Finishing with 3D plats, vehicle action, and GOTY - Part 2 of 2019 in review

Why doesn't anyone talk about Ape Escape, easily one of the top 10 and probably one of the top 5 3D platformers ever made? Yeah, the sequel is mush (I didn't bother continuing onto Ape Escape 3), but the original's tight focus on dual analog mechanics and evolution of collectibles into enemies with unique behavior paves a path for 3D action that was never followed up. Comparing this to Banjo-Kazooie (where I made the 100% clear with the assistance of the unimpeachable WarioFan63) is like comparing homemade ravioli in lamb ragu to a cold can of spaghetti-Os. The sixth console generation relegated the right analog stick entirely to camera control; Ape Escape posits a world that didn't need to be that way. Full-on dual-analog action games are something to consider for the future. (Keep in mind that the greatest 3D platformer series of all time, Super Mario, has always gotten by just fine without a camera stick). Other major 3D platformers cleaned up were Spyro (very solid), de Blob 2 (de Blob 2 long), Jumping Flash! 2 (identical to the first), and Psychonauts (not my thing). There's a ranking of the all-time top fifty 3D platformers coming sometime in the new year. And shout-out to Candleman, an awesome indie game from China doing something absolutely no one else in 2019 is doing - being a 3D plat that isn't a Banjo-Kazooie fangame.

To return to Psychonauts for a moment, I've added a new category to my table - forfeited games. Ones which will take too much effort to finish, or offer so little new information, that they just aren't worth wasting more time upon. Some of this year's forfeits were games that had been sitting on the list for years untouched - Axiom Verge and Popful Mail, both taken on only as part of the Commune - and the other three fill me with such utter disdain that they didn't seem worth the mood penalty - Psychonauts, Battalion Wars, and Rayman. Still, I'm reserving forfeits for games 1.) that have been half-cleared 2.) that I played at the behest of others, and 3.) that I severely dislike. It's a last resort.

Racing, flying, and all that great vehicle shit - these are the games I live for these days. Birds of Steel should've been the game of the year, as I finally wrapped my head around energy fighting and how to use a plane's traits to guide strategy (best represented by figuring out why everyone likes the Corsair so much - you don't fly it like a Spitfire). I knocked out the first three Aces Combat in what must've been January, since they seem such a distant memory. We got as close as we're going to get to a new Armored Core game in 2019 with Daemon X Machina - though I don't like the idea of using loot for tuning and the framerate can be a bit slow, it otherwise provides a great weapon set almost worthy of the almighty Custom Robo. Rogue Squadron on Steam was fun to revisit, more of an on-rails style Star Fox game thanks to the heavy use of linear canyon design, though it's ostensibly free-roaming. And the Commune played Pilotwings, ever the meditative experience.

GRID Autosport was my first real go at a racing sim - the previous two Codemasters games I played are the simcade ones, and though I love them quite a bit, Autosport clearly is operating on a far more nuanced level, showcasing that modern racing is really about how to use the brake. An important technique I picked up along the way is using an analog stick for acceleration/braking, which (for my hands at least) offers a finer level of control than analog triggers. I guess you could also call this the year of the right analog stick. I finished off the EAD racing line with F-Zero and Stunt Racing FX on the Nintendo Switch SNES Online, the former an unending frustration and the latter a treat that really deserves the Sega Ages treatment (as do all the Super FX games). Once I figured out how to driftcelerate I was also able to clear the hard modes of F-Zero X, a weird detail that makes me slightly less confident in calling it EAD's best.

But GOATY was not Birds of Steel, nor any of these others, but a game which is much narrower, a game with level design so tightly tuned that it is almost indistinguishable from the mechanical design, with dynamics worthy of any arcade-style action game, yet bounded such that they never overwhelm the universal technique driving the entire experience, none other than Virtua Racing. Specifically the Sega Ages variant, which takes a design that was perfect in its original form and upgrades the presentation not to match modern standards, but to let that design shine through all the more clearly. M2 didn't upgrade the game, they did something even better - stripped out all the downgrades, be they draw distance, framerate, or price. Around October I was thinking I'd pick Sega Ages Outrun for doing basically the same thing, in that case with a game I never liked to begin with and was finally for the first time able to grasp (also thanks to some graphing I did that makes me think I should be applying mathematical methods to game decoding more frequently). But the subsequent 120 hours of V.R. can't be ignored.

Some epochal FPSs slipped in there (Turok: DH and DOOM 3) and some not so epochal (Quake 4 and Battlefield Bad Company 2).

Gradii, Mega Man reboots, and 2D action - Part 1 of 2019 in review

In the year of our lord 2019 I completed 43 games, I believe exactly the same total as 2018. I'm not going to talk about the "games started" metric anymore - I've been trying that out a while and I just don't think it adds any useful information. The theme of this year was cleanup: cleaning up the list one chunk at a time.

First the co-op plays - Golem and I started the year on Hitman 2, the rare title so utterly useless we abandoned it halfway through - a guess-what-I'm-thinking adventure/strategy game that doesn't even have the courtesy to tell you when you guessed right. Adventure games use locks and keys to direct progression, strategy games use numerical metrics, Hitman 2 has neither. It's a completely unordered mess, a guess-if-you-guessed-what-I'm-thinking game. Things took a turn for the better with Mega Man Maverick Hunter X, the PSP remake of Mega Man X. The core gameplay of the best Mega Man is hard to ruin, though the gigantic new weapon set is the type of playground I'd love at age 12 but lacks the challenge I now prefer. The second Mega Man reboot of the year was Mega Man 11, the first since X2 to provide a decent contest for best in the series. The superhoned buster weapons and tightly tuned boss fights make this the first I genuinely want to call a run-and-gun (which is to say, a game more about bullets and aiming than about gravity and timing). Mega Man Legends was the third of the set, a strangely orthogonal leap for the series that is good at rivaling Zelda for a Playstation game, but still not great at rivaling Zelda. The element design is high quality, but Golem would say it's badly proportioned (too many weapons and too few enemies), and I'd say it's lacking in structure. Some sense of what will comprise a session is doubly important with content that demands experimentation (Volnutt's arsenal) - the player wants to be able to answer "when should I try this out?", "when should I switch?", and "when am I going to get a new one?".

