DizzySkullKid19
2007
One thing I'll admit: I included this game on a list of introductory adventure games without having completed it myself. That's my confession, and I really do feel like I should've got to this earlier.
We start the game with snapshots of the big city, but soon we are off to a tiny hotel in the desert of Nevada. A blank slate, a desert, or so it seems. Can we start over? Only after discovering our past once again.
I was so awe struck by this game. I ate it up, which is surprising because I'm in a slump with games right now. I admit, the puzzles did get tedious, one or two in particular (finding a tiny piece of chalk that I needed to make a pen legible). There's one other particularly annoying one that I forgot.
This is one of the most visually striking games on the DS. The book "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" (a mouthful) describes it as being like the video to A-ha's "Take on Me", a comparison I cannot un-see. Yet it really works in the games favor. It's interesting, it's symbolic almost, to see the characters in monochrome, as if they are all stuck in the dark, toiling away until the end, but with hope of color.
Kyle is an interesting protagonist. He starts the game off as kind of a gruff a-hole. Yet, his dialogue is really well written, and he ends up being a very lovable protag. He "softens" up a little as the game goes on, and we get to love him in his cynicism yet real kindness when he is put to the test by peoples desperation. It's like watching someone grow empathy.
The music is amazing, also some T's Music people worked on this game (another game to add to the Reel Fishing legacy, if you know you know.)
The dialogue can be funny as hell, I'll leave you to experience it if you haven't already. Very witty and well written.
Also, I feel like they really captured the vibe of 70s America.
Sorry for this kind of skimmed review, I promise I will eventually play this again and say my thoughts in more detail.
Trust this tired reviewer, this game made me cry, and it's intensely real and personal. Give it a shot.
(My time with this game was about 11 hours 50 minutes, but since I admittedly used a walkthrough at parts, the realistic time would be around 13 hours I think.)
We start the game with snapshots of the big city, but soon we are off to a tiny hotel in the desert of Nevada. A blank slate, a desert, or so it seems. Can we start over? Only after discovering our past once again.
I was so awe struck by this game. I ate it up, which is surprising because I'm in a slump with games right now. I admit, the puzzles did get tedious, one or two in particular (finding a tiny piece of chalk that I needed to make a pen legible). There's one other particularly annoying one that I forgot.
This is one of the most visually striking games on the DS. The book "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" (a mouthful) describes it as being like the video to A-ha's "Take on Me", a comparison I cannot un-see. Yet it really works in the games favor. It's interesting, it's symbolic almost, to see the characters in monochrome, as if they are all stuck in the dark, toiling away until the end, but with hope of color.
Kyle is an interesting protagonist. He starts the game off as kind of a gruff a-hole. Yet, his dialogue is really well written, and he ends up being a very lovable protag. He "softens" up a little as the game goes on, and we get to love him in his cynicism yet real kindness when he is put to the test by peoples desperation. It's like watching someone grow empathy.
The music is amazing, also some T's Music people worked on this game (another game to add to the Reel Fishing legacy, if you know you know.)
The dialogue can be funny as hell, I'll leave you to experience it if you haven't already. Very witty and well written.
Also, I feel like they really captured the vibe of 70s America.
Sorry for this kind of skimmed review, I promise I will eventually play this again and say my thoughts in more detail.
Trust this tired reviewer, this game made me cry, and it's intensely real and personal. Give it a shot.
(My time with this game was about 11 hours 50 minutes, but since I admittedly used a walkthrough at parts, the realistic time would be around 13 hours I think.)
This review contains spoilers
When I was a child, I prided myself on completing just about every 3D Zelda game... except for Majora's Mask. To protect my claim, I replaced the word "completed" with "played". The truth is that I did play Majora's Mask, but I didn't get very far at all. Something about it twisted my perception of Zelda as approachable, wondrous, and adventurous. Not that Majora's Mask lacks any of these things, but maybe the aforementioned adjectives could be replaced with: challenging, awe-inspiring, and complexly beautiful.
Even in the theme for Termina Field, we can hear traces of melancholy under the typical adventurous Zelda ritornello. Without getting heavy into music theory (I'm studying music as an aside) the theme starts off with the piccolo's rooster call, as it were, signaling dawn. The next section introduces strings, but with some falling suspended chords in the mix, which produces a really bittersweet effect, as if the morning is 'suspended', destined to fall to night.
Then the main theme kicks in, headed by strange, chromatic rolls on the marimba and strange doots on the brass instrument (euphonium or tuba, I'm too bad to tell). This is a really disquieting change, but soon the iconic main Zelda theme kicks in. Yet we know something is amiss in this adventure. Around 1:10 in the piece, the sense of adventure gives way to a sense of urgency, like everything is going to fall into chaos. That's my quick and amateur score analysis.
I think the music of Majora's Mask really encapsulates it's thematics more than words can even tell. Of course, there are other clues. From the very beginning, we are placed in a scene similar to the intro to Dante's Inferno, "I found myself in a dark wood". Child Link is on his vacation (more or less) from just having saved Hyrule in Ocarina of Time. Something is immediately wrong in this scenario. Epona, Link's horse for those not in the know, walks with slow steps. Link looks around anxiously. Then, we are treated to a reverse of Virgil to keep with the Inferno comparison, Skull Kid (who my username is named after, by the way) and he promptly robs Link of both his horse and his possessions. Next, Link goes into a cave, and like in Dante's epic, crosses over to a suspended bittersweet hell, Termina, after being turned into a (git gud) scrub from Skull Kid and being greeted by the very strange guide known as the Happy Mask Salesman. Link, as his child self, (not as the adapted and well-respected adult Link) must find himself in literally transformational situations via masks, which cause him different becomings. He finds these masks when he becomes woven up in others tales, or sidequests. It's almost to say that he can become the emotions embodied in the people of Termina's through a kind of sympathetic magic.
He is destined to live out these peoples tales, day by day, through these masks, with the time loop and all. For every 3 days the literal faced moon is destined to crash into Termina, and everyone in the town knows it. So we get a glimpse of all of their lives in their final days. In gameplay, this means we have day-and-night cycles. Not that these have never been done before (like in Shenmue) but they have never been done quite like Majora's Mask. The time loop adds an extra dimension not just in gameplay but in tone, because every day we are greeted by a familiar yet mysterious routine, and the more we investigate one character, like the postman, the more we put a telescope to their lives and see things we couldn't see on the surface. Due to the nature of the time loop, we can't see all of the characters lives at once, therefore we are left to investigate them one at a time, and after resetting using our "Song of Time" on our Ocarina, we can only live out their stories once again. It's almost if the entire town is stuck on a curse, and that we the hero our literally tasked with freeing everyone from death. The game ultimately ends on a note, that while happy, has a tinge of sadness to it. "We were supposed to die, now what do we do?"
