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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81464239379121544442020-03-20T12:43:45.816-07:00Out of Left FieldTheohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-52418388228763601882020-03-20T12:43:00.001-07:002020-03-20T12:43:45.729-07:00Building a Backyard Baseball 2020 RosterIt's a video game, so I'm linking to it here as well, but I wrote another modern re-imagining of the Backyard Baseball roster over at Hot Corner Harbor and The Crawfish Boxes. Go check it out!Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-70628558740937270122020-03-05T00:18:00.000-08:002020-03-05T00:18:25.172-08:002019 Game Recommendation Round UpSure, it's early March, but I wanted to give stuff I played at the end of the year a chance, so here we are.

I wrote several things about video games I played in 2019 over the course of the year. There was my review of Alwa's Awakening, a solid little Metroidvania title (and I'm excited for Eiden Pixel's sequel, Alwa's Legacy, which should be coming later this year). In other Metroidvania writing, I took more of a narrative approach in breaking down Lunar Ray Games' Timespinner. I looked at Brace Yourself Games' Crypt of the Necrodancer follow-up, Cadence of Hyrule. If you like music games like that, there was also my recent review of Simogo's Sayonara Wild Hearts. And that's not even counting my articles of things I played prior to 2019 that only went up this year, like my look at Wandersong, or my three-title look at genre mash-ups. (And even older than that, I wrote about A Hat in Time from Gears for Breakfast over two years ago, which came up again this year thanks to a new level releasing back in May and a new Nintendo Switch port dropping last October).

But that still only wound up being a small slice of things I played in 2019. So I wanted to do some quick wrap-ups on other good things I saw last year; maybe I'll come back later and write more about one or more of these if the right idea takes me, but for now, I want to at least give them a shout-out.

OtherThis is a grouping of things that didn't really fit into my other groupings; I'm putting them at the start to not give the impression that I like them any less than the other entries here.

River City Girls (WayForward & Arc System Works)

I don't go into beat-em-ups a ton, but I always appreciate well-made ones. And WayForward brings their normal expertise to the genre, making one that's incredibly fun to play. The cartoon art style is great and really comes through in the pixel graphics, and in WayForward tradition, the soundtrack kicks ass. And I'm not enough of a connoisseur of the genre to know if this is an innovation or not, but I really appreciated navigating the interconnected map, which made things much more interesting than the traditional bidirectional gameplay of sidescrolling beat-em-ups.

Super Mega Baseball 2 (Metalhead Software Inc.)

This is easily the best baseball game to appear on a Nintendo console in over a decade (since I guess the Power Pro series back on the Wii?). I've always appreciated arcade-style baseball games, and having fully-customizable rosters is a nice feature that I've sunk a lot of time into.

Reverie: Sweet As Edition (Rainbite)

A pleasant entry in the 2D-Zelda/Action-Adventure genre from new developers Rainbite, who infuse the game with other influences to keep it feeling unique. Their world draws deeply from both other games like Earthbound and their home country of New Zealand. Overall, it's a solid debut from this team.

Shanae and the Pirate's Curse/Shantae: Half Genie Hero (WayForward)

I had been meaning to play Pirate's Curse forever, and was pleasantly surprised when I got around to it. I had heard that it was a Metroidvania, and it kind of is (mostly the dungeons, although the islands outside of the dungeons have some elements). The general platforming experience is just strong, though. I liked it enough to pick up Half Genie Hero, and despite being more of a traditional platformer than Pirate's Curse, I think I liked it better? They kept a sort of branching path element to it that felt more in-line with what Pirate's Curse was trying to do than "Metroidvania". And of course, the art direction and music for the series are top notch, as that's one of WayForward's specialties.

Omensight (Spearhead Games)

I really liked the writing and especially the set-up of this one. The setting is a little like Lord of the Rings, but with animals (or what I imagine the Redwall series was like, although I never read that as a kid): high fantasy focusing on a big war between fantasy nations, with different kingdoms (each a different species) allied against each other. That's already pretty cool, but the plot set-up makes it even better: you are a sort of a guardian spirit for animal Middle Earth, returned because someone in the war summoned an ancient god to tip the war to their side but accidentally kicked off Armageddon. You now have to re-live the final hours of the world to piece together who did it, how, and what you can do to stop them. Gameplay-wise, it's a solid action-adventure title that keeps its repeated levels fresh via small alterations in paths, context, or writing as you look for clues or do different objectives. The aesthetics and creativity more than make up for any nitpicks I might have about the gameplay.

Shovel Knight (Yacht Club Games)

I had already played it, but I got the Switch version for on the go play when it went on sale. This is one of the biggest indie games on the market today, so it hardly needs my stamp of approval. But if you haven't played it, this is just a really solid platformer that learned from the best classic 8- and 16-bit platformers. Also, since it's a running theme of this section, I just found out this year that Yacht Club Games was founded by WayForward alumni.

Roguelites & Roguelikes
2019 was the year I finally started trying to get into roguelites as a genre (after Crypt of the Necrodancer's work in softening me up), and I found a bunch that I enjoyed. For those not aware, Roguelike is a term that is generally used to games based around randomized "runs"; each death means you need to start over from scratch on a completely new, procedurally-generated map (the name coming from 1980 game Rogue). I usually end up preferring the slightly less intense Roguelites, which have a similar basic framework, but include some sort of progression system to make progressive runs easier, things like buying more health or better gear to start each run with. Examples I enjoyed in 2019 include:

Sparklite (Red Blue Games)

One of the last-minute inclusions on my list, as I started playing it in the final days of 2019 but did the bulk of my playing in early 2020. I'm still counting it, though. Sparklite is a roguelite version of whatever you call the genre of 2D Zelda games, with the beautiful pixel art world map composed of random tiles that shuffle every time you die. So it's a little like a less-music focused Cadence of Hyrule, in that regard. Either way, the game feels as fun to play as a Zelda game, the Sparklite you collect in each run can be used on every type of upgrade, meaning you can just go with whatever matches how you play. It's pretty simple, but the game also doesn't overstay its welcome, being short enough that you can finish it before it feels too much like a grind. I just finished it and am considering starting another run, and with this being Red Blue Games' first non-mobile game, I'm fascinated to see where they go next.

20XX (Batterystaple Games & Fire Hose Games)

20XX is like a version of Megaman with new levels on every restart. They nailed the basic look and feel of the platformer, but making in a roguelite meant that they leaned a little less heavily on some of the instant-death mechanics of Capcom's original series. Getting a super-upgraded Nina and going on a run to the final boss is just a lot of fun, and I can't get enough of it.

Flinthook (Tribute Games)

Another pixel art platformer with a great sense of aesthetics, in Flinthook, you play as a swashbuckling, space-faring ghost pirate, using just a laser pistol and grappling hook to raid and take down the most dangerous threats on the high space-seas. This is the game that made me realize just how much I appreciate a good grappling hook mechanic, and flinging yourself around rooms gunning down enemy crew feels really neat when you get it down. I also really appreciate the sense of animation and character designs.

Moonlighter (Digital Sun Games)

Moonlighter is sort of from the same genre as Sparklite, a roguelite game in the 2D Zelda genre, which sets up some interesting comparisons. I like the main gameplay of Sparklite a little more, it's more pick-up-and-play, and it feels closer to Zelda. But where the systems involved a lot more straightforward (like I said, the one currency you pick up is everything), Moonlighter goes for more systems, with an entire second half of the game where you sell your loot from dungeons to bankroll your upgrades and equipment for deeper dungeon runs. It's and interesting combination of very different ideas, and I think it mostly works here.

Wizard of Legend (Contingent99)

We have our first entry from the "true roguelike" portion of this section. Wizard of Legend is a 2D action-adventure game that has you as an elemental magic user competing in a contest to challenge the best mages of the day. Really straightforward in conception, but executed perfectly.

Slay the Spire (Mega Crit Games)

Another true roguelike, Slay the Spire is a role playing card game, where you build a new deck of attacks and moves each time and progressively fight your way to the top of the titular tower. I've definitely seen people get way more into it than I have so far, and I probably need to spend more time with it to really dig in, but that won't be much of a problem, since I've really enjoyed the time I've spent with it thus far.

A Robot Named Fight (Matt Bitner Games)

The other true roguelike on this list, A Robot Named Fight generates you basically a new Metroid map every run. The game has a similar starting point in tone to the Metroid series as well, although it definitely goes in a more horror-pulp look, with you as an android fighting off waves of fleshy mutant monsters. My personal taste is definitely more with Metroid's sci-fi "quiet, isolated planet" feel, but the fact that I love this game just as much should show you how well Robot nails the gameplay.

Since it combines the two genres, it seems like a good time to transition to my next category:

Metroidvanias
A Robot Named Fight serves as a nice bridge into our next section (and especially the first title I list here), Metroidvanias. Metroidvanias are really one of my go-to, bread and butter genres, and I'm always on the lookout for more solid entries into the canon. There's a lot of titles I I meant to get around to this year and didn't quite reach, but there's still some really good stuff I did manage to play (in addition to the aforementioned Alwa's Awakening and Timespinner):

Chasm (Bit Kid, Inc.)

Like A Robot Named Fight, Chasm is a procedurally generated Metroidvania. Separating it is that only certain game modes utilize permadeath; in the main story mode, you're allowed to keep trying again once you die. It's overall pretty solid, and while the maps suffer a little from the curse of randomness (a computer generated map will just never top the best human-crafted ones), the rest of the game design is strong enough to make up for it, and I still liked it enough to go for 100% completion. I also feel like I need to delve into more arcade or speedruns of it, because I feels like it might be especially good for that, but I certainly don't regret the time I spent with it. Just Bit Kid, Inc.'s second game (After a 2011 XBox Arcade release), I'm curious to see where they go from here.

Hollow Knight (Team Cherry)

This has become one of the biggest indie titles of the last few years, so it hardly needs my praise at this point. But I finally got around to it in my backlog, and yeah, it's as good as everyone says. It's just peak Metroidvania design, with a beautiful, tiny insect fantasy world to soak in.

Guacamelee 1 & 2 (Drinkbox Studios)

Guacamelee was another game I had long had a feeling I would like, but I had never gotten around to it. So when the sequel came out at the end of 2018, I decided to just try them both together. And yep, I enjoyed them just as much as I hoped. The movement and combat are as smooth as you could want from a combination Metroidvania/beat-em-up (and remembering how good that could feel was part of what convinced me to try River City Girls), the animation style and color palette are both eye catching and entrancing, I appreciate their dumb and silly sense of humor, and I enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of these worlds.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Bombservice)

I picked this one up right after Timespinner, and it made for a nice follow-up piece to help me come down off of that high. The writing is a little more sparse and told through the environment, and the focus on movement and combat is a little higher, but otherwise, it's a solid game that helped stave off post-game withdrawal. Very dark and atmospheric, Momodora has you running around a ruined fantasy kingdom, a missionary from a neighboring land who has found it overtaken by some sort of dark magic. A solid entry in the genre if you're the type who's enjoyed Timespinner, Hollow Knight, Dandara, Iconoclasts, etc.

Dandara (Long Hat House)

A similar type of game to Momodora, Dandara has you wandering around its interconnected, deeply stylistic world to pick up bits of the story. The two biggest notable differences being 1) Dandara's unique movement scheme-you can only move diagonally, bouncing between walls in a zero-gravity environment (once you get used to it, it's a really cool feeling quickly ricocheting all over the place taking out enemies); and 2) the tone, which takes some common inspiration from other Metroidvania sources, but remixes it in its own unique way-it feels almost post-post-apocalyptic? Something massive has changed in the world, but the encroaching doom has been staved off and your focus is instead on helping the freedom fighters and artists beat back the authoritarians that have risen in their place. It's a little bit more out-there, but I appreciate Dandara a lot.

Puzzle
This is a really wide genre, featuring a lot of titles that aren't really that similar outside of a focus on problem solving elements. Some of them are puzzle platformers that rely on using special abilities to pass obstacles, some of them are tile matching puzzles reliant on making patterns, some of them are something in between or entirely different.

Picross S3 (Jupiter)

I'm a huge sucker for picross puzzles, and Jupiter has mastered making games of it.

Automachef (Hermes Interactive)

Half restaurant optimization simulator, half block puzzle, in Automachef, you're in charge of building automated kitchens in tight quarters to fill food orders in a timely, efficient manner. It sets up some fun questions, and it feels rewarding to set up the best answer to the problem.

Crossniq+ (FUTURE MEMORY)

I've written before about my love of tile puzzle games, and I'm always on the lookout for new entries into the genre. Crossniq has it's unique take on things, making you clear plus-shapes instead of lines to clear blocks. It's everything you'd want for a basic formula, plus all the extra features and modes you could want from a game like this.

Lumines: Remastered (Resonair)

If you read the link in the last blurb, you'll notice this game got a name drop two years ago. Well, last year, I finally got around to trying it! I think I ultimately preferred Meteos, but I definitely appreciated Lumines' blend of music and block puzzles. Ultimately, I kind of wish the soundtrack had gone a little more into pop music territory, maybe something a little closer to Sayonara Wild Hearts? It wasn't quite the full atmospheric experience of Meteos, nor is it a hook-laden beast of a listening experience like Sayonara. But it's still a unique entry in what I think is an underexplored intersection of media.

Baba Is You (Arvi Teikari a.k.a. Hempuli Oy)

One of the big breakout hits of 2019, Baba is a brilliant puzzle where the "programming logic" of the level is written on blocks that you can push around and rearrange to change how it plays. For those who haven't seen it, an example would be in a level where the goal flag is stuck behind an impenetrable wall, change the text blocks from "FLAG is WIN" to "WALL is WIN" to make the blocking wall the new goal marker. Things get complicated from there quick, thanks to genius design.

The World Next Door (Rose City Games)

I played this one right around when I published my Genre Mash-up article, and I almost included something about it, but decided to leave things more focused. The World Next Door is one half modern fantasy world visual novel, one half match-three puzzle game, where you match runs to throw spells in combat and discuss the strange spirits appearing with your friends after. My biggest complaint is that the game feels too short, with an abrupt ending, and I'm hoping it gets a sequel to expand on the interesting ideas laid out here.

Hue (Fiddlesticks Games)

Something totally different than every other entry in this section, Hue is instead a puzzle platformer. If you played Runbow, Hue uses a similar mechanic, except under your control rather than automatic; platforms and walls are certain colors, and you can change the background to make those surfaces blend in to the background and vanish or stand out and reappear to allow you to progress. I'm a sucker for bold color palettes and color-based gimmicks like this, so this was right up might alley; it's a good execution of those aspects.

Comedy
This is less of a game genre, because all of the titles listed here do a good job of mixing and matching in different genres' elements as needed for the purposes of serving their jokes. They're all clever, tightly-written little games, and I almost wrote something up comparing their styles of comedy and gameplay elements, but I couldn't quite nail the thesis well enough to bring it all together. Maybe I'll circle back around to it again some day.

Untitled Goose Game (House House)

This one became something of a fan favorite for its silly set-up, but it really is a great idea. For those not in the know, the plot here is simply that you are a mischief-loving Goose trying to make life miserable for denizens of a small British town. The levels designs are really great, giving you all the props you need to set up intricate slapstick comedy routines to harass villagers, but allowing the improvisational comedy of players executing their own plans to pull off the routines. That's a really hard-to-pull off combination of ideas, and the type of thing that's really well-suited to video games as a medium.

Donut County (Ben Esposito)

There's something really cathartic about the basic gameplay loop of Donut County: you move a hole around different maps, growing bigger with each bit of scenery you swallow up. There's a slight puzzle in determining the proper order to swallow things, both to make your hole large enough to get the biggest elements and to trigger special interactions to bring down items out of your reach. Tying it all together are well-written humor segments to serve as the narrative cohesion for the levels, where you are the human and raccoon killing time by remote controlling said hole. The writing and aesthetics here are great, and really tie things together.

Pikuniku (Sectordub)

This is a goofy little debut game with a great sense of humor. You play as maybe an awakened beast, or maybe just a normal creature facing a case of mistaken identity: your character is a red, pill shaped thing with the gangliest legs ever put to code. A lot of the humor is in the surreal situations you find yourself in as you walk across the world, investigating the totally-not-suspicious Sunshine Corporation; you'll find yourself in dance competitions with robots, searching for bloated caveworms, and appeasing the genie of the toaster. But a good part of the humor is also the slapstick, with a game engine built to emphasize ridiculous movements and writing that draws out the silliest reactions. It's a little on the short side, but I didn't mind at all.
Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-59757092014444575972020-01-25T16:34:00.001-08:002020-01-25T16:34:14.792-08:00Indie Game Recs: Sayonara Wild Hearts2019 was a great year for video game soundtracks. I already covered the Crypt of the Necrodancer spinoff Cadence of Hyrule a few months ago. I also finally got around to trying Lumines Remastered, a puzzle game that also makes the soundtrack part of the gameplay, and enjoyed that (although not quite as much as Meteos). And while less integrated into the gameplay, the Pokémon series, which has always put out great soundtracks, hit their strongest one in a while (in my opinion) with Sword and Shield. Similarly with Waypoint, a company that always has good music, and their new game River City Girls (although it integrates into the game in a cute meta way when you fight the soundtrack vocalist as a character in the game). And this isn't getting into a few other music games that I didn't get around to, like Ape Out or Songbird Symphony.

We truly were spoiled this year, but for my money, none of them take home the Best Music of the Year award. That honor belongs to Simogo's Sayonara Wild Hearts, a masterpiece of a game with an absolutely killer soundtrack courtesy of Daniel Olsén, Jonathan Eng, and Linnea Olsson. And thanks to that music, it was one of my favorite games of the year.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a game that is both stunning in its ambitions, yet also incredibly straightforward in conception. You might be familiar with the idea of visual albums, musical albums with video aspects added to them. Simogo took that idea and extended that into their specialty of game design: what if that visual aspect was instead a series of video game levels that you played through? It would almost be shocking that the idea isn't more common, until you remember that it requires the effort of making both an entire album and an entire video game, and keeping it all cohesive (although it would be amazing to see others attempt it!)

Like most concept albums, Sayonara has an overarching narrative, steeped in big, sweeping, metaphors and abstraction and with most of the specifics up to player interpretation. This tale focuses on a young girl who experiences a heart break so profound that it ties her to a cosmic struggle for universal harmony between the forces of good and evil, represented by tarot card arcana. Thus, she becomes The Fool, the masked, swashbuckling hero charged with fighting the representations of the evil arcana (who may or may not be representations of her former lovers).

That's really the main framework of the story, with most of the details told via the level designs and songs for the player to pick up on and work into their understanding of the narrative. It really is impressive how much story you can draw out of the three aspects put together, given how little of it is made explicit, and it makes building a personal interpretation out of all of that extremely fun.

The levels each serve as sorts of "music videos", with your character constantly running through different absolutely gorgeous environments and picking up different heart icons to score points. The level design mentioned mostly comes through both the placement of collectibles and obstacles, which often serve as accents on the musical accompaniment in cute ways, and Sayonara's impeccable aesthetic sense. Each level is a tightly choreographed (sometimes-literal) ballet of motorcycle chases, fistfights, acrobatic stunts, and more, against backdrops like neon-technicolor cities and surreal forest-raves; the actions and environments become more building blocks setting up the game's story, open to their own interpretation. But even if they weren't, they'd all be beautiful enough to check out on their own.

 The levels themselves are rather short, as they correspond directly to the songs. Most fall in the 1-2 minute range, with longer levels coming out to more of a traditional pop-song length (and usually serving as boss stages of sorts). And the game itself isn't too long, and can be completed in under an hour. Of course, that's not too much of a problem, since the game is at once an album and an arcade game. Each level is infinitely re-playable as you try and outdo your best score, and the game stays interesting for as long as you still enjoy the soundtrack. I've played through it essentially three times at this point just as a function of wanting to re-listen to it, and I can see myself continuing to do so.

