#xb-squaredx

[xb-squaredx]

How Monolith Soft’s Future Was Redeemed

Whether you’ve heard of game developer Monolith Soft before or not, if you’re into the gaming landscape they’re definitely a name worth remembering, and they’ve had quite the history over their 23 years in the business. Founded by Tetsuya Takahashi and Hirohide Sugiura, themselves veterans of Square from the 1990s, the company has undergone many trials and tribulations and worked with a variety of different companies from 1999 to the present day. With their latest release wrapping up the current trilogy in the Xenoblade series, I figured there was no better time than to look back and reflect on the journey the company and the founders of that company have gone through, so let’s get right to it!

TAKAHASHI’S PERFECT WORKS

Looking at Takahashi’s resume alone will show that he had a hand in a variety of beloved games during his time at Square. Working on Final Fantasy IV, V and VI among a few other titles such as Romancing Saga, Takahashi and his wife, Soraya Saga, would pitch an idea for the seventh Final Fantasy game. While rejected for being considered too dark for the brand, they were eventually given permission to develop it into their own title, which would become known as Xenogears. Takahashi and Saga had ambitious plans for the title, believing it could become a massive franchise in its own right, though the actual game’s development was fraught with issues.

Xenogears was composed of two discs, and the first disc set up lofty expectations for the rest of the game, balancing a story steeped in religious and philosophical themes alongside turn-based battles that would utilize giant robots, or “Gears.” However, the second disc was mostly comprised of narration from characters with hardly any gameplay or cinematics. This was allegedly done as a result of both the development team’s inexperience and inability to extend the two year development deadline, and thus was done as a compromise of sorts, or else the game would have shipped half-complete. The game’s English localization almost didn’t happen, with several translators quitting the project, both due to the difficulty of translating a game loaded up with references to various scientific and philosophical concepts, on top of controversy surrounding its religious themes. Despite these setbacks, the game was still critically acclaimed and it was clear that Takahashi and Saga were keen on developing the game’s world more. Alongside development of Xenogears they had also crafted “Perfect Works,” their plans for other installments in the setting that would span a much larger story. Xenogears itself was considered, chronologically, to be the fifth part of what would have eventually been six entries.

However, Takahashi and company had routinely faced issues with Square both before and during development of this title. Growing frustrated with their prioritizing of the Final Fantasy brand above all else, they would eventually found Monolith Soft, taking with them a number of other staff they worked with. They found themselves in bed with Namco, who would publish their games for much of the 2000s. Monolith Soft would then decide to start over and craft a new franchise that would follow Perfect Works…and that game would become the Xenosaga series.

A more explicitly sci-fi series from the get go, Xenosaga was conceived as a six game series, with possible plans for it branching out into multimedia, with an animated series and manga series produced, alongside a few spinoffs titles that would end up staying Japan exclusive. A spiritual successor through and through, Xenosaga contained a number of references to the Xenogears series, alongside a continued focus on mech battles, religious and philosophical themes and turn-based combat. While the first game was a strong debut for this new franchise, each subsequent entry would sell less and less, eventually trimming the series down to three games out of its originally planned six. History repeated with regards to development issues, particularly with Xenosaga: Episode II, as Takahashi had taken on a supervising role, and the team itself was composed of newer staff that wasn’t prepared for such an ambitious title. Takahashi would admit the series underperformed on the whole, part of the reason for the sudden halving of the planned story. Despite a clean start, it seemed as if Perfect Works was anything but a perfect project, with now two failed franchises behind them. However, the winds of fate would wind up changing.

FINDING THEIR FOOTING WITH NINTENDO

Monolith Soft ended up cozying up with Nintendo as the years went on, eventually being purchased by the company and becoming a first-party studio in the late 2000s. Morale at the studio was low after Xenosaga’s abrupt ending, but Takahashi was ready to move onto a new project as a way to boost employee spirits. Coming from an image that appeared in his head of two gigantic gods locked in fierce battle, the idea would develop into a game originally titled Monado: Beginning of the World. However, at the behest of former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, the title would be changed to Xenoblade, to honor the struggles Monolith Soft had undergone over the years and serve as a slight connecting thread to past projects. And the rest is history…to a point.

The original Xenoblade Chronicles debuted on the Wii in 2010, a massive near open-world RPG with a deep MMO-inspired combat system and an ambitious story. Compared to past efforts, Xenoblade was a game that Takahashi and company were able to realize with a comparatively smooth development, with few compromises to the original vision of the game at that. Releasing to relatively high critical acclaim, the game was initially not localized outside of Japan. Eventually Nintendo of Europe showed interest and would localize it, but Nintendo of America wouldn’t budge. This game, alongside a few others, actually inspired the “Operation Rainfall” fan movement to give them more attention and see localization (and I’ve even written about it before LINK HERE), and while Nintendo might not publically acknowledge the campaign as a deciding factor the game would eventually be brought to North America…exclusively in Gamestop stores. A low initial print, combined with Gamestop selling “used” copies at high prices, insured it became one of the harder to find Wii games, and while it was somewhat better known outside of Japan, it was still rather niche.

That began to change in the Wii U era, however. In a 2013 Nintendo Direct showcasing early looks at various Wii U games, a mysterious title from Monolith Soft was shown. Codenamed X, it was yet another massive RPG with a decidedly more sci-fi look…that sure seemed familiar. Eventually releasing as Xenoblade Chronicles X in 2015, this title would also see acclaim for its massive world and complex combat, though being a Wii U release it didn’t exactly reach many players. A year prior however, Shulk was revealed to be included in the base roster for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, being the last character announced before launch. This helped to put Xenoblade as a series on the map, and gave some momentum that Monolith Soft would continue into the Nintendo Switch era.

Since their acquisition, Monolith Soft would also work as a support studio for Nintendo, particular with their Kyoto office comprised mainly of artists, creating assets for a variety of projects. Over the years, they’ve worked on the Super Smash. Bros. series (Brawl), the Legend of Zelda series (from Skyward Sword all the way to Tears of the Kingdom), the Animal Crossing series from New Leaf onward as well as the Splatoon series. Their help was greatly appreciated with the more recent console Zelda titles in particular, as they were instrumental in creating the vast expanses that would help make Breath of the Wild a smash hit. Considering they’ve lent their talents to a variety of games that have gone on to sell like hotcakes and break past previous franchise records, I think that really helped them prove their worth as an asset for Nintendo, and as such they are given license to continue their own ambitious projects.

At the tail end of 2017, the Switch’s debut year, we would get Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which would go on to become the best-selling entry in the series and experience a boon of new players. More in-line with the fantasy aesthetics of the Wii game, 2 also continued exploring similar themes and further developing the battle system shared across both previous games in the series. Despite its success, the game itself still ran into problems though. With much of Monolith staff working on BOTW it was mostly a skeleton crew on Xenoblade 2, resulting in a number of third-party artists being brought on to ensure the game could be completed, though that also led to complaints about the inconsistent art style and character designs. Technically, the game had issues at launch that were slowly patched out, and being the first simultaneous worldwide launch of the series, it was clear that the English localization was not given as much care as previous games. Despite this, it was clear that this title was what helped to establish Xenoblade as a core Nintendo IP moving forward, and the franchise continues to do well.

A BRIGHT FUTURE AHEAD

Following Xenoblade 2’s release, it would receive a prequel game as part of its expansion pass, Torna: The Golden Country, which fleshed out events happening in that game’s distant past, alongside polishing up gameplay to relative acclaim. In 2020, an enhanced port of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 would release on the Switch, with updated visuals (in particular polishing up the character models), and a new epilogue story, Future Connected. The heroines of Xenoblade 2, Pyra and Mythra, would be announced as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s second Fighters Pass as well.

In 2022, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 would see a surprise reveal at the start of the year, releasing just a few months later. After the somewhat mixed reception of the previous game, 3 received rave reviews and several Game of the Year nominations. Many felt it to be an emotionally charged journey, once again spanning a massive world and containing complex combat to wrap it all together. In just a few years, the entire trilogy was now available all on one system. Not too shabby for a series initially struggling to get localized.

The major thing to remember with the Xenoblade series is that it was yet another fresh start for Takahashi and company. While still clearly its own thing, as the years went on many eagle-eyed fans would spot various references to past Xeno games. These often were seen as knowing winks and nods, but little else. When it came to various characters and story beats, there were also some connecting threads indicating that Takahashi, after all of these years, might finally be dusting off “Perfect Works” and starting anew again, after he had previously sworn it off and considered the ideas scrapped. One major change this time around however seemed to be based around making sure each individual game in the Xenoblade series would be a standalone tale that wouldn’t require playing previous entries. There were some connecting threads, yes, but ultimately each entry could stand on its own and fully realize a given theme or story idea without having to overtly connect into a larger narrative. And then Xenoblade 3’s story DLC happened.

Released at the tail-end of April 2023, Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed was yet another prequel campaign in a similar vein to Torna. Future Redeemed would cover events that occurred in the backstory for the base game, however this time around it became clear VERY quickly that this was where it would all come together. Without getting into the details of things, on top of being wary of spoiling this expansion after it just released, Future Redeemed ends up being the means to tie the trilogy together and end it on a satisfying note, with a conclusion that gave fans a lot of closure. Various theories were finally put to rest, though just as many have sprung up in the wake of that game’s ending.

It isn’t immediately clear just where this franchise, or Monolith Soft as a company, will be going next, but my gut tells me we have some great things in store. The core Xenoblade trilogy may be done, but Takahashi has gone on record stating he wants the series to continue for as long as he can do so. There’s still a lot of clear affection for their previous efforts as well. Xenosaga’s KOS-MOS and T-ELOS were guest characters in Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s expansion pass, and there have been more…overt nods to the series in general as time has gone on. There are rumors here and there that the series might return in some form. At the very least, I’m sure many a fan would be happy with simple ports to current systems, but we’ll have to wait and see just where Takahashi’s Wild Ride takes us.

In the end, I’m just happy to see that Monolith Soft has managed to turn out alright after all these years. I first became aware of them when, on a lark, I picked up a copy of the original Xenoblade. I was struck by that game’s scope and ambition and I’ve been a diehard fan ever since. Seeing just how much they’ve been carrying Nintendo into the Switch era, I think it’s only fair that they get the respect they deserve. On top of it all, it sounds like the company promotes a fairly healthy work/life balance, and their time with Nintendo has enabled them to see their visions through with few compromises. A win-win for all involved, really. Their own original entries might always be a bit niche and definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m glad their ambitions are becoming more and more realized as time goes on. From humble beginnings in the trenches at Square, to now being a pillar of one of the Big Three game publishers, I can’t wait to see the heights that Monolith Soft can climb.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

The Avengers Game: The Surefire Hit That Misfired

With the stronghold that the Marvel Cinematic Universe had on pop culture for the past decade, it was all the more puzzling that they didn’t capitalize on that in the realm of video games. Superhero video games have been a thing since the medium began, but for the longest time Marvel’s gaming efforts were few and far between, outside of the rare Spider-Man title. But in 2017 a collaboration between Square Enix and Marvel was announced, with a variety of game products teased, among them being a project centered on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. On paper, this seemed like a complete slam dunk. A prolific AAA game developer, a hot IP that hadn’t had a lot of game action in a while, and it would be landing right when the MCU hype was at its peak with the back-to-back hits of Infinity War and Endgame. But that wasn’t what happened. Something went wrong, and the surefire hit….misfired. Just before the game’s delisting at the end of September 2023, I ended up purchasing the game on a deep discount, curious at what all the fuss was about. So let’s talk about how this game ended up the way it did.

A FALSE START

Marvel’s Avengers launched in September of 2020, and to say the launch was rough would be an understatement. Broken matchmaking, a litany of bugs and performance issues, and a deeply unsatisfied fanbase. While it’s clear the pandemic had played a huge part in the game’s lackluster release state, the fact it was allowed to release like this at all was worrying. Only a month later player numbers on PC had dropped significantly and the game seemingly was in its death throes. In March of 2021 the next-gen console versions of the game released, and with it a multitude of fixes and additional content. It was clear this was an attempted re-launch of the game, but you know what they say about first impressions…

Now, to give the developers some credit, there were legitimate attempts to improve the game and add more worthwhile content. They didn’t just cut and run and leave players holding the bag. Effort was put in to making the game better and trying to right the ship, though the damage had already been done with the game’s reputation. Even as someone who got the game far after every patch and fix went out, I still encountered a ton of issues and on my last-gen PS4 console the overall experience was still rough. It feels like a game that really should have been next-gen only, but was pushed out to the last-gen systems to get as much profit as possible, in a manner similar to the ill-fated launch of Cyberpunk 2077. The sad truth here is that regardless of patches and additions to the game, no matter how many bugs they fixed and feedback they implemented, there were problems with the very core of the game, and in order to properly address these issues…they would have been better off making a new game from scratch.

THE GEAR SCORE MAKES THE HERO

One of the most hotly debated aspects of Marvel’s Avengers was its status as a live-service game. At a time when the “games as a service” bubble was about to burst, fans had largely grown intolerant of more games coming out competing for their time and money, and if you are going to market yourself as a “forever game” with tons of ways to spend money and get players to log in every day, you have to make it worth it for them and…well, I think the game’s overall reception and failure speaks for itself.

So much of Marvel’s Avengers is grinding for grinding’s sake. Everything takes longer to unlock and build up than it should, clearly designed in such a way to squeeze money out of the playerbase. After a certain point, the goal is no longer to make a satisfying game for players and instead to make it into an infinite revenue machine. At the game’s launch you had TONS of cosmetics that could only be gotten through a tedious grind of in-game currency….or you just pay up with real money. At one point the developers even tried to market an experience boosting item for players, before it was removed due to protest. Keep in mind this was a full-price game. Just a few years prior we had Marvel’s Spider-Man as a solid single-player game that had NO microtransactions at all, and a TON of costumes you could unlock by…playing the game. How novel! Speaking of Spider-Man, let’s not forget that one of the most popular superheroes of all time was made into a PlayStation exclusive for no other reason than greed. Now, I’ve played the game long after the final update just unlocked all cosmetics for players to enjoy for free, and what few things I have to unlock from in-game vendors shows me that this grind must have been awful to live through, and it must be even worse if you HAD paid for stuff without knowing that one day it would be made free with the flip of a switch.

On top of all of this, there was also artificial bloat inserted into the game’s progression systems with the focus on loot and raising your player’s Power Level. Over the last few years I’ve seen a lot of games worship at the altar of “gear score” and I hate it every time. They completely miss the forest for the trees regarding what makes loot and loadouts work in other games. Often times your own abilities as a player are downplayed in favor of forcing you to micromanage your gear, and it unfortunately infects the Avengers experience. Despite the fact that you’re playing as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, you don’t feel all that powerful unless you have the right arbitrary number attached to the endless loot you sift through during missions. Hulk Smash….but only if you put on the wrist guards that give him plus 5% damage when it’s raining outside. Remember how in Spiderman: Homecoming Peter has to grapple with being a hero despite Tony taking away his fancy suit with all those gadgets? Or how this game’s own campaign is constantly touting the platitude that “Good isn’t a thing you are, it’s a thing you do?” Yeah well actually the gear makes the hero, so get to grinding if you want to actually embody these characters!

You constantly have to deal with gear you get from enemy drops, finding them in strong boxes, or completing missions. While you do on occasion find some gear with some tangible effects that you can tuck away for a specific mission, the bulk of gear is garbage and exists almost purely just to sell off to get a pittance of currency in exchange, or later on to feed existing gear and make it stronger. But with each mission you’ll get better and better gear, constantly having to replace what you already had, so don’t get attached. So many of the modifiers and stat bonuses to gear are so minor they don’t even feel noticeable, and what’s more, it’s all there to keep up the illusion of progression.

There’s no actual progression from the gear system; the game automatically scales to whatever your Power Level is when selecting most missions. There are SOME missions that have a higher Power Level by default that you can’t take on until you’re at that level, but they didn’t feel noticeably more challenging than other missions. Now, I never hit the Power Level cap with any character, and I’ve seen evidence that some missions are hidden from view unless your Power Level is high enough, so I can’t quite speak for the pure endgame content, but the bulk of the game showcases just how horrible the gear system is as a progression system. It’s worth noting that there’s also individual levels for each character, which actually works FAR better as a real progression system. Each level up gets you a skill point that can be put towards multiple skill tress that further expand each character’s moveset and allows for experimentation to suit different playstyles and strategies. Gear systems CAN be down well, but it doesn’t work in this game, and I can say with confidence the entire experience would have been better without its inclusion. Getting off of my soapbox then, we should probably discuss the actual contents of the game itself, starting with what many touted as the best part of the whole game….the single-player campaign.

AN INHUMAN CAMPAIGN

A fair bit of the pre-release coverage of this game was focused around the story. Well before we saw any gameplay or even know what type of game Marvel’s Avengers was going to be, they were hyping up the voice cast as if it was a movie. Despite all of that focus, the single-player campaign didn’t exactly live up to my expectations for more than a few reasons, despite a decent start.

The premise is an interesting one for starters. The Avengers are blamed for a tragic accident and forcefully disbanded but years later a superhero fangirl, Kamala Khan, sets out on a journey to help clear their names and get the gang back together. Kamala is one of a few newer Marvel characters that has gotten a fair amount of buzz, similar to the likes of Miles Morales, and it’s undoubtedly great to see her take on a major role in a game like this. The early bits of the game put you in her shoes as she struggles to come to grips with her new found super powers, and the dynamic she has with the Avengers is endearing. That said, over time it started to feel like the story was being stretched thinner and thinner, and more problems started to emerge that sadly weren’t solved by the ending.

For starters, Kamala takes up the bulk of screen time. I don’t mind her being the main focus of the narrative, but for a game named after the Avengers…the team itself actually doesn’t do as much as you’d think. While we get to Hulk and Iron Man early enough, and Black Widow has a decent behind-the-scenes impact on the plot, I really feel like the narrative didn’t know what to do for Thor or Captain America. By the time the whole team is back together the game is about over, and any fun banter or moments they could have had together was mostly relegated to how they all feel about Kamala. There are times when the game’s narrative almost feels like it was written like Kamala’s fan fiction, where she is the center of everything and the other Avengers seem far too trusting and supportive of her right away, not to mention she faces little to no consequences for her actions at times. I want to stress I DO like Kamala and I think Sandra Saad does a good job portraying her, but the game gets awfully close to being a game about Ms. Marvel, featuring the Avengers, and that’s not exactly how the game was advertised.

Outside of that, I take issue with the game’s focus on the Inhumans, or rather, the lack of focus. In the comics, Inhumans are descendants of humans experimented on by the alien race known as the Kree. When exposed to “Terrigen Mist” they develop superhuman abilities, and there’s also a lot of political stuff with a royal family of Inhumans that live on the moon. In this game however, the alien aspects of Inhumans are severely downplayed, and the event that ends up releasing the Terrigen Mist and creating Inhumans here is more or less implied to be completely manmade, with no mentions of the royal family either. While it’s possible the game would have delved into the Inhuman’s alien origins later on (as certain missions do tease the Kree quite a bit in the postgame), all we’re left with in the base game is…effectively bootleg X-Men. There’s this guy, Theo, who can teleport people here and there, and he’s also bright blue…and he kind of just comes across as a less-cool Nightcrawler in every way. When you meet the Inhuman resistance later in the game, they end up being led by…Ant-Man? Because I guess they couldn’t think of or use any other prominent Inhuman character aside from Kamala. For the last few years, as Marvel began really pushing the Inhumans in the comics, TV shows and now games, it was largely as a response to not having the X-Men film rights and not wanting to promote them once the MCU took off. Many fans likewise dislike the Inhumans and view them as poor replacements for the X-Men .While I think both could have their place in the Marvel world and the premise does have potential, this particular game doesn’t really do ANYTHING of note with them.

Then there’s the lack of notable villains. While on the one hand I appreciate that the developers weren’t just reusing villains already seen in the MCU like Loki, Ultron or Thanos, their use of A.I.M. and M.O.D.O.K. leaves a lot to be desired. I’m sorry, but M.O.D.O.K. isn’t a strong enough villain to carry the rest of the game, and while there are a FEW other notable Marvel villains in here, I find they’re not used well. Taskmaster is a tutorial boss fight, and Abomination is fought early on…and then that’s about it in the base game. With both of them copy and pasted into post-game missions with a vague “oh, they’re just clones” justification. It wouldn’t be until the other story expansions that we’d get a few more villains like Maestro, an evil version of the Hulk from the future, or Ulysses Klaue, a notable Black Panther villain, but at that point it felt like too little too late. And that’s not to mention that most of the basic enemies in the game are just robots with no real personality or designs that really pop, or else fighting waves and waves of “guy with gun.” What a notable roster we’re working with here.

For all of the potential that the early hours of the campaign showcased, the cracks started to form quickly and my opinion of the story only went down with time. We started with nice cinematics and character banter, some intrigue with how it was all going to come together…but steadily it became apparent that most of the Avengers were being sidelined, the villains were weak, and the emphasis on hand-crafted single-player levels and setpieces would dwindle with time, revealing the game’s true colors.

AVENGERS: AGE OF REPETITON

For as negative as I’ve been so far, I do want to stress that I DID enjoy the moment-to-moment playing of the game and it’s clear a lot of time and effort was put into making a fun action game with Marvel characters. Now, there IS a certain level of balance here to make sure everyone is equally viable, which leads to some characters not quite living up to the power fantasy. Black Widow can take on enemies just as effectively as Hulk can, while Thor and Iron Man’s flight is slow to keep them from leaving everyone in the dust. Despite that, every character has enough tools to make them pop. Hulk can grab minor enemies and use them as weapons. Kamala’s stretchy attacks let her be a menace from any range. Smacking enemies with Thor’s hammer, or flinging Captain America’s shield at multiple opponents never got old. Even the non-powered characters like both of the Hawkeyes or Black Widow were plenty fun to use, armed with a lot of tools to take on enemies and get around the giant levels. From the intricate takedown animations for each character (Thor having a penchant for wrestling, while Kate Bishop uses teleporting to take out enemies in style) to the heavy amount of customization with everyone’s skill trees, there was a lot to like about the combat…but that can’t save a game that is so dull and repetitive elsewhere.

After the first few hours of the campaign I was suddenly forced to start selecting missions on the War Table and saw the game for what it truly was; the same handful of maps, enemies and objectives repeated over and over and over again. Compared to the curated single-player levels, the main missions, designed around multiplayer, are filled with massive maps that honestly felt way too big for their own good. You have to wander about as you look for small enemy outposts dotted here and there, fighting a pretty pathetic roster of enemies along the way. Not only are most enemies rather uninspired robots, but so many of them are just annoying to fight. Snipers that teleport away from you the instant you get close, endless turrets and drones that are always picking at you from far away, and more “elite” enemies that have tons of health to chew through in lieu of being more challenging to fight most of the time. Bosses are especially bad about this; most are huge damage sponges and play similarly to each other, completely shrugging off any attacks you land and taking forever to take out. I understand they’re balanced around four players but even so they would take so long to defeat and required barely any real engagement. Just dodge the big telegraphed attacks, sneak a few hits in and run, then rinse and repeat for several minutes.

Outside of just fighting enemies, your main mission objectives rarely change up in a meaningful way and just a few hours in I had seen most of what the game had to offer with objectives. Save some Inhuman hostages by opening up their cages, or defend some allies from waves of enemies. Maybe you need to use JARVIS to hack into A.I.M.’s database, so defend those computers from enemy hackers! There is on occasion some “puzzles” that would require a BIT of coordination, hitting switches or stepping on pressure plates to open doors for more loot but ultimately that was about as advanced as it got. Most level design would vary from gigantic open environments to linear corridors that are repeated so often I knew them like the back of my hand after just a handful of missions. Now, again, maybe that endgame stuff does change things up, but I’d rather not wade through so much of the same content over and over to see for myself.

And that’s the real shame here…for all the potential I see in this game, it gets exhausting quickly. It takes so long to actually flesh out your character movesets and try everyone out, but by that point you’ll have done the same handful of missions to the point of getting sick of them. Even with the expansions there just isn’t enough meat here to justify the grind. Sad as it is to say, it was painfully clear just why this game failed after just a few hours of playing.

AN UNENVIABLE LEGACY

The domino effect of Marvel’s Avengers’ failure is arguably just as interesting as the game itself. The poor showing for the game cost Square Enix a LOT of money, and was likely a factor in their decision to sell off their Western developers, including the developers of this game, Crystal Dynamics. The year after this game’s launch, Eidos Montreal’s Guardians of the Galaxy game ended up getting the cold shoulder from fans…despite the fact that it was exactly what many fans had wanted; a solid single-player experience with a great story that had a lot of love for the source material. But fans saw a Marvel game with Square Enix publishing it and assumed it would follow in Avengers’ footsteps. Elsewhere, the frosty reception to DC’s live-service superhero efforts with Gotham Knights and the yet-to-be-released Suicide Squad game can be at least partially attributed to this game’s poor performance. While Gotham Knight’s full release was devoid of microtransactions, the grindy nature of player progression and multiple in-game currencies to juggle points to it possibly being removed later in development. Meanwhile, the instant the word “gear score” was uttered at the gameplay reveal for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League the game was attacked by fans and the game has suffered multiple delays and as of now, it’s not clear what state that game will release in. All due to one poorly-received game!

(One screenshot was all it took for people to turn on this game)

It’s clear that the live service bubble has burst; you can only get so many people to sign up for so many “forever games” before something gives. While your mega hits like Fortnite might continue on, it’s clear by now that you can’t quite compete with that and I wouldn’t be shocked if major game releases start to pivot away from this model. It’s also been argued that the superhero bubble might have burst in mainstream pop culture. Several superhero films over the last few years have not done particularly well with fans OR at the box office. From MCU misses like the third Ant-Man movie, or the latest Thor release, to DC’s extremely costly failure with The Flash, it’s possible that superhero games might also be on the way out. That being said, Marvel does still have SEVERAL other games in the pipeline, such as the next game from Insomniac, Spider-Man 2, so it’s possible this game’s failure wasn’t enough to scare them off.

It’s sad to see how poorly this game performed in the end, even if it’s easy to see why things went this way. In another world, this game could have been a smash hit, creating a platform filled with fun things to do and multiple Marvel heroes added over a very long life. I can only imagine how they might have made certain characters work if they had only gotten the chance. Had the game launched in a better state, or hadn’t gone the live-service route, things might have been very different, but regardless the damage has been done. With Square selling off Crystal Dynamics and Eidos to Embracer, and mass layoffs hitting multiple Embracer entities, Crystal Dynamics included, there’s no hope of a second chance with this title. I can only hope the best for the people involved that they can use their talents on a better game down the line

With Marvel’s Avengers officially delisted from all major storefronts and the future of the game’s online services somewhat uncertain, I thought it important to talk about this game before it is lost to the annals of history. For all the problems I had with the game, I was happy to at least play it before it was too late. I can see that this was far from a cheap cash-in title, and a lot of talented people gave their all on a game that just didn’t work out for a multitude of reasons. I can only hope that someday we can get a more successful spin on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and game developers can look at this game as a cautionary tale for how to somehow ruin what should have been a guaranteed success.

Excelsior!

-B

[xb-squaredx]

The Frustrating State of Splatoon 3

Splatoon 3 was among the best-selling games of last year, and if you read my top games of the year post you’d see that I ranked it relatively highly. In just eight years, Splatoon has gone from the strange new IP on the struggling Wii U to being a major franchise for one of the biggest game developers out there. Being right there from the beginning, it was a magical time as the game slowly came into its own. However, almost one year into Splatoon 3’s release, I find myself torn. While largely enjoying the game as much as I ever have with the past two entries, 3 in particular has some pretty glaring issues that is slowly but surely whittling away at my patience and desire to play at all. So join me as I vent a bit about the state of Splatoon 3.

THE NETCODE! IT DOES NOTHING!

When it comes to most Nintendo series, online play is an afterthought, if it has it at all. Generally speaking, the company has shown to be laughably out of date regarding their consoles’ online infrastructure and the online experiences of a lot of their big titles. So imagine the problems when it comes to designing a game like Splatoon that is predominantly an online experience. The first two Splatoon games had their share of issues but they were fun enough…but something went wrong with 3.

From day one of release, up until the time of writing, I have suffered countless connection issues and errors in Splatoon 3, far more than I had with the first two games combined. Now, to this game’s credit, there have been attempts to address certain issues that have plagued the series. Matches end in a No Contest ruling if someone disconnects early in a match, you won’t be assigned a loss if someone on your team disconnects, and people that disconnect frequently are not only assigned losses, but also can get penalized and timed out of playing. These are some great improvements…if the infrastructure for the game even worked. Splatoon 3 is one of only a handful of games on Nintendo’s updated in-house server system, and I have to imagine the developers were grappling with issues well into the game’s release and couldn’t quite smooth them out. It was extremely noticeable in the early days of the game’s release, and even after several patches that allegedly helped with matchmaking and connections, I still see issues frequently. I have pretty good Internet, and actually sprung for an Ethernet adaptor to have a wired connection with my Switch. I have rarely had issues in other games and yet I’ll still see random disconnections in this game…and then it has the gall to blame ME for it and put me in time out. Oddly enough, Splatoon 3 is pretty much the ONLY game I play currently that has any kind of punishment system for disconnections…and yet it’s also the most unstable game of the lot. Ironic, really.

Outside of people disconnecting, which isn’t always the game’s fault, there’s also the game’s matchmaking and lobbies. At first I was really thrilled with the game’s overhaul of lobbies and queuing for matches. In the previous games you’d be stuck watching a screen as people slowly filed in for a match, without much to do. Being able to now freely run around in a training room and try out your weapon while the game searches for players in the background is great! What is less great is when the game flashes a “communication error” or “one or more players disconnected” message and completely crashes the room. This happens so frequently that it’s rare I play more than one game with a given group of randoms. I have noticed far less issues when grouping up with friends, and I appreciate that it is far easier to play with friends in general here, but it still ruins the overall pacing of a game session with a lot of starting and stopping of matchmaking, whereas in Splatoon 1 and 2 I could get a faster series of matches after that initial wait.

