Game Log Archive
Game Log is dedicated to the games I've been playing recently that encourage some degree of thought that I'd like to share. I cover games by their mechanics, narrative, and all other manner in which a game evokes emotion and engagement from the player.
A pretty decent game greatly elevated by the excellence of its narrative.
The magic of Iconoclasts lies in its characters. The story wouldn’t be as good were it not for the animated depth in its entire cast. Without the narrative, the mechanics would not be enough to elevate it above other indies of similar style.
Such a statement may seem to devalue the hard work developer Joakim “Konjak” Sandberg had put into the entirety of this game – and startling as it is, pretty much every aspect of this title was handled by just the one man. The rest of the credits are largely QA staffers and relevant staff at publisher BiFrost that helped get this game through quality assurance and certification. Regardless of objective quality, Iconoclasts stands alongside surprisingly polished and executed titles as Stardew Valley.
Despite the Herculean task of making a game by oneself, even Demigods have finite power and are prone to making mistakes.
A glimpse into the atmospheric portrayal of Akihabara within Akiba's Trip.
The booming advertisement for Conception II echoes throughout the cement plaza, voices reverberating into the infinite sky above my head. Fanboys, with strands of hair drooping over bandanas, sulk past me with downcast eyes fixated on their shadows. At a nearby train station, a young woman in maid uniform sings into a cheap, portable karaoke microphone. She dances to the music with a smile as artificial yet sincere as my memories of the cheerleaders at my high school football games. A cool, spring breeze carries her lilting notes over the rumbles of the crowd and din of commerce, bringing a smile to my face.
I didn’t come to the UD+ plaza to listen to amateurs, however. I came for the rambunctious crowd disputing with irate and protesting idol singers. Stepping from the stairs and between the two groups feuding like a Twitter War, I stare the lead idol in the eye …
… and lunge forward, brandishing my limited-edition mecha anime poster as if it were Excalibur against forty-eight screaming, scratching teeny-bopper idols.
Yes folks, I’ve finally got a new piece up over on GamersWithJobs. This one is titled Akiba Mystique, focusing on how a game like Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed establishes such an atmosphere as to make this fictionalized version of Akihabara just tangible enough, despite all of the cracks in the artificial presentation.
I’ve already written plenty on the game, but the appeal runs deep enough I wanted to discuss it further on the GamersWithJobs front page. Hope you enjoy.
Being a remake of Return of Samus keeps this from being the strongest 2D entry in the franchise.
When I played through AM2R – abbreviated title for Another Metroid II Remake – it came off as a product lacking in Nintendo’s more friendly accessibility. It was very much a game made by Metroid fans for fans of Metroid. Do you like sequence breaking? There’s plenty of that. Wall-jumps can be used to climb high walls, the bomb jump has been polished for easy timing, and mastering the speed booster’s shinespark is damn near a requirement to progress.
While AM2R had a degree of polish surpassing even many professionally developed imitators to Metroid, it always felt like it was not the Metroid Nintendo would make.
Well, I was right and wrong! Nintendo allowed European developer MercurySteam the opportunity to remake Metroid II: Return of Samus themselves – hence the DMCA takedown of AM2R. My expectations of the game to be easier than AM2R were dashed, as I don’t think I’ve died so often on a Metroid title since gravity-based monster Nightmare in Metroid: Fusion.
It's not as bad as you think! ...I mean, it's still probably not good, but at least it's not as bad.
Sometimes you just gotta eat some trash food like McDonald’s. You know it’s not well-prepared and you know it’s not good for your health. But there’s just something about it that will sate a specific appetite that other meals will not.
Video games can be the same.
I do not recommend Akiba’s Trip to anyone but folks that like quirky and experimental Japanese RPG’s. The narrative isn’t particularly impressive or ambitious, nor are the mechanics in any way polished. They are distinctly lacking in polish. In fact, I’m pretty sure they aren’t painted, let alone polished. They’ve just got the primer on them.
Despite this, I cannot condemn the game, either. While many in my circle dismissed Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed as a game for undersexed man children stripping the clothing off of underage girls, I decided to see for myself just what sort of title this was.
