The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild looks awesome.
I… I don’t think that I can wait until next March to play this. At the very best, I’ll be tided over the Skyward Sword replay, and then I’ll go mad with anticipation.
Actually, the real best part is that they made it so that I could create a half-assed Monster Hunter reference. Thanks, Nintendo!
I picked up this week in the middle of running around Skyloft looking for Gratitude Crystals. What are they? A reward for doing little sidequests for people around the world, which you can turn into a monster named Batreaux in exchange for prizes. It’s not unlike the Goddess Cubes in how it’s just inserting another step between you and your reward. At least Batreaux (“Uncle Bats”) is a fun character.
I didn’t get around to mentioning it last week, but there’s a “bar” in the sky called The Lumpy Pumpkin. Inside, there’s a chandelier with a heart piece resting on top of it. There are also signs warning not to roll into the walls, as you may knock down the (very expensive, custom ordered) chandelier. Of course, you will do this anyway, because you want the piece of heart. And when you do, you get chewed out by the barkeep and have to run errands for him to make up the cost of a new chandelier. The bar patrons will also question what the heck is wrong with you if you talk to them. It’s a fun little “actions have consequenses” sequence that pokes fun at video game conventions, like the penalties for shoplifting in Link’s Awakening.
Can you get the heart piece without breaking the chandelier? I don’t know. I broke it right away. I wanted the piece of heart! Doing jobs for the barkeep gives you the opportunity to learn a little more about some of the Skyloft residents, so it’s worth the effort. Plus you can just ignore him and leave if you really want to be a dick.
Having finished up with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, and being totally obsessed with Zelda because of Hyrule Warriors Legends, I have decided to finally begin a replay of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Will I see it through to the end? Oh yeah, most likely. Unlike RPGs, more action-oriented games generally hold my attention all the way through on a replay.
I have also decided that I will take some time out to reflect on the game each week, as despite being one of my most anticipated games ever and having enjoyed it quite a lot, Skyward Sword really didn’t leave a very lasting impression on me. I could tell you every plot beat and plenty of pointless trivia from nearly every other Zelda game, but my memories of Skyward Sword are mostly blurry and full of holes.
To call this “Week 1” might be a bit of a misnomer, as it’s really just “Day 1” if I’m going for full disclosure. It was a very full day though! I played for like six hours!
You all remember the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from the late 80’s, yeah? Of course you do. Everyone does. Though a few years ago it seemed like it was very en vogue to hate on it because… they used 80’s slang? Man, that’s such a lame complaint, and completely wrong, to boot. The only character who uses excessive slang is Michaelangeo, and it’s surfer slang specifically, because he was characterized as a surfer.
In conclusion, people are stupid.
Anyway, I’ve been watching through each season of classic TMNT lately. Of course, by watching, I mean I have it on in the background while I play Picross or Hyrule Warriors. It’s become something of a pre-bedtime ritual, in fact. My night feels incomplete without an episode or two. While slang isn’t one of them, the show definitely does have its share of problems and other general weirdness. And because I don’t have any more interesting things to write about, here is a list of things that have stood out to me.
And that’s about it. To be fair, I’m only just starting season 6, so maybe things will get mixed up a little as we go? Probably not. All I know for sure is that there is a major shift in seasons 8 to 10, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what those are all about. I’m sure I’d seen episodes here and there as a kid, and I know there’s a new main villain, but I honestly don’t remember anything else about late TMNT. It’s gonna be exciting!
I’ve been trying real hard to focus on one game per system at a time over the last few months, but I’m failing at every turn. It seems like I’m constantly getting distracted by something else, be it new or half-complete. Anyway, May was a huge step in the right direction, with a greater number of finished games than “in progress” games for this first time since… maybe it’s just the first time ever? Of course, I had to throw some (admittedly hefty) demos in there to make the grade, so maybe it’s moot.
Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (WiiU) – It feels wrong to say it for some reason, but I think Twilight Princess is one of my favourite Zeldas. I think the only thing that I truly dislike about it is the stupid canoe minigame. The forced-wolf sections in the first half of the game do feel a bit like unnecessary padding, but even those don’t really bother me all that much. I even like the “acres and acres of nothing” Hyrule Field.
Bravely Default (3DS) – I decided, now that the sequel is out, that I’ve been putting this off for too long. So I beat it. Then I wrote too many words about it. What I didn’t write there is that the final boss seemed rally cheap and annoying on my first try, but then once I knew his tricks, I stomped him into the ground with very little trouble.
