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May 26, 2020: 30-Day Video Game Music Challenge - Day 5

I got the delightful idea from my Twitter feed to talk about a single video game track a day for 30 days based on various prompts.  With everything going on at the moment, I figured it would be a great way to recommend some great video game music and exercise my writing skills discussing a subject I find very interesting. With that out of the way, Day 5 of 30 (Music that Makes You Feel Relaxed) goes to Flower Fields from Kirby’s Epic Yarn:

Day 5: Music that Makes You Feel Relaxed

Video Game: Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Track: Flower Fields (Youtube Link)

A lot of people treat Kirby’s Epic Yarn as the black sheep of the franchise due to how ridiculously easy it is and how much of a departure it is from the rest of the series, but it’s also one of the most charming and relaxing games that I’ve ever played.  It’s pretty unique in that a large portion of the soundtrack is entirely piano driven, and that starts with the delightfully calming, upbeat piano solo that makes up Flower Fields, which the title screen theme for this game is derived from.  The game’s decision to open with a mellow, cheery piano solo is enough to communicate to the player that this game is about having a nice, breezy, relaxing time. It left such an impression on me that I learned how to play it on piano shortly after its release nearly a decade ago and haven’t forgotten about it since.

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May 25, 2020: 30-Day Video Game Music Challenge - Day 4

I got the delightful idea from my Twitter feed to talk about a single video game track a day for 30 days based on various prompts.  With everything going on at the moment, I figured it would be a great way to recommend some great video game music and exercise my writing skills discussing a subject I find very interesting. With that out of the way, Day 4 of 30 (Music from a Console Exclusive Series) goes to Super Smash Brothers Melee with the Fountain of Dreams:

Day 4: Music From a Console Exclusive Series

Video Game: Super Smash Bros. Melee

Track: Fountain of Dreams (Youtube Link)

I had quite a few ideas going into this prompt but had a lot of them shut down by the words “Console Exclusive” (which eliminates a surprising amount of titles by having the one weird entry on PC) and “Series” (which eliminated a lot of one-off games, such as everything from Shadow of the Colossus’ excellent soundtrack).  The choices I had left, which included tracks from games going from the Kingdom Hearts to Super Mario Bros., felt like they would be better suited for other prompts later on in the month.

With that being said, Super Smash Bros. is absolutely a console exclusive series, and, while Fountain of Dreams was a track that certainly did not originate from this game, the sweeping orchestral version that was played in Super Smash Bros. Melee certainly put this tune on the map to the point where many confuse the song as originating from here.  Before then, I wouldn’t say that Kirby had a definitive theme song for his series like Mario or The Legend of Zelda did.  Listening to it again, I find that the song is a lot slower than I remember it, but nevertheless the energy and tension that a full sounding orchestra brings to this song makes it instantly recognizable by video game fans the world over.

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May 24, 2020: 30-Day Video Game Music Challenge - Day 3

I got the delightful idea from my Twitter feed to talk about a single video game track a day for 30 days based on various prompts.  With everything going on at the moment, I figured it would be a great way to recommend some great video game music and exercise my writing skills discussing a subject I find very interesting. With that out of the way, Day 3 of 30 (8-Bit Music) goes to DuckTales (NES) with The Moon:

Day 3: 8-Bit Music

Video Game: DuckTales (NES)

Track: The Moon (Youtube Link)

I was born a bit too late to get into the whole 8-Bit gaming revolution while it was still new.  As I grew older, I definitely went back and tried a lot of those 8-Bit classics.  Unfortunately, while I can appreciate how good the music is for its time with its technical limitations, I can’t say there’s a lot of music from the 8-Bit era that I can go back and recommend listening to now for any other reason than to get historical perspective.

What I can say, however, is that there are several tracks from the 8-Bit days that I think are “just alright” yet have inspired absolutely phenomenal covers and remixes in the modern day.  The theme for The Moon level from the NES DuckTales is one of the better tunes as far as the 8-Bit era is concerned, with its melody conveying both the wonder and technology present by being on...the moon. My true motive for recommending this track, however, is to also recommend the excellent Mariachi cover of this song by Mariachi Entertainment System, which is actually the band that got me much more interested in Mariachi music to begin with. Oftentimes in this era, the content inspired by the source material holds up much better than the source material itself.

