that I don’t mind playing on Hard as my default experience. Enemies hit far harder and bosses are more lethal, but I have been encouraged to perfect my play and learn better tactics for each fight.

To put it another way, I am continuing to carve a more optimal path through Dread’s world, which is what has always made the Metroidvania franchise so appealing. It’s not just the exploration, it’s optimizing your routes to be better equipped for certain battles. It’s a genre built on mastery and perfection, where a single playthrough is only able to deliver a portion of the intended experience. Given that I’ve developed a philosophy of replaying games in order to better learn their mechanics and what makes them tick, it is no wonder that I have grown steadily more fond of the genre.

Yet, just as before, Metroid Dread has illustrated why Nintendo’s franchise that has helped birth the genre remains best in class for me. From how it feels to control Samus, to all the little tricks and tactics that the game allows you to discover on your own, to how perfectly it guides the player through its world, Metroid Dread is a game custom built for me – or so it feels. I absolutely love it, I’m still not bored of it, and I don’t know when I could become bored of it.

I can only hope that Metroid Prime 4 can deliver as perfect an experience, though perhaps more focused on the slower, ponderous, exploratory traits that the 3D games were best at.

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It is almost time for me to be finished discussing the past year of gaming in a retrospective fashion. That does not mean I am finished playing older games or writing about them, of course, but I will no longer be pressuring myself to put so many words together under a strict time limit. In truth, it has been fun using what abundant time I have at the moment to run myself through such a gauntlet of content creation. For so long I had tried to maintain consistent schedules for posts and essays, but I ultimately fell victim to self-doubt and over-analyzing my own work. I’ve invested far more hours in writing about video games than playing them the last two weeks, even with my streams factored in, and I’m ready to take a bit of a break and play some more.

Hopefully it means this blog will be less empty in 2022, but I have been prone to mood swings and am naturally looking to end that over-abundance of time available with steady employment. Nonetheless, I’d like to remember this feeling and continue to write for the simple love of writing again.

Keep an eye on Shamus Young’s own blog for an announcement regarding our next upcoming stream. In case you missed it, we had played through Batman: Arkham Origins with my steering the wheel and Shamus running co-pilot. You can follow along from the beginning starting here or keep an eye on his “streaming” tag, or simply follow me on Twitch to receive notifications whenever I go live.

I’d add more regarding the podcast itself, but the episode is almost three hours long. That, combined with the incredible word count I’ve spent regarding my games of 2021 the past couple of weeks, is more than enough words on the topic.

What games were your favorite in 2021? Any questions or topics you’d like to hear from Steve and I when we air episode 100? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Keep in mind that these are all the games I played and enjoyed but have yet to discuss. In truth, Resident Evil Village was favored more than any title in this list, and Monster Hunter Rise now tempts me on PC for its superior framerate and performance. Nonetheless, these are certainly the remaining games that made the most impression on me throughout the year, save for my most favorite.

There are still plenty of titles I would have loved to add, however, had I the chance to play them. Tales of Arise, It Takes Two, Famicom Detective Club, Psychonauts 2, NEO: The World Ends With You, Caligula Effect 2, and so many more. As I had already stated, 2021 was a surprisingly incredible year of releases, and there was simply too much to keep up with. This is especially true after the already mentioned impact of Game Pass and the knowledge that I could wait for certain titles to potentially reach the platform.

All in all, however, the following are the games I played in 2021 that I had a blast with. My overall satisfaction may vary from title to title, but each provided something of value to me compared to other games I had played. Even the weakest of these is superior to many of the games played in prior years, and therefore all contributed to why 2021 was one of the best gaming years I’ve had in a long time.

I did not get the chance to finish Halo Infinite. I had planned to do so on stream just before the calendar rolled over into 2022, but I had experienced a dreaded save corruption bug whilst trying to troubleshoot an odd issue with the controls. Nevertheless, Infinite is the first Halo game developed by 343 Industries that feels somewhat how a Halo game ought to feel.

Somewhat, but not quite there yet. My over-reliance on select human weapons over Covenant weapons is indicative of their lack of versatility and nerfed power levels compared to the earlier Bungie games. It seems to be an ever cascading problem with the series, making the alien weaponry more and more pitiful despite expanding the arsenal. Even so, the player still has multiple tools at their disposal for resourceful and clever combat decisions. Most notable is the grappling hook, allowing the player to not only traverse to great heights and at great speeds, but to also snatch explosive canisters with which to obliterate or weaken enemy forces. It also makes for a good finisher once you’ve shot an Elite’s shields away, or pop the helmet free of a Brute’s cranium: latch on with the grapple and lunge directly into their face with a high speed jab to the jaw.

Such combat shines the best in the open world, tackling the myriad enemy facilities and capturing field locations from which your human companions may spawn. Many have already spoken of it in great detail, but it is clear that 343 referenced the titular level map Halo from Combat Evolved when exploring the concept of an open-world game in this setting. It is imperfect, given its lack of differing climates or regions to traverse; it is all grass and pine trees, each zone cordoned off by sheer cliff faces in order to limit the draw distance for weaker Xbox One hardware. The open world becomes somewhat more pointless when attempting to ride a vehicle, limited to which paths and roads you can traverse due to the rocky terrain.

Regardless, being able to approach a variety of enemy bases or encampments however you wish is how Infinite latches onto that often misquoted thirty-seconds of fun that Jaime Griesemer claimed was the franchise strength. Yes, the core combat mechanics work well, but being able to approach one enemy encampment from sniping distance, or to storm in with a Warthog loaded with marine compatriots, or even casually rolling up in a Scorpion Tank are the variety that helps keep that thirty-second loop working. There are so many different ways to approach a single combat scenario, and even if you die it is likely that no two attempts will play exactly alike. At its core, Halo Infinite is off to a pretty good start.

The actual narrative campaign, however, is where things start to collapse. The writers try to replace Cortana with a quirky, almost childlike A.I. whose over-humanization reminds me of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s Ethan. While Cortana as an A.I. with a personality was fine, she also did not feel like an over exaggeration of silly traits or comments, none of which make sense when so much of her initial dialogue is rigidly locked into the purpose of a program. The relationship of a human and an A.I. whose focus is driven by pragmatic protocols was handled far better in Titanfall 2, where BT’s monotone voice and logic-driven perspective are what allowed the occasional human quirk to shine through without the need to call attention to itself. The villains are dull, prone to monologuing, and in sore need of a cheeky Dante or Bayonetta character to lighten the self-serious tone. None of the villains are memorable or compelling, which I suppose is fitting given that the series hero is very much the same. Either Microsoft or 343 are so obsessed with making a character of the Master Chief rather than leave him as a quiet cipher for the player. It would be better to consider what more could be done with a universe whose greatest alien alliance has been shattered by the lies of the religion they were built upon. Instead, far more compelling characters like the Arbiter remain on the sideline, bored, never to be heard from again.

Halo Infinite is the best game that 343 Industries has made, but the fact that it took so many years to get it close to the franchise’s formal majesty is evidence enough that you can’t just manufacture games like a grocery product and expect them to succeed.

Perhaps this same criticism can be leveled at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, famous for the Yakuza franchise and 2021’s spin-off title Lost Judgment. They’ve effectively been working on a single franchise for their entire existence, yet the quality never seems to stop. I was fully prepared for Lost Judgment to be one of my favorite experiences of the year, especially being the sequel to Judgment – a spin-off whose narrative I preferred over any of the Yakuza titles I had played before.

In terms of mechanics, this is likely to be the best of the traditional brawler style I’ve played. Whereas the first title was plagued by a clan of goons constantly on the lookout for protagonist Takayuki Yagami, halting any momentum in the narrative or side quests for the sake of random street fights with quasi-bosses, the sequel grants the player a skateboard with which all encounters with thugs and criminals can be avoided. This allows the player to spend more time exploring and navigating the world without having to dodge, hide, or steer themselves away from potential scraps. Just hop on your skateboard and any would-be muggers ignore the detective’s presence. The loss of potential experience and money earned is balanced out by increasing their reward for completing quests, gained by taking side cases far more fitting for an urban detective like Yagami.

What is new for the entire Yakuza franchise as a whole is the inclusion of a high school, home of an eager young detective club that seeks out Yagami for support and advice for solving potential mysteries throughout the student body. These extended side stories are where the most impressive amount of content is located, as a variety of brand new mini-games have been developed exclusively for such smaller-scale narratives. From bicycle races to a boxing club, a complete rhythm game and a robotics tournament, there’s a surprising number of custom side activities framed by a mystery surrounding each student organization or individual’s plight. This is where Lost Judgment is perhaps at its strongest, because the drama of these high schoolers is handled with the same self-aware and humorous flair without sacrificing on the potential emotional investment towards the characters they surround. It may never achieve the same touching highs as a traditional Yakuza narrative can achieve, but each journey through a subculture leaves you with an ever-growing cast of likable teens and misfits.

Which is why it’s a shame that the main narrative collapses halfway through. For several hours the story is a gradual build up of themes regarding abuse of power, highlighting the manner in which society itself will protect the predators even as the prey are visibly tortured or killed. Yet when Yagami is confronted by the antagonist’s darker, self-interested take on justice, the end result is to simply shout the same counter-argument over and over, occasionally punctuated by fists. Hours of the game are devoted to hearing the same talking points by the same two characters, neither budging from their position nor shifting their perspective. It’s not a very surprising narrative turn if you’re familiar with Japanese media, as so many conflicts ultimately become an unstoppable force and immovable obstacle clashing into one another. The problem is that the Yakuza franchise typically offers far more interesting challenges for our protagonist’s values, and especially did so in the prior title Judgment. Yagami was forced to confront what it means to seek the truth and reconcile his former role as a lawyer with his current role as a detective. There is no such challenge to his values or identity in Lost Judgment, and so hours are spent with little progress being made from a character perspective while dialogue feels incessantly repeated. If the first half of Lost Judgment was my favorite Yakuza game, then the latter half was enough to drag it down into being the least.

Typically a game’s mechanics can be enough to elevate that title for me even in the wake of a satisfying narrative, but with so many Yakuza titles playing similarly and always with a healthy dose of jank, it is on their individual stories that these games rely. I can only hope that this is a rare black sheep in the Yakuza family; that, and a greater hope that they explore a less adult, more light-hearted spin-off of the high school mystery club in a future release. I’d love a game devoted to just that idea.

Scarlet Nexus was perhaps a greater surprise than expected, albeit precisely the sort of experience I had anticipated. It never looked great to me, so when it hit Game Pass far earlier than I thought it might, I was quick to give it a try. To my surprise, it was a decently paced action-RPG whose party-reliant concepts really came into fruition towards the end.

With a theme based on the connections between us, the combat mechanics are primarily based on how you implement the abilities of your comrades in arms. Some foes possess elemental weaknesses while others can only be struck using clairvoyance or high-speed acceleration. The player must thus make use of these different abilities in order to best survive and conquer their monstrous foes. In time they’ll also be able to summon their allies for a swift attack, and each follow-up summon will drive the opponent closer and closer to being stunned: a status upon which an immediate execution can be performed. All of these abilities are unlocked and strengthened through “bond” episodes between each chapter, developing the protagonist’s relationship with that character further.

By the end of the game, the player is constantly swapping abilities out, summoning comrades, and even being saved from taking damage as friends drop in to temporarily act as a shield. It takes a while to get to such excitement, however, as the early chapters will primarily rely on the player’s telekinesis to throw objects about, chaining physical and telekinetic attacks together or using the environment to unleash devastating damage. The early hours rely heavily on the narrative to drive the player’s interest, as there’s not much to chew on when you first start out. It’s alright, but otherwise feels little different than any other lower budget action-RPG.

The story is precisely what wrapped me up in the game’s world, however. I was not fond of the color palette or aesthetic, nor did the characters come across all that deep or interesting to me, but the often surprising and sometimes bizarre twists and turns it would take kept me curious just how crazy the narrative would become. It was almost a game in itself to guess which out-there twist would come next. Perhaps most surprisingly, it felt as if it all came together tidily by the game’s conclusion.

I wish I could say Scarlet Nexus was a new favorite of mine, but it was always missing some special ingredient to truly earn my unrequited love. Perhaps if there were more time spent with the characters, or they simply focused less on certain traits and more on those that developed the setting more (such as the clairvoyant’s vision starting to go bad). Nonetheless, I would have skipped Scarlet Nexus were it not for Game Pass, and I’m glad to have had the chance to play it.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is precisely the sort of lower-budget title that I fall unabashedly in love with, and yet no one else seems to enjoy it quite as much as I do. This may seem disingenuous to say given I had streamed the game with two of my friends, each of which had a good time. For my part, however, it would have become the next weekly game to dive into with my friends on the regular. It would have been the next best thing to a proper Left 4 Dead sequel, especially after I had felt burned by the Back 4 Blood Beta.

It’s hard to really pinpoint what makes it work so well for me, but I’ve narrowed it down to a few factors. The first is the time-to-kill of the Xenomorph hordes themselves. Each individual alien takes very little time to annihilate, but the constant outpouring of wall-crawling murder machines keeps the pressure on. This is especially true when the player hears the cry of a more powerful Soldier or Crasher type beast, knowing they’ll need to somehow manage both the swarm of smaller drones and these larger monstrosities simultaneously. This would be where special abilities and perishable gear comes into play, adding tactical considerations as to when to use certain skills, when to hold on for a better opportunity, or whether you should use a limited item for a temporary advantage.

The end result is an arcade-style action game that latches onto the previously mentioned thirty-seconds of fun; it’s not in killing the aliens that the fun is derived, it’s in the quick decision making that is necessary as each horde floods the facility. It’s not about when this wave of Xenomorphs will end so much as wondering where the next will appear, or what to do should a Spitter, Burster, Charger, or Soldier emerge. That the campaign also features later varieties of foes contributes to a varied gameplay experience, preventing the Xenomorphs from becoming too tedious and repetitive an opponent. Of course, the real draw is the bug hunt, and so these different enemy types offer a nice reprieve but certainly do not overstay their welcome. Just as you want to get back to regular Xenomorphs, they start crawling back out of the walls, and this time accompanied by face huggers as yet another new threat.

As someone that loves the original trilogy of films but lamented the continued mutilation of franchise lore, atmosphere, and scope, and become similarly wary of what any game adaptation might do at this stage, I was pleasantly surprised by all that Aliens: Fireteam Elite had accomplished. It makes for a satisfying Aliens game while simultaneously giving me the Left 4 Dead successor I’d been wanting for a long time. If you can get yourself a regular fireteam of three to take it on, then I highly recommend it.

I was worried about No More Heroes 3 leading up to its release. One need only look to my write-up on the entire trilogy to understand why, as revisiting the first and second game revealed a drastically different tone between the two. Travis Strikes Again was perhaps the first source of concern, as I found the title to be incredibly self-indulgent to the point of nonsense on a narrative level and extremely tedious and exhausting from a gameplay perspective.

Fortunately, No More Heroes 3 is truly the ideal sequel to the original Nintendo Wii title that launched so many years ago, all the way back when I was in College. Suda51 is still writing self-indulgent nonsense, but it feels more purpose driven this time. Our psychotic extraterrestrial antagonist is revealed to have a caring heart for his comrades on the inside rather than being a two-dimensional overlord willing to kill his own henchmen for talking back. It is a narrative that seeks to live up to the franchise moniker, reveling in the fact that there truly are no more heroes… at least, depending on whose perspective you’re looking at. For every hero is a villain in the eyes of another, and this source of conflict is what drives the characters into this Tarantino-if-he-was-a-Weeb bloodbath of aliens, mecha, and kaiju-sized alligators.

The real strength of the game is in amputating the weakest elements of its prior entries and polishing up its strengths. The original No More Heroes featured lengthy levels of janky fights against very samey opponents, so No More Heroes 3 abandons the corridors of repetitive combat in favor of singular combat arenas with varied classes of enemies, each equipped with unique weapons and move-sets. Travis Touchdown himself now possesses additional abilities to help slow down, heavily damage, or clear out the foes before him. With smoother melee controls and responsive wrestling finishers, No More Heroes 3 may not live up to the polish and mechanical mastery of the Devil May Cry series, but it manages to feel good nonetheless. We’re no longer at the point where we have to forgive jank like we did on the Wii.

No More Heroes 3 is, most of all, that rare sort of title that just reminds you why video games are so loveable in the first place. There are few mediums that can explore as many crazy concepts in a single work while maintaining an odd sense of coherence. The game is stylish in every sense of the word, and the world is a better place now that Suda51 had his chance to deliver this long awaited sequel.

Which leaves me with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, a game I hope to give its own essay in time. This was, perhaps, the greatest surprise of the year for me. I hold very little interest in most Western AAA level productions these days, and was particularly uninterested in another assemblage of stunt doubles from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nonetheless, I kept up with the marketing – something I tend to do for certain notable games even if I’m not interested in them – and found it to look more appealing as more was revealed. After it was released and received an outpouring of positive praise, I had to find out for myself.

The end result was an ideal representation of what a single-player AAA game ought to be. Much praise has been made of the lack of microtransactions and loot boxes, but I think it is more important to note a complete lack of trend-chasing altogether. There may be a number of inspirations within Guardians of the Galaxy, from Telltale style adventure to BioWare-esque population centers or crew chatter, or even the evidence of developer Eidos Montreal’s experience crafting Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s platforming and environmental hazards, but all of these inclusions feel seamlessly knitted together to form a cohesive vision and experience. What stands out to me the most is also what I’ve seen many label as the weakest part of the package: the combat.

