Consoles Feel Utterly Pointless

 

Back in 2020 the PS5 relased and with a sort of poor lineup of launch games I told myself that I would wait for there to be a better lineup of games before jumping on, also hoping to capitalize on a price drop as reward for my patience but we are now 4 years in and I'm staring Part 2 of the Final Fantasy 7 remake right in the face and I still can't bring myself to buy one, it just doesn't feel worth it at all.

The big problem is exclusivity of titles, it's just not really a thing anymore.  Any game that I think looks interesting on PS5 will, at some point, end up on PC sooner or later.  The one exception to this might be Demon's Souls Remastered but who gives a fuck about that game, really? I'm not about the drop a couple hundred bucks on new hardware and go through the rigmarol of finding space for it under my TV stand and going through all that setup and updates just to re-play a game that I already played to death back in 2009.  Timed exclusivity isn't going to get me to buy it either, the hype surrounding FF7 Rebirth, at least for me, died forever ago and watching streams of the game now that it's finally come out leaves me thinking that not rushing out to get it was probably a good decision.   The Switch sort of deals with this problem by locking a bunch of its games exclusively to that, forever, but a lot of Switch games run like ass-dick and probably would be better on PC.  I'm quite happy, for example that Shin Megami Tensei 5 is getting a PC release so that all the stupid performance hiccups can be squashed and I can play a version of the game that is distractingly shit in the performance department.  Deadly Premonition 2 is another example of a Switch game that saw vast improvements by coming to PC.  Put that stupid fucking rectangle with its flimsy controllers in the trash and just make games for PC instead.

In current day Consoles, to me at least, feel like shitty toys that are aimed at people who have the tech literacy of a 4 year old or actual 4 year olds.  Redundant pieces of hardware sold almost entirely on brand recognition than actually being useful as an entertainment device.  It never USED to be like this, PC gaming and console gaming felt like two entirely different things that offered entirely different types of games.  Look at the libraries of the PS1 and the PS2, for example, and then the PC games that were also being released at that time, there's a little crossover, sure, but it felt like owning a decent PC AND those consoles was a good idea if you wanted to experience the best of everything.  The other thing to consider was that PC gaming back then certainly felt a bit more cumbersome.  It wasn't like today where you can just download a game off steam, click go and it goes, there was usually some form of troubleshooting involved to get the game working and so consoles shone in that department because being able to just slap in a disc and play was great.  But not only is PC gaming significantly easier now in most cases but you can't even just slap a game in a console and play it anymore.  Mandatory updates and subcriptions to bullshit like PS+ and Switch Online hounding you at every turn make the experience very annoying.  Do you want to play Dead by Daylight on the PS5 where you must also have to pay an additional subscription to PS+ to do anything other that the tutorial?  Or do you wanna play on PC where you can play online as much as you want and there's no additional fee to pay on top of your internet bill?  I know which one I'd pick.

Crap libraries, shitty ancillary services that you are pretty much forced to buy into to get full functionality and the fact that you can have a better experience on a more versitile piece of equipment means that consoles are fucking pointless.  Maybe there will be a Switch 2 or a PS6 in the future but unless the landscape of console gaming changes drastically the whole thing can just fuck off

Fire Emblem Perma Death is Important

 

In the last week or so I've fallen down a sort of rabbit hole of Fire Emblem content on YouTube which has acted as the inpiration for this post and I want to take a moment to discuss one of the franchises sort of controversial mechanics

If you have never played a Fire Emblem game allow me to fill you in on what I'm talking about real quick.  Fire Emblem is a series of strategy RPGs that has been running since the NES with stories focused on warring nations and their armies and such.  Unlike something like Advance Wars though each unit in a Fire Emblem game is its own character with dialogue, story beats, personalities etc. and if they fall in combat they are usually gone for good.  Some Fire Emblem games have methods of reviving dead party members in extremely limited capacity but generally speaking if someone dies in FE, they are gone for good.

What a lot of players have been doing for years and years, then, is to reset a mission as soon as a single character falls and in the case of the later games the perma death has become a toggleable feature that can be turned off entirely so a fallen unit just "retreats" from the battlefield and can be re-deployed again next chapter.  People do this generally for two reasons.  The first being that they have sort of grown attatched to the character either for mechanical or story reasons and the idea of moving on without them fills the player with such dread that they would rather hit reset and tediously do an entire mission over than carry on without them.  The other reason is fear of "softlocking" themselves by losing either a character they feel is proficient or losing too many characters in a single chapter.  They worry that by losing certain characters they will be totally unable to clear the next chapters and thus have to restart at an earlier save or, in the worst case, the entire game.

Well on both fronts this is completely stupid because these games are designed with player loss in mind.

The softlocking thing generally speaking will not happen on a normal play through of a Fire Emblem game almost no matter how many units you lose.  In each game you are given a lord character and if this guy or gal falls then you are met with a game over and are forced to restart the chapter.  If you're losing bad enough on a map to get more than 1 or 2 characters killed, chances are your lord is going right down with them so progressing past a massacre like that is probably not going to happen.  But even if it does, what Fire Emblem has been doing even since the NES is constantly giving you a stream of replacement units that you can use if the worst case scenario happens.  If you play a Fire Emblem with the perma death turned off or you reset upon a death you will generally find your roster to be filled with tons of duplicate classes.  The units you get later are probably not going to be quite as good as ones you get early that you can train for an entire games worth of maps but if you press on through every death, the chance of you making the game unbeatable are EXTREMELY low.  

Just to really hammer the point home here is a video example of how hard it is to softlock a Fire Emblem game in this manner.  The amount of effort this guy has to go through to get a handful of maps to be in an unbeatable state would never happen in normal play (also sub to this guy he's very cool)

The idea that being able to turn off perma death "for new players" in complete nonsense because Fire Emblem has ALWAYS been kind to new players.  All you're really doing is allowing for sloppy strategy in your STRATEGY. WAR. GAME.

