What I'm Playing, November '14

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

Looks like Christmas has come early this year.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Gargoyle's Quest II (NES / 3DS VC)

This is your pretty predictable midpoint for the Firebrand series, though as the name implies, it sits closer to Gargoyle's Quest than the more exploration-heavy Demon's Crest. Emphasis on boss fights is cranked up, as is skill selection, but the game is still a matter of linear platforming levels laid out on a linear RPG over-world.

The only way to beat a gargoyle is to be a gargoyle.

Sadly, that wraps up this series for me. I highly recommend the latter two games, and to anyone wanting more, the original works too. In fact I'm not sure it is all that sad - the games pretty cleanly ran the gamut of what you can do with Firebrand mechanics in a Metroid-meets-JRPG setting. It's not like many franchises get too great after the third entry without raising the question "what does this have to do with the series?" (e.g. Resident Evil 4). I'm not exactly grateful for the existence of Mega Mans X4-X8.

Mighty Gunvolt (3DS freeShop)

This half-game came for free with Azure Striker Gunvolt so I can't complain too seriously, but man does this feel like a half-game that came as a free pack-in bonus. The mechanics are Mega Man-lite (no weapon selection or power-ups), the gimmicks are directly imitated from ASG, and the level layouts are boring verging on trite. Every jump is painless, every enemy isolated to the point where there is only one supremely obvious solution to every conflict: wait til they shoot, jump, then shoot back. The boss fights are the best part, but only two are original (the rest are repeats from ASG). It's fun to see the Gunvolt characters rendered in NES style, but this is a demo reel, not a game.

Games Finished:

Wave Race 64 (N64 / Wii VC)

Still like the physics, still don't know what to do with the game. Perfecting time trials is a bit of fun and eliminates the arbitrary nature of the main competition. But it's so short on content. The racers aren't different enough or the courses dynamic enough that it feels worth playing through with everyone. I kinda feel like I'm already a pro.

Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360)

Can you say decompression? This game runs for about 15 hours past the climax, introducing a late game new-final-boss and then a huge denouement that returns to the basic herding and delivery tasks of the early chapters. The closest thing Redemption finds to a gameplay identity is the horse-riding, so it's a shame that so many horseback missions take the identical form of riding on a road while packs of enemies give chase. Herding cattle, rustling horses, and racing made the most use of varied and technical (but still very basic) skills, allowing the game to at least feel like something. Unfortunately those were not supremely fun activities, offering little payoff for challenge, so the game mostly gets by on the occasionally open-ended cover shooting.

Dueling is a great idea for building variety around shooting skills. Some greater depth built around weapon selection or enemy AI could've really sold this as more than a shallow minigame... alas.

There was one neat thing about cover shooters that occurred to me while playing Red Dead. Generally I hate any type of AI companions in a shooting game, as they add an element of unpredictability and don't let me turtle like I like to. Many such games (Gears of War, Spec Ops, Halo) use a regenerating health system that means if I take some hits I end up taking cover to recover and then my allies get all the kills. But that actually makes sense in providing a risk/reward challenge for the player: instead of pressure coming from depleting health or ammo reserves, the game creates pressure by gradually eliminating targets. Since getting to shoot guys is more important to me than survival, the impulse to push on and play aggressively is established through "helpful" allies.

This systems rewards skill without punishing lack of skill, adapting the gameplay to all levels of players. At the same time, because both the skilled and unskilled player will survive and complete the game, there is no direct feedback on how they're doing. Thus "helpful" allies would be best supplemented with a ranking/scoring system to fill in that missing info. Of course, Redemption is woefully lacking in any feedback on performance, being a forerunning member of the "games as cinema" rather than "games as games" school.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (Xbox 360)

This one had some good ideas not deserving of general comic book game skepticism. Entirely airborne (but still gravity-bound) combat is very cool, making maintaining air a key factor in combos. In a way, instead of jumping to platform, you're punching to platform.