Bravely Second: The Ballad of the Three Cavaliers (3DS) – Officially, it’s just the demo for Bravely Second, but it’s got a unique scenario and took me about seven hours to beat. I thought that I was burned out on Bravely, but this demo really hooked me and I just may splurge on Second in the near future.
The Park (PC) – I bought this immediately after someone suggested to me that it was a Five Night’s at Freddy’s clone. That is not the case at all. It’s a still a spooky game, but it is a walking simulator instead of a security guard simulator and there are zero killer animatronics. I was still pleased, because the story was pretty good. Unfortunately, my PC could just barely run it, so the choppiness kind of ruined the mood.
Resident Evil Revelations 2 – Episode 3 (PC) – Surprisingly, this game has one of the least terrible sewer levels ever. Well, design-wise. Technically, the water was too fancy, which made the computer so unhappy and slowed everything down to a crawl, and made the game very difficult to play. Otherwise, it had a cool factory explosion and a great boss fight.
Resident Evil Revelations 2 – Episode 4 (PC) – A surprisingly brief chapter for Claire and Moira, then the longest chapter in the game for Barry and Natalia. It was really great, though, and had a pretty decent final boss. I can tell you right now that I will be replaying this one many times.
Pocket Card Jockey Demo (3DS) – A game about horse racing, in which you race horses by playing a variation of solitaire that I am not familiar with. It’s a lot of fun, but truth be told, I don’t think I’m going to buy it. It’s deceptively deep, and that’s not really what I’m looking for.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade (360) – Decided to play it a bit because I have been jonesing for some old-school TMNT action for months now. I didn’t actually finish it, but I was at the second-last stage and I would have finished it if I’d had more time. But I did get the fix that I needed. Close enough.
Monster Hunter Explore (iOS) – Do you remember Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting? I thought it was a passable way to get a MonHun fix in a pinch, but Explore is so much better. Its plays much more like normal Monster Hunter, just pared down for the mobile audience. It’s still not completely fulfilling, but it’s certainly a good deal of fun.
Hyrule Warriors Legends (3DS) -I took a long break from this to finish off Bravely Default and the Bravely Second demo, and now I’m neck deep in Zelda Musou again. I’ve finally finished the Great Sea adventure map to 100% completion, at least.
Final Fantasy VII (PC) – Yep, this happened. For whatever reason, this time around I feel like I’m seeing a lot of things that remind me of Super Mario RPG. Also whenever anything silly or funny happens I think about how joyless the remake will be and it makes me sad.
Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge (WiiU) – I wrote enough words about this already.
Lost Reavers (WiiU) – A free, online loot-’em-up of sorts. It’s not especially good, but I’ve put in several hours because… well, I’m not sure why I kept it up. I guess it’s fairly fun, despite feeling like a C-tier game from a couple generations ago. Probably because it’s a multiplayer game that is 100% cooperative. That’s a big draw for me.
Dark Souls (360) – Yeah I’m playing this again. New Game+ is, well, hard. Which is the opposite of what I normally expect from NG+. Oh, Dark Souls. Played up to the point of defeating Quelaag, not sure how far I’m ultimately going to take this run.
I have purchased two albums this month, and they could not be more opposite of each other.
First, an album by The Builders and The Butchers: Salvation is a Deep Dark Well. This is folk rock, so it’s obviously got a much stronger country bent than you would expect from me, but it’s much deeper and way less stupid than country. A fun mix of banjo, violin, an mandolin make this album really stand out from the bulk of my collection, and the punchy, upbeat tunes are nicely juxtaposed against bleak and macabre lyrics.
Next, Endless Fantasy from Anamanaguchi. This is a modern techno-pop album that features the use of a Game Boy as an instrument. It’s effects-heavy instrumentals and chiptunes which are influenced by j-pop and video games. One song is called “Meow” and, unsurprisingly, leans on synthetic mewling as a substitute for actual vocals. Another song does have human vocals, but they are nonsense in the style of a Japanese person with a very loose grasp on English writing English lyrics because English is hip.
So don’t you ever suggest that my taste in music isn’t broad.
There was once a time, many years ago, when I used to go to the movies a lot. For a long time, I used to go at least once a week. Eventually, both time and money became an issue, and going to the movies just didn’t happen very much any more. Sure, I’d get out to anything that had the name Marvel stamped on it, but by and large, trips to the theatre became much rarer. In 2015, I think I probably saw a total of three movies in the theatre.
