What I'm Playing, September '14

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

Here's a crazy thing I came up with that I probably won't follow through on. Starting now (now being when I had the idea, mid-September) I'm going to have a fixed length queue for games - that is to say, I'm not going to start a new game until I finish one I have in progress. I've listed out at least 120 games I currently have in progress, so it's no big deal. But from now on the Finished/Started lists should be about the same length.

Because of that, I'm adding a new category called One and Done for games I played but have no intention of completing.

By the way, we're now up to date! After two weeks of constant What I'm Playings, there won't be another til the end of October!

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Azure Striker Gunvolt (Nintendo 3DS)

They^[who?] said Mega Man was dead, but Inti Creates here proved there are still different directions to take the concept for unique gameplay that isn't nearly as redundant as screenshots will make you think.

Actually this screenshot doesn't make it look all that redundant.

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge (Xbox / Xbox Originals)

One of the best flying game I've ever played, replete with unique enemies and obstacle-filled environments - Pilotwings 64 meets Rogue Squadron. High Road to Revenge never languishes in endless dogfighting, keeping the gameplay mixed up in each mission even as it iterates over the same styles of aerial strikes, escorts, races, and of course dogfights. The game keeps interesting by introducing a more complex setting every couple missions, from the mountainous island of world 1 to a full-on metropolis and finishing with underground caves and ruins. Each style of gameplay takes on a different character dependent on the environment it's set in.

Devil May Cry (PS2)

I'd say Devil May Cry holds up really well, but I never played it back when it originally came out, so all I can say is that were it released today it would still be one of the best action games on the market. In fact, it's particularly refreshing to visit a game that is a.) short (4.5 hours on a first run), b.) mechanically simple, and c.) focused almost entirely on mini-bosses and bosses. The most interesting takeaway for me is that the game feels more like Ninja Gaiden than Devil May Cry 3. While the former goes for environmental variation, wild enemy variety, and challenge through survival, the latter is more about mechanical variation, enemy volume, and challenge through style/score. In fact playing Devil May Cry made me realize Ninja Gaiden is not as original as I originally thought, though that's hardly a bad thing - I only wish there were more action games that took their approach.

Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight (NES / 3DS VC)

If it wasn't for the inappropriate name, I wonder if this Alien Soldier-esque boss rush game wouldn't have a cult following, particularly thanks to its consistently unique approaches driven by variations of enemy movement patterns and environmental properties. The game provides infinite continues, so with save states to keep a session going victory is just a matter of mastering one stage at a time, making it a perfect handheld experience. The controls are on the complex side for an NES game and the end-lag on most moves takes some getting used to, but it's all very precise once you get your bearings and every attack will eventually be revealed to serve some purpose.

Games Finished:

Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo 3DS)

I only had this because it came with my 3DS, but it's hard not to enjoy such a perfect game design, even if it's becoming impossible to tell the difference between new courses and repeats. This time around I was most fond of the SNES courses, as they've benefited the most from mechanical changes in the series - taking the continuous 90-degree turns of Super Rainbow Road as one giant drift is really satisfying and not like anything else in the game.

Games Started:

Dark Cloud 2 (PS2)

This is like a treatise on the subject of crafting, skipping traditional character-based role-playing for two separate systems of item customization. The supporting world-building side-game isn't really a sim (there's no passage of time / interaction of creations) so much as it is another free-form crafting system that lets you play in a sandbox and earn points for making things that look cool/balanced. That is to say, it's more like house decoration in Animal Crossing than city building in Sim City. While it passes its time with dungeon-crawling, at its core this is a game about manipulating numeric systems to accelerate progress. If my post about New Horizons didn't make it clear, I enjoy maximization/minimization problems far more than traditional puzzles, so this really works well for me.

One and Done:

Wizards and Warriors 3 (NES)

Played this for platformer-of-the-week night with Greg L. (possibly an upcoming feature? who's to say?!). Wander around a light-on-content world and find self-contained platforming challenges - WiziWar 3 is what you'd get if you took Wonder Boy 3 and cranked up the size of the hub town and downsized the dungeons to 60-second runs. The "guilds" (dungeons) make for neat obstacle courses that iterate over a handful of themes, but they are so hard to find and brief that the game ends up mostly as bland wandering, far more reminiscent of Ufouria than Castlevania II. If you like exploring without much challenge, you might enjoy this, but it's not too satisfying as a platformer.

Super Smash Bros. Demo (3DS)

Who cuts the options screen out of a demo? The default controls are NES-style instead of SNES-style (weird for a diamond layout like 3DS) and I just want to fix it! Mega Man is pretty cool and the AI is still such a joke that I beat a level 9 computer on my very first try at the game with a character I had never played before and controls that were super annoying. Most importantly, when unleashed from an assist trophy, Knuckle Joe still shouts his trademark "KNUCKLE-EEE!" I only listed this because I'm pretty positive I'm not going to get Smash on 3DS - I'm a series fan but it's too intense a game to play on handhelds and I'm happy sticking to Brawl until whenever it is I buy a Wii U.

Lives lessons in Devil May Cry

I've never really seriously played the first Devil May Cry, though I've gotten through a lot of 3 and beat DmC almost twice now (someone just cringed). There was a sale on the HD Collection (think it's over now) so I figured that was a good excuse to make myself finish 3 and also to finally give 1 and 2 a try.

