GerardoDeRivia
Some of my favourite games are in one way or another unpolished, unrefined, imperfect in so many ways that when i think about them isolated from the experience of my playthrough, i often wonder why i consider them so high.
Then the chills come.
And this happens to me a lot, actually. Anytime I think about Yakuza 6 I can spend half an hour criticising all of the short comings, and bullshit about the combat or some of the systems, it doesn't matter, really. The core is pure, and in that core there's a story that resonated with me in ways I was only hoping it would; there is an open world that contains the kind of shit that I fall in love with in such a way I can only think about it for days and days.
Castlevania II is bullshit; obscure, obtuse to an extent that most would consider a total failure, I might consider it a failure tomorrow, i don't care, this game has connected with me as Dark Souls did in 2014. This is an ambitious aproximation to the formula that with all of its problems and the utmost certainty that it can't be completed without a guide, I cannot take anything away from the moments i have gone through and how its ambition, as often as problematic, is also inspiring and in some ways revolutionary. Coming from a linear, action game with a difficult curve that turns the later half of the game into an insufferable hell, Castlevania II implements levels and the possibility of healing in churches, it creates an actual curve that even with bosses broken by items and a difficulty that goes inverted, let's you familiarize with its enviroments.
If Castlevania was a test of skill and especially patience, Simon's Quest is more akin to the type of tiny puzzly world that wants you to wrestle with it's own rules, it's a pure adventure game, one with fenomenal ideas that turn the world into a somehow believeable and consistent environment. The interconnection between the cities, that serves as main hubs, let's the player little nuggets of brilliance in both rythm management and world design; it's about the consistency, how the few rules that the game bases upon itself are repeated, and even with assistance to decode some of these, there are beautiful moments to be found in understanding and relating clues to events, events to objects, and then finding out the next step in the journey. This is a game that both rewards exploration inside levels as much as requires attention and puzzle solving in the open world; and even if some of this puzzles are too obtuse, the verbs of the game are few, and it manages this communication to the player through clever design in a lot of places.
What does a barrier mean, the use of objects not just for attacking but for exploring, how the game tutorializes you in safe places to let you interpret what this initial clue based design mean. But again, it's all about the chills, it's a frustrating and failed game in many ways, one that made me gasp when i kneeled next to a river, that excited me throwing holy water, videogames are fucking great if I can say this without deleting it one second later.
And this is a fine videogame.
Then the chills come.
And this happens to me a lot, actually. Anytime I think about Yakuza 6 I can spend half an hour criticising all of the short comings, and bullshit about the combat or some of the systems, it doesn't matter, really. The core is pure, and in that core there's a story that resonated with me in ways I was only hoping it would; there is an open world that contains the kind of shit that I fall in love with in such a way I can only think about it for days and days.
Castlevania II is bullshit; obscure, obtuse to an extent that most would consider a total failure, I might consider it a failure tomorrow, i don't care, this game has connected with me as Dark Souls did in 2014. This is an ambitious aproximation to the formula that with all of its problems and the utmost certainty that it can't be completed without a guide, I cannot take anything away from the moments i have gone through and how its ambition, as often as problematic, is also inspiring and in some ways revolutionary. Coming from a linear, action game with a difficult curve that turns the later half of the game into an insufferable hell, Castlevania II implements levels and the possibility of healing in churches, it creates an actual curve that even with bosses broken by items and a difficulty that goes inverted, let's you familiarize with its enviroments.
If Castlevania was a test of skill and especially patience, Simon's Quest is more akin to the type of tiny puzzly world that wants you to wrestle with it's own rules, it's a pure adventure game, one with fenomenal ideas that turn the world into a somehow believeable and consistent environment. The interconnection between the cities, that serves as main hubs, let's the player little nuggets of brilliance in both rythm management and world design; it's about the consistency, how the few rules that the game bases upon itself are repeated, and even with assistance to decode some of these, there are beautiful moments to be found in understanding and relating clues to events, events to objects, and then finding out the next step in the journey. This is a game that both rewards exploration inside levels as much as requires attention and puzzle solving in the open world; and even if some of this puzzles are too obtuse, the verbs of the game are few, and it manages this communication to the player through clever design in a lot of places.
What does a barrier mean, the use of objects not just for attacking but for exploring, how the game tutorializes you in safe places to let you interpret what this initial clue based design mean. But again, it's all about the chills, it's a frustrating and failed game in many ways, one that made me gasp when i kneeled next to a river, that excited me throwing holy water, videogames are fucking great if I can say this without deleting it one second later.
And this is a fine videogame.
D U D E