But then there's the other more personal reason of become attatched to the cast and not wanting to continue if someone you like bites the dust.  Well I also think you're being silly by resetting or toggling to off because you are sort of undermining the entire point of these games' stories and removing any and all tension from individual story beats.  These games are about war and war is both brutal and unpredictable.  What the perma death does in a Fire Emblem game is really make you feel the weight of what these characters are going through and adds a lot of immersion to you, they player and supposedly master tacticain, as you work as hard as you possibly can to keep all these indviduals safe.

Here's an example

In Fire Emblem 3 Houses there is a mission when you're looking for a kidnapped person inside a spooky basement.  As you're going through the mission a guy on a horse weilding a schythe with a skull mask on turns up and starts threatening to push your shit through your nose if you don't get lost.  His stats are very high for that point in the game and you are supposed to be intimidated by this guy.  If you have the perma death turned off for this mission you are sucking every last part of the tension out of this scene.  If you screw up and get one of your students in range of him, he will just bonk them on the head, they will say "owie zowie see you next mission" and vanish off the map.  Only with the perma death turned on do you get the intended effect of this enemy.  With it on you'll probably want to stay well away from him to stop that scythe from dicing your cute mage waifu into little pieces or cutting your handsome lance boy right down the middle and thus you must also play smarter and be more creative with how you play.  It's the difference between having a story about war and having a story about a paintball match with swords.

I think the best sort of half way point that has been devised by the developers in the pulse system thing found in 3 Houses on the Switch.  In that game your lord character has a power to rewind time a little bit.  What this translates to for the missions is that if something goes wrong, you can pulse and reset a few turns and try to re-jig your strategy to not get someone killed or get a more favorable position.  This allows the player to still make mistakes or try risky strategy but not get punished too hard for it.  Do it too many times and your pulses run out so after that you're up shit creek so the tension is still there but you still have to play smart.  It then goes and ruins it by ALSO having the death on/off toggle but at the very least I have to give it credit for trying a solution more involved than just a lazy on/off switch.  The best thing about the pulse system is that players who were turned off by the perma death but still wanted to be a little brave and play with it turned on now have a title in the series to help them realize that it's not as punishing as they might think, and as a way of gathering new eyes for the series that's a good thing.

But whatever, if you enjoy FE as a reset-fest or you want to play with it turned off, then power to you.  These are single player games either way so just enjoy them your way.  All I'm saying is that I feel you might get a little more of these games if you played with it turned on.  Greater stakes equals to greater satisfaction when you win which equals greater amounts of fun.

Yurukill Pre-Purchase Impressions: Worryingly Interesting

 

Yurukill is a game that doesn't come out until July this year but after seeing the trailer it's such a weird idea that I have to say a few things about it.

Yurukill is being advertised as an "escape adventure bullet hell" game that is planned to be released for the Switch, PS4/5 and PC.  From watching the trailer it's easy to tell that this means the game is a visual novel combined with a sort of point and click adventure type thing that's ALSO combined with a....bullet hell shooter...of all things.  It's an interesting idea that will either be really good or be the gaming equivalent of chocolate mint ice cream on black pudding.  An idea that's so out there that regardless of what I hear about it from now until release, it's basically guaranteed that I'm going to buy it

Being a cross genre game doesn't inherently make it a bad idea.  Games like Persona 3 and up that combined Tokimeki Memorial style dating sims with RPGs turned out to be a fantastic idea and indie darling Undertale showed that you combine bullet hell "shooting" and RPG mechanics for something really special.  However what a game like Undertale also shows is just how hard it is to make a decent bullet hell shmup.

Let's be honest here, the combat in Undertale is kind of ass.  With the exception of maybe Sans and Genocide Route Undyne, most of the enemies have boring as shit, dull as dishwater attack patterns and the controls feel sort of "heavy" and the combat generally isn't all that great.  The writing and characters in that game is what makes it so special and the sub-standard combat can be forgiven because it's contextualised probably as part of the story.  As a "shmup" Undertale is a pile of ass but when regarded as an entire piece, it's not bad at all.  The other thing that elevates Undertale is that the set pieces in that game are incredible.  Like sure, the controls are kind of dog water and the patterns are basic and a bit dull for a shmup but the overall vibe of a fight like Metaton or the emotional weight behind the battle with Asgore means that it can get away with it.

But then there's Yurukill 

Just from this game player trailer alone you can see that Yurukill is a boring, generic looking ass shmup that looks like it was pulled from the underside of some doujin game freeware site.  Also it's hard to say for sure given what we know right now but it also looks like it doesn't benefit from having story context to help forgive boring game play.  Like there's a bunch of visual novel shit and then "oop, time for a shmup break" and the impression I get is that it's poorly thought out.  Some proper Triggerheart Excellia lookin-ass garbage.

But these are just my initial impressions from a trailer, who knows the later shmup levels might be crazy intense with fun game play and story context, don't judge a book by it's cover right?  I have another, slightly more personal reason for being wary of this game.  The first thing that this whole thing reminded me of when I first saw it wasn't Daganrompa, like it seems to in most people, but  Deadman Wonderland.  A fucking HORRENDOUS anime about a high school student being framed for a murder and having to serve a prison sentence in a theme park prison where people have to the death duels with their blood-based super powers.  It's fucking awful and I can't look at Yurukill and not get traumatic flashbacks to watching that pile of garbage.

Yurukill is an interesting combination of genres that means that even despite all the shit I just gave it in the above paragraphs I'm going to buy it and therefore I hope to whatever God may be watching down on us all that I'm wrong and the game is actually incredible.  But a dull shmup and a setting reminiscent of one of the worst pieces of fiction ever made means it has some work to do for a good write up.  

Fingers crossed though, I love it when whacky ideas work

PS3, PS4 and the Switch Controllers Can Kiss My Ass

 

Somewhere in a cardbox box, probably located in the family home I still have the Sega Mega Drive I got when I was 4 years old.  I can hook that bad boy up and shove a cart inside it and I promise you that the controller will still function.  I will be able to sit down and play a game of Gunstar Heroes or Vectorman on that thing from start to finish with no issues.  This level of durability seems to have gone completely out of the window in semi-recent times and I absolutely can't stand it.