Throughout the open world, hundreds of collectibles are placed in obvious but hard to reach locations to create swingforming challenges. The city evolves as the game progresses, incorporating new enemies and random events in each chapter, but the architecture remains static.

This game could've legitimized Spider-Man the same way Arkham Asylum did Batman. Unfortunately, loose controls, an asinine voice cast, and lazy writing nip that aspiration in the bud. The game's targeting and camera does not work nearly as well as it should, so pulling off a seamless combo generally requires luck or reliance on a small handful of long-range attacks. Even the swinging controls get hairy, with too many state-specific functions mapped to the right trigger. The controls can seem to lag or misread at times when the game doesn't yet register Spider-Man in the correct state to do a particular move.

Also, in the final two chapters the framerate gets awful (like 10fps swinging through the city). Kinda hard to excuse. 

Games Started:

Harvest Moon 2 (Game Boy Color / 3DS VC)

Never played a Harvest Moon proper - as a young lad I was never interested in games about farming and by the time I was an older lad Natsume had picked up on my young lad action needs and compensated with Rune Factory. But the Rune Factory series got real bad real fast when opaque story triggers (plant X flower on X square and water it at XPM on X day of the week) and awkward side systems (Runeys) became fundamental to the series. So, being more amenable to boring stuff these days, I decided it was time to turn back.

There was not a single Harvest Moon 2 screenshot on Google that depicted an actual field of crops

Harvest Moon 2 uses a very simple farming system with just a few crops and animals, but it also makes just harvesting a much bigger hassle than in Rune Factory. There's a lot of repetitive action picking every single crop individually and running back and forth from the field to the sale box. It's that laborious cycle moreso than profit margins that pushes me to optimize my field layout/harvest cycle. Maybe if it was too fun to water every square there wouldn't be any motivation to plant strategically.

One and Done:

Super Time Force (Xbox 360)

I played a demo for this game. The rewind-time mechanic that allows you to duplicate your character actually feels like a turn based orders system, like the alternating action of Valkyria Chronicles, Eternal Sonata, or Quest 64. On the "to buy" list.

Darksiders totally ripped off Gargoyle's Quest

After all the whining about Darksiders being a copypants and then me whining about people whining about Darksiders being a copypants, there's one thing we've all forgotten to mention. The main villain is called The Destroyer. That is a terrible and highly stupid name for a character, especially because it's apparently not even a nickname or anything. Wait, nickname isn't the right word. You know what I mean, like an alias or come on I know there's a better word that's escaping me. Kenning? I just looked up some kennings and "destroyer of eagle's hunger" meaning "warrior" is uh... well... maybe that's this Destroyer's full name.

Anyway, it's the type of name that so blatantly and artlessly characterizes a villain that you would expect it to appear in, oh I dunno, an old NES or Game Child game. Wait a tek! Game Child? That reminds me of Game Girl... which reminds me of Game Genie... which reminds me of Game Boy... which reminds me of Game Boy Color... which reminds of Game Boy... which reminds me of 3DS Virtual Console Game Boy... which reminds me of a classic recently on my tongue's tip: Gargoyle's Quest! The first Fire Brandy game; spinoff of Ghosts n' Goblins, precursor to Demon's Crest, agitator of RPG and platformer stereotypes. And whatcha-no, the villain of GarQ (gark) is none other than The Destroyer! Is this a crossover? Some type of veiled future reference to the connection between Darksiders and another GnG spinoff, Maximo? What could this mean. It can't be coincidence. Maybe it's a message from the baby Jesus? Take the letters of "Destoyer", order them phonetically (?), translate to ancient Greek, translate the ancient Greek to modern Greek, and translate that back to English. The resultant phrase may shock you: "Obama did 9/11"?! And that's just what I got from making up the answers! Think of what could happen if you actually did all the translations!

