#without feeling like cheap artificial difficulty

[bulletbilltime]

Pikmin 1^2 is so good... they gave Pikmin 1 a functional engine... 10/10 game really

[tac0tesseract]

Aftermath

Daniel spilled out of his chassis onto all fours, flinging his helmet to the scorched earth as he gasped for air. It was stupid – he knew it was stupid. The moment Eris' mood changed again he could be turned inside-out, or stripped of all oxygen, or whatever the fuck else – but neither could he breathe inside the Goblin right now. It felt like a coffin.

He'd never flirted so close with death before, at least not without Tansy there to undo it. His mech was barely standing. He was barely standing. Dan felt sick; how did this job go so wildly fucking sideways?

Fucking Tansy.

At least for now the eidolon was apparently feeling whimsical, because the air was full of tiny iridescent pink bubbles that smelled of artificial strawberries and screamed like a mountain lion when you popped them. A lovely little chorus followed Sai as he plodded over, and Daniel had to watch him through lidded eyes. He wasn't stupid. He knew Sai had been assigned as his babysitter in part. And what chafed the most was that Daniel had needed it.

What an absolute shitshow. He’d nearly been totaled, and more puppets than he could count had been vaporized. Daniel's eyes swept the smoldering remains of Eris' cute little supernova, lingering on the biomechanical survivors still milling around. Even if the metavault hadn't spontaneously spawned a miniature sun, they absolutely would have lost this fight had it not been for the sheer numbers of their reinforcements. Zerging didn't take any skill. It all felt so cheap.

Sai stopped a good ways back and climbed out of his chassis. It always freaked Daniel out how the mech mirrored its pilot's silence – save for the metallic sigh of its greywash mane. That lucky bastard had made himself enough breathing room that the Balor was already piecing itself back together. Dan would have no such fortune.

“I'm fine. I just need a minute,” he said defensively as Sai approached.

Sai pulled off his helmet. His expression was skeptical – doubly so as he sized up the damage to Daniel's mech.

“...Leave it,” Sai finally said, with surprisingly little difficulty.

“Hell no. We've got a job to do, and Maggi doesn't have time to print me a new one.” Daniel punched the ground. “Fuck. I had her. I had her, she'd just teleported! And yet when we stood there staring at each other I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger! What did she do?”

What did Tansy do? Or had guilt somehow stayed Daniel's hand instead? No, he wasn't that cucked. The metavault was probably in part to blame, sure, but – it was more than that. He could...feel Tansy somehow in that paracausal pulse, could feel her pain and her conflict and her desperation to spare them, and Sam's eyes, so many eyes, watching him expectantly. In that moment Daniel could see fragments of a future that hadn't come to pass, where he was sitting on what looked like a fancy ship's bridge? Talking to some old fart with a nice watch, and an SSC robot, and...he didn't know. But he was laughing. He looked happy.

If you surrender, we'll take you on. You don't have to die for this bullshit, Tansy pleaded.

We don't want to hurt you! cried her princess friend.

What horseshit. That kind of weakness would get you snuffed out quick back home.

Daniel finally stood, only to find Sai staring at the metavault where the “Vacationers”, as they apparently called themselves, had vanished. It was hard to read that man's face on a good day; today it was almost impossible, but there was something around his eyes: fatigue, probably.

Or sadness.

“...Did you shoot that fire fuck in there on purpose?” Daniel finally asked.

Sai turned to blink at him.

“The Toku with the cringe paint job. The one protecting Tansy.” Why did the idea of the Toku pilot make Daniel so irritated? Who was in there, anyway? Why wouldn't he leave her side?

Sai just shook his head. After wrestling with his words, he managed: “Not our problem.”

Daniel scowled. “Yeah? So we just let them all go on a goddamn field trip? What about vengeance for Knight?”

Now Sai definitely looked tired. He didn't say anything, his gaze instead straying back to linger where that princess and her flying chassis had been.

“Oni, Stunta. You two smoothbrains alive over there?” came a sudden voice over coms, punctuated by chaos in the background.

“Legion's putting itself back together; Trololo's hosed,” Daniel drawled. “Awful noisy. Gettin' freaky over there, Naga? Should let us watch.”

“Cute.” Static. “Head on back, we're regrouping.”

“Why? Where's the chiefs?”

“Trying to run off this asshole with a huge bow. He almost noscoped Neko. We've gotta get her to safety or we'll lose the Minotaur.”

“Shit,” Sai hissed, already turning for the Balor.

“Wait, are these still the same guys who intercepted you?” Daniel asked. “The fucking Karrakins? You haven't killed them?”

“Yes, the fucking Karrakins.” He could hear the eye roll in her voice. “These aren't the usual dregs they send to the Shore, and they've got some unhinged merc with them too. Banshee's orders, get back here. Now.”

The hand of panic squeezed around Daniel's ribcage again. What the fuck. What the actual fuck was going on? Who were all of these pilots? Why did they have such insane abilities? Did Uncle know about any of this? Why did it feel like the Cousins were on the back foot? Why was Knight fucking dead? Why was Knight fucking dead?

He turned for his chassis in a daze, staring at Trololo's shredded, sparking frame in dismay. A coffin. Was this where he died, too? Rotting, forgotten, in a jungle?

I am prepared to die for RA, he thought.

But somehow it didn't feel like RA was on their side.

[maxfitness]

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[mr-fent]

One thing I've noticed in playing some games with the soulslike tag is how unlike Dark Souls they are. So many of them seem to believe that the selling point of Dark Souls is the combat mechanics, which ends up reducing these games to simple action/hack and slash titles with a stamina bar, and a dodge/block/parry mechanic. With only these elements, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, is a soulslike, yet that isn't the simple defining factor.

What sets Dark Souls, and other FromSoftware games apart from the copycats (aside from the more refined formula), is the leveling system. The loss of EXP on death unless you reclaim before dying again, EXP being currency for shops. These are the elements that make a game get the tag of soulslike. But no soulslike ever accurately accounts for why that loss adds to the difficulty. Dark Souls has heavy RPG elements, with regards to stats and metagaming for certain builds. Most soulslikes omit this aspect of the game. Opting for a preset character with a limited pool of ability upgrades. They account for the EXP mechanic by just making each upgrade, or any item in the shop, prohibitively expensive.

Story wise, most soulslikes also miss the mark. These games feel like they're made by the people who skip the dialogue and cutscenes, then complain the story was too esoteric. Usually soulslikes lack any story at all, and as a result, never inform players of key gameplay mechanics, because they can claim it's "environmental storytelling". I recently played Mortal Shell, where the start of the game gives you zero information about why anything is happening. There is no indication of where to go from the start. Dark Souls practically holds your hand in it's starting area compared to most soulslikes.

Difficulty wise, many soulslikes end up severely unbalanced because they don't have difficulty and level scaling over a 50+ hour play time, so they usually just set the difficulty from the beginning, meaning these games end up with absolutely punishing early games, but pitifully easy endgames. There's no comfortable difficulty level of having a fair challenge, because nothing scales.

I also fail to understand why the design philosophy for soulslikes is to cram the Dark Souls experience into as small a package as possible, and subscribing to the design philosophy of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, which is to say, "fuck it, put enemies everywhere. Then maybe they won't notice how short the area really is." The lack of an estus equivalent (or the lack of any information that makes it easy to miss said estus equivalent) is also baffling, since without fail, all of these games have items reminiscent of life gems. Another thing in Dark Souls II that fans hated.

There are also a lot of cheap difficulty tricks. Mortal Shell put a bear trap in front of the heal/level up NPC once, and it was not there when I died and returned. Mortal Shell also has an ability you can unlock that occasionally causes a poison cloud on a riposte. It seems to only poison the player, and with the longest poison cool down in the game it seems. Why? Why do so many of these games feel the need to have the artificial difficulty that Dark Souls was accused of having.

[fullymechanized-consoomer]

Most underrated game you’ve never heard of

Every so often I think back to MAG and shed a single tear

For those not in the know, it was one of the first multiplayer FPS titles to advertise itself based on its player count, which on certain maps could reach up to 256 players. It’s also the best.

What made it interesting from a gameplay perspective was that despite the average size of the games, the team who made it (Zipper Interactive of SOCOM fame) actually thought out how to organize such a clusterfuck into a cohesive battle without losing the sense of scale. 

At the start of the game players were asked to pick between 3 different factions:

Each of these factions played wildly differently and offered substantial differences in weapon loadouts, gear, etc. 

Raven, being based on NATO countries was all about high tech, sleek equipment. Their guns were accurate, low caliber, low recoil. Their gear was mainly focused on fucking up the enemy’s ability to communicate and fight

SVER - being based on all sorts of Commie-Block/Red China stereotypes was crude. Slow firing weapons that did tons of damage but lacked controllability and tended to have artificially poor accuracy. Their gear was almost completely focused on crude offense. 

Valor was the middle ground. Most of their weapons did ok damage and were alright in the accuracy department, but had the advantage of high-capacity magazines. Their gear was a mixture of pure offense and fuckery. 

Once you picked a side the uniqueness of the game began to show.

This was your standard conquest map, and what really separated the game from the likes of franchises like Planetside. Though big, the maps were tightly packed and carefully designed. Every game essentially worked like a big Rush game mode, with one side defending their base from an assault on all corners of the map by the attacking team. Each team was subdivided into platoons who were commanded by platoon leaders and given a general sector to accomplish objectives in, with further subdivision happening at the Squad level. The whole thing was overseen by a single commander on each team, who broadly coordinated the attack, set objectives, and gave out abilities. Notably, only they could see the full extent of the map and all of the objectives in real time. Platoon leaders were given the ability to call in airstrikes, EMPs, call in vehicles, etc, while squad leaders could call in smaller mortar strikes and set goals for the squad. Every ability was limited to cooldowns, so it was up to each teams Commander to actually decide whether or not those calls for abilities would be approved or ignored if they thought it was a waste. 

The on the ground gameplay was ingeniously designed. By giving each platoon a general sector to focus on players were encouraged to work together on a map and do something useful, while their squad leaders generally set the smaller objectives inside their sectors. When the situation called for it a platoon leader could call up a few squads and allow them to mark objectives in other sectors, meaning players weren’t locked down to a map. 

Playing objectives was also extremely important as they actually did things beyond progressing the round. Each sector had their own “main” objective and a bunch of optional side objectives that could drastically change the outcome of the battle on the map. Knock out the AA and suddenly the attacking team gets to call in more airstrikes. Knock out the radar and the enemy is blind. Send out and secure a vehicle spawn and suddenly the defenders have a new bunker, etc. All of this occurring real time on a single map.  Along the way players were given generous XP bonuses and status buffs for fighting near the objective their squad mates - something that was very important for the games’ downright decadent character customization and loadout-system, which allowed you to practically build your own guns from the ground up, customize your armor, apply different clothes, etc. 

MAG’s robust ping, leadership, and reward system meant that team play wasn’t reliant on direct coordination between individual players so much as a careful directing of group-think. Give the grunts a goal and the means of communicating simple ideas and you’d be surprised how spontaneously organization and problem solving occur among the mass of humanity. 

Unlike so many other multiplayer games which offered the feeling of participating in a big battle, MAG was the only one that seemed to accomplish it. 