Also, a College buddy of mine asked me to write about it years ago when I tried doing “Stretch Goals” for my Extra Life streams. The immense delay is pretty much why I don’t do those anymore.
A smaller team and budget doesn't correlate with the degree of polish or scale of ambition.
When I think of a thirty dollar budget game, Earth Defense Force 2017 tends to come to mind. A completely unpolished and bizarre project whose absurdity and unique nature is often the source of its incredible fun. The B-Movie of video games, it’s lack of budget and cheap production is as much the charm and fun as it is in Bruce Campbell vs. the Army of Darkness.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a budget title, but it is not a video game equivalent to the cheap grindhouse shlock that would later inspire creatives like Robert Rodriguez, Guillermo Del Toro and Peter Jackson. It is much more comparable to a film like Reservoir Dogs. Clearly lower in budget and independently developed, but with greater technique and polish than its contemporaries. It may have its flaws, but its smaller scope – narratively and mechanically – do not keep it from standing alongside the more expensive and flashy AAA production content.
To understand what makes Hellblade work, it is first important to understand the real experiment developer Ninja Theory performed. Like many other action games, it is assumed that the bulk of the mechanics are found in the combat. Puzzles and labyrinths merely serve to break up and pace the action so as to not exhaust the player. Hellblade seems to follow just such a design throughout its first two zones, with puzzles and combat interchanging until the player must confront a boss.
Immediately following these zones the game takes away Senua’s weapon and spends a considerable amount of time without a single fight at all.
A simple innovation manages to compensate for some otherwise poorly designed challenges, saving this game from being an endless grind of frustration.
As a wannabe games critic I often find myself conflicted with being late to a series. I missed that initial cultural splash, that purity of form that comes with an initial idea. This means what I experience could communicate a very different idea of what a property is than what those fans from the beginning saw as the series identity. I wrote something about this recently on GamersWithJobs in the article The Spirit of Things. What I latch onto in a particular iteration may be met with displeasure by others.
If you’ll recall, I was absolutely smitten with Fire Emblem: Awakening’s pairing mechanics. It would seem, however, that this very feature and its importance is divisive. Many fans of the older games are not so taken by the “waifu simulator” – and given my own discomfort with how far Fire Emblem Fates took it, I can somewhat see why. As such, Fire Emblem Echoes seems much more favorably met by many older fans.
What is there to defend in The Order 1886? Unfortunately, not much.
When I first read Ed Smith’s Speak up, The Order: 1886, I expected to come to his aid in defending the game. In fact, part of me wants to defend the experience. It wasn’t without its merits, and at this point I cannot even recall any of the original criticisms laid at its feet beyond how “short” the campaign was – a rather perfect length that allowed me the time to give it a play at all.
I am instead confounded by the merits he claims critics had given it and the “originality” he claims it to contain. Creative weaponry? I suppose the presence of automatic rifles in 1886 would be creative to some. Most would simply call it historically inaccurate. I fail to see how Nikola Tesla’s invention of weaponry would result in such an advancement ahead of its time, either. Instead, Nikolas Tesla is merely an excuse for a bog standard gun that gamers – including myself – would be comfortable with.
In fact, I was actually rather startled when a trophy popped up informing me that I had slain with each weapon once. My eyebrow curls once again upon Ed’s claims of originality, not only for the lack of inventive weaponry but for the commonplace “achievement” that nearly every shooter comes digitally packaged with.
Turns out the Borderlands setting is actually pretty great when put into the hands of competent people.
I’m pretty much on-record as not being a big fan of the Borderlands games. I think sometimes my apathy towards the franchise turns to loathing due to a distaste for developer Gearbox following Aliens: Colonial Marines mixed with the absolute love the franchise seems to get. In a post-Destiny world it is especially confusing as to why the game would garner such a passionate group of fans. At best, I can only imagine that a love of constant loot-drops is what brings all the players to Gearbox’s yard.
Tales From the Borderlands is the first time I’ve been tempted to fall in love with the setting.
