Valfaris: "Gazer Guard" boss analysis (phase 1)

Valfaris' "Gazer Guard" is a mid/late-game boss with a compact, elegant design. The first phase of the battle (see video) is composed of three sequential tests: reading, vision, and reaction.

NOTE: The video depicts a successful run of "Gazer Guard's" first phase, so some of the interactions described in the following paragraph aren't seen here. Valfaris expects the player to risk death during experimentation, so defeating this boss for the first time may take multiple restarts, refining and hastening the eventual successful run.

The majority of enemies in Valfaris take direct damage from weapon fire, but "Gazer Guard" does not, setting up a unique boss fight. When "Therion" fires upon the central eyeball which appears to be the boss's body, its blue shield aura* and static health bar indicate that damage is not being inflicted. This feedback is identical regardless of "Therion's" equipped weapon, ruling out direct attack and suggesting a more patient approach. While the eye remains invulnerable, six floating beacons dash around the screen, pause, and repeat in an ostensibly randomized pattern. "Therion" cannot interact with the beacons while they are moving; though they can be attacked during the final and longest pause. Attacking a beacon won't kill or damage it, rather it triggers one of two events. When a beacon is struck, the boss eye either fires a single aimed laser directly at "Therion", or it recoils and its health bar decreases by a fixed decrement. Afterwards, the beacons resume their pattern of shuffling and the eyeball remains invulnerable to direct attack.

The first test for the player is reading the scenario as laid out. Once they've experimented enough to determine that the beacons are vulnerable and not the eye**, they need to figure out why sometimes damaging a beacon hurts the boss and other times it triggers a counterattack. They may deduce that given six beacons, only one is a correct target, or they may simply continue observing and experimenting until they come to the same conclusion. This should draw their attention to the shuffle, at which point they need to observe that one and only one beacon glows blue at the beginning of each cycle, just before the shuffle. At this point, the player has passed the reading/observation test; their reward is the knowledge of which beacon to target.

Now the focus shifts to the shuffling pattern. The target beacon is indicated before the shuffle, but the vulnerability window comes after. The player needs to track the (now identical) target beacon as the pattern speedily and repeatedly reconfigures. It's a game of three-card monty, a fairly rudimentary and likely familiar test of vision. This is the second test; the reward for successfully tracking the beacon through the shuffle is again knowledge, this time knowledge of the target location when it becomes vulnerable.

The third test barely registers as such, it should be so ingrained into the player at this point. As the beacons finish shuffling and are fixed in place, they lose their purple glow, indicating a change in state that experimentation will have revealed to be their vulnerability window. If the player has passed the first two tests, they know now which beacon to target and where it is. If any other beacon is attacked at this point, the window ends, the eyeball attacks, and the cycle restarts. Striking the target beacon without damaging any of the others is the third test. This can be accomplished with a melee weapon by running and jumping to its location, or with a ranged weapon by aligning "Therion" with his target along one of his eight axes of aiming. This action needs to be accomplished in a short period of time (1-2 seconds), otherwise the cycle restarts. To pass the test the player needs to be able to quickly attack an arbitrarily placed element (the target beacon) while aiming around its cover (the other beacons). This time the reward is damage to "Gazer Guard" - irrevocable progress in the boss fight.

This ends the suspension of challenge and the cycle of tests returns to the beginning. Invoking the rule of threes, the player needs to complete this three-part test three times to end phase one of the battle. The beacon movement during the shuffle becomes faster through progressive cycles, increasing the difficulty of the middle test while leaving the other two consistent. This produces a linear difficulty  curve. Phase two will be discussed in the next video.

What makes this part of the "Gazer Guard" battle particularly elegant is the inverse relationship of complexity and suspension as the tests progress. The first test is highly specific to this boss and requires processing and filtering novel information. The subsequent shuffle challenge is a new way of testing visual tracking, a skill underpinning the entire game. The player is applying a developed skill to a novel scenario, which they ought to be more comfortable with than they were with the initial analysis. At the peak of suspension, the third test, the player needs to aim and shoot at a static target, something they've been doing against every enemy in the game. As more successes are suspended on the line, the abilities tested are increasingly fundamental - this gives the game cohesion and identity: victory in Valfaris is ultimately determined by running and gunning skills, not isolated puzzle solutions.

* the blue shield aura is an indicator the player should have learned by this point in the game, as it is used on every enemy that receives an attack but no damage (guarding).

** you could say experimentation is the first test, but I think that's implicit in any scenario where the player does not yet know how to progress.

Platformer of the Month Dec. '14, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory Part 1

The platformer is the seminal genre of video game history. Always adapting to trends and technologies, never out of style, it provides an underpinning for the action games of era after era. Platformers are responsible for our sense of space and navigation; they form the bridge that transports reality into digital worlds. Without platformers, we'd all may as well be playing shuffleboard. Each month the Platformer of the Month Club dives into the deep well of platforming history, hoping to find forgotten treasure or even an extra life. 

Game: Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
Year: 2001 (JP), 2002 (NA)
Developer: Capcom Digital Studios
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: PS2

From the heartland of the 3D platforming era (1998-2003) comes this Capcom gem meant to bring Sir Arthur and his Ghosts 'n Goblins into a new era of 3D platforming (1998-2003). Unfortunately, Arthur fell into a wormhole somewhere during the transition and the developers were left with a new vaguely centurion-themed hero called Maximo (because the one thing we all remember about Ghosts 'n Goblins is that it was set in ancient Rome).

Perhaps more surprising for a Capcom game than for a 3D platformer, this one comes to us from the land of opportunity: Capcom's North American Digital Studios. While never finding its way to the "killer app" shelf, Maximo played an early role in distinguishing the PS2 as the console for old-school gamers - those who valued traditional challenge over wimpiness (Xbox) or not having any games to play (Gamecube).

To this day Ghosts to Glory nurtures a legacy as one of the hardest games of the sixth generation, forcing save management and limited lives on doughy soft gamers who were growing to view their $60 retail as a ticket to the end credits. But is Maximo: Ghosts to Glory really as grandma-rapingly brutal as legends hold? And if so, is it actually worth finishing? Hopefully you've got enough lives to reach the end of this feature and the answers you seek.

[Note: because this is a multi-hour, multi-session game, we've divided coverage into two parts, the first of which will be dedicated to mechanics and the contents of worlds 1 and 2.]

How is the game's aesthetic appeal?
Yourself: With character designs from the legendary guy who did character designs for Adventure Island, Maximo flaunts a googly-eyed cartoon look. This lighthearted approach works great for a mascot platformer, carrying through exaggeratedly warped landscapes. Matched with the game's would-be grisly subject matter - skeletons, swamp monsters, and grim reapers - the style takes on a Halloweeny sense of humor. It's more spooky than scary, if you will. The wackily chattering military skeletons can't help but remind me of Army of Darkness.

Sorry for the garbage screenshots. I can't find decent ones and have no way of capturing PS2 images.

