darkarm66

[darkarm66]

Further thoughts on Xenoblade 2

When reviewing Xenoblade Chronicles 2, I tried my best to avoid mentioning Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X. Mainly because directly comparing sequels is always unfair. Any game should stand (or fall) on its own merits. Plus sequels aren't always the same game or mechanics, so any expectation of familiarity should fall only on the player (unless the devs explicity say 'this game is a direct sequel').

However, playing XC2 just really had me wishing I was playing the first or second game instead. And like I wrote in the review, XC2 lacked a lot of cohesion between its systems. Cohesion the past games nailed. One thing, the previous Xenoblade games had, in terms of cohesion, was a great environmental design. Xenoblade had the gimmick of living on the body of dormant mechgods, but the actual impressive part was how every area was interconnected. This lead to feelings that if the player wanted to push beyond the boundaries and see what they can explore or discover, only a gamer's patience (and some overleveled monsters) would stop them. Xenoblade X added verticality with the mechs, which always meant exploration had some surprises. Xenoblade 2....dispenses with most of that. In fact, much of the hidden stuff comes from warp gates locked by field skills, which may or may not be at the right level by the time. This leads to a lot of fetch questing and cat herding just to possibly level up that skill...which you need to access by increasing trust levels. By the time you have enough skill to unlock that warp gate, the player has to go back by fast traveling. I'm split on fast traveling as a game mechanic because I do love saving the player time but the disconnected nature of all the worlds take some of the joy of traveling away. It makes what should be a vibrant and unique world feel like an inefficient menu option with random bits of interactivity. It robs some of the worlds from having any lasting impact.

Another aspect was the handling of side quests because....let's face it, there's a shit ton of sidequests in all three games. And all three had a way to make it feel grueling. However, the first Xenoblade had the advantage of completing quests if you already had the stuff in your inventory...and you didnt have to go back to the quest giver. So much time saved. So much back tracking erased. This design advancement, all the way from 2010, is just missing in 2017. Xenoblade Chronicles X had this to some degree but this was mitigated due to many of the tougher quests being in the online portion and the post-story game turned into challenging grind for parts to unlock better Skells. In XC2, it just feels like a way to stretch out something a bit longer to pad for time. XC1 and XCX's quests didn't feel like chores to do because both games felt like they encouraged players to truly, truly play to their own style so players can unintentionally complete quests without needing to activate it. 

The amount of backtracking saved in the first two games had the bonus of the game world to truly feel unique and warm, as opposed to Xenoblade 2's worlds just feeling like checkmarks to add on a map and the problem, at least for me, is that when you no longer have to be in a place any more, it doesn't need to exist. This waste the environmental design and robs it of being a world and is not just: a game. While a game being a game feels like a weird criticism, but games that are collections of exhaustive chores are usually not the best games.

One thing to keep in mind between all three games is the Affinity System. It shows up differently in between all three games, but their functionality is essentially the same: nurture a link between the party and the game world. In the first game, it gated some quests and side stories by incentivizing the player to actually do things within an area to increase affinity. But the first Xenoblade gave better payouts, gameplay wise, for the player's time. Talking to NPCs and creating good links between them allowed players to obtain items that may have been needed for quests or better: the affinity between the party members. This is where Xenoblade actually justified its long, long playtime. Not only does the party members receive the character development the cutscenes don't, it allows the players to have specific passive bonuses in gameplay. And its not just for the specific member in combat, but it benefits the entire party. And for the combat, performing certain actions for members allowed a boost in critical hits and buffed other effects. This made pay attention to which relationships were truly worth developing as the talking during combat mattered and determined how well an effect could take hold. Best of all, the affinity helped mitigate what could've been a super grindy affair.

This is the case for XCX as well, as the combat got tweaked to build on top of the combat chatter as performing a specifically called for Art, increased Affinity between party members, but was also the way to keep stacking attacks and effects on enemies, especially important as the game started doling out tougher enemies. 

For Xenoblade 2, the Affinity system is the only thing that gets leveled up through quest completion, allowing the Driver to get specific bonuses and building the Trust between the equipped Blade. It's the interaction between Blade and Driver where the Affinity system gets smashed with sledgehammer. For the most part, it's similar to the first game where trust has to be built to unlock a skill node. Then, unlocking a specific skill requires specific tasks, tasks the player may have already done. Now add the fact that Rare Blades have specific unlock nodes and quests and they have to be present (or use the dreadful Merc Mission system) to keep unlocking. I could be misremembering the first two games, but Xenoblade 2 just made it feel like double the work for the same payoff. Stretched out for over 200 Blades. 

The only thing that's consistent between all three games: there's a lot in the mechanics they won't even bother to tell you how to get it working. In the first game, it's never clear how much affinity is being added from each action but there is a number that levels it up. In XCX, you need several online guides to find out where to find the parts for the high end Skells and the fact there's a specific scheme to connecting probes. XC2 does this a little better in certain aspects but the overall vagueness to collecting is still present.

So, I this isn't a 'for the next Xeno game, they should' article because the Shulk, Fiora and Elma showing up in Challenge Mode felt like a hint that Monolith Soft may be moving away from the franchise for the next upcoming games and probably wanted to give the fans a bit of fan service before moving on. Plus, there's no guarantee that circumstances of Monolith Soft losing half their staff to a different Nintendo franchise will repeat, which I believe benefited Breath of the Wild at the expense of a better Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Hopefully, whatever the next game from Monolith Soft becomes and hopefully it's an amazing RPG, that it retains all the great parts from the Xenoblade franchise.

[darkarm66]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 review - Hurry Up and Get to Elysium, I’m bored

I had a review written and ready to go for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in January 2018 when I wrapped up the main story. It left me with a feeling that as fun as it was a game to play and this game was plenty fun, there were a lot of rough edges that its release date didn't help to sand away the rough parts. But to Monolith Soft's credit, the first game they released was not the entire story and they added a huge chunk of post release content, including an expansion pack. Now with Torna, The Golden Country done, I can safely say Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a buffet of game. And some of the features and mechanics are a bit tastier than others.

One thing that re-calibrated my feelings towards Xenoblade 2 was the understanding that most of the team of the previous two games worked on Breath of the Wild. It may not be an exact one for one trade off, but considering how incredible Breath of the Wild's open world was and Xenoblade and Xenoblade X had some incredible worlds as well, I couldn't help that something was lacking in Xenoblade 2. And after about 300-400 hours with it, that lacking quality is cohesion.

Now, let's get to the good parts: this is a really pretty game. The art work and character design is top notch and vibrant, so no one will ever be bored at looking at it and there will be some awe-inspiring sights to take in. Best of all, those sights will inspire a gamer's wanderlust and thankfully, there's also so many great lands to explore and do adventures in. 

And all that roaming is bolstered by a lush soundtrack that amplifies the incredible tunes from the first Xenoblade. Absolutely pulse pounding orchestral scores abound. 

However, most of the adventuring concludes in fancy battling and it's here where Xenoblade 2 carries people to endure those long hours. Not a complete overhaul of the original's combo-based, cool down system, but the selecting of arts is now handled by button prompts instead scrolling through with a d-pad. The stacking mechanism of effects has two added properties so combat is even less tedious around. And there's an added orb mechanic where elements lead to spectacular combos and enhance chain attacks, which is needed because Unique Monsters are way more tougher this time around and the gem system from previous Xenoblade is extremely watered down to something simpler. Now we get to the part where what could've been an amazing adventure but becomes a major crack, similar to the San Andreas Faultline: Blades. 

They're a major component in gameplay and story. They allow for some variety in gameplay, as they provide the weapons for the player to choose from. And during the story, questions are raised about what's a Blade's true purpose and what is their life away from their Drivers and whether or not, they have a will of their own to respect.

Story-wise, this interesting conflict doesn't drive much of the story. Its thought about but barely built upon. The central story is a boy meets girl between Rex and Pyra. Their drive to reach a place will take them into contact with numerous friends and foes. Some very interesting, some just....there. This gives a feeling of not a grand story being told be several vignettes being shown during an adventure. This causes some moments to fall on its face and not stick with the player the way they should, which is due to the game's open design. And this is where some of Xenoblade 2's biggest design problems start coming to light. A lot of player progression isn't handled by XP primarily anymore. It's now handled by completing tasks and quests in some of the most repetitive manner possible. Sometimes its simple stuff like killing '5 of a creature' and other times its killing a unique monster. The bad part about this is that much of the game world is locked off through Field Skills. Now quests are being done, not to make your blades more powerful, but to actually make them unlock doors and chests that would've been amazing 60 hours ago. That's not even the worse part about Blades, that would be the RNG system to unlock them.

While there are some basic blades that could be useful, the player goes through so many unlocks to get a Rare Blade, which are actually useful in combat and has fantastic character design. Some are unlocked by story, some are unlocked by pure luck. And there's rarely nothing that one could do to influence. This is a mobile mechanic in a console game and had this been any other publisher, please believe those blades would've been sold like in-app purchases. Which is bad enough but now, the player is paying with time.

One of the biggest failings of this game is how it actively and aggressively waste time in the name of 'longer play time equals value'. Mechanics are tied to together by the thinnest of threads and as a result, playing Xenoblade 2 feels like completing 5 chores to do one cool thing. And most of that is due to backtracking. Worst, they didn't even hide the parts well. 

With a New Game Plus, newer Rare Blades, a Challenge Mode that doubled down on the excellent combat mechanics, and Torna: The Golden Country, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 feels more like a game where you have to spend a lot of time to get anything out of, as opposed to a game you want to spend more time with because its enjoyable. For every cool idea or cutscene that feels properly realized, too much of the gameplay feels like a step back.

Torna fully exposes that. The combat is simpler by having less Blades to juggle and making elemental orbs easier to create and the game world is much, much smaller and easier to navigate. However, progress is gated by doing sidequests. That's right, main story progression is blocked by doing sidequests. And for what? To make the player feel sad about characters you were nice to dying, despite the fact that in 500 years they would die anyway? Worst yet: it doesn't even explain why the main antagonists would get together again in the main game, which would've been way more interesting to explore.

However, one would think by listing all of its flaws and coming down on it means I had a bad time with it. So far from the truth. When it works and I explored and found stuff to my heart's content, Xenoblade 2 shines. The same shine found on the Wii and Wii U shows up in bits and pieces. But a few great snacks cannot be an entire meal. In the end, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is one the biggest games to play for RPG and adventure fans. It's just a rough ride along the way and the destination is middling.

[darkarm66]

Gravity Rush 2 Review-Fall Into the Sea and Drown

It's really easy to want to fall in love with Gravity Rush 2. Especially when looking at its exquisitely cel-shaded, floating world. I have always been a proponent of art design and style over raw power to evoke a look and this game actually feels like an 80s cartoon come to life. Best of all, it combines that with a gravity mechanic that makes the player feel like they're flying around. In an open world setting, this should lead to some lovely exploration and thrills. Unfortunately, somehow this gets ruined by having it strangled with some of the worst game design made.

It should be easy. Especially with a character as versatile as Kat, being able to shift gravity to float and use telekinesis to fight aliens. That alone should set it apart from other open worlds. Free floating through several abysses to discover new floating islands should exhilarating and at times, it does. Then, it's time to fetch a random ass object.

