Are you aware of Mighty No. 9? That game that blew up (the good way) on Kickstarter and then blew up (the bad way) during its development cycle? The knock-off Mega Man that ended up being so much less than Mega Man? I’m sure you’ve heard of it, but you have probably forgotten about it, like the entire world did shortly after it actually released.
Although Beck’s first major outing flopped hard, it’s actually not the only game he’s starred in. Long before the Mighty No. 9 debacle, co-developer Inti Creates had made their own little Mega Man-esque title on 3DS called Azure Striker Gunvolt. I haven’t played that game, but it came bundled with a free retraux game that was even more in the vein of classic Mega Man, Mighty Gunvolt.
Mighty Gunvolt was a neat little crossover that let you play as either Beck, Gunvolt, or some girl from a game that I still don’t know what it is. It was only five or so stages long, but it was tightly designed, tough as nails, and the three playable characters all had their own style and unique abilities. Needless to say, I liked it a lot.
I’ll be honest right up front: that is probably the most clichéd title for a blog post or article or review of Slaughterhouse-Five. But it kinda makes the most sense, you know? Or maybe you don’t, because you haven’t read the book. I want to tell you that you should, but that is probably best saved for the ending of whatever this series of ramblings turns out to be.
I don’t know Kurt Vonnegut’s greater oeuvre very well at all. In fact, before I read Slaughterhouse-Five, the only work of his that I had read previously was a collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House. And even that I only read because one time Chris Kohler compared Mario Kart 8 to Harrison Bergeron. My lack of experience be damned, I would gladly tell people that Vonnegut is one of my favourite authors.
Perhaps my favourite author, on account of I don’t read enough to even know other authors.
Slaughterhouse-Five, if you are not familiar with it, is the story of a man named Billy Pilgrim and his experiences being a prisoner of war in World War Two. It is also the story of Billy Pilgrim’s life before and after the war, and the story of how he was abducted by aliens and kept in their zoo. It is also a semi-autobiographical account of a survivor of the bombing of Dresden in 1945.
The tale is told very disjointedly and not at all in chronological order, as Billy is “unstuck in time” and will randomly bounce between points in his life. This makes it a little confusing to follow at first, but the writing style is simple enough for even a man of my limited intelligence to grasp. However, it is immediately engrossing and the fragmented style ensures that something new is always grabbing your attention. One might suggest that Vonnegut’s unwillingness to stay on one story thread for more than a page or two at a time is flaky, that it’s the literary equivalent of jingling keys in front of a baby. But it worked wonders for me and my ever-diminishing attention span.
Like most books, and movies, and whatever other media I enjoy, I find it difficult to describe exactly why I liked the book so much. It was funny, it was shocking, and it very easily captured my attention throughout. I read the entire novel in under a week. The last novel I read took over two years. It also proposed many interesting ideas about religion and philosophy and time itself, but this work is called satirical. The problem is that I, with my not-good brain, can’t tell where honest opinions end and satire begins. For example, the entire book was about Billy Pilgrim adopting a fatalistic point of view, but I can’t tell if Vonnegut is championing or tearing apart that particular way of looking at life.
Despite the fact that I can’t properly articulate why I like this novel, I think it it’s easy to say why Slaughterhouse-Five is a good novel: It made me think. As few cylinders as my brain has, the book had them firing at all times; I was always pondering the theories and philosophies that Vonnegut was presenting, sincere or otherwise. And these ponderings continued even when I was no longer reading. Things I read are typically cheap fluff that has you follow a character for 200-300 pages and then put it all out of your mind immediately afterward. Such is why I’m even bothering to put these words to the page.
And so, we come back around to the point where I can finally tell you explicitly that I think you should read Slaughterhouse-Five. I highly recommend it. But as is always the case when it comes to reading, I must reiterate that I read so little that I can’t in good faith say that I have any taste in literature. Still, it was an exceptional read that kept me interested from the first page to the last.
Time to scratch another Indie Gala Trash Game off the good ol’ Steam backlog – I’ve played and finished Spooky Cats.