And oh, that soundtrack! Olsén is a wizard with synths, with complex layers filling out lush orchestrations to further build out the worlds shown in the levels. They all feel so propulsive and energetic that I can't imagine them accompanying anything but The Fool's constant forward movement, and yet, all of them feel like they could just as equally serve as dance tracks. Laser Love might be my favorite such example.

The pop songs bring in Eng on lyrics, and he writes perfect mood pieces to underscore the actions on-screen. They walk the fine line of filling in details to make the songs reflect a distinct experience, while also remaining universal in the feelings they convey. And Olsson's vocals are just perfect, ethereal to match the surreal world of Wild Hearts while also carrying intense emotion, driving home the heartbreaks and triumphs. Her voice reminds me a lot of Lauren Mayberry (lead singer of CHVRCHES), which I mean as the highest praise. To get a picture of how it all comes together, just take a look at the first "boss level", Begin Again, a story of preparing to move past a doomed romance set to an extended chase scene through a town known as Hatehell Valley. That sort of heightened emotion is the backbone of Sayonara Wild Hearts, and it really sells every minute of it.

I could go on about this game for ages, but I really just want to treat it as a short but strong recommendation. So if any part of this review sounds interesting, definitely pick up Sayonara Wild Hearts. It really feels like a genuinely interesting burst of creativity and ideas, the start of something genuinely new, on top of just being a stellar pop album, and I love it for that. Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-53004246499488750362019-10-23T16:54:00.000-07:002019-10-23T16:54:17.219-07:00Timespinner Is My Favorite Game of 2019 So FarI suppose it's not too surprising that Timespinner is one of my favorite games of the year. After all, it has a lot in common with Iconoclasts, which was one of my favorite games from 2018: both are Metroidvanias designed largely by one person over several years with a focus on deeper, theme-heavy narrative, intricate world building, and a lovingly crafted set of characters. And there are even some overlaps in the themes Bodie Lee (the designer, artist, and programmer of Timespinner's Lunar Ray Games) and Joakim Sandberg (aka Konjak, the developer behind Iconoclasts) choose to focus on.

 But the two spiral off beautifully into their own little corners, each exploring those story and game design choices separate, to the extent that they feel almost like counterpoints, and it makes me appreciate both of them even more. But we'll get into that more in a bit. Let's just start at the basics, though: Timespinner is a Metroidvania platformer from Lunar Ray Games released on most current systems (I personally played it on my Switch). The game tells the epic story of Lunais, a girl from a small, peaceful society that's constantly in fear of interstellar Lachiem Empire looming above them. When Lachiem finally makes their move, Lunais uses her people's ancient relic, the Timespinner, to travel through time and space in hopes to stop them before their attack ever begins. It's a good enough basic set-up for a large scale space opera story, but the story here goes deeper than just the surface-level details.

 We'll come back to that in a minute, though, since it's getting into spoiler territory. Before doing that, let me hit the more general stuff. The gameplay here is all great; the movement feels as good as it should, and the RPG elements give a nice extra bit of complexity and a sense of progression. The world layout is some of my favorite as well; Timespinner does a good job at teasing you with locked doors to come back to, new abilities that open the world map, hints at secrets, and more. And the two overlaying maps, set across two vastly different time periods, do a nice job of lining up in ways that make you say "Ooooohh" and feel smart once you catch on to the clues it's laying down (both narratively and gameplay-wise).

The pixel art is just fantastic; it stands with the best of the best from the 16-bit era and takes me back to playing the Super Nintendo as a kid. The same goes for the music, really; if you played any sort of "epic" 16-bit RPG or Metroidvania, Timespinner learned from the best and perfectly recaptures that feeling. The characters and their designs all look great and I love them, but my favorite understated strength of the game's art direction might be the world design.

The gameworld, as the same locations separated by centuries, are a good example of all the small bits that go into setting a scene. You're initially set up in the modern, sterile, dystopian version of Lachiem, and every aspect of it contributes to that. The music is harsh, people are sparse, and dark machines hound you in mechanical corridors. Even relatively humane locales, like the library, still feel alienating in small ways.

Then, you get dropped back in the pastoral past, and even as a harsh, largely-unexplored planet with a technically-lower population, it just feels so much more welcoming. The game's layout does a good job of allowing you to accidentally wander into places you've been before, and the transformation it takes to get to the bad future version is so shocking that it may take you a while to make the connection that you found an area you've been before (even when the landscape hasn't been totally decimated).

Not every game can stir emotions this noticeable in me, but I found myself subconsciously attacking my to-do list with a heavy focus on the past because of the discomfort from the future world and the relative pleasantness of the past. And to avoid big spoilers, I'll just say that one of the final sections in the game, set in the future world, maximizes this emotional tug, with a design that gave me the biggest sense of unease I've felt while exploring a game level since the True Lab section of Undertale. It's a well-executed surprise, and I really wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.

Of course, while the art direction and design does a lot of that work, the writing carries a lot of weight here as well, and it might be my favorite part of Timespinner, the part that kept me up thinking about it in between play sessions, desperate to get back. Of course, digging into that will hit spoiler territory, so if you want to go in as blind as possible, know that I fully recommend this game if any part of this sounds interesting, and you can come back to read the rest of this once you try it for yourself.

If you want to go a little further though, I'll keep things vague at first, to serve as a "themes to look for while you play", but give another jumping off point when I get deep into specifics.

--spoiler break--

Like I mentioned at the start, the first point of comparison for the game is Iconoclasts; after all, both are sci-fi/fantasy tales of a determined young woman fighting back against oppressive empires. But that similar framework just serves to highlight all of the ways that they're different. Timespinner focuses much more intently on the development of its lead, with a supporting cast that's still involved in the story, but not to the extent that the rest of the party characters in Iconoclasts are.

It's an interesting decision; the greater access to Lunais's headspace makes it feel much more like a role you're playing, and you see her circle of allies in a lot of the same ways she does because you were dropped into their world in the same way she was; you both have no experience with them, need the world explained in the same way, and so on. And because helping them is optional in a way the story of Iconoclasts isn't, they feel like you chipping in to help fellow travelers with their backs against the wall, like taking on responsibility to help those in need (more on that in a sec), and their gradual opening up to you feels like its own reward. It's hard to explain this, but I appreciate this subtle difference the two games bring.

But on top of that, Timespinner takes a much optimistic approach to its material. Iconoclasts still ends on a happy note, and Robin's will wins the day against the Concern, but their world is still filled with dark forces. Chaos will rule for a bit as the shattered pieces of their world are rebuilt, and some of the oppressive forces that created the evil systems still exist.

Timespinner, for as dark as it gets, never gets that cynical. People repeatedly make bad choices that lead to bad scenarios the set up the game's core, but often they're just that: bad choices, made by people who mean well but are driven to desperation. Power can corrupt, and the villains of the game are certainly corrupted, but most people aren't totally beyond redemption, and ultimately sacrifice and empathy can win the day and set things right. Societal decisions aren't the problem until they're done without concern for the humans involved: rebellion against tyranny is noble, but those same forces easily mutate into empire and domination left unchecked, or research and discovery is good, but the amoral experimentation done solely to secure greater power that you see later in the game is hideous and grotesque.

That, plus Lunais's more mystical powers, remind me a lot of my other favorite fiction. "With great power comes great responsibility" feels like it could be part of the ethos of the game, and it doesn't pull back on the cost of that duty. The Time Messengers have to sacrifice their entire future lives to another timeline when they go back with the Timespinner, and the game makes sure to point that out, and that's only the start.

And I've mentioned my love of Avatar: The Last Airbender before, which also reflects on those topics. But there's another way that Timespinner reminds me of Avatar and its sequel series, The Legend of Korra (besides Korra and Lunais feeling like they have a lot in common, which is another plus in my book). Namely, all of them have a very mature and nuanced understanding of large-scale, intergenerational conflicts. One of the refreshing about Avatar was that conflicts flowed naturally from the conflicts and decisions before them; even if a decision didn't seem like a bad choice in its making, it still opened up new areas of conflict that had to be dealt with earlier.

(The big, specific spoilers will follow, so this is your last jumping off point.)

Timespinner is much the same. Lachiem is an empire now, and you have a solid few hours seeing them as the indomitable force of an empire at the start. But after getting dropped back in time, you find that they started as a stranded interstellar colony of an earlier empire, Vilete, condemned to a planet that's overwhelmingly hostile, with most colonists either serving time there as prisoners or trying to escape a homeworld full of bigotry and crushing class hierarchy.

Lachiem's decision to turn to demonic powers to fight back is regrettable, but understandable faced with their own cruel tyrant who refused to see them with empathy and respect, and threatening to crush them militarily . Even your allies in the Viletian outpost view their homeworld fairly negatively, even if they're supposed to be fighting for them. And the ways that Lachiem's decisions spiraled out of control in the intervening years between the past and present are a tragedy in the classic sense.

Another concept that sets it as a counterpoint to Iconoclasts is the final bosses of each game, which really underlines their ideologies. Again, I don't want to give away everything, but you end up fighting major deities in each games' cosmologies (the long-forewarned Starworm in Iconoclasts, and a god of time in Timespinner), but each serves as punctuation for Timespinner's idealism and Iconoclasts' empowering, er, iconoclasm.

There's just so many big ideas and so much warm humanity in the story of Timespinner that I find it hard not to love. Wrap it in all of the solid gameplay aspects, especially the tight Metroidvania and RPG bits, and it's easily one of my favorite games of 2019. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone remotely interested.
Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-74119941738962091232019-09-03T21:42:00.000-07:002019-09-03T21:42:03.880-07:00Forget Genres, Cadence of Hyrule Seemlessly Mashes-Up Entire SeriesI've been slowly working my way through some of the indie game backlog on my Switch, and wanted to do a few shorter reviews of games that especially jumped out at me, starting with something I hinted was coming in my last piece on video games: Brace Yourself Games' Legend of Zelda spin-off, Cadence of Hyrule.

(The music is of course great, as both series are known for their soundtracks. So why not check out a sample as backing music while reading this review?)

One of my earlier favorite pickups for the Switch was BYG's original Crypt of the Necrodancer, a game I had heard a lot of good things about but never gotten around to trying. It went on sale on the Switch, so I decided to finally try it out on a whim. And I wound up getting a lot playtime out of it! I had always been sort of iffy on dungeon crawler and roguelike/roguelite games for various reasons, but Crypt took the best parts of those two genres and used them to balance each other out, all set to a banging soundtrack that made it an even more interesting rhythm game.

Giving each move in the dungeon crawler the strict time limit of a beat in a song kept you from overthinking and over-optimizing every move, and tying the dungeon sizes to the length of songs kept them from becoming too sprawling or overwhelming and made the threat of having to start over not feel completely dispiriting. Conversely, the rogue-lite elements mean you get to try different styles of play rather than just following your optimized plan, and there's only minimal planning you even could do before tackling each level, plus the music helped to telegraph enemy attack patterns so that you learn how to navigate each world quicker. On the whole, it was a really neat little system.

Meanwhile, I've written before about my love for The Legend of Zelda series, especially the 2D entries. I'm always excited for more entries into whatever-that-genre-is-called (maybe I'll tackle that issue another day), but tying it to Crypt of the Necrodancer's systems posed some interesting clashes. Legend of Zelda isn't really known for small procedurally-generated worlds, or for losing all your gear regularly and starting over, or for randomization, or for strict rules on movement, or any number of other things that could have tripped up the developers. When the game was first announced, all of those questions and more made it seem interesting, but like something that would be more of a novelty, something like a new Crypt of the Necrodancer but with Link plopped in as in Soul Calibur II, or a Zelda spin-off with added focus on music instead of, say, multiplayer.

Instead, though, Brace Yourself Games hit the perfect balance of the two; Cadence of Hyrule feels like both a Zelda game and a Crypt sequel, with enough new ideas brought to the table to make it not feel like it solely belongs to one series or the other. Areas were the two might have clashed have been reconciled in ways that keep them feeling true to both games. It really is a hybrid of the two series, which on the whole makes it feel like a new and exciting experience.

For instance, BYG recognized that a Zelda game with perma-death, forcing you to recollect all key items every time you died, would be weird and frustrating, but a Necrodancer sequel where death was meaningless would also feel cheap. So instead, there are certain items that can go away when you die or wear out over time (like currency or magic rings), but weapons and items that you use to solve puzzles generally stay with you.

And while having to move across all of Hyrule in time with music might seem overwhelming, the game strikes a compromise: each individual screen you find is treated like a mini-dungeon from the original the first time you see it, with thumping basslines and a number of enemies in your way. But clear the screen of monsters and the music suddenly drops to a background noise, allowing you to explore every nook and cranny for secrets in your own time and tempo (and staying alive keeps enemies from reappearing on the screen, another benefit to avoiding death).

Or there's the randomness of the map: instead of totally procedurally-generated levels like in the first Necrodancer, the game's overworld has a variety of pre-built single screens that are shuffled together in each new file you start. The individual screens can do clever things to hide treasure, and the world still makes sense fitting together in spite of the randomization. You can basically tackle anything in it in any order that you want as long as you can handle the enemies in a given area and collect the four magical instruments before tackling the final boss, which is freedom that hasn't really happened in a 2D Zelda before.

And the randomness gives a large degree of freshness over the traditional approach of adapting an older 2D Zelda overworld in a fairly preset order, which is much appreciated, makes each playthrough feel like a new adventure you can't totally predict, and generally encourages replayability. And speaking of that, at four main dungeons before the final one, they've even struck a good number to make the game feel long enough to feel complete, but also short enough that starting a totally new file doesn't seem daunting.

The truest parts to the original Crypt come in the form of those dungeons, which makes sense and feels like a nice way to recreate that experience without spreading it out across the entire world and risk wearing players down, while also giving them the feel of being more dangerous than random fields in Hyrule. It's a good compromise, on the whole.

There are still distinctly Zelda elements to the dungeons, like the mid-dungeon gear you acquire in each one, but even that feels like a Necrodancer adaptation of the element, as that gear is never used for specific problem solving in the dungeon (as a result of the exact gear you get in each level being up to the player rather than pre-coded), and is generally just upgraded or special versions of things you find elsewhere rather than things that allow you to explore more of the map.

It's an interesting compromise to make, since that opening up of new pathways in the larger world and the exploration that ensues is something I especially love about the Zelda series, but I think it fits here given the constraints of the two series in question. Maybe there would be a way that it could be implemented in a sequel, but in a game where you can reach any part of the main map from the word "go", locking large swaths of the world off behind hookshot gaps or bombable walls just doesn't fly. And it's not that there aren't those things still in the game, just that you find all of the major items by roaming around on the overworld, giving the "I can do these things" now feeling less of an impact, and that the secrets have to be more along the lines of "fun new gear" rather than "entire new subarea of the game.

It's things like that that makes me call Cadence of Hyrule such an interesting of the two series; any attempt to pull apart elements of the game to determine their origin finds them taking integral aspects from each, such that if it had just borrowed from one, the game would feel inexorably different and worse off overall. Props to Brace Yourself Games for pulling that off, as it really is an incredible feat of balance to master when designing something as complicated as a video game. And given that both series are already very unique blends of multiple genres and styles and mechanics, that's a lot of plates to keep in the air. That Cadence feels just as engaging as its predecessors while going off on it's own unique riff is a true testament to its quality.
Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-43554220677566292732019-08-03T14:37:00.000-07:002019-08-03T14:37:35.086-07:00Atlantis and Treasure Planet Would Make Good Live-Action RemakesI've had some thoughts about Disney's recent live action remakes, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to write them up since The Lion King just came out recently and we're coming off a four month stretch that saw three total release (and with two more coming in the next four months).

I have my issues with them, I guess. I usually get around to seeing them eventually, but none of them really strikes me as substantially better than the original. Maybe The Jungle Book, since it seemed to have more of a unified through-line the original? But the original was never one of my favorites growing up, so I haven't seen it in years and might be remembering things incorrectly.

Really, I just don't have strong feelings about any of them so far. But I know they're going to keep coming since they make so much money, so I figured I'd throw in my two cents on what I would do, for at least a little bit (since that will clearly influence Disney CEOs and make them restructure all of their plans).

And really, my two cents boil down to "make live action versions of Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire". And yeah, some of this is that those movies were two of my favorites growing up. But there are plenty of reasons I think remaking these two films specifically would be a good move outside of my personal nostalgia poisoning.

1) Why remake the classics when they're classics?
Ultimately, this is the biggest reason these movies won't happen (or, at least, why they won't be a high priority if they do); the main reason this live action remake trend exists is because people liked Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King the first time and paid a lot of money to see them, so why not try it again?

And, usually, that winds up being my biggest problem with them. I liked the animated Beauty and the Beast a lot! That's a big part of why the most notable thought I had while watching the live action version is "Gosh, I wish I was watching the animated version!"

The biggest advantage in remaking or adapting older movies is being able to see what didn't work and trying to improve on that. That's partly why the new Jungle Book stands out a little more in my mind, or why I walked away from my viewing of Beauty and the Beast much more enraptured with the movie I watched earlier that afternoon, Power Rangers (which still absolutely deserves a sequel, even if it doesn't look like that's happening).

Like I said, I enjoy both Treasure Planet and Atlantis….but they aren't The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast. There's room to try new things there without upsetting an extremely delicate balance.

2) Both could benefit from additional run-time
Outside of Fantasia, the first Disney animated to top 100 minutes in run time was Wreck-It Ralph in 2012. In contrast, the only Disney live action remake to fall below 100 minutes was Maleficent, coming in at 97. Even Dumbo, which was originally barely over an hour, fell just short of two hours in its new version.

This is one of the areas that I feel hit both of Atlantis and Treasure Planet hard in their original releases, with both coming in at just over 90 minutes. An extra 30 minutes or so would allow them to dig deeper into their larger casts, or devote more time to their big science fiction set pieces, or add more to their extensive world building, or expand upon themes they didn't have time to delve into originally. There's a lot of potential here!

3) Both of them seem to line up better with the direction of the remakes
This goes in multiple directions. Firstly, from what I can tell, most of the musical elements of the remakes have been scaled back; songs are cut, the ones that are included seem to be scaled back, and so on. Of course, Atlantis and Treasure Planet weren't at all musicals; they instead utilized big action set pieces, which seems much more in line with what the live action remakes seem to be going for.

It's not just that, though. As many others have noted, trying to use CGI to make photorealistic animals has the effect of draining any animal characters of recognizable human emotions or characteristics, which makes it difficult for viewers to interpret their facial expressions, distinguish between them, or otherwise connect to them in the way they did to their animated counterparts. There's a reason movies like Finding Nemo and Ratatouille stuck with stylized animal characters.

The obvious counterpoint in both Atlantis and Treasure Planet is that they weren't centered around animal characters, which is a benefit, but there is more to it than just that; both tend to rely on things that photorealistic CGI is really good at. Using photorealism to recreate animals that cannot themselves make human emotions seems like a bit of a waste when you could instead be making custom human-like aliens that look like real things. There's a reason Avatar marketed itself on its realistic alien world, and it did pretty well for itself. And hey, wouldn't you know it, Treasure Planet has a pretty large number of aliens!

And on the subject of learning from other innovators in the field, robots and such are also more in line with their strengths. Pixar notably avoided showing people when they could in Toy Story because their tech at the time was far better at working with the clearly artificial toys than flesh-and-blood humans, and even today, using CGI for robots feels a lot easier than getting realistic human characters out of the uncanny valley. Once again, Treasure Planet has a lot of robots, and in a world where Pacific Rim can do underwater "giant robots versus giant monsters" fight, I would love to see a live-action Atlantis combine those elements in the Leviathan, a giant underwater robot monster from the original.