The graphics hang onto the classic N64-era look, skimping on textures and favoring clean, well-defined polygonal surfaces. This accentuates the surreal impression of the shifting, sometimes floating architecture, allowing the game to look good even on a big-screen HDTV. Oh, also, everything is shot at a dutch angle. Just because.

Golem: The cartoon horror approach goes past Ghosts 'n Goblins and brings to mind something more like Decap Attack, where each enemy and setpiece has its own exaggerated, comic appeal. The way skeletons' skulls whirl in circles after being struck, or heck, just watching them shuffle around is worth a chuckle.

As for the soundtrack (by television's own Tommy Tallarico), it's sadly short on melodies; while fitting in tone, they aren't half as memorable and catchy as the visual presentation is. Ah well.

How does the player character and camera control?
Golem: Maximo walks at a decent pace, with just a tiny bit of momentum applied. The PS2's standard issue analog stick grants responsive 360 degree control. He can double jump in mid-air, which is useful for reaching higher, going farther, or reorienting his trajectory partway. There's more air control than in Ghosts 'n Goblins as well, allowing refinement of jumps in midair. Finally, Maximo knows a few sword swings (lateral, overhead, and air-to-ground stab) which are then complemented by new moves granted by pickups.

Yourself: Sword attacks are speedy and short range, but there's no one-two-three combo here. Maximo pauses after every swipe - a vulnerability more reminiscent of Castlevania than Mario 64. To his advantage, the horizontal swing covers an almost 270-degree arc. I find the double-jump to be more useful for re-steering than for heightening and lengthening leaps - it gives me an extra moment to consider my landing.

Maximo also wields a shield that can be held up to block attacks from directly in front. One of the most fundamental power-ups (which I only mention here cuz it gets its own button) is a Captain America shield toss.

The camera sits just above an over-the-shoulder angle, giving a long forward view with a relatively limited horizontal and vertical FOV. If we're comparing to the Super Mario 64 gold standard, it's similar to what Golem calls "The Close-up to Mario". There's no free analog control, but one shoulder button provides first-person free-look and another auto-center.

How are character-specific mechanics varied?
Yourself: In layman's terms, Maximo is a jack of all power-ups. His gear can be divided into two simple classes: sword magic and ability tokens. Sword magic is straightforward enough: depending on the element, the sword increases a degree in power and gains a special side effect - the ice sword freezes, the light sword is strong against undead, etc. Each sword power-up fills Maximo's magic meter, which then depletes anytime he lands a swing. When magic runs out, the element disappears.

Ability tokens are more varied. Some grant new attacks: the shield toss, a follow-up sword swipe, or a sword thrust that carries Maximo a bit forward. Others modify standard abilities, like a longer sword and a wider spike shockwave. A few are special moves that enhance the elemental swords, like a projectile and a magical shockwave. Then there are shield elements which can make blocking reflect damage, inflict knockback, or vacuum up coins.

Overall there are about a dozen different ability tokens. Abilities always stack (with a single exception: shield elements overwrite), though Maximo will lose most of them if he dies. From the start of the game he has three "lock-spots" - the first three tokens gathered fill these lock-spots and stick around even after death. With each world conquered, Maximo gains a new lock-spot, such that in the final world he can have seven abilities that carry on after death.

Power-ups have fixed natural habitats, meaning that early in the game you're likely to come across the basic abilities and later you'll find more powerful ones. Because of this, your locked abilities won't change much between playthroughs. The first three slots are almost guaranteed to be shield toss, thrust, and follow-up - that's pretty much all you encounter in World 1. Each sword element is generally associated with a certain world, though every once in a while you'll see one out of place (fire in particular shows up throughout).

Golem: Discovering the powerups of each world lends a sense of fun to the game. With the heritage that Maximo has, you might expect a harsh, punishing game where each powerup should be approached with cynicism--but instead, I always found myself excited to learn what new abilities Maximo would find. It was gratifying to learn that his sword could extend its reach or that he could freeze enemies. Plenty of powerups are throwaways, too, but a number of them are real boons.

What kind of items are present and how are they distributed?
Golem: Some items power Maximo up, like health potions for restoring health and extra armor for extending the health bar. Others grant new attributes or abilities, like the electric shield or the forward sword stab. Aside from those, you've got coins for buying items from shops as well as keys for opening chests and gates. All of those can be dropped by enemies, collected from chests, or found just laying around the world.

Each world in the game also has a particular container for storing fairies, which grant continues. For instance, in the first world, glowing headstones will cough up fairies if Maximo attacks them.

In short, there's quite a variety of items.

Yourself: The game has one of those classic platformer pause menus with six bobbing icons in the top right corner indicating how many glowing jubles you've collected, but in actuality collection is practically driven. Because lives are limited over the course of the game, continue-granting fairies are must-grabs. Coins too are doled out at a pace such that a player grabbing everything in sight will have access to many more life and armor power-ups than one rushing through.

What kind of navigable elements define the landscape?
Yourself: The first couple worlds tend to alternate between flat corridors adorned with dangerous terrain and small floating platforms that may or may not move. Note that when I say "floating" I don't necessarily mean "suspended in midair" - I just mean that they're islands surrounded on all sides by a hazard or drop.

The popular dangerous terrains for world 1 are some kind of purple grave moss from which erupt damaging skeletal hands and instant-killing hot lava. World 2 uses two similar equivalents: water to drag the player's speed down (which occasionally contains alligators who burst up for a quick hit) or water too deep for Maximo to tread (death). The placement is a bit different - the purple moss tends to be along paths or on small platforms, inflicting danger if the player dodges the not-accidentally-placed enemies in the safe zone. World 2's swamp water usually is the main path, with platforms along the side solely to provide a respite from the danger. World 2 also has an in between hazard in one particular level: tar. The player can walk through a tar pit for ten or so seconds before sinking down to a permanent grave.

Patterned moving platforms are fairly rare - in the first two worlds they only appear in a single stage. Traditional falling platforms also make an appearance in World 1's "Coffin Canyon". Jumps are more often made difficult by enemy occupation of the landing (and launching) area.

Flat, open spaces are very uncommon, so the player is rarely forced into arena combat. The choice is usually whether to jump past or linearly eliminate threats. Since the game is mostly made up of floating platforms, enemies won't chase you too far.

Golem: Maximo loves small platforms and thin corridors, so combat is often in tight quarters. This keeps the combat/platforming pace at a nice clip, making sure you rarely face more than a few enemies without an interesting jump.

What kind of enemies impede progress?

Golem: Enemies take a few hits to fell, but they're aggressive enough that each encounter demands focus. Each one has a distinct attack pattern, whether it's the shield-bearing skeleton that loves to block hits or the bomb-spitting flower that's vulnerable in close quarters. Their tactics never grow very complicated, and the game instead focuses on squads of enemies. Your standard skeleton may not seem like a big deal until he's got a flower backing him up from far off.