Spooky Cats is a very basic platformer, and it looks and sounds like it’s a Flash game from 1998. Hell, it probably is, but I’m not about to go and do the research. That’s against my policy. I much prefer to just talk out of my butt and sound like a complete moron.
Anyhow, the game is like, I dunno, 22 levels long, and many of them are just barely larger than a single screen. So it’s a brief game. There are a few longer stages, and one or two of them do have some semblance of a challenge. It’s not enough to save the game, however, because it’s really not very fun. In fact, I only powered through to the end because I realized almost right away that it was going to be an investment of less than an hour of my time. An easy write-off.
The levels are very basic, mostly just about getting to the end while avoiding monsters and spikes. Some require you to grab a key to unlock the exit door, and others task you with finding a little girl’s body and then reuniting it with her disembodied spirit. Yeah, it’s a little weird. You will also collect pennies throughout your travels, and a certain number are required to unlock the final stage. I don’t remember how many you need, exactly, but it’s low enough that if you grab pennies very diligently, you’ll have way more than necessary by the time you get there.
Only one thing really stood out about Spooky Cats, and that’s the aforementioned final stage. It’s a boss battle of sorts, against a witch-cat sitting in a toilet. Said witch is invincible while on its throne, and will periodically fire off magic blasts that become monsters if they hit the floor. The objective is to get to the little girl body behind a locked door, but I had no idea how exactly you get the key. After getting killed four or five times, it seemed to spawn completely at random, finally allowing me to finish the stage. Once you put the girl’s body and soul back together, the witch starts flying around, and you just have to dash into it a couple times. After that, the screen jump-cuts to an ending card that says “you finished the greatest game ever made!” or something to that effect. And that’s it. So it goes.
Would I recommend Spooky Cats? Not at all. If you want to throw away an hour on a no-budget platformer about a little pink blob, stylized to look like a cat, in a haunted mansion, then I guess this is for you. But for the rest of the world, there’s absolutely no reason to bother. Spooky Cats is not fun, it’s not engaging, it’s not especially nice to look at, and it has no plot. It is entirely pointless and I’m glad that I can consider it to be a free “bonus” that came packed in with other, (hopefully) more worthwhile games.
*NB: This game costs $2.99 USD on Steam. I paid $5 CAD for the 10-game Indie Gala bundle it came in. That’s a hot deal if I ever saw one.
Anyone who has been following TE since its Angelfire days or bothered to read through the archives will know that I have a certain fondness for pancakes. Well, I suppose I haven’t written about them all that often, but I very frequently reblog suggestions to read this article. For me, that’s good enough justification for my opening sentence.
Yesterday, as a combined celebration of Father’s Day and my mom’s XXth birthday, the family went out to The Original Pancake House for a (very) late lunch. Now, I’ve been to one Pancake House location many times, and it’s not really anything to write home about. But for this occasion we drove all the way across the city to the much bigger and newer location that I had never even seen previously.
In retrospect, it’s not really that much more impressive than your average sit-down restaurant, but at the time I was very much wowed by its size and fanciness. Also there’s a tiny gift shop at the entrance which is weird on its own, even moreso because it didn’t seem to sell any pancake-related goods.
The big downside to this particular establishment is that their menu is absolutely massive. Pages and pages and pages of choices. I strongly agree with the theory that a good restaurant has a smaller menu that focuses on a number of specialty dishes. The Original Pancake House has more entrée options than the friggin’ Olive Garden. It took me forever to finally make a choice, because I kinda felt like an omelette, but also those blintzes looked delicious, and a nice Belgian waffle is always great. Oh, and then all the other things on the menu. Augh!
I finally settled on the same thing that I always get at the Original Pancake House: triple berry pancakes with a side of turkey bacon. It’s not very adventurous, no, but I really doubt that I could be so satisfied with anything else. You’ve got raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries all swirled up in a generous helping of whipped cream, laid on a huge bed of six pancakes. It’s basically the perfect meal. I mean, at least for me, because I love berries. And pancakes. The turkey bacon is always a little disappointing, but there has to be a tradeoff for being able to eat bacon and not having to feel bad about it afterward. Maybe one day I’ll get used to it.