Like many open worlds, so much of the gameplay is just a laundry list of padding and tedium that's there to artificially inflate a game's length. Nothing is allowed to the player's own agency. All the player can do is stumble to each side quest and story mission.

And on the stumbling, using the gravity mechanics is god damn fight from beginning to end. The mere act of wanting to send Kat in a straight line is maddening and with a camera that's there to troll the player, it's far to easy to get stuck in a wall, lose all momentum, and completely fail quests due to the game's insistence on nailing jumps and targets dead center. Most of that can could be due to the original game's root as a handheld game on device where tilting the camera alleviated a lot of the pain. But this has been worked on for nearly 4 years, this team couldn't be shocked or surprised that they're developing on a console.

The biggest problem with the gravity and free falling is that once Kat is committed to a direction, the player cannot adjust in mid fall. This goes beyond user unfriendly into obnoxious. Too many moments require the player to be precise in their aim and the game design doesn't help. Also not helping is the lack of a lock on button, making some quests continue a bit longer when an enemy moves to the right and Kat ends up missing a kick and just careens off the screen. No concession is made to the player for such frustrating design.

Another problem with the story missions is how each chapter is just stuffed with filler. Many chapters are just long-winded tutorials for new powers (which aren't new, but just add modifiers to actions the user's been doing for hours) and honestly, the game gives no incentive to switch things up past the default style. So on one side of missions, there's tutorials 20 hours into the game and on the other side, there's fetch quests and pixel hunts before the player can get to the meat of a mission. This is the crap that's usually reserved for side quests! And worse: insta-fail stealth missions. The mechanics of the game has a magic girl who manipulates gravity and it forces the player to sneak around at times? Gravity Rush 2 can kiss my ass. 

I've barely touched on the combat because it barely qualifies as functional. There's certainly an action and at times, the user can combine gravity and kicking. And it feels good, so good, you wish and beg there's more of that in the game. But even then, the player cannot get stronger and better at it. Boss battles seem to get longer and drawn out because of this (and the lack of lock on).

Honestly, the gameplay feels as awful as it does because it doesn't feel like it wants to be a game. (An interquel anime proves that) Gravity Rush 2 feels much more concerned telling the story of Kat, a plucky do gooder with the power to shift gravity at will. Her neediness and will to do good for others drives a lot of the plot and honestly, adds charm to game. This is a character who genuinely seems as happy chasing down randoms ass balloons for kids and buying crepes for old men as she is taking out a military stronghold. And with amazing comic book cutscenes that actually add some personality and expressions to the characters, with some nifty cutscenes during finishing moves, Gravity Rush 2 comes alive as a Studio Ghibli movie.

But the problem is, it's a video game that seems to have contempt for being a video game. Or at least, contempt from the developers for having to make a competent video game. They seemed like they were forced to put what they did in the game. It just seems stuffed with content and some tuning and pruning is what was needed. Too, too many open world games mistake content for variety and length for depth. All it leads to gameplay that's the equivalent of flavorless gum that has to be chewed for hours and hours. 

In the end, it's a shame a world this lovely, mechanics this intriguing and a cast this endearing is wasted with terrible design and gameplay. Gravity Rush 2 may be better looking than a lot of open world games but that's all it has going for it.

[darkarm66]

Job Rejection

So my test plan was missing steps on how to do something and shouldn't have added the circles. How about next time you send instructions on how to perform a back end function without relying on the front end. Fuck you, Imbellus

[darkarm66]

Nier: Automata review-To The Glory of Execution

I never thought much of the PlayStation 4. It just seems like an apology for how the PS3 turned out for the first two years. It's successful as fuck, despite a lack of actually compelling software. Bloodborne was intriguing but I haven't even considered getting PS4. Until Nier: Automata showed up with that fancy trailer and showed all kinds of ass-kicking. This was gonna be the game that made me finally plunge on a PS4. And for the most part, Nier: Automata was the experience I thought it would be.

All I knew from this series was a heavy dose of esoteric weirdness and cult-like devotion because like Nier and Drakengard before it, this ain't the most accessible series. The plots are dark and moody, determined to pee all over RPG story conventions. Hero are assholes and worlds of people are pushed beyond points of insanity, despair, and hatred until all that's left is for everything to die. So, on that front, Nier: Automata suceeds in keeping that tradition alive.

Post-apocalyptic worlds don't lend well to happiness and sunshines, so it starting with Androids sent from a moonbase to keep decimating machines to make thing safe for humanity. Of course things happen, hidden truths are revealed, twists happen, some existential questioning ensues, and in the end, the story ends in a place not a lot of people expected. I'm sorry if I seem down on it, not even the New Game+ felt like 'new games' but  just continued the story. A lot of the plot devices led to interesting and surprising bits of story telling (more on that later) but a lot of it still felt linear, due to the fact that a lot of these plot elements are revealed after beating one quest to unlock another quest. So for all the praise it receives for its unconventional story, it goes through a fuck ton of convention to reveal it.

And speaking of convention, the game play of previous Nier/Drakengard games would scream to have gameplay this good. Bringing in PlatinumGames to do the meat and potato of a game should always be on every publisher's to do list, except Microsoft. Having responsive and tight combat with flimsy shoot em up mechanics does make any and every encounter seem engaging. Even the twin stick controls for the hacking segments are a nice touch to break up some monotomy in the game. Compared to other games in the series, this gameplay is a god send. But....it's 2017 and gaming isn't short on great hack/slash titles or bullet hell/shoot em ups. And honestly, after the first 10 encounters, the combat and hacking got super monotonous....which rarely happens from Platinum. No matter the weapon, location, or enemy, combat and hacking just gave me a feeling of 'get on with it already!'

So while the gameplay and story left a lot to be desired, I found genuine moments of actual exhilaration. For one, this is a very beautiful game to look at. For a world that's been pretty much dead (and conveniently put together), this game has some very excellent desolation to take in with the eyes. Destroyed building overtaken by sand, trees, canyons are a damn delight. And speaking of delightful views, as stale as the combat gets, the boss battles are some visual porn. Sure it never got more challenging than your stats determining how well you put up with it, it doesn't mean it never got boring to look at it and at times, is worth the price of admission alone. 

I was even genuinely shocked that hacking comprised a good portion of the combat, which is fun, if briefly diverting. A shame that portion didn't have a  customization/level up feature. Add in a customization that actually determines how to go about on a play style through its chip system, it made the difference between a RPG one slogs through versus one can plow through. No matter how quirky this world got and how unconventional the story became, a fetch quest is still a fetch quest, backtracking makes a game seem more padded out and escort missions are still painfully boring to do. However, this is more of annoyance than it is bad design choice.

However, the side missions led to some interesting characters, mainly Pascal, who is probably the only likable character and gets a cruel ending for his trouble. For all the themes about humanity and what it means to be human, to be alive and to exist without pain and despair, Yoko Taro creates a character that embodies it and after several games of showing characters do bad things for right reasons, creating a character and giving him a storyline that actually filled with genuine heroism and empathy, the plot thread ends with one of the cruelest things I've witnessed in gaming. But considering his previous stories in games, I really should've seen this coming. 

One thing that did stick with me is this gorgeous and ecletic soundtrack. The amazing music gave me vibes of Xenogears and pretty much Square's late 90s output: earworms that burrow into your heart that gives the game's story the emotional pulse (that it doesn't earn at times). Hypnotic vocal melodies and lush strings heightens the hopelessness Automata's world feels through most of the play time. Might possibly be the best game soundtrack of 2017.

So overall, while I was down on the game through most of my playtime and do not believe it's near the masterpiece reviewers claim it to be, Nier: Automata's ambitions, matched with an above average execution, are unparalleled. For my qualms with the story, there's an intriguing one being told through out every minute this game runs. As tired as I got seeing the same environments over and over, they are very beautiful sights. And as much as I hated hack and slashing the same type of robots, the combat is surprisingly solid and fluid. Nier: Automata is truly one of the things in gaming we should clamor for more of, despite its flaws.

[darkarm66]

This is (not) a GTA V review

Grand Theft Auto V is one of the best selling games ever. After nearly 4 years and one upgraded port, its success cannot be denied. There's no point reviewing it after all the awards, scores, and money that came its way. Also, I haven't gotten a chance to try GTA Online, which actually looks like a lot of fun to play. I've always hated reviews that spend a lot of words talking about one component and barely glancing at the others. So I won't say whether or not if GTA V is an all-timer based on incomplete play time. That said, and it seems pointless to say this after all the success it has had but......GTA V's campaign is some hot garbage.

The only thing GTA V nailed is the look and size of its game world. This is a really huge game world and as an LA native, I was astonished by the look of some of the streets and buildings that Rockstar got perfect. And when you're actually traveling throughout the game, there are some beautiful sights to behold, which is something I never said about any GTA game previously. Then, when it's time to do something....the whole thing reminds you not only is it a game, it's 15 games at once and they hate each other. The driving is a chore, the combat is lacking, the movement is tedious, the collision detection is wonky, and worst of all, the game design is super restrictive.  This is an open world that is actively trying to punish the player for doing something the creators didn't tell you to do.  Much of the campaign is built around heists, which are actually quite fun when you get to execute them, and like 'real' heists, this requires a lot of planning and staking out. So, get ready for a bunch of fetch quests, pixel hunts, and following! Do you like driving after a a target but staying at a arbitrary distance? Of course you don't! Like trekking across map for what seems like ages to pick up an item that you most likely could've acquired hours ago? Hell naw! Does all this busy work to set up a heist lead to your characters successfully completing a heist that leads to now further action? Absolutely not! Nearly every mission done is always a set up for something more exciting as the payoff. The structure of this would be fine enough if all the preceding quests didn't feel so tedious, but the probably isn't the tedium, it's the restrictiveness. For all the ballyhoo about its open setting, the gameplay is too gated and strict. There's only one way to do anything and the player is never given any real freedom to tackle anything the way they want to. You have to get in that car and go to that dot and god help you if you ever plan to use items you already have. And these punishing time wasters are the only way to unlock anything useful or interesting. Even exploring the city becomes a waste. For all of its beauty as a city, nothing really sparks a player's curiosity to explore it because a beautiful building is just...that. So much scenery and no payoff for the player to discover it (unless you spend money on property to unlock a more pointless sidequest). 

Worst of all is how everything doesn't flow into each other. Beefing up your driving doesn't make driving a car any easier or more fun or unlock something else to test your skills. Buying property doesn't allow for the user to earn more money. And all you can buy with money is interchangeable weapons and cars and clothing that has minimal gameplay effect. There's no true gameplay loops, you don't really enjoy the gameplay as much as you merely put up with it. Nearly every player choice comes with a dose of cynicism about making that choice. What's weird is that all the shooting and carnage you can cause fulfills the reptilian urge to play up to the title's namesake but its more of stress reliever for having to put up with such awful missions earlier. But the game doesn't really care for that because everything is about the story.

