Xeodrifter

Xeodrifter was a game I knew nothing about going in.  I received it for free on my Vita as part of my subscription to PS+ and I finally got around to playing it recently.  What I got was actually really fun and I feel like it's one of those games that everyone should have a go at.

Developed by Renegade Kid in 2011 and released on a whole bunch of systems and PC, Xeodrifter is basically Metroid and because of that this review of the game will probably be quite short.  Don't get me wrong, it's not an exact clone but for the most part it's the same deal where you fly around different planets, fighting these big alien creatures that look similar to each other and collecting power ups that allow you to explore the world and collect upgrades.  But being a clone of Metroid isn't a bad thing, Metroid is a great game so if there's anything to use as a template for your indie release then that's a good idea.

When the game starts out you have a map with 4 planets and a small space ship that gets messed up and needs a new warp drive or something.  It's then up to you to explore the 4 surrounding planets, collect power ups and find a new core for your ship so you can go home.  The game starts you off with 3 dots of health and a little pea shooter gun and just lets you explore freely.  What you'll find rather quickly is that a lot of the areas are off limits due to your lack of abilities and it's also really easy to die.

Very quickly though you fight a boss, get a power and the world starts to open up a little.  From there you can find secrets that will lead to health upgrades and gun upgrades which will make your shitty little gun shoot faster, stronger, in a spread or in a wave.  The only upgrades for the gun that I actually used were the speed and power upgrades and once they were maxed I felt like a complete power house but I'm sure people with different play styles could make use of all the other upgrade paths as you can add and take points from them freely at any time.

While it's a fun game there are a few complaints that I have, the length being my major issue.  The game is REALLY short, you could probably finish it on a lazy Sunday afternoon if you were willing to sink that much time into a single session and it's a little lacking in replay value.  Backtracking through levels can also be a little tedious as well and it's easy to lose concentration through an old area with weak enemies and end up dying because you're just not paying attention. My final complaint is that all the bosses are the same

Just this alien thing that comes in a different color every time. 

That said though, these complaints aren't enough to spoil what is actually a really fun little game.  While Metroid can feel a bit oppressive in its design Xeodrifter feels comfy and relaxing.  If you want an intense alien killing, exploration focused experience then maybe stick to Metroid but if you're looking for something fun and relaxing to kill some time with the Xeodrifter might be the game for you.

Castle In the Darkness

Castle in the Darkness is another one of those games that I loaded up for the first time with absolutely zero expectations.  I don't even remember buying it but I'm sure as hell glad that I did because this game is really awesome.

Castle in the Darkness is a retro style metroid-esque game for PC.  Aside from the clear inspiration from Metroid in the design, there are also some pretty clear influences from Castlevania and I Wanna Be The Guy games.  Don't let that last one put you off though, while the game is quite challenging it's not insane like those games are.

There isn't much of a story to speak of when it comes to Castle In the Darkness.  To be brutally honest with you I beat the game a few weeks back and I forgot what the story was.  From what I do remember there is a big bad guy fucking things up and he's killed basically everyone in this royal army but you, so gear up and go kick his ass.

This is one of those games that's short on the story but strong on the game play.  So you play through each level killing dudes for gold and beating bosses to upgrade your life but in every stage there are offshoots that you can explore and find hidden items.  This game has a FUCKTON of stuff that you wont find just playing the game through normally since I played it getting a few of the secrets and my clear percentage when I beat the final boss was less than 50. 

Word of warning though, this game is tough and I feel that the difficulty presented here may turn some players away.  In terms of game play style its pretty standard 2D side scrolling fare but some of the platform segments are pretty rough and the 1 hit kill death spikes will make you want to punch your monitor a few times.  Not only this but the game also is completely void of a map which is weird considering how much exploration there is to do.  It was part of the reason my clear percent was so low because I'd fucking forget where certain things were and then found myself being too much of a lazy shithead to go get it.  If you are up for the challenge of this game then keep a pen and paper handy and make some fucking notes.  I would also like to point out that upon dying 50 times you unlock an easy mode but I didn't bother to try it out so I'm not sure what changes.