Now, I've been talking mostly about the thematics of the game thus far. The game can be hard to complete without a guide though, especially since some of the sidequests can use moon logic.
Biggest tip: in this game the sword upgrades, sidequests, and collectibles are kind of required if you are going to have a semi-easy time. The masks because if you collect all of them you get a super powerful transformation at the end of the game, the sword upgrades because some of the mini-bosses are really difficult without them. One of the upgrades comes from collecting all the little fairies (I forgot what they were called) in (I think) the 3rd dungeon, so it's worth doing that, at least. The spider house quests in particular often lead to some upgrades, so they are worth doing for that reason. Also please get the song that slows down time, The Inverted Song of Time, details on how to get it here: https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Inverted_Song_of_Time. It makes life a million times easier.
Overall, Majora's Mask is probably the most challenging and mysterious game Nintendo has made, probably ever I would hazard to say. There's an interesting interview here with Aonuma which says things better than I ever could (actually, there's a group of telling interviews about MM on this site): https://nintendoeverything.com/aonuma-talks-about-the-creation-of-zelda-majoras-mask/.
It's quickly becoming a favorite Zelda game of mine for how oddly dreamlike, and bittersweetly comforting it is. It has plenty of Zelda humor and charm in it, but it is quiet and less pronounced. It's a game that wasn't scared to go into things like atonal music for themes such as the one for Southern Swamp. It is endlessly mysterious and has inspired countless interpretations, and countless video essays while still remaining esoteric and open to interpretation. It's honestly one of the most powerful games I've ever played.
Thanks for reading.
Even in the theme for Termina Field, we can hear traces of melancholy under the typical adventurous Zelda ritornello. Without getting heavy into music theory (I'm studying music as an aside) the theme starts off with the piccolo's rooster call, as it were, signaling dawn. The next section introduces strings, but with some falling suspended chords in the mix, which produces a really bittersweet effect, as if the morning is 'suspended', destined to fall to night.
Then the main theme kicks in, headed by strange, chromatic rolls on the marimba and strange doots on the brass instrument (euphonium or tuba, I'm too bad to tell). This is a really disquieting change, but soon the iconic main Zelda theme kicks in. Yet we know something is amiss in this adventure. Around 1:10 in the piece, the sense of adventure gives way to a sense of urgency, like everything is going to fall into chaos. That's my quick and amateur score analysis.
I think the music of Majora's Mask really encapsulates it's thematics more than words can even tell. Of course, there are other clues. From the very beginning, we are placed in a scene similar to the intro to Dante's Inferno, "I found myself in a dark wood". Child Link is on his vacation (more or less) from just having saved Hyrule in Ocarina of Time. Something is immediately wrong in this scenario. Epona, Link's horse for those not in the know, walks with slow steps. Link looks around anxiously. Then, we are treated to a reverse of Virgil to keep with the Inferno comparison, Skull Kid (who my username is named after, by the way) and he promptly robs Link of both his horse and his possessions. Next, Link goes into a cave, and like in Dante's epic, crosses over to a suspended bittersweet hell, Termina, after being turned into a (git gud) scrub from Skull Kid and being greeted by the very strange guide known as the Happy Mask Salesman. Link, as his child self, (not as the adapted and well-respected adult Link) must find himself in literally transformational situations via masks, which cause him different becomings. He finds these masks when he becomes woven up in others tales, or sidequests. It's almost to say that he can become the emotions embodied in the people of Termina's through a kind of sympathetic magic.
He is destined to live out these peoples tales, day by day, through these masks, with the time loop and all. For every 3 days the literal faced moon is destined to crash into Termina, and everyone in the town knows it. So we get a glimpse of all of their lives in their final days. In gameplay, this means we have day-and-night cycles. Not that these have never been done before (like in Shenmue) but they have never been done quite like Majora's Mask. The time loop adds an extra dimension not just in gameplay but in tone, because every day we are greeted by a familiar yet mysterious routine, and the more we investigate one character, like the postman, the more we put a telescope to their lives and see things we couldn't see on the surface. Due to the nature of the time loop, we can't see all of the characters lives at once, therefore we are left to investigate them one at a time, and after resetting using our "Song of Time" on our Ocarina, we can only live out their stories once again. It's almost if the entire town is stuck on a curse, and that we the hero our literally tasked with freeing everyone from death. The game ultimately ends on a note, that while happy, has a tinge of sadness to it. "We were supposed to die, now what do we do?"
Now, I've been talking mostly about the thematics of the game thus far. The game can be hard to complete without a guide though, especially since some of the sidequests can use moon logic.
Biggest tip: in this game the sword upgrades, sidequests, and collectibles are kind of required if you are going to have a semi-easy time. The masks because if you collect all of them you get a super powerful transformation at the end of the game, the sword upgrades because some of the mini-bosses are really difficult without them. One of the upgrades comes from collecting all the little fairies (I forgot what they were called) in (I think) the 3rd dungeon, so it's worth doing that, at least. The spider house quests in particular often lead to some upgrades, so they are worth doing for that reason. Also please get the song that slows down time, The Inverted Song of Time, details on how to get it here: https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Inverted_Song_of_Time. It makes life a million times easier.
Overall, Majora's Mask is probably the most challenging and mysterious game Nintendo has made, probably ever I would hazard to say. There's an interesting interview here with Aonuma which says things better than I ever could (actually, there's a group of telling interviews about MM on this site): https://nintendoeverything.com/aonuma-talks-about-the-creation-of-zelda-majoras-mask/.
It's quickly becoming a favorite Zelda game of mine for how oddly dreamlike, and bittersweetly comforting it is. It has plenty of Zelda humor and charm in it, but it is quiet and less pronounced. It's a game that wasn't scared to go into things like atonal music for themes such as the one for Southern Swamp. It is endlessly mysterious and has inspired countless interpretations, and countless video essays while still remaining esoteric and open to interpretation. It's honestly one of the most powerful games I've ever played.
Thanks for reading.
If experimentation wasn't the norm in the Chibi-Robo series, then Park Patrol might've been the black sheep. Replace the action-adventurism of the original game where you explore an expansive house with environmental activism about managing a park... then add some fighting in there.
If Park Patrol can be compared to really anything, it must be the Animal Crossing series. A game about customization, management, and completionism of your park (as well as managing your 'money', which in this case is literally your power supply).