Unfortunately the game was too ambitious for the hardware, and there were some cracks in the general game design. MAG launched on the PS3, and despite having some fun art direction looked like, well, a heavily optimized PS3 game:

. 

The devs made the conscious (and correct) decision to heavily downgrade the game’s textures and effects for the sake of ensuring good performance, and to their credit they pulled it off. The game ran remarkably well for a 256 player PS3 game, but its looks were not a selling point. Many took it to be some kind of cheap shovelware and wrote it off. 

Secondly, the game had a critical balance problem. For whatever reason the game had an obnoxiously long time to kill. It was not uncommon for a player with heavy body armor to tank an entire magazine’s worth of ammunition and still have 2/3rds of their health. This was further compounded by the fact that player characters were not limited to classes, meaning anyone could carry heavy body armor, an assault rifle, and a medic kit due to the absurdly generous weight limits. After a certain level you could even unlock perks in your skill tree that eliminated movement penalties due to over encumbrance, meaning everyone was a damage eating, machine gun toting, rocket launcher using medic. In short, it was hard to die. 

RAVEN disappeared almost overnight due to everyone figuring out their guns amounted to super accurate airsoft guns, and only those with deity-like tracking skills could manage to pull off enough headshots with their super-soakers to justify their accuracy-over-damage philosophy. Valor performed decently well, and their higher magazine capacities over all could roughly compensate for the TTK imbalance. However, only SVER had the offense oriented gear and high-damage guns to do meaningful damage. Yes, you had difficulty hitting stuff, but in a game like MAG where accuracy is compensated with via the sheer volume of fire from a maxed out server it didn’t matter. About 2 years into the game the vast majority of players migrated to SVER, and it became harder and harder to play the large games that made MAG so exceptional. 

Unfortunately a poor marketing campaign and its exclusivity on the infamously underappreciated PS3 had already capped the playerbase to a dedicated few thousand. There simply weren’t that many players to hemorrhage. Zipper Interactive went under in 2014, and with it MAGs’ long abandoned servers shut down.

So why am I and others who played it so obsessed with the failed title? Because it was perhaps the only game to live up to the promise of what a multiplayer shooter could deliver. Looking past the rather mundane balancing flaws, MAG’s comprehensive approach to organized chaos, detailed level design, objective play, free-form character customization, and simple communication tools are still second to none. In many ways the game was way ahead of its time, and so forward thinking with its solutions to certain problems faced in large multiplayer game that it feels like other devs are just now figuring out some of the tricks that Zipper already had. I constantly find myself playing other games and thinking “MAG did that better.” 

TLDR: now is the time for MAG 2

[jazinerambles]

Persona 2 Innocent Sin Review

I wanted to have some time in between playing the game and writing my thoughts for Persona 2 Innocent Sin. I will be referencing it and other Persona games so there may be some light spoilers for games 2-5. 

I played the psp version of the game on a Playstation TV. I beat the game at 76 hours on the dot. I have not completed most of the theater missions, but I have completed the main story of the game and did do a few sidequests.

My review will be organized in several sections-gameplay, story, music, characters, LGBTQ representation, extra content, wishlist and recommendation.

Gameplay:

Persona 2 Innocent Sin was released in 1999. Therefore plays as a game from 1999. The PSP rerelease updated menus, changed the difficulty, and added all out attack art similar to P3-P5 for the fusion spells. I love the all out attack animation and although the menus got a little cumbersome, it didn’t really impact gameplay for me. 

The biggest complaint about Persona 2 IS is how easy and repetitive it is and the high encounter rate. The battles for the most part are easy and if you set up all your attacks in the first round, you can basically use autoplay until an emergency occurs or you encounter an enemy in which you must change it up. 

I never saw the gameplay as repetitive as others do and I feel those who do only just battle and that’s it. I was constantly trying to get all the fusion spells, max up my personas to trade them for items, try different combinations for the demon negotiations and spread demon rumors to get items, spells, and cards (you need cards to summon new personas in the velvet room.) Demon negotiations also allow you a better look into each of the characters’ personalities and relationships. Events in the game will change how the characters react in these negotiations so it is always nice to go back to them throughout the course of the game. 

The demons you encounter have emotions. I believe they are intrigued, happy, angry and fearsome. Make them happy and they will offer a pact with you and give you free stuff and willing to spread rumors for you. Make them angry they will fight you. Make them fear you they will run away. Make them intrigued and you get the cards needed to summon personas and even more if you already have a pact with them. 

I wanted to return to the big complaint though, the high encounter rate. This was something that I felt hot and cold about. Most of the time this didn’t bother me, because I needed to level up my personas anyway. But when I needed to backtrack and explore further, it did get a little bothersome. 

You can use estoma to avoid enemies weaker than you. It is not a passive skill, so once you have a persona that has it, you have to cast it every time it wears off. At the Mu casino, you can also purchase a disguise kit that does the same thing, but it effects last about the same amount of time and it is ridiculously expensive. Just use estoma. 

As briefly mentioned above, unlike Persona 5 in which you can just catch Personas, in P2IS there are only two ways to get them. You get cards from demon negations, take those cards to the velvet room and then trade them in for a Persona. But you have to enough cards to summon it and the persona has to be 5 cards within your character level. 

You can also talk to the demon painter, for him to make you cards for the specific arcana you want by using blank cards. These are also given through demon negotiations that you have a pact with. 

In P2, ALL your characters are capable of changing out Personas, but their compatibility with different personas varies with their Arcana. 

The other way to get personas is through the story. There are certain actions that you must take to get the prime personas and then the final personas. These personas are character specific and you can’t give them to other characters. 

I wanted to talk about three more things before I move on to the story: rumormongers, fusion spells, and dungeons. 

Persona 2IS is based around rumors. Just like P3 is for the dark hour, P4 the midnight channel, P5 around palaces and so on...

To get certain items and progress the story, you MUST gather and spread rumors. There are five characters throughout the game called rumormongers. They will give you information in exchange for receiving information. You then share this information to the detective agency, pay a fee for them to spread them for you, and there you go. rumor spread. As mentioned earlier, there are also demon specific rumors. 

Fusion spells were something I really enjoyed in this game. Although hearing “Are you ready? Here goes” and “Let’s go everybody” will be stuck in my head for the rest of eternity...

Basically, to create a fusion spell, members in your party require a requisite spell and then that party member is placed in a specific order when taking turns. Once that spell is unlocked, it will let you know if you have the requisite spells and you no longer have to adjust the order of party members. Some of the spells you need to unlock fusion spells are persona specific. The fusion spells are elemental. 

I will not go into weaknesses of elemental spells, I am just going to say that you aren’t “down”’ed like you are in 3-5. 

Finally, my first real pet peeve with this game-the dungeons.

Oh boy. Air raid, AeroSpace and one of the four Zodiac dungeons (I am pretty sure its Eikichi’s) gets ALL my hate. There are cheap gimmicks that make the game artificially hard but only for these dungeons and more so, frustrating. 

But I am not going to go into detail why, and the other dungeons are not bad at all. But play the game and experience these dungeons for yourself. That is all I am going to say about that.

Story:

This section will be nowhere was long as gameplay. The story did not go where I thought it would, but that’s a good thing. I would go in completely blind if you can. The ending definitely surprised me a bit. I think it has one of the best stories of the persona games.

It does not follow a calendar like the later Persona games and time just blends together. By the end of the game, you won't know if a day, week or month passed from the beginning to the end.

Music:

The music is actually really good. It is the reason why I played the game in the first place. Just don’t look at the soundtracks names. Spotify has it available if you live in the US. You are better off listening to the soundtrack because I promise you that most dungeons songs will be cut off due to the frequency of battles. 

Some of my favorite songs are Smile Hirasaka, Unbreakable Tie, Kurosu’s theme, Joker and the Taurus dungeon’s theme.

Characters:

Despite Persona 2 not having social links, I feel like I know these characters better than some of the persona games that do have social links. It is also the only Persona game that I can say without any hesitation that I like the entire main cast. 

I truly love them all, but my favorite would probably be Yukino or Maya. 

Unlike other Personas, the dynamics for Persona 2 IS are different, because not all of your party members are high school students. The adult characters have adult problems, the high school students have high school problems, and all of them have deep psychological problems and abandonment issues that will take years of intense therapy (or Philemeon) to forget.

One of the biggest themes of Persona 2 is confronting your past and learning from the mistakes of your childhood. And the characters do! And by the end of the game you are so proud of how far they have come. And then things happen...

LGBTQ representation

Let me say that I started P2IS off on the wrong foot, but I am still absolutely justified at being upset by it. One of the very first interactions you can have with a NPC is through a very uncomfortable exchange between you, Eikichi and a transman that is pretty transphobic. And to add the icing on the cake, Atlus refers to him as a “weird woman.” 

I was literally going to just stop playing the game like an hour in because of that, but I decided to continue.

What I discovered was a game that has highs and lows when it comes to LGBTQ representation. 

You can play as a bi character who can confess his feelings to men and women. *Stares hard at Persona 4 and Persona 5*

You have a gay character that has an interesting story, character development, is unabashedly gay and isn’t a walking stereotype. Nor is his entire arc centered around gay panic. 

From what I understand the dialogue from the NPC does get better, but I am not holding my breath. 

And the one sapphic kiss scene we get in a Persona game is a kiss of manipulation and not love. So that is a little sad. 

But overall, P2IS does try to make an effort. And it definitely makes a better effort than its successor released almost 2 decades later.

Extra content:

Again, Persona 2 doesn’t have social links or a calendar. Please don’t approach it like the other games where you have to fill up your time between dungeons. It is not a necessity, but there are things you can do. 

Mu is a casino that you can visit that allows you to play mini games to gain coins that you can use to get weapons, rare items, and even unlock personas. I spent a little too much time at Mu....

You can also talk to NPCs to do side missions. Be careful though. You have to do the side missions in a given amount of time or you may not get rewarded for it. Also P2IS is very much like Final Fantasy 9 where it is much better to go to a place sooner than later, because there may not be a later...

You also have the factory which is an optional dungeon that opens up more and more as you progress through the game. 

There is the theater which is a PSP exclusive which has side missions unrelated to the main story that you can play. They are okay.

Wishlist

I hear so many people wanting a remake of P2IS so the game can be more accessible. I am very torn about this. Besides the difficulty and maaybe tweaking the encounter rate a bit, I wouldn’t change a thing. However, I also know that I couldn’t enjoy Shadow of Colossus until the controls were updated. Like I tried and then just gave up. 

I honestly don’t want a remake. I don’t trust the Atlus of today with this game.

I do want it to be acknowledged and more accessible though. 

But if I had to make a wish list, this is what it would be. Again, this would be a “it would be nice list.”

Make the battles harder.

Update cut scenes? I really like the art for the cut scenes already, but would like some more. Maybe keep the drawings but update the CG?

Social side quests. I do not want social links in Persona 2. However, side quests that allow you to learn more about your character like a social link would, would be something I would be very interested in. 

Make the portraits consistent. The art from the original game and the new art put in the PSP game (I am talking about you climax lady) clash so much. Pick one style and stick to it.

I want to fight Ms. Ideal. Let me do it for reasons. Give me a chance to battle her.

I want the option to switch out characters. I love both Jun and Yukki, but I want to be able to play with both. 

