Page 15 – Burning the midnight oil at noon

Drum of the Gods

Rhythm games are a fun little niche of video games that seem to go in and out of fashion somewhat regularly. Dance Dance Revolution blew up in the early 2000s, while Guitar Hero and Rock Band dominated the latter half of the decade. I don’t know if Just Dance was ever actually popular, or if Ubisoft just spent billions of marketing dollars to make us think it was. Beat Saber was a massive thing for a while there, a few years ago. Maybe it still is and I just don’t follow the right socials.

In 2022, however, I have found the rhythm game that I believe must have been made specifically for me: Ragnarock. Picture this: a VR rhythm game about drumming, with a Viking aesthetic and a track list consisting almost entirely of metal. This perfect coalescence seems obvious on paper, so I have to wonder how it took so darn long to get it to market. The fact that it was released in late 2020 and it took me this long to discover it is equally mysterious.

On crystals, and punching them

Di you know that there are five party members in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin? Because I didn’t. It’s just one of the many things that sets this game apart from its inspiration, and easily one of the most mysterious. There were supposed to be four warriors of light, one for each crystal. So what’s the deal here? Is there a fifth crystal? Is one of the warriors a fake? I don’t know! (Yet.)

But that’s just a vaguely-related intro paragraph. The real thing I wanted to write about today is a weird little detail that I noticed about the game.

Stranger of Paradise: Day -3 Impressions

I don’t often pre-order video games. When I do, it’s usually either because there was a pre-order discount or to improve the likelihood that Amazon ships my copy on day one (Amazon still does not always ship my copy on day one). Once in a while I will fall for the ol’ “you get some extra in-game items” ploy. I pre-ordered Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin because Square-Enix sweetened the pot by giving players who pre-ordered it access to the game three days before launch (and also some extra in-game items). It’s a silly thing to do, but it worked on me!

Now, alls that I knew about this game, before booting it up for the first time, was that it’s an action-focused retelling of the original Final Fantasy. Which is more than enough to get me on board! If I had to rank each numbered FF game, I would say that Final Fantasy the first would be the thirdst on my list. You should all know what number one is by now, but I’ll let you ponder which entry gets the silver medal. Hint: It is a hot take!

Kirkhope Strikes Again

In late October of 2021, Grant Kirkhope released a remix album of the Banjo-Kazooie soundtrack. I didn’t know this until yesterday, four months after the fact. What even is the point of social media, if it’s not going to be letting me know about things like this? You’ve let me down, internet.

Banjo-Kazooie has a brilliant soundtrack, and one of the coolest things about it is how each level’s theme changes depending on where you are in the level and what’s going on. Re-Jiggyed really runs with that idea by taking most of the tracks though phases of different instrumentation. Chiptunes, shredding electric guitars, an orchestra of synths, industrial noises, wild EDM-style beats, a literal banjo and kazoo, so on and so forth. Suffice it to say, I have very quickly become a fan of this remix album.

Now if only Rare would Re-Jiggy the actual Banjo-Kazooie game…

Tactical Thinking

I first played Final Fantasy Tactics in… 2002, probably? I don’t remember which one, but I received it as a birthday gift one year, and since then it has been the gold standard against which I measure all other tactical RPGs. I’ve played dozens of them, and I think that I’ve beaten maybe three in addition to the original FFT.

Since Triangle Strategy released a few days ago, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into why it is that I usually bounce off any tactical RPGs that aren’t Final Fantasy Tactics. And I’ve come up with a fairly simple answer: unit classes. For me, 90% of the appeal of FFT is being able to customize you unit’s jobs and skills, and that’s something that very few other TRPGs have done in a way that really satisfies me. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance might be the only other one.

Two Kay

With these words, I have published 2,000 WordPress posts.

Well, it would be more than 2,000 if you counted all the articles that I haven’t moved over from the Angelfire site yet. And I have 28 partially-written things still sitting in draft form, some of which are actually done and I don’t know why they were never published. But whatever!