Rockstar loves skewering Hollywood, pop culture and modern society but they love stroking their 'we can make better stories than movies and tv!' boner and now it being stroked on gameplay's face. As exciting as it is to complete and mission and hear about your deeds on the radio, its a waste that no plot or story development can come from emergent gameplay. Everything is a carefully curated and guided experience to some truly rank dialogue and delivery. It's always funny to see other skewer the Hollywood process and yet, want to be part of it so bad and can never see their own awfulness. Every third word is a slur or f-bomb, leading to a stupid mission. And for all the talky bits, there's nothing ever actually worth listening to. Barely any exposition but a bunch of cusswords as a 'joke'. For all its attempt at satire, all it does is just attack people for liking things, which isn't satire or parody. It's being a dick. Considering Rockstar is gleeful about be 'inspired' by better movies and shows like Heat, Breaking Bad, and the Wire, it takes from better sources without ever understanding what made those movies and shows great in the first place. But all of those works had at least two characters who didn't sound like uneducated knobs and actually conveyed an emotion that went beyond 'I'll solve everything through crime because I'm crazy!'. So the misogynistic dialogue and outlook isn't a big drag, (but nonetheless troubing), it's just misogynistic and immature coming from people who haven't hit puberty yet. And worst of all, no character seems to exhibit an emotion outside of rage. 

Franklin seems to get the worse of this deal. They had a good chance to show a character who was roped into a lifestyle he hated but his only way out was to....become a better criminal. The pathos and ethos of all the characters are wildly mismatched as its hard to sit through a story about betrayal, loss and bordeom when the game has all three characters do the same repetitive tasks and chores in a game. So, the whole 'three characters in one story' gimmick is a way that padded out an already huge game.

THAT SAID: there are elements that do come together as a whole in certain segments. Actually pulling off a heist and escaping is exhilarating and there are moments of bliss when you're actually exploring a huge city without concerns of way points and map markers.

The biggest problem: how the hell did it earn any of these stellar reviews? None of this gameplay is worth a ten or a perfect score! These components aren't just flawed, they're down right awful and even when combined, this is a really piss poor game. Online may be revolutionary in its own right but that campaign is just a soggy waffle. There was nothing in that story or plot that is close to being passable as something to enjoy. I'm utterly confused on what made the story so great because it wasn't the voice acting, plot, dialogue, jokes, character development. 

Those are my thoughts on GTA V, one of the best-selling games ever and a highly overrated game.

[darkarm66]

The Switch Will Not Be the Wii U

While the sales data for June 2017 hasn't been released and we don't know whether or not ARMS became a blockbuster, July is the 5th month of the Switch's existence. The release of Splatoon 2 is the next big game for the system, but that alone is bit significant. Especially when you compare the release trajectory of the Switch's predecessor, Wii U. 

I will never kick the Wii U, even when it's down and even when calling it failure is accepted, objective fact. However, a lot of people still remain convinced that the Switch can still end up like the Wii U, despite so many factors to the opposite. Instead of calling these myopic haters stupid and going back to ARMS, I'm gonna do a listicle of why the Switch won't be a failure.

1. It launched with Breath of the Wild:

We all know this game is awesome and delights every time it gets booted up. Super Mario Odyssey notwithstanding, it will sweep every award it gets nominated for.....if video game awards had any prestige to it. And despite the fact that this was a port from the Wii U (but a game that was never released, so let's have a semantic debate another day), it did what many people didn't think it was going to do: sell systems. It may be a port but it is still a brilliant game. The Wii U didn't have anything on its level, apologies to Zombi U and Nintendoland. Hell, the PS4 and Xbox One didn't have anything on BOTW's level and you can even argue they still don't. We tend to exaggerate what's important to a launch. We love to believe that a system launch with a lot of games of varying quality is the way to go but in reality, sometimes all a console needs is that one game to get excited for a console's lifespan. Xbox had it with Halo, Wii with Wii Sports (sorry, Twilight Princess), SNES had Super Mario World,, Dreamcast had Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure. (How does Sony get away with having one solid game and a butt lineup for their launches?). Regardless, Breath of the Wild didn't just bring the fanatics to preorder, it brought out longtime holdouts and gamers who haven't touched a Nintendo console in ages. But one more thing about launches

2. It spread out the good games throughout the entire year

Another reason why I think a huge launch lineup is overrated is that even if a system has more than 3 great games that are must buys, it's way too pricey to pay that much on day one. A system alone can break your wallet, so adding new games hurts even more. Especially when you add in memory cards, input cords, controllers: yeah....not always good to have a stacked lineup the first day. And I hear y'all out there 'I can always buy it later'. Which is Nintendo spaced out the lineup as such. They banked on everyone being balls deep in Zelda and by the time everyone came to their definite of done (war QA!), there were games they didn't pick up on day one. So even if you decided to plunk down on 1-2 Switch, by the time you need a full game, look at that: there goes Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. And when that was done, the eShop had your hook up with Minecraft, Disgaea, Ultra Street Fighter 2, indie games all the way to ARMS. Then the Breath of the Wild DLC hit and I'm splitting between two games before Splatoon 2. Then you got Mario X Rabbids, Fifa 18, WWE 2K18, Pokken Tournament DX, Odyssey and Skyrim (and that's just what's been announced and confirmed!). For a first year, they changed the game and didn't stick to the normal ebbs and flows of console launches and just wait to pack everything in the typical periods. Spreading new titles and ports out through a year seemed to be solid addition and speaking of titles, here's a hot take.

3. They let backwards compatibility die (for a while)

We know Nintendo has the deepest library of awesome, classic titles and if they wanted to, they can sell us the same classics over and over again....which is a dumb strategy. Despite Jim Ryan shitting on his dick when talking about it, backwards compatibility isn't a good long term solution and honestly, the Wii and Wii U being backwards compatible held it back in terms of power because they were systems still working off of old tech. GRANTED, Nintendo was never about pushing power to the extreme and these conservative approaches kept everything cheap, doing it to keep your old games around was risky approach, considering they can now remaster the games and sell them again. And in order for them to pull off what they wanted to do with the Switch, it just means that we keep our Wii U console and games for a bit longer than we want. What this means for the Virtual Console is hard to say because only Nintendo has any idea on what it will look and what it means for all those previous games we bought on the Wii and carried over to the Wii U. It may mean we'll never have a Nintendo console that that celebrates its past along with its future, but if it means we get new titles now, I'm all for it because.....

4. Nintendo devs have finally caught up to HD development

If you go back and look at the Wii U's life cycle, you will see that after New Super Mario Bros Wii U and Nintendoland, they didn't release a major title again until Pikmin 3 in August 2013, nine months after launch. Droughts are one thing to be expected but even Nintendo admitted that their own teams were caught off guard by the effort it takes to make an HD game. And even when the extra time paid off for the excellent spate of games they released from September 2013 on, the boat had sailed on the Wii U being a huge hit again. But Nintendo didn't have to throw out what they learned, they just applied to the Switch and BOTW is gorgeous, as well as ARMS, Splatoon 2, MK8 Deluxe. Now people don't have to give backhanded compliments to a Switch game's art style compensating for the lack of raw polygons. And all the power in the world can't make the graphics compensate for a boring game. (Oh hey Assassin's Creed!). 

5. The Switch's gimmicks....work While I loved the Wii U's gamepad and was stoked to use it for those months I didn't have a TV, that's all the Wii U had going for it. With detachable controllers, a badly designed stand, and touchscreen, the Switch seemed gimmick friendly. But here's the thing: they absolutely fucking worked. Going from handheld to console mode is incredible and seamless and handheld mode is the real killer app here. Breath of the Wild became more amazing when people realized they can take it with them and the smaller screen didn't compromise the game's looks and feel. It also created Hyrulitis. With the Switch and its gimmicks, you have a console that is just playful. And they put their eggs into that basket and ignored the other trends like cloud saves (couldn't work if there's portability), online networks, streaming, multimedia out the gate. And btw, the system takes a bit of work to find. Granted, you may fight other scalpers to pay retail price but the Switch is still in demand even without surefire things like 'cloud saves' and 'virtual consoles'. And y’all still ain’t think it can succeed despite its excellent library, just go to hell and leave your Switch with me on your way down there :)

[darkarm66]

Minimum Wage

So a couple of days ago, I saw a post that said minimum wage is going up in California. This was met with concern and worry because it went to the same dumb conclusion: ‘its gonna make everything more expensive’. I wanna take a moment and gawk at the cognitive dissonance it takes to live in Los Angeles and think people making a bigger hourly wage is the thing that makes Los Angeles ‘expensive’.

This lead to an argument at work where people were upset and that went to the another dumb conclusion: it hurts businesses and owners shouldn’t have to pay employees higher wages to keep operating.

Honestly, I never engaged with this debate because the other side always reveal their inhumanity by doing this. To believe that cooks, cashiers, janitors, and wait staff do not possess any intelligence and their skills are interchangeable is fucking heartless. And then to jump to ‘they don’t deserve to be paid’ is stupid. And it’s always fast food/restaurant workers who get put front and center of this. As if people who make you food don’t deserve better pay. How in the fuck do people walk around thinking people who feed your non-cooking ass don’t deserve a better standard of wages? 

And the reason why they deserve it is not necessarily because of their skills. IT’s because these corporations can fucking afford it. McDonalds and Taco Bell ain’t bleeding profit margins. A higher wage may mean the employees you have may be more motivated to show up and work harder and can depended on through an entire shift. That means the service can stay at a high level, that means people who buy from those places would actually like to return and keep spending. Which means that place becomes more valuable.

In order for more money to come into a place, people need to have more money to spend which comes from giving them higher wages. When people are squeezed to basic necessities being all they can buy, forget about paying your employees. No money is coming in because will forgo using what could’ve been disposable income on necessities elsewhere. Utilities, hygiene, sustenance, medicine, transportation-that’ll stop revenue in any fast food place because staying alive just became more important than a Happy Meal. And add in rent, which is just skyrocketing in LA, people are having to forgo actually food to afford a place to stay in. 

Rent is truly one of the things that are making things worse and nobody looks at it and says ‘this is actually bad’. Nope, people want to invest and flip to other people, inflating market value to made up numbers and it prices people out of being to afford to stay in it. And there’s nothing done about generations of families being displaced because a new property owner thinks a studio is now worth 1200 dollars. It’s part of cycle to keep people right on the poverty line and stay desperate enough to take anything to stay afloat: like low wages and shitty living conditions. We see the jig. 

‘But, but-why don’t they go to school and get smarter to pull their self up by their bootstraps?!?’ I’m glad you asked, dummy. Because going to school requires money and time. If you have money in short supply, you can’t take the risk of less hours, paying for classes, and trying to learn a skill to get a better job. And trying to work a 40 hour job, then doing classes throughout an entire week and not go insane is madness. Working people to point of exhaustion is dangerous because that person is gonna make a mistake that will require more time to clean up and that person will be in such bad health that they’ll be stuck on meds that can barely afford because their lack of hours doesn’t qualify them for their employer’s health coverage, leading them to probably a second job. My CEO actually fucking said that corporations should just pay into a fund that allows for education and training for people to learn more work skills......so, taxes. Because these order takers and fry cooks people love to denigrate are coming from a system that doesn’t care for funding education on level that actually educates. Just enough to be menial labor that doesn’t think beyond that.