I'm burying the lede. The largest and best part of our sessions in 2019 were the co-op 1CCs, first of Bio-Hazard Battle and then Gradius Gaiden (links to replays). BHB is a real gem of concrete design, the kind of game that looks and sounds like nothing around it, even if the shooting gameplay is fairly simple. Absolutely worth picking up a Genesis collection to try out. (Golem thought it was lame, but he's blind and deaf and plays games by smell alone). Gradius Gaiden was like learning a beautiful dance; a beautiful dance that you perform with a man. Truth be told, it was probably the instant startback offered by co-op mode (like Life Force) that made this so much more approachable and enjoyable than other Gradii. I'll reserve any more comment on Gaiden, as we're presently working on a commentary track for the game that'll be posted here and on Golem's Youtube when complete.

Onto solo clears - for shmups proper it was a light year, with just a few runs of the unspeakably easy Deathsmiles II X and a closeout of the NES Gradius. It's hard to say I've completed the Deathsmiles games, as I enjoy their scoring systems so much that I'd like to eventually play competitively. But my BFS mind won't let me settle down til I've cleared the majority of the Cave catalog, and that's a long way to go. Gradius was a 1LC mostly because there's simply no other way to play. Golem says hit points are a good thing for a shooter, and it took me clearing Gradius to understand why I've never felt the same. Gradation of punishment makes sense, but the problem with the shield system present throughout the series is that it absorbs an aribtrary number of hits not one-to-one with mistakes - or mistakes are judged at a much finer level than my ability to register - so punishment isn't graded by the severity of the mistake, but largely at random. That's complicated even further by the variable speed, which can carry you through more bullets for the same input if it's set higher. That is to say, it's very easy to make a single mistake (say, dodging a bullet in the wrong direction) and take three hits, and then later to make the same mistake and take only one hit, or none at all. This is not only poor feedback, it also undermines planning for errors. If you know there's an area you're likely to make errors, but don't know how harshly those errors will be punished, how do you use the power-up system to plan for that? I don't know, so beating Gradius required a zero tolerance approach. Setting that aside, it has good, clear level themes, and runs exactly the right length for a shooter (~20-30 minutes).

The more difficult classic clears I put aside were in the Contra Anniversary Collection and the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. With Hard Corps available for the first time digitally I had to 1CC that, and NES Contra followed. Though I wouldn't tag them with the 1CC label, I also made it through Belmont's Revenge and Kid Dracula for the first time, and more importantly, the white whale is dead! Castlevania III haunts my conscience no longer. (Then I made it about halfway through Lament of Innocence and kind of lost interest, it's a boring one. I'll be back to it later. It's uncomfortable to admit that that was the closest I came to a beat-em-up clear all year). While we're still talking classic 2D, I ran the original Klonoa - one of the all-time greats - and 100%ed New Super Mario Wii U Luigi Bros. Deluxe.

Tomorrow: the 3D lineup from the past year.

2018: The worst year yet? in video games?

I started 41 new games this year and finished 43. As the uneven numbers suggest, among the 43 completed were quite a few being cleaned up from previous years, and among the 41 started, many remain in progress. The ratio remains on track from the past couple years*, demonstrating that I'm doing a good job keeping to my one-in/one-out rule. Given that the list is expanding more slowly now, I was hoping to finish at a higher advantage, but a couple factors kept the completion total in check.

First is that I binged on a lot of Switch arcade games. I'm guessing I bought nearly 20 NeoGeo / Arcade Archives titles over the spring and summer and finished nearly none of them. Arcade games are arcade games - good for repeated 10-20 minute bursts, but unlike platformers, you can't count on the brute force Arino-clear.

Speaking of sidescrolling platformers, I barely touched the staple genre this year, less because of disinterest than because the well is drying up. Sonic Mania led to a cleanup on aisle Chaos Emerald, and Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze was fantastic, but I really didn't have much else to pick from. A dozen years and dozens of games later, I've whittled Wii's Virtual Console down to scraps, with remaining options the caliber of New Adventure Island and Kirby's Dream Land 3. And Rayman, over on PS3. Unless the contemporary trend of adventure-platformers abates or I find new patience with PC emulators, this looks to be the start of a long winter. A real shame - for many years there's been no safer bet than grabbing a random 16-bit sidescroller on a Saturday night and playing til the credits roll or the sun rises.

Run-and-guns at least seem to have retained some popular support beyond the plague of 'roguelite' and 'metroidvania', and the aforementioned arcade libraries are only helping. Beyond the many hours of Super C loops, Alien Soldier, Bleed, and (the final release version of) 20XX were among those I finished, with a few more newly underway. Mega Man X7 and X8 were more... rewarding... than expected, enough so that I intend to revisit both on the re-anniversary collection. 3D platformers provided plenty of substance too, with Rayman Revolution being the highlight, Rayman 3 being the lowlight, Jak & Spyro as pleasant surprises and Jak II an ill-forgotten curse. Sonic and the Black Knight happened too, and like X7, doesn't really deserve its awful reputation.

But the main story of the year is of course the shift in taste that has left me spending the majority of my time with racing games and shmups. I've always enjoyed both on a seasonal basis, but 2018 was an endless chain of both genres in parallel (though Raiden V did aggravate me off of shmups for a couple months). Nine 1CCs nearly doubled my lifetime total, and I'm still hoping to make Raiden IV the tenth before the new year. Deathsmiles was a clear favorite, though Axelay is close behind and only Forgotten Worlds caused any pain (well - any bad pain. All shmupping is pain). This was the other big detractor from the ratio - the length of shmups is hard to predict, and for each of the nine I beat, I started another, nearly none of which got finished (goddamn Ikaruga). Put a lot of hours into Mushi-F without much to show, but Akai Katana won't last much longer.

Fuel may be the best driving game and the best open-world game I've ever played, combining a huge world of Skyrim-like terrain with simulation-nuanced physics and as wide a range of vehicles as can be fitted with tires. The races are fucking hard and the landscape is complex, complicated further by the free-range navigation imported from the continuous overworld. It's hard to express how many light-years more interesting this is than something as precious and decompressed as GTAV, but it's buggy, doesn't have side-quests, and the netcode was weak (forget the hundred hours of single-player gameplay), so it tanked in ratings and sales. Burnout 3, Hydro Thunder Hurricane, and ExciteTruck provided some arcade counterpoints, though Burnout got hairy at points with insane AI and arbitrary traffic creating challenges too reflex-dependent to be especially satisfying - still, it's close enough to working that three times out of five you can see the great game underneath. It'll be interesting to check out Paradise. Crazy Taxi snuck in there too, but I wasn't feeling the alien technical maneuvers that seem fundamentally cabinet-bound. Ultimately I've wrapped back around to Codemasters with GRID 2, strapping the mechanical range and dynamism of Fuel to more traditional level design. So far that's a go.

