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

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

AGDQ 2020 Vods You Should Watch

AGDQ 2020 concluded on Sunday and they finished with a whopping 3.1 million dollars for the prevent cancer foundation!  GDQ holds a special place in my heart with it being the event that inspired this very website and while the last couple of years haven't really held my attention too well, this year really knocked it out of the park.  Here are a couple of the runs (that I caught live) that I think you should check out once they get uploaded to YouTube in no particular order

1. Animorphs

Strictly speaking I don't think this was a part of the Awful Games block that they include every year but every crappy game they did a run of this year was highly entertaining.  This run, however, had me snort laughing at my office computer like a lunatic.  The commentary from the runner was funny, the crowd was super high energy and there was a part where the entire room is chanting "PUNCH THE SQUID!" over and over during a combat sequence.  Bonkers game, bonkers run, worth a watch 

2. Trauma Center New Blood

I love the Trauma Center games, a series about weird anime surgery where ALIENS HAVE TAKEN OVER HIS BODY and doctors that can slow down or freeze time using nothing but the power of raw concentration.  The only thing more bonkers than the plot of these games is the INSANE level of skill put forward by the runner who was donning a nice set of scrubs during the run.  Not only did he play the game and play it fast, but he managed to get an XS rank (the highest) on most of the missions.  If you don't know anything about TC then it might be a little confusing but if you even have a passing knowledge of this game its extremely easy to tell just how incredibly skilled and precise this runner was.

3. Ocarina of Time 100%

Just when I think OoT couldn't get any more broken someone comes along and proves me very wrong.  The 100% run this year had some extra thing in its category that I think was called "no source requirement", meaning that the runner was not obliged to go to each location in the game to actually get the items he needed to fulfill the 100% requirement.  This means he's using bottles to write spritual stones in his inventory, duping NPCs to get heart containers, all sorts of far out stuff.  I remember watching the any% run of this game being done in 20 minutes or so way back when and thinking "damn, you probably aren't getting crazier than that" only to have my jaw completely on the ground every year the play this game.  It was followed up by a glitch showcase as well which was equal parts interesting and hilarious.  

4. Super Mario World "One Mind"

Some of you may have heard of doing a game "2 players one controller" where one guy takes the buttons and one guy takes the movement and they must sync up their gameplay in order to achieve victory.  I even did a 2p1c marathon with my good buddy Pithoui a while back!  One Mind however is a different beast entirely.  It's a rom hack where each player is using their own pad but they are both controlling a single Mario.  Every so often the sprite will switch between the Mario sprite and the Luigi sprite to indicate which player is in control so when he's red its p1 and when he's green its p2.  The idea is that if you are of "one mind" then the run won't look any different from any other SMW 11 Exits run but if you try to do anything even slightly different it's going to start screwing things up.  Also when I say he swaps, I don't mean every couple of seconds or something, I mean he's swapping CONSTANTLY at high speeds.  It's a really interesting run and I can't quite explain it well so just go check it out for yourself.

5. Super Metroid Impossible

The finale run of the event and the title really isn't kidding when it says "impossible".  This is such an intense run that I don't really want to say any more about it, it's basically the Kaizo Mario of Metroid but it seems that some of the stuff in that game makes Kaizo Mario look like child's play.  It stands out for me because, I'll be honest with you, I don't give a rats ass about Super Metroid speed running and yet when I saw this run in motion I COULD. NOT. bring myself to look away.  It was so intense that I even clapped wildly at my TV when he finished, I just couldn't contain myself.

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So there's five runs to start you off, go and dig through those VODs on YouTube or Twitch or whatever and find some other games you like.  There's a whole bunch of runs that I caught live that I've not mentioned in this list that were awesome and probably a whole bunch that I missed live that I'm going to catch up with as soon as I hit "post"

Roll on SGDQ, I can't wait!

Why Do I Even Like Musou?

So recently I started playing a game on my Vita called Sengoku Musou Chronicle 3 which I got for free of PSN ages ago.  I'm having and absolute blast with it but as I play the game I can't help but wonder what it is about this series I find enjoyable.