It seemed an odd choice to put the player in control of Peter Quill exclusively, but it actually unifies the game’s thematic and mechanical goals together. The story isn’t just about the team learning to work as a single, cooperative unit, it’s also about Peter’s ability to lead. This is what makes the combat work so excellently, and just as Peter needs to best learn how and when to use his teammates’ abilities, so too must the player figure out when to rely on their comrades rather than their own strength. The end result is a game that looks like a third-person shooter on the surface, but is far closer to an action-RPG focused on elemental weaknesses, knowing which team abilities to use in tandem with one another, and figuring out when and how to position yourself for your own special attacks.

As I said, I’d love to dedicate a whole write-up to the game, but another playthrough may be required to give it the proper treatment. Not that it would be torture to do that very thing: though it may lack the incentive to go through multiple times that Resident Evil Village possesses, Guardians of the Galaxy is one of those games where just thinking about it makes you want to give it another go.

Appropriate, as the movies used to give me that very same feeling.

With that said, we now come near to the end of our year in review. Next week I will conclude with my favorite game released in 2021. I’m sure it’s easy to guess, especially if you’ve been listening to the podcast or are familiar with my history of games. Regardless, I hope that, if any of the games I discussed sounded interesting, you take the time to give them a look yourself. They all come recommended, even if they were somehow or somewhat a bit disappointing for me. Despite any lows, they were still some of the best gaming hours I spent in 2021.

My relationship with indie games has been an odd one. For a while there I was not quite taken by them, finding their titles to be a bit janky or unpolished even compared to their inspirational forefathers on 16-bit hardware built with more primitive tools. Only on occasion would I be floored by the craftsmanship of a title like Hollow Knight or Iconoclasts, games whose polish and effort was as top notch as the best of the publisher-supported studios.

I find that I’ve been languishing behind the times, as there are plenty of indie games out there of superb quality and often more befitting my interests than what the larger publishers have on offer. Unfortunately, I also find myself struggling to pick out the diamonds in the rough, or to find the titles worthy of standing alongside my favorites.

As a result, 2021 has essentially been the first year where I fervently began to pursue the fruits of independent labors, learning what does or does not work for me, and what I ought to be careful of when making purchasing decisions. Most of all, it has also given me plenty of independent publishing labels or smaller developers to keep an eye on in the future.

Curiously enough, I decided to immediately follow a playthrough of 2018’s The Messenger with Cyber Shadow. Each title had clearly been influenced by the original Ninja Gaiden series for arcade and the NES, yet Cyber Shadow was the far more linear affair as The Messenger had also sought to explore different pixel art styles and, therefore, different ways of interacting with the world. Once the path between 8-bit and 16-bit dimensions had been opened, the player was free to return to older zones and use their abilities to further explore a more open-ended world.

Though I feel as if I had enjoyed the gameplay of Cyber Shadow more, it simply did not have the same staying power as The Messenger. This is most likely due to the narrative of Cyber Shadow having little style and presence, whereas The Messenger was more amusing and creative in its time-and-space bending story despite inducing more than a few groans from its attempts at humor. Otherwise, I can only assume that Cyber Shadow is more vivid in my memory due to the more straight-forward approach as a linear send-up of Ninja Gaiden; it relies more heavily on combat mechanics to establish a fast-paced flow throughout a level than ponderous exploration and platforming. If you know what you are doing – such as whoever is in control of the gameplay footage in the trailer – then you’ll be able to speed through the separate maps at an incredible pace.

For one such as myself, however, I more often found certain levels and bosses a great source of frustration. This was especially true with the final boss, whose separate phases demanded a degree of perfection I found immensely frustrating to try and get right. It is curious that I’d find Cyber Shadow so frustrating and forgettable despite sharing a few elements in common with my favorite title of the year, yet I think what it comes down to is responsiveness and polish. Or, perhaps, whether the end result feels rewarding, or that I have actually improved rather than simply memorizing what buttons to press and when.

Polish and responsiveness would ultimately be the greatest enemy to many indies I played throughout the year, preventing me from properly loving them, even when I enjoyed them. Blue Fire looked to be a fascinating, 3D action-platformer inspired by both Dark Souls and the Legend of Zelda franchise, yet was never quite up to the standards of either. It certainly has personality, what with a cute looking mascot character and cohorts not unlike those of Hollow Knight. It also managed to pull in obstacle courses not unlike those of the Prince of Persia series, featuring puzzles of wall-running and mid-air dash timing to navigate halls and platforming challenges.

Unfortunately some of these courses demanded far too much precision for the floaty leaps of the protagonist, or simply lacked the necessary guidance or metaphorical signposts to even indicate where such a course was leading or intended to go. The foes and bosses were also somewhat obtuse at times, making for more than a few troublesome encounters.

Though as I write this, I must confess I somewhat wish to go back and play the game again. I suppose that alone speaks positively of the experience I had: despite recalling some awkward fights with opponents where my dodge did not execute as desired, or sighing in frustration as I searched the environment seeking some clue as to where I might go next, I also remember having a bit of fun leaping from wall to wall or timing my strikes against a mighty boss once they’ve left themselves vulnerable. Perhaps my memory is too unkind towards the game and it deserves a second chance. So while Blue Fire was certainly not one of the best games I’ve played this year, it was certainly enjoyable enough to at least begin beckoning a return out of curiosity.

Flynn: Son of Crimson is not too dissimilar, its world and combat designed well enough to clearly indicate to a player what it is they ought to be doing. Perhaps this is one of those hard to iron out observations regarding certain games: some of the worst always leave the player baffled as to what the correct way to play is, while those that are mediocre, adequate, or simply fine make it clear what the player is supposed to do, but execution is somehow inhibited by the game itself. This could be due to controls that feel sluggish or unresponsive, a matter of animations being slow or not lining up with the player’s expectations, or the odd enemy that behaves unlike all others thus far.

With Flynn, it is a mixture of the occasional sluggish control and the odd behavior of an enemy. Most opponents in the game have clear attack patterns that allow the player to know when it is best to strike and when to dodge, or foes that flinch immediately upon being struck no matter what. Yet there are occasional opponents that neither flinch nor have as obvious a set of patterns, leaving very little room for the player to effectively swing and attack. This is particularly true of certain bosses whose attack patterns are so extended and lethal that it feels as if their fight is designed to take ten minutes each. Imagine how much of a pain it is to spend minutes whittling a boss down to one-third health only to die, forced to start over from the beginning! It happened on multiple occasions with Flynn, and in the end I could not decipher what I should have been doing since it did not feel I was playing “correctly”.

There is a balance to a game’s difficulty and challenge and whether the player themselves feels at fault for defeat or are left to feel as if the game is unfair. This is no doubt yet another subjective realm based on the player themselves or their own skill level, but I think the reason developers like From Software are known for being “tough but fair” is due to many players recognizing what they themselves ought to have done in any given situation instead. I don’t fully agree with those players, but I understand the sentiment. Shamus Young refers to it as whether a game feels “perfectable” or not. I think, perhaps, the answer lies somewhere between these options. Does Flynn: Son of Crimson feel “perfectable” to me? To an extent, yes, but one of the factors that prevents me from wanting to try and perfect my time with it is the simple feel of the game. To compare to an older title, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest feels perfectly responsive when I wish to run, leap, or roll. It feels like a perfectable platformer because, even if I screw up, I need only improve my own reaction time or make small adjustments to my playstyle.

Flynn does not feel as smoothly responsive, and so when I get struck by an enemy because the character didn’t dodge when I pressed the button, it feels less like an issue with my response time and more like an issue with the game. In truth, it’s somewhere in between. I expect a dodge-cancel or am unable to read the enemy’s animation in time, but the game is expecting either a perfect knowledge of attack animation frames or knowledge of when to consistently strike and dodge to avoid damage. I want a game that responds with me, and Flynn is not such a game.

This is also somewhat my issue with Kena: Bridge of Spirits, a game which seems more preoccupied by its own animation prowess than the ability to make those animations intuitive for players. Admittedly, I am no animator such as Dan of New Frame Plus or Also Dan of Video Game Animation Study, yet it is their work that had first helped me consider what might be “off” about Kena.

To put it as succinctly as possible, Kena: Bridge of Spirits feels as if it is more difficult than it ought to be given its design. The speed at which Kena and her opponents swing their weapons and strike is not too dissimilar to other action games, and yet dodge or parry windows feel inconsistent in comparison to similar titles. This is, in part, due to an emphasis on how such abilities might be animated in a film; notable due to the background of the game’s creators. Kena’s defensive bubble will not appear until after she’s crossed her arms in a bit of a flourish, causing her parry or block to appear in more time than a hurried press and hold of the button might demand. As the Dans note, players of fast-paced action games expect for their characters to respond swiftly under certain circumstances, and defensive moves with precise timing are just such a moment. However, there also seems to be the lack of invincibility frames to Kena’s dodge, meaning the player must be very precise in regards to leaping out of the way of an incoming attack. However, the game does not possess an effective dodge-cancel in order to make up for this demanded precision.

It is small little details like this which clash with the game’s otherwise great polish. Exploration and puzzle solving all feel top notch, and once you’ve adjusted to the game’s subtle imperfections you can manage to dominate your opponents quite handily. This is especially true once Kena is granted her final combat ability, one in which the game would have done well to have awarded far earlier in its play time (though might have also trivialized some of the fights given how powerful it is). All in all, however, I was left with a game that I had enjoyed, but was not feeling the urge to immediately jump back into. If I’m feeling curious about replaying Blue Fire, however, perhaps that will change with Kena as well.

Regardless of my evaluation, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is one of the more high profile indie games due to being the team’s freshman effort and having the look and polish of an experienced game development studio. The only title perhaps more impressive looking that I played – and only so far as realism goes rather than aesthetic design – would be The Medium, Bloober Team’s latest “horror” entry with some AAA looking production value. It was one of the first games I had played in the year, an early title with which to use my Game Pass subscription on while testing out my PC’s new hardware specs, but you may also recall that I wasn’t wholly charmed by it.

The unfortunate perception of The Medium is due to the game’s obvious allusions and aspirations to be comparable to the Silent Hill franchise. The protagonist crosses between this world and what may be a plane of the afterlife, and the horror is more psychological than it is material. However, despite the efforts to be visually striking, nothing comes off as terrifying as the inspirational material. In fact, I’m not sure I ever once felt frightened or even nervous in my whole time playing.

If anything, The Medium feels like a concept too big for its studio’s capabilities. There are the beginnings of several ideas within, yet none are developed into their full potential. The protagonist can use certain abilities in the alternate reality, but they are never expanded upon or find alternate uses when exploring that realm. Everything is straight-forward, and it all concludes in a nonsense ending that feels more art school than it does auteur; an imitation of unconventional finales that provokes no thought and is intended to do little more than shock.

I did not dislike The Medium, but it is hard to be positive about it since the entire experience feels like unfulfilled potential.

Fortunately, there is Death’s Door, a game that I have also written about already. However, as I continued to play through different games throughout the year, my mind kept returning to Death’s Door as an example of a title that knew how to execute on its ambitions. Perhaps the overall reception in the industry feels more lukewarm than other games due to a lack of innovation in narrative or mechanics, but unlike so many other titles, Death’s Door never disappointed me. It was as responsive as I desired it, the writing was amusing, and it failed to overstay its welcome.

Most importantly, however, was that perfect design of enemy encounters. Not just in regards to arenas and unique gimmicks or quirks, but the assortment of what types of opponents and how many of each type. Playing games such as Kena: Bridge of Spirits throughout the year really drove home just how important it is to test and polish encounters to challenge the player without overwhelming them. Though I still found myself having a rough time at parts, I never felt as if Death’s Door was tasking me with completing an unreasonable fight. Even when I had gone through a second time to restrict myself to the umbrella, the weakest melee weapon in the game, I always found the skirmishes challenging but possible to overcome. “Tough, but fair” as they say.

I feel as if Death’s Door truly goes unrewarded in that regard. Yes, it also has a series of enjoyable puzzles to progress through, and the post-credits endgame is delightfully open and explores more of the world literally and figuratively. Ultimately, however, it is the best indie game I played without a doubt.

I would, however, like to conclude by offering a note towards Mighty Goose, an old-fashioned and silly arcade game that would likely be a lot of fun to revisit with a friend. It can be beaten in a single play session, though there are a few abilities and secrets to go back and find should you choose. Not unlike the arcade games of old, this is an excellent title to kill an afternoon with, its combat excellently polished and mech-piloting goose gimmick being silly enough without also being shoved in your face. It was a delight to play, and the only flaw I can think of is the manner in which so much ends up happening on the screen that you can easily lose track of enemy projectiles.

There are plenty of other indie titles that released in 2021 that I have not been able to get to, or have only just begun to tackle on stream. Dreamscaper, for example, is a cozy little rogue-lite where you explore your city neighborhood during the daytime before diving into haunted memories in your dreams. It lacks the same polish that makes a title like Hades so worthwhile and playable, but if you’re a fan of the genre then it’s certainly worth giving a try. As of this writing I’ve been streaming Smelter, an interesting fusion of Mega Man Zero style inspiration with the overworld strategy and tactics of ActRaiser. It suffers a bit from the responsiveness issues that Flynn: Son of Crimson has, but has otherwise been rather interesting.

I’ll be on the lookout for plenty more in 2022, but I’ll also be careful to look at user reviews rather than simply relying on flashy trailers. Despite approaching these games knowing they are unlikely to accomplish what the higher budgeted compatriots can manage, I’m more likely to be impressed and addicted to titles such as Hollow Knight or Iconoclasts, which occasionally put the more expensive releases to shame. Hopefully there will be just such a title in 2022 to wow the pants off of me.

Everyone has highly acclaimed titles that they never got around to playing at release, or prior purchases just sitting on their hard drives and bookshelves gathering dust. No one is able to play every game of interest that crosses their path, and they are often unaware of certain titles that may be up their alley until word of mouth hits them months or years later. Then come the recommendations of friends and compatriots both in person and on the Internet, demanding an interruption in one’s schedule to play this latest game that will surely blow their minds away.

Just as I’ve made it a point to replay games I’m familiar with, I also try to go back and play games that I once missed. Oftentimes this is a better choice than to play the latest releases; rather than get stuck with something that’s okay but brand new, I might find myself deeply enveloped in a game that’s fantastic though older. This was especially true the prior year when my favorite game turned out to be Bloodborne, a title five years old by the time I finally played it.

None of the previously released titles I played in 2021 made quite as strong of an impression, but several of them were notable nonetheless. As such, I wanted to spend some time discussing them before I detailed my remaining favorites of the past year. Of course, since I’ve already written about some of these games, this will also turn into a bit of a look back at my essays of 2021 as well.

I say this because the first game I wish to bring up is Resident Evil VII, a title which I’ve remarked as being mostly great already. Despite being overshadowed by my enjoyment of its sequel Resident Evil Village, the tale of bayou terror never left my mind even as the pages of the calendar continued to turn. The secret to the best Resident Evil games is the desire to go back and optimize your path through the horrifying and threatening world. This was true in the first title and its remake in regards to improving one’s route and mastery of the Spencer Mansion, and would be further encouraged in the remake of its sequel, Resident Evil 2, by adding the intimidating presence of Mr. X to the Raccoon City Police Department. Not only would a player’s knowledge of the location be tested, but they’d need to adapt at a moment’s notice to the possible closing off of a pathway by the lumbering, purpose-driven killing machine. Resident Evil 4 would shift over to combat mastery rather than world-mastery, whose weapon upgrades would roll over from one playthrough to another and encourage the player to return repeatedly for further unlocks and improved tactics. There was still an environmental mastery, but it was locked to the combat arena rather than an entire building.

It is no surprise, then, that Resident Evil VII continues to beckon me back. I wish to take on the Baker family once again on their turf, increasing the difficulty level and testing what options are available in certain sections of the game while also learning the most optimal path through their residence. The only reason I keep waffling on whether I actually play again or not is my indecision or uncertainty as to whether I’ll be returning to the game for other analytical purposes in the future.

That, and my documented dislike of the moulded enemy type. Though Resident Evil Village has many lows, and they, too, owe to the subpar execution of the combat mechanics, Village manages to vary its gameplay experience and combat encounters enough to remain a wholly solid experience. The concluding stretch of Resident Evil VII is simply too much combat without much challenge against very bland enemies.

Nonetheless, Resident Evil VII is one of the reasons I’m convinced that Capcom is at their best right now.

I cannot say the same for CD Projekt Red, developers of the highly acclaimed The Witcher 3. I already beat up on the game enough for immersion that breaks immersion and its writing intent and verisimilitude contradicting its game design. However, I cannot deny that I still think back positively on the experience as a whole.

What has perhaps stuck closest is the scene in which Geralt and his fellow Witchers gather for a night of drinking. The evening swiftly dissolves into excess, emotional outbursts, and an all too familiar outpouring of bad ideas that indicate it is time for bed. There are many games celebrated for their writing, but so few present such a real and sincere moment as that character-focused night of drunk Witchers.

While I may not have been as taken by the game’s writing as many others, I also cannot muster the contrarian energy to claim it is undeserved. CD Projekt Red certainly had accomplished much with the game, and if you were to ask me if it or Dragon Age: Origins were the better game, I’d select The Witcher 3 without hesitation. At the same time, if you were to ask if I wanted to play The Witcher 3 or Dragon’s Dogma over again, I’d choose the latter simply because the actual combat was far more enjoyable. The Witcher 3 can be flashy and cinematic at times, but in the end it never felt that satisfying in its monster hunts or skirmishes against bandits. Like many RPG’s, it also came down to skill far less than it did the quality of your equipment and level of your spells. I don’t want to sound as if I don’t understand the purpose of a role-playing game, but my preference is that an action game lean more heavily on skill than number crunching. If your emphasis is stat and gear manipulation, then I would prefer a more strategic combat design, such as a turn-based or grid-based combat system.

Regardless, I occasionally think about The Witcher 3, and I actually hope to get to its predecessors just so that I might spend more time in that world and see where CD Projekt Red began.