I wish I had something more exciting prepared, or, anything prepared. But honestly I didn’t even realize this milestone was coming up. Here’s a link to a random article I wrote in 2004 that I have a strong sentimental attachment to, and I even think it’s actually kind of funny. At least, it made me laugh when I was re-reading it after a couple drinks the other night.

Anyways! Congratulations to me, I guess, for having voided so many of my inconsequential thoughts onto the internet.

Please note that December of this year will mark TE’s 20th anniversary. If I stop writing until 2023, that’s 100 posts per year (8.3333333333 per month). Sounds kind of appealing…

I’ll do something better for 3,000. (No promises.)

The Sinking City

Do you know Cthulhu? I’m sure that you probably do. He’s a very popular figure in nerd culture. But here’s the real question: do you know much else about the works of H.P. Lovecraft? Seems less likely, as while Lovecraft’s greater oeuvre is also popular with nerds, it’s not quite as ubiquitous as ol’ squid-head himself.

I’m no exception to that assumption. I have a giant tome of the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft, but I haven’t actually read a page of it. However! I do appreciate the mythos he created, and I’ve spent plenty of time engaging with other media that is based on said mythos. The most direct source would be the time I’ve spent falling down the rabbit hole that is the Lovecraft Wiki. But also people like to make video games that are strongly influenced by Lovecraft’s stories! Video games like The Sinking City!

Another U-logy

Last week, I wrote a couple of blog posts that were spurred on by the news that Nintendo will be closing up the 3DS eShop. What I hadn’t mentioned was that the Wii U’s eShop is closing as well. It’s… less of a big deal. I think that I bought every game I wanted on Wii U while it was still Nintendo’s active platform. It’s not like there were a whole lot of them.

What I’m getting to here, is that there was also a statistics thingy for Wii U games on Nintendo’s website. Look at mine!

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: February 2022

~ Game Over ~

Vampire Survivors (PC) – This game is still in Steam Early Access, so it’s likely not really over, but I’ve won a few rounds and unlocked everything, so… yeah. You can read more of my words about it here.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (Switch) – A complete revamp like this is exactly what the kinda-sorta stale Pokémon franchise needed. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s still so much fun and I hope that Game Freak makes another one in this style, but with just a little more polish. I was going to write a full review, but then wrote about potatoes instead.

Horror Adventure (PS4) – So bad that my PS5 refused to run it. Quite possibly the worst $2 I’ve spent on an indie horror game, and I feel like that’s saying a lot! The gravest sin it commits is having terrible controls: your character doesn’t always move in the direction you press the stick, and the turning speed is atrociously slow and cannot be changed. At least it only took 20 minutes to play through.

Banjo-Kazooie (N64) – I haven’t played this game since it was released on Xbox 360 back in 2008, and it was nice to re-visit. For the most part, it holds up pretty well, but some camera improvements would be appreciated.

The Sinking City (PS4) – Many words ~~coming soon~~.

Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB) – Perusing my 3DS library after the notice that the 3DS eShop is going to be shut down, I decided to finally play this. It’s the only Donkey Kong game by Rare that I’ve never played before. It sticks a lot closer to DKC2 than Donkey Kong Land did to the original DKC.

~ Progress Notes ~

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) – Side-jobbin’.

Potatoes… but not as you know them

There are a lot of things to say about the newest game in the Pokémon series, Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Alas, those things will likely have to be said by others, because I only want to talk about one very tiny aspect of the game today.

In this game, there is a character named Beni. He runs the Jubilife Village’s restaurant, and apparently makes a mean potato mochi. His potato mochi is so mean, in fact, that every time you complete a task in the story, your character and their friends go to the restaurant to celebrate and stuff themselves with it.

Being an uncultured North American hermit, I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of mochi before I started playing this game. I’d heard the word before, and I knew it was something you eat, but I didn’t really know what it was. I didn’t have a clue if it was traditionally made with potato, or if the potato variety was special. It was all a big mystery to me.

The image above is what sweet potato mochi is supposed to look like.

The image below is how my sweet potato mochi ended up looking.