 

Did I cover my thesis already? I'm gonna assume yes and move on. The number of lines above looks pretty small, but that's probably a welcome change from my recent thousand-word standard. If I knew at age 16 that in just seven years time I'd happily write a thousand-word paper every single day, I'd have built a rocketship instead of getting older. Time [takes slow pull from cigarette]; she is a cruel mattress. Cruel buttress? Well she's at least a good name for a song. Pink Floyd's best song is called "Time", and so is Richard Hell and the Voidoids'! Look how your reaction to that sentence went from "yeah boy!" to ":(((" in less that one word. Apparently having a short and crappy premise allows for me to spend extra paragraphs doing this.

GarQ has the typically minimal (and not-that-fantastically-translated) dialogue familiar from its era, but what the hell is this:
Baron: Firebrand, you are too late, they took the candle. It's in the Desert of Destitution to the east of here.
Firebrand: [Choose Yes or No - turns out you can only progress by choosing no? Of course!]

Maybe it's just me, but playing 3DS VC, I miss the old green palette. Feel like it at least coulda been an option, since every free GB emulator on the planet provides it 

Now I will review the name of each item in the game:
Blockbuster - Good start, I like a descriptive name. 3/5
Claw - Hmm, we're getting vaguer. 2/5
Darkfire - Moving in the wrong direction - did a six-year-old name this? 1/5

Armor of the Dragon - Wonder Boy III reference! AWESOME. 5/5
Armor of Guile - Street Fighter II crossover! Now I'm imagining Firebrand in camo pants. 4/5

Candle of the Poltergeist - Kinda meaningless. 2/5
Candle of Darkness - Oh, irony, I get it. 3/5
Eternal Candle - More candle irony? What? 3/5
Falcon Wings - Utilitarian. 3/5
Fingernail of the Spectre - Why would a ghost have fingernails? And why would they be magic??? 5/5
Gremlin Stick - More word salad but I laughed that having a Gremlin Stick allows one to see the future. 4/5
Vial - Not even worth scoring.
Essence of the Soulstream - Whatever. 2/5
Talisman of the Cyclone - This item is a one-up - did you get that from the name? 1/5

I have this problem CONSTANTLY

Demon's Crest: Play this now (also fuck Capcom)

Seriously Capcom, fuck you. Why do you so frivolously mishandle all your best series? You put out Gargoyle's Quest as your VERY FIRST game on 3DS's Game Boy Virtual Console, but leave Gargoyle's Quest II (NES) and Demon's Crest (SNES) to languish in your archives for the 7+ years of the Wii VC's lifespan? I don't get the whole deal with not releasing games on VC - seems like it would be almost pure profit; then again, what do I know? Somewhere between "a little" and "basically everything". Depends on the day of the week. 

Presumably to discourage identification with Satan, Firebrand the Red Devil is green in the US box art for his debut starring role. Then again, he's green in the game too, but so was every Game Boy hero.

Despite the fact that it's virtually unavailable commercially, you know and I know that you can find a way to play Demon's Crest, and it's high time you went and did so. In fact, make it the next game on your toplay list, if you can even in the tiniest way appreciate a 2D platformer. I think we all have room in our hearts for that. 

Even among those aware of its existence, Demon's Crest has a tendency to spook players with threats of insurmountable difficulty. I've even seen FAQs and video walkthroughs mention that the game is "near impossible". This is "near 100% made-up". Complete myth. It is indeed "near impossible" in the same sense that it's nearly impossible to tie your shoes, or nearly impossible to eat a bowl of cereal. To succeed, all you need to do is try. The only excuse not to finish Demon's Crest is that you were like, I don't know, hit by a car while sitting in front of your TV. And I live on the ninth floor, so that hardly ever happens. The two traditional means of rendering a game "unbeatable" are limited tries (Super Mario Bros.) and obscure puzzles (Castlevania II). Crest has infinite continues (there is no lives-system at all - when you die you can respawn at the last checkpoint or return to the overworld) and little in the way of puzzles - certainly not anything as difficult as the widely played Super Metroid. The legendability of its difficulty is simply a misunderstanding of dumbschoolers (?) expecting Mega Man boss battles, or onlookers associating the game with its MUCH harder GnG cousins (Ghosts'n Goblins, not Greg 'n' Greg [this blog hahahaha! Ahahahahahsaahahahafdshsafdha!]).