The other large game I had played earlier this year was Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, marking the third time I would purchase the title for as many systems and the fourth time I had started my adventure anew. You’d think being unable to complete a game so often would indicate a lack of enjoyment, but it was always the length of the game that kept me from returning. Little did I know it wasn’t actually one hundred hours long as many claimed – so long as you’re not aiming to complete absolutely everything – and that I had made far more progress in my first time through than I had anticipated.

Nonetheless, the early hours of Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition are by far the most interesting. Though aspects of the opening feel fairly generic as the home of a young group of teenagers is invaded by an overwhelming force of evil, it is the tragedy that they face and their attitude towards it that allows the game to feel somewhat different than one might anticipate. It feels potentially subversive to expectations, and the many plot twists that follow build on a mystery as to who the adversary truly is.

It is approximately the halfway point that any indication of subversion passes on by. It is also around halfway through that any potential experimentation with different party members seems simultaneously encouraged and discouraged. Your base trio of characters are unfortunately greatly effective, providing any combat role you could possibly need and synchronizing their attacks almost perfectly. While other characters serve similar roles, they are more “advanced”, so to speak: they are not as immediately useful when combined as your early trio, and much grinding is required if you wish to advance bond levels and other shared skills to be anywhere near as advantageous. As such, the game never became bad or dull, but it lost much of the momentum that drove its earlier hours through a loss of new combat features. You could either have a harder time with a B or C team, or you could just swap back to your A team and continue the same strategies you’ve been performing the whole game. It was a fine title to finally go back and finish, but ultimately it has proven far more forgettable as a whole than its opening hours served in isolation.

The greatest letdown I shall be discussing is Daemon X Machina, a title which I had played on stream this autumn. I had played the demo back in 2017 when it launched on the Nintendo Switch, but was unable to fit the game into my budget or schedule against releases like Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Astral Chain that year. Though the introductory missions of the demo were fine, I really became interested in the game when I fought one of its giant colossal boss mechs. By the time I got around to playing the game on PC, I found that such engaging battles were certainly the highlights of the final product, but were also uncommon. The remaining missions were otherwise bog standard and repetitive, with very little environmental or objective variation, let alone proper challenge.

It’s a shame, because it has a great visual aesthetic with wonderful cel-shading of Shoji Kawamori mecha designs. However, the large number of missions available were often too easy, too numerous, and had very little differentiation between them. A shorter game with a greater focus on set piece encounters like the larger bosses would have made for a more interesting experience, and perhaps even allowed a bit more room for polish and experimentation by focusing on a shorter or smaller campaign scope.

Perhaps the greatest detriment was the sheer volume of characters and verbose dialogue. The plot was ultimately nonsense, and I spent half the game hoping for characters to begin dying off just so that something interesting might happen – and that some of them would finally stop talking. Looking back, I’m not even sure I know what happened in the game’s narrative, and while I look forward to seeing what the sequel in development might look like, I’m more concerned that it will only increase the sheer volume of mediocre content rather than trimming the fat and focusing more on the core title’s strengths.

Which leads me to A.I. The Somnium Files, a Spike Chunsoft title written and directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, creator of the Zero Escape series. If you want a director that trims the fat and improves upon the strengths of his prior titles, then A.I. The Somnium Files does each of those things. While it is still full of digressions into a variety of odd topics and dabbles in the absurd, it almost relies on prior knowledge of Uchikoshi’s past games in order to mislead and misdirect the player into certain assumptions. In the end, it is perhaps his most grounded game, though most importantly the game with the most heart.

I had already discussed this title quite a bit on the podcast with my friend Issuna, but I don’t think we managed to stress enough that the strength of this game is the relationships between its characters. While there have always been several characters with personal connections in the Zero Escape series, they aren’t as tightly knit together as you see here in A.I. The Somnium Files. As a result, certain story routes, revelations, and set pieces simply hit harder because you not only care about the characters, but what these events mean to their past, present, and potential future.

Yet the real strength of the game is in its dream-based puzzles. Flexing his escape room style of puzzle design, Kotaru Uchikoshi now leads players through nonsensical dreamscapes that are capable of latching onto the more obtuse and abstract irrationality of one’s nightmares and subconscious memories, developing far more inventive and atmospheric puzzles whose solutions often double as narrative devices. These dreams are often where the player can determine which route to travel, but can also mislead and misdirect in ways that will leave the player trying to predict what sort of truth lies behind the mystery.

Without a doubt, A.I. The Somnium Files has further confirmed my interest in Spike Chunsoft as a developer and publisher, and any trailer that opens with their logo immediately has my interest. This is certainly one of my favorite releases of the year, and further confirms my enjoyment of well crafted Japanese visual novels.

Tokyo Dark: Remembrance was another such title I chose to explore, tackling some of the lower-budget and lesser known entries in the genre. Of course, Tokyo Dark may lean closer to a traditional adventure game, a sort of combination of two already similar genres separated by an ocean and culture. While there is a singular rail-roaded plot to progress down, how the player responds to certain events and how select choices will impact the game’s final concluding hours are the real selling point here.

The only flaw with Tokyo Dark is the need for at least two playthroughs in order to get the “true” or “best” ending, without enough differentiation in certain routes to justify an immediate return to the title. I had attempted to jump in and work on different choices, but knowing the opposite choices of what I’d already done would only prevent me from getting the “best” conclusion, I was unable to find much enjoyment in an immediate second run through.

Nonetheless, I want to go back sometime and see the true ending. Though bleak, disturbing, and somewhat depressing of a game to be in, Tokyo Dark was certainly a surprise to kick the year off with. Ironic, seeing as the year ultimately turned out far more pleasant for me than the prior, and therefore was juxtaposed to the tone the rest of the year would otherwise take.

On the whole, once you factor the ‘vania games I played into the mixture as well, I played a lot of decent games of prior years in 2021. I aim to keep the trend going in 2022, as I’m already progressing through Symphony of the Night and have titles such as 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim on the docket to play. I aim to do a better job of keeping these games recorded on the blog as the year goes by as well, but I try to stick to that resolution every year, so no promises.

At any rate, we’ll be continuing our look back at 2021 this week with the finest releases I played this year (that haven’t already been discussed), concluding with my favorite release getting its own dedicated entry. In the meantime, if you’re curious what I (and Steve!) are most excited for coming up in 2022, then be sure to check out the latest Eh! Steve! where we discuss that very subject.

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Neither Steve nor I were in our best of shape during this recording, though I certainly had it better than he did. I’m dealing with random bouts of sinus issues, leading to moments where my nose suddenly sounds absolutely stuffed while I’m speaking. Steve, on the other hand, is dealing with co-workers and family being sick and therefore picking up the slack, which led to his exhaustion during this episode. It leads to a bit more monologuing by me than usual, and for that I apologize.

On the whole, 2022 is looking to be a pretty solid release year. Though I had a solid 2021 myself, I have enough friends that were barely able to find any games that really spoke to them to know it wasn’t really a universally good year. The next twelve months look like they could have something for everyone, though, and so while Ubisoft and Square Enix dreadfully try to sell everyone on the promise of NFT’s and there’s trepidation to be had towards all these studio acquisitions, there’s more than enough to look forward to that everyone should find a new favorite.

At the same time, 2021 was also another reminder that really good marketing can make a mediocre or broken experience look great. I had my own issues with this while scanning trailers for indie games, but far more felt great disappointment when finally getting their hands on Battlefield 2042 for the Beta or full release. Following on the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077, it is a reminder that we must perceive all marketing material with salt shakers, waiting to see the game in action or play it for ourselves before spending hard-earned money on a potentially broken game.

What games are you looking forward to in 2022? Any questions or topics you’d like to hear from Steve and I when we air episode 100? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

It is no secret that my favorite Nintendo franchise is Metroid. I’ve even played some of the “worst” games in the property multiple times, finding something of value in each title. Despite the indie scene exploding with imitations in the “Metroidvania” genre, however, there are few games that properly sucked me in as much as their mother inspiration.

I think there are multiple reasons for this, one of which being a shift in creative direction on part of the developers themselves. Hollow Knight, for example, is a far more ponderous world. While the Metroid series is certainly an inspiration, it is only one of many, including several more platform-intensive games of old and the recent rise of the Souls-like. My first impression of Hollow Knight was initially positive, but eventually grew more exhausted as I had felt directionless and as if new abilities and power-ups were coming all too slowly. It was only after I had played through Bloodborne that I understood how much From Software’s atmosphere and world design had combined with the inspirations of Metroid to form Hollow Knight’s expansive world, one in which player choice of exploration was emphasized. Once I had that fresh new perspective, I was able to appreciate Team Cherry’s game as its own thing rather than comparing it to the Metroid franchise I knew and loved.

There has always been one other element of the equation missing, however, and that is the “-vania” portion of the genre title; I’ve never truly played through a Castlevania game, despite the franchise sharing a variety of traits in common with my beloved Metroid series. In 2021, I had begun to try and correct this.

Technically I had already begun to explore the Castlevania corner of the genre with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a game which I had replayed earlier in 2021 and developed greater appreciation for. Unlike my initial experiences with Symphony of the Night and Hollow Knight, Bloodstained felt far less “meandering” and directionless. It was more limited in regards to where protagonist Miriam could or could not go, taking its time to expand the number of possible routes to explore rather than present several options at once. Little did I know that it was somewhat of a compromise between the open-ended design of prior Castlevania titles and the “more linear” paths of the Metroid franchise.

The visual aesthetic and manner in which Deedlit walks is very much in the style of Symphony of the Night.

In truth, however, it was the efforts of Team Ladybug that had me curious about returning to the influential gothic horror franchise due to their obvious inspirations. The manner in which protagonists in Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth moved were clearly modeled after Alucard in Symphony of the Night, as were the map designs and general aesthetic of their environments. It is true that each game is based on a pre-existing property, but an emphasis on dark interiors and the purchasing of weapons and magic spells steps away from the permanent power-ups and sci-fi tech of Metroid.

Having enjoyed both games immensely, I finally chose to sit down and play Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, remastered as part of the Castlevania Advance Collection. Admittedly, I’ve wanted to try this game out for a long time if only because I passed over it during the launch of the GameBoy Advance. Having gone back and completed it, I do feel that I might have greatly enjoyed it during my high school days. I was unaware of the save states for the majority of my playtime, meaning I dealt with the difficulty as much as I would have if I’d played it in its original state, so I found myself getting frustrated at a number of deaths and forced restarts at different points. I am not ashamed to confess I had sought guides for some of the bosses during this playthrough as well.

It was certainly more difficult than I had anticipated, though in part due to the “stiffness” of the game. It is unfair to compare a twenty year-old game to more recent releases with the benefit of modern polish, but Hollow Knight, Touhou Luna Nights, and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth all certainly felt far better to play than Circle of the Moon had. However, even if we wish to be fair and compare to games of similar age, Metroid Fusion featured a far more agile and acrobatic Samus Aran than Konami had offered with Nathan Graves.

This is one of those areas where I have learned to approach the Castlevania franchise on its own terms. It is a more “old-fashioned” combat design doing its best to work around limitations rather than push through them. Even as I play Symphony of the Night – which, admittedly, feels more smooth in regards to how Alucard controls – it feels as if the combat relies on some gimmicks or tricks in order to avoid damage rather than something more acrobatic and polished.

Just another boss I feel like I mashed some buttons through in Circle of the Moon.

It’s difficult to illustrate my precise meaning, but I suppose it’s more that Castlevania is based less on reflexes and more on timing, positioning, or even exploitation. Alucard is too slow and stiff to immediately respond to most attacks with proper evasion, so even if you manage to activate his back-step, he could quite easily remain in range of the enemy attack. Samus, however, is already light on her feet in Metroid Fusion and can leap away from an attack with ease. So both Circle of the Moon and Symphony of the Night become a sort of rehearsed series of steps where you learn an opponent’s attack patterns, step in range just long enough to take a swing or two, then leap away or back-step enough to be out of range of their next attack. That, or you find a spot to consistently crouch or a tool to frequently use to take the enemy down. It’s more methodical than it is reflexive and in-the-moment.

Not that the older Metroid games lack similar approaches to combat design or feel. However, since hitting the sixteen-bit era, Samus has become more and more about speed and agility (in her 2D games) while Castlevania’s protagonists seem to move at the same slower pace as they always have. That in turn impacts how combat plays out.

It is no doubt obvious that I prefer one over the other, which is why I thus far find Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth far more enjoyable experiences despite being modeled very heavily after Castlevania. The two also take influence from outside the typical Metroidvania genre by implementing “Bullet Hell” style mechanics. With Touhou Luna Nights, it relies on the player to make use of their time manipulation abilities in order to freeze or rewind enemy attacks which take the form of “bullets” that often flood the screen. In Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, the titular protagonist gains the assistance of Wisp and Salamander spirits in order to resist damage from similarly colored elemental “bullets” while alternately dealing additional damage to opponents of a contrary affinity. Each game has a faster paced combat focus while adding additional mechanics that increase the importance and emphasis of evasion and, in the case of Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, providing healing to a maxed out elemental charge; yet another tactical consideration to be aware of, as once you’ve been struck physically you lose your charge and therefore your healing. If the alternative element is fully charged, you can swap out to that, but if you do so while stunned or otherwise in the middle of a barrage of attacks, you may risk getting struck again and losing both elemental charges, thus leaving you without healing.

Even if I am biased to prefer these games for their smoother, more agile combat, it is still unfair to compare them as they have the twenty year benefit of improved technology and broader inspiration to draw from.

An early boss fight in Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth that requires careful management of elemental affinity both defensively and offensively.

What I will concede, however, is that the Castlevania games are perhaps stronger in providing the player a sense of “freedom” that the Metroid games do not. Studying the analyses and opinions of other Metroidvania fans over the past few years has revealed to me that many players value a greater degree of freedom of choice in how they approach a map and its objectives. Nintendo has never, in either their best or worst games of the bunch, allowed players to stray too far off the critical path. Any accessible branches are strictly lateral and only provide boons rather than necessary objectives to complete.

I attributed Hollow Knight’s more open map design to the Souls-like games, but that is only partially accurate. The Castlevania games themselves seem to have a tendency to “open up”, allowing the player several portions of the castle to explore and discover rather than having a very specific path forward. What I once thought was “meandering” was actually a decision to give me freedom to tackle whatever I want. So if I happened to progress through a tough zone only to die to a boss afterwards, I could look at the map, see what other unexplored areas remained, and go see if there was another path available to take. Most of the time there was, and often just such a path would reward me with a new ability to push onwards and perhaps even ease up the challenge in the zone I had died in.

It is this realization that has contributed to my greater enjoyment of Symphony of the Night, enough so that I have no doubt I’ll complete it this time (and, yes, I aim for the “true” ending). Moreover, it may help me to better appreciate other entries in the genre far more.

After all, what I have come to realize is I was directly comparing each Metroidvania I played to the Metroid games, period. I cannot change the fact that I prefer Nintendo’s approach to the genre even as so many other players and critics yearn for the games to become more open. If you were to make Metroid more like, say, Hollow Knight, then you’d lose much of what it means to be Metroid specifically.

However, though Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth are more “linear” in the manner that the Metroid games are, they still don’t feel like a Metroid. That’s okay. Their map design is somewhere in-between that of the Castlevania games, and their combat is closer to the fast-paced, acrobatic style I prefer. This means, however, that I will approach Castlevania with a different perspective of exploration than the other games. In turn, I will no doubt also approach other Metroidvanias with a broader reference point to see in which elements they choose to take inspiration, as well as where they choose to try and differentiate themselves from the foundational franchises of the genre.

No doubt there will be plenty more ‘vania to discuss in 2022 as a result.

The seventh generation of consoles was unkind to a lot of seminal Japanese game developers. Be it the advent of HD gaming and its more expensive demand on visual fidelity, the sudden emergence of Western game developers onto the console scene and taking over, or Nintendo’s new focus on a non-gaming crowd, it was a time when many of the most prominent publishers and studios of the 90’s were left scrambling to maintain relevance, appeal to a Western audience, and abandon much of what had made them a success in the first place.

Approximately one decade ago Keiji Inafune’s detailed his belief as to why Japan had lost its seat at the head of the console gaming industry. I do not currently wholly agree with his sentiments regarding Japan’s “failures” against the rise of Western games, and Keiji Inafune himself would ruin his reputation among gamers due to the mismanagement of Mega Man spiritual successor Mighty No. 9. Nevertheless, many studios tried following some of Keiji’s advice in working with foreign studios or trying to transform their properties into an imitation of the new Western gaming demographic: a primarily younger group that had hopped aboard the hobby via Halo, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Xbox Live.

Capcom is one of the most prominent examples of such attempts to appeal to the young new Western gamer. The reinvention of old icons such as Bionic Commando into a gruff, mean looking soldier with an edgy attitude and unnecessarily dark past; handing off new successes like Dead Rising to Western studios for sequels that failed to capture self-aware wackiness that the first wave of fans fell in love with; chasing co-op trends by forcing them into their Resident Evil franchise, in addition to spending unreasonable amounts of time and money on a nonsensical campaign filled with so much explosive noise but meager substance. There were still occasional gems such as Dragon’s Dogma being released under the publisher, but most players that discovered the studio on the NES, Super Nintendo, PlayStation, or even in the arcades were becoming increasingly disappointed, disenfranchised, and seemingly abandoned.

Somewhere around the turn of generations, however, as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sailed into the sunset and the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were leaving port, Capcom had changed course. While I think it’s a simplification to blame outsourcing to foreign studios as the cause of Capcom’s losses, I do believe the shift back to internal development has forced Capcom to tighten their belts, refocus, and simply do what they do best. The release of Resident Evil VII in 2017 was effectively the start of a brand new era for the company, and now, four years later, I feel as if we’re seeing them truly hit their stride. It is possible that Capcom has never been as good as they are now.