I understand that online connectivity can have tons of variables in play. In fact, for a time this past April I had a number of online issues that took me quite a bit of time to solve. It wouldn’t be fair to expect a flawless experience every single time I boot up Splatoon 3 but even accounting for other people rage quitting or the Internet in general having some hiccups every now and then, the frequency of issues is still far too high. Even if the rest of the game was flawless, the simple fact that it just doesn’t WORK at times makes for a stain on the rest of the package. But of course there’s more to this game’s problems than this, so let’s move on.

DUDE, WHERE’S MY FLANK ROUTES?

Stage design is important in any shooter, but especially one like Splatoon, a game defined by the ability to ink and swim over any terrain. Each game in the series certainly has its ups and downs with stages, but I’m particularly disappointed with 3’s so far. I think it’s telling that my favorite stages in 3 are actually from the two previous games. There are a number of things at fault here, with the most baffling one to me being the decrease in verticality for most stages. Many stages are flatter, with less ways to get to higher vantage points. There’s also an increase in un-inkable terrain, especially regarding walls. By itself that’s not necessarily a bad decision if the developers just wanted to go into a different direction…but then why did they include new mechanics that are clearly based AROUND having more verticality? The Zipcaster special weapon is supposed to let you grapple around the stage, but on many stages the special barely has any impact. It’s like if you take Spider-Man out of New York City and see that his web swinging is far more ineffective when he doesn’t have giant skyscrapers around him at all times. There’s also the Squid Surge, a universal technique that lets you quickly shoot up inked walls, but most of the time it’s easy to forget it even exists because so few stages feel like they were designed with it in mind. Even the single player largely ignores the mechanic at times, which just makes me question why it was even included at all. It feels like the developers weren’t all on the same page here.

You could also apply that to the lack of alternate routes or flanking options in most stages. Many stages in Splatoon 3 are little more than straight shots to the middle of the stage, with it often becoming a bloodbath with no way to quickly escape. You have forced drops that make it difficult to retreat to higher ground, if not impossible. I think the stage that showcases this the most is Hammerhead Bridge, which is from the first game but has been so heavily altered it’s practically a different stage. The bridge is basically just one straight line, and as a result the stage is one series of chokepoints after another. Once one side breaks past the middle it becomes harder and harder for the defending team to force them out. Having an alternate route to get around this and flank them from behind would help alleviate the spawn camping that usually results on that stage, but they’re gone. With that in mind, Hammerhead is probably my least favorite stage in the game; matches just devolve into being the first team to push past the middle and lock the enemy down for the remainder of the match. Some stages are more open than others, but on the whole it feels like options are limited and more than ever it’s easier to be backed up into a corner. What is especially frustrating is that pre-release footage of stages like Eeltail Alley or Scorch Gorge showcase dramatically different layouts that were more open, and yet the final release leaves us with stages that drastically limit your approach to the other team. Clearly, plans changed during development.

(Stages like Mahi Mahi Resort saw drastic changes from Splatoon 1 (Left) to Splatoon 3 (Right), becoming smaller and flatter)

Now, Splatoon is a live-service game and there are constant changes and additions to be excited for, and to a degree the stage situation has gotten better. Stages like Manta Marina or Flounder Heights offer more vertical options and are mostly untouched from their previous games, though personally I’m not very impressed with most of the new post-launch stages. One aspect the developers seemed to be aware of was the power that certain ranged weapons had on some stages. Eeltail Alley and Mincemeat Metalworks could be completely locked down by a good Charger or Splatling if they claimed the middle bridge. After the 3.0 update though, signs and other objects were added to some stages to provide some cover and keep long-range weapons from having such an advantage though the changes feel more like a bandage over a larger problem with the stage design on the whole. The series has completely renovated older stages in the past and that might still happen with 3, but as it stands we’re nearly a year in without major changes. Time will tell on how well this matter is handled but for the moment there are some days I log in and see the stage rotation and just immediately close the game because I’d rather not deal with certain stages at all.

SALMON RUN: REMEMBER, YOU’RE HERE FOREVER

Salmon Run was one of the best additions to Splatoon 2, a unique co-op experience that clearly had potential to be built on in a future game. 3 definitely makes some good improvements. Having the mode available at all times for starters, and the ability to toss eggs a good distance forward is a game changer that would make it tough to go back to 2’s version of the mode. That said, other changes for the mode haven’t been nearly as welcome I find.

As a live-service game, Splatoon needs to find ways to keep players coming back for more. Players already earn rewards for playing in the mode, though it often only takes a handful of games before your bonus rewards dry up until the next shift starts. In comes the addition of the Xtrawave, and a chance to fight a King Salmonid if you’ve managed to clear all three normal waves. The Xtrawave is itself a fun challenge that can cap off a successful win-streak, without any penalties for losing. That said, the rewards for clearing Xtrawave feel very lacking for the effort you have to put in. Scales are awarded for participating in the Xtrawave, gaining more if you manage to defeat the King, on top of how high the hazard level is when the wave began. While finishing quicker with high hazard levels can net you more scales there is a hard cap on how many you can earn, not to mention good old random chance when it comes to getting the rarer silver and gold scales. In fact, if your hazard level is low enough it’s apparently just straight up impossible to get gold scales. So the mode pushes you to juice up that hazard level and play over and over and over again to get just a handful of the things…and when it comes to what you can trade them in for, you’ll be working your tailfin off to afford anything of value. There are some stickers and figurines for your locker, with cosmetic items like extra slop suit colors and even some gear you can wear in normal multiplayer, but there are some problems here. The prices are pretty absurd for how long it takes to build up any of the rare scales, and what’s more the game’s shop won’t even show you everything you can buy unless you spend some scales to “uncover” more rewards. It already takes forever to earn scales but you might be forced to buy things you don’t want just to uncover stuff you DO want…and then you’re right back to having to grind out and save up for more.

Really, “grind” is the perfect term here. This game expects you to devote a significant amount of playtime to get any form of reward, with very few ways to speed the process along. While it took them a bit to implement it, the new Big Run events do increase your scale rewards which is appreciated…but they are rare, happening at most twice in a season and only for about two days at a time. On that note, Big Run itself is an interesting idea, having the Salminids taking over a multiplayer map and pushing players to get as high of a score as possible to get a trophy. The Eggstra Work mode that was also added recently is somewhat related, having players go through five pre-determined waves in the push to get the highest score. The problem is that both of these modes only really reward the hardcore fans of Salmon Run, giving casual players few incentives to play along. The scores you need to get to even get a bronze trophy are fairly demanding for a more casual fan, and if you don’t care for score at all…there’s not much these can do for you. Splatfests at the very least grant you sea snails to further upgrade your gear, in addition to being a hyped-up event in-game centered on Turf War, the most beginner-friendly mode in the game. To be brutally honest, the continued focus on getting that score higher and higher has turned me off of Salmon Run in general. This, coupled with Salmon Run being just harder in general makes me more frustrated than anything else. Some shifts are just filled to the brim with enemies that start to mesh with one another and at times there’s so much going on the game actually starts to lag and slow down. If their intention was to keep me invested and want to come back to the mode, they managed the opposite, which is a pretty damning issue for a live-service game.

SEASONAL DROUGHTS

The success of Splatoon is largely tied to how Nintendo seemingly understood how to make a live-service continually appealing. While a full-price game, all further updates for multiplayer are free and often go for 1-2 years of the game’s life. Splatfests and other events ensure that there’s always a reason to come back later. The third game tries to change things up a bit regarding rewards and updates and honestly I think it mostly does a good job, though it isn’t without some downsides. In Splatoon 1 and 2 updates were typically weekly; every Friday or so you’d get SOMETHING new. Sometimes that meant a new weapon, or stage. Other times it might mean a completely new mode (more so in the first game). Splatoon 3 has instead adopted the season approach to content updates. Seasons last three months, and on day one of a new season players are given a ton of new things all at once. Roughly 10 new weapons, two new stages (so far the pattern being one returning stage and one brand new one), a balance patch and a new Catalog. Catalogs are effectively this game’s take on the Battle Pass that plagues so many other live-service games, though it’s mostly inoffensive. Catalogs have 100 levels to them, but pointedly cost the same amount of points to level up each time, and you get a huge bonus of points for your first win of the day. I think they serve as a decent, but attainable challenge to complete each season, without too much FOMO attached if you don’t finish them. That said, anyone that plays a lot of ranked tends to complete Catalogs quickly and then they don’t have much left to look forward to for the rest of the season.

Even if you’re not big on the Catalog, a growing sentiment with players is that the seasonal model isn’t enough to keep players coming back. All that new stuff at the start wears off before we’re even halfway through a season and the wait for the next season gets harder and harder to bear. These events like Big Run and Eggstra Work are clearly meant to help with that, though I’ve already detailed why I think these fall short. This game’s iteration of Splatfests have issues too. Going with three teams rather than two, on top of the controversial Tricolor Battles has resulted in a lot of complaints with each Splatfest, rather than excitement. Tricolor Battles were labeled as unfair to Defender players as early as the game’s pre-release beta Splatfest, and even after they were reworked slightly going into the first winter season, there’s been other issues. The Cryptid Splatfest ran into an issue where the vast majority of players picked either the Alien or Loch Ness Monster teams, with only 8% of players picking Team Bigfoot (at least in North America), meaning that the majority of players couldn’t earn points in Tricolor Battles, as they were thrown in with fellow Alien or Nessie players. And then there are the new Challenges, added with this past Sizzle Season.

On paper, Challenges seem like a great idea. Wacky rule sets that give players another reason to turn the game back on, but again the execution is lacking. Challenges themselves occur irregularly with limited time slots. One challenge might start on a Wednesday evening from 10 PM to midnight, and the next time slot would be Thursday morning at 6 AM, as an example. If you aren’t available on that day or that specific time…tough luck. The whole issue of playing the game on its own schedule versus your own has existed since the first game, but stuff like this feels nonsensical. There’s also the fact that the rule sets vary, some being quite interesting, like fog rolling into a stage periodically, while others amount to playing one of the Ranked modes without sub abilities…which doesn’t really feel nearly as fresh. And the rewards for challenges are also fairly minor, getting badges if you place high enough (once again going the score-attack route) and if you get five wins you get…a free roll of the Shell-Out Machine. Yippee. All of this wraps back around to the same core issue in that I don’t think a lot of the content in Splatoon 3 really values the player’s time. Scheduled events are rare and you have little control over actually being able to participate in a lot of them, and the rewards just don’t feel worth the time investment, outside of the Catalog. Despite their best efforts to retain players, I fear they might actually just drive them all away.

CONCLUSION

To wrap things up here, I want to stress that I do often enjoy playing Splatoon 3 and I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to put way more time into it than the first two games combined at this point. The updates to mobility with the Squid Surge and Squid Roll feel great, the new main and special weapons are fun, visually the game continues to be fantastic and its single player campaign was a welcome improvement from the first two games. Splatoon 3 clearly benefitted from the developers having gained more experience with the previous two titles and there’s tons of overall polish and content packed into this game. As a live-service, it will also continue to change and by this time next year when the last of the planned updates will be finished, it very well might be in a better place.

I don’t like to be negative and just rant and rave without any amount of constructive criticism, and ultimately I want this franchise to continue doing well and improving itself. There’s nothing else on the market like this (we’ll see if Foamstars can holds its own I suppose), and as a fresh, new franchise for Nintendo the last thing I want is for it to crash and burn. Splatoon 3 in some respects feels like a worthy successor to the previous titles and does feature a number of positive changes and additions to the core game, but the issues are even more prevalent than ever and I really hope the developers take all of this into account with the next game, whenever that happens. Considering this game was developed at the peak of the COVID 19 pandemic, on an aging console that likely couldn’t match the developer’s ambitions, this could have come out far worse, and despite what the last 3000 words or so might tell you, Splatoon 3 is far from a bad game. It’s a good game, that at times can be great fun, just held back by a number of smaller issues that I’ve love to see addressed so this trilogy can end on a high note. Maybe in a year I’ll do a follow-up and see how things have changed, but for now I guess I’ve said my piece. Thanks for listening.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Review: The Best of Both Worlds

Monolith Soft knows a lot about ambition. From their early days as a game developer, they’ve always strived for more. With ambition however, there’s often compromise. For co-founder Testuya Takahashi, his vision has often been unfulfilled despite his best efforts. From Xenogears’ infamous second disc, to Xenosaga being cancelled partway through the six planned entries, and even with Nintendo’s own Xenoblade franchise there have been issues that held the games back. Xenoblade Chronicles wasn’t initially localized outside of Japan, Xenoblade Chronicles X was both on the ill-fated Wii U, but also had re-writes that severely impacted the story, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was made with a skeleton crew, as Monolith Soft was also assisting with two major Nintendo games (Breath of the Wild and Splatoon 2) that would launch in the same year. Despite all the hardship, Xenoblade has become a bona-fide franchise and with the latest release, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, we might be getting a look at Monolith Soft when the shackles can finally release and they can complete their vision without compromise.

FIGHT TO LIVE, LIVE TO FIGHT

Something to address right away: it is perfectly OK to play Xenoblade Chronicles 3 without having played any prior game. While connections exist, the focus is on the world and characters introduced in this game, and while having extra context is nice and you might notice some references to past entries, it is far from required reading. With that said….

In the world of Aionios, there is nothing but war. Two factions, Keves and Agnus, are locked in an eternal struggle. They don’t fight for resources or politics; they fight and kill because it is the only way they can stay alive. These factions find themselves at the mercy of the Flame Clock, a measurement of their remaining life force. Though they must also eat and sleep, they too must take the lives of the enemy faction to keep their own Flame Clock filled. The people of Aionios learn to fight from the moment they are born, and have frighteningly short life spans, or “terms,” of roughly ten years. Should they make it to their tenth term, they are taken before their queen for a Homecoming ceremony, returned to her and laid to rest. A life of nothing but fighting, no one questions the natural order…until one faithful day.

Six soldiers, three from Keves and three from Agnus, find themselves on an unorthodox mission and end up meeting a man named Guernica, who is far older than anyone they have ever seen before. He tells them of a “true enemy” and that the world was once different, though it isn’t long before the group is attacked by this enemy: Moebius. Though fatally wounded in the battle, Guernica bestows a strange power to the six youths, enabling them to fight back against Moebius and give the world a fighting chance to set things right. With both factions branding them as traitors and Moebius also working to hunt them down, it is up to an unlikely ensemble to shatter the nightmarish status quo and find out what it really means to live.

Xenoblade 3 at times is the darkest entry in the franchise to date. A somber atmosphere, the game doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war. The fact that most characters in the game are basically child soldiers is merely the tip of the iceberg. Each of the main cast have experienced trauma from the constant fighting, from the people they’ve lost and what they’ve had to do just to survive in the nightmare of Moebius’ creation. Noah and Mio, our main leads, are off-seers, tasked with sending off those that die in battle, so they are both the closest to death among the main cast but also the ones who are quickest to set aside their differences in an effort to set the world to rights. Noah is a lot more philosophical about life and death throughout the game; despite being against fighting if he sees another option, he’ll still take up arms if he sees no other choice. Mio meanwhile is fairly restrained and kindhearted, but is constantly weighed down by the knowledge that she is on her final term, with roughly three months left to live at the game’s start, giving her a sense of urgency to complete the group’s mission before it is too late. That’s not to say the game can’t have more light-hearted moments though; though not to the extent of Xenoblade 2 there are often characters and missions with a more laidback, comedic bent which serve to mostly balance out the otherwise bleak setting, and leave us with memorable secondary characters. Despite the dark setting, there is a sense of optimism that shines through and keeps the game from being too exhaustingly bleak. On top of that, it might just have the best main cast in the series.

A goal for the development team was to flesh out the main cast, to not have any one “main character” that took up the bulk of screen time and development, which is definitely something the other Xenoblade games have been guilty of in the past. While Noah and Mio are given a bit more focus in the core plot, the rest of the group aren’t far behind and have their own effects on the narrative at various points. Lanz, easy to write-off as the hotheaded idiot of the team, works through his own trauma throughout the game and has to come to grips with letting go of his past if he wants to walk forward. Eunie, a brash if well-meaning friend of Noah and Lanz, struggles with strange visions that haunt her and give some eerie implications into the greater setting. She also has some of the funniest lines in the whole game. Taion, who I feared would quickly fall into a route “smarmy know-it-all” archetype displays a fair amount of depth early on. Despite being among the least-pleased with working with his former enemy, he’s smart enough to rein it in and at least attempt to get along with everyone. Despite taking a lot of pride in his strategic prowess and at times coming across as stoic, his more emotional moments lead to both some of the more touching parts of the game, and also some of the funniest. Sena, at least initially, came across as a bit lacking. She’s the plucky girl who seems to be Mio’s personal cheerleader; however her development is more subtle. Despite being driven and powerful in her own right, she lacks confidence in herself and is constantly seeking validation. She sees herself reflected in other characters throughout the game, and eventually learns of her own self-worth, though I do feel that quests ostensibly meant to be focused on her aren’t always keeping her in the forefront, so it isn’t perfect.

While the main cast feels more fleshed out than any previous Xenoblade game, I do feel that the antagonists are a tad undercooked as a result. Moebius are billed as hedonistic monsters who orchestrate the eternal war behind the scenes mostly out of boredom. They pointedly refer to this all as a game, and have no real respect for any life but their own. While easily detestable, I do feel that the vast majority of Moebius lack depth, coming across more so as Monster of the Week styled obstacles than real characters. Coming off of the villains of Xenoblade 2, in my eyes the strongest antagonists in the franchise, this is definitely disappointing. Then again, seeing as Torna in Xenoblade 2 was a tight-knit group of five, it was far easier to flesh them out compared to Moebius’ 25 members. They went with quantity over quality, but even with the “main” members that received larger focus, I do feel that the game fumbles a bit at giving us villains that are all that memorable. While I want to avoid outright spoilers, I do have to mention I find the ending also loses a bit of steam. The game has a real emotional and narrative high point and…kind of runs on fumes after a while; though I think the ending is strong enough. I do feel there are more unanswered questions with this game when the credits roll, and some moments that don’t make much sense if you stop to think about them. Xenoblade 3 at points seems to be going for a more thematic, symbolic story than an overtly logical one, so I can let a few things slide. Seeing as there is story DLC coming next year though, it is possible the closure and explanations I yearn for are a ways off.

On the whole though, I think Xenoblade 3’s story is very well done. An interesting hook at the start, a steady supply of new developments that push things forward, with a large variety of interesting characters and the best main cast in the series yet, even with the ending stumbling a bit. Monolith Soft seems to have taken a lot of the criticisms of the English dub of Xenoblade 2 to heart here as well, as the English performances are excellent across the board. Lip synching also applies to either the Japanese or English audio tracks, so we no longer have the more awkward moments from Xenoblade 2 where things didn’t even remotely match up. As far as other aspects of the presentation go, Xenoblade 3 continues to push what should be possible on hardware as old as the Switch. Vast landscapes filled with things to see and do never fail to impress, while the overall character models are expressive and detailed. The main cast can even get dirty when out exploring, with a dedicated option to wash clothes when at camp. What the game might lack in high-fidelity textures it often makes up for in its strong art direction and expressive anime cel-shaded style on characters, making this one of the Switch’s most technically impressive games. Also worth noting, there has been more focus on making the game look good in handheld mode as well, which was often seen as an afterthought for previous Xenoblade games on Switch. Coupled with a targeted 30 FPS frame rate the game is about as smooth as one could hope for, considering the console specs and sheer scope of the game. I also feel I should point out how seamless the game is when switching from cutscenes to gameplay. Previous entries in the series would have to fade to black to quickly load in boss fights but in 3 the game instead has a more stylish zoom out straight into gameplay out of the cutscene. While there is a definite difference in quality for the pre-rendered cinematics versus the in-game cinematics, the transitions between the two are a lot smoother, and coupled with voice work even in many of these in-game moments, the overall presentation is a good deal higher than past entries in the series.

To go this far without mentioning the game’s music is a crime unto itself, but to be honest here, when it comes to Monolith Soft, I simply just expect great music by default. Thankfully, Xenoblade 3 delivers here. From a beautiful piano piece that serves as the main menu theme, to several fantastic battle and field themes, there’s almost too much to parse when picking favorites. Compared to the previous games, Xenoblade 3 has a heavy emphasis on flutes, tying in with Noah and Mio’s instruments when working as off-seers, and giving the game its own distinctive sound. It can be hard to name favorites but I’ll try anyway. The Moebius battle theme itself includes ominous chanting, which ties in with the player tackling higher beings with god-like power, and at points the song even sounds like it is laughing at you, emphasizing that Moebius sees this all as entertainment over anything else. “A Step Away” is one of only two vocal tracks in the game, playing at the game’s emotionally draining darkest hour and may or may not have caused tears to be shed. For my money though, “The Weight of Life” has to be my favorite, despite how little it plays in the game. A climactic song that amplifies the cutscenes it appears in, it showcases just how hard the team has to work to overcome overwhelming odds and has moments of intensity that give me chills every time I hear it. Appearing at the end of the game’s second official trailer, I couldn’t get it out of my head then and still can’t. As always, Monolith never disappoints when it comes to music. Well…except for the fact that using a Chain Attack completely overrides whatever theme is playing, which means you can miss out on the more dynamic boss themes. So that could be better. That said, we still have an actual game to describe here, so I’d best move on.

BATTLE WITH CLASS

To anyone that has played any of the games in the series up until this point, Xenoblade 3 will be easy enough to get into, but for those that might be new to the series, here is a quick run-down of the basics before we get into what this game does differently. Speaking broadly, all Xenoblade games play out very similarly to MMO-styled combat. Players are free to move around in control of one character while the rest of the party is controlled by AI. When in range, you’ll attack automatically, though these attacks are often weak. The real damage comes from using Arts, special attacks with a wide range of uses and effects, which undergo cooldowns after use. Some Arts require you to hit opponents from a specific position, like Noah’s Edge Thrust, which does more damage from behind. Depending on which faction they belong to, Art cooldowns differ slightly in this game. Kevesi characters like Noah, Lanz and Eunie, have to simply wait for the cooldown to expire similar to Xenoblade 1. Agnian characters (Mio, Taion and Sena) instead recharge their Arts with auto-attacks similar to Xenoblade 2. Many Arts also are used in status combos, with the party using specific Arts in sequence to force a given status onto the enemy. Noah might inflict Break on opponents to stagger them, and Lanz can follow up with an Art that inflicts Topple, making the enemy defenseless for a time, as an example. While the AI generally follows along with what you want to do, this game also allows you to swap control to any main party member during battle, and even outside of that you can give some orders to allies to make them do specific things if need be. For the most part as long as you do your thing, you can let the rest of the party handle things on their own, but having the option is certainly nice.

This game really emphasizes proper team composition and everyone acting according to one of three roles: attacker, healer or defender, which should be fairly self-explanatory. New to this game is a wide variety of classes characters can obtain, all of which fall under one of these three roles. While Noah and company all have their own starting classes, throughout the game players can recruit extra party members, known as Heroes, and unlock the Heroes’ classes for the rest of the party. As a class is used, it levels up separately from the character and after certain milestones players will gain skills and Arts that can be used regardless of class, which is where some real interesting customization happens. You could have characters learn some healing Arts so they can help out regardless of class, or just give characters more offensive options in general. Given enough time it becomes easier to do various status combos or inflict some big damage, but the game still has plenty of other systems at play to make you even stronger.

Following the inciting incident in the game, the core party gain the ability to Interlink into powerful forms known as Ouroboros, which they can freely use in combat a bit later on to great effect. While active, the Ouroboros has powerful Arts unique to them and they take no damage from attacks, though the form has its drawbacks. The Interlink will eventually overheat if not cancelled early, locking out the form for some time, and early on before the forms can be properly leveled up you won’t last long and be able to do as much. On top of that, characters have specific Interlink partners; Noah with Mio, Eunie with Taion and Lanz with Sena. If one of the pair is defeated in battle or hit by certain statuses, the Interlink cannot be performed. There’s also the problem of being down a character. If your healer Interlinks your party loses out on any heals, so you better make them count. While not an instant-win button, with practice the Ouroboros forms can help turn the tide of harder battles, but for situations that require even more power, there’s always the series staple in the Chain Attack. Once the Chain Attack gauge is filled, players can activate it at any time. Time stops and players can go all in on one enemy with the ability to use any Art on any party member. Without getting into the intricacies, the player is given an assortment of “orders” at the start of each “round” of the Chain Attack, which all have different effects if completed. Noah’s order has attacks potentially bypass an enemy’s defense, for example. The goal of each round is to use Arts to build up Tension Points. Once you reach 100 Tension, the order is executed. Rinse and repeat until you either run out of party members or the Chain Attack gauge empties. Heroes have their own orders that can be incredibly powerful; Valdi adds more Tension to his Arts if fighting a machine-type enemy, for one. And later on, Ouroboros orders can be used if certain conditions are met for even more damage. It takes a bit of luck and coordination but this game’s iteration of Chain Attacks might be the best yet in the series…perhaps even too good.

The series has quite the reputation for being difficult to get into and having quite complicated combat, though 3 aims to streamline things a great deal and ease players into things. From an honest to God training mode, to the slow but steady introduction of major mechanics with dedicated tutorials, Xenoblade 3 is perhaps the most straightforward game in the series, even if the beginning of the game somewhat goes too far with handholding and forcing players to do something as simple as, say, equip a piece of gear onto a character step by step. I’d rather the game teach me at all than flash a tutorial prompt on screen that can never be revisited though, so it’s a massive improvement from Xenoblade 2! Navigating menus is also made easier, with shortcuts that let me get right to where I want from the main game, like letting me open up the area map or party customization screen instantly, and those shortcuts can even be customized. There’s lots of smaller accessibility features in the options as well to make things flow smoother, like letting your AI allies Interlink on their own or leaving it to your explicit order. These quality-of-life updates really start to add up over time.

Throughout the series, Monolith Soft has streamlined combat and with 3 they’ve landed on a really solid series of systems. The combat is faster and snappier than in 2, though retains that game’s improvements from 1’s combat, such as attack cancelling and the more streamlined UI. That said, an issue this game shares with all but Xenoblade Chronicles X is the inability to jump and run in combat, which can get awkward in the often bumpy terrain battles take place on. Getting launched by an enemy attack can cause you to get stuck on a small hill and be unable to get back to fighting unless you holster your weapon, at which point you’re a sitting duck. While the UI is streamlined and the game generally does a MUCH better job of teaching you, some fights are still a cluttered mess. I’m not sure it was really worth it to have the entire party (plus one Hero) active at once. Against larger, single targets like bosses it is mostly fine, but when fighting multiple enemies at once it becomes sensory overload, it being a legitimate problem trying to find who you’re locked onto and knowing what’s even going on. Those issues are fairly minor though, and the end result is some of the most engaging combat the series has ever had. Other aspects like equipment are further de-emphasized as was the case in 2; you can equip some basic accessories and gems to your character, as well as fiddle with the skills and arts you obtain by mastering classes, but that’s about it as far as “builds” go. As someone who dislikes having to constantly buy new armor and weapons for huge RPG parties, I’m not all that upset to see things simplified down like this and find the class system engaging enough when trying to optimize characters, so I think it balances out. While fighting is a huge part of the game, let’s not forget there’s other aspects to this gameplay experience too!

SATING MY WANDERLUST

As a series, Xenoblade really excels at sating my wanderlust, boasting vast landscapes filled with things to see and do that are often quite striking. In some respects, 3 makes some great improvements from the previous entry, though I’m still left wanting more. Aionios, according to the developers, is roughly five times bigger in terms of walking distance compared to Xenoblade 2’s Alrest, though I find the ways to navigate this world aren’t scaled up to match. Your run speed and jump height and distance aren’t much different than in either Xenoblade 1 or 2, despite the world being so much bigger and it just doesn’t cut it. Often the jumping is mostly to get over the small bumps in the road that you should logically be able to already walk over but can’t for whatever reason, and it’s otherwise useless for any amount of platforming, and while I made frequent use of the fast travel system to get around there’s still large stretches where I would turn auto-run on and put my controller down to do something else as the group crossed large expanses. The most infuriating thing about all of this though is that Monolith Soft already solved these types of issues with Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U. That game was also massive, bigger than Breath of the Wild in fact, and was a seamless, open world to boot. And to match that players not only could run FAR faster than in any other game, they could jump far higher and farther to make navigating the vast world of Mira fun in its own right. And later still you would gain access to a giant robot, the Skell, to cross even larger expanses faster and eventually unlock the flight module to make the world your oyster. While I’m not asking for 3 to add in a giant robot to fly around in (I mean I wouldn’t say no either) at the very least I wish this game took the running and jumping from X. Later in the game you do gain access to a boat to cross a large aquatic region…but its controls both leave something to be desired and the sheer scale of this ocean means the boat only makes moving from point A to B SLIGHTLY less tedious.