DMC is more Resident Evil than I was ready for. I know the whole history where it started development as Resident Evil 4 (isn't it delightful that after a million redesigns, the process of envisioning a fourth Resident Evil gave us both the modern melee action and over-the-shoulder shooter genres? It always makes me sad to hear people say they'd rather RE4 have been survival horror again. It's also funny that DMC was banished from the RE series when Shinji Mikami thought it had become "too cool and action-packed". Then Leon Kennedy did a flying roundhouse to knock a zombie monk into a pool of lava.), but it's got more exploration and puzzles than I'd expect based on my knowledge of Kamiya and the series' later entries. The map is more to the tune of Resident Evil's Spencer mansion than it is to Bayonetta's extreme hallways. It actually lends the game a nice creepy atmosphere where on my first pass I'm always a little distracted trying to keep track of locations and get a jump here and there when enemies jump out. The fixed camera angles lend to that too.

But this is Devil May Cry, right? I'm Dante! Who cares if enemies jump out, because no longer am I constrained to tank controls and fixed aiming angles - Dante can dish out relentless strings of stunning blows on enemies that aren't half as fast as he is. It takes something more to amp up the tension, to stick to that survival feel, and that's where the lives system comes in. Yes, lives. In an action game. People love those, right?

Devil May Cry uses a limited lives system; the expendables are called "yellow orbs", because seriously I have no clue why they couldn't come up with a real name. At least it's not "chips". It works like this: you start the game with a stock of 3 yellow orbs, and any time you die one is consumed to revive you at the beginning of the fight, with all enemies back to their starting state. The only way to replenish your stock is to buy more orbs at the shop, costing precious limited resources that could be used toward upgrades. Thus the total supply has a ceiling, and it doesn't regenerate between levels or upon loading a save file. So the game is pretty much telling you: you better have a really good reason to spend one of these.

If you don't want to waste a yellow orb when you die, you'll have to start the level over again. Luckily, levels are short and familiarity with the layout pays off big time - as in Resident Evil, fifteen minutes of wandering and a dozen battles can be cut to five minutes and three battles once you know where you're going. Levels are tightly parsed (at least at this early point in the game - I'm only on Stage 6) such that objectives remain clear and paths are easily memorized - this isn't RE where in the first five minutes of the game you'll get a key that you need to use ten hours down the line (though, fast fact, it was only very late in the development that they added the mission structure). The end result of encouraging the player to reset if they die is that they get immediate feedback on how they're improving their gameplay in the short term and can quickly get a grasp on how to conserve health and orbs. The game becomes a minimization problem, bringing it all back home to its survival horror roots.

While this resetting does entail some redundant gameplay, it should only be in accordance with the player's lack of skill - that is to say, they should only be replaying parts they haven't yet mastered. The combo scoring system, an entire fifty-page discussion of its own, also encourages the player to get the most out of revisited areas through bettering their combat skills.

The yellow orbs still come in handy though - they're a crutch, but a necessary crutch. There are naturally those times when you come up against a new challenge - the first boss for instance - that kills you so quickly that you don't know what the fuck just happened. It'd be a pain in the ass to restart the level just to reach that point and get instantly killed again, so the yellow orbs allow a quick retry point so the player can keep focused. You can burn through orbs learning the boss, then when you think you're ready to give it a real go, load up your save and make one clean pass through the level. This allows the game to maintain challenge at a dual scope - honed in on individual fights with orb revival, and broadened to level survival compositing the individual challenges for a 'final' run.

Game game game of the Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaar Awards!!!!!!!!!!!! Part 2

Continued from yesterday. You can see the rules in that post - remember, the top three are picks of games I played for the first time in 2013, not games that were released in 2013.

Game game game of the Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaar Awards!!!!!!!!!!!! 2013 Ed.

Special Baby Retard Category: Best Game released in 2013

You folks asked for it, so here it is: my vote for best game that was released in 2013. The reason I would never bother orienting a peer-to-teen choice awards contest around this idea alone is that I don't actually play enough games that come out in any given year to choose anything even remotely representative of "best of that year". I played maybe 20 of the, I dunno, 500+ (mainstream) releases of 2013. I'm not gonna judge a game I haven't played, no matter how much I've read about it. That's why... well, I'm not going to criticize the big boys. I'm sure they know what they're doing and they have their integrity and we all respect that. Anyway, the second runner-up to Best Game Released in 2013 WOULD HAVE TO BE:

#3: Killer Is Dead, Xbox 360, Grasshopper Manufacture, 2013

It's action. Reaction. Random interaction. Now who's afraid of a little abstraction?

Not I. And neither should be you. I like a nice formal narrative. Okay, does it really count as formalism versus bland David Lynch symbolism when a guy's secret twin brother appears in his dream and slices his breakfast of a single fried egg perfectly in two? No, but that's exactly what makes it funny! There's a fine line Suda walks here between depth and mockery, and that's what makes for great satire. Killer works as a compelling mystery of its own, carefully exploring the facets of Mondo Zappa's buried psyche, and also takes every opportunity to send up the video game industry's self-seriousness about sexuality while being incredibly sexist (see the Gigolo segments), existentialism while being incredibly preposterous (see the Alice-meets-lobster boss), and even bromance while being incredibly... bromantic (see the hilarious Gears of War mission). I must admit I wasn't left wanting for more of Killer Is Dead's combat, but it was fun while it lasted and tough enough that there was mastery on offer. [I also have to comment that my combat fatigue is probably more a testament to having played too many of this type of action game in the past year or two... Killer Is Dead is more unique than Platinum fare, but doesn't transcend the crowd like Arkham Asylum or No More Heroes 2] Considering that the game is nice and short (praise short!), looks like a impressionist painting, and has a soundtrack ranging from thrash to hip-hop to classical remixes (by Akira Yamaoka of course), it certainly justifies further plays to investigate the themes.