A few action-adventures and RPGS filled the adrenaline troughs, but not many made the clear list. It did feel good to finally retire Darksiders II after many years of prolongation, and my feet are starting to sink into the mud and muck of Ys VIII. Yakuza 3 is a really neat River City Ransom sequel which, unexpectedly for a beat-em-up, would probably win story-of-the-year if I'd finished it (actually, no, Wolf Among Us). 60 hours into Final Fantasy VII I am STILL on disc 1. OCD and materia are a dangerous mix.

That's about it for the year. Greg and I partner-played six games, all distinctly unnotable: Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 6, Munch's Oddysee, Rayman 3, Pikmin 2, and Metal Gear 2. The dual themes of the series were A.) solid foundations spoiled by overfocusing on one stupid element (dungeons in Pikmin, combat in Rayman, etc.) and B.) going on for way longer than necessary. I pretty much disliked all of them, though RE2 is more boring than bad, Munch is a promising alpha, and RE6 was shallow incredibly trashy eye-rolling fun. I mean RE6 was definitely the best one. That's how good a collection of games we're talking about.

* 2015: 74/54, +20
* 2016: 55/55, +0 (I may have tracked 'started' differently for 2016)
* 2017: 60/59, +1

What I'm Playing, December '14

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

December just goes to show that two weeks off is a lot of time to work on video games. People always act like it's weird or bad to take off work to do the thing I enjoy most in life: stay at home, sleep in, relax, play video games, and watch movies. Like somehow it's lazy of me to want to do those things, but going to the beach to get drunk for a week is this grand achievement. Sorry I enjoy things that you don't, other people. Sorry! Bye bye!

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing

Mighty Final Fight (NES / 3DS VC)

This kind of dumb game brings Final Fight to your NES in a package that is admittedly more complete than the SNES port (it has all 3 characters but still no 2-player). There are also some Final Fight 3-ish special moves that I actually barely figured out and definitely didn't need to easily beat the game. My opinion on Final Fight and Capcom beat-em-ups has always been that they're overly simple and boring. Mighty Final Fight fits that generalization, but being a more condensed game at least presents a clear vision of you know what I'm just going to do a Weekly Beat-Em-Up on this. I like doing those.

Ultimate NES Remix (3DS VC)

Probably definitely shouldn't have bought this one. The premise of challenges built into NES games I've already played isn't that enticing. Then again, I loved indiezero's Retro Game Challenge and people on the Internet said "this is RGC but for real!" Also, the idea of remix stages which trade elements between games - like playing as Link in Donkey Kong! - seemed pretty neat.

While the game is addictive enough to beat, the content isn't nearly as complete as a comparison to Retro Game Challenge suggests. Where Challenge presented eight complete games and open-solution challenges within them ("beat Stage 1 without dying", "collect 1000 gold pieces"), Remix is more like WarioWare, where you are dropped arbitrarily into a situation and given an immediate goal ("kill all three Goombas on screen", "grab the 1UP before it falls"). In both cases the challenges are used to teach the player about the game, but RGC teaches the player goals and lets them learn the means, while Remix explicitly explains mechanics and tasks. This is what makes it a minigame collection while RGC was an anthology.

The game works with that premise, but is ultimately diminished by the lack of originality in the remix stages. While a few transplant elements from one game to another (play as SMB2 Peach in Lost Levels or play stage 1-1 of SMB in SMB3), most just add arbitrary restrictions that don't qualify as remixing so much as adding difficulty. For instance, decreasing the sight radius in SMB3 or giving Glass Joe a one-hit-KO punch in Punch-Out!!. There is way too much repetition in the remixes - considering there are only 50 such stages (75 if you count the bonus stages) and 16 games to work with, you'd expect each to be represented a couple times. Yet the vast majority of the remixes concentrate on the Mario games, with almost no creative takes on Kid Icarus, Excitebike, Kirby's Adventure, or half the other included titles. I realize Mario is the fan-favorite, but what's the point of reviving all these other games if you aren't going to give them any attention? The Mario games are the ones everyone's already played a million times (and that stand alone best) - Kid Icarus and Metroid for instance benefit much more from remixing.

Games Finished

Maximo: Ghosts to Glory (PS2)

The PS2 era sorta-Ghosts 'n Goblins game that was handled by Capcom's Western division. Check out the Platformer of the Month feature for more coverage.

Secret of Mana (SNES / Wii VC)

Secret of Mana belongs to an elite club of games that I've done a complete 180 on, from unmitigated dismissal to unmitigated fandom (Wonder Boy 3 and Max Payne 3 are two others I can think of right now). Mana is a weird game, built around a mixed real-time/turn-based combat system, AI companions, and usage-based leveling. The trick, as I've written before, is taking it in context of WRPGs rather than JRPGs. This isn't a slow-paced action game. It's a turn-based game with real-time positioning.

Getting the dragon and free open-world travel makes a big difference too. The game starts off with a weirdly cumbersome map - it's mostly linear, but there are islands you need to jump between, which requires finding the right cannon to take you where you need to go. Not a huge deal until you set the game aside for five months and come back without any idea how to get around or sane world structure to help. The dragon opens things up, making it easier to revisit areas and allowing quite a bit of non-linear exploration.

Maybe I fixate more on how I've come to like Mana than why I like it because the latter answer is simple. 1.) It has an incredible soundtrack. 2.) Character-building is entirely player-determined - you not only pick your fights, but pick which weapons/magic to use and in turn upgrade. 3.) Real-time combat provides strategic non-deterministic positioning - i.e. you can change the way a fight goes just by standing in a different place. 4.) Good boss fights that require unique puzzle-solving (e.g. the wall that heals itself and closes in on you). 5.) Minimal story.

Ninja Gaiden (NES / Wii VC)

Part of the Immaculate Conception of NES platformers, Ninja Gaiden alongside Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man 2, Castlevania, and Super C defined what it meant to be an action game in the late 1980s. Though they're all challenging in their own right, Ninja Gaiden is the one best known for insane difficulty. So perhaps it's fitting that it took me longer to beat than any other game I've ever played - yes, I've been working on Ninja Gaiden for approximately 20 years now, since I first got it on NES around age 6.