I did not take a photo of my meal. Sorry. Taking pictures of my food has lost all of its appeal now that everyone does it every day. Instagram, I hate you more than you could ever know.
Anyway, the meal was delicious and the service was adequate (the “how were the first few bites?” visit came as I was taking my last bite). However, I felt that while the building and décor were very fancy and new, the chairs seemed a little lacking. They were passable, sure, but I don’t know… I guess they could have been a little nicer. They were so bog-standard in a place that seemed like it wanted to be more than the average dining establishment. But hey, if that’s the worst thing I have to say about the place, I think that’s pretty good! Oh, no, wait. I complained about the too-big menu as well. You mileage may vary on that one.
So yes, I would give the McGillivray Original Pancake House my official seal of approval. While it’s a bit of a drive, and it doesn’t have quite the same “this has been here forever” character that the one at The Forks does. But that’s to be expected, since it’s considerably newer, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I don’t see myself making the drive out there again any time soon, because I don’t normally do sit-in dining, but I’ll be perfectly pleased if it’s picked to be the place of another family gathering.
Okay, not really “liveblogging” as it’s usually done. I’m not going to update this post with each thought I have. I’m just going to write down every thought as it goes through my brain and collect them here, then embed the video once it’s over. Let’s a-go!
9:39 – It’s still over an hour away. Also, I am not technically using my lunch hour yet, so I should probably get back to work until the show actually starts.
10:58 – Two minutes away!
10:59 – EEEEEEEEEEEE!!
You know what, forget timestamps. They’re just gonna slow me down.
It’s beginning!
Oh, ARMS. Why are they still wasting time on this? It comes out in… oh, no it’s a sizzle reel. I guess that’s okay then.
Was that Rocket League? I don’t care, but I know many will be jazzed.
God, do I ever love the Splatoon 2 pink/green colour scheme.
It’s Reggie. Stop being philosophical, Reggie. Just show me games. Or silly skits like previous years.
XENOBLADE 2! HYPE! Great place to start! It is even more anime than ever, but I don’t even care. Music seems dope, natch. Still slated for 2017, even!
Kirby! New Kirby! Animal friends are back! And monster allies! And good lord is it ever pretty!
Hi Takahashi. I’m also glad that Switch has been so successful.
Oh man, I sure would like to have a plush Bewear.
Pokkén DX is cool, but there was a whole thing about it last week… CORE POKEMON GAME ON SWITCH!? BWUUHHH!?!? YESSSSSSS
What’s this space… Metroid! Prime! FOUR! EVERYONE LIE ON THE GROUND
Another Yarn Yoshi game? Fortunately, it’s so different (and upon closer inspection, it seems more like Felt Yoshi), it doesn’t even seem like overkill.
I am so hype for Fire Emblem Warriors. Even more now that Girl Corrin is confirmed!
Guh. I can’t believe that the Zelda gear is going to be enough to get me to buy Skyrim again.
Breath of the Wild DLC looks cool. But I still might pass until the rest of it comes out in winter. I will do my best to pass on those new amiibos, too, but I may need to splurge on Mipha.
Shoo, Reggie! Tournaments are cool, but I’m here to see new games!
Mario + Rabbids looks excellent. Like a ridiculous take on XCOM. I honestly can’t wait. Good on you, Ubisoft, for finally doing something I have the slightest interest in.
Oh, yeah, there’s Rocket League. I still don’t care. Sorry. Cross-platform play is sweet, though.
So now there are photorealistic dinosaurs in Super Mario Odyssey? Okay. That’s not the weirdest part by a long shot. The game looks completely insane and amazing, and is by far the most creative thing I’ve seen from E3 this year. And it’s out in October! Whoo!
Is it just me, or did the Mario Odyssey song sound like it came directly out of Katamari Damacy?
