#having WAY more fun instead of just trying to speedrun the game and getting frustrated :')

[34saveme34]

[h

hi guys

I cannot repent. there will be a chapter 2

word count: 1693]

Mario and Meme Gayms - chap 1 (Marware)

The electricity came back on. The crew finally took note of him. And man, if he didn’t have fun watching those fools scared! He was especially captured by Mario’s insanity really coming out. It was something special. He knew that even from back at the casino but it really shined today. Although he… didn’t think the man would get that close to him… He couldn’t have guessed that the TV was his last string. He did appreciate the sacrifice though. It felt romantic in a cruel and ugly way. Your brother to someone who caused you so much pain? Oh, the betrayal! The emotions! Truly, he was made for the best possible show. He should… lure him to his side. If just a simple obsession could make him that way, he wondered what would happen if he got Mario on his side…

The crew went back up after getting back the electricity and reacting to his head, shrugging it off. Mario was the last one to leave. Oh! This was his perfect chance! Although, he still felt that talking to him directly didn’t make sense just yet. He could easily mess it up. Instead… he chose to play a very special video for Mario. It… caught his attention. Mario curiously watched the TV, as if slowly sliding closer until he grabbed the sides of it with both of his hands. It was a bit too close for his liking but he had to keep his cool. 

The commercial had a code for a rare skin on Roblox… Mario reacted delightfully, immediately scribbling down the code to his best ability. He wasn’t able to read well but he could still recognise the symbols. Mario immediately ran back up, jumping with joy.

“Mario is gonna get so many friends!!” That was the last he heard of the man, for now at least. He retrieved his head, putting it back on his body. It wasn’t his favourite stunt but it did help him in getting around. He couldn’t stand around any longer, as he went further in the dark. There was still much to set up before he could consider Mario his… Well his like, servant? Team mate? There really wasn’t much else to it… even if he was intrigued… 

Mario sat by SMG4’s computer, speedrunning logging on Roblox. He NEEDED the skin. He was grinning wide. It took him a while to figure out how to use it, considering no one was ever so generous to give him like this. Although the layout for the code didn’t exactly feel… right. Mario was too invested in the rare skin to care though. 

He got it on and immediately went into a roleplay game. People immediately took notice of him, something he didn’t think would happen. He was getting more and more friendship requests with each second passing. It was quite overwhelming but Mario could take it. He took it with his full chest, screaming. He got invited to games, he had fun. Everyone was so nice to him. It was perfect. Even games that would usually make him rage were fun because as soon as he felt bad or angry, he got comforted. It was so perfect. He never wanted to leave.

SMG4 came into the room, seeing Mario eagerly play at his computer.

“Hey, Mario, how long are you still playing? I wanted to make some m-”

“Mario’s busy!!!”

“Dude…” 4 crossed his arms, sighing. He walked up to Mario and grabbed him, trying to pull him away from the computer. It was no use, as if he was….

“Mario? Can’t you just… let me use MY computer?” he was frustrated.

“Mario’s busy!!!” he repeated like before, though insanity peaked through his voice. 4 was a tad bit worried about that.

“C’mon, Mario, there’s many games you can play, actually Tari wanted to-”

“Mario can’t!!! He’s glued here!!!” 

4 was confused, until he looked down, seeing that Mario indeed glued himself on the chair. He sighed, even more frustrated.

He couldn’t keep it in himself, he used all his strength to push Mario away from the computer, sending him along with the chair on his ass. He went flying across the room. But Mario got up and… didn’t look happy at all. He stared at 4 for a bit, visibly shaking, eye twitching. 4 was starting to get scared now.

“Man, quit it- this- this isn’t you!”

“YOU DISTURBED MARIO’S AWESOME ROBLOX ADVENTURES, NOW YOU MUST DIE” Mario lunged at him like a predator. 4 dodged him, running out of the room. He wasn’t followed.

He peaked back inside after a bit, seeing Mario sat back in front of the computer, enjoying the game as if nothing happened. This scared 4. He left, not knowing what to do. 

It had been days. The others tried to get to Mario but all of them had to quickly escape the same way 4 had to. Because of this, 4 wasn’t able to stay in his room either, using the gaming room instead until 3 offered that he could stay at his. 

One day, 3 tried again, stepping in the room, weapons ready with him and the others to cover and help in case something happened. However, as soon as the door was opened, the room was empty. The screen was the only light source with static. Mario was nowhere.

This worried everyone as they explored the room several times but didn’t find anything.

Until 3 thought of something.

“Wait the ca… umm” he immediately stopped, remembering that it’s… not exactly the best thing to be proud of.

“The what?” he was questioned. Everyone was questioning him. He was sweating bullets. Oh he was NOT having a good time. He had to collect himself together.

“Well… so, I… ever since the castle sank, I was scared something similar could happen to 4 again so I put a camera in here to make sure-”

“You did what???” 4 looked at him pale “You… didn’t see when I…?”

“Yes, I did. Sorry” 3 turned away. It seemed neither wanted to elaborate although the others were left questioning.

They took the camera and looked at the footage. However the moment when Mario disappeared was redacted. By that same thing… They had seen on the TV.

Mario, he was in a beautiful landscape, in his beautiful skin with his beautiful friends. Everything was perfect. However one stood out to him. A player who had a TV for a head. They didn’t speak but were sticking around him all the way through. Showing him hints without words when he got stuck on a particularly hard parkour map. Or helping him on quizzes. They were growing to be his favourite. His heart fluttered looking at them, like a guardian angel. Just made him want to leave even less. Not like he was thinking about leaving anyways. This was just too good to let go. 

This player sent him an invite to a game he never saw before. It seemed to be a private map. Nobody else was there but him and the TV headed player.

Mario scratched his neck, stupid thoughts entering his mind.

“Are you hitting on Mario?” he blushed, pressing his index fingers together in that very specific pleading emoji way. 

The player didn’t reply for a few seconds, seemingly considering how he should react. Maybe reconsidering his plan in the first place.

“No no… however… I got a deal for you” the player leaned down to Mario’s level. 

“It feels like it” 

“No it’s- Mario. I’m offering you appreciation you never had before… The attention you deserve.”

“You’re definitely hitting on Mario. It’s okay, Mario knows he’s one sexy italian man”

The player was losing it. They paced around. Mario was starting to look a little sad about it.

“Are you okay?” He looked at them sad, very sad in fact. Not his favourite kind of creepy hang out buddy being sad.

“I’m- I’m fine- Besides, online dating is against the rules.”

“Mario broke some rules here and there, he’s above the law” Mario gave the player a thumbs up who could only laugh and facepalm. 

They couldn’t believe they felt a bit charmed by Mario of all people.

“It’s like you want to date me or something” they joked with a wide grin “I didn’t even do much”

“You helped Mario a lot! Mario is not good at thinking and you did it for him”

They chuckled, almost forgetting what they are here for. 

“Well,... I think we could make a great team.”

“Oooooh…. Great team? With Mario?”

“Yes! No one would be as great as you for this…”

“Mario thinks you’re flirting”

“Sure” they laughed “I was rather referring to the time you were hosting Meme Games… I could help you host another one! What do you say?”

“Anything for you, Roblox player” he cried, hugging their long ass legs.

“Oh, worry not, Mario” they grabbed his face, looking at him softly “I’ll be there. You bring the challenges and your spirit… I’m giving you everything else. You deserve it”

Mario blushed, looking up at them. They pat his head before he was ejected from the game. To everyone’s surprise there of course. As they didn’t even have time to leave before he came back. They all looked at him scared. 

“What? Mario’s fine” he jumped up, the same grin he had when looking at the TV headed player not being gone. He was obviously ecstatic. 

“Sorry we bothered your gaming sesh” Tari looked down. She knew how gaming can get. She was also the gentlest when bothering Mario.

“I’m not. It’s about time you go touch grass and let SMG4 sleep in his OWN room” SMG3 chimed in, obviously annoyed.

“No one asked you to take SMG4 in” Meggy said to him.

“He was taking up space in the gaming room! It’s the best that I could do” he was annoyed.

“Mario is hosting meme games” Mario jumped up excited again, then ran out of the door, not even paying attention to any of the comments. Everyone looked at each other. Meme games? It had been a while.

[pixies-and-poets]

Donkey kong tropical freeze is such a bad game, it's not even really about playing or having fun, it's just strictly super technical and all about inhumanly perfect timing. It seems like a game designed for a cpu that has all the perfect inputs already programmed into it. Playing it as a human player is like... oh, sorry, but you didn't wait until literally the very last frame to jump off the last platform, so now your jump won't be able to cover the distance to the next platform. Sorry, try the last 2 minutes of gameplay you just did all over again! Like what kind of weird ass game devs think that's what makes a game good? Instead of filling a game with nothing but ridiculously challenging platforming that demands inhuman precision, just find ways to make it creative and interesting. I swear so many professional game devs come off like those stupid kids in mario maker who just make stupidly impossible levels where theres some secret shortcut only they know about like "hehe nobody will beat MY level" and its embarrassing. Whatever happened to the old donkey kong style of game where I remember swimming around as a cool swordfish and not worrying about my every input at rapid speed like I'm playing dance dance revolution on expert, but just exploring and enjoying the music and collecting bananas and having fun? The elitist direction of this series is so depressing.

This ask made my eyes bulge when I first saw the preview, but... while I don't necessarily agree with you, I'm gonna meet you where you are.

Tropical Freeze is a game that I think I respect more than I actually enjoy. Its music is incredible, its enemy team is about as fun as can be without actually being Kremlings, its levels are beautiful and you can play as Dixie again, AND Cranky (and now Funky). I don't know if you thought I'd find this ask insulting but I've only ever played the game twice to my memory, and I don't have a huge amount of personal attachment to it. Once, as co-op when the game was brand new, and again when it came out on Switch I did Funky Mode. Whereas I play the original SNES trilogy at least once a year. (edit: actually I'm pretty sure I've done Funky Mode twice)

Because it's been so long since I did the "normal" game, and because I played co-op, I don't have a strong remembrance of how difficult it actually is. But I do remember it being quite hard for us both. If I'm good at any games in the world, I'm fucking good at the old DKCs. I used to speedrun them, I grew up with and was molded by them. And while Retro Studio's work is built off of them, there's a slightly different feel and weight to its demands that are just different enough that I can no longer innately be an expert. (Side note, if you want a game that actually feels more similar to the old games, check out Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair!! It's great!)

So I get where you're coming from, I really do. I think TF is a masterpiece. I say that, anyway, so... Why do I never feel the urge to replay it? But honestly I think that's down to how the game feels overall, its length and level design, its overlong bosses, and not due to its difficulty, which is neither here nor there for me. ...and the fucking rocket barrel levels, I kind of hate them.

See, I do appreciate a good challenge and have played games since that I would consider far more demanding than TF. Of course many of them are indie games, or classic games. Tropical Freeze is pretty hard for a mainstream Nintendo game of the modern era, but lots of people out there love a good challenge and I think it's a good thing that Nintendo/Retro respect their players enough to issue one. Unfortunately, people who want to chill with the silly cartoon animals might end up being frustrated, BUT! That's what Funky Mode is for. It really was a genius idea. Funky Mode is like, so much more fun IMO, it really does replicate the feel I get with the original DKCs, allowing you to go faster and be more confident even if you're not that familiar with TF's level layouts. Even then, it's not totally easy- you still have to be somewhat careful and pay attention, but you can get through the game a lot faster.