To the game’s credit though, it does improve on one of my least favorite aspects of Xenoblade 2’s navigation. In the latter, you would frequently need to unlock paths forward with field skills and constantly open up menus to swap around Blades to get the appropriate skills in order, but it was a real mess and pace breaker. In 3 field skills are taught to the party after meeting certain Heroes, and just have them permanently active from that point onwards. The game even teases you a bit at the beginning by showing you tightropes you won’t be able to use until a ways later into the story. That said, there’s only four field skills in the entire game and two are completely optional, and even in those cases I can count the times you DO need to use them on one hand. Expecting every Hero to have their own field skill would have been overkill for sure, and in this specific case I’m glad Monolith Soft didn’t go for quantity over quality. Sadly, the game couldn’t improve on 2’s map at all, as it still makes it difficult to judge differences in elevation. Certain symbols only show up on the minimap but not the full map, and you’re limited to just one pin you can put on the map per areas, which simply isn’t enough. Seeing as so many people from Monolith Soft worked on Breath of the Wild, which had detailed maps that showed off things well, as well as multiple pins and such to work with, this is a pretty disappointing step down. Far from unusable but there’s more that could have been done here.

Thankfully, the game does improve on one aspect the series has always been a bit iffy on: the quests.

HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO (QUEST)

Xenoblade has often had a LOT of quests, but very few were really worth doing outside of the experience or money they’d give you. The first game went a little too hard on MMO-styled quests that just amounted to killing a given number of enemies or gathering a given amount of items. Some quests had more worthwhile rewards and little storylines associated with the NPCs giving them out but it really wasn’t worth having to trudge through all of the basic ones to get to them. Xenoblade Chronicles X was a fair bit better with more engaging quest lines throughout the game with more tangible rewards. Watching your city slowly accept more alien citizens into it was really neat, among other things. But that game also had strange requirements to even take on quests and often limited who could or could not be in your party to even accept them which held it back. The vast majority of quests in Xenoblade 2 were kind of unremarkable to be honest, though the Blade quests were often higher quality…a shame most Blades were only obtainable through in-game gacha that took TONS of luck and grinding to even get. So really, the bar was pretty low for Xenoblade 3’s quests and they still raised it so much higher that it’ll be very hard to top.

Side quests in 3 come in two flavors: basic quests and Hero quests. Basic quests can vary but often concern themselves with NPCs and tend to have their own minor storyline connected to the colony they hail from, while Hero quests are for both recruiting and later strengthening the Heroes you can add to your party. Hero quests come with voice acting and even some extensive cinematics at times, so the presentation really makes them stand out. While some Hero quests are actually required to complete the story, the vast majorities are optional…but if you take nothing else from this section, know that it is within your best interests to do them if you can, because they contain some of the game’s best moments. Be it character development, gags, or some really great rewards in the form of power-ups or party members, I was almost never disappointed with the Hero quests. Some are so good I’m shocked Monolith Soft didn’t make them required, especially since they often tie up loose ends to the core story or some characters’ personal arcs.

Something I came to enjoy about all of these quests is how they would often feed into each other and in some cases build off of one another. Take the quests found in Colony 9. The colony is rather run down at the game’s start and the new commander, Zeon, isn’t well respected by the rest of his subordinates. His initial Hero quest is about learning to trust Noah and the others, but subsequent quests around the colony are about him earning the trust of his peers and eventually getting the colony to start growing their own crops to sustain themselves. This requires the help of Colony Tau, which you encounter much later on, but serves to strengthen relations between the two. Most of the colonies in the game end up being paired off with a colony from the opposite faction, further emphasizing the game’s core themes of looking past initial differences or prejudices and working together for a common goal. Some basic quests can have some unexpected payoff. One questline has you attacked at random points by strange robotic soldiers, which eventually leads to a late-game Hero quest, and that hero teaches you a field skill that enables you to tackle another Hero’s ascension quest as you go off in search of a mythical hot spring. It made me feel validated in scraping every inch of the map and doing every quest when I could. Often times I was torn between continuing the core story and doing as much side content as possible, which is about the highest praise I can think of for an RPG. Things aren’t perfect, of course.

While I would say most missions are at least somewhat interesting for delving into NPCs or occasionally shaking things up, the game does repeat certain quest types a bit too much. Virtually every “follow the tracks” mission is the same, but the tracks themselves sometimes seem to wig out and spontaneously pop into existence. Not bad, but also not very engaging. Any time you have to follow an NPC that walks as slow as possible also kills the pacing of the game. I’m begging you here, Monolith Soft, please never do this again. There’s even two separate quest lines about making it rain that either requires random waiting around or dropping a ton of money on an NPC to make it rain instead. But really, the biggest issue I have with a lot of the quests in the game is how you get them.

Sometimes you’ll just be given a quest straight away, while others will be displayed on the map with a big glowing question mark. But often times you have to gather information on a quest before actually being assigned it. Wander over to NPCs with neon yellow speech bubbles and just eavesdrop for a few seconds and BAM, you have some quest info. But some quests require multiple pieces of information to even accept and even then, you have to go back to camp and specifically discuss the info to gain the quest. Some quests require you to have specific Heroes in your line up OR be discussed at a very specific camp just to give you more hoops to jump through. This does nothing but really add extra steps to the process and I don’t find it adds anything of note but maybe some minor flavor text. I can tolerate it for the most part at least, except for the handful of cases where the information you need to gather can only be obtained at VERY specific times of day. I wasn’t able to even START a few quests near the end of the game because I would have to go to a specific part of the map at a specific part of the day for the CHANCE the conversation would be there to overhear. Granted, you can change the time of day in-game manually but it was still an annoying obstacle that didn’t have to be there.

That said, I did everything in the game, which isn’t something I could say for ANY other Xenoblade until now, as there was always something that would burn me out of the process. Maybe there were just too many quests, or weird requirements to even start them, but Xenoblade 3 is the first game in the series I’ve 100% completed, so that should speak to the sheer quality of most of the side content in addition to the core story.  For the most part the game is very keen on making it easy to keep tabs on your progress through quests, or making it easy to see where to go next. Some quests which required you to grab specific items would sometimes mark themselves on your map, and some areas would spawn a large amount of items in said area to make gathering take no time at all. That said, this wasn’t universal and there are still some really tedious questlines involving gathering items that I had to look up to cut down on time. All told though, I never felt the need to just drop a quest and enjoyed having so many things to do throughout the game. Monolith Soft has come far when it comes to their side content, though there are still some pitfalls with the greater balance of the game with all that in mind.

AN UNENVIABLE BALANCING ACT

Balancing a game is hard, especially an RPG with tons of systems layered over one another. Past Xenoblade games have been a bit hit or miss with balance, and going into Xenoblade 3 I was curious how well they’d balance a game where your entire party is battling at once. I think for the most part the game’s intended balance curve when focusing on the story is mostly fine. And it does take steps to keep players from growing too strong too fast and breaking the game over its knee but…well, let’s just say there are some issues with their approach to things.

Most regular encounters are generally fine so long as you are within a few levels of your enemy, and as long as you single out some stronger enemies and don’t attract a group you’ll do fine. Same old Xenoblade. As in past games though, there are varying types of enemies that can rapidly change things, namely the Elite and Unique enemies. Unique enemies are a series staple, basically bosses in disguise and are often far stronger than their level would imply, with Elite enemies a slight step down from that. These two enemy types are a LOT bulkier than standard enemies, and as I found throughout the game, most storyline bosses qualify as these types of enemies as far as health and defense goes. On the one hand, this meant that even in situations where I was quite over leveled, these bosses still put up a fight, but it also kind of makes most fights a drag….unless you use Chain Attacks.

Which leads to my next point: Chain Attacks are kind of broken. They are SO good, you’d be foolish NOT to abuse them, but by using them battles can get kind of samey, all that unique music is drowned out by the Chain Attack theme, and it also makes it easy to over level without even trying. See, similar to Xenoblade 2, if you kill an enemy during a Chain Attack but keep going for as long as possible you end up getting an “overkill” modifier to your experience. Depending on when and where you do the Chain Attack, you could end up getting upwards of 1000 times the normal experience. Add to this that Elite enemies also have a separate modifier for experience you gain from taking them out, as well as the fact that one of the perks to doing more side quests is upping the chances of seeing more Elite enemies…and it means you are DROWNING in experience before you even get to the experience gained from quests and exploration.

Now, in Xenoblade 2 Monolith Soft implemented a system where you would have any non-battle experience stored separately that you could access at an inn to bolster your levels if you needed a boost, or ignore it if you didn’t want to over level. This carries over into Xenoblade 3; however it lacks the ability to level down, which was added to the Switch port of Xenoblade 1, at least until the post-game. So you have a game where it is extremely easy to over level, even if you aren’t trying to optimize it, and that leads to another problem.

Whenever you complete a Hero Quest in this game, a given party member will “inherit” that Hero’s class. So, when you beat Valdi’s quest and add him to your party, Lanz gets the ability to be a War Medic immediately. For everyone else, they have to unlock it slowly by fighting alongside Valdi and/or Lanz in that class, as an example. What the game fails to tell you though is that if you are more than four levels higher than an enemy, characters gain NO progress towards unlocking these classes. Despite the fact you still gain experience and Class Points (to rank up the classes), they saw fit to freeze your progress. In a game where it’s criminally easy to accidentally over level, which pushes you to fight stronger and stronger enemies to actually unlock the classes the game is clearly built around. Which will just over level you even more. It’s a problem that starts small, barely noticeable, but by endgame I was left with a ton of classes I couldn’t really pass on to anybody, which really limited my options.

To be fair here, this isn’t an issue every player is likely to really run into. Not everyone’s going to do every quest in the game, or use all their stored experience. The game is perfectly playable and beatable without getting every class on every character. As I said before, going from story beat to story beat, the game offers pretty decent challenge, and if you don’t abuse certain things like the experience modifiers, you likely strike a good balance with the game. I also only played on the default difficulty so maybe the harder difficulty would have been a better idea. I’ve definitely seen strategies and set-ups that break the game in half and trivialize it even at the higher difficulties but that’s so far removed from an average experience with the game I can overlook it. Monolith Soft likes to put a lot of things into their games and striking a perfect balance between rewarding players for doing it versus not punishing players who don’t engage with every facet is impossible. For the most part, the game works fine as intended and for those that enjoy exploiting and optimizing things out, Xenoblade 3 can be a lot of fun. I just hope in the future they can try to limit punishing players that stray off the beaten path and gorge themselves on all this wonderful optional content. They’re getting better in some ways, but there’s still a lot more that can be done.

BRINGING AND END TO THE ENDLESS NOW

I’ve had a lot to say here regarding Xenoblade Chronicles 3. If you couldn’t tell, I quite enjoyed it and took great delight in devouring it over the course of about 170 hours. As it stands, this game is likely my Game of the Year, or at the very least in the running for it. Monolith Soft has become one of my favorite developers over the course of the Xenoblade series. From their support work on major first-party Nintendo games, to this series, I’ve seen tremendous growth from them. They learn from their mistakes and shoot ever higher, with each original title from them demonstrating that they are some of the best in the business. I said before that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is Monolith Soft more or less at their best in many regards, and shows a glimpse at their true potential, with their ambitions fully realized.

While I am a bit mixed on certain endgame elements of the story, it was an extremely engaging, emotional title that excelled at giving me a main cast I really cared about. I love Shulk, I…tolerate Rex, but the rest of their party members were hit-or-miss By contrast, I love the entirety of the Ouroboros gang here. Demonstrating surprising depth and story relevancy, at no point did they fade into the background. While the setting definitely takes elements from past titles and longtime fans have a lot to dissect and mull over, making this game mostly a standalone experience allowed the cast to shine, no fear of being upstaged or made to play second-fiddle to returning characters. For anyone joining this series with this installment, I’ll say again that you don’t miss out on too terribly much and the core experience will still hit hard.

This is easily my favorite Xenoblade when it comes to the combat, making for a smooth experience that I easily lost several hours in without even noticing. The ease of swapping between side quests, the main story and exploring the corners of Aionios cannot be overstated here. For as long as the game was, it was hard to put down until I saw the ending through. Despite some bumps in the road, Monolith delivered not just a good story, but a good game built around it. It was a journey that seemed endless, and at times I didn’t want it to end.

For as bleak as the game could get, there was always an optimistic streak that kept it from being too much. For as nightmarish as the world was, the heroes moved forward. Xenoblade 3 is a game all about moving forward; it is about accepting loss, celebrating the good times along with the bad, and cherishing the time you have while you can. As tempting as it may be to live in a stable status quo, that leads to stagnation and ultimately destruction. The future is uncertain, there are doubtless struggles ahead, but despite that fear of the unknown, moving forward is the only way we can go on living. The past few years have weighed pretty hard on me, as I’m sure it has for many others out there, and it has put a lot of things in perspective. I found myself frozen, afraid to move forward or back. Trapped in my own “endless now,” I’m glad to have found hope again. This might be “just a game,” but it was a game I felt I really needed to play at this specific moment in time. It means a lot to me, and I’m glad I was able to share my thoughts on it. A triumph of the genre, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 stands out to me more so than perhaps any other game this year, and I can’t recommend it enough.

[xb-squaredx]

B-Squared's Belated Top 10 Games of 2023

Well, this has come out…a lot later than I wanted to but life gets in the way. 2023 had a lot of fantastic games in it…but sadly I didn’t get to very many of them. So many great games, from the indies to the AAAs and everything in between. As of now I’ve had to be a bit more careful with money and still haven’t gotten my hands on either a beefy PC to play all the new games or a next-gen console, so my options are somewhat limited…which will be reflected in this list. So for anyone asking why Baldur’s Gate 3 or Alan Wake 2 or Spider-Man 2 or anything else isn’t on this list…I had no real means to play it. That said, I still enjoyed the bulk of what I played in 2023, so I figure it’s better late than never to celebrate those games.

#10: F-ZERO 99

F-Zero is a franchise I have limited experience with; I’ve played far more of Captain Falcon in the Smash Bros. series than any other F-Zero game combined. Regardless, the release of a new game after a near 20 year hiatus certainly had my attention. F-Zero 99 is a new take on the original game, after the popularity of Tetris 99 on the Switch. Up to 99 players race together in a battle-royale fashion, aiming to take first place…or at least survive to the finish line. I’ll be up front that I’m terrible at this game and didn’t play that much of it, but I can recognize that it was a fun spin on an old idea, giving players ample ways to try to play catch up in the chaotic, high-speed races, and for those that are more well-versed in F-Zero it served as a way to scratch an itch that has been bugging them for a good long while. Its unclear what the series’ future will be but I’m hopeful that the overall positive reception to this free-to-play title means there might be more to come for F-Zero sometime soon.

#9: ADVANCE WARS 1+2 RE-BOOT CAMP

As long as we’re talking about older, revived Nintendo franchises, we may as well talk about Advance Wars. After Fire Emblem really took off worldwide, this series has been rather dormant over at Intelligence Systems. Due to real world events, this release was delayed by about a year, but I’m glad that the remake of the first two Advance Wars games helmed by Wayforward was able to finally release. Overall, these are very faithful remakes with some great new bits of animation, voice acting and music, with players able to compete in the campaigns or wage war locally or online in the multiplayer modes. Some people weren’t a huge fan of the visual style in this remake, or felt that it could have done more, but ultimately I’m just happy to see this series come back again and I think Wayforward did a great job. The endless horrors of war have never been so fun!

#8: HOLOLIVE FAN GAMES: (HOLOCURE: SAVE THE FANS AND IDOL SHOWDOWN)

You might remember from a while back that I’m a VTuber fan, especially the ones over at Hololive. There’s been a number of really fun fan games that have released over the years but this year we got two of them released that were right up my alley…well, kinda. First off we have Holocure, a “bullet-heaven” game in the same vein as Vampire Survivors starring the Hololive girls. It’s technically still in early-access and has been out for a while…but the STEAM release was in 2023 and that’s when I first played it so it counts. It’s a very fun game with cute pixel art, great remixes of Hololive songs and is filled to bursting with tons of interesting references to these streamers…which makes it almost completely incomprehensible to non-fans, but that’s beside the point.

We also received a Hololive fighting game in Idol Showdown this year, which I also enjoyed for the most part. The character movesets are filled with just as many references, with some very expressive sprite work on both the playable cast and the backgrounds. A rogue like Digital Frontier mode adds to the stuff to do in the game if pure fighting isn’t for you, and it’s even received some free DLC characters as time has gone on. I do wish the game was a bit more optimized in some regards, but it’s otherwise a really fun game that managed to combine two of my interests together into one package. So I’m counting both of these games together under the umbrella of being Hololive fan games. Give them a try….and fall down the rabbit hole.

#7: NICKELODEON ALL STAR BRAWL 2

Speaking of fighting games, I was pleasantly surprised by the reveal and subsequent release of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2. Despite being excited by the prospect of the first game, I wasn’t all that fond of it by the time it released. It was a barebones experience, devoid of any voice work for these iconic characters (often with iconic voices), looked bad, ran worse at times and most of the cast had very same-y, uninspired movesets. So I’m very happy to say that the sequel is everything the original game should have been.

NASB 2 is a gigantic improvement in every way; it looks a lot better, the voices are here from the get-go now, there’s a huge single player campaign and the cast this time around all feel FAR more fleshed out and distinct. I still have some qualms with the roster overall, but I’m glad the team at Fair Play Labs (and the few members of Ludocity on this project) managed to create something that can appeal to both hardcore platform fighter fans and fans of the Nick characters. Sadly, I think a lot of people felt burned by the last game and didn’t even give this one a try, but trust me…this really is one of the more inventive platform fighters out there. The Slime mechanic itself is kind of worth the price of admission, being able to augment your moves, burst out of combos, or spend on a huge super move to send foes flying. The single player is also filled with fun references and a fair bit of things to do as you fight various minor enemies and bosses from across the various Nick shows. While a bit bug-riddled at launch and my potato PC can barely handle it at times, I had a blast with it, and I hope that people can eventually give this game a chance.

#6: BAYONETTA ORIGINS: CEREZA AND THE LOST DEMON

Oh hey and speaking of burning fans with the last installment and giving things a chance…yeah Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon was always going to be a tough sell. Even if Bayonetta 3 had been well-received by fans, taking a series known for its over-the-top arcade action and extremely sexual heroine and pivoting to a fairy-tale aesthetic and relatively simple puzzle solving and exploration wasn’t ever going to have a wide appeal. If you don’t like the other Bayonetta games you might end up enjoying this, but then why would you even be looking in this game’s direction? And conversely, if you love the other games, this one is so completely different there’s no guarantee you’d enjoy it. Truly, Bayonetta Origins is a game for an extremely small niche of players, but I was willing to give it a shot and ended up quite enjoying it. In fact, I think it’s one of the best games Platinum has put out in years.

Taking place when young Cereza was still a witch in training, players have to guide Cereza and her first demonic summon, Cheshire, through a maze-like forest infested with dangerous fairies. The game itself feels inspired by something like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, alongside Platinum’s own Astral Chain. Players control Cereza and Cheshire simultaneously, using each control stick to guide them through puzzles and the occasional combat encounter. Cereza uses her magic to hold enemies in place or manipulate the environment while Cheshire is in charge of tearing enemies apart. The cel-shaded storybook aesthetic is very charming, making for a game that I think is a lot easier on the eyes than Bayonetta 3, and the coming-of-age element of Cereza learning to stick up for herself and get stronger gave us a fairly well-told story (which is kind of a rarity for this franchise). Outside of a map that isn’t all that helpful, and the fact that it’s still connected to Bayonetta 3 in some strange, confusing ways, this is far and away the best Bayonetta game developed for the Switch, and yeah, I’m just as surprised as you are.

#5: STREET FIGHTER 6

Once upon a time Capcom was considered to be the kings of fighting games, but everything changed when Street Fighter V came out in such a barebones, awful state that the FGC at large moved onto other things. But 2023 was the year Capcom returned to take their crown back, and MAN is Street Fighter 6 a massive return to form. Now, I should stress my time with this game has been limited; I’ve played with a friend with their own copy of the game as well as poured over the PS4 demo, but I don’t actually own this game myself yet. If I DID, this would probably be a bit higher on this list honestly.

SF6 took a long hard look at the complaints levied at the previous game and did everything they could to turn things around here. Rather than launching with no arcade mode and later adding a lackluster story mode, 6 launches with a massive World Tour campaign, giving players the ability to create their own character and dive into the world of Street Fighter in what is ostensibly an action RPG hidden within the greater game. Rather than give us the divisive V-System that encouraged passive play and largely locked away each character’s strongest tools, the Drive System in SF6 gives players tons of way to engage with the game right from round start and encourages both aggression and proper resource management. At high-level, SF6 becomes a tug-of-war between players doing everything they can to whittle down their opponent’s Drive Gauge, while holding onto their own, and then place them into checkmate when they go into Burnout. The game’s new, more realistic artstyle took some time to grow on me personally, but I think they ended up making it work, though admittedly I’m with everyone else in stating that the OST for the game is a bit lacking. Thankfully, they nailed it where it really matters: the roster is filled with some awesome new faces (Marisa my beloved) and manages to make the veteran fighters feel fresh, and the cherry on top is an almost impeccable online experience. I’m glad Capcom learned from their mistakes, and the result is one of the best fighting games around.

#4: FIRE EMBLEM: ENGAGE

Releasing right at the start of the year, I’m sure a lot of people forgot about Fire Emblem Engage, though really I think they’re missing out. I’ve been a fan of the series since Awakening, so the gaps in knowledge with the series is vast, but I could still recognize this as a love letter to the entire series. Clearly intended as a celebration of the franchise’s 30th anniversary before a certain pandemic got in the way, Engage is filled to the brim with fanservice…and not just the sexy kind! Truthfully I do feel aspects of this game are at odds with each other; while the overall presentation is great, being the most colorful and flashy game in the series yet, its story is…let’s say lacking. The characters are all fairly one-note and at times lean way more into stock anime archetypes than fully-fleshed out cast members, especially in comparison to the best parts of Three Houses, and there is the odd….otaku-bait stuff for lack of a better term, especially regarding the romance options, but the actual core gameplay is the best in the series.

Fights are fast, ferocious and give players a ton of great new mechanics to sink their teeth into. The star of the show is obviously the various rings characters can equip, which can summon a ghost of a past Fire Emblem hero to help out, giving you a neat little Stand of sorts to augment your abilities for a short time. Adding to that, players can push enemies away, or even break their guard, preventing them from attacking during your turn. I really enjoyed some of the changes to the core weapon triangles of the series, including a new one with archers, mages and bare-handed fighters. Being able to have my healers lay waste to those units with some fisticuffs never got old. Engage might not be the most ambitious game in the series, but at the same time it was a fantastic celebration of how far this series has come and how much more life it still has in it yet. Alear’s hair is still kinda dumb though…

#3: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

Years ago Breath of the Wild not only launched the Switch into immediate sales success, but also started a conversation about how to craft an interesting open world game after years of the genre feeling overdone. And now in the twilight years of the Switch, Tears of the Kingdom returns to that same world with some new tricks. Link’s new abilities give players even more options for engaging in that world, and many of them are true technical marvels. I’ve gone over a lot of this game in a separate blog post, so I won’t try to reiterate what I said there too much, but ultimately I just enjoyed getting to bounce around a familiar world with even more freedom and opportunities to mess around and see how things worked.

I’d argue that TOTK has more in common with a big old box of random Lego pieces than a game at times. Half the fun is reaching inside and seeing what I can create when mixing and matching things together. Using Link’s Ultrahand and Fusion abilities I can craft vehicles and weapons that are often very goofy and don’t always work right…but when you land on something that’s just crazy enough to work it’s magical. In addition to the massive world from BOTW we also have islands in the sky to investigate, alongside the mysterious Depths, so there was always something to poke at and do. You get into a pretty solid gameplay loop of using the sky islands to look for areas of interest down below, then messing around on the ground during quests and visiting towns, before traveling into the Depths to harvest ore that goes towards making a variety of vehicles that can help me get around elsewhere, especially when it comes to getting back into the sky. Your options start out limited, but as you play you get more and more tools to work with and your various mechanisms become that much more complex. This even gets reflected in some of the dungeons you investigate, with one in the Depths in particular being such a programming flex, tons of game developers on Twitter were losing it, just wondering how Nintendo made it happen. For as much as we tout graphical upgrades as true progress in games, Nintendo is doing more interesting things with the very innards of a game using a console that was already out of date when it launched, and that needs to be championed.

For as much time as I poured into this game (probably somewhere close to 200 hours), I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed all of it. With that amount of playtime, you’re bound to notice some cracks. While this game definitely amplified everything I loved about BOTW, it also failed to really address many of the concerns people had with the previous game. Fusion as a mechanic makes ALL weapons feel usable to a degree, but the constant breaking is even MORE frequent. While there IS a way to stop slipping on wet surfaces, it requires a TON of time investment and the potions that give you slip resistance feel like a bandage over the whole annoyance. And then there’s the story being…very repetitive and a bit too much like the previous game in ways. I can see why talk of this game kind of dried up faster compared to BOTW; there was both a lot more competition this year, but also a lot of this game felt too derivative and lost that novelty of the original game. I wouldn’t have poured over 200 hours into the game if I didn’t love it, but there was definitely enough there to hold it back from being my favorite experience of the year.

#2: XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3: FUTURE REDEEMED

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was my GOTY last year, and I knew that a beefy DLC campaign was still in the chamber. I was looking forward to Future Redeemed, but it exceeded about all of my expectations. While the core Xenoblade games have their connections, they’ve all been relatively standalone experiences on the whole until now. I had remembered going into Xenoblade 3, curious to see how all of these elements from the first two games would come together, but that game’s story leaned far more on the brand new cast rather than touching on the older characters in the series and I was left with a lack of closure. I should have had more faith in Monolith Soft, as Future Redeemed serves as not just a prequel to the story in Xenoblade 3, but as the glue that ties the entire Xenoblade series together.

Similar to Xenoblade 2’s Torna: The Golden Country DLC campaign, Future Redeemed is about the size of a medium-sized RPG in its own right, even if it never got a standalone release like Torna did. It keeps a lot of the same core systems of the base game here, but with some interesting twists. Whereas base game Xenoblade 3 made use of a class system and the ability for allies to fuse together, Future Redeemed emphasized pairing up different characters so they could cover for each other’s weaknesses or add to their strengths, on top of having some flashy combination attacks. There was a ton of things to do on the world map at any moment, with Monolith Soft making great use of a more limited map compared to the base game. Seriously, grind rails that can go up AND down were about the one thing Xenoblade 3 really needed! There was also just…so much fanservice and real love for this series found throughout. Seeing Shulk and Rex, the protagonists of the past entries, interacting with each other was fantastic, and newcomer Matthew was a great lead in his own right.

Longtime fans of Monolith Soft CEO and overall creator of the Xenoblade series, Tetsuya Takahashi, will know that his vision of a complete story has been a difficult one to see to completion. Starting back with Xenogears and later Xenosaga, it’s here that Xenoblade finally managed to have a satisfying multi-game arc and conclusion that finally answered some burning questions I had from the ending of 3. Somehow Future Redeemed managed to bring it all together in ways that longtime fans had always hoped for, and all in a neat 30-ish hour package. While I had greatly enjoyed Xenoblade 3, it was still missing something and Future Redeemed was that final piece, making me feel really valued as a longtime fan in the series, and also seems to have some nods to fans of the overarching “Xeno metaseries” that makes me extremely interested in seeing just where Takahashi’s Wild Ride takes us. If this DLC was an indication, the future is indeed bright.

#1: SUPER MARIO BROS. WONDER

As long as we’re talking of bright futures…boy is it good to be a Mario fan right now. From a billion dollar box office hit, to remakes of two beloved RPG spinoffs, that alone would have satisfied fans of the plumber, but then we got hit with the first wholly original 2D Mario in almost two decades. While the New Super Mario Bros. games were all mostly well-regarded critically and commercially, they were just as often considered kind of stale. Inoffensive, but not very interesting, and with so many pumped out in such a short time, it was felt that Mario’s 2D outings had lost something. With the Super Mario Maker games, many had felt that Nintendo had done all that they could with the formula and left it in the hands of fans…but boy were we wrong.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is oozing creativity out of every pore. From the stylish art direction that calls back to the older 2D art from the NES and SNES days, to the focus on music found throughout the game, it’s a rare game that made me smile about the whole way through. So much here feels fresh and different, from the litany of brand new enemies and power ups, to the various Wonder effects that often cap off levels and take them off the rails. I’ve gushed about this game enough in a separate blog post, which you can read here, but ultimately it has to be said that Wonder is a fantastic experience from moment to moment.

Not every game needs to be revolutionary or create a whole new industry standard to be recognized as great. Sometimes it just needs to be really fun. But even so, the amount of care that went into Wonder deserves praise. The developers weren’t given a deadline at first and got to really explore ideas before nailing things down. To see so much of the original Mario crew still involved on this project after so many years in the industry also showcases Nintendo’s iterative design that is continually polished to a fine sheen. The simple act of moving around is so smooth and responsive, the level design constantly plays with your expectations and makes hunting for secrets such a blast, and many of the new mechanics are slotted in seamlessly, like they were always there. Why yes, giving Mario a grappling hook makes perfect sense! Of COURSE he can turn into an elephant and put out fires with water shot out of the trunk! Some dislike the changes to multiplayer, no longer having any collision or ways to really screw with other players, but that results in seamless online play that lets players experience the levels together, yet apart, in a way I haven’t seen many other games implement. Being able to guide newer players through levels by giving them hints, or even a power up if they need it, and throwing down a standee sign that can revive them even if I’m not there…it’s really something special, akin to how players of Journey felt back in the day. The one blemish on what is otherwise a perfect experience are the boss fights that are both too few and too same-y, but honestly that’s a nitpick in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the game that probably gave me the most joy this year. Not the longest game or the most technically impressive, but a masterclass in design that deserves every bit of praise.