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May 23, 2020: 30-Day Video Game Music Challenge - Day 2

I got the delightful idea from my Twitter feed to talk about a single video game track a day for 30 days based on various prompts.  With everything going on at the moment, I figured it would be a great way to recommend some great video game music and exercise my writing skills discussing a subject I find very interesting. With that out of the way, Day 2 of 30 (Opening Level Music) goes to  Rhythm Heaven with the track Built to Scale: 

Day 2: Opening Level Music

Video Game: Rhythm Heaven

Track: Built to Scale (Youtube Link)

The more I thought about a track recommendation for the opening level of a video game, the more I realized that many games don’t really use their best tracks on the opening level.  They’ll have a great title theme, sure, but it was kind of difficult to think of a first level track worth talking about.  It’s also a very narrow category, as two great tracks that I thought were the themes of the opening level, Super Mario Galaxy 2’s Yoshi Star Galaxy and Bastion’s A Proper Story, were actually themes for levels slightly later in the game.

Nevertheless, there was one track that I instantly gravitated towards recommending as soon as I recalled its existence.  Rhythm Heaven is a music game for the DS where you need to tap and flick your stylus across the touch screen according to the instructions included in each song.  Obviously, when the player hits the first level they are just starting to learn the controls, so the first song needs to have a premise and composition simple enough to be understood by someone just starting the game.  Built to Scale nails this challenge by taking the do-re-mi-fa-so that is pretty much universally understood and making it the focal point of both the track and the gameplay.  Tap and hold at do; flick at so.  It’s a song that offers such a simple and elegant solution to guiding the player through the game’s mechanics while managing to mix that hand-holding into an instantly catchy track.

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May 22, 2020: 30-Day Video Game Music Challenge - Day 1

I got the delightful idea from my Twitter feed to talk about a single video game track a day for 30 days based on various prompts.  With everything going on at the moment, I figured it would be a great way to recommend some great video game music and exercise my writing skills discussing a subject I find very interesting. With that out of the way, Day 1 of 30 (Title Screen Music) goes to Cadence of Hyrule with its Main Menu Theme:

Day 1: Title Screen Music

Video Game: Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer Feat. The Legend of Zelda

Track: Main Menu (Youtube Link)

There are a lot of good title screen tracks that first greet a player when starting a video game.  There are even ones that I personally like more, such as the superb In Case of Trouble from Bastion’s title screen, but there is no track in my mind that has as much value for the video game it’s in than the Main Menu Theme from Cadence of Hyrule.  

It’s one thing to know that an indie studio has been given the green light by Nintendo to make a game in a franchise as venerated as The Legend of Zelda, but there was still a lingering doubt that Brace Yourself Games wouldn’t be able to make a game that lives up to the series legacy, even with their track record with Crypt of the Necrodancer.  Opening up the game with this track, which is a loving tribute to Ocarina of Time’s title screen and an absolute bop in its own right, immediately let me know that the Zelda franchise was not only in good hands, but that Danny Barranowsky and the rest of the crew working on the soundtrack brought their A-game to infuse these classic Zelda tracks with that unmistakable Crypt of the Necrodancer flair.  It’s such a chill mix with its slow, mellow drum beat and glittering vocals, and it’s the perfect opener to ease you into the idea that a Zelda game made by an indie team can be just as charming as one developed by the old guard.  The entire soundtrack is worth a listen, but the title theme in particular did wonders in instilling faith in the quality of the game.

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August 27, 2019: ProJared...

Well...I took my time to go through the entirety of that massive 42 minute ProJared video where he gives his side of the story on his whole drama, and I wrote out my thoughts afterwards into the Youtube comments. I figured I wouldn’t waste my words by posting it only in there, so I’ll go ahead and paste it under the fold, as I think I got a lot of my thoughts onto it that I wouldn’t be able to replicate by trying to write it again:  

Note: Just to prove that I’m not some ProJared hater and that I’m at least attempting to think rationally, here’s a link to a weekend video project I putzed out back in college that shows I was a big fan of and heavily inspired by his work:

Well. I made a comment before watching the video. Here's my comment after the video:

Congratulations ProJared. You've given your side of the story, and it's a pretty strong side that I can't poke any obvious holes in. It still seems extremely iffy that you essentially gave a few "no comment" statements while all of this was occurring then went dark for months, which...you know, was a large reason why these accusations were taken as gospel.  It will be EXTREMELY interesting to see how other sides of this issue respond to this video, especially the ones mentioned specifically by you, but, I've got to hand it to you. A single video has done wonders for your optics.