And I do want to say, while TF may be the most difficult DKC game, the originals were no walk in the park either. I don't know your experience with how much you've played them, but like I said, for ME they seem easy- after all these years- but I've been around streaming communities, and communities that specifically like to do challenges and casual races, for a long time now. I've seen so many people struggle getting through DKC, DKC2 or DKC3 for the first time. I've seen people give up on doing it without save states. I've seen extremely skilled gamers get frustrated when attempting speed or challenge runs, which granted is a special case, but they have hours and hours of practice and the game meets them there and still kicks them. The DKC series has always been on the harder side, compared to something like Mario which would be the average. I know someone who, like me, has DKC2 as his favorite game ever... but still struggles while playing it. So your description of the older games seems a little rose-tinted. Maybe the early levels were all fun times collecting bananas, but tell me how much peace and vibes you really had in Snow Barrel Blast or Poison Pond or Lightning Lookout or Koindozer Klamber or Parrot Chute Panic or Toxic Tower or- (and that's not even to mention lost world levels)

TF has become a fan darling, but it's ok to not like it. That said, I think its Switch release crafted it into an ideal: a legit challenge for those who want one, and a different mode for those who just want to storm through and yet without it being a totally babymode no-brainer experience. I would like to see any future games offer a balance similar to this, if we ever get them.

....they really do gotta bring Enguarde back though, that's the important thing. I'm not kidding.

[mycelium-bf]

im stoned and having a lot of thoughts <3

[zeta-in-de-walls]

Dream’s speedrunning

Hey guys, I don’t usually make posts like this but I’ve kinda been following this drama for a while and felt like discussing it. Heh, Idk. I’m no expert ofc. 

See, I’m a bit dismayed to find I do indeed believe Dream definitely is guilty of cheating in his minecraft speedrunning. I figured I’d explain my thoughts.

For those who are unaware, a couple months ago, Dream did some livestreams where he streamed Minecraft speedrunning in version 1.16. He did six sessions which were all hours long. Over that time he did hundreds of piglin trades to get ender pearls. 242 trades in fact!

 And that’s where the issue comes in, as ender pearl drops from piglins are rare - there’s 4.73% of an ender pearl trade. From this number of trades, you’d expect 242*4.73% = 11.4. That’s the average, obviously there’s bound to be a little deviation but the higher the sample size, the closer you’d expect it to be to the average. 

Dream got 42 ender pearl trades. That is many, many, many standard deviations from the mean. That number is incredibly suspicious and it is effectively impossible for it to be explained by ‘good luck.’ Now you may be thinking that the whole point of world record times is to find that instance where you get astronomically lucky, but this wasn’t just his world record pace run - this was from all the runs in the streams, including the bad ones. It gets worse when the mods also examined Dream’s blaze run luck and found it was also way above the norm. Both of these combined being incredibly fortunate is even more unlikely to happen naturally. And these are two of the most important factors in a minecraft speedrun. 

But wait. What about bias? When speedrunning, you’d stop trading after a successful trade - that would skew the result to be slightly higher, right? True! The speedrunning mods apparently tried to account for that, giving Dream some benefit of the doubt. And, just in case their calculations for Dream were way off they decided to try it on other speedrunners and see if they also get astronomically high luck, suggesting the problem is with their calculations and not with Dream. They examined other speedrunners and not one of them were anything close to Dream’s high odds! 

For comparison, they examined Illumina (and others but Illumina was the luckiest they found) and found he had a string of good luck, such that his odds of getting it legitimately were only 9%. Dream’s luck meanwhile? 0.000000000565% Errr... yeah. And these were using the exact same calculation method. Dream’s numbers are not natural. For that reason, Dream’s records are completely unverifiable as his game must have been tampered with in some way to have achieved such results. 

Now Dream made his response video and got someone else to write a paper on it. Apparently this person used a different formula that gave Dream much more benefit of doubt. And came to the conclusion that Dream’s odds were not 1/7.5 trillion, but 1/10 million. I believe that he also included runs Dream had done earlier in the year - a good month before the six streams where Dream is thought to have been cheating. The obvious answer is that Dream only changed the odds before those six streams, as his odds were normal before then. Remember, they don’t think Dream was always cheating, they think he started cheating with those six streams - that’s why the runs before then are not relevant and in fact damn Dream further in some respects as it makes it more obivous that his game has been tampered with recently - rather than that he’s always had a faulty version of the game with weird luck installed that just so happens to improve the odds of the two things most crucial to speedrunning. So if you add some extra irrelevant data to your sample to skew it, it looks less implausible. 

Now you may think 1/10 million odds can happen. But its just more likely that Dream tampered with the odds and modded the game - its apparently a very easy value to change. Even if you have no experience in mods, you literally change one value -the ‘weight’ of ender pearl drops from piglin trades. It would be equally easy to undo and share files showing no evidence of cheating of cheating to the mod team when requested. Prior to these runs, Dream had complained a lot about the RNG in 1.16 and how it ruined his speedrunning experience. Given how much it frustrated him, the motive for changing the odds to benefit him is there. Instead of owning up to it, he’s digging in his heels which is a shame as anyone would have immediately accepted him changing the odds to make the game more fun to play while streaming. But he’s denying it. 

[sleepless-in-starbucks]

Any way you could turn that popcorn comic into a story? -pineapple (no pressure I'm just curious)

Speedrun because I have school soon BUTNevermind have to go to school ajdfbvhdsbjsd y’all won’t see this for a whileAlright back now time to finish (...none of these notes will make sense to y’all since no timestamps on them but shhhhhh they’re in chrono order don’t worry)

Inspired by this

-Roman and Deceit go to that movie theater a LOT-They both love having movie dates (Roman thinks they can be both very romantic or very goofy; they have flexibility; Deceit likes the Sins He Can Commit In The Dark which are mostly just kissing Roman til he’s red as a tomato; they both like the show they get with it all)-But there’s only one movie theater that’s close to them, and that’s the one Virgil works as-Virgil is sarcastic all the time towards them, mostly because he and Deceit were ~rivals~ in high school and he knows he (nor his boyfriend) wouldn’t report him to his manager for just acting like he always has-And when he’s on shift (which he is a lot- he needs the money) he always makes sure to be the one helping them-Roman’s frustrated that all his cutesy couple moments are being Ruined by Virgil but he will NEVER stop saying cheesy stuff because he refuses to be beaten by an angsty popcorn butter-er-Deceit’s just amused by the whole thing, since his and Virgil’s rivalry always has been and likely always will be some petty little thing that doesn’t actually matter that much, so he’s never really insulted by any of it-(Which is good, because if he was, Roman has promised multiple times he’d threaten Virgil with his sword. Deceit doubted Virgil would care, but Roman might drop it and cut someone’s toe)-This whole thing goes on a while-As in roceit visits the movies at least once a week (they are ADDICTED to cinema) and at least once a week Virgil ‘helps’ them with a side of extra salt-They’ve come when Virgil’s not really been on his game, though

-Sometimes it’ll be late and it’s clear he hasn’t slept in too long as he mumbles his way through their transaction-Sometimes he’ll be too busy glaring at another employee to be witty, and they know he must have just gotten chewed out for a stupid reason-Sometimes he’ll just… look at them, with some odd look in his eyes, before he checks them out as quickly as possible and with as few words as possible-Roman and Deceit notice-They’re not sure, exactly, when they decided they needed to help protect the emo who always made fun of them, but they have and they will-They’ll make the employee who was a jerk to Virgil enjoy an absolutely horrible transaction-Or they’ll just awkwardly tell Virgil he’s doing good before they go to their movie-When he’s tired, they remind him to go home soon, to rest-More than a few times they’ve driven him home after their movie when it’s clear he shouldn’t be trusted behind a wheel-And for his off days, they just make sure to slip him a bigger tip, since they know he needs the money-They don’t have too many breaks in their ‘rivalry’ but they do have some, and those moments are their breaks-One day, they come to the movies like usual, noting that Virgil seems happier than usual. they don’t ask after this, but they’re both (not-so-) secretly happy to see him happy-After he’s helped them, though, he tells them the cause: he’s got a new job, and given two weeks notice. it’s better paying, more within his interests-Deceit and Roman accept the news outwardly excitedly, inner-wardly excited... and upset-They had gotten used to seeing Virgil at the movies, after all, and their back-and-forth had become very familiar. they were both loathe to lose it, but this was better for Virgil! and though they’d never say it to the soon-to-be-ex-movie theater employee’s face, they wanted him to have only the best-They did start going to the movies more in those two weeks, though, trying to enjoy the last of all of this-And by ‘more’ I mean they went to multiple movies every. single. day. because they did still have work, this meant a lot of real late and early movies, but they made it work-The only thing was this: if they walked in and saw Virgil wasn’t behind the counter? they’d leave and come for the next showing they wanted to see-They were coming here for a REASON after all-Virgil seemed amused by the attention + extra final chances to roast poor Deceit, so he never mentioned it-Now, all of this? It was leading up to something... a plan.-Because Deceit and Roman had seen a lot of Virgil, had gotten used to his snark and his sarcastic tone and his smirks and frowns and deadpan expressions, had gotten used to his sense of humor and interests, had gotten used to him-And as that deadline approached for their time with him to be cut short, the both of them were realizing very quickly they didn’t want to lose him-So they had a plan-They came in for their final movie on Virgil’s final day-You could tell it was his last day- he wasn’t in uniform, he looked more carefree than ever, and when they ordered he didn’t even ring them up; just handed over the drinks and grub, free of charge-‘what’re they gonna do, fire me?’ Virgil had asked with a grin when Roman looked at him in shock-‘happy to be almost gone, I can tell’ Roman commented idly-‘there’s only so much fake butter a man can smell before he goes mad’ Virgil joked back. ‘besides, it’s even better knowing I’ll never have to see your boyfriend’s ugly mug ever again’-‘yeah well have you- uh’ Roman stopped, looked at Deceit, looked back at an unimpressed Virgil, continued, ‘y’know, boyfriend- your- I mean-’ another pause, dramatic hand motion, slamming his hands into the counter, ‘our!’-Virgil didn’t respond aside from looking at Deceit in confusion-‘mind my boyfriend... for such a romantic he’s not great at pick-up lines...’ Deceit said, only making Virgil look more confused until he added, ‘though he could be our boyfriend’-Virgil blinked at him. once. twice. looked at Roman. blinked again.-‘what?’ he asked, finally, sounding torn between extremely bewildered and almost hopeful-‘we’re trying to ask you out.’ Deceit clarified. ‘as you can tell, we’re amazing at it.’-‘...you’re gonna have to say that again, because it’s still not making sense-’-‘we want to DATE you, emo daydream!’ Roman finally said, cheeks immediately blushing a dark red even as he stared Virgil right in the eyes-Virgil froze up at that, both the confusion and hope in his expression increasing. ‘I- wha- why?’-‘because you’re pretty, and cute, and funny albeit snarky, and because of that me and Roman can to the shared conclusion that we don’t want all of that to walk out of our life just because you got a new job’-Virgil didn’t respond to that for a minute, instead just looking down at the counter, clearly lost in thought-finally he says, slowly, awkwardly, ‘...that might be... nice. you guys are... also nice’-‘I’m pretty sure that means ‘I love you’ in awkward introvert language’-Deceit lightly elbowed Roman, though considering Roman was leaning against Deceit’s side + holding his arm as he stared stupidly adoringly at Virgil, it wasn’t very effective. ‘you’re going to scare him off’-‘no, no, I don’t mean it scathingly. I think it’s... cute.’-Virgil who up until now had been doing pretty well at being more shocked than flustered, was beginning to lose that battle. ‘shut up, princey’-Roman puckered his lips. ‘make me?’-Deceit gently shoved Roman away from the counter. ‘I’d apologize for his antics, but you’re well-versed in them’-‘that I am’-Deceit smiled and handed Virgil a card with both his and Roman’s numbers on it. ‘call us so we can set up a date, yeah?’-‘uh... yeah’ Virgil said, cheeks flushing a shade darker just at the thought of a date.-Deceit nodded, still smiling as he collected the food (passing drinks to Roman), the two of them heading off-‘wait!’-Roman and Deceit turned back towards Virgil-Virgil didn’t say anything at first, the ‘wait’ clearly having been spur of the moment. finally, he lifted the card, almost pointlessly, and said lamely, ‘enjoy your movie’-Roman and Deceit smiled back at him. ‘we will’ they promised, before heading to their film-They didn’t uphold that promise, considering they didn’t pay any attention to the movie at all-But given they were instead more occupied with thinking (and talking) about their new boyfriend, they were fairly certain Virgil would forgive them

[dylawa]

Hey! is there anything you want to talk about on here but haven't had the chance to? (Because this totally isn't a ploy to get you to talk about something that makes you happy or anything)

ᴬᶜᶜᵒʳᵈᶦⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ᵃˡˡ ᵏⁿᵒʷⁿ ˡᵃʷˢ ᵒᶠ ᵃᵛᶦᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ ᶦˢ ⁿᵒ ʷᵃʸ ᵃ ᵇᵉᵉ ˢʰᵒᵘˡᵈ ᵇᵉ ᵃᵇˡᵉ ᵗᵒ ᶠˡʸ⁻⁻

Just kidding. But I am going to infodump. Majorly. And somewhat randomly. You have opened the floodgates, but:

TL;DR, I’m replaying the Jak and Daxter Trilogy, and though the story is batshit and poorly paced for today’s standards, the games are fun and have major replay value, and sometimes, a batshit story is just what gaming needs.