That being the case, I was kinda surprised that I knocked it out in a single sitting in just a couple hours. If ever I was led to suspect my new ADD meds are making me better at video games, this seems like proof.

Anyway, this is one of my higher ranked NES games, though I've never pretended to like NES games all that much. This is just one game that has satisfying action AND cool art AND great music.

Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (NES / Wii VC)

This one increases the complexity of the level design with gimmicks, and of enemies with tracking behaviors, making for a more refined, but perhaps less distinguished version of its predecessor. It was actually the first one I beat - I picked it up as a reprieve from Ninja Gaiden II '08 and before I knew it was facing off against the final boss. Maybe it's familiarity, but this one also feels like it has the smoothest difficulty curve in the series. And the best music. But that ninja shadow gimmick is lame.

Actually against bosses the shadows are pretty cool to manipulate tactically. It's just in levels that they're pointless.

Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (NES / Wii VC)

The least popular of the original trilogy, this one was hurt mostly by history. After the departure of the creative lead on the previous two games, the former art director took over. I don't know what that means, but what resulted was a game that is thematically the tightest but poorly balanced. It also feels a lot more flat and linear than the previous two, even if it makes solid use of unique level elements. The enemy design feels like a step down from 2, heavily featuring stationary turrets that slow the game's pace.

Worst of all Ninja Gaiden III had a rough localization process. See, as originally developed, the game is clearly the easiest of the three. It is much more linear and has a password system, lots of 1-ups, and gracious power-ups placement. This original Japanese version is what I played. The localization unit felt the game was too easy for a series known for sadistic difficulty - honestly, I agree - but they went too far in ramping up the challenge. Limited continues is an obnoxious twist that Ninja Gaiden had never needed before. Piled on top of way more enemies and double damage rates, they ensure the North American edition is a serious chore.

Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)

What a delight this was. I genuinely do not understand why this game was ill-received or how reviewers had the audacity to call it redundant. Where Ninja Gaiden '04 is an action adventure that mixes Prince of Persia platforming with Zelda mazes and Devil May Cry beating them up, Ninja Gaiden II is pure murder action. It's more intense for it, and certainly harder to take in long sessions, but if it's fast-paced combat you like, this is the one to go for. Haven't put much time into hard (Mentor) mode yet, but if this isn't a new classic, I'm not Sammy Davis Jr., and I don't even know who that is.

I have more to say about Ninja Gaiden II, but I'll save it for the game of the year awards....

Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox / Xbox Originals)

Alright truth time. I beat this one many years back, but I got so caught up in Ninja Gaiden Christmas Fever that I felt like I had to blow through it again. So, while technically this does not belong on this list, I just wanted to see a fifth Ninja Gaiden. It's an addiction, you know?

Black remains it's totally own awesome thing. It's slow and methodical, simple with inputs and weapons, and ultimately a game that is all about the enemies. NGII gets so bogus fast that it's hard to keep track of individuals so much as group tendencies, and the game's preference for large homogeneous groups emphasizes that. Black, by comparison, is nearly a fighting game. You need to know every move from every enemy and how to respond accordingly. Flying Swallow the military guy when he reloads? Always counter claw fiends as soon as they materialize? Izuna Drop, Izuna Drop, Izuna Drop? It seems a bit rigid, but enemy movement is so dynamic and the environments so varied that learning techniques gives way to adapting them to spacing.

It's also extremely cool that the game introduces new enemies for higher difficulties and Mission Mode - and I don't just mean more powerful palette swaps, I mean entirely new enemies. The speed also picks up as things get harder - I think I'd say the first stage of Hard mode is paced comparably to the first stage of NGII normal (Warrior) mode.

Games Started

Superhero League of Hoboken (MSDOS)

This is sort of a point-and-click-adventure-meets-RPG, but really it's just an RPG with a point-and-click interface. It's interesting to see a game with finite random battles (win enough and they go away), and I definitely like that there are no healing spells or items. I could really get into this game... if it wasn't called Superhero League of Hoboken. Unfortunately the 90s comic book humor really doesn't work for me here any better than in Comix Zone. It's occasionally funny, but generally just plain ugly.

If you think this image is funny, you will love this game.

One and Done

Bonk 3: Bonk's Big Adventure (Turbografx-16 / Wii VC)

Was doing a Let's Play of this, probably should save my commentary for the video. It's alright, not the worst Bonk I've played and not the best. Bonk just isn't that great a series. It seems pretty decent when it's been half a decade since I seriously played a Mario game, but then I play Super Mario Bros. 2 or New Super Mario Bros. Wii for 20 minutes and realize it's not. I did beat it, though not very impressively.

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.

What I'm Playing, October '14

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

Well my initial push to finish games is looking pretty good.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Xbox 360)

That took all of five days. It's not the 8-hour playtime that makes Revengeance feel short, it's the swift pull-up halfway through where the earlier multi-tiered levels give way to reused environments, redundant stealth encounters, and sorta insulting stage numbering (one short stage doesn't have a boss, then the next is just a boss, etc.). You basically get 3 full and 4 quarter-stages. Still, I love the action here - it's a Japanese assimilation of the stealth alternating counter-driven style of popular Western games like Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed. The weird pacing just makes higher difficulty replays awkward, with the shockingly early climax leaving little to challenge your skills on the back end.

This is the peak of the game's difficulty. It is the Stage 3 boss. In a 7-stage game.

Kid Klown in Crazy Chase (SNES)

This one was done for the already-published Platformer of the Month Club, enjoy.

Games Finished:

Bayonetta (Xbox 360)

Speaking of weird endgame pacing. Bayonetta becomes wildly indulgent in the final act, giving too much time to variety stages (both Space Harrier and Motorcycle Madness), redundant boss reduxes, and fake-out endings. The main thing I like about this game is the bread and butter combat, but for the last two to three hours there basically isn't any. It doesn't help that (at least in Normal mode) bosses are excruciatingly easy, but still tediously long. Recently I've been starting action games on hard mode because why fuck around, but Bayonetta sadly does not permit that and is far, far too easy for any but the most novice players (professional reviewers) on Normal.

In also hurts that the game is a bit churlish with rewarding performance, as the only thing holding me back from platinum level rankings was that I didn't seek out the hidden sub-stages and thus had a bunch of zeroes in my overall score. Here's a bit of personal philosophy: action games should not have hidden sub-stages. Ever. That is explicitly, shamefully bad design.

