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Sea of Stars
2023
Chrono Trigger is a bad game to spiritually succeed- not because I consider it insurmountable, but because there's not really anything to succeed. Its greatness mostly stems from an intangible combination of structure, pacing, and presentation instead of any single concrete gameplay or narrative hook. From a game design standpoint, the lessons to take away from Chrono Trigger aren't exclusive to JRPGs, as evidenced by the fact that New Game Plus, as a concept, is now a mainstay across a wide range of genres. Fortunately, Sabotage has a good track record here, considering The Messenger was a Ninja Gaiden clone that played nothing at all like Ninja Gaiden, and this game similarly manages to avoid feeling derivative. Chrono Trigger's combat was fun but not particularly deep or complex, and instead focused on trying to make fights feel dynamic and fast-paced by expanding on Final Fantasy's ATB system, a feat that it accomplished better than most actual action RPGs from its era. Sea of Stars opts for a more standard turn-based approach, and borrows inspiration from Chrono Trigger's fluid character positioning, the Mario RPGs' action commands, and, against all odds, Octopath Traveler's lock/break system, and it actually ends up working out great! There was clearly real thought put into how all of these ideas fit together in ways that might not be obvious at first. For example, the Koopa shell special move from Mario & Luigi is repurposed here, but the fact that enemies aren't in static positions means that using it requires foresight about how long it'll take to hit each one in order for it to be most effective. Underlining these three core mechanics is the fact that health and mana pools are both small, but easily replenished. You die in three hits but are revived automatically after a few turns, regenerate magic on using normal attacks, and can swap out party members freely. It's a really unique combat system where you really feel like your decisions cause the flow of battle to turn on a dime. Missing a single action command can, and often does, mean that your opponent's turn isn't skipped, which means he hits and kills you, which means you lose. And so, with this solid foundation in place, Sea of Stars then expands on its gameplay throughout the course of its runtime by doing... absolutely nothing. There aren't any status effects, every piece of equipment just boosts one of your stats, and enemy variety is extremely low. The only two things you can do to your opponents during your turn is damage them or delay their turns, which means the gameplay plateaus in complexity once you get all your party members about halfway in. It's a bizarre, extreme example of constructing a genuinely compelling set of mechanics, and then missing the landing and letting your game slip into the doldrums anyway. But it's not like it tried and failed here: the game isn't boring because of balance issues or some other oversight, instead it feels like the dev team came up with the battle system and then immediately gave up. And, even more strangely, this sentiment feels like it applies to every other area. The combat is great mechanically but battles are still bland. The pixel art is outstanding but there's pretty much zero optional content or NPC flavor dialog, meaning that locations look pretty but have no texture. The music is solid but the story is barebones (mostly comprised of endless Proper Noun namedrops that I haven't been given reason to care about) and characters have no personality, so none of the narrative beats feel memorable or climactic. What makes this game so uniquely disappointing is that it seems like every aspect of it that Sabotage actually gave a shit about turned out great, but they just put in zero effort everywhere else. In hindsight, I regret calling Signalis "rudderless," because by copying an existing experience you're at least going for something. This game feels like a rough sketch of a JRPG with only a few portions colored in and no apparent plan to fully capture the genre's likeness. And, really, that's about as far from Chrono Trigger as you can get.
Yakuza Kiwami 2
2017
"Quem é você?"
Essa pergunta vale para os personagens de Yakuza, que frequentemente se encontram em conflito sobre sua identidade. Descobrem que são coreanos, depois que o pai é policial, depois que na verdade foram substituídos por sósias
e etc.
Mas também é uma pergunta para o jogo em sí, Yakuza está se levando a sério, ou é tudo pelo humor? Onde exatamente na indústria ele se encaixa? Em um momento o jogo nos entrega uma cena onde Kiryu discute a relação que tem com Kaoru, e depois nos entrega uma missão onde devemos ser dublador de um jogo pornô. Onde ele quer chegar e mais importante, importa saber (agora) onde ele quer chegar?
Apenas aproveito a jornada enquanto os personagens e a franquia se descobrem com o tempo. Em uma história sobre essas identidades, nada mais gratificante do que ver a diferença entre dois homens (Kiryu e Ryuji) que a principio...São iguais.
"Quem é você?"
Sou tudo aquilo que você não é.
Essa pergunta vale para os personagens de Yakuza, que frequentemente se encontram em conflito sobre sua identidade. Descobrem que são coreanos, depois que o pai é policial, depois que na verdade foram substituídos por sósias
e etc.
Mas também é uma pergunta para o jogo em sí, Yakuza está se levando a sério, ou é tudo pelo humor? Onde exatamente na indústria ele se encaixa? Em um momento o jogo nos entrega uma cena onde Kiryu discute a relação que tem com Kaoru, e depois nos entrega uma missão onde devemos ser dublador de um jogo pornô. Onde ele quer chegar e mais importante, importa saber (agora) onde ele quer chegar?
Apenas aproveito a jornada enquanto os personagens e a franquia se descobrem com o tempo. Em uma história sobre essas identidades, nada mais gratificante do que ver a diferença entre dois homens (Kiryu e Ryuji) que a principio...São iguais.
"Quem é você?"
Sou tudo aquilo que você não é.
Out of all of the games that was released in the 80s to early 90s that featured Mickey Mouse as the star character, The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse was arguably the best game of the bunch that we would get. It wasn’t anything particularly new or exciting, just being a pretty basic platformer made for kids, but it was still solid enough, had great music, several different outfits to try out and mess around with, and that good ol’ 16-bit Capcom charm that oozes out of every game that they made back for the SNES. Not to mention, since this was Mickey Mouse that we’re talking about, it was pretty successful, selling over a million copies, so naturally, because Disney is all about making that good ol’ mouse money, they had Capcom working on a sequel pretty soon afterwards. Eventually, this sequel would be released to the public, and it would exhaustingly be known as The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey & Minnie.
Before playing this game for myself, this was the Magical Quest game that I had known the most about, as I had previously seen it in an unfinished video playthrough on YouTube, and at the time, I thought it looked decent enough. It didn’t look bad, but it looked like an average licensed platformer of that era, and now that I have played the first Magical Quest game, I could also make the assumption that this one wasn’t going to be that much more different or grand compared to the previous entry. I went ahead and played it anyway though, and all in all, I would consider this to be an improvement over the original game, and a pretty good game all on its own. It doesn’t change things up too drastically from the original game, and it is as simple as you would expect, but hey, I will take a licensed game that is simple yet sweet over one that is complex yet rotten, if you catch my drift.
The story is just as simple as the previous game, where Mickey and Minnie Mouse are on their way to meet up with their friends at the circus, when they meet up with a Goofy that wants to end it all, saying that everybody at the circus has randomly disappeared, and Donald Duck and Pluto are nowhere to be found, so it is up to Mickey and Minnie to not only find their friends, but find out what happened to all the circus performers, which is a… very boring plot, to be frank, but it is a Mickey Mouse game, so I’m not sure what else I was expecting. The graphics are… the exact same as the original game, but to be fair, it still does look pretty good, and all the sprites for the enemies, bosses, and Mickey & co. look pretty good, the music is very enjoyable again, still giving off that Capcom vibe, and having plenty of cheery to dreadful tunes to hear throughout, and the gameplay/control is almost identical to that of the original game, but with a few new additions added to make it that little bit more fun.
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Mickey or Minnie Mouse, go through a set of six stages across plenty of different generic settings, run and jump all around while defeating enemies and collecting various items to help you out throughout your journey, either by giving you currency for shops or giving you more health, acquire several outfits that you can switch between at any time to help you either progress through the levels or give you an advantage against the foes in the game, and take on plenty of colorful and cartoony bosses, being easy enough to take on, while not too easy to the point of being boring. Those who have played the original Magical Quest game will know exactly what they are getting into with this game, and in many ways, it stands on the same level as the original game in terms of quality, but it still manages to be fun, while also incorporating previously said new elements to help make it more enjoyable.
If you somehow haven’t already picked up on it already, in this game, you now have the option to play as Minnie Mouse rather then Mickey, and she is… basically the exact same as Mickey in terms of everything, but hey, at least we have the option to play as her at all, so that is pretty nice to see. Not only that, but the game now features simultaneous co-op, where one person plays as Mickey and the other plays as Minnie, which is definitely the best way one could play this game, and while I didn’t play it in co-op, it does look like a good amount of fun to try out. In addition to this, some of the outfits from the last game are gone, but in their place, we now have all new outfits to help us out on our journey, such as the sweeper outfit, which allows you to vacuum up enemies to gain coins from them, and the cowboy outfit, which allows you to bounce around on a wooden horse, jump higher, and shoot a toy pistol to break blocks and take out enemies. While the sweeper outfit is very situational, and I didn’t really use it a whole bunch, I did really like using the cowboy outfit, especially for certain bosses and to help get through tricky spots.
If none of that sounds exciting to you though, then what you are left with is pretty much yet another Magical Quest game through and through. Not only are the graphics identical to the original game, but so is the gameplay, with it playing identically to the original for the most part, and not having that many new or exciting changes to be seen. It still manages to be fun, but again, if you weren’t really sold on the last game, then this one may not be able to convince you either. Not to mention, like the last game, there is also a boss rush, but it is also just as miniscule of a nuisance as the previous game’s boss rush. I would rather there not be a boss rush at all, but hey, a tiny boss rush is better than a regular one any day of the week.
Overall, despite very little change from its predecessor, The Great Circus Mystery does manage to be not only an enjoyable sequel, but still a pretty good game all on its own for the SNES era, providing the same amount of fun and whimsy as before, while also allowing the option for a pal to join alongside you to witness every bit of that same fun and whimsy. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the original game, as well as those who just like Mickey Mouse and his pals in general, because even if it is a retread of old territory, that old territory is still fun to go back to to this day. Although, with all that being said, we never do end up finding out what happened to those circus performers in the game. Yeah, we defeat the big bad evil guy, and it is assumed that everything is all well and good now, but they never outright say everything went back to normal! So, if you think about it…………. those circus performers are probably dead.
Game #527
Before playing this game for myself, this was the Magical Quest game that I had known the most about, as I had previously seen it in an unfinished video playthrough on YouTube, and at the time, I thought it looked decent enough. It didn’t look bad, but it looked like an average licensed platformer of that era, and now that I have played the first Magical Quest game, I could also make the assumption that this one wasn’t going to be that much more different or grand compared to the previous entry. I went ahead and played it anyway though, and all in all, I would consider this to be an improvement over the original game, and a pretty good game all on its own. It doesn’t change things up too drastically from the original game, and it is as simple as you would expect, but hey, I will take a licensed game that is simple yet sweet over one that is complex yet rotten, if you catch my drift.
The story is just as simple as the previous game, where Mickey and Minnie Mouse are on their way to meet up with their friends at the circus, when they meet up with a Goofy that wants to end it all, saying that everybody at the circus has randomly disappeared, and Donald Duck and Pluto are nowhere to be found, so it is up to Mickey and Minnie to not only find their friends, but find out what happened to all the circus performers, which is a… very boring plot, to be frank, but it is a Mickey Mouse game, so I’m not sure what else I was expecting. The graphics are… the exact same as the original game, but to be fair, it still does look pretty good, and all the sprites for the enemies, bosses, and Mickey & co. look pretty good, the music is very enjoyable again, still giving off that Capcom vibe, and having plenty of cheery to dreadful tunes to hear throughout, and the gameplay/control is almost identical to that of the original game, but with a few new additions added to make it that little bit more fun.