Yourself: Many enemies only spawn when the player approaches. Thus the first element of defense is simply awareness, the ability to grasp what kind of enemies might be spawning (each level has a fixed set), where they could spawn, and how to react at that time. A skeleton slowly pulling himself out of the earth is vulnerable to a quick aerial attack, while a coffin shooting up can bump the player away - or, at the correct distance, permit a preemptive strike. Later on metal coffins will do damage and bounce back sword swipes. Within the same realm, treasure chests occasionally turn out to be mimics, requiring the player to clear the area and take their time when collecting bounty. Just the spawning behavior here requires a lot of skill to manage.

Enemies tend to work within defined territories, from patrolling halberdiers to sentinel crows to river alligators. A key element to progression is learning to identify an enemy's threat zone in order to either isolate it or avoid it altogether. Crowds are dangerous, as Maximo's shield only faces one direction and a blocked attack causes a lengthy recoil; equally dangerous are the precarious ledges that border battlegrounds.

How are individual levels built from these elements? Does this facilitate exploration?
Yourself: Levels are pretty linear across the first couple worlds, sequencing together platforming corridors and usually more enemy-heavy rooms. A corridor might task the player with running across a series of cliffs that fall out from under their feet or jumping along moving platforms floating down a river. Typically projectile and patrolling enemies are laid out at fixed points that may make them easier to dodge then fighting, like an axe guy on an island near the floating debris or a halberdier guarding the far end of a plummeting bridge. Melee enemies tend to spawn where you least want them to, like on an open-edged platform that provides a resting point between tighter jumps.

World 2 seems to prefer this type of design, with "'Dem Bones" dedicated almost exclusively to long stretches of bone platforms over tar pits, "The Quick and the Dead" to the aforementioned debris sailing down a river, and "The Village Level" to high moving platforms and tree-branches. The aforementioned alligator-infested water propels the player forward without allowing them time to wander.

What I call "rooms" are areas where linear progression is halted by a locked door, large numbers of enemies, or a non-obvious path. The world 1 stage "Dead Heat" sees the player enter a courtyard containing six sarcophagi and three sepulchers. The only way to get through is by passing a locked gate guarded by a halberdier. To find the key, the player needs to open each thing that houses dead people. Enemies spawn once the player enters each sepulcher and a few spawn points lurk around the sarcophagi too. The door can't safely be unlocked without first killing the guard.

These are a bit more common in World 1. There's the thing I just said from "Dead Heat", and "Coffin Canyon" ends with a similar series of rooms, the first a graveyard with a locked door and the second another sepulcherville with a hidden switch. The opening stage, "Grave Danger", uses mostly wide graveyards with hidden paths and spawning enemies along either side.

Golem: Within each room, the path to the next room is typically laid before the player. For instance, in the "Dead Heat" sepulcher example, one road leads between a series of tombs and up to the locked gate. Meanwhile, each sepulcher is locked and coffins lie ready for ransacking. The thing is, once you open a lock or open a coffin, you're liable to trigger an enemy spawning. A quick playthrough will stick to the road, while a full clear will open up each sepulcher.

Enemies spawn only when Maximo gets close enough, so exploration comes with the risk of damage. Maximo rarely obscures the main path, making such excursions a choice rather than the result of haphazard trial-and-error.

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Clearly Maximo: Ghosts to Glory has a lot going on. We'll be back with part 2 to fill you in on the back half of the game, the bosses, and our final impressions!

Platformer of the Month Nov. '14, Kid Klown in Crazy Chase

The platformer is the seminal genre of video game history. Always adapting to trends and technologies, never out of style, it provides an underpinning for action games of era after era. Platformers are responsible for our sense of space and navigation; they form the bridge that transports reality into digital worlds. Without platformers, we'd all may as well be playing shuffleboard. Each month we dive into the deep well of platforming history, hoping to find forgotten treasure or even an extra life. We'll be bringing you everything we uncover here at the Platformer of the Month Club.

Game: Kid Klown in Crazy Chase
Year: 1994
Developer: Kemco
Publisher: Kemco
Platform: SNES, GBA

Oh we are starting this off on one hell of a foot. A size 23 foot. I've got two words for you. Up. Down. Clown. Town. Kid Klown. Crazy Chase. Okay, back to using full sentences. Actually my first note looking at that boxart is that our mascot here (indisputably one of the most acclaimed of the 2D era) is more your classically-styled harlequin (or Christmas elf) than what I first picture as a clown. I guess it's only in 21st century America that clowns have developed that firm image of "orange afro rainbow pants and party hat". Kid Klown looks almost... respectable.

Speaking of classically-stylization, that's one thing this game doesn't! Kid Klown himself might remind you of a Sonic the Hedgehog or a Bonk, but the tightly timed uni-directional gameplay is hedged in future memories of now-popular "endless runners" like Canabalt, Flappy Bird, or Bit Trip Runner. But hey, the game uses traditional running and jumping controls and challenges the player to navigate a course, so it's only reasonable to approach it as a platformer.

So is Kid Klown a Lost City of Atlantis, defining trends a decade yet to come, or is it shallow tripe meant to capture the lowest common denominator? Don't make a joke about "what if it's both?". I did that in my head and it got sighs all around.

How is the game's aesthetic appeal?
Yourself: It's impossible to play Kid Klown without visions of Road Runner dancing through my head. The developers definitely made the most of their trial-and-error gameplay as a setup for varied physical comedy bits. While the individual traps aren't much to look at, Kid K's pratfalls are drawn out to downright whacky levels. He jerks his body three or four times before tearing his head out of a block of ice, floats gently to the ground after being flattened to a pancake, and shakes off water like a dog. A lot of old platformers show cartoon influence, but Kid Klown takes it an extra one half to three quarters of a mile.

The soundtrack has an appropriately jaunty tempo but I can't say I found much to like in the composition.
Golem: By 1994, the Super Nintendo was churning out high quality graphics, and Kid Klown benefits from an attention to detail. In the city level, Kid passes by mundane skyscrapers and through standard construction sites, only to be flattened by a swarm of comically undersized sedans. The contrast between realistic settings and jokey elements goes a long way to sell the humor here.

As for music, Kid Klown sets the right pace and tone for a nutzo chase, but  fails to provide any memorable melodies.

How does the player character control?
Golem: Hold down to make Kid Klown run diagonally down-right along a straight path, and use left or right to strafe either direction. Up will let you slow and eventually halt Kid, but he can never move backwards. Aside from running, the only other function is a jump with a fixed height.

Holding down to move diagonally allows Kid's path to take more screen space, but it also makes judging his trajectory more difficult. Additionally, having to hold down can be troublesome when you need to be precise with moving left and right (it's just easy to fumble on the control pad).

Interestingly, the options menu offers an upside-down control scheme for left-handed players.
Yourself: 4-way isometric control tends to bother me, but here it works mostly fine since you're only moving in one general direction. Using d-pad down for what amounts to an accelerator is unpleasant though. Kid has momentum and controls essentially like a car, which leaves me wondering how smoothly the game might have felt had it used A for accelerate and B for brake. Hell, I actually might get out my emulator and try it.