I’ve been journeying down nostalgia lane over the past few weeks; I’ve been replaying the Jak and Daxter trilogy, and in terms of the meta, the trilogy is kinda weird: the first game came out in 2001, and was your average adventure platformer, akin to Crash Bandicoot or Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. You were a boy coming of age, your friend had been transformed into basically a ferret, and you were going to try to get him all sorted out while also defending the world from a growing army of monsters through menial tasks. Then, Jak II came along, and Naughty Dog decided to give the boy you played as in the first game a voice, a mutation, anger issues, a goatee, and a gun. The reasoning was Naughty Dog felt that was the direction the gaming industry was taking, and their playerbase was growing up into that demographic, so it made sense to go with the flow in that aspect. I’ll tell you what though, I sure was confused as a wee Dylawa when we got the sequel to Jak and Daxter, and after two minutes of normalcy, suddenly we got arrested by the police after crashing our space/time traveling car just for looking funny.

Playing Jak II again resurfaced some video game exclusive childhood trauma, but also my golden gamer fingers. Many tears of frustration were shed in my youth, but I’m an older individual now, and it’s so much more satisfying to beat those same levels that would haunt me in my sleep. Jak II is hard as hell, and I’m not alone in thinking so; it is speedrunners’ least favorite of the trilogy to play, and for good reason. Its checkpoints and rate of health drops are brutal, enemies are annoyingly accurate, and bosses rarely give you time to breathe; you can expect to start a lot of missions over from the beginning if you die. It’s the longest of the three to speedrun, actually; estimated run times for any% categories are 16, 55, and 26 minutes respectively for the series. If speedrunners can find the mythical “Construction Site” skip, the run for Jak II can be shortened down to just 6-10 ish minutes, making it shorter (and FAR easier) than the other two games. Meaning instead of playing the original Grand Theft Auto for kids (tm), you’d escape prison, “borrow” a grand total of like, two vehicles, and then kill Satan.

Storywise, I don’t think this was the direction Naughty Dog initially intended for the series, but again, the industry was changing, and the players were growing up, so I understand the creative decisions from that aspect. But it sure was weird going from Jak and Daxter, wandering around an ancient world with artifacts left behind by powerful and mysterious beings, with their technology being abused to unleash hazardous materials into the world at large, to Jak II, being thrown into the future and Jak having basically his innocence taken from him and getting involved with the mafia for revenge against a corrupt government in a perpetual stalemate with aliens, then to Jak 3, where the Gods say “sorry the government experimented on you, here’s some ying to that yang to balance you out” and MORE aliens show up to destroy the world and a guy you’re pretty sure died in the last game is now a cyborg, and now Jak decides to have daddy issues for no reason in particular...

Anyways, as for the gameplay, in order of fun, my ranking is 3, 1, 2. 3 introduces a whole new slew of abilities and weapon upgrades, one of them is basically a mini nuke, and you eventually get to fly. 1 introduces the universe (which Naughty Dog then kinda throws halfway out the window, but I digress) and its mysteries, alongside beautiful scenery and masterfully crafted levels, and 2... is 2, I guess.

If someway, somehow, I was given the opportunity to write the scripts for a reboot of the series, I would absolutely lose my mind. I could have a field day expanding the lore of the universe in a way that remains true to the original iteration while filling in the gaps players wouldn’t have been able to fill otherwise. Unfortunately, Naughty Dog has entirely foregone their platformers in favor of their more story-driven games, namely (shudders) The Last of Us II. Not to bash on anyone that does enjoy it, you like what you like with video games, but I don’t feel the same love in there as I do with the Jak Trilogy. Last of Us has professionalism; Jak and Daxter has passion. When I look at the gaming industry, Jak and Daxter is what I see as approaching the pinnacle.

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen Rambles about Dusk Diver

I finished playing Dusk Diver, a small beat-em-up by JFI Games. I originally played it because it was on sale, I’ve had my eye on it for a few months now, and I needed a break from DMC5 for a bit. And boy do I have some thoughts about it now that I’m done with the game. Namely a bunch of nitpicks, but... we’ll get there in time. 

But as always, let’s start with that Synopsis.

Dusk Diver takes place in the Ximending district of Taipei, Taiwan. The story focuses on Yumo Yang, a Taiwanese high school senior that got caught up in a spiritual adventure over her summer vacation. While out with her friend she was randomly pulled into the alternate dimension of phantoms and demons. Before she was about to get killed by one a local loin god protects Yumo by (accidentally) transferring his powers to her. After she fends off the phantoms she decides to help clean her city of phantoms over summer break with the god’s help, along with the help of his eccentric and frugal boss... Boss. 

The plot takes off from there as Yumo pummels phantoms, gains allies, brightens up her town, and learns more about why the phantom and human realms are colliding. I gotta’ say, it’s nice to actually write the synopsis without having to either look at wiki article or outright copy it. This game is very simple for both good and ill. 

So... what do I think of this game? 

Well, unlike Assassins Pride I’ll be going over the bad first and then try to end on a high note, since for all my issues and nitpicks I did enjoy this game very much.

With that said, let’s start with...

The Bad

The Localization

So the localization is very similar to Under Night In-Birth Late[st] in that it feels very unfinished. When I talked about Under Night’s localization I was a little too harsh on it for my current liking and I’ll use Dusk Diver to explain myself a bit better.

Dusk Diver’s localization isn’t bad. I played this game listening to the Taiwanese dub and nothing sounded too off, but the script, the actual words on the screen, were rife with spelling and grammar errors, inconsistent terminology, and even moments where you could read the actual code of the game in the text. This the translation was either rushed, or it didn’t have enough time to really finish it, which makes it feel really sloppy. The said thing is that this game does have a rather charming script despite this, but reading all those errors and trying to correct them in your head can be... annoying.

The RPG Elements

So... this game is a beat-em-up that revolves around doing large combos and keeping up a hit counter to get higher drops of health, SP, TP, and other resources. The main goal of combat is to get combos going, collect SP and TP, and use those to do more damage to the enemies. 

So why is there an RPG level up system in this game?

I still have a lot of DMC5′s mechanics ingrained in me, so forgive me if this sounds pushy, but in most hack-and-slash/beat-em-up style games tacking on an RPG-style upgrade system only slows down the overall gameplay. 

Let me explain. Every time you complete a level for the first time you gain skill points. You use those points to improve your HP, SP, attack, etc.. This doesn’t feel good to do for this style of gameplay. In most beat-em-ups/hack-and-slash games skill points and similar currency are typically used for new moves or special abilities. DMC5′s red orbs are for new moves, Nero’s devil arms, and a limited amount of health and devil trigger increases. Senran Kagura uses its currency for costumes, accessories, and music, with the mere act of leveling up giving you higher bases automatically and more moves when you reach a certain level that proves you’re familiar enough with your current moveset to expand it. Solely making the numbers of damage and health go up doesn’t make you feel more powerful, it makes you feel like you can just handle the enemies that have gotten a lot more health and do a lot more damage for no reason other than slowing down the gameplay. I’ll save my recommendations for later, but the quick version is that the skill points should be used for more moves, more SP, and Drive duration only, as health and attack feel really arbitrary points to tack on for this style of gameplay.

The Platform/Alternate Gameplay Modes

Not often and namely during side missions for the Boss, but sometimes you have to do platforming segments and reach a certain point on the map and defeat some enemies.

They’re terrible.

Much like Devil May Cry, movement, jumping, and generally getting around feels fine save for me wishing Yumo’s run speed a bit faster. However, precise jumping and general platforming just don’t work. I don’t believe there’s a drop shadow in this game, the jumping itself has much different momentum when trying to maneuver in the air, making some moving platforms a pain to reach, and while the platforms themselves are rather large, the moving platforms go too slow compared to a lot of the fast-paced combat, making it a painstaking wait to get to the next fight.

Again, like DMC, this most platform this game should have is fighting on rooftops. In fact, I believe in the second or third mission you did have to traverse rooftops and it was actually pretty fun. Like I said, the platforms are usually wide enough that even with the wonky jumping it’s not a pain and getting to a higher point on the map and seeing the overall scenery is... nice. 

It’s just when you want me to pull off jumps like this is a Mario game is when things get dicey.

But those are all the big issues down, or at least my top three so...

Smaller Issues that Bug Allen

Like I said, I have more nitpicks than actual problems with this game. The game itself is a fine 10-15 hour experience, but there are several smaller issues that just pile up as you play it. It shouldn’t take you out of the game, but they did frustrate me a little. With that said though:

The minimap needs an ability to mark sidequests, it’ll make for a lot less backtracking and random pausing to look at the map and see where I need to go. I understand that this game is a more or less faithful for recreation of the Ximending district, but for non-locals playing this game like me finding locations is rather difficult. 

Since this game has visual novel styled cutscenes it’d be nice to have a log button to backtrack conversations just in case you skim over some important dialogue.

On that note, an option to control the speed of the text would be great as well, as I didn’t see one in there initially.

Cutscene Skip Button. It’s annoying to do the hard mode of these stages and having replay cutscenes I’ve already seen. Especially when I’m just hunting for Dragon Vein Shards.

Dragon Vein Shards should be tied solely to upgrades, as using them for plot advancement only adds to the grind... or so I would say if not for me have twice as many of the shards needed for progression every time. Again, I’ll go more in depth when I talk about my desires in a sequel, but for now I’ll just say these items should either be for leveling up or as a sort of collectible.

I’d like the rank system to be more like DMC, tying clear time, damage taken, max combo, and things like all together so that the end goal isn’t just to speedrun a stage for the S-rank.

Can the menu option be mapped to the triangle button like every other game? It kept throwing me off when I tried to pull up the map.

There doesn’t need to be a small cinematic when you do certain guardian attacks. It locks Yumo in place and has a real high chance to miss its target save for bosses.

It’d be best to map items to the buttons instead of the d-pad, as it kept tripping me up when I was trying to heal. 

I think that’s it for the major nitpicks, so let’s move onto the the good stuff.

The Good

Story and Theme

The story of Dusk Diver is simple, but effective. You go around saving the district by fighting monsters, you see how those monsters effect the district in each arc, and you solve the problem, usually getting an ally along the way. The few people that are aware of your secret job as a magical martial arts girl, usually the elderly or spiritually attuned, are very supportive toward Yumo. 