Bayonetta had some uniquely paced combat, getting almost turn-based with its reliance on time-slowing dodges, so I could see myself playing it again. Still, it's very sandboxy and I think you'd have to be an idiot to rank it with the good stuff like Ninja Gaiden Black and Double Dragon 2.

Crashmo (Nintendo 3DS eShop)

I kinda can't believe I beat this. Technically there are still 20 or so bonus stages to go, but I got the all-important credit roll so I'm happy to call it done. The thing that kept Crashmo alive late-game was the introduction of gigantic puzzles with dozens of pieces that allowed free-form solutions. They probably rank as much easier than the more rigid challenges (at least for me they were), but they were a lot more rewarding to play, allowing me to prove I had learned and could reapply the many specific techniques developed through the game's course.

Street Fighter 2010 (NES / 3DS VC)

Okay, the last level here was insane. Most stages in this game give you 120 seconds to kill one boss. With the same time limit, this level featured three reused (but now harder) bosses and two totally new ones. That's 20 seconds a boss, and these guys have strict patterns that only leave them vulnerable in certain windows. I really had no choice but to cheese it with save states. Oh well. Lotta good bosses here, you can see the Capcom house-style that permeates Mega Man X and Gargoyle's Quest as well.

Super Mario 64 (N64 / Wii VC)

I have a bit of an OCD problem with Super Mario 64. I am really uncomfortable with leaving stars behind, so I end up 100%ing every world before moving on, which leads to a lot of time wasted on levels I don't really like. Still, this game is goddamn genius no matter which way you slice. Level greats include Whomp's Fortress, Lava Lava Lake, Hazy Hazy Maze Cave, Dire Dire Docks, Pirate Bay's Cavern, and Tock Tock Clock. Anti-favorites include: Shifting Shifting Sand Land, Snowman Blowman Land, Tiny Tiny Big World, and Boo House.

The improved resolution Virtual Console port proves that SM64 still looks fantastic

God of War (PS2)

Even back when it was the second or third modern melee action game I'd ever played, I really did not care for God of War. It has these insanely unwelcome "adventure" parts that usually involve mandatory backtracking or puzzles, the camera angles are very annoying (namely because the movement controls are camera-relative), and the combat is soooo repetitive. Sure, it feels nice and squishy, but that only gets you so far after battle #1000 with the same three enemy types and the same two combos that always defeat them. The game sorta tries to find some identity by spreading battles across different arena types (moving floors, small platforms, tiers) but it makes annoying choices that tend to backfire.

Games Started:

The Evil Within (Xbox 360)

Check up on my chapterly coverage for which I am being paid by Capcom to make as many Resident Evil 4 comparisons as humanly possible. In my defense, I see every game through the lens of Resident Evil 4. Or Mega Man X or Ogre Battle 64, as genre applies.

Wave Race 64 (N64 / Wii VC)

The international Commune Podcast game du jour for November, Wave Race is heavy on the waves and light on the races. I enjoy the wave-handling mechanics a lot, it's just that the sparse course selection and 1v1 limitation pretty heavily restrict this as a multiplayer alternative. Compared to this, it's no surprise that the de facto party racer for the eternally ripe N64 has become Star Wars Episode I Racer.

One and Done:

Hyrule Warriors (Wii U)

Just got this for the sake of it, it feels insanely well-polished - at least compared to the "budget" feel common to Dynasty Warrior games. I'll come back and play it for real sometime in the future.

The Firemen (SNES)

Another podcaster, this is a pretty easy top-down shooter that mixes in a little exploration and a timer. It's fun but it is hard to count it as a game-in-progress when the only thing holding me back from beating it is I just haven't played it a second time.

What I'm Playing, September '14

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

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

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

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

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Azure Striker Gunvolt (Nintendo 3DS)

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

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

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

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

Devil May Cry (PS2)

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

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

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

Games Finished:

Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo 3DS)

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

Games Started:

Dark Cloud 2 (PS2)

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

One and Done:

Wizards and Warriors 3 (NES)

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

Super Smash Bros. Demo (3DS)

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

What I'm Playing, June '14, July '14, August '14

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

Annnnnnd here's the big one. I completely failed to track all summer, so I'm just shoving em all in. I probably forgot a couple but there's almost no way for you to tell. We've got one more to go before we're back on schedule, and that's September, which'll be up later this week.

Special Recognition for Starting and Finishing:

Fatal Labyrinth (Sega Genesis / Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection)

A Genesis roguelike that cuts to the chase and is a great starting point for the genre, being fairly easy but suitably tactical and providing crutches like checkpoints every five floors.

Super Bonk 2 (Super Famicom, Japan only)

An okay platformer that doesn't utilize its ideas well and basically plays like a more linear Bonk - which is enjoyable enough for a run.

Shovel Knight (Nintendo 3DS)

Beat this largely to prove to myself that it was just as derivative and boring as suspected.

Games Finished:

Crimson Alliance (XBLA)

While easily categorized next to similar-looking hack-and-slashes and Gauntlet-riffs, the careful balance of the combat here and emphasis on defense make for better comparison to the handheld Castlevanias.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North (Xbox 360)

Very nice combo action game with solid if simple brawler enemy design and a satisfying balance between shooting and slashing.

Phantasy Star IV (Sega Genesis / Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection)

I've pretty much already said my piece on this game, it was everything an RPG should be and never felt like a waste of time.

Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360)

For a while this delivers all the (now easier) thrills its recycled RE4 mechanics promise, but the last act turns into a cover shooter that neither the developers nor the engine were able to manage (plus a constant AI partner as dumb as Sheva is catastrophically annoying).

Games Started:

Ys Book I & II (Turbo CD)

This is the kind of game that proves how much impact a soundtrack can convey - flat though the tale is on paper, it delivers an emotional punch just because Koshiro and Nagata's music is so gorgeous.

Dungeon Siege III (Xbox 360)

Nice tweener hack-and-slash with fun crowd combat that doesn't rely on loot or grind/questing.

bit Generations: SoundVoyager (GBA)

A simple all-audio game, this functions more as a statement on the potential of sound-only gameplay than it does as a uniquely compelling experience.

Lost Planet (Xbox 360)

The potential for monster-shooters remains high and an aspiration of Capcom's, but they missed the mark in this one that may as well be titled Space Invaders '06.