Let me skip the animation when I create a new Persona. 

*EDIT*  I can’t believe I forgot this and feel awful I did, but I do think they should keep the trans NPC, but change the dialogue and the the name. It isn’t the NPC that is the problem but the dialogue and actions. Otherwise, I think it would be ok. 

I think that’s it.

Recommendation:

So should you play Persona 2 IS? Short answer, yes. Long answer is that it is complicated. In a few months the game will no longer be accessible for psp consoles. The physical version of the game is ridiculously expensive. You will have to accept the fact this game is on psp and its sequel’s psp version never came to English speaking markets.

You may not like the graphics, gameplay, or that it doesn’t feel like the later persona games. And as much as I love this game, that is alright. You do you. But I truly do think you are missing out on a great game. So if you have the opportunity to do so, yeah absolutely give it a shot. 

[paladin-lynx]

SquipJere Week 2020, Day 2: Virtual Reality

@squipjerebmc’s SquipJere Week 2020 Day 2: Virtual Reality

Ships Involved: The SQUIP x Jeremy Heere (Technical Difficulties/Squipemy/Squeremy/JereSquip/SquipJere)

Setting: Canonverse, set in the time interval between “Loser Geek Whatever” and “Halloween”.

Trigger/Content Warnings: Non-graphic mentions of pornography and masturbation

It seemed that even with an artificially intelligent Tic Tac in his head, life could still be awfully boring sometimes.

When the SQUIP wasn’t having him practice his posture or coaching him on how to ‘think cooler thoughts,’ Jeremy was pretty much left to his own devices. He had new friends that he could potentially call up to hang out with – he had taken an indefinite rain check on Rich’s invite to come over – but he still didn’t feel like he knew them well enough to be alone with them, and his usual Player One was out of the picture for right now. It was different when Jeremy was at school; in a way, he felt like once he left this house and stepped through the doors of Middleborough High, he was a different person. Sure, the SQUIP was trying to keep his habits and interests consistent regardless of where he went, but it was still much too tempting to recede back into himself when he was in the safety of his own home.

But there was only so much he could do when he was by himself. It wasn’t like he wanted to spend all his time doing homework and researching the newest trends so that he could stay ‘in the now’ – or was it ‘in the know?’ – and his games started to feel repetitive after a while and he wasn’t about to spend the money to buy new ones. And he couldn’t watch porn without the SQUIP knowing, of course. There were a handful of times he wondered if he should ask his father if he wanted to do something, even just watch a movie, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle seeing his father waddling around in just his robe and underwear. It was a constant reminder of why he’d gotten his SQUIP in the first place.

And so here he was, sprawled on his bed and staring up at his ceiling. The SQUIP had made him take down the glow-in-the-dark stars that he and Michael had stuck up there God knew how many years ago, deeming them too juvenile for a high school junior. And some of them had only been hanging on by one point, so maybe it was time to peel them off anyway. Jeremy had woken up with the cheap little stars littered on his bed and carpet too many times before.

He let out a long-suffering sigh, deciding that counting the dings and marks above him was better than just being alone with his thoughts. When he thought too much, he just ended up feeling sorry for himself.

Of course, then he remembered that he did, in fact, have a supercomputer in his head.

He had hardly even opened his mouth to summon the SQUIP before its physical form fizzled into existence next to the bed, standing over him. It raised an eyebrow. “What can I do for you, Jeremy?”

Of course it knew he had wanted to speak with it. Jeremy breathed out through his nose, looking up at the face above him. “Entertain me, SQUIP.”

It huffed, rolling its eyes and shaking its head. Jeremy would expect such movement to mess up anyone’s hair, but of course the SQUIP’s stayed perfectly styled. “I’m a Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor, Jeremy. My infinite wealth of data and my connection to your mind is meant to be used to help you achieve your most difficult goals in life. I’m not a toy for you to play with.”

Jeremy pouted. “Well, I’m bored, so my goal right now is to be entertained.”

The SQUIP frowned at him in return. “That isn’t a difficult goal. You have plenty to entertain yourself with.”

“You won’t let me get off, which is how I normally keep myself busy.”

“Because you need a sexual partner that isn’t your own hand. And you need to get your libido in check regardless.”

“Well then, what do you suggest?”

“Call up Brooke.”

“Eh…”

“You have all these video game systems and just the other day you were telling me how much you love indulging in nostalgia.”

“Not feelin’ up to games right now.”

“Watch TV? Or a movie?”

“Mm…”

The SQUIP sighed, rubbing a hand over its face. “Honestly, dear, there are so many things you could do, and you’re asking me to find something to cure your boredom?”

Jeremy flashed a bashful smile. “Yup.” He knew he might end up getting on the SQUIP’s nerves – circuits? – if he pushed like this, but he couldn’t help it. The SQUIP had eased up a little in its lessons because Jeremy had been doing well, so he felt like he had a little room to argue. Besides, there was something oddly satisfying about seeing the SQUIP at a loss.

Of course, as he thought that, the SQUIP leaned down a little closer, narrowing those sharp eyes. “Are you trying to stump me, Jeremy? Because I’ll have you know that that’s an impossible task.”

And just like that, Jeremy felt his stomach flip and his streak of confidence faded away. He swallowed the lump in his throat and steeled himself, shaking his head. “I just want something to do, come on.”

The SQUIP sighed, straightening back up. It tilted its head, and Jeremy could feel the familiar, albeit barely noticeable, buzz at the back of his mind as the SQUIP analyzed the situation.

Finally, it blinked back to awareness and extended a hand to Jeremy, who flinched slightly on instinct.

“Come on. Get up,” it commanded.

Jeremy furrowed his brow. “What?”

“Up.” The SQUIP frowned and reached to instead take Jeremy’s hand itself. The SQUIP’s hand was cool to the touch and Jeremy knew that there wasn’t really anything there and that the SQUIP was just manipulating his nerves and puppeting his limbs as he was pulled to his feet.

Jeremy tried to ignore the way his cheeks warmed as he awkwardly stood there, the SQUIP still gripping his hand. “Um, okay. M’up. Now what?”

It smiled at him. “Close your eyes, love.”

Jeremy bit his lip, hesitating, but after a moment he obeyed and his eyes fluttered shut.

“Good. Now, I want you to tell me a place. Any place, real or fictional.”

Jeremy’s brow creased. “Why?”

The SQUIP tutted at him. “Always with the questions. You wanted me to entertain you, and I need you to trust me. So tell me a place.”

Jeremy wasn’t entirely certain where this was going – the SQUIP had a bad habit of being overly explicit with some of its plans and then so incredibly vague about others – but he did try to think of a place. But with how bored he’d been, he wasn’t feeling terribly creative.

“I dunno. Uh, Hogwarts.” He could practically feel the SQUIP’s disappointment in his nerdy answer and he scrambled to defend himself. “C-c’mon, Harry Potter is super popular and mainstream!”

“Not with how Mrs. Rowling has been behaving herself recently. But I digress. Keep your eyes closed.”

Jeremy pouted but he listened, keeping his eyes shut. He was tempted to open them just to spite the SQUIP but he refrained, curiosity getting the better of him. He could feel the SQUIP poking and prodding at his brain – it wasn’t painful, but the sensation of something manipulating his thoughts and senses would never not be weird – and at one point it even felt like his eyes were itchy. But he still obeyed the order given to him and waited.

“Alright. You can open them now.”

Warily, Jeremy cracked open one eye before they both flew open and his jaw dropped. Still holding the SQUIP’s hand, he found himself staring at none other than the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Every little detail was there, from the floating candles to the grand windows to the Houses’ tables. Despite him being positive it was the middle of the day, it was clearly nighttime outside and the firelight was the only thing allowing him to see.

“H-holy shit,” he mumbled. “Is this…is this like virtual reality?”

The SQUIP chuckled. “I’d say it’s better, considering it’s right in your mind rather than through some headset or screen.” It waved a hand to gesture around them. “Not feeling so bored anymore, are you?”

“Definitely not!” Jeremy grinned, already thinking about all the places he could ask the SQUIP to send him to. He knew it was nothing more than a hallucination and the SQUIP had made him see plenty of things before that weren’t really there, but he was too in awe to care that it wasn’t real. He pulled his hand away from the SQUIP.

He could feel the SQUIP frown and reach out for him again. “Jeremy—”

But the boy was already racing forward, eager to explore. However, as he hurried down the aisle between two of the tables, he yelped as he slipped on something, arms waving wildly as he tried to find his balance.

As he thought he was about to tumble backwards, a pair of strong arms caught his waist and he found himself staring up, red in the face, at the SQUIP.

The SQUIP let out another chuckle. “There’s only so much I can control,” it explained, motioning to the floor. When Jeremy looked down, there was a sock standing out against the dark floor of the hall, and he realized that must have been what he had slipped on.

“Oh…Right, we’re actually still in my room,” he murmured, gaze swiveling back up the SQUIP, who was still holding him in what was almost a dip. He just blinked dumbly up at the supercomputer, mouth too dry for him to ask to be let go.

The SQUIP broke into a little smirk and pulled Jeremy back to his feet, although its arms didn’t move from their place around the boy’s waist. “I didn’t think this hall would fit the moniker of ‘great’ if it was reduced to the size of your bedroom, so there are limits to where you can move around. But even if you can’t tell where the illusion ends, I can…”

It raised one hand to snap its fingers, and Jeremy flinched as music flooded the hall from seemingly nowhere. He blinked at the SQUIP yet again, confused, before his blush returned full-force as the SQUIP took one of his hands in its own, the other settled against his hip. “Wh—”

“Come on, Jeremy, I know you had to learn how to slow dance with your mother for your Bar Mitzvah. Just follow my lead.”

Stunned, Jeremy mindlessly moved his free hand to the SQUIP’s shoulder. He decided not to linger on the mention of his mother and he also decided not to point out that he’d been taught to lead in that dance, not follow – although perhaps that didn’t matter because that dance back then had barely lasted two minutes and Jeremy had always been better as a follower than a leader anyway. Always the Player Two, although that was hopefully beginning to change.

And so he let the SQUIP lead, and soon enough they were sweeping through the Great Hall, and only after a solid minute did Jeremy notice that the House tables were gone, leaving them more room. The SQUIP was rather fluid in its movements for a machine – then again, the SQUIP wasn’t your average machine – and it led Jeremy in such a way that he realized it must be making sure he didn’t trip over or bump into anything that was actually in his bedroom that he couldn’t see. Unsure of what he was supposed to do in his role, he ended up watching their feet until he felt an unseen force gently tipping his chin up, making him gasp softly.

He expected the SQUIP to make fun of him like it so often did, but instead it just gave him what he dared to call a fond smile. “Come on, dear. Have some fun. This is all for you.” He felt his muscles start to loosen up a bit and a wave of calm washed over him. “That’s it. Enjoy yourself. You wanted me to entertain you, didn’t you?”

And with the SQUIP’s mental nudges, Jeremy did start to get more into it. He was no ballroom expert by any means, but with the SQUIP guiding him, he was able to follow along easily enough after having a few moments to adjust. Soon he was laughing and at one point the SQUIP even made it look like they were wearing matching suits, and Jeremy tried not to focus on the fact that the SQUIP looked absolutely dashing in a suit.