CONCLUSION

There are tons of games I wish I got to this year. I’m sure this list would look a LOT different if I had a beefier PC to check out certain games with, or a fancy new PS5, but that wasn’t in the cards this year. If anything though that just goes to show how many talented people are in this industry that there are so many finely-crafted experiences, so many ambitious titles that keep pushing the medium forward. It was admittedly a lighter year for Nintendo, which has always been my bias, but I’m glad to see the folks over at Remedy and Larian and so many others pushing the boundaries of what we can expect to see in games. Having a virtual D&D campaign filled with moments where you have to adapt to things on the fly is nothing short of a magical experience, and seeing how Alan Wake 2 fuses together film and video game to create something so unique deserves its roses as well. Ultimately though, this was a year filled with some developers running on all cylinders, truly excelling at their craft. We’re getting fighting games with honest-to-God single player content! Strategy games are alive and well and continue to tease and torment players with tough decisions. All the while smaller developers pump passion into their projects, resulting in some fantastic experiences all their own. It was a good year for games and I look forward to seeing what will make my list next year. Until next time.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Super Mario Bros. Wonder: How Mario Got His Groove Back

Mario has had a rough regression into 2D. Once the top dog in platformers, Mario has been in a bit of a lurch regarding a number of his titles for the last several years. While once seen as a breath of fresh air, as the New Super Mario Bros. series went on many regarded them as too same-y and stagnant. The same could be said for the 3D titles, as every title from Super Mario Galaxy 2 onward sanded off a lot of the wackier, more experimental aspects of the earlier 3D titles. The less said about the state of the Mario sports and RPG spinoffs the better. However, in recent years there have been glimmers of hope that everyone’s favorite plumber might be getting back to his roots. Super Mario Odyssey was a well-received return to form for the 3D sandbox titles, and the resounding success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie speaks for itself. But the real test was releasing a 2D Mario game that manages to actually FEEL new and exciting. Is Wonder that game, or will be left wondering when this supposed renaissance will truly begin? Let’s find out!

A NEW COAT OF PAINT, AND A FRESH NEW SOUND

The first thing that stuck out to me when first booting up Wonder was just how alive everything felt. The New series after a time felt anything but new, filled with lifeless animations and a bland visual style that was…fine but not exactly exciting. Wonder by contrast is vivid and adorns everything with either a painterly or even clay-like texture. It might not be the most visually striking game ever made, but as far as Mario’s 2D outings go this one really pushed past some boundaries. While in 3D, everything looks a lot more akin to the older 2D art for the Mario cast. Faces are rendered with this 3/4s style, always facing the camera and making sure we can see just how much more expressive each character is. From the determined looks on their faces when dashing about, the way Mario pulls his hat over his eyes when he crouches, or the little flourishes like how the extra-large elephant versions of characters have to squeeze through doorways or pipes, there’s so much attention to detail here.

Adding to that is the sound design and music having a much greater presence here than normal. Over time, we’ve taken for granted how past Mario games have sounded, but Wonder shakes this up a bit. A jump is now the plucking of a string instrument that’s different for every character, while a ground pound is accompanied by a drum roll into a satisfying cymbal hit. Even the iconic sound of entering a pipe has been changed, replicated with a xylophone. The music in general matches the tone of each level well enough. From the early stages and their more laid back tones, to the more sinister themes of the Bowser airships, there are also several stages that feature musical setpieces that really stand out as the most memorable parts of the game. But that’s not all regarding the game’s presentation taking it up another level.

Wonder’s plot is about as simple as we’ve come to expect for the Mario series, and yet there is FAR more voice work and dialogue in this game than you’d think. Mario and friends are visiting Prince Florian of the Flower Kingdom when Bowser crashes their party, stealing one of many powerful Wonder Flowers. Harnessing their power, he merges with Florian’s castle, using his newfound status as…Castle Bowser to build up Wonder energy for…well, something that can’t be good! Florian accompanies the Mario crew in a manner similar to the assistant characters we’ve seen in the older RPG series, having something to say after major levels are beaten or when you enter into a new world. Each world itself also has its own subplot that gives a BIT more context to your platforming fun. In the Sunbaked Desert, we have to track down Bowser. Jr. and take back all the water he’s stolen from the residents. Whereas in the Fungi Mines, players have to investigate several ruins and progress further and further underground to save a group of miners that have been trapped by a cave-in. Even the talking flowers you see throughout the game help the world feel more real, like the adventure is unfolding in real time. At times they can be there for a joke, or as a more diegetic in-game hint, but they also serve as a way to test the waters for more natural voice work in the Mario series after mostly abandoning the prospect with Sunshine. On the note of new voices, this game actually marks quite the shake-up in the voice cast.

After nearly 30 years voicing the plumbers, Charles Martinet is now succeeded by Kevin Afghani. Afgahni’s take on the Mario brothers clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Martinet’s portrayal and in many cases is downright identical. His Luigi sounds uncannily like Martinet, though there are places here or there with Mario where you can hear a bit of a difference, but the transition is largely painless here. Giselle Fernandez also takes over for Daisy after Deanna Mustard’s similarly long tenure with the character, and they really capture the energy Daisy is known for overall. Nabbit is now voiced by Dawn Bennet, while Prince Florian and his Poplin subjects are voiced by Caitlyn Elizabeth and Christine Cabanos respectively. The likes of Peach, the Toads, Bowser and Bowser Jr. are all still done by their longtime actors, but this definitely feels like a new era for the series as the old guard is stepping down. It’s a bit strange to see more professional actors taking on some of these roles, as a good amount of Mario enemies and NPCs are often done by members of the sound team or even the Nintendo Treehouse, but if there was ever going to be a game to swap out a good chunk of the cast, it would have to be this one. The first of MANY changes and surprises in store!

ELEPHANTS AND BADGES AND FLOWERS, OH MY!

Within the first few moments of touching the game, I was reminded of my first impressions with the likes of Super Mario World and how different that game had been from the NES games. Wonder feels like another step forward for the series regarding not just level design and gimmicks, but core gameplay elements that aim to surprise and shatter past conventions. Don’t get me wrong though; this is still a platformer through and through. You run through stages, grabbing the flagpole at the end and gaining collectibles along the way. But each level has something that feels well and truly new and exciting to spice things up. Be it the rather large roster of new enemies, level-specific mechanics like pools of goop you have to slowly push through, or using water to cool down giant superheated platforms, there’s always something around the corner that makes for several standout levels. But the biggest takeaways for a given level will arguably be the various Wonder Flower segments.

Just about every level features a Wonder Flower players can touch, which then triggers a large change to the stage that players will have to navigate in search of a Wonder Seed, which will turn things back to normal. Sometimes the stage itself starts moving like its alive, while at other times enemies might change in size or multiply, and there are even transformations that will affect the Mario crew. While a handful of effects are repeated throughout the game there are a number of completely unique ones that make for a fun climax to the stage. What’s interesting is that the vast majority of these segments are optional, allowing players to skip past them either on replay or when speedrunning, but you’ll be missing a huge part of the game’s charm if you don’t engage with them.

Outside of that, there are also new tools at your disposal to get through these stages. The Elephant Fruit power-up is the most documented part of Wonder in general, letting players become powerful pachyderms as they slam enemies away with a powerful trunk, which can also store and shoot out water. That said, its own uses feel a bit less revolutionary when compared to, say, the Cat Bell from 3D World. Other new power-ups include the Bubble Flower and Drill Mushroom, with the former letting you  bubble up enemies and jump off of them for a boost, while the latter lets you burrow past obstacles and occasionally unearth secrets. Alongside the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower, Wonder uses the power ups smartly, especially with certain timed challenges that task you with taking out enemies as quickly as you can with your arsenal of abilities.

When it comes to character-specific abilities however, some might be a bit disappointed to see the cast is largely homogenous. While it’s great to play as the likes of Daisy and Peach, alongside the Mario Brothers and Toads, everyone is the same (barring the Yoshis and Nabbit, who function as “easy mode,” basically)…so that’s where the Badge system comes in. Players obtain Badges throughout the game, which come with a wide range of effects. From replicating those character-specific abilities (the very first one you get is essentially Peach’s floating from past games), to passive effects like drawing in coins or hinting at secrets, there’s even some Expert Badges that make the game harder on you. You can try out the Jet Run badge to speed through levels but there’s no way to stop running. Or try out the Invisibility Badge to sneak past enemies…just good luck platforming when you can’t see yourself either! Badges are probably my favorite addition to the game, allowing for a degree of customization with exploration and difficulty that really ups the replayability and even accessibility of the game, though I do wish there was a bit more freedom with the system. Only being allowed one Badge, even in multiplayer, is a bit of a shame, but if anything this is a great new system that I’d love to see become a mainstay to the series.

PLAYING “TOGETHER”

Speaking of multiplayer, that’s one facet of Wonder that’s drawn some ire from some circles. Compared to the past few multiplayer Mario platformers, Wonder doesn’t employ collision between players, and also limits the ways players can interact with each other. So this means no more running into people, or picking them up and “accidentally” throwing them to their deaths. This also allows the level design to no longer have to space things out for up to four players, keeping things from feeling too cramped OR too spaced out. It seems perfect and we should all be rejoicing…but for the griefers out there that love to mess with other players this is a dark day and they probably cancelled all of their pre-orders. Now, there is something to be said about being able to physically interact with players and create some spur-of-the-moment plans to grab a collectible or make it through a tough section. If someone plays as Yoshi you have the ability to ride on their backs at least, but otherwise it feels more like you’re playing alongside someone rather than truly together. But perhaps as a result of this, the online experience might be some of the best the Mario games have ever seen.

When connecting online, players will encounter “ghosts” or “shadows” of other players that can be seen but, similar to local play, can’t be interacted with normally. Players can see each other and use little emotes to communicate, but you’re all largely playing your own instance of the level. As a result though, there’s no real input delay or lag to worry about (except when players are loaded into a level you’ve already started) and you can go about your business without worrying about someone messing with you. That said, you can’t, say, ride on another Yoshi player online like you can in local play, but you do gain the ability help out other players. Players can share spare power-ups with other players even online, as well as revive players if they die if you can touch their ghost before a short timer goes down, in a manner somewhat similar to co-op in Cuphead. On top of that, online is where Standees showcase their use. Players can crouch down and press “X” to throw out a standee of their character on the spot, which can serve to either highlight a hidden block or area players can reach, but also serve as a way to revive other ghosts. Throwing down a Standee right before a tough spot can end up really helping other players out, even if it doesn’t do much for you. Players can gain “heart points” by helping other players out and finishing levels with them, which do nothing but give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside. While most online interactions are with random players that can come and go as they please, it IS also possible to make dedicated rooms with friends and engage in races through certain stages too. While the online and even co-op multiplayer might not quite be what every player wanted, I do feel that Wonder found a way to truly innovate after the last several Mario multiplayer experiences were often characterized as being chaotic and frustrating. It feels nice playing through levels and serving as a guide to less experienced players, and being able to race about with friends can be fun in its own way.

THE DIFFICULTY OF CREATING A CHALLENGE

Now, one major aspect of Wonder I was worried about pre-release was the overall challenge the game would pose. Seeing how strong the new power-ups and Badges were, combined with the ways that other players can help in multiplayer, I was worried this wouldn’t be very engaging and you could kind of sleepwalk through it. As subjective as difficulty can be for people, I do think that Wonder largely managed to keep me engaged and offered some real challenges, while also enabling players to really shape the game to their own skill levels. Mario is always going to be a series that appeals to as many people as possible. It doesn’t carry the kind of reputation that, say, the Donkey Kong Country series had regarding difficulty, but Wonder does give players a TON of options to make the game ease up on you and a lot of the difficulty can come from just NOT engaging with these options. Just avoid using Badges, the power-ups or the Yoshis and Nabbit for a more challenging run through the game. That being said, the game does pepper each world with far more challenging levels off the beaten path. Most of the world map actually allows you to tackle levels in any order you want, and levels have individual difficulty ratings so you know which ones to avoid if you want to have a chill time, or indeed which ones to seek out for a real challenge. The game’s final challenge was also suitably hard, so on the whole I was satisfied with my time with the game….with really only one exception.

The vast majority of Wonder is designed around surprising players, constantly doing something unexpected and weird….which makes it all the more disappointing to see them drop the ball with boss battles. Now, this is a platformer and I don’t really ever go into a platformer thinking about the boss fights. If they’re fun, then that’s good enough for me, but they’re often not at the top of the list and I care way more about the levels leading up to them. In Wonder’s case though, not only are the bosses very simple and easy, they’re also infrequent and very same-y. In that regard, it’s the one thing that I think the New series handled better. You fight Bowser Jr. in most of the worlds, with the same overall idea of him attempting to run you over in his shell, with the only difference being a Wonder effect that changes up the arena a bit. But after about three or four jumps on his head the fight is over and they all fail to leave an impact. Not helping matters is that a few worlds just don’t even HAVE boss fights at all, not even minibosses like Boom Boom show up here. While the final boss at least was unique and fun, it still felt like it ended somewhat too soon and I was left underwhelmed by the finale before the post-game challenges. Again, most Mario bosses aren’t much to write home about but with every other aspect of Wonder really going out of its way to impress me, the bosses just stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe if they had gone for a more setpiece driven platforming challenge for the final level, similar to the finales for 3D Land and 3D World, that would have been better, but at the end of the day I wish the game had just pushed the envelope just a bit further.

That being said, I applaud how accessible the game is overall, and for younger or more inexperienced players they’ll likely have enough to grapple with and be plenty engaged. Multiplayer can be both helpful but also make things a bit more tricky depending on the level, and having some easy-mode characters on top of certain badges SHOULD give everyone a chance at beating this game if they so desire. I do feel that the path to true 100% completion is a bit more fulfilling. Each level has at least two Wonder Seeds to get, one for beating it normally and one for completing the Wonder Flower segment. Some levels have secret exists that bestow another Wonder Seed though, and I had to really keep my eyes peel for hints to find those. Wonder Seeds are the only plot-critical collectible but the game also keeps track of whether or not you got three large purple coins in each level, on top of reaching the top of every flag pole at least once, so I had my hands full getting full completion and felt satisfied enough at the end, so I think they did well enough. Maybe in the future they could use the Badge system to let players tweak the difficulty a bit more minutely. Maybe give us some Badges that make enemies tougher or impose a time limit on stages (something this game notably removed compared to past games), just for some extra spice. Difficulty is always going to be tricky to balance, but for the most part Wonder excelled enough there.

A WONDERFUL START TO A NEW ERA

2023 really does feel like we’re entering into a new era for not just Mario, but Nintendo as well. A new console is all but confirmed to exist within the next year or so, and after the Mario Movie’s smashing success, on top of the debut of the Super Nintendo World theme parks, Nintendo is likely ready to make even bigger moves with their IPs, and that includes Mario. Wonder, at least according to the developers, isn’t necessarily the blueprint for every Mario title to come, but it does at the very least paint a picture that this franchise isn’t anywhere close to running out of steam. Mario’s “dark ages” are still far better than the heights of many other franchises but all the same it’s nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel here. With remakes of beloved RPGs, and games like Wonder and Odyssey taking chances and being real returns to form for both 2D and 3D platformers, the future of the series hasn’t looked this good in a while, and I’m excited to see where it goes next. I don’t know if I could say that Wonder is the best 2D Mario game, but it’s easily the best in a long while and will likely be considered a bit of a swan song for the Switch era. Endlessly creative and boasting some surprisingly novel online elements on top of playing like a dream, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is one of the easiest recommendations I’ve had in a while and even with releasing so late into an utterly packed year of amazing games, it stands on its own as far as being in the Game of the Year conversation.

Until next time,

-B

[xb-squaredx]

2023 In Gaming: Great For Games, Terrible for Workers

It’s that time of year again (or perhaps a bit later than usual), and while we await the juicy gaming news and big reveals of 2024, we should really take 2023 to task. Every year in gaming is going to have its highs and lows, and especially since the start of this decade it’s been…a fairly tumultuous time. 2023 still manages to stand out from what’s come before. A huge refrain you might have heard throughout the year was that “2023 is great for games!” So many highly regarded games and some really big success stories…but that isn’t the whole story. So yes, 2023 was a great year for games, but a terrible year for anyone working in the industry itself.

THE BIG THREE’S BIG YEAR

We can start by examining the Big Three of the gaming sphere: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Sony themselves had a somewhat mixed year overall. Certain timed or console exclusives like Forspoken or Final Fantasy XVI had somewhat mixed reception, though the latter at least seemed to sell alright. In the realm of adaptations to their video games, things were somewhat better. While the Gran Turismo movie…exists, and many enjoyed the Twisted Metal series, the real winner here was HBO’s live-action Last of Us series. It won critical acclaim for it’s writing and acting, regarded by many as one of the better game adaptations out there. The biggest first-party release was obviously Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 and while that game did get a fair bit of acclaim and is the fastest selling PS5 exclusive so far…not long afterward Insomniac was hit with a major hack that put a real damper on things. From personal employee information being stolen in this hack, as well as the plans for Insomniac’s next few projects (such as the already-confirmed Wolverine game), there was also a lot of information shared about Insomniac’s difficulties with selling games to appease Sony higher-ups. At one point, one presentation questioned the much larger budget for Spider-Man 2 and how that didn’t seem to translate to higher sales, or even significant recognition for that extra bit of cash injected into things. While Sony seems to be doing fine in some regards, the PS5 having sold over 50 million units, keeping pace with the PS4’s sales along the same time frame, there are signs that the company is having major issues behind the scenes. After the acquisition of Bungie last year, (alongside the Firewalk Studios acquisition this year), Sony has changed course on a number of in-development live-service titles, shelving over half of them. Adding to this, there was the rather strange announcement of the Playstation Portal, a device that lets you stream games to a small screen imbedded in a PS5 Duelsense controller. Many have likened that to the ill-fated Wii U system, and as it stands it feels like a strange project to put money into with an uncertain audience to adopt it. Alongside their continued VR efforts, Sony trudges on, but the cost of these endeavors might be starting to take a toll.

For Microsoft undoubtedly the biggest story this year from them was the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Despite resistance from various government officials, the business deal eventually went through. Along the way some absolutely WILD statements were thrown around by the likes of both Microsoft AND Sony, from downplaying Nintendo’s success in the industry, to Microsoft basically admitting to having failed the entirety of the Xbox One generation and losing customers, feeling that they NEEDED to take steps to become a monopoly to even compete. As talks closed down, Microsoft would promise to keep Call of Duty on Playstation consoles for the immediate future, though other titles are up in the air. Regarding their games this year, I’d say it was also a bit of a mixed bag. Starting the year off strong with the shadow drop of Hi-Fi Rush, a colorful, inventive rhythm action game by Tango Gameworks under Bethesda, we would later see the atrocious reception to Arkane’s Redfall not long afterward. Along with this, we ended the year with Starfield, a supposed “game of the generation” that many hyped up as being the ace in the hole Microsoft needed. That said…the game didn’t quite make the impact many might have wanted. While selling around 12 million copies by the end of the year, the game seemed to vanish from public opinion entirely. No nominations at The Game Awards, and no major impact on the gaming industry compared to the Elder Scrolls entries that came before it. Gamepass still goes on as a subscription service that attempts to bring in more players, but even Phil Spencer knows a lot of work must be done to win over fans again. During an appearance on the Kinda Funny podcast, Spencer was asked some hard questions on Xbox’s fumbles and he was honestly pretty frank, especially an admittance that losing the Xbox One generation was a major mistake that they’re still paying for. Regardless of the money they throw around, it’s clear Xbox is still on the defensive.

Now, I’ll admit I’m probably a bit biased here, but Nintendo had a hell of a year and is the clear “winner” for the Big Three. The launch of Super Nintendo World across various Universal theme parks was mostly well received and I’m sure that will continue to expand as the years go by. Getting in on the trend to have a shadow dropped hit, Metroid Prime Remastered came mostly out of nowhere to tantalize us and whet our appetite for the long-awaited Metroid Prime 4. Pikmin fans were thrown a real bone this year; from the first two games being ported to Switch to the release of the equally long-awaited Pikmin 4, the series feels like it’s experiencing a boom of newer players that could take the series to new highs. Strategy fans saw the release of Fire Emblem Engage, a title celebrating the history of the franchise, alongside the revised released date for the Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp remakes. For the Xenoblade fans this year, the final bit of DLC for Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Future Redeemed served as an amazing sendoff to the trilogy and a way to tie things together in a way many fans had hoped for but figured would never come. One of the absolute biggest games this year was the latest Legend of Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom. Building on what the previous entry, Breath of the Wild started, this was seen by many as a technical marvel. Getting such a massive world to run seamlessly on the Switch’s tech is witchcraft, as is the game’s advanced physics and building mechanics. Engineers were blown away by what this game accomplished, no doubt helped by the game having essentially an entire year of polish. That said, the game didn’t seem to quite hit the mark for some fans and ended up repeating some of the criticisms of Breath of the Wild, somewhat reducing its overall impact. Mario fans had a TON to chew on this year. For starters, there was the smashing success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, with it becoming a billion-dollar earner for Nintendo and Illumination. While critically it didn’t fare well, it fared well with audiences and was clearly part of a plan to push the plumber this holiday season. The first wholly original 2D platfomer in a long time, Super Mario Bros. Wonder released to critical acclaim at the end of the year, alongside the reveals of remakes for Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, thrilling longtime Mario RPG fans. With a Princess Peach game on the way in early 2024, alongside a remake of the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong game and a Luigi’s Mansion 2 port, Mario fans are eating well. This year also saw us saying goodbye to Charles Martinet as Mario’s voice, taking on the task of being a “Mario ambassador” (whatever that means) as we welcome newcomer Kevin Afghani to this role. With rumors of a new Nintendo console being revealed (and maybe even released) in 2024, Nintendo’s future is looking quite bright as the Switch enters its twilight years with some amazing games. But that’s just the Big Three so…what about everyone else?

OTHER INDUSTRY ILK

One major thing that really stood out this year was the final nail hammered into the coffin that is E3. The Electronic Entertainment Expo seems to be dead and buried, cancelling not just the 2023 venue but the next two years as well. After years of being THE place to get gaming news and reveals, it really is the end of an era. We’re at a point where other developers are using their own digital presentations on their own timetables to great effect, following Nintendo’s lead with their successful “Nintendo Direct” format. While E3 was a great way for fans to play games before anyone else and for some truly legendary on-stage moments to occur, the pandemic clearly sped up the venue’s demise, not helped by longstanding controversy with leaking attendee information and the costs of running these large presentations.

Sega had a particularly interesting year, starting with their acquisition of Angry Birds studio, Rovio which is sure to bring in some money. Following the success that the Sonic the Hedgehog brand has seen this year, Sega also seems poised to carry that momentum into new titles. They revealed several new entries in long-dormant series such as Golden Axe, Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi among others right at the end of the year, and are also apparently hard at work at some extremely expensive “super game,” though seeing as they also cancelled an expensive new IP in Hyenas I’m a little skeptical of how this project will turn out. Sega of America also voted to unionize, which seems like good news, but there have also been apparent threats of layoffs if a union comes to pass which puts a real damper on things.

Square Enix had a somewhat rocky year. Forspoken was one of the more ridiculed games online this year, particularly due to its dialogue, and it failed to earn high sales. The primary team behind this title, Luminous, has since folded back into Square Enix proper and the engine they used for this title (as well as Final Fantasy XV) seems like it might be shelved despite a lot of time and money pumped into it. Square Enix themselves has also stated that they are going to start focusing almost entirely on larger-scale projects and scaling back on smaller games in the near future, likely as a result of several smaller projects released over the last few years not doing very well.

When it comes to larger figures in the industry itself, it’s also been a bit of an off-year. Following the disastrous launch of Babylon’s Fall and the shaky reception of Bayonetta 3, one of the founding members of Platinumgames, Hideki Kamiya, left the company in late 2023. Starting a YouTube channel in his spare time, it’s currently unclear why Kamiya left the company, though leadership apparently going full-steam ahead on live-service titles despite signs of the bubble bursting in the industry is a pretty good guess as to why. Someone of Kamiya’s pedigree would likely be a great asset to any developer…just as soon as his non-compete clause ends. Elsewhere, Yuji Naka, largely viewed as the “creator” of Sonic the Hedgehog, was also sentenced to prison for insider trading during his time at Square Enix. It’s safe to say that Naka’s reputation in the industry is about shot, though it’s sad to see the fall from grace all the same.

Speaking of falls from grace, Unity as a developer tool and engine is likely going to be a thing of the past soon. Following news that Unity would begin charging developers after they’ve past enough sales of titles that use Unity, many have sworn off the engine entirely, or are at least heavily considering it. Konami also continues to lose a lot of goodwill from fans as many Silent Hill fans are forced to watch the quality of the franchise fumble. Silent Hill Ascension is being regarded as one of the most hated games of last year, with some accusations that the game’s writing might be using AI generated scripts, if not voice work. AI has itself become a hot button issue for most of 2023, and the gaming industry isn’t immune to that. Alongside Ascension, Embark Studios’ The Finals was under fire for using AI voices for the game in lieu of paying professional actors, and the most recent entry in the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series has been accused of using AI voices for at least the English dub of some lines, though nothing has been officially proven. Of course we also have more old-fashioned scams alive and well with The Day Before, an online shooter accused of asset flipping and misleading marketing that ended up killing its developer, Fntastic, after only being available for purchase for about four days. Scams are eternal.

Leaks are ALSO eternal. Outside of the massive hack and leak of information from Insomniac, Rockstar also suffered various hacks, with the Grand Theft Auto V source code potentially stolen. This comes alongside the source code for League of Legends also being stolen from Riot. A bit of a recurring story throughout 2023 was repeated leaks of military information from forums for the game War Thunder as well; it seems people would risk the wrath of the US Military just to win some online arguments.

To end this segment on some GOOD news in the industry, several sexual assault cases from Riot, Activision and Ubisoft resulted in several victims receiving settlements. Several former members of Ubisoft were even jailed following sexual assault allegations, so there’s at least SOME justice in the world. And for some interesting surprise hits of the year, there were quite a few!

Larian ended up stealing the hearts and minds of gamers in 2023 with the long-awaited release of Baldur’s Gate 3. They would go on to sweep many award shows at the year’s end, enjoying tons of sales success for the title. Effectively letting players enter into the world of Dungeons and Dragons with a moving story filled to the brim with charming characters, it was also considered a marvel at giving players TONS of freedom to explore, fight and progress through the game. In some respects, it’s the next best thing to a real tabletop experience with lot of room for improvisation and countless variables resulting in unique playthroughs for everyone. Remedy also gained a lot of attention for the release of the similarly-long-awaited Alan Wake 2. A survival horror game with an arthouse approach, many praised the game’s presentation and foreboding atmosphere…alongside some dazzling musical numbers thrown in for good measure. After years of hit or miss titles, Remedy seems to have really hit their grove and fans have been enjoying the “Remedyverse” that has been connecting so many of these projects together. From the likes of the Max Payne games to Quantum Break, Control and now Alan Wake, the story goes ever deeper, and many a fan can’t wait to see where it goes next.

On top of the big AAA hits, it’s important to not forget some of the most notable indie hits this year. From RPG throwbacks like Sea of Stars to the colorful, distinctly-animated platformer that is Pizza Tower, there’s too many to list. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a loving spiritual successor to the likes of Jet Set Radio that has been in the works for quite a bit, and for fans of fishing, the horrors of Dredge were sure to delight. While not a 2023 game, this was the year that saw Suika Game gain a huge amount of fans due to various streamers (and Vtubers) playing it, resulting in a worldwide release after previously being only available in Japan. A fruit-based puzzle game, where players try to merge the same types of fruits to make progressively bigger fruits, the simple charm of the game won over millions of new players, having sold over 5 million copies by the end of the year. But if we’re talking big sales success with indies, we have to bring up the sleeper hit that is Lethal Company. Developed by Zeekers, previously an amateur developer using Roblox, Lethal Company came out of nowhere to become one of the biggest hits of the year at over 10 million sales since October of 2023, and this is still as an early access title. A co-op horror experience, players enter into creepy facilities in hopes of finding scrap and spare parts to sell in order to make a profit…but many things lurk in the shadows and players will have to keep their wits about them to survive and meet their quotas. A simple game and certainly a bit crude at points, the game’s success speaks for itself, becoming a gigantic hit especially with streamers. Just goes to show that success can come from anywhere.

While that covers the industry in broad strokes, I’d like to now spend some time investigating some more specific trends that slowly emerged throughout the year. Strap in, because with few exceptions, things start to get a bit bleak.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE A JRPG

With Final Fantasy XVI as one of the most talked about games of 2023, not all of that talk was positive. Playing like a traditional action game was controversial for longtime fans that associate the series more with turn-based affairs, or at least “RPG staples” like multiple party members and gear to collect and swap around to make builds. Many argued it was wrong to call the game an RPG at all. During the various bits of press for this game, as well as the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Rebirth game, Tetsuya Nomura mentioned his own dislike of the term “JRPG,” feeling it was trying to “other” games out of Japan. This kicked off a whole slew of discourse over whether he had a point or not. Some argued it was always said endearingly, or pointing out that design differences between a game like, say, Final Fantasy VII was markedly different from, say, a Fallout or Witcher game. While they are all considered RPGs, the way they are designed and play are so different that the umbrella term ceases to be useful. It did lead to some interesting discussions of game genres and how they’ve evolved over the years, but also a lot of disparaging remarks that seemed to brush off Nomura’s dislike of the term, among other things.

Nomura’s offhand comment on JRPGs would be the catalyst for a greater discussion of how western journalists and gaming pundits would often disparage anything out of Japan in the past decade or so. In some cases these seemed to be tongue-in-cheek digs, but some could be far more unpleasant and looking at them from today’s standards, it led to many a jaw drop. Among all this talk, the game review show, X-Play, was often brought up. So many “jokes” and comments directed at anything outside of Japan were seen as being incredibly racist at worst and just in poor taste and crass at best. From the constant mocking of anime or manga fans, not to mention RPG fans during this era, there was this common belief around the seventh console generation or so that the West was on top and Japan had fallen behind. Certainly Japan did struggle with the switch to HD consoles and certain Western franchises like Call of Duty or Halo found great success around this time, but none of that really excused the venom that was directed at Japan at the time.