First the PS3 controller.  The PS3 Controller is a pretty good pad that feels nice and is easy to game with, a good piece of essential gear for the system.  However, lurking inside the controller is a small piece of styrofoam that over time, with use, will wear down.  When this sucker wears down it causes your controller to start putting out random inputs.  For example I've been trying to slog my way through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, an absolutely terrible game that gets even worse when the main character, Gabriel, is just doing whatever the fuck he wants.  Sometimes I would be in combat and despite me not pressing the X button to jump, he would jump.  Even more annoyingly is that killing enemies drops souls that you absorb to charge a magic bar with the L3 button, but pressing L3 would also, for some reason, press L1 which would activate the magic mode and waste whatever energy you just absorbed. The game is already shit and with this extra hurdle it makes me want to not play it at all.  

So I head online and try to find a fix and thankfully I find one.  A simple fix that involves opening the pad, finding the little piece of styrofoam that is apparently the cause of the issue and wrapping some electrical tape around it.  So I did that, great success no problem!  However when I put the pad back together, that plastic that keeps the shoulder buttons in place was so old and shitty that it basically just shattered in my hands.  It's not like I was slamming the controller back together, I was trying to be as careful as possible and the whole thing just fucking fell apart.  But even if I was doing an Incredible Hulk impression with my controller, why the fuck do I even have to do this in the first place?  I have retro controllers that are god knows how many years old and those all work fine so why the shit is the PS3 pad made like this?!

What's even worse, is that I ordered a Hori 3 controller off Amazon to replace it.  I went for this pad because its compatible with the PC and I wanted a pad to replace the shitty PS4 controller.  The reason the PS4 controller is in the title is because while it does work great when being played with the PS4, playing with it hooked up to a PC is a FUCKING. NIGHTMARE.  The micro-USB connection in the top of the pad is looser that your mum and disconnects from the computer constantly.  If you've ever watched a stream where I'm using the pad, you will hear that disconnect/reconnect sound CONSTANTLY and its really fucking annoying when it happens in the heat of game play.  I've never had this issue with any other device that uses micro USB, why is the PS4 pad made like such garbage in this regard?

So the Hori 3 works great on my PC but plugging it into my PS3 turned out to be a complete shit show.  I fire up Castlevania and all the buttons work but for some reason the sticks don't work.  I can do everything except what is possibly the most important function of the character, move.  This would also happen when using the PS4 controller with the PS3.  All these pads are the same fucking thing why do they have to operate so differently between games?!  It's not even consistant either since I had an issue when streaming No More Heroes on PS3 where I couldn't block attacks only to realize that the issue was that in that game, the shoulder buttons weren't working and everything else was just fine.  Playstation hasn't changed its controller layout since the fucking first system they put out, how is this so much hassle? It boggles the mind.

Now I was only going to complain about my Playstation pad woes in this post but any chance to shit on Nintendo I'm going to take.  At least with the Sony controllers they either worked properly for a long time or have annoying things when being used out of their primary intended use.  However the controllers on the Switch don't even get that and the Joycons are quite possibly one of the worst things I've ever had the displeasure of using.  Not only do they feel like shit but they start to drift if you so much as look at them funny.  I was getting Switch drift in less than a year of owning the system and MAYBE I'd understand if I was playing Smash Brothers 10 hours a day but my sticks starting drifting after playing though Fire Emblem of all fucking things.  No real intense stick use, just moving a cursor around a grid and selecting things on a menu was too much for that flimsy sack of garbage.  The only game I played before that was Breath of the Wild which, while a bit more intense on the stick, wasn't too heavy on rapid or strong movements.

But we all know the reason why the Joycons suck so much shit.  It's so that you shell out an additional 6-8000 yen for a Pro Controller.  Do you want to enjoy the games for the system that you already paid money for or do you want to torture your hands and give yourself permanent muscle damage from using the Joycons? Well if its the former better break out your wallet, motherfucker

Fuck you Nintendo, I hate you

Fire Emblem 3 Houses

 Yesterday I finally beat Fire Emblem 3 Houses and I want to say it's probably the best game I've played on my Switch so far.  Although do keep in mind that I thought Breath of the Wild was shit and Mario Odyssey bored me to tears and even though Fire Emblem is way better than both of those, it's still riddled with problems that detract a fair amount of the enjoyment for me.

For those who may be living under a rock, Fire Emblem is a series of strategy RPGs that's been going since the NES days.  In the west, we were first given a taste of the series on the Game Boy Advance but since that entry it's become a fairly popular series.  If you're a Smash Brothers fan you're probably more than just a little familiar with a few of its more famous faces.  The Fire Emblem games are a series of strategy RPGs which are probably most well known for their use of perma death.  In most Fire Emblem games, if you lose a character they are gone for good and combined with some pretty challenging maps the series has a bit of a reputation for being on the tougher side.

If you're new to the series then 3 Houses might actually be a good place to start.  One thing to note is that in this game the perma-death is actually optional.  When you begin the game you are asked to pick a difficulty and if you want the mechanic turned on.  So if you want to play the game on it's hardest modes but the idea of permanently losing a character turns you off, the settings are separate so you can customize your experience, it's a nice touch even if FE snobs will poke fun for you using it.

I'm going to try and avoid talking about the story because it's quite long and there are also 4 different routes which you can go down and I've only played the one for Claude (the yellow guy) so I can't really talk about the story in much detail outside of his scenario.  On a basic level you're a Mercenary that gets picked up by a monastery and you are hired to be a teacher, train your students and save the world.

The strategy RPG gameplay in 3 Houses is actually very good.  If you're a Fire Emblem fan you'll probably enjoy it and if you're new the game goes out of its way to get you acquainted to its many systems so you won't be overwhelmed.  I have very few complaints about the core gameplay of 3 Houses but it's EVERYTHING ELSE that pisses me off to no end.