What kind of non-aggressive elements guide the player's path?
Golem: Balloons. Each stage in the game is littered with balloons Kid can grab by jumping. They can either have a coin, health recovery, some damaging element (like a bomb), or an all-important card suit (heart, spade, club, or diamond). However, what's inside remains a mystery even on repeat playthroughs.

While most balloons will contain the same thing time and again, on each play of a stage, the four suits will be randomly distributed to different balloons. The catch is that you need all four suits to clear the stage. Luckily, if you reach the end of a stage without all four suits, the game loops you with no penalty and keeps all balloons the same.

Aside from balloons, stages feature the occasional platforming element. A springboard here, a moving platform there, and a balloon to ride down a cliffside.
Yourself: There are also coins strewn about the path which unlock bonus stages.

What kind of enemies impede the player's path?
Yourself: Most of what you'll battle in this game aren't so much enemies as they are traps. Banana peels, lava arcs, crab claws and fire hydrants all stand in between Kid and his rival, a bomb with a spade on it. There are typically three means of avoidance: run around, jump over, or stop. The game is pretty reasonable in introducing new and more complex enemies, as stage 1 is comprised largely of things to be jumped over (bushes, cannon balls, spike pits), stage 2 features a lot more that need to be run around (cars, caution barriers, falling pots), and stage 3 is the first time you'll really need to stop (for fire walls, falling boulders, and lava).

Though there are essentially only three responses they'll inspire, the challenge is in learning the traps' timing. How long is it between a shadow appearing and a boulder falling? When is the next car going to speed across the road? You'll generally need to pick up the rhythm of the level and get a good sense of the distance Kid can jump.

Many traps can be dealt with by any of the available means - when Kid is stopped he can walk left or right without moving down at all - but they may not be equally cost-effective. Likewise, being in the right position on the cross-axis is crucial for grabbing balloons, so you may be forced into jumping over a preceding trap that you would've just run around were you ignoring them. Taking the safe route is something that comes into play on repeated loops when you know which balloons you're aiming for.

How are player character mechanics varied?
Yourself: While Kid Klown is absent any power-ups or character selection, some level-specific elements affect the way the character moves. Steep hills show up in a couple places (I think only in Stages 1, 3, and 5) to introduce a speed boost, linearly increasing difficulty via reflex time. Stage 4 is entirely an ice level, as usual decreasing friction so the character takes longer to get going and stays in motion longer after the control is released. I didn't have much trouble with the ice stage, and in fact I think the game let up a bit on the trap difficulty to account for it.

Not really a mechanic, but Stage 5 decreases visibility to a small circle around Kid K. Like the speed-up, this basically just increases necessary reflex time.

How are individual levels built from these elements? Does this facilitate exploration?
Golem: Towards the start of the game, in the first two stages,  elements pop in for brief moments soon to be followed by a different challenge. In stage one, Kid scampers away from rolling logs, weaves between hurled axes, and leaps over shrubbery all in the same breath. In the later stages, ideas pick up a little more consistency, such as the ice stage that places two rising/falling block segments right after one another.

There's always a great variety to the hazards, but their placement picks up a more consistent verse/chorus structure later in the game. This keeps the early game fresh and frantic while lending the later game more of a get-down-to-business-and-study feel.

Yourself: The game uses mild randomization to create some variety on replays. As mentioned above, the suits hidden in balloons are shuffled around every time you die or restart. Occasionally individual traps will also be position-shifted (a bush that was on the right is now on the left, etc.). There is theoretically an optimal path to each level established by the consistent placement of coins in balloons; however, the unpredictability of suit location means on a first run the player will need to check every balloon anyway. So the randomization defeats the purpose of the collectibles altogether.

On continued loops, a player can refine their approach to account for balloons they've already checked. Since looping is a punishment for not succeeding on a first try, it feels weird for it to add complexity to the gameplay - the structure suggests a good player is one who can grab all the balloons on the first try, not one who can learn their contents.

How is the boss variety and how do boss fights generally work?
Yourself: No bosses to be found here. Our main villain, the Ace of Spades, is just a constant nuisance.
Golem: There were bonus games after stages (sometimes). They weren't bosses, and we didn't figure out how to win them.
Yourself: I kid klown you not, there was an air hockey game where scoring in either goal costs you a chance. How do you win this? Sigh. I looked it up and it's that you have to score three goals to get a one-up. Meaning if you don't have three chances to start out with (chances are determined by coins divided by 10) then there's no point in even trying.

What is the overarching structure of the game?
Golem: Five stages, all in a row. If you run out of health or time, you spend a continue and restart the current stage. If you reach the end of the stage without every suit, the stage loops while preserving balloon layout. If you grab all suits on each stage on your first run, the game can move at a quick clip; miss just one suit, and you replay a stage, slowing the pace considerably.
Yourself: At the end of each stage, Kid grabs a key. If the stage is completed on the first loop, he also gets a heart. At the finale, the player is presented with ten keyholes, 60 seconds, and a princess locked in a cell with a time-bomb. You can select the placement of your keys, but each can only be used once and there is no indication which might be the one and only correct keyhole. So it's pure luck whether you screw up and witness the princess explode right before your eyes. The internet tells me that getting it right leads to a better ending (depending on opinion) and getting it right AND getting all the hearts is necessary for the best. The hearts challenge makes sense for replay value. The keys not so much.

Word on the street is that getting the best ending opens up hard mode *<:O]

How is the learning curve and difficulty?
Yourself: For a game that allows only 3 retries, Kid Klown is pretty forgiving. Allowing the player to loop through the stage if they missed any items is a good call and alleviates the frustration of close misses and screw-ups. The levels mix things up enough that they require individual learning, so that's solid too. Unfortunately, the core gameplay - timing jumps within fixed windows - does nothing to differentiate style or skill of play, so each challenge is extremely binary - either you get hit or you don't. A minute to learn, no additional time to master.
Golem: Kid Klown features tweaks to make it more forgiving, such as loops and a generous health bar, but the core concept--collect four randomly placed balloons without passing them (on a diagonal course, no less)--is harsh. On the other hand, building a mastery of the courses led us to collect balloons more consistently, so the learning process itself had a nice incline to it. We'd start out a course entirely confused, gradually warm up to its challenges, and eventually zip to balloons as needed. It's just that, as Yourself says, there's not much past that. Perhaps the suits could've been an optional challenge rather than a necessary one.

Play again or recommend?
Golem: While Kid Klown finds excellent execution, its core concept is so ornery and shallow that it's hard to recommend. I had fun yelling at it.
Yourself: Check it out on Youtube or something. It's a "cool, I didn't know this game existed". The wacky face-plants are where the game finds most of its identity and they don't have much lasting value.

This was a really inappropriate game to flex this survey. Look forward to a better entry next month, when we'll be playing Maximo: Ghosts to Glory!

Mario VERSUS Luigi: Character select in platformers. A duologue.

Duologue. Diatribe. Dissension. Declamation. Double Talk. Double Talk. It's alllll talk. So is this feature, captured from some of the secret email archives of co-bloggers Greg (Yourself) and Greg (Golem).