With that being said, I think I'll take a pass on re-subscribing or re-watching any of your videos until you do a bit more to prove that you're serious about making a comeback.  This is probably the cognitive dissonance in me taking hold, but a lot of little naggling things about everything from the tone of the video to your argumentative style to your constant use of the tried and true "I don't remember". It was really weird how you seemed to think that we believed the accusations simply because the accusers fired first, when in reality it was because you did nothing to dispel the whole cheating affair thing, which put us in the mindset that you'd be capable of predatory behaviour. There was no poisoning the well on their part when previous events already had the well poisoned for you.

Even more than that, however, I'm biding my time before jumping back into your content simply because, in your absence, I've seen countless other content creators that are much less controversial yet still make wonderful content, much of which surpasses the (sporadic) content that you create.  RelaxAlax, ScotTheWoz, NitroRad, AntDude, the list goes on and on.  Taking a step back from your content and seeing all of the other content creators that filled the void you left behind made me realise that...unfortunately, your content hasn't aged very well.  Even if every single accusation against you is false, you still have a mountain to climb in order to get your content onto the level of quality that I enjoy regularly from these and other fantastic content creators.  Sure, it's not a competition, but, when you have all of this controversy to contend with, it causes me much less stress to just say fuck it and stick with all of the content creators that don't stress me out with their drama.

So, ProJared, go ahead and give your Youtube career another shot. I'm extremely on the fence about where the truth lies in all this drama, but if you want to give things another shot, I won't be the one sending death threats. Just expect me to be extremely wary and cynical of how you proceed going forward.

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January 21, 2019: What Remains of Edith Finch

01/21/2019: Oh boy, it’s been a long time since I’ve put a post onto this blog.  I figured that, since I’ve gotten off my Overwatch addiction (for the most part), I’d probably be playing enough new video games to have opinions worth writing about.

I have a few ideas kicking around for posts I want to write, but for right now, since I have Martin Luther King day off, I figured I would give What Remains of Edith Finch a shot.  It’s currently free until Thursday on the Epic Games Store, and considering that you can complete it fully in two hours and change, I thought it would be a good idea to take some time to finish it after all of the good word of mouth that’s come my way regarding it.  My thoughts below the fold:

My scoring system for video games and movies typically has a very important breakpoint.  Anything that scores an eight or higher is something that I would want to watch or play again.  What Remains of Edith Finch is special because it will be the first, and probably only, game to score high despite me having no intention to play it ever again.  What Remains of Edith Finch is short, punctuated experience that is bursting at the seams with clever ideas and is one of the most engaging walking simulators that I’ve played in a while.

My praise for Edith Finch is particularly surprisingly because I’m usually extremely critical of walking simulators.  Dear Esther is a regular punching bag of mine for showing how pretentious and boring much of the genre is.  What sets this game apart, however, is that this game has actual structure.  Most walking simulators are like dark rides at Disneyland:  Your only interaction with the “game” is walking towards the next bit of story or cutscene to be played and otherwise just watch as events unfold.  While Edith Finch is similarly linear, the story constantly cuts away to small vignettes of other characters that are related to the story which are essentially mini-games with entirely different control schemes.  Without spoiling too much, the action in the mini-games will highlight events in the story perfectly, and two of the events in particular will probably go down as perfect examples of how to immerse a player into a story through gameplay.  The story is, like a lot of stories in these walking simulators, thought provoking and steeped with deep imagery, but having an actual game to fall back on, and a rewards structure of getting new vignettes as you progress through the story, makes this game infinitely more engaging than any walking sim I’ve played in a while.