And this notion that fast food employees aren’t educated is a lie as well. That last little recession that hit back in 2007 forced so many people who had great jobs into that workforce. So, it’s not just pimply teenagers trying to save up for a car that’s taking your order. There are parents, sisters and brothers who provide for their siblings, someone who’s sending that money back to their home country, where they would’ve been a doctor or lawyer. 

So what happens to that worker who’s gonna be making 15 an hour. In that month, if they happen to do 40 hours every week, that check will allow them to pay rent without getting a pay day loan, they can keep the lights and heat on at their own place. And their own place can now be filled with things they can enjoy, like books, games, movies, music, television, or a hobby they can enjoy to a point and then decide they may wanna make a business of it. And when they spend money on things they enjoy, that money goes to a place that sells that and will restock it because now that place has a product in demand and other people are willing to spend money on it, like clothes. That clothing store will need to order materials to make sure its in stock because people will have money to spend on clothes and if enough people have money, then they will have enough stock to meet demand and make their money back on the supply they bought. And now: 2 businesses are growing because now that clothing store has to pay for employees to make sure they can take the money for the purchases and ensure that the customer gets what it wants. And the money that goes back to the cashier allows them to possibly save and go to school in their off time to learn other skills so they can have their own clothing store because there needs to be more than one store since people all of sudden has money to spend on clothing. Or instead of going back to school, that cashier can use that well paying job to take a trip. That means having enough to pay for 2 plane tickets, a way to get there, traveling around the city, paying for a hotel room, which goes to the staff that makes the stay beyond pleasant by cleaning that person’s room, bringing food, and generally being helpful. 

A person on a decent living wage is now supporting multiple businesses and industries, which allows them to hire other people to be engaged to do the same. And it allows people to....KEEP DOING THAT. Paying people a decent living brings a peace of mind that shakes people out of their own despair and those make feel people trapped under a system that exploits labor and money to a point people won’t fight back. Speaking of which...

It’s no coincidence that Trump being president and wages and stores are closing. Deep down, people have bought into the fact that this ‘taxes’ boogeyman is stopping ‘you’ from living your best life. And it’s not a coincidence that people of color bought into it because they want to be that person at the table buying the fancy plates, sitting at the best tables. They never realize that after they buy into it and start thinking they’ll sit at those tables, they’re gonna have their chair yanked from them as soon as they try to sit down. Selling out and punching down your own people is white supremacy’s greatest tool to keep POCs fighting with one another and not advancing our own cultures. Trying to be a better class of people won’t stop the cops from thinking a college grad is a ‘nigger’, believing fast food people are stupid won’t stop a Latino from being looked at as the help at a dinner party. They truly do not want people to become smarter and more skilled. A smarter population won’t rebel.

When people in LA are against a higher minimum wage because of ‘the fast food workers’, they’re really saying that they don’t want blacks, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, and all the other ‘minorities’ from ever escaping the bubble that allows them to be exploited. And the ones who never have to deal with that don’t want others to escape it because it means they no longer have to be on the pedestal of ‘I made it!’. They want to keep that prestige to their selves because they believe it’s their invite into a better world. They think they’ll lose all they have.

When in truth, all it can do is destroy these myths of elitism and prestige and see we all people and everyone can win. We all don’t need out own pizza to eat, if we can get fed from a decent slice if we make enough pizza to go around. And people don’t need to be MVPs to be fed well.

[darkarm66]

Breath of the Wild review

On the Wii U, I had The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess in their HD remastered forms....and barely touched. This is reoccurring issue with me and remasters, even with games I love. No matter how much I loved them the first time, there are some games I won't touch again and it was mainly due to the beginning stages. I dreaded going though Ordon Village again and knowing I'd have to put up with those tutorials again to get to the parts of Twilight Princess i did enjoy. So once Link wakes up Breath of the Wild, gets his clothes and Sheikah Slate and I got to run around with my meager abilities and items, I knew that this game was gonna be a classic. Yes, that's all it took. Now, there have been many many reviews that extolled the excellence of Breath of the Wild, much better written reviews when it came out, possibly on the verge of hyperbolic. So allow me to add to it. And yes, not only is this the best game of 2017, It very well could be one of the greatest of all time. While those reviews have mentioned Witcher 3, Skyrim, Arkham Asylum and other open world games as direct influences (Nintendo said as much as well), this game inspired feelings in me I haven't felt since Xenoblade Chronicles. And like Xenoblade Chronicles, Breath of the Wild succeeded due to not just the high amount of gameplay but also by eliminating a lot of wonky, reductive elements. 

There's no invisible barriers that prevents the player from going where they want to go, once you get off the Great Plateau after getting the runes in the Shrines, the player has everything the need to explore this amazing version of Hyrule. And the exploration was felt lacking in previous Zeldas. You knew that special icon or crack in the ground required the player to retrieve the item from a dungeon. Now, you just have to go there and a lot of it just jumps out at the player. This time around, Hyrule itself is a dungeon with so many puzzles that tempt to player to stop moving and just fiddle around for a bit. The world is littered with seemingly out of place shapes and it draws the player in a way that doesn't feel contrived or blatant. And even if a trail isn't apparent or there's no natural way to enter a place, the climbing mechanic breaks all of it. Climbing itself becomes its own minigame because its governed by a stamina wheel and the weather system, which does allow the player to be challenged by where they can climb but it doesn't allow the player to break the game by going everywhere. And speaking of challenge, get ready to eat humble pie with the simplest combat system but toughest enemies ever. 

This Hyrule wasn't afraid to hand the player its ass over and over. And the lack of tutorials and locked rooms that teach you to fight means you're not stuck in this one place until you get it right. If you die, you come back and try again or move onto somewhere else to do something that won't kill you. When I tried to put off the story as much as I possibly can, I ended up discovering Shrines (in a minute, not yet), Koroks, rupees, side quests, food. Until I became bored and started the Zora quest line, which delighted because I got to climb up a waterfall with ice blocks and led to the real menace of Hyrule: Lynels. This is when previous Zelda game would put you in this room and turn this into a boss battle to see if the player has gotten any good. Not this time, it didn't care that I didn't have enough hearts, or my shields were too weak, or my weapons were brittle. So I just turn around from the high point and glided to somewhere else instead. While players will have to fight to actually survive, Breath of the Wild let the experience teach the players.

And mainly, those Shrines is how you get experience points. The Shrines are dotted the map, some not even trying to hide, some taking maddening puzzle solving, others rewarding the player for figuring out all the clues. Not only is this how the game facilitates fast travel, it also scratches that dungeon crawling itch for a bit, but only by being a puzzle shrine or a combat shrine. It lacks the incredible intertwining of previous Zelda dungeons but the light content and brain stretching use of items makes up for it. Especially since the player is always rewarded with a great item. Unless its a weapon...

Okay, in the early goings, weapon durability can be a bummer. Weapons break too common and by the time you get used to one, its gone. That's not the worst part of it. The problem comes when good weapons do start becoming more readily available but not you're out of slots because you don't wanna waste your Royal Broadswords on some basic ass Bokoblins because you know a Lynel needs that work more. However, you deal with it because all the puzzle solving and wander lusting led to Korok seeds to expand the inventory, so now by the time you wanna start wrecking things, you're actually equipped to do so this time around.

I also believe that the durability allows the player to actually replay certain areas. While other games use powerful enemies as gates to keep the player away for a few hours, that doesn't feel like it this time around. The map allows players to actually keep tabs on where they may want to go but don't feel like dying to do so. Place that stamp down, go somewhere else and come back to it when the player truly feels ready. I remember Miyamoto talking about how they wanted Zelda games to be able to replay certain areas for a reason. And now they didn't have to force the player to do a bunch of fetch quests or pixel hunts to come back to an area they already beaten. This makes Hyrule feel more livelier this time around because no matter how much time you spent in one area, you can come back to it and discover something hiding under your nose this whole time but you couldn't see it just yet. Or it has a dope sword you really needed but didn't have room for.

But one thing to make room for: food! There was something so hypnotic about resource gathering and cooking, in a way that surpasses Final Fantasy XV's photo-realistic dishes. The abundance of materials, which not only kills the tedium that might have killed lesser games, allows players to actual feel free to consume and experiment with everything they've gathered. In the beginning, basic meals are cooked to give your health a chance withstand raiding an enemy camp. By the time you're in the 100 hour mark, players are hunting to create complex dishes that give them dope buffs to make a play session a more pleasant.

One pleasant thing this go around is the story. For all the flack Nintendo gets for its approach to stories, it only gets it because they're not telling it through the usual cinema envy of other games. This is a deconstruction of Link and being the chosen one. Link isn't just gonna be handed all the tools needed to succeed just because he was chosen. Same goes for Zelda, who seems heartbroken that she has to be the reincarnation of a goddess. And thanks to the Memories questline, you get to see those cutscenes but they aren't automatically triggered because you did a thing. You earn those previous moments beforehand that showed Link and Zelda not truly feeling going along with what destiny wants to do because it worked 100 years ago...which was probably Nintendo's feelings developing this game.

For years, Eiji Aonuma talked about breaking the conventions and in the gameplay and story, that feeling comes across well with Divine Beast Champions, especially who they just fall doing what they were told to do. This is truly about how Zelda's dev team felt about coming together to give the same results, only for it to fail before it even began and the task fell to new people to do what's necessary to defeat Ganon through new means. It's deeply personal and the emotion maturely understated. Link and Zelda develop as legit characters through their struggles and heartbreak and it gives the story an emotional richness not seen since Ocarina/Majora. Link (and the player) truly earns the right to be called a hero, not because he was chosen but because he endured and grew.

I haven't even mentioned how beautiful this game is. Forget your need for 6 billion polygons per sec to animate a face. The details astounding from up close and far away. Climb to the top of the mountain and you see a sprawling, diverse horizon to take your breath away or look down to see a forest or lake or camp to possibly sail down. None of it ever stops looking gorgeous. My favorite place in the game revolved around a Shrine that needed an Orb to unlock but the area you were in was completely dark. Seeing Link as a shadow, lighting torches to move around this area was utterly beautiful and proves that developers don't need to high end CGI cutscenes to make a visual impression that last forever. Speaking of lasting impressions, this is one of the best UI I've seen in a game. It conveys information and stats without completely cluttering the screen and taking away from the game world. Even when playing in handheld mode, you can stil take in a lot of visual treats of Hyrule.

And despite the impression that I'm ready to marry this game, this game isn't flawless. Weapon switch is a legit pain. Holding down one button to switch to a particular weapon isn't as intuitive as the other controls in the game. You're better off just pausing and switching items, which sorta breaks the immersion for the player. Also, as great as the Koroks and Korok puzzles are, did their have to be 900 of them. I'm all for trolling the player and subverting expectations for attempting 100% completion, but 900?!? That quickly veers between padding and repetitive. And the dragons can suck it. Only one item drop per appearance and god help you if you don’t want a scale. Again. Which leads to the upgrade system being underwhelming, due to its limited focus on armor and not weapons.