It seems like I’ve been going to significantly more movies as of late (this Friday will be the fourth Friday in a row that I’ve gone to the theatre), and while the experience is obviously a little different from how it used to be, there’s one relatively minor change that’s really bugging me.
Back in the day, the pre-show used to feature a music segment where one of the hosts would talk to some musician or another about their upcoming or recently released album. These would almost always be Canadian indie musicians that nobody has ever heard of, and almost never would their musical styles appeal to me back then, but I think that nowadays I’d definitely look up some of the artists that were featured.
Now, there are just commercials for whatever mass-produced pop garbage is hot at the moment. Not even interviews, just the same commercials that you’d see on TV or YouTube.
Why did it disappear? I have no idea, really, but a little Googling suggests that the music segment was sponsored by SiriusXM. Presumably the sponsorship deal came to an end and the music interviews got axed in the process.
Like I said, I never really cared for most of the indie stuff that was featured before, but I definitely held a certain appreciation for the segment. It highlighted music that is underrepresented and tried to push people in the direction of finding something new. It was nice to see a mainstream media avenue give exposure to non-mainstream music; a painless way to introduce people to the idea that music exists outside of radio garbage.
Of course, the interviews were never long or in-depth, because it was just a short segment during the pre-show, but it was easily the most interesting segment. But that’s dead now. Instead, we just get told to buy the godawful new Ariana Grande album. It’s so disheartening.
The music segment wasn’t the only thing to go either. Nearly every segment with any sort of thought put into it has been axed in favour of more commercials and Toys R Us ads hosted by the most obnoxious kids on the planet. There aren’t even periodic trivia bits any more. I used to try to get to the movies early because I enjoyed the pre-show, but now I just get there early to make sure I get a decent seat.
*There are some light spoilers in this wall of text. If you care, read at your own risk.*
When it was first revealed, Bravely Default seemed like a true renaissance of old-school Final Fantasy-styled gameplay with a very pretty coat of paint. The online circles that I run in were all atwitter about how it looked like it would be the game they had been longing for since the days of the SNES. It took a year and a half, but finally it was localized for North America. And then things went horribly wrong. It was love at first, but then as people got deeper into the game, they began to bellyache about how dumb the plot was and how the second half was nothing but repetitive padding, among other things.
My story begins many years later. While I was interested in the game from the very beginning, I didn’t hop on board the Bravely Default train right away. I played the demo and loved it, but not quite enough to buy in. I waited staunchly for a price drop, but after a year had passed and it became clear that the price was etched in stone for all eternity (it was published by Nintendo outside of Japan, after all), I gave in and pulled the trigger.
Right out of the gate, choosing to wait was a massive boon to me. BD has a streetpass/online feature that lets you sync up your characters’ job levels with those of your friends. So right from the very beginning of the game, I had access to every ability for every job. I still had to level up the jobs on my own to gain their stat bonuses, but having those abilities put me at a great advantage. You can also call upon your friends in battle to dish out an attack that they have chosen to share, which, if a strong enough attack was recorded, could wipe out early-to-mid-game bosses in a single hit. You can only summon each friend once, though, so that was a little less broken.
Speaking of jobs and bosses, I believe that the battle system is the one thing that everyone who played Bravely Default agrees on. Agrees that it is amazing, that is. The job system is ripped nearly wholesale from Final Fantasy V, which means that you have a huge list of jobs which are acquired at predetermined points, and you can switch each character into any job you like at anytime outside of combat. Every job has a list of 14 abilities, one of which remains in effect at all times that a character is using that job. Otherwise, abilities take the form of actions you can perform in battle, or passive skills that give you persistent bonuses like higher attack strength or HP recovery after battle.
Crunch the numbers here: 24 jobs with 14 abilities each, and four characters to build. That’s a lot of options at your disposal. There may be one perfect combination that will carry players from the beginning to the end of the game, but I never bothered to check. Most of the fun in a game like this is throwing together your own builds and seeing what works. The game is built in a way that encourages you to try out all of your options, and it really is exciting to finally put together a build that stomps a boss you’ve been having trouble with.
The plot is where things start to get a little bit shaky. Many would argue that all video game stories are bad, but let’s just take it on its own terms for now, okay? The basic setup is that the world’s four crystals have lost their power, which is causing all sorts of terrible environmental problems, and you must journey to reinvigorate them. Of course, there’s an evil empire out to stop you at every turn because ?????, as evil empires are wont to do. Oh hey guess what THAT’S A FINAL FANTASY ALRIGHT. A little mundane, sure, but not particularly offensive in any way.