I know that’s a potentially controversial statement given how many franchises continue to lie dormant or dead, or to compare to the sheer volume of games the publisher used to release. There used to be years where multiple Mega Man entries would hit store shelves, yet the last time we saw the Blue Bomber was Mega Man 11’s launch in 2018. The last pulse detected in the Breath of Fire franchise corpse was a free-to-play mobile game whose reception was so poor it caused the title to shut down a year after launch. Alternate fighting game franchises such as Project Justice/Rival Schools and Darkstalkers haven’t seen new entries in well over a decade, their characters relegated to roster slots in the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise, as DLC for Street Fighter V, or cameos in cross-over titles like Project X Zone.

I think such a view of the past is beyond rose-tinted, however. Even during the 90’s Capcom was beginning to catch flack for just how rote their Mega Man releases had started to become and how many different variations of Street Fighter they were pushing out at once. They were still releasing a lot of diamonds, but there was a lot of rough to sift through due to Capcom grinding so many properties into overworn and overused dust. Nevertheless, it never stopped the company from introducing new franchises or taking a property and giving it a fresh new spin. Mega Man Battle Network for the GameBoy Advance was a clever combination of role-playing and action platformer mechanics whose narrative structure felt like a shounen anime that could fit right into your pocket. Resident Evil was a brand new PlayStation release that took the whole world by storm despite cheesy voice acting and low-budget, live-action cut-scenes. While it failed to become as successful in the West, the launch of Monster Hunter on the PlayStation 2 would begin a new cultural obsession for Japanese gamers that persists and burns brightest today.

2021 feels like the culmination of all of Capcom’s efforts to correct their course. Capcom Arcade Stadium and Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins Resurrection were likely their two smallest releases that would go unnoticed by most of the gaming audience, but were no doubt appreciated by fans of their old-fashioned library of challenging arcade hits. The first major release of the year, however, was Monster Hunter Rise, and in so many ways it is one of the largest successes any single company could have. Though it is currently only available for the Switch, it has dominated many streaming hours on the likes of YouTube and Twitch while proving to be an excellent jumping-on point for new fans.

I myself have tried several times to write about my experiences with it, especially as I have now firmly dropped Destiny 2 from my regular gaming rotation. I tried without success to write my feelings out regarding the two, but it is an admittedly unfair comparison to make. Nevertheless, while each game relies on a “loot-driven” gameplay hook to keep players latched onto their fishing line, Monster Hunter Rise has no time-limited manipulation to try and coax players into regularly logging in and repeating mundane content. Any time I want, I can simply open the game, select a mission, and hunt a monster. Even if I have some high-powered gear equipped, there’s a chance my carelessness will get my butt knocked out and dragged back to camp on a cart.

What makes Monster Hunter Rise so satisfying is how specialized its mechanics are. Everything focuses on the hunt. Even leaping about the overworld to collect colorful birds is all in service of boosting one’s stats in preparation for the upcoming battle, and the addition of wire bugs has made navigating that world all the more engaging and fun. What makes Rise work so well is the amount of time spent focusing on what matters, eliminating the padding of prior games so that you can do what the box says: hunt monsters.

In the past, Destiny 2 was my game to play if I didn’t want to currently commit to something. It was perfect for when I was mentally exhausted and simply wanted to complete a few missions and enjoy some excellent combat mechanics. Now, however, that role instead fits Monster Hunter Rise while simultaneously doubling down as an easy game to just grab friends for in order to play. It is a perfect anytime game and, had I not run into some other highly replayable games this year, I’d have certainly jumped head first into more of Rise.

Resident Evil Village was the next big release of Capcom’s for the year, and it is one of those titles whose replayability was so strong that I’d consistently return to that instead of spending a bit more time in Rise or playing other new and incomplete games in my library. You may recall earlier this year that I showered Village with great amounts of praise, and that praise remains even after a fifth playthrough on the highest difficulty. This is my favorite entry in the entire Resident Evil franchise, surpassing even Resident Evil IV despite having far less effectively designed combat.

While I am concerned as to the narrative direction this game takes and its implications towards games after, Capcom has returned Resident Evil to its former glory days and, perhaps, even surpassed them. With Resident Evil VII we have a new and excellent take on horror; with Resident Evil 2 Remake we have the old-fashioned gameplay fused together into a polished interpretation of Resident Evil IV’s combat that perhaps surpasses all of the predecessors as a whole; and with Village, you have the mainstream success whose terror is more akin to amusement park thrills yet provides so many reasons to dive in and revisit over and over. Even if the worst deviation is the Resident Evil 3 Remake, it’s far from being as low as the lowest of the series. Nevertheless, I think Village truly is the best product of each of these in terms of content and gameplay variety.

The next release of the year was Monster Hunter Stories 2, a game that I have not yet had a chance to play myself. It looks like quite the major upgrade from the original 3DS game, and I have heard nothing but praise for it. Even the most lukewarm response is positive, and multiple online personalities I know to dislike most turn-based JRPGs found Stories 2 to be one of the best they had ever played. Sometimes such words can be red flags for those with a greater interest in the genre or preference for the more obscure, but as I have already stated, all I hear is praise. Even long-time turn-based RPG fans are pleased with how this title turned out.

I similarly did not play Capcom’s final release of the year, the VR version of Resident Evil 4. Curiously, it was a project outsourced to Armature Studios, a Western developer founded by former Retro Studios figureheads. Perhaps it was due to their experience working with Nintendo on the Metroid Prime franchise or their work with Keiji Inafune on ReCore that made it easier for them to work with Japanese developers, but Capcom broke their own rule regarding outsourcing to foreigners in order to build this project. Regardless, I am not interested in VR myself, and therefore know very little about this project or its reception. I certainly haven’t heard of it being bad, at least, and have already seen it win some “Best VR Game” awards.

We finally come to The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, the last release of Capcom’s I had purchased in 2021 and a title I continue to work through. I was a latecomer to the Ace Attorney franchise, one of the few titles that managed to steadily grow in popularity while Capcom was chasing Western tastes in the seventh generation. It has swiftly become one of my favorite franchises that Capcom has developed in recent years, and I was greatly excited to discover this previously Japan-only pair of games was being localized and launched globally.

It did not disappoint, though I hope to save most of my thoughts for a proper write-up later down the line. From a purely mechanical perspective, leaping back in time allowed the developers to wipe the gameplay slate clean of all the bloat Phoenix Wright had collected through six games. This “back-to-basics” approach would then allow them to develop new mechanics and direction that would uniquely apply to not only a different era, but a separate country. Protagonist Ryunosuke Naruhodo now tangles cases alongside detective Herlock Sholmes – no, that’s not a typo – in order to properly deduce motivation and uncover secrets through careful environmental observation during investigation. Court trials now put our hero at the mercy of an easily swayed and deeply biased jury as well, not just a judge.

This last adjustment is the most important, as The Great Ace Attorney Adventures – the first game in the bundled package – heavily explores themes of prejudice, subjectivity, and emotion interfering with the search for truth and justice. Be it racism, classicism, or the two mingling together, The Great Ace Attorney Adventures explores these potentially hazardous topics with panache and, most importantly, without hatred or condemnation. None of the characters are portrayed as two-dimensional evil-doers. Despite the often comedic and exaggerated presentation, the characters are instead handled as realistically and reasonably flawed. This is, perhaps, why I loved the game as much as I had. Such topics in a modern climate are a minefield, and yet The Great Ace Attorney navigates the landscape without throwing grenades of its own in order to “clear” the field of hazards. There is no soap box, nor is there condemnation.

I hope to write more on the games once I have finished the second, but again I have been reminded of just how excellent the writing of such visual novels and adventure games from Japan can be.

Which is why I wanted to dedicate a whole post to Capcom in particular. Though I only played around half of the games they released in a single year, none of their releases seem to be duds. If anything, each title they release comes off as being best-in-class. I have no doubt that their million-sellers list is front-loaded with recent releases in part due to their refocusing efforts back around 2013, producing fewer titles but of a high quality. With fewer releases competing for marketing dollars and spread out across the calendar year, emphasizing the long-tail rather than day one sales numbers, it becomes somewhat less difficult to turn a game into a hit.

As always, I cannot fully put my trust into a single developer anymore. I am jaded enough to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop, and that expectation is still present with Capcom. For the time being, however, I feel as if 2021 is the confirmation that Capcom is in a good spot right now, and it makes me hopeful to see what will come in the future.

An admittedly barebones looking future at the moment. There’s rumors abound of a sixth Street Fighter, a sequel to Dragon’s Dogma, and a remake of Resident Evil 4, but the only titles we absolutely know are in development are the now delayed Pragmata and upcoming expansion to Monster Hunter Rise. As such, the news I’m most eager to hear for in 2022 is what Capcom is working on. It may be with slight trepidation that we’ll see them slip back into old habits, but for now, they’re one of the few companies I feel more excited about than I am worried.

If there’s anyone that deserves accolades for best games released in a single year, it is, without a doubt in my mind, Capcom.

I don’t know the last time I spent so many hours playing games in a single year as I had this one, but it still wasn’t enough to get to all the titles I yearned to play. Admittedly, 2021 was overall a more positive experience for me than 2020 had been despite continued struggles to better balance mental health and all that other lame junk. Whether I’ve steadily been doing better on that front or the greater quantity of top notch releases are the primary reason it was a better year remains a mystery. All I know is I’ve even had a good time with some of the year’s greater let downs or disappointments.

That I became more invested in streaming games may have also contributed to my enjoyment. I was able to exercise some creativity in overlays, broadcasting myself creating the sort of cartoonish artwork that I hadn’t been drawing in a long time, and even figuring out a method of transitioning the Eh! Steve! Podcast to video. It has allowed me to connect with others via the platform, and has now given me a way to collaborate with Shamus Young. While a good chunk of my gaming time is still done as a solitary experience, streaming has helped me remain social, which has been especially useful as the old Destiny 2 fireteam has all but disbanded.

What I wish to discuss, however, are the games that really helped shape this year for me. Before I discuss specific releases or studios, I’d like to go over some of the broad strokes of games discovery, gaming habits, and my approach to purchases and games completion. This is the year that I’ve put my money where my mouth is in terms of declarations of what is and isn’t a better manner to spend one’s time, and it has ultimately contributed to why I’ve felt all the more positive towards the hobby in 2021. It will be interesting to look back at the end of next year and see if many of these habits will have only grown or will continue to ring true.

Three years ago I had written an essay on the replayability of games. Since then I have continued to devote more and more time to not only returning to old games I knew and loved, but to also comfortably dive back into a newer game I had already beaten just for the sake of enjoying it some more. In fact, my favorite games of the year were both titles I had chosen to play through multiple times. Since the initial writing of that essay, I have become more convinced of the necessity of not only replaying games, but of a game’s replayability proving its excellence and worth.

On one hand, this is one of the reasons I had played fewer new games than I’d have liked this year. Instead of playing a number of indies that had been releasing, I was instead going back and replaying Resident Evil and its transformative sequel Resident Evil 4; I had streamed co-op sessions of Dead Space 3 and Halo 4 with my friend Zack; I jogged my memory on No More Heroes and No More Heroes II: Desperate Struggle before the long-awaited third entry released; I ran through Bloodborne and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night again just for fun; I used the Pixel Remaster of Final Fantasy IV as an excuse to run through what is, perhaps, the foundation for my current passion for the medium one more time.

The month of June was effectively spent playing Resident Evil games.

Frequently, both with friends and with strangers, I’ve run into this notion that no one goes back to replay, reread, or rewatch old favorites simply because there’s “too much” to keep up with; that there’s not enough time to enjoy both the old and the new and therefore one must be sacrificed. What I discovered in 2021 more than anything else is that it is better to compromise much of the new in order to ensure time well spent with what you know. It is, perhaps, why none of the disappointments have hit as hard as they otherwise might have. Rather than feel like half of my year was games that were okay or alright, I felt as if I had a mostly steady pace of enjoyment marked with the occasional disappointment, mediocrity, or just fine-but-not-great gaming experience.

There is no doubt that I faced some disappointments. If I learned anything from Blue Fire and Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King, it’s that even indie developers are able to put together trailers that make their games look far more polished than they are in actuality. I managed to complete the former title on stream, and while it was enjoyable enough it also proved to be frustrating at times and forgettable in the long-run. Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King, on the other hand, was a janky experience whose level-up mechanics were perhaps the most inconvenient and most harsh I’d seen in a Souls-like game. I wanted nothing more than to quit early as I streamed my first session of it, and was glad to be done playing it once I shut the stream down. Such a game is not worth spending more time on.

This has made judging the worthiness of a game purchase all the more difficult, as there are many indie titles that look good but don’t necessarily play well. On the other hand, there are also games that are mechanically tight, but whose experience is otherwise padded or marred by other detriments of design. Daemon Ex Machina was a title I had yearned to finally get my hands on after having enjoyed its Nintendo Switch demo back in 2019, but the full experience was plagued by bland, samey mission design dragged out by a nonsensical narrative populated with far too many uninteresting or irritating characters. By the game’s end, I had lamented that it hadn’t been filled with fewer missions focusing on more unique boss fights and set pieces, as those had a tendency to be the real highlight.

Which, perhaps, leads me to the final lesson learned in terms of purchasing games: those that are fine but lack staying power. I had expected Persona 5 Strikers to be right up my alley after I had enjoyed the hack-and-slash cross-over of Fire Emblem Warriors, but I barely made a dent into it before forgetting it was in my Steam library gathering dust. Nier: Replicant was not too different, though I had at least already beaten the original of that game on the Xbox 360 nearly a decade ago. The pressure to complete that was not as strong since I’d played the game before.

Daemon X Machina barely had any highs in what was ultimately a plateau of experiences.

Nonetheless, each was a full-price purchase that went towards a title I never finished. I don’t like spending my money in such a manner, nor my time if I can help it. If the greatest games to me are those that demand replaying, then a game I cannot even finish is the antithesis of the ideal. It does not mean the games themselves are bad; this is obviously not the case with Nier: Replicant, which I honestly dropped less due to the gameplay quality and more because of all the games and health issues that had interrupted my time with it. What it does mean is some games and gaming experiences stick with me better than others.

Which is what leads me to Microsoft’s Game Pass. Earlier this year I wrote a lengthy essay comparing Microsoft’s strategy against Sony’s, primarily consisting of my thoughts and feelings towards their Game Pass subscription service. I still have misgivings regarding the implications of game value from such a service and the increased perspective of games as disposable, but I cannot deny that it has begun to impact my purchasing habits. Most notably, I had already noticed Microsoft had a decent relationship with Bandai Namco, and so I decided to wait until Scarlet Nexus was playable on Game Pass rather than purchase it on Steam. My wait was rewarded far sooner than I expected, and I now am wondering if I ought to similarly wait for Tales of Arise to make a similar jump.

Not that there’s any guarantee such a thing will occur. I have a strong feeling Game Pass may be a manner in which certain companies try to squeeze extra cash out of the initial sales period of their titles, and the sooner a game winds up on Game Pass the more swiftly that game’s sales plummeted. Tales of Arise may not see Game Pass nearly as quickly as Scarlet Nexus due to its already successful sales numbers and increased praise and word of mouth –  especially now that it has won best RPG of the year from the Game Awards. Nonetheless, I’m still holding back from snagging the game on a sale due to the off-chance it may show up on Game Pass in the next few months.

I may not have even played Scarlet Nexus this year had it not been for its inclusion on Game Pass.

I am now in a position where I look at a game and wonder if it is Game Pass material before deciding if I want to purchase it, or if I even wait to see how deep of a discount it might go on during the holidays. This has not stopped me from purchasing certain games such as Touhou Luna Nights on Steam because I enjoyed it so much on Game Pass, but it certainly gives me an option to try before I buy like the rental days of old.

It has also caused me to better appreciate Microsoft’s strategy in the wake of Sony’s increase in prices as well as their and Epic’s insistence on platform exclusivity. It is due to their exclusivity that I skipped The Pathless and The Last Campfire in 2020, and while they both released onto Steam in 2021, they did so at a time I was not able to give them attention. I would have been more likely to have bought and played them when they first launched if they’d simply been on more platforms. The only game for which I broke my decision to give Sony no further money was to support Kena: Bridge of Spirits as it looked right up my alley. It certainly was an enjoyable game, but it was also flawed and frustrating, and in the end I wish I had stuck to my convictions and waited for its platform exclusivity to end – even if it meant the possibility of skipping out on Kena altogether, just as I still have yet to touch The Pathless or The Last Campfire.

With Microsoft, I can play their first-party games on PC or on my Xbox console, and I don’t have to pay $70 a pop. It is those rising prices of the next generation that make Game Pass look all the more appealing every day.

As I had stated, there were plenty of games I did not get to in 2021 but hope to in 2022, particularly on stream. Most of them are indie titles such as Smelter, Ender Lilies, Dreamscaper, Steel Assault, Dark Deity, and Greak: Memories of Azure. There are also games such as Ys IX: Monstrum Nox that I’ve been meaning to get to for months but require such a deep time investment that they kept getting put off. Normally, knowing there were so many potential greats left unplayed would leave me feeling as if there are obvious holes in my end-of-year list of favorites.

However, 2021 was not any other year. There were a lot of excellent titles, and one studio in particular stood out among them. I’ll be discussing them in the next year-in-review write-up.

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Steve and I could not record an episode on Guardians of the Galaxy as we promised, so I cooked up this last-minute replacement instead. Naturally, I chose some of the busiest days to try and piece it together. Consider it a Christmas gift to those that must do long-distance traveling and could use a podcast to help fill some of the air time.