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Mickey or Minnie Mouse, go through a set of six stages across plenty of different generic settings, run and jump all around while defeating enemies and collecting various items to help you out throughout your journey, either by giving you currency for shops or giving you more health, acquire several outfits that you can switch between at any time to help you either progress through the levels or give you an advantage against the foes in the game, and take on plenty of colorful and cartoony bosses, being easy enough to take on, while not too easy to the point of being boring. Those who have played the original Magical Quest game will know exactly what they are getting into with this game, and in many ways, it stands on the same level as the original game in terms of quality, but it still manages to be fun, while also incorporating previously said new elements to help make it more enjoyable.
If you somehow haven’t already picked up on it already, in this game, you now have the option to play as Minnie Mouse rather then Mickey, and she is… basically the exact same as Mickey in terms of everything, but hey, at least we have the option to play as her at all, so that is pretty nice to see. Not only that, but the game now features simultaneous co-op, where one person plays as Mickey and the other plays as Minnie, which is definitely the best way one could play this game, and while I didn’t play it in co-op, it does look like a good amount of fun to try out. In addition to this, some of the outfits from the last game are gone, but in their place, we now have all new outfits to help us out on our journey, such as the sweeper outfit, which allows you to vacuum up enemies to gain coins from them, and the cowboy outfit, which allows you to bounce around on a wooden horse, jump higher, and shoot a toy pistol to break blocks and take out enemies. While the sweeper outfit is very situational, and I didn’t really use it a whole bunch, I did really like using the cowboy outfit, especially for certain bosses and to help get through tricky spots.
If none of that sounds exciting to you though, then what you are left with is pretty much yet another Magical Quest game through and through. Not only are the graphics identical to the original game, but so is the gameplay, with it playing identically to the original for the most part, and not having that many new or exciting changes to be seen. It still manages to be fun, but again, if you weren’t really sold on the last game, then this one may not be able to convince you either. Not to mention, like the last game, there is also a boss rush, but it is also just as miniscule of a nuisance as the previous game’s boss rush. I would rather there not be a boss rush at all, but hey, a tiny boss rush is better than a regular one any day of the week.
Overall, despite very little change from its predecessor, The Great Circus Mystery does manage to be not only an enjoyable sequel, but still a pretty good game all on its own for the SNES era, providing the same amount of fun and whimsy as before, while also allowing the option for a pal to join alongside you to witness every bit of that same fun and whimsy. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the original game, as well as those who just like Mickey Mouse and his pals in general, because even if it is a retread of old territory, that old territory is still fun to go back to to this day. Although, with all that being said, we never do end up finding out what happened to those circus performers in the game. Yeah, we defeat the big bad evil guy, and it is assumed that everything is all well and good now, but they never outright say everything went back to normal! So, if you think about it…………. those circus performers are probably dead.
Game #527
They say it ain’t easy being cheesy, and I certainly felt what they meant when I decided at random to take a look at the first game to feature the mascot of Cheetos as its main star, Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool. It was pretty much exactly what you would expect from a cheap 90s licensed game based on a brand of snack foods, being incredibly generic, having terrible control/movement speed, some of the lamest excuses of boss fights I have ever seen, no inclusion of continues or passwords whatsoever, and just having that feel of a cheap product smeared everywhere you look. It wasn’t completely terrible, but it was just bad enough to where I would swear off Cheetos for the rest of my life, sticking with Doritos from now on in case I needed some cheesy snacky goodness. Although… it has been quite a while since we did play that game, and I have had a hankering for some cheese-covered corn chips that aren’t shaped like a triangle……… ah fuck it, why not, I’ll have some more again. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? I would have to play Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest? Yeah right, like that would happen…………………… wait, oh shit, I’m typing a review right now… which means………. NOOOOOO-
So yes, for some reason, I guess Too Cool to Fool was successful in its attempt to swindle money out of all the poor kids from the 90s in exchange for cheesy garbage, so as a result, it managed to get a sequel just one year later, and naturally, I wasn’t looking forward to playing it at all. Sure, the original game wasn’t terrible, so I didn’t immediately think this game was gonna be terrible, but there was still a good 99.9% chance it could’ve ended up being god awful. Finally though, after putting it off for long enough, I decided to give it a shot, and it was bad… but thankfully not doomsday levels of bad. For what it is worth, it is an improvement over the original game, and it does have an approach to gameplay that I prefer way more than what that game gave me, but it still manages to be cheap, licensed garbage that is just about as appealing as taking another bite of those god-forsaken chips.
The story picks up right from where the last game left off (I think), where while on his way to Hip City, Chester Cheetah loses his map due to Mean Eugene, the villain from the last game, chasing him down and ripping it up into ten pieces, scattering it all over the country, so it is up to Chester to get the pieces back to reach Hip City, which, much like the plot of the original game, is clearly perfect in any way, and if you question it or dislike it whatsoever, you simply aren’t wild enough to go on this quest. The graphics are… admittedly better then the previous game, with there being a lot more consistency in what you see and new environments to run through, but it is still mostly just a bunch of random colors thrown on the screen, the music is… actually not too bad, with there being several tracks that I ended up liking as I listened to them, but maybe I just have garbage taste, and the gameplay/control is, also admittedly, better than that of the original game, but not only does it still have some hiccups to be seen, but it doesn’t do anything to… you know, get creative.
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of the raddest cheetah you have clearly ever seen, Chester Cheetah, go through a set of 9 and a half levels that take place in various locations around the United States, run and jump your way through these levels while bouncing on enemies to take them out, gather plenty of items that can either give you extra lives, a means of progressing, or an extra chance just in case you get hit, and fight several bosses that are about as complex and fun to fight as me counting the fingers I have on one hand. It is as creatively devoid as any shovelware game from this era can be, offering nothing new or exciting from many other games of the era, but again, it could’ve been a whole lot worse.
First of all, you can now choose to go through any of the levels in any order you want, which is pretty nice, even if none of the levels are that exciting or different from each other, and speaking of which, the levels themselves are pretty short, with you being able to run through them very quickly, so that helps out a lot when you want to get through the game as fast as possible. Not to mention, it isn’t simply just about reaching the end of the stage, as you will also need to find a piece of the map along the way, which is pretty neat… or at least, it would be if most of the map pieces weren’t just lying around in broad daylight, just waiting for you to grab them. Seriously, you could’ve at least hidden them a little better this time around.
And finally, like I mentioned earlier, this game actually has boss fights! No more awkward, dumbass endurance tests like from Too Cool to Fool, for instead, we have full on fights with various lovable characters from the Cheetos franchise, like Mean Eugene and… uh… Mean Eugene! As for the boss fights themselves, they are… ok. They are pretty simple, just your typical “bop them on the head three-four times to win” bosses, but hey, they are at least more fun to deal with then the shit from the last game. Not to mention, some of them can be pretty tricky if you don’t take advantage of some of the moves that Chester has at his disposal.
But now, it is time to get into the issues that ruin the game, with the first one being, of course, the controls. You all ever seen that Family Guy cutaway gag that involves Chester Cheetah snorting Cheeto dust like it’s cocaine? Well, I feel like I’d have to do the same thing to be able to play this game properly, because not only does Chester once again have inconsistent running speeds (even if it is improved from last time), but there were many different moments where it just felt straight up unresponsive. Moving felt incredibly stiff, and a lot of the time, whenever I would hit the jump or run buttons, the game wouldn’t register it at all, and I would end up dying in some scenario because apparently I wasn’t allowed to hit a button then. Not to mention, you die in one hit if you don’t have a bag of Cheetos, meaning it is most likely you will die to a lot of things that you can’t see coming or properly avoid.
And finally, there is slowdown EVERYWHERE in this game. When it comes to the SNES version of this game, it feels like this game can’t just go five seconds without some kind of slowdown issue occurring, and it’s not as if there are that many enemies on the screen when it happens either. I don’t inherently have a problem with slowdown too much in video games, as sometimes it can actually be helpful, but I do get bothered by it when it either effects my gameplay negatively, or it is constant. This, my friends, is the latter. Aside from all that though, a lot of it is your generic licensed game affair, being a pretty unpolished platformer that can be beaten very quickly, if you can get a handle on the shitty controls.
Overall, despite the improved gameplay, the inclusion of boss fights, and not being long enough to get mad about, Wild Wild Quest is yet another pointless piece of shovelware for a product that really didn’t need any kind of advertising like this, being as basic as it gets, having flawed fundamentals, and is about as slow as a slug that is being burned alive from having salt poured onto it. I would only recommend this for those who liked the previous Chester Cheetah game, but for everyone else, there are plenty of better platformers from this era, licensed or otherwise, that you can play over this. But anyway, with all that out of the way, I think I am now done with Cheetos for good, for real this time! Don’t need anymore shitty food-related games to ruin my day. Although, I am getting kinda thirsty… ooh, hey, when did this can of 7UP get here?
Game #526
So yes, for some reason, I guess Too Cool to Fool was successful in its attempt to swindle money out of all the poor kids from the 90s in exchange for cheesy garbage, so as a result, it managed to get a sequel just one year later, and naturally, I wasn’t looking forward to playing it at all. Sure, the original game wasn’t terrible, so I didn’t immediately think this game was gonna be terrible, but there was still a good 99.9% chance it could’ve ended up being god awful. Finally though, after putting it off for long enough, I decided to give it a shot, and it was bad… but thankfully not doomsday levels of bad. For what it is worth, it is an improvement over the original game, and it does have an approach to gameplay that I prefer way more than what that game gave me, but it still manages to be cheap, licensed garbage that is just about as appealing as taking another bite of those god-forsaken chips.
The story picks up right from where the last game left off (I think), where while on his way to Hip City, Chester Cheetah loses his map due to Mean Eugene, the villain from the last game, chasing him down and ripping it up into ten pieces, scattering it all over the country, so it is up to Chester to get the pieces back to reach Hip City, which, much like the plot of the original game, is clearly perfect in any way, and if you question it or dislike it whatsoever, you simply aren’t wild enough to go on this quest. The graphics are… admittedly better then the previous game, with there being a lot more consistency in what you see and new environments to run through, but it is still mostly just a bunch of random colors thrown on the screen, the music is… actually not too bad, with there being several tracks that I ended up liking as I listened to them, but maybe I just have garbage taste, and the gameplay/control is, also admittedly, better than that of the original game, but not only does it still have some hiccups to be seen, but it doesn’t do anything to… you know, get creative.
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of the raddest cheetah you have clearly ever seen, Chester Cheetah, go through a set of 9 and a half levels that take place in various locations around the United States, run and jump your way through these levels while bouncing on enemies to take them out, gather plenty of items that can either give you extra lives, a means of progressing, or an extra chance just in case you get hit, and fight several bosses that are about as complex and fun to fight as me counting the fingers I have on one hand. It is as creatively devoid as any shovelware game from this era can be, offering nothing new or exciting from many other games of the era, but again, it could’ve been a whole lot worse.
First of all, you can now choose to go through any of the levels in any order you want, which is pretty nice, even if none of the levels are that exciting or different from each other, and speaking of which, the levels themselves are pretty short, with you being able to run through them very quickly, so that helps out a lot when you want to get through the game as fast as possible. Not to mention, it isn’t simply just about reaching the end of the stage, as you will also need to find a piece of the map along the way, which is pretty neat… or at least, it would be if most of the map pieces weren’t just lying around in broad daylight, just waiting for you to grab them. Seriously, you could’ve at least hidden them a little better this time around.
And finally, like I mentioned earlier, this game actually has boss fights! No more awkward, dumbass endurance tests like from Too Cool to Fool, for instead, we have full on fights with various lovable characters from the Cheetos franchise, like Mean Eugene and… uh… Mean Eugene! As for the boss fights themselves, they are… ok. They are pretty simple, just your typical “bop them on the head three-four times to win” bosses, but hey, they are at least more fun to deal with then the shit from the last game. Not to mention, some of them can be pretty tricky if you don’t take advantage of some of the moves that Chester has at his disposal.