Of course, even if the thought was fleeting, the SQUIP caught it and broke into a small grin. “You clean up quite nicely, too, Jeremiah.”

“Oh, don’t ruin it by calling me that,” Jeremy protested, the tips of his ears feeling hot. The SQUIP laughed and gave him a twirl, and before he could really process what was happening, Jeremy felt himself fall back and he was suddenly in his room again, laying on his bed staring up at the ceiling. Still no glow-in-the-dark stars.

“What?” he breathed out, hurriedly sitting up.

The SQUIP was sitting in his desk chair, back to its normal sleek outfit, smiling. “I figured that was enough excitement for one day. Don’t think I forgot that you have an English essay to write.”

Jeremy groaned, flopping back on the bed. “That wasn’t even that long!”

“Wasn’t it?”

Jeremy’s eyebrows furrowed and he leaned over to check his clock radio, surprised to see that indeed quite a bit of time had passed. It had only really felt like a few minutes, but maybe that was another trick on his mind.

Still, he frowned over at the SQUIP. “I don’t wanna write my essay,” he whined.

The SQUIP let out a soft laugh and sauntered over, brushing a hand against Jeremy’s cheek and tilting his head up to look at it. “If you do some work, perhaps we can have some more fun later. Hm?”

Jeremy wasn’t sure if the SQUIP meant for that to sound as suggestive as it did, but then again, the SQUIP was in his brain and knew exactly how he’d take a statement like that. Which was how it knew that he’d listen and get to his feet.

As Jeremy grumpily sat down at his desk, the SQUIP smirked at him. “If you get the whole thing done tonight, maybe I’ll even consider wearing a suit again.”

Jeremy’s cheeks burned. “Fuck off.”

He got to work.

[vegangiftsuk13]

Vegan Food and Gifts Is Not Boring After All!

Numerous individuals feel that vegan food is exhausting, bland, and doesn't take into consideration much assortment. Indeed, they couldn't be all the more off-base! With veganism on the pattern these days - vegans have more choices than any other time in recent memory to guarantee that they have tasty food to eat and appreciate.

What Do Vegans Eat?

The vegan diet comprises essentially of the accompanying food varieties: vegetables, new natural products, entire grains, pasta, olive oil, coconut oil, tofu, vegetables and beans, soy, artificial meats, false cheddar, vegetable patties, vegetable patties, dried natural product, soy and rice milk, soy yogurt, vegan heating (cakes, biscuits, cuts, brownies), mixed greens, new squeezes, smoothies, nuts, seeds, peanut butter, almond spread, cashew margarine, vegan margarine, vegetable soups, and pan-sears. Truth be told, these days one can make a dish that recreates their #1 food sources, just without meat and dairy! With the accommodation of incalculable vegan sites, online journals and vegan formula digital books, one ought to experience no difficulty discovering a formula to 'clone' their number one dish or sweet treat! Undoubtedly, vegan food never must be exhausting!

Vegan Meals At Restaurants

A few group don't prefer to prepare each supper, or they are basically excessively occupied. Most eateries and remove bistros offer vegan food and suppers, including Italian (pureed tomatoes pastas, vegetable minestrone and so on), Chinese (rice, vegetable spring moves, vegetable mix fry's, steamed vegetables, vegetable soups, tofu dishes), Indian (rice, dahl, vegetable coconut milk curries, lentil dishes), Thai (rice, vegetable curries, tofu noodle soups, coconut milk pumpkin soups and so forth), Subway, Sumo-Salad, and so on Indeed, I ensure that you could discover some vegan food choices at almost any eatery, bistro or remove shop these days! You should simply inquire!

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Vegan Recipes

There is a large number of simple vegan plans accessible these days to fulfill the preferences and requirements of each vegan. Regardless of whether it be morning meals, snacks, suppers, sweets, snacks or solid treats - you can track down a boundless number of plans to test. You can clone pretty much any of your #1 suppers and food sources in the event that you find a suitable formula to do as such! There are numerous heavenly vegan plans for you to attempt like scones with jam and 'cream,' 'bacon' and 'eggs,' 'cheesecakes,' 'wiener'- moves, English biscuits with 'bacon' and 'eggs,' chocolate cakes and brownies - and so on, you can clone it! Veganism has never been more enjoyable and delectable than it is today!

For more  information

[titusmoody]

Ranking the SM64 levels

3 Bob-omb Battlefield: I’m starting the list with my third favorite because I can explain every other level in terms of this one. This is easily the most impressive level in terms of design. SM64 sorts its levels into “chunks” that connect in various ways. The exact borders between chunks and how finely we chop the level up into different chunks doesn’t quite matter. I find I like chunks better if they 1) interconnect so you can get to multiple different chunks from wherever you are. Bonus points if the game uses the Y axis to create some one-way connections like Bob-omb battlefield’s bridge that spits you back out near the beginning of the level if you fall. Extra bonus points if you can use some precise jumping to get around those limitations. 2) Has its own distinct element, either visually or mechanically, like the little area with the mounds when you climb up the very first ramp in Bob-omb battlefield. 3) Contains a pretty clear “first star route” to one specific other chunk, like the path up the ramp at the beginning, or the mountain “weenie” that you can see a path to when you get beyond the chain chomp and bridge. 4) There are at least a couple chunks that the first star route doesn’t touch at all, but you can still see. Both the area with the stumps you can run in circles around as well as the floating island you can see from your ascent up the mountain are good examples. The only reason this isn’t #1 on my personal list is because it is focused mainly on beginners who have literally never encountered a 3d game before. Climbing the mountain and freeing the chain chomp are both great, and the mountain contains plenty of opportunities to get up faster using more difficult jumps. On the other hand, it uses the wing cap and fairly precise cannon aiming, the first and second least fun things in the game. 

Now, onto the worst levels:

15 Dire, Dire Docks: While swimming isn’t as awful to control as I remember it being when I was a kid, it’s still not great. This level uses currents to suck you towards death pits in a couple places, which isn’t fun. A few of the stars either include or are mostly built around having you navigate the weak end of the current, and there’s just nothing good about it. Plus, what’s the deal with water levels having segments connected only by lengthy narrow tunnels? Probably a loading thing, but it doesn’t help the design. The not-underwater part of this level is only used to make you do cycle-based pole jumping which is even worse than the death currents. 

14 Tiny-Huge Island: Eh, this was such a creative idea for a level that I don’t begrudge it for not working. This level has chunks that only connect if you are the appropriate size, which is a good idea. Around half the things you need to do to get the stars are pretty good, too. However, big mario is just too big. If you turn at the wrong time you go into sliding down mode and there’s never a platform big enough for you to get your balance before falling off the mountain to your death. The level also feels a little unvaried. The chunks aren’t distinct and reuse the same few elements throughout without getting more challenging as you progress along the “first star route”. 

13 Tall, Tall Mountain: This is one of two linear levels in the game, and is by far the less interesting. SM64 approaches linear levels as spirals upwards. In this case, around the mountain. I think there’s only a single place where you can take two different routes up. There’s not a lot to say. The platforming feels perfectly fine throughout the ascent. The slide is the most well-hidden place in the game, and I might have gotten frustrated looking for it if I hadn’t seen speedruns. This may have been ranked a little higher if it weren’t for the star that requires the most precise cannon aim in the game.

12  Cool, Cool Mountain: It’s a neat idea to start at the top of a level and be asked to descend in various ways. I think the problem is that too much of what you’ll actually be doing is trying to precisely control your slide down the same stretch and jump away at exactly the right place.

11 Rainbow Ride: This level isn’t structured like any other in the game. There are two points where the main path branches--once into three and the other time into two--but none of those branches reconnect, so it’s more like a path with a few self-contained sections off of it. I like the platforming quite a bit in this level, but don’t like how disconnected everything is from everything else. The main problem, though, is that the main path consists mostly of waiting around on a magic carpet with nothing to do but the occasional trivial jump. The difficulty of the platforming this late into the game means that deaths will happen, and it’s really a detriment that there’s no way around waiting on the carpets.

10 Lethal Lava Land: This level gets credit for being exactly what the game needed after the first set of levels + the first boss. Going into the basement for the first time and encountering a completely flat level is a big surprise, and the tiny safe paths surrounded by lava make the level look extremely perilous. The level is actually pretty tiny, which leaves each chunk with only enough space for one (1) thing to do. The interior of the volcano sure does add a lot, though. It’s like a miniature Tall, Tall Mountain with only a couple of stars.

9 Hazy Maze Cave: This level is pretty okay. The clumps are separated from each other by corridors and doors, which is why it seems like a “maze” but if you smushed them together the layout would be pretty typical. The clumps might be the most varied between each other, too. And this is the only level that contains a mini-level that unlocks a different cap. 

8 Shifting Sand Land: The pyramid is cool. Having successive stars where you’re asked to: get to it, explore the inside, then find the secret entrance with a boss is unlike anything else in the game, and it’s neat. Things aren’t as interesting outside the pyramid, but there’s just barely enough there with enough variety to keep things fine. The outside is probably about as good as Lethal Lava Land, and the pyramid is vastly better than the inside of the volcano.

7 Jolly Roger Bay: Okay, I lied a little bit about Shifting Sand Land. In Jolly Roger Bay, there is one star you get by swimming into a sunken ship and hitting something that makes the water drain out. And if you’re thinking about it, that must mean that the ship was resurfacing. Sure enough, when you go back in for the next star, there’s a ship on the surface now! I think that is a little like the pyramid situation, though not quite as cool. This one ranks higher because it’s the only other level outside of Bob-omb Battlefield that feels like a playground where you can basically do anything that seems fun without penalty and if you do well, you’ll be rewarded. Unfortunately, it does the same long, narrow tunnel thing as Dire, Dire Docks. It’s also too easy to be particularly interesting, but of course with its placement in the game, it should not be any more difficult. 

6 Thwomp’s Fortress: Most people’s second level, I assume. Does a good job at establishing patterns so that you know that Bob-omb Battlefield isn’t just a fluke, the whole game is that way. It’s a little on the small side, and the platforms that retract into the walls result in a lot of deaths that feel cheap for being so early in the game, but aside from that, it’s all pretty solid. 

5 Wet-Dry World: Like with Lethal Lava Land, the game knows exactly what to hit us with to open up a new area after a boss. The goals become a lot less obvious here. There is no obvious “path” that leads through the chunks, so you’re mostly on your own. On the other hand, this is another level that doesn’t punish you for doing things wrong, it’s just more picky about rewarding you than earlier levels. 

4 Snowman’s Land: More linear and more punishing than Wet-Dry World, SM64 knows when to break its established rules and when not to. This level does pretty much everything right. I particularly like that they brought back the “bullies” from Lethal Lava Land with the added challenge of ice physics, the hidden area in the igloo, and using the penguin as a shield against the wind. 

2 Big Boo’s Haunt: This one uses the normal level approach to make the level feel like a real place. The separate, self-contained rooms would be too limiting, but the connections between the first, second, and third floor and the doors between rooms, plus the balconies make it just as nicely interconnected as everything else. In fact, the balconies in particular are clever real-world examples of ways that actual places have similar designs to SM64 levels. Most of the game is openly and even proudly abstract and artificial. The tension between realistic spaces and interesting level design is still being played out in games today, but here in 1996 we already see that Nintendo already knew what they were doing.