It just keeps going. CGI has been great for making disaster movies where the threatening armageddon is somehow still a beautiful spectacle. And hey, wouldn't you know it, those two movies have so many opportunities to flex those artistic muscles, between tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, supernovae, and imploding planets. Space movies have also been able to take advantage of computer graphics to make the unreachable seem right in front of us, and again Treasure Planet is sitting right there. Visualizing lush, fantastic population centers is another strength of the scale that CGI can achieve, and both movies provide plenty of opportunities for that, from the ruined sunken kingdom of Atlantis to the crescent-moon-shaped city-planet spaceport in Treasure Planet.

Obviously, my love for these movies growing up is a big part of my thinking here, but I do think that the objective reasoning behind this makes sense as well. It's not going to happen, but remakes of these two could give them a real chance to improve on the interesting concepts and visuals the originals brought to the table. Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-81928311574755881262019-07-02T00:10:00.000-07:002019-07-02T00:10:48.557-07:00A Study in Video Game Genre Mash-Ups: Indie Game RecsFor most of what I can remember while growing up playing video games, it felt like the idea of mashing up distinct genres into a single game was somewhat frowned upon. And that's not entirely unfair, in all honesty. Some larger studios especially often take a "throw it all in" approach that can leave titles feeling like a collection of unfocused or half-baked ideas. And even if they are pulled off somewhat well, it can still feel really confusing for players as to why, say, a Sonic the Hedgehog game needed a fishing game mode that clashes pretty severely with the main gameplay.

But just like every other design decision that a game studio can make, it's just another tool in the toolbox, and it can be done well! The answer to those two problems seems pretty obvious, in retrospect: limit your focus to just what you feel you can do well, and only include the new elements if you can find a natural way to connect it to the game's main idea. I want to focus today on some of the different approaches that games can take to pull off a natural feeling genre mash-up, specifically through the lens of a couple of indie games that have managed to walk that tightrope and come out of the experience with some brilliant games.

Experimenting with Genre: Yoku's Island Express, Villa Gorilla
Yoku's Island Express starts with a pretty basic idea for a set up: it's a Metroidvania* with an enchanted tropical island aesthetic and filled with cute talking animals where you play as the island's new postman, a tiny dung beetle. There are plenty of Metroidvanias these days though, so developer Villa Gorilla decided to add a twist to the formula. And sometimes, the most interesting twist on an idea you can do isn't to append something new and complicated, but instead to remove something fundamental to the concept and then try and build it back up without that.

*Refresher: A 2D platformer with a focus on exploring a large map rather than traveling one direction in a straight line, where new abilities you find over the course of the game allow you to explore to new or previously-inaccessible areas. If that doesn't tell you enough, see here for a more description.

Yoku decided to remove jumping from their Metroidvania, and for a genre that emphasizes exploring in four directions and using pits to impede progress, that meant there had to be some form a replacement to allow a full range of exploration. And that's where the second genre in the game comes in: for their experiment, Villa Gorilla combines the Metroidvania with pinball games.

As wild as that sounds, it makes for a natural pairing; instead of a button to make Yoku and his rolling ball jump, you instead get two flipper buttons that correspond to various architecture around the island, with different screens creating small virtual pinball tables. Mastering the controls and finding the full set of hidden abilities leaves you flipping over large pits and rocketing to new screens above you with ease, just like in a game with a jump mechanic. It's incredibly fun to learn and use, and it's the type of combination you're only going to get when developers approach things from a new and unique angle like this.

This is also the creative impulse that led to the creation of the wonderful Crypt of the NecroDancer by Brace Yourself Games, where the developers took a traditional dungeon crawler formula, but decide to add a timer rather than giving players infinite time to make their next move. That timer comes in the form of the beat of a song, making it a rhythm game hybrid. I'd go into more depth, but it's a few years older than the three focus points of this article, and I might be doing a longer piece soon on their incredible follow-up that came out a few weeks ago.

Recreating an Experience: Battle Chef Brigade, Trinket Studios
I wrote about this one a while ago, but I really like it and wanted to go a little more in-depth. And it even got a big update that added a lot of content to it a bit ago, so it's definitely still relevant!

 The set-up to Battle Chef Brigade is the type of "new, offbeat approach to a familiar setting" that I love to see, and the type of thing that smaller media like indie games or comics excel at delivering. Simply imagine your standard epic fantasy world setting, complete with monsters, magic, knights, and all of that. Now, instead of a standard epic fantasy storyline, imagine what their cooking competitions are like.

Much like Yoku's island world is built with architecture to imitate the pinball table parts it needs, the world of Battle Chef Brigade is lovingly crafted around this central hook, with a story centered around the kingdom's highest order of chef-knights and one young apprentice's hopes to prove herself and join their ranks. And just like the story, the gameplay is built around trying to bring this premise to life.

Which brings us to its unique combination of beat-'em-ups and match-three puzzle games. As a fan of both of those genres, there generally just isn't a lot of overlap in ways to combine them. But because of Battle Chef's knight-chefs, there's a natural connection point that prevents it from just being fantasy chess-boxing where you jump from one thing to another.

Your cookware is represented as the puzzle board, with the various ingredients taking the shape of the blocks that you need to match. Stirring those pieces around, keeping them in the ideal places, and combining them with complimentary ingredients all improve the meal's taste, winning you more points from the judge. Where it differs from other tile matching puzzle games is that, as a combination knight-chef, you also go around collecting those foods that go into the dish: the puzzle pieces you get to drop into your frying pan/game board are the raw ingredients you win in the field from hunting various magical plants and monsters, which you take down via traditional beat-'em-up fighting combos.

In addition to creating a multifaceted experience to imitate the feel of this fantasy role, that connection between the two halves allows for further depth of strategy that otherwise wouldn't be present. Instead of sitting around and waiting for the I-block that you need like in Tetris, you can go out and find the level-two red piece you've been looking for (provided that you've been memorizing the ingredients that the monsters you fight drop, along with their movement patterns to avoid their attacks).

And even the balance of the two sides becomes part of the strategy; what's the optimal balance of hunting time versus food preparation? Is it better to take one big trip and draw inspiration from the food you find, or multiple small ones looking for specific things?

None of this even gets into the game dipping its toes into other areas, like narrative games (the story mode of the game is really fun as well!) or RPG like elements (you can buy different cookware as you progress in the story that allows you to cook in different ways, but you can only take so many things into a showdown). But all of that works though because the central game loop is built around such a fun mash-up.

Building a Narrative: The Messenger, Sabotage Studio
This is a subtler one, since the two genres in question are "traditional platformer"* and "Metroidvania" and the latter is technically a form of platformer, but I think the gameplay shift is very noticeable given that Metroidvania is such a distinct subcategory, and it does have an effect in how the game goes, so I'm sticking to it.

*I wish there was a better term for this, but I'm not aware of one, so I guess this is the best I can do for now to describe a platformer like Mario, that focuses on travelling unidirectionally on a more or less fixed path without much exploring.
The Messenger starts with a straightforward setup, if somewhat unconventional in its specifics: you're a ninja in a small village on a fantasy island that has been overrun by demons. When the long-prophesied hero from the west arrives, he passes off his scroll to you, telling you to continue his mission and take the scroll for delivery to someone on the east end of the island who can help turn the tide in the demon war.

And so, you set off, running perpetually to the right...err, "east" of the screen, trekking across the different biomes of the island, running into a variety of different characters, and picking up equipment to help you pass the new obstacles in each level. Still, there are weird things in the journey, like the numerous obstacles that you never get anything to deal with, or the Demon King's castle being relatively far "west" in your journey.

And then, halfway through the game, you find the time travel mechanic advertised in the trailers, taking the game into full Metroidvania mode. There are certainly interesting ways this affects the gameplay, with your knowledge from the first half informing how you traverse the newly-opened-up world. In that sense, it does fall partly into the first category (removing the navigating involved in Metroidvania games from the first half does affect the gameplay, although that by itself feels slightly more limiting, in a way).

What makes it different (and helps make up for that initial lack of freedom and exploring) is that The Messenger also ties this shift into its story. That there is time travel, and that it affects gameplay, isn't really a spoiler. But that shift has other effects that give the game a lot of heart and charm, and changes a lot of story expectations you build up in the first half. Character moments teased in the first half come back in the second. How the world and story works is affected. Jokes pay off.

Of course, The Messenger is hardly alone in this; plenty of stories in other media have followed this playbook. But as a game, The Messenger can also apply this formula to gameplay elements not present in other forms of media. Using things you learn in the twist, you can discover entire hidden levels, which really adds to the surprise and sense of discovery in the player. A lot of the character twists that come up accompany side quests to progress the game. It's a bunch of cool little stuff like that, which really makes me appreciate the game even more. The two distinct halves almost give the feel of a game delivering its own sequel that recontextualizes the original, within the body of the original. Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-26530427959094277342019-04-23T00:47:00.001-07:002019-04-23T00:47:39.504-07:00Alwa's Awakening Is a Solid Little Indie MetroidvaniaMy last few indie game reviews have been really, really big, in different ways, touching on big, thematic stuff and more in-depth analysis. But doing only deep dives on the best of the best is exhausting and limiting, in a lot of ways, and I think there are also a lot of smaller titles that are incredibly solid and deserve love and attention, too, even if they aren't in my running for whatever the video game equivalent of the Oscars or Pulitzers would be.

So this one is more in the vein of my Blossom Tales review, which is fitting since there are quite a few similarities. Alwa's Awakening, by first-time developer Elden Pixels, is an incredibly well-designed little throwback number that has clearly learned from the best. An 8-bit Metroidvania/platformer that feels like the perfect distillation of the genre, playing it on my Switch made me feel a connection with my younger self hunched over my Game Boy, while at the same time feeling like it's own distinct unique thing rather than a recreation of a specific classic.

Of course, that nostalgic feel makes sense; Elden Pixels really feels like they've taken an old-school approach to designing things here. There was definite attention paid to focusing the game on specific set of elements the designers wanted to include and an emphasis on refining them, rather than letting the scope of things sprawl out of control. The player character only has two abilities in the start of the game, a jump and a staff attack, and every ability that you unlock over the course of the game is a spell that you cast with that staff attack. Not only that, but the game decides to pare that spell list to just three, with improvements to those three being the late-game finds that finally open up the entire map to you. There's a beauty in that level of straightforwardness.

And there's a deeper deliberateness in all of that. It becomes very clear what types of abilities you're going to be finding, as you come across areas of the map that are clearly kept inches out of your reach. Every challenge feels like a puzzle that you can solve if you just piece it all together, whether it's dead ends that clearly just need one more tool, or learning the trick to spotting fake walls, or even finding ideal strategies for toppling bosses.

There are other nice things about their world design besides just the puzzle aspects, too. The different sections of the map are distinct enough in their design to stick in your mind and make it easy to remember spots to return to later. And the map is a very solid example of Metroidvania game design; secret tunnels connect you to areas you didn't know would come back up, branching paths make you feel clever when you find them and explore them fully, everything is connected enough that it doesn't take too long to get anywhere from any of the warp points which makes jumping between areas to further explore not a problem, and all of that good stuff.

Too many games in this genre stray into making things too linear, but Alwa's Awakening has the good sense to leave things open and let you explore at your own pace with only general checkpoints for you to go towards at your leisure. You can poke into various parts of the map pretty early, a nice preview for what's coming and a good way to get a sense of how things are laid out, and most of them have secrets to reach even if you can't do much else yet. It's all appropriately twisty and turny, and you can really jump ahead at your own pace in some areas (sometimes with ways forward that are clever enough that you feel like you may have accidentally broken the sequence the designers intended, even when it is all part of the plan).

The non-gameplay elements are all solid as well, if a little basic. Most of the character designs are lovable, if a little basic (particularly main character Zoe). Most of the story elements are pretty standard, but there are enough interesting hooks in everything that it certainly feels like the team is capable of more with more time, resources, and experience. The interludes in towns or up mountains add some nice variety from the dungeons and tunnels that make up the rest of the world, and again, with more time, I'm sure Elden Pixels would come up with a host of more interesting locals and characters to populate them.

The makers clearly studied their fundamentals of game design from the best, especially of the Game Boy/NES era, and applied that to creating their own vision of that style. All in all, it was enough to keep me coming back for ten hours or so in an attempt to find every secret and still leave me wanting more, which is always a positive experience. The things Alwa's Awakening is good at are enough to grab your interest, and even it's weakest points are never weak enough to make you feel like the game is missing out on anything. I look forward to seeing where Elden Pixels goes from here. Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-28714322885991278232019-02-09T18:05:00.001-08:002019-02-09T18:05:56.761-08:00Wandersong, a Groundbreaking Musical Video Game, Is One of 2018's BestOne of my favorite games of 2018 was Wandersong*, and I wanted to write something about it for a while, but wow was it difficult to come up with something that didn't just devolve into gushing praise.

*note: I played the Nintendo Switch version, but it's also available on PlayStation 4 and PC/Mac via Steam.

Not that gushing praise wouldn't be merited; the game is beautiful in every capacity, and the team of Greg Lobanov (creator), A Shell in the Pit (music), and Em Halberstadt (sound) deserves all of the compliments. Everything clicked with me. The game looks beautiful, with a strong art direction full of bold colors and a look that brings to mind construction paper and Paper Mario. The writing and story is fantastic, and full of probably my favorite cast of characters I've seen; even random townspeople stick in the mind, and the main cast are all incredibly endearing. And man oh man, the music.

I mean, the game is called Wandersong, so of course the music had to be good. But it really is something else. The soundtrack is, naturally, amazing, and I've been listening to it on repeat since even before I finished the game. It's loaded with memorable tunes, and so many are tied to key moments in the game that instantly call them to mind when you here them. It's a perfect synergy.

It's more than that, though; everything in the game revolves around music, from the biggest story themes to the smallest game mechanics. It's a level of focus that many games don't have, especially games in the rhythm/music genre. Every action in the game more complicated than basic moving in a 2D space (basically left/right/jump) is undertaken using the singing wheel that serves as the game's main mechanic. Puzzles to cross large gaps or scale large heights? Casting magic spells? Dialogue with non-player characters? Encounters with large monsters? Every one of them, you use the wheel to get the Bard to sing, and the Bard's music in turn interacts with the game environment in some way to meet the challenge.

I find this amazingly cool in a bunch of ways. At the basic video game level, it makes for an incredibly tight toolset for the player to learn and generally creates an incredibly versatile gameplay verb to use. Everything tying back to one element like that helps keep the story's gameplay and theme tight, leads to some creative puzzle design as the developer explores all the different ways they can play with the verb, and generally makes the player feel smart as they figure out all the ways in works in-game with minimal prompting, since there are only so many things you can try to sing to or at before putting the pieces you have together properly.

But it also means that the game essentially creates an instrument for the player to learn and use, just like they would a piano, or a guitar, or their voice. It's a fun little burst of creativity, and I definitely got distracted several times trying to get the Bard to belt out random snippets of songs that I had stuck in my head.

The game even encourages you to do embrace this creativity in a variety of ways. Several challenges within the game ask you to compose a melody for other characters to play back to you. Other times, during some of the game's key song performances, the window to hit notes is very generous, allowing you to play around with tempo, alter the rhythm, or even add extra notes to embellish the musical line. And while some answers you can give to options in-game require you to sing your response, you soon realize that the developer intentionally left this ability to start singing in for almost every line of dialogue. There's almost nothing to stop you from making the Bard sing every sentence like it's a musical, and it's amazing! There's basically no barrier separating the music, story, and gameplay.

When I made that realization, it got me thinking about Wandersong's relation to other rhythm games and the musical genre overall. There's a lot of ways that the interactivity of video games can bring new experiences to people, and Wandersong allowing players to essentially star in a partly-player-generated musical is something that is pretty close to unmatched right now. There's definitely nothing that can do it at this level of mass accessibility, at the very least.

The musical comparison is interesting in another way as well. Musical theater, in its earlier days, started with scripts and songs, but the two frequently didn't mesh well. There would be plays that would occasionally be interrupted for musical numbers, but the numbers themselves were sort of incidental to the rest of the production. What is sometimes called the integrated musical, with songs serving narrative purpose like we think of today, had to be developed over time (Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! from 1943 is frequently credited as their start).

In a lot of ways, Wandersong feels like a similar leap forward for video games. I've tried for weeks now to think of another game that combines the full triple threat of gameplay, story, and song like this, and there are a lot that have two, but never all three at once. Some will have songs that ask the player to mimic playing an instrument or create rhythms or something, but the story is frequently unrelated to those segments, usually being told through cutscenes without gameplay. It gives the feel of a series of music videos a person gets to play that are loosely threaded together to get from one to the next.

Other games with a focus on generating music make the entire game playable, but it frequently comes with a much lighter or more ambient story. The creation of music is an experience, and it can be a pleasant one, but the story ends up as more of an experience as well, rather than a more concrete narrative to follow. That's not to say that games that do these things can't be good in their own right, just that it's a lot of things to juggle and that combining them so tightly and naturally is not easy! I might be forgetting something, since there are a ton of games and I can't play everything, but I've never played something as robust in all regards as Wandersong, which is what especially makes it feel like a musical.

Wandersong is the type of game that makes me excited about video games as a medium. It's pretty to watch, or listen to, or follow along to, and all of that would make it a stellar work of art in its own right. But there's more to it than that; it feels new and exciting, like we haven't seen anything like it before. The way it's told, with the specific gameplay and style, feels like it could be the basis for a game genre in and of itself, with an infinite number of unique stories that could be told this way (Wandersong itself cycles through a number of different genres, with each chapter dipping its toes into different narrative and gameplay tropes, and showing just how much room there is left to play around with in this space). Games that are both this good and this revolutionary don't come around often, and it's part of what made Wandersong one of my favorite games of 2018. Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-9740136380933353012018-12-06T19:32:00.000-08:002018-12-06T19:32:37.461-08:00Super Smash Marvel Ultimate: Continuing the Hypothetical Series to the Present Three years ago, I had some fun with my love of Marvel and the Super Smash Brothers series to make a series mashing them up (one, two, three, four). In each case, I looked at things like when each game in the Smash Bros series came out, the size of the rosters, and where Marvel stood at each of those release dates to come up with what I think is a reasonable approximation of what a hypothetical Super Smash Marvel series would have looked like.

With the highly-anticipated Super Smash Bros Ultimate coming out this Friday, I figured that now would be a perfect time to continue the series. After all, Nintendo has already announced exactly how big the roster will be even after DLC, so we know exactly how much space we have to work with, and this has been a pretty big year for Marvel (including five of the top ten grossing movies of the year being based off of Marvel properties, and the still-upcoming Into the Spider-Verse garnering a ton of early praise), so we should have some new possibilities to choose from.

Thankfully, there are a lot of roster spots open this time as well. Throughout this series, I've been matching my roster sizes to the Smash Bros games, but I haven't been removing characters like they have. So, for example, when the games added eighteen new characters in Super Smash Bros Brawl, I only added thirteen characters to Smash Marvel Brawl since I wasn't also removing five characters. However, for Ultimate, Nintendo is bringing back every playable character that has ever been in the series. Counting the six upcoming DLC characters (only one of which, Piranha Plant, has been announced), plus including the new echo fighter character as distinct options, that leaves us room for 82 characters in Smash Marvel Ultimate, or 22 more than I featured in my last go-around.

Also of note, this will be the first Smash-Marvel entry will I won't have to reconstruct where Marvel characters' popularity stood at the time, which might make filling all those slots a little easier. So with all of that lead up out of the way, let's get started on our monumental task.

To start with, let's look at the echo fighters I mentioned a second ago. This is a new category that Nintendo came up with for Ultimate, consisting of characters highly based off of other fighters in the game. Seven of the 82 fighters are noted as echoes, including returning characters Lucina and Dark Pit. I specifically added Kate Bishop/Hawkeye last time as a counterpoint to Lucina, so it seems reasonable to consider Marvel's recent wave of legacy heroes (which includes Kate) as the counterpoint here.