It’s not all praises, however.  While Edith Finch is bursting with ideas in these mini-game vignettes, there are certainly a few of them that are less refined than others.  Some of them still amount to nothing more than glorified cutscenes, and one in particular had controls that were so awful that I was afraid I soft-locked the game and had to resort to mashing random buttons to get through it all.  Additionally, this is still a game cut from the same cloth as other walking simulators.  The gameplay helps accentuate the story, but if you’re not the type to really get into the storytelling and artistry, this game probably won’t be for you.

With that being said, however, What Remains of Edith Finch can easily be completed in two hours, and I encourage anyone curious about the whole “games as art” movement to go in blind and give it a shot.  Even if you think it might not be the game for you, the time and cost commitment (the game is free on the Epic Games store as I’m writing this) means that you should still sit down and give it a try.  What you find will probably surprise you.  I know it did for me.

Score: 8 / 10

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Remember to download the new dlc for A Hat In Time today while it's free! https://www.instagram.com/p/BnrWsK9HPK4/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1vikcyr8vqefq

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September 4, 2018: Adventure Time

9/4/2018: Adventure Time apparently ended today.  I haven’t watched in years, but the news got me thinking nostalgically about how much it influenced both my life and the world of animation in general.  The Ice King will always have taught me a lesson about losing people that you care about.  Princess Bubblegum will have always taught me to accept that some things were never meant to be.  The pure beauty of Adventure Time from my perspective was always its ability to mix anarchic imagination with serious, even uncomfortable subjects and themes.  Regardless of your opinions about the show’s trajectory in later seasons, it proved that animation could tackle subjects typically considered too serious for children’s entertainment and paved the way for cartoon networks to green light everything from Steven Universe to Gravity Falls as a result.

In light of that, I’d just like to thank Adventure Time for helping me, and the rest of its audience, grow up a little bit.  I really appreciate it.

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December 30, 2017: Top 5 Video Games

I surprisingly didn’t play that many games for the first time this year, so I’m downsizing a list of best games from top ten to top five.  Go ahead and blame it on Overwatch, which I’m still playing with a passion a year later.  Again, all games are fair play on this list as long as I only started playing them this year.  My list below the fold:

Runner Up - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (November 1992): In an effort to celebrate the release of Sonic Mania (which I still don’t own at time of writing) I wanted to go back and play some of the games from the series I missed. This included the Sonic 4 episodes, which I can only describe as an absolute disaster, and Sonic 2, which was as good as people said it was. It has great level design with simple mechanics that allow you to focus more on the fast pace and less on plodding platforming sections, and I’m glad that Sonic Mania has seemingly been able to capture that feeling.

#5 - Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (June 2017): While I’m still dubious about how dated these games actually are, especially the first one, this collection is still a great value and provides a good nostalgia trip for people that grew up during the time these games were new.  I’m certainly not going to 100% complete these games like I originally intended, but they are mostly well crafted games that show just why Naughty Dog is the industry darlings they are today.

#4 - DOOM (May 2016): It’s fast paced, high octane shooting that eschews typical “modern warfare” gameplay design for something that’s insanely more fun.  Some of the levels do plod along depending on how much of a completionist you are, but everything from the gameplay to the presentation mixes together to make an old-school experience feel fresh again. Multiplayer is a miss though, as I never touched the mode.

#3 - Hollow Knight (February 2017): A Dark Souls style story enveloped in an appealing Newgrounds-esque art style and addicting Metroidvania gameplay.  There’s more of an emphasis on combat in this game than others of the genre, and the combat mixed with the game’s inclination to throw you in the dark and let you find your way creates a surprisingly eerie atmosphere that’s difficult to put down. The difficulty curve gets way too soft at the end, but I still loved it all the way through.

#2 - Ori and the Blind Forest (March 2015): While Hollow Knight blended Metroidvania with action and an eerie atmosphere to put the player on edge, Ori and the Blind Forest does the opposite: Calming you with a beautiful atmosphere and mellow tone while giving you a massive playground to run around in. It’s never so frustrating that you have to play it in spurts like I had to with Hollow Knight. I took my time, explored every nook and cranny of this delightful world, and enjoyed some really inspiring and clever segments that mixed storytelling with gameplay.