The main difference is Park Patrol does actually have a story in there. Without spoiling much, it is a pretty creative take on the ways we neglect our environment, and it doesn't hide it's honesty at parts, in that it doesn't just remain a fictional parable but also indicates that us in the real world have things we could be doing better. "Remember, Miasmo (the big bad) is lurking behind every exhaust pipe and smokestack, waiting in the shadows to make his return" or something like that as is said at the end of the game.
Essentially, the game fits the system of having different living toys (as is the norm in all Chibi-Robo games) who you become friends with. In this case, you have toys like a mascot for an American football team, one of the free rangers from the past game, and a stereotypically French marionette who wants to be freed from his strings, among other toys. I can safely say that all their designs were smart and creative, and they were all lovable characters with personality quirks of their own.
Basically, you recruit for them to work for you at the park. You pay them in "watts" (like I said, your power supply) to build structures, or terraform the land. Eventually, they run out of watts, so you have to recharge them, and each time you do they will advance a little in their own story. For example, the Free Ranger egg gets a new job after wishing for one (won't spoil what it is). They advance in their story by interacting with the other toys you have in your team, if they have power left.
The main thing of the game is basically growing flowers, which you do via giving them water (obv) and dancing along with a boombox (not so obv). The dancing part is a pretty cool system, but it was a little hard to figure out at first. I eventually got used to it. Basically, you have to spin the outer circle of the "record" that appears on screen and you have to do it at a certain constant speed. When you do that, you will get a score, if it's above 70 the plants will throw off seeds that multiply the number of flowers. After a certain amount of flowers are grown, the space they are on will turn green, and one of the objectives of the game is to turn the whole park green.
Now, I completed the main story and I still have not turned the whole park green (though I've turned most of it green). At first, it was a repetitive venture, with the assistant in this game, Chet (RIP Telly, in this game apparently) being kind of annoying and saying the same things over and over, with the same high pipsqueak voice. Sorry Chet, love you though.
The routine is going to feel very repetitive in this game at first. It basically goes like: plant flowers, get toys to do work for you, then when they are out of commission go back to town the recharge them. I'll give it to the game though, it does get much better with variety, and while not having "as much" to do as the original Chibi-Robo, there was still a lot to do. You get new park projects, like games you can build (a bowling game for example), and there is plenty to do in town as you can meet new toys over the course of the game.
I was really impressed with how well they managed to leave room for a story in a simulation/management game.
Oh yeah, the game has battles where you have to fend off "smoglings" (and later, "Smoglobs") from destroying your plants. This was kind of annoying because I could never get to the smoglings fast enough, and the only vehicle that I found easy to control was the bike (the car(s) are surprisingly hard to control).
Overall though, a surprisingly fun and addictive game. Frankly, I prefer it to Animal Crossing: Wild World as my favorite simulation game on the DS. While it might not be the feast that the other Chibi Robo games could be, namely the original and Okaeri!, it is still a very very worthy and smart game that did a lot of revolutionary stuff for a DS sim game.
If Park Patrol can be compared to really anything, it must be the Animal Crossing series. A game about customization, management, and completionism of your park (as well as managing your 'money', which in this case is literally your power supply).
The main difference is Park Patrol does actually have a story in there. Without spoiling much, it is a pretty creative take on the ways we neglect our environment, and it doesn't hide it's honesty at parts, in that it doesn't just remain a fictional parable but also indicates that us in the real world have things we could be doing better. "Remember, Miasmo (the big bad) is lurking behind every exhaust pipe and smokestack, waiting in the shadows to make his return" or something like that as is said at the end of the game.
Essentially, the game fits the system of having different living toys (as is the norm in all Chibi-Robo games) who you become friends with. In this case, you have toys like a mascot for an American football team, one of the free rangers from the past game, and a stereotypically French marionette who wants to be freed from his strings, among other toys. I can safely say that all their designs were smart and creative, and they were all lovable characters with personality quirks of their own.
Basically, you recruit for them to work for you at the park. You pay them in "watts" (like I said, your power supply) to build structures, or terraform the land. Eventually, they run out of watts, so you have to recharge them, and each time you do they will advance a little in their own story. For example, the Free Ranger egg gets a new job after wishing for one (won't spoil what it is). They advance in their story by interacting with the other toys you have in your team, if they have power left.
The main thing of the game is basically growing flowers, which you do via giving them water (obv) and dancing along with a boombox (not so obv). The dancing part is a pretty cool system, but it was a little hard to figure out at first. I eventually got used to it. Basically, you have to spin the outer circle of the "record" that appears on screen and you have to do it at a certain constant speed. When you do that, you will get a score, if it's above 70 the plants will throw off seeds that multiply the number of flowers. After a certain amount of flowers are grown, the space they are on will turn green, and one of the objectives of the game is to turn the whole park green.
Now, I completed the main story and I still have not turned the whole park green (though I've turned most of it green). At first, it was a repetitive venture, with the assistant in this game, Chet (RIP Telly, in this game apparently) being kind of annoying and saying the same things over and over, with the same high pipsqueak voice. Sorry Chet, love you though.
The routine is going to feel very repetitive in this game at first. It basically goes like: plant flowers, get toys to do work for you, then when they are out of commission go back to town the recharge them. I'll give it to the game though, it does get much better with variety, and while not having "as much" to do as the original Chibi-Robo, there was still a lot to do. You get new park projects, like games you can build (a bowling game for example), and there is plenty to do in town as you can meet new toys over the course of the game.
I was really impressed with how well they managed to leave room for a story in a simulation/management game.
Oh yeah, the game has battles where you have to fend off "smoglings" (and later, "Smoglobs") from destroying your plants. This was kind of annoying because I could never get to the smoglings fast enough, and the only vehicle that I found easy to control was the bike (the car(s) are surprisingly hard to control).
Overall though, a surprisingly fun and addictive game. Frankly, I prefer it to Animal Crossing: Wild World as my favorite simulation game on the DS. While it might not be the feast that the other Chibi Robo games could be, namely the original and Okaeri!, it is still a very very worthy and smart game that did a lot of revolutionary stuff for a DS sim game.
This review contains spoilers
I have no idea what I just played.
Equal parts oddly relaxing, confusing, and frustrating, Flower Sun and Rain really tries to confuse the player above all else. Most of the time, it's a funny confusion, but sometimes it flies way over my head.