Golem: So, I was thinking about what I might use to write a hefty email, and character distinction in Super Mario 3D World kept bugging me. I dunno how much of this is me repeating myself from the other night, but hey, it's worthwhile to get it written down. None of this is a specific rebuttal to what you said the other night.

In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Tails and Knuckles offer platforming abilities far beyond Sonic's. The huge, sprawling levels offer plenty of opportunities for areas that only Tails can access, other areas that only Knuckles can access, and some they can both reach that Sonic can't.

I don't know how familiar you are with Sonic 3 & Knuckles, so you may have to take some of this on faith.

I wouldn't call that a particularly shallow system, especially since Sonic 3 & Knuckles often blends in paths naturally. Even when it's something dopey like a wall that only Knuckles can break, the path beyond A) explores a new space of the level map that you may have imagined exploring and B) sticks to the assets and general design sensibilities of the stage. (That latter point is a frightening discussion unto itself, but I think for the purposes of this email, we can gloss over that.)

But mechanically speaking, I think it's a copout compared to something like Super Mario Bros. 2. That is, I mean to compare the low-level rhythm of gameplay, the feel of each individual jump. Sonic 3 & Knuckles' system offers greater possibilities in terms of overall level exploration and uncovering entire new areas.

Anyway, every time you separate characters into their own unique stage segments, that's one less chance for a comparison. If you get a part that requires Knuckles so you can glide over pits, you'll never know what it's like to carry Sonic through that section (you'll have two different sections and only one way to experience each). On the other hand, if you have a tough platforming segment with Sonic, you might remark to yourself that Knuckles would sure be helpful (one section that has two different experiences).

And that leads to a lot of neat strategery in Super Mario Bros. 2. 1-2 has a difficult cave portion where Snifits corner you as you try to blast open walls. One option is to take Toad, who's built for combat--not like you need to make big jumps in the cave anyway. Or, you could take Luigi; if you're skilled, you can bypass that cave section entirely by jumping to the top of a tall hill. Anyone can play that part, but the character you choose will cast the same stage design in a different light.

There are neat moments of character comparison in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Super Mario Bros. 2 does feature character-specific paths. I just mean to compare their overall demeanor. Can I use the word "demeanor" like that?

So, in general, I like to have a way to cheese a situation and a skilled way to approach a situation. That's as opposed to something binary, either you can do a segment or you can't.

And I think that fits Super Mario 3D World's overall arcadey mentality. Something like Sonic 3 & Knuckles or Super Mario 64 is built for hanging out and poking around. Super Mario 3D World, on the other hand, has stages built around a single path. The interesting part isn't how you explore, it's in the mechanics of experiencing that path.

You also get character-relevant puzzles, but they're not character-dependent. So, that green star might be easier to grab with Peach, and recognizing as much is solving a puzzle. Figuring out how to get there with Mario is another puzzle.

3D World does have moments where you can only collect something if you have the right powerup, but that's a matter of skill rather than character choice. They'll always give you the necessary powerup in the level, too.

If all the character-specific switches in 3D World lead to stamps, and none to green stars, that would fall in line with my reading. I have no idea if that's the case.

On that note, it's worth saying that my points about Super Mario 3D World are in theory. A better writer would have examples: here's one green star that suggests the use of one character and provides challenge for another, something like that. Not only has it been like two weeks since 3D World came out, but given the game's size and range (see: the Super Mario Galaxies), I don't know that I'll ever have a great grasp on it.

[So we had a bit of an offline discussion about how many games actually have a character select, particularly platformers featuring exploration, and particularly ones that don't allow swapping on the fly. The answer we came up with is that we don't know a ton :( . Super Mario Bros. 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles are not a particularly common model - if you think about it, the primary games starring character selection are fighters/racers/shoot-em-ups/brawlers/etc. Those adventurier games that do allow character selection, like a few from the late Castlevania and Mega Man series or Ganbare Goemon, usually have completely scripted differences in campaigns (a la Resident Evil) or superficial or action-only distinctions between characters.

Nonetheless, the conversation on SMB2 and S&K3 is valid and in keeping with the original lead-in, Super Mario 3D World]

Yourself: What it sounds like you like about Super Mario Bros. 2 is that it's a platformer with a weapon select; your 'weapons' here being the characters' physical attributes. I suppose what leads me to make that wholly semantic distinction is the notion that there are really two skill-sets at play in a game that includes both action and exploration, one for each type of gameplay. In as simple a platformer as Sonic 3 & Knuckles or SMB2, those skill-sets are comprised of the same abilities, but still applied differently - Knuckles' glide may allow him to safely swoop over a boss or cross a gap to a new section of a level that Sonic can't reach. Anyway, I liken the selection of an action skill-set to a weapon select because, really, isn't that the same thing you see in a Gradius or a Gunstar Heroes or an Earth Defense Force 2017? The pre-determination of a set of functional capabilities?

You say of Super Mario Bros. 2: "the character you choose will cast the same stage design in a different light". I find that to be a somewhat optimistic way of looking at things. For instance, the aforementioned cave from 1-2 - it really doesn't feel like it's made to be played as any character BUT Toad/Mario. Sure Luigi can make it through, but his skills don't offer any benefits - in fact, his high jump just kind of gets in the way, causing him to bump into the ceiling and making Snifit bullets harder to dodge, and his slow pick-up speed makes the bombs more tedious to deal with. I suppose that's "a different light", but to me that light seems to be revealing that that part of the level is meant for a different character - similar to the way 4-1 (Lakitu stage) of Super Mario Bros. is suited to the Fire Flower, even though it can certainly be survived without. I see how Luigi's version is different, but it's not totally clear to me how it's rewarding (it's slow and awkward to time).

I'm not saying this is a universal syndrome or that I have a problem with that, simply that my impression of the game is that it vacillates between generic-enough-to-play-the-same-with-every-character and character-specific segments, such that I don't think it really is so much more complex than "pick the character you like best, and occasionally switch to someone specific for a particular segment". There are subtly variant experiences and plenty of parts that do play uniquely interesting with all four, and there's certainly nothing to dictate that you must have a favorite character, i.e. that you can't equally enjoy playing with all four, but I've never found nearly enough variation in the bread-and-butter gameplay between characters to make it feel any more like four games in one than Pokemon Red is 1.1390625e+13 (150^6) in one.

Bearing that in mind, neither Super Mario Bros. 2 nor Super Mario 3D World is purely an action game. There is exploration and (light) puzzle-solving to be done as well, thus the characters' exploratory skill-sets come into play when I'm making a selection. In fact, in Super Mario 3D World my choice is dictated almost entirely by how I'm looking to play the game. While the characters are largely balanced, the heavy use of scrolling and mobile and rhythmic obstacles, like the Train levels, the gate level [fill the number in later], and the rolling tiles in Star-2 certainly suggest faster characters for better scores and play times. With that on top of the tendency for Green Stars and Stamps to be hidden past high and long jumps, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to designate Mario and Toad as the action characters and Luigi and Peach as the explorers. So, playing with that understanding, I don't even really need to be on the lookout for Luigi- or Peach-specific puzzles - I can just plow through the fun-runs with Toad and not worry about missing a Star, knowing that when I go back with Peach I'll have a much easier time grabbing it anyway. 