Then you get to the second half of the game. This involves travelling through four parallel worlds and reviving all four crystals in each. Which is less repetitive than it sounds, but still a fairly shoddy way to pad out the back half of your game. Along the way, there is a theme of how you shouldn’t always just blindly do what you think is right (hence, bravely default), but it gets a little bit muddled in the melodrama and world-hopping nonsense. I do think that the first half of the story could have made a fine game on its own, but the big twist really didn’t do it any favours.
The one upside to having to repeat your quest five times is that in each subsequent world, you get to fight all the bosses who you’d previously earned jobs from (“asterisk holders”) again. In the first two repeat worlds, they’re just stronger, but in the fourth and fifth worlds they start teaming up and it makes from some really interesting battles. You also get a little more backstory for each asterisk holder in every world, which makes nearly all of them more likeable, but then you stop to consider that they’re all alternate versions of themselves, so there’s no actual character building and it’s all moot.
Okay, so the bad guys were mishandled, but what about the main characters? Sadly to say, it’s a 50/50 split. Agnes and Tiz, who are arguably the mainest characters, are both boring and show exactly zero development over the course of the story. Edea and Ringabel, who are mostly just tag-alongs, are super lovable. They are both overflowing with personality, and have actual character arcs in which they grow as people and come to realize things about both themselves and the world they live in. It’s a little shocking how night and day the character pairs are.
So yeah, it’s got its ups and downs -like any game, really- but I think that at the end of the day, Bravely Default is definitely worth playing. The gameplay is polished to a perfect shine, and if you really can’t bear the plot, nearly every cutscene can be skipped. It took me over a year to bring it to a conclusion, but it was quite a ride. If absolutely nothing else, I was elated when my big, dumb face became a background element in the final battle.
I don’t know how or why, but by some strange twist of fate, EB Games slashed the price on Code Name S.T.E.A.M. to $5 yesterday. Five dollars. The last time a Nintendo game got slashed down to bargain bin price was Metroid: Other M, and even that bottomed out at $15. The only other case I can think of is when Toys R Us was clearing out Chibi-Robo! Park Patrol for like $3. I still kick myself for not grabbing a copy.
Really, this almost never happens with Nintendo-published games. They may go on sale slightly, but they generally retain their full value until they’re re-released under the Nintendo Selects banner.
What this likely means is simply that Code Name STEAM (I’m not writing in all the periods every time) is probably the most ignored Nintendo game in history. I can see why, what with it being the complete opposite of what people expect from Nintendo: It’s not part of an established franchise, it’s all about guns (goofy as they may be), and it’s really difficult.
But -and I only have experience with the demo so far- it is an awesome, awesome game. It’s basically a Nintendoized version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Like, what more could you ask for? It’s just too bad it had to die such an underwhelming death. At least the other experimental new IP that Nintendo launched in 2015 was met with resounding success. Sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn’t. Just the way she goes.
I can’t believe that I did something noteworthy and forgot to mention it for… three days.
Last weekend, I got the chance to play with an HTC Vive for a few hours. My cousin’s husband had pre-ordered one, and it arrived on Friday so he invited me and my brother to come over and check it out.
Now, I have been pretty staunchly apathetic about VR gaming. Not because it doesn’t appeal to me for any particular reason, but simply because I don’t want to care about it. I really don’t need to get dragged down that rabbit hole. Alas, a man can only remain wilfully ignorant for so long, and it’s easy to break down when the Vive’s gaming experience is unbelievably cool
First off, you really have no idea what it’s like until you’re in there. It really is like being sucked into another world. A world where you’re bashing into non-existent walls and ceilings because you’re way too absorbed in the VR experience, but another world no less. If you plug in earbuds as well, you’re as good as dead to the real world. It is amazingly immersive, and I actually felt really odd every time I took off the headset and returned to Earth.
The problem, of course, lies in the fact that you need a huge amount of real-world space to use the thing properly. The sensors measure out your range of real-world movement, which creates an in-game box in which you can flail around freely. You can then move said box around the larger game world via a process called “blinking,” which is far too hard to describe concisely, so I won’t even try. We were playing in a fairly small corner of a basement, and while it was workable, I can’t help but feel that a larger field of movement would have enhanced my experience. The less blinking around, the better.
I started off in a simple tutorial (hosted by a not-Wheatley spheroid robot) that showed me where all the buttons were, and allowed me to shoot lasers, fire off confetti blasts, and inflate balloons to my heart’s content. It was simple and cute. Then I moved into the Wii Sports of VR, Valve’s The Lab. I only played three of the eight available mini-games, but each really spoke to me in a different way.