Before I say any more, allow me to explain what Musou is to those who may not be familiar.  "Musou" in Japan has a number of different names in the west depending on the series.  Dynasty Warriors if the setting is China, Samurai Warriors if the setting is in Japan, Pirate Warriors if you're crossing over with One Piece and Hyrule Warriors if you're crossing over with Zelda.  However don't get it mixed up with Devil Kings or Sengoku Basara because despite the fact that they are almost the same thing, they aren't made by the same people and I'm sure there's some hardcore fan somewhere you'll offend by putting them together.

So in these games you pick or make a character and then you get slammed into various historic battlefields where you are a super human war god and everyone else is brain dead and barely knows how to swing a sword.  You run around mowing down hundreds and hundreds of dudes until eventually you come to a special dude with a title above his head and you murder him to lower enemy morale or win if it's the REALLY special dude.  The combat involves mashing one button and watching guys die until a meter fills up and then you press one other button once and you watch a little animation special move where a whole bunch of guys die at the same time.

Yes, there's a little more to it than that, of course, but that's essentially what it feels like to play a musou game.  It sounds and feels like something that SHOULD be boring and repetitive after maybe 1 or 2 stages but for some reason I just can't stop playing.  There's something incredibly satisfying about watching that kill count slowly rise up and just running around a huge battlefield mowing down tons of dudes single handedly.  Maybe I enjoy it so much because when I was younger playing the earlier games I was too stupid to tell how dumb it was and now I play it on the train after work where it works as a sort of stress toy rather than a proper video game.

If you've not played a Musou game you should try it out.  Maybe it won't be for you and you'll see it for the boring piece of crap it probably is.  OR you'll get sucked it by it's highly stylistic approach to historic warfare and the bloodthirsty loon buried deep inside you will have an absolute blast.

We Don't Need A Female Link

One of the games that came out of E3 this year that actually sort of surprised me was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  It looks really cool and is sort of giving me weird Souls vibes which is something I would never expect from a Zelda game.  It's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on in the coming months and I'm looking forward to getting my grubby mitts on it.

So of course, like whenever there is a large piece of gaming news that people are happy about, certain outlets had to run articles crying about a lack of a female link.  These so called "journalists" even got interviews with some people from Nintendo and asked them about it.  They were told that they considered the idea for a while but ultimately scrapped it because it didn't fit in with the game they wanted to make, fair enough?  Well of course not, this idea makes them sexist, women hating misogynists because the cry baby social justice regressives can't get their way and Nintendo will not be bullied on the matter.

Link doesn't need to be a fucking girl anyway, he's already the protagonist of a well established and much loved series, suddenly changing him to female would be just weird.  People have argued that they could at least put in an option but that doesn't work either because this isn't a game where you fucking role play.  You are playing as Link, he is the hero and you join him on his adventure through Hyrule as he breaths on wild things or whatever this game is going to be about.  Link is not you, you do not need to imprint your personality, or lack thereof onto him.  You don't see anyone moaning about how Samus from Metroid should be changed to a man for the exact same reason.  Both Link and Samus are good characters in their respective games and people like them the way there are.  I don't need Samus to be a man for my to sympathize with her quest to save the galaxy because I'm not an overly sensitive little shit stain.

It's not like Zelda is a particularly original or hard concept either.  It's about a character going on an adventure to find a bunch of trinkets to save the world.  This is a concept that is, and has been, easily copied.  If you REALLY wanted a female-led Zelda game, you could quite easily make one. Call it "The Story of Belda: The Whistle of Minutes" or some shit and have a female protagonist wandering around a large world collecting shit in order to save it.  3 of this, 6 or 7 of that and a nice big over world to put it all in and BOOM, there you have it.  Are you seriously telling me that there isn't a single female developer in the industry that can make this happen? Really? Because I'm almost positive there is.  If Clover Studios can do it with a dog, you can do it with a girl.