And there have been a lot of good ones to choose from. I've liked Miles Morales as Spider-Man and Laura Kinney as X-23/Wolverine in the comics, and both have appeared on the big screen in the between this year and last. Jane Foster's turn as Thor has been critically acclaimed, and I've heard good things about Amadeus Cho as Hulk (and both runs have sitting on my reading list, waiting for my free time). Eve Ewing's Ironheart #1 came out this month and has been getting a lot of buzz. Plus, I've enjoyed reading other "successor" characters like Nadia Van Dyne/Wasp, Sam Alexander/Nova, Silk, and Viv Vision. Between echo fighters and costumes, I think there's a way to get all of them on the roster (my guess is the first five as the echoes and the others as alternate forms of other fighters, but I'm open to discussion on those).

The sixth spot, though, goes to someone else. Last time, I added two Star Wars characters (namely, Luke and Darth Vader) to correspond to Capcom's Mega Man and Ryu. I keep flip flopping on this call now*, but I'll stick with it for the moment. Since Capcom got an echo fighter this time (Ken from Street Fighter), we'll add one from Star Wars. Rey, as Luke's newest protégé, seems like the best fit, but I can also see an argument for Kylo Ren as an echo of Darth Vader.

*Would an actual Marvel fighting game goes as far to add Star Wars characters? And if so, would they really stop at two or three once they started? I'm not positive about either, but it makes for a nice parallel to the Nintendo-Capcom situation if nothing else.
I usually start these focusing on the villains, so we'll do that part next. King K. Rool from Donkey Kong and Ridley from Metroid are the big villainous additions this time (as well as Dark Samus as an echo fighter, but we've already filled those slots), so we'll go with our normal two-ish* new villains from Marvel as well. Over the past installments, we've hit most of the biggest villains, between Magneto and Dr. Doom in the second entry, Loki and Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus in the third, and Thanos and Ultron last time.

*Of course, villainy is such a flexible concept in both universes; see, for example, Magneto leading the X-Men for a few years, Hawkeye and Silver Surfer being introduced as villains, or Bowser casually go-karting with Mario and Peach.

A lot of the biggest remaining ones in the comics I can think of are a little unusual (for example, Kang the Conqueror relying on time travel, or Galactus being planet-eating-huge), so maybe we could reach into the movies for some popular antagonists. I think the last few movies have had some great ones (albeit I did find Thanos more lacking than many others did), but I especially liked Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp and Killmonger from Black Panther (plus, I've heard some awards buzz for Michael B. Jordan's performance in the latter, which would be well-deserved). I think both would slide neatly into a Smash Bros-like game as well, so let's go with them.

Speaking of Black Panther, I think it would be pretty easy to justify adding another character from that part of the comics following the massive success of the movie. I would say that Shuri is the most likely candidate, given her large role in both the movie and comics.

While we're on that tangent, who are some other popular characters from the movies and films that we're still missing? Given how deep we are into the universe, that's a good place to brainstorm for more ideas. We're still missing two of the core Guardians of the Galaxy members, so let's finally add Drax the Destroyer and Gamora. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is still going strong, with its sixth season coming up. A character from that show would make sense, possibly Quake, who has gotten a push in other corners of the Marvel Universe. And I've avoided The Punisher so far because I'm not a big fan of the character, but it's probably time to finally add him; after all, he's a fan favorite who finally got his own Netflix series (following three prior studio films).

Speaking of starring roles in movies, Cable getting a co-star role in Deadpool 2 probably helps bump him to the top of the X-Men list. I've used Mario-adjacent characters as the stand-in for X-Men, which is good this time because Nintendo added three (Daisy, King K. Rool, and Piranha Plant) and we're still missing a bunch of notable X-Men. In fact, I may even dip into our five DLC "Wild Card" options to add some more (since X-23 is from the team as well). Last time, I noted Emma Frost, Gambit, Cable, and Psylocke as the runners-up, so we may as well add that whole quartet. We're still missing a lot of notable mutants, so if you'd prefer someone like Angel or Jubilee, I'm open to those arguments, but I'll stick with these ones for now. I think they would bring a nice mix of popularity and unique move sets to a fighting game.

I think we've covered most of the biggest names from the movies and TV shows, and we're pretty well-covered on the X-Men front, so I can include a few personal favorites that I think would also be realistic dark horse choices in a real Smash Marvel Ultimate. We still have five more slots to fill, so I'll go with Squirrel Girl for the next one. I mentioned her as a possibility last time, and I think it's possible she would have made the fourth game in this hypothetical series, but she can't be ignored by now. Her acclaimed comic run is still going strong, with a wide audience (fun fact: I once even saw my college Science Fiction professor at the local comic shop as we both were buying the newest Squirrel Girl collection), numerous awards, and potential TV adaptions in the works.

Patsy Walker/Hellcat is actually one of Marvel's oldest characters, first appearing in a teen romance comic series (think something like Archie) back in 1944 (for reference, that's just three months after Captain America's debut). Those titles continued into the late '60s before the genre fell out of favor, but in in the mid-'70s, she was revived and giving a superhero identity, soon thereafter becoming a member of the Avengers. She's appeared regularly since then, including a TV supporting role in Jessica Jones, and I'm a big fan of her most recent solo series, Patsy Walker A.K.A. Hellcat.

Mockingbird doesn't have quite as long a history as Hellcat, but a lot of the other beats are similar. Bobbi Morse was introduced in the '70s, later became a superhero, joined the Avengers not too long after, and became a prominent reoccurring figure in the universe. She was also featured on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. until Marvel tried to produce a spin-off show starring the character, but that fell through after just a pilot episode. And of course, her most recent solo series was an exciting spy/mystery run that wound up picking up some Eisner Award nominations.

I floated the idea of Moon Knight last time, and I'm definitely sticking with it this time. He hasn't shown up in the MCU side of things yet, but he's floated as a possibility all the time, and he's had a few solid comics series as of late. It helps that he has maybe my favorite designs in comics; even all of the alternate versions look incredibly cool, improvised-bed-sheets version included.

And lastly, let's include one more recent star. America Chavez quickly caught on with fans after her debut, and has been racking up appearances since then, with starring roles on fan-favorite teams like the Young Avengers, Ultimates, West Coast Avengers, and the recent Marvel Rising Animated Series, not to mention her own solo book. A quick rise and big following like hers seems like the type of thing that would get her into a game like this.

Whew. That took a while, but we finally filled out the entire roster. Our end result is:

Roster additions for Super Smash Marvel Ultimate:

Drax
Gamora
Quake
Punisher
Shuri
Cable
Gambit
Emma Frost
Psylocke
Mockingbird
Squirrel Girl
Moon Knight
Hellcat
America Chavez
Ghost
Killmonger

Echo Fighters:
Thor (Jane Foster)
X-23
Spider-Man (Miles Morales)
Hulk (Amadeus Cho)
Ironheart
Rey

Returning characters: Spider-Man, Venom, Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, The Thing, Daredevil

Beast, Phoenix, Magneto, Dr. Doom, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, She-Hulk, Ant-Man, Wasp, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Black Panther, Silver Surfer

Iceman, Nightcrawler, Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers), Rocket and Groot, Nico Minoru, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Loki, Dr. Strange, Vision, Falcon, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch

Ultron, Thanos, Shadowcat, Colossus, Star Lord, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, War Machine, Winter Soldier, Deadpool, Spider Woman, Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Nick Fury, Elektra, Namor, Spectrum, Nova, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-3322111031925315902018-11-23T17:54:00.000-08:002018-11-23T17:54:34.873-08:00The Second Fantastic Beasts Movie Multiplies the First's Problems I've been trying to best summarize my experience watching Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and I think the best I've got so far is "I didn't hate it, but it has a lot of flaws, and I struggle to imagine anyone caring much about it at all absent a strong love of Harry Potter". A mostly spoiler-free review:

There's a lot going on here, almost like it's condensing 600 to 700 pages like some of the later Harry Potter movies…but there's no source material here that the movie is adapting from. It's just stuffed full of characters and plot threads and details like the books, but doesn't have time to really focus in on any of them. And yet, feels almost like a filler episode in a TV show, throwing out a few sort of interesting bits that make you go "Oh. Okay, I guess," but otherwise treading water while you wait for the real "exciting stuff" to come around.

I almost wrote about this spin-off series two years ago after the first movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but I didn't find myself impassioned enough to write a full article. The problems with the first one largely came down to the fact that there were two different main narrative threads going on, they didn't really overlap or compliment each other very much (until the very end, where they were loosely tied together), and both were worse off for it. The sequel, instead of using that movie's worth of set up to try and establish a sort of main story going forward, instead decides to explode it into even more character arcs to follow, making it even more claustrophobic and underdeveloped.

And that crowding has real, negative effects on every aspect of the story. Because you don't have time to delve into other important things, so major aspects like character motivations or crucial worldbuilding are left to the viewer to fill in the blanks. Everyone is instead given one-line general directions and a character trait or two, and then they just sort of head off in that direction. You can kind of guess some finer nuances if you're familiar with the larger series…but that's usually not a sign of a strong story.

And more than that, the crowding just feels so unnecessary. So many of the things that were included just left me with the question of "Why?" Why was this important enough to warrant inclusion at the expense of other things? Why does this improve the series? Minor spoilers in the next paragraph, skip it if you want to remain totally unspoiled, although the only parts I'll be explicit about are things that were known pre-release. Skip to after the dashes if you want to avoid them, though:

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Why is there conflict between Newt and Tina? It doesn't feel necessary, it's based on a basic misunderstanding that would feel cheesy in a bad sitcom, and the resolution just gets us back to basically where we were after the first movie. Why is Leta LeStrange important? The movie clearly wants us to feel she's important, and she was built up in the previous movie, so we're supposed to see her as part of the main cast, but then the movie only uses her as a plot contrivance in other characters' storylines (including that dumb Newt-Tina thing) rather than important in her own right, and acts like her story is wrapped up by the film's end. Why is Nagini in this movie? Making her a cursed witch is an awkward decision for a lot of reasons, and if it adds anything, it's a profound discomfort to the original series, nothing for these spin-offs. Why do wizards have spells to perfectly recreate a scene from twelve hours ago and creating homing objects, but none to just find or contact each other even over short distances, or correct enchanted papers, or any number of other easy fixes, other than "that's how we need magic to work here to drive the plot"? Why are bloodlines suddenly important? This feels like something we dealt with in the original Harry Potter series (the answer was: "they really aren't"), and we get some in-story reasons to justify it, but the movie also seems to try and frame it as an important question despite the audience's knowledge otherwise. It just makes it feel like cheap build-up to give the "twist" at the end punch. And these are only the especially big questions; I could definitely go on, but I think I've gotten my point across.

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After watching Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, I couldn't help but remember back when I was excited for the Fantastic Beasts movies. Back when they were announced, I remember how refreshing the premise sounded for a prequel series; instead of over-explaining events hinted at by the books, things like Dumbledore's history, they were going to focus on fleshing out the world more, with stories only tangentially related to the original story of Harry Potter.

Every detail that trickled out since then has slowly sapped that energy. We found out that Grindelwald would be included, then we learned that the trilogy would become five films, then we heard that the second movie would feature Dumbledore in a large role. And now, here we are after movie two, and with what's left, it seems like we're looking at…a trilogy of movies dealing largely with the Dumbledore/Grindelwald conflict that was hinted at back in the original books. Right back where people speculated a prequel would go for years after Harry Potter ended.

It makes these two movies almost feel like a prequel series to the real prequel series, and that's unfortunate. A guy wandering the magic world looking for strange creatures and maybe occasionally bumping into Harry Potter-adjacent things sounded like such a pleasant and enjoyable pitch to build off of. Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-3214474272230845652018-11-12T21:56:00.001-08:002018-11-12T21:56:03.551-08:00Iconoclasts Is One of the Best Games of the YearFew games have hung in my mind like Iconoclasts. Hell, few works of narrative art in any medium have, and I knew I wanted to write about it immediately upon finishing it. But wow, does it feel like a big thing to tackle.

So let's start from the top. Iconoclasts is a one-man project, the culmination of seven-plus years of work by Joakim Sandberg (also know as Konjak). And yes, he made every part of it; the art, the music, the programming, the story, and the stuff he didn't know how to do already, he taught to himself, simply because he wanted to make this specific project. This gives the game a unified creative vision that just isn't at all common in projects of this scale, and it's amazing in so many ways that I feel I can't adequately capture in language. And it's easy to forget while you're playing the game as well; I did, until I got to the credits, which, to pad out their length to fit in a full "Where are they now?"-style epilogue that plays simultaneously, lists the name of every character in the game after starting with a simple "Game by Joakim Sandberg" and getting through all the testers, special thanks credits, and such in under two scenes.

For anyone who hasn't ever given much thought to video games as a unique art form, games like Iconoclasts are some of the best examples of the medium. The game has an epic fantasy/science-fiction world and lore that I find utterly compelling, hinting at intergalactic refugees settling a strange, new world and building a entirely new society off of what they had left, with what they find on their new home shaping the new society. Konjak's art style is beautiful, distinctive, and detailed, giving several unique biomes that feel lush and real. And it all feeds into a story that does what the best science fiction does, using its novums to build a compelling story that explores universal things like society and human nature.

The plot follows Robin, a mechanic (with an iconic, physics-defying wrench-shaped ponytail) who has inherited her passion from her father but lives in a repressive, dystopian theocracy that has outlawed the practice. When caught fixing some of the world's advanced machinery, she goes on the run from the Agents of One Concern (the local religion), working with various other fugitives as they try to piece together what's causing the shortage of native miracle fuel Ivory that's killing their planet. It's a pretty straightforward general plot fleshed out and enhanced by the uniqueness of the world.

From a gameplay standpoint, Iconoclasts is a rock-solid entry in the Metroidvania genre. The decision to make a wrench one of the key central mechanics is a fun and memorable gameplay decision that ties in nicely with some of the themes, and the boss battles against a variety of large machines stand out as some of the biggest highlights and challenges (although the multiple difficulty settings keep things accessible for novices and challenging for experts). All of them are impressive in their own way, but there's also a sense of skill in their design that makes them all feel like big and important moments within the story; yet, the important ones get a little extra something to them that makes sure you grasp how monumental they are within the story, which etches them into your mind.

And Konjak's skill for visual design doesn't stop with just the setting; the characters are a visually eclectic and loveable bunch, fleshed out even more by his strong writing. Everyone in the main cast is deeply nuanced and relatable, if not likeable in spite of the deep flaws they are each working to overcome. And as mentioned, their exploration through a twisting narrative is an emotional roller coaster, buoyed by some fantastic twists (including an absolutely brilliant one in the final boss of the game that I would absolutely recommended not spoiling yourself on).

 If any of this sounds appealing, I would absolutely recommend checking it out. From here on out, I'll be discussing a little be of story and thematic bits, so if you want to remain totally unspoiled, now would be the place to start playing. I'm pretty vague about most of the specific details; it's mostly about the big, overarching themes, so don't worry too much if you're still unsure and want to learn more, but if you want to go in with a total blank slate to form your own opinions, go check it out first and then come back. Iconoclasts is available on just about any or any game platform (I played the Nintendo Switch version, and it ran perfectly smoothly on that), so you have plenty of options if I've piqued your interest.

--mild spoiler break--

Somehow, Iconoclasts walked the line of being a work about an oppressive dystopian society facing an upcoming apocalypse without ever feeling too depressing to me, which is impressive given how dark that combination of words is. I think a big part of this is Robin, with Konjak turning the "silent hero" archetype of video game protagonists into actual characterization. Unlike most of those silent player characters, who are usually left silent to allow the player to imagine themselves as the hero, Robin is decidedly not you. Her silence becomes a mark of her implacable determination and mostly a personal choice, with a handful of exaggerated motions conveying most of her thoughts, and speech bubbles consisting of just a single icon (used to great comedic and/or storytelling effect,) as the exceptions that prove the rule.

It also makes for a great foil for the rest of the characters in your party, allowing them all to bounce off of her in ways that tell you more about both parties (especially once you realize that Robin isn't just a cipher for them to exposit at, but someone reacting to them, and in turn generating responses). All of them expose their vulnerabilities to Robin in ways that endear them to you, and make the few times you get to choose how to react to them feel more impactful as a result.

The gameplay effect on your decisions is limited to a key impactful moment at the end, but even before I knew that, the choices I was making in my interactions felt actually difficult because of how well they capture a spectrum of plausible responses to a multi-faceted issue, and because of how immediately it became clear when I picked a "wrong" response that hurt another person in my party in some way. These were all nuanced characters with reasonable (if not always ideal) motivations that I wanted to help, and the gameplay makes it clear when a not-well-thought-out choice negatively affects them.

And make no mistake, that is a key part of the game. Failure is one of the reoccurring themes of the game, and it's handled in a mature way without just dumping misery on the player, and not downplaying things like hope and optimism as a counterbalance (in a way, it reminds me a little of The Last Jedi, which I really liked for similar reasons). Failures define and drive just about every character in the game, from things like failures to protect their loved ones (both in a physical sense and not), or failure to fulfill their societies' prescribed roles for them. And this intersection of failure and expectations in turn makes a few of the scripted failures the player is forced to encounter especially haunting moments within the game, particularly with regards to a couple of significant end-game characters who succumb to these forces. Of course, it also deepens your appreciation for the ones that successfully push back as well.

And just under that surface is an examination of what exactly makes those failures; are they really a flaw, or unrealistic expectations foisted upon them by society that the characters are (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) pushing back against? This second question is of course what gives the game its name, and what makes the final twist that I alluded to earlier so interesting, as it comes during the final boss and calls everything you know about the game's world into sharp question while also providing a resolution that still feels pretty satisfactory about asserting your place in the world.

And all of this is merely scratching the surface; I have so many other themes that I have listed in my notes that I would love to expound upon, like knowledge, exploration, and learning; self-acceptance; parent-child relationships; and the clash of cultures and morality. All of those have some interesting threads that could be tugged on, but they feel way to specific for a general overview like this, so I encourage anyone who finds this interesting to look into Iconoclasts more. It's given me a lot to think about and stuck with me in a way that few other pieces of art have, and I can't recommend it enough to anyone interested. Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-42654927852617266682018-10-26T00:51:00.001-07:002018-10-26T00:51:39.190-07:00The New American Song Book and the Pop Music CanonSlate ran a fun piece last week looking at what they termed "The New American Songbook", or the pop hits (some from non-American acts, despite the name) of the last 25 years that will be listened to long into the future. The full balloting can be found here, while this piece covers the top thirty songs (which basically wound up being anything that got more than one vote from their 19 panelists).

I wanted to weigh in on it because, let's face it, this is right up my alley. A panel of experts weighing in on the best, most memorable entries in one of my hobbies from the past twenty-five years? I basically write a dozen articles each year on the baseball version of that.

I wanted to write a few thoughts on the balloting and maybe provide my own nominations.

1. The list is generally pretty solid.
Nothing there seems totally out of place. I don't know if it's necessarily in the order from "most likely" to "least likely" (just for starters, "Let It Go" is probably too low at 30, given that it has a recent popular movie for young children and the full force of Disney behind it), and there are certainly songs that I thought deserved more votes (I'm still a little shocked "Mr. Brightside" was only named three times and landed at the middle of the list). There are things missing, but any list of just twenty-five songs is going to be missing a lot. Also, "Hey Ya" seems like a strong number one, so it's hard to quibble too much with the system.

2. Twenty-five years was probably too long of a window to use.

Some of these picks feel kind of obvious. Like, "All I Want for Christmas" has been a holiday staple since before I was in school. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" was recorded back in the '80s. Predicting them to make it twenty or thirty more years when they're already working towards their third full decade of heavy airplay right now feels more like an observation than a prediction.

The average song from the top thirty was released on July 1, 2002 (almost literally-the average release year came out to 2002.5). The average overall song was a little better, but it still came out to the first half of 2004. Some voters leaned especially heavily on fairly established titles, with a couple ballots average release year being something in the 1990s.

