Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – September 2017

The beginning of the month was a time of plenty, with a vacation week dedicated solely to doing whatever the heck I wanted. And also getting a crown on one of my teeth, but that’s besides the point. Then the dark times came, as I went back to school, and my video game time was subsequently supplanted by studying.

~ Game Over ~

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS) – It’s been 13 years since the last 2D Metroid. The wait was so worth it. The only thing that could make it better is if it were a Switch game.

Chicken Wiggle (3DS) – Completed all the packed-in levels, but as long as Atooi and Talk Nintendo keep making new ones, I’ll keep on playin’ ’em!

Illusion of Gaia (SNES) – I’ve been wanting to replay this for what feels like forever, and finally doing so was my birthday present to myself. A good use of my week off.

Piczle Lines DX (Switch) – For the record, I only beat the Story Mode’s 100 puzzles. There are still another 200+ puzzles to solve in the Puzzle Mode. Hooray!

PAN-PAN (Switch) – A cute little adventure game that took well under two hours to finish up. I’ve come to really enjoy short games like this, and PAN-PAN was very fun and rewarding to solve.

No More Heroes (Wii) – A replay inspired by the recent announcement of the third NMH game.

~ Now Playing ~

Hollow Knight (PC) – Not only is it a sterling example of what a Metroidvania should be, but the difficulty level is perfect. Very tough, lots of dying, but no challenge ever feels unfair.

Death Road to Canada (PC) – This weird zombie road trip roguelike came out of nowhere, and holy cow is it ever a blast to play. I’m not convinced that it can actually be won, though.

Final Fantasy XV (PS4) – At this rate, I’ll never finish it. There are too many sidequests. Too many hunts. A too-big Adamantoise. Too many got-danged fish to catch.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch) – It’s basically a light-hearted XCOM, so yeah, it’s really good. What’s much more surprising is that it’s sort of making me like the Rabbids.

Monster Hunter Generations (3DS) – Say what you will about the MonHun grinding cycle, I find it ever so satisfying and it’s still fun after seven billion hours over sixteen hundred games.

Monster Hunter Stories (3DS) – I think it says a lot that I invested upwards of ten hours in the demo, and still didn’t finish it before the full game was released.

Splatoon 2 (Switch) – I basically just played during the Splatfest, and it was nice to see my team win again after the crushing defeat of Ketchup by Mayo. Friggin’ mayo. So gross…

Pokémon Puzzle Challenge (GBC) – How do you make me like Puzzle League even more? Throw a Pokémon skin on there. Bonus points for being Johto-themed!

Picross NP Vol. 1 (SNES) – I wasn’t seriously playing it. Just booted it up to knock out a few puzzles. As much as I love this collection, the controls are just too… slippery?

Magikarp Jump (iOS) – Might be time to stop including this and Greasy Money on the monthend list. I mean, I play Pokémon Shuffle every day, too, and it hasn’t been mentioned in ages.

TPB: Greasy Money (iOS) – Back-to-back event weekends mean I’m even more invested in this app than usual. But I’m still not going to give them any more of my money.

Rock Band (360) – Played a bunch one weekend; my left hand remained cramped for days after.

King of the Monsters (SNES) – I played exactly one round, and then quit because it was dumb. But it sure did look appealing in Nintendo Power lo those many years ago.

Long time listener, first time writer

Anyone who knows me even just a little should be aware that I’m not really a “participation” kind of guy. In most cases, I much prefer to sit on the sidelines and just watch other people do their thing. Observation makes much more sense to me. I’m told that this is a perfectly normal thing for introverts, and I’ve been happy to live my life in this fashion.

However, once in a while, I will feel an irrepressible urge to get up and be part of something. It’s rare, but it happens.

One of those moments came this week, when listening to the previous week’s episode of the Talk Nintendo Podcast. In it, the boys were discussing recent eShop releases, as they do, and mentioned that they were going to start accepting reader-submitted reviews of eShop games to read on air. Because two guys just can’t play every game, you know?

