#its a fun challenge to try to create distinctive characters while still fitting in a specific mold

[flambo19]

Some assorted replika oc doodles (partially just to practice drawing stars lmao)

[mediabasedlife]

A Look Back At...The Last Generation (2013-2020)

I’d like to start this off by thanking those who encouraged me to write this article, my friends and family who encouraged me to rekindle this project despite my own trepidation. I hope its quality lives up to those lofty expectations.

     Say what you will about the hobby, gaming is in many ways the gift that keeps on giving. Every year there are hundreds, if not thousands of new offerings for every brand of player out there. And wouldn't you know it, there's a fairly significant portion of that library that are actually pretty good. Now, people will argue ad infinitum about what games are the best, or what consoles, or even which generation trumps the rest. This diversity of opinion is what has allowed gaming discussion to thrive just as potently as the medium which it encapsulates. Like any opinion, all of this is especially subjective; great games have been coming out pretty much every year since gaming began, a trend that seems like it will continue as long as gaming itself continues to thrive. While some may argue, I would say the latest generation thrived especially well. Ignoring the Wii-U, since I never owned one, and skirting around handhelds, the latest generation spanned the life of the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and technically, the Nintendo Switch. And through their seven-year life [switch notwithstanding], we saw the release of some truly excellent games - from top budget AAA titles to humble indie offerings. Now, in 2020, while we as a community are taking our first steps into the new generation of gaming, I think it fair to take pause, gaze back, and remember some of the games that made the latest generation so memorable for so many.

2013

    2013 marked the start of the last-gen, with the release of both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. Both consoles were built to shepherd out their predecessors, marking leaps in visual fidelity and infrastructure that would empower them to become the monoliths of gaming that they hoped to be. I won't say that both consoles had an equally vibrant launch, but they both tried to put their best foot forward. While the Xbox was busy desperately trying to become the multimedia center for your living room, Sony kicked off the next generation in style, releasing a whole seven days earlier than its competitor. With the Xbox not far behind, both consoles brought a suite of new, shiny games to play. Well, in theory, anyway. I'm not here to speak of the quality of the launch lineups of either console, but what I can do is list off the game that stood out, and why it made it onto my list.

-Assassin's Creed Black Flag      Black Flag actually saw its initial release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 almost a month prior to the soon to be current generation, but with both new consoles came a second release, one that came equipped with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from what was then a next-gen game. It doesn't look good for my list to start things off on a technicality, but this game is worth it. Black Flag remains one of my top three Assassin's Creed Games, which is saying a lot considering the sheer scale of the franchise. Fresh off the love it or hate it Assassin's Creed III, Black Flag looked to take a revitalized approach to the franchise formula, playing off of fan feedback, expanding upon what fans loved from AC3, and adding in new activities and a broader, fresher open world to explore. In it, you play as Edward Kenway, a charming rogue of a pirate who kicks the game off by stealing the identity of a defected Assassin. Expecting nothing more than riches and glory, his masquerade instead goes quickly sour, thrusting Edward into the conspiracy filled, secretive world of the Assassin and Templar conflict. What makes this story stand out is how different Edward was as a protagonist, seeing him acting largely indifferent to the traditional formula the assassin's creed games had followed thus far. The game's setting also helped it immensely; the game plays more like a pirate simulator, seeing players sail the Caribbean searching out treasures and fame, gathering a sturdy ship and a hearty crew, engaging in thrilling naval battles, and basking in the warm glow of the sun-drenched sands that define the game's many islands. Along the way, you interact with a bevy of historical or mythical figures, such as Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Calico Jack, and many more. All of this came together to create an immensely satisfying game, a standout amidst its peers and predecessors, and an experience that still stands the test of time despite the numerous sequels it has received.

2014

    2014 was the year the new generation really started to pick up. The consoles had begun to get their footing, truly ushering in the next wave of quality games and proving their value to the players. Several critically acclaimed games got their start here or saw revitalized releases on the current generation of consoles. However, there were a few strays, games that elected to release on the prior consoles first and foremost, games that wouldn't see new-gen ports for some time, and others that never did, but still merited recognition and praise. But how many will make it onto my list? Well, you'll just have to read on.

-Titanfall     Titanfall was, for me, the first game on the Xbox One that truly cemented it as a worthy purchase. It was a melting pot of ideas and innovation that I immediately fell in love with. Built with an always-online principle, Titanfall sees players engaging in a pseudo-campaign of multiple, looping competitive matches. On the surface, you could easily glance Titanfall's way and see nothing remarkable. Another first-person shooter in a sea of competitors, all of whom had far more clout at the time. But what set Titanfall apart from the start was its dedication to movement, satisfying and fast-paced gunplay, and especially, robots. See, Titanfall's whole gimmick is this; players take on the role of Pilots, better than average soldiers of the far future who are deployed in times of conflict as superior ground troops, but more importantly, heavy artillery. As pilots perform well on the battlefield, they can call in the titular Titanfall, summoning their respective Titan to the fray. Titans are large, deadly mechs that can be piloted by the player to give them a distinct advantage in battle. What this translates to in gameplay is simple; as players make their way through matches, they build up a meter which when filled allows them to call down a massive robot to wreak havoc. Every player can do this, usually multiple times a match if they're good enough. Titans are fast, tough, and lethal, and fun as hell to control. But what kept the game balanced was the fact that titans weren't invincible. All players came equipped with anti-titan weaponry, alongside their usual loadout of rifles or handguns. This meant that anyone could take a titan down if they were savvy. The titans, coupled with the frantic movement and satisfying shooting, made Titanfall a one of a kind game. It's fitting, then, that the inevitable sequel would go on to improve on it in virtually every way, but that'll have to wait for later.

-Diablo 3     I will admit to not having played this in its initial release window, in fact, some years would pass before I finally picked it up on console during a sale. And though my time with it was quite belated, I would still consider it to be a genuinely fun game, one worthy of being on this list. In Diablo 3, players choose between seven classes; Wizard, Monk, Necromancer, Witch Doctor, Demon Hunter, Barbarian, or Crusader. From there, they are thrust into the demon-plagued land of Sanctuary, beginning their adventure in the town of New Tristram. Each class has a different backstory and a slightly different narrative throughout, but the core throughline is thus; you are sent to the village to investigate reports of a falling star, only to be swept up in a fight against hell and heaven itself for the fate of the world. In terms of game difficulty, the game sports an impressive twenty difficulty tiers; easy, normal, hard, master, and then sixteen levels of torment. Should players want an even greater challenge, there's also hardcore mode, which starts you off with permadeath: you get one life, no exceptions. Die, and the character is gone for good. Overall, I would say that Diablo's biggest strength is in its gameplay loop; Diablo plays like a top-down, hack and slash role-playing game, with players exploring the various levels in search of loot all the while battling hordes of enemies and leveling up, earning new abilities and skills that players can swap out to create their ideal builds. The core gameplay loop, while simple, is wildly addictive, with a massive loot pool to chase in an effort to grow ever stronger. Each class plays differently, but all of them are easy to learn. Diablo also supports local and online multiplayer, making it a great game to play with friends or family.

-Sunset Overdrive     Sunset Overdrive is a game I've previously covered on this blog before. In fact, I'd say I did such a good job that if you want to read about it, go read that article. But if you'd rather not click away, let me give you the TL;DR. Sunset overdrive is a satirical open world game made by Insomniac in which you play as a cocky and comedic hero out to save their city from a bogus energy drink that caused a pseudo-zombie outbreak. It's built around movement, with the player grinding on rails and running on walls and doing everything they can to stay mobile while gunning down the mutated enemies and exploring the environment. It's funny and feels great to play while being hampered by an underwhelming character creator and suite of customization options, but still manages to come out on top as an immensely satisfying game.

-Destiny     Destiny is the brainchild of one Bungie studios, the original creators of Halo, the next game on this list. Fresh off their amicable split from Microsoft, Bungie did what they did best; develop a truly great FPS. But this time, they added a twist; Destiny is equal parts Shooter, Looter, and MMO. It took these three core ingredients and mixed them together with gusto, delivering an immensely entertaining game that felt incredible to play both alone or with your friends. The story of destiny is a long one, but can be summarized simply; Some years in the future, Humanity met and allied with an alien being known as the Traveller, an alliance that heralded massive technological and social leaps, ushering in the new Golden Age of humanity. Unfortunately, the Traveller's natural enemies, The Darkness, attacked the solar system, destroying much, and whittling down the last survivors to a single safe city. In response, the Traveller created Guardians, reanimated protectors infused with the Traveller's power, tasked with defending the earth and all its colonies from the encroaching forces of evil that threaten this dwindling peace. Resurrected by a ghost, an emissary of the Traveller, you play as one of these Guardians; taking on the role of either the agile Hunter, the cosmically magical Warlock, or the strong and stalwart Titan. From there, you could either progress alone or join up with friends to take on the challenges of the solar system, pushing back the forces of darkness. Although lacking in longevity in its first outing, destiny was quickly expanded and iterated upon, turning it from an already impressive game to a true powerhouse and pillar of its genre.

-Halo: The Master Chief Collection     I won't pretend this started off as a flawless, perfect compilation of prior Halo games. But I love Halo, and I loved playing these games again, so it makes the list. Especially after all of the improvements and subsequent additions 343 made to the collection post-launch. On release, it featured Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4, but has since gone on to include Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach as well. If you're unfamiliar, Halo is a staple franchise in the Xbox lineup, and the master chief collection sought to unify all of the prior releases under one umbrella for the newest console. Halo is a sci-fi FPS franchise, largely following the saga of the titular Master Chief Petty Officer, John-117. John, or Master Chief as he is more commonly called, is a Spartan; a supersoldier of the future, who fights to protect humanity from an alien collective dubbed The Covenant. In the first game, Master Chief crash lands on an alien ringworld known as Halo, which later turns out to be an ancient superweapon created to exterminate all sentient life in the galaxy. Subsequent games only build the stakes from there, seeing John stave off one intergalactic threat after another in a franchise that continues to satisfy time and again. What the Master Chief Collection does is bundle everything up in one convenient package, while simultaneously offering tweaks and improvements to complement the technological advancements of the new consoles. It offers local and online multiplayer, both for its story and its competitive modes. Overall, even with the flawed beginnings, I would consider The master chief collection a must-have for Xbox players.

-Grand Theft Auto V     Ah yes, GTAV, the game that refuses to die. Technically, this game released on the Xbox 360 and ps3, but it's been put on the PS4/XBO and now even the PS5 and the latest Xboxes too. I won't be surprised if this game gets ported to the consoles that come after that, too, in seven or so years. This game just won't quit. But that's also a testament to the dedication of its player base and the overall quality of the game itself. GTAV is an irreverent, biting joy of a game, replete with humor and charisma. It was, and remains, the latest in Rockstar's open-world crime franchise, in which players take on the role of not one, but three separate characters trying to make their way through life in Los Santos California; Michael, a retired crook stuck in the witness protection system, Michael's former, quite deranged partner Trevor, and rounding out the cast is Franklin, a street-savvy up and comer. Together they go about committing numerous heists, shady deals, and more than a few moments of mayhem in their quest for glory. Its secondary selling point was a robust and open-ended online mode, where players could create their own character and participate in myriad activities with and against their friends and strangers for fame, money, and clout. This is the mode that has kept GTA going in the years since its release, and it is the mode that has seen the most improvements and updates as well. I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time in it myself, but it was always the story of Michael, Trevor, and Franklin that drew me in overall.

-Tales from the Borderlands     Tales from the Borderlands is the only Telltale game I'm putting in this whole list. Not for lack of quality on the other games' parts, but simply because this one has to be my favorite. For those unfamiliar, Borderlands is a series of FPS games that take place far in the future on the fringes of space; the titular Borderlands. It follows a revolving door of ragtag Vault Hunters, people who go in search of mythical, alien "vaults" that are rumored to contain vast amounts of treasure. They are incredibly popular, addicting looter shooters that match satisfying gunplay with beautiful cell-shaded graphics, topped off with charming and funny characters and not too shabby storytelling. Telltale games, on the other hand, are traditional point and click adventure games, released in episodic formats and usually broken down into seasons. They focus on storytelling first and foremost, showcasing incredibly compelling narratives influenced by player choice. You'd think, then, that these two dichotomous formats wouldn't pair well together at all, but Tales from the Borderlands proves that sentiment is wildly false. Tales from the borderlands took what was great about previous telltale games, and matched it perfectly to an original tale set in the Borderlands universe. It weaves an incredibly compelling narrative, filled with equal parts humor and feeling, and manages to tell one of the best Borderlands stories to date.

2015

    I don't have a lot to say about 2015. The new generation was still going strong and saw some truly excellent games grace its shelves, many of whom are going to appear below.

-Bloodborne    2015 kicked off incredibly strong with Bloodborne, the latest instant classic from the studio behind the equally popular Dark Souls franchise. Bloodborne melds the skill-oriented, punishing combat and exploration heavy maps of the Souls games with an eldritch, psychological atmosphere, a match so perfect it went together like peanut butter and chocolate. To espouse the story of Bloodborne would be an effort in itself, but  I shall do my best to summarize it; Shirking the more medieval settings of the Souls games before it, Bloodborne sees players navigating the victorian gothic town of Yarnham, a city plagued by beasts and monsters. It is these monsters you are tasked with dispatching, taking on the role of a Hunter of Beasts, sent to cleanse the town of that which ails it. But not is all as it seems, and the beasts may not be the only monsters Yarnham has to offer. Outside of its interpretive yet incredibly strong narrative, Bloodborne offered equally polished gameplay, iterating on the previously mentioned combat from prior dark souls games to create a punishing yet wildly satisfying gameplay loop that was easy to learn yet hard to master. Bloodborne forced players to always be on their guard but gave them no shield or barrier with which to do so, believing that offense was the greatest defense, making success hinge on your willingness to fight and your skill in surviving the nightmares that Yarnham had to offer. A melding of horror, action, and exploration, Bloodborne was a true success, cementing itself for years to come as a top tier action-RPG, and saw countless fans that remain dedicated to it to this day.

-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt     I'm going to be blunt; This is one of my favorite games of the last generation. It is a top tier RPG, made up of an incredibly charming cast of characters, a beautiful open world, and a thrilling, fantastical narrative that all come together to make one of the best games to release in the last seven years. Though a sequel to not only two prior games, but also a long line of books, The Witcher 3 was surprisingly friendly to newcomers, of which I was one at the time. Despite its pedigree, I felt right at home in the world of the Witcher, quickly picking up on what I had missed in its long and storied life. The Witcher 3 puts players in the role of Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher, a magically enhanced human tasked with routing out monsters that threaten the world of man. This time around, Geralt is searching for his ward, Ciri, as he navigates a world fraught with monsters and men in equal measure. what starts as a simple search for a missing friend quickly blossoms into an adventure for the fate of the world itself. Though a fantasy RPG at its heart, the witcher manages to tell some particularly grounded and human stories, and this game is no exception. One moment will see you stalking a beast out in the wild, the next will see you navigating political intrigue in the courts of royalty. But it all flows together to create one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and one that earned a not inconsiderable amount of well-deserved praise when it first debuted back in 2015.

-Assassin's Creed Syndicate     Hot off the heels of the muddied AC Unity, Syndicate was the last proper Assassin's Creed game before the franchise would experience a massive genre and gameplay shift in its next entry. Where Unity saw too much focus on graphics and not enough care anywhere else, Syndicate finely balances all of its parts to create an impressive experience overall. This time around, players get to visit London, at the tail end of its industrial revolution. Out goes flintlocks and swords, in came steam and steel. This entry sees players in the role of both Evie and Jacob Frye, siblings fresh off their induction into the Assassin Brotherhood, tasked with dispatching justice on their Templar foes across London. The setting isn't the only big change for this game, as Syndicate saw an overhaul in both visual quality, scale, and gameplay. London feels lived large and lived in, with plenty of ground to explore and streets filled with people going about their day-to-day. Missions are split between Jacob and Evie both, with some allowing you to pick and choose and others forcing you into the shoes of one or the other as they work together to clean up the city. It innovated on the traditional gameplay loop, with this game having you going from borough to borough, toppling its templar leaders and expanding your sphere of influence with the aid of historical figures like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Nikola Tesla. These famous faces are not the only people lending the Fryes their helping hand, as Syndicate also put the Fryes in charge of their own street gang, a ragtag group of brawlers and scouts that would come to their aid at the press of a button. Most times, conquering a borough involved you and your gang scrapping it out with those of the templar order, dusting knuckles to see who got the final say in the control of the area. This may seem at odds with the traditionally stealth-oriented approach prior games focused on, but that side of the game was not neglected either. Assassination missions saw fine-tuning and innovation as well, with players able to plan out and partake in uniquely tailored kills that matched the locale and personality of their target, from disguising yourself as a scientific cadaver to kill a corrupt doctor to allying with a guard and feigning capture to infiltrate and kill a target in the Tower of London. The game saw improvements out of combat as well, with Syndicate receiving a large overhaul in its parkour movement and general navigation. The Frye twins come equipped with a grappling hook that allows for speedy travel across London's many rooftops, while ground travel was made all the more expedient with the inclusion of horse-drawn carriages. The general parkour itself was also tuned, allowing for freer player movement and tighter directional control. All of this to say, Syndicate saw some truly welcomed improvements, iterating on the legacy and creating a lasting impression that stands up as one of the better games of the franchise.

-Star Wars Battlefront     While I've spoken of a Battlefront on this blog before, this is not that same game. Rather, this is Battlefront 2015, a soft reboot to the previous Battlefront line of games for the new generation of consoles. This Star Wars Battlefront was helmed and developed by Dice, famed for the Battlefield franchise, a line of competent and entertaining military-focused first-person shooters. They were known for solid campaigns, but more importantly, massive scale competitive multiplayer modes. This pedigree is shown heavily in Battlefront, with the game sporting 64 players competitive multiplayer, with teams taking on the roles of either the empire or the rebellion as they fight their way through maps taken straight from the star wars universe, from the snowy plains of Hoth to the immense forests of Endor and everywhere in between. The game was replete with game modes and had the ability to be played in either first or third person. Players were given access to a modest selection of in-universe weaponry, and could even take the role of recognizable star wars heroes on occasion. Visually, the game was stunning, with incredibly faithful and detailed recreations from everything to weapons to the maps themselves. It felt like a genuine passion project, built from the ground up by competent developers and made for fans and first-timers alike. Battlefront, much like many games on this list, has since been usurped by a sequel but remains an incredibly competent shooter and a genuinely fun game to play.

2016

    While 2015 saw the release of some truly impressive games, 2016 was a genuine powerhouse of a year. It saw the rise to prominence of Virtual Reality, through the oculus rift and the PlayStation VR. 2016 also saw the first re-released console of the current generation, in the form of the Playstation 4 Pro, a trend that Xbox would follow as well, seeing the release of 2016's Xbox One S, and in 2017, the Xbox One X. These were touted as faster, better performing, better-looking consoles than their base model predecessors, offering several enhancements to graphical fidelity and console performance, running games even better than they already did. And with these new consoles came an all-star suite of excellent games, a multitude of instant classics from big-name studios and fresh indie developers alike. Many of the games that released this year are ones I've individually covered before, but they still deserve their spot in this article. So without further ado, here are some of the most noteworthy games of 2016.

-Oxenfree     Where Bloodborne was the standout hit that kicked off 2015, Oxenfree did the exact same thing for 2016. Developed by the California based indie team at Night School Studios, Oxenfree is a supernaturally infused, slice of life adventure game that follows Alex, a witty, rebellious, soon to be high school graduate as she makes her way to the fictional Edwards Island, accompanied by her best friend Ren and new stepbrother Jonah. This small group of friends is meeting up with what they assume will be a large group to have a weekend bash, But what was supposed to be a boisterous weekend party turns out to just be two extra guests; Clarissa, a fellow student who has ties to Alex, and Nona, a mild-mannered girl who just so happens to be Ren's current crush. Their modest get together quickly goes south when Alex uses a small handheld radio to tune into a weird signal emanating from the island, unleashing the spirits of a sunken military submarine, long since lost at sea. These wayward souls possess one of the kids and scatter the rest across the island, forcing Alex to uncover the mystery of their death and find a way to save her friends and escape the island. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, taking queues from classic ghost stories as much as it does retro coming of age stories, but it adapts these ideas masterfully. As for how it plays, Oxenfree is a side scrolling point and click adventure game, built around exploration and dialogue rather than complex game mechanics. It explores the interpersonal relationships between all the characters as much as it explores the haunted nature of the island itself. It easily shifts between these disparate tones, with a story filled with as many supernatural spooks as sarcastic teenage banter, seamlessly integrating player choice into the mix to create a truly excellent narrative. Oxenfree also features a high amount of replayability, with player choice going on to influence which of the game's many endings, as well as touting a new game plus mode that adds an extra smattering of content for your subsequent playthroughs. Oxenfree was a gift that kept on giving, more than earning its spot on this list.

-Firewatch     Firewatch is the first of several 2016 games I've previously written about, and while my opinion of it may have not been the highest initially, ruminating on it since has led me to a new appreciation of the time I spent with it. I would recommend reading my original review, but the short summary is thus; you play as Henry, a man on the run from his troubles who takes a job in the Shoshone national forest, keeping an eye on the wildlife and ensuring nothing is amiss. Your companion through the game is Delilah, a voice through your walkie talkie, somebody else who has taken the same job as you over in one of the adjacent watchtowers. Throughout the game you explore the forest, keeping the area safe while exploring the mysteries of the area you now inhabit, all the while developing a friendly relationship with Delilah as you go. It's a simple, but satisfying first-person adventure game, with an emotionally charged but comedic narrative about one man's journey to get lost and find himself.

-Stardew Valley     Stardew Valley is a retro-inspired simulator game about a down and out office worker who inherits their grandfather's farm in the titular Stardew Valley. They leave their mundane life behind and embark on a new journey in rural life, building up the farm from a rundown, untamed field into a bustling agricultural powerhouse, all the while making friends and forming bonds with the locals that you meet along the way. Stardew plays like a dream and features a stunning pixellated art style that complements its easygoing nature. Stardew is a game you can get lost in with ease, featuring an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop; It's a charmingly simple sim, one that encourages players to make their own way and their own choices, with a multitude of different ways to spend each in-game day. You're encouraged to play the game at your own pace, experiencing its range of content as it comes, rather than being railroaded into any one path for progression. It's a game that encourages exploration, diversity, and freedom, one that never really ends. Stardew made waves when it first came out for being such an open-ended, friendly experience, and it has since gone on to be heavily expanded upon by its developer, seeing releases on even more platforms and accruing even more fans along the way. It's a game that's easy to love and hard to put down, a comfort food game that makes you want to revisit it time and again.

-Titanfall 2     Where the original Titanfall was an excellent Xbox exclusive, Titanfall 2 bloomed the franchise into a multiplatform powerhouse. While it kept the excellent multiplayer modes, Titanfall 2's biggest change was the inclusion of a proper single-player story, and it's this inclusion that sees Titanfall 2 earn a place on my list. Titanfall 2's campaign is short, but sweet, seeing players take on the role of Jack Cooper, a pilot in training under the mentorship of an experienced soldier named Lastimosa. Unfortunately, on their first field mission, Lastimosa is killed, forcing Jack to embrace his future role as Pilot in an effort to survive and keep Lastimosa's experimental Titan out of enemy hands. This Titan, given the codename BT, is unique among Titans in that it can freely equip the various titan weapons and abilities, while simultaneously having an expanded AI that allows it to perform better in combat than its contemporaries. Together, Jack and BT make their way through the Frontier, coming into conflict with the varied enemy forces that they were originally sent in to stop. The campaign is brief, but what it lacks in lengths it makes up for in entertainment; the banter between Jack and BT makes for some great dialogue, and the campaign is perfectly built around the shooting and movement tech that made the first Titanfall so distinct, creating a series of levels that are just as built around gunfights as they are around precise first-person platforming. The game's environments are also beautiful to look at, varying from gritty industrial complexes to lush jungle environments that are as nice to look at as they are to maneuver through. Accompanying the stellar story mode is the recurring suite of multiplayer offerings, all of which have been upgraded and improved upon to complement the innovations of the sequel. Where Titanfall was good, Titanfall 2 is great, and it's a continual shame the series hasn't been given more time to shine.

-The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition     This is another game that I've previously covered on my blog, and it's also another technicality. See, Skyrim technically released back in 2011 but saw so many re-releases in the years afterward that at this point the only device that doesn't natively play it are phones. With this particular re-release, Bethesda sought to give console players the same quality of life changes that PC players had been seeing for years, namely graphical improvements, stability patches, and most importantly, player-created content. Skyrim had developed a bustling and dedicated community of creators in its years since release, all of whom had made countless mods for the game that ranged anywhere from simple tweaks to full-on expansion sized stories, and the special edition release marked the first time Xbox and Playstation fans could get their hands on this library of unique content. It created a situation where the already hefty game could be made all the more robust with fan contributions. Don't like the music? Download one of the unique music packs somebody put together. Want any number of pop culture-inspired items? Looking for some new quests to spice up this five-year-old game? It's all there and more.