What makes me ignore these flaws: the game never forces you to do any thing mentioned before this (except the first four shrines and runes). You never have to find a Korok seed (but why the fuck wouldn't you?!?), you never have to expand your health and stamina, you don't need to cook a meal, get the Master Sword, ride a horse, shield surf, regulate your temperature, complete a shrine. The game is indifferent to your progress. But you will do any and all those things because Breath of the Wild is excellent at triggering your curiosity and intellect  and rewarding it, not rewarding your patience. Best of all, nearly everything you do fits into a mechanic the benefits the player, the quest aren't just a collection of repetitive checklists of escalating numbers nor is its badly tuned mechanics just thrown for the sake of variety. (Take that, open world games!)

This is not to say the previous Zeldas were awful. They didn't get tens and awards for nothing. You may even miss the linearity. They were great for what they are. Breath of the Wild is just better. Instead of telescoping design and handing you the fun stuff when you did the one thing it told you to do, it trusted the players this time around to make their own fun and build their own legend. Players will end up completing the same things but everyone will make their own path to completion. Breath of the Wild is worthy of the praise it has received and then some. It break ground by avoiding all the pot holes and wasted soil of previous Zeldas and open world games and brought  freshnesss that hasn't been felt in years. Truly a game that lives up to the word 'Legend'

[darkarm66]

E3 Changes

They finally did it. The Expo people finally broke down and did what I thought they would do but wouldn’t do so because the formula was working: E3 is going public. For three whole days, the Los Angeles Convention Center can be packed to holy hell with journalists, developers, publishers, salespeople, marketers, retailers and more fans! 

For years, E3 has had problems making the very act of attending a chore. And moving around it was worse. So basically what should be a show filled with the industry checking each other’s wares and games that should be setting trends, its basically a collection of expensive displays, swag grabs, and ignored demos after you get out the extremely packed Nintendo booths. Now if you’re a publisher that’s not Nintendo, you’d be pissed to high heaven knowing you spent millions on swag, colorful booths, engaging demos and lose any buzz to Nintendo’s next game.

Let’s actually discuss the whole costs of E3 because that’s a lot of money to just let go for space alone. Sadly, for all the money the industry makes, there’s never been a surefire way to print money, unless one gets one huge franchise and use it print money. So there’s very real risk for many non platform owning publishers to spend at E3. With Nintendo, even if your game is on a Nintendo machine, they still have to compete against Zelda or Smash Bros. Sony and Microsoft will give the third parties space and time to stand out, but when a lot of those games look so similar, there’s more competition and even less buzz. Now we have third parties who either have to run their own booth and ensure their titles can generate its own hype and stand out in the crowd or just be another title on a console. And that’s not even mentioning the cost it takes to get a demo running, playtested, bugfixed, and stable enough to make sure people who have to convince customers to maybe buy it ready. Now add in some machines to purchases to run the demo, sky high electricity bills, actual people that have to maintain the booths, well....I can see why publishers wanted that money back. 

There’s truly no financial incentive for publishers to go all out for E3 and have a presence on the show floor. So when publishers decided to skip their own expo, that’s a whole lot of money lost for the ESA and Convention Center. So selling a 150-250 ticket to ensure some kind of revenue be generated for the industry isn’t shocking. 

I’ve been going to these things for ever a decade and leading up to it, I always debate if going is ever worth the anguish but mainly because it was always worth the money: FREE! Having it free for people within the industry allowed people to see former coworkers, friends you made on the project you knew were shit, and the PR people you kissed up to for party access. So while I’m gonna miss E3 this year, the reason why I hate to open to all concept is that:

IT DOESN’T FIX ANY OF THE ISSUES E3 HAS!

Those lines are ungodly but only because they have the shittiest hours to cram everyone in. Even if the Nintendo booth is the very first thing you do, 4-5 hours are gone and other lines can take up to 1-2 hours to sit through. It’s very possible to lose an entire day to just two game. And most of that is due to press members having to do their job and they never have their own day to play all the demos, which should be that Monday before they open the doors. Tokyo Game Show has this figured out. Two days for press, two days for fans. 

Even the fabled 4th day wouldn’t save E3 because now you got cranky as fuck booth attendants who are probably sick of all these creeps wanting pictures while you hold a DS. And it gets worse.

All the restrictions they put into getting a pass is pointless, considering you can see fucking kids walking around after  you got hassled for your proof of adulthood. And you swear a lot of the people around lied on their applications on what they do to get in. This is treated like Magic Mountain, like people made it to a holy grail of excitement!

And the press has been routinely pushed away with publishers doing their own live pressers and events away from the Convention Center. Why relay on a blog when a video kept under wraps can get the preorders?

And all to compete with PAX? E3 was never PAX, it wasn’t even Comic-Con! It was never a convention, it was an expo by the industry, for the industry. It wasn’t trying to get fan approval before they did something, it was a way for game makers and business people to connect to figure how much of the shit on the floor would sell. It was a way for people to network and stay in touch, just in case a project doesn’t work out or a studio has an opening. That’s getting tossed in favor of cosplay meetups.

So good job, ESA: you kinda pushed away the people who build the games in favor of the people who buy the games. Maybe. Probably. This may be the best E3 ever but I won’t be finding out.

[darkarm66]

Xenoblade Chronicles X review

Hundreds of ship are leaving the planet and then, the Earth explodes. Right off the bat, Xenoblade Chronicles X is filled with wonderful sights. This game is not only one of the best RPGS, it also a blueprint on how to do open world games that aren't just inefficient ways to select quests. As much as Nintendo's consoles has gotten shit for its lack of hardware muscle, the amount of content that the player can seamlessly access and just how much gameplay is actually there.

First off, this one of the biggest and best worlds ever. Actual worlds where people work, show up on schedules, creatures have their own biology: there are a million moving parts, all in front of the player. In fact, this game can overwhelm when control is giving to the player. Mainly due to the fact at no point, the player is ever forced to do anything. Xenoblade Chronicles broke JRPGs for its unprecedented lack of linearity and XCX follows suit for open worlds.

And it's beautiful! You see sights that are legitimately breathtaking in real life: waterfalls, active volcanoes, snow-capped caverns, isolated islands, sandstorms, lightning storms, caverns, and sky high islands. People gush over real life open worlds but this is one of the best looking video game worlds ever. It's like Nintendo keeps it a trademarked secret that more than 8 colors can be used. 

What makes these visuals more hypnotic is the lush soundtrack from Hiroyuki Sawano. Looking around the sky and looking at that night sky and hearing a lot of these overworld themes is powerful. It swells up more emotion than any cutscene can do, even if it lacked some of the variety of its predecessor. But what makes this world of Mira more beautiful: all of it is interactive. There are no invisible gates, no waist barriers blocking off access. Anything visible can be walked on and explored. And this is the truly beautiful part: all of it affects gameplay.

XCX has some of the deepest linking systems in gaming. Every and any thing done feeds into on another system that is needed to progress though the game. Any battle, no matter how quick or long? Of course you get XP to level up but you also get affinity points between your party members that allows for battles to go smoother. Random doodad you picked up walking around? Boom: side quest completed. Side quest completed? You just leveled up your online affiliation and have bonus items waiting for you. Those items? Yeah, just completed another quest. That quest you completed? Just gave you some Miranium to use to level up stores, now you have access to better weapons and gems but what if you want higher level gems? Keep getting into battles and gain the materials needed, which still gives you more player specific missions which unlock tougher sidequests and expands more materials. Point is: nothing you do in this game is wasted or just busywork to fill a marketing bullet point. Everything leads to something to unlock and use. Everything is a constant build to better and better gear. This was a great way to stimulate player agency. Can it be too much? Kind of leading to one sticking point.

XCX has no time to explain how a lot of it works together. You will spend hours wandering around these gorgeous continents, doing whatever, wanting to know the purpose of why something was done. And fighting yourself to do something more directed. And its mainly due to trying to reach a ledge or cave you know leads to better loot but can't reach in the meantime. So while XCX does a good job of letting you play in a sandbox, you have no ideas why some of the toys are there.  But the truth is, a lot of it is there to test your battle mettle.

While the game isn't a direct sequel to the incredible Xenoblade Chronicles, the battle system (and sidequest logic) returns with a lot of tweaks. While its still auto attacks/special arts/cooldown based with your party being handled by the A.I., the affinity system comes into bigger play as the your party members, expanded to four, actually call out which arts they need to stay in the battle, which not only increases affinity, but has the player tinkering which class and skill set is needed to be effective at every battle.  Then, half way (or a quarter: story/chapter progress isn't the same for every player), the Overdrive system is introduced and allows for more bonuses and status effects, as well as some nifty visual effects. And now arts can be chained together for more bonuses, but finding the right chains will take some experimentation. Sometimes you'll miss the way more effective chain attacks, but due to the online elements, the battles had to seemingly be tuned for balance but to make the player work a bit harder. That was the only element from Xenoblade which I missed the most. This is a severely challenging game, make no mistake. As easy as Xenoblade was and as much the high level enemies exist to 'conveniently' gate off other areas of the world, this game will hand you your ass if you never paid attention to how buffs and statuses work, which is which makes the sidequest grinding described a few paragraphs earlier so important. Truthfully, this game is gauntlet to gamers who crave gameplay. 

This game will be as easy or hard as you want it to be, depending on how much time you attempt to put into it. A straight romp through the story, which is still gonna ask the player to explore, will still take a bit of commitment but the beauty of the game's depth reveals itself the more the player puts into it on their own accord. It's like Monolith Soft heard how easy Nintendo games and just went 'Uh huh, try this on for size.'

And again, when it comes to sidequests, XCX will drown players in actual content. Many of the same 'collect this and kill that.' This can drive people insane due to the game's inability to explain stuff. Especially affinity, which is a just a vague bar where you never know how much is being added to it. While many of them are optional, it just becomes chances to actually get some challenging gameplay for their selves. Despite this, too much good stuff is hidden behind some quests and bars. I never minded because it was still a chance to keep exploring the world itself. And then you get Skells....

And its when you get Skells, you kinda get why a good chunk of the content was locked off. One reason was to justify its size but the main reason: they're fucking awesome! It's not just a super mode for combat, skell combat and exploration becomes a game on its own and one can appreciate the size and diversity of Mira. As mentioned earlier, despite how huge this game is, nothing is wasted. And even Skells unlock more and more challenging gameplay to experience. I'll go on record and say that Skells are the best video game mechs ever, even if they never fight. It flies, transforms, and when it fights, it curbstomps and can be customized to an absurd degree. 

And the online elements, which are that elements, not huge blockers or impediments to gameplay. They can only enchance your time, but yet: it's not a requirement.

For all this gameplay that makes XCX a worthy successor to the original Xenoblade and it many elements, surpass it, there was one key element not mentioned: the story. Chris Kluwe's dumbassery be damned, Xenoblade's story was epic, masterfully told, thematically tight, and above all: complete. XCX's opening scene of an exploding planet couldn't be better of a set up. And yet, to find any kind of theme, emotional resonance or connecting thread, it's all in the sidequests. The plot never got going and only until its final chapter are players getting answers that turn into more questions, just like all previous games in the Xeno series. 