The first two Firebrand games (Garg Quest I and II) play like a top-down RPG with random battles and one-time dungeons, with platforming taking the place of turn-based battles and dungeon-crawling. Demon's Crest, the third, uses a Mode 7 free-roaming overworld reminiscent of ActRaiser II (another criminally overlooked game) or Final Fantasy VI (once you get the spaceship). You can safely fly around this map until you choose to land on one of the clearly marked stages or shops. Landing will take you into one of the handful of branching 2D side-scrolling stages, each of which is littered with hidden items and alternate routes. Each major path will lead you to a boss conflict (that's right - some stages have as many as four! different boss fights), each boss will leave behind a power-up, and each power-up will expand your abilities in a manner similar to Mega Man X. These new abilities will make available new routes, so on so forth, you get the idea. There's a wealth of such optional content - a player going straight from point A to B without exploring or replaying stages will experience less than half of what the game has to offer. Thanks to gradually unlocking stages (two at a time) and clear visual presentation, you'll always know where to look for places to use your new skills. This isn't Super Metroid where you have to go to every single room in the game and use a Power Bomb - it lends itself to a rather succinct linear playing order like Mega Man.

Beyond its Goldilocks scale, where Demon's Crest truly excels as an adventure platformer is in providing rewards for exploration. Let's look at the standard examples for a sec. In Super Metroid, getting an optional item usually means you can open up another identical cave area to get another item to open up another identical cave area. The new tools are fun in and of themselves and offer new means of transportation (lazer feet, grapple) or combat (charge beam, ice beam), functioning to modify your repeated traversal of the same basic world. The real goal of the game - the entire notion of progress - comes from upgrading your capabilities. Metroidvanias like Symphony of the Night take a radically different approach, in which new talents serve almost solely to open new doors, sort of just splaying a normal linear level path across an interconnected world. 

Demon's Crest takes a little bit from each of these approaches. In the larger world, new abilities do work like Metroidvania-style keys, unlocking entire new stages that could have just been presented linearly, if not for the challenge of discovering them. Since, unlike in Symphony, exploration is totally optional, these hidden routes are far more rewarding - secret levels are fucking exciting! As a matter of fact, the experience becomes full-blown Super Mario World. But then you're also powering up in a non-trivial way. This ain't no pansy-ass Alucard sliding kick. Firebrand gets a number of different attacks and transformations that completely alter his movement mechanics. And, you guessed it! The hidden areas emphasize the abilities it takes to unlock them. You don't get the full impact of Water Firebrand until you uncover the underwater cave substage that plays like Ecco the Dolphin. By exploiting your growing skill-set on the main path, you'll arrive in areas that offer unique stage design (and, as aforementioned, boss battles) that the game world otherwise totally lacks!

For all this talk of navigation, you may be surprised to learn that the focal point of the gameplay is the bosses. Are the bosses? Ugh, there's just no way to make that sound right. You'll spend a substantial portion of your playtime in these conflicts, and they're likely what'll stick with you after you put down the game. It's not quite Alien Soldier, but a kindred spirit nonetheless. You won't die many times in the levels proper, certainly not after a playthrough or two has taught you their ins and outs. The challenge lies in the lengthy but fair boss fights which require space management (zoning), timing, and aggression. See, I actually like bosses with deep health reserves, because it means you can't get lucky and, as Golem would say, "cheese it". These ain't yer pappy's nonsensical reflex-driven Mega Man battles; they're methodical and rewarding of strategy. This is reinforced by the almost universal pre-boss checkpoints which allow you to infinitely retry each battle. Lesser games mask poorly designed boss fights by throwing you back to the beginning of the stage when you lose - Demon's Crest is confident enough in their challenge that it puts you right back in the thick of it. 

Oh, right, and they're huge and awesome-looking.

Play Demon's Crest. Even if it doesn't impression you as strongly as it has me, it'll at least provide new perspective on those classics you do love.