But now, it is time to get into the issues that ruin the game, with the first one being, of course, the controls. You all ever seen that Family Guy cutaway gag that involves Chester Cheetah snorting Cheeto dust like it’s cocaine? Well, I feel like I’d have to do the same thing to be able to play this game properly, because not only does Chester once again have inconsistent running speeds (even if it is improved from last time), but there were many different moments where it just felt straight up unresponsive. Moving felt incredibly stiff, and a lot of the time, whenever I would hit the jump or run buttons, the game wouldn’t register it at all, and I would end up dying in some scenario because apparently I wasn’t allowed to hit a button then. Not to mention, you die in one hit if you don’t have a bag of Cheetos, meaning it is most likely you will die to a lot of things that you can’t see coming or properly avoid.
And finally, there is slowdown EVERYWHERE in this game. When it comes to the SNES version of this game, it feels like this game can’t just go five seconds without some kind of slowdown issue occurring, and it’s not as if there are that many enemies on the screen when it happens either. I don’t inherently have a problem with slowdown too much in video games, as sometimes it can actually be helpful, but I do get bothered by it when it either effects my gameplay negatively, or it is constant. This, my friends, is the latter. Aside from all that though, a lot of it is your generic licensed game affair, being a pretty unpolished platformer that can be beaten very quickly, if you can get a handle on the shitty controls.
Overall, despite the improved gameplay, the inclusion of boss fights, and not being long enough to get mad about, Wild Wild Quest is yet another pointless piece of shovelware for a product that really didn’t need any kind of advertising like this, being as basic as it gets, having flawed fundamentals, and is about as slow as a slug that is being burned alive from having salt poured onto it. I would only recommend this for those who liked the previous Chester Cheetah game, but for everyone else, there are plenty of better platformers from this era, licensed or otherwise, that you can play over this. But anyway, with all that out of the way, I think I am now done with Cheetos for good, for real this time! Don’t need anymore shitty food-related games to ruin my day. Although, I am getting kinda thirsty… ooh, hey, when did this can of 7UP get here?
Game #526
The conceit behind Supermassive Games’ body of horror games was a noble one to begin with. The simple idea of a playable slasher film pushed to the extreme; taking after the likes of “choose your own adventure” novels but most notably the interactive dramas of David Cage- which at this point stand as some of the most potent pieces of camp entertainment the medium has seen (that’s another conversation though). With Until Dawn they delivered on this promise with a game that was effectively curated in its tone and pacing, balancing between the joyful excesses of the genre with some genuinely visceral gnarliness (no doubt borrowing influence from Larry Fessenden who has a starring role in the game and had a pronounced hand in the writer’s room). After the game’s success, Supermassive went on to produce “The Dark Pictures Anthology” which was in essence a collection of ‘Until Dawn’ clones with what essentially felt like half the budget, production time, and length. The ambition had me excited but within the first hour of playing ‘Man of Medan’ I realized just how short it falls from their potential after how good Until Dawn was. Fast forward to now and we’re on ‘episode four’ of ‘season one’ of this project and its safe to say that Supermassive is utterly washed. I think I gave a lot of credit towards the bigger vision they were aspiring to but at this point I simply don’t have the patience for this brand of lazy, copy-paste development anymore- especially after seeing the refreshingly moderate effort placed into their spiritual successor to Until Dawn, 'The Quarry'.
Much of the appeal of horror to me is its sheer devotion to sensory affect and how far it can tease the participator, whether it be a film, novel, or video game. I believe with the latter medium we’re able to gauge the most potent application of the genre and what it can accomplish regarding the player’s interaction with the environment as well as other characters. There is literally so much you can do within the genre, so it makes it frustrating that Supermassive skimp and stumble away achieving the bare minimum almost every time. The typical slasher runs about eighty to ninety minutes so it’s shocking to me that these Dark Pictures games are en masse paced so poorly and proceed to take up an interminable six hours. It’s over an hour of gameplay for ‘The Devil In Me’ to reached its primarily location and half of that time is spent on a pointless opening set piece that acts as a tedious tutorial and also bears no real significance to the overarching story. The rest of this hour is its own dirge of setting up the ensemble’s dynamics and basic plot points in the blandest, most expositional manner possible- and rest assured reader, this is the worst and most cynical band of personalities Supermassive has conjured yet. Unfortunately, if not even Ashley Tisdale can sell the dialogue and development her character was given in House of Ashes, then Academy Award nominated Jessie Buckley certainly won’t here.
What's left beyond the uncanny valley-ass performances and the expressionless blocking in the cutscenes is a game that never moves at a natural pace; instead playing like being trapped in the apathetic body of a rusting tin man at all times as well as littered with jittery camera angles and glitches and lacking any sense of motivated lighting to add visual flourish or at the very least helpfully guide the player. As all these Dark Pictures titles go, once the violence ramps up its silly attempts at raising the pulse of the player get slightly more fruitful but as in the case of all the Dark Pictures titles, it's hollow thrills with no lasting resonance. No intricacies, nothing for the inquisitive player to glean or discover of its characters or setting that won't be explained away by the dialogue or needlessly made obvious in the lore newspaper clippings cluttered around the map. At the end of the day, there really was no point in me spending time writing about this prime example of dubious corporate horror when there's no shortage of real darkness in the world, but it's defeating when these small pleasures could be crafted to be so much better. If anything I feel as though this is a personal epitaph for a developer that suggests I may not be returning for 'season two'.
Much of the appeal of horror to me is its sheer devotion to sensory affect and how far it can tease the participator, whether it be a film, novel, or video game. I believe with the latter medium we’re able to gauge the most potent application of the genre and what it can accomplish regarding the player’s interaction with the environment as well as other characters. There is literally so much you can do within the genre, so it makes it frustrating that Supermassive skimp and stumble away achieving the bare minimum almost every time. The typical slasher runs about eighty to ninety minutes so it’s shocking to me that these Dark Pictures games are en masse paced so poorly and proceed to take up an interminable six hours. It’s over an hour of gameplay for ‘The Devil In Me’ to reached its primarily location and half of that time is spent on a pointless opening set piece that acts as a tedious tutorial and also bears no real significance to the overarching story. The rest of this hour is its own dirge of setting up the ensemble’s dynamics and basic plot points in the blandest, most expositional manner possible- and rest assured reader, this is the worst and most cynical band of personalities Supermassive has conjured yet. Unfortunately, if not even Ashley Tisdale can sell the dialogue and development her character was given in House of Ashes, then Academy Award nominated Jessie Buckley certainly won’t here.
What's left beyond the uncanny valley-ass performances and the expressionless blocking in the cutscenes is a game that never moves at a natural pace; instead playing like being trapped in the apathetic body of a rusting tin man at all times as well as littered with jittery camera angles and glitches and lacking any sense of motivated lighting to add visual flourish or at the very least helpfully guide the player. As all these Dark Pictures titles go, once the violence ramps up its silly attempts at raising the pulse of the player get slightly more fruitful but as in the case of all the Dark Pictures titles, it's hollow thrills with no lasting resonance. No intricacies, nothing for the inquisitive player to glean or discover of its characters or setting that won't be explained away by the dialogue or needlessly made obvious in the lore newspaper clippings cluttered around the map. At the end of the day, there really was no point in me spending time writing about this prime example of dubious corporate horror when there's no shortage of real darkness in the world, but it's defeating when these small pleasures could be crafted to be so much better. If anything I feel as though this is a personal epitaph for a developer that suggests I may not be returning for 'season two'.
Heaven Will Be Mine
2018
Heaven Will Be Mine's predecessor, We Know the Devil, resonated with me even though I'm a cishet dude because of how it intersected grappling with religion and finding one's identity as a teen, which I heavily struggled with all those lifetimes ago. Heaven Will Be Mine did not really give me any sort of emotional peg to hang on to, as it leans even more heavily into queer narratives. And while I've enjoyed a handful of mecha anime, I wouldn't really say I'm a big fan of the genre.
Still, I mostly enjoyed my 5 and a half hours with it, playing as all three characters and seeing all the endings.
To start things off, the writing is dense.
There's the literal plot where humans discovered an alien "existential" threat from outer space in the late 50s and started a military space program that, you guessed it, trained child mech pilots that would fight the threat, but then that threat turned out to be not much of a threat after all, and now it's this alternative 80s cold war and the forces sent to fight that threat have split into three factions with different ideologies regarding humanity's direction toward space travel.
There's all the interpersonal histories between the three protagonists and the supporting cast. Then there's all this sci-fi philosophizing over concepts like gravity and Culture with a capital C and othering and war, which also periodically bleeds into a metanarrative.
And it's all delivered in different modes of text doled out in a not-so-strictly chronological manner in chats, emails, letters, archives, quotes, and psychic dialogues written in prose that swings confidently from cheeky flirtation to inscrutable jargon to emotional outbursts to metaphors galore.
Heaven Will Be Mine is so very difficult to try to sum up, and it feels so very much intentional how it refuses to be recognized as just one familiar thing or a set of familiar things to be neatly categorized. It is a game about human bodies feeling more human in their robot ship-selves where they can express themselves more freely in space, where Earth's flattening gravity doesn't quite exert as much force. I couldn't quite relate to the messy interlocking relationships between Pluto and Luna-Terra and Saturn and Mercury and Mars and Europa, but I understood their fears and desires.
There is so much poetry to the action/romance/sex scenes that even with the static, impressionistic art, I felt every shot, every thrust, every near miss, and every collision. The choreography actually might be my favorite writing in the game as a sensory experience.
The music and how it moves to the rhythm of every scene makes my head pound and my heart swell. The deep bass, the ethereal synths, the unrelenting percussion, the ear-splitting glitch noises are sensual, debilitating, melancholic, and uplifting. It's a powerful soundtrack.
The UI that resembles what you would think of as a mecha's HUD and the beeps and buzzes that play when you interface with it is ~immersive~.
Coming into this after the fairly straightforward, more emotionally driven narrative of We Know the Devil and hearing how this game has been advertised as simply a "flirty lesbian mecha visual novel", I was not expecting Heaven Will Be Mine to be quite the layered text that is as interested in exploring metaphysical concepts as it is in getting queer women to make out with each other. It's one of the few games where I've had to actually stop and reread lines to make sure I understood what was being said, and not because it's written poorly, but because theory, metaphor, personal and world history, and subtext and meanings constantly converge. I'm coming out of this feeling a bit emotionally detached but a lot more intellectually stimulated. I don't love it, but I think it's a challenging work that deserves focused attention.
Still, I mostly enjoyed my 5 and a half hours with it, playing as all three characters and seeing all the endings.
To start things off, the writing is dense.
There's the literal plot where humans discovered an alien "existential" threat from outer space in the late 50s and started a military space program that, you guessed it, trained child mech pilots that would fight the threat, but then that threat turned out to be not much of a threat after all, and now it's this alternative 80s cold war and the forces sent to fight that threat have split into three factions with different ideologies regarding humanity's direction toward space travel.
There's all the interpersonal histories between the three protagonists and the supporting cast. Then there's all this sci-fi philosophizing over concepts like gravity and Culture with a capital C and othering and war, which also periodically bleeds into a metanarrative.
And it's all delivered in different modes of text doled out in a not-so-strictly chronological manner in chats, emails, letters, archives, quotes, and psychic dialogues written in prose that swings confidently from cheeky flirtation to inscrutable jargon to emotional outbursts to metaphors galore.