While I think you can argue that things have largely improved over the years, that one random comment from Nomura opened up some old wounds and a lot of that xenophobia that had started to fade away during the 2010s came RUSHING back as various game pundits denied any such sentiments had existed. Adam Sessler, one of the former hosts of X-Play, didn’t exactly have the best response to criticisms though. There have also still been some statements made from Western devs in recent years that show these sentiments are still around, such as firing back against Elden Ring’s UI and general UX design among other things. If anything, I think it shows that the gaming industry still has a lot of growing up to do and some skeletons in the closet they keep trying to hide.

CAPCOM RECLAIMS THEIR CROWN

Of my many biases, fighting games are a big one, and this year had a lot to talk about regarding the genre. Let’s start with the bad before we get to the good though. For starters, the winner of “Best Fighting Game” for 2022, Multiversus, ended up being taken offline partway through the year. Having started its second season of content around the holiday season of 2022, updates began slowing down to a crawl with only one new character added during that season amidst some seasonal costumes and events. The developers, Player First Games, would announce that the game’s beta period was ending and we would see the game return…sometime in 2024. This was confusing for many as it felt like the game’s full release had already happened alongside the first season pass. Considering the game’s hefty monetization, it certainly SEEMED like a full release, but as of now it’s as if the game never happened and considering the tumultuous nature of Warner Bros. after the Discovery merger, there is a real fear the game might not actually be brought back. Alongside this, the fighting game battle royale, Rumbleverse also shut down in 2023. Despite its interesting twist on the genre, many fans just didn’t click with it and it was lost in the sea of other live-service titles. Nintendo also ended up turning heads when they revised their tournament guidelines for games like the Super Smash Bros. series. Many are left confused and frustrated with the constant attempts to throttle the competitive scene, though at this point what else is new with Nintendo?

That said, there was a lot of hype this year with a variety of reveals and launches of some greater fighters out there. With more news on SNK’s new fighter in the Garou series, City of the Wolves, fans are looking forward to seeing them continue onwards, on top of them finally adding rollback netcode into the latest Samurai Shodown game. Arc System Works continued to pump out content for Guilty Gear Strive, and despite security issues with hackers affecting some players and lukewarm receptions to much of the season 2 DLC characters, season 3 has been more highly regarded with new mechanics, special moves, characters and modes being added. ArcSys would also throw fans of Granblue Fantasy a bone with an updated pseudo-sequel to the licensed fighting game with Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, finally giving that series rollback netcode for fans to enjoy. Speaking of rollback, Dragon Ball FighterZ also finally received updates on the rollback to be integrated into the game, making just about every modern ArcSys game in line with online quality. French Bread fully unveiled Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes, a sequel to their original IP, launching right at the start of 2024. Namco’s Tekken 8 is also hotly anticipated, with many fans welcoming the new installment after years of waiting.

When it came to the biggest releases for fighting fans though, Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1 were the stars of the show. The former was Capcom’s apology for the previous game’s sorry launch, on top of creating a deeply satisfying set of mechanics and new characters to play with, on top of a significant single player campaign with World Tour Mode, with perhaps the best online experience in a modern fighting game. Capcom also drew attention to their Capcom Cup tournament taking place in 2024, with the winner receiving one million dollars, which certainly helped propel interest in Street Fighter 6. Meanwhile, the latter was the first game set in a brand new universe following the events of the previous Mortal Kombat, and while the assist-based gameplay with the new “Kameo” system was praised, fans had some qualms with the story in this “new” world alongside the game’s DLC characters feeling a tad redundant (both Omni-Man from Invincible and Homelander from The Boys make the cut, both being “evil Superman” archetypes). The game also launched with a number of bugs and many criticized the lack of single player content compared to other entries, but it was still a major sales success.

Seeing new entries in the biggest fighting game series launching within a year of each other, Street Fighter, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat fans are eating well as we enter into a new era of fighting games. With some exceptions and issues here or there, most fighting games have finally embraced rollback netcode, and we’re starting to see more emphasis placed on single player content, resulting in games that feel like full packages. Indie fighters also pop up every so often, pushing boundaries in ways the bigger budget games might not, so no matter where you look there’s something to look forward to. I hope you all enjoyed this brief indulging of my biases and some rare good news in the industry, because our final segment here is going to cover what is easily the most distressing trend about this year in video games.

AN ENDLESS SEA OF LAYOFFS AND CLOSURES

There is no sugarcoating it; 2023 was absolutely awful for many in the industry, as month after month news of layoffs and closures would ripple throughout the industry. Studios big and small have seen massive issues, and as a bit of a spoiler for 2024, that trend isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Where to even begin here? We have the absolute industry giant Epic Games cutting over 16% of its workforce, as reported in September. That’s over 870 jobs gone in the blink of an eye. Despite Fortnite being the biggest thing ever, apparently for years Epic hasn’t been really making much money and these layoffs are an attempt to cushion that blow. It’s hard to really picture the BILLIONS of dollars they rake in between Fortnite, licensing out the Unreal Engine and various other revenue streams still not cutting it, but regardless workers are paying the price.

(from PC Gamer)

Really, September and October were where the floodgates really started to open with closing after closing, layoff after layoff. The QA staff for the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf game were laid off after being brought on to help out Bioware in late September. Team 17, known for the Worms series of games has laid off much of its QA staff, around 50 jobs on top of the CEO leaving. Following over three different rounds of layoffs, the devs over at CD Projekt Red have started unionizing to protect themselves. That’s over another 100 jobs lost. Things aren’t safe at Bungie either, also reporting layoffs, on top of a “soul-crushing” atmosphere at the studio. That’s about another 100 gone, same with Pokémon GO developer Niantic. These layoffs come at the price of cancelling games and delaying expansions, with employee morale at an all-time low. Even studios that died once and were resurrected, like Telltale Games, have seen layoffs.

Layoffs are already bad enough, but longtime developer Volition shut down in 2023 following several rough years. Once well-known for the Saint’s Row series, things were rocky after the fourth game’s somewhat mixed reception. Following the absolute dud that was Agents of Mayhem, the Saint’s Row reboot failed to perform well. That said, much of the blame for Volition’s demise must be laid at the feet of Embracer Group, their parent company that swiped them up a few years prior. Embracer was on a spending spree for quite some time, snatching up various other studios such as Eidos and Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix, which have also seen better days more recently, but the biggest blow came from a 2 BILLION dollar deal falling through, and as such they have had to do some serious “restructuring.” Considering they’ve snatched up somewhere around 138 different game studios alongside all of the other non-gaming ventures they’ve gone to (such as buying the IP rights to Lord of the Rings), this could wind up being absolutely catastrophic. One really has to question just where this ends, and if we might be brushing up against another gaming crash.

For my own two cents here, this is partially the results of unchecked corporate greed, mixed in with the short-sighted belief that the boom the tech and entertainment sector enjoyed with COVID would go on forever. As much as the pandemic lingers and the world state has changed, things are not like they were for the bulk of 2020 when most people were stuck inside with nothing to do. As the “streaming wars” have raged on with movies and what was once television, games continued to do well and brought in tons of money that is now drying up, at least in comparison to the days of lockdowns. We’re at a point in capitalism where the negative effects are harder and harder to ignore. Studios are bought up and then multiple “redundant” jobs are removed. All in the pursuit of capital. The line must ALWAYS go up, and it doesn’t matter how many people must suffer for that to happen. This year was good for business but don’t ever forget that it came at a very human cost.

CONCLUSION

Alright, let’s take a breath and try to take this all in. It’s kind of crazy what can happen in a year, just looking at one industry. As many were so quick to say throughout the year, it was a GREAT time for video games. Some amazing sequels, sleeper hits and breakthroughs in the industry I hold so dear. I’ve made it no secret that gaming is one of my biggest interests and over the last few years especially, it’s served as an escape from…well, the awfulness that seems to have enveloped the entire world. It’s certainly important to highlight the good in this industry. I’m glad to see a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 resonate with so many people, showing that games like this can find mass appeal and success. It was great to see the Xenoblade series get some closure with the trilogy’s final bit of DLC, which also feels like closure for all of the various projects Monolift Soft have been involved with dating back to the days of Xenogears. Seeing Sega bringing back classic IPs is always good to see, and Remedy finally hitting the big time with Alan Wake 2’s success is heartwarming. There was a time when Sam Lake felt a sequel would never happen, and then this year ended with him performing a song and dance number from the game at The Game Awards. A lot of fantastic games and great memories this year, but we can’t lose sight of the worst aspects of the industry that produces these experiences.

People make games, not corporations. People that work hard for years and often never get even a shred of recognition. And then, when we’re seeing record levels of profits, they can be cut loose. All to please the almighty shareholders. I don’t know how we get better from here; again, going into 2024 we’re still seeing TONS of layoffs that rival 2023 already. This isn’t going to get better anytime soon. It’s worth pointing out that this has been predominantly a Western gaming issue, and Japan has seen little if any layoffs overall. There definitely seems to be much stricter labor lays in Japan comparatively. The legacy of Satoru Iwata during his time at Nintendo is greatly impacted by his repeated reduction of his own salary to prevent layoffs during the tepid Wii U years, and while that is a very noble thing…that also just kind of seems like a cultural norm over there. I’m not saying the answers to our troubles lie solely in the Japanese gaming industry, as they have their own problems, but it’d be great if CEOs worldwide would realize that constant downsizing and expensive acquisitions don’t exactly keep the industry healthy. Because honestly if this continues there won’t really be much of a gaming industry anymore.

So far, roughly a month in, 2024 is already giving us a ton of things to talk about, but I’ll hold out hope that at least some of it will be some positive news for the industry going forward. Rumors have been swelling for a while that Nintendo’s next major console will release in 2024, and with the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles entering into their fourth years on the market, people are looking forward to seeing this new generation really take off. At any rate, I’m sure it will take a great while for things to stabilize. I suppose in the meantime, we still have indies! So that’s something, right? It’s hard to really end things on a positive note when you really look back at all the garbage at the end of the year. But it’s important to not give into despair and just let things go by without comment. As bad as things have been this year, it’s always possible to turn things around. While 2024 still isn’t looking great for employment in the industry, we still have 11 months to go, and I will hold out hope we can see some momentum swing into the other direction. That said, I think that’s about enough for now. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the next time I do one of these, I’ll have some better things to talk about.

Take care out there!

-B

[xb-squaredx]

No More Heroes III: A Sequel That Shouldn’t Exist

As the gaming industry trudges on, it’s not hard to notice a trend; games are taking longer and longer to make and the costs continue to climb. Not only does this mean more time waiting for the next installment in your favorite series, but it also has a side-effect of making companies less likely to take risks. A game underperforming nowadays could spell the end for a studio or franchise, and so only the “sure thing” games get made by the bigger publishers. In hindsight, the sixth console generation was a last hurrah for budget titles; there were SO many games of varying length, polish and quality in the era of the PS2 and GameCube. It was a time when Capcom could release absolute bangers like Resident Evil 4 but also finance something “cheap” and weird like God Hand. A time when Nintendo was ballsy enough to have a game starring Luigi as a GameCube launch title. As the HD era kicked off, it became clear that these types of games just weren’t financially viable anymore, though for a time the Wii was home to a fair few hidden gems that were still cheap to make, with one in particular standing out to me: Grasshopper Manufacture’s No More Heroes. Somehow against all odds, we’ve now arrived at a timeline where this niche series about an otaku assassin has reached a third mainline installment as a major Switch exclusive, and there’s plenty to talk about regarding it.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Let’s set the stage here: way back in 2007 No More Heroes released to the masses on the Wii with a…terrible launch in Japan. The West took to the game very well, however, becoming one of Grasshopper’s best-selling titles. The nerdy, perpetually horny wannabe-assassin Travis Touchdown agrees to become the world’s best assassin because some hot chick he met at a bar said she’d sleep with him if he did. That’s it. That’s the plot! Using a beam katana he got online, Travis sets out on a surreal, bloody journey that can be funny, crude, and more than anything else…memorable.

The original game was not flawless by any means; the story ran the risk of being tasteless at points, the combat was definitely wonky and the open world was empty. Despite all of that, it was filled with a unique charm that only Suda 51 could deliver; Travis was an odd beast of a protagonist. Johnny Knoxville put through a Japanese lens, he could be badass and crude one minute, and utterly pathetic and hilarious the next. While the combat wasn’t nearly as refined as many other action titles, it managed to work in motion controls in a way that was incredibly satisfying, swinging the Wii Remote for the killing blow, making it the exclamation point at the end of the sentence that was that battle. Sure, the structure of the game was a bit of a grind; being forced to work crappy temp jobs to earn enough money to unlock the next assassination fight, then having to spend several minutes driving through a barren open world to get to some actual content. I would argue that all of this helped to reinforce how much of a loser Travis was outside of his assassinations and was a good juxtaposition for all of the slaughter. This all mixed together and resulted in a game unlike anything else. You would NEVER see a AAA game that would get this weird. They’d likely have an open world littered with things to do, or just cut to the next fight without showing all of the weird grinding and dead-end jobs, but that would just suck the charm right out of it. Ultimately, it’s the kind of game that only Suda could make, and likely only during this strange transitional period to HD gaming.

A sequel would follow a few years later and despite polishing up its combat, offering more playable characters and its story having a bit more gravitas to it, the lack of marketing coupled with the Wii’s declining popularity resulted in the game’s sales being quite a disappointment. It’s worth noting that around this time Grasshopper went through some changes; Suda would move to more of an executive role, with a rare directing credit on small games like Liberation Maiden on the 3DS. Over the years, Grasshopper would face issues with the changing gaming landscape and outside of a few successes (like Lollipop Chainsaw), their games continued to be niche at best. One of their more well-known fumbles was Shadows of the Damned which faced executive meddling from Electronic Arts and the game’s eventual finished state would hit Suda particularly hard. GungHo Online Entertainment would acquire the company in 2013, and later Suda would establish a smaller team he would lead over himself, separate from GungHo’s team. It would seem that the indie explosion of the 2010s had a profound effect on Suda and with a new Nintendo console on the horizon, this all culminated in the 2017 announcement of Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.

TSA is an odd game, even for Grasshopper and Suda 51. It is one part tribute to indie games, one part No More Heroes continuation, one part celebration of Grasshopper’s entire catalogue of games, and it all ties together with a deeply personal examination of the trials and tribulations of game development. Travis spends the game going into the game worlds of launch titles for the fictional Death Drive Mk. 2 video game console, and he develops a deep respect for Dr. Juvenile, the acclaimed developer of these games, and comes to sympathize with the sabotage of her greatest work, which has heavy parallels to the development of Shadows of the Damned. TSA was not going to be for everyone, and was a far departure from the typical No More Heroes formula, but it was also extremely experimental. Large portions of the game’s story play out in old PC-styled visual novels, various other mediums are blended into the game’s sparse cutscenes and allusions to media that Suda loves are abundant throughout. I wouldn’t say the game itself was all that fun to play to be exact though; levels went on pretty long, enemies weren’t all that interesting to fight, and the game’s clearly low budget meant there was minimal voice acting, which severely held back the ability to really bring the characters to life. That said, getting to the end gave the clue that a proper mainline entry might not be that far away. Sure enough, at E3 2019, just a few months after TSA came out, No More Heroes III was confirmed for the Switch.

I’M NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS, BUT…

When I completed No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, my visions for a sequel didn’t exactly line up with the No More Heroes III we eventually got, and I think that’s not entirely a bad thing. This game centers on Travis taking on a group of dangerous alien outlaws that set their sights on Earth. They’re well-mannered enough to agree to the whole Ranked Assassin battles that the series was built upon at least, so Travis is able to take them on one at a time as he slowly works his way up to Prince FU, the leader of the bunch. At this point, Travis has fought psychopathic assassins, cyborgs, supernatural forces and sentient computer bugs, so really a fight against aliens was clearly the next step. FU is a fun antagonist on his own; he gets WAY more screen time to flesh out his cocky, laid-back personality, compared to most series antagonists that only show up at the very end of the game. By going with aliens as the primary threat, this also allowed the character designs to get WEIRD, and gives a lot of potential for the boss fights of the game to be the craziest yet. I think the decision to fight off an alien invasion is an inspired one, but I wouldn’t exactly say that the end result was completely satisfying.

I want to dance around overt spoilers, but generally speaking I feel like No More Heroes III’s narrative is very weak overall. For as much potential as the alien plotline has, the vast majority of the aliens Travis has to fight aren’t all that memorable by series standards. In some cases this seems deliberate, but on the whole I feel like the premise was wasted. Adding to that, established characters in the franchise, such as Travis’ disciple Shinobu or the likes of Bad Girl and her father, Bad Man (who got a lot of focus in TSA) barely feature in the game at all, written out in a way that just feels uninspired. Meanwhile there are a few newer characters that get integrated into Travis’ entourage but they aren’t really given a lot of room to be developed and their presence here basically ate up the screen time that other characters could have gotten instead. Probably the most disappointing aspect of the story though is how little the relationship between the primary antagonists is explored. At the game’s start, we’re treated to a nice 2D animated sequence that shows a young boy named Damon meeting a young Prince FU, nursing him back to health and helping him to find a way back home. FU promises Damon he’d return in 20 years’ time…and that’s when this game kicks off. At first glance Damon is shocked at FU’s extremely aggressive demeanor and seems concerned with FU’s dreams of conquest, but then the rest of the game never really delves into it at all. We don’t find out why FU turned out the way he did (outside of some dialogue where he was allegedly “always” like this), and as for Damon…I have my own ideas about why he got so little focus, so put a pin in it for now. Ultimately, the story feels somewhat incomplete and rushed…and then I read an interview wherein Suda stated that around an hour of cutscenes for the game had to be gutted, and suddenly it all makes sense.

All that said though, I’d argue the overall presentation is still pretty good and hits a lot of high points. The game blends in a lot of different mediums and at every turn there are allusions to all kinds of media. Each chapter of the game is given its own psychedelic pseudo-live-action intro that homages old Ultraman opening themes, there’s a mecha anime-styled ending theme for each chapter, super-deformed eyecatches in-between chapters and…loading screens that mimic the Netflix interface as the next chapter begins. At every point you’re assaulted with different art styles and bright, garish colors and it can be a real feast for the eyes. That said, there are also parts of the game that are pretty crude, and I don’t think it’s wholly a deliberate choice. While the character models for Travis, other NPCs and enemies are all often pretty detailed and animated well enough, the environments are often very low-poly and lack detail. Driving through the open world sections in the game, you’re treated to some pretty bad pop-in and lighting that frequently breaks. Areas are just as barren as they were back in the Wii original, but it’s a lot less forgivable given the boost in power between the Wii and Switch. Parts of this game can look really nice, but other parts feel like they come from generations past. Audio-wise, I think III has a fairly solid soundtrack with a lot of variety, including lo-fi rap and techno, though I’m not sure how well it will hold up to the previous mainline entries for me. The voice acting, meanwhile, is fantastic and I’m glad most of the actors from previous entries could reprise their roles even all of these years later. Robin Atkins Downs IS Travis Touchdown and I don’t think anyone else could ever successfully play him, and across the board I think most everyone delivers a good performance, even if a lot of the cast had little material to work with. All that said, the combat is where I think this game surprised me the most.

I STUDIED THE BLADE

Across Grasshopper’s entire catalog, I’d say their action games are…functional, but often lacking in polish, though I’m clearly spoiled by the likes of Capcom and PlatinumGames action titles that prioritize the feel of the action above all else. The first two titles in this franchise are mostly fine and have good ideas; they just needed a bit more time to fine-tune things. TSA was more arcade-like in the action department and the focus there felt more designed around using your special Death Glove powers over your beam katana. I was a tad worried going into No More Heroes III but coming out of it, this is the best combat the series has ever had and quite possibly the best combat in any Grasshopper game. It feels way more polished and responsive, and you actually fight enemies that are varied in design, forcing you to change up your ways to approach them. Travis can still use a few Death Glove powers that run off of cool downs, but the game still allows for fun with the beam katana slicing and dicing opponents. Killing enemies triggers a roulette wheel that has the chance to give you a random power-up (up to and including Travis donning his new fancy power armor), and other aspects like his wrestling moves and his perfect dodge have way more use. In old games, you could only grapple enemies that were stunned with melee attacks, but in this game, if you can get behind opponents, you can just suplex them for free and it feels really satisfying to land a good grapple, and then performing a grab on a stunned enemy also replenishes your swords battery which allows you to keep fighting without stopping to uh…you know…shake some life into it. The Dark Step maneuver in the first two games was more than a little inconsistent, but in this game the Perfect Dodge feels more tuned. Dodge at the last moment and you can hack away at enemies while time is slowed down, or go right for a grab! I wouldn’t say the game’s perfect though.

While the combat is much improved and polished, there’s still some jank. For example, if Travis dodges and time slows down, enemies remain in their attack animations even as you hack away at them, and in a lot of occasions, the instant the slowdown stops I end up getting hit by the attack that I had already dodged…because the game still treats it as being active and the enemy never stopped attacking even though I was slicing them up in the slowed down time. Compare that with, say, Bayonetta, where attacking enemies while Witch Time is triggered put them into hitstun and prevented that exact issue. While I think the enemy variety is MUCH improved, with Travis fighting some really weird aliens that have more inspired designs than “thug with bat” or “thug with gun,” they tend to be a real pain to fight, and that definitely contributes to this game being a LOT harder than past entries on the whole. Travis lacks good crowd control, so he can get swarmed easily and enemies on average have a LOT of health, so you have to dedicate a lot of time to taking out a single target, all while the others are free to take shots at you from off-screen. Making use of all of your tools, from the Death Glove powers, to suplexes, to your roulette wheel can make a huge difference but on the whole some fights just feel like they go on for too long, and there’s little to do but fight.

Unlike past entries that had dedicated levels leading up to bosses, in No More Heroes III you have to instead traverse the open world to find “Designated Battles,” that Travis has to complete before the boss fight is unlocked, in addition to paying a fee, just like old times. These Designated Battles are usually just battling a few waves of enemies in an arena, though occasionally Travis will don his power armor and take to space to take on a huge boss in a shoot-em-up section. Bosses end up having little to no build-up since you just fight generic mobs of enemies that are disconnected from the fight on the whole, barring one real instance midway through the game. To a degree, the levels in the first game weren’t all that fun and cutting them out means little value is lost, but it did add some variety to the game and I really feel their absence. But maybe it would have been easier to accept if the open world sections had been fulfilling to explore on their own.

Unlike the first game, this time Travis has more than just Santa Destroy to explore. There’s also the suburban Perfect World, the desert wasteland in the Thunderdome, the dusty, war-torn Call of Battle ruins, the suspiciously plain Neo Brazil and Damon Tower, which is sadly the smallest area in the game, being little more than a corridor leading to the final boss. While it was nice to explore Santa Destroy again and see what changed, most areas in the game still feel very empty. In the case of places like the Thunderdome it makes sense, though Neo Brazil is little more than a parking lot…with a bustling city looming in the distance you can’t visit. With Suda it’s hard to tell if this is a joke on the player, or just issues with development. Looking at the map, many areas are labeled as a “forbidden zone,” and you never get the ability to travel there throughout the game. It’s anyone’s guess if this was done as a joke, a consequence of development scaling back, or perhaps planting seeds for future DLC. While I can somewhat commend Suda for bringing back the open world aspects that only the first game really had, I do question the execution and feel that the ambition might have been better spent elsewhere on the game. Why make SIX areas that feel lacking to explore, when you could have fleshed out a single area instead?

While I decry the game world for feeling a bit lacking, there are things to do. Travis can engage in various odd jobs to earn money for the ranking battles, and there are a few sidequests players can engage in. Compared to the first game, the grind isn’t nearly as much of a problem; you earn money for doing just about anything in the game and the jobs are often quick and mostly painless. Travis can pick up trash in rivers while fighting off alligators, unclog toilets, help the coast guard fend off giant alligator attacks, or race street punks on his bike to get them off the road and stop disturbing the peace. The only side activity I find to be absolutely bad is mining, where players are forced to navigate super tightly-packed mines where it’s both easy to get lost, and easy to fall into lava pits that immediately cause a game over. Said area is one of the only times in the game Travis needs to jump…and thank God for that because his jump is pretty stiff and laggy. There are also a lot of optional fights players can engage with that open up as the game goes on, but they mostly felt like padding. Not only are some of these later fights absolutely grueling (try fighting 25 waves of enemies for over a half hour!), they also seemed to glitch. The wrong mission would load in, which in turn prevented me from actually unlocking a good amount of later missions. Nothing game breaking of course, but if you’re going for 100% completion you might be in for quite the headache.

UNFLINCHING INDULGENCE

In the long gap between No More Heroes 2 and No More Heroes III, I did my best to expand my horizons when it came to games. I dipped my toe into a lot of franchises I’ve never played before, and played what some might call modern masterpieces. In that time, I think I grew quite spoiled by playing games developed by people that were masters of their craft, and when it comes to these smaller, more experimental titles, I often can’t help but compare them, which isn’t really fair. Like, OF COURSE Breath of the Wild wipes the floor with No More Heroes III when it comes to making a great open world. It’s no surprise at all that Bayonetta or Devil May Cry has more fleshed-out, satisfying combat. Major console exclusives look and run better than this game does a lot of the time, and to say that I’ve played games with better stories than this should probably go without saying. This goes beyond No More Heroes III and can apply to a lot of Grasshopper’s catalog; their games aren’t the biggest or shiniest, they aren’t the most polished and they often suffer from some pretty big flaws…but I still love them anyway because no one else makes games like them.

Like I said at the beginning, gaming has changed a lot in the last decade or so. The budget for games balloons and niche games grow ever smaller. We need these artsy, weird games now more than ever so we can actually have some variety. Not to get on a soapbox, but so much of modern gaming is made up of live-service games that are more concerned with being a constant form of revenue rather than being an entertaining experience, and if they aren’t that, they’re incredibly homogenized. But games with Suda 51 at the helm have an identity. For what they lack in raw visual fidelity or content, they make up for in earnestness and creativity. These are games where characters can just sit on the couch and shoot the shit about anime and movies they like; seriously, the ending of every chapter of the game just has Travis and Bishop talking about Takeshi Miike movies or the latest Kamen Rider show, and it’s clear Suda does this so that he can just talk about the stuff he loves. He uses these games to make commentary on what he likes or doesn’t like about the industry, and honestly I have to admire the courage it takes to be so indulgent. To just homage anything and everything at a given moment, to tie your games together into a loosely-connected universe filled to the brim with callbacks and continuity nods that only the most seasoned Grasshopper fan is going to get.

You have to be tuned to a very specific wavelength to really “gel” with Grasshopper Manufacture’s games, I think. I’m not trying to be elitist when I say that; it’s just that these games clearly aren’t for everyone. They’re dumb, they’re crude, and they are often really janky and barely hold together under close inspection. I can’t say I can recommend their games to everyone, but for a certain niche, if they “get” it? They’re gonna have a FANTASTIC time. Because they found a game that isn’t afraid to not always make sense, or work for everyone. They found a game that, despite any flaws it has, can still shine through and make a connection with the player.

I’d say at the end of the day I’m happy that No More Heroes III got to exist at all and it feels like a small miracle that it happened. In some ways this isn’t the ideal sequel I wanted, but in others it did things I never could have expected, which leaves me with a game that was still very memorable. Knowing that Grasshopper has had its ups and downs and the actual team on this particular game was quite a bit smaller than I had expected, I find that III is a fairly ambitious product. While to a degree it might be held back a bit by Switch hardware, I’m also sure that the pandemic impacted the game quite a bit as well. Seeing as this missed the initial 2020 release date, and hearing of aspects of the game that were left on the cutting room floor, this game was undeniably a result of compromise. That’s pretty much the case with most things though, and this series has even had some jokes about things that had to be cut from the games to ship on time, so it isn’t a huge surprise. Admittedly though, having over a decade to dream about what a true end to the No More Heroes trilogy could be definitely clouds my judgment on this game a bit; there’s a part of me that can’t help but wonder what could have been. At the same time, I’m just thankful this got to exist in any state, and if I’m being honest and looking at this game on its own merits, No More Heroes III is a fun, stylish, and occasionally uneven ride that leaves me hopeful that Suda remains in the director’s chair for more fun stuff down the line. For a game that I had begun to imagine would never exist, it made out OK, and the world is better for having more wacky appearances from Travis Touchdown. According to Suda 51, this is the last No More Heroes game, but I certainly hope there is more to come from his one-of-a-kind mind.

Start the game.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Rise of the V-Tuber

As a platform, YouTube has gone through a variety of “eras,” wherein a particular trend catches on and defines the website for some time. In the early days, you had funny cat videos, then Let’s Plays of video games became rather popular, and now we seem to be deeply entrenched into a new era that has exploded in popularity as of late. If you’ve frequented the website at all in the past few months, it is almost inescapable. Cutesy, anime-styled avatars that play games, sing, chat with viewers, or even cook! What does it all mean? Where did they come from? Are they here to stay? Most importantly, how does one crawl out of the rabbit hole once they fall into it? All that and more will be revealed as we delve deep into the wacky, wholesome and sometimes worrying world of V-Tubers. (photo credit YuuGiJoou. Check her out on YouTube, Twitter or Twitch!) 

THE ORIGIN

To begin properly, let’s define the subject. A “V-Tuber” is a “Virtual YouTuber,” someone who streams on YouTube (or any other streaming platform) using a digital avatar as a proxy. The streamer in question typically uses face-tracking software so that the avatar can emote (or at least attempt to emote) to match their own reactions as they provide entertainment for their audience. While it may seem as if V-Tubers are rather new, in doing research on the topic, you’d be surprised how far back things go.