After a few minutes of reflection, yes, I think Nintendo “won” E3 quite handily this year. I was just so bored by most of Sony’s presentation, and I really do not give a single flip about whatever Microsoft is up to. Maybe I’ll type up a more thoughtful thing tonight. Maybe not. Time will tell!
It’s been a while since I’ve cracked open an ice-cold Steam game, but also I haven’t bought any new PC games since January (mostly because most of my video game budget is being funnelled directly into the Switch), so the Steam backlog had pretty well stabilized itself.
And then I bought another friggin’ Indie Gala bundle. It’s not my fault, they led with a good banner image and I was a little drunk at the time. This just goes to show: don’t drink and read e-mails.
The good news is that I’ve already played one of the ten games that came in said bundle to completion. I even went ahead and logged some unnecessary time to wring out all the achievements (but gave up because they’re tedious and would take forever), and I still spent less than two hours total with the game.
Zoo Rampage is kind of a pathetic little game. Or, to be fair, it’s a pathetic game for the year 2017. This is the kind of thing that would have seemed more at home back in the mid-nineties. One of those really cheap little PSOne games that you would have still felt half-burned by even if you’d only rented it.
This is an arcade-style game, where you take control of an animal, and then wreak as much havoc on the board as you can in a couple minutes. Zoo Rampage is a fitting title, because it actually plays somewhat like Midway’s old Rampage series. The big differences are that here you’re playing as perfectly normal animals and the action takes place from a top-down camera angle. Also you don’t actually eat or smoosh the humans, they just get flung around with those cartoon dizzy stars appearing above their heads.
Like I said, the goal is to destroy as much scenery and trample as many people as possible in two minutes. If you hit the target score on a stage, you get to move onto the next. Easy-peasy. Your only obstacle is an ever-increasing number of zookeepers that will chase after you in an attempt to shock you into submission. And if a couple of zookeepers get around you, it’s basically over, because they will stun-lock you to death and there’s basically nothing you can do about it.
There are a scant five regular stages to play through, and then two gimmicky bonus stages to play afterward. Clearing the game completely will take you maybe half an hour because of the broken zookeepers and also it’s kinda tough to hit the target score on the final stage. Like I said, I logged a little extra time to wrap up the achievements, but quit because all outstanding cheevos at the end were “run over X number of people” time-wasters that weren’t worth the effort.
The two gimmicky bonus stages are actually less fun than the main game, even though they’re obviously designed to be “fun” distractions. One has you trying to kick soccer balls into a goal as an elephant, which can be intensely frustrating until you learn how to cheese it. The other locks you in as a penguin, chasing around people and scooping up all the fish they drop behind them.
Zoo Rampage does let you play with up to four players at a time, but it’s local-only, so nobody will ever play this game with their friends. The game would also be significantly easier with multiple animals causing mayhem, so maybe that’s for the best after all.
And that’s about all I have to say about this one. A number of the songs on the soundtrack sound an awful lot like off-brand Goldfinger, and nothing about the game will give you the impression that anyone involved with its creation really cared about it. I apologize if I’m off-base with that assertion, but this is like half a game with no heart and no clear vision. It’s something you could get for free and still end up wondering why you bothered to play past the first stage.
Don’t bother playing Zoo Rampage. Just boot up your N64 (emulator) and play Rampage: World Tour instead. That’s what I wish I had done instead.
*NB: This game costs $3.99 USD on Steam. I paid $5 CAD for the bundle. I think it’s safe to say that even $0.50 is a steep price for this heap.
note: added a couple more paragraphs on June 12, denoted by asterisks
I’ve mentioned a couple times already that I bought into the THQ Nordic Playstation Humble Bundle some time ago. Once I finished playing Destroy All Humans! again (which was the entire purpose of buying the bundle), I decided that I ought to give another one of the included games a go. You know, since I had them and all.