1 Tick Tock Clock: Here’s the other linear level. Based on the criteria I laid out right at the beginning, it seems like a linear level couldn’t be placed this highly, but although I’ve only mentioned “platforming” in passing so far, that really is the absolute core of the game. You run and you jump. If those two things didn’t feel good to do, SM64 would be a bad game regardless of how great the level design is. Tick Tock Clock gives you nothing but opportunities to run and jump well. If it’s like any other part of the game, it’s like being outside the castle right when you start, while you’re figuring out what the controls are. Only now, you already know how to do everything you need to do to beat the game, and you get a chance to do a lot of it. 

[4colorrebellion]

4cr Plays - HyperParasite (PS4)

It is the grimdark 80′s. World War III has neared its conclusion, but humanity can’t stop to catch its collective breath just yet - a new threat has reared its ugly head. A parasite is moving across the planet, able to take control of helpless humans and wield their bodies like puppets in pursuit of doing incalculable damage. The President of the United States has offered a great reward to the one who brings this parasite down. Will humanity succeed?

Well, you better hope they don’t. In HyperParasite, you are the threat. Wave upon wave of human has lined up to take you down. Will you be able to survive?

I saw down this week with the PS4 version of HyperParasite. Read on for my impressions.

HyperParasite is a twin-stick shooter with rogue-like elements. That’s a whole mess of word salad, so what does that mean? If you aren’t familiar with the basic style, you progress through a series of randomly-generated levels presented with a top-down camera. You move your character with the left stick and aim attacks with the right. A tap of the right trigger unleashes your standard attack, while hitting the left trigger unleashes a powerful special attack (which requires a cool-down period before being used again). You can also dodge - allowing you to press a button to roll in the direction you are aiming. This is essential if you want to survive. 

Each level is randomly generated from a set of themed tiles. Each time you die, a new version of the level is generated. A level is made up of a series of rooms. Defeating the enemies in a room allows you to move on in any of the open directions. At the end of a level lies a boss. If you are able to make it past that boss, you get to move forward. 

The key twist in HyperParasite is your ability to take over different enemies. On your own, you are extremely weak. At the beginning, a single hit is enough to take you out. However, you can take control of the bodies of enemies, wielding them like fleshy little puppets. When you take over a body, you can use both the normal and special attack of that person. You also use their body as a suit of armor, allowing you to take a few hits without dying. You can discard the current host body at any time - and if they die, you are forcibly evicted - leaving you free to find a new host. 

There are a number of different types of people you can possess. For instance, a homeless guy attacks by thrusting his shopping cart. As the cop, you can fire your service pistol, while the boxer can unleash deadly close-range attacks. Each type of person has their own attacks and play styles, leading to strategic decisions about who to take over and when to switch bodies to avoid leaving yourself vulnerable.

However, you cannot just reach out and take over anyone you like. You first have to unlock the ability to possess that character type. The first time you defeat a character of a particular type, you can collect their brain. If you can make it to a shop - there is one in each level - with the brain, you can start to work on unlocking them. Unlocking a character type requires a certain quantity of coins - gained from killing enemies. Basic characters come cheap, but stronger characters will require quite a lot of cash. 

You can also use money to purchase upgrades or to store bodies for use later. In addition, you will find upgrades scattered around each level. These upgrades can either give you more health in your parasite form, give you greater attack power, or improve your defense. I recommend going straight for health before even considering anything else. At the start, one hit is enough to kill you. Additional health gives you a bit more protection when you are forced to switch bodies. 

When you die, you lose all upgrades and start the level over. However, the bodies that you’ve unlocked or put coins into remain as they were. This means that you carry over the ability to take over certain character types after death, granting some sense of progress. 

To be honest, when I was offered a chance to try HyperParasite, I was skeptical. I’ve put quite a few hours into the Geometry Wars games over the years, but have never really sought out these kind of shooters. I also normally avoid rogue-likes entirely. I hate losing a lot of progress when I die, I get frustrated by cheap, artificially-induced difficulty in games, and I generally find procedurally-generated levels to be uncreative. 

However, I ended up really enjoying HyperParasite. I was impressed by how responsive the controls feel. Movement is smooth and snappy, and when I died, I felt like I could generally pinpoint the actual mistake I made. The game is tough, but fair. It doesn’t feel hard for the sake of being hard. Rather, it just feels like a modern take on an arcade game. I also really like the core possession mechanic. There are fun differences between characters, and I enjoy how often you switch between them. It feels fresh. Getting back in after death is also snappy, so dying isn’t a major annoyance. 

I played HyperParasite on PS4. It isn’t exactly a technically demanding game, so I encountered no real issues. It is launching this week on PC and all three consoles, so you can check it out on any platform you happen to own. I would actually recommend the Switch version. This is a great game for quick sessions, and isn’t something so nice looking that you have to put it on a big screen. 

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by HyperParasite. The core idea - taking over different types of enemies and using their attacks - is really clever and well implemented. The game feels good to play, and manages to be tough while retaining some fairness. If you’re interested, I recommend giving it a try.

A copy of HyperParasite was provided for this review.

Official Website

[mst3kproject]

111: Moon Zero-Two

 In his review of Serenity, the late Roger Ebert defined ‘space opera’ as being like horse opera, but with space instead of horses.  I can think of no better description of Moon Zero-Two.

Captain Bill Kemp and his co-pilot Kaminsky were once heroes, the first men on Mars, but now that a proper colonization of the solar system is underway, they’re reduced to running a salvage operation.  The opportunity to do something more profitable knocks when Evil Businessman Mr. Hubbard asks them to help him crash an asteroid on the far side of the moon – an asteroid made of almost pure blue sapphire!  Meanwhile, Kemp is also trying to help a woman named Clementine Taplan, who’s supposed to be meeting her brother Wally, but nobody’s seen him since he sent her the invitation four months ago.  And isn’t it interesting that Wally’s lunar mining claim is exactly where Hubbard’s asteroid is going to hit?

I actually really like this movie.  The visuals are often silly, but it’s quite well-made and the ‘space western’ feel is fun. The actors are decent, the effects aren’t bad, and when you think about it, it’s surprisingly hard science fiction. The only overtly unrealistic things in it are the artificial gravity and the characters’ bad habit of going for spacewalks without a tether.

Moon Zero-Two’s overall aesthetic probably made more sense when the movie was new than it does now.  It is, indeed, rather painfully late-60’s, but nothing about it is just gratuitously weird – everything has a purpose.  The music, for example.  Tom Servo complains about the ‘free-form jazz’ but it’s as effective at suggesting the free-floating emptiness of space as the Jaws theme is at saying ‘shark!’.  Indoor scenes have a more grounded soundtrack and even the low-gravity barfight is not scored the way the parts that take place in vacuum are.

Likewise, the odd outfits and plasticky wigs serve to emphasize the artificiality of the environment.  The ‘natural’ late-60’s-early-70’s look, with loose clothing and long hair, would have been entirely out of place here.  This is a world humans have had to build from the ground up – nothing else is natural here, so why should the people be?  The moon colonists try to jazz up their world a little with their fanciful outfits and theme nights at the bar, but they can’t even make a dent in the relentless desolation of the landscape.  They barely even make one in the self-consciously futuristic white of their cities.  Kemp says ‘we will always be foreigners here’, and the sets and costumes reinforce his point.

In Clementine’s case, what she wears also serves to show how comfortable she is in this environment and in Bill’s company.  When she first arrives on the moon she is covered from head to toe. As she adjusts, she trades her weird headpiece for a wig.  Finally, we see her with her own hair hanging down.

On another level, clothing in this movie is about vulnerability. Bill and Clem come closest to being humans in the natural state (nude), when they are near death from over-heating in the un-insulated moon bug.  Bill’s two topless scenes are supposed to be about his dislike of vulnerability turning into a willingness to show vulnerability around Clem, but they don’t work very well because both of them are such clichés: she catches him coming out of the shower in what’s supposed to be a joke, and then there’s the ‘couple who won’t admit they’re falling in love have to undress because of the heat’. I can see what they were going for, but I wish they’d found a better way to do it.  Both scenes get some very powerful eyerolls.

(ETA: I probably should have said something about how Bill is in love with Clem like twenty minutes after his previous girlfriend died, but I only just dealt with something like that in the EtNW review for It’s Alive and I decided not to bother.)

The idea of vulnerability brings us to the movie’s main theme, which is that while space is a place of limitless potential, full of things like rich nickel veins and sapphire asteroids and other opportunities for science and profit, living there is always going to suck.  In the future of Moon Zero-Two, there is a large population of humans on the moon, but anything above and beyond a very basic lifestyle is rare and expensive. There’s the tiny hut we see that Wally Taplan was living in, Kemp’s complaints about the cost of drinks, and the difficulty of getting anywhere that’s not a tourist center.  Danger is everywhere – as one character observes, ‘nobody dies slowly on the moon.’

These dangers are mostly hidden from casual travelers so as not to frighten them (witness the monument, around a corner where only residents will see it), but vacuum, heat, cold, and radiation are ever-present.  It’s much like modern air travel, which is perfectly safe as long as everything works and everybody does their jobs, but all it takes is one mistake, one faulty component, and everything goes down in flames. This makes Moon Zero-Two stand out from other sci-fi movies that rely on alien monsters to scare the audience, forgetting that space itself is really far more frightening than any number of extraterrestrial teeth.

This isn’t a horror movie, though – Moon Zero-Two bills itself as ‘the first moon western’.  I’m not sure if it’s actually the first, but it’s definitely a moon western!  I mean, we’ve got miners, tycoons, shootouts, and untold riches in a wild new frontier with dangers around every corner!  As a bonus, setting it on the moon avoids the troubling questions of who has a right to this land, and doesn’t allow the writers to use ‘angry natives’ as one of their generic dangers.  Western clichés pop up repeatedly, but unlike the cliché nudity, these are actually entertaining as each one comes with a sci-fi twist. There’s a saloon, but the barfight takes place in microgravity!  Bill and Clem may overheat and die in the desert, but that’s because their moon bug has broken down rather than because their horse stepped in a gopher hole! These fun little uses of the tropes are a running gag in themselves.

Moon Zero-Two is also another movie where it’s a load of fun to look at what the writers and production designers thought the future would be like versus what actually happened.  The film-makers probably thought they were being very forward-thinking, with their personal computers and satellite communications.  Of course now we scoff at the briefcase-sized computers with their single-colour displays and giant keypads, but at the time it must have seemed quite futuristic!  It makes me wonder what people fifty years from now (if there are any left) will think of the interactive hologram technology we depict in movies like Avatar and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

For all these things to like about it, Moon Zero-Two is a long way from perfect.  Everybody on the moon seems to be white and there are far more men than women, although the women we see are portrayed as competent and intelligent (except for Hubbard’s collection of bimbos, barely able to sound out the words on their Community Chest cards… though when we consider Harry, I suppose we’re meant to assume that Hubbard just likes surrounding himself with stupid people).  We relate to Bill as he seems like just a guy trying to make a living, but he’s a bit too much of a bitter grouch to really be likeable.  I would have liked to see some more personality for Clem and Kaminsky, too.