#1 - Cuphead (September 2017): Absolutely gorgeous and occupying a gameplay style that I both love and don’t see enough of in this gaming landscape, Cuphead easily takes the crown for my favourite game played this year. This is the first game in a while that made me want to buy it just by watching it being played for thirty seconds on Twitch. Fair yet massively challenging gameplay complements the art style and gives you a high every time you manage to defeat a new foe, and the obvious speedrunning component makes this a game that won’t be forgotten about soon.

And a few games that most certainly didn’t make this list despite having played them:

+ The Last Guardian (December 2016): I really wanted to enjoy this one, but massive technical issues bogged down what should have been a great piece of interactive storytelling.

+ South Park: The Fractured But Whole (October 2017): The fact that I picked this game up for half off ($30) two months after its release tells you everything you need to know about this game. It takes a slightly modified version of the excellent Stick of Truth’s gameplay then repeats it ad-nausea to create a game that’s both extremely bland and lacking any sense of creativity. The bland humour doesn’t help either. 

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Happy Halloween everybody! Be fast, not slow and make it a good one!

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Assassin’s Creed: Origins Code

Love Monster but don’t play Assassin’s Creed: Origins, so here’s a code for anybody that cares enough to redeem it.

5CRXJ3358V6M2M

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August 26, 2017: Sonic 4: Episode 1

August 26, 2017: With Sonic Mania still being a few days away for the PC master race, I decided to try expanding my horizons by trying some of the Sonic games I had in my library but have never played.  My thoughts on Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 below the fold.

I write reviews of games and movies and other experiences I have for fun.  One of the greatest advantages I have because of this over, say, a professional critic is that I can jump ship if a game is going really badly.  At the same time, part of the reason I write these reviews is in order to expand my horizons.  There’s something to be gleaned from experiencing any video game, no matter how bad it is, so I try to give myself ample time and energy to get to a respectable spot in the game before writing about it.  Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 is one of the few times where I’m giving up and throwing all of that optimism out the window.

I really should beat this microgame before I give an opinion.  It’s only four worlds long, with three stages that take approximately five minutes to complete, as well as a boss fight in each.  The fact that I’m exasperated and done with this game after two and a half of them is a testament to how frustrating, slow, and unfun this game was.  The first world pulls the Sonic tradition of being the most fun, but they can’t even get that entirely right.  It’s so close to being enjoyable, yet it can only get to a place where I muse about how it would be fun if designed by people who cared.

Part of it is the controls, which attempts to meld the spin-dashing, classic of the original Sonic games with the homing dash of his newer iterations.  In short, it’s a complete mess and takes a lot of time to get used to as you fly past platforms that you’re expected to precisely land on because of an errant tap activating the homing attack.  It’s like the developers designed the levels without the homing attack in mind and then were told to add it in at the last second.

What really sinks the ship, however, is some absolutely atrocious level design.  They get the odd level or two right, such as the aforementioned first stage and a Casino Night Zone inspired pinball level.  After that, however, they introduce a lot of mechanics that simply don’t line up with Sonic gameplay.  The second most frustrating for me was a segment where you had to ascend upwards and to the right across a bottomless pit with platforms that phased in and out of existence and bizarrely could not be passed through from the bottom while active.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was a puzzle solving segment where you needed to light torches in a specific order by running through them to agonizingly get up a column, and one of the torches, which, mind you, is very difficult to avoid going up a narrow column, would reset the entire column and send you back to the bottom to start over.

Sonic 4: Episode 1 was not fun.  It got very close to being fun at one or two spots, but the horrible controls and level design, along with the fact they expect you to pay upwards to ten dollars to play twelve half baked stages, makes it impossible to recommend.  If you’re a diehard Sonic fan, just go back and play the classics again.  There’s nothing for you here.

Score: 3 / 10

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August 2, 2017: Baby Driver

August 2, 2017: Considering two of my top three films of all time are directed by Edgar Wright, I’m surprised that I didn’t go see Baby Driver until a week ago.  After seeing it, I needed a week to formulate my thoughts, but I’ve finally compiled them below the fold.