For starters, the concept of a virtual celebrity has been around for a while, with one of the most notable efforts being Hatsune Miku, a Vocaloid voicebank program. Hatsune Miku is every bit as famous and beloved as a flesh-and-blood singer or entertainer despite being nothing but voice synthesizer software. Vocaloid got its start back in 2000, eventually being reworked into a commercial product in 2004, though it wasn’t until the programs started receiving anthropomorphic character designs that it took off, with Hatsune Miku’s own debut in 2007, and the rest is history.

Many will consider “Virtual Idol” Kizuna Ai as the true pioneer of what we call a V-Tuber today, making her debut in 2016, however one could make an argument that Ami Yamato, a 3D-animated vlogging channel debuting in 2013, beat her to the punch. Honorable mention of course goes to Any Malu, a Brazilian animated YouTube vlogger who debuted in 2015 and eventually gained her own show on Cartoon Network Brazil. While Ai may not be the first, she is undoubtedly considered to be the codifier that many later V-Tubers would follow. Ai’s entire shtick was being an AI program that wanted to connect with humans, playing games, singing or interacting with fans. Following her explosive popularity, it was clear that other companies would follow the model established by Ai, with their own spins on it of course.

Nijisanji, established in 2018, proved that this trend could be incredibly profitable, becoming trailblazers in their own right as they established various “branches” of their company in several countries with their own unique performers that could cater to a wider range of viewers. As of this writing, Nijisanji employs over 164 “Virtual Livers,” most of which come from their Japan branch, alongside their Korean, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian branches. Similarly, there is the Hololive corporation, which saw substantial growth throughout 2020 in particular. Established in 2016 originally as Cover Corporation, at first Hololive was the name of an app meant for use in 3D motion capture, though following Nijisanji’s success, Hololive was rebranded as a V-Tuber competitor and also features a variety of colorful characters spread across many different main branches. There is of course the Japanese branch, as well as Hololive Indonesia, the relatively new (and highly successful) Hololive English, a defunct Chinese branch and an all-male Holostar branch in Japan.

Other, smaller V-Tuber groups have sprung up alongside the corporate powerhouses, such as VOMS Project, established in March of 2020, as an independent trio of streamers, and more recently at the tail-end of 2020 with V-Shojo, featuring a group of Western streamers (who ironically mostly stick to Twitch). Outside of this of course are the countless independent streamers who utilize avatars for one reason or another across many different platforms. Even prominent Twitch streamers seem to be getting in on the act, such as Pokimane, though that one has not come without some backlash. So consider that a rough history of how V-Tubers got started in Japan but how did they gain a more global fanbase? Well, in a word…”memes.”

GOING INTERNATIONAL

I won’t deny there had to be at least SOME overseas fans who enjoyed watching V-Tubers before they became more well-known, but for many Western fans their introductions to V-Tubers in general typically came from viral videos taken from various streams that spread like wildfire, eventually getting people curious enough to check them out. For Kizuna Ai, her playthrough of Resident Evil 7 gained notoriety for her mimicking the cursing of the English-speaking player character, and for Hololive, arguably the first real Western breakthrough for the company came from a now infamous moment from Sakura Miko’s stream of Grand Theft Auto 5. 

Also from Hololive, Inugami Korone in particular had a variety of memes spread about her due to playthroughs from various games that even got acknowledged by the developers themselves. Her playthrough of DOOM 2016 resulted in a short-lived Easter egg implanted into DOOM Eternal, and her video on Banjo-Kazooie (and the animated Eekum Bokum fan video that spawned from that) got the attention of Rare, Xbox and even Grant Kirkhope, the composer for the original game.

Honestly, the real unsung heroes of sorts for V-Tuber popularity might just come from foreign fans that would clip and translate various moments from streams that helped to build an international audience. There are dozens of Twitter handles and YouTube channels that specialize in spreading these clips around and if you factor in the YouTube algorithm, once you see one video your feed will be flooded with similar videos. It is no surprise fans call getting into the fandom “falling into the rabbit hole.” When you look at the more popular members of Hololive, often the ones with various viral clips have the higher subscription counts. In the case of Aki Rosenthal, one of the older members, her sub count exploded after a fan translated a section from a then-recent stream in which she talked candidly about her less-than-stellar growth as well as the difficulties of standing out in general. While at one point having the lowest amount of subscribers (well below 200,000), in the months since that video her sub count has more than doubled going past 400,000. Sometimes the talent needs a little push.

Now, within Hololive itself, I think Kiryu Coco is also partially responsible for expanding the fanbase, being one of the few employed talents with the ability to speak English (likely a native speaker), she gained a large international fanbase as she would work to translate what she or other members were talking about on the fly, and later on established an ongoing series where she would directly engage with fans over websites like Reddit and “rate” the various memes they would send in. Coco also pushed for establishing what would become Hololive English, which has proven to be a gigantic success, each member of that branch blowing past more established talent’s subscriber counts, with Gawr Gura becoming the first Hololive V-Tuber to pass one million subscribers and just recently passed the two million mark. So yeah, V-Tubers are a big deal now but…what is about them that makes people want to watch them in the first place?

THE APPEAL

So, right off the bat, if we’re going to ask why someone would want to watch a V-Tuber I think it’s fair to ask that of virtually ANY internet personality. The reason why someone would watch Game Grumps or Pokimane or Jojo Siwa or whoever else is the same reason they’d watch Kizuna Ai or Inugami Korone or Ironmouse: they’re entertaining. I guess that seems like a bit of a cop-out answer, right? There MUST be a reason why V-Tubers have blown up in popularity over the last few years, so are there things that make these particular Internet entertainers stand out from the crowd?

Undoubtedly, the fact that these streamers are playing a character is a deviation from the norm, though the dedication to staying “in character” seems to vary from person to person, and over time many V-Tubers tend to open up and are far more genuine. At any rate, even the best actor out there can’t possibly make up various daily happenings or childhood stories for their characters on the fly, day after day, stream after stream. Still, I’d imagine the decision to use a proxy as opposed to their real self can be liberating, a mask they can wear to speak more freely or a role they can play up for entertainment. For the most part, I think the persona aspect is mostly harmless fun that makes the streamer seem more distinct; ask yourself which is more eye-catching: some normal human playing a game and occasionally cracking a joke, or a one-eyed pirate girl discussing her raunchy past? Or maybe you’d rather watch the grim reaper practice her raps? Even talent that don’t really play up their character much still often have interesting character designs; we have princesses, dragons, devils, robots and more. A little something for everyone!

Speaking a bit more personally, I find it interesting to watch streamers from an entirely different culture and how they interact with fans or engage with games. I find it funny when Inugami Korone or Sakura Miko plays more Western-oriented games like the DOOM series or Grand Theft Auto V respectively. Often times they’re blown away by the culture clash, or they view these games through a different lens since it’s so different from what they’re used to. In particular, those two are just genuine goofballs that are funny all on their own. More chat-focused streams are an interesting view into daily life in Japan, such as the stories Houshou Marine tells, though obviously a given V-Tuber’s viewpoint isn’t a metric you can apply to the whole country, but she’s still interesting to listen to. Takanashi Kiara is also notable for her multilingual skills, which has helped her bridge the gap a bit more between the various Hololive members through her Holotalk segments where she interviews other V-Tubers. Outside of Hololive, Amano Pikamee from VOMS Project is just a bundle of energy that’s fun to watch as she rages in Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine. Her tea-kettle laugh is also just kinda charming. The V-Shojo group stands out for being super vulgar compared to the more corporate V-Tubers and while I don’t watch them all that much, there’s still some fun chaos to be had. Still though, I think there’s one big elephant in the room that would also help explain V-Tubers catching on at this specific point in time: the pandemic. Streaming is one of the few jobs not really affected by the pandemic, and with people stuck inside, they’re more likely to scroll through YouTube or Twitter and find a funny clip and then…well, you know… It’s one bright spot in an otherwise dark time…but I’d be lying if I said it was all sunshine and rainbows.

THE DARK UNDERBELLY

The overall idea behind V-Tubers, at least in Japan, seems to be an extension of Idol Culture…and uh…if you know anything about Idol Culture in Japan, it is all kinds of scummy. Exploitative, filled to the brim with harmful rules and regulations and largely catering to some vary unsavory “fans,” I’ll make it no mystery that I find it incredibly distasteful. Look no further than what happened to Minegishi Minami from the idol group AKB48. To keep a long story short, the obsession with “purity” and being this idealized Japanese beauty means idols are effectively locked into their work, unable to discuss or in many cases partake in romantic relationships, as that would make them less “desirable” to their audience. This unfortunately does at times extend to V-Tubers.

Take Tokoyami Towa, who was suspended for some time and forced to make an apology video for…having some male voices briefly heard over Discord during an Apex Legend stream. She even lost a lot of subscribers and support from Japanese fans following this, though once learning of this, Western fans flocked to her as a show of support. Hololive has also dealt with a variety of issues coming from Chinese fans; though that’s a particular hornet’s nest I don’t want to delve into here too much. To sum it up, fans can get obsessive and toxic, which can lead to the talent being harassed. It is for this reason, it is generally agreed upon by fans to not delve too deep into the personal lives of the V-Tubers, for fear of being doxxed and the illusion being broken. These kinds of issues certainly bring up some interesting questions regarding how talent should be treated moving forward.

Are these V-Tubers characters or just alternate sides of real people? Where does the fantasy end and reality begin? Ultimately, the lines are somewhat blurred. Talent certainly brings some of their own personality into the performance, but they are forced to remain anonymous and as can be seen in the case of Kizuna Ai, they are not always in control of the character they’ve been given. Kizuna Ai’s initial actress was for a time replaced, and “clones” of the character with different voices and personalities started to spring up, likely as an attempt to compete with the likes of Nijisanji and Hololive. In cases where V-Tubers retire from the industry, or “graduate” as some call it, all of their hard work cultivating a fanbase might end up being for nothing as they were forced behind a proxy that isn’t truly themselves and I imagine it can be hard to start over again from square one. Never mind the attempts to step out of the shadow of your older work. Man, Perfect Blue was downright prophetic at times, huh?

I don’t want to dwell on the negatives too much though. It’s worth noting for one thing that Nijisanji seems relatively lax regarding how their talent operates, whereas it seems Hololive is the standout for adhering to the idol ideal, though considering how some of the talent acts (in particular Kiryu Coco), one has to wonder if they’re softening their stances a bit. Many V-Tubers generally talk about the positive aspects of the industry and being given the opportunity to reach people from all over the world. Shortly after Ina’s debut in Hololive English, she was actually brought to tears when told her art streams convinced people to get into (or back into) the hobby, which had been one of her goals for becoming a V-Tuber in the first place. Ironmouse, now a member of V-Shojo, has an immune system disorder that keeps her bedridden and forced to stay inside, so the opportunities afforded by this particular type of streaming has allowed her to reach out to others and as per her own words, has changed her life for the better. While there are definitely “fans” that go too far, corporate practices that are outdated, or harmful and a slew of potential unfortunate implications, ultimately I think most people out there are just looking for quality entertainment, and these digital proxies give these entertainers an outlet to connect with fans in a way that they might not have otherwise.

CONCLUSION

V-Tubers are in a bit of a boom at the moment, though I can’t imagine it’ll last forever. We’re quickly approaching market saturation and after a point, people can only follow so many streamers at once. Hell, as I was editing this up, it seems as if prominent YouTuber Pewdiepie is about to step into the ring, so who knows what kind of shake-up that could bring. The bubble will undoubtedly burst and what becomes of V-Tubers then is still up in the air. Or who knows, maybe V-Tubers will endure and replace all entertainment and we’re just watching the beginning of a cyberpunk dystopia. Stranger things have happened! Considering the world is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic, that should largely have an impact on the popularity of V-Tubers for some time to come, though as we emerge into a “new normal” in the world, it’ll be interesting to see how these entertainers continue to evolve. Now, I suppose there is one question I never quite went over before now, isn’t there? How does one escape the V-Tuber rabbit hole? Well, I’m sorry to say but there is no escape.

Enjoy your new home!

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Metroid Dread: Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

The Metroid series is a real standout from most of Nintendo’s in-house franchises. While most Nintendo series are bright and colorful and family-friendly, Metroid is dark and moody, and oftentimes scary. Most Nintendo series forego narrative in favor of pure gameplay, while Metroid has an ongoing storyline and a clear arc for protagonist Samus Aran to follow. Most depressing of all, while most first-party Nintendo series are either clearly dead-and-buried or see frequent installments, Metroid exists in this excruciating middle ground. At times, the series gets attention, only for it to die out for several years at a time. Despite all of the critical acclaim that the series gets, the sales often don’t back it up (fun fact, a title like Super Mario Land on the Game Boy has sold about as much if not more than the entire Metroid series combined), leading to longtime Metroid fans often starving for more content. Following Metroid Fusion’s release in 2002, the series has since danced with either the Metroid Prime subseries (itself set in-between the first two Metroid games), or interquels like Metroid: Other M. For those wishing for a true continuation of the main storyline, it has been 19 long years…but we’re finally here. The long-rumored, often-thought cancelled Metroid Dread…is real. Development of Project Dread has reached the final stages of completion. So let’s start the mission.

THE GALAXY IS AT PEACE…?

Dread opens with a recap of the events of Metroid Fusion. With Samus having eradicated all living Metroids, a new threat emerges: the X Parasite. Gelatinous creatures that can infect, kill, and then replicate any living creature, complete with absorbing memories, Metroids were their sole predators. Samus herself nearly died due to an X infection, but her life was saved by a vaccination created using leftover Metroid cells, granting her the ability to absorb the parasites and avoid further infection. She saves the day, as she does, and the X menace has been thwarted…or has it?

When the Galactic Federation receives word that the X has been sighted on planet ZDR, they send sophisticated machines, the E.M.M.I. units, to take care of the problem. Predictably, something goes wrong and the Federation loses contact with the robots, thus it is up to Samus to investigate and find out if the X are indeed a true threat and what happened to the E.M.M.I. Dread strikes a balance between a more traditional narrative complete with some sparse dialogue and cutscenes, and the subtle, environmental storytelling of the past Metroid games. Some felt Fusion’s linear, story driven approach and pretty much the entirety of Other M’s narrative wasn’t a good fit for the franchise, so Dread might be more to their liking. For my own take, I really enjoyed Dread’s narrative as it finally delves more into the ancient Chozo race, the alien bird people that took Samus in and raised her into the bounty hunter we all know and love. For a long time, the Chozo were a background element at best, but in Dread they are finally brought into the foreground and along with it, we get a more personal antagonist for Samus to face compared to some of her past foes.

Dread’s core presentation is also incredibly stylish, and for being the first HD Metroid, it makes the jump gracefully. The environment is given more detail than ever before, which helps with the eerie, at times hostile atmosphere the game fosters. From local fauna running away as Samus draws close, to hints of enemies that are to come lurking in the shadows, there’s a lot of great details packed into the mostly 2D viewpoints. Various cinematics are woven seamlessly into the gameplay, often switching from one to the other and back again with no major hitches. Adding to all of that, the game’s animation and overall character/enemy design is fantastic. Samus in particular is animated very well; the primary developers for this game, Mercury Steam, manage to pack a LOT of character into Samus with just her body language. She may not have a quip ready every other minute, but Samus’ actions speak louder than words most of the time. Various enemies you encounter, combined with larger-than-life bosses, showcase some great attack animations and telegraphs; an attack might take you by surprise once but often afterwards you can pick up on the subtleties that will let you dodge any further attempt afterward, which really complements the fast-paced action of the game. The sole real weak point here is the music. It’s mostly atmospheric, and I wouldn’t call it bad but it doesn’t do much for me. Maybe in time it’ll stand out a bit more but as of now it hasn’t grown on me. But honestly, that’s one of the few genuine complaints I can lobby at the game. It’s almost entirely aces from this point onwards.

THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR

Dread benefits from the foundation laid out by Mercury Steam’s previous work with the Metroid II remake, Samus Returns. Anyone coming into this game from Samus Returns will be right at home with Dread’s base controls, though for everyone else (even some longtime fans) there might be a bit of an adjustment. Samus can now aim in full 360 degrees using the control stick, and the game will frequently force you to hit enemies at odd angles. Trying to rely on the limited angles of previous games will make this game a much harder, more awkward affair, just fair warning. The melee counter from Samus Returns is further refined, and the game feels more balanced around it. Enemies will frequently charge at Samus, complete with a quick flash that signifies she can parry their attack and let loose a kill shot if she times it properly. A well-timed counter can take out enemies instantly and has them drop more health and ammo, but enemies will frequently feint before going in for the real attack, so timing is crucial. Being able to perform the melee counter while running and jumping was the missing piece that the mechanic really needed, no longer breaking up the player’s momentum and ridding this game of the constant start-and-stop action that somewhat brought down Samus Returns.

As with most games in this franchise (and the greater genre that owes half of its name to Metroid), Dread is a game about exploration. While Samus’ abilities are limited at the start of the game, as time goes on and more power ups are found, the map begins to unravel and allows players more freedom to explore every nook and cranny looking for secrets and yet more power ups. Think of a new ability less like a weapon and more like a key that can open a variety of doors all over ZDR. Many of Samus’ iconic abilities return here, such as the Grapple Beam or Speed Booster, which lets her swing around and pull certain objects with the former, and dash through obstacles with the latter. However, some new moves are mixed in, some right from the get-go. Samus can now perform a slide to quickly pass through some narrow passages, which ends up being useful not only in the fast-paced combat, but also when exploring and keeping up a certain pace. Samus can also gain various Aeion abilities which drain from the similarly named gauge, which can allow her to quickly dash through the air or walk through a given location invisible to most enemies, among other things. All and all, Dread continues the series tradition of leading the player through a maze-like alien world, taking them through various biomes and tasking them with finding the way forward, though it often isn’t immediately apparent where to go next.

Part of the charm of games like this comes from getting lost…or maybe it’s more accurate to say it can be an acquired taste. Not knowing where to go next can at times be frustrating, and if stuck for a long enough time it can really kill the pacing of the game. I consider myself someone who gets lost pretty easily both in games and in real life, but as far as Dread is concerned I think it was constructed with a lot of care to ensure players wouldn’t be lost for long in most cases. From moment one, the game makes it clear that hidden blocks are everywhere, and a missile or bomb will expose them, giving you a clue as to what ability you need to break through a given barricade or unlock a door. So generally if you’re lost, just start shooting wildly and you’re almost sure to find a potential path forward! Though often the game doesn’t need to resort to that, and the level design carefully leads players forward, even if it might not feel like it at points.

To a veteran player of the series, it’s rather easy to get a feel for what the game wants you to do. You pick up on some game design tricks the game uses to get you on the right track. One room might have a ceiling you can shoot through to continue forward, and it places enemies along the path so that as you shoot at them you’re likely to “accidentally” hit the breakable ceiling, and with it, you have your path forward. Often times when a new power up is awarded to you, the very next room outright requires learning how to best use it to advance, working as a subtle tutorial. As far as other quality-of-life features go, the addition of teleporters helps cut down on backtracking slightly, but the real star of the show here is the map. The map is extremely detailed by series standards, even marking various destructible blocks once uncovered, and giving you the option to highlight them. Say you find the Speed Booster and open up your map; you can then highlight any Speed Booster blocks you’ve found to get an idea of where to use your new fancy ability. Being able to add markers on the map is also helpful for investigating other areas of interest. With all of this in mind, alongside various moments of one-way passages, Dread does its best to lead you along the critical path with little chance to get turned around for too long most of the time. It’s certainly possible to get a little stuck despite all of that, and it definitely happened to me once or twice, but never for too long. For those afraid that makes the game far too linear, trust me when I say that the game is arguably just as open-ended and partial to sequence breaking as Super Metroid was back in the day. It’s clear the world was crafted very carefully; the path forward isn’t too cryptic, though there are plenty of other barriers that can keep you from making progress…

HUNTER BECOMES HUNTED

Not long after the game starts, Dread makes it clear that the E.M.M.I. units you encounter aren’t to be trifled with. In a manner similar to the SA-X from Fusion, they are near-invincible hunters that can and WILL run Samus down if spotted. E.M.M.I.’s prowl around specific areas, denoted with a special door. They can “hear” Samus moving about but until they spot her with their vision cone, the mechanical menaces go about their business, though they never stray too far from Samus. Early on, Samus gains the Phantom Cloak ability to let her stealth through E.M.M.I. sections without triggering them, though it only lasts for so long and will begin draining from her health if she doesn’t power it off. Nothing players throw at E.M.M.I. units can slow them down and if they so much as touch Samus, players are given two VERY tight windows to parry their attacks before suffering an instant Game Over. Only by fully exploring a given E.M.M.I. location and locating a Central Unit, can Samus momentarily power up her Arm Cannon to melt off their protective plating and land a powerful charge shot to take the E.M.M.I. units down. They prove to be persistent, efficient predators, able to crawl anywhere and everywhere to pursue Samus, and some units have quite a few tricks up their sleeve to stack the decks even more in their favor. The goal was to create an enemy that instills dread into the player, and while I think at first the game succeeded…there’s quite a few things that could have been improved.

According to series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto, Dread has been on the backburner for years because hardware couldn’t quite capture what he wanted out of the E.M.M.I.’s until now. While I think they’re competent enough trackers, I can’t help but feel that the E.M.M.I.’s on the whole are a bit of a wasted opportunity. Despite the units using sound to subtly track Samus, players can’t exactly use that against them. You can’t, say, shoot a missile at a far wall to lure the E.M.M.I. away from you, and outside of the Phantom Cloak being active, Samus can’t even walk and is always sprinting about and making noise. It also becomes blatantly obvious as you play through the game that the E.M.M.I.’s are somewhat scripted. They will always spawn ahead of you once you enter a door leading to their area and even if you are being super quiet and stealthy and never make a sound the E.M.M.I. always hangs around wherever you are. It is like they KNOW you’re there but they know they aren’t “allowed” to pursue you until you meet the proper criteria. It all feels a little too fabricated and as time goes on, you become aware that the E.M.M.I. are less predators and more puzzles that require typically only one real solution to get past. Later units also seem to overcompensate to keep the challenge up as Samus gains more abilities that let her escape more easily. Things like hearing you no matter how far away they are, or being able to see you through the environment…it starts to feel a little cheap and frustrating, honestly.

To be fair to the developers, they had a tight rope to walk here. They wanted to emulate the SA-X, which was a terrifying experience in Fusion because it could mow you down so quickly and you never knew where it would turn up next. However after beating the game, it becomes clear that the SA-X encounters are HEAVILY scripted, which makes it lose a lot of impact. With Dread, players encounter E.M.M.I. units far more often and depending on your tactics, you might evade detection or you might be running for your life, so there’s SOME suspense…you know, were it not for the fact that they have special doors telling you exactly when an E.M.M.I. encounter was happening. Imagine playing a horror game where the game would put up a warning telling you when a monster was about to pop up; Dread is a bit like that after a point. Of course, letting the E.M.M.I.’s just traverse everywhere would have led to even more problems so this was probably for the best. Still, they often straddle the line between being frustrating or annoying more than scary or intimidating. Thankfully the game employs very forgiving checkpoints, so if an E.M.M.I. does kill you, barely any time has been lost. Were that not the case, the game might have become unbearable. While undoubtedly a focus in advertising for the game, I do feel that the E.M.M.I. sections are one of the game’s few weak points, though once you accept them to be the puzzles they are, they aren’t too frustrating to deal with and only slightly wear out their welcome.

STICKING THE LANDING

I’ve seen a lot of discourse surrounding this game both before and after release. People argue it isn’t “worth” the $60 price tag, almost entirely because it’s “merely” 2D, or that it is too short to justify the price. Now, ultimately value is going to be heavily subjective and depending on the person, $60 is a lot of money and they want to get the most bang for their buck possible. I can only speak for myself, but I immensely enjoyed the game and gladly paid full price for it. While shorter than many games (though the in-game timer displayed is misleading, only counting actual play time, not counting up if the game is paused or in a cutscene, as an example), I had a blast the entire time. Rather than go on for far too long, risking boring players and breaking momentum, Dread moves at a decent click and there was very little downtime. The short length also adds to the game’s replayability for me, and after completing my 100% run, I decided to do my best attempt at a speed run, even looking up and attempting several sequence breaks that the Metroid community had already found. That only made me appreciate the game’s careful construction even more; anyone complaining the game is too linear should know that there are several alternate ways to progress through the game, and many bosses have alternate ways to defeat them, even being able to skip whole phases instantly. While a normal guided play through lead me from place to place subtly but consistently, once I engaged in some sequence breaks the entire rest of the game was off-the-rails and I got to enjoy the immense freedom and momentary confusion that resulted.

While I struggled quite a bit with the game at first, to the point of feeling frustrated, eventually the game clicked. Enemies are fast, aggressive and hit hard, but they also telegraph their attacks very clearly and once you learn their patterns, they can be taken out quickly. This applies to bosses as well, and while I do think SOME enemies can be a bit much at the point they’re introduced (such as the Chozo Robot Soldiers), with some determination you can adapt and overcome. On my repeat playthroughs I was shocked at how quickly bosses could be mowed down, and how few tries they took in comparison to my first run. With that said, Dread can still be difficult, and there are some things I wish the game would have had to smooth things out a bit more. While the game has a default difficulty and an unlockable Hard Mode, it would have been nice to see an easier difficulty as well. Just have enemies do less damage or make the timing for the parry more lenient. Really I think it’s the reflex requirement that will trip people up more than anything. Allowing for button remapping would have been nice too; this is the type of game that uses every button on the controller, as well as some slightly unwieldy button combinations for some actions and it can be easy to get things like the Grapple Beam mixed up with the Storm Missiles, as an example. Little things like that is just a consideration for a new entry.

My first Metroid game was Fusion, and as I slowly went back through the other games to learn more about the series and where it first began, I awaited a game that would finally take the series forward. I never thought it would take 19 years, and I never thought it would manage to live up to that wait. Proper respect must be paid to Nintendo and Mercury Steam for somehow managing to deliver Dread in such a state, and as such a huge surprise to close out 2021. The game looks incredibly sharp and plays buttery smooth, the challenge is high but never unfair, and the story pushes forward and ended on such a strong note that I immediately just wanted the next Metroid game in my hands to keep it going. The E.M.M.I. sections leave a bit to be desired and the music could have been a bit more impactful, but those minor lows don’t diminish the massive highs that Dread delivers on.

Going into this year, I certainly wasn’t expecting to see much from the Metroid series. With Metroid Prime 4 undoubtedly facing some major development woes on top of everything else going on the world, something like Metroid Dread was the last thing on my mind. Seeing all of the interest in Dread warms my heart and the finished product gives me a lot of hope for the franchise moving forward. It also puts a bit more pressure on Prime 4 in all honesty, but after all is said and done, I’m just glad this franchise seems to be standing on two feet again. The galaxy is vast and full of terrors, but it is reassuring to know that the galaxy has a savior waiting in the wings, and it hopefully won’t be too long before we see her again.

See you next mission.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Please Don’t Sleep on Hades

2020’s…been a real year, huh? At a time when in-person gatherings aren’t much of a thing and people have to stay in, video games are suddenly a pretty attractive option. That said, few games have really grabbed me this year; in a roundabout way, 2020’s been a year of reruns, as I go through a lot of games I’ve already played or games that are just yesterday’s news (but new to me!). However, in the nick of time, the folks at Supergiant Games delivered unto us their latest title, Hades. While they’ve been working on this game for years, with it hitting Early Access on Steam back in 2018, the full version of Hades finally hit Steam, the Epic Game Store and made the leap to consoles with the Switch, which is where I picked it up. It has been a WHILE since I’ve had a game grab me so strongly so early on, and I’ve been hearing this game’s praises for years now already, so allow me to happily state why I think Hades is worthy of the hype and is a fantastic game I’d easily recommend!

DADDY ISSUES

OK, so first things first…you don’t actually play as Hades in this game, but rather his son Zagreus. Ol’ Zag has had it with his father, and tries to literally fight his way out of hell to reach the surface, and no matter what his old man puts in his way, Zagreus (and the player) will meet the challenge. And probably die, but hey, that’s OK! In the underworld, death is more of an inconvenience than anything else, so after taking a moment to dust himself off, Zagreus will head out for another attempt. For as long as it takes.

Hades is a rogue-like, meaning it’s a game based around randomization and adaptation. On any given “run” of the game, the level layouts, enemies present and the variety of power-ups Zagreus can find will be left to chance, with the player challenged to amass the best build they can to eventually break out of hell and reach the human world and if you die…start from scratch. That said, Hades is among the ever-growing sub-genre of rogue-lites, in that there IS some permanent progression, which takes a bit of a sting out of dying, but more on that later. Now, most games of this type aren’t really big on story. They have a premise that’s little more than an excuse to play. Splunkey wants you to explore a cave, The Binding of Isaac sees you escaping a basement and in Enter the Gungeon you uh…e-enter the gun—you get the point! But what separates Hades from most rogue-likes/lites is that there actually IS a very interesting story that unfolds as you play.

There’s more to Zag’s desire to get to the surface than just getting away from his father, though their strained relationship certainly doesn’t help matters, and over the course of your many, MANY escape attempts, players learn of the rather screwed-up nature of Zagreus’ family of deities, though any mythology nut could tell you to expect that. Hades has an incredibly charismatic cast, superb voice acting across the board, and some real sharp writing that really got me wanting to meet anyone and everyone and learn more about this world. You’re likely to run into Hypnos first, who always has a “tip” ready for you when you meet your end to a given enemy or hazard, or the fabled hero Achilles, who acts as a mentor to Zagreus. There’s Dusa, the adorably frazzled flying gorgon head who acts as the House of Hades’ maid, and of course…Megaera, of the Furies.