-Watch Dogs 2     You might be wondering why I've put Watch Dogs 2 on this list while its predecessor is nowhere to be found. While the first Watch Dogs was a middling revenge story that happened to incorporate some neat hacking based features, Watch Dogs 2 is where the franchise really found itself. It follows the story of one Marcus Holloway, a bright and witty young man who's been framed for a crime he didn't commit by a faulty surveillance network that monitors the city of Los Angeles in a pseudo-dystopic future not so removed from our own. So Marcus does what he does best, hacks into the network and removes himself from it entirely, embarking on a campaign to take the whole system down with the help of white hat hacker collective Deadsec. What sets this game apart from its predecessor is the charisma of its cast and the far more varied ways in which you can use the game's technology to your advantage. Hijack cameras, remote control vehicles, manipulate streetlights, the world of Watch Dogs 2 is yours to manipulate all at the press of a button. And if hacking doesn't get you where you need to be, Marcus has some skills of his own; he's particularly skilled at parkour and quite handy at non-lethally dispatching foes with a weapon of his own design, a billiard ball attached to a bungee cord. And if playing non-lethally isn't your thing, you can also accumulate quite the arsenal of homemade weaponry, all 3D printed from the base of your hacker collective. Watch Dogs 2 is a game about a group of people trying to take down a corrupt system using whatever means they can. It's a witty, satirical, but surprisingly grounded story told across a beautiful open-world recreation of Los Angeles, one that drew me in far more than its predecessor ever managed to do.

2017

    2017 might not have had the same pedigree of games as its predecessor, but it did see the belated release of the latest current-gen console; The Nintendo Switch. A revolutionary step up from the Wii and Wii U, The Switch took the gaming world by storm thanks to its ability to seamlessly transition from a home console playing on your TV to a handheld console able to go with you anywhere. The Switch remains a staple of the console market to this day, easily standing tall next to the Playstation and Xbox consoles both new and old. Aside from the Switch, there was still a healthy collection of games for people to enjoy, some of which will be highlighted below.

-Night in the Woods     Night in the Woods marks yet another game I've personally reviewed, and also stands proud as one of my absolute favorites of this generation. A humble offering from indie studio Infinite Fall, it was a gorgeously animated sidescroller of an adventure game that followed college dropout Mae Borowski as she returns to her small home town of Possum Springs to rekindle old friendships and reconnect with her family. Despite its anthropomorphic cast, it tells a genuinely human story, one that perfectly reflected what it feels like to revisit old haunts; how things can be so familiar yet change so much, seamlessly blending an emotionally charged narrative with a dark, suspenseful hometown mystery. Night in the Woods remains an absolutely incredible game to experience, showcasing themes like mental illness, sexuality, and identity through the lens of youthful wit and clever, dry sarcasm. I haven't played many truly perfect games, but Night in the Woods came damned close to being one.

-Kingdom Hearts 1.5/2.5     Ah yes, another collection of re-releases. Kingdom Hearts technically started back on the PS2, with the release of Kingdom Hearts 1. From there it blossomed into an incredibly diverse and lengthy franchise that saw releases on consoles and handhelds alike, from the PS2 to the Gameboy Advance. What these re-releases did was bundle all of the Kingdom Hearts games into one complete package, and tossed them all onto the PlayStation 4. It created a cohesive collection for this storied saga and presented it all in an easy to follow order that anyone could pick up and work through. Both games also offered the previously exclusive Final Mix content to the west for the first time, expanding on the already hefty games with more difficulty options, more enemies, more story content, and more challenges to keep the fun going and going. But what is Kingdom Hearts, I hear some people ask. Kingdom hearts is a series of action RPGs that follow the adventures of heroes known as Keyblade Wielders as they fight against the forces of darkness that threaten the worlds beyond. They play great, feature an especially enjoyable cast of characters, and tells a heartwarming story of good and evil. A joint project between Square Enix and Disney, Kingdom Hearts features an abundance of Disney characters and worlds, crossing over with various Square Enix properties in this epic struggle against light and dark. That's the easiest summary of the story by far, as delving any deeper would almost certainly confuse the casual reader, but let me say this; The Kingdom Hearts games are fantastic, well worth the time, and with these remastered collections, more approachable than ever.

-Nier Automata     Nier Automata is a tough game to talk about in-depth, on account of just how easy it is to spoil for people who haven't experienced it. But it was also one of my favorite games of 2017, so I'll do my best to give it its due. Nier Automata is somewhat of a hybrid game; it blends so many genres together but somehow manages to do each one of them justice. Equal parts open world, action RPG, Bullet Hell, and more, Nier Automata takes place in the far, far future, in the ruins of earth. Humanity has long since abandoned the planet and sought shelter on the moon, entrusting a group of humanoid androids to defend the planet from an encroaching alien threat. The story follows several of these androids; 2B, 9S, and A2, as they wander the ruins of humanity and fight back against the robot foes that the aliens use as soldiers. It tells an amazing story that all but demands subsequent replays to get the full breadth of its narrative weight across, with each subsequent playthrough seen through the eyes of one of the other characters. Equal parts sci-fi story and humanist breakdown, Nier Automata is a deconstructive, philosophical pondering wrapped in the guise of an anime action game. That's not to say it doesn't wear the disguise well; Nier Automata plays like a dream, with stylish combat and an accompanying score that makes for easy listening both in and out of the game. It's another must-play, especially with the remake/remaster of its predecessor soon to release in 2021.

-Persona 5/Persona 5 Royal     Persona 5 is an absolute joy of an RPG. It's slick, stylish, has a superb soundtrack, and tells a top tier story to boot. You take the role of a down-and-out high school kid who's been forced to transfer from his hometown in the countryside to Tokyo, thanks to a bogus police incident. Labeled a criminal and looked down on by the adults of his new school, the protagonist goes about bettering himself, raising his grades, and making the most of his new life in a new city. He forms bonds and relationships with the people around him, making fast friends with many of his classmates and even some chill adults along the way. Oh, he can also use a supernatural phone app to dive into the corrupted hearts of society, utilizing a special power to battle the evils that lie within and force them to change their ways and confess their deeds. Herein lies the dichotomy of the Persona 5; Much like the other Persona games that preceded it, the story it tells is a hybrid of supernatural mystery and coming of age drama, blending mundane highschool life with a fantasy adventure. It is equal parts life simulator and stylish role-playing game, as you and your friends do their best to repair a broken system using the fantastical powers they've been imbued with. These powers are the titular Persona, powerful creatures that embody the sides of ourselves we keep hidden behind the masks of society. These personas allow one to do battle with the shadows that lurk within these corrupted hearts, creatures that take on myriad forms inspired by religion and myth. Wielding this power, they embark on a journey of social reform, fighting a revolving door of less than scrupulous individuals that all culminating in a battle to change society itself. In spite of its overtly fantastical elements, the story it tells is decidedly grounded and surprisingly relatable; at its core, Persona 5 is about a collective of disenfranchised individuals trying their best to make it through life and change things for the better, a story that was and remains especially poignant and a welcomed escapist fantasy to fall into time and again.

-Slime Rancher     Slime Rancher is an adorable simulator game and one I've praised before on my blog. It blends first-person shooter elements with the farming simulator genre, tasking players to manage and explore a planet on the fringes of space that's almost entirely populated by a race of creatures known as Slime. Slimes come in a varied selection of types and sizes, but all of them have one universal similarity; they all produce a resource known as a Plort that you can trade to an intergalactic trade center for currency, which in turn allows you to upgrade your slime farm and expand into new territories. The gameplay loop is nothing but fun, with each new expansion bringing in new species of slime that you can wrangle and combine to make hybrids that in turn create more valuable plorts. As you make your way through the planet, you start uncovering logs left behind by your farm's prior owner, that weave a narrative of love and loss, a story that drives you forward in your quest if only to see how it concludes. You're not alone in this quest, though, as you have your slimes for company as well as several long-distance conversations via the computer in your home between friends and fellow farmers alike. Subsequent game updates have only expanded upon the experience, seeing new opportunities for trade, daily activities, and more, making an already invigorating and enjoyable game all the more so.

-Destiny 2     It's no secret that Destiny 2 had a complicated launch window. Many fans felt that Destiny 2 left too much of what made its predecessor great on the cutting room floor, electing instead to reset the player base back to zero and tell a brand new story. While I missed some of what Destiny 2 left behind, I was still somebody who found a lot of joy in Destiny 2, as evidenced by the thousand-plus hour count it tells me I've poured into it since its 2017 release. The game has also seen countless improvements and additions in the years since its release, adopting a new seasonal model and even going free to play after a point. Most recently, Destiny 2 saw the release of Beyond Light, the first in a new trilogy of expansions that hopes to continue the game forward over the next few years. So, while it might have had a rough start, it still remains destiny at its core, making it one of the best shooters on the market, coupled with a satisfying loot hunt and a rewarding structure that continues to keep its fans coming back for more. That alone lands it in my list of games for 2017, and the generation as a whole.

-The Sims 4    Though this game technically saw the light of day back in 2014, I didn't end up playing it until its console release here in 2017. Thus, I place it here. There isn't a lot of complication with Sims 4. If you're at all familiar with its predecessors, you know exactly what to expect. An engaging simulator game, in which you craft an individual or family and set them on the path of life, influencing them as they go or leaving them to their own fates so as to see what happens. You tailor their looks, personality, aesthetic...it's a premier example of micromanagement as entertainment. This installment shirked some of the advancements made by its predecessor but still manages to be a robust and enjoyable game all on its own, made all the better by continued additional content releases in the years since its premiere. It's a game that keeps on giving and seems primed to continue doing so for some time yet.

2018

    2018 saw the release of some genuinely top-shelf games, with the Switch continuing to establish itself against its contemporaries, while the Playstation continued to add excellent exclusives to its lineup.

-Far Cry 5     The Far Cry games have always been known for being competent shooters with large open worlds, and this one is no exception. Shirking the usual foreign locales, Far Cry 5 takes place a lot closer to home, seeing players cleaning up the rural backwoods of Montana, taking place in the fictional Hope County. In it, you play as a rookie cop sent in to apprehend an evangelical doomsday cultist; John Seed, The Father. This arrest quickly goes south, leaving you as the last lawman willing to stand up to the Seed family and free Hope County from their grasp. To do so, you systematically break the hold of his lieutenants, dismantling their bases of operations and taking down his associates in a slow climb to face him once more. Along the way you make friends and allies out of the locals, people with a similar drive to rise up and clean up their county. As far as the gameplay, Far Cry 5 is a mix of FPS and RPG elements, with a rudimentary character customization system and plenty of powerful guns to acquire. You level up and earn skills that augment your preferred style of play, be it stealthy or over the top, all in your pursuit of justice. Augmenting this quest is the world it takes place in, with players exploring lush forests, vibrant fields, and the general detritus of rural America. Hope county feels real, with looks to match, despite its farcical tone and over the top gameplay. All of this came together to make a Far Cry that felt fresh and fun, a genuine step forward for the franchise.

-God of War     Prior games in the God of War series were not known for subtlety, nuance, or humanity. Rather, they were violent hack and slash games that featured the titular God of War, Kratos, seeking and exacting bloody revenge on the greek pantheon for their slights against him and his family. They were by no means bad games, but they weren't what I would consider masterpieces either. Then, we were given God of War (2017). This soft reboot/Sequel for the franchise saw Kratos embarking on a distinctly more grounded story than its predecessors, navigating the perils of fatherhood while on a journey to deliver his late wife's ashes in the world of the Norse Pantheon. He is joined by his son, Atreus, a bright but rebellious young boy who seeks only to prove his worth to the gruff and distant Kratos. This more human story is accompanied by a more grounded approach to combat and gameplay; while it retains the emphasis on action, it feels more deliberate than prior entries, shifting the combat style from the hack and slash nature to a more measured approach, with players needing to conserve stamina and plan their attacks lest they get easily overwhelmed. The game also incorporates a more open world structure than its predecessors, seeing Kratos and his son freely traversing their environment, unlocking shortcuts, and finding means to double back on past areas in a level progression that feels more like a Souls game than the God of Wars of old. All of this came together to make a game that felt genuinely innovative, a fresh new direction for a pre-established franchise that was as welcoming to newcomers as it was to prior fans.

-Donut County     Donut County is a silly, short indie puzzle game in which you play as a mischievous raccoon delivering "donuts" to the unsuspecting populous around him. These donuts are, in fact, large sinkholes that expand as they eat different objects, eventually growing to swallow the entirety of the lot they were sent to. The core gameplay lies in this concept, with you controlling the various sinkholes from level to level, figuring out the order in which to consume the various objects on each map in order to grow in size. As the game progresses you unlock various upgrades to these sinkholes, like the ability to spit things out of them, adding new layers to the simple puzzles the game encapsulates. It isn't a terribly long game, as already said, only taking an hour or two to finish, but it cemented itself as a charming indie game amidst a sea of big-name titles.

-Marvel's Spider-Man     Developed by Insomniac, previously mentioned in the Sunset Overdrive excerpt, Marvel's Spider-Man is a rare example of a genuinely amazing superhero game. In it, players take on the role of Peter Parker, a Spider-Man who has already established himself as the hero we know and love, but one that still has room to grow and learn. What starts off as a triumphant takedown of one Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, soon blossoms into a complicated web that involves a shady group known as the Demons that Spider-Man must stop from wreaking havoc on the city. But the game isn't just about the Heroics of Spider-Man; The Game showcases the best aspects of Peter's character, splitting the game equally between his time as Spider-Man and his normal life as Peter Parker, a scientist working under the apprenticeship of one Otto Octavius, while simultaneously working with his Aunt May at the local Homeless Shelter and trying to rekindle his forlorn relationship with Mary Jane. All of this unfurls simultaneously, weaving a web that melds incredible movement with fast and stylish combat, stellar characters, and a heartwarming tale, cementing itself not only as a great game but also as one of the best Spider-Man stories out there.

-The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories     The Missing is a heartfelt, down to earth story told through the lens of a grisly but goofy premise. In it, you play as the titular JJ Macfield, a young girl who goes on a trip with her close friend Emily to a remote island off the coast of Maine. What is supposed to be a fun excursion takes a turn for the worse, as Emily goes missing, leaving JJ to track her down. Unfortunately, this quest quickly leads JJ to her death...but not for long. Resurrected by a bolt of lightning, JJ gains the ability to remove various parts of her body, as the island quickly goes from an idyllic wonderland to a psychedelic nightmare. Undeterred, JJ uses her newfound ability to traverse the island, ever searching for her lost friend. The Missing might sound like a horror game on paper, but it uses these macabre themes to tell a distinctly grounded story about dealing with personal identity and navigating a hostile and unfamiliar world, culminating in a heartbreakingly bittersweet twist that I won't spoil here. This is all to say; the Missing is an excellent game. It's a joy to play, despite its harrowing content, and it manages to convey its themes in a way that feels genuine and meaningful, telling a story that's still relevant to this day.

-Super Smash Brothers Ultimate     Smash games have always been good, and Ultimate more than earns its moniker. This is the Ultimate Smash game; iterating on its predecessors without changing anything for the worst, Ultimate is an unabashed love letter to the series as a whole, incorporating every character and every map from every prior game all in one upgraded package. If you don't know what Smash is, let me explain; Nintendo is known for a lot of fantastic first-party titles, from Mario to Kirby to Metroid, and countless others. Smash takes all of these well-loved characters, throws them in an arena, and has them fight for supremacy. Debuting on the Nintendo 64, Smash has seen one major game release for every Nintendo console since, culminating in Smash Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch. As earlier stated, it features an absolutely enormous roster of playable characters, featuring every fighter from the previous games and several new additions for good measure. This roster was only further expanded with the release of the fighter passes, seeing an additional eleven fighters across the two that have thus far been released, ranging from surprise hits like Persona 5's Joker to fan favorites like Banjo and Kazooie. While not featuring a traditional story mode, Ultimate makes good use of its characters in a suite of different game modes that can be played both alone or with friends, online or locally. It's a fantastic party game and an equally praiseworthy fighter, rewarding skilled play but catering to casual players and newcomers alike.

2019

    2019 marked the slowdown for the current generation, shadowed by the whispers of a new age of consoles. This made for a simple year for games, but one no less stacked with noteworthy games and worthwhile experiences.

-Kingdom Hearts 3     After years of waiting, 2019 finally saw the release of Kingdom Hearts 3. The wait might have been long, but the game delivered on the hype, simultaneously closing out the narrative arc that had begun so long ago with Kingdom Hearts 1 and beginning a new chapter for fans to look forward to. In service of this goal, Kingdom Hearts 3 wrapped up the majority of dangling storylines from all the previous games, while still leaving a handful of mysteries to chase into the future of the franchise. It featured a new suite of Disney worlds to explore, and incorporated Pixar properties for the first time in franchise history. The new content accompanied refined and polished gameplay mechanics and a complete visual overhaul, while still retaining the heart and soul that defined the games thus far. It all came together well enough but was later expanded upon through the release of Re: Mind, the game's beefy expansion that rebalanced gameplay and added in hours of new story content to better cap off the story. All told, Kingdom Hearts 3 was another great game, building on a legacy that seems like it will continue well into the future.

-Devil May Cry 5     For those not in the know, Devil May Cry is a series of games that follow the life of Dante, a half-demon sword for hire as he does his best to kill monsters and eat pizza. It's a franchise known for skillful, precise, stylish combat mixed with goofy, over the top stories, usually involving Dante and his associates contending with the fallout of his family, the demon king Sparda and his brother Vergil. While not a flawless franchise, it saw several excellent releases over the years, but then went depressingly dormant. Devil May Cry 5 was the perpetual waiting game, but 2019 saw it finally come out, accompanied by mass acclaim and praise. it really seemed like all the years of waiting were well rewarded. DMCV features three playable characters; Nero, a fellow demon hunter first introduced in Devil May Cry 4, Dante, the series' staple protagonist, and lastly the mysterious V, a newly introduced character for this game. Together the three were tasked with working together to take down the demonic Qliphoth and its master, Urizen, an immensely powerful demon lord. The game looks gorgeous, marking the first time the games have looked truly next-gen. Accompanying this boost in visual fidelity is the franchise's staple; combat was finely tuned to be more stylish than ever, with each character having a variety of tricks at their disposal to dispatch the demon hoard that stood between them and Urizen. Devil May Cry was back, and it was better than ever.

-Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night     Bloodstained is the spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, helmed by its most prominent contributor Koji Igarashi. Starting its life as nothing more than a simple Kickstarter, it blew through its funding goal and a few years later saw its release on the current generation of consoles.  It's not a particularly complicated game, but it is particularly fun, with it adapting many of the staples that made Castlevania so great. As a spiritual successor to Castlevania, the games play very similarly; both are side scrolling hack and slash games that take place in fantastical gothic castles, and both see protagonists with varied combat and magical aptitude on their quest to take down the castle's owner. In the case of Castlevania, that owner is Dracula, but in the case of Bloodstained, players are tasked with defeating Gebel, an alchemically modified human known as a Shardbinder. You play as another one of these Shardbinders, Miriam. Miriam and Gebel are the lone survivors of an alchemical experiment that gave them the ability to wield a power called shards, crystalline embodiments of demonic essence. The narrative is simple, but the gameplay is where it shines; as players progress through Gebel's castle, you can accumulate more and more shards, all of which give Miriam access to new abilities, abilities that go on to aid her in her continued exploration. This creates a very satisfying loop; explore the castle, collect shards, unlock more of the castle to explore. Augmenting her shards are a suite of craftable and upgradeable weaponry, a selection of melee and firearms that allows players to diversify their preferred playstyle and experiment with what works best in any given situation. Subsequent content additions have added even more to the game, in the form of new modes, difficulties, and playable characters, adding to the replayability and longevity of what was already an excellent experience. Despite starting from simple roots, Bloodstained rose up and became something all on its own, paying homage to its inspirations while cementing a name for itself as a new staple of the genre.

-Catherine Full Body     While originally releasing in 2011, 2019 saw an expanded re-release complete with new characters, new stages, and hours of extra story content. At its core, Catherine and its Full Body re-release are unique gems in the gaming world. One part puzzle game, one part dating simulator, it blends the complicated world of relationships with macabre block puzzles, all the while weaving a beautiful tapestry about one man's quest for love. In it, you take the role of Vincent Brooks, an unambitious 30-something simply going through the motions of life. He has a steady relationship and a stable job, a group of colorful and enthusiastic friends, but it's clear from the start just how much he's stagnated. His current girlfriend, Katherine, is starting to ask the big questions; marriage, children, their future. Unable to parse these ideas, he loses himself in his time at the local bar with his pals, shooting the shit and getting sloshed. That is, until, a new flame suddenly appears; the seductive temptress Catherine. One thing leads to another, and it comes to pass that they spend the night together...maybe. This is where the game's narrative really kicks off, with Vincent having to navigate the day to day, attempting to reconcile his long-time love with his possible new fling. This story is juxtaposed against the game's core gameplay loop, which sees Vincent forced to climb the deadly tower of babel each night in his dreams. To do this, players must stack blocks and avoid the perils and traps that each stage presents, making a mad dash to the top of the tower before the bottom collapses in on itself and Vincent plummets to his doom. For you see, this isn't an ordinary dream; if you die on the tower, you die in real life, making this desperate ascent a race for his very life. Each stage of the tower represents the game's various core themes, and each gets more and more complicated as the game progresses. In the interim of these climbs, players are set about answering multiple-choice inquiries that influence the direction of Vincent's relationships, with each answer adjusting a conspicuous morality meter that eventually comes to determine which of the 8 endings you could attain. With Full Body, this number was increased to 13, to adjust for the inclusion of a new paramour; Rin, a mysterious piano player that sets up shop in Vincent's favorite bar. Both Catherine and its Full Body re-release are excellent games, but I was especially smitten with the layers of extra content and story that Full Body brought to the table, additions that made Full Body one of my favorite games of 2019.

-Untitled Goose Game     Untitled goose game is a simple premise on paper; players take on the role of an ornery, mischievous goose as it wreaks havoc through a small English town. Equal parts puzzle and stealth game, the goose has a laundry list of tasks it seeks to complete, from stealing hats off people's heads to infiltrating the local pub. It's not a long game by any means, but it has a ton of replayability in the form of additional tasks and challenges that only present themselves after your first playthrough. These range from time-based completions to additional bouts of mischief and all of them are incredibly satisfying to chase down. Untitled Goose Game has a quaint, painterly art style that compliments the charming simplicity of the game's premise, accompanied by a dynamic, classically-toned score that rises and falls in prominence as you go about your goosely business. All said Untitled Goose Game is a genuine treat, a brief but whimsical game that's just about having fun and goofing around.

2020

    It's no secret that 2020 has been a rough year for a lot of folks. Between a pandemic, political controversy, and general drudgery, it's a year that feels like it can't end soon enough. But in spite of it all, 2020 was also a fantastic year for games. Serving as the last hurrah for the Xbox One and Playstation 4, we saw the release of some truly excellent stories that kept players going through the long months of an otherwise mediocre year.

-Animal Crossing: New Horizons     Releasing right at the start of widespread quarantine, New Horizons supplied people with something they couldn't easily do in their own lives; escape. Animal Crossing New Horizons is the perfect escapist fantasy for the year it released in, seeing players partaking in an island getaway in the hopes of colonizing and forming an idyllic town on an untamed paradise.  At their core, the animal crossing games are simple simulators. You create your character by selecting a few presets; hair, eyes, skin color, and then you're let free to explore your new locale. With this latest release, that locale is the aforementioned island, a small paradise in the sea dotted by trees and rivers, accented by flowers and weeds. You start your life on this new Island with a handful of other residents; the Nook Family, the proprietors of this island venture, and two random villagers who are looking to make a life on this island the same as you. Things start small, with everyone working together to set up tents and create a bonfire and find some food for a welcome party. Afterward, the game synchronizes itself to your console's date and time and sets you off on your way. Unlike other simulators on this list, Animal Crossing is a unique breed, running concurrently to the real world, continuously progressing in real-time. Flowers grow, trees produce fruit, and each day is a new adventure. It follows the general turn of the seasons for your respective hemisphere, celebrating holidays and alternating available activities with each passing day. As for what you can do yourself, the opportunities are legion; you can catch bugs, go fishing, search for fossils, chat up your villagers, visit other islands, and much more. As you progress, more ventures open their doors to you; catch enough bugs and fish, and you can elect to have a museum built to showcase your finds. Collect enough resources, and you can build new furniture and create plots of land that encourage more villagers to come and move to your island. Everything you do is in service of continued growth, but also serves just as simple fun, a charming, easygoing distraction from the concerns of the day-to-day.

-Final Fantasy VII Remake     The Final Fantasy franchise is a long and storied one, replete with highs and lows. One such high was 1997's Final Fantasy 7, a game that quickly cemented itself as a fan favorite and an absolute classic. Now, in 2020, FF7 is back...sort of. See, FF7 Remake is the first in a line of games that will eventually go on to tell the entirety of the original FF7's story, which means that this release is only the first portion of a much larger narrative. Adapting what was originally the first few hours of the original game, FF7 Remake expands upon the opening section of its predecessor, simultaneously remaking the old content for modern audiences and adding in new aspects for old fans. FF7 Remake improves upon the original in practically every way, serving as a genuine remake that still manages to retain what made that original game so memorable and important to fans. The game might be new, but the heart is the same; FF7 Remake follows the story of Cloud Strife, an ex SOLDIER turned mercenary hired by an eclectic group known as Avalanche to dismantle a local power plant that's poisoning the planet. What starts as a well-intentioned but extreme case of eco-terrorism quickly explodes (pun intended) into a much larger story that sees Cloud and Avalanche bringing the fight straight to the corrupt Shinra Corporation and beyond, culminating in a battle against fate itself. Because this remake only covers a portion of what will go on to be a much larger narrative, it only scratches the surface of what makes the original FF7 so great, but it does so with gusto; the game plays and looks better than ever, bringing with it a heartfelt and compelling narrative that keeps you hooked the whole way through.