While I applaud any game developer that chooses more gameplay over more cutscenes and linearity, what disheartened me about it is that Xenoblade proved that could tell a story completely. And I was fine for the plot staying away from the most part and when it revs up: the end! Maybe it was gonna be left to DLC or  a Switch port, but either way a bigger story was going to be told and there's no definitive conclusion. All the threads have to be found on the player's on accord with the evidence they have left. But still, themes of genocide, diversity, racism, extinction, rebirth, insanity (you can't be part of surviving race in a new planet without losing your mind) are touched on with neatly.

So, while the story didn't conclude, what we're left is still an amazing game that continues to delight and expand. A sprawling open world that puts more emphasis on the world actually being open and not inhibiting the player's own natural curiosity. It takes some doing and some time, but Xenoblade Chronicles X is an instantly rewarding time sink and one of the very best games of this console generations.

CAVEATS!!!!: I try to review games as a way for how I feel about to make sense to me, so I try to look at the the mechanics of a game, which may or may not work, regardless of how I feel about them. Also, I hate the release date rush to get a review because you have to rush before you truly understand a piece of art. Sometimes, its only when you get away from the hype and first week cycle can you see a game on its own merits. Plus, hindsight really, really helps prevent a review from sounding like an unofficial circle jerk.

[darkarm66]

Final Fantasy XV review-Please drive off a cliff

10 years. From planning to execution, the journey for Final Fantasy XV to get here was turbulent, to say the least. But it was finally finished and released. And this is probably as nice I'll be about it. Game making is very hard work and it becomes probably 100 times more intense for one of the biggest franchises on the market. So I don't envy the task the FFXV dev team undertook getting this game out. I envy the people who ended up playing this because this game is just a damn mess. From story, combat, and pacing, there were some great ingredients to make a great game that just never mixed properly.

To be fair, its getting a lot of high praise because there's an open world. A huge, sprawling mix of deserts, hills, forests, mountains, rivers, motels, and small towns....that are barely populated with any sort of interactivity. There's actual work to actually find an enemy to fight or find someone to talk to. It makes you wonder why it needed to be as big as it is. And as big as it is, nothing stands out or has its own distinct look. As beautiful as this game can look, its baffling lack of visual diversity can make a person feel like they're retreading the same places over and over.

Ultimately, FFXV's foray into open world shows that they've got some ways to go. Navigation feels too constricting. You're forced to carry around this damn car that apparently goes fast enough. You have to use it because the world is just too damn big to walk through, which isn't a problem by itself but when controlling the car is so bad you're glad to let Ignis do it, this was a feature that could've been scrapped. Worse, this car is restricted to the road, so getting around means driving until a location is found and stopping on that road. There's no shortcuts, no hidden paths, just long, torturous scenic drives from point A to point B and back.  Backtracking severely murders any joy you can have exploring these places.

What truly kills exploration is the fast travel. IT IS SHIT. SHITE. It is unbelievable how user unfriendly this fast travel system is. If you're in one place and you need to get to another, you just can't warp there, even in a game where the only avatar you can control has access to powerful weapons due to magic crystal, you cannot warp to the place you need to get to. You have to either go back to the car and select a spot to pay to go back to a spot you already discovered. It gets worse if you're in a dungeon, one of the few highlights of this game. You have to warp back to the entrance. Either the car or the last spot you rested, which could be on the complete opposite side of the map. AND YOU HAVE TO REPEAT THIS SHIT FOR NEARLY EVERY QUEST YOU DO.

And on the chance you find one of these hidden dungeons in plain sight, good luck playing them because the earlier ones you find aren't that bad. Then the high level dungeons really puts the screws to the player due to a horrible map, fussy door switches, and terrible platforming due to some design overkill. Some treks can take hours (and you can't save inside of them) because nothing in the design or UI gives any clue on what the player should do. Ironically, despite evidence that some content was cut, these dungeons can really feel like padding.

The quest themselves aren't all that bad: collect this or kill that. Which is pretty much standard RPG stuff. The exploration tedium, however, kicks back in doing hunts because you can only do one at a time, even when starting a new one leads you back to the same area you were just in! And this tedium bleeds into the other parts that are actually fun. Like combat. Sometimes  in a game, you just want to see an enemy just get bludgeoned with a shiny weapon you have and this game delivers. But due to its day/night cycle, whereas you have to rest your characters and eat recipes to get temporary boosts, you can get caught into long, time consuming battles because you're scrambling to find a nearby place to rest or camp.

The combat system proves that FF13's hate was a bit unjustified. Each battle became about actually trying to find an enemy's weakness and actually exploit it. Here: you're just spazzing from enemy to enemy, hoping to avoid damaging, praying an attack can be blocked long enough to parry. in 13, you can actually see teammates not be loads and in 15: shit just happens when it comes to Linkstrikes and chains. there's nothing that actually triggers them but sheer luck. All you can hope is to find enough equipment to just overpower enemies. Except in boss battles and some monster hunts. Because the lack of depth and simplistic whack-whack-whack flow of combat can lead to some lengthy fights, mainly because you'll just whack away until a bar fills up to use a special technique for your partners to use a technique that can make it go faster. Battles are just purely attrition. What makes the combat more tedious is that your levels ultimately mean dick because you will still get into long fights, no matter how stronger your characters became. Towards the end, I was level 73 and yet, taking down level 20 trooper scrubs felt like it did at the beginning of the game. You and your party doesn't progress or grow. Fights are just....here.

A shame because the creature designs in here are exquisite. There's amazing detail and form to a lot of the monsters you get to fight. These are just exquisite creatures that you actually wanna gawk at. 

I don’t wanna say too much about party because the game sure as hell didn't. They're just....there. Swap out two of the guys for one of the more pleasant female characters (Iris and Aranea, represent!), the story is told the same. At least with Aranea, she actually had some damn motivation. But the character development getting cut off at the knees is more to do with Square's insistence on taking a game's huge scope and chopping it up into smaller pieces and letting you put it together. Been that way for a while, especially in 13's case. Only one of them as an ability worth using, there's only one conversation worth giving a shit about, and during combat, you can't control them not to get killed, leaving you in the position of healer, even though one of them is a bodyguard. Like, how?!? Everyone in love with these characters love them for 'pretty' they are and think of the kissing they want to happen. There's zero depth to your party. And the moments that happen just feels thrown in. Like, they realized something needed to happen to these guys. You see cutscenes, brief snippets of the guys talking, but this is just a mirage.

Now for the camps: you actually have to rest to level up and earn AP. And you get to see photos, which highlights the biggest reason I hate this game in spite of wanting to love: I have to stop playing and enjoy the game presenting itself. You're not allowed to actually play this game because you have to see how pretty everything is. Allegedly, your party is supposed to bond over a road trip but that actually happens in cutscenes. The battle camera is so chaotic, you can't know how stylish the combat is until you see a photo of it. When going into a dungeon, you have to see the characters crouch and move cautiously through it. There's even a cutscene of them pumping gas! Who needs that? 

The vague plot wastes the amazing soundtrack, forcing the music to create the emotional resonance this game just doesn't earn. It wants you to feel the emotions the characters go through, yet doesn't do any build up or reconciliation. It's just moments. 

Which is why I don't mind they stop cutting the pretense and just made everything linear as fuck towards the end. They're gonna make you enjoy their visuals and cutscenes and anguish, playability be damned! This isn't just hand-holding to guide the player through, this game is a crazy ass aunt dragging you through the store when you already know what you want to buy. Yet, in its conclusion I just had one question: why they did I stay in that godawful, empty ass country if nothing I did there matter? Nothing, no theme, plot or character detail is told through gameplay? No sidequest I did made anything better for that world I spent hours in. Not even the conclusion gives a rat's ass about the world that was saved yet it made sure that it was saved. This divide in priorities is heartbreaking considering how much this game comes alive when the player is left to their own devices and actually making choices about how to proceed. And the end game content, frustratingly kept behind the final boss, is proof that if they built this game around some gameplay and made a world to actually exploit that, this could've been a belter.

And for all that was cut out of the game, what they left in was just baffling. Chapter 13 is just excessively boring and painful to look at. That stealth sequence in that building is just wasted geometry. My time would've been better off if Noctis just sat in a chair while text showed me what happened. The vague plot wastes the amazing soundtrack, forcing the music to create the emotional resonance this game just doesn't earn. It wants you to feel the emotions the characters go through, yet doesn't do any build up or reconciliation. It's just moments. 

Add in some wonky AI and the fact you can't save in certain places, I'm shocked that critics were barely that critical of it. But shout out to y'all claiming this is better than 13 because the reverse happened: a long open world segment with a linear conclusion vs a linear progression and brief open world part that didn't throw away all the shit you learned hours earlier. People who liked the combat in XV are just bellends who just love to play shit simplistically. In spite of all this, I did put 80 hours into this. And that's not even counting the post-game content, including the new dungeons and that flying car (don’t use it). But most of that time was spent getting to a place, doing a quest and coming back to complete it.

So, for all the high points, there are some severe low points. Even the things that work on its own barely qualifies as functional. It's shit as an open world game, it's horsefuck as a story, the combat is montonous, this is exhausted mouthdrool as an RPG. Had this been an other RPG, maybe I'm not as harsh. The much ballyhooed lengthy dev time and rebrand from Versus XIII to XV has long been publicized. And yet there didn't seem to be an actual cohesive vision present in the game. It's all in the different movies and anime shorts.  Problem with this approach is that you're well exhausted beyond the point of caring if you invest in these. And even then, nothing is concluded, wasting your time in the process.

This game will delight fans of pretty boys and running around. It will infuriate fans of well thought out game design. So it's definitely a Final Fantasy game after all.

[darkarm66]

Was finally feeling good after Friday night and was looking forward to party. Then because of some miscommunication, mainly not being told I wasn’t getting picked up and not having the address, I decided to not go. And all this is my fault?!?!? 

I’m tired of being treated like the asshole for a last minute decision. I’m sick of being expected to go along with a change of plan when I commit to a plan. I’m cannot stand giving so much empathy and compassion to people I love and not having any of it come back to me. I hate not being able to tell people how they hurt me. I’m expected to just be silent and swallow it and let it go. And even when I want to keep it to myself, no one will let me. ‘Always gotta talk about it’-no. Let me stew for a few days. 

Just means I gotta keep depending on myself, emotionally. Gotta be my own shoulder to cry on it seems. And I pushed away the only one who’d let me because she wasn’t what I wanted in a friend. Good one, 2016.

Just leave me alone.

[darkarm66]

The Wii: 10 Years Later

Previously: House of the Dead: Overkill, No More Heroes, Guitar Hero/Rock Band

Virtual Console

Of all of the underrated successes of the Wii, it's Virtual Console is still pretty much never been given its due. Not only were we allowed to purchase Nintendo's legion of blockbusters all the way up to the Nintendo 64, it wasn't just an all Nintendo love fest as we got hits from the Genesis, Turbo Grafx-16, Neo Geo, Commodore 64, Arcade and MSX. So if the current hits weren't hitting you, there were so many past titles to get lost in.  So this isn't a write up of every classic game you should already have, but rather the overall whole of the service itself. 