In older Fire Emblem games, you start a level, complete the level and then move on to the next level.  Each map is book ended by a bit of story and you enjoy a nice strategic adventure.  3 Houses however changed all of that and now you have a sort of Persona style system between every level.  In almost every case, you are given a bit of story and then a calendar and you have an in game month to make preparations and train your troops.  You get a few chances each month to do a few things like explore the monastery and talk to people, take seminars to up your skills, do side-battles or rest up to increase motivation and recharge your super sword.  For the first few maps, this is actually pretty fun but after a while, when you start to get access to more "activity points" it just starts to feel like a drag.  An obligation that you have to partake in to keep yourself up to speed when all you really want to do is get on with the fucking story.  3 Houses took me around 60 hours to beat the first time around but if you took out all of the stupid faffing around between story missions it probably would have been less than 20 

I said above that I was going to try to avoid talking about the story but my next problem point does involve it so spoilers ahead for those that give a shit.

The "main" route of the game involves 22 missions but, much like the between-mission gameplay, the story is also padded out to fuck.  You are sort of acting as a peace keeper in the first part of the game but some shit happens and you are presented with the big bad guy.  Your final encounter with big bad guy happens around mission 18 or 19 where you have them on their knees in front of you and you put your giant blade right in the top of their skull.  Then the game is like "oh but there's also Technowizards with ICBMs" and I didn't really mind this because they are sort of eluded to as a major player in the plot very early.  So you do a stage in Tron world with dubstep music and after you finish that the game goes "oh yeah remember this dude in the worlds lore? yeah fight him" and you have to do ONE MORE MONTH of faffing around and one more fucking mission with an enemy that barely puts up a fight.  After you beat the big bad the story ceases to be interesting and I ended up blasting through the last few missions just because I didn't give a shit.  

Funnily enough, the route I didn't do, the "secret"-ish route, only has 18 Chapters.  So I guess in that path you just do what's required and win and the game doesn't pull the Skrillex Army or Lore Man out of it's arse to pad out a few more levels. 

My final complaint with this game is the localization.  My Switch systems setting is set to English so the game displayed English text but the English voice work was probably some of the worst I've ever heard in my entire life.  I like to over exaggerate my disdain for English voice actors of Japanese anime games but 3 Houses had me literally cringing with how bad it's English voice work is.  Luckily though you don't need to suffer through it as the game has an option to turn on Japanese but that raised another issue.  The translation for this game is just off in places.

I get that translating Japanese is hard, there's plenty of things in Japanese that don't really go into English too well so you have to take liberties but some of the mistakes made completely change the way that certain characters are.  It ranges from little things like completely ignoring one characters strange way of speaking to big things like completely changing a characters personality.  The best example of this I came across is a scene between the characters Hilda and Raphael.  Raph is a big strong punchy boy with a sort of gentle giant type personality and he's trying to make a necklace for his sister for her birthday or something.  He enlists the aid of the usually lazy Hilda and she goes above and beyond to help him out and make a nice gift that his sister would really enjoy.  In the Japanese Hilda says something along the lines of  "The flowers you picked were looking a bit lonely so I added these things" while in the English she says "The flowers you picked looked so pathetic so I added my own touches"

The point of that scene is to make clear that Hilda isn't so much lazy and she just has massive confidence issues.  Shes worried about letting her superiors down and so she asks people to do shit for her so she can keep up her noble appearances but for this task with Raph it gives the idea that when it comes down to it she really is willing to put in the effort for people she cares about.  However the translation just makes her sound like a bitch.  All the nuance of the scene is sucked RIGHT out and the nature of the character is completely changed.  This is the example that stood out the most to me but things similar to this are dotted all over the place, the translators should be embarrassed.

But overall, despite my bile, FE3H is actually a pretty good game.  It's got a ton of content and if you like strategy RPGs this is one of the best franchises to turn to.  So if you don't mind slogging through weird, half baked dating sim mechanics, you'll probably have a good time  

Nintendo's Obsession with Faff

 

I've been slowly making my way through the big Switch releases to try and convince myself that I didn't waste my wife's money asking for it as a gift for my birthday with varying amounts of success but if there's one thread that goes through the big franchises I've played so far it's that Nintendo games are OBSESSED with faffing around.

Faffing around is a British term that means doing a whole bunch of shit that is ultimately a waste of time and it feels like with the Switch Nintendo put up a big poster in the lead developer office with the words "faffing around" in huge block capitals to constantly remind their teams what to focus on.

The first huge game I finished on the Switch was Breath of the Wild and I've commented plenty on how I feel about that one but there is A LOT of faffing in that game.  Searching around for weapons, searching around for korok seeds, pointless side quests, filling in the encyclopedia, cooking and much more all just feels like stupid bullshit to do for the sake of doing it.  In old Zelda games you just....went...and sure there were some side activities you could faff around with but in Breath it feels like the faff has become the focus.  Even the shrines feel like faff because they are so small and easy and once you get a couple of upgrades under your belt they become essentially pointless to even do unless you are a weirdo that wants to 100% it or something.

Mario Odyssey was the second game to showcase Nintendo's obsession with faffing around.  Most Mario games have had 120 collectibles spread out over a number of levels.  Well crafted and fun to play courses with a nice little McGuffin at the end to give you a dopamine hit when the jingle plays.  Odyssey on the other hand has A THOUSAND fucking moons and most of them involve faffing around.  Herd some sheep, guide a dog around to certain points, posses a thing, run around collecting coins, do children's puzzles.  It has so much more to get while somehow also having significantly less REAL content.  The actual moons that you have to get are actually quite fun and Odyssey sports some of the best 3D platforming I've ever played with but Jesus lord Christ in heaven is it padded to fuck with FAFF.

But the game that loves Faff more than a child loves its own mother is Fire Emblem.  Good LORD does this game love some faff.  Most of the Fire Emblem games I've played are just a linear series of missions where you and your army fight off the big bad.  The series is focused on what's important which is this SRPG combat and while there are things like support levels and stuff a lot of that was done ON the battlefield.  You'd have your big burly axe man walk up to the fast sword man and they would go "It's sure great to have such a good buddy by my side on the battlefield" and then it would play a jingle and some stats would go up.  3 Houses however has taken all that and turned the whole thing into a faffing around simulator.  Now you're a teacher in a school so you have to faff around with lessons, faff around on the school ground doing "quests' for students, faff around raising support levels by taking people out to lunch and tea time, faff around fishing and the list goes on and on and on.  But you can't just skip the faff and go to the combat because the faff is INTEGRAL to having a good party.  When you get to the combat it's great, I really enjoy the actual SRPG part of the SRPG I spent 6000 yen to play but it's everything in between that pisses me the fuck off.