-Minecraft Dungeons     Minecraft Dungeons takes the charming, voxel visuals and world of Minecraft and melds them seamlessly with a charming, easygoing dungeon crawler that's approachable for casual and experienced gamers alike. Where Minecraft is an open-ended sandbox game about building and exploring a blocky world, Minecraft Dungeons sees a collective of heroes on a quest to defeat the evil Illager, a powerful sorcerer whose armies have been sweeping the land leaving destruction in their wake. It's not a very complicated story about good and evil, but it doesn't have to be; Minecraft Dungeons prioritizes it's simple and easy to master gameplay first and foremost. You collect loot, battle recognizable Minecraft enemies, and progress through a litany of stages on your way to fight the big bad. It's not very long but encourages you to play it time and again, collecting better gear and trying your hand at the many difficulty levels for additional challenges. It's not the best looking or the best playing game that released this year, but it had heart and made for a short and entertaining way to pass the time.

-Ghost of Tsushima    Ghost of Tsushima isn't a game to scoff at. One of the best looking games of the generation, this PS4 exclusive is one part historical timepiece, one part action-adventure, and one part stealth game. It follows the story of Jin Sakai, a samurai and one of the last survivors of the Mongol invasion of his home island of Tsushima, Japan. Left to die, he is found and nursed back to health by a wayward thief who teaches Jin the art of stealth and subterfuge, seeing him off on his quest for bloody revenge on the Mongol invaders that have encroached upon his homeland. To do this, he must first build up a fighting force of equal minded, skilled warriors, all while dismantling the various camps and operations the Mongols have set up in the absence of the defeated Samurai army. Jin can approach this in one of two ways; relying on his prowess as a formidable Samurai, Jin can challenge the many enemies in the game to flashy yet precise sword combat, or he can utilize the recently learned skills of stealth, infiltrating their encampments and silently picking the Mongols off one by one. There's no wrong answer to how you choose to play, although it takes some time for Jin to accept his new roles as both Samurai and assassin. Both methods of play feel equally as stellar, too; Combat in this game is incredibly polished, finely tuned swordplay that focuses on timing and well-planned strikes to dispatch your foes with ease, while the stealth feels tense and requires a distinctly tactical approach, planning your routes and cleverly dispatching foes so as to not raise suspicion. But the game isn't just about taking out your enemies. Ghost of Tsushima boasts one of the most beautiful open worlds I've ever experienced, a vibrant and gorgeous landscape dotted with myriad activities and side quests for you to explore and enjoy. One moment, you could be doing battle with a wayward group of Mongols or bandits, while the next could see you tracking a friendly fox to a shrine, composing a haiku in the shadow of a large tree, or recuperating your strength at a small hot spring while you ruminate on your adventures thus far. Ghost of Tsushima is an incredibly varied game, alternating between intense highs and calming lows, all coming together to become one of the best games of the last generation.

-Spiritfarer     While I have not finished this game, it more than deserves recognition on this list. In it, you play as Stella, a young girl who takes over as the ferryman for the River Styx once Charon retires to the afterlife, tasked with providing for the wayward souls who live on the river as you ferry them to their final rest. To do this, Stella must collect various resources and build up her ship, outfitting it with living spaces and various commodities tailored to her current passengers. These aforementioned passengers will, in turn, begin to open up to Stella, tasking her with making certain foods or visiting different locales, all in an effort to give these wayward souls a proper farewell on their trip to the afterlife. Spiritfarer is a simple simulator game about resource management and exploration that showcases a lovely, genuinely heartfelt story about love and loss, one that will put a smile on your face as easily as it brings a tear to your eye.

     And with that, I close out this hefty list, closing out the last generation. This compendium hardly scratches the surface of the last seven years' library, but hopefully, I did a good enough job remembering some of the games that made this last generation so great. There are a lot of games that I've still yet to play, resting in wait in my backlog for the time they get pulled out and given their due, but for now, this concludes my walk down memory lane. The last generation saw some excellent additions to the vast and ever-expanding library of video game history. Here's hoping the next several years can say the same. The start of the new consoles is off to a very promising start; in the last month or so alone we've seen excellent releases from both indie and big-name developers, fresh takes on old franchises, and new IPs alike. So, here's to the Last Generation, here's to the Next Generation, and here's to gaming overall; may it continue to thrive for years to come.

[fuse2dx]

July ‘20

Final Fantasy 7: Remake

Straight to it: this game is gorgeous. It’s the closest thing to playing a CG movie that I think I’ve ever experienced. Heck, it sounds great too - not that everything is perfect, but it’s clear that the sound team have been given a pretty wide remit to try new, weird, and wonderful ideas out with the original’s motifs and themes - which I have a lot of time for. Split out almost any given moment from its 40-hour runtime, and it’s really something to behold. 

Where it all gets a bit more mixed for me is in how much it’s weighed down by its own ambitions, and the trappings of AAA game design. Intentionally slow walk-and-talk sections, shimmying through narrow gaps, climbing ladders, and balancing across long beams all do their best to stifle your momentum and mask the load times for the grand scenes they usher in. Rather than the varied and open world of the FF7 you remember, this is an exhaustive deep dive into the tiniest part of that world, creating new stories out of it, but ultimately prompting a constant re-treading of environments in the process, ones that are already pretty repetitive in their look and feel. That big wide world you want to explore is tantalisingly out of reach, instead holding you to a linear run of cut scenes and set piece battles with the occasional hub for side quests. Having the entire game voiced means that for every scene that’s enhanced with by a particularly powerful performance, there’s a multitude more that are bogged down in daft, over-egged nonsense. 

The change from traditional JRPG battles to more action-based combat is a bit more subjective; characters control in pleasingly different ways, there’s clearly some depth to how party and materia configurations influence your outcomes, and it certainly helps demonstrate this heightened level of visual flair - but it’s got plenty of room for improvement. The camera clings far too closely to your character, and when locked on, really struggles to keep up in a lot of instances. While some enemy attacks are telegraphed, they’re easily missed from as a result of these failings. Sufficiently rough beat-downs can prove difficult to recover from too, in light of its rather restrictive re-imagining of what the ATB system should mean in a real-time situation.

It all feels very elaborate and self-celebratory, and not surprisingly so given how rabid the demand for its existence was in the first place. I’m all for a bit of change, and while I enjoyed a lot of it, so much of it hangs on what comes next - and I can’t help but worry that this project as a whole is an over-commitment. 

Streets of Rage 4

Given the first three games in the series released within a 3 year window, and it’s now been over 25 years since, it’s perhaps not the most surprising revelation to find this newest title heralds the biggest changes that the series has seen to date. Love it or hate it, there’s a very distinct, very modern visual style, and no amount of ‘Retro CRT’ filter is going to bring back your beloved pixels as you remember them. That’s not to say the visuals won’t create a similar impression on you, but as it happens, I’ve seen enough to know there’s a pretty broad church of opinion on what a modern Streets of Rage game should look like. It’s a similar tale with the audio; the original games are often held up as the pinnacle of what was possible with the Megadrive’s sound chip, and while plenty of inspiration has been taken from these cuts, there’s a much wider range of instrumentation and sequencing complexity that’s become possible with modern sound processing. Some tracks stand out, whereas others blend more into the background, but in general it fits well. Is it as bleeding-edge cool as the originals sounded at the time? Perhaps not. Does it still capture that Streets of Rage magic? It’s a damn good shot.

Aesthetics aside, characters stomp about with good weight, feel delightfully unique in how they are best played, and both giving and taking hits feels really chunky and convincing. Moves chain into one another nicely, and juggling works well; there’s plenty of opportunity to showboat with good usage of situational specials and environmental features without too much opportunity for thing to become silly. There’s a nice range of stages, and a complete run poses a well balanced challenge. A good range of modes and features make this stand out as a generous blend of old and new, and in total you end up with a pretty great product overall. I like it a lot. 

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

Supposedly put together on a pretty tight schedule, it’s no surprise that we found out about this only about a month before it launched. Unsurprising too, that it’s not much evolved from the first title. Zangetsu returns as lead, but supported by a new cast of companions, and eventually, in worst-kept-secret style, the rest of the first game’s cast too (they’re in the trailer, for heaven’s sake). The game’s eight levels are set out with multiple paths, designed intentionally to let different groups of these characters use their unique traversal powers to steer you down different routes - and while preferable to a totally linear setup, that’s not to say it changes things up enough to not get a little tiresome, either. Bosses do have harder variations in some modes but are not always the most fun to re-visit in the first place, given they vary wildly in challenge stakes, and are often best handled by experimenting with different character’s sub weapons until you find the one that’s exploitable. Chances are, turning on Hachi’s invincibility and just tanking your way through everything will do just that. 

Moment to moment things are still fun enough - particularly when you get in the spirit of things and experiment with different characters, rather than brute forcing your way through every scenario with the same one. The soundtrack isn’t quite as memorable, but is still plenty enjoyable. Despite the feeling that little’s new, it’s still a worthy release, and a good way to keep Bloodstained relevant in lieu of what’s likely to be a much longer development cycle before we see a proper follow-up to Ritual of the Night. 

Mother Russia Bleeds

A scrolling brawler it may be, but after the gloss Streets of Rage 4, it’s clear the two couldn’t be any further out of step tonally. The plot sits on top of an alt-1980s Russia, and revolves around a group of Romani street fighters out for revenge after being taken forcibly from their camp to be used as guinea pigs for a highly addictive, hallucinogenic drug... that just happens to grant them super-human strength. Smooth and sanitised this is not; the pixels are out in full force, and gritty, needle-fuelled ultra-violent thuggery is the order of the day. The tutorial running you through its range of moves is a succinct highlighting of this, where the first time you kneel in front of and pummel a blood-soaked opponent to death is handled in a way that’s genuinely quite striking, and yet is but is utterly inconsequential as you move on to fight your next. Weapons just crank this up tenfold, with chainsaws, grenades, rifles and the like having results akin to their real-world equivalents - with environments often left as a bloody mess of corpses, rather than a pretty picture with the aftermath faded from view.

The action is fast, almost frantic at first impression, but after some time adjusting, it begins to feel much more by intention, and manageable too. There’s a few options to mix up your combo endings - like pushing people back, or launching for a few more hits, but make no mistake that you’ll be focused more on crowd control by numbers rather than finesse. There’s a few neat ideas coming out of some of the game’s set pieces, and bosses are typically less dependent on your typical straight-up fighting skill, instead relying on your ability to determine the mechanical gimmicks needed to beat them - and this leads to them breaking things up nicely. The lack of one-on-one finesse might have been an initial detractor, but as the battles became bigger, and the stages became more interesting, I felt like the game came far more into its own. The game’s hard cocktail of downtrodden types pushed through a backdrop of sex, drugs, and violence feels a little too try-hard in places - and one does wonder how closely the team involved had been looking at Devolver’s other output before pursuing the theme - but it doesn’t take too much away from what’s actually a pretty refreshing example of this type of game.

[megaboy335]

Mega’s 2019 Top Anime List

Another year of anime has come and gone. This year I ended up watching a lot less due to the over saturation of Isekai and light novel anime, but there was still plenty to enjoy. As usual I consider any show that ended this year as a contender to be on my list. This is simply my opinion and there will be spoilers below.

1) Pokemon Sun & Moon

Starting this list with a show I watched for 3 years, Pokemon Sun and Moon was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with the Pokemon anime. It took the best aspects of XY and added loose animation to the mix. Ash and friends have never had so much personality as each episode brought the characters to life in new ways with funny facial expressions. As an adaptation of the game, Pokemon SM did better in some areas compared to others. The trials were simplified or restructured to account for Ash’s classmates being trial captains in the game. While the Kahuna battles were spaced out very far apart in the anime. I always thought it was strange that in-between major story battles, Ash barely ever thought about the challenges.

The two major story highlights of the anime are Lusamine’s arc and the Pokemon League. Lusamine’s story was the main plot of SM and it played out almost exactly like the game. Her downfall to her Ultra Beasts obsession and then Lillie knocking some sense back into her mom is still an emotional highlight of the series. In any Pokemon anime, the Pokemon League is what brings meaning to Ash’s entire journey through the region. SM’s league is similar to the game where it’s the first league of the region. The rival pairings and matches were completely predictable, but it ended with two big surprises. First, Ash was actually allowed to win for once (matching your character becoming the first champion in the game), and secondly he had a full 6 v 6 match with Kukui. It spanned 3.5 episodes with Ash’s Litten completing its character arc by reaching its final form during the battle. It was a rare match where both parties are battling it out for fun and it ended with a flashy finale of two hype Z-moves. Pokemon SM will be remembered for its simplicity, yet ambitious approach in always showing something new week after week.

2) Mob Psycho 100 Season 2

Mob-Psycho continues where it left off in season 1. The main protagonists have come away from a battle with Claw and now daily life resumes. This season featured a love story, Reigen’s arc, deeper exploration into psychic powers, and the return of Claw. Just like in season 1, Mob continues to excel in two major areas. First is of course the animation. An average episode of Mob is literally that one stand-out episode of a one cour anime. Psychic power usage is often a reflection of emotions and they are animated in different ways depending on the characters thoughts in a particular scene. There were so many highlights this season that it would be impossible to list them all.

Mob’s second strength is the character writing. In season 1 Mob was a boy struggling to create his own identity. This season Mob actively tries to break out of his shell and become his own unique person. We see this through his efforts with the fitness club, again when he separates from Regien, and again as he shows everyone that having psychic powers is no substitute for personal growth or status. Mob is no longer a timid boy like he was at the start of the series. He can now stand on his own two feet and help others who are struggling to get up. Considering there is still a little more manga left to cover, I can only hope it gets one last season to finish out the story.

3) Kaguya-Sama: Love is War

In order to understand the appeal of Kaguya-Sama, just for a second imagine if Death Note was a romantic comedy. Both of the protagonists are locked into a battle of wits to outsmart the other in the events of daily life. The mere act of choosing a vacation spot, going somewhere, or giving an item to each other suddenly becomes a high stakes duel. Kaguya-sama follows Kaguya herself and Shirogane as they try to avoid being the first to admit their love for each other. The side characters only help to add wildcards to each battle such as Chika being able to change the tide of battle with a single phrase.

I enjoyed seeing how absurd each battle would become week after week. The presentation is simple, yet very effective in this anime. Resources were definitely allocated for use in certain places for maximum impact. The voice acting also helped a ton in selling just how important each battle was in the minds of the characters. Overall, the series knows how to play with your expectations. Some battles turn out as expected, some with a twist, and others end on some kind of middle ground. However, each battle brings them a little closer together. I can’t wait for the next season in April.

4) Run with the Wind

Almost all sports anime revolve around high school students trying to become as good as possible and win nationals before the 3rd years graduate. However, Run with the Wind takes a different approach to this formula. It focuses on a group of college students who, at the start at least, would rather do anything else than run. It takes about half of the show before our group of characters even get on the same page about running. I enjoyed how this anime put us into the heads of each character. Some have personal reasons for not wanting to run, while for others it was something trivial. However, by committing themselves to the team they each gained a new outlook on themselves and those around them. It was quite literally an uphill for the team to reach the level of success they got at the end. The final run brilliantly showed how each character learned from the experience and how the time they spent on the team was a positive life changing moment. Run with the Wind shows that it's never too late to try something new.

5) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind

Jojo is back on the list after an extended break between parts 4 and 5. Compared to previous stories, Part 5 is most similar to part 3. There is a quest to clear and it involves the main group traveling across the land and defeating enemy stand users each step of the way. The differences between part 5 and its previous stories becoming apparent right away. First off, the protagonist is not a traditional Joestar. He is the son of Dio born from when he had Jonathan’s body. Secondly, the group of main characters are not exactly good guys. As mafia members they display a sense of unity, but lack the high integrity of previous Jojo characters. A connection they all share is being looked down upon in society, but placing a place in the world through Bucciarati’s squad.

The aspect that makes or breaks a JoJo story for me is usually the villain. I consider Diavolo to be the weakest of any villain across the various JoJo stories. During the early arcs of the story, Diavolo comes off as an interesting character. He has a mysterious personality and will clearly stop at nothing to keep his identity hidden, including killing his own daughter. The series then adds layer of complexity when we meet his alter ego Doppio. The two personalities are clearly distinctive, but the line between which one is charge can be murky. However, his character intrigue quickly comes crashing down as the final arc fully brings Diavolo into the limelight. The story comes down to who can control the stand arrow, which is a sharp contrast to previous villains who drove the final arc on the back of their eccentric personalities. While JoJo part 5 is still a good anime, it will always come near the bottom of my favorite JoJo parts.

The Year of High Profile Weekly Shonen Jump Anime Adaptations

As the 2016-17 hits from Weekly Shonen Jump have aged up, all of their anime dropped in succession this year. I am a huge fan of the magazine, so here’s a section with some quick thoughts of their anime.

The Promise Neverland - The anime changed the escape arc from a mental battle to a horror series. While animation is definitely better suited to playing with the idea of show don’t tell, the result ended up being telling the story through a different lens. While I appreciated the idea, I feel it came up short. The loss of Posuka Demizu’s art was another major blow to the mood they were trying to create.

Kimetsu no Yaiba - When the manga first began, I never imagined it would become a 1+ Million seller. Ufotable brought their top class digital effects to a manga that at a quick glance would make anyone think it would be the last series to get such treatment. The anime brought a lot to the table and greatly helped to bring the manga to life. It was a great experience from start to finish (episode 19 is a major highlight of the year). I’m looking forward to the upcoming film.

Dr. Stone - Compared to the other Jump anime this year, Dr. Stone’s animation and presentation stuck very close to the manga (if not even inferior to Boichi’s creative spreads at times). The aspect that sold this anime best was the voice cast. They brought so much life into the characters and conveyed the passion each one has for science and learning. I enjoyed seeing Senku create his inventions in animated form.

Bokuben - This might not exactly be considered “high-profile”, but I can’t help but find myself impressed by the anime week after week. It adds a few touches here and there to better tell a cohesive story and occasionally adds a scene or two. I appreciated the heart the anime brought to the series through the seiyuu. Introducing a new seiyuu unit from the cast was also a nice bonus as well.

Best OP/EDs of the year:

1) One Piece Opening 22 - The One Piece anime has changed dramatically under Tatsuya Nagamine. This opening is fast paced and filled with future story teases. It changes the format by cutting the op run time down to 2 minutes and includes clips of the episode. The final sequence of Luffy vs. Kaido always gets me hyped each to watch the episode each week. 

2) Mob Psycho II Opening - This opening feels like a natural continuation of the first season opening. It once again showcases how the show is full of creative animation and unusual characters.

3) Mix Opening 1- Mitsuru Adachi is known for his nuanced writing of giving characters the space to convey their thoughts. This opening fully shows these traits through its sequence of character shots that feel like a natural usage of his writing style. 

4) Kaguya-Sama Chika Ending - Cute song and amazing choreography. There’s a clear reason why this swept across the internet last winter

5) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5 Opening 2 - Not only is Traitor’s Requiem a very cool name for a song for this part of the story, but the plot teases are perfectly timed in the song. The opening animation also kept on giving with the villain version and Giorno later recapturing the opening.

This brings 2019 to a close and another decade comes to an end. As my way of recapping the decade, here is a list of my top shows in each post I have made since I started posting them in 2014:

Space Brothers

Hunter x Hunter

Kill la Kill

Nisekoi

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3

Sore ga Seiyuu

Death Parade

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3 (Second Half)

Hibike Euphonium 

One Punch Man Season 1

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4

Mob Psycho 100 Season 1

Yuri on Ice

Konosuba Season 1

Sakamoto Desu Ga?

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Tsuki Ga Kirei

Re:Creators

Ero-manga Sensei

Owarimonogatari (the Monogatari series in general)

Hugtto Precure

A Place Further than the Universe

Yuru Camp

Dragonball Super

S.S.S.S. Gridman

[villainever]

God, We're All Tired: Female Conflict in Killing Eve's Season One Finale

So I'm sure 1x08 has been analysed to death, but seeing as we're winding up to the end of Killing Eve's second season (sad face), I thought I'd jump in with a completely unsolicited reflection on the ultimate culmination of Villanelle and Eve's mutual obsession and pursuit. I'll kick off by saying that from the start, we knew this moment would be interesting, for a whole slew of reasons: Firstly, from the get-go, we were shown that Killing Eve was here to subvert and reconstruct; it's deeply oriented within its genre, but it's irreverent, and even what I would describe as a reclamation of spy-fi. Specifically, it's a female-led narrative taking ownership of a set of texts and tropes that have consistently objectified and excluded women by turns. From its inception, the psychological thriller genre has delighted in a) withholding women's agency, and killing/torturing/assaulting them, both to shock viewers and to lend pathos to the motivations of male characters, and b) revelling in their "expiration" from sexual desirability, and casting the "ailing crone" as the villain orchestrating events. Killing Eve has absolutely no interest in ever reducing its women to their component parts. There are no pedestals, and there are no pitchforks. As a show, it hits all the golden points of suspense television, and completely reimagines the rest; it's a masterpiece balacing act of keeping the classic cat-and-mouse recogniseable, while allowing Eve and Villanelle to each be both the predator and the prey.

Secondly, our two protagonists are women. Highly unusual and exceptional women -- that's inarguable -- but nevertheless, they've been socialised in particular ways. What's so fascinating here is that both have been injected with a comfort in and enjoyment of theatrical violence that's usually reserved for male villains. However, even at their most ruthless, there's an innate intimacy to both of them -- unlike, say, for example, the Joker, Villanelle's flamboyance and love affair with destruction never manifest as mass-killings or the eradication of infrastructure (like blowing up a hospital). Villanelle exacts each murder with the creativity of the truly engaged and passionate, but it's always personal and unique, usually one-on-one. She doesn't have a vendetta against the world, either; she finds beauty in it -- in ice-cream and movies and nice architecture or fun clothes. Similarly, Eve is enthralled by Villanelle's flair for the deadly and the dramatic, but it's not born out of a spite for humanity, but a sense of artistry and a consuming need for some adrenaline in her otherwise numb and mundane life. These complexities muddle their emotions and motivations, and make it difficult for even the most television-literate to semi-accurately predict their storylines.