Limiting the choices to things from the last fifteen or so years (or even just since 2000) would have probably been a little more fun, even if it would have wound up with more misses.

3. The one-vote songs are an interesting bunch.
 There's not really a specific theme to any of it, it's just fun to sift through. Some are clearly personal favorites that are more wish-casting on the part of the voter who picked them (although a decent number of them note that as well).

Other ones are songs that I'm surprised didn't pick up more votes. For instance, "Good Riddance" by Green Day strikes me as something that's already in the "pop music canon", as it's already pretty strongly tied to graduation. "Happy" by Pharrell seems like it's from the same cloth as "Uptown Funk", and I wonder if voters felt they could vote for both. "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley is the indie hit that feels like it borrows from a bunch of genres, and feels established as pretty timeless already.

Artists with multiple entries feel interesting in their own way. Some of them feel like the voters knowing certain artists will be remembered but not totally agreeing on which one will become their "signature song". One the other hand, some artists will definitely have multiple songs played for a long time, but setting aside one fifth of your ballot to just one artist does feel a little boring, so I can't blame voters too much for either consolidating around an early favorite or for throwing a vote to the one they may like better and think will still be getting played (I even agree with some of them, like "All of the Lights" and "Love on Top").

Also, just looking over the list makes me realize how many different ways there are to count a song as "remembered", for the purposes of this exercise. There's clearly a place for things like novelty hits in the general consciousness, and given the massive success of things like "Macarena" or "Cupid Shuffle" or "Gangnam Style", I see no way they aren't played in some capacity for decades. Picking Disney songs almost feels like cheating, which makes it a little strange that "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and "A Whole New World" only got one vote each. Musical theater, like "My Shot" from Hamilton, feels similar, like it should be on an entirely different scale (how do even compare the popularity of, say, "Phantom of the Opera" and "Kiss" by Prince, both from 1986?), but still a fair and accurate pick here.

Other songs will clearly be remembered at the forefront of their own niches (stuff like, say, "Loser" by Beck and '90s alternative, or "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance and punk/emo music, for a few of my guesses), but I also don't see them getting the same level of play that some songs do. If people still remember it, does that distinction matter at all, being the "deep cuts" of the pop canon rather than the stuff that shows up everywhere?

4. My special ballot
I thought it could be fun to cast my own hypothetical ballot, but I feel like there'd be a lot of overlap with stuff on the list, and that seemed a little less fun. But there are a lot of songs that I think will stay around that didn't even get one vote, so I thought it might be fun to make a ballot of just those; the "biggest snubs", if you want to think about it that way. Given those criteria, my ten-song ballot (plus one personal choice) would probably include:

"Royals"-Lorde
I was kind of shocked none of the voters picked this one, given not just how big it was, but how the music industry almost reformed around it. Pop music suddenly got a lot darker and slower in the wake of this and "Team" sitting on the charts for months, and a slew of young female singers with a lyrical emphasis cropped up in her wake (who I've heard some playful refer to as "Lorde-alikes"). That kind of impact is usually a good sign something will be remembered.

"The Middle"-Jimmy Eat World
This one has become something of an alternative standard in the seventeen years since its release, and works as a pretty decent stand-in for the pop-punk of the early-to-mid-2000s. It helps that it's catchy, radio/mass-audience-friendly, straight-to-the-point, and instantly relatable.

"All Star"-Smash Mouth
This song has moved from inescapable pop song to somehow-even-more-inescapable internet meme over the last twenty years, and all of those plays have gotten it lodged in the brains of millions and millions of people. I added this one late, because I was surprised none of the voters even mentioned it.

"You Belong With Me"-Taylor Swift
A couple of the voters mentioned certain artists they nominated being big enough that they needed to be represented for some song, but none of them extended that logic to arguably the biggest pop star on the planet right now. Part of the problem is that it's not entirely clear what song you'd vote for ("Shake It Off" and a number of others could probably also work), but once a pop star gets to a certain size, it's more than likely at least some of their songs last.

"Viva La Vida"-Coldplay
Coldplay is sort of in the same place of being a huge artist that's just been getting hits years now (they hit #3 on the charts last year, seventeen years after "Yellow"), but not picking up any votes. There are also a few options, between "Clocks" and its ubiquitous piano riff, a number of slow songs that could serve as classic slow dance songs (something that a number of voters brought up), and "Viva La Vida". I'll go with the latter, thanks to it being their biggest hit and sweeping chorus that makes it a fit for a number of instances.

"Shut Up and Dance"-Walk the Moon
"Closer"-The Chainsmokers and Halsey

These are both in the same category: massive hits that were played everywhere, still getting played fairly regular a few years later, simple enough to stick in people's mind, appeal to wide audiences, very easy to sing along to, catchy, especially evocative of the feelings they're conveying, and sort of the "faces" for larger genres of the 2010s (indie pop and EDM-pop, if you had to apply terms to them). It helps that they're both very well done songs, too.

"Kernkraft 400"-Zombie Nation
A few of the reviewers mentioned songs being played at sporting events as contributing factors to a song's longevity, which is good insight and what led me to this one. The best thing is that we don't have to wonder whether the artist or title will last in memory! No one knows offhand the German DJ and one hit wonder who made this one, and no one ever knows the lyrics, but eventually everyone hears and recognizes "The OOOOO song". The fact that it's overcome both of those usually-fatal factors is a pretty good clue it will keep getting plays no matter what happens.

"Dreams"-The Cranberries
This one is a rougher guess, but I wanted a few more unconventional picks. This one was a staple of alternative rock even before lead singer Dolores O'Riordan's untimely death earlier this year, but I've noticed it getting played a lot more since then. It's a sweet love song led with a beautiful vocal performance and catchy hooks. And on top of that, it seems like it's influenced quite a indie pop musicians; there are cover versions by Passion Pit, Bleachers, MisterWives, RAC, Imagine Dragons and K. Flay, and even more. That many artists wanting to share their love of a song is a good sign that future generations will hear it.

 "Turn Down for What"-DJ Snake and Lil Jon
This is another one that I think captures its moment in the pop music landscape too well. Like some of the other ones I've mentioned, it helps that it's simple. And it's also a little bizarre, as far as mass-appeal pop music goes, which helps it stand out.

"Run Away With Me"-Carley Rae Jepsen
This is my personal choice. I think it's just a perfectly made pop song, and it deserved to get bigger than it did. Hopefully it takes off as a cult classic, but I am under no illusions that it'll surpass "Call Me Maybe" in cultural memory.

It's a good thing there aren't hard caps on this like there are for Hall of Fame balloting, because I could easily think of another half or dozen or so that I could make a strong case for.
Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-18415798559550800482018-09-24T20:43:00.000-07:002018-09-24T20:50:46.975-07:00Music Monday: Summer 2018 PlaylistI've been listening to a lot of great music this past summer, and I wanted to do something to highlight it. The end of summer seemed like a good time to commemorate it, and I struggled with ways to cut it down and focus on some select songs or artists, but eventually, I just decided to go with a long, uncut list to get a wider scope. That meant cutting the writing part of this so this didn't balloon into a novella, but I think the music is strong enough to speak for itself (and maybe there will be more writing on some of it to come).

If you find something you really like, I definitely encourage looking into these artists more. I didn't want the list to spiral even more out of control, so I had to put some limits in pace, but a lot of these are snippets of really strong albums, or artists who are newer and could do with some new listeners. Take a listen!

 Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-9491744639027649092018-09-04T21:59:00.001-07:002018-09-04T21:59:11.135-07:00Celeste Perfectly Unites Story, Theme, and GameplayContinuing my ongoing attempt to highlight and analyze amazing indie games (especially those on the Switch), I would like to discuss one of the year's best titles, Celeste by Matt Makes Games (previously of Towerfall fame*). For anyone curious, I played the Switch version, but it's available on pretty much any platform you'd want to play it on.

*Which, it was recently announced, is itself coming to the Switch at the end of September, if you haven't tried it yet and are looking for an excuse; it's wonderful in its own right!

Celeste is a rare beast, a game that is mechanically tight, incredibly well-designed level-wise, and fun to play while also being an incredibly moving narrative and thematic experience. For those who haven't heard of it yet, the premise is pretty simple: a girl named Madeline arrives at a remote peak (the titular Celeste Mountain), looking to escape some sort of (initially undefined) personal trauma by climbing it. Along the way, she meets a variety of figures that aid her in her journey, with the entire story rendered in some simple-yet-beautiful pixel art graphics, and with one of my favorite game soundtracks supporting the whole thing.

The game is an incredibly tough platformer, challenging players in a variety of ways while also being one of the more forgiving games of its kind. Save points are frequent in the normal course of a level and carry through between sessions, and on top of that, the game has a variety of options to tweak the challenge in almost any way imaginable so that anyone can feel comfortable playing it, regardless of whether or not you're the type of person who can beat a classic Mario game in ten minutes. That in and of itself is pretty notable; Game Makers Toolkit has more on these features, which is definitely a worth a watch.

If you're at all curious about it and want to go in unspoiled of the deeper plot details, I would absolutely recommend trying it! From here on out, I'll be getting pretty deep into the nitty-gritty of the story.

With that out of the way, let's move on to Celeste's themes and their synchronicity with the gameplay. As you play through the game, it becomes pretty apparent that Madeline is dealing with depression, anxiety, some combination of the two, or something similar. It's not exactly hard to see if you play it; she more or less admits it in conversations with other characters, and the mountain literalizes this struggle with the physical manifestation of her dark side (referred to in-game as simply "Part of You", but since lovingly nicknamed "Badeline" by the game's fans and developers).*

*My favorite touch might be the hidden backtracked confession in level five; after passing through a magic mirror, you get a literally-reversed message about mental health struggles that starts at the moment you find Madeline's friend Theo, all as you explore a confusing dream world filled with eyes in the walls and enemies. I'm a sucker for impressionistic art that makes metaphorical experiences literal, and this hits all my emotional checkboxes.

In every possible sense, from the total view of the entire work, to broken down all the way to the smallest unit the game allows, Celeste is about acknowledging, facing, and eventually overcoming these mental struggles. Trying to ignore them and move on only harms Madeline; indeed, the game touches on this in its messages for the player, noting that it tracks your in-game deaths because you should take pride in all your failures and how they've made you better, rather than trying to pretend they never happened. And of course, they recognize that every person is unique, offering a variety of both accessibility options and self-imposed challenges (how many different collectibles and secret levels you want to challenge is totally up to the player, with no real difference other than a sense of personal accomplishment) for each player to decide what constitutes "beating" the game, just as each person has their own set of personal struggles to overcome.

The overall structure of the game's story mirrors the attempts of someone in a depressive slump trying to try things to jar themselves out of it, and the "good" and "bad" periods that go with it. In every level, Madeline sets out to do things that could, in theory, help her cope with her mental state, but only half of them end up positive experiences. Which ones help are even alternated, creating an "up-and-down" effect to the narrative. The odd levels (prior to the finale, level seven) represent the down periods, with things like meeting people, sleeping, trying to help others, and generally challenging herself ending poorly. Sleeping at the end of the first level leads to the dream world of level 2 that creates Badeline. Trying to help Mr. Oshiro, the man/ghost who owns the hotel of world 3 (and someone suffering from a his own set of unresolved mental health issues) leads to tensions flaring with Badeline, and Mr. Oshiro chasing the two of them off the premises after he turns into a monster. Chasing Theo into the ominous mirror temple in world five ends with the two of them stuck in a strange alternate world, with Madeline having to save Theo from being stuck in a crystal.

Of course, all of those have their own issues that made them flawed coping mechanisms, whether it was trying to ignore the underlying anxiety; trying to regain self-worth by spreading yourself thin trying to help a stressful/ungrateful third party; or charging in to a situation that makes you uncomfortable at someone else's whims (of course, the last one is partly on Theo, for pushing Madeline too hard and not listening to her).

The even chapters stand in stark contrast however, with Madeline's small attempts at comfort working much more effectively. Calling her mother at the end up chapter two to just discuss her feelings ends on a positive note after a heart-to-heart with her new friend Theo. Level four ends with her meeting up Theo again, where he teaches her a mental trick for calming down after a panic attack (which involves focusing her breathing through imagining a feather).

But the sixth part is easily the most helpful. After she tries to cast out the Part of Her before the level starts, the two are sent her back down to the base of the mountain; she then uses her new power-up, the feather (pretty clearly calling back to Theo's help two chapters), to catch up to Badeline and reconcile with her, rather than totally send her away. Through acknowledging and accepting her problems, rather than trying to pretend they don't exist, she becomes stronger, and the two of them (now recombined) are twice as strong (with a new gameplay mechanic and aesthetic changes to Madeline to literalize this growth), and able to re-summit the entire mountain in the grand finale.

But it's not just the overall narrative structure that speaks to Madeline's struggles. Even the gameplay mirrors the theme at the story's core. As mentioned, Celeste is the kind of game that prides itself on its difficulty, in part because that's kind of the point. It's meant to be a seemingly insurmountable task, like conquering your inner fears and anxieties.

And, as mentioned earlier, the game breaks that challenge into smaller chunks, with each room's doorway serving as both a checkpoint to return to when you die, and a save point to reload from should you decide to take a break and walk away for a bit. And, narratively, that's the point; breaking an insurmountable challenge into still-hard, yet more manageable sizes with time to reset in between is a way to cope with the metaphorical and literal mountain staring you down. In between these levels, the game even gives you a variation of the feather/breathing exercise; the level-select screen is a simple, calming view of the mountain while a light and airy piano melody helps to clear your mind.

Playing Celeste is like staring at the fractal patterns of the snowflakes that fall on the eponymous mountain. At every level of scrutiny, you see the same message of personal growth reiterated. Examining it at any level gives you a new appreciation for the multitude of ways it approaches its subject matter. This incredible level of design and attention to detail is a big part of why it's one of my favorite games of 2018.Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-46035528706604883172018-08-07T23:58:00.000-07:002018-08-07T23:58:20.678-07:00Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King Is an Interesting Indie Homage to 2D Zelda GamesA big part of my love for the Nintendo Switch is that it's a platform highly conducive to indie games. Sure, the big titles like Super Mario Odyssey and Splatoon 2 are incredibly fun, but they're only part of the experience. Smaller titles like Battle Chef Brigade or Crypt of the NecroDancer or Celeste (more on this one coming soon) have comprised a large chunk of my playing time as well. I like that Nintendo has begun to do more to showcase these titles, which often wear their inspiration from earlier Nintendo games on their sleeve, and Nintendo's support has made the Switch all the more attractive for independent studios.*

*This isn't to say that it's perfect; in fact, I have a lot of opinions on how they can improve their support for these types of games. But it definitely beats the system that's in place for indie games on, say, Steam, which appears to be "approve everything, and then release something constantly with no notice".
One of the big success stories from this set up has been Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King from developer Castle Pixel. The game did well enough on Switch to keep the company open after it got lost in the massive shuffle on Steam. It's not hard to see why it likely resonated with Nintendo fans, though: the game is a clear love letter to the 2-D Legend of Zelda games and others like them. A Link to the Past, in particular, is a clear influence, which is a big part of what convinced me to pick up the game initially; ALttP was my introduction to the Zelda series, the one I've played through the most, and still probably my personal favorite entry.

And Blossom Tales definitely feels like playing it's inspiration, which took me through a weird roller coaster of emotions while playing the game that I wanted to break down because of how unusual they felt. Castle Pixel has done a great job in making a game that feels cozy and familiar, but bright and new simultaneously. The Kingdom of Blossom is a pleasant place to explore, filled with diverse locales to discover; large enough to feel satisfying, but with a helpful and tastefully-restrained fast travel system that hits the fine balance of making reaching every last corner not feel like a chore, but also not making it feel like you're just skipping by the entire map. The story is pretty straightforward, but with an added Princess Bride-esque framing device of a grandfather telling his children of the adventures of new knight Lilly, which is both charming and a useful reminder of what to do when you pick the game back up.

Everything runs smoothly gameplay-wise, and it feels like the best of the 2D Zelda games. The only real complaint I have is that the dungeons are much too linear*, and every dungeon just made more anxious to get out and continue exploring the overworld. But every other aspect of it feels like it could be an official Zelda spinoff or something.

*Game Maker's Toolkit has a good series breaking down Zelda dungeon design, if you want an in-depth analysis. But my quick critique here basically boils down to this: almost every Blossom Tale dungeon is basically following a straight line through a dungeon. You find a lock door, go to the only other open door, find a key, and go back to the door. Or, you find a room of enemies, fight them all, then move on. Some of the single-room puzzles are irritatingly clever, but none of those challenges really extend to navigating or understanding the layout of the dungeon.

Of course, the game keeps calling to mind A Link to the Past. That's not really their fault, either; the 2D Zelda games haven't really spawned their own genre*, so unlike, say, Metroidvanias, or 3D platformers, with a wealth of games to compare them too, the only thing I could keep stacking Blossom Tales up against was other Zelda games. And that's not really fair to them; Nintendo is a longtime giant of the industry who pioneered, codified, or outright created numerous styles of video game, while Pixel Castle is a new studio just starting out.

* I'm not even sure what to call them; I've only heard "2D Action-Adventure", but even that doesn't quite feel totally accurate. I'm not a huge fan of naming entire genres after specific games, but it does seem pretty common and it conveys the game's feel pretty quickly. We just need something that rolls off the tongue better than "2D-Zelda-like".

Of course, despite the paucity of examples in the field, Blossom Tales is hardly the first game of its kind to call A Link to the Past to mind. Nintendo tried release what seemed to be a direct sequel (it's hard to tell, as the Zelda timeline is confusing) in 2013, A Link Between Worlds. ALBW reused a lot of ALttP's elements, from map to dungeon locations and motifs to story, often for the worse.

A Link Between Worlds brings to mind the old saying about how you can never go home again, though. The new overworld felt too familiar, to the point where my knowledge of ALttP kept me from ever feeling stuck, or from feeling that the world was at all expansive. The "twist" of there being a second "dark world" half of the of game was the least surprised I had been by a big plot reveal in some time, while also being something of a disappointment because part of me hoped Nintendo would use the blank canvas of a new dimension to do something at least mildly different than the ALttP's Dark World. And to top it all off, I basically don't remember most of the game's world design because it will never have the impact to overwrite my memories of exploring ALttP as formative a game (to both my childhood and gaming in general), yet it also wasn't different enough to stand apart from its predecessor in any meaningful way.

Blossom Tales's homage, in comparison, feels incredibly tasteful. Nothing should be forced to stack up directly to one of top 50 (at least) or so games of all-time, but even still, it's carved its own little unique niche in my heart. I'll definitely remember exploring their world, and mowing through hoards of various monsters and undead ghouls is exciting. I'm extremely interested in seeing what Castle Pixel goes from here, and if nothing else, The Sleeping King makes for a solid entry in this not-quite-yet-a-genre. If you love this style of game and want a new fantasy land to explore for a while, it's definitely worth a look.
Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-21753920876727097222018-05-09T21:04:00.000-07:002018-05-09T21:04:09.858-07:00Remembering Meteos: A RetrospectiveThe other day, there were plenty of people on social media who were discussing their "Gamestruck 4". For those who missed it, the inspiration for the conversation was the day before, when movie streaming service Filmstruck started a hastag asking people for to name the four films that "defined them". From there, other people began applying the thinking to other mediums, hence "Gamestruck 4".

With that background out of the way, I decided to think about it some. Video games have been a large part of my life, so which four could be the ones that most "defined" me, whatever that meant? There were a lot of contenders. Super Mario World, as the first video game I played, was a starting point. I've probably put more hours into the Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart series than any other games. I've written about my love for series like Mario, Pokémon, and Backyard Baseball in the past, all of which had major impacts on my formative years. There are more modern titles that remind me of why I love the medium, like Super Mario Odyssey, A Hat in Time, and Undertale (which I've wanted to write about for years, but still have no idea where to even start). Or, I could pick games that are highly representative of genres I like, or which line up with my aesthetic tastes.