Heaven Will Be Mine is so very difficult to try to sum up, and it feels so very much intentional how it refuses to be recognized as just one familiar thing or a set of familiar things to be neatly categorized. It is a game about human bodies feeling more human in their robot ship-selves where they can express themselves more freely in space, where Earth's flattening gravity doesn't quite exert as much force. I couldn't quite relate to the messy interlocking relationships between Pluto and Luna-Terra and Saturn and Mercury and Mars and Europa, but I understood their fears and desires.
There is so much poetry to the action/romance/sex scenes that even with the static, impressionistic art, I felt every shot, every thrust, every near miss, and every collision. The choreography actually might be my favorite writing in the game as a sensory experience.
The music and how it moves to the rhythm of every scene makes my head pound and my heart swell. The deep bass, the ethereal synths, the unrelenting percussion, the ear-splitting glitch noises are sensual, debilitating, melancholic, and uplifting. It's a powerful soundtrack.
The UI that resembles what you would think of as a mecha's HUD and the beeps and buzzes that play when you interface with it is ~immersive~.
Coming into this after the fairly straightforward, more emotionally driven narrative of We Know the Devil and hearing how this game has been advertised as simply a "flirty lesbian mecha visual novel", I was not expecting Heaven Will Be Mine to be quite the layered text that is as interested in exploring metaphysical concepts as it is in getting queer women to make out with each other. It's one of the few games where I've had to actually stop and reread lines to make sure I understood what was being said, and not because it's written poorly, but because theory, metaphor, personal and world history, and subtext and meanings constantly converge. I'm coming out of this feeling a bit emotionally detached but a lot more intellectually stimulated. I don't love it, but I think it's a challenging work that deserves focused attention.
Heaven Will Be Mine
2018
Appalling and unendearingly juvenile: it's a display of trans women's tragic, enforced inability to conceptualize a future for themselves, bereft even of the understanding of this limitation.
The lack of structure, which in a more purposeful work might express a belief about narrative itself or the patterns of human life, is here an expression of its belief in the fundamental passivity of the demographic it represents. Its characters are incapable of meaningful action: everything they do is an expression of sexuality, while actual sex is functionally absent from their world -- it is reminiscent of Valerie Solanas.
The vacuity of the interpersonal relationships between these characters, which never extend beyond flirtation, seems lost on the game, which miraculous transmutes these into serious, committed intimacy in the final act. Love and belonging are nothing more than an abstract hope here: the labor, the negotiation, and the compromise that render either of the positions possible is regarded as an impossibility.
Indeed, the possibility of any contact between the transgender and non-transgender worlds (which are in reality one world: Earth) seems to be explicitly denied. This theme is especially prominent in one ending, in which the allegory of a doomed romantic relationship is used to express it: a motif I find particularly vexsome.
While my support for the developer is unwavering, I cannot abide the work itself. I truly hope we can one day count on transgender authors, at the very least, not to produce narratives of transgender impotence.
The lack of structure, which in a more purposeful work might express a belief about narrative itself or the patterns of human life, is here an expression of its belief in the fundamental passivity of the demographic it represents. Its characters are incapable of meaningful action: everything they do is an expression of sexuality, while actual sex is functionally absent from their world -- it is reminiscent of Valerie Solanas.
The vacuity of the interpersonal relationships between these characters, which never extend beyond flirtation, seems lost on the game, which miraculous transmutes these into serious, committed intimacy in the final act. Love and belonging are nothing more than an abstract hope here: the labor, the negotiation, and the compromise that render either of the positions possible is regarded as an impossibility.
Indeed, the possibility of any contact between the transgender and non-transgender worlds (which are in reality one world: Earth) seems to be explicitly denied. This theme is especially prominent in one ending, in which the allegory of a doomed romantic relationship is used to express it: a motif I find particularly vexsome.
While my support for the developer is unwavering, I cannot abide the work itself. I truly hope we can one day count on transgender authors, at the very least, not to produce narratives of transgender impotence.
The GamePad mode that lets you create blocks was fun for my young nephews to mess around with.
However, playing this game with children in which you could pick each other up and throw each other off the edge was a nightmare. Do not recommend.
However, playing this game with children in which you could pick each other up and throw each other off the edge was a nightmare. Do not recommend.
Frequently enthralling in theory, occasionally stumbling in practice, yet incredibly beguiling in retrospect. Like Alan Wake, this is a game that toys with spooky contradictions and the grueling concept of ‘process’. Yet unlike that game (besides this being actually good), this is less a twisting narrative about the complicated and often defeating journey of creating art and deconstructing success than one about the sheer mundane becoming extraordinary and introducing order from such a chaotic dynamic. Elements and objects of everyday existence are touched with the supernatural and the obvious American response to this is to transform these newfound and wondrous discoveries into bureaucratic nonsense; where even the forces of capitalist labor inevitably puncture. Remedy stretches these ideas to its absolute limit, nothing feeling shortchanged through the extensive notes and tapes littered around the map. While I think the game is afraid to allow the player to deduce these simplistic connections (Jesse being a talkative cipher yet largely devoid of personality) it’s pretty wild that a AAA title was allowed to be this devoted to such an overtly antagonistic and distinct aesthetic. The brutalist design here is utterly astonishing in how it invites the player to partake in the haywire destruction of office and industrial spaces; witnessing antiquated practices and oppressive structures devolve into otherworldly abstraction. Perhaps that’s the greatest credit I could owe to Remedy despite the overwritten (yet unsentimental) nature of their creation. Anyways the DLC expansions here are rather bloated and lack the grace and active sense of visual innovation that the base game carried, and the overall experience falls into the familiar trapping of chaining endless enemy encounters as its climax in lieu of something as bold as the first two acts. Ultimately, it’s a game I haven’t stopped thinking about while and since playing. The playful and surreal world Remedy has intricately crafted here shows vast promise and the slick gameplay loop is as addictive and deeply satisfying as it is explosively chic.
Silent Hill 3
2003
𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘯?
I’ve taken a considerable amount of time between my experiences with each of the main Silent Hill games. I played the first entry around six-seven years ago when I was still in a mutually toxic relationship and found it excellent yet downright baffling. Containing industrial and metallic horrors beyond immediate comprehension and freaky cults and oddly touching ‘chosen family’ dynamics, it pushed the limits for what I believed a PS1 title could achieve through sheer atmosphere and symbolic prowess alone. After nabbing a decently priced copy of the second game a year post my separation from said relationship (and in the wake of the pandemic), I found myself shattered by its oppressive deconstruction of a guilty conscience and the interconnective nature of trauma- both shared and isolated. How pain binds fractured souls together, and winds them up into botched and abstracted spaces of American normality to fend for themselves on a primal level. It took everything the first entry accomplished and confidently treks into bold territories that challenged the player’s allegiance to their supposed protagonist as well as call attention to their adjacent relationships to side characters- who upon the surface don’t directly contribute much to James’ arc but rather gracefully ebb and flow with the intention of supplementing the themes of the story. These first two games were exhausting to push through, almost sadist in quality and punishing in developer motivation with how they marry deeply complicated and expressionistic narratives with deliberately stunted and claustrophobic gameplay. They are, to me, a primordial testament to what the medium can achieve as singular works of art (as well as propelling the interactive possibilities of horror).
Anyways, Backloggd word salad aside, it has been nearly four years and I have finally gotten to the trilogy capper. I have since healed from my own personal traumas from the relationship that haunted my experiences with the previous two games (but still write the inflated wordy nonsense on here for the four people that actually read my reviews). That word, “healed”, succinctly captures what it felt like to play through Silent Hill III. It is an encompassing coming of age narrative about origin and birthright and interrogates the identity that we are born with versus the one we ultimately choose for ourselves. The game also wraps itself back into the thematic backbone of the first game in a clever way, weaving in ideas of evangelic persecution that removes women’s agency from their bodies and intertwining that with emotional struggles of familial belonging. Team Silent fills the game with the adequate amount of angst, grief, and sass that any teenage girl confronts as they are exposed to the chronic realities of impending adulthood. And yes, it is also very scary; utilizing some fairly cursed sound work and utterly hideous (and frequently phallic) creature designs in addition to incorporating another deliciously brooding soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka. Everything in this game carries the instinct to exercise hostility and discomfort towards Heather. Who didn’t feel that way about the world as an insecure adolescent? At the very least the sense that nothing is quite “okay” permeates much of the game’s wildly structured first half leading up to the story’s venture to the titular town in the second. The player navigates through malls, subway stations, construction sites, office buildings, and apartment complexes with the overall goal of getting home and then from there we are thrust into the familiar spaces we’ve walked before as other characters.
Despite its messy development, this is as much an effectively bittersweet culmination of the franchise’s mythology as it a deliriously unique exploration of its own themes. While I wasn’t as taken with the characterizations here as I was with the previous entry (Douglas didn’t do much for me, sorry), that remains somewhat the only sour note to an otherwise masterful game that I imagine will smooth over with time. Just writing this I look back on my nights playing this fondly and already with slight tinges of nostalgia. Every dream-like moment is so committed to utmost immersion for the player, inducing unease within the most mundane of everyday locations- at least before they are transformed into otherworldly distortions of malice incarnate. This dynamic allows for pulpy levity that toggles self-reflexive tone shifting; registering discordant humor, occasional dramatic poignancy, but mostly unhinged beats of urban surrealism. The game’s iconic visual and thematic aesthetic teamed with Heather’s infectious presence providing a much-needed cushion for the player to fall back on for reprieve against the most ungodly of manifestations, this is truly as well-rounded as horror games can be. Now if someone out there wants to lend me Silent Hill IV..
I’ve taken a considerable amount of time between my experiences with each of the main Silent Hill games. I played the first entry around six-seven years ago when I was still in a mutually toxic relationship and found it excellent yet downright baffling. Containing industrial and metallic horrors beyond immediate comprehension and freaky cults and oddly touching ‘chosen family’ dynamics, it pushed the limits for what I believed a PS1 title could achieve through sheer atmosphere and symbolic prowess alone. After nabbing a decently priced copy of the second game a year post my separation from said relationship (and in the wake of the pandemic), I found myself shattered by its oppressive deconstruction of a guilty conscience and the interconnective nature of trauma- both shared and isolated. How pain binds fractured souls together, and winds them up into botched and abstracted spaces of American normality to fend for themselves on a primal level. It took everything the first entry accomplished and confidently treks into bold territories that challenged the player’s allegiance to their supposed protagonist as well as call attention to their adjacent relationships to side characters- who upon the surface don’t directly contribute much to James’ arc but rather gracefully ebb and flow with the intention of supplementing the themes of the story. These first two games were exhausting to push through, almost sadist in quality and punishing in developer motivation with how they marry deeply complicated and expressionistic narratives with deliberately stunted and claustrophobic gameplay. They are, to me, a primordial testament to what the medium can achieve as singular works of art (as well as propelling the interactive possibilities of horror).
Anyways, Backloggd word salad aside, it has been nearly four years and I have finally gotten to the trilogy capper. I have since healed from my own personal traumas from the relationship that haunted my experiences with the previous two games (but still write the inflated wordy nonsense on here for the four people that actually read my reviews). That word, “healed”, succinctly captures what it felt like to play through Silent Hill III. It is an encompassing coming of age narrative about origin and birthright and interrogates the identity that we are born with versus the one we ultimately choose for ourselves. The game also wraps itself back into the thematic backbone of the first game in a clever way, weaving in ideas of evangelic persecution that removes women’s agency from their bodies and intertwining that with emotional struggles of familial belonging. Team Silent fills the game with the adequate amount of angst, grief, and sass that any teenage girl confronts as they are exposed to the chronic realities of impending adulthood. And yes, it is also very scary; utilizing some fairly cursed sound work and utterly hideous (and frequently phallic) creature designs in addition to incorporating another deliciously brooding soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka. Everything in this game carries the instinct to exercise hostility and discomfort towards Heather. Who didn’t feel that way about the world as an insecure adolescent? At the very least the sense that nothing is quite “okay” permeates much of the game’s wildly structured first half leading up to the story’s venture to the titular town in the second. The player navigates through malls, subway stations, construction sites, office buildings, and apartment complexes with the overall goal of getting home and then from there we are thrust into the familiar spaces we’ve walked before as other characters.