Thirdly, Eve and Villanelle are never positioned as diametrically opposed. This in itself is not exactly out of the left field -- a lot of media with a dark focal point or mature subjects introduce heroes and villains who share key traits (e.g. Sherlock and Irene, in CBS's Elementary), or even comparable goals (e.g. Black Panther's Killmonger and Nadia both want to open Wakanda's borders). In most cases, though, the antagonist will represent some kind of seduction to the 'other side', that the protagonist inevitably resists the allure of (e.g. Andy realising Miranda isn't who she wants to grow up to be -- successful but alienated -- and goes back to her excuse of a boyfriend in TDWP). But while Eve and Villanelle are very much established as one another's temptations, we also see that they'll grant the other access to a part of the world that is, for now, barred from them: Villanelle and Eve will stop each other from being bored. They "resist the allure" not because they fear moral wrongdoing, but because they cling to their respective images of themselves -- Eve, as someone "nice and normal", who happens to have a grey area for a hobby, and Villanelle, as someone independent, in control, with no lines she wouldn't cross. Way back in the pilot, we're shown that they don't actually WANT to destroy each other. Villanelle is too interesting to Eve, Eve is too attractive to Villanelle. Yes, they pose a significant threat to their respective lifestyles, but as we've had proven, they're becoming willing to risk that if it means gaining something more. They don't reflect a sinister alternative timeline of "look what you could've been" (which is inherently hero-centric, and Killing Eve pays as much attention to Villanelle as Eve), they offer each other a "look what you could still be", that is at once dark and hopeful -- something that they've really elaborated on in this second season. But 1x08, even though it is very much the symbolic collision that is the centrepiece of all chase stories, is not their first meeting. Villanelle goes to Eve's house in the (iconic) 1x05. So why not save that for the finale? Why not build and build and have that tension released right at the end? Because, crucially, 1x05 generated more tension. The show's writing is so substantial that it doesn't worry about losing its audience after the moment they've been waiting for happens. It's one of the reasons you could have the entire plot of Killing Eve spoiled, and then still enjoy every episode when you watch it yourself: it's the How that we love as much as the What. Killing Eve takes the time and space to revel in its style, characters, and setting -- but that's another essay. In 1x05, their meeting is high-octane, and crucially, it's brief. We get a snapshot of how their infatuation and fixation translates into chemistry. And they both become real to one another. Eve's last reservations begin to fade as she realises that she can survive an encounter with Villanelle, and her sense of self -- most importantly, the subconscious idea that she's somehow special -- is vindicated (Eve's slight narcissism, and how the show makes it compelling and intoxicating, is yet another thing I could go on about). For Villanelle, Eve is allowed to be more than just great hair and a worthy threat. She's someone challenging and entertaining. What's so incredible about that first meeting is that it's proof that this dynamic isn't running on mystery and fumes. It's sustainable. They continue to appeal to one another once they're in the same room together. They appeal even more. Their sexual tension skyrockets, and the whole dance becomes extremely personal. They can't write one another off as playthings, although they largely continue to attempt that, at least for a short while. With this in mind, let's move on to that finale. Not only is Eve trashing Villanelle's apartment hilarious, and a perfect articulation of the humour/danger cantilever that makes Killing Eve awesome, but it provides a critical catharsis for the audience before the actual confrontation. By this point, the price for Eve's obsession is starting to rack up -- her job is circling the drain, Niko's dodging her calls, her self-image is blurring. Eve has a whole lot of feelings, but she's allowed to express them on her own, symbolically taking them out on Villanelle by ruining her things, which become a vehicle for venting her frustrations without actually affecting their relationship. When Villanelle does arrive, Eve's ready. This scene would've worked if it was some sexy wall-leaning, banter, and Eve surprise-stabbing Villanelle in the middle of a conversation. I think that's probably how a lot of screenwriters today would've done it, scrawling it off by rote and relying on Villaneve's chemistry and Comer and Oh's excellent acting to nail the bit. Instead, we get this civil conversation, and then they lie down together, first relaxing, and then gravitating towards one another. I don't believe that Eve knew until the millisecond she decided to do it that she would actually try and stab Villanelle. I actually gave this mini-essay a title, and it's "female conflict". That's because I think that this entire sequence wouldn't have happened in a show created by men, or featuring male characters. In violent shows, we get violent conflict. Killing Eve is unquestionably a violent show, but it's distinct from its contemporaries in that the characters aren't there to prop up the violence; the violence is there to reveal and develop the characters. But after a whole season of elaborate murder and tyre-squealing pursuit, we get this stillness. Yet, it doesn't feel for even a beat like bathos. It's absolutely a climax, and it's both suspenseful and arresting. It really illustrates that the show is about fascination: they're hungry to know everything, like Eve says. There's no performative combat. We can't guess what's going to happen because neither can they. Their obsession isn't a "this town ain’t big enough for the both of us" situation. It's a "this town is only the both of us". Their worlds are reduced to each other and they don't want to squander it with fighting, because fundamentally, Eve and Villanelle are so much more similar than they are different. Again, I say this is so fitting for female characters because they see this co-existence as an option. It's so simple, but the idea of your protagonist and antagonist sighing, "Fuck, can't we just have a lie down after all this?" and making it satisfying is incredibly radical. Because it's so personal, and intimate, and human. At every interval, the writing asks, What would we actually do at this moment? Not, What precedent has popular culture set for this moment? Too often, I think we give characters responses that we've seen before in texts, because we watched/read it, accepted it, and just filed it into our own work, knowing it's what the audience expects. But this scene with Eve and Villanelle is so heart-wrenchingly in-character. It's two people charging at each other full speed, not to hit each other but to be close to one another. And like so many other tiny beats over the course of the season, Killing Eve luxuriates in this proximity. We get to breathe. It's gentle. It's a gentle pause between two people who could utterly eradicate one another, but choose not to. It's ladden as well with such a specific but familiar kind of exhaustion, and it's an act of defiance, too. Killing Eve rejects the hegemonic (and predominantly masculine) cultural assertion that conflict (or even sometimes, in the less typical texts, debate and negotiation) is the way to resolve difference, and indeed, that difference must be resolved. That one must overpower the other. That your enemy is an alien and cannot be connected with, related to. The fact is, a lot of even this first season isn't spent chasing, it's spent running. Eve and Villanelle take an interest in each other early on, and it quickly escalates from intellectual to sexual to emotional (insofar as either of them are capable of that). By 1x05, they've caught up to each other. The rest of the time, though, they're fleeing from how much they want each other, how alike they might be. And in Villanelle's Paris apartment, they concede: I love you more than I hate you. I need you more than I should. And it's with that concession that we as an audience can experience their relaxation, too. It's what we've -- consciously or not -- been waiting for. That acknowledgement. But Margot, you say, you've been talking about how this isn't about violence -- have your forgotten that Eve STABS Villanelle, literally three seconds after this? I have not, The Only Follower Who Read This Far. So why engineer all this, and then have Eve knife Villanelle straight in the gut? Because even though they have this liminal second together, their story isn't resolved. Killing Eve goes absolutely wild with power dynamics, and I could discuss that for hours, too -- Eve is older, but Villanelle is more experienced; Eve is more stable, but Villanelle is more adaptable, etc. But generally speaking -- partially because Eve is, at the beginning, something of an audience surrogate -- the scales are in Villanelle's favour. She's dangerous, clever, has no fear of legal consequences, and has more freedom and greater resources. Killing Eve is allergic to any pedestrian predictability, so it shakes up this arrangement. In stabbing Villanelle, Eve proves to both of them what she's capable of. Prior to this, they had an impression of their similarities, but this throws into sharp relief exactly how deep those run. Eve immediately regrets the stabbing, because it wasn't about getting rid of Villanelle. She doesn't want to hurt her so much as show her that Eve has power too, has recklessness too, can keep up. This interaction isn't the product of an inability to relate, but a desperation to connect. This joins them together, affirms their relationship. Eve isn't trying to dominate her, to win, not really. She's telling Villanelle what she's capable of, and equating them. We get this confirmed in how Villanelle perceives in the stab wound as a symbol of affection (2x02, 2x05), and how Eve says she continues to think about it constantly (2x05). I believe that while Villanelle always respected Eve, if Eve hadn't stabbed her, Villanelle would've remained confident that she, quietly, had the upper hand. That if ever need be, she could be more cunning and cruel and decisive than Eve. But Eve's put them in the same ring, and also removed one major wall between them -- Villanelle's murderous side is a key part of her character, and after this, she knows that Eve isn't intruiged by her despite this, but because of it, and because it’s at least partially common ground. Eve isn't Anna (another comparison I could go off on a tangent about, but I'll spare you). In sum, I think that the season one finale was beautifully rendered, and reflected Killing Eve's appreciation of itself. It let the characters interact genuinely, it refreshed their dynamic, and allowed them development separately (Eve's new understanding of her own capacity for harm; Villanelle's new experience with vulnerability, and not being able to predict others) and together (intertwining them irrevocably, further aligning them). It's one of those rare scenes where it's completely surprising at the time of viewing, but in hindsight, seems inevitable, and you can't imagine it any different. I can't make any predictions for the season two final episode other than I expect something equally unexpected, something just as loyal to the characters and their relationship, and their capacity to embrace and antagonise each other. This essay is probably borderline incoherent. It really got away from me. I set a timer for half an hour and told myself that whatever I got written in that time, I'd post. Thanks so much for your kind comments on my rant yesterday, and I hope this is at least vaguely what you were looking for, @ the people who said they'd read another. You're my favs. If you've got something else Killing Eve-related you'd like me to yell about, let me know! Or if you want to come chat, I promise I'm friendly! I’m using the tag “#villainever writes” for this rambly stuff atm, so if I ever write another of these I’ll have a digital drawer to put it in hahah

[wackygoofball]

Gwenspiration: The Wacky Version Vol. 1 - The Fanfics

As threatened/promised, I am tooting the horn in a number of posts, following the most kind call of @jaimebrienneonline.

I decided to begin with fanfic as JB fanfiction was my way into the fandom when a kind voice, long time ago, lured me over to the wonderful world which is JBO. And ever since that day I found both my home and my people. 

I am not going in a particular order because like my non-existent children, I kind of love and love to hate all of my fics equally.

But, for matters of scrolling convenience, I will put this list below a cut:

Childhood Friends has a special place in my heart because it is one of the two fics that got me into the fandom, and it is of the rare species of completed Wacky WIPs. The story marked my first tender steps in the canon as I was still catching up on show and book knowledge but got instantly hooked on the JB dynamic and just *had* to write fanfiction about them, albeit not yet knowing just what the frack Westeros even looked like on a map. I simply was intrigued by the idea of how the lives of our OTP may have played out differently if only they had met at a younger age, only to run into one another time and time again over the years, until at last, the circumstances seem to be in their favor. Writing that fic was a challenge because, for one, it got finished, which is incredibly hard for me to to do, and it is a coming of age story of sorts, which is not necessarily what I am used to writing. Nonetheless, it was a project that got me firmly into the fandom, which is why I am always remembering the process (and the writer’s panic) somewhat fondly, and always smile like an idiot when someone finds that old fic of mine and leaves a kudo or even a comment, reminding me of those early beginnings of my JB shipping career.

Choices likely has to be mentioned in the same vein, despite its crucial difference being that it went on a very, very, veeeeeery long hiatus and yet has to awaken (some prince wanting to give it a smooch to maybe bring it back to life? Would be much appreciated!). It was born out of the wish of exploring the infamous what if of Jaime and Brienne already getting intimate while on the road back to King’s Landing - as a matter of necessity/convenience, only for the misfortunate/very fortunate circumstance that Brienne winds up pregnant after their one time together. I enjoyed/would very much to enjoy again to write the character studies on how they deal not just with the issue of parenthood but also with their insecurities regarding their feelings for one another, which inspires more than one ill-made choice (*roll credits*) for either one of them as neither one dares to call love what actually is just that, hiding instead behind missions and honor, parenthood and duty, and fractured pasts that leave them wondering just who they became thanks to each other.

Colour Verses is a series that was born out of my first ever (I believe) JB Appreciation Week. OMG, it’s been so long. The theme of colors really had me inspired, which is why those pieces, which can be read in succession and independently, have a soft spot in my Wacky heart.

The Shredding Project, I believe, deserves an honorary mention despite its utter lack of completion for some of its parts and a happy ending for some of the tales shredded in this part of the fandom. I have a great passion for fairytales and deconstructing them, which inspired this undertaking of twisting and turning aka shredding all those stories into new models to fit Jaime and Brienne into. In fact, the Shredding Project is much larger than it currently is on AO3, as most of the shredded stories still reside in a large, very large Word file on my computer (42 shreddings up to date with a total of 414k words *whispers* 414k mkaaaay, yes I *am* obsessed), and can be found in the respective thread on JBO, where one can read perhaps not an eloquently put-together retelling of favorite fairytales (and some Disney movies) but at least find a conclusion to every story and thus a happy ending, as befits a fairytale.

Bow Down is another story I would mean to include in this list. It came to mean a lot to me personally because I worked my way through it at a time when I was not really having the time of my life for a number of reasons. Thus, finishing that fic did a lot of things for me - and hopefully also with my oh so patient readers. The basic premise is how things would have developed, had Brienne failed to find Sansa and thus fully dedicate herself to the cause of the Blackfish during the Riverrun Siege whose bitterness is clouding his judgment, leaving Jaime in a tough position to choose between his family and the mannish woman he can’t help but care about as much as he does.

A Tale of Spring is one of those fics I wish to include in that already way too long tooting because a) it is a finished story, which is always a rarity in my Wacky world, and b) it is still a kind of headcanon I would have loved to come about in some capacity, as it leaves room for not just happy endings while at the same time giving space for futures to grow for JB as they are cautious to dream of their future past the Long Night, edging on a Dream of Spring.

Paths is one of those stories I am, yet again, very desperate to get back on track with (I mean, it is supposed to lead somewhere, title has it). This story means a lot to me because I just have so much in my head for how this is meant to conclude and just have to get over that one edge to finally ebb into the narrative direction I need this to go (aka follow the path *badum tssssss*). I suppose the story was very much fuelled by my love for G.I. Jane and the dynamic between Jordan O'Neil and John James Urgayle (and Viggo in those short shorts... way too short shorts... damn). At the same time, my aim with this fic is to show not just how tough JB can be and how much ass they can kick together but also how insecure they are beneath the tough surface and how they actually long for something way outside the line of fire.

Train Acquaintances, by contrast, is a rather self-indulgent fic I started to write and was surprised to have found an audience rather fast. I just really liked the theme of trains as a way for two people to meet while at the same time playing with the overly romanticized notion of trains and deconstructing it somewhat. They are a curious means of transportation, to put it mildly. And to then throw in Jaime trying to act smoothly when he is just acting like a dork most of his time was just too delicious to resist. While it’s been a long time (because my computer ate part of a chapter I found really important and that has frustrated me so much, I can’t even tell you), I remain intrigued writing this story because it has a rather distinct mood from what I normally tend to write. And awkward Jaime is just so much fun to write.

Washed Away is one of those fics I am so desperate to get back to that you woudln’t even believe - because it is the one fic most closely tied to the book canon. Its premise is the Lady Stoneheart situation yet to be resolved, wherein Brienne makes a dangerous gamble to save the man she knows is not guilty of the crimes Lady Stoneheart accuses him of, leaving them both to wrestle not just with the dilemmas of this overall situation but also their conflicting vows and feelings for one another.

In the Eyes of the Seven is one of those fics I am yet again very desperate to get back to (yes, I realize I type this sentence far too often, but it is the truth!) but have not yet found a way to bridge between two important plot points, currently creating a gap that keeps me from moving on to the next chapters. It is one of those narrative places where I nerd around freely and explore some mad medley of historical fiction inserted into the history of Westeros, taking up on the runaway nuns of the Reformation period and re-applying it to the Westerosi context by making it about septons and septas instead. While perhaps not a particularly popular story of mine, it is a story I very much enjoy writing as it gives opportunity for lots of introspection, insecurities, and the wish of both characters to break out of the boundaries of the norms set by a static system leaving no room for the likes of the Kingslayer and a woman fancying herself a sword as much as a book or a dress. In general, there are just so many ideas for it inside my head that I really hope to get back on track with that story because there is just so much more I want to tell the readers about in this strange tale.

May the Norns Bind Their Fate strikes a similar tune for me, as I get to gush about my mediocre-at-best knowledge of Norse mythology (albeit a great interest) and yet again change Westeros to my liking to insert the political system of the Viking era into this society (or rather my wacky interpretation thereof). For me, it is both an experiment in terms of perhaps (big perhaps) turning things a bit more heated than I am used to (for Wacky writes no smut, unless it is a literal accident, which only happened, like, once) and diving deep into aspects such as trauma and grief as well as fate and determinacy, since the idea of seers knowing your future has a very distinct appeal in my view, and how knowing one’s “fate” may affect the outcomes of the events. Thus, taking up on the challenge to deal with that in this fic still has me hooked - and I hope I am not the only one.

Last but not least...

An Honorable Man and a Just Woman is a story I am happy to have found an audience because it really gives me something personally to write it. Considering how sadly things played out in the show, I was in dire need of my own little fix-it and have since taken up on the challenge to entertain those questions of what would have changed had Jaime survived, what would be if he were declared King of the Six Kingdoms. Not only does that leave a humbled Jaime trying to find his place in a world he never thought he would see, having seen his ending long before he rode away from Winterfell, but it also leaves him and Brienne with the reality of what it is like to survive when so many died, and how to cope with how they parted and why. And while there are still so many things left unsaid and feelings left unexpressed, one can only hope that those two honorable and just people will eventually find their way around in the new world they are meant to build.

So yeah, I tooted a lot, and I still left out a whole bunch of my weird fanfic children, but those are the ones I feel a great deal of dedication to, even if, admittedly, a lot of them haven’t seen an update in ages. But rest assured, anyone reading this who dared to jump the Wacky train and read along, knowing very well that this strange woman struggles finishing a WIP most of her days, that I am still dedicated to each of those stories (as I am to any story I write). There are simply technicalities and real life not letting me dedicate as much of my time to it as I would need to finally get that final push ahead on a lot of them.

Be it as it may, in the spirit of Glorious Gwendoline Christie, here’s to my shameless self-promotion!

Stay tuned for the next post about the wackiest of Wacky’s wacky creations.

Until then...

Much love! ♥♥♥

[chriswritesthings]

Generation Zero offers a great world to shoot in, but is technically flawed

Originally uploaded to MSPoweruser.com

Just Cause and Mad Max creators Avalanche Studios have been busier this past year than I think they’ve ever been. Just Cause 4, the upcoming Rage 2 and the just-released Generation Zero is a rather large line-up for one studio. But are all of these games of quality, or are they hindered by a spread workload?

Set in 1980’s Sweden, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Cold War tensions are at their peak. You play as a nameless 18 or 19-year-old in your first semester of university, the threat of thermonuclear annihilation constantly looming in the back of your head. It’s decided that a camping trip is a good idea, as a getaway, and your friend decides that a small island just off the coast is a great locale.

You grab a couple of coolers—for a cheeky bevy with the boys—and food before setting off. On your return, you get shot out of the water, have to swim to shore, discover that everyone has been murdered and that there are machines roaming the wilderness that are out for blood, and you and your friends are left to piece together the events of the last few days while attempting to avoid heavily armoured death, probably all while hungover.

This is the premise of Avalanche’s first foray into a co-op first-person action shooter since theHunter: Primal. At its base level, it feels like an amalgamation of Fallout and Far Cry with a sprinkling of Horizon: Zero Dawn.

However, before you can begin roleplaying your Swedish Rambo fantasies you must first create your character through a fairly rudimentary creation suite. It offers eight pre-set 80s stereotypes to build upon with gender options, face shape and skin tone. We’re not talking Black Desert Online levels of character customisation, but enough to give the player a distinct look from their allies.

Generation Zero starts out solidly, prompting you as soon as you make landfall to find a weapon and some first aid kids in the nearby buildings. There’s ammo in a police car parked on the road—sorted. Not long after you’re introduced to the games’ basic enemy machine, the runner. Fast and deadly, they pose a challenge from the get-go and don’t get much easier as the player progresses. Physically, they look like robot dogs or wolves with a fuel tank and a machine gun strapped to its back. Once these machines are dispatched, the game points you in the vague direction of the nearest settlement that might have people in it at one point and lets you off the leash.

It’s certainly not a game that will hold you hand or tell you where every objective and enemy is. The in-game compass functions purely as a compass, it always points north. It won’t tell you where objectives are, there won’t be a red dot highlighting nearby enemies, it just points north. Enemy detection is only signalled by two things: actual sound and a shotgun mic style detection meter.

This would be great if it wasn’t for the fact that both sound and detection are broken. This much becomes abundantly clear when you go into the first underground location you come across. While inside you’ll constantly have a detection bar even if you’ve cleared the entire building of enemies if you walk or sprint—not because enemies are down there with you, but because they’re above ground and can apparently hear you down there. The second time it becomes noticeable is when trying to sneak past a patrol. If they get too close, even moving while crouched will raise their awareness forcing the player to either sit perfectly still or attempt to engage them hope the entirety of Sweden doesn’t come running.

It’s unfortunate that Generation Zero is consistently marred with technical issues, all of which seem entirely unpredictable. For example, being downed and then reviving too quickly may make the player unable to sprint at full speed. The next time this happens, the same set of actions may have no effect. Machines locked in steel containers can seemingly warp out of them at will, and then there’s whatever this 28-second clip of nonsense is.

Despite its many, many flaws, I wouldn’t say that Generation Zero is a bad game. From the moody nightime lighting to the midnight thunderstorms followed by dense fog, its world is dripping in a thick, dripping atmosphere. The morning god rays and autumnal leaves are a definitive pep-up after a brutal firefight. Much like their previous games, Avalanche really does know how to sell a world.

All of this is backed by an 80s soundtrack that fits so beautifully to the design of the machines and the world they inhabit. The game is true for the player character who feels as weighty as their firearms, all of which have great audio-visual feedback. Encompassed in a story about a sudden invasion and a missing populace, never meeting a living NPC, interacting with hastily written notes and skittish recordings—it’s a unique and mystical world trapped in a rugged game.

Generation Zero is a game propelled by its ability to be played with a group of friends. While its technical systems may be flawed, its world and mechanics are still engaging enough for fun-times-with-mates. Once you get into the groove, you’ll find amazing atmosphere, story, and a rocking OST. You’ll also discover busted mechanics, flawed AI and bugs crawling out of every corner.

7/10

Pros:

Weighty combat

Incredible visuals

Stunning audio

Cons:

Sub-par AI

Flawed detection system

Mehs:

Inventory management can be sluggish

[kirain]

Top Ten Favourite Anime Games

For this list, I will only be including games that are specifically considered part of the anime genre, NOT games that were created by Japan Studio or other Japanese companies/creators. So games like shadow of the colossus,  Bloodborne, Metal Gear, Resident Evil, etc., won’t be mentioned. While it is arguable that such games could fit the anime genre, it’s never been clarified. So here’s a list of my top 10 anime games.

1. Gravity Rush

There’s no real order for this list EXCEPT for Gravity Rush. It is easily my number one favourite pick. I bought it for next to nothing thinking it would be a cute little experience, but it ended up gripping my interest for four days straight; which is rare for me. While at work, all I could think about was getting back to it, and it’s one of the few games with trophies that didn’t annoy me. Seriously-- not one trophy pissed me off. In every game there’s at least two or three that really grind my gears, but Gravity Rush had nada.

There are several challenges in the game that are tough but fair, and they never become boring because they’re designed in such a way that the more you play them, the better you get. You begin to learn the controls, the landscape, the shortcuts, etc., which makes for some excellent gameplay. At no point in the game do you feel like a failure, which is nice once in a while. On top of that the story is fun, the characters are lovable, and the art is breathtaking. During each new chapter, we’re given information in the form of a hand-drawn manga, which only adds to the uniqueness. The language in the game is also made up, so anyone can relate to it. And the music? Oh, don’t even get me started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxIC6Vu1ee0&t=43s

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, they went ahead and created a sequel, Gravity Rush 2! It’s pretty rare, in my opinion anyway, that video games have sequels that measure up to their predecessor, but Gravity Rush 2 might be even better! It lets us revisit old friends, make new friends, explore more areas, it gives us grater challenges and a newly implemented difficulty setting, and additional online adventures that have nothing to do with achievements! What really hits me about these games, though, is the freedom. You get to fly wherever you want, anytime you want, at ridiculous speeds. The world is vast, beautiful, and so fun to navigate.

After playing and falling in love with these games, I can only assume they’re called “Gravity Rush” because they’re an absolute rush to play.

2. Devil May Cry

Specifically the first game, Devil May Cry will always have a special place in my heart. I played the game a lot when I was in grade school and kept replaying it well into my high school years. All the way up until my PS2 broke. :’)

Now, I do know that this game was created by Capcom and that it was supposed to be related to the Resident Evil franchise, but director Hideki Kamiya openly stated that the game is an anime-style hack and slash action-adventure game, and even gave the anime T.V. show, Devil May Cry: The Animated Series by Shin Itagaki, his professional seal of approval.

That said, Devil May Cry is addictive with its brutal but charming character Dante, and its dark and twisted plot/gameplay. If you’re into cool characters, blood and guts, and kick-ass combat, this is the game for you!

3. Catherine

Another nostalgic game for me, Catherine was something I played constantly when I was in high school. The animation is enticing, the story is a giant mind f*ck, and the English voice acting is stupendous. Like many story-related anime games, it has multiple endings, as well as a karma metre that wraps into your choices. The story revolves around a man named Vincent  Brooks, who is beset by supernatural nightmares while torn between his feelings for longtime girlfriend Katherine and the similarly-named beauty Catherine.

While the game is mostly a platformer, the challenges are unreal, especially in Babel (an extra area not related to the story) and the arcade game, Rapunzel. If you want your brain to turn to mush, I’d suggest setting this baby to the hardest difficulty. Naturally there’s a trophy for beating everything with a gold time, so if you get that you’ll be able to gloat to all your friends about how smart you are. XD

Jokes aside, though, there are other aspects to the game that keep you going. You won’t get bored of the platforming because between each level is the story, given to us in two distinct anime styles, and a trip to the bar, where you can get drunk and interact with other characters. Depending on the dialogue you choose, you could be responsible for their dreams coming true ... or their untimely death. A remake of the game will be coming out for PS4 next year and I can’t wait to play it!

4. No More Heroes

No More Heroes is another action-adventure hack and slash video game that follows a man named Travis Touchdown ... who is a hardcore otaku. Literally all he cares about is killing and anime, which makes for a hilarious story. Travis is also a top-class assassin in a world where assassins constantly compete. Think John Wick: The Anime. This game is full of comedy and combat, as well as cool characters, crude challenges, and a cuddly kitty cat. I played this game religiously when I was in high school, and enjoyed it even up to it’s weird mind f*ck of an ending. The only downside being that it’s only available on Wii, which made for an interesting and unique experience, but a sad realisation that it will never be available for any other platform.

5. Trauma Center: Second Opinion

Just like No More Heroes, Trauma Center: Second Opinion is only available on Wii; but that in no way affected my love for it. Second Opinion is the second game in a long line of Trauma Centers, but for some reason it’s the only one I enjoy. Perhaps it’s because playing it on the Wii gave it a sense of realism. The game is a surgery simulator, and like an actual surgeon, you have to concentrate and keep your hands steady to succeed. If you move too quickly or throw yourself off balance, the patient will die. The art and music are also incredible and, believe it or not, there’s actually a pretty interesting story that goes along with each chapter. As you work your way to more advanced operations, you really take a liking to the characters and feel a strong sense of duty to your patients. To anyone who owns a Wii, this is definitely a game I’d recommend.

6. Chibi-Robo!

Chibi-Robo! This game takes me back! I spent hours upon hours playing this game, and I still would today if my copy hadn’t been stolen. This little treat is only available on the Wii and GameCube, and was created by Nintendo. It’s one of the most adorable platform-adventure games I’ve ever played to date. The Wiki explains the plot perfectly, so I’ll just post it here:

“Chibi-Robo! takes place in a 1960s-style American home and revolves around a tiny, highly advanced robot of the same name. He is given as a birthday gift to a socially withdrawn eight-year-old named Jenny Sanderson by her father. This is much to the dismay of Jenny's mother, a homemaker who is constantly stressed over how much money her husband spends on toys despite his unemployment.”