When I wrote about Nier: Automata I discussed how many believe you must sacrifice either gameplay or story based on your priority. Narrative-driven games must sacrifice mechanics, gameplay and agency while mechanics-driven games must sacrifice story and character. Gearbox and Telltale each deliver an experience in this universe that adheres to this mentality, and in the end I’m left unsatisfied with the end result.
The problem with Borderlands as a setting in the Gearbox developed titles is that it all exists for the sake of the mechanics. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but it certainly keeps the world from being as vibrant as its comic book aesthetic. The world looks wonderful and the art direction certainly oozes personality. The problem is that the narrative and games themselves do not support it. Even Borderlands 2 – where each primary quest followed a sort of three-act narrative structure to provide a more engaging and satisfying episodic feel to every mission – failed to achieve anything more than a template for mechanics-based narrative.
Not everything is as you first perceive. There's two sides to Nier: Automata, and unfortunately I can only discuss one without spoilers.
I would describe Nier: Automata as being a game about duality, deceit, and opposition. Perhaps not what you’d expect – or even desire – of a game description. You cannot really ascertain what sort of mechanics make up the gameplay with those words. Though “opposition” seems to somewhat describe the very nature of a conflict, it is broad enough to also encapsulate the likes of Super Mario or even a Madden title.
Nonetheless it is on these three concepts that Nier: Automata lays its very foundations. Like the indie game Toren – a game I analyzed in-depth on my YouTube channel and even this very blog – it takes thematic content typically intended for a narrative and carries those ideas through to the gameplay.
Final Fantasy XV manages to be an enjoyable experience despite being an incomplete game.
I think it was for Final Fantasy VIII that I saw a magazine headline its preview with “Not Your Grandfather’s Final Fantasy”. The suggestion at the time, of course, being that the new title was such an evolution of the formula that it was a definitively new experience.
Instead, that cheesy headline is what comes to mind when playing Final Fantasy XV. Primarily prompted by its opening screen, declaring that it is a title for new and old fans alike, I cannot help but think of how not Final Fantasy this is. It makes use of a variety of familiar elements, but what brings me back – the reason to play this game – is completely different.
This is a Final Fantasy where the emphasis is gameplay and sidequests, not the story. While the franchise has sought to update and revise its gameplay in greater and greater ways since the Playstation, never has it made as large a leap as this. Similarly, never have the side quests and optional boss fights been such a large draw. In the past, only the most dedicated players would trudge through all of the side dungeons in hopes to obtain every hidden weapon, spell, or trinket. For all the times I played Final Fantasy VII, I never once did get Knights of the Round.
With Final Fantasy XV, though, the side content is the draw.
Long-running franchises always run the risk of becoming rote and repetitive. The Ace Attorney series manages to meld an ensemble-based narrative with gameplay to make the series more vibrant than ever.
During the 80’s and 90’s, my perception of Capcom was as a sequel-generating machine. As long as their game was a success you would be guaranteed to see another one… or two… or perhaps even five.
The Mega Man franchise is perhaps the most notorious. Near-annual releases of not only the original game, but the spin-off X series that premiered on the Super Nintendo and continued on the PlayStation. Once the GameBoy Advance rolled around, Mega Man Battle Network reared its head and spawned yet another series on this new device. Street Fighter may have had few “sequels”, but it continued to iterate with updated editions and various cross-over spin-offs. Street Fighter begot X-Men vs. Street Fighter, which begot Marvel vs. Capcom. The Resident Evil franchise seemed to be shambling about much like its iconic creatures before the seventh numbered game released to critical acclaim earlier this year.
The Ace Attorney series – known in America as Phoenix Wright – is at first blush no different than that 90’s style of iterative sequel generation. The second game is much like the original, but with a single new mechanic added. The third game followed suit, adding only a single new feature. Even when protagonists swapped in Apollo Justice, it seemed to be following a similar formula but with one exception.
For other games, swapping protagonists doesn’t exactly mean much. While X is, narratively, a very different character from Mega Man, his traits are defined by his evolution in gameplay. When Apollo Justice makes use of his bracelet to perceive minor physical “tells” during a testimony, it’s no different than the prior games adding new methods of investigating a scene. It’s simply that title’s new gimmick.