Side content is cool and all, gives some extra distractions or an excuse to get stuff to make a character or party stronger but with some of these Switch titles Nintendo have gone WAY fucking overboard with it and now it feels like annoying padding rather than fun side-shows.  Bravely Default 2 comes out tomorrow and I'm hoping for a tight, well crafted RPG experience but my body is in fact ready for large amounts of faffing around.

2021: The Year For Evaluating the Switch

 

About a year ago my wife got me a Switch for my birthday.  I was pretty happy and excited when she pushed the box under my nose, I quickly unboxed it, hooked it up to the charger and started messing around with it right away.  But since that day the Switch hasn't really seen much use.

 I've never once in my life regretted a console purchase.  When I was young and rocking the Sega Saturn when all my buddies had the much more popular PS1, I was happy with my giant black box running Panzer Dragoon Saga, Fighters Megamix and Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo.  When the Dreamcast came out and died a swift death, I was still happy with games like Shenmue, Evolution and Space Channel 5.  Even the WiiU which I have played exactly half a game on since I bought it still has pride of place under the TV in my house.  But when I look at the Switch I just can't help but feel a little bit of bile rise in the back of my throat.

I can't place exactly what makes me feel that way, probably the fact that it was extremely hyped by games media, twats on social media and even friends of mine.  All of them going on constantly "have you played this on Switch?", "have you played that on Switch!?" "oh my god Zelda is SO much fun" etc etc.  So when I did finally get one only to find it quite lacking it makes me feel a sort of disdain towards the thing.

But I'll be honest, I haven't really given it a fair chance.  The first game I played on it was Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I know there are certain morons that will bite my head off for saying this but I HATED it.  It's durability system made it immensely frustrating to play, the exploration while cool at first became a chore after a few hours, the combat was laughably easy and the whole thing was so easily broken by cooking and upgrades that I didn't feel like I was on an adventure while playing, I felt like I was just faffing around until Ganon died and the ending played.  Then I moved onto Celeste and had a pretty good time with that but was having an infinitely better time with the PC version and then after that I played Bloodstained which was so buggy and lacking in performance that I couldn't believe that they allowed it to retail for the Switch at all.  The only TRULY positive experiences I've had with the thing since I bought it have been Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster because portable Nocturne is awesome and Tetris99 which was fun but I haven't played that shit for months.

So this year, before I file it away mentally as a massive piece of shit I'm going to give it a fair whack.  The Switch will be my focus for gaming purchases and off-stream playtime for the year.  I started Mario Odyssey recently and I'm not overly taken with it but it's not awful.  There's also a remake of the ORIGINAL version of Baroque (from the Saturn) which I've been meaning to buy for a while and Bravely Default 2 is just around the corner at time of writing so I'm pretty excited for that.  Shin Megami Tensei 5 (the reason I bought the damn thing) will one day surface and a quick google of upcoming games yields a few results that have piqued my interest.

So the Switch has exactly a year to sell me on its library otherwise it's going in a cardbox box and getting less use Vita for the rest of time

2020 Console Wars

 Console wars were a thing back in the day that users and companies used to partake in to try and push sales of their own systems. Sega did what Nintendidn't, Atari were doing the math and people would froth at the mouth about the number of "bits" a system had despite that fact that no one knew what a "bit" actually was.  It was a bit of fun back then to argue with your friends on the playground between Mario or Sonic being better and it was sort of funny to see companies do a bit of shit-slinging in their adverts but in the modern day of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X it all feels a little pointless.

Back then systems felt quite different to play and their libraries were pretty drastically different too.  The type of games and the way those games felt to play felt worlds apart back when were were arguing over the SNES and the Megadrive or the Saturn and the PS1.  The Xbox and the PS5 are far too similar for anyone to really give a shit anymore and from both of those systems most games are getting PC releases too so owning one or the other is irrelevant in the face of a user with a beefy rig.

But whenever Sony or Microsoft put out a tweet about their new systems, there go all the twats in the replies arguing about CPU speed or graphical capabilities like anyone REALLY gives a shit.  Just get the thing your friends are getting so that you can all play together and if you have no friends just get the thing that has a game on it that you like the look of.  If you're into Souls, get a PS5, if you're into Halo, get an Xbox, you really don't have to think that deeply about it.

Luckily for me, I've always managed to avoid this tiresome console warring dogshit since I've always managed to maintain a social circle where all my bases have been covered.  When I was very young I was lucky enough to have both a SNES and a Megadrive, a bit further on I had a Saturn and my buddy had a PS1 (which I later bought off him) and then I had a DC, that same guy had a Xbox and another buddy had a PS2.  We weren't so much arguing over who had the better thing but rather just enjoying each others libraries when we hung out, it was cool.  After that point I was old enough where it stopped mattering since I'd buy my own shit anyway.

So quit yelling over poly-counts and FPS values, you're games aren't distinct enough any more for anyone to care.  Just buy a PC because everything will come out for that anyway at this point.

2021: A Year For Extreme MegaTen Hype

I'm a bit of a cynical bugger when it comes to new releases, I sort of just assume that everything that's coming out is shit so that when I buy it and it ends up being shit I don't feel too put out.  As a result of this cynicism I tend to ignore things like Nintendo Directs because I don't give a shit about anything they have to say and if something interesting does happen either someone will tell me or I'll just see it on a shelf at some point after release day.  But good lord do I regret not checking out the Nintendo Direct last night because HO-LY SHIT there was some good news to come out of that one.

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne was a game on PS2 that came out in 2003 and as quite frankly one of the best games on the system.  For the completely uninitiated the game is sort of like grim-dark Pokémon only the goal of a Shin Megami Tensei game isn't so much to collect them all but to survive whatever apocalypse is going on and maybe punch some Gods in the face.  You negotiate with and collect demons to put them in your party and fight with them in a sort of Pokémon-esque way but that's pretty much where the similarities end.