For a game that seems so basic, there are a plethora of areas to explore and they are huge. Ironically so, I’m sure, but it makes for some amazing gameplay nonetheless. As you wander, you help other creatures around the house, including the family, solve their problems and complete challenging and often comedic tasks; such as flipping burgers, cleaning up puddles, and-- you know-- helping the egg general save his fellow egg soldiers from the household dog. Yeah, stuff like that. XD

Honestly, it’s super fun and I recommend it to anyone, no matter what their age. It’s clearly geared towards children, but I can’t think of a single reason why an adult wouldn’t enjoy it just as much. It’s relaxing, freeing, and puts a genuine smile on your face. :)

7. Pokemon X and Y

Okay, I know I probably shouldn’t add Pokemon to this list, but I can’t help it! I’ve always loved the Pokemon games, but they just get better and better every time! Pokemon X and Y quickly became favourites of mine, and they consumed my life for a good two months as I captured every single Pokemon, bred the perfect IVs, and worked my ass off to get every shiny I desired. On top of that, I loved the story and, for once, how my character design turned out. What’s more, I fell absolutely in love with the Looker side quest, which is possibly the best and most emotional side quest I’ve ever played in a Pokemon game. X and Y will always be special to me, because in was with these two games that I caught ‘em all!

8. Pokemon Sun and Moon

Visually, Pokemon Sun and Moon are the best of the Pokemon games, in my opinion. They were also the first to really shake things up and give fans new and improved methods of breeding, capture, travel, communication, and more. We were also introduced to a new type of pokemon called “ultra beasts”, along with a fun and alluring story with several new characters and legendaries. Throughout the game, I found myself laughing hard at some of the experiences, and I spent countless hours capturing, trading, breeding, spoiling, and loving all of the new pokemon the games had to offer. I even transferred my pokemon from X and Y over so I could give them the same love and affection. ^_^

I have to thank @cassafra5 and @george-nordington, because they’re the ones who bought me this masterpiece! Thanks, guys! <3

9. .hack//OUTBREAK

This is a game that will always be near and dear to my heart. Back before guides were widely available, I was playing a game called .Hack//OUTBREAK. It came out in 2002, when I was only 12 years old. Back then, my dad was still alive. He never really understood my taste in anime, but he wanted to try and relate, so he bought this game for me on a whim. Little did he know I knew absolutely nothing about the .Hack series, and little did either of us know that OUTBREAK was actually the third part to two other .Hack games. Still, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I played the game-- and I fell in love.

Visually, OUTBREAK was one of the best games I owned on PS2, and although parts of the story were difficult to follow, I was hooked. I dedicated entire days to this game, and because there weren’t any guides, I had to write down every code and location so I wouldn’t get lost/forget them. Today, I still have pages folded safely in the case. The amount of exploration and character interaction opened me up to a whole new genre of video games. In fact, it basically introduced me to anime-style games. I could actually buy gifts for my friends and build relationships. That seems common now, but back then it wasn’t for a typical PS2 game.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck when the save cartridge was accidentally kicked by my brother and all of my data was lost. I wasn’t too concerned, since I figured I could just replay the game and get everything back ... but the disk was also severely, irreparably scratched. It no longer plays. As such, it is now merely a keepsake from my father. I miss you, dad.

But 16 years later and my sister and I are still quoting this game! XD @alannahkiwi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I-7hwgwqa4

10. Persona 5

I only recently started playing Persona 5, but it’s quickly made its way to my top ten. I can’t say too much about it just yet, aside from the fact that the animation is crisp, the story is gripping, and I’m ready to sink hours of my life into platinuming this gorgeous feet of human achievement! So much heart and sole was poured into this game and it shows with every in-game step I take. This is the only game on this list that I haven’t yet finished, but I have a sense that I don’t really need to. Thus far, every mission has been a gem and I don’t want the party to end!

[lynchgirl90]

#TwinPeaks  "David was really specific with me about how he wanted Cooper to move and look in those last few beats." @Kyle_MacLachlan looks back on  @SHO_TwinPeaks

Toast of 2017: Kyle MacLachlan shares the secrets of 'Twin Peaks: The Return'

Twenty-five years after its alternately brilliant and befuddling series finale, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s singular creation, Twin Peaks, returned to television for a summertime encore that, appropriately enough, wound up raising more questions than it answered. What’s the significance of the atomic bomb imagery? What happened to Audrey? Is Carrie Page really Laura Palmer? And then there’s the most important question of all: is Twin Peaks: The Return a TV series or a movie? Although it aired weekly on Showtime in 18 hour-long installments, two prestigious film magazines — Sight & Sound and Cahiers du Cinéma — ranked the series among their best movies of 2017, setting off a firestorm of debate on Twitter. True to form, Lynch has deliberately avoided engaging in this heated discussion, although he did fan the flames early on, telling Rolling Stone prior to the show’s launch in May that that he approached The Return as an “18-hour film.”

As it turns out, Lynch’s leading man, Kyle MacLachlan, mostly agrees with his longtime collaborator on The Return‘s designation in the TV vs. film debate. “It’s tricky, because it’s a hybrid,” the actor tells Yahoo Entertainment. “David wrote it and directed it as if it were an 18-hour film, and was very specific in saying, ‘Don’t call them episodes; just call them hours.’ And at the end of an hour’s worth of viewing, he would just segue into something else, usually a performance at the Roadhouse, as a way to give it the feel of an ending. So I think the idea was that it would be viewed as one long film. But the debate is interesting! We’ll have to come up with a new category.”

While we’re in the process of inventing new categories for Twin Peaks, let’s not neglect finding fresh ways to honor MacLachlan’s performance. Besides reprising his iconic role as the coffee-and-cherry-pie-loving FBI agent Dale Cooper, the actor creates two (and maybe more) versions of his alter ego, including the Cooper who’s trapped in the otherworldly Red Room, as well as his evil doppelgänger, who has been loose in the real world for the past quarter-century. And then there’s Doug Jones — Dougie to his friends — a Las Vegas insurance agent whose face and form is borrowed by Cooper after he exits the Red Room but before he regains full consciousness. In MacLachlan’s hands, each of these characters emerges as a distinct individual with strikingly different physicalities and personality traits. He recently received a Golden Globe nomination for his multifaceted work, but perhaps he deserves three nods, or, failing that, an entirely new statue. In a lively chat for our year-end Toast of 2017 series, he shared his theory about what the final shot of The Return, means and the strange art of playing a newborn in an adult body.

Yahoo TV: I’d like to start at the very end of Twin Peaks: The Return — specifically that haunting final scene before the credits where Cooper brings Carrie Page, the woman he thinks is Laura Palmer, back home to Twin Peaks. What went through your mind when you first read that sequence on the page?

Kyle MacLachlan: I was really moved by it. I had the same reaction to that as I had when I read the end of the original pilot. I don’t know if you recall but the very first time Twin Peaks was on air, there was a gloved hand that reaches into the frame and picks up a gold necklace, and you hear Grace [Zabriskie, who plays Laura Palmer’s mother, Sarah] screaming in the background, and there’s a quick cut. It’s very disturbing, and lifts you out of your seat. I had exactly the same thought here. We shot that scene very early on in shooting The Return; it was while we were up in Seattle, which was during the first five or six weeks of filming. We hadn’t gotten to everything else, and it’s always a bit discombobulating to play something early in the filming that’s going to be placed at the end.

David was really specific with me about how he wanted Cooper to move and look in those last few beats. And it was quite easy to react with shock when Sheryl Lee [who plays Laura and Carrie] is screaming in the middle of the night in a Seattle suburb! It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Also, having the owner of the house there at the door. That’s part of David’s brilliance; he enlists people that he feels have the right kind of energy. As I was playing it, I felt this slow draining of confidence. Confidence is such a part of Cooper’s DNA — it was seeping out from his pores. But one of the things about that particular Cooper is that he’s slightly different than the Dale that wakes up in the hospital; he’s another tick on the character dial away from the original Cooper. So there was a loss of control and I felt very helpless. All of those thoughts and feelings were playing in that scene, but how it was going to fit into the whole of Twin Peaks I didn’t know yet. I didn’t know what the impact was going to be, and it turned out to be very powerful.

So much of the series rests on the delayed gratification of seeing the return of the original Cooper. Were you similarly impatient to play him again?

Yeah, I did want to get back to him. During filming, I would occasionally think, “We’re really going to test the patience of our fanbase!” But I also admired the kind of commitment that David has to his vision. We never spoke about getting back to the real Cooper more quickly, but he obviously felt it was important to maintain that tension about whether he’ll come back or not. It also allowed the character of Dougie Jones to also really take hold, and I think people really began to fall in love with him. Then it became, “We love Dale Cooper, but we also love Dougie Jones. Only one or the other is probably going to survive here, and we don’t know which!” It was one of those tricky things that, in hindsight, was actually pretty great. And David was able to put a little cherry on top when Dougie returns home as a slightly more capable version of the original.

Just within our office, we had a bet going about when Cooper was going to return. At one point, I said that we weren’t going to see him until the last episode. I do feel like Episode 16 — when Cooper arrives and everything is kind of resolved, to a point — is the end of one long beat. And then with Episode 17 and 18, you transition into something else — almost a new story and new direction. It’s a new quest, I guess, that’s sort of separate from what we’ve been watching before.

How much freedom did Lynch give you to create your different identities as Dougie, Bad Cooper, Red Room Cooper, and so on?

We found them together. Bad Cooper took a little bit of time, because David and I were approaching that character as organically as possible. There’s always the temptation to immediately say, “Oh, he’s this kind of guy, he wears this kind of stuff and he looks this kind of way,” just establish him quickly so you don’t feel the discomfort of not knowing. But every time we work together, we let the character find his way. With Bad Coop, we started with, “What is he like inside and how is that gonna be reflected in the way he moves and looks?” There were times where we wondered whether he was going to be put together and impeccably dressed, but then we let the character find his way — to the point of having dirt on his face and hands and not caring about it. There were also discussions about jewelry and other types of minutia — things that are incredibly boring to anybody not involved in creating this character but very important when you’re trying to make a character come to life from the page.

It was the same with Dougie. David knows I have a certain facility with physical comedy, and he wanted that to be magnified. So you take Cooper, and you distill him down into a new being. What is it like to be put in a body in a world where you don’t know anything? It’s almost like taking a newborn and putting it into an adult body. We had a lot of fun with the challenge of that. You have to have a lot of patience and a lot of confidence as an actor that what you’re doing is going to hold up, because there were a lot of moments where there didn’t seem to be a whole lot going on with Dougie. You just have to trust that it’s going to work; there was a big commitment to that character having that stillness.

How much freedom did Lynch give you to create your different identities as Dougie, Bad Cooper, Red Room Cooper, and so on? We found them together. Bad Cooper took a little bit of time, because David and I were approaching that character as organically as possible. There’s always the temptation to immediately say, “Oh, he’s this kind of guy, he wears this kind of stuff and he looks this kind of way,” just establish him quickly so you don’t feel the discomfort of not knowing. But every time we work together, we let the character find his way. With Bad Coop, we started with, “What is he like inside and how is that gonna be reflected in the way he moves and looks?” There were times where we wondered whether he was going to be put together and impeccably dressed, but then we let the character find his way — to the point of having dirt on his face and hands and not caring about it. There were also discussions about jewelry and other types of minutia — things that are incredibly boring to anybody not involved in creating this character but very important when you’re trying to make a character come to life from the page.

It was the same with Dougie. David knows I have a certain facility with physical comedy, and he wanted that to be magnified. So you take Cooper, and you distill him down into a new being. What is it like to be put in a body in a world where you don’t know anything? It’s almost like taking a newborn and putting it into an adult body. We had a lot of fun with the challenge of that. You have to have a lot of patience and a lot of confidence as an actor that what you’re doing is going to hold up, because there were a lot of moments where there didn’t seem to be a whole lot going on with Dougie. You just have to trust that it’s going to work; there was a big commitment to that character having that stillness.

Even though you’re a much-respected character actor, it feels like The Return has been a reintroduction of sorts. Audiences seem to have come away from the series with a new appreciation for your range as a performer.

I was very excited to be able to do a different thing as an actor. That’s one of the things I pursue, and the opportunity to play not one, but three or maybe four very different characters was challenging and exciting. David knows that I’m the guy for Cooper — he can’t go and find somebody else! But if he’s going to write something where I’m going to have to do other things that he’s not necessarily seen me do before, but in his heart believes that I can do, that’s a humbling thing. I don’t know if I would have been capable of doing this 10 years ago or even 25 years ago when we first did the show. As an actor, you like to think that you’re evolving and getting better and getting better at your craft. So I feel like this was an opportunity for me to do some interesting work, and if I’m going to have to do things that I’ve not done before, there’s nobody better to do it with than David because he knows me the best and I could completely trust his eye.

You mentioned the physical comedy aspect to playing Dougie Jones earlier, and many of those scenes did remind me of silent film comedians like Charlie Chaplin. Thank you, that’s great. I’m a big fan of Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd as well. If you go back and look at the movie The Hidden — which, geez, was in the late ’80s, I guess! — I got to do a similar kind of thing. There’s an alien that’s inhabiting a human body for the very first time in that movie. But it takes the eyes of David Lynch to give the courage to just let something run. There were a lot of times in Twin Peaks where we just rolled camera, and I did what felt right to me. Then, with the encouragement of David, I’d go even further thinking, “I’m going to trust that he’s got my back on this.” And we came up with some great stuff.

Having worked with him so long, what’s the thing about David Lynch that would surprise people the most? That he’s got a wonderful sense of humor, terrific patience, and joy in the creative process. He’s very welcoming of an actor’s input, but at the same time very specific about what he’s looking for and what he’s not looking for. And he’s so rooted in reality and in the moment; it’s important to him that he absolutely believes that the actor is that character in that situation. There are just so many things about who he is — I could go on and on. When I look back over the years, I started with David Lynch in Dune, and then I also did my second movie with David Lynch, Blue Velvet. Being young, naïve and callow, I think I felt, “That was good, but now I’m gonna go work with these guys over here.” That depth of appreciation [for David] that didn’t necessarily exist when I was in my early 20s has come up and out, and I love the man so much. To have worked with him as many times as I have and to have done some of my best work with him has been a big part of the journey for me as an actor.

Looking ahead to what’s after Twin Peaks, what have you taken away from the show that you hope to apply to your next role? My process hasn’t changed much. I want to do interesting things with interesting filmmakers, and something that makes sense to me as an actor in the moment. In some ways, these performances have given me more confidence in what I’m able to do, a stronger belief in myself. And it has nothing to do with the reviews or anything like that; if I see it in my own performance, I’m comfortable with it. And I did see it in my performance in Twin Peaks. I was like, “You’ve grown, Kyle. There are things that you can do that I didn’t even know you could do.”

Twin Peaks: The Return is streaming on Showtime Anytime and on Hulu with a Showtime subscription.

link (TP)

[fuse2dx]

September ‘20

Paradise Killer

Putting it out there front and centre that I know some of the folks involved in creating this, and clearly I’m devoid of sufficient integrity to be impartial. You know, it’s best to get these things out there, with the internet being what it is. 

It’s a whodunnit set in Paradise, with your character having been brought back from exile and tasked with solving who’s responsible for the mass-murder of the island’s core council. There’s a clear set up with one guy already due to take the fall, but it quickly becomes apparent that the island’s populous of weird deities - who perhaps have too much time on their hands - clearly have more of a stake in this than they’d like you to know. You’re left to investigate at your own pace, poking around crime scenes and places of interest, but also soaking up the island and its vibe as a whole. Getting reacquainted with its residents is a massive chunk of this, and if their out-there names, colourful outfits, and eccentric behaviours weren’t enough to draw you in, there’s more serious manners such as allegiances and motives to start peeling back the layers of. Titbits of info gleaned will often give you the opportunity to eke more out of someone else, and although the game does a great job of subtly nudging you to where loose ends might best be chased down, you’re given the freedom and ultimate responsibility on when to start wrapping things up at trial.

Given the potential for disorder in its narrative structure, the game’s job in cataloging all of your gathered information is crucially neat in its execution. The free rein that allows you to be as orderly and meticulous as you choose is welcome, as is the gentle push towards the truth of things. But there’s also just enough space to sink into convenient falsehoods - even to present them at trial and make them stick, if you can pass on that conviction - and it’s this freedom that really sets it apart from its contemporaries. Helping this is a fully realised island you can move about in and investigate, rather than doled out chunks of  exposition by chains of talking head sequences. More salacious secrets are typically locked behind puzzles or specific items, but there’s also a particularly inviting nature to the architecture that suggests playful acrobatics - dashing, double-jumping and the like - be used to explore out-of-reach areas. 

The look is tinged in pinks and blues, giving a suitably welcoming glow to Paradise. It’s warmth is helped massively by the soundtrack that runs throughout it, bringing pleasant, jazzy saxophones and subtle, warm electronics into its city-pop inspired stable. There’s a great voice running through its veins too - one that operates in its unspoken thoughts, the descriptions of its collectables, even the interface and the sub-headers as you enter new areas - just about damn everywhere. It’s smart, it’s cynical, and it’s snappy, and is a regular factor in keeping a smile on your face even in the moments that get closest to being downtime. Bias be damned! I can say, hand-on-heart, that it’s a game that not just nestles in comfortably among its peers, but stands tall among them. 

Moon

Cult status can be a double edged sword. For anything cult - movies, albums, games, you name it - there’s that risk that if put under a modern lens, they can be painfully of their time. Cherished by those that were there, perhaps, but impenetrable - or even worse, alienating - for those without that context. Previously a Japan-only PS1 title, Moon has held such status for 20+ long years, but on its return, lets you know very quickly that a lot of what it had to say was timeless.

Its sending-up of RPG tropes is pretty spot on - the game-within-a-game that your character boots up got a big belly laugh out of me almost immediately, and then leads into a montage of a hero’s journey through a world that you’re then later transported into to pick up the pieces. See, the ‘hero’ in the game is kind of a jerk - barging into people’s homes, taking things out of their cupboards, killing all of the wildlife, and so on - and while this likely sounds very familiar, Moon prompts you to remove that filter of normal game behaviour, and instead asks that you try and be a bit more conscionable and pleasant. Acts of kindness to others are repaid in love, a tangible currency that grows your love level, allowing you to spend more time in its world before you need to rest and begin your day’s busy-bodying anew. Observing the routines of the world’s inhabitants is key to making good on its many grievances, and although these are straightforward enough at the start, some of the later challenges relied on some more tenuous thinking - to which, I’ll put my hands up and say that I turned to a walkthrough. These more patience-testing moments might have been a good way to pad things out in ‘97, however it’s a bit steeper an ask today, when I daresay most people will be visiting this as more of a curiosity. Accepting a helping hand doesn’t stand in the way of these scenarios delivering on the charm, surprise, or humour they originally aimed for, though. Labelling it a parody or a spoof might work as a descriptive shortcut, but it’s never mean spirited, and clearly loves the subjects it pokes fun at - there’s a wonderfully self-effacing humility throughout it.

Given Final Fantasy 7 - often cited as a common entry point for many modern western fans of JRPGs - didn’t even arrive in Europe until after this originally released, it’s not hard to understand why it wasn’t considered for localisation at the time. The audience certainly didn’t exist at scale, and simply wouldn’t have had the gaming experience or vocabulary to appreciate it. Not only can we now better appreciate it as the tongue-in-cheek love letter it is, but the message of compassion and thoughtfulness is something that’s more essential today than arguably ever before. 

Spelunky 2

This was always on my radar as a likely ‘game of the generation’ contender. I’ve been playing the original game on and off now for around 8 years - it’s followed me as a regular part of my gaming diet across 4 different platforms, and crucially, all the way up until the night before this finally landed on my PS4. Without getting too philosophical about it, it’s a very important game to me. Despite all of the time playing it, thinking about it, talking about it, or even reading the gosh darned book about it, I never once thought to assume I had the answer for what would make a fitting sequel. Thankfully, the team behind it had more ideas, and the faith in their convictions.

All of the crucial components of the original are here in abundance, and added to with a restrained modesty. Its randomly generated levels are more complex, and offer more distinct ways of hiding secrets, all while a subtle but slick graphical overhaul does great work in making them look more organic than ever before. More complex fluid physics allows for more transformative ways of opening up levels, and mounts might add some quirky new dynamics to things, but crucially, things under the hood beside this remain largely the same.

Perhaps more importantly, Spelunky 2 understands the fervent player base centred around the original game, and uses their knowledge and familiarity to challenge them anew with clinical precision. Things are just similar enough: the title screen, the tutorial, many of the enemies, and the stages that you find them in - they’re tweaked, yes, but still familiar. On top though, there’s enough that’s new, or changed in a minute yet specific way that makes it very clear that things are going to be uniquely dangerous all over again, and that your muscle memory is more of a liability than a crutch. The curve of learning the game - understanding and tempering its dangers, and the slow, cautious, pulling back the curtain of its newer secrets - is still pitched in the same utterly compelling way as before, though. Rather than being harder outright, or just more lumped on top, it finds a way to make new players and familiar faces alike to learn to play Spelunky all over again, and it’s a total joy to have that opportunity. It’s everything I didn't realise I wanted in a sequel, and it’s breathed a new lease of life into a game that I wasn’t even bored with in the first place. 

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 Remastered

The original THPS was proper lightning in a bottle stuff; while its countless sequels eventually drained every good idea bone dry, and it left countless half-baked spin-offs in its wake, it’s hard to be mad, or surprised, when the original formula was so potent. Underpinned by a brilliant combo system that called back to arcade-style score chasing, in tandem it also nailed the kind of goal-based mission objectives that became so common after it. This is before you even get on to the way that skateboarding’s irreverence, fashion, and music were curated and presented in such a way that they left a mark on an entire generation. Sports titles are often glossed over from a critical perspective, but there is no escaping the quality and impact of this series. 

This remaster tries to capture it at its zenith - and although they’re arguably off by a game or two, depending on who you talk to - it’s generally welcome that some of the ideas from later games are pared back. What it does with these first two games is for my money, the gold standard of what a remaster should do - it makes them look and feel like you imagined they did at the time; smooth, detailed, and responsive. Please, don’t make me go back and look at what the originals actually did look like, because I don’t think my poor brain could take it. The kitchen sink has been thrown at everything surrounding the game, with more relevant and diverse skaters brought into the fold, menus upon menus hiding a wealth of additional challenges, and a soundtrack that celebrates the older, punkier roots of the game, but also shines a light on some musical features that are perhaps more relevant to today’s youth. It’s all handled with a surprising elegance.

It’s a great new way to introduce the series to people, and also a nice outlet for old hands, with my only real criticism being that I had blasted through both of the original tours within a day of dropping the disc in my system. Yes, I could chase high scores endlessly, and yes, there’s a park builder and an abundance of multiplayer modes - but if you’ve finished these games before and just want to revisit them with a new lick of paint, don’t be surprised when it dries out fast.

[bardqueenofgallifrey]

I didn't have a tumblr account in 2013, so I have no idea how the fuck a 53-year-old Sci fi show became part of something as cringe as "superwholock". I mean, I watch Sherlock but damn this match makes no sense. Could you explain to me how it happened please???

Honestly? I don’t know exactly.

I was never really a part of SuperWhoLock, and I don’t think I was on here for the origins either, but whenever it was that I did get on here, I was just a passionate Whovian who also watched and liked Sherlock (these days I’m pretty indifferent about Sherlock one way or another, and give as few shits about Supernatural as I ever did).  

BUT, I’m gonna see if I can try and work out/theorise how SuperWhoLock rose and fell, if only to try and make the point that Doctor Who never deserved to be lumped in with it. Feel free to challenge any points I make, because I’m guessing here. 

although, frankly, this idea of cringe culture is kinda snobby and gross. let people like shit, damn, if they’re not hurting anyone or trying to say Supernatural is the best show ever, who gives a fuck, honestly

Firstly, the thing about Doctor Who is that it has been around for literal multiple decades. Almost fifty four years. It has been around since before some of our parents were born. 

Doctor Who fans were around long before the internet was invented. They were here before, and will be here long after everyone has forgotten what the hell Supernatural ever was. Doctor Who fans are now the ones making Doctor Who. They were the ones who, when it got cancelled, created an entire thriving Audio Drama business through the love of it that still existed everywhere, and they are the ones who brought it back and now create it. They’ve never let it die. 

You know why? Why Doctor Who’s endured, and is so passionately loved by so many, and before all this mess wasn’t any more cringy than being into Star Trek? Because it’s good. 

It is a flawed show, of course (always, somehow, in some way, in ways that vary across different eras), but one that is good in a reckless, nonsensical, optimistic way. No matter the ups and downs of its objective quality, it’s never really lost its heart. 

It is a show with a protagonist that uses words/intelligence/compassion over violence to fight, a show that focuses on telling hopeful adventures that can be watched by children and also inform them of some of the harsher aspects of the world in an interesting way.

Also, it’s always been quite progressive. It had the first female drama producer at the BBC, and a gay Indian director. No one wanted it to succeed and it’s a miracle the show ever got off the ground. 

People like to talk about the “screaming Classic companions” but you know what? Fuck that. The Classic ladies were all wonderful, including the biggest screamers. Susan? The Doctor’s granddaughter, genius, with telepathic abilities and a whole lot of heart. Mel? Computer programmer aka fucking smarty pants, who once flipped the Doctor over her shoulder, and was such a genuinely nice person that it was genuinely impressive. Zoe? Adorable 60′s companion who canonically had a higher IQ than the Doctor. 

Doctor Who ladies have been awesome since the beginning, and calling out misogyny from the beginning. 

(It ALSO had errors of its time, especially an Orientalism issue that is pervasive through a lot of older sci-fi, that can’t and shouldn’t be forgotten either. But that’s for the most part irrelevant to this discussion other than the general whiteness which is still obviously a problem albeit one the show is slowly working on.)