Aside from it's simplistic but challenging game play the game also boasts a pretty awesome pixel art style some great music and a surprisingly fair bit of replay value if you're a little bit of a masochist.  The game also has a decent amount of length even if you just play it normally considering it's cheap price point and has an exceptional amount of value if you try to go for 100% completion. 

So if you're a fan of difficult platformers or you enjoy a bit of the old Metroid style 2D exploration type thing then I'd say you should give Castle in the Darkness a try.  You may need to put your serious game face on a little bit but don't let the games challenge and unwillingness to hold your hand deter you from trying a great little indie title.

Ori and the Blind Forest

This is another one of those games that I knew absolutely nothing about upon purchase but I'm very happy that I took a chance and gave this game a shot.  Despite it's quality, there isn't actually all that much to say about it, but here I go.

Ori and the Blind forest starts out with a story about a little white cat thing born from some Elder Tree getting separated from said tree.  He is found and raised by a fat brown thing and together they live a happy and idyllic life together until the forest starts to die and their food supplies run out.  When the fat brown thing dies of hunger and Ori himself comes close to death, he is saved by a spirit and is then tasked with recovering the forest.

From here, Ori and the Blind forest opens itself up and you find yourself in a "metroidvania" type of game.  I hate using that term but it's the best word to use for games like this because then everyone knows what you mean.  In case there are people who live under a rock and don't know what I mean by "metroidvania" then it's the kind of game where you have a big 2D map and you have to explore and find power ups in order to progress.  These kind of games are filled with lots of pickups that are often unattainable at the start but as you collect more skills then you can backtrack in order to pick up all the goodies you missed with your new found skills.

Ori and the Blind forest doesn't really boast anything unique apart from it's check pointing system where you spend mana to create a save spot.  That said, it does boast a hell of a lot of polish and the team that put it together obviously know what's up when it comes to making games like this.  The game play is smooth, the platforming is fun and the puzzles while a little on the simple side aren't completely brain dead.  There's also a decent amount of stuff to find in the dying forest but the game allows you to upgrade Ori to sense them out so you aren't left completely in the dark about where certain secrets lay.  That said, getting 100% in Ori is no easy task with certain items being missable and the sensing skills being locked way up your skill tree so you're still going to need to keep your wits about you if you want all the goodies the game has to offer.

The one thing that struck me the most about this game is the graphics and music.  There's a really nice atmosphere to this game that helps you immerse yourself in the game pretty easy which is something I've not been able to do with any title for a long time.  Also the music is really well done with nice ambient themes as you explore and stuff that really gets the player going when shit is hitting the fan.

I feel that Ori and the Blind Forest is one of those great games that people will remember for a good while.  It's nothing new or original but it knows what it wants to be and does it really well.  It's fun, immersive and looks great, y'all should give it a shot.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

This is a game that has been part of my collection for a very long time and beaten on multiple occasions but very recently I just went and beat it again so I thought I'd talk about it a little bit.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is a DS game that, like most Castlevania games post Symphony of the Night uses the Metroid style rather than original Castlevania style.  I'm not saying that as a bad thing, I like metroidvania a lot but it just is what it is.

Portrait of Ruin being on the DS had to have some kind of gimmick that set it apart from other titles in the franchise.  For example Dawn of Sorrow had you drawing seals on the screen to finish bosses and other things but the gimmick here doesn't involve the touch screen of the system at all.  Portrait of Ruins thing was that you had two characters that you could freely switch between.  These two characters where Johnathon and Charlotte and they both have their own strengths and weaknesses that you must use in order to overcome Dracula's castle.

Except the vast majority of the game isn't spent dealing with Dracula at all, oh no.  At some point some tosser called Brauner came along and sealed Dracula away using magic evil paintings.  Actually, I'm not actually sure he was trying to seal him away, I beat it last month and I didn't really give a crap about the story but it's something to that effect.  What this means in terms of game play is that you not only have to deal with Dracula's castle but with the insides of Brauner's paintings.  Of course, once you deal with him Dracula comes along to try and ruin your day but that's only at the very end of the game when you're on course for the best ending.