First up on the list (because it’s sorted alphabetically) was ArcaniA: The Complete Tale. I had no idea whatsoever what it was, but I went ahead and installed it anyway. Over the course of my journeys, I discovered that it’s the fourth game in the Gothic series, which I had never heard of previous to this. That’s probably because it’s a painfully generic PC RPG series.
Anyway, it seems that Arcania (I’m not capitalizing the last A any more) is the first of the series to land on consoles, which means it’s the only one I’ll ever play. Oh, and that’s also because man is Arcania ever generic. It feels exactly like what Fable would be if it had absolutely zero charm and personality. And I think Fable is really the best comparison gameplay-wise as well. Arcania has less to do and no good/evil gimmick, but the combat is janky, and the game has a very linear “open world” that you can only progress through as you hit all the proper plot triggers.
**As a quick aside, Arcania technically does have a lot to do, because there are ten thousand random objects that you can interact with in the world. But not a one of them does anything. Not the cook pot, not the alchemy table, not the smithing anvil. Nothing. Lying in a bed doesn’t even restore HP or pass time. In fact, the “role-play elements” are so pointless that there is an option to turn them off completely. So I can’t help but be completely baffled as to why they’re even there in the first place. Why? WHY??**
That’s not to say that Arcania is bad, per se. It’s just not at all living up to its potential. There’s still fun in exploring and combat. Though I have to admit that the game’s bugginess does try its best to get in the way of any fun you’re having. Enemies will vanish and reappear behind you. Your hitbox is absolutely massive, which makes successful dodges a bit of a coin toss. If you step off the beaten path, you character will begin to slide around uncontrollably, which may end up dumping you out of bounds and into the waiting arms of death.
Actually, I think that the only reason I’m enjoying it is because I’m playing on the Super Very Hard Mode. Every battle is for all the beans in the can, and enemies in groups of more than one [1] can decimate you in the blink of an eye. It’s fun to gauge every encounter and try to figure out the best strategy for handling them. Usually the best strategy is to backpedal while firing off arrows, but I try to save that for when I’ve been killed a half dozen times by the same monster gang and need to move on. If combat were easy, I think that I would have been bored out of my mind before the intro chapter was over.
I think that the thing I dislike most about the game is actually the main character. He’s a nameless tough guy who is an absolute dick to everyone at all times. Okay, sure, he’s an amnesiac whose village was burned to the ground (along with his fiancée and unborn child) by the Evil Empire, but that doesn’t mean he has to be a complete jackoff to everyone. And what’s the deal with his lack of a name? You can’t edit this character in any way, so it’s not like you’re really role-playing here. He’s always gonna be the same gruff bro in everyone’s game. It’s just the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae of Arcania’s questionable design decisions.
**Speaking of which, did I mention how weird the teleportation system is? There’s no fast-travel, and teleporters come in pairs that only warp to each other. Most of these warp pads are close enough together that it’s literally just as fast to walk the distance as it would be to wait for the game to go through the teleporting animation and load you over to the destination pad. The system is so pointless that you can see where even the developer realized this, as the warp pads just stop appearing three-fifths of the way through the game.**
Anyway, I’m going to keep at it. I’m at least 25 hours deep at this point with what looks like the end of the main quest in sight. I mean, I’ve run out of map and the game hasn’t ever asked me to backtrack to this point, so that’s got to be it. I don’t really want to play the included DLC campaign, but it looks like I’ll have to if I want to wrangle up the easy platinum trophy. Then I can finally move on to the next C-tier game from that bundle at some point. Probably Destroy All Humans! 2.
I went out to throw the ball around a bit by myself that weekend, and had a pretty good time having finally found something to do while being outside (that isn’t walking around aimlessly). Then last Saturday morning, my dad, my brother and I all went out to “shoot hoops” for a couple hours. I learned to play Horse and had so much fun. I literally did not want to leave the court when it was time to go.
It’s really weird. Don’t worry, we’re on the same page there.
I know I like to project a “sports are the worst” kind of image, but that’s really not me. I like sports. I just can’t be arsed to follow professional sports. I don’t give a flying flip about players or stats or championships or maniacal fans who devote their entire lives to their team. But I like going out and doing the things. At least, to some degree.