The reboot then brought in (some, not enough) queer characters and main characters of colour, etc, and its general diversity has only been getting better and better on that front for the most part, especially in the last couple of years. 

But anyway, how the hell did it get mixed up with the whole SuperWhoLock mess? 

Well, the reboot brought in a whole new generation of fans, and only got bigger and bigger and bigger, and was peaking RIGHT about when Sherlock aired. 

The Doctor Who and Sherlock crossover is easy enough to work out; they had the same headwriter(s), and they’re both about neurodivergent (coded??) genius white guys that theoretically have a kind of unconventional attractiveness to them. You can see how they drew in the same crowd. 

Now, how the hell Supernatural became a part of that, I’ve no idea. I’ve never been a Supernatural fan (even if I did watch the first four and a half seasons once, more or less enjoy them, but also not find them massively interesting). 

But I’m going to assume it’s because it again involved white guys with Big Emotions, that the fans could thirst over, who were undertaking some larger than life shit. 

My theory is that it, at least partly, was the White Male Slash Fandom. 

You know. That group of mostly straight girls who treat shipping conventionally attractive white men like a fetish and a kink to explore, who will ship basically any two CAWM under the sun if they so much as look at each other. I imagine the Johnlock crowd overlapped with the Destiel and Wincest crowd, and Doctor Who, since it had Ten/Simm!Master (and Eleven/Rory to a lesser extent) as well as some nice hetero ships, kind of got dragged along because almost everyone in the Sherlock fandom was probably in the Doctor Who fandom too. 

You can kind of see how it fits. The Supernatural gang and the Team TARDIS are big damn heroes with a lot of heart, while Sherlock fulfilled the ideal levels of pretentiousness that we all go through in our teenage years. 

Of course, then everyone realised that Supernatural kinda sucks because it’s an incredibly white, incredibly male, incredibly STRAIGHT show that just queerbaits its audience and doesn’t know when to call it quits, and so everyone started jumping ship. 

Then everyone looked at Sherlock, either went “this has its issues but it’s still fun”, “this is QUEERBAITING TOO, WHY WONT JOHNLOCK KISS, FUCK MOFFISS”, or “this is also incredibly white, incredibly male, and incredibly straight, so fuck this also”, and that was it for Sherlock and general opinion too. 

(For the record: Johnlock was not queerbait. Johnlock was an expression of Steven Moffat’s own very intimate, but platonic, friendship with Mark Gatiss, and they explicitly told everyone they were not gonna make it gay. And then the toxic ass fandom, deluded out their minds, started sending Gatiss - an actual gay man - abuse about being “an honorary straight” for not making their fetishised fictional relationship canon, at one point literally the day after the Pulse massacre. Seriously. What the fuck. Never speak about it being queerbaiting ever again and leave Mark Gatiss the fuck alone.) 

Now. Doctor Who had meanwhile been dealing with the changeover of the showrunner. 

Series 5 went down pretty well for the most part, but a lot of people had their issues with Series 6 and Series 7. The fandom had kind of gotten too big, for a show this unconventional. To the point of a lot of people not being able to deal with the distinct change from the style of Russell T Davies, because they weren’t really aware of how the show needs to reinvent itself constantly even on a stylistic level. Because they were treating the show like any other show, when one can’t really do that. 

It was all kind of a mess of:

very mixed fan reception on Series 6

Series 7 being on the weaker side (not as weak as some people who missed the whole point of Clara’s storyline make it out to be, but weak nonetheless, though Moffat has admitted to this and explained it was because he was under so much pressure about the looming 50th anniversary, and like, fuck, fair enough)

people being pissed at Moffat for Sherlock shit

Russell T Davies having done quite a few things in his era that are questionable from a wider Doctor Who standpoint, which Moffat as the Ultimate Who Fan didn’t go along with, only to then receive hate from people who were convinced that if RTD did something it must be right, because they haven’t seen Classic Who or apparently bothered to do a couple of google searches to educate themselves

plus, a few of Moffat’s quotes around 2012ish got taken out of context because he’s a sarcastic little shit who runs his mouth

and so people got the idea that Moffat’s a narcissistic misogynist who “loves white men”

also people confused “plot hole” with “is going to be explained later” and complained about him having plot holes in series 5-7 when really it’s just that he was waiting to tie up all the loose ends in Matt Smith’s finale episode

Anyway, thus began the popular - to this day! - sentiment of thinking that Moffat is one of the worst things to happen to television, or at least Doctor Who (and Sherlock Holmes). 

And so, that was the “downfall” of Doctor Who and SuperWhoLock, so to speak, as all three shows were written off by the wider Tumblr/nerd community as being incredibly cringy. 

Now, to examine it from today’s view, in light of recent series/opinion about the series/the female Doctor reveal. 

The problem is, the general attitude about Moffat - who don’t get me wrong, is far from a flawless writer, or person - has literally reached the point of mass delusion. It’s very clear that literally thousands of people have a completely fictionalised version of him in their heads. 

How do I know this? I saw someone say that a female Doctor was a “defiance of everything the Moffat era stood for”. 

As in, the same Moffat era that, in the last three seasons:

explicitly made the genderfluidity of Time Lords canon (Dark Water/Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time)

changed the Master into a woman (Dark Water)

had the now female Master refer to becoming a woman as an “upgrade” (The Witch’s Familiar)

had a companion’s whole storyline be about “becoming the Doctor” in her own right, with her getting a whole episode of her pretending to be the Doctor, and her flying off in her own TARDIS with a companion of her own in the end of her final episode! (Flatline, Hell Bent)

had ANOTHER companion’s storyline end with her immortal space girlfriend at the console of the TARDIS, offering for her to travel through all of time and space with her in a direct parallel to the Nine/Rose offer from the first episode to the reboot (The Doctor Falls, Rose)

had a Time Lord regenerate from a white guy to a black lady onscreen just to FINALLY shut up people who said race/gender changes couldn’t happen (Hell Bent)

had the Doctor positively reacting to the suggestion that he could be  - or had been - a woman, multiple times (Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time, The Doctor Falls)

Moffat’s era has been statistically proven to have shifted public opinion in favour of a female Doctor (ask @scriptscribbles, if you want proof), thanks to the above. 

Simm!Master: “She? Is the future going to be all girl?” 

Twelve: “We can only hope.” 

Also, Moffat wrote Lumley!Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death in 1999. He’s been pushing for a female Doctor for 18 damn years. 

So, the idea that anyone thinks he’s against it, as opposed to having explicitly worked to help make it happen for years, shows that the general opinion of him is literally a mass fictionalisation/delusion. 

(It’s just one example, but there are hundreds of others, like how everyone seems to think he thinks of himself as The Greatest Ever and having a huge ego, when he’s literally one of the most self-deprecating people ever, if you watch him in an interview. He’s openly admitted to mistakes he’s made on his time on the show, such as the way he handled the scene at the end of Flesh and Stone, and how Series 7 wasn’t his best because of the pressure he was under about the upcoming 50th anniversary; he is aware of his fallibility.) 

He’s not a perfect person, or writer, and no one knows that better than him. There’s a lot of critical discussions we could have about his writing, and there are a fair few actual problems with it, just as there are in the RTD era, and every damn era of Who that has existed. I’m not saying everybody has to like it, because every era of Doctor Who is down to personal preference, and that’s fine. There are plenty of rational, well-informed people, fans and otherwise, who have their -often sound - reasons for not liking Moffat and/or his era of Who in general. I am friends with some of them. 

But those rational, well-informed people are like, 5% of the people who otherwise make up a sea of loud, ignorant delusion that condemns Doctor Who under Moffat’s direction and downright refuses to acknowledge some of the amazing stuff it’s done in the last few years. 

(Like, Series 10 featured a black lesbian co-lead who got a happy ending, leaving the Moffat era finishing strong on six canonically sapphic women, four of whom are still alive, none of whom died pointlessly or without agency, and three of whom are immortal or close enough, in a time when all other TV sapphics are dropping dead like flies. It also had the Doctor punch a racist in the face and comment on how history is whitewashed, and had an episode slamming capitalism. Plus, the finale canonised that Time Lords don’t view gender the same way, reinforcing canon genderfluid Time Lords.)  

Between his second and third seasons of DW being divisive and/or a bit weak, all the Sherlock shit going down, and the fall of Supernatural, and the issue of people taking RTD Who as the baseline for everything Doctor Who when they really shouldn’t have, anti-Moffat sentiments got so big that masses of people fell off the show, and continue to refuse to acknowledge that he might have done anything worthwhile with it since they left. That he might, as a person, have developed and improved. 

And so, that is potentially how Doctor Who got lumped in with SuperWhoLock, labelled “not progressive”, and considered “cringy” to this day. 

Or at least, that’s my theory, as someone who wasn’t really paying a lot of attention, but knows her Doctor Who. 

[gublernews]

Trent Haaga’s 68 Kill is a nasty bit of midnight movie fun, full of femme fatales sadistically taunting its central character Chip. Haaga began his run at Troma and wrote fest fav Cheap Thrills, bringing to the table a balance between full-on B-movie schlock and a keen eye for detail and character. He wrote the lead role for Matthew Gray Gubler, known to many as Dr. Reid on Criminal Minds but also for his pitch perfect take as the intern in Wes Anderson’s masterpiece The Life Aquatic.

68 Kill just had its Canadian premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival where BMD spoke to the director and star about the film, their fascinations and how Tom Ford plays a role in Trent’s cinematic life.

You’ve come a long way from your days at Troma, yet 68 Kill still has that spirit of abandon running through it.

Trent Haaga: Troma gave me my start and I grew up on this kind of thing. I've made quite a few movies since Troma - I wrote Cheap Thrills and Dead Girlthat leaned more into that serious thing. They use the [term] “post-horror” these days, but I always just like my stuff to be a little punk rock. I know that in today's film world climate 68 Kill is not what's trendy at the moment, it's a little over the top, but it's what I wanted to make. It's kind of fun and sexy. Where are the sexy movies these days, right?

Matthew, as the lead you have the responsibility to be completely mad yet not come across as not a douchebag. It’s a fine line to toe.

Matthew Gray Gubler: I felt really honoured when Trent offered me this leading part, but there's this weird responsibility that comes with that to be a baseline and not devolve too much until the right time, to make sure other things pop and everything works together. Trent did a brilliant thing - this guy's a lunatic, a cineloon - he wrote us an e-mail talking about naturalism, this literature movement which I was not familiar with, that told all of the characters what animal they were. For instance, AnnaLynne was the scorpion, and if you look closely at the film there are some scorpion references. Dwayne was an alligator, the slow, lethargic, horrifying killer. My character was the fly, which I think was symbolically realized in the beginning with the honey. I really referenced that a lot in remembering to be that thing that constantly hums but doesn't shout. What's so special about it is the work that Trent did in creating this tone that could have at any point fallen one way or the other, and it was all him.

While you're in the midst of chaos, you're trying to obviously do the words and do the actions, but you're trying to do it in a way that fits the greater whole. Obviously, you need strong direction, but you as a performer, do you simply let yourself go to the moment and make sure that he's there to catch you if you fall?

MGG: I'm really good at talking about certain things, but acting is hard to talk about. I understand what you're saying and I don't want to sound pretentious, but whenever I approach a movie as an actor I never look at the character. I just really want the movie to be really fucking good, even if I get cut out. And that's happened! So I never look at it like how can I shine in this moment. When I look at a scene, I'm not like, oh, can I showcase my cool moment here, it's more like what's going to make the viewer unable to blink during this scene. I consider myself less an actor and more a storyteller.

One challenge of direction must be that with a film like this it can't all just be turned up to 11, otherwise the whole thing just sounds like noise.

TH: Exactly. Casting was a super important thing. I'm a fan of Matthew, I was watching Criminal Minds while I was writing the script and his voice just kept seeping in. The trick is that Chip does a lot of really stupid things. He's not the brightest bulb in the box, but he's got to be loveable. We had kind of a weird shorthand, there would be times when I would say hey, you need to Chip out more.

MGG: Oh, I loved that, it was so great.

TH: You establish kind of a baseline and then you go “let's get Chip out to 7” on the Chip scale, or sometimes I'd be like, you need to Chip down to 4 here. It's a weird sort of cool.

MGG: I like the idea that this character is bounced around like this horrible pinball machine where he's the sad ball just getting boinked from psychopath to psychopath, to love to loss. To me the best acting is just reacting and with the characters and with Sheila and Alisha and everyone it's very easy to just be the thing that's getting kicked and finding the story there.

You've done bigger budget, you've done indie movies, how you find that ability to actually still be listening given the different pressures of each project?

MGG: I always approach everything the same, whether it's a TV show or giant movie or an indie thing. I sound like such a douchebag talking about it, but I studied filmmaking and the only thing I know about acting is really believing something and tricking my own mind into believing it. It's less about knowing the line or the moment and more about knowing every fucking thing about that human so it's almost like being a spy. Every movie I do is going into deep undercover and if they find out that I'm really not this person I'm going to be murdered.

Do you go home with your character? How method are you?

MGG: Yeah, it's bad. Criminal Minds haunts the shit out of me. I flew here from there, but to go from defending a child's life with a gun and a knife and trying to save them to listening to “MMMbop” by Hanson on the radio a moment later.

What were the films that you saw where you said, fuck it, I'm going to do this for a living?

TH: Anything that just feels like a human being sat down and made it, not a group of people. [Take] Nocturnal Animals - when I watched it, I was like this is a singular vision of a human being, whether you liked it or not. Neon Demon, I know a lot of people hated that movie, but when I watch Refn's movies… Werner Herzog, Tarantino, you just go, oh, there's a person here. You may not agree with every decision that they made but it felt [made by] a person with a unique point of view.

Are we going to see a little bit of Tom Ford in your next project?

TH: I would aspire to it but I always can't forget my schlock background and it's just so deeply ingrained in me.

MGG: It's not schlock, man!

In some ways it has to be schlock, right? Own the schlock.

TH: You have to. I grew up in a trailer park, I understand these characters, this is my milieu

It's not ironic.

TH: Exactly. Some people would deny their schlock background once they reach a certain level of success, they would deny their sort of white trashy upbringing. But these are the things that made me what I am and they are what make me have hopefully a distinct vision. So when I look at Tom Ford, I think, oh, here's a really rich, successful guy in multiple fields, he's traveled all over the world, he can do this movie that's got a bigger thing. When I watched Nocturnal Animals, I was like, oh, if only, one day, I could do something like that, but I know that there's gonna be a little hook at the back of me that's going to drag me through the mud a bit more than that and it's just because of the nature of my upbringing.

So, Matthew, what films changed your trajectory?

MGG: I mean, as a kid, it was probably Ghostbusters. I saw it when I was three and I had to leave because the librarian came at me and I ran out of the room crying. I remember two movies that really changed my life forever were when I saw Rushmore on the opening day and I was, like, you're allowed to do that? It blew my mind. To me the gold standard is Buffalo 66. It’s the finest ever made, a perfect film.

TH: It's so fucking good.

You're falling in love with Rushmore and then you have a chance to work with Wes.

MGG: Yeah, how crazy is that? I'm very fortunate for that.

So, should you meet your heroes?

MGG: Yeah, always.

[homesception]

May 30th, 2013 - Part 1: Wherein Lobac writes a book

I am constantly humbled by my own peerless capacity to capture Lobac’s sublime essence in the form of Homestuck panel edits.  This one is, if anything, my finest work yet, an exquisite realization Lobac’s deepest and most fundamental inner truths, the very core of her personal being.

lobac said:

Right then, I was gonna say stuff about those weird destiny/mythology/title/element/RPG class thingies!

Ok, so... this page is just a huge text post of classpect speculation, plus some troll chat name discussion, and I’m not really sure what to do with that, or what commentary I could add that wouldn’t be confirming or denying her guesswork in a spoilery way.

Eh, we’ll just wing it.

(By the way, this is all more about what I’d LIKE to see, story-telling-wise, and about what I WANT to be true because this could potentially be a really neat system It’s less about what I think is LIKELY to happen)

Fair enough

Oh MAN I am so excited about this though

Classpectulation was always very popular among the fanbase.  Some people got way, way into it.  Me not so much, though, actually.  Not sure if there’s any reason behind that, just wasn’t really my scene.

So much speculation to be done!!! (*~▽~) So many things to be confused about!!! (~▽~*) SO much disappointment in my future once I realise that everything I guessed was wrong!!! (*T▽T*)

I mean, I can see why Lobac and others found it exciting.  

Ok, first of all, we’ve finally shed some light on the whole “Title fits player? Title… doesn’t fit player??? Title challenges player????? No????” debacle (Finally I will be able to sleep peacefully again)

Oh, yeah!  The light thing!  Hahaha, that’s, that’s still pretty funny.  :p

SBURB tells players what their general role in the grand scheme of things is, their “destiny” if you will, and assigns them in a way that makes their party likely to succeed It’s like wanting to have a healer, fighter and wizard in your party I think? Offense and Defense and stuff all need to be strong and work well together if you wanna get anywhere, so SBURB balances things out and makes sure every angle of the game is covered by someone

Eh, I don’t know.  I mean, by this point in the story we know there are parties / player groups of different sizes, and the troll group includes elements that the human group doesn’t have, like Blood and Mind, so not every angle can be accounted for in every group.

(I still don’t know what the actual POINT of SBURB is supposed to be, and why we’re even doing all of this to save a world that the game created in the first place… Why do you even need the kids? Why do you need them to go on a journey of character growth and self-discovery??? There’s obviously some bigger purpose but??? I don’t think we got any hints toward what it is)

Can’t comment on this bit

However, these are HYP3R FL3XIBL3, meaning that you’re supposed to decide what your title means for yourself and how to utilize your powers in a way that fits your personality and the path you choose So, it’s not quite as simple as everyone’s title being purposely unfitting and challenging, or everyone’s being unproblematic and fitting perfectly, it’s all about personal growth, it’s all about how the individual interprets their role

There was a lot of theorizing trying to create a one size fits all model o how Sburb assigns classpects to players, but I always sided with this interpretation, that some players are challenged, others not so, that not just the class and aspect but the experience is tailored to individual players and varries arbitrarily.

What I mean by this is that, at least for now, since it’s up to the kids to both grow into their roles and shape them, there’s no point in making any “general” statements about any elements, it’s probably a better idea to look at what they might mean for the specific character they were assigned to

This is a good approach, I think, and Lobac goes on to break down her thoughts on some of the asspects and classes, but before we jump into that I’d just like to point out that there’s a third axis as well, even if it doesn’t make it into the kids’ titles, of prospit vs. derse.  I don’t think its too much of a spoiler to say we don’t get to see any examples of players with the same class and aspect but different moon assignments, mostly because I don’t actually remember if it’s true or not, but I do remember thinking it would have been interesting for comparison purposes to see what difference that would make.

BREATH ~~

Ability to (subconsciously??? seriously what even was that) manipulate the wind and conjure up storms, of course! I imagine John will not be very, precise, or subtle, when using his powers, so he probably won’t be able to make himself “fly” by redirecting the air around him? Or rather, it’ll take him quite a while to get there, the kid needs some kind of challenge

seems straight forward enough.

Maybe he’ll fall of a cliff

NO COMMENT.

Storms can also be fucking terrifying and destructive - John could possibly be like that if something awful enough happened? His father’s death, maybe

What, like a break the woobie kind of situation?  I guess the plot could go that direction.

I’m already seeing the whole “flexibility” thing here, you can interpret this any way you want to

Basically.

BLOOD ۵۵۵

I’ve no idea who’s supposed to be the Knight of Blood, which means there isn’t that much to say but of course there’s the obvious implication, and also… Eh I’ll get to that later

There’s probably spoilers on that page somewhere.

LIGHT ☼

I don’t have any good commentary on Lobac’s speculation, here, possibly because I’m getting pretty tired, it’s about 9pm as I’m writing this and it’s been a long, long day.  But it’s all really good stuff, and I highly recommend you just follow the ‘lobac said’ link above and read it for yourself if you haven’t in a while.

SPACE   ҉

Yeah, this one and Time are pretty much the odd ones out I mean, is there any way to interpret Space other than, well, space?

Well, there’s like personal space, or when people are breaking up they might say they need some space...

I don’t know, I got nuthin.

TIME ⏳

Travelling through time! Stopping time! Seeing the past and/or future! We’ve had an entire act full of random-ass time powers I don’t think there’s even anything left to say (Except for POOR FUCKING SAWBUCK. That can never be said enough)

Homestuck has lots of great time shenanigans and a positively silly number of examples of distinct weird and amusing (if not always useful) weird time powers, mostly thanks to the Intermission’s Felt.  Even if in all the Felt’s cases time still just meant literal time and not a metaphor for some other more abstract concept, it still gives an idea of the range that, Breath or Light powers or whatever could take, even if they were restricted to just blowing and illumination.

MIND ⍰ (Yeah no clue how to put a symbol to that)

AAAAaaand apparently there’s a limit to the number of videos tumblr will let me embed in a single text post?  Boooh, that’s no fun.  Bluh.  Was gonna put that samurai jack clip here, the “I knew that you knew that I knew you would cheat” bit, but... eh.  oh, well.

Right, GC is a Seer of Mind! Mind probably just refers to the ability to understand other people, and use it against them or help them with that knowledge in any way you see fit It does make her really good at trolling people, by definition

It does make sense that she, at least, isn’t an abject failure in that regard.

And now onto the classes...

...

..

Actually, I’m too tired to go on, so I’m going to cut this one short here, and put her discussion of classes and troll handles in another post later.

[cawfulopinions]

Fire Emblem Fates: Just Shove Your Children into the Puberty Void

           I really wanted to like Fire Emblem Fates. I really, really did.

           But there’s only just so much anime I can take, you guys.

           Fire Emblem Fates is the fourteenth entry in the long running Fire Emblem series of fantasy, turn-based strategy games. The series has always made itself distinct from other games in the same genre with its strong sense of fantasy aesthetic, its character writing, and smooth, smooth animation, but has always failed to get traction in the West due to its difficulty and occasional iffy mechanics choices. Fates’ predecessor, Awakening, sold very well, however, and proved that there was a place for Fire Emblem in the states, but sacrificed a lot of franchise difficulty, so Fates promised to give an experience that both fans of Awakening and fans of previous Fire Emblems could enjoy.

           It… certainly tried. I don’t think it quite got there, but it tried. But there was a lot going on along the way that makes me question what the hell they were thinking.

           Fates, ultimately, feels like it’s torn between being a Fire Emblem entry and being a cool light novel that all of the kids will like. There’s a lot that feels like it was cribbed from the latest cheap anime on the airwaves, just for the sake of appealing to people who’re into that. It’s a very weird atmosphere and it doesn’t really fit for what Fire Emblem has previously been. There’s some serious war drama, but there’s also some creepy incest stuff involving your non-blood related siblings and a lot of fanservice. There’s this soap opera stuff involving whether you should be loyal to your birth family or your adoptive family, but also a dimension crossing dragon man’s evil army that wants to destroy the world. There’s DLC gating. There’s a lot of DLC gating.

           It’s not a bad game, persay, but… well, there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s dive in.

           Disclaimer: All images in this long pile of salt are either pulled from official Nintendo press releases or official art, from Miiverse posts, or from other sources. Every image is a legitimate image from the localization, at least as far as I can tell. There’s exactly one image I ‘capped myself, and it’s because I wanted a good shot of a booty. Otherwise, I didn’t screencap them. Please excuse my laziness.

            So before we get into my gripes with the writing, let’s talk mechanics. Fates is split into two versions, Birthright and Conquest, with a third route titled Revelations available as DLC. Each of the versions sports a different plotline, with different units and different maps. However, rather than each game being their own separate thing, the three routes actually branch from a single choice point a couple chapters into the game, after which point you’re locked into one version’s storyline.

The three versions offer different gameplay experiences – Birthright has you supporting Hoshido and is most similar to Fates’ predecessor, with access to skirmishes to level your units and a generally easier experience; Conquest has you supporting Nohr and is a fairly traditional Fire Emblem experience, so resource management is the name of the game; and Revelations has you rejecting both countries and running off with the intended blue-haired waifu, and features several unique map mechanics and access to almost all units from both games, opening up strategies and marriage options that aren’t available in the other two versions.

This is basically foreplay for these two.

           These are all pretty ambitious ideas, so it’s a shame that they all just… don’t really work. For starters, unit types are largely divided by kingdom, which creates some weird balance issues. The majority of the units you get while playing with Hoshido are samurai, ninjas, and mages – speedy foot units with low defense –while the majority of your mounted units are Pegasus knights – low defense, low HP flying units who are vulnerable to archers, which Nohr has in spades. Which is a problem, because the majority of the Nohr units… are slower, hard-hitting mounted units who can tank hits way better than you can. When playing on Birthright, you have to work for your mounted and tanky units, as for a long time the only non-flier mounted unit is Silas, a defector from Nohr who brings along the precious Cavalier class, which can reclass into the tankier Great Knight class. It’s a helpful move, but it’s just not enough a lot of the time.

           In a move that’s clearly meant to balance them, Nohr’s units tend to have low resistance, making them more vulnerable to magic. This makes Conquest an exercise in frustration all on its own because the enemy AI on Conquest can afford to throw endless mages and ninjas at you to carve through your resistance and lower your stats with their throwing knives. And, of course, there’s the occasional Spear Fighter with a Beast Killer spear there specifically to fuck up all of your mounted units’ days,

           Only on Revelations do you have access to units to both types, since you get every recruitable unit between both games, save for a few specific plot units who you could only support off with the Avatar anyways. Besides the absolute pile of warm bodies you’re suddenly given, it opens up a larger experience with the game and better strategies you can now put into place… so it’s a damn shame that the route’s only available as paid DLC, and not as the base game.