The game has an overall light, encouraging tone. It wants you to love the city as much as Yumo and Leo do, and it works. All of your side missions have you help out the locals in some way and you gain increased power for the super mode. You work at a convenience store, you partner with the local gods and guardians. Everything you do reinforces the idea of protect, preserving, and understand the town you live in. Yumo gets bonus dragon shard veins by frequently eating at local restaurants and becoming a regular. You help tourists out finding places to visit. You help an elderly man by taking photos of his old stomping grounds and he reminisces on what those old buildings were originally for. You help a coffee shop for free drinks. The list goes on, but a lot of the game reinforces this theme of community and loving the town do so much in. This is a very comfy game despite all the action of bashing demons and phantoms.

Characters

While simple, Yumo as a character is a very cheery girl that just wants to help others. She’s a bit annoyed at being forced to help at first, but she is someone that’s helpful at heart. And seeing her want to protect her friends and town is genuinely heartwarming. 

Plus, I really like her design. I’ve always been a fan of simple street clothes, and black with yellow highlights will always sell me on a character. 

Your guardians are pretty fun too. Leo’s knowledge of the city and desire to help others really gives him a cool grandpa vibe. Bahet’s a quiet and encouraging guy with a noble background despite his punk fashion. Le Viada is a model with a complex around her age and big sister mentality, the list goes on. Again, these characters are simple, but effective.

Gameplay

While I did have my nitpicks, the gameplay is solid beat-em-up action. Light and heavy attacks with the occasional use of the the guardians. And each guardian has a special ability with their damage. Leo can do massive damage to enemy shields, getting rid of them in one or two shots with his more powerful moves. Bahet can slowly chip away at an enemy with his scythe’s poison effect. Le Viada’s guns can outright ignore enemy armor and punch through it, as well as lay down traps, and... there’s a fourth guardian for when you beat the game. I won’t spoil it, but they’re basically a turret that stays in one place while you summor your other guardians, making her unique as you can’t usually summon two guardians at a time. And like I said before, aiming and lining up certain attacks can be a bit unwieldy since some moves playcinematics that lock you in place, but it’s overall fun. Racking up combos, using big AoE moves, it all feels great.

And with all of that out of the way.

Wishes for the Future

Much like in my Fire Emblem rambling I don’t like the idea of correcting a story or game that’s already been finished, but I find no issue with discussing what I want for the future. And I really thing this game can have a sequel. The game states that Yumo isn’t the first person in recent time with latent spiritual powers, or that this is the first time that the phantom and human realms became loose. And hell, Yumo is still someone that wants to protect her town, so it’d be easy to make a game in another area of Taipei that’s gone out of whack, or even give the reins to someone else. And I do want a sequel. 

Like I said, my main issue with this game are some nitpicks that could honestly be fixed with a patch or a two-month delay. If this game sold well enough to get a sequel I’d buy it. 

That said, here are a few things I’d like to see in that hypothetical sequel. Such as...

Rankings

A lot of these are going to be taking a page from DMC since I was taking a break from DMC5 to play this, but the ranks shouldn’t be tied solely to clear time. That just makes people speedrun the stage and miss Dragon Veins. Having rank linked to time, combos, hits taken, and so on would give you some breathing room when you try and explore a stage, as you wouldn’t be punished for being curious. You’d still need to be quick, but you won’t be completely screwed either.

Leveling Up

Leveling up give you skill points that you can stick into your health, SP, attack, super mode duration, just dodge duration, luck, and moves. This game shouldn’t give attack or health for skill points. This is just my belief with design, but beat-em-ups shouldn’t just jack up the health of normal enemies as you get stronger, instead just giving us tougher enemies with different patterns of attack. The game already does this with some success, so those slots that increase health and attack seem pointless. You get skill points when you complete a stage for the first time, or find dragon vein shards. This... really puts a lot of pressure on the kinds of skills you upgrade, and while I’m not against that it does make this very light-hearted oddly restricting as you debate what to upgrade. I’d recommend using those dragon vein shards solely to level up instead of for story progression as well. With each upgrade costing more and more dragon veins as you increase your stats. In this first game you can collect over 150 dragon veins. You only need 50 to complete the story mode, and I had about 75 by the time I reached the final mission. 

I know some people struggled to grab them, but... I didn’t, so... maybe have the veins do something else than gate story progression.

Post Game Activities

If we are going to have a post game to finish up some side quests for 100%, then we might as well have some extra things to do too. 

Oh right, I never mentioned that yet.

Yeah, once you beat the game you’re essentially in a free-run mode to finish some leftover side quests and do a few extra things you might have missed, but... I finished all the side quests before the final story, so I was left with just finishing some hard-mode missions and finishing up my upgrade tree. That said, if there is going to be a post game here’s a few ideas:

Survival Mode where you fight waves of enemies. Some akin to a Bloody Palace Mode where you can compete for a high score among friends and online.

Post Game dungeons that are hard as hell, this could be DLC if you wanted as I wouldn’t mind paying for more content like this.

Extra moves/skills. Yumo’s moveset is rather small compared to DMC and Senran Kagura. If we’re going to have just one character to play as then I’d rather have a complex character that takes awhile to learn than an easy one where I’m spamming the same moves over and over... or give us more characters to play as with equally simple movesets.

That’s really it. The game overall is fun with it’s only real flaw being a rather short game for 35 bucks. Like I said, either some DLC or a sequel would make me feel better about recommend this one, but if you want a fun, short beat-em-up game then this is out on steam, PS4, and the Switch. Feel free to get... though I’d recommend waiting for a sale.

In any case, back to DMC5 for me.

[singing-robot]

re: Dead Cells/Undertale

And why it would be the worst crossover ever. 

First off, I have not finished Dead Cells, and I’m trying to play it as blindly as possible, so please do not add anything further than what I mention right here in this post!!! This includes tips, runes, locations, and unseen dialogue. I’ve recently acquired my first stem cell, and have only gotten to the Concierge once in the many games I’ve started in hard mode, sodo please be mindful of that. And now, the promised content. 

This started off as a fun mashup between the two games, but the realistic side of my brain kicked in and said, “How would this actually go?” And, quite honestly, that one seemed more interesting, both in terms of how this hypothetical game would be played (I wish I could show you guys instead of just talking about it), and in the potential angst that would be held. 

The first thing I feel we need to address is how the game starts. Dead Cellsman (as I so often see him called) has a beheaded prisoner to crawl into each time you start over. Who is supplying these? I have no idea. However, I’m going to say that these bodies are either thrown down there by the same being each time you start, or Mr. Prisoner Sir finds his ride off-screen, and we only see him fall down. 

“But Robot!” you cry. “That’s so unnecessary and specific!!! Why would you bring that up?” Good question!! Because the alternative is diggging his way underground and taking over the dead body of the first fallen human. Only works once, and that’s so horrifying and disgusting that I immediately hated it as soon as I considered it, and wished I never had. The concept of eventually unlocking the other previous humans would be pretty cool if they weren’t, you know, way past their expiration date. 

Disgusting and terrible, but I needed to address it. Next section: actual fighting. 

Mr. Cellsman does not have the time for extensive dialogue and conversations. He’s thrown into prison, given a couple of weapons, and his tutorial covers a total of maybe 20 seconds between three deaths. Everything after that is a line of destruction and occasional smart remarks about something poorly lit by a blue candle. A speedrunning, monster-hacking, hilt-happy creature does not bode well for the residents of the Underground. 

He does not have much sympathy for the dead, and he criticizes those in charge of the living. I don’t blame him, honestly, but it makes me wonder how he would react to something that begged when he’s already supposed to kill it. Or if he would even give them time to do so. For the purposes of this post, he doesn’t. He sees it, he hacks it, he gains whatever coin they had on their person. All things considered, I’d say he would start off with a fairly high Level of Violence, so it would be much easier to go through the game. 

The boss fights would be very interesting. Toriel wouldn’t have any sort of connection as to a child, and would not hold back during her fight. I almost want to see it. The dogs would be the equivalent of Elites, probably. Papyrus would be absolute hell to fight, with his constant ground attacks; not to mention that you’re supposed to hit him in the middle of all of it. He’ll make it a fair fight, of course, but according to even Dead Cells logic, he will be on par with you. I think Undyne would be very similar to the Time Keeper, except you couldn’t simply break out of her hold. 

I did this in my sketchbook and I’m so glad I can make it again with real context.

To be fair, I’ve only gotten as far as Undyne, so I won’t go much farther on that topic, except on the specifics of the next section dealing with Sans, since I won’t ever play that run, anyway. (So, basically, I lied.) 

Encountering Sans at the end would be... very frustrating, to say the least. Either his fight would be very similar to the Hand of the King, or he would simply disappear every time you tried to hit him, until you figure out that there’s actually a secret passage to bypass him entirely and you’ve wasted so much time, there goes your speedrunning record. The difference here might actually count on either the time it took you to get to the end, or how thoroughly you took out the monster population. (He would probably deal more damage than Frisk ever could; getting held up so often allowed for more people to escape.) 

Wow. So. Here we are. Are you still reading this? Have you done this all in one big chunk? Please take a moment to look away from your screen, stretch, and do five real good blinks. Take in a deep breath and hold it. Hold it. A little longer. And out. Yeah, man. Breathe some of the outside stuff, too, for bonus refreshment. Maybe get some water while we’re here. This post is a little long, might as well add in a break time paragraph. I’m certainly using it as a time to stop writing, before I get into the next segment and lose 30 more minutes. Also??? Thanks for sticking through this far, it really means a lot. Especially since I haven’t edited a single bit of this so far, and probably won’t from this point on. 

All right!!! Have you stretched? Have you had some water? Did you take a big whiff of your surroundings so as to not get too lost in the sauce of this crazy post? I hope so, pal, because here comes the fun part: The Aftermath. 

When you fight Sans, he makes his accusation: you’re the anomaly in his research, and you need to be stopped. But here’s the thing: he doesn’t say that on nothing. He says that in almost full confidence, and suspected it in other runs. What gives you away? Not entirely sure, but I bet defeating the Captain of the Royal Guard without dying, or openly having zero interest in things that should be interesting, hints at it. And unless something is lit by a blue candle or offers the promise of cells and upgraded weapons, Dead Cellsman has very little interest in anything at all. 

So you could imagine that someone speedrunning through the Underground, killing everyone in his path while hardly stopping to glance at the scenery, would be waving a big red “time anomaly” flag. And if Sans managed to evade him until the end, and even had the time to overcome any shock and actually do something, that would be one horrible, inescapable fight. 

Here’s where my idea splits in two: 

1. Sans dies. You receive a special item to take out Asgore in one hit, you win, you finish the game. There is... little point in restarting it, because I’m logical and boring and the remaining monsters of the Underground wouldn’t come out of hiding for... a very long time. Longer than it’d be worth Mr. Cellsman to consider coming back for. 

So when Frisk falls, there is nothing and nobody. The place is a little dusty, a little bloody, there’s a few spare coins on the ground, but everything is utterly abandoned. The towns, the stores, the homes you can’t explore, anyway; they’re empty. It’d make for a boring game, honestly. There’s Flowey, but he’s so distracted by recent events that he doesn’t even show up when you first fall. There’s not point in “kill or be killed” when there’s no one around to fight you. He’ll talk to you, sure, but because you’re another entertaining attraction. Your SOUL would be great, but what’s the point if the others are almost completely inaccessible, now? 

Perhaps he’ll tell you the tale of the genocidal killing spree he witnessed for fun. 

2. (This ending applies to ones with and without a Sans fight, with or without total monster destruction.) Not to add another angst story featuring the Sans man, bUT... Sans does not die. You get past him, you take out Asgore, you win the game, whatever. You get to move on.

And Sans was wrong. Nothing resets. He thought he was right, he was so positive, but here he is. And there are so many people who are dead. It must be hard to deal with, when he hardly has anyone to blame it on. He can’t even curse the murderer to his face. So imagine what it must be like to watch another monster kill so many of its own kind, only to have a human fall after that. The creature that banished them all underground is now here to either finish them off or send them to the Surface, but I doubt anyone thinks it’s the latter. The angel has returned to free them all.