She serves as the first proper boss in the game, and will be a pretty sizable challenge for most players, but as you eventually overcome her again and again, she and Zagreus end up attempting to reconnect with each other, and her recurring fights become an excuse to flirt and test each other. I may as well say too that it’s easy to fall in love with the characters in this game because…I-I mean, just look at them! This game is a bisexual’s paradise, that’s all I’ll say.

A bit of a fun fact, but Zagreus’ voice actor, Darren Korb, is also a composer at Supergiant, so he’s a man of many talents, since Hades has a killer score. From the laid-back tunes at the House of Hades where you can unwind and recharge after a botched run, to the pulse-pounding boss theme, there’s some GREAT music on display here. And that’s before you meet Orpheus and Eurydice, two characters with amazing singing voices that, if you play your cards right, might start singing together. The game’s visuals, meanwhile, aren’t a slouch either. While the level layouts are randomized, everything manages to look well-crafted, each region of the underworld having their own distinct look and feel. The fiery pits of Asphodel end up juxtaposing well with the paradise that is Elysium. Now, character models are generally less-detailed since the camera stays zoomed out to give players a good view of the action, but the portraits for the various characters more than make up for it with their distinct, detailed designs. A-And I’m not just saying that because everyone’s hot! Now, admittedly you might take a look at Zag and think he’s nothing but an edgelord and the game itself might be taking itself too seriously, but in reality, Hades strikes a pretty good balance, and definitely carries a sense of humor. Characters love to snark at each other, the various Shades chilling in the House of Hades’ lounge have some funny conversations you can listen in on and all told, the game only gets serious when appropriate. Really, I have no real complaints with the game on a presentation level; it’s all aces so far, and thankfully the game-y part follows suit!

LIVE.DIE. REPEAT.

Hades is best described as a dungeon-crawler. You have an isometric view as you move about, avoiding hazards and fighting off enemies as you climb each chamber on your way to the surface. Defeat every enemy in a chamber and get a reward. Sounds simple enough until you factor in all of the various permutations of events; Hades aims to make sure no two runs are alike, with different enemies, power-ups and challenges awaiting you. All of this is doled out slowly, as with each subsequent playthrough you begin to have more of the game unraveled. First and foremost, Zagreus can gain various Boons from the other Olympian Gods, who are sympathetic to his plight and lend him some power if he makes contact with them. Each God has their own twist on the abilities they grant Zagreus. They can all increase his stats in some way, or affect either his dash ability or his Cast, a projectile attack. For Zeus, naturally, all of Zagreus’ moves will gain an electric effect, whereas Artemis focuses more on upping Zag’s critical hit chance. Dionysus, the God of Wine, grants you the “hangover” status effect, allowing your attacks to uh…make enemies drunk? Sure! You’ll be given a random selection of three Boons to pick from, of varying rarities. Over the course of a run, you might try to nab as many Boons from the same God as possible, or vary it up and see which abilities synchronize together. At times, you might even be granted a Duo Boon, where two Gods decide to combine their power for a special ability that plays to both of their strengths. Still, at other times, you might be forced into a Trial of the Gods, where you must choose one God’s Boon over the other, with the snubbed God lashing out afterwards. Hey, just because they’re Gods, doesn’t mean they’re nice. Of course, you’ve also got a variety of health and weapon upgrades too. In fact, let’s gush about the weapons for a second, shall we?

At the time of writing, Hades has six weapons to play with. You start with a sword, which is the all-rounder of the set, but as you gain keys to unlock more weapons, you can start to really experiment. The bow and rail cannon serve as ranged options with different approaches, while the spear is the melee weapon with the best range at the cost of pure power. The shield grants you absolute defense at the cost of range, while the gauntlets let you unleash your fisticuffs on underworld scum, though leave you with limited ranged attacks. Each weapon has specific Boons and weapon upgrades you can find as well, some of which can radically alter how a weapon works. The rail cannon, for example, fires a lot faster than the bow, but this is balanced by needing to manually reload…unless you get a weapon upgrade that gives you unlimited ammo with the only catch being that you can only do burst fire. Adding to this, players eventually unlock hidden Aspects of weapons, morphing them into different forms which can also influence their moveset. Change the shield to the Aspect of Zeus, and when you throw your shield Captain America style, it stays out and continually spins, dealing tons of damage over time and effectively forcing enemies to get sliced to bits if they want to get near you. I didn’t expect this game to have half this many weapons or to have them balanced so well. Really, just like anything else, weapons are another tool you can poke and prod and experiment with until you get a truly killer collection of Boons and upgrades that let you just demolish anything in your way. It’s very satisfying when you finally clear a run with a great build…though depending on the RNG, you WILL get some crummy builds, but that’s the nature of the rogue-like!

It’s likely that a bad build (or really, just getting hit with a new boss or enemy you aren’t prepared for) will lead to a death, but as already established, death isn’t really that much of an inconvenience in the underworld. Zagreus just spawns back at home and is free to immediately try to escape again, but this brief reprieve lets you chat up whoever happens to be around, give them gifts, advance some side-quests, pet your dog Cerberus and practice with weapons and such before you’re ready to go at it again. It’s after a run that you also get to spend a lot of the spoils of your escape attempts. While you lose Boons and weapon upgrades and the like upon death, there’s a LOT of various items you keep with you that have plenty of uses. Darkness shards are used for permanent skills that can be applied to Zagreus, like Death’s Defiance, which grants Zagreus another life upon dying, which can eventually be upgraded to give him THREE extra lives, just as an example. Precious gems can be used to fund a variety of cosmetic changes to the House of Hades. Just because Zagreus doesn’t want to live there anymore, doesn’t mean he can’t at least make it look good! Nectar can be gifted to other characters to improve your relationships with them, with bottles of Ambrosia being required later on, while special keys can be used to unlock weapons, more upgrades for your Darkness shards, or just used as a secondary currency for trade. There’s really a LOT of different items to mess around with, though admittedly if you’re the type to want to max out EVERYTHING you’ll be in it for the long haul, as there is not only a LOT of stuff to upgrade and purchase, but the random nature of things means rewards are never a guarantee. Though it’s worth noting the game’s totally beatable without going nuts with completion. Which I guess leads me to the biggest compliment I can give this game: even after “beating” it, I still can’t stop playing, and there’s plenty of reason to keep going.

REPLAYS AND REWARDS

So, full disclosure, I’ve gotten Zagreus to the surface. Several times, actually. But I haven’t quite “beaten” the game yet. In fact, at the risk of sounding pretentious, it is as if the true game begins after you’ve beaten it once. Without getting into specifics, let’s just say the game gives you a very good in-story reason to keep playing, and you won’t reach credits without several completed runs under your belt. And even then, there’s still stuff to do. I’m almost 30 hours into Hades and I’ve barely scratched the surface honestly. Every major character has their own sidequest you can undergo, but it can be slow goings when it comes to advancing them. Trying out all the weapons and boons and different combinations will easily take dozens of hours to fully experience, though the game has a handy in-game list of what you’ve done and haven’t done, as well as in-game achievements with tangible rewards that will spur you on. I was admittedly surprised at how dense of a game Hades can be. A successful run will likely take you somewhere between a half-hour to an hour, which is pretty devious. Just long enough to stay engaging throughout, and short enough that I can keep convincing myself that I have time for “one more run” and then suddenly several hours have gone by. Strangest thing.

Something that’s become a bit of a staple of Supergiant’s work is customizable difficulty, various modifiers you can flip on to make the game harder if you so desire, which in Hades takes the form of the Pact of Punishment. After a successful run, you can turn on a given pact to spice things up for subsequent runs. Maybe enemies do a bit more damage, or you give yourself a super strict time limit to clear a run. You can give enemies armor that makes them sturdier, or jack up the in-game shop’s prices. You can even be forced to give up Boons in order to advance past certain doors! Probably the most impressive Pact is Extreme Measures, which ends up greatly affecting the boss fights in the game…trust me when I say you won’t be ready for them the first time you flip that on. Activating a given pact increases a “heat gauge” that, should it reach a given level, will end up granting you various special items to help with fully upgrading and unlocking stuff. Of course, with each successful run completed with a given Pact activated, you’ll have to raise the heat more and more in order to keep getting these upgrade materials so be prepared. You can also still gain these materials (albeit at a much slower rate) playing through the game normally though, and there’s really no penalty for choosing NOT to activate a given pact. On the flip side of things, there’s also a God Mode you can toggle on that makes Zagreus a little stronger with each death, which can help those that want to see more of the story but are struggling with the game. Have your God Cake and eat it too!

All and all, this game just delivers on every level and I’ve been devouring it since release whenever I have a spare minute. You can see that Supergiant is taking all the lessons they learned from each previous game and combined it to make what is easily their best game yet. I don’t throw around words like “masterpiece” lightly, but Hades is just such a slam dunk that I’m sorely tempted to call it just that. I mean, if you hate rogue-likes, I’m not sure if Hades will really push you over the edge admittedly? You get way more rewards retained after death than just about any other rogue-like I’ve played, but if you’re the type that hates having to constantly adapt and not being able to memorize what’s coming, I can see this not working for you. But for me at least, I’ve had an absolute blast with the game and the only issue I really have with it is a small nitpick at best. When it comes to getting to know various characters, you can talk to them and give them Nectar or Ambrosia as a gift right? But what happens if they don’t show up on a given run? Or what if they DO show up, but they’re locked into a conversation with someone else? That means you can’t really advance anything with them until a given dice roll pities you. MEGAERA I THINK YOU’RE COOL, PLEASE JUST TALK TO M—oh sorry, don’t know where that came from… So yeah, that’s the nittiest of picks.

I adore this game’s cast, the voice work and music is excellent to the ear, the combat is engaging, the gameplay loop is addicting…need I say more? I mean, I’ve said almost 3000 words, but to really sum it up…I highly recommend Hades and I hope you don’t pass it up if you’re even remotely interested. You can find it on Steam, the Epic store and Switch as of right now, and I don’t think you could go wrong with any version.

Blood and darkness await you.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Pokémon Sword and Shield: A Franchise Turning Point

The Pokémon franchise has been around for over 20 years, and in that time it has proven to be more than a passing fad and has carved out a massive multi-media empire. Outside of some rare spinoffs like the Pokémon Stadium games or the likes of Colosseum or Pokken Tournament, the series has stayed primarily on handheld consoles. For years fans dreamed of what a true, mainline Pokémon game could be like on a home console. During E3 2017 when Game Freak announced that such a title was in development for Switch, people got excited. The resulted games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee were not quite the main leap people expected, instead being a strange hybrid of Pokémon GO and remakes of Pokémon Yellow. However, the announcement that a true new generation of Pokémon would hit the Switch in 2019 reignited that hype. While at first excitement was high, over time a dark cloud hung over the titles, Pokémon Sword and Shield. Controversies erupted over the announcement that not every little critter would be featured or transferable to the game, and as time went on any new announcement was met with pushback. Everything from visuals to new features was criticized all the way up to launch day. Now that Sword and Shield are in players’ hands, at the end of the day…how did it all turn out?

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

This time around, trainers embark across the Galar region, basically the Pokémon equivalent to the UK. I do like Galar as a setting; it has a ton of character, with probably the most interesting aspect to it that Pokémon battles are treated as a major spectator sport. If you want to join in the Gym Challenge, you need a sponsor, and your Gym battles take place in massive stadiums filled to the brim with roaring fans. It’s an interesting deviation from past games, even if the basic formula is about the same. The characters within Galar also have a fair amount of charm from your main rivals to the Gym Leaders, to the undefeated Champion. A lot of people give Hop, your main rival, a lot of flak, but I found he had a lot of hidden depth to him and he has a satisfying arc as the story goes on. As he loses to you again and again, he doubts himself and subsequent battles have him throwing in random Pokémon and strangely his signature partner, the adorable Wooloo, is absent. Once he gets his act together, however, he forms a pretty balanced team, and Wooloo’s back front-and-center. It was a neat moment of character growth shown off through gameplay. As far as Champions go, Leon has a lot more presence throughout the game than a lot of past Champions. His flair, his awful fashion sense, his inability to follow directions…it all made him a bit more endearing. Most of the Gym Leaders are pretty much just there as stepping stones, but they all are fairly memorable either for designs or flashes of personality. It helps that everyone gives you neato trading cards too!

Galar’s main claim-to-fame is the Wild Area, a huge collection of different biomes located smack in the middle of the map. It has far and away the largest collection of Pokémon within, with different monsters appearing depending on the weather or time of day. It’s a place you’ll be returning to time and time again, and it made a big impact. It’s the only area in the game with a controllable camera, for one, and rather than follow a linear balance curve, the Pokémon you encounter in the Wild Area are often far too strong to handle. You’re even forbidden from catching Pokémon if you lack a certain number of Gym Badges, so the place is full of Pokémon you can only really admire from afar until you’re “worthy” of getting them.

Take the Wild Area away though, and Galar feels pretty small. With only ten Routes in the game, Galar is among the smaller regions. Most Routes are very straightforward, not many branching paths or hidden goodies, and there isn’t any neat new areas opened up after beating the game either. The Wild Area, from a franchise standpoint at least, is pretty impressive, but looking at the game on the whole it feels a little lacking. That’s not to say Sword and Shield don’t bring in new mechanics to mess around with, but whether they make up for what’s been taken away is going to vary with people.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

Since the games went 3D, each region tends to have its own core “gimmick” to differentiate it with older titles. X and Y had Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon had Z-Moves and for Sword and Shield we have Dynamax. Something in the air in Galar can allow Pokémon to grow to colossal size for a short time, granting them extremely powerful Max Moves for its duration. While Dynamaxing seems cool at first, the spectacle kinda wears off after your first few uses of it (not to mention the animation lasts forever), and upon further inspection it’s not as great of an upgrade as you’d think. For one, a Dynamaxed Pokémon only gets a health increase, and all other stats stay the same. Abilities and their elemental types stay the same too, so it’s not a game-changer like Mega Evolution was and it really has more in common with Z-Moves. The Max Moves can be nice, as they’re usually a good deal more powerful when it comes to raw damage, and can come with nice side-effects, but it’s kinda inconsistent. The stronger Fighting-type moves actually become weaker as Max Moves, for one. On top of the base Dynamax ability, some Pokémon can use “Gigantamaxing” instead. This changes their look overall and grants them a unique G-Max Move, though considering how hard they can be to acquire I’m not sure it’s all that satisfying. It doesn’t help that rather than having a certain species of Pokémon capable of Gigantamaxing, it comes down to unique Pokémon themselves that have the trait and it can’t be passed down through breeding either. Overall, Dynamaxing has its uses but I highly doubt it’ll become a staple of the series and will likely be replaced with something else for the Generation 9 games, and I can’t say I’ll miss the mechanic much.

One big addition to the series is Max Raid Battles, found in dens littered all over the Wild Area. Teaming up with up to three other players, locally or online (or team up with awful CPUs if alone), your goal is to take out a permanently Dynamaxed Pokémon. You get a limited amount of turns and if you suffer more than four knockouts, the Raid will end in failure. Victory, however, enables you to get rare and powerful Pokémon, some even coming with really great stats and difficult-to-obtain Abilities, and it’s practically the only way to get Gigantamax Pokémon. The difficulty of the Raids increases as you progress through the game, however, and the Five Star Raids can be brutal. The rewards are great though, getting a lot of extra loot. Bonus moves to teach Pokémon, EXP candies that eliminate a lot of grinding, and more, even if the capture attempt fails. The one real issue with Raids is that some Pokémon can be pretty stingy with appearing in Raids, and you’ll have to use somewhat rare items, Wishing Pieces, to kick some Raids off. There are also the occasional connection issues, but I have more to say on that later.

Outside of these new features, there are the standard quality-of-life changes that each game has, though some can be harder to notice and appreciate than others. You can send Pokémon in storage out on Jobs, to get some neat rewards and some EXP for them, though I find them to be a bit underwhelming. Being able to swap Pokémon on the fly now is a godsend, and together with the EXP Share built into the game, it allowed me the freedom to switch up the monsters in my party and get newcomers up to speed quickly. Most games I barely bother with more than the maximum six, but the sheer variety of Pokémon in Galar let me feel more comfortable with constantly swapping around. On that same note, no National Dex aside, there’s a LOT of choices in Galar. Route 1 alone has over ten Pokémon you can catch right at the start, as opposed to the common mammal, common bug and common bird. It was nice to see some under-represented Pokémon make the cut, but I won’t argue with anyone bummed that their favorites aren’t allowed in. It is a regrettable decision overall, even if it might have been unavoidable here.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t mention the story much at all because…there isn’t much of one. Pokémon as a franchise isn’t known for its storytelling, despite the Black and White and Sun and Moon games existing and having very well-done stories. Overall, Sword and Shield seems to focus more on characters than an overarching plot and that isn’t too bad overall, but it makes the eventual climax more than a little disappointing. Team Yell, our villainous organization this time around, are just a bunch of hardcore fans for another rival of yours, a girl named Marnie. The conclusion to their story felt very flat, and the eventual main problem involving the Legendary Pokémon is tacked onto the end of the game with little build-up. It doesn’t help that the main villain’s motivation doesn’t make sense. He wants to avert an energy crisis that’s 1000 years from actually happening, and for some reason he refuses to let you get your shot at fighting the Champion because apparently putting things off for one day is unacceptable. It’s just very sloppy. And honestly, “sloppy” can describe a lot of this game, sadly.

WHY Y-COMM WHY

No game is without flaws, and Sword and Shield are far from the first Pokémon games to have their fair share of issues, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these games in particular are a victim of compromise. Game Freak doesn’t have the luxury of delaying games and polishing them up to a fine sheen, not when the multimedia empire has merch and anime to launch at the same time. I’m also certain that working on this game alongside the Let’s Go games AND Little Town Hero did them no favors. So there are areas in the game that lack polish. The story’s abrupt conclusion, the visuals in general, and Galar itself feeling a tad empty; these are all compromises that had to be made to get this game to ship on the date decided well in advance. I can sympathize with the developers here, and really they’re in an un-enviable position. But at the same time, I’ve been playing Pokémon games for over twenty years, and I kind of expect better, you know? Far too many times I have to shake my head and question why something is designed the way it is, or why it feels at times like the games are going backwards in quality. Problems that were solved several games ago rear their ugly heads again, and for this being a brand new generation and the “proper” debut on a powerful home console, I can’t help but feel that this is just a 3DS game that’s been blown up onto my TV.

NPC character models and the Pokémon themselves look fine, as does the sleek UI, but environments look kinda rough. The Wild Area itself, I say with no exaggeration, looks like it was ripped out of a GameCube game. Those trees are a meme, but at the same time, they also look that bad. Some of the main towns are pretty grandiose, be it the giant castle theme of Hammerlocke, or the steampunk designs of Motostoke, while others feel incredibly barren. It’s kind of intentional with Spikemuth, but I was more than a little disappointed with how small towns feel. While it’s great that HMs have been officially retired (starting from Sun and Moon), Galar itself feels like it has little to offer those that want to explore. You don’t get access to a way to cross water until near the endgame, but there are only a small handful of areas you’d need to backtrack to with that ability. There’s not even a Victory Road in this game, or a rough equivalent.

Sword and Shield, from a competitive standpoint, seems to be trying to make strides in breaking down barriers and allowing more casual fans to dip their toes into competitive play, which I really appreciate, but I think there’s still room for improvement. While on the one hand, it’s never been easier to tweak and customize your Pokémon to your heart’s desire, the game is still not as transparent on certain subjects. You can view a Pokémon’s Effort Values, extra points you can place towards stats, on their stat screen, but only if you hit the X button on that screen, and there’s no indication that’s a thing you can even do. I was more than fifty hours into the game before a friend even told me that! There have been some pretty major strides to reduce the time commitment however, so I have to give the game credit there. As far as game balance goes, having less Pokémon to choose from does inspire creativity, though from what I hear, a fair few Pokémon are a bit of a problem, but that’s no different than any other game. Honestly, even attempting to balance a game with so many moving parts and possible strategies is pretty admirable. I’m not deep into the meta of competitive Pokémon though, so I feel there’s not much I can add to the conversation. If there’s one thing I can’t defend however, it’s this game’s connectivity features.

Starting from the DS era, Pokémon has had online features, but Sword and Shield marks the first time that the Global Trade Station, or GTS, has not been available. This means it’s impossible to put up a posting for a desired Pokémon, or fulfill other’s requests. This wouldn’t be so bad if the way to trade with friends wasn’t such a chore. Rather than being able to freely select a friend and initiate a trade or battle with them, players must enter four-digit codes and HOPE the game pairs them up. This is in every way a downgrade from the past several games. X and Y released over SIX years ago and solved this very issue with the Player Search System. Y-Comm, as it stands, is an awful replacement and there’s not one thing about it that other systems didn’t do better.

If you connect online, the game will have “stamps” appear that show you what friends are doing, alongside broadcasting trade or battle requests from random people, but often those requests are out of date, and trying to join in will result in error messages, the requests fulfilled long ago. Trying to join friends in Raid Battles is an exercise in trial and error, and if online in the Wild Area, other players constantly appear within it and as a result the game begins to chug along. What could have been a neat way to interact with other players across the world results in the game becoming worse to play, so I mostly left it off. Connecting with others has always been a franchise selling point, way back to the days of the Game Boy Link Cables. To see this game drop the ball so severely is worrying. I care about this far more than the graphical issues, far more than the National Dex, and it makes me hesitant to try out the next titles if they can’t solve these issues and KEEP them solved.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Pokémon Sword and Shield are not bad games; they’re in fact filled with charm and fun. I’ve logged over 80 hours into the game over the past few weeks and the hours flew by. There’s a lot of work that’s clearly been put into the game. The Pokémon designs and concepts this time around are really creative, for one. There’s the Applin line, dragons that hide in apples, and the abominations that are this game’s fossils; carelessly stitched together pieces of incompatible fossils resulting in a freak of nature. I love them. My heart goes out to Game Freak, because it’s clear people worked hard here, but this simply can’t be the game they wanted to make. I think Sword and Shield are turning points for the series, but it’s unclear if that’s a good thing or not.

For all the backlash and negativity surrounding these games, they’re still the fastest-selling Switch games ever. Many fans are pretty satisfied with the game as-is, and the real bitter pill disgruntled fans need to swallow is that…these games have no real reason to improve in quality. Think about it; sales aren’t down, and there’s not a true rival to these games anymore, so why would the hire-ups at Nintendo and The Pokémon Company give these games more time and resources? On top of this, remember that these games are only one part of the massive whole that is the Pokémon brand. Pokémon GO makes a frankly disgusting amount of money, the anime has been going strong for two decades, merch is in no short supply, and now we can likely add major Hollywood films to the list as well. If Game Freak was any other developer, behind any other franchise, they’d likely be able to delay the games to polish them up and add in content that would otherwise be cut, but they can’t do that when they MUST launch simultaneously with the anime, the card games, the merchandise, etc.

The series has been around for so long now as well, while many fans have likely moved on from the franchise, new ones are lining up to take their place. On top of that, there are Pokémon diehards that will likely always support the series. Pokémon is a constant for them; it’s almost like comfort food in game form. They’re not WRONG for feeling that way, and I’m kinda in that same boat. I knew going in that these games were going to be somewhat disappointing, but I still bought the thing! For all the rage directed at these games, many people still gave them their money, and I think the message has been read loud and clear: Pokémon can get away with cutting Pokémon, so it’s unlikely Game Freak will change course any time soon.

Now, of course, that’s one way to look at things. A negative way to be sure. It’s also possible that Game Freak can learn from issues they had with developing these games and push past them. As they get used to console development, to HD development, and get a better idea of what fans want, the next games might actually surpass all expectations. Pokémon as a franchise has always had feature creep to deal with, and Sword and Shield is clearly where it all boiled over. So maybe if they don’t have to worry about accommodating nearly 1000 critters in every single game, they can make larger strives towards higher quality. I don’t want to count them out, but at the same time, I won’t hold my breath either. I’ll always be open to what path this franchise takes, even if they stumble a bit to get there.

In the end, Sword and Shield feel more than a little rough, but there’s some real bright spots glimmering in what might be the franchise’s Darkest Day. The Pokémon themselves are still fun to use and capture, the characters and world of the games are still wholesome fun, and I’ll reiterate that pumping over 80 hours into this game didn’t feel like a chore and I was largely engaged for the entirety of that time. Here’s to hoping that brighter days lie ahead, and a few years from now we can look back at the Dexit controversy and laugh.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Astral Chain Review: Popo’s Bizarre Adventure

Life can be funny sometimes; I started out 2019 hoping that I could play a certain PlatinumGames-developed Switch exclusive, and while I did eventually get such a thing, it wasn’t Bayonetta 3, but instead Astral Chain. The last time Nintendo and PlatinumGames worked together on a brand new IP we got The Wonderful 101, one of my favorite games of all time, so I was pretty pumped about Astral Chain from moment one. A game where you control Stands like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, but you’re a hot anime cop! The kinda game you didn’t know you needed! Now that it’s finally here I can definitely say with confidence that I really love…like half of this game.

C.O.P.S: ANIME EDITION

The world of Astral Chain is in a bad way. Set in a future with Earth on the brink of collapse, most of the planet has been corrupted by the Astral Plain, an alternate dimension. With the remnants of humanity confined to a man-made island, an elite police force, Neuron, investigates the invisible cause of the world-ending corruption, Chimeras. Armed with enslaved Chimeras of their own, Legions, Neuron fights back against Chimera attacks, all the while searching for a way to save the world before its too late. Players take the role of a newcomer to Neuron, rising up the ranks alongside their twin sibling, mastering their Legion as various villainous factions seem intent on bringing about the end of the world.

I’ll be blunt here: Astral Chain’s story is passable, but didn’t do much for me. It’s not exactly bad, but predictable and doesn’t really take many risks. The game has an anime aesthetic, and in many cases seems more content with paying homage to various sci-fi anime than telling a unique story, so I’d say it’s quite by-the-numbers. That’s certainly fine, but what really shines in most Platinum titles are their larger-than-life characters, and I find them lacking here. Most of Neuron gets the shaft as time goes on, with only a scant few characters getting much development. Maybe I’m a tad spoiled by the likes of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but the fact that so little of the incidental dialogue is voiced also keeps most of the Neuron officers from sticking out to me. Some characters, like Hal, Marie and Kyle, DO stand out and are pretty great, but that’s about it.

Thankfully, everything else about the game’s presentation is stylish. From the UI to the enemy intro cutscenes, to the sound design and battle animations, Astral Chain is a delight for the eyes and ears. The futuristic setting allows from some sleek visuals, and the lighting and particle effects stand out among most Switch titles. I’d daresay that at times, Astral Chain is Platinum’s best looking game. This does come at the cost of performance though. The game is locked to mostly 30 FPS, though you’ll see some dips in some frantic moments, but not too often. Resolution can also dip in some instances too, the performance at its worst in bigger areas with tons of NPCs around, but most combat sections cut down on clutter and the performance remains solid when you need it, so it mostly works out. Music’s also pretty stellar, and completes the anime-aesthetics with legit opening and ending themes too. Looks can only do so much though, but Platinum is never one to get by purely on outward appearances.

CHAIN PAIN

Combat is where Platinum shines, and that’s definitely true for Astral Chain, though you do have to wait a lot longer than usual to get a good feel for what the game’s trying to do. The first few hours leave a pretty bad first-impression honestly, with lackluster combat options and clunky movement, but once the game shows it’s hand everything starts to really click. By the endgame you’re drowning in options, to the point where it would have been overwhelming if the game threw it all at you right at the start. Best to ease players into the game, but it’s risky to not start the game off on the right foot.

The defining feature of this game is controlling two characters at once, your officer and their Legion. At the start, your officer’s options are limited, and Legions mostly attack on their own, but over time you gain more Legions to swap between on-the-fly, as well as more manual actions you can perform alongside them. Sync Attacks, for one, require you to tap the Legion button at specific points after attacks, which will have the two of you team up for big damage. Your officer gains a shape shifting “X-Baton” weapon that can take a few different forms to vary up their own combat, but the five Legions you gain are your most important tools. Sword, Arrow, Arm, Beast and Axe; each Legion has their own uses in and out of combat and in many cases feel like extended nods to Platinum’s entire back-catalog. Sword can enter Raiden’s Blade Mode from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to cut enemies on a specific axis, or sever connections between specific doors or objects. Arrow can take out enemies from afar, or be brought in for an over-the-shoulder shooting experience right out of Vanquish. Arm is like an extended nod to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, pounding foes with a flurry of punches, as well as being able to pick up and throw objects. Beast is just Bladewolf from Revengeance, letting players ride atop it for mobility, and digging up items or following scents like a real dog. Lastly, Axe is a powerhouse that also grants players a powerful barrier that can protect them from various hazards. Certain enemies require specific Legions to take out, and with all five at the press of a button, things can get hectic, but in a good way and advanced players can do a lot with all of these tools.

Each Legion has their own skill tree that can grant them special moves or increase stats as well, and similar to the chip system from Nier: Automata, players can equip special passive skills onto each Legion, provided they have enough slots open for them. The chain connecting officer and Legion also comes into play too, being able to move the Legion freely and bind enemies up (bringing Wonderful 101’s Wonder Liner to mind), or send a charging enemy flying back with an Irish Whip straight out of wrestling. Legions can’t stay out forever though, their Sync Gauge slowly draining as they fight, huge chunks of it taken out if they get hit by attacks, but it recharges pretty quickly, especially if your officer stays aggressive. Compared to past Platinum titles, there’s a lot more emphasis on using items and having “builds” when going into fights too. Healing items alongside combat-oriented items like drones or shields are encouraged rather than penalized, as is the standard. There’s more I could go into, but this hopefully gives you an idea of how much is going on in this game’s combat. Comparing the first few hours to endgame is night and day, more so than almost any other Platinum title.