So fuck all these shitty "journalists" and their whining.  If you don't like playing as male Link, then don't play the fucking game, go find something that suits your tastes or better yet, stop playing fucking video games and put isolate yourself from the rest of the world so that we can have our fun without having to listen to your stupid shit.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Thanks to region locking bullshit on the 3DS it's taken me a fair while to get around to playing this game but it was worth the wait because it's rather good.

It's hard to talk about Zelda really, everyone already knows whats up.  You play as Link and for some reason Hyrule gets fucked and princess Zelda goes missing.  Go around a bunch of dungeons, get a bunch of items, fight a bunch of bosses and save the world.  At this point we've done it a million times and despite things being a bit predictable at this point, it's a tried and tested formula that works and these adventures are fun to go on. 

However, Link Between Worlds tries to mix things up a little bit when it comes to dungeon progression and items.  In previous Zelda games you would go to a dungeon, do some puzzles and get an item, then use that item to do the second half of the dungeon and kill a boss with it.  However in this game all the items are available from the get go pretty much and you pay to rent them out.  Dungeons are still based around the use of a core item but it means that when you find that big chest with the secret thing in it, it's not something predictable and you end up receiving something actually useful and worth the effort of all that puzzle solving.  The games core mechanic of turning into a wall painting to move around the world is also easy to understand and used in a number of interesting ways that keep things entertaining.

I only have two complaints about this game but neither of these ruin the overall experience.  First, the game feels short.  I played it almost exclusively during my work lunch breaks and train rides and I've managed to beat it in what feels like a very short time.  Granted I didn't get EVERYTHING in the game but scouring for little crab things for unnecessary upgrades to my items and raising enough rupees to buy a golden bee didn't tickle my fancy really. My second complaint is that I feel like the game is too easy, I played through the entire thing, had 0 deaths on my death count on the end screen and didn't even come close to dying even once.  There IS a Hero Mode that unlocks when you beat the game which I've yet to try so I'm hoping that a second playthrough may yield a more challenging experience.

Either way, it's a great little game on the 3DS and you should give it a whirl if you haven't done so already.  Just classic, fun adventuring.   

Did I become stupid?

So recently I've been working my way through my small collection of 3DS games.  The first one I pulled off my shelf was Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and I'm having a grand old time but holy shit does it make me feel stupid.

A lot of the stuff I'm doing in the game I'm doing from memory but I decided to stop and take my time and talk to some of the NPCs.  A lot of the time I can get what certain characters are hinting at but I can't help but feel like I have become considerably stupider when it comes to this kind of thing.  I have NO fucking idea how my child self, without the internet, figured some of the shit out in this game.  Granted I've not resorted to using GameFAQs yet for my current play through but I'm putting that more down to my memory than my smarts.

It's the same kind of thing with old action games on things like SNES and Mega Drive.  I die a lot more now than I remember doing back then and I can't seem to get as far as I used to.  Granted, I think it's because I'm out of practice but I just don't have the patience for multiple attempts at old games anymore.  As a kid my collection was a lot smaller and my backlog nonexistent so I guess I didn't mind sitting there and grinding runs in order to get good.  Now, when I start dying I just shut the thing off and play something else, my skill is being ruined by my vast choice of games.

I think there is an argument to be made that the internet does spoil a lot of gamers nowadays.  Way back then, when Internet access was extremely limited we couldn't just resort to a quick Google search for an answer and we had to play a bit smarter and be a bit more persistent in order to see those endings.  I also can't help but feel that modern gaming is a lot easier than it used to be.  We are constantly having our hand held by overly long tutorials and way point markers telling us where to go at all times and unfortunately a lot of people, including myself, become overly reliant on shit like that.

Doing a bit of retro gaming is good for you I think, gets those old gaming senses that you may have lost to brain dead current gen shit going and the end result of beating a game that doesn't hold your hand is super satisfying.  I think I'm going to force myself to be a bit more persistent with these older games and not just give up to go play something else.  Can't moan about current gen being too easy if I give up on the retro stuff too quickly for being too hard.