Normally I would just think this was a cool addition and take no action. But they just happened to mention PAN-PAN, a game that they knew nothing about and had strongly piqued my own curiosity. So I went ahead and bought the game, played through it, and after much deliberation, sent in a tiny review.

And now, my friends, you can listen to my paragraph of thoughts on PAN-PAN being read on Talk Nintendo Episode #53. I have now truly been immortalized on the internet. This is even better than the time I got name dropped on No More Whoppers. Best of all, I even got a nice little thank you email back from the boys, encouraging me to send more micro-reviews in the future. So maybe I will!

Full disclosure: one of my tweets has been read on Talk Nintendo before. But man, it was a friggin’ tweet. It means nothing.

Educator’s Creed

Normally, I just ignore all the “today’s highlights” emails that Twitter sends me. Really, I probably should find a way to turn them off. But I’m glad that I bothered to actually look through the headlines this morning, because this is really neat:

I probably still won’t buy the game, because I don’t care about the Assassin’s Creed franchise. But I really love the idea that they’re building a world that you can opt to take in and enjoy in peace. From what I’ve read, there are even going to be guided tours in-game that are narrated by actual historians and Egyptologists, so this is really going to be on the level. Plus, you get to freely run around ancient Egypt and climb around on everything, which is one of those impossible dreams of mine. Specifically, I’d just love to spend like a month exploring and studying the Great Pyramid of Giza, but it’s a protected site and normal folks are definitely not allowed regular access.

You know, maybe I will buy this game. A man can only watch The Pyramid Code so many times before he needs another source of information.

Samus Returns: The Morning After

After about a week of trying to eke out playtime here and there, I finished up my first run of Metroid: Samus Returns last night. For those who may not know, this is a complete remake of the Game Boy’s Metroid II: Return of Samus, which is generally regarded as the worst Metroid game. Metroid II was my first Metroid, and having never revisited it since (I was probably eight years old when I played it), it occupies a special, nostalgic place in my heart.

Anyway, like I said, I finished my first run of Samus Returns. I fully intend to go back for 100% completion, and then to run through at least twice more to play on the Hard and Fusion modes. For now, though, I’ve a few trace thoughts about the game that I’d like to share.

  • Samus Returns is hard as balls. I died lots and lots of times. It’s hard enough where the Hard Mode and even-harder Fusion Mode seem unnecessary. But I suppose they’re just more reason to replay the game.
  • The number one reason, of course, is that Samus Returns is friggin’ amazing. Like, it’s right up there with Super Metroid and Zero Mission.
  • There are a few things that drag it down, though. Like how some of the environmental puzzles are repeated so often that they get stale. It’s like, okay, I get it: use Spider Ball to go over the crumbling floor and grab the missile tank. I’ve only done this thirty times already.
  • The game gets slow between the point where the Spider Ball is introduced and when you finally get the Spring Ball. So much time spent tediously rolling your way around mazes…
  • There are two new major bosses: First, an excavation robot that is probably the most difficult boss in the game, who guards the Power Bombs. Secondly, the new final boss is… Ridley. Of course. Because he must be shoehorned into every Metroid game. Also he was weirdly easy after the very challenging fights against the robot and Queen Metroid.
  • In addition, all the various Metroid evolutions have been given crazy upgrades. There are 40ish of them throughout the game, and each encounter is intense enough to feel like a real boss battle. The few Omega Metroids in particular make for really great battles, and even the lesser Alphas are constantly learning new tricks to keep them interesting even after taking down roughly two dozen of them.
  • I rolled the credits for the first time with just under nine hours on the game clock. That’s a beefy Metroid! Samus didn’t even take off her helmet in my ending, so there’s clearly a lot of room for improvement.
  • And looking it up, there are a whopping nine endings, three for each difficulty mode. Looks like I’ll be playing this a lot…
  • I only got 66% of the power-ups on that first run. It’s going to be a long road to collect ’em all.
  • The stinger after the credits not-so-subtly suggests that MercurySteam would very much like to do a Metroid Fusion remake next. I would very much like that as well.
  • The final “power up” was a complete surprise to me and I love it. So good. So perfect.