Generally, the combat is up to the Platinum standard, but unlike most games by the developer, there’s actually a LOT of gameplay that isn’t straight combat, making this Platinum’s most varied game yet…for better or for worse.

STYLISH BUSYWORK

Here’s where things get kinda tricky. On the one hand, it’s good for a game to have at least SOME variety, right? If a game is nonstop action, it risks becoming stale, so having some slower moments makes the bigger moments more impactful. It’s a question of pacing more than anything else, and unfortunately the pacing in Astral Chain leaves a LOT to be desired.

To say it as succinctly as I can, the levels in Astral Chain drag on far too long. A typical level in Platinum’s catalog is roughly 20 minutes, give or take a bit of backtracking or some story bits. In Astral Chain, a full level, or “File”, can take four to five hours by comparison, and when you lay it out like that, you realize there’s an awful lot of filler to sift through to get to the good stuff. You have investigation sequences that are laughably easy for one. Using discount Detective Vision from the Batman Arkham games, you “find” clues and then fill in the blanks to form a lead, but these sequences are impossible to fail. Solutions are highlighted and even if you come to the wrong conclusion, the game will just correct you and you’ll move on regardless. Then you have platforming sequences that are mostly fine, though hampered by being unable to use the camera most of the time (since the right stick can also manually control your Legion). At times, honest-to-God sidequests can be found that are usually not combat-focused, and we can throw in some awful motion-controlled minigames for good measure. On their own, these extra bits aren’t too bad, kinda boring in some respects but otherwise fine, however for someone who just wants to progress the story and get to the next fight, they become barriers you’re forced to contend with before you can get back to having fun.

Now, a lot of this stuff IS optional, but you’re heavily encouraged to do them all anyway. You get locked out of getting good end-of-File ranks if you avoid optional ranked missions, and you’re given rewards for all of this stuff anyway. They’re mostly cosmetic rewards, but the game still seems to expect you to engage with this “extra” content…to the point that it’s clearly not seen as extra but a part of the whole Astral Chain experience. If you stripped out the non-combat portions, that’s like 2/3s of the game gone and it feels kinda messed up to skip out on so much of it. Rather…maybe the game should have made a point of having this stuff be engaging to do in its own right.

MAKING THE GRADE

I want to stress that there’s a lot I liked about Astral Chain. There’s plenty of charm hidden throughout here, and the prospect of a Platinum game that strives to do MORE isn’t a bad one. I enjoyed having NPCs to talk to, larger areas to explore that weren’t just combat areas, and little touches like getting points for recycling or being unable to jaywalk were appreciated. One thing I never touched on was its ranking system, which seems more emblematic of the issues I had with the game. Rather than rewarding and ranking one’s own play, it awards high ranks more so for variety than anything else. It doesn’t matter how poorly you play (to a point), as long as you do a lot of different stuff it’ll all work out. Thus, the game threw a lot of stuff at the wall regardless of how hard it stuck, and as such there’s a number of great ideas mixed in with some really, really weird ones.

Astral Chain is in many ways an experimental game for Platinum. They seem to be trying to move away from niche action games and offer up more for the consumer, but in doing so I fear they might be diluting their games. I’ve been quite a bit more critical of this game than I expected to be, and in the end I’m more just bummed that I didn’t enjoy it more. This game is the directorial debut of Takahisa Taura, and I can practically feel the passion he had for this product; he likely loaded this game with a lot of things that he personally liked, and it’s clear everyone involved worked hard to deliver the best game they could. The results vary a bit, as we have crisp visuals and unique, deep combat mixed in with some plodding segments that seem thrown in for variety’s sake. Astral Chain is ambitious, but maybe this once Platinum bit off a bit more than they could chew. I’d also petition that this game is a victim of certain expectations of what I think a PlatinumGames title “should” be. It’s possible Taura felt pressured to put in aspects of Platinum’s past output and was afraid to go further and make this game truly something new. I’ll also wager that if Astral Chain is someone’s first Platinum game, they’ll be able to come in with a fresher perspective and might end up enjoying it more than a diehard fan like me. There’s a solid foundation here for any future titles though, and I think this game’s issues could be ironed out if given the chance. At its height, the combat really sells this game for me, and action fans will find a lot to love…but there’s a lot in here that might not scratch that particular itch. I wouldn’t quite call this game the weakest link in PlatinumGames’ chain at any rate, and I remain a fan of the company and their future output.

Shine on Platinum.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

B-Squared’s Top 10 Games of 2019!

2019 was a year full to the brim of GREAT games, and as is the custom at the end of the year, people love to rank their favorites, so…I’d like to do the same! Of course my own tastes might be different from yours so if you don’t see a thing on here that you liked, chances are I didn’t like it…or more likely, there’s just too many great games out this year, and I couldn’t get to everything. I’d like to stress to that the rankings don’t really matter all that much, especially the farther down we go. Everything on here is an easy recommendation. Without any further ado…let’s take a look at my Top 10 Games of 2019~

#10 - River City Girls

I love action games, but 2D beat-em-ups never really clicked for me. They were largely before my time and I was thinking that it’d be impossible to get me into one in the current era of gaming. And then I saw Marian’s redesign for River City Girls and bought the game. What can I say? Abs are a great sales pitch. But seriously, getting Wayforward on the helm of a beloved classic franchise is already a great way to pique my interest, and while there’s SOME aspects of this game that I don’t quite gel with, it’s a fun, colorful romp through a ridiculous universe that I’d LOVE to see more of down the line. Featuring a role-reversal, with the girlfriends saving the boyfriends this time, River City Girls has gorgeous pixel art, an AMAZING pop-synth soundtrack that’s worth the price alone, and it’s a game that clearly had fun with the concept and that fun rubs off on you. From the stylish animated boss intros, to the co-op fun that can be had with a friend, everything in this game is brimming with charm. Basic NPCs have great designs in their own right, being able to recruit enemies as assists is a neat idea, and it all adds up to a fun, bite-sized adventure with a bit of depth under the hood if you’re willing to give it a look. Can the character designers get a raise for this game, please? And let Megan McDuffie just do all the songs from now on. ALL OF THEM.

#9 - Astral Chain

Most people assumed if we were going to get a Switch exclusive game by Platinum this year, it’d be Bayonetta 3 but instead Nintendo surprised us with Astral Chain, the anime cop action game we didn’t know we wanted. The game boasts great visuals and is probably the most content-rich Platinum game ever made for starters, but for me the true draw is in the combat. Playing as your police officer in tandem with an alien creature known as a Legion, this tag-team action game is unlike pretty much anything else on the market. While the game starts off very simplistic, the Legion itself moving and attacking with no input from the player, over time more and more options unlock and things get considerably more complicated. By game’s end, you’re drowning in options, and once things clicked, combat was always a treat. With plenty of enemies to practice with, Legions to master and a gigantic post-game filled with challenging encounters, I had more fun with the combat in this game than I did with a lot of other games this year. That said, I do feel that Astral Chain could have benefitted from trimming some fat or rethinking its overall structure. For being a new IP with some bold ideas, I’m willing to accept these as kinks that can hopefully be ironed out in a sequel. Oh, and add Lappy to Smash already. You know you want to, Sakurai.

#8 - BABA IS YOU

Puzzle games are hard sells for me, since I don’t like the frustration that often comes from being stuck. You feel dumb, you get embarrassed and turn the game off in shame, or at least that’s my experience. But then sometimes you get a game so clever, so…weird, that you can’t help but be sucked into it. BABA IS YOU is a block-pushing puzzle game, with the twist being that the “rules” of a particular stage are often physically present in levels and are in fact blocks that can be pushed and manipulated by the player. ROCK is PUSH, WALL is STOP, FLAG is WIN and BABA is YOU. But what if you can’t touch the flag because the wall is in the way? Well, make it so WALL is PUSH to move it aside, or maybe make it so that BABA is WIN and you become the win condition itself. As the game goes on, more modifiers and rules are slowly introduced and absorbed into your own internal logic of the game, logic that increasingly has to be broken and remade to suit your needs. It’s a very empowering experience when the solution clicks and the results can often be hilarious and surprising. This game also GOES PLACES the further you go in, and I’d rather not ruin that surprise for anyone who might be looking into the game. Definitely one of the most innovated titles I’ve played in a LONG time. BABA is GOOD.

#7 - Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid

OK, so…hear me out. Power Rangers was a franchise I was obsessed with as a kid, and while I don’t follow it anymore, there’s still some love for it flowing in my veins. So when a small, no-name studio puts out a Power Ranger fighting game that takes the simplified controls of Smash Bros. and the tag-team craziness of Marvel vs. Capcom and slaps it all together for a cool twenty bucks or so? Well you got yourself a purchase and it ended up being WAY more fun than I expected. Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid is far from the best looking fighter on the market, it’s single-player content is lacking, and it’s roster, while interesting, isn’t as big as a lot of the competition, but damn if it isn’t fun to play. With characters taken from across the franchise’s long history, from the live-action movie reboot to the comic books, each choice has been inspired and resulted in an incredibly varied cast. With no crazy inputs for special moves, combined with a tagging system that lets you cycle through your three-Ranger team quickly, the game is the best kind of chaotic fun, but true masters can command that chaos and channel it into cool combos that make you want to say “Morphinominal!” Considering it’s a budget title, it’s also received a fair amount of updates throughout the year to pad out the roster with both free and paid DLC fighters, a full story mode and improvements to the netcode and overall presentation., so if you passed on it at launch, it’s much improved now. It’s not gonna be a fighting game on everyone’s radar, but I’d rather support it than the grind-heavy slog Mortal Kombat has become…Now just hurry up and add that monster that baked the Rangers into a pizza!

#6 - New Super Lucky’s Tale

If your name isn’t Mario or Sonic, 3D platformers are effectively dead. That said, there’s been a few up-and-comers in recent years that are trying to revive the genre. Hat Kid from A Hat in Time, the duo of Yooka-Laylee, and now Lucky from the folks at Playful Studios. The cute fox has quite the history, starting from the Oculus Rift title, Lucky’s Tale, to a full-fledged platformer on the Xbox One X, Super Lucky’s Tale and now the enhanced port/reimagining New Super Lucky’s Tale on Switch. Halfway between a full-blown sequel, and enhanced edition, the game takes assets from the Xbox original game, tweaking and refining everything from visuals to controls to level layouts. The result is a game that is incredibly well-polished. It looks great, Lucky is a treat to control as he moves from jumping, burrowing and sliding around fluidly, and the variety on display keeps things interesting. We’ve got full 3D levels, 2D levels, auto-runners, and even some marble maze levels and puzzles thrown in for good measure. It’s not a hard game, but it IS incredibly fun, and well made. We don’t get many 3D platformers these days, so cherish what little comes of the genre. I hope Playful and Nintendo continue to collaborate, as they really seem more at home here. Just…maybe don’t add more words to the title of the next game, guys.

#5 - Katana Zero

There’s no nice way to say it: there’s too many pixel-based, side-scrolling indie games out there, so the ones that DO stand out deserve to be celebrated. Katana Zero has a real ‘80s flair for starters, using bright neon, TV and VCR visual effects, and a synth soundtrack to give it some real style. When a game kicks off with you slowing down time and reflecting a bullet back at an enemy with your katana, you make a good first impression! Add in the trial-and-error that is planning the perfect route through a stage, the satisfying slicing and dicing of enemies, the unique, challenging boss encounters, and you have a game that was on my radar for a while, before I finally got into it at the end of the year. Its storyline is pretty interesting too, with some slight variances in how events unfold depending on your words and actions, though it ending on a bit of a cliffhanger is a bummer. That said, when a game leaves you wanting more, there’s worse problems to have. At the very least, there’s some DLC hinted at that might be interesting, as well as the implications that this is the merely the first in a trilogy, and at this point I’m game for whatever developer Askiisoft has in store.

#4 - Luigi’s Mansion 3

The GameCube was an odd era for Nintendo, as they attempted to innovate and try new ideas rather than rely purely on their old standbys. Case-in-point, rather than launch the console with a new Mario platformer, his second-banana brother Luigi got his first starring role in what would become the Luigi’s Mansion series. While not making QUITE as big of a splash as maybe Nintendo hoped, it’s garnered a decent fanbase, and when a sequel was announced for 3DS, people ate it up. Considering the gap between the first and second games, I think many people were surprised at the relatively quick turn-around for the third installment. I was also surprised at the overall quality and how much I enjoyed digging into it. For starters, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is easily one of the better-looking Switch titles, boasting some great lighting and particle effects, with some fun physics implemented for just about everything in the massive mansion. Luigi and company are animated with a lot of expressiveness that never gets old, and the music sets the tone perfectly too. From a gameplay standpoint, the toolset Luigi gains gives him ample options to poke at every nook and cranny, with the slimy doppelganger Gooigi being the clear stand-out. Some of the floors of the Last Resort hotel that Luigi must ascend are particularly massive and intricate too, some floors feeling like Legend of Zelda-style dungeons. While not a particularly challenging game, it’s still really satisfying to poke and prod at everything in sight, sucking in all the coins, gold bars and stacks of paper bills you can handle, not to mention slamming the ghosts around like the Hulk does to Loki. There’s also multiplayer! That I…haven’t really touched but…hey! More bang for your buck, surely!

#3 – Dragon Quest XI S

I don’t consider myself a huge fan of JRPGs. Or at least that’s what I thought before I tried out the Dragon Quest XI demo on Switch. I ended up falling for the game hard and bought the full release, carrying my demo data over and not stopping until I hit credits. Despite having never touched a Dragon Quest game before, outside of an hour or so of VIII, I was overcome with this feeling of nostalgia when it came to this game. That’s because Dragon Quest is THE quintessential JRPG game, the originator of all that we take for granted today. It was nice to feel right at home with a simple, effective combat system, rather than having to watch games re-invent the wheel in an attempt to stand out from the pack (sorry Xenoblade), and the story itself, while predictable and a little basic at times, was told well and told earnestly. It really nailed the feeling of going on a grand adventure, with enough twists on the formula to keep things interesting. The turn-based combat was elementary, but always presented me with fair challenges and lots of ways to solve the encounters laid before me, with enough quality-of-life features added in to minimize grind and make things more convenient. The Switch version of Dragon Quest XI featured a bunch of new content on top of a game that had more than enough going for it, and it’s clear a lot of work was done to make this port as faithful as could be, and it stands out not just as a great port on a system known for some shoddy ones, but as a title that’s brimming with as much polish and quality to rival first-party Switch titles. Don’t ban Hero in Smash and don’t miss out on this game if you haven’t taken the plunge already!

#2 – Devil May Cry 5

The Devil May Cry franchise has had its share of ups and downs over the years. For every game that’s considered a success, you have another game that doesn’t quite measure up. For years many thought the franchise was dead in the water after the attempted reboot, DMC: Devil May Cry failed to grow its audience, but when Microsoft’s E3 2018 show revealed to us a new installment, fans were ecstatic. Devil May Cry 5 boasts crisp visuals, deep combat and trims the fat, removing the wonky platforming and puzzles of earlier games to create a high-octane action experience that ultimately exceeded fan expectations. Its storyline firmly plants Devil May Cry 4’s Nero as a main character in his own right, wraps up the story of the Sparda brothers neatly, and if this ended up being the last title in the series, I think it’s that rare ending that ends up being totally satisfying. Combat is the real draw here though, the game giving players three distinct characters to learn and master. Nero’s robotic Devil Breaker arms allow him a decent amount of variety, while having a balanced, beginner-friendly combat style for new players. Dante remains the king of variety, having more weapons than ever before combined with his signature style switching, though the game is actually designed with all these options in mind so he doesn’t end up breaking the game like he did in 4. Newcomer V ends up being a breath of fresh air, controlling up to three demonic summons at once, forcing players to really think more strategically. The music is incredible too; Nero’s own theme, Devil Trigger, has been stuck in my head since last year and I don’t see it leaving any time soon. All things considered, Devil May Cry 5 might be the best game in the franchise, and a worthy contender for game of the year personally. Now if only we had a special edition with Vergil and the ladies playable…

#1 - Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I got into the Fire Emblem series with Awakening and really liked it a lot, however Fates, the next installment, left a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn’t really get into Echoes, itself a remake of the second game in the series, and I began to wonder if this franchise was really for me. I was willing to give Three Houses a shot, but I was not prepared for the game to blow past all my expectations. Fire Emblem: Three Houses isn’t just a good game, it’s a game that’s redeemed a franchise that’s stumbled a bit in recent years, and it likely cements Fire Emblem as a core Nintendo franchise for years to come. It has class, depth and real heart...with only minor creepy or pervy elements! Making a grand return to home consoles after more than a decade on handhelds, it goes big and it ultimately paid off, on track to become the best-selling entry in the series. The school setting might seem weird at first, and I wondered how well I’d adjust to it, but being able to instruct your units and influence their growth in battle was worth the learning curve. Things are introduced slowly enough that the flow of the game becomes relatively easy to manage, if a bit time-consuming overall. With four distinct storylines you can explore, TONS of character interactions and some interesting tweaks to the strategic gameplay the series is known for, I’m confident in saying that Three Houses is well-worth a purchase for newcomers to the franchise. Divine Pulse is a great quality-of-life addition that lets you undo mistakes, rather than force you to start over from scratch, and overall the UI and layout of the game gives you enough information to make informed decisions without overwhelming you. Makes me wonder how we survived before the games showed us who enemies would target on their turns before now. Admittedly, some aspects of the progression have some issues, especially at endgame, and visually the game really is not up to par most of the time, but these end up being tiny blemishes in the long run for me. They certainly weren’t bad enough to prevent me from starting a new path the instant I finished my first route. If I have one request…just make Claude a gay option. Give the people what they want, Nintendo!

Honorable Mentions

I’d like to add on some honorable mentions here before we close things out, though most of these are things I didn’t even get a chance to play, but they certainly might have made this list. For one, Resident Evil 2 Remake seems like a high-quality reinterpretation of the survival-horror classic, but I can’t do horror so I’ll likely pass it up. It’s also for that reason that I might not get to Control but I might try jumping out of my comfort zone for that one. The confusion surrounding both The Other Worlds AND The Outer Wilds is funny, but they’re both space-based games I’d be keen on getting to at some point down the line; the former is a great Western RPG by the folks who made the GOOD Fallout games, while the latter is an interesting space-faring puzzler with some interesting mechanics I’d rather not spoil for those not more in-the-know. Indie titles Sayonara Wild Hearts and GRIS definitely caught my attention with their great visuals, and in the case of the former, its soundtrack, even if the gameplay wasn’t quite there for me, and the weird fighting-game-but-kinda-RPG that is Indivisible demands my attention sooner or later. Bloodstained is the Castlevania follow-up I keep forgetting is out, and I hear great things about Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. The team behind the Yakuza series recently made a spin-off of sorts, Judgment that hit the West this year and while I like the Yakuza series for its quirky tone and fun combat, there’s still six other games I’d have to sift through, so going with Judgment, which is set to possibly begin a new franchise, seems like a good alternative. And how could I forget the likes of Shovel Knight as we finally receive the last expansion that’s been years in the making? I haven’t touched the King of Cards expansion yet, but I have the upmost faith in anything Yacht Club makes, so that’s surely a game of the year contender. 2019 was crazy good! Glad to close the year out with so much quality, and tons of great stuff to add to the ever-growing backlog.

Hope you had some good gaming memories made this year!

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Farewell, Super Best Friends Play

In the early morning of December 16, 2018, the Super Best Friends Play YouTube channel announced they were disbanding. After nearly nine years of daily content, it’s surreal to see them go. I even did a blog post a few years back plugging them and calling them out as one of my favorite YouTube groups. I can’t offer much, but I’d like to just briefly talk about how much that channel meant to me, and try to put into words just how sad I am to see them go.

The Super Best Friends started off as a Machinima series known as “Two Best Friends Play.” The “founders” of the channel, Matt and Pat, would play through games while mercilessly riffing on each other. The big joke was that the two didn’t seem to like each other much, despite the series’ title. Over time, their audience grew beyond Machinima and they started their own YouTube channel with daily videos. They would have theme months and weekly specials, like fighting games on Fridays with “Friday Night Fisticuffs” and their horror-themed “Shitstorm of Scariness” in October. What was once two friends became four, with Woolie and Liam joining and the group being rebranded as Super Best Friends Play. For a time, it was great and after a while, I found myself watching them more than I’d watch television. The Best Friends had become my go-to entertainment. Nothing lasts forever though.

A major blow came in December of 2016 when Liam parted ways with the channel. It seemed amicable but it still hit the channel hard and from that point on, writing on the wall seemed to form around the group disbanding entirely. Matt took a hiatus from the channel, and would frequently miss the podcasts the group recorded together. All three remaining members began working on side content. For Woolie and Matt, these were smaller, more niche Let’s Plays or skits, while Pat took to streaming on Twitch and creating a YouTube archive for them. The channel’s growth seemed to significantly slow around this time, just a hair under 700,000 subscribers, which while not insubstantial is certainly not as successful as other top YouTuber groups. After nearly a decade of daily videos, I think it’s fair to expect more than a bit of burnout, wondering how much longer they could go on for…and now we’ve found out.

When I stumbled onto their Machinima videos back in the day, it was during a time when I didn’t have many friends of my own. Going through the latter days of high school, the loneliest time in my life, and through watching their videos, I almost felt like I was vicariously enjoying the game along with them. Their intro video to every Friday Night Fisticuffs has them waving the viewer in to join them on the couch; you were part of the friendship too. Seeing that Pat and Matt aren’t exactly friends anymore really does hurt with that in mind, and I feel about as crushed as if they were my own friends. I’ve never met them, never really interacted with them in any real capacity, but I felt a bit of a connection to them, as weird as that might be to say.

If there’s one word that can sum them up, I’d say it was “genuine.” They never really overreacted in videos, they didn’t use face cams or anything like that; they weren’t fake at any rate. Their channel felt like less of a cultivated brand and more like a bunch of friends who accidentally made something that wound up being more successful than they ever expected. They played what they wanted to play, talked about what they were passionate about and ended up making me a fan of a ton of different games and anime and movies that I would have likely missed out on otherwise. I think if they aren’t feeling it, or likely haven’t been feeling it for a while, then it’s best to cut ties now before it gets even messier. It might hurt, but I think they’re making the right decision.

The last few months have been more than a little rough for the channel I can tell. While playthroughs of the new God of War and Detroit: Become Human were well-regarded, they seemed to hit a real snag with their Let’s Play of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, which was far and away the least popular series they’ve done in a long while. Even I have to admit I’ve found myself rarely watching a lot of their videos lately; they’ve mostly been background noise as I’ve done other things. I still can enjoy their commentary and still loved their podcast, but I can’t say I’m too surprised about the breakup when it’s clear the “magic” is gone.

In the end, I wish Matt, Pat, and Woolie nothing but the best. I hope their future endeavors work out and they continue to work on things they are passionate about. With all of them still producing their own content, with Matt also working on video games of his own, and Pat and Woolie having their own podcast, they’re still here, just not together. Hard to believe they’ve been around nine years, but it’s been a good run.

A common motto for the Best Friends was that they “promise nothing, and deliver less,” but in the end I think that they often over-delivered. They’ve been responsible for so many artists and other channels springing up over the years, making thousands of people laugh each day and always being a welcome part of my subscription feed. It certainly counts for something, I think. Don’t cry because it’s over, but smile because it happened.

Thanks for everything, Best Friends Zaibatsu.

-B

[xb-squaredx]

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC Speculation

With Super Smash Bros. Ultimate right around the corner, it’s natural to look towards the future, rather than just be satisfied with what we already have. With that in mind, since I already completely botched ALL of my choices for potential newcomers in the base game, so let’s try it again with the DLC characters we’ll be getting! Surely I’ll get at least ONE right!

So, to preface this, I do have to acknowledge a bit of a wrench in the works when it comes to speculation: the Piranha Plant. A part of me feels like making a Piranha Plant playable is a message to us: nothing is off the table. That we should expect the unexpected. That Sakurai is a beast that cannot be tamed and does whatever he wants! However…it’s also possible this is just a flex of Sakurai’s creative muscle, and just something he wanted to do. With the news that Nintendo chose the DLC characters for Ultimate, I’m assuming this was Sakurai’s one chance to rock the boat and we’ll likely get some more “safe” or “expected” choices for DLC. That said, with SO many potential characters apparently off the table as either Assist Trophies or Spirits, there is this general question of “Just WHO could they possibly add now?” Well, I have some ideas…

Smash Bros. and Fire Emblem have a strange relationship, and we’ve had characters added to the former to promote the latter before, so for me one of the few no-brainer picks is a character from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, slated for 2019. As of now, we really don’t know all that much about the game, and while there seem to be three main protagonists, I think it’d be a toss-up as to which one we’d get. But with Fire Emblem being treated as a major franchise for Nintendo now, it just makes sense. Fans might get upset, but maybe if we’re lucky they won’t use a sword!

I think in general most choices are going to be geared towards promoting UPCOMING games, but at the same time, the Xenoblade Chronicles series might see another rep. Why? Well, because Sakurai clearly likes the games, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sold well and he’s already placed a TON of Spirits and Mii Costumes from that game in Ultimate already. Now sure, Rex getting a costume seems like it’s a nail in the coffin, but I look at it more as Sakurai whetting fan’s appetites for the eventual DLC addition. Now, if it’d be Pyra instead, or having Rex and Pyra as a weird duo character, I’m not sure, but I’d honestly be kinda surprised if they don’t get in as DLC. The Torna: The Golden Country DLC campaign is also fresh in people’s minds, so I’d still say there’s a good chance. That said…

I’m still holding onto some hope that Elma could make it in as a rep for Xenoblade Chronicles X as a bit of a curve-ball. There are rumors that X could see a port to Switch and putting Elma into Smash is totally possible as a way to give that port some good press. Now, Monolith Soft itself hasn’t exactly spoken like a port is a sure-thing, and really it’s probably better to go with the more relevant reps with Rex and Pyra, but I can dream!

As far as promotional characters go, I feel that Nintendo might be looking to pimp their mobile games, and we just got Dragalia Lost not too long ago. The first original IP on mobile (albeit in conjunction with CyGames), it seems like a real missed opportunity to not use Ultimate to promote the game. Granted, there COULD be Spirits or something instead, but a playable character isn’t off the table at all. I also hear rumors that a Granblue Fantasy character might be in the cards, which is also done by CyGames, but rather than go with a franchise that…well…isn’t well known outside of Japan and lacks ties to Nintendo, why not go with their new mobile IP? A mobile IP that’s been making more than either Super Mario Run or Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Just something to think about.

So that’s three spots, roughly, all from Nintendo. But I think it’s fair to expect at least one more third party rep. I wouldn’t expect more than two honestly, and that’s even pushing it I think. But with third party, the sky is the limit with possible inclusions. Pick a company, any company and there’s totally at least one possible choice from each; Square Enix, Bethesda, Ubisoft, even Microsoft! So who can we expect? Doom Slayer? Banjo and Kazooie? A Slime from Dragon Quest? Honestly, the more I think of it…I’m not really sure who I could trim it down to.

You could argue that Doom Slayer being put in would be a great way to promote Doom Eternal I guess, and I guess Bethesda has been in talks with Nintendo regarding Smash…but would that really fit? Would that be something Nintendo would have chosen? Hard to say. The same goes for characters from the Fallout or Elder Scrolls series; they don’t strike me as franchises Nintendo feels all that bothered to help promote. We’ve seen that Square Enix is pretty hard to work with; such as limiting Cloud’s Midgar stage to two songs and rumors that he was the hardest character to get back. I kinda feel like Nintendo wouldn’t want to keep playing with them. They have tons of possible choices to go with if Nintendo IS willing to play ball with them, but I’m not super confident in any one choice. Dragon Quest is arguably their biggest franchise, so that would make total sense to put in someone from those games…but there’s always a possibility they’d go with something else. Maybe Geno fans would get thrown a bone…but I’m not holding my breath. Regarding Ubisoft, I wouldn’t say that Rayman is out of the question, really, and he seems like the most likely pick. Maybe that random trophy he got in Smash 4 can be topped with a playable appearance. But then there’s the curious case of Banjo and Kazooie. While once Nintendo characters and allegedly considered for inclusion in at least one of the games, they’re owned by Microsoft now, and it’s pretty unlikely that a direct competitor with Nintendo would be willing to lend a character out.  Microsoft is on better terms with Nintendo than one would expect, nowadays though. With Minecraft on Nintendo platforms (with Super Mario skins, on top of Banjo skins), Microsoft’s Phil Spenser stating multiple times that he’d love to see the pair in Smash and the fact that he’s likely a pretty big fan request…it IS possible. But we come back again to the question of if this is on Nintendo’s radar. While there are plenty of thirty-somethings that would love Banjo and Kazooie to make it in, I’d argue someone like Steve from Minecraft is a far more logical choice, even if he isn’t my ideal pick.  

Honestly, I think one of the more likely candidates is Tekken’s Heihachi. Arguably the face of the fighting games series, he had a Mii costume in Smash 4 and despite Namco co-developing this game, so far only Pac-Man is repping from them, so why not add another? Seems odd that Capcom, Sega and Konami get two reps (or more with echoes) while Namco still has one. So really, if I have to pick two that seem most likely…I’d go with Rayman and Heihachi. Not my ideal picks if I’m being honest, but they make the most sense.

Overall, I think that’s it. I’m prepared to be mostly wrong here, but it sure is fun to speculate! It’d be actually kind of cool to be completely wrong here and get five total surprises. Regardless of who we get, we already have SO much and I’m sure to love anyone they add anyway. I have faith in Sakurai and his team, and with just about a week to go until Ultimate launches, we’ll have plenty to occupy our free time before any of these characters get confirmed anyway I’m sure.

Until next time,

-B