Dragon's Dogma (Xbox 360)

Very very junky combat that is technically incompetent and reliant on a brutally archaic game structure that overall makes a complete mockery of its premise of high action meets high role-playing, something accomplished perfectly well in, for instance, The Witcher 2. I don't normally go out of my way to dislike a game, but Dragon's Dogma is abysmal and the single worst conceived/executed professional game I have played in years. For every stroke of genius like Vanquish that makes me wish Japanese developers would spread their genre wings, there's a Dragon's Dogma to show some can't handle it.

Adventures of Lolo (NES)

Hey if Zelda takes too long to get around to block puzzles for you, this has got plenty, and they're tricky enough if you like that stuff.

Mega Man Xtreme 2 (GBC / 3DS VC)

A just okay adaptation of Mega Mans X2 and X3 that mostly falters due to the already bad level design of X3 and an ill-fitting appropriation of X4's Zero. 

Birds of Steel (Xbox 360)

Haven't played enough simulators to know where this lies on the spectrum but if this is what they're like then hey I'm on board because the game makes just doing turns and loops so satisfying.

Resident Evil 6 (Xbox 360)

This is the third terrible Capcom 360 game I played in this interval - it takes that atrocious last third of RE5 and just runs with it, making for one of the most unpleasant unwieldy shooters brains can imagine.

Vexx (GCN)

Though late to the Super Mario 64 party, Vexx provides nice open environments that take advantage of sixth generation hardware when most platformers had moved on to be whatever in the dumb hell Jak & Daxter & Ratchet & Clank are.

Vexx was suitably angry for the era at least

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (SNES / Wii VC)

A surprisingly dynamic game that at least as far as I've played keeps things mixed up in the level arena even if the basic mechanics are a bit stuffy.

Charlie Murder (XBLA)
Pretty pointless and toothless action RPG in the form of a neo-beat-em-up, approaching zero gameplay to be found.

Wolfenstein: New Order (Xbox 360)

Your basic post-Half-Life 2 FPS with emphasis on run-and-gun rather than digging in, it's still surprisingly strategic and largely maintains the medium high standard the series is known for.

Nazo no Murasame Jou (NES / 3DS VC)

A version of Zelda where instead of all those stupid boring puzzles and mazes you get to fight crazy swarms of enemies.

Space Harrier 2 (Sega Genesis / Wii VC)

This is Greg L.'s favorite game ever and I am starting to get into it, even though I still find the mechanics of Space Harrier explicably hard to manage (see entry for 3D Space Harrier).

Legendary Axe II (Turbografx-16)

For side-scrolling action I actually like this better than Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts or Super Castlevania IV - it's more enemy focused than the former and faster than the latter, even if it's not as diverse as either.

It's the H.R. Giger reincarnation of the California Raisins!

What I'm Playing, May '14

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

More catch-up on unfinished posts. Again, the ones with long summaries I actually wrote back in May and the others will just get a sentence. Never gonna get these done if I keep giving every game a huge essay. Next up is the summer list. 

Games Finished (that never had a Started entry):

Mega Man V (Game Boy / 3DS VC)

Really like the execution of level themes in this game and its downplaying of gimmicks in favor of small unique moments.

Mega Man Xtreme (Game Boy Color / 3DS VC)

The Game Boy Megas Man were really all over the place. Dr. Wily's Revenge is a semi-port of Mega Man that retools the level design, Mega Man V is 100% original, and now there's Mega Man Xtreme, a mixed port of X and X2. Four stages are drawn from each game and strictly recreated here, so while the level design remains brilliant because the first two X games are, there's also no need to play this game if you have access to the SNES titles (which, if you own a SNES, PS2, Gamecube, Wii, or Wii U, you do). There are a few things that set Xtreme apart as distinctly worse: 1.) Select is the dash button, which is really pretty awful on a 3DS, 2.) the gameplay is a little crunched down to fit the smaller screen (enemies missing here and there), 3.) the level selection doesn't cohere since it was taken from two different games, 4.) most of the collectibles are gone and 5.) when you charge your gun (aka all the time) the lead guitar track cuts out of the music, making this the rhythm-only version of the X/X2 soundtrack.

Spec Ops: The Line (Xbox 360)

Spec Ops: The Pretty Good Story about PTSD That Wasn't as Much an Adaptation of Heart of Darkness as People / The Game Itself Said It Was. And would have been more effective with less shooting, to be completely honest. If it's supposed to be mind-numbing and emotionally dulling, mission accomplished, but we were there by the halfway point.

Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires (Xbox 360)

The Dynasty Warriors: Empires games are a sub-series all their own, having run for five or six games now (they started at 3). They use the same engine as their main series counterparts but instead of focusing on character variety and bosses, they shift the focus to tactics. It seems a little silly that at this point "Empires" isn't just a mode in the main games, since I can't imagine them having separate audiences. Just a cheap move by Koei to inflate sales from their die-hard fans.

Anyway, worth an extra purchase or not, DW6: Empires is a solid game. Like in DWG3, the player is still conquering territories by grinding through troops at enemy bases, but enemy commanders don't play as big a role in the action, functioning as HP sinks more than bosses. The movesets are extremely basic, allowing room for tactics to take over as the key gameplay element. Each map is wide open and contains almost a dozen bases and enemy armies, meaning there are far more critical points to the battle. Because the enemies are so plentiful and widespread, the player needs to take advantage of their ability to pause the game and issue attack and defense orders to allies. The game feels more along the lines of Battalion Wars or Battlestations than pure action, as winning requires the full utilization of the player force.

The strategic over-map (familiar to anyone who's romanced the three kingdoms) is more a stage select than anything, offering far too few options to make for real macro-strategy. Still, Empires seems to provide a nice middle ground between the tough arena fighting of the main series and pure turn-based tactics.

Games Started:

Tomb Raider (Xbox 360)

Basically the same gameplay style as Resident Evil 5, this shines when it breaks into exploration of broad climbforming hubs, but does so too infrequently and bores with it's scripted mini-game segments.