I think my new e-handle is gonna be fingernail_of_the_spectre. That is a very real item from GarQ (pronounce: "gark"). Someone's been messin' on Wikipedia! Look out for me on such sites as Internet.com and TheInternet.com.

Top Ten Platformers rerevisited, again. Some more

Let's knock this one out early, huh? Continuing from yesterday's post.

4.) Bionic Commando Rearmed 2
A sequel to a requel? And an unpopular one at that? Unfathomable. Believe it or not, I don't particularly care for the original Bionic Commando or its 2008 enhanced remake. The swing-only movement is too mechanical and rigid; too often an attempt at a minor hop ends with Rad flung hopelessly off a ledge into the will of the winds. Rearmed 2 finally addressed this issue by adding a jump button and direction controls for the grappling arm. The masses were infuriated and the game was shockingly condemned by a gaming press which had been enamored with its predecessor.

Why? How many times do I have to tell you that relying on the mainstream gaming media is the equivalent of going to MTV for advice about music? Rearmed 2 is all about finesse and precision. It's about rewarding the player through controls, giving them the opportunity to do just a little bit more than even they thought possible. This is mobility you never have to think about - it's like that Spider-Man moment where you simply jump off a building and let your instinct do the rest. Rad Spencer is everything you want a platforming protagonist to be, and his versatility doesn't come at the cost of obscene complexity. It's all two-button control.

The game is in the most literal sense a shooter, but it gives plenty of options for when to sneak, run, or open fire. Most of your time will be spent trying to swing into new paths, although the occasional boss will provide the equivalent of an electrified jungle gym.

5.) Demon's Crest
This one might be off your radar. Here, check it out.

If the aesthetic of Demon's Crest doesn't seem familiar, the protagonist may. That's because the game is part of a spin-off series of Gs n' Gs. As Gargoyle's Quest II united the overworld of Dragon Warrior with the stages of Ghosts n' Goblins, Demon's Crest brings together the Mode 7 world map of Final Fantasy VI with Arthur's antics from Super Ghouls n' Ghosts. Thankfully, Crest takes the edge off the unforgiving GnG platforming and gives the player more leeway to experiment and explore. That's not to say this is an easy one to complete; fearsome fiends, labyrinthine caverns, and even a brain-scratcher or two await.

In some sense, Demon's Crest takes the very opposite approach to these obstacles from what is seen in GnG. While Sir Lonely may as well be in a wheelchair for all his adaptability, Firebrand, our protagonist this time around, rivals RPG heroes in his customizability. Not only does he have five (six?) different transformations, each form also has a unique set of powers that can be swapped in and out at will. If you thought Ufouria was a delight because of its starring foursome (it's not and you didn't), boy are you in for a treat here.

Of course, in the fashion of all great adventures, Firebrand has to fight to win these skills, and taking a page from Super Metroid, they aren't all obviously located on the beaten path. The order of powering up is in the hands of the player, leading to a lot of potential for repeated runs.

6.) Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil
Klonoa 2. Hey, have all the games I've listed been sequels? I feel kind of ashamed all of a sudden. That's kinda bullshit though. Video game sequels can't be blindly equated to cash-in film franchises. While certainly your God of War 5s and your Pokemon Magentas don't rise high above the yearly Bourne Anemone and Terminator rehashes, many "series" in the world of gaming better parallel the ongoing works of filmic auteurs or the catalog of a band's albums.

Klonoa 2 is perhaps the best example of a 2D game taking place in 3-space. Its environments wind, weave, and fold over themselves, never creating a plausible image of the real world. Instead they stand as gorgeous expressionist sculptures, masking unexpected twists and turns. Klonoa is a puzzle game at heart, demanding thought before action, but doesn't deny the satisfaction of execution. One needs not only be smart enough to solve a puzzle, but quick enough as well.

An excellently paced game, Klonoa 2 always has an action segment on hand when the mazes become dizzying and knows how to light a fire under your pants and get you thinking fast. The health bar and floaty jump give just enough leeway that mastery isn't necessary - only the right intentions.