One of the reasons I personally am so happy about this news is because Nocturne is a game that's stupidly expensive to buy here in Japan.  Over here there were 3 versions of the game released, a standard version, a 'Maniax' edition and a third one that featured Raidou from the Devil Summoner series instead of Dante from Devil May Cry.  The standard edition is pretty fairly priced but it's lacking a lot of the features that the Maniax one does.  The Maniax edition, the one we got over in the west, costs about $200 and the one with Raidou costs even more than that.  This remake version is going to apparently cost $60 and is the Raidou version of the game which means that my wallet is just as happy as I am.

But that's not all!  Shin Megami Tensei 5 also got another trailer and it's extremely exciting to see that the game hasn't been forgotten about despite not hearing anything about it for a VERY long time.  The first announcement for SMT5 was the only reason I bought a Switch in the first place.  I don't give a flying rat fuck about Zelda or Mario or whatever tired Nintendo IP is being churned out but I care very much about being able to play SMT5 on the day it comes out.

Not only is this news extremely exciting but it's also extremely funny.  One quick look at Twitter and the amount of crying from various parties had me giggling all throughout my day.  Nintendo fans were butthurt because it wasn't Smash news or something, despite the fact they very clearly stated it was a partner presentation and Persona fans (an SMT spinoff series designed for braindead twats, myself included) were EXTRA butthurt because they have been clamoring for a Switch port of Persona 5 for a good while now.  There was even a small group of butthurt Persona fans crying about how P5Scramble, a Dynasty Warrriors knockoff set in the Persona 5 universe hasn't been localized yet.

July 21st was an extremely good day for MegaTen fans and we can only hope that the success of SMT3 remake will maybe trigger a remake of Digital Devil Saga or maybe, the best game in the franchise, Jack Brothers.  We can dream

Breath of the Wild First Impressions

Since about mid December I've been slowly working my way through Breath of the Wild on my Switch.  I've been playing it for a good while now, got a handful of things but I'm sort of teetering on the point where the adventure is really going to get into full swing so before I grab my Master Sword and get in some big ancient robots, I'll post some of my thoughts about this game so far.

First lets get some good things out of the way.  The game is HUGE, and I don't just mean in terms of actual game world but there's also a ton of stuff to do.  I've not even seen close to all of it but I'm constantly finding quests, big enemies, shrines, interesting looking landmarks, towns etc.  There is definitely a ton of fun to be had just running around and looking for things which, in fairness, is what I've spent the vast majority of my time doing with the game up to this point.  With a lot of these open world type games its easy for the world to be big but sort of barren of anything interesting (New Fallout for example) but Zelda just constantly has stuff popping up every which way.  You'll set a goal for some quest or to get to some shrine and then on the way there about 7 different things will distract you, but in a good way.

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But after you get over the vast and varied world, things tend to go downhill a little bit.  Zelda doesn't have your usual set of dungeons to explore and conquer.  In this game you have 4 divine beasts that you must go inside and defeat the boss of and then go hit up Hyrule Castle to go slap Ganons shit in.  Conventional dungeons have been replaced with Shrines which are sort of short puzzle or combat sequences which will net you a spirit orb.  4 spirit orbs give you either an extra heart or extra stamina, that choice is up to you.  Since exploring the world is so fun, the act of hunting around and finding these shrines are cool but the only thing that awaits you on the inside is pure disappointment.  Every single shrine is some kind of brain dead puzzle to solve or some shit, non threatening, easy as hell enemy to defeat.  This wouldn't be a problem if the shrines were not such a big part of the game but doing a number of shrines is VITAL to success.  For example getting the master sword requires you to have a certain number of hearts in order to pull it from its stone and so you have to do a button of shrines to get enough orbs to get those hearts.  Health in general is a problem in this game because of my next big gripe which is the combat.

The combat in Breath of the Wild is shit.  There's no if, ands or buts about it, it's just shit.  Partly it's shit because of the breakable weapons thing that the games decided to use and it seems that there isn't a weapon in the game that doesn't just shatter after about 7 or 8 hits.  This problem however is more of an annoyance than a real deal breaker but the deal is indeed broken when you consider the difficulty of combat.  A combat encounter will only really go one of two ways.  The first is that you fight the enemy for a bit and then it lands a hit on you and you die instantly, this is basically the only way to game over.  The second is that you will fight the enemy for a bit and he lands a hit on you and doesn't kill you instantly.  In this situation the enemy has literally no chance of winning the encounter because if your health becomes critically low, you can just chow down on one of the hundreds of steak skewers in your pockets or just spam apples until you are full HP again.  All this challenge (or lack thereof) means is that there exist little pockets of Hyrule that you can't go to yet until you find either enough shrines to get enough hearts or until you get armor strong enough to make sure you don't die in a single blow, after that, every single combat encounter in this game is free.

The tedium of the shrines and the atrocious combat are my two BIG gripes with this game but I'm fully aware I'm only scratching the surface.  I've not done any of the divine beasts yet and there seems to be plenty of stuff dotted around the world that might make up for these two glaring problems by the time I get to the end.  I don't hate this game, but I think that all the hype I encountered before getting my Switch made me think I was in for something really special when all I seem to be getting right now is a mediocre open world action adventure.

I'll do another post after I finish it to see if my opinion changes at all

My Friend Pedro

Just before my winter holiday started I had the joy of playing through My Friend Pedro on PC and while it is a simple game, it's an extremely fun one that you should check out.

There isn't too much of a story to speak of in Pedro, you wake up in some place and get told to kill dudes by a Banana.  I think you're trying to get revenge on someone but I don't really remember since it was early December when I finished it but the story is basically just background noise as you run through stages shooting dudes and having your banana companion quip at you.