Lone Survivor (PC / Steam)

If you've ever said to yourself, "what would happen if I made Resident Evil into a sidescrolling pixelated thing and gave the player character the ravenous hunger of Ultima VII's Avatar", then you've played, sealed, and delivered Lone Survivor. See you're in this post-apocalyptic world and there are zombies and you can only shoot in three directions so to get headshots you gotta get real close but worse than ammo scarcity is food scarcity and also your little dude is going insane (maybe? or is the world going insane?!) so you're forced to trek out into the wilderness and keep moving to keep fed. So maybe it's like Don't Starve meets Eternal Darkness. There's some neat mystery going on (that of course as all insanity-based games threatens to get overindulgent) and a bit of old-timey adventuring of the go-find-the-scissors-to-cut-through-the-skin-wall variety. It's definitely thrilling to duck through a dark passage and have no clue where in time or space it may lead. I generally like the tiny graphics, as it reminds me that part of the horror of older games was the power of imagination. The old rule is that what you don't see is scariest, but I'd say that what you can only kinda-sorta half make out is even scarier. Trying to figure out what the fuck I'm even looking at can get some twisted possibilities running through my head and be even stranger than the often bland cut-and-dry 3D of modern horror.

The low-res art looks great on the environments but a lot of the monsters come out looking more silly than scary

Moon Chronicles: Episode 1 or whatever (Nintendo DS / 3DS eShop)

This was a shockingly boring game that wasn't survival horror at all, more like a spaced out visual novel whose remaining episodes I certainly will not be playing. Also, how many Alien references do you need in one game?

What I'm Playing: November '13 - April '14 - Part 2: Games Started

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

I am wildly behind here. This post was mostly drafted back in April when its companion piece was published, so I'm going to cap off the untouched games with perfunctory summaries so I can quickly take care of May and then all the months I failed to track.

Games Started:

Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 (Xbox 360)

I can't say I've ever had an opinion on Dynasty Warriors, having only played/enjoyed Mystic Heroes - and that at a time before I had any exposure to modern 3D combat. Unfortunately I loaned my copy of Mystic Heroes to a friend with whom I shortly thereafter had a complete falling out, which only goes to proves the old adage: don't loan games if you want to have a strong opinion about Dynasty Warriors. For many years Greg L. refused to loan me games for exactly that reason. Eventually one day he caved and let me borrow his copy of Star Fox 64 and, quickly realizing that he still had a strong opinion about Dynasty Warriors, learned it wasn't so bad after all. Which just goes to disprove the old ad

Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 doesn't have anything do with being a regular action game (i.e. Devil of Cry, God May War). Not sure why anyone would talk about the combat in those terms. It's an arena fighting game with a light real-time strategy backbone. Each player starts with a base at their end of the arena and move across the map, capturing territories as they go, with the primary goal of conquering the enemy HQ. The players (or the player commanders and the CPU commanders) are equally matched when they come face to face in attacking/defending zones. Those giant hordes the series is known for actually aren't the main combat - they just provide an interactive life bar for zones. Instead of standing on a flag while a timer ticks away to signify "capturing", DWG3 requires you to chop through X amount of cannon fodder robots - before an enemy commander can kill you or drive you away. The whole thing would make a perfect competitive multiplayer model - it's almost exactly a MOBA - and I don't know if I've missed the game where they did that or if they're just not going to because Japanese.

Not really a Gundam fan, just grabbed this one because it was (at the time) the most recent Dynasty Warrior

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES / Wii VC)

This game's pretty awesome, it's far better that Zelda I: The Adventure of Zelda. Solid action combat that mixes up one-on-one brawling mentality for Iron Knuckles et al with the larger scale action platforming sensibility of a Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden for larger rooms and caves that have you dealing with a fixed enemy layout built around a level architecture that you can't just run through. There's also a satisfying risk-it-or-lose-it RPG questing structure granted by the tight life limitation that gives the game a Dark Souls pace.

XCOM: Enemy Within (Xbox 360)

This is an expansion of Enemy Unknown, but there are so many new ways to develop your trooper corps that the game takes a different shape even from the beginning. Considering that Unknown was one of my favorite games of the last couple years with a fantastic combination of tactics, survival horror, and sim gameplay, it's not like I need an excuse to play again. But giant mech troopers and biological supermen are a great excuse anyway. It might just be that I'm rusty, but it definitely seems like the game's gotten harder to compensate for the new player capabilities. As much as it breaks my heart to see a soldier die, the fact that it gets such a response is exactly what makes this game great.

Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)

Sure is convenient having a roommate with a Wii U. Don't have to buy stupidconsolewithnogames but still get to play Mario. I had a blast playing through the first eight worlds of 3D World (in fact I guess this kinda coulda gone in Games Finished), as the game was loaded with all kinds of gimmicks and tricky puzzley bits leading to collectibles.

I can complain that it felt on the thin side, but this is a solid action-platformer that fills the dimensional niche between New Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Galaxy 2, so just in regards to the way it utilizes 3D space I think its worth investigating. Of course, that's me who's only played 2 of 4 NSMB games and skipped Super Mario 3D Land, so I may be fresher than the true Mario die-hard who is approaching this game with a fair amount of world-weariness. It's definitely too safe to feel like a worthy successor to the 3D Mario legacy, feeling instead like a spin-off game.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Nintendo 3DS)

So far this game had two surprises for me: 1.) just how insignificant it is to have access to all the weapons from Scene 1 and 2.) just how significant a goofy gimmick like the wall-walking actually managed to be in shaping dungeons. While it's nice to rent weapons and the idea offers a tiny bit of improvisation potential, the overworld isn't actually any more open than previous games like Link to the Past, in that the price of rental is totally trivial (you will have all the weapons all the time) so the actual important parts of the world are just locked off beyond stuff not related to the weapons. Improvising dungeon order isn't that cool either. What is cool is that now that Link has a timed ability to cross gaps, moving platforms of all sorts have been incorporated into dungeon layouts, making this the "platformer" Zelda (I suppose in addition to Zelda II of course).

Earth Defense Force 2017 (Xbox 360)

Not since Jet Force Gemini has ant discrimination reached such lethal levels with such drastic consequences. EDF 2017 is categorized as a third-person shooter, but due to the lack of cover and the sheer volume of enemies, it takes on a different feel than what is the prevailing style of the genre (games like Max Payne 3, Gears of War, and Transformers: War for Cybertron).

A small handful of games has always stood out in my head as "the non-cover shooters", though design-wise they remind me most of 2D eight-directional shoot-em-ups like Robotron 2084, Smash TV, Total Carnage, and Shock Troopers. 3D shmups is I guess what I'd call them: DOOM, Resident Evil 4, Lost Planet, now EDF 2017.