           Unfortunately, all three routes (but especially Birthright and Conquest) have a particularly damning, unfun issue: their map design sucks. It’s awful. The maps are almost entirely designed around the quality of “how can we make it easy for everyone ever to get swarmed by everything” and it makes everything an exercise in frustration. There’s one particular map in Birthright where you’re storming a fort, and the lead up to the fort is a large, open field, and the moment you move into one enemy’s range, you’ve basically moved into every enemy’s range, and whoever you send up there is about to get swarmed by everything. Which is an issue, because your tankier units are in short supply, and there’s only so much that Pair Up can do to fix everyone’s defensive issues.

This map’s probably the most extreme case, but it’s far from the only one; several of the maps can more or less be described in qualities of either “big open rectangles” or “awful mazes of corridors”. There’s also a surprising dearth of interesting terrain – I think I can count the number of maps with actual forest tiles on one hand, and since the final chapters on both Birthright and Conquest are all indoors, the terrain’s even more limited.

           Making things a bit more interesting is the Dragon Vein mechanic – every map has special tiles that can be activated by any members of royalty you have in your team due to their draconic heritage, causing different effects depending on the map you’re on. These can be used against you or to your benefit, since there are more than a few maps involving you fighting the opposite kingdom’s royalty too. Honestly, it’s probably the shining feature of the game, aside from the rebalanced Pair Up mechanics, and I’d like to see something like it return in later games.

           It’s fairly obvious from how the routes were designed and the various balance issues that appear that the decision to split the game into three full games worth of content meant nothing was really properly balanced. Admittedly, difficulty is subjective, but for me, Birthright, when played on Normal, was disgustingly easy. When played on Hard, it was a ball-raking experience in frustration and bullshit deaths. Conquest remains frustrating for the entire experience, especially if you’re playing on Classic, but it never feels frustrating in a fun way – it always feels like you’re clawing against the game, desperately trying to find a foothold while you’re being relentlessly carved apart by a million ninjas. And for all of their difficulty, Fire Emblem games do generally feel fair about it. It never feels unwinnable unless you’re on, like, Lunatic or some shit. But god, there were legitimately moments in Fates where I felt like snapping my 3DS in half because it felt flat out unfair.

You can change the difficulty mid-game, but you can only turn it down – Hard to Normal to Easy, Classic to Casual to Phoenix, where units, upon dying, come back the next turn. There’s basically no middle ground when it comes to difficulty – either you’re coasting through with absolutely no challenge whatsoever, or the game actually has your testicles in a vicegrip. Doesn’t help that the game gives you a few really good units in the form of your royal siblings, some of which come pre-promoted, and others with their own unique weapons. In fact, Ryoma’s weapons and stats are so good that people have actually soloed Birthright with him.

Beware the lobster man, for his lust for destruction is endless.

           On the subject of weapons, Fates does away with something that’s been a series standard for decades – weapon durability. Instead, the game gives you several weapons with several differing effects – for example, the Sunrise Katana gives the wielder an insane dodge rate, but has a lower strength. Extra weapons can be forged into one another, letting you steadily improve their stats and, over time, make a weapon far superior to the one you started with. This is a pretty contentious subject in the fandom, but honestly? I don’t have any problems with it. Healing staves still have durability, and it means I don’t feel afraid to use my cool weapons like I always do in other Fire Emblems.

           It also carries over the Pair Up mechanic Awakening introduced, with some new balancing to it – now, units can only aid in attacks if they’re standing to the side of the units in question, and only defend if they’re paired up with (on the same space as) another unit. Enemy units can also pair up, which leads to a lot of frustrating moments when you’ve got two heavily defensive units bottlenecking an area and you’ve got to get past them to make progress. Still, it’s an improvement, and I’d like to see it come back in a game with more unit variety, so I could fully take advantage of it.

           Another thing Fates introduces is unique skills for every character – some get bonuses depending on the type of terrain they’re on, or the characters they’re around. Others have conditional bonuses or abilities, like Orochi and Niles being able to “capture” units that can be convinced to join your army, or Sophie being able to strip enemy units every now and then. This is actually a pretty cool thing overall and it really makes me think more about who to use beyond just stats and if I like them or not.

           There’s also been several changes to how supports work, specifically through the addition of the A+ rank and the new class change seals that have been added. While S-rank is still exclusive to units of different sexes (symbolizing them getting married), A+ notes a “best friend” unit of the same sex, and like S-rank, every unit can only A+ rank once. The new Marriage and Friend seals allow a unit access to classes of their maxed out ranks, giving greater variety in the skills and classes they can earn. It’s a nice change. Master Seals are still in, as are a new variant that allows a child unit to upgrade to a promoted class immediately after recruitment if they’re recruited after a certain point in the game.

…but we’ll get to that later.

           There’s also the My Castle, which is an expansion of Awakening’s barracks, and is honestly such a weird part of the game that it barely garners mentioning. It’s where your shops are, and over time you can add more facilities, gather materials to use to upgrade your items and make stat boosting food with, and participate in some faux-multiplayer matches to get points for other upgrades. It’s interesting, but its existence is… odd, especially since the plot explanation for it has to deal with Fates’ weird flirtation with alternate universe bullshit.

…but we’ll get to that later.

           Overall, the mechanical changes are for the better, it’s just they’re marred by a lot of other dumb shit. Like the map design, the terrible balancing, and Jesus Christ, can I just have a knight, please, so I can stop getting punched in the face???

           This is all without getting into the story, writing, and aesthetic, which is some of the most contentious in the franchise for a good reason. It’s, to be frank, kind of bad. It’s weird and anime in ways that Fire Emblem hasn’t really been in the past, and it feels more like I’m playing a not-so-great light novel adaptation than a fantasy war simulator. And it’s not like Fire Emblem isn’t tropey – for how much people love it, Sacred Stones’ plot sure wasn’t winning too many writing awards, and a good chunk of Awakening’s characters are better described by what anime tropes they adhere to – but Fates really goes all in, complete with some of my least favorite tropes: people being prideful about dumb shit, and sibling fetishism, because no light novel style plot is complete without siblings who want to bang the protagonist.

Some, more blatantly than others.

           So here’s the basic outline of the start of the plot: the player Avatar (default name Corrin) is one of Nohr’s princes/princesses, and have been raised in seclusion in a castle distant from Nohr’s capital. Your siblings, who are also children of the king, Garon, have visited you over the years to keep you company and have grown very close to you. After a series of events, Corrin is captured by Hoshido, the neighboring kingdom, it’s revealed that the protagonist was actually born a prince/princess of Hoshido and was kidnapped by Garon in a previous war. In retaliation, Hoshido kidnapped a Nohrian princess, Azura, and raised her among their royalty. A rapid series of events take place following these reveals, with the Hoshidan queen being assassinated through a curse on your sword and the sudden attack of half-invisible soldiers, Corrin suddenly turning into a dragon, and Nohr invading Hoshido, all leading up to the moral choice that marks the version split: do you stay with Hoshido, the family you were born with; do you return to Nohr, the family you were raised by; or do you seek a third path?

           So let’s talk about something that becomes very, very obvious when you start off: Nohr is evil. Nohr is hilariously evil. One of the literal first things that happen after you meet Garon is him ordering you to execute a pair of prisoners who were captured in a recent skirmish. When you don’t execute them, and your brother Leo pretends to execute them for you so you can let them go later, you find out that your siblings have to do this shit all the time and spend a lot of time only really following the letter of the order under ol’ Dad. One of the next things that happens is you walking in on Garon literally praying to an evil dragon skull. Basically every Nohrian army executive you meet who isn’t one of your siblings or their retainers is also some degree of evil and/or stupidly bloodthirsty. When you get to Hoshido, you find out that Nohrian mages have been sending literal animated corpses over to Hoshido to fuck shit up and just letting them do whatever they want, because Hoshido has a magic barrier keeping Nohr from directly invading it around it (in fact, this is why the queen had to be assassinated in such a roundabout way).

           So when the route choice is presented, it’s supposed to be less “I want to be with this family” and more “I want to stop Nohr” and “I want to change Nohr from within”. Or at least that’s the intent. And while much ado has been made about Treehouse’s various translation changes (which I will not be getting into here, because that’s a can of worms I ain’t touchin’), the changes made at the route split were absolutely for the better. In Japan, when you choose to go with your Hoshidan family, it’s explicitly because they’re your birth family. In the NA version, it’s because you can’t reconcile your own morals with what Nohr’s done.

           The weird part is, it really would not have been that hard to present Nohr in a sympathetic light – it’s stated that due to their perpetual night and poor weather, they have always had poor crop yields and had to invade other countries to support themselves, and ultimately it’s Garon’s dickishness that’s perpetuating the war. Previous Fire Emblems have also had antagonistic, but sympathetic enemy armies, including the Plegians from Awakening, who go to war in the first place because their mad tyrant wants revenge for the previous slights of Ylisse. So Nohr’s levels of cartoonish evil aren’t because it’s not a thing the franchise does… it’s because they just didn’t want to put the effort in to make it actually nuanced.

           From the choice point onward, the plots follow three different paths. Birthright’s path is a fairly standard trudge through a Fire Emblem plot. I’ve heard it called the best “plot” out of the two starting routes, but I think that’s more because its plot is actually paced out well and doesn’t spend the first 15 chapters fucking around making you do Garon’s dirty work and complaining about it ad nauseum. What makes Birthright annoying is in the individual plot beats. There’s two distinct instances of characters killing themselves for no goddamn reason that occur during the story, and while the writers clearly want you to feel something during them, the actual reasons and circumstances are so contrived it’s hard to feel anything about it.

*muffled Rihanna plays in the background*

Furthermore, the further you get into Birthright, the more contrived the reasons for your Nohrian siblings to not ally with you get – Elise is blatantly on your side (and gets a storyline death for it), Camilla is clearly considering defecting before some contrived plot bullshit happens to make her want your friends dead again, and Xander and Leo just keep fighting you for reasons. Reasons that are never adequately explained beyond “Me Nohr, you Hoshido, you traitor, blaaaaaaugh”.

           “Contrivance” is the name of the game with Conquest, too, which sounds like it’s going to have a sneaky storyline about you trying to pull a coup on Garon and change Nohr that way, but is actually about you putting down rebellions for him and fucking up Hoshido because you found out that he’s secretly a monster, and the only way to convince your siblings that he’s a monster is to sit him on Hoshido’s magic throne, because the plot device that Azura pulled out of her ass to reveal this to you with was a one-time use. And your character complains about this a lot. A lot. Half of the dialogue between them and any members of the Nohrian army boils down to “BUT WHY—“ and then your siblings rushing in and saying that yes, you’ll do the evil thing, don’t worry about a thing, and then your character resuming complaints. By the end of the game, you succeed on putting Garon on the throne, revealing that he’s a gross monster, kill said gross monster, and then have a surprise boss fight with a possessed Takumi, who had previously appeared to kill himself for inadequately explained reasons.

           No matter which route you finish first (because let’s be real, you have to pay extra for Revelations, so you’re definitely not playing it first), you’re going to be left with a lot of unanswered questions, first and foremost being “Who were those semi-invisible enemies I fought all the time? What was up with that alternate dimension I fell into with Azura that one time in Conquest? Why were Takumi and Garon possessed by weird gross monsters? Why did Azura just suddenly die at the end for no real reason?” Good news: these are all explained if you buy Revelations. Bad news: You have to buy Revelations to even get so much of a semblance of an explanation, because otherwise these plot things are all left completely unexplained. The plot for Revelations barely has anything to do with the plot for the other two versions, too – while Birthright and Conquest are about the war between the two countries, Revelations is about a dragon that went mad, an alternate dimension kingdom, and how basically every problem in the game was because of these two things.

           All routes manage to hit on one of my bigger pet peeves about Fates, though, and that’s that for all the plot tries to be about this moral quandary of the war, it ends up being more of a soap opera about how much it’s tearing you apart to have to fight your siblings, with a lot of very anime bullshit along the way, and by the time you get to Revelations, it’s gone so full anime that it’s not even pretending to be about a war anymore. The weirdest bits of the writing are in the alternate universe stuff, which you’re first introduced to early in the game when they introduce the My Castle, a pocket dimension only the Avatar can access where time doesn’t pass and the army can just hang around and chill. This alternate universe stuff then proceeds to go wholly unreferenced until a brief visit to Valm that takes place in Conquest, and Revelations, where it’s suddenly the crux the plot spins around.

           Or unless you have a kid.

…but we’ll get to that later.

           There’s a myriad number of other things that make the plot feel weirdly anime and amateurish for such a huge production. Azura is pretty much just “Plot Device: The Character”, with the song she sings through the game basically just being “Plot Device: The Song” with how many different things it gets used for (its actual effects, naturally, are unexplained unless you play Revelations). Azura being a songstress in the first place is a very tropey move – singers and divas are frequently very important characters in Japanese media, and having their songs have magical effects is one of those very common tropes that always feels contrived when it shows up. She’s extremely obtuse with her intentions, which turns out to be because of a literal curse that keeps people from talking about Valm (the alternate universe kingdom) without being in Valm (so again, you want explanations for stuff, better buy  Revelations).

           Similarly, Corrin tends to basically stumble onto new powers and weapons as the plot demands, giving the feeling that they’re meant to be a self-insert wish fulfilment character of some sort. In order, Corrin is a member of all three courts of royalty (yes, including Valm’s), is part-dragon, can turn into a dragon, suddenly has a magic weapon reveal itself to them that’s actually the key to saving the world, and spends a large portion of the plot seeking out a massive power boost so they can go fight Garon on his terms. And while there’s definitely something to be said about a character you can customize being meant to be something of a self-insert, since Corrin’s appearance is fully customizable, and since they can support with everyone, have the most versatility class-wise out of anyone, there’s an amount of wish fulfilment fantasy I can take, and we crossed it a while ago here.

           Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Revelations and things that come out there, one of the big plot points is that your birth parents actually aren’t the same as your Hoshidan siblings’ birth parents, and your dad’s actually a dragon. This is something that’s also told to you when you S-rank one of your Hoshidan siblings, in the form of a secret letter your mom left for them, but up until that point on Birthright? You just think you’re partaking in some incest of the highest degree. So if you want to get that explanation without thinking you’re banging your biological siblings? Better buy Revelations.

           Not that any of this makes any of the sibling fetishism in Fates any less creepy. Since the Avatar, like in Fates’ predecessor, Awakening, can marry any character in the game, all of your Hoshidan and Nohrian siblings are fully marriageable. However, a few things are made immediately obvious when you’re interacting with these characters. The first is that both families consider you to be their family, which raises a ton of awful, creepy questions about power dynamics and the morality of fucking the people who raised you. The second is that the developers absolutely wanted you to fuck your siblings anyways, because Elise and Camilla exist.

From left to right: Three potential routes in the mythical bisexual anime dating sim that only exists in my dreams.

           All of the Nohrian and Hoshidan royalty characters are written around specific anime tropes and honestly feel like they could have been plucked from an otome game, or at the very least, a passably written light novel, but Camilla and Elise specifically play into a particular incesty trope-set that’s very common in Japanese media: the sister who wants a more-than-sisterly relationship with the protagonist. Half of Camilla’s dialogue is basically just throwing innuendo at you while simultaneously implying she wants to mother you, leading to a frankly disconcerting combo of MILF-femme fatale-big sister tropes. And just in case you hadn’t gotten the memo yet, Camilla gets an entire CG scene dedicated to showing off her tits and ass on Birthright, while on Conquest, a large part of the ending CG scene is dedicated to the protagonist running headlong into her titties. Subtle.

Elise, on the other hand, is a cute little gothic Lolita little sister who’s always cheering you on and calling you “Big brother!” or “Big sister!” – grating, but standard enough little sister tropes in Japanese media. The problem is that she’s marriageable, and unlike Awakening, where it was implied that the debatably legal characters all had their kids at least a few years into the future from when the game takes place, the children in Fates are all born not too long after characters get married. So either Elise is supposed to be a legal loli (which is creepy), or you’re banging your underage adoptive sister (EVEN CREEPIER).

All of the siblings in Fates have these problems, but Elise and Camilla really get it the worst, because they’re so overt about it. They’re characters whose entire identities are wrapped up in being your sibling, and you can fuck them. Even with them not being your blood sibling, there was a conscious decision to write them in this faux-incesty manner that adds a real creepy sheen to the whole thing. All of the other members of the royalty? They’re dating sim tropes. Ryoma and Xander are dependable, kind of dorky older guys, Leo and Takumi are supposed to be the standoffish, full of themselves ones, Sakura’s the cute, shy one; and Hinoka’s the hot blooded genki girl. And then there’s Elise and Camilla, who fall into two varieties of incest trope, with a double dose of lolicon on Elise’s end.

But hey, while we’re talking marriage options, let’s talk about the other characters in Fates. So a big thing about Fates is that since it’s technically two separate campaigns, both Birthright and Conquest have complete casts and full armies to take with you, with the characters you get determined by which route you’re on. This isn’t inherently a problem (at least until you get to Revelations and you get both casts, minus a few pre-promotes, giving you a massive pile of units you’ll probably never use), but something about the cast feels very incomplete. There’s a lot of character tropes that are reused from Awakening – for example, Subaki is a Pegasus riding retainer for the crown who’s well known for being absolutely perfect at everything, much like Awakening’s Cordelia; while Hayato is a child-like mage who wants to be taken seriously and has been trying to prove himself, much like Awakening’s Ricken.

It doesn’t stop with just tropes though – a few of the characters are wholesale lifted from Awakening, too. Did you like Cordelia, Tharja, and Gaius? Well, I hope you did, because they’re child units on Birthright. This is actually one point where Conquest has a definite leg up on Birthright, because Conquest’s Awakening cameos, Odin, Laslow, and Selena (Owain, Inigo, and Severa, respectively) actually came to Fates’ world using an actual plot mechanic from Awakening, and get a set of DLC dedicated to explaining their presence in the world in more detail. So that’s another paywall on massive plot material, because that’s the name of the game with Fates, but at least the effort’s been put in.

And something that doesn’t really help is a lot of characters seem to be written very differently depending on route and whether you’re in the main story or the supports. For example, Takumi, if you’ve only played Conquest, is a raging asshole. There is nothing good about him, definitely nothing that seems to suggest the popularity he apparently has in the fandom. If you play Birthright, he’s cold and standoffish and jealous, but there’s depth there. But then there’re his supports, and he’s awkward and prideful and somewhat endearing about it. It literally feels like three different characters.

Top: Takumi in Conquest. Bottom: Takumi in Birthright and his supports.

Overwhelmingly, the various Support chains feel better written than the majority of the game. Even with how tropey a lot of the characters are and how sick I grew of them in the main story, I still enjoyed the support chains a lot. Anything involving Mozu pretty much immediately became a feel good, good time, even with the less personable characters. Raging asshole Takumi became likeable through his supports. It legitimately felt like I was reading a completely different story when I got to the supports, and I genuinely wonder if they were written by a completely different writing team.

Fates also does something no other Fire Emblem has allowed before: there’s gay marriage options. There was much ado made about how stupid it is that they’re version locked, as well as the tropes that go into them, but I’ll give Intelligent Designs credit for trying. However, I won’t give them credit for the fact that the options suck ass. The gay marriage options are Niles, an innuendo spouting Nohrian thief with a thing for bondage and enough angsty backstory and hidden darkness to make him a stereotypical yaoi “top” character; and Rhajat, who is literally just Awakening’s Tharja, a creepy Dark Mage with a penchant for curses and is the Avatar’s stalker. These characters weren’t written to actually make them appealing to gay people – they’re written to fit yaoi and yuri archetypes to make them appealing to straight people.

Go away.

And it’s not like I didn’t give them a chance on my own playthroughs – both my Birthright and Conquest avatars were actually genders that matched the gay options for those routes – but as I got through their support chains, I found out pretty quickly that I didn’t want anything to do with either of them. I’m not interested in marrying someone whose only interesting character traits are his love for innuendo and his angsty backstory, or a creeper who wants my vagina because she’s convinced that I’m her fated lover, and is willing to curse everyone to make it happen.

Legitimately, there’s other characters that would have made more interesting gay options, like Silas, the Avatar’s childhood friend who’s dedicated enough to them to defect to Hoshido; and Soleil, Laslow’s daughter who loves girls so much that her personal skill is all about powering her up when she’s around other girls. Why she’s not the gay option, and Discount Tharja is, is beyond me.

There’s something that’s really jarringly apparent about the Fates cast the further you get into it, though. The game really wanted no business with any party members who weren’t conventionally pretty and young. And nowhere is this more exemplified than with certain pre-promotes you can get, the character of Nyx, and the non-recruitable boss character, Zola.

           So in Fates and Awakening, pre-promoted units (units who come to you already as an upgraded class) generally can’t be supported with any party members besides the Avatar. Both games have exceptions (specifically, Frederick and Anna in Awakening and the royal family members in Fates can all be supported with other units besides the Avatar), but that’s generally the rule. It was odd in Awakening, because in previous Fire Emblems pre-promotes usually could still support with other party members.

But something Fates does that Awakening didn’t is that all of the pre-promoted units who can only support with the Avatar are also old. From Reina, a Kishin Knight with visible wrinkles and a lust for murder; to Shura, a vagrant from a Hoshidan border nation who defected to Nohr; to Gunter, an old man who is one of the Avatar’s retainers. It seems like anyone over the age of 20-something is shoved into the “Avatar-only” category of supportable characters, regardless of their apparent depth of character. Some of these characters are also among the few who don’t come back for Revelations – Scarlet, a Wyvern Lord Resistance leader who joins you in Birthright, gets a particularly undignified death when you first go to Valm to justify her lack of involvement.

It’s the kind of thing that really feeds into Fates’ weird, creepy light novel feeling, because that’s not something other Fire Emblems really have done. Awakening had a good amount of visibly older characters who were still fully supportable (Frederick and Gregor come to mind), and previous Fire Emblems had multiple older characters per game and never really called attention to them the way Fates does. But here, every character (save, say, Benny on Conquest) has to be in the age of conventional attractability and look appropriately, and god forbid they don’t, especially if they’re a woman.

The most egregious instance of this is quite possibly Nyx, a child-like Nohrian mage who’s actually old enough to be an old woman. She falls into a long-standing Fire Emblem tradition of “characters who look like little girls but are actually super old”, which are usually among the various Manakete characters of Fire Emblem. These generally range from “wise despite their appearance” (Myrrh from Sacred Stones) to “uncomfortably childlike” (Nowi from Awakening).

Nyx is a rare exception in that she’s fully human, and looks the way she does because of a curse… and she’s also a Dark Mage, so she wears a bikini everywhere. It really does feel like they wanted an excuse to put a kid in a bikini, and used the “she’s really like a hundred years old!” excuse to justify it (which they also did in Awakening, and it was just as uncomfortable there). And yes, you can marry her as a male Avatar, and yes, she will give you a kid. Have fun with that mental image.

And then there’s Zola.

Who wouldn’t want to give this little creeper a hug?

Zola is a character with… very contentious writing, and another character where, in order to get any perspective on him, you have to play Birthright first. In all three routes, Zola is a minor boss who impersonates the Duke of Izumo, a neutral kingdom in the war, and uses this as a chance to try and execute the Hoshidan royal family before getting killed by Leo for his dishonorable behavior. It’s pretty standard Fire Emblem boss fare, and he’s pretty forgettable there.

But on Birthright, Zola lives past that chapter as a prisoner of the Hoshidan army, and this allows him to gain more depth as a character, revealing that despite his cowardly nature, he does have loyalty toward the Avatar and there’s something sympathetic about him. In any other Fire Emblem game, it’s entirely possible he would be recruitable. In fact, he factors into the Hoshidan army’s plans to fight Garon during the theater episode in Chapter 12.

However, by this point, keen-eyed Fire Emblem players have probably already noticed that Zola did not join the army after his “recruitment”, and the plot summarily executes him after taking three chapters to humanize him, and he’s completely forgotten from that point on. The thing is, more morally ambiguous characters are recruited to the Avatar’s team in Fates alone (cough cough Niles cough Rhajat cough), and they’re allowed to stick around. But Zola is executed despite the game clearly showing he’s loyal to the Avatar (he even pleads to Garon to spare the Avatar after he betrays the party) and him having a fully fleshed out character.

As far as I can tell, the only reason Zola is not recruitable is because he is not pretty. He’s a coward whose looks match his personality, and so he was always intended to be cannon fodder. It creates some legitimate questions about the equating of beauty and goodness in Fates, because there’s legitimately no reason why that plot development needed to occur in Birthright considering how that event is handled in Conquest and Revelations. It would have been easier to leave it all out.

So that’s three distinct cases of characters who are over the hump as far as “acceptable age” and appearance goes, and how they’re treated. It’s another thing that feeds back into Fates’ “big budget light novel” feel – you’re not going to see a ton of those with main characters who aren’t conventionally attractive young people, and the characters are generally designed in a way that they’re appealing to younger players and their aesthetics.

And boy oh boy, does this show in Fates’ character design.