Despite its messy development, this is as much an effectively bittersweet culmination of the franchise’s mythology as it a deliriously unique exploration of its own themes. While I wasn’t as taken with the characterizations here as I was with the previous entry (Douglas didn’t do much for me, sorry), that remains somewhat the only sour note to an otherwise masterful game that I imagine will smooth over with time. Just writing this I look back on my nights playing this fondly and already with slight tinges of nostalgia. Every dream-like moment is so committed to utmost immersion for the player, inducing unease within the most mundane of everyday locations- at least before they are transformed into otherworldly distortions of malice incarnate. This dynamic allows for pulpy levity that toggles self-reflexive tone shifting; registering discordant humor, occasional dramatic poignancy, but mostly unhinged beats of urban surrealism. The game’s iconic visual and thematic aesthetic teamed with Heather’s infectious presence providing a much-needed cushion for the player to fall back on for reprieve against the most ungodly of manifestations, this is truly as well-rounded as horror games can be. Now if someone out there wants to lend me Silent Hill IV..
Gradius ReBirth
2008
The start of the digital era of online game services is quite an interesting one as many companies experimented with what would work both in terms of both service and software. Take Wiiware for example, a service Nintendo introduced on the Wii in 2008. It allowed small teams to release small games (40mb limit) at budget prices. This was back at a time when shovelware appearing on these digital stores was a lot less of an issue and even some of the bigger known game developers were trying their hand in this type of market. This led Konami to release a trilogy of 'rebirth' games on the Wii. These games used existing intellectual property of Konami to make remake / remixes of older titles of Contra, Castlevania and the first of these three, Gradius.
The thing is that Gradius Rebirth just feels like a remix in every way. There isn't anything here that feels like this release was actually necessary. It's not that it's bad, it isn't. It plays like Gradius, looks like Gradius, sounds like Gradius but that's also kind of the problem. It's just so uninspired in a series hardly know for variation or innovation between titles. If you weren't a fan of Gradius this won't change your mind, if you were then you've basically played this game already. Otherwise it was just a Gradius title available on the Wii.
You play the role of James Burton piloting the iconic Vic Viper sent out to defeat the Bacterians. Like the rest of the series in Rebirth you can collect power ups that you choose when to use depending on how many you have collected which will upgrade a different element of the ship. Depending on the ship you choose (or later unlock) will depend on the load out available to upgrade. The upgrades are mostly weapons such as missiles, lasers, or two way firing but can also include the ships manoeuvre speed or force fields and shields as well. The various power up load outs have levels when used multiple times to gain strength to deal with the waves of enemies you will face over the course of the five levels.
I like the power up system, it gives control for what you want to upgrade and different ships handle different levels and bosses differently due to their slightly varied load outs. What I don't like is how utterly punishing it is when you die losing everything. Often if you die it will be because a section is hard to get by so going back into it with only a portion of your previous strength often means, (at least in my case) I will die there again. It feels there should be greater balance for a game that isn't an arcade coin gobbler like some of it's predecessors.
Whilst unfortunately Gradius Rebirth and the rest of this trilogy are currently lost to the annals of time with the Wiiware store closing in 2019. I also can't say unless you're a super fan you are missing out much with this one either. It's fine, it's just forgettable. Still I hope it does get a trilogy Rebirth release on modern platforms for preservation so that other gamers can at least find that out for themselves.
Half a star for the cover art. Gradius covers nearly always have stunning artwork and the usage of almost prism colours here really stand out.
+ Looks like Gradius, sounds like Gradius, plays like Gradius.
+ Gradius power up system and ship options are still pretty great a mechanic.
+ that cover art.
- Looks like Gradius, sounds like Gradius, plays like Gradius.
- Dying still feels brutally punishing.
The thing is that Gradius Rebirth just feels like a remix in every way. There isn't anything here that feels like this release was actually necessary. It's not that it's bad, it isn't. It plays like Gradius, looks like Gradius, sounds like Gradius but that's also kind of the problem. It's just so uninspired in a series hardly know for variation or innovation between titles. If you weren't a fan of Gradius this won't change your mind, if you were then you've basically played this game already. Otherwise it was just a Gradius title available on the Wii.
You play the role of James Burton piloting the iconic Vic Viper sent out to defeat the Bacterians. Like the rest of the series in Rebirth you can collect power ups that you choose when to use depending on how many you have collected which will upgrade a different element of the ship. Depending on the ship you choose (or later unlock) will depend on the load out available to upgrade. The upgrades are mostly weapons such as missiles, lasers, or two way firing but can also include the ships manoeuvre speed or force fields and shields as well. The various power up load outs have levels when used multiple times to gain strength to deal with the waves of enemies you will face over the course of the five levels.
I like the power up system, it gives control for what you want to upgrade and different ships handle different levels and bosses differently due to their slightly varied load outs. What I don't like is how utterly punishing it is when you die losing everything. Often if you die it will be because a section is hard to get by so going back into it with only a portion of your previous strength often means, (at least in my case) I will die there again. It feels there should be greater balance for a game that isn't an arcade coin gobbler like some of it's predecessors.
Whilst unfortunately Gradius Rebirth and the rest of this trilogy are currently lost to the annals of time with the Wiiware store closing in 2019. I also can't say unless you're a super fan you are missing out much with this one either. It's fine, it's just forgettable. Still I hope it does get a trilogy Rebirth release on modern platforms for preservation so that other gamers can at least find that out for themselves.
Half a star for the cover art. Gradius covers nearly always have stunning artwork and the usage of almost prism colours here really stand out.
+ Looks like Gradius, sounds like Gradius, plays like Gradius.
+ Gradius power up system and ship options are still pretty great a mechanic.
+ that cover art.
- Looks like Gradius, sounds like Gradius, plays like Gradius.
- Dying still feels brutally punishing.
Beautiful game. RGG I love yall, thank you for the journey, couldn't have asked for anything better. Masterpiece
This review contains spoilers
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance wasn’t any better received than Circle of the Moon was. The second entry in a series of Castlevania games on Nintendo’s horizontal handheld system was released only a mere year after Konami decided to showcase it with a title that would stamp the Metroidvania direction that Symphony of the Night established for the series in permanent ink. While this is technically the case, upon playing Circle of the Moon, could the game really be defined as either a sequel or a spiritual successor to one of the franchise's most celebrated and influential titles? Argue about its subjective quality all you want, but what I’m prodding at is that Circle of the Moon did not want to walk in Symphony’s shadow. It’s readily apparent by the grittier visuals, the return of the whip and secondary items, and the brutally uncompromising difficulty that Circle of the Moon sought to pave its own path while the trail was admittedly on the same Metroidvania ground that Symphony had cemented. Because Circle of the Moon was radically different from the game that was advertised, it did not sit well with the new audience that Symphony garnered. Personally, I thought the deviations from the Symphony were refreshing, but I understand why someone who was introduced to the series with a game that featured multiple weapons, grandiose graphics, and a more manageable difficulty curve would be turned off by Circle of the Moon’s repressive minimalism. Because the response from Circle of the Moon was generally lackluster, the next entry on the GBA served as an opportunity to rectify the failed experimentation and craft something more likened to Symphony of the Night. Despite their best efforts to appease Symphony of the Night enthusiasts, the oxymoronically-titled Harmony of Dissonance still didn’t satisfy them, and here is why.
We’ve reverted back to one previous century for Harmony of Dissonance when the Belmonts were still relevant, for yet another member of the iconic vampire killing clan is introduced as our protagonist: Juste Belmont. Juste’s childhood friend Lydie has been kidnapped and taken to a strange castle that has been erected on the grassy hills of whatever European village this is seemingly overnight. Upon exploring the foyer of this estate, good ol’ series staple Death confirms that the castle is indeed another one of Dracula’s new constructions (no shit). Juste splits the task of rescuing Lydie with his other lifelong best friend Maxim, who is suffering from amnesia and can’t remember what his objective was beforehand. Even though Juste has no canonical relation to Nathan Graves, apparently what binds them together as the protagonists of GBA Castlevania games is performing the grunt work of traversing through Dracula’s castle with a friend to save someone dear to them from Dracula’s clutches. Boy, I sure do hope Maxim isn’t seduced by the darkness of Dracula as easily as Hugh was (fingers crossed).
The predominant complaint that most people seem to have regarding Harmony of Dissonance is with its presentation. It proves to me that Circle of the Moon was artistically restrained as opposed to mechanically and that the GBA was capable of rendering striking visuals. Still, considering Harmony of Dissonance’s aim was to make a mobile Symphony of the Night, their futile efforts to transport its glorious, refined pixel art to a 2.9-inch screen was interesting, to say the least. Harmony of Dissonance displays the most striking visuals ever seen across any Castlevania title. Its graphics don’t simply pop out with buoyant flair: they scream at the player with the subtlety of a wild howler monkey. The word “lurid” doesn’t even quite cut it. In their attempt to emulate the splendor of Symphony on a mechanically inferior piece of hardware, Konami has managed to craft what playing Symphony on acid would be like. Not a single piece of the background or foreground isn’t psychedelic, exhibiting that fleshy GBA color palette seen in Metroid Fusion only amped up to eleven on the intensity scale. Some of the backgrounds across the castle are simply kaleidoscopic views made to simulate the apex of drug-addled freakouts. Still, the player will have to make a concerted effort to peek over at the backdrops because I don’t know how one can keep their eyes off of Juste’s cloak which is so crimson red that it’s practically bleeding. There’s bombast, and then there is a complete overload of visual flair to the point of being stomach-churning, which is how many of the detractors describe how the game’s visuals upset them. It doesn’t help that the sound design is irritatingly shrill as well, really honing in on the hallucinatory feeling. Personally, Harmony of Dissonance’s presentation is its strongest aspect. The mix of the dazzling and the macabre reminds me of Giallo, an Italian subgenre of horror films whose refusal to color in the lines is its defining idiosyncrasy. As for the piercing sound design, I don’t think that was intentional, so there’s one legitimate demerit I’m going to have to mark off Harmony of Dissonance for.
Another criticism of Harmony of Dissonance I have that doesn’t seem to be as widely discussed is its protagonist. Besides his stupid, awkward name that is hard to pronounce, Juste Belmont is an imposter. How can Konami peacefully sleep at night after such brazen lies trying to convince all of us that this man isn’t a vampire? His pale, bedsheet-white skin complexion makes Alucard look Sudanese by comparison, and Alucard has never been one to shy away from revealing his vampiric form. Alucard is so white that Aryans would worship him as their Messiah. I feel that if I stabbed Juste, a translucent green goo would spill from his insides instead of the warm, organic red blood that signifies a mortal, earthly creature. On top of looking like an undead creature of the night, Juste also moves like one as well. Whenever Juste jumps as par for the course in a platformer game, his brief ascent is strangely languid, as if he’s manipulating the gravity used to bounce himself upward like oh, I don’t know, a vampire would. See the playground scene from Let the Right One In where the vampire girl hops off the equipment for reference. Juste’s less grounded movement is also annoyingly imprecise, making the player correct for the unnatural physics of a character that is supposed to be human. He does perfect the dash maneuver that Alucard introduced in Symphony to expertise, darting around every room of the castle like he’s a poncy Sonic the Hedgehog. Still, I must impress that Juste beats Alucard, who is a fucking vampire, with his proficiency in executing this supernatural move. Sorry to say Simon, but someone has spiked your gene pool with the blood of your enemies. I don’t like Juste’s jerkoff name, I don’t like his jerkoff face, and I don’t like the jerkoff way he carries himself on the field.