I have to let this game sink in for a bit before I really understand what it's about. (Time for a music metaphor) It's kind of like atonal music - where they are throwing dissonant, unresolved chords at you all the time, without a real center or tonic, but still you have a sense of things progressing. It is literally maybe one of the only plots I can think of from a videogame that only works because it's confusing, because it's nonsensical. It works exactly because there is no stability - or just enough to make the nonsense appealing. Interesting too that this game references a lot of composers, mostly for the pleasant (but odd) familiarity of some of the remixed classical tunes. Still I see some parallels of the tone of this game and the works of Debussy, Ravel and the like. Using odd, yet dreamy and majestic harmonies. I would describe the tone of FSR as precisely an odd daydream.
Of course, the game itself is like if you melded Professor Layton with an odd (vaguely) Polynesian and Sinatra-age America vibe. The biggest comparison might be to a show like Hawaii 5-O, only much more postmodern and tongue in cheek. Now the puzzles can be bad. In particular, there are some puzzles that assume that you just take something for granted - in the latter of the game in particular, there is a series of puzzles about a radio. You have to look for a "memory radio station". So the guidebook (where you will look to solve most of the puzzles in this game) has a listing of a station where callers request the songs they want to be played - songs they have memories of. It didn't say anything of memories in the description of the station, so (my probably dumb) self couldn't make that leap of logic.
Yeah, the game also has a lot of walking back and forth, lots and lots of it.
Flower, Sun and Rain can be confusing and sometimes poorly designed. It operates purely on a seeming lack of ground, and is held up only by shocking the player at every turn.
Yet, I'll be damned if I didn't like my time with it. I love the DS version in particular, something so interesting about the grainy, DS-rendered graphics that complements the style of this game. While I think the game was a bit too tongue-in-cheek at points, I also was supremely relaxed by it, and found myself laughing a lot. Mondo is a very witty guy.
I loved this game for the time I spent with it, and I'm looking forward to replaying it! There is a loooot of walking though. It brings me to a good point: the way this game flaunts its faults. I've heard the Grasshopper crew wasn't exactly operating on a million dollar budget during this game. Still, bringing attention to the games faults with Fourth Wall breaks didn't exactly make them less obvious - for example "I can guess you have a lot of walking to do this chapter", or "why don't our 3D character models look like our 2D illustrations?". The game easily could have done without these fourth wall breaks, and it really kind of broke the immersion.
Still, I'm impressed at what the developers were able to do with what they had - I feel like this game could've been an interesting art film (in the best way possible). While it was silly most of the time, I had a hint of some serious themes of derealization, the ways people take advantage of each other, and questioning of ones self and identity. SPOILERS: (see the movie "The Truman Show" or "Synecdoche, New York")
Very lovely, and I usually don't play much of Suda 51's projects because the hyperviolence isn't my thing. I loved this one though. Give it a shot if you want something equally mind-destroying and relaxing.
Equal parts oddly relaxing, confusing, and frustrating, Flower Sun and Rain really tries to confuse the player above all else. Most of the time, it's a funny confusion, but sometimes it flies way over my head.
I have to let this game sink in for a bit before I really understand what it's about. (Time for a music metaphor) It's kind of like atonal music - where they are throwing dissonant, unresolved chords at you all the time, without a real center or tonic, but still you have a sense of things progressing. It is literally maybe one of the only plots I can think of from a videogame that only works because it's confusing, because it's nonsensical. It works exactly because there is no stability - or just enough to make the nonsense appealing. Interesting too that this game references a lot of composers, mostly for the pleasant (but odd) familiarity of some of the remixed classical tunes. Still I see some parallels of the tone of this game and the works of Debussy, Ravel and the like. Using odd, yet dreamy and majestic harmonies. I would describe the tone of FSR as precisely an odd daydream.
Of course, the game itself is like if you melded Professor Layton with an odd (vaguely) Polynesian and Sinatra-age America vibe. The biggest comparison might be to a show like Hawaii 5-O, only much more postmodern and tongue in cheek. Now the puzzles can be bad. In particular, there are some puzzles that assume that you just take something for granted - in the latter of the game in particular, there is a series of puzzles about a radio. You have to look for a "memory radio station". So the guidebook (where you will look to solve most of the puzzles in this game) has a listing of a station where callers request the songs they want to be played - songs they have memories of. It didn't say anything of memories in the description of the station, so (my probably dumb) self couldn't make that leap of logic.
Yeah, the game also has a lot of walking back and forth, lots and lots of it.
Flower, Sun and Rain can be confusing and sometimes poorly designed. It operates purely on a seeming lack of ground, and is held up only by shocking the player at every turn.
Yet, I'll be damned if I didn't like my time with it. I love the DS version in particular, something so interesting about the grainy, DS-rendered graphics that complements the style of this game. While I think the game was a bit too tongue-in-cheek at points, I also was supremely relaxed by it, and found myself laughing a lot. Mondo is a very witty guy.
I loved this game for the time I spent with it, and I'm looking forward to replaying it! There is a loooot of walking though. It brings me to a good point: the way this game flaunts its faults. I've heard the Grasshopper crew wasn't exactly operating on a million dollar budget during this game. Still, bringing attention to the games faults with Fourth Wall breaks didn't exactly make them less obvious - for example "I can guess you have a lot of walking to do this chapter", or "why don't our 3D character models look like our 2D illustrations?". The game easily could have done without these fourth wall breaks, and it really kind of broke the immersion.
Still, I'm impressed at what the developers were able to do with what they had - I feel like this game could've been an interesting art film (in the best way possible). While it was silly most of the time, I had a hint of some serious themes of derealization, the ways people take advantage of each other, and questioning of ones self and identity. SPOILERS: (see the movie "The Truman Show" or "Synecdoche, New York")
Very lovely, and I usually don't play much of Suda 51's projects because the hyperviolence isn't my thing. I loved this one though. Give it a shot if you want something equally mind-destroying and relaxing.
2000
This review contains spoilers
This game echoes like a soft and compassionate war cry, asking to reconsider our Lack of Love.
"There is no comedy outside of what is strictly human. A landscape can be beautiful, graceful, sublime, insignificant or ugly; it will never be laughable. We will laugh at an animal, but because we will have surprised in it a human attitude or a human expression. We will laugh at a hat; but what we mock then is not the piece of felt or straw, it is the form that men have given it, it is the human caprice from which it has taken the mold. How has such an important fact, in its simplicity, not attracted the attention of philosophers? Many have defined man as “an animal who knows how to laugh”. They could just as well have defined it as an animal that makes people laugh, because if some other animal achieves this, or some inanimate object, it is by a resemblance to man, by the mark that man leaves on it or by the use that man makes of it"
- Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
"All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."
- Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
I wanted to start this review off with this quote from a French philosopher in his book on the comic, where he talks specifically about what it is we find funny and cute in non-human creatures. Admittedly, what I know of the book I have glanced from summaries, but it says most of it in the above quote: what we find funny in animals is the human pattern we have ordered upon them. Not that these patterns aren't real - the Fibonacci sequence for example is real and actually present among natural organisms such as plants, but we shouldn't take this as proof that humans can unlock the key to nature itself, a kind of colonialism over life itself, but rather that, in Bergson's radical conclusion, nature is one big march and that we are just one perspective in the middle of it, not above it. Like painting a still life that gets increasingly complex and abstract, say like a Cubist painting resembles the original scene it was based on, but the original scene is still there in the essence of the painting. The painting is abstract but always with immanence rather than transcendence, always a within and not an above. Point being: I think humans are within nature and just the next step from a march that was already there. The patterns and constellations we put on nature are real, but the stars were already there.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this myself - but let's take how this game constantly disorients your sense of space. For one, you start off as a very elementary organism, a little guy without eyes, almost like a jellyfish on land. You rise from the bottom of the sea, nearly being eaten by a fish. Soon after you arise, you see a creature just like yourself metamorphize into a larger creature. So you think: I want to do that.
When you do, after solving somewhat non-obvious puzzles (don't be ashamed to use a walkthrough), you get gifts from other creatures, and you can evolve into a black and white spotted little guy. In every game Kenichi Nishi has been involved in, you will see nods to his dog Tao, and while it's not apparent at first, the black and white spotted creature in their various increasingly dog-like transformations may be seen as this games nod to Tao. That's a neat little factoid as an aside.
Back to thinking of these evolutions: the very first time we evolve, we get an immediate change of scale. The whole first map is now relatively tiny, and the creatures that were imposing predators beforehand now are tiny little wimps (no offense to any of the animals in this game).
Games like Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap are often championed as games that provide an amazing sense of scale, but Lack of Love is often left out of the conversation. A few levels after the first, IIRC, you get on a river and eventually get thrown off what was the back of a huge turtle-like creature. What an amazing change! It's almost like with each iteration of our evolution, we are laughing at what came before (a nod to the quote at the beginning), because what we thought was the entire world was simply a miniscule diorama.
The sense of scale this game gives you provokes not only simply wonder, however, but a real sense of terror. Essentially, and slight spoilers ahead, the plot goes like this: Earth has become an overpopulated, overly competitive industrial hell where the livestock have essentially been dying due to the toxic chemicals around and such. As such, the worlds space program sends a robot named, if I remember correctly, Halumi, to scope out another livable planet and make it suitable for humans.
When we first encounter Halumi, we have already become significantly larger than the creature we first got off the back of. However, we still pale in comparison to the power and size of Halumi, and we don't even match the size of their foot. Soon, (SPOILER) Halumi sets off a device of sorts which bulldozes the entire land you are standing on, and you only barely survive to end up in a barren wasteland full of dead creatures.
Of course, there is a moral grey area here, because what were the humans supposed to do? Is the paradise they eventually try to set up at the end of the game better or worse than the eat-or-be-eaten world of the animals (although at least that was more natural, and maybe not as painful as we ascribe it to be?) It brings up serious moral questions about what is artificial and natural. Yet, throughout all of this, the message is clear, we cannot insert ourselves above the environment. Yet the game itself isn't triumphant in this conclusion until perhaps the end - isn't it sad to have to restart on another planet, and how do we save our own? Isn't the whole game of survival a sad affair that we would rather avoid?
There are no easy answers.
Yet there is humor in this game, which is why I brought up the initial quote. There is a stupid pun about the games title: LOL, and how the game does not inspire laughs. Yet, I find myself disagreeing. The type of comedy we see here is non-verbal. It's seeing, for example, some dragonfly like creatures in one area hold a footrace, because it's like seeing something we as humans do that we didn't expect to see among animals. Then there are creatures who play hide-and-seek, who take a nap with you, etc. It's full of these small bouts of humor. The character designs are not without their quirks either - both of the animals themselves and of the artificial robotic people. In the last area, there is a robotic baby who guides you through the first maze of a test you have to undergo in order to be seen as the most "intelligent" and worthy of the creatures around you. More on that later. There are also some silly looking penguin-like bird creatures in one of the later areas.
Is there hope not only in this game but for us? The game leads us to answer this question, it leaves it completely open. If it's not the best game on the Dreamcast (I would almost say it is), it is the most aesthetically unique and possibly thematically challenging games on the console (along with games like DeSpiria)
The game itself is not always well designed - in fact it can be sadistically designed, maybe on purpose. Puzzles use moon logic, and one of the worst puzzles is near the end, where you have to do whole rooms full of sliding block puzzles within a timer of like 2 minutes. It kind of sucks.
There's no shame in using a guide, once again. It feels like this game was almost made for a guide.
Your health in this game is basically represented by a green sphere, surrounded by rings. The more up-going rings you have (which you get by eating food or other creatures) the more your health increases, if you have a ring going down, beware because that will deplete your life and when the sphere is gone, you are dead.
It's interesting, looking at the people who developed this game on it's MobyGames page, notably the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto, we see a lot of future Skip members, but not a lot of Vanpool people. I find that interesting, because I would say this games spiritual successor in gameplay is "Endonesia" for the PS2. A game with similar survival aspects - and similar, albeit a more complex communication system (this game has a different function mapped to each of the buttons of the Dreamcast's controller, Endonesia uses a complex system of communicating via emotions you get from the enviroment).
If you've read to the end, thank you so much. This is probably only my first draft of this review. Highly recommend this game, if there's ever a Dreamcast mini, this practically needs to be on there.
"There is no comedy outside of what is strictly human. A landscape can be beautiful, graceful, sublime, insignificant or ugly; it will never be laughable. We will laugh at an animal, but because we will have surprised in it a human attitude or a human expression. We will laugh at a hat; but what we mock then is not the piece of felt or straw, it is the form that men have given it, it is the human caprice from which it has taken the mold. How has such an important fact, in its simplicity, not attracted the attention of philosophers? Many have defined man as “an animal who knows how to laugh”. They could just as well have defined it as an animal that makes people laugh, because if some other animal achieves this, or some inanimate object, it is by a resemblance to man, by the mark that man leaves on it or by the use that man makes of it"
- Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
"All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."
- Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
I wanted to start this review off with this quote from a French philosopher in his book on the comic, where he talks specifically about what it is we find funny and cute in non-human creatures. Admittedly, what I know of the book I have glanced from summaries, but it says most of it in the above quote: what we find funny in animals is the human pattern we have ordered upon them. Not that these patterns aren't real - the Fibonacci sequence for example is real and actually present among natural organisms such as plants, but we shouldn't take this as proof that humans can unlock the key to nature itself, a kind of colonialism over life itself, but rather that, in Bergson's radical conclusion, nature is one big march and that we are just one perspective in the middle of it, not above it. Like painting a still life that gets increasingly complex and abstract, say like a Cubist painting resembles the original scene it was based on, but the original scene is still there in the essence of the painting. The painting is abstract but always with immanence rather than transcendence, always a within and not an above. Point being: I think humans are within nature and just the next step from a march that was already there. The patterns and constellations we put on nature are real, but the stars were already there.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this myself - but let's take how this game constantly disorients your sense of space. For one, you start off as a very elementary organism, a little guy without eyes, almost like a jellyfish on land. You rise from the bottom of the sea, nearly being eaten by a fish. Soon after you arise, you see a creature just like yourself metamorphize into a larger creature. So you think: I want to do that.
When you do, after solving somewhat non-obvious puzzles (don't be ashamed to use a walkthrough), you get gifts from other creatures, and you can evolve into a black and white spotted little guy. In every game Kenichi Nishi has been involved in, you will see nods to his dog Tao, and while it's not apparent at first, the black and white spotted creature in their various increasingly dog-like transformations may be seen as this games nod to Tao. That's a neat little factoid as an aside.
Back to thinking of these evolutions: the very first time we evolve, we get an immediate change of scale. The whole first map is now relatively tiny, and the creatures that were imposing predators beforehand now are tiny little wimps (no offense to any of the animals in this game).
Games like Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap are often championed as games that provide an amazing sense of scale, but Lack of Love is often left out of the conversation. A few levels after the first, IIRC, you get on a river and eventually get thrown off what was the back of a huge turtle-like creature. What an amazing change! It's almost like with each iteration of our evolution, we are laughing at what came before (a nod to the quote at the beginning), because what we thought was the entire world was simply a miniscule diorama.
The sense of scale this game gives you provokes not only simply wonder, however, but a real sense of terror. Essentially, and slight spoilers ahead, the plot goes like this: Earth has become an overpopulated, overly competitive industrial hell where the livestock have essentially been dying due to the toxic chemicals around and such. As such, the worlds space program sends a robot named, if I remember correctly, Halumi, to scope out another livable planet and make it suitable for humans.
When we first encounter Halumi, we have already become significantly larger than the creature we first got off the back of. However, we still pale in comparison to the power and size of Halumi, and we don't even match the size of their foot. Soon, (SPOILER) Halumi sets off a device of sorts which bulldozes the entire land you are standing on, and you only barely survive to end up in a barren wasteland full of dead creatures.
Of course, there is a moral grey area here, because what were the humans supposed to do? Is the paradise they eventually try to set up at the end of the game better or worse than the eat-or-be-eaten world of the animals (although at least that was more natural, and maybe not as painful as we ascribe it to be?) It brings up serious moral questions about what is artificial and natural. Yet, throughout all of this, the message is clear, we cannot insert ourselves above the environment. Yet the game itself isn't triumphant in this conclusion until perhaps the end - isn't it sad to have to restart on another planet, and how do we save our own? Isn't the whole game of survival a sad affair that we would rather avoid?
There are no easy answers.
Yet there is humor in this game, which is why I brought up the initial quote. There is a stupid pun about the games title: LOL, and how the game does not inspire laughs. Yet, I find myself disagreeing. The type of comedy we see here is non-verbal. It's seeing, for example, some dragonfly like creatures in one area hold a footrace, because it's like seeing something we as humans do that we didn't expect to see among animals. Then there are creatures who play hide-and-seek, who take a nap with you, etc. It's full of these small bouts of humor. The character designs are not without their quirks either - both of the animals themselves and of the artificial robotic people. In the last area, there is a robotic baby who guides you through the first maze of a test you have to undergo in order to be seen as the most "intelligent" and worthy of the creatures around you. More on that later. There are also some silly looking penguin-like bird creatures in one of the later areas.
Is there hope not only in this game but for us? The game leads us to answer this question, it leaves it completely open. If it's not the best game on the Dreamcast (I would almost say it is), it is the most aesthetically unique and possibly thematically challenging games on the console (along with games like DeSpiria)
The game itself is not always well designed - in fact it can be sadistically designed, maybe on purpose. Puzzles use moon logic, and one of the worst puzzles is near the end, where you have to do whole rooms full of sliding block puzzles within a timer of like 2 minutes. It kind of sucks.
There's no shame in using a guide, once again. It feels like this game was almost made for a guide.
Your health in this game is basically represented by a green sphere, surrounded by rings. The more up-going rings you have (which you get by eating food or other creatures) the more your health increases, if you have a ring going down, beware because that will deplete your life and when the sphere is gone, you are dead.
It's interesting, looking at the people who developed this game on it's MobyGames page, notably the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto, we see a lot of future Skip members, but not a lot of Vanpool people. I find that interesting, because I would say this games spiritual successor in gameplay is "Endonesia" for the PS2. A game with similar survival aspects - and similar, albeit a more complex communication system (this game has a different function mapped to each of the buttons of the Dreamcast's controller, Endonesia uses a complex system of communicating via emotions you get from the enviroment).
If you've read to the end, thank you so much. This is probably only my first draft of this review. Highly recommend this game, if there's ever a Dreamcast mini, this practically needs to be on there.
This may be a bold choice - but I want to say something about Disaster Report 4 before I'm even done with it.
This games genius comes from how it tries to portray something that, in my opinion, video game medium or perhaps I should say industry struggles to come to terms with - "social realism", an earnest portrayal of the actual conditions of suffering in a society.
Now, it may seem strange to declare Disaster Report 4 a depiction of a society, when it at surface value is a depiction of natural disaster and it's effects on a society. Yet, I see something even deeper here.
I'm sure a lot of us have endured natural disasters of some sort. For me, living on the coastline of America, said natural disasters were often hurricanes. At first, when I was doing some volunteering to help mitigate the impacts of such a disaster, I had the true idea that "it brought out the good in people". Only, at that time this idea was somewhat superficial.
Since, I found in this game that disasters not only bring about good faith in each other as human beings, but also show and X-ray of a society that causes people suffering. Here we can see people with their heads down, suffering from not only natural disasters but the kind of bureaucratic cushioning that tries to absorb the impact of the natural disasters, while human individuals are left in the dark. Take an example of a character in this game, a man from a poor family who moved to the city after getting a job offering, who made it through multiple stages of the interview process before the disaster hit. All of a sudden his suffering is at a boiling point - not only has he come to the city searching for a job so he can support his family, but that hope has ultimately collapsed and as a result left him collapsed. In the search for light and hope for his family, and in his total destitution and misery at his own perceived failure to do so, do we realize something - no corporate body will set him free from this, it's *ultimately the power of human love at it's simplest, love for the Other (A la Levinas's Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy) ) - that we come to understand how interdependent we are.