3D Space Harrier (Arcade / 3DS eShop)

In space, no one can hear your hair. Hence the birth of 3D Space Hairier, a 3DS port of the arcade classic that incorporates stereoscopic third-dimensional viewing into the gameplay of this rail-shooting arcade classic. The port also adds touchscreen controls that I found far too touchy to be usable. Anyway, this is still Space Harrier. That old game of basically Star Force with a Z-axis. As much as I like Space Harrier, after all these years I still can't figure out how to play well past the seventh level or so without simply memorizing the layouts - I just can't see what's happening.

3D Galaxy Force II (Arcade / 3DS eShop)

Closer to Star Fox than Space Harrier and closer to Panzer Dragoon than Star Fox, the arcadey shooting here is pretty fun but never "takes off" and is hampered by a kinda lame Adventure Island-style mixed health bar / timer (that runs down through the entire game, not just each level) that could only belong to an arcade game.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (Xbox 360)

What I was most impressed by here was the flow of the story and the game environment and how successfully it evoked the escalating madness of classic comic events like the original debut of Venom or Maximum Carnage.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (Xbox 360)

I am a Lords of Shadow fan so it is no surprise I like this one - short of the Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry series, this is as good as modern melee action gets - what it lacks in gimmicks it makes up for in the challenging and deep enemy design that earns it the Castlevania name. Okay the stealth segments are wildly unnecessary but they're at least scarce. One of my favorite things about this game is how off-the-rails the art design goes, evoking the grotesque horrorscapes of 2D classics like Ninja Gaiden, Splatterhouse, and Super Ghouls n' Ghosts. I can forgive the use of an interconnected world over the preferable level structure of the first game just because there's so much cool stuff to see.

Hexen (PC / Steam)

Hexen is one of the earlier first-person combat games that was focused on the combat rather than the RPGing (opposed to Ultima Underworld or Elder Scrolls: Arena) - while the combat is more basic than I'd like, the game is set in hub-based mazes which is nice if not fun.

Don't Starve (PC / Steam)

This one really took off. I'm glad to see that's the case, not because I'm particularly in love with the game, but because I've been following Klei for a while now and want them to stay in business for as long as possible. The Shank games were some of the best 2D action of their generation and Mark of the Ninja's stealth platforming worked on every level. I'm guessing the games did well enough (Shank got a sequel after all), but they were never all that recognized. There's no question about Don't Starve though, I'm still seeing that in the news pretty regularly. Maybe it's because it was a solid game in the early PS4 field, but more likely it's because...

Don't Starve is a carefully crafted exploitation of every addictive game trope of the last five years. The game is Minecraft + Farmville + Diablo + (the catchy art of a) Braid or Limbo. While it's great fun to play and its varied inspiration does translate into varied gameplay, it's almost cynical in execution. Procedurally generated environments? Check. Reset player progress after failure? Check. Tedious harvesting for huge quantities of materials? Check. Crafting that in turn makes harvesting quicker/safer? Check. Building bases/farms to increase the rate of production? Check. Rare dungeons with huge rewards and extremely high risk? Check. It follows the model of these folded games where the goal of the game is actually to be able to continue to play the game, with the illusion that you're playing "better" as you keep going.

The best twist of Don't Starve is the adventure element, the mysterious world that makes you want to survive so you can keep uncovering its secrets. Minecraft fell flat because the world was so plain that after 3 hours you'd seen everything and all that was left was to play Legos. The weird altars and wormholes and pig huts scattered throughout Don't Starve suggest something larger at play, and while I've yet to survive long enough to uncover it, it's enough to give purpose to a good run.

Master of Darkness (Game Gear / 3DS VC)

Leave your shame at the door, because tonight we're ripping off Castlevania without abandon. Mr. Society or whatever is the weird dude you control fighting off yet more famous movie monsters in this competent but unengaging action platformer.

Counterfeit Monkey (PC / Gargoyle)

Yes, it's America's very first original text adventure, 2012 or 2013 or something's Counterfeit Monkey. I've only dabbled in text adventures, and almost beat Wishbringer like that once, but I always thought I liked them. I mean, I still think I like them. The old Infocom ones, that is - the ones where you can screw with anything and ruin the whole game and the dialogue is funny and the game is self-aware. Monkey showed me that there is a lot to hate in this style of game, predominantly when it's used as an interactive novel that simply requires you to type "N" instead of turning a page. As far as I played there was nothing wrong with the puzzles - they quickly became predictable and a bit easy, but I've been told other mechanics are introduced that spruce things up further down the line. Aside from the fact that the humor didn't work on me and the characters severely grated, my biggest problem with the story that eventually caused me to give up was simply that I wasn't drawn into the world - it felt more like someone had come up with some wacky rules for a game and then struggled to piece together a story that could somehow support them. While author Emily Short did a respectable job in making that world functional, I didn't particularly find it engaging, relying too heavily on cliches like totalitarian regimes and surly sailors. 

Soldier Blade (Turbografx-16 / Wii VC)

Bigger enemies, less stupid weapons, and better level variety makes this the best Soldier game I've played.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure (GBA / 3DS VC)

I dunno I only played the tutorial and it was like a puzzle game which wasn't what I thought it was.

Adventure Island (NES / Wii VC)

I played this as part of a project that you'll all soon be experiencing for yourselves from a first-person narrative perspective. It's really hard but a lot of fun and I think kinda underrated. Maybe. It's true that it's not as original as Mario or deep as Sonic, but it hits a middle stride for people that can't quite handle all the action of Ninja Gaiden, and it makes modern retro platformers like Super Meat Boy and Dustforce look redundant (as redundant as something declaredly retro can be).

Adventure Island II (NES / 3DS VC)

Same. You'll read about this soon. The much underplayed sequel.

Metal Black (Arcade / Taito Legends II)

Crazy ass arcade shmup with Darius roots that has fantastic boss design and such great music and visual style that it is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorites.

Taito Legends (PS2)

I mostly got this for the Space Invaders games, though the surprise hits of the collection were Gladiator, an early scrolling action/fighting game, and Rastan, a pretty tight action platformer.

Taito Legends II (PS2)

Incredible collection of shmups on here - Metal Black, Raystorm, Darius Gaiden, G-Darius, and Grid Seeker, not to mention a handful of unexpectedly decent action plaformers and beat-em-ups.

Shatterhand (NES)

One of those buried treasures that is buried for good reason, Shatterhand has a very awkward gimmick (floating sentinel power-ups) that leave it with watered down shooting and watered down platforming.