The biggest thing that just feels like it’s missing from Moon Zero-Two is any idea of what’s going on down on Earth.  This is not, of course, essential to the story – it’s notable that we never see Earth, only what’s happening on the Moon and in space – but considering when the movie was made I was curious what it would predict for the outcome of the Cold War.  In the opening, we see an America and a Russian astronaut who are rivals until they are both swept up in the (extremely capitalist) race to colonize the solar system.   In the movie proper, the Russians vanish.  Somebody sneeringly asks where Kaminsky is from, but it’s not clear whether this is a cold war thing or just garden-variety xenophobia.  What happened?  Have the Russians left the moon as the British-American colonization project got going?  Do they have their own bases elsewhere on the surface?  We never find out, and it makes me wonder why the opening sequence brought it up.

Speaking of the opening sequence, I do love the theme song.  It’s so cheerful and catchy, and it makes exploring the solar system sound like a really good time!

Outside of the Russian movies, which had been badly-translated and mercilessly cut down, I think Moon Zero-Two might be the best film ever featured on MST3K.  It is very easy to make fun of, being so obviously a product of its time, but it doesn’t have any of the egregious errors of acting, pacing, or cheapness that ruined so many other good ideas in such movies.  For the most part it uses its clichés in an entertaining way and we don’t really hate any of the characters except the smug, cackling Hubbard, whom we’re supposed to hate.  Its visuals, audio, and story never bore us, and the story has only one major coincidence in Clem and Hubbard both going to Bill for help – but what we’re told about Bill’s past and present doesn’t make this seem too unlikely.  As I already mentioned, it doesn’t need a whole bunch of technobabble to get the story going, and still manages to be pretty good fun.

Perhaps the highest praise I can give to Moon Zero-Two is this: it’s probably the only MST3K episode where the riffing actually annoys me, because I’m trying to pay attention to the movie.

[hapgen]

DBH Secret Santa!

Hey @connorssock! I’m sorry that it took so long for me to post this, technical difficulties during the holiday season is never a joy. However, I hope that you enjoy this little one-shot I put together for you:

Title: Joy to the World 

Word Count: 1999

Pairing: HankCon

Summary: Connor rubbed his hands together, trying to take his mind off of those penetrating thoughts by concentrating on the texture of his new leather gloves. Hank had given him these gloves as a Christmas present, even though he wasn't gifted them until December 27th. It was a late night, both of them were sitting in front of the television, the idea of holidays and Christmas escaping their thoughts.

Author’s Note: Thank you to the amazing people at @dbhevents for putting this event together! It’s been a blast!

Connor loved being a detective at the Detroit Police Department (after all, that’s what he was created for), but he couldn’t help but feel. . . odd, about his situation. An interesting and clenching feeling was all he felt in his chest (he shouldn’t be feeling anything there, he didn’t have the same muscle and brain connections that a human did) and it made him worry. Was something wrong with him that he couldn’t detect? Scan after scan, diagnosis after diagnosis- everything had come up pristine.

Then what was this feeling?

Connor rubbed his hands together, trying to take his mind off of those penetrating thoughts by concentrating on the texture of his new leather gloves. Hank had given him these gloves as a Christmas present, even though he wasn't gifted them until December 27th. It was a late night, both of them were sitting in front of the television, the idea of holidays and Christmas escaping their thoughts because of the nasty legislative war going on in Congress. Apparently, protests across the country were skewing the desperately needed votes, slowing down the legislative process.

Hank had been grumbling to himself the entire evening as he nursed a bottle of beer (a cheaper version, because Hank had a few fines to pay after assaulting a government employee), watching the television with narrowed eyes. Hank had made his views on this whole situation quite clear- androids had free will, and so did humans- hence, androids deserved the same rights, liberties, and protections that a human had.

(Those stickers on Hank’s desk disappeared awfully quickly after the Detroit Tower incident.)

Connor crossed his legs, attempting to find a comfortable position to sit in. Just sitting in his usual formal way was not working for him anymore (stress, anxiety, worry- everything that was what the internet said his jitteriness pointed to). Hank said that he had to try and relax (“For once in your damned life, Con.”), so Connor took that advice in stride.

And completely failed at it.

Hank turned and looked at Connor, his eyes looking softer despite his eyebrows being pinched together. He swirled the bottle around and cleared his throat, “Why are you doing that?”

“Doing what?” Connor knew exactly what Hank meant, but he wanted to have a little fun. Today had been a rough day, and according to many of the leading scientists in the psychiatric field, humor was the perfect way to heal any emotional worries.

Grumbling curses under his breath, Hank leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He blindly rested the half-empty bottle on the foldable table next to him (how he did so, Connor didn’t know- Hank must have had a lot of practice).

“You know, Con, I’ve been thinking-” Hank began, but held a hand up as soon as Connor opened his mouth, “don’t say it, I will kick your ass out of this house in a heartbeat.”

Connor sighed, “Okay, Hank.” He shifted his legs into an awkward criss-cross applesauce, feeling even more uncomfortable than before.

(He definitely wasn’t going to say: “That’s a first,” because Connor admired and trusted Hank, but. . . he oftentimes did make irrational decisions by choosing not to think, but to just act. It was oddly attractive.)

Hank rolled his eyes. They were such an icy blue. Like the blue on that one princess’ dress in that singing movie everyone hated. Connor loved Hank’s eyes. They seemed so much more emotive than the rest of him. Even if Hank tried his hardest to hide any pain, fear, or happiness, Connor learned to look at the dilation of his pupils and the wrinkles around his eyes. Everything about Hank was so raw. So. . . human.

He wondered if Hank did things like that with him? He had removed his LED not too long after the commotion earlier that year, and Connor knew that it was the one thing that gave away his emotions to Hank.

“So, you know that fidget thing you do? The squirming and shit? The coins and tie-fumbling?” Hank said, adjusting his position on the couch. The springs were a little old at this point. They needed a new couch.

Connor blinked, “Yes, but I wouldn’t call it fidgeting, per say. It’s to help calibrate certain functions in my systems.” He paused, looking away from Hank’s gaze, “. . .it doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“God, Con, that would never bother me enough to ask you to stop, fuck.” Hank looked perturbed. Connor guessed that he miscalculated that thought. “I just- You usually do stuff with you hands, right?”

“I usually don’t calibrate with my feet, Hank, so yes, I use my hands.”

“You know what I fucking meant, Jesus.” He rubbed his face, looking both amused and annoyed at once. Connor loved that expression on Hank’s features. It was heartwarming.

Hank continued while Connor chuckled, struggling to contain his own laughter, “So- so do your hands ever get, I don’t know, cold?”

Connor immediately stopped laughing and squinted his eyes, “I don’t have the same temperature receptors that you do, Hank. I can adjust them. I can feel cold, warm, or hot whenever I want.”

“Wonder when they’ll make something like that for humans to wear,” Hank grumbled before reaching for something underneath the couch. “Now, I know that you have all that fancy engineering inside of you, but in case they stop working for some fucking reason-”

Connor looked at the rectangular package deposited in his lap. It was crudely wrapped with green paper, a cheap dollar store bow placed in the top corner. He blinked at the package, then glanced back up to look at Hank.

“. . .this is a lovely box, thank you, Hank. I’ll treasure it forever.”

Hank looked constipated, “Holy shit, Con, it’s a present, open the box.” No, not constipated, just irritated. But, the good kind of irritated, Connor supposed.

Timidly, Connor began to open the wrapped container, prying a finger underneath the folds of the paper. He gently tore it off, beginning to feel this tight, warm feeling in his chest as set the paper aside. The box was plain, made of cardboard, processed in China- and it held something inside. Connor felt giddy. His hands vibrated as he opened the box, revealing a pair of-

A pair of gloves.

They were faux leather, Connor could tell that much, but they looked divine. The stitching was simple and clean (and tight, Connor noticed, so they were of decent quality), and, as he found out when he slipped the pair on, there was a soft layer of faux fur inside. He hands felt delightfully encased in warmth, his sensors tingling with the texture on his skin. Connor looked up at Hank with wide eyes, absolutely awestruck with the perfection of the gift.

Hank looked sheepish, “Back in the day I used to be, uh, fidgety, too. I liked having something on my hands, cause it just. . . felt better, I guess? Fuck.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and Connor detected his raised heart rate and warmth spreading across his upper body.

Connor smiled softly, rubbing his fingers together through the material of the gloves, “I love them. They’re perfect. Thank you, Hank.”

“Glad you like them.”

Connor sighed quietly after reconstructing that memory. It felt like a lifetime ago, despite it only being two weeks after the event. The gloves were now snug on his hands, practically becoming a second skin. He didn’t go anywhere without the gloves on his hands, and he only took them off when he got home or had to analyze evidence.

(“Well shit,” Hank said, crossing his arms in mock anger as Connor knelt next to a victim’s body, “I was hoping those gloves would curb that licking fetish you have, guess I’ll have to come up with something else.”) Growing impatient, Connor checked the time- it was half past one. Hank was late. Again. For the third time in a row. Why Hank thought it was a good idea to leave him waiting at a crime scene to go, and he quoted, “check out the new food truck down the road, he’ll be back in ten minutes,” Connor had no idea.

He looked down both sides of the snow-covered road, turning up his heating systems as the temperature continued to drop. Flurries fell harder, the wind picked up, and cars speeding along the road became few and far between. Connor found himself grumbling some unsavory words under his breath, letting the artificial steam from his heating systems out of his mouth. He rubbed his hands together, focusing on the fuzz inside of the gloves. 99% of the material inside the gloves was a pollutant to the environment, but at least the leather itself wasn’t actually. . . real.

The beaming headlights from down the road caught Connor’s attention. Along with the visual cues, his above-average hearing also detecting some less-than-savory lyrics and drums coming from the stereo inside the vehicle. Connor sighed to himself (a truly unnecessary thing, but new emotions come with new habits), and walked towards the passenger side of the car as it rolled to a stop.

He opened the door, unsurprised to see a sheepish looking Hank. At least he had the guts to feel embarrassed.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Connor. I could barely see with this blizzard. You alright?” Hank asked, jacking the heat in the old car up a few notches.

Connor immediately felt a difference, the snow that had piled on top of his head beginning to melt. Even his heating systems could keep his thirium from close to freezing levels, so he was thankful for the blast of hot air. He was probably soaked to the artificial bone, but it wasn’t an issue. He wasn’t actually mad at Hank. Just. . . a little miffed.

“I’m fine. Just a little cold.” Connor answered, peeling off the damp gloved.

Hank pursed his lips together, his eyes glancing in between Connor’s bare hands and the icy road in front of him. He turned the stereo down a few ticks, before clearing his throat. “So. . . that place on the corner was pretty good. They have some neat stuff.” He said, gesturing to the cup holders in between the seats.

Connor looked down at the two disposable cups and tilted his head. “I’m surprised they’re open in this storm.”

“Believe me, I was surprised, too. Got a discount for being on the force, and they gave me a large coffee for the price of a medium. Real nice.” Hank scratched his beard, idly tapping the steering wheel, “They also some stuff for androids there. ‘Dunno how it works, but I’d thought you’d like to try it.”

“You got me a drink?” Connor said, a lilt of awe in his voice. He picked up the smaller, closer cup and gently popped off the lid, looking at the blue contents inside. “It looks like thirium.”