I am working on my write-ups for the year when I am able. In truth, though, 2021 was honestly pretty good to me. I know these days it seems like everyone is first making note of all the negative going on in the world before trying to highlight the good, and it is tempting to address such things in order to avoid sounding ignorant or heartless. However, I’d rather focus on the positive than I would to force myself discussing the negative.

Thank you to those that read this blog and have kept up with the podcast, and those that look to all other things I work on. I hope you’ll keep coming back in 2022.

Episode 100 will be coming up sooner than we expect. Have anything you’d like us to discuss on that episode? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your questions or thoughts.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

I vaguely remember one school morning when I, a pimple-faced freshman in high school, met up with one of my closest friends for our usual round of pre-homeroom chatter. With a mocking grin on his face, he informed me that Microsoft was making a “Direct X Box”, a brand new console to compete with Sony and Nintendo. His laughter and dismissal were understandable at the time, for conventional wisdom held that, much like political parties, no third system could possibly survive. We had watched as the Atari Jaguar went extinct, were barely familiar with the existence of the 3DO before it crashed and burned, had witnessed the SEGA Saturn barely make a name for itself next to the N64 and Sony PlayStation, and were mourning the inevitable demise of SEGA as a console manufacturer. The Dreamcast was failing to make a dent in the market while all eyes were on the PlayStation 2 and upcoming Nintendo Dolphin. Your best bet was to dethrone one of the top dogs just as Sony had done against SEGA, and there was no foreseeable way that Microsoft could kick either Sony or Nintendo to the curb.

This was nothing to say of Microsoft’s reputation at the time. We were in the middle of the disastrous Windows ME, perhaps the most buggy and crash-happy operating system I’ve still ever used in my life. You were more fortunate to be running Windows 2000 instead, though it, too, fell victim to the dreaded Blue Screen of Death on a fairly regular basis. For a bunch of young punk teens that were witness to the birth of the Internet age, however, we were also becoming increasingly aware of the limitations and inconvenience of Microsoft’s proprietary measures. MS Paint was vastly inferior to any other image editing program, be they free like GIMP or more costly like Adobe Photoshop and its affordable Elements line. Windows Media Player was an unnecessarily large application both in screen real estate and resources, swiftly replaced by the likes of Winamp for music by most. This was not long after Microsoft was taken to trial for an attempted monopoly by bundling their Office software, and were effectively seen as an evil, world consuming empire of gluttonous greed.

Nonetheless, I shrugged my shoulders and told my friend I’d wait and see what they did. We still did not have enough information on what the system would look like, how it would differentiate itself, and what games would be on it, and until Sony came along with the PlayStation no one expected SEGA to be conquered by a new challenger so easily.

Four years later, this time a taller, hairier, and somewhat less pimple-faced freshman in College, I had packed both my Xbox and GameCube to occupy my dorm room for gaming. The PlayStation 2 was left at home to gather dust, for all I had cared.

It is, perhaps, for that very reason I cannot help but bask in the nostalgic green glow of Microsoft’s Power On: The Story of Xbox, a documentary examining the history of Microsoft’s game console. It carries with it a tone not too dissimilar from Netflix’s own The Toys or The Movies That Made Us, crossed with History Channel’s The Men, The Food, and The Toys That Build America. The first three chapters are, in particular, the most interesting and entertaining as they go into the deepest depth of the building, setbacks, and failures of developing the first console.

However, they are also the most interesting by setting that original Xbox team apart from all others that would follow: despite being part of the most monolithic tech giant in the world, the crew building the Xbox were no different from the scrappy underdog kids in a garage that corporations like Microsoft and Apple had started out as. The small team that kick-started the project were already gamers who had a passion for the medium and a desire to step into the ring themselves. They saw both an opportunity in the market – primarily in the ability to make game development easier on consoles – and an opportunity with the resources of their employer.

It is this last opportunity that perhaps develops the most interesting set of conflicts to be seen in this sort of documentary. As far as the games industry – and computing in general – goes, most of the stories are common and repeatedly told: the demo kits wouldn’t work, someone was sweating blood trying to fix it everything time for the demonstration to the press, retailers, and consumers, and some of those failures were even recorded live on stage. However, so rarely do you hear about scrappy little developers, all hidden away from the more prestigious teams of the company, fighting to convince Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in the world, and his loud-mouthed energetic cohort Steve Ballmer to give one billion dollars to a project they couldn’t even know would pay off. This is nothing to say of the conflicts to allow the game console to ship without Windows or even Office products.

Stories such as these are fit for a Hollywood biopic plastered across silver screens. The story of the original Xbox and how it all came together is inspirational, informative, and, yes, nostalgic, too.

Seamus Blackley was one of the original developers of the Xbox console that had left after the system launched.

That several members of the initial team left Microsoft after having shipped the hardware – and understandably so, as their brightly burning passion had also burnt them out with the mental and physical toll taken throughout the ordeal – is perhaps the first sign that the spirit of the Xbox would inevitably change. That first console was driven by a team that loved and were knowledgeable about games, insofar as to understand why developing for the dominant Japanese consoles was such a trial for anyone outside of Japan. Even the direction of Xbox Live was surprisingly outside-of-the-box yet forward-thinking, from the focus on broadband Internet instead of dial-up to the inclusion of something as simple as a headset.

The end result of being built by gamers was that the Xbox allowed a player such as myself to experience new types of games that I had not been getting on the PlayStation 2, GameCube, or any of the systems before. Halo: Combat Evolved and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind are perhaps two of the most prominent titles for the platform to introduce a whole new style of game to consoles, but the fact that the Xbox was the only platform capable of running both Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 – two of the most technically impressive PC games of the time branded as “unportable” by the computer gaming fanbase – added to my love of the system. It was a gamer’s console.

The next several episodes of the documentary naturally move onto the Xbox 360 and what comes after, but immediately there’s a sense of loss. Those charismatic and enthusiastic leads from the first system are no longer providing commentary. More and more the information is coming from a whole host of sources, far less centralized and therefore far less driven by a single vision. What the Xbox 360 introduced was the possibility of the games console to be more than just a game machine and DVD player: it was also a multimedia machine, and this broader focus on media would lead to a broader and less focused set of interests in who the systems would be for.

The house of cards would utterly collapse when Peter Moore left Microsoft, only to be replaced by Don Mattrick. Though Don himself had made games in his youth, it was perhaps working at Electronic Arts that shifted him to be more driven by business than passion. Admittedly it is absurd for me to suggest something like that of a stranger, but when the documentary dropped Don’s line about reaching three-hundred million customers instead of thirty million, it led me to a single, cynical conclusion about the new leadership: that the vision of the founding team was gone. It was no longer being driven by a young group of developers that saw an opportunity in games, but instead driven by a business man that saw an opportunity in customers.

To put it another way, there is a scene in the holiday film Scrooged in which the top executive of the television network is trying to convince Bill Murray’s character Frank Cross that house pets are “starting to watch television”. Though the scene is obviously satirical and written for comedic effect, the underlying concept of focusing not on the quality or content of what is being made as much as how you can earn more money off of it is… well, it’s precisely the kind of thinking gamers like my friend expected from Microsoft and therefore why no one trusted them to make a game console in the first place. Don Mattrick was looking at the figurative house cats and dogs that currently were not playing on the Xbox, thinking about how they might be able to drag them in and wring money out of them.

The shift in tone of the company coincides with a shift in tone from the company. While there is an ownership to the many mistakes of this era, a sort of mea culpa to gamers for emphasizing things like television so much in the Xbox One reveal, there is also a defensive tone from the likes of Larry Hyrb and others. The always-on functionality of the Xbox One and how it would license your game was just misunderstood! The Kinect is still being used for incredible purposes outside of the games industry! We’re sorry, but we’re not sorry because these things were great ideas!

What Don Mattrick and the rest of the Xbox team missed about the Kinect, even when acknowledging that it was driven by imitating Nintendo’s own Wii Motion Control, is that it wasn’t developed based on the same sense of opportunity that the original Xbox had been. Yes, throughout the development of that first console the team had frequently referenced Sony and the notion that they could miss their only chance to break into the market. However, part of the goal of the Xbox was to fix problems the other companies were unaware of or apathetic towards, a goal birthed by a bunch of gaming Microsoft employees first wondering what kind of console they’d want to play.

Just as the original Xbox was driven by a unified vision of gamers, the Wii motion-controls were driven by a group of toy makers, and it is the one aspect of Nintendo that so many fail to understand when it comes to what drives them. It’s not just a sense of “being different”, though that was certainly part of the drive once it was clear they were up against two gaming giants now; it was also that desire to create new ways to play. Microsoft knew they wanted to do something different, but the end result was still imitation: a motion-based method of gaming rather than using a controller. Nintendo had Mii’s, so Microsoft would have similar-but-slightly-more-detailed Avatars. Nintendo had Wii Sports and Wii Fit, so Microsoft would have Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures! Simultaneously, whereas Nintendo stumbled into a larger audience than I think even they had anticipated or planned on, Microsoft was looking to leech off of or compete for the dollars of that very same audience. They weren’t looking to fill a space no one knew was there as the original Xbox team had; they were merely looking to take it over.

Nintendo and Microsoft both had to learn the hard way that many of those potential customers were not interested in being reliable and loyal consumers; the WiiU failed not just because of a confusing marketing campaign, but because casual gaming audiences see no reason to purchase a new Just Dance or Wii Sports machine five years later when their current one is doing just fine. This is even more true with the premium pricing of Xbox and Sony hardware.

Photo taken of the final day at Lionhead Studios

I have digressed, but I do so because it is this sort of introspection that feels missing from the later episodes of the documentary. All mention of failures and obstacles in those first three episodes feel sincere, often regretful, and completely honest. It is a completely different tone than hearing Don Mattrick argue that it was just a mistake in messaging, or Larry Hyrb insisting that the always-on functionality was ahead of its time. The final episode of the documentary somewhat touches on the loss of Lionhead Studios, but it doesn’t dive deeply enough into the corporate meddling that led to the studio’s closure and final, canceled game in the first place. It does not cover Microsoft’s abandonment of most first party intellectual properties in favor of founding 343 Industries and The Coalition to become production factories for just Halo and Gears of War, respectively. A curious item not to address considering Phil Spencer’s own quote regarding Lionhead:

You acquire a studio for what they’re great at now, and your job is to accelerate how they do what they do, not them accelerate what you do.

What does it mean, then, when you have two studios that were simply built to do what you do? Or, more specifically, to force them to build what you think you want them to? Bloomberg recently had a story on Halo Infinite’s development, preemptively calling the game a triumph when it had just barely released its campaign – one might even say incomplete campaign given the lack of co-op features or the ability to replay missions without having to start fresh on a new save file. Plenty of time is spent dedicated to how important the first three Halo games are to the Xbox in Power On, yet none is given to any of the games developed by Microsoft’s studio dedicated to the franchise. A rather curious thing to skip over, isn’t it?

Of course, this is all to be expected. The further on this series became, the closer it would get to the current Microsoft and Xbox products and strategy, and as well put together as it is, this documentary is a marketing gimmick. An effective one, too. It reminded me of how I felt about Xbox as a brand during those first seven-to-ten years, before I bought a PlayStation 4 and Sony began to turn themselves around. It is good to see Microsoft reflect on their mistakes with the Xbox One and Lionhead, but unlike those early days of the original Xbox, it feels like the introspection is less honest and more marketing.

Perhaps I was only able to trust those early years of the Xbox because I was young and naïve, but I also wonder if, in some way, the product and its strategy communicated and conveyed the feelings of those developers that had driven it. Now, jaded and scarred, I perceive Xbox as an ex-lover that once cheated on me. Feelings remain, and I want to trust them again now that they’re coming forward with apologies, but those scars run deep and I’m seeing the same red flags all over.

At the very least, I highly recommend the first three episodes. They are by far the most fascinating and honest of the bunch, and I think anyone interested in the history of old tech would find something to appreciate about it.

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The past month has wiped me out so badly that I still forget to update the blog. I have plenty of things I hope to discuss and write about, but I do not know if I will have the opportunity to do so. This is especially true as the year winds down and I continue to catch up on some of the releases I’ve been playing and resume my streaming schedule. Fortunately, life has at least relaxed enough I can do that regularly.

I have surpassed the halfway mark in Guardians of the Galaxy now, and it is most certainly not feeling padded in a narrative sense. The game continues to surprise me even as I inch ever closer towards its conclusion. I’ve found so many AAA games lavished with praise to be disappointing to play, such as Control and Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order. Even when I do enjoy them, such as the latest God of War or Ghosts of Tsushima, it is usually with an expected amount of content or trends that I still am not much a fan of. Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, while imperfect, just feels so much better in terms of not just writing, but scope. This is not a “shooter” in the classic sense, even though primary protagonist Peter Quill does in fact shoot using guns. It is a squad-based game, and it is executed with such surprising skill that I am flabbergasted a game of this production level is as enjoyable to me as the mid-level budgets that have more frequently been catering to my interests so perfectly.

I wish to do end-of-year write-ups this January and may, in fact, leave December a tad vacant on the blog as I do just that. There will also be at least one or two podcasts focused on favorite games of the year. However, Guardians of the Galaxy is just the sort of surprise that defines this year for me: filled with really, really good games that should leave anyone that partakes in this hobby left with something to put a smile on their face.

What did you think of Scarlet Nexus, Back 4 Blood, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, or Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy? Any shorts you’d like to see become a full series? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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Half an hour into this episode my Internet dropped, causing the stream to stop and then restart halfway through. Quite the delightful little technical issue to have on your second attempted streamed podcast.

I am mostly fine with this episode. However, being locked up with Covid and taking care of Covid-infected family members leaves one with a desperate desire to communicate with friends comfortably. Part of that comfort comes with a loss of inhibition and consideration, and as such I had to fight myself to keep from being overly snarky and demeaning of the typical Video Game Award nomination choices. Most of all, however, was the digression at the end, which is a far more sensitive topic than I feel it could have been treated. In its own podcast with its own time I feel we could have illustrated a more informed and level-headed perspective on.

Nonetheless, I think we will have that opportunity in time. I also think I will be free to stream more often now, and will be putting a schedule together shortly. I also hope to revive this blog a little bit, so please be patient. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things after a tumultuous month.

What are your thoughts on the Video Game Awards and their nominations? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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We’ve finally arrived! Our first episode streamed on Twitch! At first I was wondering if this was such a good idea after all given the work required to prepare the images, and there’s still more I’d like to try and prepare to improve the stream-side of the experience, but in the end there was a different energy for Steve and I when it came to doing a live recording. It was the same old sort of casual conversation, but knowing there were folks listening in the moment was less nerve-wracking and more energizing.

Of course, it wasn’t just Steve and I. Friend and fellow weeb Misfit Waferton joined us to share her knowledge of anime studios while giving her own opinions on the different short-films in the Disney+ Star Wars anime anthology. In addition to her Twitch, you can also follow her on YouTube and Twitter.

As for Star Wars: Visions itself, there’s really nothing more to say that I haven’t in the podcast. I loved nearly all of the shorts and would love to see more, be it in terms of shorts or greater, full-length series set in some of these universes. I highly recommend giving it a watch if you have Disney+, regardless of your status as a Star Wars or anime fan.

What was your favorite short in Star Wars: Visions? Any shorts you’d like to see become a full series? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

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We’ve finally reached episode 90 of Eh! Steve!, and with it the final episode recorded through “traditional” (for us) circumstances. After this, we shall be moving our conversations over to the Twitch channel, though each recording will still be stripped of its audio and uploaded to iTunes and Google Podcasts. It is fitting, however, that our final podcast in this format be of Revenge of the Sith, seeing as our divided opinions regarding the Star Wars franchise have been a frequent point of debate.

I tried to remove as many awkward and lengthy pauses as reasonable in this episode, but in the end I could not perform a perfect edit. Nonetheless, I hope it is a good one to listen to.

I wish I had a proper closing thought for the conclusion of our prequel discussions. In the end, I suppose Steve did prove his point that the prequels weren’t as “bad” as I had remembered. Nonetheless, I still stand by the point that the films are only as fondly remembered or successful as they are due to the brand recognition and legacy. Even if they’re not bad – they are too technically competent to be truly bad – I cannot really believe them to be “good” either. It is doubtful I will ever go out of my way to see them again. Simultaneously, I can confidently confirm that these films at least tried something different and that George Lucas was more creatively inspired than the sequels had ultimately been.

Well, the ones I’ve seen, at least.

What are your thoughts on Revenge of the Sith? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Today is the release of Metroid: Dread, the “fifth” entry in the “main” Metroid narrative. More specifically, it is the most recent canonical release beginning with the progenitor Metroid on the Nintendo Entertainment System, followed by Metroid II: The Return of Samus on GameBoy, which was then succeeded by Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo, and then continued with Metroid: Fusion on the GameBoy Advance. If there is a specific storyline that has been running through the entire franchise, then these are the games considered to be the “main” ones.

Nintendo has recently announced the cast for the upcoming Super Mario Bros. film adaptation, and in response a friend of mine asked me who I’d wish-cast into the role of Samus Aran should she receive a film of her own. It is a question I answer begrudgingly, for I’d prefer there be no film adaptation of Metroid at all. It is not a series whose traits work well with the motion picture medium, grounded too much in an isolated atmosphere of exploration and mystery. From its inception to its modern interpretations, the best entries are those where the plot is minimal and the story is developed through the experience of the player.

It was days later that I stumbled upon comments on some blogs and forums that brought up the much maligned Metroid: Other M and the faults with its writing. Reading and responding to such comments led me to a realization: the greatest problem with adapting Samus Aran to screen is the same as whenever series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto insists on giving her a voice; Samus Aran is not a character, and the franchise is at its best when the story is not about her.