The gameplay however is where things get interesting.  At a basic level you are tasked with running through the stages from the start to the end, killing all the dudes along the way.  You are given a pair of pistols to do this with and you can find a bunch of other weapons on the way.  You are also given a bullet time mechanic to help you line up shots and avoid damage and if you are wielding two guns you  can use the right click to split your aim between two targets.  The game itself, at least on normal difficulty, isn't that hard to just finish, but where things get tricky is the scoring system.  You are given points for each kill, for each kill you make within a certain time frame you are given a multiplier for those points and on top of that you are awarded extra points for being flashy.  So for example, you COULD stand at a distance and pop at guys one by one and play it safe OR you could run into the room, flip off a wall, shoot and exploding barrel and use your split aim to headshot the two guys nearest to you in mid air for big score.  There's also plenty of pans, bouncy thingies and other environmental things to help you with the carnage.  Those who play nice and flashy are rewarded with a rank at the end of each stage AND the game gives you a little gif of your flashiest kill that you can share on social media.

There are a couple of stages that change up the gameplay style such as a bike chase and a part where you're falling off a building but these really just amount to auto-scrollers where you shoot a set amount of dudes and maybe fight a boss.  Each stage also has its own little gimmick which means that you have to juggle planning the best way through the stage to not die and trying to find a way to get the most score.

My Friend Pedro, while a little on the short side, is a great game with quite a bit of replayability between hunting for ranks and extra difficulty modes and at 15 pounds that's a pretty good deal for what you're getting.  So if you're into things like Hotline Miami and other arcadey type, over the top action games, give this one a try. Oh, it's also avaliable on Switch.

Earth Wars

Here's a game I'm still playing but it's taking me so long to finish it I felt like I'm just going to go ahead and talk about it now.  It's also not very good

Earth Wars, also known as Earths Dawn (I discovered literally just now as I tried to Google information about the developer) is a 2D side scrolling action game about people beating up aliens.  I lost interest in the game so quickly that I now just skip all the cutscenes but from what I can tell aliens came out of the Earth and now you have to retake what was destroyed as part of an elite squad that all decide to use swords instead of guns.  You have to battle your way across North America killing big bads and doing other random missions such as saving soldiers or finding items until the problem has been solved. 

The first thing you'll notice right off the bat is the art style and game play are extremely reminiscent of games such as Odin Sphere or Muramasa but sort of like the poor mans version of this style.  The visuals are sort of "chunky" and nothing animates very well.  Couple this with the fact that combat is very busy with explosions and particle effects flying everywhere and what you have is a very visually frustrating title.

But I didn't download this game for free of PSN just to look at it, dangit, I came to play!  Unfortunately the game plays like a pile of rotting assholes and is generally frustrating and just flat out not all that fun.  It's again, trying to imitate the fast melee type fighting that you find in games like Muramasa but it's clunky and quite often the character doesn't quite do the exact things you want them too.  Also there's no "impact" when attacks connect and you have no real feel for exactly how much damage you are doing.  Also there's no variation in attacks or combos, you just mash attack on the thing until it explodes into tiny pieces and then dash to the next guy to repeat the process.  I'm even at a point now where my weapon has a death effect on it so I just mash until I see the icon and then run away until it the death kicks in and I get to move on.

Speaking of a lack of variation the missions are absolutely abysmal.  You get the main story missions which have you fighting through a map to fight a big enemy which are kind of cool but these sections are always book ended by pointless "free missions".  The free missions have you running through the same drab environments again and again to do such exciting things like "Kill X of Y", "Find Z of this item" or "reach location with time limit".  Once you've done enough free missions to run down a timer you get to do another cool mission but these last about 5 or 6 minutes before it's back to the boring grind again.  The game seems to have an embarrassingly small amount of content but just has you do boring shit on the same 4 or 5 maps to pad things out and make you think that you got your moneys worth.

But the worst part is you MUST do these free missions because they get you skills which you have to activate on your, quote from the steam page, "Massive Skill tree".  The only thing massive about this skill tree is the size of the interface that you have to scroll through to get to each skill to activate them but the skills you get are all samey drab bullshit.  Most of the skills are stat increases or passive bonuses and the "active" skills that you get are all dumb shit like "Guard".  That's right folks, I'm 8 hours in and JUST got the skill that lets me block attacks.

Now I'm being very harsh but it's easy to see that Earth Wars had a lot of ambition behind it.  Clearly, the developer oneoreight has some good ideas but due to a lack of time/money/talent, whichever, the game just turned out a bit crap.  Of course, I'm not one to give up so I'll play it through to the end and if my opinion changes I'll be sure to make another post but I very much doubt it.  Even though I got it for £0 off PS+, I feel ripped off.  Don't spend £25 on Steam or whatever for it, just go and buy literally ANY game made by Vanillaware instead.

Severed

So when I was on the plane to the USA for my summer holiday I decided to pick one of the random Vita games I got for free as part of PS+ and the first choice my finger went to was a game called Severed.  I didn't have any expectation for this game but what I got was actually really good. 

The first thing I noticed right off the bat was the art style.  I thought I'd seen it before somewhere and it wasn't until I got off the plane, hit Wi-Fi and was able to Google it that I discovered that Severed is made by a developer called Drinkbox Studios who also made another great game called Guacamelee! Just as an aside, if you haven't played that you should also go check it out because it's fantastic.

So the game starts out and you find yourself in the role of a young girl who's family has been taken away by monsters and your arm has been cut off.  You walk through her destroyed house and an evil thing in a mirror gives you a sword and then you go on an adventure to get them back.  The story is a bit bare bones but it's got everything you need to make you want to press on.  A missing family and a world full of weird monsters and places to kill and explore.

Game play wise the game plays sort of like Zelda had a baby with one of those weird first person horror dungeon crawlers on the Amiga or something.  You have to explore dungeons and each dungeon gives you a piece of gear that will not only solve the puzzles in that dungeon but open up extra bits of the world for you to go and find secrets and whatnot.  There are three "worlds" let say with one hub area that connects them and as you gain gear and skills you'll want to back track for heart pieces (for more health of course) and brain pieces (for mana)

It's the combat however where this game really shines.  You use the touch screen to swipe enemies with your sword and each enemy has different patterns that you have to work out in order to deal damage and to block their oncoming attacks.  At first you just work out how to kill them and then kill them but as you progress through the game it starts throwing multiple enemies at you which surround you.  This puts you in situations where your having to manage not only attacks and blocks but doling out the occasional smack to the enemy behind you or to your side so that their attack meter doesn't fill up and slaps a bunch of your life away.  If you deal out enough hits without being attacked or blocked you fill up a bonus meter and when the meter is full it allows you to....SEVER!....enemy body parts which you collect and use to power up your characters skills.