Hank shrugged, “I said that you were waiting outside for me and I wished I could bring you something back. The guy at the counter apparently had a friend- and android- that invented this stuff.” He pulled into the driveway and set the car to park before turning to look at Connor.

“Well? You gonna try it?”

Connor hummed, smiling softly at Hank. He leaned forward and place a light peck on Hank’s lips, mumbling a quiet thank you. As Hank chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck, Connor took a sip of drink.

“Hank. . .”

Still on the high of getting some affection, Hank sighed, “Yeah, Con?”

Connor pursed his lips together and glared at the drink, “This tastes like shit.”

They both looked at the offending cup before beginning to laugh at the absurdity of it all: a thirium drink, leather gloves, late Christmas gifts. . . What an odd little world they lived in, and how joyful Connor thought it was. Maybe that was the clenching, tight feeling in his chest- the contentment and love he felt with Hank by his side.

[fakesurprise]

Debriefing and Destressing

The prequel stories aren’t really post-cyberpunk; cybernetics exist and are used, but definitely inferiors to Other Things. Basically, cybernetics is now so cheap the rich refuse to use it. 

My boss has an office. No one else bothered with such things: you just reportrf over the Edos Array and conference that way. But Alder had an actual an actual room with chairs and a table he insists on sitting behind. I’d heard of him before he was assigned my handler, so I never bothered to protest. It’s a waste of time even by government standards, but there were far worse ways to waste time.

I entered to discover that he has altered things since my last visit; there was a replica fireplace against a wall with two comfy chairs beside it and a small side table between them. The table contained a bottle of alcohol and two glasses, both of which erre poured.

“Stevens. Please join me.”

I walked over and sat down. My system were too efficient for alcohol to do anything to me, and I barely taste it, but I had a sip anyway as the chair groaned a little. Even without the cumbersome battle suite I wore earlier, I had far too many implants to be light. “Sir. You wanted my report in person?”

“You did survive meeting Lady Tower. That is our official designation for her; she has enough aliases and use-names in the Array and Network proper that we just made up our own name over her preference for locations high above the cities of Edos. We know she uses a medchair and has some older cybernetics, the latter at odds with the kind of repairs and aid she has offered to others. There isn’t another private contractor on record in our nation who can successfully reactivate any soldier who has gone civilian. So, yes, in person.”

Alder is older, but he’d seemed to be about seventy for at least thirty years. I had no idea how old he actually was; I suspected far younger than many thought, and that the penchant for antiquities like a desk and office was just to throw people off their game. But I had no proof, and thankfully no need to look for it.

I sat my drink down. “August Zim is dead, which we suspected. Lady said others have survived, though not the extent of what she was able to recover for them. She did claim it would be almost impossible to do the same for me, which fits with the record of not lying about what she can do. She had a small lab in a tower in the north-delta sector. I marked the location in the briefing I sent earlier, though I imagine she’s long gone. She accepted the deal to travel to Elmith and let us know the outcome of her activities to date, but only as it relates to reactivation.”

“Curious. We did not expect it to be so easy.”

“It wasn’t. The battlesuit was destroyed, and I only survived because I tortured a boy.”

“That you left out of the report,” he said dryly.

“The boy was young, with an electromesh of military-grade quality both he and Lady Tower could use effectively. A shunt in his stomach for food, and difficulty breathing both pointing to damage from gasses. Also an artificial voicebox that was almost good enough to fool a decent asi. He also sold his eyes to her, and they were used as cameras. I am uncertain if that was another arrangement, but she did wish to preserve his life and refuses to leave Edos until she has finished making his voice work successfully.”

“The latter is unexpected.”

I nodded. “We knew she kept victims or veterans of the wars at her homes as servants and weapons, but not that she actually cared if they died. I am uncertain if she did or simply wanted the contract finished as a matter of professional pride.”

“Someone, ah, gifted with an electromesh would benefit more from having a stomach and other parts regrown than a shunt and artificial voicebox.”

“I thought so as well, so I looked into the issue. The mesh would interfere with growing new organs. Connecting them into it would be very expensive, and ensuring they could survive the mesh would mean testing that would drive the cost up to levels even the military would hesitate at paying out. The lack of a voice drastically limits interaction with an assistant, personal or otherwise, and the Array and technology in general. There are artificial voiceboxes and voice modulators that can work with an assistant, but this one also has to survive a mesh and controlling the mesh requires a very good assistant, hence the problem.”

“That is a complicated outlier, and one i imagine just selling your eyes does not pay for.” “I suspect she has taken it on as a challenge. I plan to return later today and see what is left of the Tower. If the boy has been left behind, he can at least explain some things.”

“And the Lady?”

“Did use a medchair, but had perfectly viable cybernetic legs, and an arm she pretended had latency issues it did not. I can only assume it is for matters of practicality, and helps attract people like the boy.”

“Ah. So that hey believe they are helping her, and she uses outlier cases to experiment on?”

I nodded. “It does seem likely, sir.” I had another sip of the drink because Alder was waiting for me to.

“And you felt there was no reason to terminate the target”

“Not in this case, no. I used a civilian battle suit, which was – limiting. I retain most of the enhanciles I had during the war; it reminded me of not having them. The Lady is hardly unique in what she offers, or the desperate veterans who want what they feel are their bodies back. To be rendered slower, with less senses, less awareness, less strength: to go from grace to a clunky body so expensive to maintain. It is a hard transition with so much of what was meant for war disabled.

“And even if they are activated somewhat, weapons run out and bodies require repairs. Ironically even more once those systems are active again. Over twenty enforcers were lost taking down  Li-owen a month ago, which led to this investigation. But if Li-owen had been left to just show off and be clever and not forced into battle with government forces –.” I shrugged. “A week. Two at tops before things broke that needed repairs that could not be afforded.”

“Which was what led to to the attack by Li-owen on the hospital and the resultant deaths, Stevens.”

“I am not saying Li-owen was in the right at all. Far from it. Some veterans cope just fine with civilian life and limits. Others do not, and some system must be in place for them.”

“Your mandate is purely investigative. But continue.”

“Let them retain enough to not feel – limited. And limit them to occupations that suit those skills. People would pay decent credit for cage fights, Anders.”

Anders took a slow sip of his drink. “There are many illegal ones, but making them legal would – lose that outlet for people.”

“Something like that might work. I don’t know. Do you need anything else?” “No.”

I nodded and left, heading two levels below to a gym. It was small, not quite military-quality. But the targets were solid and fast, and I spent a good half hour killing fake enemies and pushing myself. Reminding myself that I wasn’t limited, getting rid of how even my eyes had been less in the battle suit by shooting targets for a good five minutes.

I didn’t break anything, which should appeal to the psychbot assigned to me.

I put my weapons away, heading to a locker for a simple outfit and then back out into the city to check out what had become of the Tower.

Not needing to sleep had uses, but unfortunately I was exempt from overtime pay. Not that the pay mattered in this. We do what we must, and only after do we deal with it with.

I wasn’t intending to deal with anything I didn’t have to. The past wasn’t anything I was keen to embrace again. But that didn’t keep it in the past.

And the war cast shadows that nothing I did might ever erase.

[tutordoctoruae]

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dark souls

an analysis of every game in the dark souls series by a big fan, but not a fan-boy. someone who isn't so clouded by toxic competitiveness and false pride that they can't see the obvious flaws. a sorta guide for the average person so they can enjoy all the great things souls has to offer, while avoiding the substantial amount of garbage that 95% of players will genuinely hate.

tl;dr - play ds3 or bb first. they’re the best and most fair. maybe watch playthroughs of others to see if you can handle the series’ flaws. a more detailed, WAY longer write-up is underneath the readmore cut! - souls games from best to worst - 1. dark souls 3 GOOD: best souls, best action, great aesthetics, best mixture of everything series did right, best starter game, most fair, least issues. BAD: broken early game co-op due to smurf invaders ruining it for everyone. still has issues that are in every souls games like no offline pausing and artificial difficulty. 2. bloodborne GOOD: fresh new take on souls, made the action better, fair difficulty, souls for people who don’t care about tolkien fantasy, another great starter souls. BAD: confusing multiplayer, shorter than most souls, aesthetic direction limited variety of everything, “chalice dungeons” suck. 3. dark souls 2 GOOD: co-op is the BEST in all of souls, fixed many difficulty and balancing issues brought in by ds1, not a miyazaki game but that can be a good thing sometimes. BAD: without co-op is probably worse than demon’s tbh, rigid laggy combat, kinda linear compared to ds1, not a miyazaki game and you can tell. 4. demon’s souls GOOD: really started it all and deserves the credit, short but sweet, weirdly happy but still evil aesthetics, feels like a fun set of obstacle courses, many ways to mitigate the difficulty. BAD: horrible co-op, confusing mechanics, comparatively too short, almost level-based which takes away from exploration, “world tendency” isn’t great, still very rough around the edges. 5. dark souls 1 GOOD: best aesthetics/music/characters/world/lore of any souls, originated souls exploration, plenty of secrets and replayability, HUGE game, the fan favorite, the deepest levels of masochists will love the abuse from this game, an exploit in all versions to “cheat” and help mitigate the bullshit. BAD: almost not worth playing due to insane cheapness and difficulty right from the start, the fanbase of ds1 is so toxic and horrible and elitist i have to include it, “ornstein and smough”, “curse”, even the world exploration is frustrating in this one, i have never labeled a game as “abusive” until now, is so broken that i have to include a cheat as a fix. 6. dark souls 2 on ps4 GOOD: a remixed version of ds2 that manages to feel very different, way better visuals and 60fps, potential for co-op paradise with ability to play through all of ds2 with 3 friends simultaneously (i wanna try thisss). BAD: worst souls, least fun single player of the whole series by far, most of the balance and fairness brought in by vanilla ds2 is gone, literally patched balanced bosses to break them and make them artificially unfair, feels like a sloppy ds2 fanmod made by a ds1 purist, combat seems even laggier than the original, as much as i hate on ds1 at least it was a fully original game, just go play the other versions unless you’re desperate.

THE READMORE

this will kinda be in order of release. one last thing to note before starting the series is that souls IS inherently cheap and unfair by design. even avoiding most of the worst parts and doing extensive research won't save you from all of it. the concept of souls is that wasting your time retrying parts isn’t enough of a punishment for errors. the creators wanna really hurt you. and they refuse to include difficulty settings! but imo some of the pain is worth it tho, because the storytelling, world exploration, and aesthetics might be better than any game in the last ten years. and highly competitive, “i wanna prove myself” types will eat this gameplay up. this is like if castlevania symphony of the night and silent hill had an incredible but problematic baby.

demon's souls: GOOD! a gorgeous, tough, medium-sized game that really started it all. rough around the edges, but so cool! don't skip this one. this is like your favorite band right before they hit it big. it's still hard, but a lot of the difficulty can be dealt with by choosing an overpowered starting class (royal), and grinding for levels and healing items. the aesthetics are through the roof. it's somehow a happier game than any other souls, which makes it stand out imo! sadly no expansions for this game. i'd have loved more!

there's some bad stuff for sure though. like having to keep track of inventory carry weight. and other things that became staples of the souls series but are really horrible design. like inability to pause even offline. plentiful cheap traps and "gotcha" guess and check mechanics everywhere. super easy to accidentally attack an npc and literally break an entire playthrough. horrible autosaving. confusing awful multiplayer. forced invasions by (usually) smurf players who aren't looking for a fair fight. i'd say "play this one offline" but sadly the servers just went down for good so you don't really have a choice anymore.

it's also comparatively short. maybe a third the size of ds1. maybe even less. and the whole "world tendency" mechanic is just... so so confusing. meaning most players will miss out on a ton of content. it was a cool idea, but it just kinda didn't work with how they did it. too much research required for too little reward. in it's defense, that made the whole game feel very mysterious? idk even with the issues it's still a fav.

dark souls 1: TERRIBLE! i have a lot to say about this one. it's a bit sad, because truth be told this has THE best style and THE best lore and THE best music THE best characters and THE best world design of any souls. aesthetically, this is the pinnacle. it's also a HUGE game with tons of replayability and hidden stuff everywhere. it even has dlc that's really really cool! as far as world exploration goes, this had my favorite part in any souls game ever ("under the tree").