It may sound controversial to openly declare Samus to not be a character. One term that may be more precise to her role is that she is a cipher or conduit for the player, an avatar to embody for the sake of exploring an environment and completing a mission. However, even from a narrative perspective, Samus Aran is a person that does not grow. She is who she is and she will not change. When I claim Aran is not a character, it is largely in her purpose within the medium in which she is created. However, if we’re speaking in terms of narrative, then we need to perhaps step away from our standard ways of considering a character.

The best comparison that can be made is with the film Dredd, where the titular character is central to the plot but not necessarily the focus. He is Judge Dredd, and the events that have made him who he is are in the past. There is no longer any testing his conviction or willpower. He firmly believes in his sense of justice, and the only conflict is in punishing that which he deems criminal or unjust.

Any philosophical conflict or character growth is thus left to those around Dredd. Be it the rookie experiencing her first mission as a Judge, the plight of the criminals now facing off against a powerful force, or other corrupt Judges that would betray the code that Dredd abides by, it is through their lives and decisions that all thematic and philosophical conflicts are explored. Dredd, on the other hand, simply is.

It is for this reason that I feel so many fans have responded strongly to the Prime extension of the Metroid franchise as opposed to Sakamoto’s efforts to expand it with Fusion and Other M. In the Retro Studios developed series, Samus is never given dialogue. All of her personality is expressed through body language, and the character conveyed is one of experience, caution, and quick thinking. If you had to describe her in one word, “professional” might be the most apt. Yet the stories the player explores within these games are not her own. Instead, the player through Samus begins to unravel the mysteries of planets such as Talon and Aether and the tragedies buried within their ruins. The conflict arises through uncovering the logs of the Space Pirates, the Galactic Federation, the Chozo, and the Luminoth.

What the Prime games succeeded in doing was developing the world in which Samus dwells. This allows the player to effectively pilot Samus through this expansive galaxy, learning of the different alien races throughout and witnessing how great intergalactic kingdoms and empires are often brought down through corruption, be it physical manifestation or ideological.

In comparison, the galaxy as portrayed by Metroid: Fusion and Metroid: Other M is boring and simple. The only race dwelling among the stars apart from humans are the Space Pirates and the Chozo, the latter of which had fled the galaxy a long time ago. Whereas the Space Pirates had once built the Mother Brain themselves, Sakamoto had retconned through manga that the Mother Brain was an invention of the Chozo gone wild, controlling the minds of the otherwise unintelligent Zebesian natives. This is a far cry from the intelligent, mechanically-minded Space Pirates of the Prime games that are driven by a hunger towards technological military might. Simultaneously, races such as the Luminoth or the other bounty hunters found in Prime 3: Corruption or Prime: Hunters serve no place in Sakamoto’s interpretation of the game setting.

The Galactic Federation is given no better treatment, as they are effectively as two-dimensional as the greedy Weyland-Yutani of the Aliens franchise that served as series inspiration. While it was originally the isolation and parasitic nature of the Hollywood terror that informed the design and direction of Metroid on the original Nintendo, it would seem that Sakamoto would later draw his greatest inspiration from the generically greedy and ethically bankrupt authority whose sole interest is in controlling and weaponizing the most dangerous life form discovered in the galaxy. While I can hardly say the Galactic Federation in the Prime branch of games is thoroughly developed, it ironically feels less generic by having no remarkable traits whatsoever. It’s enough of a blank slate that we’re instead able to witness its members develop the setting through logs and conversation, such as one soldier declaring Samus Aran to be a mythological figure while another admires and looks up to her. In other words, the Galactic Federation is defined more by the individuals within it rather than sweeping a broad brush to paint over it.

Lastly, we come to Samus Aran herself. Sakamoto’s attempts to develop Samus often backfired, either contradicting the vague-yet-firm impression players had developed of her over the years, or bringing certain traits so far to the forefront that it did her a disservice. While players in the 80’s were stunned to discover Samus’ identity as a woman upon finishing Metroid, there were just as many – if not more – players, such as myself, that always knew her as a woman when we picked up Super Metroid for the first time. It was accepted as fact, and did not make her any different from characters such as Mega Man, Mario, or the Belmonts. She was beloved because of her prowess as a warrior, and for the attachment we developed in controlling her. Our successes were her successes, and vice versa.

To immediately bring her gender to the forefront in Fusion by highlighting her CO’s habit of addressing her as “Lady” means to now firmly establish her womanhood as a defining aspect to her identity. This is not necessarily a problem depending on how it is handled. Does the game try to say something about women facing greater hardship due to being perceived for their sex and not their actions and accomplishments in the military? Well, no, it doesn’t, really. Similarly, while there is a running theme of “motherhood” in Other: M, it is portrayed with all the finesse of a middle-aged man that has no concept of what it means to be a mother.

The closest you actually get in Fusion to some manner of character depth to force Samus to question whether she is really human or some sort of weapon. The question is prompted by the heartless SA-X clone of her hell bent on destroying everything in sight. It has more to do with Samus’ identity as a human than it does as a woman, which begs the question of why attach a nickname such as “Lady” to her. Or, more specifically, did the developer think bringing her womanhood forward was enough to develop her as a character? Much like her CO presumably addressed her based on her sex rather than her accomplishments or personality, the player is now thinking of Samus first by her gender rather than her prowess as a warrior.

It is this emphasis on the “Lady” nickname that Other M further leans on and unfortunately stumbles over. With her nickname emphasizing her status as the lone woman among a group of men, she is then placed into a position of obedience and subservience under a male commander despite being an independent bounty hunter. She is then subject to emotional anxiety despite being a proven, battle hardened warrior – particularly in terms of fighting a beast that she’s defeated several times by that point in continuity.

In other words, all of Yoshio Sakamoto’s efforts to “develop” Samus as a character instead dismissed or contradicted the impression players had developed of Samus being strong, decisive, and independent. Regardless of how many missions she herself had conducted alone, each of Sakamoto’s efforts to give her a voice instead reduced or violated those traits that players had been able to project onto her.

I am also aware that I, as a male, could be stumbling all over this topic myself and doing it a disservice.

Let us return to the notion of a Metroid film and why the Prime series feels like a far more worthy successor on a narrative scale to Super Metroid: there’s no need to try and “develop” Samus, because she has already developed into a professional, experienced, and independent bounty hunter. She’s an adventurer, and her role is to help eliminate the corruption on ruined planets that are in distress.

If you were to do a Metroid film, then your best bet would be to tell a story where Samus is not central to its narrative. Perhaps explore the final days of the Chozo, before they had fled the galaxy. If you wish for an origin to Samus, then have her as a character, but not the protagonist. Or, perhaps, have her take a role such as Judge Dredd, working with a younger, inexperienced bounty hunter or Federation soldier that has found themselves in over their head. Be careful, concise, and intentional with her dialogue. Do not try and give her an abundance in some effort to “develop” or “characterize” her. Let her actions speak volumes and her words be as precise as her aim.

At the end of the day, the best Metroid games and stories are not about Samus Aran. She serves a key role in those narratives, yes, but she is not a character to be challenged philosophically or ideologically. She is who she is, forged by the training of the Chozo and the armor she wears. There is no more character growth for her, and therefore we use her as the vehicle to explore the stories of worlds needing salvation or cleansing.

I am curious to see which direction Metroid: Dread shall take.

Direct Download

It is isolating to see other people being excited about something you’re not. It is even more so when the things you get excited about pass under the radar of others or are met with little-to-no appreciation. My natural instinct in these scenarios is to become condescending and judgmental, leaning upon a juvenile sense of my own intellectual superiority or some other nonsense garbage like that. Lifelong bad habits are the toughest to break, and I wanted to spend some time this episode getting over them a bit. The results are mixed.

There will be one last episode recorded in person with Steven, I’ve decided. Episode 90 will be our return to the Star Wars prequels, discussing Revenge of the Sith in all its… erm… “glory”. From there, I plan on creating a regular schedule for Eh! Steve! on Twitch, where we will likely record on one or two Thursday nights of the month, strip the audio, and upload it to iTunes and Google Podcasts on the weekend. I hope this will not be too disruptive, and will in fact be an improvement by increasing the number of voices and perspectives on the show. It will likely become a bit more regimented, but I’m hoping to continue our emphasis on interesting discussions rather than following the typical formula of covering game news and detailing everything we’ve all been playing.

Please look forward to it.

Did you like what you saw at Sony’s presentation? How about THQ Nordic’s this past week? Looking forward to anything from TGS? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Goichi Suda, founder of Grasshopper Manufacture and creator of the No More Heroes franchise, describes his creative philosophy as designing games with the spirit of punk. He grew up with the musical genre in much the same way he grew up with video games, and as such wants to avoid safe, conservative ideas and to instead try and push the boundaries with what games can be. Of all the games he had worked on prior, it is No More Heroes where this spirit stands out the most.

Booting up the remastered release of No More Heroes on PC earlier this summer, I found myself struck by that very do-it-yourself “punk” nature that was rebelliously birthed in the music scene in retaliation to the prog-rockers and Simon & Garfunkels of the time. If I were to summarize the game as succinctly and accurately as I could, it would be in comparison to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’s opening performance of “Launchpad McQuack”. It doesn’t take a professional to recognize the unbalanced audio levels that cause each instrument and mic to blow out the amps and speakers, nor does it take much to observe the lack of sophistication in the song composition. Yet there is an undeniable rawness to it that defies the systematic, corporate cleanliness of what you’d typically hear on the radio. This is expression, and you cannot help but be caught up in the energized emotion of the performers strumming those chords and banging those drums with as much fervor as they can muster.

(There is a degree of irony to this, seeing as the songs were written to specifically sound half-baked and shoddily composed. However, that’s partially because the songs themselves were rushed and given no opportunity to be cleaned up, retaining all mistakes and problems for the final cut of the movie.)

There was something of this spirit lost in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, perhaps due to Suda51’s shift to “Executive Director”. What that means is uncertain, though Suda’s time away from the director’s chair following the first No More Heroes has been widely published. He was still contributing ideas to the many projects within Grasshopper Manufacture, but he was not in control of them. It is, perhaps, for this reason that Desperate Struggle feels less like a sequel and more like an imitation. Like the corporate moneymen that believed they could imitate Michael Bay’s style and achieve the same success, the sequel title feels like a superficial understanding of what made the original game work while failing to capture the same heart of its unpolished “Launchpad McQuack” of a game.

Of course, the jump into No More Heroes 2 is rather confusing from the start, with the con-artist scheme of Sylvia being abandoned and the Assassin’s Association being treated as a legitimate organization. The climactic twists and reveals of the original – none of which are delivered with a fully straight-faced sincerity – seem ignored or forgotten in order to justify another round of climbing the blood-slick rank ladder for Travis Touchdown. While Travis’ sexless Otaku lifestyle was made a joke through his final goal of banging Sylvia and owing the video store a number of adult tapes, it was far from the only kind of gag or conversation held. It was an aspect of him, but there’s not a scene in Desperate Struggle without some remark, close-up, or blunt gag of a juvenile, perverted nature. Gone are the (pseudo-)philosophical discourses with the assassins, each of which had been hardened by a life of killing. Travis’ fanboy ignorance and delusions of living an empowered dream of violence were once made obvious when his efforts to sound cool before these professional killers sound instead like nonsense. Within Desperate Struggle, however, there is no character to the villains. Instead, it’s a half-baked tale of the revenge cycle, screaming loudly but saying nothing.

The sequel’s combat tries to introduce a greater variety of enemy types, yet they ultimately result in little more than being slower, bulkier, and jam-packed with hit points. Though the original game relies heavily on its bosses being unreasonably invincible to most attacks save for brief moments of vulnerability, the sequel fails to make up for it with truly captivating mechanics or climactic battles. Bosses technically have more interesting attack patterns, but many of them can be cheesed in a fashion the original game’s bosses could not. Though the over-reliance on invincibility was frustrating and dragged fights out, No More Heroes drove the player to study enemy behavior, figure out their openings, and capitalize on evasion, counters, and spine-shattering suplex moves. The jank was bearable because the logistics of the fight were still challenging and demanding of patience.

Desperate Struggle is neither desperate nor much of a struggle, save for some poorly communicated expectations in its final conflict. It truly embodies the diminutive concept of the “hack-and-slash”, where a slow but massive beam saber is capable of cutting through mook and boss alike for the majority of the game. Though the greater variety of foes and boss attacks are an “improvement” on paper, in execution they result in a game demanding less thought and more habitual button mashing.

Perhaps most telling is the manner in which the open-world was addressed between the two games. Santa Destroy is a largely barren city littered with odd jobs and combat activities. It’s not a bad setting and certainly has some character, but in No More Heroes it feels more like padding between activities in order to increase the game’s running time. It doesn’t take long before driving back and forth across the city to perform a variety of mandatory tasks between ranked battles becomes tedious, especially as the cost to enter each fight rockets into the sky. Desperate Struggle sought to counter this by removing the open-world altogether, teleporting the player from location to location from an overworld menu. Santa Destroy was no longer a place, and all side content was relegated to 8-bit mini-games that were ultimately far more time consuming than any single odd job from the first game. Instead of fixing the elements that made the over-world tedious, they removed the over-world and kept the tedium.

Though Desperate Struggle is not without its charm, it failed to understand why fans were drawn to the original despite its flaws. Or, perhaps more accurately, Desperate Struggle sought to correct what the critics deemed as faulty game design, comparable to an upstart punk rock record being reviewed poorly beside the latest overproduced pop sensation riding the airwaves. The fans, on the other hand, not only loved No More Heroes despite its flaws, many loved it for the flaws, even if they weren’t able to explain it themselves. If the spirit of punk rock is to do something different, then you’re bound to make mistakes along the way. What’s most important is that there’s nothing else quite like it.

Which is why No More Heroes III feels like a more appropriate sequel than Desperate Struggle. In June of 2019 Goichi Suda mentioned listening to fans and their input to guide the development of the long-awaited sequel, a drastically different shift from the prior game’s attempts to address the critics. This is no doubt why the open-world made a return, as well as many odd jobs and side-quests old and new. However, these elements of the original game weren’t simply dropped back in with a higher-resolution skin: changes and adjustments were made in order to improve the experience and reduce the grind.

The first adjustment is to have two separate currencies for ranked battles and upgrades rather than just the one. Combined with a reduced price hike for each ranked battle, the player is able to more expediently go from boss fight to boss fight without the open world tediously padding the game’s length out. Though there are plenty of side quests and mini-games to complete or collectibles to obtain, all of which help contribute to both currencies, they are optional and unnecessary for making forward progress. Instead, the player only has to take on a minimum of three “designated missions” before each ranked battle, keeping the focus on the reckless violence against stylish alien foes.

This is perhaps where the game sees its greatest refinements, taking some of the Death Glove abilities from the lesser filler entry of Travis Strikes Again to increase the combat options available to the player. Enemies have unique and varied attack patterns compared to the prior entries, and knowing when to launch, drop kick, slow, or pelt these foes will help both ensure survival and increase one’s rating for the fight. The higher the rating, the more cash earned. It’s still no Devil May Cry, but the combat encounters are without a doubt the most enjoyable and refined in the franchise.

The same goes for the boss encounters, relying far less on cheap tactics or invincibility. Some of them certainly have their share of gimmicks, but these often result in a break from the monotony in order to provide something fresh and inventive. Whereas Yoko Taro manages to drop players into alternate game genres in Nier or Nier: Replicant while maintaining the otherwise somber atmosphere, Suda51 slides players into a sudden first-person horror, rhythm game, or role-playing game with a twisted, delightful levity.

I can think of no other franchise that could get away with a toilet plunging mini-game without seeming crass, tactless, or juvenile. Suda51’s sense of humor often lacks sophistication, but rarely does it feel childish. He is indulgent, but unlike Travis Strikes Again, it is easier to go along with the ride in No More Heroes III. If the former title was Suda searching for that love of games out of depression, then the latter is a celebration of everything that the director has loved throughout his life. Shoji Kawamori style mech battles on land and space; references to a variety of classic game genres; a nerdy otaku with a lightsaber that spends his time between missions discussing Takashi Miike films with his best friend; opening and closing credits in the style of anime from the late 70’s or early 80’s. You can get a real sense of what Suda51 loves just by playing this game, and if you’re a kindred spirit, then the game will speak to you in a manner that few others can.

If No More Heroes is “Launchpad McQuack” and Desperate Struggle is the corporate attempt to recreate it through superficial imitation, then No More Heroes III is that original band ten years later in a far more impressive sound studio with far better equipment keeping the same spirit of song-writing alive. It’s the difference between “Prowler” and “Fear of the Dark”.

Much like punk – or even the above-referenced Iron Maiden – not everyone is going to get it. Many of the most influential bands don’t have a single song that made radio waves. Those who get it will get it, and those who understand No More Heroes will appreciate No More Heroes III the most. It’s not the best game to be released this year, but I can guarantee you that it’ll be one of the most unique, if not the most unique, and it all comes down to that do-it-yourself punk rock attitude of Suda51.

Who, for the time being, seems to be saying goodbye to Travis Touchdown. Upon release of the game he issued a farewell to No More Heroes on Twitter, discussing his intention to move onto other projects for now. It is a move that I am not against, truth told. No More Heroes III feels like the sequel fans have wanted since the first, and while Desperate Struggle was certainly fine, it was clearly not made with the same passion or spirit as the original. If the third game is to be the conclusion, then it not only delivers on the first game’s potential, but it makes for a fantastic send-off.

To that I say farewell, No More Heroes. There was nothing quite like you before, and I doubt there’ll be anything quite like you after.

It’s been a couple of weeks now since I watched Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: Thrice Upon a Time, the final entry in director and series creator Hideaki Anno’s “Rebuild” quadrology of films. A project over a decade in the making, there was a sense of finality to it not only for the films themselves, but the franchise as a whole. This is it. This is the end. It is a definitive conclusion, and as the credits began to roll I could not help but feel a wave of satisfied completion wash over me.