And not only was it just the hits we all knew, they released games that never got official releases in certain regions. Yes there was Super Mario Bros 3 to download yet again, there was also Super Mario Bros 2: The Lost Levels. For Gunstar Heroes, we also got Alien Soldier-both from Treasure and both highlighting their boss-centric game design. I was able to complete the Phantasy Star games because of the Virtual Console without the need of paying three figures on eBay for a used copy, like Sin & Punishment (foreshadowing alert!). Piracy and second hand markets can usually die out when there are legitimately ran services with ample content to access. And more importantly, I got to get rid of so, so, so many old systems and store them because the Wii became an all-in-one stop gaming machine. 

 And just like licensing restricted how Guitar Hero and Rock Band had screwed up which songs we can play and which games we can play it on, the licensing issues screwed up which games we can download or rather, couldn't download. Tecmo Bowl was dope but damn EA for hoarding the NFL license and preventing us from playing Tecmo Super Bowl. And the only way you're gonna play The Goonies I and II is but eBay hunting (or downloading some ROMS like the filthy savages you are).

But the biggest bummer was how it just completely lost momentum. Towards the premature end of the Wii's lifespan, Square games just started showing up. There were arcade games running on it, we were so close to Segasonic and Moonwalker and the true Donkey Kong! This highlighted Nintendo's reluctance to be a curator for gaming beyond their own output.

While it wasn't going to be complete, it was comprehensive. We didn't get everything and it ran out of steam before it could ever be complete, especially since how the Wii U and 3DS failed to keep it going, Earthbound offering notwithstanding, but we we did get was a fuck ton and I loved going through it from time to time, as I do to this day.

Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies

Remember a few paragraphs ago how I talked about the Virtual Console being able to release games that never made it to certain regions? Sin & Punishment benefited the most from it. (Foreshadowing alert!) North America finally got to play one of the more truly unique games to ever grace the N64.

And its uniqueness was mainly due to its control scheme. The game is basically on-rails action game, where many enemies had to be locked with the crosshairs to actually shoot.  And with the N64's controller, you were aiming with the stick and using the face buttons to dash and jump. How did this weird control scheme lead to some amazing set pieces and tight combat? Treasure made it. Treasure can make the most unnatural designs feel second hand with really good enemy placement. It felt bad in a few late level platforming stages where players had to walk, aim, and jump with this control scheme, but the scheme was pretty solid. Especially once players learned the more advanced techniques of dash and close-quarter slashing.

Also what made the control scheme work was a its co-op mode where two players controlled on character, with one player taking care of the action and someone else controlling the movement and blocking.

Add in a bizarre storyline that took some cues from Evangelion (because what didn't take from Evangelion in Japan in the late 90s?) and a thumping soundtrack, this turned out to be one of Treasure's better offerings but not the gem that would've turned around the Nintendo 64 towards the end of its lifespan. However..... Sin & Punishment: Star Successor

Sin & Punishment's success on the Virtual Console was so overwhelming and well-received, Nintendo took notice and it lead to an honest to goodness sequel. This doesn't happen in the game industry: games released nearly 8 years after the fact and has such a positive financial impact leading to a sequel happen rarely. So, when Nintendo releases a non-Nintendo franchise game and gamers don't support it, don't act brand new because a sequel ain't coming.

The game itself is a pretty extension of the predecessor, with the remote being used for aiming and jumping, blocking, and dashing being used by normal buttons. Also, the combo system (which I didn't mention in the last write up) requires mastery of the controls and level layout without it turning into hard memorization, leads to incredibly thrilling moments and replayable moments. It also led to some amazing boss battles which became incredibly easy to its co-op mode, which pretty much gave players a second attacker that couldn't be hurt. 

What made this game and Treasure’s design so beautiful is that no matter how weird or offbeat the controls are, they tailor the levels and game world around it.

And surprisingly, the story was continued with Isa, the son of Saki and Airan from the last game, finding a spy and deciding to protect her in the midst of an Earth vs Space war that was hinted at the last game. While usually, Treasure's plots are just there to justify all that fancy combat, it ties into the ending of the first game with a twist you saw coming but was still utterly gobsmacking. It was the usual Treasure excellence without the boss battle spam. And another solid addition for the Wii lineup.

[darkarm66]

The Wii: 10 Years Later

Previously: Wii Sports, de Blob

House of the Dead: Overkill

Thanks to the Wii’s success and casual focus, it revitalized formerly dormant genres and niches, with the light gun series coming back in a huge way. The Wii Remote eliminated the need for pack-ins, so you no longer need a toy gun to use for only one game and hope other developers supported it down the line. Where there were a good number of light gun games (Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and The Darkside Chronicles, Dead Space Extraction, Sega Arcade Pack came to mind), House of the Dead: Overkill was the most memorable to me. Instead of being a zombie blasting sequel, this became a prequel drenched in a grindhouse film aesthetic, dialogue and all. 

The thing about most zombie games, many of the better ones are not the very serious ‘OMG viral outbreak, we must kill everything to survive’ games but rather the ones that have its tongue firmly in the cheek, embracing the inherent silliness of its B-movie roots. And holy hell, Overkill nearly swallowed its own tongue. So much profanity, inane dialogue, and bizarre storylines. 

Best of all, it didn’t let it having an arcade game roots stop it from being shallow as it had some satisfying gameplay mechanics. Headshots were not only a way to conserve ammo, but chaining them increased your score, which lead to more unlocks and upgrades. And giving how it doesn’t spike for the sake of ‘challenge’, a lot of the levels became replayable without it feeling grindy. Best of all, getting to the Goregasm level, shows a American flag waving, adding to the cheeky charm.

No More Heroes

Of all the lies perpetuated about Nintendo's machines, is that they're family friendly. As if appealing to the entire family with diverse titles is such a blight on gaming. And yet, when No More Heroes hit the Wii, it felt like a jolt to the system. A straight up beat em up with an odd story about a punk who has to do odd chores to have enough money to go on killing sprees. This was one of the many things Nintendo wanted from the Wii: a new generation of game creators twisting old conventions to create new experiences. And there was no career who's career skyrocketed more than Goichi Suda, aka Suda 51.

Part of the appeal are his pop culture mismashes in his games stories, similar to the way Tarantino, Rodriguez, Wright and countless other B-movie directors who had enough artist cred from the indies side to have their works just be enjoyed. Same for Suda 51: though he references other works in his creations, they underpinnings are just remarkably solid. 

For all the attention game received for the waggle jack off motion/animation, the crude humor, the bizarre plotting of Travis Touchdown;s journey to be the nummber one killer after winning an online auction, there's a solid comabt game. The meat of the game came from the brawling. Just an enjoyable button masher with a decent dodge/block mechanic that gave it a bit of depth. The motion part, that action so many developers fumbled with the Wii Remote (including Nintendo)  came when finishing enemies and it was ultimately this interaction that drew so many people in. The beam katana unleashed on a weakenend enemy lead to so much carnage and glee. And that was just the levels before a boss fight. The story's twist allowed for some audacious encounters and memorable dialogue. A long corridor chase only to be preceded by a boss psych out was some fun stuff. Even the final level led to a hilarious bit referencing Duke Nukem and the ESRB. So much of this game's personality came from the interactions before, during, and after a boss fight: the goal of each part of the story of Travis's rise to the top of assassins. Each level is just a refresher on easy kills and scores, which allows Suda;s team to do stuff out of the ordinary so each level doesn't become a repetitive corridor slog. One level becomes a shoot em up, the other a 2D side scroller. Then, a boss fight happens where they're given a bit of personality before a gimmick comes in to make a normal fight a bit longer. Whereas most fights are 'avoid attacking animation til the boss telegraphes an opening', some require a bit more reflexes and dedication. The other's game fascination came from the life Travis Touchdown has to lead when not battling. He's for lack of a better term: the ultimate loser. He lives in a dinky motel. He dedicated his life to hobbies like wrestling, anime, and porn videos. And in order to even go to the main story levels, Travis has to earn money doing a bunch of weird mini games with some odd control variants. There's also some levels where Travis can kill a bunch of normal goons, but its the odd jobs where you see this amazing contrast of what a takes to be 'badass', which should be a slight dig at gamers and bloodlust. They can only feel invincible killing others, yet falter when its times to adjust to rest of society. But this foray into the game's open world wasn't just for social navel gazing. A lot of the games different upgrades and boost were found in Santa Destroy's wide, wide open that barely felt like a city and more of an interactive menu. The game caught a lot criticism for not having a bunch of busy work and fetch quests populate a city like many other open world games tend to do. Granted most of that was due to the hardware's limitations, but a sparse open world with very little interaction outside of going from A to B helped solidify what Travis's life really was: lonely with no stimulation outside of his hobbies. It one of those little things that can only reveal itself through gameplay. And far as the game design goes, it showed just padded an open world game can feel and how much of that interaction can create a false sense of excitement. The open world was boring but the main missions came alive due to some incredible cel-shading combined with a pop art aesthetic and some of the loveliest tunes in a game.

No More Heroes got a ton of mileage out of remixing the main tune, never feeling repetitive or droning, but becoming a bouncy melody like most games used to do before the 32-bt era. When the boss battles occured, ears were spoiled by some amazing rock/punk/techno mash ups. All in all, this was a solid game that deserved all the hype and spoils that came it ways. Suda 51 became a rockstar developer where so many hung on every word he said for now on.

 All of his subsequent titles got that much more attention and anticipation. It became a shame that nearly all of them was basically No More Heroes in a different wrapping. Killer Is Dead, Lollipop Chainsaw: all big console titles that was the same game. Which harmed his smaller 2D offerings, which still packed the wacky writing  on top of solid mechanics, like Sine Mora and Liberation Maiden.

Even Desperate Struggle, the sequel that fixed the 'flaws' that weren't bad and abandoned a lot of the energy that made the first one in the first place. It replaced the game's weird odd jobs into some 8-bit minigames, which were undeniably awesome but lacked the first game's contrasting philosophy of demeaning labor in order to live an intense life of blood pumping excitement. You go to space in one minigame. The open world was abandoned to just become a menu select screen with the sweetest menu music ever. While the sequel had better combat, lesser pacing, it had  the feeling of a focus grouped 'improvement' and something not borne of inspiration.

Guitar Hero/Rock Band

Yes, there are subtle and not so subtle differences between both games. Rock Band focused more playing well together and simulating the band dynamic, whereas Guitar Hero felt more hardcore, verging on punishment at times. This isn’t about the differences, but what both of them are: rhythm games that needed an extra peripheral to play. This usually makes gamers pucker up because that can easily lead to the cost of a console. And yet....just like Wii Sports, you couldn’t go to a different persons house without seeing a plastic guitar or drum set and having the time of your life. 

Again, while peripherals were around console gaming for decades, it blew up between 2004-2012. And while both games were successful on every console, The Wii comprised more of the unit sales for both franchises at a certain point. Thanks to the Wii remote being its own dongle and the buy in for playing on the Wii pretty low, it made sense that the Wii had the better sales, even when it got gimped features. 

It helped that the games were just well polished and actually fun to play and replay. What sucks were all the extra titles and band specific spinoffs that came afterwards and the restricted as fuck licensing that made fans have to go back and forth between the discs to play certain songs. 

Regardless, no matter your preference, the ‘casual’ market helped drive the success of the rhythm genre and having plastic guitars with your friends was an awesome way to party. It took gaming away from its more ‘nerdy’ inclinations to a more socially accepted pastime.