The rest is standard metroidvania fair of finding weapons, levelling up, exploring the castle and gaining abilities that help you get through all the walled off bits.  There is also a ghost sitting in a room near the castle entrance who will give you quests and completing these quests will yield various rewards.  There are also a few online features I never used and extra characters you can use once you beat the game so there is quite a lot of content here.

That said, this one is far from perfect and for some reason the little niggles in this one get to me a lot more than any other Castlevania game.  For example, Johnathon spends the whole game carrying around the Vampire Killer, the legendary whip that's been used since the series began.  However, because he's not a Belmont they make a big deal about how he can't use it without special help and if he does use it it'll consume his soul or some shit.  However, once you do unlock the vampire killer's power it has absolutely no adverse effects and is probably the best weapon in the game.  It's such a major plot point but the games lets you swing that shit around like any other weapon with no repercussions, it seems a little silly.

The double character thing also seems like a bit of a waste since my last through consisted of using Johnathon and nothing but unless I needed magic for something specific or she had to help me push something.  Charlotte is pretty much weaker in every way and while I'm sure there's some hardcore player out there who could argue the benefits of Charlotte, for a guy like me she's fairly useless.

The worst thing about this game though is that it goes and pulls a Silent Hill 4 but repeating the same 4 or 5 levels twice just with slightly stronger enemies the second time round.  It's fine because unlike SH4 the core game play is really fun but I do wish that they had a bunch unique portraits to go through rather than just 4 or 5 repeated.

While I personally think Portrait of Ruin is a really good game I'd find it hard to recommend it to someone who wasn't a Castlevania fan.  If you were looking to get into the whole metroidvania thing or you came off Symphony and wanted to try something else, go play Aria of Sorrow or Order of Ecclesia, it's like this one but way better.  Not that this is bad, just go enjoy the REALLY good ones first.

The Problem With Metroidvania

Today I polished off a replay of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and really there is this huge glaring problem with the whole "metroidvania" thing that I feel the need to express my opinion on because I'm a bit of a self absorbed twat.

Anyway, the first thing to mention is that I fucking love these games.  Aria of Sorrow being my personal favourite, but really I love new school "metriodvania" as much as I love old school side scrolling Castlevania.

So if I love these games so much, what could the problem possibly be?  Well let's think about Metroid for a moment since they are quite similar in game play.  In Metroid you explore a large 2D world, collecting powerups and special abilities in order to move forward, basically the same as new school Castlevania right?  Well the difference between the two games is that every single power up in Metroid feels useful in some way.  A life boost or a missile boost is always welcome, while in Castlevania not everything you get is very good.

In fact, while I was playing Order of Ecclesia I was collecting all the different glyphs that can be used as weaponry, but pretty much through the whole game I stuck to the same 3 and didn't really have much trouble at all.  I would constantly find new weapons, Armour and accessories throughout the game but I would end up ignoring most of them just because what I was currently using was a better anyway.

This problem really affects the game play sometimes because exploring starts to feel like a bit of a chore after a while.  I don't care about searching 100% of a map for that extra item or chest because I know that I'll end up not using it anyway.  I did explore 100% of every map because I'm a bit OCD like that, but your normal player might just get sick of being given sub-par "power ups" and just sack the whole exploring thing and just make a dash for the boss room.

Still, there is plenty of verity in the Castlevania equipment lists so you can always play pretty much exactly how you want, which is a plus.  To me these problems aren't game breaking, just a minor annoyance but I can imagine for some it really turns them off these kind of games.

Rogue Legacy First Impressions

One of the first things I ever posted about when I started this blog effort was this sort of Roguelike game called The Binding of Isaac, and I gushed a hell of a lot over that one.  But after having burnt myself out hard on that, finally something has come along to fulfil my randomly generate dungeon needs.

Rogue Legacy is a 2D Metroidvania-esque Roguelike game that recently got released on Steam.  I've only really started playing, but from what I can tell the aim of the game is to explore the randomly generated castle and kill a bunch of bosses so you can go fight the big bad behind a huge gold door and then win the game.

You play as a knight who at the start is killed quite easily by pretty much everything inside the castle and when you die you have to start over completely from scratch, so if your hoping to get to that final boss then you really have to pull your socks up and show some Metroidvania skills.