So the thesis that natural disasters "bring out the good in people" is not totally unfalse -
but we have to see the profundity of this good, that it's a good that has to happen through struggling in order to be 'pure good'.
There are multiple people in this game who's life situations are ultimately at maybe their bleakest, and this is ultimately where the 'social realism' of this game shines through.
This is amazing, because I think the game medium itself encourages a kind of detachment from our own bodies - an 'out-of-body' experience, our movement projected onto an avatar. In order to make gaming 'pleasant' many video game companies resort to thus providing fantastical worlds, these days, most likely "open" worlds where peoples desire for escape from the vicissitudes of everyday life is ultimately encouraged, as a trade off for their money. So the fact that a game like Disaster Report 4 is allowed to exist is amazing. You won't find much extremely pleasant in gameplay here, for good and bad reasons - one such reason is that you are dodging natural disasters, collapsing buildings. For those of us who have survived this thing - it is an unpleasant thought to see our very human avatar being killed by a falling steel building.
I'm sure Granzella themselves were very aware of this - they were planning to release the game a day before the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit (source: https://www.vgfacts.com/game/disasterreport4summermemories/), that caused at least 18,000 people to die (source: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/day-2011-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami).
So knowing this, I think Granzella (who before the earthquake was known as Irem) must've known that the Disaster Report series could not stick to it's roots as simply a fictional disaster-flick inspired game (not to say the original games were without any weight, either though). Many people who had survived the disaster who would think to play this game would find such a representation bullshit at best, and insensitive at worst. Yet, in a stroke I consider genius, they had to imbue it with a serious humanistic weight. It's one of the most 'real' games that I've played all my life.
Play this, it should hit you like a lightning bolt.
This games genius comes from how it tries to portray something that, in my opinion, video game medium or perhaps I should say industry struggles to come to terms with - "social realism", an earnest portrayal of the actual conditions of suffering in a society.
Now, it may seem strange to declare Disaster Report 4 a depiction of a society, when it at surface value is a depiction of natural disaster and it's effects on a society. Yet, I see something even deeper here.
I'm sure a lot of us have endured natural disasters of some sort. For me, living on the coastline of America, said natural disasters were often hurricanes. At first, when I was doing some volunteering to help mitigate the impacts of such a disaster, I had the true idea that "it brought out the good in people". Only, at that time this idea was somewhat superficial.
Since, I found in this game that disasters not only bring about good faith in each other as human beings, but also show and X-ray of a society that causes people suffering. Here we can see people with their heads down, suffering from not only natural disasters but the kind of bureaucratic cushioning that tries to absorb the impact of the natural disasters, while human individuals are left in the dark. Take an example of a character in this game, a man from a poor family who moved to the city after getting a job offering, who made it through multiple stages of the interview process before the disaster hit. All of a sudden his suffering is at a boiling point - not only has he come to the city searching for a job so he can support his family, but that hope has ultimately collapsed and as a result left him collapsed. In the search for light and hope for his family, and in his total destitution and misery at his own perceived failure to do so, do we realize something - no corporate body will set him free from this, it's *ultimately the power of human love at it's simplest, love for the Other (A la Levinas's Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy) ) - that we come to understand how interdependent we are.
So the thesis that natural disasters "bring out the good in people" is not totally unfalse -
but we have to see the profundity of this good, that it's a good that has to happen through struggling in order to be 'pure good'.
There are multiple people in this game who's life situations are ultimately at maybe their bleakest, and this is ultimately where the 'social realism' of this game shines through.
This is amazing, because I think the game medium itself encourages a kind of detachment from our own bodies - an 'out-of-body' experience, our movement projected onto an avatar. In order to make gaming 'pleasant' many video game companies resort to thus providing fantastical worlds, these days, most likely "open" worlds where peoples desire for escape from the vicissitudes of everyday life is ultimately encouraged, as a trade off for their money. So the fact that a game like Disaster Report 4 is allowed to exist is amazing. You won't find much extremely pleasant in gameplay here, for good and bad reasons - one such reason is that you are dodging natural disasters, collapsing buildings. For those of us who have survived this thing - it is an unpleasant thought to see our very human avatar being killed by a falling steel building.
I'm sure Granzella themselves were very aware of this - they were planning to release the game a day before the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit (source: https://www.vgfacts.com/game/disasterreport4summermemories/), that caused at least 18,000 people to die (source: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/day-2011-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami).
So knowing this, I think Granzella (who before the earthquake was known as Irem) must've known that the Disaster Report series could not stick to it's roots as simply a fictional disaster-flick inspired game (not to say the original games were without any weight, either though). Many people who had survived the disaster who would think to play this game would find such a representation bullshit at best, and insensitive at worst. Yet, in a stroke I consider genius, they had to imbue it with a serious humanistic weight. It's one of the most 'real' games that I've played all my life.
Play this, it should hit you like a lightning bolt.
(Completed meaning I watched a full playthrough, am working through the game itself rn though)
I make it my business to play strange games, yet Discipline, a Japan-exclusive WiiWare game that's a mix between a pet simulator and a stealth game stands above the rest in it's unabashed strangeness and even braveness tackling a less than pretty thematic.
It's a game by Kazutoshi Iida (Doshin the Giant, Aquanaut's Holiday, Tail of the Sun), all pretty strange, surreal and somewhat unnerving games. While not strictly a horror game, Discipline has you going through a medical operation, where you are eaten by a giant shark-like beast and whisked off to an experimental prison in order to save your ill sister (according to this article you're doing it to rake up the fund for her surgery) That's at least what I can make out of the setup of the game. You are put in prison with a bunch of weirdos, and you have to use an uhh interestingly shaped living device that takes water from your body, mixes it around, and by some literal alchemy turns it into something you shoot at objects in your prison cell to fulfill your cellmates wants and needs (it opens stuff like toilets or pulls down beds, opens up food trays). I couldn't make this up if I tried. Eventually if you fulfill a bunch of their needs they (literally) break, and the device takes up their karma. That's the setup.
Now the game, like I've hinted at, is somewhat of a pet simulator; you have to keep an eye on the gauges of each of your inmates desires (stuff like hunger, tiredness, etc.) because if one of them goes into the red, then they could very well do something crazy that will land you in solitary confinement (luckily, it's not really game over, it's just annoying). Add on top of this that there is guards patrolling, and if they see you using your device you will get a mark, 3 marks and you are in solitary confinement. That's the stealth part of the game.