The only Belmont signifier that Juste possesses that proves his kinship is using the family standard weapon of the whip along with the collective of secondary weapons that use ammunition we’ve been familiar with since the days of Simon on the NES. Even though Juste’s physicality is meant to ape Alucard, at least he retains the classic Castlevania in a Metroidvania environment like Circle of the Moon started to do. Harmony of Dissonance also repeats the use of deadly, screen-encompassing spells transferred over to the GBA from Rondo of Blood, which is always a neat way to quickly annihilate all enemies. While I appreciate how the essentials of Castlevania’s gameplay are preserved nicely, what innovations does Harmony of Dissonance contribute to the Castlevania formula to discern itself among the pack? Harmony of Dissonance seems to emphasize clothing and items as integral mechanics. Circle of the Moon didn’t skip using collectible wear coinciding with RPG attributes, but Harmony of Dissonance adds another layer of interactivity to them besides their offensive and defensive perks. All of the major collectibles needed to progress through the game in Harmony of Dissonance are intertwined with the items of clothing that Juste picks up around the corridors of Dracula’s castle. Alternate flails for the whip are also strewn about in the same obscured settings, and a few are necessary to use to bypass obstacles around the estate. Implementing the progression items into the slew of varied clothing is bound to confuse most veterans of the series, for it's unclear when they unlock what is needed to progress. Usually, an important item is obtained after defeating a boss, signifying a stepping stone in progress with a substantial accomplishment. The player can determine which item they should use by reading its description in the menu, but how are they to know which one has a special attribute among the mishmash of clothing items, which are also scrambled in the menu with no organization to speak of? Also, it’s incredibly inconvenient changing from a clothing item with better stats back to the less-than-deal one to use once in a blue moon to unlock a passageway.
What is ten times more messy and disorganized in Harmony of Dissonance is the game’s interpretation of Symphony’s second half. Once Juste finds himself on the opposite side of Dracula’s castle, Death’s second wave of exposition involves explaining to Juste that Maxim has unfortunately fallen to the entrancing gaze of Dracula. Apparently, the evil aura exuding from the force of all six of Dracula’s body parts has caused a schism in Maxim’s body and mind, and the anti-Maxim created from the rupturing is the one who captured Lydie in the first place. Another grand effect of Maxim toying with Dracula’s remains is that it has caused a mirrored version of the castle to materialize in another dimension, which is where Lydie is being held captive and Dracula’s assorted parts are still radiating pure malevolence. Already, the premise of how the game’s second half came to be is a head-scratcher, but wait until it’s time to enter the opposing realm and interact with it. Instead of teleporting Juste around the castle, the warp gates that are marked with a yellow square on the map will transport Juste to Maxim’s fabricated castle, which is referred to as “Castle B.” No, the castle is not twisted on its head (which would be especially nauseating in this game), but an uncanny version of the same castle with slightly tougher enemies. Actually, there really isn’t all that much difference in the design except for the most minute rearrangements that usually lead to pertinent points of progress. What “Castle B” mostly achieves is confusing the hell out of the player. Upon warping to “Castle B” for the first time, the western half of the castle is blocked off now because the shift has torn the entire castle asunder like Germany after WWII. Juste is confined to one fraction of the castle for quite a while, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear exit because this is also when all pathways to progress become hazy and circuitous. Basically, an impediment found in one dimension can possibly be dealt with in the other, which involves several back-and-forth treks to and from the warp gate. The slog of unclear progression in the fake castle is enough to give someone a headache.
I suppose the befuddling frustration I experienced upon entering Maxim’s “alternate” realm of existence was the only thing keeping me from breezing through Harmony of Dissonance. Fans of the classic Castlevania titles complained that Symphony of the Night was too easy, but only compared to the blisteringly painful difficulty curves found in the traditional 2D platformers that gave players an exhilarating rush of accomplishment. Harmony of Dissonance, on the other hand, is easy by the general standards across all video games. One could give it to a small child as an introductory peek into the series, and I doubt they’d have much trouble with it until the dimensional flip-flopping takes place. Potions of varying regenerative amounts will drop from enemies fairly often, and the roast found in the cracked corners of the walls has been shifted into turkey and turkey legs to itemize the healing properties of food in varying quantities. Overall enemy damage is tepid enough, but all of the game’s bosses are laughably pitiful when they keep insisting on repeating the same languid tactics that I already evaded seconds in advance. A healing orb drops after defeating each boss similar to the classic titles but unlike those grueling tests of skill, the damage these pathetic bosses dished out barely amounted to a scratch, the plethora of healing items withstanding. I’ve made positive claims for all previous Castlevania games that were deemed easy before, but Harmony of Dissonance’s borderline effortlessness is enough to make me resign from my defendant post.
The primary objective in “Castle B” is finishing what Maxim started by reobtaining all six pieces of Dracula scattered across the "Twilight Zone" of his castle. Doing so will unfasten a mechanical door situated below the floor leading to the underground chamber at the center of the gothic architecture where an unconscious Lydie is stashed. Because I played Symphony and know that this game is doing its damndest to ape it, I knew there would be additional requirements to fight Dracula that the game wasn’t going to inform me of. Upon performing extraneous research, the caveats to facing Dracula once again were to wear both rings representing the two friends of Juste upon entering the boss arena and arriving here from the alternate castle. Juste will first subdue his corrupted male friend before the dark lord erupts from Maxim into the shape of something so hideous and malformed that it would make David Cronenberg say, “What the fuck?” In the optimal ending, Juste escapes the crumbling manor with Maxim and Lydie. Lydie is fine, but it’s implied that the evil form of Maxim bit her on the neck, which would mean that this happy ending carries complications. However, even a Maxim possessed by Dracula was never a vampire, so all that might occur is him getting slapped with a sexual assault charge at most. Considering that I barely broke a sweat fighting Maxim and Dracula back to back and I don’t care for these characters, I don’t think it was worth the additional effort beforehand to ensure the best outcome.
What Circle of the Moon expertly avoided in translating Symphony’s Metroidvania design to a handheld system was distancing itself as a prospective “Symphony on the go”. I think it’s obvious that a system that primarily plays 2D games would serve as a perfect hub for the Metroidvania genre, but Symphony made such a colossal impact that it set such a high standard that the GBA couldn’t compete with. Harmony of Dissonance is the result of acceding to everyone who did not appreciate Circle of the Moon’s maverick decisions by coming as close to Symphony of the Night as feasibly possible, and apparently, only I had the foresight to know this wouldn’t work. It actually amends every problem across Circle of the Moon, but it’s when it tries to differentiate itself from Symphony while also tracing Symphony’s template where the game falls flat. Symphony’s graphics were exuberant, so Harmony’s attempt resulted in an acid-laced attack on the senses. Symphony’s difficulty was more manageable than any classic Castlevania title, so Harmony dumbed itself down even further to the point of being braindead. Symphony’s reversed castle section fundamentally worked to pad the game, so Harmony’s version of this without outright copying it amounted to a roundabout disaster. Any game that dips back into an idea from Simon’s Quest is desperate to discern itself from the pack, which is really what the developers should’ve focused on again instead of the fool’s errand that fueled Harmony’s development. Besides the eye-popping visuals, there isn’t much to recommend regarding Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
We’ve reverted back to one previous century for Harmony of Dissonance when the Belmonts were still relevant, for yet another member of the iconic vampire killing clan is introduced as our protagonist: Juste Belmont. Juste’s childhood friend Lydie has been kidnapped and taken to a strange castle that has been erected on the grassy hills of whatever European village this is seemingly overnight. Upon exploring the foyer of this estate, good ol’ series staple Death confirms that the castle is indeed another one of Dracula’s new constructions (no shit). Juste splits the task of rescuing Lydie with his other lifelong best friend Maxim, who is suffering from amnesia and can’t remember what his objective was beforehand. Even though Juste has no canonical relation to Nathan Graves, apparently what binds them together as the protagonists of GBA Castlevania games is performing the grunt work of traversing through Dracula’s castle with a friend to save someone dear to them from Dracula’s clutches. Boy, I sure do hope Maxim isn’t seduced by the darkness of Dracula as easily as Hugh was (fingers crossed).
The predominant complaint that most people seem to have regarding Harmony of Dissonance is with its presentation. It proves to me that Circle of the Moon was artistically restrained as opposed to mechanically and that the GBA was capable of rendering striking visuals. Still, considering Harmony of Dissonance’s aim was to make a mobile Symphony of the Night, their futile efforts to transport its glorious, refined pixel art to a 2.9-inch screen was interesting, to say the least. Harmony of Dissonance displays the most striking visuals ever seen across any Castlevania title. Its graphics don’t simply pop out with buoyant flair: they scream at the player with the subtlety of a wild howler monkey. The word “lurid” doesn’t even quite cut it. In their attempt to emulate the splendor of Symphony on a mechanically inferior piece of hardware, Konami has managed to craft what playing Symphony on acid would be like. Not a single piece of the background or foreground isn’t psychedelic, exhibiting that fleshy GBA color palette seen in Metroid Fusion only amped up to eleven on the intensity scale. Some of the backgrounds across the castle are simply kaleidoscopic views made to simulate the apex of drug-addled freakouts. Still, the player will have to make a concerted effort to peek over at the backdrops because I don’t know how one can keep their eyes off of Juste’s cloak which is so crimson red that it’s practically bleeding. There’s bombast, and then there is a complete overload of visual flair to the point of being stomach-churning, which is how many of the detractors describe how the game’s visuals upset them. It doesn’t help that the sound design is irritatingly shrill as well, really honing in on the hallucinatory feeling. Personally, Harmony of Dissonance’s presentation is its strongest aspect. The mix of the dazzling and the macabre reminds me of Giallo, an Italian subgenre of horror films whose refusal to color in the lines is its defining idiosyncrasy. As for the piercing sound design, I don’t think that was intentional, so there’s one legitimate demerit I’m going to have to mark off Harmony of Dissonance for.
Another criticism of Harmony of Dissonance I have that doesn’t seem to be as widely discussed is its protagonist. Besides his stupid, awkward name that is hard to pronounce, Juste Belmont is an imposter. How can Konami peacefully sleep at night after such brazen lies trying to convince all of us that this man isn’t a vampire? His pale, bedsheet-white skin complexion makes Alucard look Sudanese by comparison, and Alucard has never been one to shy away from revealing his vampiric form. Alucard is so white that Aryans would worship him as their Messiah. I feel that if I stabbed Juste, a translucent green goo would spill from his insides instead of the warm, organic red blood that signifies a mortal, earthly creature. On top of looking like an undead creature of the night, Juste also moves like one as well. Whenever Juste jumps as par for the course in a platformer game, his brief ascent is strangely languid, as if he’s manipulating the gravity used to bounce himself upward like oh, I don’t know, a vampire would. See the playground scene from Let the Right One In where the vampire girl hops off the equipment for reference. Juste’s less grounded movement is also annoyingly imprecise, making the player correct for the unnatural physics of a character that is supposed to be human. He does perfect the dash maneuver that Alucard introduced in Symphony to expertise, darting around every room of the castle like he’s a poncy Sonic the Hedgehog. Still, I must impress that Juste beats Alucard, who is a fucking vampire, with his proficiency in executing this supernatural move. Sorry to say Simon, but someone has spiked your gene pool with the blood of your enemies. I don’t like Juste’s jerkoff name, I don’t like his jerkoff face, and I don’t like the jerkoff way he carries himself on the field.