One concept that I’m increasingly coming to grips with is the idea that you can regard a movie as being objectively better than another without necessarily liking it more. Baby Driver is a good example of this.  It beats out every other Edgar Wright Film (Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, etc.) in terms of its personality, style, and plot, yet the moves it takes to get there makes it lose some of the magic that I saw in those other movies.  Baby Driver is an amazingly fun ride with tons of style and heart but also seems to be more catered to a traditional audience than fans of Edgar Wright’s other films may be used to.

The first half of the movie is exactly what I was looking forward to as an Edgar Wright fan. The eponymous Baby is one of the best getaway drivers in the game despite being a teenager, and he has the peculiar habit of listening to music nearly all of the time. We get to see a few typical days in his life pulling off heists, interacting with his cohorts, and gradually learning his backstory in which he gets entangled with his current crowd after stealing and wrecking the car of the wrong man. From this, it’s immediately apparent why this movie is being praised for its style.  The sound design is nothing short of fantastic, taking place nearly entirely from Baby’s perspective.  Nearly every shot is choreographed to the music that Baby is listening to, and it works wonders for getting you into the same groove that he must be feeling while watching it.  Every meticulous detail is accounted for, right down to the music cutting out some of the channels when Baby takes off an earbud to let someone else listen in.  Edgar Wright has always been a style over substance kind of director, and this movie, from start to finish, shows that off wonderfully.

What sets Baby Driver apart from previous efforts, however, is the second half, which goes into much more emotional depths than what I’m used to from Edgar Wright.  Baby feels trapped inside this world of crime, which he detests despite being really good at it, and spends the second half of the movie trying to run away with his love interest, who he has great chemistry with.  It’s really well done, and there surprisingly isn’t a singular villain so much as there is the fact that Baby really is working for a criminal underground, with people he worked with that are ready to turn on him the moment he starts threatening their interests.  Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx, two of these criminals, turn in fantastic performances here, being both likeable and detestable depending on the situation.  The movie even has a believable and fitting, if not cliche, message: You can run away all you want, but you can only truly be free when you face the music.

Like I said, this movie is fantastic and easily the best film that Edgar Wright has ever made, both critically and financially, yet I walked out of this movie feeling less excited than I did after seeing Hot Fuzz or Scott Pilgrim for the first time.  After thinking about it for a long while, I think this is for two reasons.  First, Edgar Wright’s movies were always so special for me specifically because of the high his directing style provided.  Say what you will about emotion and sadness being a great part of the experience in Baby Driver, but, in a film that I expected to be hype and good times all the way through, having such a bittersweet second half kind of took me out of the experience.  I still enjoyed it massively, sure, but it was harder for me to enjoy the action at the end of the film because I was so invested in these characters that it made me sad when bad things happened to them.  Second, Edgar Wright’s films always had what I call the Regular Show effect.  His films would always start out with boring, mundane scenarios (being a cop in a quiet village), and the fun was how they slowly escalated into outright lunacy by the end (shooting up the recently discovered evil inhabitants of said village with massive amounts of weaponry).  Baby Driver starts out crazy and stays there the entire film, punctuating it with fits of normalcy. Neither of these points are necessarily issues to an objective critic, but, if you’re a huge Edgar Wright fan like I am, it points to an experience that feels like it wasn’t necessarily built for you and was instead made to please a more general audience.

It feels really hipster for me to say that I don’t rank Baby Driver as my favourite of Edgar Wright’s portfolio because it dared to mend itself into something more people would like.  Edgar Wright simply wasn’t making money directing cult classic after cult classic, and I absolutely do not blame him for making something that was more of a crowd favourite.  The film is stylish and filled with more heart than I knew what to do with, and I probably would recommend this film over the ones that Edgar Wright’s made.  Baby Driver is just not my favourite.

Score: 9.5 / 10

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June 28, 2017: Ori and the Blind Forest

June 28, 2017: I spent the last week or so completing Ori and the Blind Forest, and it definitely is a game worth talking about.  Note that I played through the standard edition of the game, although I do have some things to say about the existence of and differences between the two versions.  My thoughts below the fold.

Ori and the Blind Forest is a breath of fresh air in a genre that was dominated by cookie cutter “homages” to the games that we once played.  Its tight controls, touching narrative, and addicting exploration elements contribute to an experience that, despite having some nagging issues, is an absolute joy to play through.