#2 DmC: Devil may Cry, Xbox 360, Ninja Theory, 2013

S-Stutter!!!!

Certainly this is one of the combat action games of the generation. This is combat that derives its depth from clever reactivity, the ability of the player to quickly analyze a split-second situation and be prepared with which tools can be deployed to handle it. Those tools are what make DmC particularly rewarding - like the original Devil May Cry, this isn't a game where you'll be stressing to remember which combo string does what and spending hours mastering the input timing to pull it off (a la Bayonetta or BlazBlue) - DmC is based around simple inputs with wildly varying results. If you want to play a game where you fight demons with swords and guns, it is hard to pick one that will make you feel more powerful and graceful than this. The chains (uh, physical chains that is, not combo chains) that pull Dante or enemies across the battlefield add such speed, dynamism, and - yes - chaos to the battles that you'll never feel you're repeating the same conflicts, and the bit of platforming they provide between fights strings the adventure along all the more fluidly. I may not have been a huge fan of the story, but few players will have time to worry about that amidst the endless combat variations. In fact, this is kinda the opposite of Killer Is Dead - where there the story inspires replays that the gameplay is just good enough to support, here the story is successfully kept out of the way enough not to ruin a first play-through which is sure to inspire more gameplay-based reruns. The stages are loaded with unique enemy combinations and scenarios that'll draw you back for score- (and collection-) based runs.

#1: Bit.Trip Runner 2: The Legend Runs On, XBLA, Gaijin Games, 2013

It's actually called Bit.Trip Presents... Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. For those worried about copyright infringement. If that's how that works.

I actually like my name better than the real one. Can we do anything about that? Tim? Name change? Tim's giving me a no. Runner 2 is the type of sequel that does exactly what the Bit.Trip series wasn't all about. Bit.Trip told a succinct and fluid story through gameplay, music, imagery, and a tiny handful of abstract cutscenes. Gaijin didn't have time for a typical video game sequel that reiterated gameplay concepts with better graphics, more songs, multiple playable characters, a world map, and dancing. They had an artistic vision to uphold. But people loved Bit.Trip Runner and they didn't give a shit about Artistic Vision: The Game, so Runner 2 is exactly that typical sequel I described. Thing is, as far below the genius of the original saga as it is, it's still an absolute blast. It is everything an arcade-style rhythm platformer could hope to be, overflowing with charm, style, gorgeous visuals, toe-tappin' tunes, a great sense of humor (if you like pickles), and one HELL of an addictive structure. I couldn't stop playing for days, and the game is cleverly crafted arcade greatness that always allows room for improvement while still providing multiple levels of satisfaction for skilled runs.

This is the epitome of a fun video game - one that is memorable and delightful even for unskilled players, and a sensory treat that demands mastery.

AND FINALLY: GOTYE 2013

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the moment has arrived. It is time to unveil my three very favorite games I played in the last year that every single one of you should go out and play right this very instant. The second runner-up, bronze-medalist, almost as good as the other ones Game of the Year 2013 IS:

#3: Mark of the Ninja, XBLA, Klei, 2012

Playing to terrify guards is one of the most challenging and satisfying strategies

Mark of the Ninja is a game that knows what it wants to be. It's a ninja game and it's a stealth game and it's a platformer. It's not a stealth-platformer starring a ninja. It's a ninja game and it's a stealth game and it's a platformer. To clarify the seemingly arbitrary semantic distinction I'm making here: over the course of the game, Klei cranks up all of its design elements independently and allows the player to choose how to approach each situation using distinctive gameplay methods. Your "tools" aren't just a set of interchangeable maguffins like night-vision goggles and lazer trip wires, they're gameplay styles like "slow and strategic, using items" or "fast as possible using precisely timed jumps". This gives the game an almost Sonic-the-Hedgehog-high-path-low-path feel, where knowledge, skill mastery, and choices can be applied to result in a totally different gameplay payoff. It's amazing how naturally Klei pulled this off without ever making the game feel like a series of discrete choices. Partly that owes to the stealth framework, wherein a mistake gives the player a chance to adapt (as in Sonic when a player falls to a lower path) rather than immediately sending them back to an earlier checkpoint. There's so much variable gameplay here, especially once the extra playable characters (costumes) are thrown into the mix. This game demonstrates that there are still new ways to do the classic platformer (without just throwing in puzzles, fuck you "indie" gaming). [it wasn't my #1 platformer just cuz I wanted to make it clear it was one of my absolute favorite games of the year, transcending genre, and that everyone should play it].