This feeling did not last. Days would pass by, and as I thought more and more about the film, I could not help but feel as if it was mishandled. I had spent so long wondering why Anno had changed directions so drastically with the third film, You Can (Not) Redo, that I had hoped this conclusion would answer those questions and provide a clear throughline. The final ten minutes of the film introduce changes to the entire continuity that serve no purpose and do nothing to develop the psychology of certain characters. Further research into the development of each film reveals that Anno had no grand vision at the start – at least, not one he adhered to throughout – and had effectively made it up as he went along.

Fans have been claiming that they “finally” got closure out of this film. I cannot imagine how, as the entire franchise became more convoluted and vague in the final hour. Perhaps what they really mean to say is “I finally got my happy ending”, forgetting the rage that erupted in the fandom in the actual happy ending of the television series. I’ve seen memes that refer to the original series and films as “depression” and this final film as “therapy”, and once again point to that original series ending. Even if the original End of Evangelion film left you feeling depressed due to the tone of its conclusion, there was always the manga with its more optimistic fusion of ideas from the film and original series.

Ultimately, I don’t think it is “closure” that viewers got from this final film. I simply think that many of them have been placated.

I should first make clear that I do not believe the film is bad, nor do I want to remove anyone’s sense of enjoyment of it. In fact, I still find all four Rebuild films to be enjoyable. However, one of the things that has made the original Evangelion series so core to my love of anime as a medium is how consistent it is in focus. To summarize succinctly, Neon Genesis Evangelion is about human relationships. More specifically, it is a Japanese perspective on human relationships and how the desire to get closer to another contradicts with the fear of being hurt. Each character has a very specific and real sort of psychology going on in their minds, and they are often victims of their own self-sabotage to better their conditions and relationships with others.

I was slightly younger than the protagonist Shinji Ikari when I first viewed the show. I originally preferred the manga because Shinji seemed to have “some balls”, a willingness to behave in a way that implied greater confidence or guts. He felt more empowered within the manga than the show. As I grew older and rewatched the series multiple times, I began to realize that I had wanted Shinji Ikari to be an idealized version of myself. I related to him greatly, but I wanted to live out a fantasy life through him. As the years went by and I matured, I began to lose that desire to fantasize through protagonists and instead began to appreciate Shinji for the worst traits he and I shared. I recognized aspects of myself I had once yearned to ignore, and could relate more closely with the character because he, too, chose to dismiss them.

The characters of the television series feel real, and End of Evangelion throws a fourteen year-old boy at the lowest point of his life into an event he is simply not capable of handling. By the end of the film, he is not enlightened. His choice is a stubborn, childish reluctance, and his final actions reveal cowardice within his emotional and irrational tantrum. There are several pieces of dialogue from moments earlier in the film to suggest it is not as depressing as it first seems, that there is still hope and a future, but it is still not a generically happy ending. It is a conclusion – one that the staff themselves consider “an alternate” to the far more pleasant yet abstract and vague television finale – and it is all the more memorable because it is not generic.

The Rebuild films, on the other hand, cannot be summarized as simply. There are certainly elements of human relationships within them, but if that’s what the show has been about then the final hour of the last film does a poor job of delivering on the concept. In fact, the closer you get to the end, the more clear the message becomes that Hideaki Anno is done with Evangelion. Could it be that the entire series has been leading to this decision? If so, are many of the stylistic and narrative changes reflective of why? Precisely what is Anno trying to say with this work?

Based on what I’ve read, part of the reason there’s no clear throughline is that the films were written and rewritten as they progressed and involved potentially far more cooks in the kitchen than the series prior. Characters such as Mari were inserted by a producer, leaving Hideaki Anno to try and figure out what purpose she served in each film. By the closing of Thrice Upon a Time we still have little information regarding who she is, with only a handful of hints littered here and there between the third and final films. She has no psychology or depth like the other characters. She feels like a corporate mandate to simultaneously sell figurines to fanboys and allow an over-empowered self-insert for fangirl fan-fiction writers. She’s far closer to the Shinji that my twelve or thirteen year-old self wanted. If Shinji had been written like that, then Evangelion would have been a forgettable, uninteresting show barely worth a first examination, let alone the hours upon hours of analysis it demands.

I don’t think it’s merely the insertion of outside ideas into the project, though. After all, most creative works such as this involve the input and feedback of surrounding team members. It is highly doubtful that all of the original Evangelion were a result of Hideaki Anno’s mind alone. As the director in charge, he certainly had a hand in its execution. If you’re familiar with his other works, then you can also recognize his visual style and dialogue. The question then becomes who Anno is surrounded by.

There’s also questions of why bother with the Rebuilds at all. Based upon interviews following the latest film’s release, Hideaki Anno wanted to remake the series without the budgetary constraints of the original series. He yearned to do more with computer animation and digital techniques that were not previously possible. Though these changes in technology have no bearing on the quality of the original series’ writing or characters, the desire to keep going back and “improving” was evidently present.

New toys and weapons, constantly redesigned mechs, a focus on over-the-top action… isn’t this all just the sort of thing other Mecha anime did that Evangelion was trying to avoid?

I hope I’m not the only person suffering unpleasant flashbacks to George Lucas and his constant meddling with the original Star Wars trilogy. Restrictions to budget or possibility will often test a creator’s problem solving skills, pushing their ingenuity to the limits in order to develop fresh and effective solutions. The workarounds, improvisations, and alternate decisions often result in a more unique product that stands out all the more from comparative works. Evangelion was no exception to such decisions and moments, such as the awkwardly long and silent elevator ride between Asuka and Rei. The viewer goes from an observer to a participant in the awkward silence, caught just as much in the atmosphere as Asuka herself. Shinji holding Kaworu’s life in his hand is not much different. Though I figured out precisely how long I needed to fast-forward this moment on VHS, I now as an adult watch it in full. I want to listen to the epic melancholy of the classical track in the background while Shinji indecisively lingers upon the most heart-breaking – and in some ways, spirit breaking – decision he has yet to face.

Are these good examples of direction? I do not know, but the decision to save time and money on these particular moments reflect the creative intuition of Anno and his team at the time. These were moments you could cut costs and maintain mood and meaning, preserving high-quality animation in moments where it would matter far more importantly.

So once Hideaki Anno has far more resources to see his vision through, what do we ultimately get? The Berserker modes of the Evangelions are not only incredibly over-the-top, they instead become a sort of Super Saiyan mode of empowerment whose consequences are spoken but never properly shown or felt. What was once a terrifying reminder to the characters, and therefore the audience, of the immense power they were foolishly trying to harness under their control is now a moment to pump your fist into the air and shout excitedly as explosions fly across the screen. Oh, sure, we’re informed of how “dangerous” the berserker mode is to the pilot, but never do we witness those actual consequences in action. The original show, on the other hand, was cratered into an effective no man’s land of consequences. “Show, don’t tell”, as the old saying goes.

Don’t let the smile on his face fool you. Going from “frowning all the time” to “smiling” is not actually character development if there’s no logical cause-and-effect path that got him to that stage. This is “conveniently capable of concluding this series” Shinji, as opposed to “realistically depicted person with realistically depicted problems” Shinji.

At this stage I no doubt sound like an old curmudgeon griping about things being different, but I think it’s more a question of what, precisely, has been improved. By the final stretch of 3.0 + 1.0 Shinji Ikari no longer feels like a person. The third film had broken him absolutely, every decision made leading to disaster. Every attempt to save or help someone led only to greater pain and misery. Just as he’s beginning to recover, he seems to suffer yet another incredibly painful loss. The result is… an immediate transformation into being precisely the mature and wise character he needs to be to bring the film to its hour-long climactic conclusion.

In an interview with Time, Anno discusses how he was more interested in the “inner self” and “inner world” when he created the original Evangelion series. By the time he had been working on the Rebuilds, Anno was more interested in the “outer world”. The nature of Shin Gojira and its commentary on the Japanese government’s response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and foreign governments is evidence of this “outer world” he is interested in. We can see some of this interest similarly reflected in 3.0 + 1.0, perhaps addressing the current situation with Japan’s low birth rates and other potential social concerns.

This means Anno is trying to write a story originally crafted as an “inner world” narrative despite having less interest in it, working “outer world” ideas into it, and finally bringing the entire series to a close. To reiterate, he has been doing this for more than a decade, across which he has no doubt transformed and changed in regards to outlook and interest from first film to final.

I would argue that it is impossible to tell a fully coherent and consistent narrative across such a span of time, and the final minutes of this film are evidence towards that belief. It’s not just a matter of those “inner” and “outer” world themes being dismissed in favor of artistically and somewhat abstractly saying goodbye to this franchise. It’s also in how much more convoluted the setting itself becomes, how the very core of who a character is can be changed with a seemingly minor detail, or just the convoluted flood of brand new buzzwords and philosophies that confuse what was, ultimately, a far more simple concept to understand.

Why yes, I do actually prefer this ending.

Which is bizarre to say, given how many questions were left ambiguously open in the original Evangelion with only some hints or answers in materials or games not released outside of Japan. Yet despite those unanswered questions, the core of the show was easy to understand: Seele wanted to break down personal barriers and become one unified existence through the Human Instrumentality project, all while Gendo Ikari was manipulating events so that he could be reunited with his wife Yui once more. At the center of it all is Shinji Ikari, himself an unknowing tool of his mother’s own, third will towards a specific future. Though this is the core of the plot of the original Evangelion, it’s still not what the show is about. It is through these machinations that we explore the human psyche, social relationships, and our own contradictory natures through Shinji Ikari and the connections he makes while caught up in this maelstrom of agendas. That is what Evangelion is – or was – about.

I do not dislike the Rebuild films. I don’t think they’re bad. However, despite the budget and massive quantity of CG spread across them, I do believe they are a lesser work. If someone wants Evangelion but with a happier conclusion, I’d more readily recommend the manga to them than I would the Rebuilds. Even if, canonically, the films do overwrite the original series, I can choose to ignore it, just as I choose to ignore the idea that Final Fantasy VII Remake in any way overwrites the original.

The Rebuilds are better than average as far as film goes, and perhaps ten years from now I’ll change my mind and find them just as worth pouring over as I do the original series. From my current perspective, though, they are a lesser work. If this is Anno’s idea of “improving” the series, then I am glad to see him let it go and move onto other projects.

It would seem I have the memory of a goldfish. I also suffer the incessant desire to speak too openly about myself no matter how concretely I swear I will do no such thing. What can I say? I’m a Millennial, and in my foolish youth I discovered the Blurty blog platform. “Over-sharing” has long since been embedded in my thought processes as a habit. While I have broken free of the shackles of social media, it has not yet quenched the fire of spitting out my introspective thoughts and hand wringing over things. What things? Many things.

When this habit combines with the goldfish memory it turns into the inevitable sensation that I’m about to repeat myself. Digging into this past year’s archive of blog posts reveals that, yes, I’ve already verbalized my thoughts regarding the content of this blog,and would rather leave my waste of words and time regarding behavior on stream in the rubbish bin of memory. The older I get in years, the more I believe these sorts of posts should be left by the wayside. If they are to be discussed, it should be with trusted sources with whom I can bounce my thoughts towards in private.

Unfortunately there is something more therapeutic than therapy itself in writing things out. Perhaps because, in these moments, I am writing regarding the subject most occupying my mind. In fact, this is a subject that’s been flitting about my brain pan for over a year now, whispering a truth that I’ve long wanted to ignore. A single idea that threatens to shatter any sense of value attached to not only my hobby, but the time spent thinking about it.

The honest truth is that I don’t want to make YouTube videos anymore. Or rather, I don’t want to keep making full-blown deep-dive analytical videos of video games anymore.

At the time of this writing, I have completed a script and recorded the audio for an in-depth examination of Resident Evil 4. I’ve been passionate about much of the project throughout its creation, but now as I gaze upon the hour-long audio that must be edited followed by the immense task of scrubbing and cutting video files together, I cannot help but feel as if the energy is sucked out from me like a vacuum plunged into my throat to steal away my breath. The passion has gone, and the idea of moving onto Resident Evil VII next – part of my initial plan in doing a trilogy of videos concluding with Resident Evil Village – feels more like a burden placed upon my shoulders.

Hopefully you can expect at least two posts regarding Resident Evil 4 in the near future.

Some of this simply has to do with the realities of adulthood. Any time spent working on projects and hobbies while unemployed during Covid came accompanied by heavy guilt. Time spent not searching for a job was time spent being a parasite upon the world, or so it felt. So whether I was allowing myself to be sucked into the escapism of video games or spending more hours working on hobbies than job hunting, I became so bogged down by guilt and feelings of irresponsibility that joy was fleeting and to be experienced only in the moment. The streams and podcast were two of the only methods I could find to comfortably step away from such worries because they were inherently social. It is no wonder I began to steer my focus towards those activities as a creative outlet. I never felt as if my time could have been better spent elsewhere, they often occurred towards the end of the day when leisure feels more earned, and by being social there was a limit to how much time was spent on it rather than on more responsible things.

My work situation has steadily improved this year, allowing me to more comfortably write on the blog. My Witcher 3 pieces of Word Smiths and Papa Geralt and my examination of Batman: Arkham City’s gameplay and narrative were wonderful expressions of my thoughts and feelings towards those respective titles. Still other pieces felt held back or restricted due to the desire to “withhold” information for a deep dive video. Single playthroughs of select titles failed to provide enough familiarity and material to properly chew on and produce a worthwhile, digestible piece. Not in the written form, at least. Sometimes, discussing gameplay truly is difficult to do in the written word, made so much easier by a video’s ability to demonstrate visually.

In May I had decided to try crafting deep-dive videos once more. I opened a document to first outline a new approach:

• Begin writing scripts before or during video recording. Adjust script as necessary.
• Allow myself to work on multiple videos and scripts at once.
• Stock up on videos rather than release them as they were completed. Release once-per-month in a “season” like format.
• Record each “chapter” of audio as its own file so video editing can begin earlier and in tandem.

I don’t know if I have any plans to write about A.I. The Somnium Files beyond the podcast. I just wanted to post a picture of Aiba.

In the process of spear-heading my video on Resident Evil 4 I found myself incapable of working on multiple videos at once. Working on the script while recording the footage proved beneficial, but the need to play through the game so many times and to double-check or fact-check certain moments led to further exhaustion. The combination of my day job and dedication to the podcast, blog, and Twitch channel meant the script-writing and video recording process was still taking a long time, and it was also interfering with my ability to play other games I was enjoying. All told, even if I were to have been more productive and dedicated to the video, it would have taken the entire summer just to finish a single analysis of Resident Evil 4. There was no way I’d be able to stock up on several videos to release once-a-month.

No matter what, there would always be several-month-long gaps between each video. The only way to produce them in an efficient manner would be to give up the blog, podcast, and stream, especially as a full-time employee. From a perspective whose primary concern is in numbers, this route to drop all other hobbies would make the most sense. My YouTube channel has far more subscribers and followers than any other content I publish.

The satisfaction I get, however, is just not enough to justify continuing this format any longer.

I’m not ready to just give up on videos, however. I still have a lot of things I’d like to say and communicate, and the video format is still best suited to those things. However, I’ve convinced myself that I need to create each video as a sort of “deep dive” rather than focusing on a singular topic. This is, in part, due to my love of such videos and an increasing difficulty to find similar content matching my tastes. It instead seems as if there’s an incredible drop-off of well-researched and in-depth content. Many feel far too rooted in their own perspective and opinion, and others seem to have shifted further and further into some political extreme or simply moved away from the content I began watching them for. I’ve felt that, rather than complain about what’s missing, I should try to make the content I want to see. Unfortunately, it is just not feasible for me at this stage of my life.

There are some games I struggle to write about that could perhaps make for some decent, shorter videos, though. My recent written piece on Death’s Door leaves me unsatisfied as I simply tried to have something here on the blog. I wanted to speak positively about the game, but doing so in written form was a struggle. It is possible a simple video on the game, a recommendation, would have helped me highlight why I enjoyed it while trying to demonstrate to others why they might wish to play it as well.

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is an example of a game I love but have difficulty writing about. Could make for a decent, shorter video.

Which, I think, gets at the heart of why I want to create content at all. As the title of this essay suggests, I’m in my mid-thirties. I’ve just crossed the threshold into the latter half. I only have so much time to devote to my hobbies, especially when I’m working, and trying to read my Bible daily, and trying to perform lower-back exercises each morning due to my sciatica, and volunteering at Church, and learning Japanese.

There are so many things in my life that I’ve given up, so many projects and goals that were left unfinished. I’d love to actually see something through to the end for once in my life. However, I am not the young mid-twenties adult I had been in 2013 when I had started my YouTube channel. My goals have changed, my routine has changed, and, quite frankly, I no longer resent my day job. I am grateful for it, if nothing else, and grateful for any opportunity to work. In the end, the more I try to define myself as a YouTuber, the more I fall into depression and uncertainty.

I love games and anime. I love discussing games and anime with others. Despite spending a lot of time enthusiastically pondering and contemplating design and themes, I no longer feel so conceited as to be able to “teach” people about these things. I simply wish to express that which I love, or, on occasion, describe why I’m left less satisfied. Lengthy, half-hour deep dive analysis may be something I enjoy, and in another life they may be something I’d still be able to create, but right now, I’d rather play what games I can in what time available, sharing my thoughts in far less time consuming ways.

This is not my farewell to YouTube. Not yet. As I said, I still have some ideas for smaller videos that I’d like to try putting out. It is also possible that, one day, I’ll finish off that series of examining 3D Zelda games. For the time being, however, I’m done with what RamblePak64 has meant to me so far. I’m ready to try something new. Something that, for whatever reason, I’ve been far too hesitant to do.