Mini-Review – Illusion of Gaia

For me, there are a number of video games that I often find myself reminiscing about because something has triggered a pleasant memory that is attached to them. Most of these games are old, played in my youth, that I have never gone back to replay. One of the most prominent in my memory is Illusion of Gaia, the middle child of an SNES trilogy by Quintet. Though it’s not your typical middle child. Gaia was far better known than its older brother, Soul Blazer. And its younger sibling, Terranigma, was never formally released in North America.

Gaia’s notability is mostly in the fact that it was published by Nintendo, and as such was pushed rather heavily in Nintendo Power. Yet despite this, its siblings seem to be talked about much more often by retro game enthusiasts. Soul Blazer has been christened a hidden gem, and Terranigma’s cachet is being one of those SNES RPGs we never got, which automatically makes it more sought after in the age of the internet. And so, good ol’ Illusion of Gaia often gets forgotten these days, because it was the one of the three that wasn’t forgotten in its own time.

But I haven’t forgotten it. I mean, obviously. In fact, it’s spent a lot of time in my active thoughts in the 20+ years since I first played it. A game that left a lasting impression on my impressionable young mind. Most of this, I attribute to the fact that it was a fantasy RPG that used famous locations from the real world, and had a rather mind-blowing plot twist at the very ending. And so, since these elements were burned into Li’l Ryan’s brain, any time they come up in real life, they trigger memories of Illusion of Gaia.

Continue reading Mini-Review – Illusion of Gaia

Birthday Cake Froot Loops!!

Back in June/July, Kellogg’s made the minimum required effort to celebrate Canada Day by introducing a new limited-time-only flavour or Froot Loops:

Behold, the fairly-appropriate Birthday Cake Froot Loops! I mean, I guess they’re alright. It’s a safe bet. Not something I’d sell my first-born child for, but surely a better way to go than making something more specifically Canada-themed. Maple Froot Loops would be bad. Poutine Froot Loops would be even worse.

Froot Loops do not support the same range of gimmick flavours as chips, is what I’m saying.

Flavours aside, I do like the simplistic box design. It’s fairly close to the standard F’Loops (Has anyone ever called them F’Loops before? I want credit if it catches on.) box, only with a Canada-inspired white stripe down the middle and a tasteful smattering of festive flair. Very classy, as far as sugary cereal boxes go.

The Loops themselves did not quite fare so well. When I puled open the plastic bag in which they resided, my olfactory sense was greeted by a whiff of something mildly unpleasant. I can’t say it was outright offensive, but it did not bode well for a product that expected me to put it in my mouth. There’s a reason why I never eat fish.

Upon further reflection, I was able to identify the odor as the typical synthetic birthday cake flavour that is used in other junk foods. Peeps, for example. But it wasn’t quite right here. Party Cake Peeps smell delectable. Birthday Cake Froot Loops, not so much. I can’t put my finger on exactly what about it was off, which I’m sure is not a great help to you, the reader. But I’m also publishing this post a month and a half after the product in question has been pulled from store shelves for the rest of eternity. Clearly, being helpful and timely are not part of my mission statement.

The taste of these Froot Loops also left something to be desired. If I continue comparing them to Party Cake Peeps, the Loops tasted like very lightly flavoured cardboard. I guess that Froot Loops have just been that way for some time in general, as I can’t recall the last time I actually enjoyed a bowl, but I was still hoping for more from these. It was a long shot, but dreamers gotta dream, you know? They weren’t as bad as, oh, let’s say a certain Cap’n Crunch offshoot, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I never went back for a second box.

And so that’s the end of that story. If you found this post underwhelming, don’t worry! I have another cereal-related post in the hopper. Though to be fair, it’s probably not going to be any more exciting. At the very least, it will be more genuine because I won’t be trying to recall the smell and taste of a product that has been out of my mind for weeks upon weeks.