First was Robot Repair, which puts you in a cute little office where you start by playing around with a few drawers and switches to get used to moving around and interacting in virtual space. Then an overhead door opens and one of the multiplayer robots from Portal 2 stumbles out, ostensibly in need of repair. This is where the “reality” part of virtual reality really started to shine.
When you see a huge robot lumbering at you unsteadily, even when you know it’s a pretend thing, you get the heck out of the way. It is an involuntary reaction, because even though this is all just images being beamed into your eyes through a crazy expensive headset, your brain is being tricked into thinking that it’s real. Of course, it got much, much worse when I failed to repair the robot. It fell apart, and then the office fell apart, giving way to a massive factory. Then GLaDOS (who is massive and terrifying; I nearly fell over when she appeared) came out of nowhere to harangue me, seal me in a cube and then smash me into a fine paste.
Robot Repair is defintely the best way for anyone to experience VR for the first time. I’ve embedded a video of it below, but it loses a lot when you aren’t completely immersed.
I moved on to another mini-game called Slingshot, which was more or less Angry Birds, only viewed from the slingshot’s perspective. You load up these spheres, and then try to launch them to break as many boxes as possible. Red boxes explode, and blue boxes give you another sphere. Oh, and also, every sphere talks to you while you’re aiming, and they all have unique personalities. I found it very difficult to figure out where I was aiming, and generally had to launch one sphere as a baseline, and then adjust my shot with a second and possibly third sphere. I didn’t do great, but my brother absolutely killed it.
The last mini-game that I played in The Lab was Longbow. It is a simple tower defense game, where you’re standing on a castle wall, and you have only a bow and arrow to defend against adorable little silhouette invaders. I got really into this one, and by the second wave I was firing arrow after arrow like a madman (though I wasn’t a great shot). There are also little torches off to your sides so that you can shoot flaming arrows. I could see myself playing this one until I had achieved absolute mastery.
Next, I tried out a game called The Brookhaven Experiment. It is incredibly simple and incredibly familiar. You stand in the middle of a dark field, and then spin around and shoot zombies as they stumble towards you. It would be boring as all heck in any other situation, but actually being in the game made it all the more thrilling and intense. It took me a while to get used to aiming, because your gun swivels around realistically, instead of being aimed perfectly straight ahead like in every other game. So I had to learn to line up the sights to make accurate shots.
Once I figured that out though, it got really easy. Zombies go down from one good headshot, though big zombies take three or so. You also get a flashlight to help cut through the darkness, though it does have limited batteries. Like Longbow, I got really into this one, and learned to hold my flashlight under my gun, at once illuminating the area in front of me and steadying my shots. By the fourth wave, I had stopped bothering to use the flashlight at all.
It is a really easy and simple game, but the true thrill comes when you let zombies get too close. Again, even though it’s obviously fake, when you turn around to a zombie all up in your biz, your heart rate quickens and you do start to tense up. On more than one occasion I actually did fall backwards because my body was simply reacting to get me out of what it perceived as harm’s way.
The last game I played was The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed. It has a terrible name, but it was a very cool game. The Gallery was very different from the other two games: it was a legitimate adventure games with all sorts of random junk to pick up and puzzles to solve. I wasted a lot of time just wandering around interacting with things to see what they could do (never very much), and mostly just enjoyed drinking in the atmosphere.
There isn’t a lot else to say about it, because it’s very short and there isn’t a lot that you can actually do, but it is a really cool glimpse into the future of VR. I’ll really be sold on this when they start making games where you can interact more deeply with the world and objects can do more than one scripted action. What I’m looking for is just a big virtual toybox, really.
Overall, I was incredibly impressed with the Vive. It delivers a truly unique, amazing experience. The biggest problem with it is that it’s got a massive barrier for entry. The price tag ($1,300, not including high-end gaming PC) is enough to make one queasy, and then there’s the need for an entire room devoted to the thing. It’s a very cool new technology, but it’s going to be a very difficult thing to introduce into the mainstream. The costs of getting and using the Vive could easily cause it to become an even shorter-lived success story than motion controls.
I really do look forward to seeing what people come up with when they start making really high quality games for VR, but as it is, there’s nothing that really makes it a must-have toy. Aside from bragging rights, I guess. Having experienced it first-hand, I’ve definitely been converted into a believer, but it’s going to be a while before I literally buy into virtual reality gaming.