As you play you find gold that you can use to by equipment and upgrades with at a hub screen before you start a run with each new knight.   You may be thinking this is an easy game since you could just spam a bunch of shit runs to get gold, beef yourself up and do the game in one shot but that is not the case.

Upon leaving the hub area you have to give a dude at the gate all of the money you are holding, so if you want an expensive upgrade you have to get the money for it all in one go.  It may sound like an annoying system but it's actually a really cool way to keep the game challenging, but gold drops so easily that it never feels like bullshit to build up the hundreds of gold you might need for those upgrades. 

The final cool feature I want to touch on is the character select screen after being killed in the castle.

You get a choice of 3 knights that have a different class and spell, but the most interesting thing is the trait of your knight.  Traits are special buffs or debuffs that each knight gets given at random and they can have drastic effects on your run.  For example, I was given a knight with the colourblind trait so the entire game was in black and white while I was playing with that character.  I have one friend who had a knight with far sightedness which made his screen blurry and another who had an exaggeration trait where the damage numbers would read huge values instead of the actual ones.  The traits are not only pretty funny but they have a cool effect on the game play that make sure every knight feels a little different each time.

So that's it for now, I'm going to go and play a ton more of this, and with the steam sale still in full swing I'd suggest picking it up while you can get a bit of a discount on it.  It's also extremely accessible so if you've never played a Roguelike and the genre looks a bit intimidating to you, then give this a go, you'll have a ton of fun even if you suck at it.

Symphony of the Night's Reverse Castle

The last post that I made about Symphony of the Night I gushed quite a lot, so I thought just before I beat the game I'd come back and gush a little bit more.

I'm going to get into spoilers here, so if for some reason you haven't completed or played this game yet then hurry up and get to it, you're already fucking years late.

Anyway, a ways into the game you discover that the castle is being lorded over by none other than Richter Belmont, the protagonist from Rondo of Blood.  This is where the game gets interesting because from here, you can go straight to Draculas's chamber, go and ruin Richters shit and the game will end right there.

I like to call that ending, the "lazy shit" ending, because if you go to any lengths to explore the castle (which is sort of the point of the game) then you can easily find a pair of holy spectacles.  With these equipped you can see this little green orb when you fight Richter, and killing the orb instead of him opens up a entirely different castle!

OK, maybe not entirely different, it's the same castle flipped upside down.  This sounds awful at first since it sounds like a bunch of backtracking through the same areas and having to complete the exact same game again, but it's actually really cool.  New items to find, new enemies to battle and bosses to defeat, basically new everything except backgrounds.

What I find so amazing about the reverse castle though is that the developers put it in, and made the whole thing entirely missable.  There was no guarantee when this was a new game that every player would figure that out, they programmed all this shit and it would have been totally lost on some players.

Shit like this is awesome, and with Symphony's reverse castle you're essentially getting 2 games in one.  So if you needed MORE of an excuse to pick this up on XBLA or something like that, now you have one.

Castlevania Series Run: Symphony of the Night Opening Sequence

I bet everyone forgot that I was playing through the entire castlevania series didn't they?!  Well I sure as hell didn't, so today I started playing Symphony of the Night again.  This is only gonna be a short one, since I just started playing and I should be getting ready for work right now.

It's been a long time since I last played Symphony, and the reason I'm making a quick post about it is after playing for about 30 minutes or so, this game, has one of the best openings of any game I've ever played.

The game starts with the final battle from Rondo of Blood, and once you've done that, it gives you a scrolling text screen that tells you the story, but it ends with "No man can say who will emerge victorious"

I mean good god, that's fucking genius.  I find that when I play more recent games, it never feels like I'm doing anything particularly impressive, like I'm guaranteed to win by virtue of being the main character.  In this game though, it really feels like you're going up against something that's probably going to kick your ass, or at least give you a damn hard time.

Then you get this section

Just running through corridors one shotting monsters twice the size of you, god it feels so good!  Then Death shows up and steals all your awesome shit, and the game starts good and proper.  But this game does an amazing job of hyping you up for everything to come AND it makes you want to get revenge on the prick that took all your shit.

There is a reason this game is regarded as such a classic, and this is one of em!