Here’s… a thing

I don’t really post enough random, rad stuff that I find all that often any more. Too many long rants about games or movies or whatever. I can’t help it. I feel so empty and incomplete when words aren’t spilling out of me and onto a webpage.

So here’s a classic: RichaadEB’s cover of “Megalovania” from Undertale. It’s one of my favourite video game tunes of all time, and I didn’t think that a cover could ever do it justice. Alas!

Happy Bornt Day to me!

I’m gonna get drunk as f**k and eat chicken fingers!

But that’s for much later this evening. The big event for my birthday this year is… football? My dad procured a couple of tickets to this year’s “Banjo Bowl,” which I gather from stray bits of conversation in past years, is some sort of big deal. I don’t really know why, but I’m excited!

Full disclosure: I was interested enough after that paragraph to actually do the research. What I’ve learned is that there’s a rivalry between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders, and they have apparently created a tradition of two back-to-back “event” games. The first being the Labour Day Classic, always played in Regina, followed the next weekend by the Banjo Bowl, which is always played in Winnipeg.

I still don’t really understand why these two games mean anything more than any other football game. The closest I’ve come to an answer is simply, Sports: Who F**king Knows?

With a steady pace

Alright, so maybe last weekend I got a little carried away with video games and YouTube and just generally doing things that weren’t reading. Though I am “behind schedule,” I have completed the second book in the Southern Reach Trilogy, Authority.

Authority takes place a certain amount of time after Annihilation, how long exactly I can’t remember, but it’s a direct sequel that follows up the evens of the first book from a vastly different perspective. There are many parallels between the two main characters, despite the fact that they have such different personalities. Authority, as you might expect, gives you answers to some of the mysteries in Annihilation, while leaving other things unclear, and posing many new questions of its own. I’m thinking that the final book, Acceptance, is probably going to do the same thing.

Again, I don’t want to tell much of the plot because it’s absolutely best to go in completely blind. But whereas the first book was about exploring a pristine wilderness, Authority is more of an office drama/mystery. It’s a huge jump in setting, tone, and overall readability. Authority is much less abstract, easier to digest. It’s also a fair shake longer, which is one reason why I took forever to read it despite having “powered through” it, at least from my perspective. The other reason is that it starts of real slow. Like, real slow. But maybe that’s just how novels work? Or at least most of the novels I read. Anyhow, it picked up before long, and I became completely absorbed and found myself doing the good ol’ “just one more chapter” thing.

It’s a good thing that I don’t have a habit of reading before bed.

All in all, I’d say that Authority is worthy follow-up, even though it’s a very different experience than Annihilation. And the ending, man. The ending was just something else entirely. It seems like a popular opinion that it’s the weakest of the trilogy, but I don’t really want to assign placement before I’ve finished them all (also, HOW?). With that said, onto Acceptance!

And that’s a very literal “onto Acceptance!” By the time this post goes live, I’ll probably be halfway through it.

Last Month in Movies – August 2017

I have so many movies sitting on my “want to watch” list that I will likely never make the time for. Because when I watch a movie, it’s usually some terrible horror film that pops up randomly on Netflix. And that’s your explanation of what happened below.

Insidious: Chapter 3 – I really loved the first Insidious movie for totally playing with my expectations of what a “possession” movie could be. Plus, it had a certain video-gameyness to it that really spoke to me. Insidious 2 was almost more of a whodunit mystery than anything else, and while it didn’t hit the same sweet spots, I liked it well enough to shout at the folks who were chatting in the theatre while the movie was playing.

The third film in the trilogy is…. ehhhhh. It goes back in time to a previous case of the medium from the first two chapters. This one is about how a young girl accidentally calls forth an evil spirit when trying to communicate with her deceased mom. After our heroine gets hit by a car and briefly dies on the operating table, said spirit begins to appear to her in the real world, and all the usual wacky ghost stuff stars happening. There is a neat little twist to how it goes down, but it’s nothing especially exciting.

Continue reading Last Month in Movies – August 2017