I accidentally made a super metal and symbolic image to go with this, I will post it separately because, holy cow, did not expect it to turn out like this. 

Frisk has to face the most scared, enraged, and depressed monsters they could ever have encountered. Some of them will attack as viciously as they can. Others will beg for mercy, or run as quickly as possible. More will just wait, confused and perhaps upset if they are spared. There will be some who are simply NPCs, as per usual, but they will be very different. There will be fewer. Frisk’s mission to save monsters and encourage their character development will be vastly different and very difficult. 

I... made the mistake of waiting over 24 hours to type out the second half of this and lost some of the steam I started with, but I’m also bad at simply describing how bleak and depressing it would be without getting too much into it. So!!! To conclude, a semi-realistic Dead Cells/Undertale crossover would be extremely sad and depressing, since it’s basically coming in on the aftermath of almost-genocide. I will definitely accept further questions and, possibly, requests regarding this post, especially since you actually read through the entire thing and endured through everything in this post even after my enthusiasm died down in my writing. Sorry to disappoint after hyping up The Aftermath, but I was writing that at midnight and probably lost some of my good points. Definitely had a better version in my head. 

I also super ignored almost everything involving Flowey for Mr. Prisoner Sir because uhhh I didn’t want to write around that too much, so please don’t call me out on it because I definitely am aware of it and only have weak justifications for doing so. And, since we’re both here, 

UnderCells - a little catchy, I like it, but it sounds like the main story itself would be focusing on Dead Cellsman going through the Underground. While it would, to an extent, ignoring Frisk’s presence would simply make it a new level and brief one shot thing for the man. I really like the sound of it, though. 

DeadTale - far more appropriate for Frisk’s leg of the journey (as well as all of monsterkind), kinda funny in a sick sort of way, definitely used somewhere else. 

It doesn’t matter if you use either of these terms, I thought I’d address it since it’s already a super long post :’D

You made it to the end!!! Congratulations!!! 

[recentanimenews]

Resident Evil 2 Remake Will Have you Seeing S.T.A.R.S.!

I’m supposed to gather some electric parts to turn on the mechanism that opens cell doors in the underground jail cell. I found one after dodging vicious zombie dogs, and now I’ve found myself climbing back into the very police station I was trying to escape less than an hour ago. I know where I need to go--by now the police station is somewhat safe, and I know the best routes to get to where I need to go… until I find myself needing to extinguish a fire. "No problem," I say, and go about doing so with some easy exploring. Things are going well. I’ve got good health, ammo, and then… Mr. X happens. Suddenly, everything I thought I knew had changed.

All the skills I remembered from playing Resident Evil 2 20 years ago vanish, as the huge Tyrant hounds my every movement. Open a door too fast? Footsteps. Shoot my gun? Louder footsteps. Suddenly… a door opens that I didn’t open. I panic, and run. "If I can just get to the save room, I’m fine…" And then I hear it. A Licker. I ran too fast and too loudly, and with only a second to spare I dodge into the S.T.A.R.S. office, safe for now, and pause the game. My breathing is ragged and I put the controller down for a moment. I’m terrified, excited, and above all, happy. This is the best feeling in the world!

Resident Evil was always my favorite horror franchise, and Resident Evil 2 was the game I spent the most time with when I was younger. I played it more than I played any other game in the series until the co-op fest of Resident Evil 5 with my partner. The zapping system of Resident Evil 2 entranced me; the idea that a game had multiple storylines that interacted with each other, and that the game itself changed when you played it again blew my mind. The campy charm of the weird puzzles, esoteric nonsense, and scary but cool monsters made it all a blast. And then Mr. X showed up in scenario B, and I lost my little mind! I couldn’t believe a game could have a monster chase me, know where I was going, and make me feel unsafe in areas I thought I cleared. Fast forward to 20 years later, and I found myself doing the exact same things I did when I was a kid, totally amazed by the experience I was having, and watching as nostalgia mixed with the new experiences introduced in this remake to create something truly special.

There’s no real way to beat around the bush: the Resident Evil 2 remake is an amazing game! If that’s what you wanted to know, you can stop reading now and go buy a copy of it right this instant. It might even be my Game of the Year, and the year just started, and yes, I know that Kingdom Hearts III just came out. But the Resident Evil 2 remake has an addictive and entrancing combination of things going right for it that make the game not only thrilling to play, but a game you constantly want to get back to playing. To play again and see if you can get a better score than you did, how much ammo you could have saved, what route you might have tried to avoid Mr. X better the next time (For the record, my Leon playthrough resulted in a 7.5 hour B rank, and I’m already gunning for that A!). If you have played Resident Evil before, you’ll likely find a lot to love in this game, and if this is your first introduction to the series (or maybe second following last year’s also stellar Resident Evil 7), you’re in for a real treat. And there’s an odd magic to this remake; if you never played Resident Evil 2, it’s still an amazing game, and if you were a fan of the original, the Resident Evil 2 remake might transcend to be an almost perfect game. The graphics are amazing, and the combination of sound, lighting, and effects make the game feel tense and scary even in well-lit areas, and downright terrifying in dark ones. Each area of the game (there are 3 major ones) have a distinct feel and sense to them, making them unique and exciting to explore.

But much of that, frankly, you probably already knew. The game looks amazing and borrows heavily from the new engine used in Resident Evil 7, changing from the first person perspective of that game to the somewhat more traditional over the shoulder camera from Resident Evil 4 through 6. The controls are fluid, particularly when compared to the older “Tank Control” style of the original, but at times I found the game still had a weird inorganic movement to it that made avoiding enemies still pretty challenging in tight areas, as if the remake combined the two control schemes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4. This isn’t really a complaint, and if anything the Resident Evil 2 remake feels like the best version of Resident Evil controls since 5 (omitting 7 here since 7’s first-person view really changed the game experience). In terms of how the game feels, looks, and plays, there’s very little to complain about with this remake; it just works.

Perhaps the biggest discussion to bring up in terms of gameplay, however, is difficulty. I found myself caught off guard by the difficulty of the Resident Evil 2 remake even as someone who had played all of the previous titles, and even done runs of earlier titles at harder difficulty. Generally, I play the game on normal first, then go back and test myself with harder difficulty, or use easy difficulty to attempt a speedrun or pick up missed collectibles. In this remake, my first zombie encounter left me totally stunned and, honestly, panicking. I had shot him in the head 4 times… and he got back up! I found myself running low on ammo constantly early on because I kept trying to kill my enemies, angry at times that the monsters I had so easily killed when I was younger were now giving me trouble. And then I encountered my first Licker, and things changed.

This game is not about fighting. It is quite literally about surviving, which means making the decision of when to fight, when to run, and when to plan your next move. Normal difficulty will provide you with this question just as readily as hardcore will, and players should be prepared for that difficulty swing if they’re used to Resident Evil 4 style Super Secret Agent Leon, popping off Ganado heads and doing sick melee takedowns. You aren’t that Leon (or Code Veronica Claire) in this Resident Evil 2, you’re a person trapped in a hellscape with no way out and limited supplies. It was a funny thing to realize, because the term “survival horror” has rarely focused on the actual “survival” part, with more and more modern games focusing on early weakness transforming into endgame destruction on a grand scale as your character finds better weapons and levelled up. The Resident Evil 2 remake turns that on its head, instead focusing on making you think about the best way to get from point A to point B with the least possible risk to yourself. A mistaken calculation can cost you time, ammo, and health, and there are even times when you’ll need to judge if it’s better to take damage to avoid using up precious ammo, and you’ll certainly need that ammo when you face the bosses that this game throws at you occasionally!

Each boss fight is exciting and challenging, and while you may feel frustrated at the amount of ammo used, the game seems somewhat fair in helping you replenish yourself afterwards, and doubly rewards you for good planning and smart use of resources and your environment. At times I felt early on that I might struggle with the game and run out of ammo, but when I finally finished Leon A, I found myself literally swimming in ammunition that I could probably never use all of. Judicious use of non-combat items matters as well, and while the game doesn’t have a strict upgrade path like later installments did, you can still find ways to make your weapons better, usually by hunting safe combinations and exploring hidden areas off the beaten path. To this end, the map in Resident Evil 2 is an amazing ally and one of the best new features in the game. When you enter a new area, the map will turn red if there are any items, files, or important interactables to locate. The closer you get to that item (or, if like me, you actually brushed up against it but didn’t notice the prompt), the map will tell you exactly what that item is for you to go back and grab. Seeing what rooms were red and what weren’t really gave me a sense of knowing that I had finished an area (for the moment, at least), and tracking my progress in an organic manner.

One of the charms of Resident Evil 2, and the Resident Evil series as a whole, are its puzzles. It would probably not be incorrect to say that the Resident Evil games are actually puzzle games that occasionally have you shooting giant mutated zombies and other things. If you wanted to abstract that even further, it’s honestly fair to say that the avoidance and risk-reward routing through areas of Resident Evil 2 is a puzzle itself. This is probably also why Resident Evil 2 is one of the strongest in the franchise with its somewhat ridiculous set piece puzzles spread out around the police department. Finding weird keys, turning dials on giant statues, finding gems to insert into boxes are all within the game's experience, and it does little to ever try and make any of that make sense. In the Resident Evil 2 remake, there are a few attempts with the narrative change that the police station used to be an art museum, but it still makes little to no sense, and is lovable for it more than frustrating or silly. The sewer system, with its chess piece keys, is even sillier, and all in all adds up to what makes Resident Evil 2 so fun: its charm. The game has a weird charm about it that makes the experience fun to work through, even when fighting off flesh-eating monsters. The puzzles add a thoughtful but not particularly difficult wrinkle to that mix, making you think every action out in advance, and putting you on somewhat constant quests to find the one weird item you’ll need to open a door so you can collect a medallion to… well, you get the picture! All of that supposed backtracking may sound tedious, but it isn’t, because every time you venture back into the areas you’ve explored, not only might you find new secret places to explore or connect to, but the threats have likely changed too.

There are a few odd quirks to the game, however. One of which involves the DLC add-on that allows you to play the game with the original Resident Evil 2 score and sound effects for things like menus and typewriters; once I heard about it from friends, I bought it myself during the review and was blown away by how much it changes the experience! While it may not matter as much initially if you’re new to Resident Evil 2, playing with the original score was the missing component for me in some ways of merging the two versions of the game. Hearing the classic police station music play when I entered the main lobby was an amazing thing, and it made me feel like I was 20 years in the past, playing the game for the first time. Even if this remake is your first rodeo with the game, I honestly suggest getting the DLC to really complete the package; the new score is fine by all means, but the original score was a real work of art that fit the game perfectly. The added benefit of the Resident Evil 2 sound effects being thrown in was a great bonus.

  My second issue with the game is voice acting. For whatever reason, Capcom decided not to use the union backed voice actors from past Resident Evil games; I’m not sure if development and recording for this game coincided with the SAG-AFTRA strike that took many voice actors out of games, but what I am sure of is that I think Capcom did the game a disservice by not working with the original actors to ensure the true feeling of Resident Evil 2 was preserved. The new voices of Leon, Claire, and the rest are fine, but they feel off or wrong in a way that you think you know what these characters might sound like, and they don’t. Some line readings are a little awkward (I’ve found this to be the case with Claire more than Leon), and while 20 years ago we might consider that campy charm, here it just sounds… odd. I don’t think there’ll ever be some way to fix this in DLC like with the music, and it makes me sad. I really enjoy the Resident Evil 2 remake, and don’t think I’d not play the game because of it, but I wish Capcom had waited or elected to pay the union actors and preserved the original personalities and intonations of the Resident Evil cast before release. As a few minor notes, if you get extremely anxious while playing horror games, or find games where monsters chase you constantly (like Alien: Isolation) hard to play, do know that Mr. X can be a bit of a handful (he’s really smart), but it doesn’t take up as much of the game as it seems. It can change the pacing and comfort level a bit, so be forewarned!