On the outset, the game seems a lot like a forest inspired version of Metroid, with you exploring various areas in an open world to find new abilities that allow you to progress through the game.  The Metroidvania influences can clearly be felt here, yet the power-ups you receive make the gameplay take a completely different turn from those games.  The game ditches the small, claustrophobic level designs most of these Metroid inspired games have in favour of large, sprawling layouts, and then gives you the movement abilities required to traverse such large areas slowly throughout the game.  In this way, you can truly see how far you come throughout the game as you learn moves that allow you to traverse larger, taller, and more treacherous expanses as you progress, and every step in that progression feels very natural.

A lot of complaints have been made about the lack of a quick-travel feature in the game (or, at least, in the initial version of the game, which is what I’ve played.  Fast travel, as well as various other features, was added in a special director’s cut of the game), which forces you to travel the entire map to get back to collectibles from earlier areas in the game that become newly accessible after acquiring a new power-up.  While I can see where that criticism would come from, since the map is sprawling and prone to frequently getting lost and having to check the map, this backtracking also helps the sense of progression in the game.  Older areas become an absolute breeze to traverse after grabbing later power-ups, and it feels great to bolt past a room that took you numerous retries previously after becoming stronger.

The light RPG elements also help with alleviating the lack of a quick-travel feature, as, after about half-way through the game, a diligent collector will have found more than enough experience and upgrades to make the rest of the game a breeze.  Alternatively, a master player or speedrunner will have a great time trying to rush through the game with as few upgrades as possible.  Indeed, the speedrunning community has opened this game up to all kinds of sequence skips and time savers, and it continues to look like a promising game for people of all experience levels.

That being said, the game does have a slow section in the middle of the game that suffers from some poor design.  In general, any of the sections that hamper your ability to move around freely slow the game to a crawl, leaving you twiddling your thumbs as you trudge through a slow bit in order to get back to the fluid platforming that makes this game great.  Also, as much as I like the fact that the developers went back to try to improve a game they’ve already released, it is a bit scummy that they’re making people buy it again as a full game.  Owning an original copy of the game gives you a fifty percent discount on the director’s cut edition, but that’s still half the price (ten dollars at the time of writing) for what amounts to much less than fifty percent more gameplay.  I would at maximum pay an extra five dollars for the extra content, so hopefully the definitive edition drops to that price sooner rather than later.  People who don’t already own this game obviously won’t have this problem, since the definitive edition has pretty much replaced the original in terms of its price and content, but it definitely feels like a slap to the face for early adopters.

That being said, however, Ori and the Blind Forest, even in its original version, is still an absolute blast to play through.  The combination of exploration, fluid platforming, and emotional story make this a game that’s worth playing for fans of gaming in general, no matter what the skill level.  It’s an experience that I’d recommend to anyone with a love for platformers and is absolutely worth your time and money.

Score: 9 / 10

[thedoctor1199]

June 21, 2017: Ballz

June 21, 2017: Not to be confused with the old fighting game on the Sega Genesis, today’s post is my thoughts on the Android game Ballz, which can be found on the Google Play store here.  My thoughts below the fold.

Ballz is a game that embodies what I love about smartphone gaming.  It was obviously made on a shoestring budget, yet is still able to take a basic premise and turn it into an enjoyable little time waster.  Each turn, you set a trajectory and launch a salvo of balls from the bottom of the screen towards a mass of numbered blocks, which decrease in value when hit and are destroyed upon reaching zero.  Power-ups also appear on the field, which permanently increase the number of balls launched per turn by one when collected, and after each turn the collection of blocks drops one notch down the playing field, generating more power-ups and blocks in its wake.  The game ends when a block touches the bottom of the field without being destroyed.

So far, Ballz seems like nothing more than a knockoff combination of Puzzle Bobble and Brick Breaker, which it essentially is.  The combination, however, is an addicting yet strangely serene experience.  Since the game is turn based, you can spend as much time as you want lining up your shots, and, just like in Brick Breaker, you can destroy a lot of blocks quickly by trapping your shots between the blocks and the top of the screen.  It’s immensely satisfying to aim the perfect shot and watch as the balls go crazy and destroy an entire screen’s worth of bricks, especially when you get far enough to launch hundreds of balls per turn.