What does this mean for the blog? Well, hopefully it’ll mean more pieces more frequently. I have plenty that can be said regarding Resident Evil 4, after all, and would need to carve up and divide it into several posts worth. It might even require some rethinking of this website’s structure, in order to increase the ability for readers to find posts via more specific topics or properties. For now, however, I’m going to focus on going at my own pace, making sure that my hobbies provide pleasure rather than pressure.

Godzilla is one of those few non-video game properties that has managed to stick with me throughout my entire life. Since I discovered him around the age of five and onward, I’ve always felt a love of his big stompy feet and deadly radioactive flame breath. It was this love that led me to discover and see a live show for Kaiju Big Battel and a deep appreciation for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim despite its mediocre characters and leaps of logic.

Never had I really explored kaiju cinema beyond Godzilla, however. Not in regards to the many Japanese properties, at least. I’d always been curious about Gamera, the colossal turtle whose filmography is mostly only known to kaiju enthusiasts. Godzilla had enough mainstream clout and recognition to get a poor Hollywood adaptation released in 1998, followed by a proper American recreation in 2014, but the odds of there ever being a blockbuster budgeted Westernization of Gamera has been slim-to-none. Unless you were a prominent viewer of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the 90’s, or a child exposed heavily to the cheaper film fare licensed out to local UHF television stations, you were unlikely to ever come across the name “Gamera” outside of kaiju enthusiast circles. Scanning through Amazon Prime’s video library recently, however, I noticed quite the collection of the beast’s films available for streaming. Now was the time to expand my knowledge of massive monsters and see for myself if Gamera had what it took to stand beside one of the most iconic colossal creatures in cinematic history.

I’ve only watched the original Gamera, the Giant Monster, released in 1965, as well as its 30th anniversary reboot Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Incomplete though it may be, I figured these two films would serve as a foundation for what would define the Gamera films in each generation’s origin. On a superficial level, neither film was as good or entertaining as select Godzilla films from those respective eras.

Nonetheless, I found each film quite fascinating in their own right.

The weakest aspect of the Gamera films is, by far, their core plot. Whereas Gojira was written a decade prior as a reflection and commentary on nuclear power and the manner in which Japan had suffered and recovered from it, Gamera, the Giant Monster was created for no reason other than to make a competing giant monster movie. Daiei Film’s then-President Masaichi Nagata had wanted to craft a film inspired by both Gojira and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Unfortunately, that particular film, Nezura, which would have been about an infestation of man-eating, mutating vermin, was cancelled due to health department concerns regarding the brown rats used in filming. Gamera was made afterwards.

In other words, it is a film made not in order to express a feeling or philosophy of the film maker(s), but to simply cash-in with an imitation. There’s an element of “heart” absent from Gamera that defines the original Gojira. Doctor Serazawa is conflicted between his responsibility to defeat the amphibious leviathan that threatens the world and his desire to keep the potentially worst weapon created by man out of the hands of competing, warring governments. In the end, he unleashes the weapon upon the beast Godzilla, but not before destroying all of his research, and not without taking his own life. It is a philosophical conflict that remains relevant to this day and is what elevates the material beyond its dated puppetry and old-fashioned special-effects.

Gamera, on the other hand, concludes with the colossal tortoise being tricked onto a rocket and launching it into outer space. The conclusion is clean, swift, and efficient, allowing the film its terror and chaos before concluding just as the run time demands. Perhaps there’s something said in brief moments of jet fighters flying overhead in the early minutes of the film regarding Cold War powers, but at its core Gamera is about little more than a giant turtle stomping around Japan causing havoc.

Despite being clearly visible, the blowtorch inside the Gamera puppet or costume allows the filmmakers to use more impressive pyrotechnics than the Godzilla films typically have on offer.

Nevertheless, I found the experience entertaining. This is in part due to what I can only think to describe as the “innocence” of older film. I cannot imagine that audiences believed such special effects “looked real”, but there must have been a greater willingness to buy into the illusion being sold. As impressive as it can be, there’s so much technology and computer generation put into increasing visual fidelity that it creates a sense of skepticism. You cannot trust anything you see on screen, and it washes most imagery over with such a clear lens of artificiality. Once you discover that a show like The Mandalorian is filmed almost wholly in Unreal Engine, it’s not as if a spell is broken. It’s more that you better understand why it never looked quite right in the first place.

Fidelity and verisimilitude in an old film like Gamera takes on a different meaning because everything on-screen is tangible, and that is where I believe its strength lies. It was made a decade after the original Gojira and so had the advantage of lessons learned since the original inception. Even so, I’d say many of the effects found in Gamera more than held their own compared to Toho’s release of Invasion of Astro Monster that very same year. Where the fire breath of Godzilla and lightning bolts of Ghidorah were being drawn onto the frames in the old-fashioned style, Gamera was spewing actual flames from his mouth. Perhaps it is the advantage of being filmed in black-and-white. Invasion of Astro Monster, by contrast, is in full color, which may have only emphasized a “cheap” look by modern standards. However, if there was anything that shocked me in the film of Gamera, it was how good the costume itself, the miniatures, and the flame effects looked.

There were obviously moments where it looked cheap as well. The moment that the child falls from and hangs onto the railing of the lighthouse, for example, or the air-brushed spiral jets depicting Gamera’s UFO-style flight across the sky. Nevertheless, for a film that Daiei themselves had little faith in and expected to fail, the special effects were pulled off surprisingly well. Even if the plot had no heart placed in it, you could tell those working on the film were putting their soul into its look.

Which is precisely what had me curious enough to jump right into Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Despite growing up with the Showa era of Godzilla films, I ultimately preferred the Heisei era of colossal wrasslin’ due to an improvement in acting, continuity, story-telling (as campy and cheesy as it remained), and special-effects. I wanted to know how Gamera’s reboot compared ten years after Godzilla had reinvented itself.

Narratively, the end result was similar. Aside from some potential environmentalist talk, there’s no real sense of purpose for the film to exist aside from existence itself. When Toho soft-rebooted Godzilla in the mid-eighties, it was to not only remind younger generations of the terrifying power of nuclear war, but to present a Japanese perspective and philosophy on the Cold War; it took a stand as the lone nation to suffer under nuclear power against the two national giants wielding said power so irresponsibly. Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, on the other hand, says nothing. It is also too modern to get away with all of its camp and cheese without some laughs here and there.

I cannot help but wonder if this model street would be a bit more convincing if it weren’t for the paved road looking obviously artificial. The fine details are greater than you typically get in a Godzilla film.

Nonetheless, I continued to find it interesting how different the philosophy seemed to be regarding Gamera’s own costume. There seems to be a lot more puppetry involved in even modern Gamera as opposed to the adherence of outfits and body suits in the Godzilla films. While the villainous beasts dubbed Gyaos were always clearly a puppet, there was still a detail to their and Gamera’s design that impressed in terms of craftsmanship.

Yet at this point it did not outcompete with what Toho could put together in a Godzilla film. Instead, what truly had me impressed were the quality of the miniatures. It’s hard to really describe why it impressed me so much, as there was never a moment I believed they were real buildings. Nonetheless, there was such a level of detail that allowed me to more easily buy into the illusion being sold. I believe the secret is in the smaller size of Gamera and the Gyaos when compared to Godzilla and his skyscraper-sized titanic antagonists. Gamera is a smaller beast, and therefore the miniatures themselves do not need to be reduced to as small a scale. This allows for more intricate little details to be visible, and therefore to be more convincing. The smaller a model of an object becomes, the more it looks precisely like that: a model. The details of the scaled-down sets of Gamera, however, allowed such a degree of fine fidelity as to increase believability.

As of now I’m not sure I consider Gamera to be a “must-watch” for kaiju fans, but as I’ve stated before, I’m a Godzilla fan first. It is because of Godzilla that I have an interest in other giant creature features in the first place. From my understanding, however, there are possible themes and concepts written into the other films that I may find more fascinating than Gamera’s initial birth and rebirth.

Perhaps, after watching more of the filmography, I’ll come back with some additional thoughts.

Direct Download

As before, there is still a lack of background music to be used for the podcast now that I’ve chosen to go “legit”. As such, apologies for any awkward noises that are more easily noticed due to that terrible, encompassing silence in the back.

This week I have a special guest, a recent ally by the name of Issuna87, a fellow player of game writer and director Kotaro Uchikoshi’s games. Many may recognize him more from the Zero Escape series, particularly titles such as 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward, though also the concluding title Zero Time Dilemma. Uchikoshi has a very particular style to him, filled with scientific, cultural, and historical knowledge that tends to get pushed so far into the bizarre – and often times over the line – that you begin to question the legitimacy of everything he states. He treats all things, fact and fiction, with the same acknowledgment of possibility, which is one of the reasons A.I. The Somnium Files is so fun.

I was glad to have Issuna join me, though it is quite possibly the most gushing I’ve ever been on a podcast. I can only hope such pure enthusiasm for a game can convince others to play it. If nothing else, I hope listening to such joy brings a warmth to your heart while so many seem insistent on negativity and gloom.

Did you get to play A.I. The Somnium Files yourself? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.

Back in February I wrote about the design of the game Salt & Sanctuary, specifically calling out its adherence to the design template presented in the inspirational Dark Souls. The conclusion I came to is that I’m far more interested in games that glean some lessons from the franchise, but otherwise put their own spin on the Soulsborne genre.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I like it when a game knows how to blend certain design elements together in order to generate something fresh. I enjoy Darksiders 3 as much as I do because the elements it chooses to blend happen to fit snugly together, like LEGO bricks stacked into a colorful tower. It’s not enough to mix and match genres. You must take into account the goals of each individual game and which mechanics are used to achieve their vision. Some of those mechanics may not be compatible with those of another game, no matter how similar.

While the prevailing label to Death’s Door is that it is a Zelda-like rather than a Souls-like, that Dark Souls inspiration is still present. However, most acknowledgment seems to be in the game’s combat and leveling mechanics. Yes, you collect “souls” of enemies when you defeat them, and then use those souls to level up and improve your combat prowess. However, the most significant inspiration from Dark Souls has little to do with its combat, and instead fits snugly into the philosophies found in the Zelda franchise.

Death’s Door deftly combines the Dark Souls approach to map design with that of The Legend of Zelda.

When Nintendo developed A Link Between Worlds, they chose to experiment with player freedom by granting the player the option to pick and hold onto any tool at any time. If the player could afford it, they could “rent” every tool available in the game, granting them true freedom. However, in execution this only meant the player could choose any order in which to tackle the dungeons. Those dungeons still contained a critical path the player must follow, and puzzles throughout each dungeon were limited to just a couple or few of Link’s possible toolset at a time.

The order in which you complete dungeons in Death’s Door is just as sequential as most prior Zelda games. The freedom is instead found in the dungeons themselves, allowing the player to choose from one of many pathways rather than following a single critical path. As with most games, the freedom is limited and illusory since the player must still complete a whole circuit of each map before unlocking the passage forward. Nonetheless, by including multiple branching paths, the player is led to choose where to go first, and as a result it feels more like the discovery of exploration once you see how it all comes together.

It is in this manner that Death’s Door blends the sensibilities of the Zelda franchise and Soulsborne genre together in a way that feels natural. The design of the Zelda dungeons are focused less on creating shortcuts and more on unlocking doors that reveal keys to other locks, guiding the player throughout the dungeon while painting that illusion of puzzling your way out of a maze. The Soulsborne environments and dungeons, on the other hand, are less interested in the illusion of a maze and more interested in diverting the player through alleys and side-roads, slowly revealing shortcuts that a player can use to bypass the hazardous passages on a second playthrough. These shortcuts are a necessity for a game that prides itself on a challenge, preventing players from having to conquer hazardous environments and skirmishes that they’ve already proven capable of defeating. It’s a far lesser concern in the Zelda games, which take greater care to help less skillful players remain alive.

Death’s Door is far more interested in challenge and difficulty, and therefore designs its dungeons with those shortcuts in mind for the same reason as the Soulsborne games do. Should a player die, they can jump right back to where they fell in battle. This concept of shortcuts happens to work well with the Zelda design, which emphasizes the discovery of keys so that one can unlock doors. Within these side passages are also an assortment of puzzle chambers, perhaps the greatest influence from the Zelda franchise in how the game is stitched together. Despite such obvious inspirations, however, they are blended in a manner that allows the game to feel unique from either influential title.

Of course, Death’s Door has a formula of its own, not unlike the Zelda franchise. Each corner of the world is itself broken up into three separate “dungeons”, with the first introducing the player to a new environmental obstacle. The entirety of this first dungeon teaches the player the myriad ways in which to solve said puzzles. There will typically be unique environmental hazards or transportation in each of these zones as well. Once the player enters the “dungeon” proper, they’ll have multiple paths that will lead them towards four “keys” with which to unlock a larger door. This doorway leads them to that area’s key ability: the fireball, the bomb, or the hookshot. Once obtained, the player is then able to unlock the path forward to the villains’ lair, the third of these “dungeons” and a primarily combat-focused “siege” map that leads to the boss.

Despite relying on such an obvious formula, it becomes less of a problem through each zone’s previously mentioned unique hazards or traversal mechanics. Be it floating platforms whose bull-shaped busts must be struck to speed across long distances, ice that the player will skid, slip, and slide along, or vines that must be struck to lift the player to higher platforms, each territory has a variety of flora or constructs that no other zone possesses. Each territory is thus differentiated aesthetically and mechanically, with their own unique combat arenas and puzzles found in no other area.

Which leads to what I believe is the real meat of this game: the combat. There have been some criticisms regarding its “lack of depth”, a claim that I have mixed feelings about. While the game has a low “skill floor” in that you could simply swing the basic sword the entire time, dodging enemies when need be and doing little more, one could throw a similar accusation towards Hollow Knight. It is a game where the player is not required to learn the best use of spells, or to master techniques such as bouncing off the top of foes, or blocking the enemy’s blade with your own.

At the same time, I’d be lying if I claimed Death’s Door had the same variety of mechanics available as Hollow Knight and its charms and their myriad combinations, even if in secret. It really is a more combat oriented Zelda-like in that regard, for good or ill. Personally, I did not feel the need for the game to be any more than it was, and that’s largely due to the design of each individual enemy and the manner in which they are grouped together.

One could split each foe off into three classes: the mooks, the ranged, and the bruisers. The mooks are generally weaker in terms of how much damage they can take, focusing instead on heading right for the player to strike close range. They are unable to close the distance and are easily outrun, but too many and the player can become overwhelmed. The ranged units tend to hang further back, with some slinging spells that the player can bounce back at other opponents, others tossing poison bombs that can hurt friend and foe alike, and others guiding piercing arrows that cannot be deflected, only avoided. Finally are the bruisers, larger enemies with deep pools of health and the uncanny ability to close the distance. Many of their attacks have far thinner windows and tells, giving the player fewer opportunities to strike and fewer strikes to make before having to dodge.

Aside from each species of enemy within these classes possessing unique behaviors, and therefore driving the player to carefully engage with each one differently, the game also takes care when grouping these foes together. There will rarely be more than two bruisers on the field, and never more than three at a time. The more bruisers present, the fewer mooks or ranged foes available. While many games simply throw larger and larger forces against the player in order to be more “difficult”, Death’s Door makes sure each encounter is challenging but not overwhelming. It instead becomes a matter of how the player chooses to prioritize each foe species or class.

For example, do you take out ranged opponents first? Or do you use their projectiles to your advantage, deflecting each spell back at another opponent? Or perhaps you wish to lure that crowd of mooks into the range of a green wizard’s poison gas bomb? This is also where some of the game’s tools can come in handy, allowing the player to escape both mob and poison by hookshotting onto an opponent just as the bomb is about to land and burst. The fire spell, particularly when powered up, can torch multiple foes in a single crowd.

Yet the inability of the bomb to deal much damage to a mob is indicative of the surprising limitations of the combat. I cannot argue with some of the criticisms in regards to depth of options, as there are very few reasons to use any of the spells but the fireball during these intense and fast-paced skirmishes. It has the greatest advantage above all others by striking at multiple foes and being capable of lighting them on fire. Simultaneously, while there are multiple melee weapons available, they all behave roughly the same. The only differentiating traits are how swiftly they swing and how many consecutive strikes you can afford in a combo. I found the twin daggers most effective in being able to dish out the most damage in as short a window as possible, and therefore stuck with them throughout the majority of the game.

While this is certainly a detriment to Death’s Door in terms of customization and options for replayability, it does not change the manner in which the game’s enemies and opponents are cleverly designed and carefully grouped together. The game’s combat becomes a highlight regardless of its faults or limitations once combined with the many environmental hazards and traits in the more difficult “siege” segments of each territory.

It is unfortunate, then, that the endgame content is perhaps the greatest letdown. Not wholly, as it is also where the game is the most free. You are provided one item – a single hint – as to where to go next. Afterwards, the player must explore the world to solve mysterious puzzles and find new secrets on their own. There also happen to be fewer opponents scattered about the world, allowing the player this final task to feel more calm and relaxing to complete. However, the pay-off is not only very… minimal, there’s no climactic gauntlet of combat to push through, one which tests all of the player’s skills and forces them to earn that completionism. Just a handful of additional encounters no more or less difficult than what is in the primary campaign.

Nevertheless, the game is still stronger for its endgame content than without. If I were a more snarky games writer, I’d write a hot-take, click-baity headline exclaiming Death’s Door is the best Zelda game released in July. Instead, I feel like it helps pave the way for other games inspired by Zelda to do their own thing rather than adhering to Nintendo’s own formula. It still captures much of that same magic, but it stands as its own creation rather than a bootleg imitation or failed clone.

For that reason, I will undoubtedly come back and play Death’s Door again.