There were some interesting titles there, some of which included games that I hadn't thought about for years. Golden Sun was a big one, an old Game Boy Advanced RPG with a sprawling fantasy epic at its core centered on a group of magic users traveling the world. I spent a lot of time on that one, but of course, I already had a potential RPG representative in Pokémon. Then, there's games like Tetris and Tetris Attack; I love puzzle games, but especially ones like that.* But what about something that could combine those aspects?

*I have no idea what the official subgenre name is. "Match Three Games" seems like the style, but name that doesn't really apply to Tetris. Wikipedia suggests "Tile Matching", which seems the most accurate even if I've never heard it used before. Of course, I'm also fond of my mostly-buzzword-yet-technically-not-wrong descriptor, "rougelike puzzle games with permadeath".

And that's when I remembered Meteos.

For those who weren't fortunate enough to try it, Meteos was a 2005 Nintendo DS puzzle game created by Q Entertainment (and under the design lead of the brilliant Masahiro Sakurai, of Super Smash Bros and Kirby fame) in the same genre as Tetris. But whereas Tetris felt (to young me, at least) like something basic and ancient, even primal, that had always existed in some form or another*, Meteos felt distinctly new.

*And to be fair to young me, Tetris predated me by nearly a decade, so it was pretty close.

It came out early in the DS life cycle, at a time when most developers weren't quite sure how best to utilize the new touch screen, and so they haphazardly fused on mechanics that interrupted the flow of the game or made no sense. Meteos, in contrast, felt designed around being a touch-based puzzle game*, centered around frenetic rearranging of columns as possible matches crossed your eye (here's a random gameplay sample from YouTube, for those who need a visual).

*Although some later versions were made for systems without touch screens, so it is possible to adapt.
Of course, Meteos brought more to the table than just a new control scheme. At every turn, it felt like the game added twists to the genre and its conventions, starting from the most basic points. Unlike Tetris or Tetris Attack, completing the required match would not immediately clear out the blocks and drop everything else down a row, but rather transform them into rockets and shoot them to the top of the screen, carrying every block above them. Combos also moved from skill moves to absolute necessity: if the upward momentum from those new rockets didn't carry the stack off the top of the screen, they'd start to fall back to the ground and undo your progress unless you followed up with more matches to restart the rockets.

There were other innovations, though. For instance, Tetris Attack and its successors like Pokémon Puzzle League added a character select for players, but those had minimal effect on things. It was nice, and changed up the visuals and music, but otherwise, not much happened. But Meteos took it a step further; the variety of planets you could play as actually functioned very differently, with variation among the gravity and other rules regarding removing blocks, as well as different sets and ratios of blocks to clear.

And even the act of clearing blocks built onto other new ideas, as the game had a sort of combination of crafting and RPG leveling included; different blocks you cleared would be added to a bank, which you could then withdraw and combine to unlock new planets to play on. There was a joy in trying to unlock all of the new planets, measuring out which types of blocks you needed to look for and clear (say, for example, did you need to focus on playing on planets with red and purple blocks, or maybe go all out collecting yellows?), and then testing your new spoils. It added more to the game than just another story mode.

Although, even in the story mode, the game was experimenting on its predecessors' formula. There wasn't just a single story mode, but multiple ones, each providing a different play experience. One new focused on branching into different combinations of opponents, while another posed unique challenges to allow players to complete the hardest path beyond just winning against computer opponents. And while the story that was there was sparse and not too ground-breakingly novel, it was incredibly atmospheric, giving enough to feel mythic in its retelling of galactic good versus incomprehensive interstellar evil, and what it left untold was to maximize the feeling of a mysterious and unknowable universe.

Plus, there were nice little bits of gameplay adding to the story and narrative feel, like the block bank and story nodes fleshing out the backstories of the planets you could play as, or final boss Meteos' design looking like the Space Eye of Sauron and sending you blocks containing trapped creatures from the other planets you played as. And then, there was the soundtrack, which set the mood remarkably well and stood out especially among its handheld peers of the time. The different planets' tracks, in addition to their inhabitants composed of simple geometric shapes and lines, did a decent job of fleshing the worlds of the game out.*

*For those unfortunate souls who never played the game need some examples, there is a fan Wiki with pages for each planet.
So, what happened after the bolt of brilliance from out of nowhere that was Meteos? The game got a number of accolades and sold pretty well for being a new series, and was also eventually ported to PC and mobile markets. There was also a pair of true sequels. Meteos: Disney Magic, also for the DS but coming two years later, applied a Disney coat of paint to everything and switched up mechanics in a significant way by allowing the player to move blocks horizontally in addition to vertically. In my opinion, both of these were for the worse; even young me realized that the art direction was a major point in the original game's favor, and the additional axis robbed the series of a little of its simplicity and basic mechanics. A more traditional sequel, Meteos Wars, made its way to Xbox Live Arcade the year after that, returning to the original formula plus adding a few more planets, while also bringing couch multiplayer to the series and stripping the gameplay of the touch screen element that had somewhat defined it.

I have no idea if that lack of touch screen worked for the Xbox, as I never played it, but as confusing as Meteos without touch controls feels, it gives me a degree of hope. Because the game series has been pretty hard to come by these days, given that it's latest edition is a decade old and I'm not sure that a modern game solely reliant on touch controls would make it outside of the mobile market (a place where one Meteos port has already vanished from) today (technically, some of those mobile games have made their way to the Switch, but being touch-only means they face some limitations).

Knowing that a non-touch version is feasible means that a remaster or true Meteos 2 could happen. Adding to those embers of hope is Lumines: Remastered, an upcoming Switch version of another mid-2000s portable puzzle game that could be thought of as a sister series to Meteos. Both series were by Q Entertainment, and while Meteos started as a Nintendo DS exclusive, Lumines began life as an exclusive for that system's handheld rival, the PlayStation Portable. If one is seeing a new version in 2018, what's to say the other couldn't? And a return to Nintendo on the Switch would definitely serve the series well, as it feels like a good fit for the runaway hit system. At the very least, the series was strong, fun, and creative enough to deserve a new version for modern audiences to enjoy. Here's to hoping for another star trip across the galaxy.
Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-50988180915215228932018-05-06T22:21:00.001-07:002018-05-07T15:00:38.511-07:00A Few Criticisms of Avengers: Infinity WarI'm just going to cut straight to the point: I don't think necessarily think Avengers: Infinity War is a bad movie. I enjoyed myself watching it in some capacity, which is ultimately what Marvel Studios was going for. But it was a certain type of movie, the kind where, as I'm watching it, I start thinking of all the ways it could have been better. So with that, I figured I'd give the few most significant changes I think would have improved the third Avengers film. As a warning, if you haven't seen Infinity War yet and you're concerned about spoiling the movie for yourself, maybe hold off, because I'm going to cover some major plot points.

First: Don't change Thanos's motivation from the comics.

I'll start with a basic one (also, a less spoilery one, to give that crowd one last chance to leave). For those who aren't familiar with the comics version of the character, the film rewrote Thanos's basic motivations. Contrary to what a lot of people think, the Marvel movies aren't necessarily good because they stick close to the plot of the comics (in fact, some of the best decisions have been when they let directors and writers play fast and loose with the canon). So the fact that Thanos's motivation is different isn't necessarily bad in and of itself.

It's just that the new backstory just…doesn't quite work. Some villains can be given motivations that seem understandable even if their actions are monstrous, but it needs to line up with what they're doing. Leaving aside that Thanos's plan to stave off overpopulation by killing half the world is both monstrous and nonsensical (for a variety of reasons), it overlooks that his means to doing is by collecting the Infinity Stones, artifacts that allow him to alter reality.

Which, you know, presumably includes the power to just…make infinite resources, thereby solving that overpopulation problem he worries about. Which is one of the problems in dealing with all-powerful artifacts, in that they frequently would break the sequence of events the writers need to happen, such as when Doctor Strange totally neglects that he has the power to control time when his team of Avengers just misses the chance to stop Thanos in the fight on Titan.*

*Of course, Strange insinuates there's some reason he didn't use the Time Stone, but it apparently needs to be concealed from the rest of the Avengers, which is its own lazy and frustrating writing trope, but let's not dwell on that too long.

Since there's really no way to make Thanos's mass genocide seem reasonable in any way, why bother concocting a new origin at all? In the comics, Thanos is still a powerful cosmic entity seeking the reality-altering Infinity Gems in order to kill half of the universe, but he's doing it to woo Death. Trying to appeal to a physical embodiment of a force of nature like that feels like a good combination of strange, mystic, and terrifyingly incomprehensible for a goal as crazy as massive galaxy-wide genocide. And part of me thinks this might be too bizarre for a major blockbuster, but then, Marvel also just included Ego the Living Planet in a movie last year, so maybe we're underestimating the amount of weirdness people will go along with. At the very least, unrequited love for Death as a being is an underlying motivation that can't be countered with "that's not at all how this works", like Thanos's new plan can.

Second: Too many deaths at once

I don't know how else to say it, but the large number of deaths that closed out the movie did nothing to affect me emotionally. I suppose some of that is technically due to outside knowledge, as even the most casual of Marvel Cinematic Universe fans is pretty darn clear the movies won't be "for real" killing off Spider-Man or Black Panther or every Guardian of the Galaxy outside of Rocket and Nebula any time soon. Plus, even for those who don't know that, it's not like the MCU has been hesitant to undo deaths in the past.

But still, something about these deaths in particular felt especially hollow. Maybe it's the overwhelming quantity making it hard to take in the full scope, with double digits dying all in the same scene? Maybe part of it is how rapidly they all happen, with only one main character dying in the first two and a half hours before suddenly erasing half of them in a single moment and leaving little time to reflect on each individual as they go and making all of them feel less impactful than that early death? Maybe it's how blatant a set-up the entire moment is for the sequel, how easy the fix is, and consequently how obvious it is that none of this will last more than two-thirds of a movie?

Of course, Marvel movies have managed to wring emotion out of their moments in the past while being clear set-ups for future movies as well. So it might just be that the decision to end where they did made it clear on some emotional level that this was the midpoint of a double-length movie rather than a conclusion of an individual movie. Getting too worked up about that feels in some ways almost like getting worked up when thing go south at the end of a chapter in a book, right before the intermission of a play, or (most appropriately) in between issues of an ongoing comic series. Or, to quote one of my favorite movies growing up: "Guys, guys, relax. It's only halftime".

Except that it's clear from the way the scene is treated that the creators wanted it to be a clear emotional beat. With that in mind…

Third: Maybe just restructure the movie?

If the nature of your movie is robbing your major emotional beat of its impact…maybe you need to restructure your movie? Of course, there are other problems of this sort. For instance, if your heroes need to lose their major battle to set up the downer ending, it needs to feel deserved, and I just don't know if that's the case here. For instance, the loss came because a single lapse in judgment from Star Lord…but also from Doctor Strange deciding not to use his magic "time rewind stone".

Of course, if you saw Doctor Strange, you'll know that that magic stone was enough to overpower what seemed to be magic demon lord of a hell-dimension, but it's apparently just not enough to stop a big purple dude? And based on that, it's arguable that Strange's actions in Infinity War betray his character arc from his solo movie*, seeing as that movie ended with Strange more than willing to trade his life for the greater good to save the rest of the universe, but this one sees him trade an Infinity Stone (allowing Thanos to wipe out half of the universe) for a single person's life.

*This arguably also holds for Spider-Man, who ended his movie deciding to be the more local hero that Iron Man wanted him to be and turning down a spot on the Avengers…but immediately charged at a space ship in the opening twenty minutes of Infinity War (maybe it applies to other heroes too and I just haven't thought of this yet, but it's also probably fair to note that none of these problems are as glaring as the gaps that result from Ant-Man appearing in Civil War that I've noted in the past, so it's an improvement at least.) Edit: There's probably an argument that Thor: Ragnarok was undone too, I suppose.

What's the fix here? I'm not totally sure. It might require a longer sequence, but then, maybe the secret could have been to not end with Thanos having completed the Infinity Gauntlet; even if you need to spend more time on these beats, ending with Thanos having devastated the heroes by taking one Infinity Gem after an all-out battle, and well on his way to completing could have been equally devastating if done well. And nothing says you couldn't have had Thanos succeed at wiping out half the population in the next Avengers (which, arguably, wouldn't have lessened the emotional impact much anyway, given that the decision they went with already made it feel like the midpoint of a larger movie). While I'm not positive of what the best choice might have been here, the more important point is that there were alternatives.

Conclusion

Of course, it's not all bad news. Ultimately, I liked Infinity War a lot more than the movie that technically preceded it, Civil War. And it's tempting to try and forgive these weird gaps in the film's logic as something that crops up in the big events in comics as well (which is clearly the inspiration for Infinity War, in all of the best and worst ways). But those issues are still issues in the source material as well; they're essentially just ignored because of how prevalent they are. The Marvel Cinematic Universe presents a chance to learn from those mistakes and build a better story (something the last few films have been especially good at), one without flaws so ubiquitous they become just background noise. For all the parts of Avengers: Infinity War that I liked, I still find myself quoting Tony Stark in Spider-Man: Homecoming: "I wanted you to be better". Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-73594733585424444832018-01-21T21:06:00.000-08:002018-08-28T22:03:32.502-07:00A Hat in Time and Level Design Philosophies in 3-D PlatformersA few weeks ago, I wrote about my favorite indie games from the past year and I lavished high praise on A Hat in Time by the development team Gears for Breakfast. It's a throwback to the 3D platformers of the '90s and early 2000s that I loved growing up, but like all of the best nostalgic throwbacks, it's good not just because it references the classics of a past, but because it understands what made those classics work, and consciously decides to do its own thing. Now that I've more or less finished the entire game, I feel like I can begin to break down some of the things that the game does especially well.

Every aspect of A Hat in Time is meticulously designed and pitch perfect. The aesthetic side of things are incredibly strong; the game is filled with beautifully-animated, cel-shaded style worlds, each with it's own hilariously-written and quirky side characters. The entire thing is scored with a triumphant and exciting soundtrack that makes you feel ready to set out on an adventure. Protagonist Hat Girl is given a strong personality with almost no dialogue, and is one of my favorite new main characters in the past decade or so. The controls are tight and so much fun to use, which is critical to a platformer that relies on navigating spaces. Few games make simply moving around a level feel so natural and easy.

And while that all is nice, there's one specific aspect of the design that I'd like to focus on: the construction of the worlds that serve as your digital playgrounds. A Hat in Time makes some interesting choices in how they went about building these stages that I feel like digging into a little, because I think the variety they provide are part of what keeps the game feel so exciting and new at every turn.

Each of the game's four worlds (which the game refers to as "chapters", with the missions subdividing them as "acts") is built upon a different school of thought of platformer level design. The first chapter, Mafia Town, fittingly takes probably the most well-known basic style, something between a hub-and-spokes and tiered-level design (maybe something like "wedding cake" could give you a good mental image). Essentially, the level is designed radiating out from a central point to keep it easy for the player to picture and navigate while also feeling less linear and more open world. Additionally, that central point is raised to give players a high point to visually survey the full area if needed, with a number of paths to this point that offer variety to traverse the map while still acting as something like access points (the "spokes" of the Hub-and-Spokes). Super Mario 64 has probably the most notable style of this design (about half of their stages fit this example), with stages like Bob-omb Battlefield, Whomp Fortress, Cool, Cool Mountain, and several others severing as examples.

Mafia Town would feel right at home with these stages, as a town built around a mountainous island, divided into concentric rings connected through various slopes, slides, and staircases. A top-down view of the level makes this pretty apparent. As probably the most iconic and familiar style of level in 3-D platformers, it makes sense that this would serve as the first level, although there are some significant differences with the old style.

Notably, Gears for Breakfast rotates the starting point around the map to follow the narrative flow of the story and reduce redundant backtracking across the map at the start of each mission. Also, unlike Mario 64 and more in-line with later examples of the genre, it makes sure actually provide more of a reason to kick you back to the hub world after collecting the MacGuffin at the end of each level, with different acts frequently featuring changes to the world and making it feel much less like you could have picked up multiple Time Pieces in a single run if you hadn't been sent away.

Speaking of changing the map, the second chapter, Battle of the Birds, takes this to an even greater extreme. The world is essentially three different maps that are connected narratively but completely separate physically; the space you explore in acts two and four (a train) have nothing in common with the one in acts three and five (a town square), and the level you play through in the first act (the movie studio) won't be seen again at all until the resolution in act six.

However, all three of these places share a similarity in their design, in that they're Linear. There will be branches and side rooms to explore, but you more or less have to follow the path laid out, which makes a lot of sense given that this is the most narrative-heavy chapter, and it's a lot harder to lay out an ordered narrative if the player is given too much freedom in the order they can tackle objectives.

Instead of exploration, the game creates the challenge in making you figure out how to get from one point to the next, much like a 2-D platformers or the Sonic Adventure series (or, if you want to stick to the Mario series example, the Bowser levels in Mario 64). The spaces and missions chosen even physically reflect this linear mentality, with one of the worlds being a train (meaning that most of your navigation will be forward a car or back a car), and one of the two missions in the most open world (the town square) being to lead a parade along its route line.

Then, there's the third world, Subcon Forest. It's a fairly standard Sandbox level, focused mostly on exploration, similar more to the levels of games like Banjo-Kazooie or Super Mario Sunshine. There are walls that keep you from wandering into certain areas at the start, but you can permanently remove those in basically any mission at your leisure. Of course, playing into the wide-open nature of the world, some of those locked-off areas are even totally optional, guiding you to explore to finish off all of the side quests while also not forcing you to do so to progress the story.

Drawing a line between this style and the Tiered Hub-and-Spokes design of the first chapter can be tough, but there are a few crucial differences in my mind. The Hub-and-Spokes designs usually focus on building vertically, cramming more things into less square footage and frequently making the entire level visible from the peak. The Sandboxes, meanwhile, don't care as much about sprawl, instead making traversing large areas part of the experience. Notably, A Hat in Time plays into this feeling by making its Sandbox level a seemingly-endless haunted forest.

Another notable feature of the Sandbox as compared to Hub-and-Spokes is freedom of movement. Getting from Point A to Point B in the latter is usually restricted in some way, by things like paths up mountains or alleyways through restrictive areas. And because of added vertical traversal, there are usually multiple fairly-equivalent paths to go between the points. The Sandbox, meanwhile, will have no restrictions, and a simple straight line going from Point A to Point B is usually the best options.

Also, it's worth noting that Sandboxes aren't necessarily without large central structures; Subcon Forest itself has a large tree at the center with items at the peak for people who can climb it. But reaching the apex doesn't really change getting from one point to another; it doesn't provide a shortcut or impede movement elsewhere. It's just another challenge of the stage.

The last world, Alpine Skyline, is a sort of variation on the Linear structure of the second chapter. However, it seems to borrow from Super Mario Galaxy, focusing on smaller sections of platforming, occasionally with branches in the path, and each separated from each other. Whereas Super Mario Galaxy pulled this off with planets and cannons shooting you between them across space, Alpine Skyline instead finds Hat Girl ziplining between distinct mountain peaks. The branching paths keep some level of exploration, the small chunks the level is broken up into allow for some variety and creativity in the level design, and the challenge of the world makes up some for the less-prominent narrative of the world. It also dips its toe slightly into the Hub-and-Spokes design, with a central town and individual routes branching out from it, which can be tackled in any order.