I’m still a lazy, overweight, out-of-shape slob. So typically I can’t sustain that kind of physical exertion for long. But basketball -or at least just shooting around for fun- doesn’t require me to push myself too hard, so it’s basically the perfect way to get into being more active. I’m outside and off my butt and actually being engaged in something, which is exactly what I need.
I’m lobbying to make Saturday morning basketball a regular thing, though my suggestions have been met with grumbled maybes. I’ll still go out by my lonesome if it comes down to it, but it’s nicer to have a couple people to share the burden of chasing after a stray rebound.
How long will this new hobby last? To be honest, probably just for the summer. I am not exactly renowned for my sticktoitiveness. I have a definite tendency to get all worked up about something for a while, then drop it completely when some other shiny, new thing comes along. Especially since there’s that big ol’ “winter” thing that will completely kill any momentum for a good six months. But we’ll see!
A new Pokémon Direct happened today! I have thoughts! Excited thoughts!
Pokkén Tournament DX – I’ll be honest, it’s not what I was hoping for, but it’s about what I expected. You can’t fault Nintendo for taking all the big games from a system that nobody owned and re-releasing them on the hot new machine that everybody (who matters) wants.
But I’m at a very tough crossroads with this one. On one hand, I don’t really want to buy Pokkén again. $80 seems like a lot for any fighting game that isn’t Smash. On the other hand, it has become obvious that they’re never releasing the DLC characters for the Wii U version, so this will be my chance to finally play as my beloved Scizor. Plus Decidueye is super cool and will probably be a lot more useful in Pokkén than the actual Pokémon games.
Ah, who am I kidding? I’m absolutely going to buy it again. Pokkén will be an excellent bus game.
Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon – This is not what anyone expected. The whole world was set on getting Pokémon Stars for Switch, not an alternate telling of Sun/Moon on 3DS again. But that’s just the way Game Freak works. They love clinging to the system they’re comfortable on.
Again, I’m a little hesitant to get too excited here. I mean, we really only got a little teaser; I need to know a lot more before I decide how much I care about this one. Pokémon Sun and Moon were wonderful games, and if they craft the UItras as well as they did Black 2 and White 2, I would say we’ve got a definite Buy on our hands here. But that’s going to require at least three things: a convincing new plot, at least one new island to explore, and the return of that sweet movie-making mini-game.
Ohhhhh and new Alolan Forms. Those have to be a thing.
At the very least, the mystery of Necrozma is solved(ish): he becomes armour for Solgaleo and Lunala. Should have been more obvious, since he’s a prism and his ability is Prism Armor. It’s also another parallel to BW2, where Kyurem can fuse with Reshiram and Zekrom.
Pokémon Gold and Silver on 3DS Virtual Console – IMO this should have happened long ago, not in this coming September. Finally, we’ll be able to play a legit version of these games without having to worry about the dreaded battery issue! But seriously, what was the freakin’ holdup?
Actually I think that this is what I’m most excited for out of the three announcements. Though it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering how much I love retro gaming. Gold and Silver are great, though to date I have logged uncountable hours into them and still haven’t completed an English version of either one. I very much look forward to leaving one (or both?) half-finished yet again.
What really boggles my mind is the complete absence of Pokémon Crystal, the GBC-exclusive third version. Its extra features and animated sprites are awesome, but really I want it mostly because it was the first Pokémon game that let you play as a girl.
In 2015, I recorded myself playing through Mega Man 4. I never did anything with the files because… I really don’t quite remember why. Probably because I was too lazy to watch and process them.
Anyway, I went and did all that work last month and put the finished videos on YouTube as a celebration of Mega May. Because I didn’t actually play any Mega Man games. Had to do something, you know? The first episode is embedded below.
The series is… not doing well. Nobody watches my Let’s Play videos. Maybe that’s why I didn’t bother processing and uploading these before? And after all the trouble I went through (barely any) to whip up those spiffy title cards.