I have two complaints about this game, the first being that it felt a bit short.  I don't know if it's ACTUALLY short but I managed to finish it after spending only a couple hours on the plane and then a couple more on a bus tour ride but it could just be that I'm really good.  Also the upgrade system is broken and you can basically get all the upgrades you need even if you suck at the game.  Sometimes in pots and things you find "giblets" and one of the first skills you learn is how to transmute giblets into upgrade items.  Even if you somehow manage to go the entire game not being able to sever a single body part (impossible) you could still power up enough for the final boss to be a complete cakewalk.

Still, despite these complaints I had a great time with Severed, it's a fun game with a lot of personality.  I played the Vita version but apparently it's on mobile, Wii U and Switch so go check it out.

Mobile Games Need to Stop Lying

I don't hate mobile gaming as much as I used to.  Certain titles like Shin Megami Tensei Dx2 and Dragon Quest Rivals have changed my opinion on mobile gaming being a complete steaming pile of dogshit.  I'm not ashamed to admit now that sometimes in my downtime I'll go sniffing around the app store for a new RPG to have a go on or maybe find some kind of rhythm game that's just packed wall to wall with anime girls.

It's also not uncommon to see adverts for these games on social media.  Scroll through your Twitter or Facebook feeds and you're bound to see at least one advert for some kind of mobile game.  One thing I can't stand though is when these adverts flat out lie to you about the content of the game.  There was one I remember quite vividly for a game called Z Girls or something, some town building waifu game with zombies which in it's ads used a lot of images of Vocaloid characters.  It's not uncommon for some mobile RPGs to do vocaloid crossovers but these game was completely devoid of any of that.  It was just putting the characters on the ad to try and entice certain fans into thinking their shit game was worth playing.  The absolute worst offender was some Pay2Win menu based Romance of the Three Kingdoms strategy game that was using footage from some goddamn Dynasty Warriors game in its adverts.  How do they even get away with shit like that?!

Generally speaking if you see a game that has these kind of ads they are usually shit anyway and are trying to use the misinformation in the ad to at least get a download and bump themselves up a listing on the app store.  There are quite a few games however that don't lie to you and are actually pretty good such as Azur Lane and South Park Phone Destroyer.

Let's be honest though, if you really want some decent mobile gaming you're probably better off just buying a DS, Vita or Switch.

One to Watch: My Friend Pedro

Usually when I'm flicking through Facebook videos and something gaming related comes up it's usually some kind of thing that I'll close out of pretty quickly.  Some kind of meme video, top 10 or people getting their jollies off whatever big AAA game du jour is. However when the trailer for this little unheard of title crossed my feed I felt compelled to watch it all the way through.

From what I can tell, My Friend Pedro is a game about a man who seems to enjoy cosplaying as Deadpool a little bit taking instructions from a sentient banana to go into buildings and kill a bunch of bad guys.  As far as the premise in concerned it's not going to win any awards for best writing but let's be honest, with a tagline like "blood, bullets and bananas" were you really here for the plot in the first place?

The game play on the other hand is where this game looks absolutely mental.  With the main character flying around the room blasting dudes like he thinks he's Dante from Devil May Cry or some shit.  There seems to be a big focus on environmental kills as well utilizing explosive thingies or having your bullets ricochet off certain surfaces to kill dudes from the safety of a nearby wall.  There's a part in the trailer (which I'll post at the end of this post) where he throws a frying pan in the air and has his bullets bounce off it to clear an upper room of guys.

The big reason that this game piques my interest is it has a very sort of Hotline Miami vibe to it but only now it's a side scroller rather than a top down game.  I get the feeling that while there is a lot of high octane action My Friend Pedro will probably, like Hotline, be more of a puzzle game with action elements rather than a straight up shoot-a-thon.  Lot's of strategizing and probably a lot of dying with quick restarts is what I envision for the first time player (just speculation) but either way it looks like the kind of game I will get very into very quickly.

Here is the trailer if you want to check it out for yourself, it's really fuckin' cool

 

That Nintendo Direct

So last night this Nintendo Direct went down that I didn't watch but I sure as fuck caught all the information about it via my Facebook and Twitter feed.  Now I don't yet own a Switch and I sure as fuck want one.  They've been restocked in a bunch of stores near me and I'm definitely not lacking the funds for the thing but I just can't bring myself to pick one up and this mini direct pretty much made it clear in my mind why.

On the surface, the Direct was pretty cool.  They announced a whole bunch of titles that were coming to the Switch including a port of Dark Souls and (another) remake of The World Ends With You with a new extra campaign bit stapled on the end which kind of made me a little excited.  But that's exactly the problem, there's nothing new on the Switch AT ALL.  It's either ports, sequels or ports of sequels getting released and that goes for the direct and the current library of games.

Think for a second about what you're getting excited for here.  Just taking the two games that I'm the most interested, Dark Souls came out originally in 2011, that makes it nearly 7 years old.  TWEWY came out in 2007, that's over 10 years ago!!!  Not that remaking or remastering these games (depending on how you view it) is a bad thing but is it really worth sucking the Switches dick for doing so?  I've been playing this game for a long as time and the system is going to have to do more than that to sell me.

Now I understand that some people haven't played these games, especially TWEWY, so for some it's a reason to be legitimately excited but I get the impression that if you've been gaming for a long time and you have eclectic tastes then the Switch right now just isn't for you.  It's a shame too because it's a really cool piece of kit that I WANT to own but I just can't quite justify the purchase yet.

All that said though, Shin Megami Tensei 5 will be dropping at some point and despite it being a sequel I'm an absolute sucker for that series so I'm going to HAVE to buy one at some point.  I just wish the system had a bit more originality going for it.  I'm sure one day it'll happen and when it does I'm going to run to the nearest shop with a fat wad of cash and buy it all.

What excited you the most about the Direct?  What games from the current library are you enjoying?  Leave a comment and let me know!