I don't think I've come across any (or enough to remember) "puzzles" complex enough that they demand character-specific solutions (yeah, Peach can cheese a lot of stuff, but so can anyone with a Raccoon suit) - the game has not broken my general Mario mentality of playing stages once for challenge and once for completion - the difference here is that I have different characters suited for each play-through. That's really nice - since I'm still going for completion on every run, I get to see multiple variations on the action and on the puzzles. But again, I don't think the game provides a compelling argument to play every stage with every character. And that's not even touching on the fact that a larger number of the levels are built around equalizing mechanics like the boost pads and beep-boop blocks that essentially nullify character benefits. 

Golem: That got me thinking; one key difference between Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D World is the sense of platforming. I notice fewer bottomless pits in Super Mario 3D World, lessening the importance of someone like Peach. On top of that, verticality isn't played up as much, either--after all, judging how tall something is in 3D World is harder than in 2D. So, I might pick Luigi in Super Mario Bros. 2 if one level has those plants that shoot fire straight up, since he'd be able to jump over the fire. I don't think I ever have trouble jumping over anything in Super Mario 3D World. In all, the size of my jumps is less important for regular old action, meaning it (pretty much) only holds relevance when I'm exploring. That's on top of the other gestures that even out character attributes that you mentioned, such as powerups and boost pads.

So, when it comes to something like Super Mario Bros. 2, I think you don't give "subtly variant experiences" enough credit. Assuming you enjoy the game enough to play all the way through four times, it's neat that the characters tweak that experience. It's not an entirely new game, but I gain a new appreciation for old challenges. So far, in Super Mario 3D World, I've struggled to find enough subtle variance to care. These days, I'm usually just picking Mario because I can't find something to care about in the other characters. (Rosalina aside, who opens up new attack possibilities.) Granted, that's working alongside my general fatigue with the game, so I'm already biased against it.

But it sounds like you'd say the game is fairly balanced between action and exploration? You have one approach to the stage where you just clear it, and another where you collect everything, so it sounds like you pick from Mario/Toad just as often as Luigi/Peach.

Yourself: When it comes to a mechanic though, is it fair to presume you enjoy the game enough to play all the way through four times? I'm not even sure I agree with the unpleasantly specific thesis, "if you like SMB2, you'll love playing through as all four characters! If you don't like SMB2, you won't!" Given the presumption that one likes the game enough to play it multiple times, the proclivity still exists for a player to pick the same character that felt best the first time. That's typically how I end up playing any given game - as you said, we're assuming I'm already motivated by other factors to replay, so I don't tend to re-evaluate the character selection process. If I decided I liked Mario for 3-1 the first time, there was probably a reason I made that decision, so I'm likely to stick with Mario for 3-1 the second time. 

I think the issue we've been skirting is simply a difference in the way you and I play games. We both enjoy gameplay that encourages experimentation, and selection is an explicit mechanic through which a game can facilitate tomfoolery. I think the conversation on SMB2 has pretty clearly illustrated the two sides of the issue - your approach, to uniquely combine skills with challenges to gradually uncover more information about every individual part of the game, and mine, to try to solve the puzzle of which selection maxes some metric for each situation and then to put together the solutions to form a grand picture of the game. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the way you think about it is: "what is Mario's version of the game like? How does it compare to Toadstool's?" Whereas I think about "which parts of the game belong to Luigi? Which are played as Toad?" Don't get me wrong, I'm not coming out in support of the Sonic 3 & Knuckles / World of Illusion approach, where there are portions of the stage ONLY accessible by a single character, because figuring out which parts I like to play as whom - solving that puzzle - is entirely why I like character select. But that rarely involves actually playing all the parts with all the characters.

Back to 3D World - I think we both land in the same place, that for the purported experimental avenue that the character select provides, there aren't enough original rewards to reap from the levels to justify exploring it. No to your latter question, I wouldn't say 3D World is anywhere even close to balanced between action and exploration. As I said, I still go for completion on every run, even the "action" run, and the game is so light on puzzles/exploration that I usually do get the 100% on that Mario/Toad attempt. It's only maybe a quarter of the time that I find myself dropping to the Luigi/Peach pool for a collection rerun. It's a slightly different kind of play-though, but one that I only experience on a small fraction of the levels.

Golem: That's a succinct way to put it--that is, "what's X's version of the game like?" versus "which parts of the game belongs to X?" You know, using X reminds me that that's what X4 versus X5 is like. Putting aside the question of whether or not one would actually want to play X5, you get character selection on a per-level basis because some levels work better with a ranged weapon, while others feel better with a strong melee move.

Is the conclusion that Super Mario 3D World's characters ultimately satisfy no one? I mean, I'd take it over New Super Mario Bros' character selection any day, but they aren't different enough, and the stages don't do much to evoke their differences. On the other hand, if you're building a game for four-player coop, I can see why you wouldn't want the characters to stray too far from one another.

Yourself: Yeah. The conclusion is that it's a game that's made for co-op, so going too out-of-bounds for an interesting single-player character would've made it a hassle to play. I'll give them that co-op is fun, and that given more balanced stage design - a Super Mario Galaxy 2, if you will - I think the differentiation between action and exploratory characters would be sufficiently interesting. Of course, the portioning and flow of levels in Galaxy 2 vs. 3D World is an entirely different conversation... and one we almost had instead of this one, had I fired off my half-completed opening email before yours on character select.

It figures you would bring up X4/X5 - this conversation actually made me want to go back and replay them. I always enjoyed the distinction between X and Zero in X4, feeling like it really was two different games, but never got a feel for it in X5. 

Mommy, what's a climbformer?

This is a nice stupid little portmanteau I came up with because of perpetual lack of a better term. Considering that dictionaries already fucking hate the word "platforming", this is double bonus. Why must we combine "climb" and "platforming"? Because the PC-police have outlawed "euro-platformer" as racist, I suppose. 

If you haven't noticed, traditional (N64-style) 3D platforming is deader than a chicken that's been stabbed with a door-nail. Aside from the occasional begrudgingly acclaimed Super Mario Galaxy or Super Mario Galaxy 2, no one's dared to release a 3D platformer since the heat-death of the sixth console generation. Part of that is probably that 2D is Back to the Future (the future being now), and 2D platformers were always better than 3D, which we learned from two generations of failed experimentation and Rocket: Robot on Wheels. So when it became "okay" to make 2D games again, all the platformer wannabes just reverted to that. Not a lot of interest was left in games styled after Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, and Sonic Adventure.