#2: Retro Game Challenge, Nintendo DS, indieszero, 2009/2007(JP)

This is such a great total experience that was completely undersold by everyone who pitched it as an anthology of faux-classics or a nostalgia trip. Retro Game Challenge is the story of two Japanese kids (one of whom happens to be a young Shinya Arino) growing up in the late '80s indulging in video game culture. The beauty of the game doesn't come from the neo-retro "8-bit" games (which are a dime a dozen these days anyway), it comes from the fictionalized experience of anticipating a new game, finally getting your hands on it, sitting down and going nuts trying to master it, reading magazines with fan letters and hints, and going through the entire cycle again with the next game. It's meta as hell, but it's a game about the experience of being a gamer, set in an idealized time we imagine as more optimistic and which many of us associate with our youth. Still, I think this experience would resonate with anyone who's ever been excited about games. The fact that you actually get to dig into eight cool original titles (that are just as fun as those they're based upon) is really just a bonus. 

#1: Ys: The Oath in Felghana, PC/Steam, Falcom 2012/2005(JP)

Oath is actually a remake of the SNES/Genesis/Turbo16 Ys III

This game made me so happy. I don't know how else to put it. I just felt extreme, unadulterated happiness every time I sat down to play it. Okay, that made it sound a little creepy. But there's a child-like sweetness to Oath in Felghana, a romantic simplicity to the classic story of innocence lost that pairs wonderfully with the gung-ho "cool" metal and hardcore action that characterizes the game's underworld. I think I can best explain it using the soundtrack. The game goes from the track on the left when you first arrive in town to the track on the right when you're in a dungeon. That's the span.

    

It's just... a perfectly straightforward, honest video game. It's a fairy tale, not an epic, a stylized adventure that serves theme over story or character. If there is action, there are fucking wailing guitars. If there is sensitive stuff, there are sad violins. The dialogue and cut-scenes are just enough to carry a through-line, the rest is entirely mood.

The essentially-one-button action follows that fuck-it-just-get-to-the-point mentality. Just because it's button-mashing doesn't mean it's easy or mindless - your character is so fragile and everything moves so quickly that you'll need to learn enemy patterns and probably die (or at least restart dungeons - no healing items here) a lot of times to perfect your skills. Once you get it down you'll feel like a steamroller completely crushing everything in your path - until, of course, you hit the shmup-style bosses with their strict patterned mechanics. Will you have to match your magic charge attacks to a color-changing boss' periods of vulnerability while dodging his attacks specifically designed to capitalize on that element's weakness? Or perhaps you'll be up against a trio of spirits who adapt their aggression as you pick them off? There's even a side-perspective 2D fight that had me thinking of Castlevania. The boss fights are the game's absolute highlights, calling back to the style of classic Treasure and Konami action. 

Ys: The Oath in Felghana is my game of the year because it captures what is for me the absolute essence of a video game experience. It immediately puts all the cards on the table and develops challenges from established mechanics, putting me into a continuous state of adaptation. Each situation is a puzzle in and of itself, fun to learn because of the enjoyable core action and a different kind of fun once perfected because of the uniqueness of the setting. The fighting is contextualized with a concise, purposeful story about the consequences of action and responsibility and adorned with a sweeping, roaring soundtrack and minutely detailed graphics that bring the game's inhabitants to life. The action doesn't have to be the greatest ever conceived nor the tale the greatest ever told for the experience as a whole to be what every action/adventure should aspire to parallel. 

What I'm Playing, Majune '13 (Pt.2)

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

Let's finish this, you [expletive deleted] fuckheads. Here lies the rest of what I played in the second half of May and first half of June.

But first, a little investigative journalism. Which song is better: "L Dopa" or "Precious Thing"? Ooh, that's a tough one. No right answer there.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Wario Land II (Game Boy / 3DS VC)

Basically, this is the twist - you don't see this until the end

Wario has never reached quite the Nintendo stardom he deserves, first and foremost because his main series lived mostly on handhelds. But the same can be said for Pokemon, and Pikachu was famous enough to earn a crossover with Nobunaga's Ambition. Perhaps Wario sequels would be demanded with the same fervor as Star Fox and F-Zero if he hadn't peripherally been kept alive through the virtually unrelated WarioWare micro-game slop. Then again, I'm not sure Nintendo could sustain yet another line of 2D platformers - they're still juggling Mario, Kirby, DKC, Mega Man, Yoshi, Pokemon Snap, Gran Turismo, and Gran Turismo 2.

Wario Land II is where the fat man really hits his wobble, the previous game being more of a Mario Jr. (as suggested by its prefix, Super Mario Land 3). It's not until II that the visuals take on their trademark cartoonery (this unassuming Game Boy title has far more personality than many 16-, 32-, and cu-bit counterparts) and the design starts to rely heavily on puzzles and weird abilities. There are a lot of lessons to be learned just from the use of enemies here.

The game has a Super Mario World-esque wealth of hidden content - I imagine most players, like myself, will first reach the credits and scratch their head to find their completion rate was only 50%. At this point the game pulls back the curtain and reveals its secret stage-map, providing a much needed clue to uncovering all its content. I'll admit I have not yet delved into what is essentially a Second Quest's worth of new material, so it's a bit of a stretch to claim I'm "finished" with the game. However, I was also driven to kick someone's brain off when I witnessed (after wasting 20 minutes and a youtube search) how deviously hidden are the secret stages.