That being said, sessions of the game tend to be much longer than runs of your typical mobile games like Candy Crush and Jetpack Joyride, an aspect that’s exacerbated when you start each run with a single ball and have to painstakingly build up your count before things get interesting.  I’m glad that the paid aspects of the app are minimal, including a genius system where you can receive one continue per game by watching and advertisement, but I wish they had some feature to skip the beginning and start off with a fifty or so ball arsenal.  As it stands, the tedious slog at the beginning of each run means I can only play two or three games before I get bored for the day and move on to something else.

Despite being a slow starter, however, Ballz is still an enjoyable little mobile experience for when you’re bored on the go.  It implements its simple little mechanics well, and, while there are certainly better, deeper games, even on the smartphone market, it’s a great choice for some nice, casual play.

Score: 7 / 10

[thedoctor1199]

June 20, 2017: Coraline

June 20, 2017: In a rather strange pick, I watched Coraline with my in-laws over the weekend.  My hopes were high knowing that this was the precursor the excellent Kubo and the Two Strings, and those hopes were pretty much validated during my viewing.  Spoilery thoughts below the fold.

Coraline is strange.  Coming from the same studio who would eventually go on to make personal favorite Kubo and the Two Strings, I knew that talented hands were also at work making this, but I didn’t grasp just how good Coraline would be until I sat down and actually watched it all the way through.  Coraline is an imaginative film that successfully captures the essence of a dark fairy tale, with all of the magic, wonder, and suspense that entails.

To start with, the film is really well paced.  Worse children’s movies would feel the need to kick into high gear from the word “go” for fear of losing kids’ stereotypically short attention spans.  Coraline, however, is given plenty of time to introduce its eponymous protagonist and set up how disillusioned she is with her life.  She’s just moved to a new town, far away from anybody she could call a friend, and her parents are too busy with their work to give her the time of day.  She’s given time to quibble with her parents, meet all the quirky neighbours, and set up many other nuances that will affect her visions when she crosses into the other world.

It takes about ten minutes before we’re even given a glimpse of the dream-like “other world,” and even then the film cleverly keeps the viewer in the dark about what’s going on for a good while longer.  The cliche of “this is all a dream” is purposely left on the table for pretty much the entirety of the first two acts, which allows it to dazzle us with its (admittedly worse than Kubo’s but still) dazzling visuals.

When the major conflict of the film arises, however, the story takes a very dark, Brothers’ Grimm-esque turn for a kid’s film and treats its audience with a lot of respect.  It doesn’t shy away from some pretty haunting ideas involving death and kidnapping, yet presents these ideas in such a way that they provide a good lesson to children and feel absolutely vital to the story, however terrifying they might be to a younger audience.  All of the wonder and majesty presented in the opening acts are turned on their heads, and the story resolves perfectly, providing a simple yet thought provoking message.  By the end, most everything comes together to create a darker, modern day fairy tale that kids can latch onto.

With that being said, however, Coraline surprisingly runs into the same issue that Kubo had in that it’s so focused on nailing the story and atmosphere (Japanese folklore in Kubo’s case and European folklore in Coraline’s) that it kind of leaves its characters out to dry.  In this regards, Coraline stumbles even more in that pretty much every character save for Coraline and the main antagonist was either boring, not fleshed out enough, or was simply a plot device to move the story along.  The story was so good that it was able to move pieces around in a way that served it, but I never felt any of the motivations for characters, except Coraline, to do the actions they performed.  In a film that hinges on Coraline’s relationship with her parents, I had a massively difficult time trying to determine what the family dynamic was.  The father seemed to be at least trying but wasn’t in enough of the movie for me to tell, and the mother is so overly antagonistic with her daughter that she both does not feel like a real person and also does not seem believable when she has a more sympathetic turn at the end.

I say this because Coraline was good enough that I wanted to be able to call it a perfect movie, but, despite my qualms about the characters, Coraline is still a great movie with a dark atmosphere that does things differently.  While I still don’t think it beats out Kubo for me, it’s still very, very good, especially for what could have been just a cheap Nightmare Before Christmas clone.

Score: 8 / 10