As we got our code right at release, I decided to take my time with the game and play through the storylines fully to see what the full game really had to offer. It may seem odd for a review, but here are a few tips that I learned while playing that I hope can help you out when you try out Resident Evil 2:

1) If you don’t think you’ll enter an area often or for a long time, aim for zombie’s legs rather than try to kill them if you can’t just dodge by them. It slows them down considerably and saves some ammo.

2) Blue herbs may seem worthless (there are like 2 enemies in the game that poison you) but can be combined with Red+Green herb mixtures to give poison healing but, more importantly, damage resistance! Great for boss fights!

3) Save frequently and cycle saves; I hunted a few trophies this way that I either missed initially, or would have needed to go back and do things I might not have done originally to get them.

4) Don’t worry about your ranking! That’s what replays are for! The game rewards multiple play through attempts through familiarity and speed.

5) Dogs suck. Run.

6) You get the ability to craft certain types of ammo. Always prioritize weapons that have scarce ammo but big impact on your play style or needs.

    If you are a Resident Evil fan, you probably stopped reading this review after the second paragraph; the game is just that good and you probably already bought it. If you’re new or on the fence, or never got to experience Resident Evil 2 the first time, you should absolutely consider making this game part of your library. There are a lot of great reasons to play through the game multiple times, and Capcom has promised some new DLC expansions to add on to the game over time as well. Even without them, the Resident Evil 2 remake is an absolute blast of amazing gameplay and experiences that you’ll find yourself going back to again and again, wondering if this time, just maybe, you can get that S rank. So buckle up, take your G-Virus shots, and get ready to tag along with Leon and Claire.

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Amazing atmosphere, graphics, sound direction, and controls make this probably the best Resident Evil yet

+ There is a lot to do across multiple routes and reasons to keep replaying the game

+ It’s Resident Evil 2!

+/- Difficulty might turn off some at first, but it is worth sticking through and learning from your mistakes

- While almost everything else is fantastic, the non-union voice actors used instead of the original cast is a real letdown

  Are you a member of S.T.A.R.S., returning for more? Or will this be your first encounter with Resident Evil? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments!

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

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

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[basklin]

A love letter to Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

or how I learned to stop worrying and love the game.

Hotline Miami 2 turned 3 yesterday, I thought I’d write something up for it!

The following contains spoilers for both Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. I'm going to put it under a read more seeing as I got carried away.

I didn't get to play the game on its release date, I was busy with real life. My sister was playing a part in her university theatre troupe and had a role as Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, it coincided with the date of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number's release and I was going to go back to the house me and my family were staying in at the time. It was a moment of respite during a time of year where I was working on my final art presentation for my school and I had worked non stop on it. I wanted to play the game since its announcement and having finished the first Hotline Miami less than a year before, I had waited so long, I could wait a day longer, my time was my own to work with. The comics by Dayjob Studio had gotten me really excited for the game at the time as well, more than happy to see my favorite medium put to use in promoting a game I was looking forward to.

I got back to my student flat in the early afternoon and made myself lunch, downloaded the game (updates and bug fixes included) and happily started it up. I'm ashamed to say now that I was expecting most of what the first few levels had to offer, since I'd spoiled myself on a leak that came out a few months before the official release of the game. I originally wasn't going to watch it, but a friend who'd watched before me said there was a character with my name in it, seeing as that was so rare to me, I caved in really fast. (Fun fact: it was the direct inspiration for one of the first comics I did for that game)

I have to point out that I'm thankful that the game's slasher style tutorial wasn't spoiled in the leaked gameplay footage, as it was a genuine joy to see the amount of details in the level design at my own pace. There was a big buzz around that level when journalists were framing it as an unwanted shocking sexual assault scene in a game about senseless violence and cartoonish gore. The game's meta commentary about sequels and how that kind of scene is used in horror movies for upping the shock value was lost on me too, but we can't be expected to get the point of a moment in media the first time. The presentation in most cases for this is frankly overblown and lasts around 3 seconds, a pair of pixellated buttcheeks over a woman I didn't even know the name of yet wasn't going to put me in a catatonic state, but a trigger warning  asking a player if they want to be spared from that kind of scene before the start of the game is always a worthy inclusion.

Even today the first 5 levels of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number are the perfect representation of the rest of the game: big sprawling detailed areas, a diversity in those locations, playstyles associated with named characters, and an actual commentary on violent video game protagonists.

As mentioned before, I was very much looking forward to the game's release and getting around to playing it. I had gone cold turkey on playing the previous installment, wishing to discover the gameplay anew and making my patience feel like a reward when I got around to playing it.

I wrote “named characters” because giving them a name makes them more real, part of the world, with motivations unique to them. Not just an avatar the player can slip into and mirror back what the little amount of pixels with a human shape might be beginning to feel when committing violent acts. That also means there are more stories that come bundled together, they're more present than ever and harder to ignore for a player who wants to skip to the next action set. The arcade game format of the first game alongside its simplicity is lost, but more story is what I wanted in the sequel, so I can't complain.

Playstyles and characters were a joy to discover and experiment with these characters comprise of:

The Fans, covered in colourful war paint with their individual animal masks and expertise, all set out to go on a vigilante murder spree, chainsaws and guns in hand.

Manny Pardo, the detective whose motives remain unclear, with a more gun oriented gameplay.

Evan Wright, the writer with the one with the most unusual playstyle of the lot, seeing as he tries to do non-lethal takedowns of people he chooses himself to be around needlessly putting him and his family in danger in pursuit of the truth behind the first game's phone calls. This unique gameplay can be made into the default one by going too far on ground executions, making him go into a blind rage and seeing red.

The Soldier, limited to a single gun of your choosing whose ammunition must be replenished through carefully placed boxes throughout the level and an army knife for close range combat.

The Mafia, comprising of the Son of the former leader of the Russian mafia and his Henchman. The former wanting to reinstate the dominance of the Russian mafia after the Colombian cartel took over and the latter wishing to break free of this cycle. The Son has the same array of skills as the Fans, exception made of the chainsaw and gun combo, making him a reckless one man army, and a cool parallel between the Russian mafia and the vigilantes in animal masks.

And the last playstyle, what feels like the default way to play the game, is the one found in the first game. Simultaneously not making you feel contrived to play a certain way, but not making you feel overpowered either. It's shared between a handful of characters in the game: the Henchman , the Rat, the Pig Butcher, and the Snake. (although the latter is able to play in a fists only way with one of his masks)

Guns only, dodge rolling, fists only, a chainsaw and gun at the same time, double MP5s, and even non-lethal gameplay help to define everybody really well, beyond words and appearances.

Getting to explore levels that are massive and open was the biggest game changer, being tunnel visioned and sticking to melee weapons became a death sentence for some levels with frustration quickly rising. I remember reading the advice that guns made too much noise in Hotline Miami, the result was sticking to a melee weapon and executing fallen enemies; which rewarded you with more immediate points than firing with the different array of guns, but rising combo counters and being wary of cover definitely became the name of the game in the sequel, for better or worse.

Gone were the collection of small colourful appartement buildings, what felt like cardboard boxes with “Miami, Florida” scrawled in felt tip pen on them; instead we have unique looking buildings, that feel inhabited, grubby at times, and more unwelcome than ever for a gunfight. More windows, and getting shot from offscreen, and enemies for which you have to use a specific kind of weapons on to progress through the level, all at the same time.

Multitasking is asked from the player, being aware of the enemies in your surroundings along with the abilities and limitations of the character you are playing. Not to mention hard mode which you unlock after finishing the game for the first time, with more reaction time and ammunition conservation playing a bigger role by then. Hotline Miami's puzzle side could expand to its full potential and the developers have truly made a better game. More thought, more gameplay, more amazing music tracks from a variety of indie musicians, and more story was put into Wrong Number, it was everything I was hoping for and I wasn't disappointed by the game at all... At first.

This isn't going to relate to a few people, but I try to finish games as fast as I can. Not speedrun them mind you, I like playing games too much for that, but finish it from beginning to end in a timely fashion. In the past, my interest dropped very fast for games that require time, knowledge of all its controls, or reflexes to beat and will get frustrated if I can't get back into the groove of it after a few months of not playing it. I tend to start over because I've either lost track of the story or of the rhythm of later chapters. On top of that, I didn't want to be spoiled accidentally or put it off too long. I remember finishing Hotline Miami's main story in one sitting only coming back the next day to finish the Biker levels, why not do it with Wrong Number?

To this day, I regret playing Hotline Miami 2 in one sitting. After 3 hours without a break, I had a slight headache, by the time I had finished the game 6 hours later, I had a migraine. By playing it the way I had, I'd successfully completed the game, but gotten a feeling of disgust by the end of it. I've had hangovers that felt better.

On a side note, that day I got a call from a classmate who wanted my opinion on the direction of his end of the year comic presentation was going. He came round when I was in the middle of Deathwish, on the level with Corey, what felt like the ultimate test of skill at the time. And I definitely gave vibes that I wanted to get back into the action, despite taking the time to answer questions and discuss his comic project (if you're reading this Jean, I'm really sorry, come round for tea sometime!). Time feels very fuzzy for this, as I seem to remember spending too much time on that stage, listening to the track Roller Mobster by Carpenter Brut over and over and slowly growing to resent it. I've gotten better since then and like the song just fine now, but I still have trouble with that level.

The assault on the Russian Mafia's headquarter by the Fans is a 4 floor action packed romp, where they all have their own floor for themselves and aim to meet each other on the roof of the building. Things don't go as planned for reasons that weren't explained immediately. Only after Deathwish do we realise that the Fans we had played as had fallen in battle one by one and died during their siege as we were playing the next floor. Now, characters whose gameplay were unique at that point got killed offscreen, with one onscreen by the police, rightfully so as they had only themselves to blame for their demise. I felt drained by the time I had come to what I thought was the end of the game. It turned out that it was the midpoint of the whole story. A pit in my stomach was slowly forming: there was going to be more after all this?

More of everything is both a blessing and a curse, more music leaves room for tracks I'll have a hard time liking, more violence means I'll slowly be apathetic to the character's struggles, and more characters is forgetting the levels that features only one of them, wondering why they were even there in the first place and if they could have been cut in favour of a smaller cast with their unique gameplay. Excitement had passed and doubt had settled in: character driven stories are what I love most of all and the cast was slowly thinning down. Those who had died weren't seen again in the story, was it going to keep my interest? I certainly expected it to.

I finally took a break to have dinner and a stretch before coming back to continue Casualties, the final level featuring the Soldier. The stages between that one and Deathwish are wonderful, great even, but they felt as thought they don't fit into the main story, I remember later trying to rearrange all the levels, keeping in mind which levels concluded each chapters and found that everything fitted really well together as it did. I was still getting over the previous levels so maybe I wasn't enjoying them as much as I should at the time.

I'm going to be honest when I say I forget the Soldier is in the game every time. An actual wartime setting, in an alien looking Hawaii none the less, with a gameplay that's really enjoyable and prepared me for hard mode's ammunition conservation gameplay very well should be memorable. It may be due to the fact that his inclusion was to give a background to the protagonist of Hotline Miami and give the origins of the secret organisation behind the phone calls of the first game, with parallels to mission euphemisms over walkie talkies, commando style hits, and sense of loss to a cycle of violence that doesn't care for its victims or its players. The character's final moments didn't bite as hard this time, even though that one felt the most undeserved out of the whole cast.