Platforming itself wasn't dead though: 2003's Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a watershed moment for 3D navigation. It taught us that it could be just as fun to climb, shimmy, scramble, wall-run, and swing as it was to jump. Is Sands of Time still a platformer? Sure. It's largely a game that challenges the player to reach point B from point A. In fact, I specifically omitted the notion of jumping from my definition of platforming because of games like Sands of Time, which evoke the same gameplay challenge with different mechanics. The progeny of the prince includes many of today's most popular American games, from Assassin's Creed to Uncharted to Lords of Shadow to Enslaved to God of War to Darksiders II to Shadow of the Colossus. But the term "platforming" isn't typically used in association with these games, and even when it is, it's usually qualified somehow as "Uncharted-style platforming" or some such. 

Climbforming.

There's no question that the p-word invokes traditional images of Mario and Sonic jumping across tree branches and floating boxes, yet there's also no question that a new platforming-rooted navigation paradigm has taken over in the realism-driven 3D world. For fun and enrichment, it helps to have a different term to classify this contemporary approach. "Climbing" doesn't quite communicate the dynamism and challenge of the gameplay, plus it makes for a confusing noun form ("[ice]climber[s]"), so I've chosen to go full obnoxious and coin "climbforming". You heard it here first.

Retro done Rocket Knight right: The post I accidentally didn't write yesterday

Before I shot off on a tangent faster than the sun shoots lazers at the moon, I was going to write yesterday (now it's two days ago, since I didn't finish this post Thursday as intended) about the underrated Rocket Knight and reigning eShop fan-fave, Mutant Mudds.

[Things are about to get a bit hairy nomenclaturally speaking - the Rocket Knight/Sparkster series is confusingly titled. Let me give you a "cheat's sheet" here. There are four completely distinct games in the series:

Rocket Knight Adventures (Genesis, 1993)

Sparkster: RKA2 (Genesis, 1994)

Sparkster (SNES, 1994)

Rocket Knight (XBLA, 2010)

and the main character is the same throughout, known dually as Sparkster and the Rocket Knight. Note that I'll always bold the titles, so if you see the names in tiny text, it means I'm referring to the character or the series whole. The sign of good writing is the need for a "cheat's sheet", though I think the blame this time rests firmly on Konami.]

I chose RK and MM because they're on opposite ends of the retro spectrum, whatever that means. A spectrum doesn't really have opposite ends, ya know, it's a continuous FINE who cares. Rocket Knight is retro game type I: a revival of a long-forgotten (or long-missed) property with intent to continue rather than reboot. Megan Man 9, Double Dragon Neon, and dare-I-say Street Fighter IV fall into this neighborhood. Mutant Mudds is retro type II: an entirely new property created as if in the past, like La-Mulana or Dark Void Zero. And remember, I said it's a spectrum, so games like Bit.Trip fall somewhere in between. Whichever the means, the intention of each type is for you to sit down and feel as though it's 19XX again.

Let's take a look at these means, since the degree to which they're successfully executed becomes the degree to which the game accomplishes the goal of retro (recall: to evoke a specific time, place, and packaging). At first it might seem as though Rocket Knight has the easier task; it's already got characters, setting, and gameplay to draw on. "Isn't any game starring Rocket Knight immediately retro?", you ask. In fact, that franchise nature makes things a lot tougher - see Donkey Kong Country Returns for a game unable to overcome the same baggage. It's not good enough to regurgitate the iconic series elements and say "ta-da", because saying "ta-da" has historically accomplished little to nothing in virtually any situation. At best that constitutes a fan-game - it's too easy to assume that a classic game is classic because of exactly what's in it, that to recreate greatness, all you need are the elements of greatness. The original Rocket Knight Adventures earned its belovation through innovation, uniqueness, and the solidification and expansion of ideas established by the sequels. By varying the core concepts of the original game, the continuing entries reflect on their predecessors and clarify their identities, while also incorporating new ideas into the body of work. This is why even the less-than-fun Rocket Knight Adventures 2 is valuable. Its weird insistence on super-hidden collectibles (basically Chaos Emeralds) calls focus to the element of exploration within the series that is otherwise easy to ignore - after playing RKA2, what seemed like aimlessly open environments in Sparkster become open-world mazes, promising exploratory platforming rather than accidental footholds.

So what we're really looking at isn't how Rocket Knight duplicates RKA and Sparkster(s), but how it presents new means of experience in congruence with the ideals of the older games. Rocket Knight presents the familiar (if you're Golem or I) anthropomorphized possum/pig/wolf world of the series, once again torn asunder (yeah boy) by war between... apparently an entire army vs. Sparkster. Though war has always been the backdrop of the games' stories, this time it's immediate, all-consuming, and epic. This is partially accomplished simply by an increase in resolution - with 1080 eyes to work with, a lot more can be jammed onto the screen, an opportunity Rocket Knight uses to populate the landscape with lively battles between pigs, wolves, and their war machines (sadly for RKA2 fans, the lizardmen do not return - get your fix from Skyrim instead). The choice of environments also keeps Rocket Knight focused - there aren't any detours through giant-musical-instrument-world this time around. Sparkster himself has become a more violent avatar, with more attacks than ever, an emphasis on close range combat, and an overactive jetpack. All of this serves both to recall to us the omnipresent world-at-war atmosphere of the Rocket Knight and to bring it to the fore, providing a new element of focus to go back and rediscover in the classic trilogy.

Mutant Mudds, on the other hand, gets a blank slate to write on. It's emulating a time period - let's say 1990, just for simplicity's sake - and thus can pick and choose from anywhere in the massive berth of game design of that era (or just pull heavily from Super Mario World and Virtual Boy Wario Land). Where Rocket Knight had to prove that there was still something to be done with the series, some way to evolve it creatively, Mudds isn't really out to prove that 1990 can be more than it already was. Instead, it wants to show us how simply fun a game can be without contrivance, how the olden standards remain not just functional, but viable. The success or failure of Mudds doesn't establish it as part of classic canon or prove that it would or would not have been awesome and original had it been released in 1990, rather it says "hey, guy. This old baseline, this still works. So there's nothing stopping you from innovating on top of it."

Someone should point out that I seem to be trivializing Mudds, shrinking its goals so it's easier to declare as successful. Well, that someone should go play the game and then see if they can stand by their contention, because frankly, if you can see any kind of ambition or experimentality in there, you have keener eyes than I (and everyone knows that I have the eyes of an eagle - an eagle which has lazerbeams for eyes. An optometrist told me this. I am not kidding.). The game gives you Firebrand's hover (Gargoyle's Quest), Mega Man's cannon (Mega Man), and drops you straight into the level hub, which is just a room full of doors. There are exactly 100 'coins' and one hidden door in every stage. You have infinite lives/continues and there are no checkpoints. It pretty much says "look, platforms, okay? You know what to do."

The platforming aspect of the game isn't so interesting to discuss, though I will say it works as well as any reviewer might have you believe, if not better. Mudds' true success as retro is in showing us that there are still fun characters to make, even without dialogue, duologue, diatribe, dissension, declamation, double talk - double talk, IT'S ALL TALK. You tell 'em, Adrian Belew. The titular Mudds are an alien species serving the role of Goombas and Koopas, varying in size and appearance corresponding to their function. Sure they're all brown, but I came to affectionately nickname each of them by the time I'd collected all forty water sprites (more specifically, I nicknamed each one "Tim"). The game's protagonist is definitely named Alex or Maximillian, I don't remember which, but he too is a success. Though clearly inspired (consciously or un-) by Earthbound's Jeff, the developers give Aleximillian just enough personality - his dorky, overly enthusiastic wave at the player when the controls go silent, the brief flash of buck teeth as he strolls along, and of course the shorts. The game makes you wish we got more such colorful 8-bit silliness, simply by non-referentially throwing us an example.