Games Started:

Ys: Oath in Felghana (PC)

This is a remake of Ys III in the style of modern PSP/Steam Yss like VI and Origins. That means it's a top-down isometric hack-and-slash with minimal RPG elements, orchestral musical arrangements, and fleshed-out story. It reminds me of the non-farming portions of the Rune Factory series. I'm working on a Let's Play of this one, so you'll have to tune into the videos for further commentary.

Prepare to be seeing a whole lot more of this.

Saints Row: The Third (Xbox 360)

I've been seeking an open-world destroy-everything game and last month made the mistake of wasting money on the stultifying Just Cause 2. Instead I should've been looking to the further works of former Red Faction developers, Volition - in particular, Saints Row: The Third. I had brushed off Row 3 when I first read about it, understanding it as yet another Grand Theft Auto 3 redux with a comedy gimmick. While Sleeping Dogs has tired me of city driving, Row 3 at least sports a world-class engine that permits and encourages the insane and reckless stunts which would have been out of place in Dogs' gritty cop-story. That's to be expected, as the Red Faction games excelled at physics. Plus it offers tanks, helicopters, jets, and VTOLs if you don't feel like driving. Row 3's shooting has the visceral, impactful, and decidedly violent feel that Volition seems to do well. I can't exactly put my finger on why, but tearing through a mob with a submachine gun is simply far more fun here than it is in Max Payne 3. Maybe it's that it's not really cover shooting, but more a firepower cock-fight.

God forbid I mention it, but the game also wields a decided sex appeal. The female character models in Row 3 look... uh... really nice. And playing dress up (or dress down, as it were) leads to some satisfying results. It's equal opportunity, too. Meaning that if you prefer to play as a shirtless, chiseled dude, there's a meter that lets you crank up the size of his junk.

Games Finished:

DmC: Devil May Cry (Xbox 360)

Hey, Dante gets white hair at the end! Why do I care about this? Spoiler warning I guess? It signifies the transformation of his character from aimless rebel protecting the human race to white-haired aimless rebel protecting the human race.

Let's talk collectibles for a second, since I've already dedicated a post to story and future-dedicated a post to combat. Wait I changed my mind, let's talk platforming. Tangentially related to collectibles, since collectibles don't work in a game without some kind of interesting navigatory mechanic. One of the sleeper hits of DmC - and I think it was a sleeper even to the devs - is the grappling hook(s)-driven platforming. Like the combat, Dante's traversal techniques are so complex and overwrought that they actually wrap back around to be interesting. He's got a double jump, three kinds of air dash, a blue grappling hook that works like the Hookshot, and a red grappling hook that works like "Get over here!". The fun of the platforming is being caught midair saying "shit shit shit which do I use?!". Failure triggers something more like familiarization that memorization - you've got enough time for each input that you just need to be vaguely aware of what is coming to be able to pull it off. The floaty leeway between each move also means there's a difference between just making it and a badass perfect run. Frankly I'd play a game that was made up solely of this stuff, as I found the late-game climactic platforming gauntlet to be more exciting than the succeeding final boss battle.

Wrapping back to collectibles - they're handled quite nicely through the use of an ambient audio cue. "Hidden" items in 3D games are a can of worms because of camera abstraction - what's hidden to the camera may not necessarily be hidden in the environment. This isn't a problem in 2D, because there's no distinction between environment and perspective (or at least it's minimal). I'm not going to get into which games do it right (Super Mario 64) and which do it wrong (ugh) right here and now, but DmC comes up with an elegant little solution to circumvent the problem entirely - overtly tell the player when a collectible is nearby. Now before we dish out too much undue credit, let's note that 3D Marios do the exact same thing (stars make a telltale tinkling sound) and at least Skies of Arcadia did too, but that doesn't make it any less welcome. These cues mean that the player can naturally explore environments without worrying that the camera is missing anything, and it means that the developers can't get away with hiding an item in plain sight - at the very least they have to use alternate paths, and in the best cases they use platforming puzzles.

As if the uniquely pleasant platforming and camera-stress-free collection weren't enough, DmC throws one more bone onto the bonus content fire: challenge rooms. As did Donkey Kong Country before it, DmC  packs each stage with one to three hidden bonus rooms, rewarding diligent exploration with a spot of fresh gameplay.  All of this bonus content is thankfully tracked by a menu screen that lets you know how much you've done and how much is left to be done in each stage. Perhaps it's all in my head, but the whole experience has a really nice, delightfully old-school feel to it. The only downside - and sadly there is a downside - is that these stages are far too long to casually jump into for completionist runs. DKC and SM64 stages took five minutes from beginning to end, so it wasn't much to ask you to play them over and over looking for that one last macguffin. While the saving grace of DmC is that levels are usually free-roam (and enemies don't respawn), said levels can take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes to complete. If you find yourself at the end of a half-hour-long stage, still missing one of fifteen collectibles, you're likely to give up for the night - and possibly forever. So take it with a grain of salt - the collectibles are there and well-designed for the 100%-seeking player, but you'll need to be committed to catch-'em-all.

DmC had all the elements of an epic adventure, so why did it feel so... insignificant?

Let me first remark that DmC, evaluated solely on the basis of gameplay, was terrific. It was a really fun game, the rare combat-actioner that kept me engaged in the mechanics all the way until the end and left me still wanting more. It somehow managed to grow and grow, always giving me something new to try without feeling like it was overwriting my old techniques. I can't wait to play it again, and I can't wait for the inevitable sequel. But let me save the specifics for the upcoming head-to-head with Bayonetta over the title of Action-Game-of-the-Generation.