[darkarm66]

The Wii. 10 Years Later.

10 years ago, I camped out at a Best Buy with my best friend, food and a mini keg. I got interviewed by GameTrailers talking about how excited I was for the system and the remote, because it was game changing. To be honest, I wasn’t down for camping out for it, especially after camping out for the PlayStation 3. The PS3′s demand at the time was way more bigger than anything Nintendo could muster at the time and I figured, ‘It’s Nintendo-they’ll always have consoles available’. I was way wrong. Dead wrong. And the industry at large was wrong. No one could’ve predicted the phenomenon the Wii would become. 

There will be stories from much, much better writers about the hardware’s success, that remote, it’s incredible sales, the philosophy of core versus casual, but for me, the Wii’s amazing quality was due to to its incredible software lineup. As I write this, I turn to my shelf and see just how many incredible games I held onto and many more I downloaded. Let others point to why it took off, but it sustained itself with amazing software, many of which occupied best sellers list for months, if not years. So for the next upcoming months, ‘ll be writing about the games as best as I can. Today, I’ll start with one of the biggest hits: Wii Sports.

(This idea was inspired by Deadspin’s Big Book of Black Quarterbacks. Wanted to write this last year but reasons and real life delayed it.)

Wii Sports

Tech demo is usually double-edged sword because it’s proof of concept for a game but not much a game itself. A short weekend could showcase all anyone needed to see from Wii Sports. Immersive, yes, but very shallow. With boxing, bowling, baseball, golf, tennis-there were no tournament modes, no campaigns, nothing to necessarily unlock. No ‘repay value’ in terms of content. The reviews reflected as much. I don’t even think it got higher than a 7 out of 10 in some places (and you can adjust the metric by publication). And yet....not too many places didn’t have Wii Sports to play. So many parties I went to had Wii Sports as a centerpiece. 

Not only did this disc guarantee that people who bought Nintendo’s system would have some content to go with it out the box, it would also prove immediately that games never had to be made and sold in according to what a sales or marketing executive thinks a game should have. Wii Sports was never padded but there was legit gameplay with tons of multiplayer. No campaigns again but the simple gameplay loops were addictive and very Nintendo like.

All you need was one motion to be able to do anything across the games. However, each of the games had a way to teach players not only the controls but how the go beyond the rules. So even with the simple schemes, there was depth to get so much of its limited content. The difficulty curves in higher levels demanded people learn the small wrinkles in the gameplay with out having to learn something new. All anyone needed was to apply precision and speed with the waggle. 

Suffice to say, Wii Sports, stripped from any context about success, was an incredible game. 

And from there, console games no longer had to be overstuffed and padded out, filled with content, levels, and modes that never added more to the core gameplay. Wii Sports showed those ‘huge’ games could feel just as gimmicky as those casual mini games. And Wii Sports wasn’t just a success because it was packed in, it sold well in Japan on its own.

While casual games thrived on the PC for decades, Wii Sports showed there was a legit market and people waiting to become gamers. And the industry couldn’t wait to capitalize on its success without ever crediting the company that sparked it.

de Blob

THQ, in my mind, was one of the better third party publishers on the Wii as they didn’t just rely on port dumps and watered down spinoffs of bigger franchise. They went out an actually made better than legit games. Original games. And de Blob was one of the better, non-licensed titles they released. A charming platformers, a sorta open world where using and mixing colors was the key to completing objectives. It was different enough from the usual run and jump fare, especially since the jumping was bit more difficult than necessary. This showed a mindset among developers that used the remote as a waggle device as a opposed to a legit controller. This lead to many games on the Wii remapping a standard action to a gimmicky use. 

More games were hurt by that decisions, as constant waggle can’t be maintained for over a standard game. Even Nintendo figured that out. What saved de Blob was the prioritization of coloring a whole world and giving life to game worlds, which would be more amazing in a post Splatoon world. The colorization of the game world made the exploration a bit more exhilarating. Definitely one of the Wii’s better games in its early days.

[darkarm66]

The End of Elect-gelion

(It’s a play on The End of Evangelion. Shut up!)

I had a completely different post mortem to write up cause Hilary was the assumed winner. She should’ve won. It was in her hands. And....Dems shit the bed. 

But to be honest, this was just a terrible campaign. There wasn’t a great candidate out there. Obama’s charisma was just something to behold and it will be missed. It was gonna be impossible to follow, so you get apathy. 

Truth is, there’s actually a lot to take away. On the Dems, they gambled on just the presidency and actually screwed the pooch on the ground game and actually getting out and connecting with rural America. But Clinton did that to bring in more people of color. We showed up for her. At least most of us.

And these people who was just tired of her and sick her: how many people y’all are just a blast to hang around? I mean seriously, the lot of y’all hide behind memes in place of wit and humor and can’t post your real face. I’m sick of this ‘I need to be inspired!’ She was doing this for decades, longer than the lot of y’all have ever mattered. Going away will never diminish all the accomplishments she made. 

I get the whole ‘the whole system is corrupt’. It is, there’s something about our style of government that completely disengages people from taking it seriously until it’s too late. There are too many times where the ball gets dropped on people and they just feel they don’t matter. Why they hell should anyone vote? No candidate has ever seem to grasp the reality that surrounds them and how voters are looking for help with the real shit people are going through. Fuck your policy and talking points. Listen, feel, and react. I believe this is what people want the most from politicians: a genuine human being who feels their anxiety, despair, and rage. Not a well-rehearsed campaign speech. Hillary was doomed the moment she wanted to run.

But that’s not to say Bernie would’ve fared any better. Yes he would’ve done better in places HRC lost in, but there were key demographics he lost in the primary. And his policies weren’t really in a lot of people best interests. This man legitimately lost when he lumped in black struggles with working white struggles and didn’t understand the structures that prolong the struggles for blacks. I don’t give a shit what Killer Mike had to say, black people weren’t looking for saviors and if we were, it sure as hell wouldn’t be a white politician saying if we minorities had more money, everyone would feel better. Like having 20 more dollars in my wallet stops me from getting called a nigger. (and that’s not to mention how his campaign mishandling registering voters and not creating alliances with black leaders).

Make no mistake, Trump’s was a victory lap for white nationalism and racism that no longer had to hide behind coded language and dog whistles. And there are already Muslims, Gay and Lesbians, Trans People, Latino/as, Blacks, Indians, and Women being attacked and targeted. I wasn’t voting against Trump because I thought jobs packages was terrible, I voted against him because he rode of a wave of truly scary activity being perpetrated by his followers and that’s not even counting the GOP being the GOP and engaging in any the voting fuckery they engaged. People decided to keep whiteness as the virtue as opposed to steady but surely progressive change. And none of it surprise me. Never doubt humanity’s capacity to shoot itself in the foot when it is taking steps forward. 

And worst, he is has GOP that is hellbent on gutting social programs. Programs that feed kids at schools, people who can’t work or afford food, or need medicine, get grants to go to college, give jobs training to teenagers, child care, low cost housing. Say what you will about ‘the system’, but there are people within government who actually want to make that system work like that for everyone who needs help. Those are the people who need the votes. But naw, keep thinking you’ll be happier not paying taxes at all one day. 

So what next? Democrats...you’re done to some extent. There are many senators who actually captured seats and seem like they won’t budge from their principles, even if it means not being liked. That party can’t be abandoned but it can’t keep being okay losing the Midwest. So everyone in the DNC needs to be tossed. Today. Start organizing and create coalitions but not with these lifelong Democrats who have just hung around to long. There were people at phone banks, going door to door, signing people up to vote. They need to that energy sustained for decades to come. 

Trump will be our President and he will fuck shit up. Cause he wants to cause his campaign showed the kind of man he will be in charge. 

Any decent media member who didn’t engage in this ‘both sides are awful’ narrative need to be listened to for now on, because cable news sold out fact checking for some dope ass revenue that will not go to expanding and diversifying news rooms. There will be hell to pay for the disservice they’ve done.

Voters: it’s okay to be ruled by your emotions. But it fucking can’t be anger all the damn time cause you didn’t get what you want. This happens every election and y’all never seem to understand what ‘the work’ actually is when it comes to writing, enacting, and passing legislation. Especially when the GOP has shown to be pouty as fuck when they don’t get their precious tax cuts. Governing actually takes some work, some of it is redundant and inefficient, but these are small steps that do have to happen.  So third-party voting, libertarian and protest voting doesn’t make you the smartest snowflake in the pile. Shit ain’t happening because no one hasn’t heard an idea good enough to run with. They ain’t willing to put in the grunt work needed to get shit done. Logic without emotional maturity isn’t helpful, same with being overly emotional without a brain cell. People gonna have to start using both for now on.

As far these protests go, let’s be clear at what they are: protests. Which are legal to do. Free assembly is a right. Protests aren’t riot. They became riots when the state decides to meet those protests with weapons and armor. Protesters, who are legitimately protesting and not some wannabe Anonymous shitstarter, just look to march, vent, and connect. And y’all need to fucking let them. People who really felt the system wasn’t for them before the election now have proof and will carry that fire. That’s the shit that needs support. Not this finger wagging and faux paternalism. You don’t care they were pushed away into feeling like this to begin with. 

Unity? Fuck this. Since he ran, Obama’s then had all kinds of disgusting mud thrown at him. Mitch McConnell succeeding in never making any kind of compromise with him, Congress fucking shut down the government in embarrassing fashion (how was that not a campaign point), they nearly committed treason, and blocked a judge from being sworn in to the Supreme Court. There is no reason to keep proving that ‘we’re so much better’ than this. And that’s not to mention all the Tea Party protests the Obama Administration received for years, so y’all really need to miss the fuck out of me about how protesting isn’t the way. The fact these men and women obstructed so much progress because he was black is proof that we don’t need to always meet in the middle. 

And since the GOP is fine demonizing people of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims, women, working with them won’t keep them safe from people who blame them for their own misfortune. 

As far as asking ‘would you like it if they did it to Obama’, THEY FUCKING DID FOR EIGHT YEARS. They disparaged this man and his family for his entire terms! Stop acting like this behavior was invented in the past 24 hours! Americans have shown how they feel about others and we need to fight back because they showed they ain’t willing to defend it or care for it. Sometimes you can’t hope for a bully to not hit you, you may have to punch that bully in its nose. Lemme ask this: was Sarah Palin down for working the President after she lost? How much compromise did Mitt Romney bring to Washington? Exactly. Get off that high horse and get on the ground.

Make no mistake, the next 4 years are gonna be rough but I plan to give hell wherever I can.

Finally, last and definitely least, third parties: Fuck y’all in the eye. Y’all ain’t got different ideas or better ideas. Y’all got one moment of clarity before a bunch of dumb shit comes out your mouths. Stop acting like the weird kid in the funny hat who no one picks for softball. You’re the weird kid no one plays with cause you shit on yourself and never think the smell is bad. And stop this vanity running in the presidency. Why don’t y’all fucking start small in Congress? Cause y’all truly don’t give a shit about governing and are too vain to understand why things happening the way they do.

Gear up: this is gonna a truly chaotic 4 years.