The only Belmont signifier that Juste possesses that proves his kinship is using the family standard weapon of the whip along with the collective of secondary weapons that use ammunition we’ve been familiar with since the days of Simon on the NES. Even though Juste’s physicality is meant to ape Alucard, at least he retains the classic Castlevania in a Metroidvania environment like Circle of the Moon started to do. Harmony of Dissonance also repeats the use of deadly, screen-encompassing spells transferred over to the GBA from Rondo of Blood, which is always a neat way to quickly annihilate all enemies. While I appreciate how the essentials of Castlevania’s gameplay are preserved nicely, what innovations does Harmony of Dissonance contribute to the Castlevania formula to discern itself among the pack? Harmony of Dissonance seems to emphasize clothing and items as integral mechanics. Circle of the Moon didn’t skip using collectible wear coinciding with RPG attributes, but Harmony of Dissonance adds another layer of interactivity to them besides their offensive and defensive perks. All of the major collectibles needed to progress through the game in Harmony of Dissonance are intertwined with the items of clothing that Juste picks up around the corridors of Dracula’s castle. Alternate flails for the whip are also strewn about in the same obscured settings, and a few are necessary to use to bypass obstacles around the estate. Implementing the progression items into the slew of varied clothing is bound to confuse most veterans of the series, for it's unclear when they unlock what is needed to progress. Usually, an important item is obtained after defeating a boss, signifying a stepping stone in progress with a substantial accomplishment. The player can determine which item they should use by reading its description in the menu, but how are they to know which one has a special attribute among the mishmash of clothing items, which are also scrambled in the menu with no organization to speak of? Also, it’s incredibly inconvenient changing from a clothing item with better stats back to the less-than-deal one to use once in a blue moon to unlock a passageway.
What is ten times more messy and disorganized in Harmony of Dissonance is the game’s interpretation of Symphony’s second half. Once Juste finds himself on the opposite side of Dracula’s castle, Death’s second wave of exposition involves explaining to Juste that Maxim has unfortunately fallen to the entrancing gaze of Dracula. Apparently, the evil aura exuding from the force of all six of Dracula’s body parts has caused a schism in Maxim’s body and mind, and the anti-Maxim created from the rupturing is the one who captured Lydie in the first place. Another grand effect of Maxim toying with Dracula’s remains is that it has caused a mirrored version of the castle to materialize in another dimension, which is where Lydie is being held captive and Dracula’s assorted parts are still radiating pure malevolence. Already, the premise of how the game’s second half came to be is a head-scratcher, but wait until it’s time to enter the opposing realm and interact with it. Instead of teleporting Juste around the castle, the warp gates that are marked with a yellow square on the map will transport Juste to Maxim’s fabricated castle, which is referred to as “Castle B.” No, the castle is not twisted on its head (which would be especially nauseating in this game), but an uncanny version of the same castle with slightly tougher enemies. Actually, there really isn’t all that much difference in the design except for the most minute rearrangements that usually lead to pertinent points of progress. What “Castle B” mostly achieves is confusing the hell out of the player. Upon warping to “Castle B” for the first time, the western half of the castle is blocked off now because the shift has torn the entire castle asunder like Germany after WWII. Juste is confined to one fraction of the castle for quite a while, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear exit because this is also when all pathways to progress become hazy and circuitous. Basically, an impediment found in one dimension can possibly be dealt with in the other, which involves several back-and-forth treks to and from the warp gate. The slog of unclear progression in the fake castle is enough to give someone a headache.
I suppose the befuddling frustration I experienced upon entering Maxim’s “alternate” realm of existence was the only thing keeping me from breezing through Harmony of Dissonance. Fans of the classic Castlevania titles complained that Symphony of the Night was too easy, but only compared to the blisteringly painful difficulty curves found in the traditional 2D platformers that gave players an exhilarating rush of accomplishment. Harmony of Dissonance, on the other hand, is easy by the general standards across all video games. One could give it to a small child as an introductory peek into the series, and I doubt they’d have much trouble with it until the dimensional flip-flopping takes place. Potions of varying regenerative amounts will drop from enemies fairly often, and the roast found in the cracked corners of the walls has been shifted into turkey and turkey legs to itemize the healing properties of food in varying quantities. Overall enemy damage is tepid enough, but all of the game’s bosses are laughably pitiful when they keep insisting on repeating the same languid tactics that I already evaded seconds in advance. A healing orb drops after defeating each boss similar to the classic titles but unlike those grueling tests of skill, the damage these pathetic bosses dished out barely amounted to a scratch, the plethora of healing items withstanding. I’ve made positive claims for all previous Castlevania games that were deemed easy before, but Harmony of Dissonance’s borderline effortlessness is enough to make me resign from my defendant post.
The primary objective in “Castle B” is finishing what Maxim started by reobtaining all six pieces of Dracula scattered across the "Twilight Zone" of his castle. Doing so will unfasten a mechanical door situated below the floor leading to the underground chamber at the center of the gothic architecture where an unconscious Lydie is stashed. Because I played Symphony and know that this game is doing its damndest to ape it, I knew there would be additional requirements to fight Dracula that the game wasn’t going to inform me of. Upon performing extraneous research, the caveats to facing Dracula once again were to wear both rings representing the two friends of Juste upon entering the boss arena and arriving here from the alternate castle. Juste will first subdue his corrupted male friend before the dark lord erupts from Maxim into the shape of something so hideous and malformed that it would make David Cronenberg say, “What the fuck?” In the optimal ending, Juste escapes the crumbling manor with Maxim and Lydie. Lydie is fine, but it’s implied that the evil form of Maxim bit her on the neck, which would mean that this happy ending carries complications. However, even a Maxim possessed by Dracula was never a vampire, so all that might occur is him getting slapped with a sexual assault charge at most. Considering that I barely broke a sweat fighting Maxim and Dracula back to back and I don’t care for these characters, I don’t think it was worth the additional effort beforehand to ensure the best outcome.
What Circle of the Moon expertly avoided in translating Symphony’s Metroidvania design to a handheld system was distancing itself as a prospective “Symphony on the go”. I think it’s obvious that a system that primarily plays 2D games would serve as a perfect hub for the Metroidvania genre, but Symphony made such a colossal impact that it set such a high standard that the GBA couldn’t compete with. Harmony of Dissonance is the result of acceding to everyone who did not appreciate Circle of the Moon’s maverick decisions by coming as close to Symphony of the Night as feasibly possible, and apparently, only I had the foresight to know this wouldn’t work. It actually amends every problem across Circle of the Moon, but it’s when it tries to differentiate itself from Symphony while also tracing Symphony’s template where the game falls flat. Symphony’s graphics were exuberant, so Harmony’s attempt resulted in an acid-laced attack on the senses. Symphony’s difficulty was more manageable than any classic Castlevania title, so Harmony dumbed itself down even further to the point of being braindead. Symphony’s reversed castle section fundamentally worked to pad the game, so Harmony’s version of this without outright copying it amounted to a roundabout disaster. Any game that dips back into an idea from Simon’s Quest is desperate to discern itself from the pack, which is really what the developers should’ve focused on again instead of the fool’s errand that fueled Harmony’s development. Besides the eye-popping visuals, there isn’t much to recommend regarding Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
ActRaiser
1990
I'm a big fan of genre mashups. For a while now, the best way to get my attention and stand out from within the neverending tide of new releases is to do "genre 1 + genre 2" to make combinations I haven't seen before. Sometimes these result in great new games that do something innovative, and sometimes they produce an incoherent mess, or just an underwhelming experience. And whilst I associate most of this school of design with modern indie games, I knew that they certainly weren't the inventors of this approach; and I thought I had to pay my respects to the OG weird genre mashup : Actraiser (and yeah I know there were weird genre mixes even further back depending on what you count but remember that video game genres are bullshit anyways so its fine)
The strength of a hybrid gameplay model is 2 fold. One is that its an in-built tool for pacing wherein one mode is a nice change of pace/a break from the other. Though more conventional, games like Persona (3 onwards), XCOM, Recettear etc keep the line going up and down with their respective gameplay models. When I'm tired of hanging out in P5 I can do a dungeon and when Im tired of that I can go back and eat a giant burger in Shibuya. The other is that the gameplay modes can feed into each other and make what might be two vastly different mechanical exercises integrate more closely through these connections like getting weapon fragments from killed aliens in missions in XCOM to build laser rifles back in the base to kill aliens more efficiently to get more fragments etc.
That last part is usually the make or break for the genre hybrid in my experience. At best, the two tie seamlessly together in a way that it makes you wonder how no one thought about this before, at worst both become a slog or one feels bolted to the other unnaturally, you resent one mode from keeping you away from the other. There is also a third approach, where you simply don't try all that hard to integrate the two modes or even at all, which can also work.
Actraiser kinda tries to integrate its city building with its castlevania-esque action platforming, but not super hard. And I think it works in that respect. You play as an avatar of "the NOT Christian God" helping various settlements to grow in population by directing them to build towards available land, clearing swamps and foliage, killing demons who respawn until the towns grow close enough to their lairs to close them etc. You do this so more people can worship you, which makes you more powerful and therefore more able to foil the plans of "NOT Satan". Its a cool (and you'll forgive me for using this word) ludonarrative, wherein a symbiotic relationship exists between god and those who worship him, God protects his flock from evil who in turn make him stronger. It also pre empts the usual narrative question of "how can there be an antagonist to an omnipotent being?" by making the battle between good and evil also a battle for the hearts and minds of people, the will of the creator being realized through their work.
This is brought up more explicitly during the Maranha Arc, an island with a pretty substantial presence of monsters, leaving you to constantly kill the demons in the overworld lest they get 5 seconds to burn the peoples' crops. The narrative of that particular episode involves the people being seduced by the dark forces and eventually even the temple priests who communicate with you go over to the demons' side. After you defeat the evil demons they explain that they were deceived by the demons due to the hardship they suffered, their faith wavering when faced with hunger and violence. This reminds a bit of the story of Job from the bible, who was tested at the behest of "the adversary" to prove to God that his faith was only due to his blessed circumstances. Ultimately Job endures great suffering without turning his back on God which leads him to be greatly rewarded.
There is also the matter of the "demons" being based on figures from other religions like the minotaur, pharaohs (who were the gods' representatives on earth in egyptian mythology) , various others from nordic and hindu mythology etc. The master is a jealous god, angered by these "false idols", its no surprise the game was subject to censorship when being localised in the west to avoid the more overt references to christianity and religion in general. As much as the game is a metaphor for monotheism I think there's also a hint of Buddhism, possibly due to Quintet(the studio which made Actraiser) being a japanese studio. There is mention in the epilogue of reincarnation and whilst in keeping with Christian lore, the idea of humans being straying from righteousness by the allure of demons who keep them in suffering on this earthly realm through violence smacks a bit of Mara, the demonic representative of death, rebirth and pleasure, who tried to stop Siddharta Gautama from achieving enlightenment.