Great though the combat was, any game that drags on for 21 hours needs to sustain that with at least some story depth. The quest spanned a number of increasingly surreal locales, but the surrealness of it all eventually became a weakness rather than a strength. When each area tears itself apart into a bunch of floating platforms floating across apocalyptic skies of swirling rubble and firestorms, it doesn't much matter whether it started as an upside-down skyscraper or a labyrinthine soda bottling plant. A bit more grounding would've served to give the environments more character and could've lent a more epic feel to the dreamlike wandering.

The scripting also let down what should have been a spectacular journey to free humanity from a sinister demon crypto-regime. Simply put, we spend far too little time in the actual human world with actual humans. DmC's high concept is that present day society is actually being run as a demonic dystopia without our knowledge - evil world-domination hooliganry is being carried out in a parallel dimension by monstrous overlords quietly enslaving our souls. The real-world components of this dastardly plot are a soda manufacturer that repackages succubus vomit (yeah) as a mind-numbing energy drink ironically titled "Virility", a news mega-corporation broadcasting propaganda and imprisoning dissenters, and the military-industrial complex strong-arming the villains' will. Rebellious but slacking demon-slayer Dante is forced to voyage through Limbo, the parallel soul-world where all of these machinations are visible as what they really are, to disable the Pepsi, Fox News, and US Army counterparts from the inside. This is actually an awesome plot! It sounds great on paper, combining elements of dimension-hopping, dystopian sci-fi, and socio-political commentary.

Unfortunately, a lot of high concepts sound good on paper - the trick is making them seem real. DmC never manages to pull it off because it spends almost 100% of the narrative in Limbo, never giving us a feel for the plight of humanity. The intermittent propaganda-news broadcasts are a nice touch, but we should be seeing how people react to them. Is it like the real world, where we shrug off Fox News or the Liberal media as being biased, or do people actually buy into it? I understand the concept of Virility, but how does it actually affect people? Does everyone drink it? Does it make them stupid, or are its effects unseen? I couldn't even figure out if this was supposed to be the real world, a near future, or an alternate dimension, because no places or names are mentioned. Limbo doesn't have anything to contrast with and thus seems to exist in a void alongside all the other fantasy worlds we experience in games. When I'm in a twisted office building or walking down a crumbling street, I don't feel like it has a real-world counterpart. I just feel like I'm in demon world. And therefore, I don't feel like there's anything to save. This just feels like the post-apocalypse, trivializing the whole story into a small battle between a handful of heroes and villains. The heroes feel less heroic and the villains less villainous - it's just a personal squabble.

Our primary protagonists, Dante and Vergil, should've been humans, and they should've had real day-to-day lives. Instead they have no contact with humanity, being characterized as loner outsiders who hate demons... but seemingly hate humans too. Or at least don't care about them. The fact that they're Nephilim (angel-demon hybrids) doesn't matter at all, it's dumb backstory only used to explain why they're so badass and able to enter Limbo. As every action movie and game ever has evidenced, audiences have zero trouble accepting that a normal human can be essentially super-powered (for Christ's sake, look at how much we love Batman), so this is just stupid. Let them find a mystical artifact or family heirloom to allow them into Limbo. As a matter of fact, it actually makes them less badass that they're born with superpowers - I'd feel more vindicated playing as an underdog human rising to take on the demon threat. But we all know why the Nephilim thing exists - because this is a Devil May Cry game, and Dante has always been an angel-demon. If this game hadn't been saddled with the series backstory, I guarantee Dante would've been human. And since this is a reboot anyway, I don't see why he wasn't.

The token human we do get, Kat, has magical superpowers-by-birth too, so that's fucking stupid. She too is an outsider who's been tormented by demons all her life. So she serves as a really shitty connection to humans, and Dante's claim in the climax that humans are "worth saving" - because of Kat - loses all its meaning.

A token character in more ways than one.

Are humans worth saving because they're all magic? I don't think that's what Dante meant. I'm awfully tempted to side with Vergil, that she was just a tool. She was magic, so she was useful. How am I supposed to sympathize with Dante? The humans couldn't save themselves. So maybe the Nephilim do deserve to rule. Wow, I just realized that this is the plot of The Protomen. Weird.

I'm glad Vergil turned on Dante, it wouldn't have been Devil May Cry without that. An equal-footing duel also made for a much better final showdown than the mundane giant-by-the-numbers Mundus. But I really wish it was better justified and had more impact. Vergil's big emotions line, "I loved you, brother", falls completely flat when we never got any social interaction between the brothers at all. The game seems to take place in like, a day, and they just met. Vergil is left mostly behind-the-scenes, with the woefully weak Kat-Dante romance taking the spotlight. We needed to see more of the brothers working together, get some banter and maybe some shared childhood memories. I wanted to care about having to fight him. The writers clearly knew they didn't have enough to build a real conflict, so they throw in the whole debate about Kat's worth at the end, which feels transparent and perfunctory. And this is where it all comes back to the lacking presence of humanity. Dante and Vergil's fight is over the fate of the entire human race. But it feels like a petty argument because we never see or care about the human race.