This exercise is mostly observational, and not meant to be definitive; nothing says these are the only styles of 3-D platforming worlds available. Additionally, worlds can and frequently do mix-and-match in their design, even sometimes just by making single levels within that follow specific styles of gameplay. A Hat in Time specifically serves as a strong cases study in the process of game-world design; each world has a clear intentionality in how it was built up and how a player is expected to traverse it, the game makes use of its short length to showcase as many styles as possible, and the attention to detail and level of effort put in the game make every level an especially fun example to test out and see for yourself.
Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-4466042678009910072018-01-07T20:04:00.000-08:002018-01-07T20:04:21.138-08:00My Favorite Indie Games of 2017I've written a decent amount in 2017 about video games, but mostly about larger titles from bigger companies. It's not necessarily bad, but it's also not really indicative of a lot of what I played this year, either. And that's kind of a shame, because a lot of smaller, indie titles rely on good word-of-mouth to get attention. So maybe I'll write a full article about one or more of these games later, but in the meantime, I wanted to run down a list of the smaller titles that I enjoyed this year. Not all of them came out this year, necessarily, but part of the joy of smaller games is finding something you missed the first time. With that in mind, consider looking into one or more of these if they sound interesting.

Anarcute
Anarcute is a top-down beat-em-up that I stumbled upon about extremely cute animals fighting off the iron fist of a fascist police state. The discordant halves of that premise do a lot to elevate a solid set of mechanics and level design into a really interesting total package.

Battle Chef Brigade
This is one of my two favorite games on this list. Do you enjoy side-scrolling beat-'em-ups, RPGs, and/or match-three puzzle games? Have you ever watched Lord of the Rings or played Legend of Zelda and wondered what their version of Chopped is like? If either of those questions is a yes (or even just intrigued bemusement), Battle Chef Brigade might be a game for you to try. Set in a fantasy kingdom overrun with monsters that has decided hunting them and cooking them into fancy dishes is the best way to handle the problem, you play as a young runaway looking to join the elite titular force. Matches involve juggling so many parts that it keeps you on your toes the whole time. Are you finding the right creatures? Are you getting the correct tastes? What's the best combo you can build to combine flavors? How do you work around inedible taste gems? It's incredibly fun.

Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King
Nintendo's decision to keep innovating with their main titles is admirable, but it means a lot of rich set-ups, mechanics, and concepts get sidelined or discarded with plenty of room left to explorer. Indie games have done a great job in recent memory of building off of those idea, for example building the entire rapidly-mushrooming "Metroid-vania" genre while The Big N let the original, 2D-style Metroid game lay dormant.

Blossom Tales is something like that, but instead of 2D Metroid, it focuses on A Link to the Past-era Legend of Zelda. As someone who had ALttP serve as my introduction to the series (and it probably remains my favorite entry in the series), seeing someone else play around with this style and build it into something new is a lot of fun. I'm still early into this one (it came to Switch pretty late in the year), and I look forward to more of it going forward.

Chromagun
A first person puzzle game in the vein of Portal 1 and 2; you get a gun that shoots paint and locked rooms that can only be unlocked by splatting the walls with said paint. It's a little lighter on the physics side of things than that series, but it sets out on its own complex-but-easy-to-understand mechanics that surprisingly hasn't been used (to my knowledge). And that color-based idea at its core gives it a strong aesthetic sense that's also right up my alley. It lives a little too much in Portal's shadow at times, including a similar sense of humor and mid-game twist, but it carves out its own respectable niche.

Event[0]
This is the one title on the list that I actually did write about this year. It's a tight little story-driven sci-fi thriller built on a fascinating central mechanic.

Fast RMX
What Blossom Tales does for 2D Legend of Zelda, Fast RMX does for F-Zero. Nintendo has let the fast-paced, low-gravity sci-fi racer lay dormant for years, seemingly deciding to focus on Mario Kart. It's understandable, but I think the two were distinct enough to coexist. It's understandable if Nintendo doesn't want to devote time to both series, but it's good to see someone else take their ideas and run with it.

A Hat in Time
My co-favorite title here, tied with Battle Chef Brigade. A Hat in Time is a throwback to the 3D platformers I grew up playing back on the N64 and Gamecube, a genre of long hoped would see a retro revival. There were a lot of entries in that category from the indie circuit this year, finally, and this one was the best. A Hat in Time is love letter to Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine that, like all great modern throwbacks, knows what parts are essential to capturing the essence of its genre and what parts would be better off being replaced with more modern elements. And the art direction and general design of everything is both richly designed and cartoonishly cute, and this all carries through to the strong-level design. Every location feels welcoming and detailed. Playable character Hat Girl stands among the best silent protagonists in video games. Everything about this game feels natural and perfect.

Kamiko
Kamiko is another game that clearly draws inspiration from earlier Legend of Zelda, but goes in a different direction. Instead of going expansive and deep in gameplay, it focuses instead on smaller, quicker bursts, making an almost arcade-like experience that's ideal for replay and speedrunning. It definitely makes for an interesting point of comparison, although I wish it were a little longer.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
A neon-psychedelic trip through the galaxy on a spaceship to save existence from "anti-love", with just you and your friends to help you steer and man the guns against forces of evil. It's as wild as it sounds, and a lot of fun as a co-op game (and the newer Switch version makes it super easy to play with friends on a couch and in front of a TV).

The Next Penelope
Does the idea of a Greek-myth-inspired, cyberpunk racing game sound exciting? Because I know all three of those things appeal to me. The Next Penelope is a tough-but-fun top down racer that I finally got around to trying once it came to Switch (Nintendo so far has done a great job of bringing a wide range of indie titles to the new system and highlighting them) late in the year. I really don't know how to further talk this one up; that opening pitch I gave alone seems like a pretty hard sell, to me. If it's that way to you as well, definitely check this out.

Snake Pass
Snake Pass is a fun and unique twist on the 3D platformer; in a genre that has basically been defined by Mario for the last two decades, Sumo Digital decided to instead create a game where the protagonist couldn't jump (being a snake, of course). All vertical movement has to be done by slithering, twisting, and pulling yourself around bamboo poles and other structures littered around the courses. It's an interesting concept, and makes the game feel a bit like a brainteaser. The mechanics get a little irritating at times, but they're also fascinating and rewarding, so ultimately, I appreciate Sumo Digital's decisions even when it gets tough.

Superhot
I know this one took off more last year, but I was a little late to the party. Superhot is a shooter that taps into the puzzle genre, but goes in a very different direction than the Portal-like side of the genre. Rather than asking you to get from Point A to Point B of a level, Superhot is concerned with what you do in that level, dropping you in a room with a bunch of aggressive AIs and asking you to fight them all off. To give it more of a puzzle-game-feel, time only moves forward when you move. The end result basically makes you feel like a fight scene choreographer for an action movie, as you wind up single-handedly taking down hoards of attackers with complicated moves after you learn the patterns through iteration. There aren't many other ways to get that feeling, and it's really cool.

The Witness
Another 2016 release that I got around to a little late. There's a lot about that frustrates me about The Witness, but I keep coming back to it. There's something so calming about walking around the beautiful island setting and solving puzzles, and it feels so good when it all connects. I think the game loses something in its attempts to go entirely non-verbal, but again, I see where it's coming from on that side of things and I respect the commitment.Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-75615988634911513682018-01-01T11:56:00.000-08:002018-01-01T11:56:44.283-08:00Music Monday: Best Music of 2017Picking my favorite music for a year is a little weird, the more I delve into it. A lot of stuff that I "discovered" this year actually came out last year or earlier. Some of my favorite albums that came out in 2017 include songs that were released in 2016 or even 2015. When you think about it even more, there's a very good chance that I haven't even heard my favorite song from 2017 yet. Even if I have, I still might grow a new appreciation for something that I initially brushed off. Drawing up lists like this always involves some degree of arbitrariness.

But I still wanted to do something to mark the end of the year, so I built a list of my favorite songs from this year. I tried to stick to a full rules, though:

1) Songs should be from 2017 when possible. 2016 is okay if I wasn't aware of the artist until this year, or if the song was released as an early single for a full album that came out in 2017, but try not to go earlier than that.

2) I decided to limit myself to 2 songs from a given artist. If they have two songs on the list, it should either be because the artist had multiple releases this year, or because I really liked the release in question. Generally speaking, I like the larger body of work of every artist here and would recommend listening to more of any of them if you like what I included here, but I didn't want the list bloating up too much; it's already nearly 5 hours as is.

Seeing as this list is 80 songs, I'm not going to touch on every single inclusion, but I'll highlight a few things here and there. With that out of the way, let's get to it:

"House Party"-The Knocks & Captain Cuts
"Turn It Up"-Penguin Prison
"Turn"-The Wombats
"Victorious"-Parade of Lights

All of these are relatively late releases in 2017, and each likely will be followed up sometime in 2018 with full record releases. I'm very much looking forward to each.

"Cut to the Feeling"-Carly Rae Jepsen
"Stay the Night"-Jukebox the Ghost
"Feel Good"-Neon Trees

All of these are in a somewhat similar to the first bunch I highlighted, except they were released earlier in 2017 and I haven't heard anything concrete on follow-ups for any of them. We'll see where that goes.

"Waiting for the Punches (We Go On)"-Atomic Tom

I've been a big fan of Atomic Tom since their 2010 debut album, and I have to say, the soundtrack of a direct-to-video sequel for a largely forgotten mid-2000s kids' comedy is not where I expected to find them in 2017. Still, though, their contributions to it were good, so whatever.

"Patience"-ALASKALASKA

It feels like every few months, I find some art pop band that I get really into. ALASKALASKA was one of the ones for 2017. "Patience" has one of my favorite moments in any song of the year, and probably the most cathartic one; after nearly four minutes of gradual build-up, we get a massive horn line into a one-and-a-quarter minute outro. It's amazing.

Tremendous Sea of Love-Passion Pit
Something to Tell You-HAIM
Melodrama-Lorde
Content-Joywave

These are the albums that I feel like I might warm up to even more going forward. It's basically what happened with HAIM's first album. I'm especially worried that I'm being too harsh on Passion Pit, comparing TSOL to their previous releases. It's a little weird release overall, and to be honest, I'm not actually even sure if it's more of an album or a long, especially-polished EP or even set of demos. Maybe I'm just thinking about this too much.

GALLERY-A R I Z O N A
Act One (The Complete Collection)-Marian Hill
Origami-Vinyl Theater

These albums all came very close to making my top albums of the year/getting two songs on the playlist, but in the end, they just missed (Act One in part because it was a 2016 release with a 2015 EP attached that I just found out about this year, but whatever).

Paperwhite
Great Good Fine Ok
Junior Prom

All of these bands have such weird release schedules for new music, basically releasing individual songs before sometimes maybe collecting them into EPs, so they each mostly get singles here. Great Good Fine Ok's III was technically released in early January, but had songs from as early as 2015 on it, so I wasn't sure if it should count, but I eventually went with it.

I Don't Like Being Honest-The Aces
Ultraviolet-Dagny
Good Look for You-Gavin Turek
Give It Up-Patternist
THE SCIENCE OF LETTING GO-Smallpools
Kaleidoscopes-Transviolet

Crafting a good EP feels like a totally different art from a good album. Since they're so much shorter, they have to do more to stand out, and they have less room for error. Either way, these would be my picks for my favorite EPs of the year. Ultraviolet and Give It Up were 2016 releases that I didn't see until this year, and they're each perfect snippets of pop. Gavin Turek's Good Look for You is a great R&B throwback. Smallpools' follow-up to their first album LOVETAP went in a kind of different direction, but after a listen or two, I really started to dig it. Kaleidoscopes blew away everything else that Transviolet released before it; their earlier releases were good, but the strength of "The Hamptons" and "Don't Put It On Me" really kicked this up to the next level. And The Aces will be one to watch going forward; I Don't Like Being Honest is a very solid debut.

Felt-The Chain Gang of 1974
Closer-Wild Cub

These are my honorable mentions for Albums of the Year. I liked each artist's previous album well enough, but both of these blew away my expectations. Closer builds on Youth's strengths in a big way, and shows some major growth as songwriters and performers. And I have no idea what it is, but something on Felt really connected with me, and I can't really explain what.

Gone Now-Bleachers
Connect the Dots-MisterWives
About U-MUNA
EGO-RAC
What If Nothing-Walk the Moon

And these five are my choices for Album of the Year (in alphabetical order by artist, not in any sort of hard ranking). There's a good chance I would have just listed every song from each album if I hadn't put in the two-song-per-artist restriction in place.

EGO has maybe my favorite run of songs in anything this year, between #4 ("Unusual") and #8 ("Johnny Cash"), including maybe my favorite song of the year in "The Beautiful Game". The rest of the album is really good, but just…wow, those five in a row.

Gone Now is one that grew on me. For some reason, I wasn't sure what to make of it when it came out, but it stuck with me, and I was shocked on later listens to find myself singing along with it without realizing how much of it had sunk in. Picking a second song to go with "Don't Take the Money" was hard, but "Goodmorning" was one of the songs that I noticed worked its way into my brain. Also, Bleachers released a live album this year that's worth checking out if you're into that type of thing.

Connect the Dots is like the distillation of everything I liked about MisterWives' debut into something even stronger. Picking two songs was hard, but I wound up leaving off "Chasing This" since it featured in an earlier Music Monday from this year.

About U is MUNA's debut album, and easily my favorite debut-anything of the year. They've already released a follow-up single, so maybe a 2018 follow-up will find it's way onto next year's list.

Talking Is Hard was one of my favorite releases of 2014, and I was worried that it would be hard to top. What If Nothing delivers on that, though, feeling like an expansion and deeper focus version of that album. Starting it for the first time brought me back to how it felt the first time I listened to Talking Is Hard, in love with the new thing that I'm listening to, and that's a good place to be.

I saw Bleachers, MisterWives, MUNA, and Walk the Moon all live this year, and all of them are amazing acts to see first hand. Highly recommended, if you get an opportunity.Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-55046212593793042882017-12-10T11:43:00.000-08:002017-12-10T11:52:59.503-08:00The Best Pokémon Missing from Pokkén Tournament DXI've been playing a decent amount of Pokkén Tournament DX for the Switch as of late. Fighting games aren't always my jam, but I've found myself liking it a lot so far, which maybe isn't surprising given my love for Pokémon as a series. And given that love of Pokémon, I have some opinions on the roster that was chosen for the game. Granted, the roster as it is isn't bad or anything. At 807 total species in the series, narrowing it down to about 20 is a difficult task, and the 21* that were included in the game do as good a job as any others.

*Well, 19. Two of the characters, Pikachu Libre and Shadow Mewtwo, are variations of other Pokémon already on the roster. So they don't really widen the total scope of species represented, even if they are unique characters in their own right.

But at the same time…since DX is a port of an earlier game, a part of me hoped it would include a couple of new choices to expand the roster into at least the mid-20s. Instead, we basically just got one new character (plus four others that were in the arcade version but not the Wii U one). It would have been nice to have seen a little more added in to this updated version*

*I didn't really play the original version all that much, so I feel like I can't complain too much since it's all new to me either way. But still.

There's still hope, of course, in the way of things like downloadable content, but there's been no news on that front. Given all of that, I assembled a list of my thoughts on the most notable Pokémon omitted from Pokken Tournament DX's playable roster.

Jigglypuff and Greninja
First, let's start with the two obvious ones. Pokkén isn't the first fighting game series to feature Pokémon as characters: you may have heard about this little series called "Smash Bros". While Jigglypuff and Greninja weren't the only choices to make the latter and not the former, they were probably the most notable omissions. Jigglypuff started as something of a joke addition to the original Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 64, but it's gone on to be in every version of the game since then. You can definitely see reasons to include it, too; Jigglypuff is popular, would be the only normal type on the roster, and could contribute an especially aerial style of play that Pokkén Tournament DX doesn't have much of, making it stand out.

Greninja seems much more in line with the rest of the Pokkén roster, with its design drawing heavily on a type of warrior (ninjas, duh) and a reasonably large fanbase, especially being a starter. On top of that, it's a relatively recent Pokémon, being introduced in Generation VI, something that's surprisingly underrepresented in the game.

Hawlucha
This is maybe the only exclusion that actually baffled me. With the last two exclusions, you could easily explain it away as Pokkén wishing to establish its own voice, independent of the influence of its massive predecessor. Hawlucha doesn't carry that problem. It carries an incredibly unique design that is, like Greninja, directly inspired by a form of fighting (lucha libre). Both flying type Pokémon and Generation VI are underrepresented in the game's roster (again, more on that shortly). It looks awesome. I can't think of a reason against it, but instead, Pokkén decided to go with a second Pikachu that's wearing a lucha libre costume.

Blastoise

This would be a play directly into nostalgia, positioning the Pokémon Blue cover star directly against its Pokémon Red counterpart Charizard (who did make the game). I also feel like given Blastoise's water cannons and shell, it could bring it's own unique style to the game, focusing on ranged attacks and heavy defense. The biggest concern might be too many Generation I representatives in the game already, but it's arguably not even the most represented (5 unique species versus Generation IV's 6), despite being arguably the most influential and inarguably the second largest in terms of new Pokémon introduced.

You could throw Venusaur in here if you wanted to as well (especially given the original pairing being Red and Green versions instead of Blue), but it might be a little harder to fit in. Sure, they put a quadruped on the roster already in Suicune, and Ivysaur was in Super Smash Bros Brawl, but it would definitely be a little more awkward than Blastoise (as Brawl itself demonstrated), so if you were worried about oversaturing Pokkén with the original generation of Pokémon, I'd go with Blastoise first.

Hitmontop
The Hitmon line is a fan favorite, and Hitmontop is far-and-away the most unique member. As an added bonus, it would add to Generation II's representation, which only consists of Scizor and Suicune as is despite being arguably the most influential and maybe best-remembered games in the series. Hitmontop would obviously carry a unique sense of movement given its ability to travel like a top, could maybe make greater use of the different stances than any fighter in the game, and would certainly provide a totally new experience no matter what.

Heracross

While we're on the subject of popular fighting Pokémon from Generation II, it's a little strange that Heracross didn't make an appearance. It's actually based on a real-life beetle that's used in insect-fighting (which is also a real thing, apparently), and has a name that's inspired by a Greek demigod famed for his strength (Herakles/Hercules). And it's not like the game was overflowing with Bug types, with only Scizor present.*

*Ice, Ground, Flying, Bug, Dragon, and Fairy each only got 1 representative, while Rock and Normal got none.

Generations V, VI, and VII
As I've been alluding to throughout this piece, Pokkén's breakdown across the generations of Pokémon games isn't anywhere close to even. The three most recent generations, which total 314 species (nearly two-fifths of the total) and represent every new Pokémon that debuted in the past decade, contribute a total of 3 picks to the roster.

It's not like they lack for solid choices, either. I've already mentioned two Generation VI options in this article in Greninja and Hawlucha, plus other unique possibilities like Tyrantrum (who wouldn't want to play as a T-rex in a fighting game?) and Aegislash (if they could do a haunted chandelier, a haunted sword and shield should be no problem).

Generation V has (in my opinion) the overall strongest design of any single generation in the series and is overflowing with with strong candidates, including but not limited to: the samurai-otter hybrid Samurott; the enchanted golem/superhero Golurk; the large electric spider Galvantula; the swordsman Bisharp; the legendary technology-enhanced prehistoric bug Genesect; and the three-headed dragon Hydreigon.

Generation VII has it's own set of interesting choices. There's the first fighting-type psuedo-legendary in Kommo-O, and the intimidatingly-designed Golisopod. And if you like bizarre monster designs that would fit perfectly, it's hard to top new legendary Buzzwole, an extradimensional mosquito-like being with the jacked physique of a wrestler.

There's no way you could include all of these Pokémon, but it's frustrating they didn't even try two or three of them.