While Fates borrows a lot from Awakening, one thing it does not borrow are Awakening’s class designs. Awakening’s designs were generally fairly simplistic, and aside from a few specific things (flying classes’ baffling lack of armor, those… shoulder things on knights, cavaliers wearing toilet seats for neckpieces), they were fairly reasonable fantasy armor. In fact, most female characters, including the prissy aristocrat troubadour Maribelle, wore pants. The downside there was that a lot of classes were gender-locked; Pegasus knights and troubadours were female only, but even so, they didn’t have particularly egregious designs.

Fates removes gender locking for all classes, but the female only designs are often… egregious. By which I mean, everyone wears panties. Everyone wears panties into battle.

Can you please put on some goddamn pants before you chafe your thighs into oblivion?

Hoshido classes, thankfully, generally wear loincloths over their panties, but the egregious lack of pants tends to be really blatant. But Nohr classes tend to be more than willing to let it all hang out there, even if (or especially if) they’re a horse-riding class. Nothing was worse than upgrading my daughter to a Great Knight, only to find out that she was now riding her horse into battle pantsless. I may have explicitly decided to go with a male Avatar for my Conquest run because I found out that the upgraded Nohr noble class just bares her panties everywhere for female Avatars.

Fates has a lot of really weird fanservice in it. The explicit focus on Camilla’s everything, the panty-baring female class designs, the access to a hot spring that doesn’t seem to have any real purpose beyond being there, and being able to strip enemy units with certain weapons all just gives it a really weird atmosphere for a game that’s supposed to be a serious war drama. It’s the same incongruity I get from a lot of recent anime, such as Re:ZERO, which is apparently a serious story, but also gives its generic main character a harem of pretty anime girls who all want to get with him.

A lot of Fates feels like it’s trying to appeal to the most common denominator by emulating what other games and anime are doing, like the dynamics between characters and the related character design, as well as things they felt were the most popular elements of its predecessor, which was the best-selling Fire Emblem game in a long, long time and possibly saved the franchise. So it gives you a massive cast of characters and a dynamic world-saving plot makes pairing them all up a major mechanic, and even includes previous games’ characters as a throwback to people who liked Awakening. And, most bafflingly, it includes Awakening’s child mechanic.

IT’S TIME.

           When two characters of opposite sex reach an S-rank support with each other, they get married, and their child can then join your army after completing a side mission. Awakening reconciled the fact that the parents and children could fight alongside one another through the use of a time travel plot – no one actually has any children over the course of Awakening’s story (besides Chrom, which is part of the set-up for this element); rather, their future children travel through time to help prevent the horrible future that happened in their own world. It’s a major part of Awakening’s plot, and while none of the child characters have major plot relevance outside of Lucina, the fact that they go out of the way to weave the explanation for why they exist into the plot helps ground them, and several of the children’s Supports involve them trying to connect with their younger, past parents now that they’re in a world where their parents are alive again.

           Fates, however, doesn’t use this explanation. Instead, after your first marriage scene, you’re treated to a cutscene explaining that the parents didn’t waste any time getting knocked up, and after the child was born, it was determined it was too dangerous for any kids to be kept around with the war going on, and so the children were sent off to their own alternate pocket universes (or “Deeprealms”) to grow up safely. Because time passes differently there, the children almost instantly grow to adulthood from the people in the army’s perspective, and by the time they’re recruited they’re fully trained, fully capable soldiers ready to go stab the shit out of some enemy soldiers.

Just shove ‘em riiiiight in. Don’t worry about any consequences, it’s fiiiiiiine.

           There’re a lot of stupid holes and questions that pop up as a result of this, first and foremost being the very obvious question of “When did anyone have time to have children?” All of the female characters in Fates are also combatants, so unless they’re all badasses on the same tier as Metal Gear Solid’s the Boss, they probably weren’t fighting at the same time they were pregnant. Also, Fates isn’t very clear about the time frame the game takes place during, but since no one ages significantly, it can’t be more than a couple of years. Since time doesn’t pass while the characters are in their My Castle, theoretically they could have stayed there for the duration of their pregnancy, but unless the gestational period in Fates’ world is significantly shorter than real life human gestational time, that would mean individual characters having to stay in My Castle for periods approaching upon months, at which point they would have their children, and then shove them in the puberty void to keep them safe while the parents go right back to fighting in a war.

           Which brings it around to the next unsettling implication -- the neglect in the children’s upbringing. Fates’ children only aged quickly from the perspective of their parents outside the pocket dimension – inside their Deeprealm, time moved for them at a normal rate, and the occasional visits the parents gave (as indicated in their Supports with their children) were separated by periods of years. Fates does not shy away from showing how this kind of upbringing affected their children – many of them have major gripes with their parents for essentially abandoning them for their own good, and a few of them have developed some odd quirks and delinquent behavior as a result. Several of their recruitment events are about guilting their parents into bringing them along for the war, and it’s a constant subject in their Supports, as well. No one is particularly happy with how the situation worked out in-story.

           The constant statements that it was done for the children’s own good in their Supports and recruitment events really pushes to the forefront how baffling the explanation is, because the game makes it more than clear that it was this distant upbringing that messed the children up so badly. It goes into absurdity if you’re playing Conquest, which features three returning child characters from Awakening as potential parents, who should know what it’s like to grow up with no parents (all of Awakening’s parent units are dead by the time their children travel back to the past) and would probably not want to subject their children to the same upbringing.

           It’s the inclusion of the child mechanic that pushes Fates from a passable, if flawed, game, right into “basically unplayable”. It’s blatantly obvious that Fates was not written with a child mechanic in mind, and that it was added because Awakening’s shipping mechanics went over very well, and they wanted to capitalize upon that. And it’s not like any of the child characters are bad characters--

           Well, most of them aren’t, anyways.

You are not my children. You are a disgrace.

           But ultimately, all they do is serve to give you more units in a game that’s already swimming with units, and end up being a massive distracting bit of bad writing in a game whose writing is already only passable at best. They literally could have been left out of the game entirely, and nothing of real importance would have been lost.

           (Also, it would have forced them to make a lesbian option that wasn’t just “Discount Tharja”. Or at least tried to make it less obvious that they were recycling everyone’s favorite stalker waifu.)

           Fire Emblem Fates is, ultimately, not a bad game. For all of my griping about the map design and unit distribution, there was clearly a lot of thought put into the new mechanics. Forging weapons to make them stronger feels more rewarding than the old durability system, which always ended up boiling down to “Iron swords for everyone!” so you didn’t waste your cool super weapon. And if you can look past the writing, you’ll definitely have a good time with it, or at least end up frustrated in the kind of fun way only Fire Emblem players do. But the obvious DLC gating, the poor writing, and the nonsensical puberty void bullshit make it a very hard game for me to like, and I don’t think I’ll ever get around to playing the third route as a result.

[recentanimenews]

The Weird and Wonderful Worlds of Columns II and Ichidant-R

  Arcade games always have a special allure to them. Lots of experimentation, lots of new ideas and ways to eat quarters, and also lots of difficulty bringing those games perfectly to the home console market. In a previous review, we took a look at SEGA AGES versions of Space Harrier and Puyo Puyo, which attempted to bring the arcade magic of those games to the Switch, taking advantage of the fact that modern hardware has allowed games to recreate their arcade perfect selves.

  For many of the SEGA AGES titles, the focus has been on classic, well known titles, like Sonic the Hedgehog, Outrun, Phantasy Star, Alex Kidd and other famous SEGA franchises have already had their time in the limelight. But what about lesser known, weirder titles? Thanks to our friends at SEGA, we were given a chance to check out two titles that fit that bill: Columns II: The Voyage Through Time, and Ichidant-R, and boy were we surprised by these two! 

Columns II is perhaps the simpler of the two to talk about: the sequel to the original puzzler Columns, Columns II is a game that’s eluded home release for a while, having been an arcade only release for much of its life except for a port to the SEGA Saturn; interestingly enough, its sequel, Columns III would see release on the Genesis, which explains why many SEGA Genesis compilations tend to skip from Columns I to III. And, frankly, that’s a bit of a shame! Columns has always been a somewhat unique puzzle game, as much of its action runs counter to what players familiar with Tetris or Puyo Puyo might expect: while combinations can be made horizontally and vertically, Columns really shines from careful consideration of diagonal plays to clear boards and create combos.

Columns II: The Voyage Through Time features two distinct modes of play: Flash Columns, and Vs Columns. Flash Columns takes players on a journey through time (hence the name) where they are tasked with completing 70 frankly punishing stages. The name “Flash Columns” refers to the fact that players are presented with a board that is already partially filled with gems (or other weird objects, like fossils or futuristic orbs; remember, time travel) that includes numerous flashing gem/fossil/things. The only way to clear a stage is to burrow down into the level and clear those flashing gems, a task that becomes increasingly difficult as the speed of the game picks up, and your own poorly laid out plans create unwanted consequences as you become your own worst enemy.

Along the way, players will run into Skulls, which appear in the board and act as a roadblock: clear them, and the entire board will be ratcheted up, meaning you have less space to work with! Flash Columns left me with what I can only describe as two distinct feelings: that I just didn't get Columns, or that I was so hyper aware of Columns that I knew the moment I had lost a board from a single set of 3 gems being placed. It was a weird feeling, to say the least, to oscillate between knowing the game is hard, to knowing the game well enough to realize I had already lost 30 seconds into a level. Thankfully, with unlimited continues and save states, this allowed me to play through the entire 70 stages of Columns II and feel a sense of accomplishment that, in an arcade, would likely have been physically impossible or extremely expensive.

Columns II runs so counter to the way most other puzzle games play (the focus on the diagonal being key to playing the game) that at times I found myself getting in my own way, trying to stack vertical or horizontal matches of icons, only for the board state to either remain exactly the same as it was, or in some cases, be even worse than it was before I cleared things. There aren’t many options to rotate or “drop” pieces either, which means that 3 stack high block is going somewhere, and you need to find the absolute best order and position for it to drop before you end up replaying that level all over again. Some stages would feel like a breeze, and others would be a grueling 30 minute long battle.

In the end, I was surprised at how I grew to actually like Columns II unique gameplay and challenge, where I initially came in comparing it only to other puzzle games, and despairing when the "wrong" 3 sets of jewels dropped. My reward for clearing all of these stages were the “Jewel Case”, a cute bonus added for SEGA AGES that features various “Jewels” of SEGA’s gaming collection, such as Nei from Phantasy Star II, and running through some frankly obscure SEGA characters and games to round out the overall collection. Having some goal or achievement to work towards, even if it was just an image of a cute SEGA character, really did help make me want to play more of Columns II, where I likely would have otherwise just played it till I got my fill and maybe picked it up occasionally afterwards.

In fact, compared to the SEGA AGES Puyo Puyo version, Columns II feels like a more robust package. Versus mode in Columns II allows 2 players to face off head to head in a format that plays like the original Columns, with each player building their board over time and trying to defeat the other (or simply outlast them) by creating cascading combos and chains. You can also take the game online and challenge other people to face you in Columns, although I must admit the overall community for such a game feels fairly small. Still, it is a nice addition to the game that gives it some extra life. There is also an included version of the original Columns as well, which gives you the option to play “regular” columns if Flash Columns is too difficult or tiring, and also gives you the ability to turn on “Skull Smash” which lets you play Flash Columns without the dreaded Skulls appearing. All of these really do create a nice package that spruces up a unique and absent part of the Columns family of games, and will really test your puzzle mettle, especially if, like me, you’re too used to those lovable tetrominos! 

While Columns II was fun, the real gem in the rough of this duo of releases is Puzzle and Action: Ichidant-R. Ichidant-R is the sequel to Puzzle & Action: Tant-R, itself a spin-off of Bonanza Bros. The Bonanza Bros. heroes, Robo and Mobo, shed their original jobs to become detectives (Tant-R), Medieval knights (Ichidant-R), and reprising their roles as detectives in the final game, Treasure Hunt for the SEGA Saturn.

While that interesting tidbit of lore isn’t required, I was personally amazed to learn that Bonanza Bros. spawned such a unique trilogy of games in their own right, and Ichidant-R is perhaps the first SEGA AGES game that I’ve felt greatful to experience because of how unique the title is. Ostensibly, it’s a collection of minigame puzzles that players select from randomly; in some cases it wouldn’t be wrong to say the Puzzle & Action games feel like very early inspirations for Wario Ware titles. These games range from memory puzzles to mazes and almost everything in between, with a somewhat shocking amount of variety given the age of the game.

While Ichidant-R is a very interesting and fun game, there are a few minigames that just aren’t very fun. The pencil sharpening game feels like an absolute nightmare on the analog sticks of the Joy-Con controller, and while the Pro controller is a bit better, this certainly feels like a game that didn’t age well after the removal of the arcade stick it expects you to be using. Other times games can just get ridiculously difficult; one of Ichidant-R’s biggest features is the oppressive time limit you have to complete a round of the minigame you’re on, and sometimes a single error can spell doom for an entire attempt at the game.

This is fine, since we have unlimited continues, and one nice feature is that when you continue from a game over, the game seems to recognize this and tones down the difficulty a bit before ramping it back up. Still, there are some games I definitely don’t want to play again, and some that I found fun enough to keep me going or replaying the game. Two players can play, as well, making it a bit of a challenge to see who will complete their games faster and essentially team up to take on the challenges the game presents you wish.

However, Ichidant-R’s true magic shines in the extras included in this SEGA AGES release. SEGA really went all out for the first official Western release of Ichidant-R, presenting players with the option to try out the Mega Drive version of the game. The biggest differences here is a “Quest” mode that is almost like a miniature RPG coupled with minigames, where players roam around an overworld map, fight off enemies (who challenge them to minigames), and collect the Philosopher Stones in order to save the kingdom.

Unfortunately, the entire Mega Drive version is in Japanese, and given the amount of text in the game this is understandably something probably not worth the investment in to translate. To mitigate this factor, SEGA’s manual for the game (available online here) includes a full walkthrough to help you experience the unique Quest mode, and also has the explanation for the 2-4 player Mega Drive only Competition mode, where players compete against one another to try and reach the boss first and be the one to bring them down! The Mega Drive mode offered in this version is worth the price of admission alone, letting players explore a game that would have never likely seen the light of day in the West in any other circumstance.

In our previous review of SEGA AGES titles, we mentioned that sometimes these versions of the games introduce new, arcade perfect versions of games with some updates, like Space Harrier, and others present a somewhat flat experience of the game as it was, like Puyo Puyo. In these two titles, Columns II and Ichidant-R, SEGA AGES really shines for the showcase of games it was meant to be. Not only do players get to experience arcade perfect ports of these two previously forgotten and unpublished games, they also get a bevvy of extras, with Ichidant-R’s Mega Drive mode really taking the cake. If this is the kind of quality that gamers can expect from SEGA AGES releases, they have a lot to look forward to as the line continues to grow; for now, do yourself a favor and pick up both of these if you love puzzle games, or simply like experiencing unique games that you can’t get anywhere else!

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Arcade perfect ports of Columns II and Ichidant-R.

+ Lots of extras; Mega Drive Mode in Ichidant-R is worth the purchase alone. 

+ Both games look and sound great, and controls are generally spot on. 

+/- Some of the minigames in Ichidant-R aren’t so great, and difficulty can be uneven.

- Tetris brain will really ruin you when trying to master Columns II. Go for the diagonals!

  What’s your take on these hidden SEGA gems? Have you played any of the Puzzle & Action games before? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments! 

    ----

Nicole is a features writer and editor for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[aurelliocheek]

A Year of Rain: The Last Reward

How to bring the environment to life.

When our team at Daedalic Entertainment were approached and asked on who wanted to write an article for Making Games magazine, I was not late to raise my hand in excitement. Even though I’ve never done anything like this, writing an essay for anything, to be honest. I opted to do it because I love challenges, and as a game developer, we face new challenges every day. So challenge accepted!

At the beginning of March 2019, I got the great chance to join the art team of A Year Of Rain. A skilled team which I’ve learned a lot from in the short amount of time I’ve been here. What does it mean to join a group so late in the production? Well for starters missing out on the pre-production state, meant that I needed to work efficiently and smarter to get the results before delivering our game.

How can we do that and at the same time keep a visual curiosity and fidelity all through the game? By using a technique called modularity.

Modularity in games is about the creation of an asset (or texture) that can be used repeatedly with itself or another modular asset.  If you take a look at the thumbnails I have provided for you, you may notice that a lot of the units share one or more things in common. Roots, flowers, mushrooms and stones, those are some of the pieces that bring fraction units together, creating the illusion that they originate from the same place.

There are, of course, pros and cons to this method of working. We already mentioned that it’s an excellent approach while also being very time efficient. Another massive advantage of working this way is to save memory, improve loading times and streamline the production. However, the downside to this workflow could be that it feels repetitive. That is one of the issues that many artists face when creating tileable textures and props that must be scattered all over the place. For example, one can consider vertex painting. It is a simple way to paint colour onto an object, by directly manipulating the vertices rather than the textures. This way, you can construct more complex scenes with the same piece by adding or removing details from it, making it look different from the same part that is next to it.

Vertex painting is also a convenient workflow to use when building the environment. For example, vertex painting can be used on the ground that the player walks on. It’s an excellent way to paint a tileable grass texture on an otherwise very dull stone road. This way, you get an incredible variation in the environment. I could list many more examples of how we could use vertex painting, but that would go beyond the scope of this article.

The assets in this picture have an unknown origin, but because of how our mind works, we understand that they are structures or buildings of some sort.

Developing Readable Shapes  Creating an RTS (real-time strategy) game is immensely challenging itself, and creat-ing assets for the genre is not an easy task. Our concept artists sketch many concepts which need to be distinct and clear from a top-down perspective. That means iterations upon iterations until the silhouettes are readable. One of the hardest challenges in working with an RTS game (or any game) is the need to simplify shapes to their essential core, because of the view being further away from the player. It is not a simple task. We have to remove as many details as possible from the asset while keeping it exciting and visually tasty. To do this, we explore several types of forms that adapt to the “Shape Language” already established by our art director. What does that mean? It means that every fraction and unit have a distinct look and just by playing, you will come to understand how each character fits their respective fraction. The shapes that we create has either elements, patterns or rhythm in them that chains them to each other.

Shape language and readability are the two key points we look at whenever we execute a concept in 3D. A strong shape language can help to push a character’s appeal and personality.

Stylised RTS “So you are doing another one of those cartooney RTS games”. Yes, and there’s an easy answer to why. Being a gamer myself, I can’t help but feel that most of the games played in the RTS genre use this type of art style. So what are we aiming for when using stylised art? One simple word. Exaggeration! We have the freedom to scale our characters almost to the same size as our buildings, without that it is looking wrong. We can do this so that our characters stick out more.

In my opinion, trying to achieve the same result with a more realistic art style would look a bit strange. One of the most significant advantages of going for a stylised look is that you can push your asset’s forms and colours to be more quirky and exciting. The second advantage is that you work only with primary and secondary shapes when doing a prop. The silhouette mostly stays the same with minor deviation. One thing that we do with our assets is to taper them in the lower part of the mesh. It gives the mesh an illusion of being more extensive at the top. The real challenge with doing stylised game art is conveying to the player that the assets and environment are using fewer details while emphasising the shape, colour and form.

A small peek of the Work in progress meshes taken in-game. We can suddenly see that there are huge differences in contrast and colours.

Forming and Sculpting the Concept  One of the essential parts, before we start doing any heavy 3D work, is to begin col-lecting references, for both stylised and realistic art. We use references together with concept art to know how assets are to be built. When we have enough references, we start by analysing our object. What are the characteristics of the asset? By pinpointing the required details, we can create them in 3D to mimic our asset at hand.

I’ve mentioned silhouette earlier in the text, but I can’t emphasise enough how important it is for readability. It is crucial for every asset, character or environment that we find a suitable shape. You must be able to recognise an object, even with objects that don’t have a specific background. Our team is always hard at work, trying to create new and visually satisfying shapes. We start by blocking out a silhouette in our 3D engine or sculpting software and throw it into our game engine to check its readability. The reason for this procedure is to iterate continuously, so the asset fits into the shape language of the game. When everything seems fine, we start to sculpt the asset to our liking, forming it and giving it details that can be appreciated in-game. Sculpting can be incredibly fun and yet is also very time-consuming; sometimes, we need to stop and ask ourselves if the features we are putting down are necessary or visible, and if not, we need to dial back on them. We often ask other artists to look over the iterated 3D asset, and this way, we can get constructive feedback and make the necessary changes. This procedure is not only crucial for your growth as an artist; it also ensures that the mesh fits with the overall look of the game. What I tend to do after I’ve gotten thumbs up with the sculpt that I have made, is decimating it and testing it in the game engine to see that everything is still readable.

The retopologize phase is to take our high-density mesh and build a cage around it, which captures the silhouette but have much lesser density.

Give Me Some Colours, Please We are moving on from sculpting to re-topologize and painting. Yes, the fun part! Retopologizing means taking a mesh with a high density of polygons and redefining the 3D mesh at a lower resolution. Just imagine a plane with 50×50 gridlines and picture the same plane as one big plane with four vertices (4 points). That makes the plane less noisy, visually speaking, but more importantly, it makes it more comfortable to paint on. A stylised object usually has fewer details but larger shapes, which can make it feel like it is easier to paint and create. However, working with unlit textures means a lot more work that will have to go into painting ambient lighting, colours, shadow and highlights. You can bake out maps to use as a guide before painting over your mesh. Three maps we tend to use for speeding up our workflow are ambient occlusion, curvature and sometimes a normal map. These are applied as an overlay or multiply layer in our painting software before we start to paint over it.

To make sure that everything turns out the way we wanted it and to save ourselves time and trouble, we start our textures with just some base colours. The flat coloured mesh is then imported into our game engine, to see if it fits the overall look and matches the rest of our game. We can make some minor changes to the colours in case something feels off. Finally, we start adding more contrasts and colours on our mesh, bringing it to life while continuing to test it in the game engine, so that the visual fidelity stays the same.

Shape language is important for all the assets that are being created. Here you can get a taste of two work in progress beasts that are created by one of our 3D artists, Denice Wagner.

Pieces of Advice Make sure to collect and figure out your references before starting. Collect as much information as you can. I usually collect pictures for primary, secondary and tertiary shapes. When sculpting, I begin with the most significant form and work myself down to the smaller details. Collect references for textures, sculpts, colours, shapes and structure.

Breakdown of your assets, character, environment and your textures. Make sure you understand what you are seeing relative to how things are constructed in real life. Knowing the context and background of your objects will most definitely save much time during the creative process.

Blockout your shapes before going into detail. Figure out if there’s a possibility to be more modular with your workflow. Get your most prominent forms down on the canvas, maybe even adding a black material to it to see if the silhouette is readable and engaging. Make the changes that are needed and keep on iterating until you and/or the team are satisfied.

Import it into a game engine. Does it fit into your environment? If it does, move on, and if not, take it back to the drawing board.

Iterate. Don’t be afraid to iterate on your mesh and diverge from your concepts. Sometimes it is necessary that we have to do small changes to make it more fitting to the game’s world and lore. It can be as little as just a change of colour or as radical as scaling down the head of a character while scaling up the eyes.

When sculpting, Wisam always start with the big shapes, to find the most important landmarks of the structure before moving on and adding details.

Use constructive critique/feedback to your advantage. A constructive critique will make you grow as an artist, and it will help you to understand what you can improve and prevent mistakes in the future. If you are working with an environment for a game or just a portfolio piece, I would recommend joining an artist forum and ask for C&C (comment and criticism).

Give constructive critic! If you can help a fellow artist in need, give a helping hand. Many artists can get stuck in bad habits, I for one can work on details for hours, Luckily I have an Art Director that pinpoints that (often), and then I move on.

Challenge yourself. To grow as an artist, we need to challenge ourselves every day. Sometimes we need to do things we’ve never done before to improve, even if it is just by a little bit. Here at Daedalic Entertainment, we challenged ourselves by creating a game in a genre; we haven’t done before.

Have fun. I can understand that working with the same mesh or environment for days or weeks can be tedious and feel like you are not progressing. However, those are the moments where you are growing the most. Working on the same asset for an extended period can drain your energy, and a lot of artists have a massive list of unfinished game projects. However, pushing through at that time is when you will learn the most.

Believe in your ability to perform. Nothing comes easy in this business, but believing in your knowledge of thriving can push you beyond your limits. An artist never stops learning; we learn new skills every day. If we limit us to doing the same thing, every day, we will get the same results every time.

The 3D artists are working closely with the art team to carry out the aesthetic vision for the game.

Finalising We made all the assets, characters and environment. Now we start putting every-thing together. At last, our world starts to live and breathe. Here is where the final-ising of our game starts. The small fixes, like colour correction, scaling and even set dressing. Polish the visuals of the game to the point where everything falls in place like Tetris parts.

So everything feels like they derive from the same world and lore. Finally, our last reward is seeing our creation come to life.

I want to thank Making Games for the opportunity to write this article, but also a huge standing ovation for the art team at Daedalic Entertainment who’s been working very hard and doing their best at creating the art for A Year Of Rain.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article.

I will leave you with this great core message I found on the internet “The art is the preliminary vision of the final product. It has to support the project narrative at all times. More importantly, art is the language you use to communicate those ideas that will determine the final product”.

Wisam Petros Odish Environment and Prop Artist

Wisam is an environment and prop artist with the responsibility to bring the undead fraction in A Year Of Rain to life. Before getting an excellent opportunity of joining Daedalic Entertainment, Wisam worked as a freelance 3D artist for smaller game companies, creating props and environments for mobile games. Daedalic Entertainment is his first massive experience in the game industry.

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