This may seem like a lot of analysis for what is supposed to be a dumb action game, but it was so long that it could've been an epic masterpiece. The elements were all right there, which is what makes it so disappointing that it never took off. Hopefully the next reboot will get it right.

What I'm Playing, March '13 (Pt. 3)

In this feature, we commemorate games I have for the first time started and finished in the last few highly variable time units.

Finally we put March to rest. It was a busy gaming month, what with being out of work 'n all. This feature is going to be dramatically shorter in the coming months, not requiring weekly installments.

Games Started:

Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters (GB / 3DS VC)

When did Kid Icarus become a classic? I think it was around the time Pit showed up for a Super Mash Bros. Brawl. At least, that's when it somehow jumped from the ranks of lesser Nintendo works like Pilotwings to being mentioned in the same breath as Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man. Leave that for another time though, perhaps my coverage of the 3DS game... what was it called... blanking here... my brain is saying Of Myths and Monsters and I know that's wrong... Uprising, that's right. Anyway, Myth-Mon is to Kidick as Metroid II is to Metroid: a full-fledged handheld sequel, same team, same story, expanded gameplay. Weird, right? Sequels shouldn't be on handhelds! But they were, and they did. Myth Sand Mo cleans up the formula of the NES game, instating all-directional scrolling, infinitely respawning enemies, and better balanced (fairer) dungeon gameplay. Downward scrolling alleviates the ridiculous oversight of the original which turned the bottom of the screen into a constantly rising deathtrap, and horizontal adds an element of exploration, hiding rewards beyond the player's direct line-of-sight. Infinite enemies creates potential for grinding, which may not sound like a good thing, but is at least in keeping with the game's demanding RPG elements. There is also more payoff to the role-playing/grinding, as this time around, upgrades stick around for dungeons.

Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS)

This never once happens in game - these characters are allies, best friends, and [spoiler]

I kinda already did a first impressions on this when I played the demo. After 25+ hours, I feel vindicated in my prediction that this would be the most interesting Fire Emblem in years. One interesting mechanic that doesn't reveal itself until hours into the experience is marriage/child-having. I don't think I'm spoiling too much by saying that the game involves time travel - this allows for parents and children to co-exist at the same age in the same time, skipping those BORING "growin' up" years. "Boring" in the RPG sense. Pairing off characters to get hitched is a game unto itself, allowing for skill and (mild) plot variance. Each arriving child opens up a new mission, and these missions provide more opportunities to cupidize your soldiers, creating more children and more child-missions. If you're anything like me, about two-thirds of the way through you'll get completely side-tracked and leave the plot for like ten hours to get all your gal-soldiers knocked up. This provides further incentive to utilize as many characters as possible, as there are only so many potential parents, and each pair only gets one child. The only complaint I have with this system is that it's a bit more rigid than it leads you to believe - the child and their story arc is entirely determined by the mother - the father only determines the hair color (a fact winkingly mentioned in one of the father/son conversations, wherein the father asks "did you get anything from me but your hair color?!"). I realize it would have been a shitload of work to program a unique child for each unique pairing, but it also would've inspired me to replay the game just to see all the different kiddies. Gotta catch a mall! As is, the only limitation on which ones you see is how many characters you manage to betroth. I don't know if that word can be used that way, and franklin, I don't care.

DmC: Devil May Cry (Xbox 360)

Even by fanboy standards, the four-game Devil May Cry series is extremely hit-or-miss. The only opinion that seems to bear any general consensus is that DMC3 is the best. So before saying anything about  the fifth and newest, DmC, I should mention that the only one I've played at any length is 3 (note: DMC is not the same as DmC - the former is the first game, the latter the fifth). The only real point of comparison I'm going to make is that DmC is probably better. Dante's moveset is more expansive than it's ever been, probably more expansive than any combat character I've played outside of fighting games. He probably ranks in the same tier as BlazBlue in terms of sheer input variety. This provides a lot of combo options, and a less technical feel to it all - once you get used to the controls (and they will take some getting used to), you'll feel like you have a dozen choices for the next attack in each string. On the flip-side, the only way DmC makes you feel the need for these moves is the score counter. The basic X, X, X, X, X combo will usually clear the path if you're feeling lazy, even on the highest difficulty (the highest available from the start - there are three or four more that unlock after beating the game). So there's a lot of cool stuff to do, but the motivation to do it needs to be internal. It has to come from your heart.

Games Finished:

Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES / Wii VC)

Another Virtual Console game I've had for ages, this one I've near-completed many times, but never felt was worth the time to conquer. Golem helped me make it through the final boss on a co-op run (and by "helped", I mean "stole a bunch of my lives"), though as with Strania, we didn't get to see the True End-Boss since we played in Normal difficulty. Alien Wars is near-universally touted as the best Contra, but it doesn't really butter my bread. It's over far too quickly, and only three of the six stages are actual side-scrollers. Two are top-down - a style of shooter I like, except when reliant upon the ridiculous world-spinning controls found here. Most of the bosses are good, but the final impression was "it's over already?" More on this in an upcoming duologue comparing it to Hard Corps: A Contra Adventure, III's Sega Genesis counterpart.