Actraiser does a lot with very little, in this respect, and I kind of wish there was more to this, the game is rather brief and most of the "point" is relayed right at the end after the final boss rush, at which time I'm a bit too high off of the victory to meditate on human's tendencies to abandon religion when their living standards rise. Actraiser is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The menuing and UX of the city building is a bit clunky, not being able to do anything whilst a town is being constructed is ok, but can you just let me use my powers without having to show me the slow text box explaining its use every single time I use them? The platforming is good, has that weighty movement reminiscent of a Castlevania 1 but the hitboxes can be a bit dodgy, sometimes in the enemy's favour, sometimes in the player's. Hitting enemies at floor height remains kind of a crap shoot all the way to the final boss. I am pretty shit at the game but thankfully Actraiser is a lot more generous with the wall chicken than CV1 is. And hell, worst case scenario you can go back and increase the population to upgrade your max health. Not a big fan of the final boss gauntlet, its always a gut punch reading a guide for a game who says "yeah this boss is bullshit, just use your fuck you spell to kill him quickly, the other bosses can be fought normally".
In the end though, I enjoyed Actraiser, I think its rightfully seen as a classic and will rank highly if I ever make a list of my favourite genre hybrid games. I have heard that the sequel abandons the god game aspect entirely, and that sounds like kind of a waste... I'll play it eventually but not anytime soon.
The strength of a hybrid gameplay model is 2 fold. One is that its an in-built tool for pacing wherein one mode is a nice change of pace/a break from the other. Though more conventional, games like Persona (3 onwards), XCOM, Recettear etc keep the line going up and down with their respective gameplay models. When I'm tired of hanging out in P5 I can do a dungeon and when Im tired of that I can go back and eat a giant burger in Shibuya. The other is that the gameplay modes can feed into each other and make what might be two vastly different mechanical exercises integrate more closely through these connections like getting weapon fragments from killed aliens in missions in XCOM to build laser rifles back in the base to kill aliens more efficiently to get more fragments etc.
That last part is usually the make or break for the genre hybrid in my experience. At best, the two tie seamlessly together in a way that it makes you wonder how no one thought about this before, at worst both become a slog or one feels bolted to the other unnaturally, you resent one mode from keeping you away from the other. There is also a third approach, where you simply don't try all that hard to integrate the two modes or even at all, which can also work.
Actraiser kinda tries to integrate its city building with its castlevania-esque action platforming, but not super hard. And I think it works in that respect. You play as an avatar of "the NOT Christian God" helping various settlements to grow in population by directing them to build towards available land, clearing swamps and foliage, killing demons who respawn until the towns grow close enough to their lairs to close them etc. You do this so more people can worship you, which makes you more powerful and therefore more able to foil the plans of "NOT Satan". Its a cool (and you'll forgive me for using this word) ludonarrative, wherein a symbiotic relationship exists between god and those who worship him, God protects his flock from evil who in turn make him stronger. It also pre empts the usual narrative question of "how can there be an antagonist to an omnipotent being?" by making the battle between good and evil also a battle for the hearts and minds of people, the will of the creator being realized through their work.
This is brought up more explicitly during the Maranha Arc, an island with a pretty substantial presence of monsters, leaving you to constantly kill the demons in the overworld lest they get 5 seconds to burn the peoples' crops. The narrative of that particular episode involves the people being seduced by the dark forces and eventually even the temple priests who communicate with you go over to the demons' side. After you defeat the evil demons they explain that they were deceived by the demons due to the hardship they suffered, their faith wavering when faced with hunger and violence. This reminds a bit of the story of Job from the bible, who was tested at the behest of "the adversary" to prove to God that his faith was only due to his blessed circumstances. Ultimately Job endures great suffering without turning his back on God which leads him to be greatly rewarded.
There is also the matter of the "demons" being based on figures from other religions like the minotaur, pharaohs (who were the gods' representatives on earth in egyptian mythology) , various others from nordic and hindu mythology etc. The master is a jealous god, angered by these "false idols", its no surprise the game was subject to censorship when being localised in the west to avoid the more overt references to christianity and religion in general. As much as the game is a metaphor for monotheism I think there's also a hint of Buddhism, possibly due to Quintet(the studio which made Actraiser) being a japanese studio. There is mention in the epilogue of reincarnation and whilst in keeping with Christian lore, the idea of humans being straying from righteousness by the allure of demons who keep them in suffering on this earthly realm through violence smacks a bit of Mara, the demonic representative of death, rebirth and pleasure, who tried to stop Siddharta Gautama from achieving enlightenment.
Actraiser does a lot with very little, in this respect, and I kind of wish there was more to this, the game is rather brief and most of the "point" is relayed right at the end after the final boss rush, at which time I'm a bit too high off of the victory to meditate on human's tendencies to abandon religion when their living standards rise. Actraiser is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The menuing and UX of the city building is a bit clunky, not being able to do anything whilst a town is being constructed is ok, but can you just let me use my powers without having to show me the slow text box explaining its use every single time I use them? The platforming is good, has that weighty movement reminiscent of a Castlevania 1 but the hitboxes can be a bit dodgy, sometimes in the enemy's favour, sometimes in the player's. Hitting enemies at floor height remains kind of a crap shoot all the way to the final boss. I am pretty shit at the game but thankfully Actraiser is a lot more generous with the wall chicken than CV1 is. And hell, worst case scenario you can go back and increase the population to upgrade your max health. Not a big fan of the final boss gauntlet, its always a gut punch reading a guide for a game who says "yeah this boss is bullshit, just use your fuck you spell to kill him quickly, the other bosses can be fought normally".
In the end though, I enjoyed Actraiser, I think its rightfully seen as a classic and will rank highly if I ever make a list of my favourite genre hybrid games. I have heard that the sequel abandons the god game aspect entirely, and that sounds like kind of a waste... I'll play it eventually but not anytime soon.
Not all heroes wear capes, some wear seriously outdated suits.
It's been a long road getting to this point for both myself and Yakuza's main star Kiryu Kazama. Like many people I got into this series with Yakuza 0 through word of mouth in 2017 and wondered what I had missed all that time. There simply isn't another game series like it. It's a Frankenstein's monster whose separate parts on paper don't feel like they should work but amalgamated together they create something magical. They are serious crime dramas, only they are off beat comedies. They are beat 'em ups yet also adventure games, RPGs and dating simulators. It's all of these things and yet none of them. Not all it's ideas work, when they throw so much at the wall some things don't always stick but without fail for me they are always emotional, hilarious and entertaining.
The series' big selling point to me though is actually it's world design. This series along with Deus Ex made me realise I don't dislike open worlds, I dislike vast areas for the sake of being vast with empty meaningless content, sometimes less is more. Yakuza games are open worlds done right, not gigantic bloated icon maps usually used for those descriptions but smaller denser hubs. Locations have meaning, they have personality, the cities feel like characters in the game as much as the cast. If the game tells me to go to a shop or street I normally know where it is without having to bring up a map. They are full of life, small compact and focused.
Yakuza 6's story follows this same thought, whether it was because this was the first game on the Dragon Engine at the time meaning they cut back I don't know but I appreciated the sharper focus on Kiryu rather than the overly large games before that were getting a bit too big for themselves. Kiryu was really the heart of this game, it's his personal story about his own values and dedication to family. Hard to discuss without spoilers but whilst the overall story wasn't quite my cup of tea generally resulting in some pacing issues it still has some fantastic characters, moments and voice acting. This is partially because Yakuza's cinematography for it's cutscenes are a step above most games to me. The camera angles, facial details and expressions have always been extremely impressive but I truly noticed it here.
Like every Yakuza game the side content is often as important as the linear main story. Yakuza 6 scales back on this too but there is still a wealth of content here I spent a lot of my 70 hours playing through on. Spear fishing in an underwater on rails shooter, building up a clan for street fights in a mini strategy game, helping a small baseball team beat their countryside rivals (I'm not into baseball but this is making me consider some other games for it) as well as the usual suspects like cabaret clubs, video chat dating, mahjong and arcade games. It even has the full arcade game of Virtua Fighter 5 as optional content which is pretty crazy as far as a throw away mini game is concerned.
Honestly except some story beats I just don't have anything negative to say about this game. The combat is a little simpler than some other titles though that doesn't concern me much as the moment to moment narrative beats and atmosphere are the core to the series to me. I started it because I needed to play it to play Gaiden as I skipped from 5 to 7 initially but then had a feeling of regret I hadn't played it sooner as the Yakuza magic took hold of me. I love the world, the characters, the side content, exploring and taking in the sights of the locations. Yakuza as I discussed is a lot of things but to someone who grew up as a Sega fan it really shows to me that they still have that spark that made me a fan of theirs in the first place and may it long continue.
+ Hiroshima is a great new location.
+ Cinematography and voice acting are superb.
+ Baseball, spear fishing and clan fighting are pretty fun side content.
+ It's Yakuza.
- Storyline is a little up and down.
It's been a long road getting to this point for both myself and Yakuza's main star Kiryu Kazama. Like many people I got into this series with Yakuza 0 through word of mouth in 2017 and wondered what I had missed all that time. There simply isn't another game series like it. It's a Frankenstein's monster whose separate parts on paper don't feel like they should work but amalgamated together they create something magical. They are serious crime dramas, only they are off beat comedies. They are beat 'em ups yet also adventure games, RPGs and dating simulators. It's all of these things and yet none of them. Not all it's ideas work, when they throw so much at the wall some things don't always stick but without fail for me they are always emotional, hilarious and entertaining.
The series' big selling point to me though is actually it's world design. This series along with Deus Ex made me realise I don't dislike open worlds, I dislike vast areas for the sake of being vast with empty meaningless content, sometimes less is more. Yakuza games are open worlds done right, not gigantic bloated icon maps usually used for those descriptions but smaller denser hubs. Locations have meaning, they have personality, the cities feel like characters in the game as much as the cast. If the game tells me to go to a shop or street I normally know where it is without having to bring up a map. They are full of life, small compact and focused.
Yakuza 6's story follows this same thought, whether it was because this was the first game on the Dragon Engine at the time meaning they cut back I don't know but I appreciated the sharper focus on Kiryu rather than the overly large games before that were getting a bit too big for themselves. Kiryu was really the heart of this game, it's his personal story about his own values and dedication to family. Hard to discuss without spoilers but whilst the overall story wasn't quite my cup of tea generally resulting in some pacing issues it still has some fantastic characters, moments and voice acting. This is partially because Yakuza's cinematography for it's cutscenes are a step above most games to me. The camera angles, facial details and expressions have always been extremely impressive but I truly noticed it here.
Like every Yakuza game the side content is often as important as the linear main story. Yakuza 6 scales back on this too but there is still a wealth of content here I spent a lot of my 70 hours playing through on. Spear fishing in an underwater on rails shooter, building up a clan for street fights in a mini strategy game, helping a small baseball team beat their countryside rivals (I'm not into baseball but this is making me consider some other games for it) as well as the usual suspects like cabaret clubs, video chat dating, mahjong and arcade games. It even has the full arcade game of Virtua Fighter 5 as optional content which is pretty crazy as far as a throw away mini game is concerned.
Honestly except some story beats I just don't have anything negative to say about this game. The combat is a little simpler than some other titles though that doesn't concern me much as the moment to moment narrative beats and atmosphere are the core to the series to me. I started it because I needed to play it to play Gaiden as I skipped from 5 to 7 initially but then had a feeling of regret I hadn't played it sooner as the Yakuza magic took hold of me. I love the world, the characters, the side content, exploring and taking in the sights of the locations. Yakuza as I discussed is a lot of things but to someone who grew up as a Sega fan it really shows to me that they still have that spark that made me a fan of theirs in the first place and may it long continue.
+ Hiroshima is a great new location.
+ Cinematography and voice acting are superb.
+ Baseball, spear fishing and clan fighting are pretty fun side content.
+ It's Yakuza.
- Storyline is a little up and down.