The next four levels featuring Richter the Rat are some of the best I've experienced, by that point we were focusing on a new character we'd met in the previous game and of which I didn't think much of at the time. Seeing him was an unexpected surprise for me, a really good one because of all its touching cutscenes and tight levels. Even in his last chapter, with the track Le Perv by Carpenter Brut, reminiscent of Deathwish's nauseating track, was honestly a joy to play through, despite the difficulty. It also was a nice conclusion for the Writer's story, who instigates the Rat's recollection of the events, with a final choice between continuing the book about the vigilante group and its mysterious phone calls or reconnecting with his estranged family while there is still time and discontinuing the cycle of violence, neither choice affects the outcome of the finale, but there is definitely an obvious conclusion in there, for me at least.

Nowadays, I know all the elements and numerous characters were included in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number so that everything would be done in one game. Everything Dennaton wanted to experiment with, characters that tied different storylines together and both made sense of the first game and concluded its story for good. Hotline Miami didn't have room for flamethrowers or more storylines with other operators, it was an overarching story for the player, to be in the shoes of a hitman in an animal mask, with room to interpret the story for ourselves. The sequel doesn't stand on its own from a narrative sense: I'd be utterly confused by some of the stories of Hotline Miami 2 if I hadn't played the first game, since everything stems from the events of Hotline Miami. The result is that it all feels very heavy to take in all at once.

I really didn't care for Jacket's background, or why he did anything in the first game. He doesn't have a name, or a voice, or a personality, he's really boring in a story sense, but he's the perfect game protagonist. If he can be anything you want him to be, there's no room to dislike him, aside for his violent actions which he doesn't justify to himself in any way, he just does as he is told, like the soldier he once was. We feel what he feels during the violent missions, the sense that we get better and better at the game, the character doesn't improve, as there's no character to improve, we as the player are improving level by level.

So when the sequel explained that he was a veteran that fought in a war we never get the context for or care about, my first thought was that “he was just Rambo”. I hadn't watched Rambo at the time and only ever saw that character in old Atari games where you kill nameless soldiers. He'd always seemed like the generic action movie soldier that looks cool shooting away at his enemies. But since then, I've sat down to watch the first Rambo and saw the tale about young man coming back from war without education, aside from how to kill, back to a country that doesn't need him, and even despises him. It's an incredibly sad thing to watch a character broken by committing and being the victim of violence only to be rejected by the society they served.

The personal interpretations about Jacket is one of the best parts of Hotline Miami, as much as its gameplay, graphics, and music. Wrong Number builds upon that foundation by taking multiple interpretations of what Jacket could be and extends it to the cast of the sequel: he could be a jingoist with a burning hate for Russians (Jake the Snake) just as much as he could be scared for his life and willing to protect a person he loves (Richter the Rat). He's the now unwanted soldier of a war that is long lost (the Fans) just as much as he is the patriot in service of a minority struggling for his rightful place in a hostile environment (the Son). He's also a serial killer in an animal mask (the Pig Butcher) just as much as he is a killer with his own motives that don't have to be revealed to the player (Manny Pardo the Detective). And Biker’s search for answers is mirrored by the Writer, it was only fate that they would eventually meet up.

After the levels with Richter, we have the final 5 levels featuring another one of my favourite characters: the Son. He's the de facto leader of the Russian mafia, a scarred one man army with what feels like the strongest desire of the cast of characters: taking back Miami from the Colombian cartel, the new organised crime network in charge. His Father, the final antagonist of Hotline Miami, felt like a strong businessman with the plan of gaining power over the city through assimilation: striking a deal between the Colombians and their cocaine distribution, owning methadone clinics for the new addicts to heroin and cocaine, and gaining the favour of local politicians. The Son is nothing like that. He has a more aggressive show of power and control, separating himself from organically made drugs in favor for more potent artificial ones produced locally and actively killing his competition through violence, being in a revolution similar to the masked vigilantes in an attempt to undo the damage caused by Jacket in the first game.

As an aside, Manny Pardo has his final level in the middle, throughout the game we are teased with his personal investigation, the one of a serial killer called the Miami Mutilator, separate from the main plot of the game. It all comes to a head in his last level when it's revealed that he is the one behind the murders of the Mutilator, in an attempt to overshadow the media's attention of the masked vigilantes. The interpretation I developed over time was that his story arc was a meta commentary on sequels having their own story and an inevitable lack of interest from fans of the first game, curious instead about a continuation of the first game's narrative.

I remember originally thinking from the game's trailer that Manny Pardo was Jacket and getting really curious about how the story was going to go about, until I realised that he was in fact another character with his own motives and losing interest almost immediately in favour of the Fans revealed alongside him in the video. When it emerged that he was a detective, it seemed immediately more interesting than Jacket ever was, that it would be a character in search of answers, similar to the likes of Biker from the first game. The expectation was subverted, as it turns out that he has more current things to worry about and masked vigilantes are a thing of the past, crime doesn't stop happening and random violence is the norm in the world of Hotline Miami.

After the Detective's final level, we have what has to be one of the hardest challenges of the game: the final showdown between the Son and the Colombian cartel's Boss in his sprawling villa. Even after having been playing the game for almost 8 continuous hours, it really felt like what the game was leading us up to, from random street thugs to the drug army in Miami. And yet, even when the level was all said and done, there was yet another level after that. We are back to what felt like the finale a few hours ago: Deathwish, only this time it's the Son's side of the story, overdosing on his own artificial drugs and going on a overcoloured haze of hallucinatory violence.

Apocalypse is the name of that level, and it's a beautiful boss rush, where all the Fans are turned into monstrous animal shaped fever dreams that the Son has set himself out to destroy in his terrible drug trip, alongside his own men, turned into unrecognisable demons. It all leads to the rooftop, where a rainbow bridge invites us off into the void as the game's credits show up on the screen. The credits fade in favour of the rest of the cast, alive and unperturbed by the finale we as the player went through, only to realise that events offscreen trigger the end of the world, nuclear bombs vaporise them all and...

I didn't get it.

It took a good night's sleep and a bit of thinking to understand what Hotline Miami 2:Wrong Number was about: deconstructing Hotline Miami. The first game's conclusion had a hopeful tone to it, with mocking comments by the developer's stand-ins if we came back looking for more answers by playing Biker's additional levels, with actual answers that feel forced if you actually manage to find all the clues within the game. The sequel ends the world with nuclear clouds and if we start a new game, we get a new introduction at the start of the game essentially asking: “why are you back?”. There were no more answers the game could provide.

Violence is at the core of both of the games and it never seemed to stop. Hotline Miami left us wanting more, Hotline Miami 2 left us with the most violent thing known to humanity. I remember thinking that it was a deus ex machina ending, an answer to problems that seemed unsolvable. But inside the game there’s all this rising tension, focusing so much on the characters distracted me from the fact that it was culminating towards the end of the world. All the characters were trying to solve all their problems through violence, but the world wasn't going to get better through those methods. It was the only conclusion a game like that could have and I love it more than ever.

I cannot thank Dennaton enough for the incredible time I had and keep coming back to with Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. It has made me explore media I never would have discovered otherwise and draw things I never imagined I would come to draw. Happy 3rd anniversary to an incredible game, and I look forward to the future.

[pidgezero-one]

saving y'all another tweetstorm about sm rando tourney shenanigans

context: in top 8 losers' bracket matches of the super metroid randomizer tournament, cfb vs zoast mutually agreed to do 100% instead of any%, and then cfb and foosda visited all save points. chat was not pleased. cfb posted this compilation of screenshots from the second match, see for yourself: https://twitter.com/CruelFancyBaron/status/927751861016367104

my thoughts on the situation: what the fuck is there to be mad about? cfb, zoast, and foosda are all extremely talented players. there is no money on the line in this tournament and viewers have no material investment in it. it is just a tournament that will end up having a winner.

i used to be a tournament organizer in the competitive smash bros community. smash bros is divided up into sects: melee and smash 4 are the "esports" titles with enormous viewerbases, sponsorships, and decent money on the line, and professionalism is expected to some extent. professionalism includes consistency in player effort and ruleset administration. this means that "hard" rule violations like changing set rules (such as the old tradition of "gentleman's rule" where both players agree to play on a banned stage) and "soft" playstyle deviations (like a top player using a character they don't seriously train with) are discouraged and bound to start a tidal wave of drama and accusations of bracket sabotage. 64, brawl, and project M are smaller and more tight knit, and while these communities do try to keep up professional practice, there is less lashback when something spontaneous occurs.

i can think of a few examples of this difference: a few years back, hungrybox and mew2king were in grand finals at a tournament (I think it was MLG?). hungrybox had a wide match lead, and m2k decided to go puff and ditto him. puff is by no means m2k's strongest character and he likely was not expecting to win the ditto vs the best puff in the world. most likely they did this for fun. some ppl were livid with this decision and wanted m2k to finish the set playing one of his mains instead, although the result most likely would have been the same.

contrast this to smash 64: isai, one of the most talented and historically significant players of all time, is known for just doing what he wants to do. this means that we've seen many a top 4 set with players like himself, superboomfan, and tacos doing DK dittos instead of using top tiers. for the most part, nobody who actually plays 64 gives a shit when this happens. they're obviously just doing it for fun, and we're having fun watching them have fun. ppl who aren't invested in the community are irked especially when isai isn't going his "full potential" with a top tier, but he doesn't feel like doing that.

and IMO that's what's most important. isai, boomfan, tacos, and mew2king are not breaking rules by choosing characters in top bracket for fun. it's a video game, it's supposed to be fun! at the top level these players are at, it's not unreasonable to think that perhaps viewers can enjoy what the players are doing and especially the fact that the players are putting their hearts into it.

what cfb, zoast, and foosda did IMO is closer to this than it is to an actual ruleset change like gentleman's stage select would be. any of them could have violated the stipulation at any time, but they chose not to, because they wanted to do something spontaneous and have fun. these 3 players are incredibly fucking good at sm and sm rando and their modified matches were entertaining, but this evidently was not what some players wanted to see, i guess.

i'm personally not down with viewers being mad about that. imo a tournament with nothing on the line should be primarily about the players. i don't like that ppl can't derive enjoyment from players doing silly on-the-fly things like this. back when smash was grassroots we lived for that stuff. it was fun for everyone playing and watching. many speedrunners feel this way about these matches as well.

that attitude seems to have changed with the popularity of livestreaming having exploded the way it has. there's no hiding that sm and alttp randomizer have exploded outside the confines of the speedrunning community, and are popular now even with people who don't speedrun at all as well as mainstream twitch viewers. mainstream twitch viewers want esports. that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it also demands seriousness that isn't always fair to expect of players who join events for fun. i see this as analogous to ppl being upset about 64 players doing DK dittos just like being upset with m2k and hbox's puff dittoing, it's a whole lot of mad for no reason. speedgaming's other content primarily attracts speedrun enthusiasts and shenanigans are not a problem for anyone in those streams.

there's another perspective to consider outside of players vs viewers, though: straevaras, the tournament organizer, was also not pleased, and posted his thoughts here:

https://pastebin.com/HeFZxE4Q

i definitely do agree with his sentiments that doing things just to piss off viewers is in poor taste, but i'm also pretty sure these 3 jokers would have done these altered matches regardless of whether or not chat hated it. i'm also very sympathetic to his frustrations in later tweets about having to deal with chat being shitty about it. when things don't go as expected in an event, it almost always falls down on the TO ultimately moreso than it does on the players, and few ppl really stop to think about that perspective. i've definitely been there.

i don't agree that the runners in question necessarily violated the integrity of the tournament, though. as a TO you have to be prepared to expect some of your players to mess around in their sets. bracket upsets happen all the time when a player goofs off. that's just part of the package that comes with being a TO, you will never get all of your hundred or whatever entrants to all want the same objective. that's something you're more likely to get out of running an invitational. some of these players joined because they think the game is fun and aren't invested in the outcome. you could argue that that's not the point of the tournament, but it'd be impossible to mandate runners not to get X number of items or not to visit Y number of rooms. TOs can always make a DQ call based on suspicion of collusion in these instances, but that's not something that should be considered in an event that does not have anything on the line. you could also argue that it's disrespectful to the eliminated entrants who really did want to do well, but the only thing you can really say about that is to make better plays next time so you can be the one to turn down the offer to do whatever stipulation in your match next time.