Sleeping Dogs (Xbox 360)

This was quite the Herculean labor. Sleeping Dogs is one of the longest games I've finished in the past few years, clocking in above 30 hours. If that doesn't sound impressive, you don't know my opinion on long games. The last RPG I beat probably happened in the '90s. I suppose I always finish my Zeldas, so there's that. Still, it's unusual that I stuck this one out. What it came down to is that I loved the melee combat, the gunplay was half-decent, and the pacing was just right to keep it all fresh. You know how the Arkham games worked so well by alternating stealth and brawling? Sleeping Dogs works exactly the same, though it has about five types of mission instead of just two (though the focus certainly lies on driving, shooting, and punching). This one's got a full post to come. I'm still working on the major DLCs.

The roots of combat Pt 1: Arcade Sideways Walkers

We're about to embark on a mystical journey through a feature about the history and taxonomy of combat action games, but first I want to introduce you to a type of game that's going to come into play in that discussion - one you might be a lot less familiar with than the brawler or the shmup. "Genre" is probably too sweeping a term for these games - they're more a subset of action games and platformers. Let's call them "arcade sideways walkers" (ASW). I got that from the title of this very article, but let's keep that between you and me. While we're "let's"ing, let's also note that these don't necessarily have to be arcade games, though they often were.

The most familiar example of arcade sideways walking is Altered Beast. If you recognize this Genesis and arcade "classic", you're probably already on board and ready to move to the next lesson. If not, check it out, and remember, kids: never "wise fwom youw gwave" without adult supervision.

The idea here is that we have a flat 2D side-scroller with extremely basic environments and swarming enemies. Observe the light platforming, the monotonous enemies, and the steady environmental progression (it's NOT a series of static fights). I used to think of these games as flattened beat-em-ups (Streets of Rage condensed to a single horizontal plane), though it never felt correct - now I'm going to attempt to explore the empirical backing that proves that feeling correct. The ASW is, in fact, almost completely unrelated to the beat-'em-up.

The one particularly interesting feature introduced in a handful of these ASWs will be familiar to most from Secret of Mana (and this blog post about it). The auto-charge meter, whereby pausing between attacks slowly powers them up. Here's an example from Astyanax:

Watch the "PW" meter at the bottom

As fast-paced actioners with a constant stream of enemies, the meter serves ASWs (among them Magic Sword and The Legendary Axe) completely differently than it does Mana. It actually becomes a primitive combo system, allowing for fast, weak strings of hits to be alternated with slower, more deliberate blows. If the animations were to reflect the attack power, this would be almost immediately recognizable as the same timing-based combo system used in modern 3D action, seen in the likes of Bayonetta and Darksiders.

ASWs are, for lack of a better word, not all that fun. They're primitive beyond their time - platformers, by comparison, were fully evolved (in the Pokemon sense) by the early '90s. Unsurprisingly, they vanished as quickly as they appeared - their life-cycle seems to have terminated in tandem with that of the arcade itself. Other arcade-birthed genres like the shoot-'em-up and the beat-'em-up endured consolification and live on in one form or another to this day. The ASW appears to have gone the way of the dodo.

BUT DID IT REALLY? Oooh, this twist is gonna blow your mind. See, here we've got a regular Charles Darwin on our hands. Did you think all the evolutionary imagery (the one word worth of it) was going to be a build-up to a Beagle joke? No, I want to talk about whether God based video games on humans which were based on monkeys, or if it was all here in the first place.

In 2001, the sixth console generation was unleashed (that's the one with PS2/GCN/Xbox). This new era brought with it a whole new style of gameplay, one destined to [rule them all]: the button-mashing 3D melee action combat thing. Yeah, it doesn't have a good name, because these games tend to be classed elsewhere, most frequently as action/adventure. What I mean is Devil May Cry, God of War, Ninja Gaiden, etc. Think for a second: where did they come from? What is a PlayStation, N64, or PC precursor to this style of play? What early 3D game pitted a single combo-equipped fighter against mobs of weak, varied enemies? Sure, 3D fighters like Virtua Fighter and Soul Edge existed, as did the more RPG slanted action/adventures (Ocarina of Time, Castlevania 64), but the former had yet to be injected into the latter. Complex play control was reserved for one-on-one matches, while group-fighting was the territory of brawlers, RTSs, and RPGs. So was DMC the first game to pair ongoing battle with linear adventuring?

The Arcade Sideways Walker is here to say: "no". And it's frighteningly correct. No, terrifyingly so. I had like 50% of a heart attack just thinking about how correct it is. Remember that pseudo-combo system I described above, the one revolving around the charge meter? Remember how I said that same system is present in Bayonetta, aka DMC5, not to mention the four DMCs preceding it? So is the ASW actually a precedent for combat-heavy action/adventure, with its situation-centric challenge and steady linear progress?

Ostensibly, yes. Wait, that's the second time I segued paragraphs by posing a question in one and answering it in the next. Whoops. Strictly looking at content, ASWs have an almost uncanny degree of commonality with sixth- and seventh-gen melee action games. Historically speaking, the answer is far murkier. What we have, in fact, is a case of "the missing link". The chain of influence is unlikely to have skipped ten years and two generations - I doubt RE4 morphed into DMC after the design team spent a long weekend playing through Legendary Axe. But Golem and I have struggled to brainstorm even a single game that bridges the gap. So be on the lookout! It could be out there.

Until then, I'm gonna spend the next week or so rigidly classifying the action combat genre in contrast to the brawler.