Pseudo-Legendaries
Of all of the groups of Pokémon to be underrepresented, the "Psuedo-legendary" class might be the most surprising. The pseudo-legends are rare, powerful, frequently part dragon-type, one-per-generation evolutionary lines (with one exception), and usually become one of the biggest hits of their respective games for all of those reasons. Yet only Garchomp made it into the final version of Pokkén as a playable character (Dragonite is a support Pokémon as well). I've already mentioned Hydreigon and Komm-o as possibilities in the last selection, and I think Tyranitar is also a strong choice, but really, any of these ones would work. In the end, I guess it's good the developers didn't lean too heavily on any one category like this, but if you were adding a handful of extra Pokémon to the DX version, at least one more pseudo-legendary seems like a strong choice.

Legendaries

DX's roster has probably the right balance of legendary Pokémon to regular ones, at four out of 21 (counting both Mewtwos); while they are usually popular due to their status and power, you wouldn't want them to overwhelm the roster. But if you were including a few more characters, probably one or two of them should be legendaries.

I already mentioned Genesect and Buzzwole back in the Generation V-VII section, but there are a few other options as well. One of the Titans (Regirock, Regice, Registeel, or Regigigas) would work well; they're humanoid, big and tough, and could focus on defense. And as a bonus, Rock, Ice, and Normal (Regigigas's type) have 0, 1, and 0 representatives, respectively, allowing them to cover even more types. And something like Deoxys was long speculated to make Smash Bros, and it's transforming could make for an interesting playstyle.

Alternatively, they could go with something unexpected and pick one of the smaller legendaries. In my mind, Celebi stands out as a fun option, getting to see how it's time travel/control powers work.

Honorable Mentions
Everyone's going to have their personal favorites, but I had to narrow it down somehow. There were a bunch that I thought about including that would be interesting in small ways, but couldn't write a unique-enough full blurb for, like Poliwrath, Gallade, Abomasnow, Swampert, Ampharos, Shiftry, and Breloom. Every species, in the end, is pretty well designed, and it's not hard to see how they could fit into a game like Pokkén.Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-2950205643127279772017-12-02T00:26:00.000-08:002017-12-02T00:26:08.733-08:00Meet the Robinsons Is Two Clicks Off of Being a Disney ClassicI love Disney movies (that may have been obvious already, not sure), and I love time travel movies (may not be as obvious), so I figured it was long overdo for me to revisit what remains to this day the only film in the Disney Animated Canon to tackle time travel, 2007's Meet the Robinsons.

The movie has kind of been forgotten, which maybe isn't too surprising; it did come out at a rather low point in Disney's history, after all, on the heels of a string of failures in the first few years of the millennium.* But, it came right before the turnaround that lead to the re-invigoration of the studio, where we find it today once again something of a juggernaut, and appropriately enough, contains a lot of very strong points in what's otherwise a solid but occasionally uneven movie.

*I don't feel like getting too into the nitty-gritty of each movie, but I feel like it's pretty safe to say the only unqualified success for the studio in the early 2000s was Lilo and Stitch. And while there were some good movies in that stretch that underperformed, I don't think I'll run into too much resistance in saying that the three films immediately preceding Meet the Robinsons, namely Chicken Little, Home on the Range, and Brother Bear, are all among Disney's weakest feature films.

Let's start at the positive: overall, Meet the Robinsons actually has a very strong core. Every narrative choice the script makes reinforces its main point and themes. Lewis's character arc, the inciting incident, the villain's plan and motivation, all incidental characters' development as well as some of the characterizations, the central plot elements of the movie, all of it ties together to reinforce the same ideas, namely to focus on the future no matter the challenges, stop worrying about the past, and so on. Those are some strong foundations. All of that may seems kind of simple, but Disney thrives on that sort of simple recursion of relatively universal themes driven home repeatedly and in a way that resonates. So on this end of things, at least, Meet the Robinsons holds up its end of the bargain pretty well.

Of course, it makes this central point explicitly clear (maybe overly so), but there's still a lot of other neat stuff going on under the hood (so to speak). There's the big overarching theme of family of course, which the movie is also pretty clear on. But there's a lot more there as well, and it's almost shocking how much was crammed into an hour and a half. There's Lewis coming to appreciate the value of the personal connections he draws when he feels worthless, learning that he's more than just his personal successes or failures.

There's also Lewis growing to respect others' agency just as he comes to accept the past as a fixed thing that he should focus on changing going forward rather than working to change retroactively. He goes from wondering what inspired his mother to give him up for adoption to respecting her choice to do so; just as the head of his orphanage said, she had her reasons for giving him up that had nothing to do with him as a person, and focusing on what he could do instead rather than seeing it as simple mistake to be corrected is an incredibly mature decision.* It's almost surprising to see a Disney movie that doesn't end with him connecting with her in some way. And finding this empathy for others, whether his mother, his son who has messed up (and set the plot in motion), or in his foe, and working with it and encouraging it (as the rest of his future family does to him in his hour of need) separates him from villain Bowler Hat Guy, whose schemes are repeatedly foiled by his failure to account for what his minions do or think.

*Director Stephen Anderson was adopted as a youth, and it shows from the nuance and depth the movie has on this issue. It feels likely this at least draws on his personal experiences in making this point.

Speaking of the Bowler Hat Guy, he's actually a strong addition to the Disney Villain Cannon (sure, he's not the "main" villain", but he's essentially "the face" for the film's Big Bad Duo, and it's telling that actual "main" villain Doris is for most of the film just his major distinguishing feature*). He's goofy and in an odd way endearing in his petty silliness and incompetency, and is easily the funniest character in the whole thing between some excellent physical comedy thanks to the animators and the best dialogue in the script. Stephen Anderson voiced the character, and may actually have the strongest acting in the cast, creating a voice that perfectly compliments what the movie was going for. While some people may prefer slightly more threatening villains, a strong, memorable, and thematically-important villain (with him basically mirroring protagonist Lewis in every way imaginable) is just as good, in my opinion.

*Which feels like it may be even more to unpack thematically, but not today.
There are more, small things I could mention. There are a few strong bit performances from pros like Angela Bassett and Tom Selleck. There are a number of clever and funny bits in the script. The design elements that make up the future are interesting in conception, at least.

But there are just a few things that take the movie down a peg or two, stopping it from entering into the pantheon of the true Disney Classics. And a lot of it is just the devil in the details, so to speak.

The design elements I alluded to are one such area. The animators basically went for a retro futuristic design with a few touches seemingly coming from the ideas of children's ideas of the future. It just...doesn't ever rise to the level of iconic that other animated films do in their worldbuilding. It kind of just feels like a regurgitation of generic 1950s sci-fi magazines rather than a lived in place, a backdrop rather than a real location.

And really, this is sort of the problem that carries over to the rest of the film. All of the distinguishing elements that could have put the whole thing over the top are instead just good enough. The animation is above average, but feels dated already just a decade later. Sure, technology moves quickly, but consider that at the same time that this was released, Pixar was releasing films like The Incredibles, Wall-E, Ratatouille -- shoot, even Cars, for the apathy that it gets in some circles, clearly had a lot of work put into giving it a clear, distinctive, and well thought-out feel -- and their art holds up much better. Meet the Robinsons feels especially forgettable in comparison to all of those.

Or the cast. We get over a dozen members of the Robinson family introduced to us rapid-fire, and they're all just sort of...there. The movie is incredibly brisk in its run-time, but there are ways to make the most out of introducing a large cast of unique characters in not a lot of time. There's a focus on unique designs, which helps at least keep them a little visually distinct, but we spend almost no time with any of the characters learning about them. We get a line or two for each, and they basically all wind up being "the quirky one" to varying degrees, which doesn't do much for establishing them in the audiences' minds. Paring it down to a smaller number and focusing on making that number even marginally deeper would have helped some.

Or relying on more shorthand could have helped. For example, one uncle is voiced by Adam West in his distinctive style that has become synonymous with "silly, showy heroism", and with a little design shorthand, it gives a much clearer impression of the character than most of the other relatives get, which in turn makes him slightly more memorable. It kind of shows that many of so many of the bit-parts came from the same few voice actors, and they all wind up kind of indistinguishable. It also doesn't help that so many of the extra lines that we do get go to robot butler Carl, who doesn't show himself to be much more interesting than any of the other individuals in the Robinson family even with the extra focus.

Either way, the movie kind of needs something like this. Lewis and Wilbur's actors are fine, but they're kids, and can't really turn in performances as strong as more mature and noted actors. Something like that would go a long way to help cover things up a little. On top of that, because we don't really get any depth from the family, it robs the movie of some chances for humor and momentum. The sequence to introduce all of the family doesn't really move things forward plot-wise, doesn't provide us with any especially-notable characters, and moves too quickly to get in any good comedy outside of a few small sight-gags, leaving it feeling overall just a little flat and perfunctory. Fleshing out characters more would go a long way in these regards, giving the second act a little more of a point (and possibly more humor overall from seeing more of the family members and how they bounce off of each other) and letting us enjoy experiencing it. Maybe a little extra time would have helped things (the movie feels almost breathless at times), but it was already a little on the long side for a Disney film of its time, and I feel confident that the time it already used could have instead been meted out a little more judiciously.

Even if there are disappointing elements to it, in the end, we got a solid movie, and that's not something to mourn. As the movie says, making mistakes and learning from them is important, and there's a lot in Meet the Robinsons to admire, appreciate, and learn from.Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-91325715939868578022017-11-22T13:45:00.001-08:002017-11-22T13:45:49.580-08:00Super Mario Odyssey: Review and Game Design AnalysisSuper Mario Odyssey is a burst of joy, in the purest form. I don't know any better way to describe it than that.

In that vein, the closest comparison I can make to anything is the feeling of playing on a playground when you're little, exploring each new part; there are the slides, there are the swings, there are the jungle gym, and so on, and here's how it all fits together. Here, Nintendo has created the their own digital playground, much more intricate and detailed and interesting than the real world ones people are used to. And then, they went and did twelve more times.

The level design work in Odyssey is superb, a case study for anyone who's interested in video games as a creative medium, with hundreds of things to pull apart. In my article on Splatoon, I alluded to my desire to see more games return to using well-constructed "hub worlds" in navigating to the levels. Mario Odyssey doesn't do that, yet I hardly found myself missing them.

All of the care that normally went into designing those massive, connecting levels is instead here applied to each individual world, making each feel massive without actually making them large or cumbersome. The amount of things to do in each one is deceptive, and contributes to the illusion of feeling grander than it is; even the largest world could be completely be circumnavigated in less than ten minutes, but each is so densely packed with interesting challenges and exploration that it feels more massive (again, just like a little kid in a new playground).

Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit notes that the large number of varied play mechanics could easily be enough work to develop a dozen smaller indie titles, and I would say that sentiment could easily be applied to the levels. I would easily play smaller games built off of worlds like these, going from New Donk City (easily my favorite level) to other smaller neighborhood levels/the rest of the city, or an entire set of space-based levels sprawling off from Honeylune Ridge, or so on. Instead, Nintendo decided to cover all of the things, creating a sprawling world that's so much fun to even just visit, not even getting into the details of the absolutely gorgeous art work, world-building, and sound* that supports the experience.

*The music is its own bit of wonderfulness. I have had most of the songs stuck in my head at some point, perhaps none more than "Jump Up, Super Star" and "Honeylune Ridge: Escape".

There's a lot of interesting design elements in play to this end. The first is attention to detail; the levels aren't overwhelmingly huge, but every detail in them serves some purpose. Even the few dead ends feel like the contribute to at least giving the level a sense of completeness to make it feel like a set of lived-in worlds, like a few empty dead end allies in the city or the empty houses in the desert town. Nintendo also realized the value in in working with all of the space afforded in a 3D world; each level makes use of verticality in a way that few other games of this nature have.

Keeping in mind the z-axis and where different elements fall within it is significant in play, as you remember that a checkpoint that looks close to your destination on a map may actually fall further away from elevation differences, and you find yourself constantly looking for ways to scale objects to survey your surroundings and reorient yourself (which affords you additional opportunities to take in the beautiful landscapes, thankfully). The choice of the bases for each world even shows a commitment to this design concept, whether it's the skyscrapers of the city, the tall outcroppings of rocks (that can be scaled in low gravity) on the moon, jungles and forests with tall trees around central points, and even a pair of water levels that make full use of the varying depths the sea affords them.

Despite this sheer amount of detail crammed in, it hardly feels overwhelming, thanks to a few other smart decisions that give a sense of the high degree of intentionality that went into the design. The game is dominated by a strong set of rules that the player picks up on in play. Exploration is always rewarded. Any sort of bonus room or special activity will always carry two moons.* Certain activities repeat across worlds and can be planned and accounted for. Certain visual cues will clue in the player to certain well-hidden moons.** Naming conventions for missions and even their placement in the checklist frequently carry clues to their location in the level. In a way, it reminds me of the type of thing found in The Witness, just applied to a platformer rather than a puzzle game.

*There is a single bonus room that defies this rule, the literal "exception that proves the rule", but it comes with the special post-game marking to ensure players know it's there. Additionally, Nintendo included a bonus feature to let players know if special rooms carry undiscovered moons, which both ensures players realize this deviation AND serves as a good checklist for finding missed moons for completionists.

**Which eases a lot of the frustration that I normally find in these types of quests, especially when paired with the clues available to those who need them. Between these two features, I always found myself thinking "Why didn't I think of that earlier?" rather than "Why would I have thought of that earlier?".
In the end, this doesn't mean that every single power moon is extremely fun to find. There are definitely a few missions that I didn't like, but ultimately, I could at least understand why they were included, and the fairly strict adherence to these rules make them at least feel fair. And really, one other major design principle makes it feel fine: choice.

Everything in the game gives the players choice. If you don't like a mission, you never need to do it. There are always other options to replace it. You can unlock everything significant in the game with a fraction of the total moons actually in the game, and if you find yourself short of moons in the postgame, you can just throw some coins at the store to pick up any other moons you may need to cover the difference. The only reason to get all 880 moons* is if you want to, and as someone who has done that, it's definitely worth it if you enjoy the game. Even the few clunkers in there aren't enough to spoil the rest of them.

*880 even feels a little like a commitment to intentionality, stopping short of a "rounder" number like 900. It stops at that number because that number is what the designers felt it needed, nothing more.
Other than those few clunkers, though, there aren't too many complaints that I can make. The only other "substantial" thing is simply that I wish there was more. I want to see what would be just beyond the borders of the existing levels. I want to see full kingdoms based on ruined castles or the cloudtops, both of which are teased but turn into just mini-levels. I want to experiment and take captured enemies to unintended places, like their non-native worlds. I wanted to see more hidden levels like the first major postgame world, filled with nostalgia and callbacks to the past. The work to accomplish all of these is so extreme though, that it seems more than fair to settle for "just" the amazing pure burst of joy that we got instead.Theohttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8146423937912154444.post-34172114595009355612017-08-29T21:39:00.000-07:002017-08-29T21:39:17.073-07:00Splatoon 2, Its Place Among 3D Platformers, and the Legacy of Super Mario SunshineI've been playing a lot of Splatoon 2 lately and enjoying it a bunch. One thing that I've done so far that I didn't get to do as much in the first game though was play the story mode; I mostly just didn't have time then, more than anything. Naturally, I decided to correct that with the sequel, and I found something interesting within: the level design is highly reminiscent of another game I had been thinking about recently.

I've had Super Mario Sunshine on my mind lately. There's no specific reason, it's just been a handful of small things that bring it to mind on occasion. It got a lot of flak at the time of release, some of which was due to changes it made to the beloved Super Mario 64's formula, which is to be expected with Nintendo. They're constantly tinkering with their franchises, and won't release something unless they feel like it brings something substantial to the series.

I liked a lot of the new stuff, and unfortunately, there hasn't really been a game since that quite capitalized on some of the things they introduced. The water/jetpack-thing that Mario wielded was one thing in particular that I minded a lot less than everyone else. The level design was also notably different than most subsequent 3D platform games. Sunshine built on Mario 64's system of a hub world (Delfino Island in Sunshine, Princess Peach's Castle in 64) with extensive connected levels, which was pretty ubiquitous to the genre at the time.

Sunshine seemed to almost build an entirely connected world; unlike in earlier games like 64, where levels were simply represented by paintings, you could see the levels in Sunshine from each other, way out on the horizons of the stages. Dummied-out data even reveals a planned train connected the world even more; were it not for size-limitations, the game might have been even more interconnected. But this aspect seemed to sort of dead-end with the game.

The one aspect of the game that many people at the time seemed to really like about Sunshine at the time though was the bonus levels. These were collections of floating platforms in a space-like void, stars in the distance, where you'd be stripped of your F.L.U.D.D. waterpack (for the first run-through, at least) to focus on precise jumps and maneuvering. It's not hard to see how this fed into the design of the follow-up game, Super Mario Galaxy. Every level in the game was collections of planets floating in space, each focusing on jumping and maneuvering without the distraction of a waterpack.

Consequently, the main hub world of Comet Observatory was scaled back to a fraction of Isle Delfino, with a fraction of the areas to explore and tasks to navigate. This was something that the follow-up, Super Mario Galaxy 2, would take to even greater extremes, leaving something that was in total not even the size of the first section of the Castle from way back in Super Mario 64, with most of the navigation of worlds done via selection screens.

And this has sort of been the state of 3D platformers since. Super Mario 3D World got an overworld sort of similar to Super Mario World from way back on the Super Nintendo (maybe it's own topic one day, given my love of Super Mario World), but nothing quite like those original hub worlds of 64 and Sunshine.

And that's where the Splatoon series and its story mode ties in, in my mind. These games seem to be going back to the days of Super Mario Sunshine and exploring a divergent evolutionary path from the Mario series.

The most obvious change is in the central mechanics of each. Given that people complained about the mechanic of an advanced water gun strapped to Mario, Nintendo apparently decided it was worth separating out into its own game, where it could be fleshed out and played with more extensively and without disrupting the core of the Mario series. In turn, that became a game centered entirely around the mechanics of a Super Soaker-esque water gun and tank strapped to your back, albeit with the ammo changed to ink to fit in with the squid theming of the new game. And, thanks to focusing on this mechanic, the game instead veered more towards the third person shooter genre rather than the 3D platformer.

But it didn't totally abandon those roots. The level design in story mode is heavily indebted to the same bonus stages that inspired Super Mario Galaxy, as a set of floating platforms suspended in some sort of void that need to be navigated, the main difference being that this time the challenges are a little less based on deft maneuvering and more based on the this-time-included gun mechanic.

And of course, there's the overworld system. Both Splatoon games moved away from Super Mario Galaxy 2's primarily-menu based navigation. Instead, there's a central hub world of a city plaza serving as the menu for each game, with the story mode getting it's own set of "mini-worlds" in which you navigate to different levels by finding grates to travel through, and completion of a set of levels opens up new "mini-hubs" with their own sets of levels, much like Super Mario 64's castle with paintings for individual levels and different sections of the castle with new sets of paintings to travel to. And in the case of Splatoon 2 at least, you can see other points from where you stand; the main square is off in the distance, as are the other "mini-hubs". It's definitely reminiscent of Super Mario Sunshine's set-up. It's still not quite on the level of Isle Delfino, which was set up to feel like a real place, while the hubs in Splatoon (outside of the main plaza) are still technically just floating blocks in space, but it's definitely moving back in that direction after a long time away from that design.

It's worth noting that the Splatoon games may just be a preview of things to come for Nintendo. This fall, they'll release Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch, and while we don't know the exact specifics of how it will play, it looks like it might take the design of Sunshine a step further, with small worlds serving as both the individual levels of the old games and the hub worlds. So instead of one major central area with a bunch of different "spokes" coming off it, instead we may get several interconnected worlds that are both their own "hubs and spokes", with their own missions and goals throughout.

If so, I couldn't be more excited; it's been a decade and a half since Super Mario Sunshine, and things like Splatoon 2 seem to indicate Nintendo is itching to return to their old ways. I can't see what big ideas they can bring back to the 3D Platformer; I've missed seeing this genre push itself in new ways.Theohttp://firstname.lastname@example.com