No one likes an excessively long post, which is why I decided it would be perfect to end this week of being too busy to write. If you made it this far, your special reward is that I'll remind you that you can demo both of these games for free! And both are available on PC with relatively modest system requirements! So if you're reading this post, you can probably have them downloaded and ready to play by the time you finish reading this post, had I put this paragraph at the beginning!

Let's Play Sonic Adventure (Side A)

So, recently, I've been working on this thing. It's another coop LP with yourself Yourself, only Yourself isn't there.

I see a lot about design in 2D Sonic games (cough), but I haven't come across much on 3D Sonics. I guess that's to be expected, but I think Sonic Adventure deserves a look. Depending on your region, it came out in 1998 or 1999, but it feels like an early 3D platformer. Sonic Adventure fumbles about, seeing what 3D can do for the platforming genre; it just kinda strikes out at any idea that grabs its fancy.

Maybe this speaks to my lack of experience, but I get the feeling most 3D platformers from that era fit in one of two categories: either you have corridors, like Crash Bandicoot, or wide open plains, like Super Mario 64. Actually, I can't think of any other corridor platformers off the top of my head. What was Croc like, again?

[G]Regardless, Sonic Adventure straddles the two, breaking free from corridors without going all-out open-ended. This hardly makes Sonic Adventure unique, but it does make Sonic Adventure a game that I enjoy.

I'll let the videos speak for themselves. This week, I'll post the first half of the LP. [ed: click past the break for the rest of the videos]

Hell Yeah!.... right.

Welcome back to Uninspired Games That Want Desperately to Be the Next Indie Darling, where recently we featured Dust: A Furry's Tale and today we'll touch on another game starring a kind of anthropotato protagonist. I say "kind of" because it's a rabbit-human-skeleton. My personal gratitude goes out to Arkedo Studios for featuring that noblest of creatues, the skeleton, but why fuck it up by giving him rabbit ears? Rabbits are disgusting and foul beasts that neither pay taxes nor contribute to modern society in any meaningful way. Dust is a good point of comparison for this game - as embarrassingly as that one failed to be grandiose, Hell Yeah! fails equally to be comic. Cringe away!

This game is so far beyond edgy that clearly, identifying with the avatar was not on the minds of the developers. Instead they set out to prove they could make a game with no rules attached that broke all of your mother's rules, by taking the exact plot and characters from Disgaea and then calling them "not the exact plot and characters from Disgaea". Dis-G being a tac RPG with a rabid cult following, you'd probably guess it had your average saving the world JRPG androgyny plot that moron Final Tales fans eat up, but it was actually a highly silly game about a stupid and insecure prince of Hell who had explosive penguin servants. Hell Yeah! is a game about a stupid and insecure prince of Hell - with rabbit ears - who has an octopus servant.

Weird - Laharl actually does have bunny ears and they both wear the same red scarf...?

But Hell, it doesn't really matter that it's a complete ripoff because it ain't even remotely funny, and I highly doubt there'll be much debate over that. Or maybe there will be - some people love regurgitated meme humor as thoroughly as others love amnesiac buster swords. Lord knows that if someone laughed at Explosion Man, they'll laugh at anything. Just know that if you find yourself in stitches over the dialogue in Hell Yeah!, then you are a complete idiot. Allow me to halt the hate-boat for a minute and give the game credit for one thing though - the over-the-top fatality micro-game/animations are actually a kick and it's cool that each of the 100 is unique (or I assume so, having played only the demo). They'll remind you of Happy Tree Friends, if you're into that sort of thing (you fucking psychopath).

I don't like to feature games just to pick on them, although I do, so uh, sorry? But I just played this demo and had to comment that it made me a touch sad, yet somehow has gotten more press and reviews (by tenfold) than La-Mulana.

Top Ten Platformers: Revisiting The Top

I'm sure you're sitting there right now, wondering what the best 2D platformer of all time is. You've probably been planted for days, face inches from your monitor and index finger tapping out the drum line to "Shadows in the Rain" on your F5 key, otherwise frozen with anticipation. Your life can't go on without my opinions, I know. Mine can't either. Or I guess it kinda can. My opinions are sort of a burden, a cross I must bear. An Atlas on my shoulders. To always be right, yet know I have to somehow find a way to go on among the ignorant self-righteous charlatans of the world.

Whew. Okay. I'm back. It's Mega Man X. Megan. Mna. X.

10.) Mega Man X

Mega Man X deserves to be called the greatest for you and for me, for time and for time again, because X is a true hero. He's what Joseph Campbell would call a "myth in the making". I could call on my friend Ezio and his never revisited "column" about Joey C. to explain this to you, but I know more than him and he's lazy.

X is a robot fighting against other robots. Campbell considered this to be the first indicator of a "myth in the making": an artificial life-form of equal or superior to human intelligence locked in an eternal, indissoluble conflict with an indefinite beginning and end. Because Capcom will never stop milking the same few intellectual properties, we can definitively say that the X series will never have an end, and since the original Mega Man games strictly precede X and are also ongoing, there will never be a concrete beginning, as each Mega Man is essentially an adjustment of X's backstory. The artificial life aspect is pretty clearly spelled out in the game, when X uses a fake toothbrush and has a helmet instead of hair.

It's not enough to show that X is part of a machine war - so was Terminator and also The Matrix, and neither of them are the greatest platformer of all time, as per Campbell's definition of myth in the making. We need to prove that X is adaptable. Yes, adaptability is a key element of myth, and platforming. If X couldn't turn grey and start throwing boomerangs, no one would remember him. Though his blue-green scheme stuck with him through the worst of times (X6), X was as much a chameleon as Sting Chameleon. Seems like there's a pretty good chance they were brothers. Was this the unspoken twist of the game? X, too, is a chameleon?

That's shocking, but convenient too, because Campbell has it down here that a myth in the making has to have killed his brother. This is the point where many debate Mega Man X; who is X's brother? Is it Zero? Zero dies, but X doesn't kill him. That doesn't make them brothers, even if red and blue are matching colors that look nice with that outfit. X rises from his brother's grave to continue the eternal battle against whatever the hell Sigma is. A dog I think. A dog that rules the world! Or is making plans to. Mega Man X: Kill a dog who has big plans. Sounds bad. I see why they didn't make that the tagline. Never know with the Japanese.

A myth in the making is something that impacts our daily lives as we go to school, work, robot school, robot work, et al. If that's not Mega Man X, I don't know what is. It can be approached a million different ways, but always has the same presence. It's always there, just around the bend, behind that barrier, under the streets, within the river, the river of I'm done