BUT... you have to actually play the game to see all that, and that's the problem. it's just not fun to play unless you're an insane masochist and don't value your time. they kicked up enemy numbers like crazy, made the ai way smarter, REMOVED grinding for health items, and made grinding for levels not that effective at all. everything in this game is tedious work. escapism that's harder than real life? no thanks. there's artificial difficulty walls everywhere you turn, usually in the form of bosses.

seriously the bosses in ds1 are the worst. think of a normal tough game. take that difficult last boss fight. imagine you're now fighting three of those final bosses simultaneously (stun-lock included). now imagine that fight is at the start of the game. and that's the benchmark of ds1's bosses. they aren't ALL that impossible, but a lot of them are. there's this one particular boss fight, "ornstein and smough", that is by far the most misplaced, unfair, stupid boss fight i've ever seen in any game ever. whoever developed it is truly a moron. i almost forgot about the “curse” status effect! about half way into the game, you’ll run into this. it requires an expensive and rare consumable item to deal with it. it’s very easy to miss these until it’s too late. why am i bringing this all up? because not only does curse kill you almost instantly, you respawn with half your health missing until you heal it. imagine all your hard work leveling, all gone to waste from just a single status effect. and this is before teleporting between bonfires was just a part of souls games from the start, so even if you figure out where to go to heal it, you still need to slog through some of the worst areas with half max health to get to them. and then there’s always the risk of getting cursed again when you go back? big issue, because most likely where you’re at in the game the curse removing items aren’t unlimited. bad bad bad bad baaad design.

but, thankfully, there's a way around all these issues. kinda. CHEAT! there's an exploit that lets you consume boss souls an unlimited amount of times even on consoles. it still takes a while to do. it's not instant god mode. on the contrary, the game is still super hard even if you're over-leveled. by doing this, ds1 will feel more fair, like the other souls games. you'll have way more fun.

i NEVER cheat in games normally, but cheating in ds1 takes a bad, horribly flawed game and fixes it. you may hate cheating, but this is more like ripping off an evil casino or like the mob without taking any risk, since the game is so so so unfair to begin with. if you don't wanna cheat, i'd say play the first parts and then watch a playthrough of the rest. the deepest levels of toxic elitist souls fanboys absolutely WORSHIP this game. don't listen to them. even the creator himself has moved away from a lot of this games bullshit.

dark souls 2: GREAT! those same souls fanboys i just mentioned? hate this game. because it's noticeably easier. because it made co-op viable. because their impossible game was suddenly moderately more accessible to everyone else. it's still super tough, super cool, super beautiful. the original creator may have stepped down from this one to do bloodborne, but it's still DEFINITELY souls. and it's an overall better game than ds1 by a long shot simply because your ticket to fun doesn't come at such an unreasonable cost. oh and omg they added back grindable healing items! they also removed the STUPID tutorial area/mandatory boss fight before you can level that every other souls has. and just a lot of the other player-unfriendly changes made between demon's (des) and ds1 have been sorta reversed.

it might seem weird but, since the game is comparatively unpopular, it keeps the majority of toxic soul elitists from playing. the kind of people who get off smurf invading so they can bully others? to stomp new players so they can feel misplaced joy in their otherwise pathetic, purposeless existences? yeah not really here thank god! most invaders are regular people looking for competition, and usually even have a good sense of humor.

outside of that making online totally do-able in this one, it makes online co-op really fairly easy. in comparison to des and ds1, i mean. it's still unintuitive silly bullshit, but imo in this one it's SUPER worth it. amazingly fun! get a good friend. play through the entire game together! a++++. just make sure to keep that soul level similar to each other!!!

there are bad things tho. the single player isn't nearly as good as cooping through the whole thing. the aesthetics aren't quite as good as ds1. the exploration is kinda worse. the gameplay feels weirdly sluggish sometimes too. it's just insanely tanky. people that wanted "dark souls 2: more dark souls 1" would be a bit put off by this bc it was more like how ds1 was to demon's souls. unconnected in lore. imo i kinda liked that but... still. it's biggest flaw was it's lesser story/lore polish compared to the other games.

oh, and while the dlc zones (THREE whole big dlc this time!) are pretty cool, the bosses are just crazy tough to the point of not being fun. still worth getting the dlc for the awesome levels, but the bosses were disappointing in their frustration.

dark souls 2 ps4: THE WORST! this is a sorta weird one, but it deserves it's own little analysis. theoretically, this should've been really cool. a tougher, remixed version of ds2 with dlc included and better graphics/framerate. tbh the game IS beautiful. some if the little touches and changes, while subtle on the surface, completely change how you path through the entire game. it's what "zelda oot master quest" WISHES it could be. also, theoretically, you can play co-op with up to three other people this time (was two before)! neat!!

*should have been neat. because their "remixed enemy placement" really just added way more way tougher enemies. made everything insanely harder. certain bosses that were tough but fun before now just devastate you with no explanation. imagine a shoddy fanmod made by a ds1 fanboy "to fix the casual play". that's what this feels like.

ds2 rode a fine line between cheapness and fairness before, but now all the balance is gone. frustrating annoying bullshit. if you're that kind of ds1 masochist i mentioned before, this is the ds2 for you. everyone else should stay the fuck away. just replay the ps3 version again. i suspect the reason it's like this is they balanced it around the ability to have 3 people helping you at all times? which is idiotic. bc the co-op was a way to compensate for the super hard bosses and invasions. but if you then raise the bar like that, it'd make any single player parts totally unfair. which is exactly what happened. btw i only played the dlc on ps4 and not on ps3, so maybe that's why i was wishy-washy about it?

had they included both the original enemy arrange of ds2 WITH this one, it woulda been cool. but as it stands now it's a much worse version of ds2 for more money. no thanks.

bloodborne: AMAZING! it's so odd to me. people kinda ignored des compared to ds1. they didn't like how ds2 was it's own thing compared to ds1 (see a pattern???)... but then the most drastically different souls game comes out, and almost everyone unifies and loves it. but i'm not complaining, i love it too!

suddenly super fast paced action in comparison. jrr tolkien replaced by hp lovecraft. a smaller game with more polish. it's great! some of the reactionary gameplay was traded for rewarding aggression and risk. but truth be told, that made the game easier. imo bb was the easiest souls game at that point by far. might still be?

but that's not a bad thing, because souls games are so inherently hard and cheap, that the "easiest" souls ends up being the most balanced and fun. the gameplay is just so much more responsive and better than any souls ever came close to being. as much as i missed shields, it was just better. no more slow responses. gameplay feels more like an action game "should".

tho there are a few flaws here too. there are still a few unfair bosses. not like ds1 or ds2dlc... but just the same, they kept up the annoying trend of moderately difficult and insanely interesting/fun world navigation, but with bosses as disproportionately difficult brick walls in your way of the game you really wanna play. the co-op was the most confusing souls co-op yet, to the point i've never even done it (thus could be all on me but still).

there's a whole big (technically optional) chunk of the game called "chalice dungeons", which should've been this amazing roguelike maze of seemingly endless exploration. think souls meets diablo. but it ended up more like the most boring (and often cheap) repetitive thing you've ever done in a souls game. the assets uses to make the random dungeons were too few and so every dungeon felt kinda the same. and they locked a bunch of REALLY good content behind this dungeon slog. i'd say use em for a bit of grinding and then ignore em completely.

my last little complaint, and i'm torn on this, is actually something i praised before. the aesthetics. in all other souls, even though it was "knights n dragons", there was a TON of variety. bright, beautiful locations. dark, evil places. alien landscapes. bizarre abstract things. legend of zelda. silent hill. but in bb, it's mostly just dark. everybody wears edgy black. it's all the same. the weapons and outfits are way more limited. it's more focused for sure, but there's just... less of everything. but souls is a confusing complicated nightmare of gear management, so this might be a good thing to some people.

dark souls 3: THE BEST! this is it. the best souls. they combined the greatest parts of every souls game into one. the amazing combat of bb, but with all the customization and variety of the other souls. the good kind of lore that was in ds1. it's actually the lore sequel to ds1 that everybody wanted, all while being it's own thing as well. there's even a weird aspect of navigation simplicity like des had? oh and it's possibly the easiest souls yet. they even removed soul memory to make co-op way easier! just everything is more intuitive.

a wide variety of aesthetics and locations. a "best of souls" while having it's own unique things. the "weapon abilities" feature is great. everything was polished and optimized. if this truly is the last souls game they'll make, then they went out on the highest note.

okay but now here's the flaws, lol. the removal of soul memory, while it should have made co-op simple and fixed it in comparison, it actually created a whole new HUGE issue. it made things so so easy for smurf invaders. in the earliest areas, you can't take more than a few steps in co-op before some loser with a obv troll name pops into your game and takes almost no damage whatsoever. you won't beat them. they're cheating.

smurfing via high end gear to this level is cheating. there's no other way to look at it. nobody would call an ant vs an elephant a fair fight. so to save time and resources that you need to play online (it's complicated), you have the host disconnect. and then you try again. it's tedious. i'm sure it's made countless new players just give up on co-op completely, and maybe even the whole game. souls smurfs are all so pathetic like i genuinely wish they would find a way to ban them. this is the biggest issue.

another thing is it's sorta linear. maybe even more so than ds2. it's not awful like i think there are more branches than bb but still it's definitely no ds1 in that regard. there are also a few cheap bosses. "nameless king" (optional), "sister" (end dlc thus optional), and "dlc dragon" (forgot his name but double optional). i also think "dancer" (mandatory) is a bit bullshit, but it's also really cool so...

the first dlc, while looking very cool, is kinda tiny and lackluster. it does have amazing npcs/lore... but as stated before, the final boss of it is awful. souls boss formula at it's worst. the second dlc is MUCH better, with maybe my favorite end bossfight in all of souls. it's so hard, but fair. they made the garbage secret bossfight in this dlc thankfully optional. oh and the dlc itself is beautiful and large. and very fitting in regards to lore.

it's kinda hard to not mix in good with the bad on this game. i genuinely love it. most of the typical souls bullshit is easier to avoid, but it doesn't take anything away from the good parts. if you played one souls game, play ds3.

well that's it. srry if it was too long. tried to make it as short as i could. i'm sure i forgot a few points, but i'll rant about this stuff even more extensively in my ds3 letsplay i'm sure. thanks for reading! hope it helped people interested in getting into souls!!