i got shit for years for allowing my tournament attendees to play on hyrule castle, but i kept it legal because my players wanted it. the viewers didn't and they would complain, but that mattered less to me than my attendees having fun. most viewers who had actually run tournaments before saw no issue with my reasoning, and that's important. i see speedrunning as on this level right now, players should be able to do things for fun and it's sad that viewers don't get enjoyment out of that bc they've been spoiled by a very very different culture of gaming. speedrunning at the end of the day should be for fun, so either have something on the line or just let the speedrunners have fun...

just my IMO

[milliethesillie]

Time for a stupid review rant

Beat Superstar Saga HD..... I’m still stupidly mixed on it. Also spoilers pretty early on in the review because I’m fresh off of it and I’m going on how I feel about stuff

Visuals: at a first glance its gorgeous but theres alot of little things that suffer because of it. Lets take chucklehuck woods for example. The lighting is cool how it peeks through the trees but because of the lighting it makes bean spots harder to see. Then theres alot of attacks that are much harder to dodge because they’re models instead of sprites. 2 examples are the poison clouds fired by the blobs in Jokes end and Cackletta’s soul’s fire attack. They’re prettier but its alot harder to tell where the attack ends and starts. Cackletta’s soul fire is a major offender because its impossible to tell if its even on the ground yet or not so I’m jumping over fire that isn’t there yet. You know the final boss fight is a good summarization of how I feel about the visuals. Cackletta’ Soul is visually terrifying and amazing and i love it but she’s got so many attacks thats near impossible to tell where the are spacially, her fire, to a lesser extent her thunder, and her carousel of arms which used to be one of her starting attacks easier attacks became a Mario Killer because I could not tell when it was going to hit the guy. and apparently alpha dream knew this because its no longer a starting attack and she now only uses it late in the fight. Also I swear everything moves a fraction of a second slower then it did in Superstar Saga. I mean the game looks good i guess but the graphics effect gameplay negatively and the original sprites of everyone just popped out more so.... I was going to say next but I forgot to mention a small number of the unique designed enemies were replaced with typical vanilla Mario enemies and this does fit in visuals so there.... Thats the complaint. and the toads from little fungi town are boring now.

Music: Lets get the easy crap out of the way. All overworld themes sounds just like they did in the GBA cept with more modern instraments and they are good.... However Those aren’t the tracks that I care about. So lets go over the ones I do care about. First the Main battle theme: So apparently all trumpets were brutally murdered right before the development of this game because the trumpety tracks from Superstar Saga features little to no trumpets. Main battle theme being one of them. Technically speaking theres already an HD version of this theme with trumpets from Paper Jam but they messed up some of the notes and for someone who’s played Superstar saga so much its just impossible to listen to that and not notice. Superstar Saga HD’s battle theme got the notes right.... and whatever the instrament they use is ok.... But I still prefer the 8-bit trumpets.... or modern trumpets where they don’t mess up the notes but apparently thats not possible. Ok So next is the Main boss theme: while the original lacked trumpets to be murdered for the remake I’m still iffy on how to feel about the new one. Mainly because I have no idea what the main instrument is. Like I want to say the new one is better but that weird main instrument almost sounds... muffled for lack of a better term. Moving on because thats honestly just taste. Popples Theme: They murdered the trumpets but I still really like this one. First battle theme that I can say is on par with the original no question. Those were the main ones that I was worried about going into the game so the other ones just get a pass in my book. So yeah overall.... Some of them work.... Others not so much but..... eh?

Gameplay Changes: Ugh where to begin on this one. Lets start with out of battle stuff because this will take less time. Mario and Luigi can no longer swap places manually. Now instead you press L or R to swap through a long line of moves and Mario and Luigi will swap places when that move is selected. This means no more annoying the front bro by hitting or handing them before learning the required move which stinks and unless you’re using the touch screen going through your moves is alot more tedious. Invisible Bean spots are now visible so you don’t need to walk around with small mario and look for an exclamation point. THey added blocks that carry cassette tapes that contain the games music both old and new so I can dig that. The Mush badge got nerfed so you can’t cheese the game with it anymore and believe me I tried (99 regular, supers and 80 ultras plus whever 1-ups and goldens I had and I didn’t feel that cheesey).  They probably needed to do that to make sure the game wasn’t impossibly easy.

Difficulty: So lets talk about how the game is easier. So Mario and Luigi’s stats are naturally higher then they were in the original, and they forgot to balance that with the stats of the first two areas, so you’re going to kill the first boss in 2 turns and the mini boss of the next area as well as the dragon atop hoohoo mountain.... Ok fine maybe 4. Queen Bean and Popple and Rookie 1 seemed less fragile but the overworld enemies were still babies, this made me constantly paranoid about if the game was ever going to get hard or make me try because I was missing alot of counters and still wining. It almost balances out... and I know I was never overleveled because of one thing that paper jam started doing that I hated. You see every enemies level.... Why? The game is stupidly easy for the first few areas so you never should feel like you have to grind. Plus enemies always go for you. Mario and Luigi games are designed that if you just kill every enemy that starts a fight with you or whatever gets in your way you will level up enough to fight whatever boss is next. You should never feel underleveled unless you’re speedrunning the game. Oh yeah I forgot to mention some other things. THe basic jump hits twice when done correctly which makes it just plain better then your hammer and hands 87% of the time. Countering hammers can’t be dropped but I mean they were doing that one since Parters in Time... although I didn’t find out till late in Bowsers inside story, but I was hoping they’d keep the old droppy hammers. And then theres your bros attacks. Even on the normal difficulty for the attacks the screen still turns dark and gives you a prompt so practicing isn’t really nessecary especially with the the colored spiky background box prompt being replaced with a circle slowly shrinking to show you when exactly to hit it. The only bros attack I can’t consistently excellent is cyclone bros because apparently I’m not as good at button mashing as I thought. But yeah I could rant forever about how the game is alot easier.... But I was gladly surprised when Cackletta’s soul threw me a curve ball. I might have complained earlier but I still liked this fight alot. It was beating me up and I almost died alot. It was a really fun and sometimes frustrating fight and the first victory I felt like I actually earned. 

Things they added: Welp theres Minion Quest.... which is a non game with a somewhat enjoyable story... Theres amiibo support.... which gives you 3 of each bean and a random piece of equipment that you can already get in game.... Thats it. I was really disappointed when I found out theres no X Bosses in this game. How hard can they be to add? Just buff some stats and boom you’re done! I know exactly where to put it too! The arcade machine in little fungi town with a towel over it! It would be perfect there! But yeah aside from a few minor things theres else nothing major added.

Final Verdict: Idk. I’m willing to admit I’m overly harsh on this game but I don’t see this as better then the original. If you don’t have the original super star Saga  get in on VC or emulator. If you have played it I’d still recommend this. I don’t think its as good but its still a good game. I’d Recommend this over Paper Jam! Heck play Super star saga twice and paper jam 0 times! Its pefect. Whatever I’m tired leave me alone

[viralhottopics]

‘Thimbleweed Park’ review round-up: A worthy homage (with some hiccups)

Image: Terrible Toybox

There’s a new Ron Gilbert adventure game and you can play it now.

Don’t ask who he is. If you don’t know, just go play Maniac Mansion. And The Secret of Monkey Island (plus its sequel). Gilbert helped create both of them, along with a string of other classic adventure games.

SEE ALSO: Playing a game in a different language can make or break a world record speedrun

His latest co-created with Maniac Mansion collaborator Gary Winnick is called Thimbleweed Park and it is a Kickstarter darling. The game’s crowdfunding campaign kicked off in 2014 with a $375,000 target that had nearly doubled by the time it ended with $626,250 pledged.

Two and a half years later and just shy of a year after the original release target Thimbleweed is here in all its lo-fi glory. Let’s see what the critics think.

Destructoid (Kevin McClusky)

Thimbleweed Parklets you take control of five very different characters, each with their own skills and specialties. You’ll move them around the town, picking up anything that isn’t glued down to try and figure out the mysteries that surround you. It’s set in 1987, though there’re some anachronisms to be found if you want to get pedantic. The story begins as a murder mystery, and borrows some of its trappings from several early ’90s favorites likeTwin PeaksandThe X-Files. Later on,there’s even some stuff in there that calls back toThe Matrix. It does a great job of setting the mood and maintaining tension, even though you can play at your own pace and there’s only one (easily avoidable) way to get yourself into a failure state.

Polygon (Whitney Reynolds)

These multiple viewpoints are a straight lift from Maniac Mansion, and it works. While the different characters don’t have particularly different skills, they have different knowledge and limitations. One character might be afraid of heights where another will happily climb, and another might know useful information about vacuum tubes where another is clueless. Some puzzles take multiple characters working together in different locations to solve, similar to the Maniac Mansion sequel, Day of the Tentacle. All of it added together to make clever ways for me to get my brain working in several directions at once to solve puzzles. And, when my brain wasn’t quite working, I could quickly switch to a different character to get away from whatever puzzle thread I’d gotten stuck on.

IGN (Ryan McCaffrey)

It helps to have so many playable characters. While you might assume that having five people and five inventories to manage could overwhelm you, Thimbleweed Parks alternative paths are instead welcome, and later puzzles require multiple characters to work together from different locations. For instance, at one point, youll need to distract a reporter with one hero remotely, via radio, so the one in the room can get what he/she needs. On that note, every playable Park-er eventually gets a map, which effectively serves as a much-needed fast-travel system.

GamesRadar+ (David Roberts)

Fortunately, most of the … puzzles are logically consistent with the world Thimbleweed Park presents, and each character’s notebook keeps a running checklist of everything you need to do to progress the story which helps to keep you on track if you start to feel overwhelmed by your ever-increasing inventory. There’s even a casual difficulty, which strips out a lot of the more vexing puzzles for a more streamlined experience (much like Monkey Island 2’s “magazine reviewer” mode). For a game as rooted in the past as Thimbleweed Park is, it does a lot to help give newer and less-experienced adventure game players plenty of chances to succeed without consulting a strategy guide.

Kotaku (Jason Schreier)

As the game goes on, these puzzle chains grow increasingly silly and complicated, as do your interactions with the inhabitants of Thimbleweed Park. (My favorite: an intrepid newspaper journalist who really wants to win a Pulitzer.) The puzzles can get difficult but rarely feel unfair, and when you solve them, youre usually rewarded with something fun, be it a new area, some gorgeous art, or a good joke. (There are lots and lots of good jokes.)

PCWorld (Hayden Dingman)

[O]n rare occasions characters are removed from your control for story reasons, along with their inventories. Just realized you need an item you left on that other character? Too bad, because youll have to wait 5 to 10 minutes for them to return. I wont spoil why that happens, but will say its frustrating the times it does.

And while I grew a bit annoyed at how many seemingly useless red herring items are in the game, I was doubly annoyed at how cavalier the game is with your inventory. Thimbleweed Park is split into eight chapters, and sometimes the game just decides to pare down your inventory without warning, removing a bunch of fun items before youve really explored their potential. A shame.

pixelkin (Eric Watson)

We may long for the golden era of Adventure games but the genre is far from dead. Thimbleweed Park represents a triumphant return to classic LucasArts Adventures. Its alovingly hand-crafted story from the masters of thegenre. If you have any affinity for a pixelated adventure that makes you think as much as smile, do not sleep on Thimbleweed Park.

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Read more: http://ift.tt/2nQeINN

from ‘Thimbleweed Park’ review round-up: A worthy homage (with some hiccups)