This game is sadly, as Wiiware (and on top of that as a Japan-exclusive) lost to obscurity a little bit. I actually don't mind it's obscure status, because it's a very niche game by it's nature. Vinny from Vinesauce played it though, which is one of the few english speaking videos I could find on it, and it's main claim to fame. One win for surreal and honest videogames with prison, and maybe subliminal healthcare system messages. Sadly it's also one loss for preservation, but I speculate it's a bit of a personal work for Iida so I don't know if he would really want it to be for sale again, so we will have to respect that if it is the case (such is pure speculation though). Anyway, it's become an extremely personal work for me.
I make it my business to play strange games, yet Discipline, a Japan-exclusive WiiWare game that's a mix between a pet simulator and a stealth game stands above the rest in it's unabashed strangeness and even braveness tackling a less than pretty thematic.
It's a game by Kazutoshi Iida (Doshin the Giant, Aquanaut's Holiday, Tail of the Sun), all pretty strange, surreal and somewhat unnerving games. While not strictly a horror game, Discipline has you going through a medical operation, where you are eaten by a giant shark-like beast and whisked off to an experimental prison in order to save your ill sister (according to this article you're doing it to rake up the fund for her surgery) That's at least what I can make out of the setup of the game. You are put in prison with a bunch of weirdos, and you have to use an uhh interestingly shaped living device that takes water from your body, mixes it around, and by some literal alchemy turns it into something you shoot at objects in your prison cell to fulfill your cellmates wants and needs (it opens stuff like toilets or pulls down beds, opens up food trays). I couldn't make this up if I tried. Eventually if you fulfill a bunch of their needs they (literally) break, and the device takes up their karma. That's the setup.
Now the game, like I've hinted at, is somewhat of a pet simulator; you have to keep an eye on the gauges of each of your inmates desires (stuff like hunger, tiredness, etc.) because if one of them goes into the red, then they could very well do something crazy that will land you in solitary confinement (luckily, it's not really game over, it's just annoying). Add on top of this that there is guards patrolling, and if they see you using your device you will get a mark, 3 marks and you are in solitary confinement. That's the stealth part of the game.
This game is sadly, as Wiiware (and on top of that as a Japan-exclusive) lost to obscurity a little bit. I actually don't mind it's obscure status, because it's a very niche game by it's nature. Vinny from Vinesauce played it though, which is one of the few english speaking videos I could find on it, and it's main claim to fame. One win for surreal and honest videogames with prison, and maybe subliminal healthcare system messages. Sadly it's also one loss for preservation, but I speculate it's a bit of a personal work for Iida so I don't know if he would really want it to be for sale again, so we will have to respect that if it is the case (such is pure speculation though). Anyway, it's become an extremely personal work for me.
A f*cking masterclass. Is roughly about the same length as Hotel Dusk at around 14 hours (in my playthrough) but it just leaves the impression of being a million times more grander in scope and cinematic than that game that it feels much longer. Rest assured, in a good way, because it has the same turns-and-twists as your average mystery novel, only with extremely poignant writing that will make you shed tears. So it's runtime will likely feel bittersweet, with you feeling some pain as you have to part with the game. This is because the characters are so true-to-life in their struggles that, while probably not matching actual humans come the closest I think I've ever seen in the video game medium, no exaggeration. So it feels like saying goodbye to friends as you leave this game, just like Hotel Dusk.
You'll likely feel the same spatial memory navigating the apartments in this game you would have going to a place you know well (you may actually memorize where each of the tenants live) - I think a testament to how well the atmosphere at play here "settles you in".
It has the same comforting noir ambience, just, with like I said a much less "hardboiled" (in the sense of superficially tough) approach. It's softboiled crime fiction lets say, with its very sentimental take on how far we carry our burdens, how far we try to escape from the past, how we even have a sentimental attachment to the past that keeps us anchored even with the painful shit we had to go through. In a way, some of us stubbornly hold onto even painful memories- no, especially painful memories. We have a Stockholm syndrome towards the past. I myself fall into this sometimes - because isn't the past all we have to define ourselves on? Maybe or maybe not this is a wrong way of thinking. I'll spare you my soapbox for now lol.
It keeps the same pleasure of exploring your surroundings in a cozy, slice-of-life feel, but it merges with feelings of mystery and suspense as you progress through seeming to unravel the entire world in this one mundane place.
I won't spoil anything, hopefully I didn't give anything away. Give this a shot, maybe try Hotel Dusk first however, I found this game to be somewhat more unforgiving in it's interrogation segments, and I think Hotel Dusk will give you a good foundation of how the duology plays out. However, you really can't go wrong starting with either of these games.
You'll likely feel the same spatial memory navigating the apartments in this game you would have going to a place you know well (you may actually memorize where each of the tenants live) - I think a testament to how well the atmosphere at play here "settles you in".
It has the same comforting noir ambience, just, with like I said a much less "hardboiled" (in the sense of superficially tough) approach. It's softboiled crime fiction lets say, with its very sentimental take on how far we carry our burdens, how far we try to escape from the past, how we even have a sentimental attachment to the past that keeps us anchored even with the painful shit we had to go through. In a way, some of us stubbornly hold onto even painful memories- no, especially painful memories. We have a Stockholm syndrome towards the past. I myself fall into this sometimes - because isn't the past all we have to define ourselves on? Maybe or maybe not this is a wrong way of thinking. I'll spare you my soapbox for now lol.
It keeps the same pleasure of exploring your surroundings in a cozy, slice-of-life feel, but it merges with feelings of mystery and suspense as you progress through seeming to unravel the entire world in this one mundane place.
I won't spoil anything, hopefully I didn't give anything away. Give this a shot, maybe try Hotel Dusk first however, I found this game to be somewhat more unforgiving in it's interrogation segments, and I think Hotel Dusk will give you a good foundation of how the duology plays out. However, you really can't go wrong starting with either of these games.
Some days I just feel totally braindead, and too tired to dive into a 70 hour JRPG with complex mechanics and more text than, uh... Anna Karenina. Those are the days I pop up Mario Kart.
Now, I will admit, my Mario Kart experience is pretty much limited to Mario Kart 8, 7, and DS; also having experienced some of the Wii game at parties and such, however.
I do know what I love about Mario Kart though, and that is the interactive environments (all the different shortcuts, things that pop up on stage, and the like), and in general just a ton of possibilities and learnable skills that make getting better at the game fun. Hell, even the times I lose in Mario Kart (which have been frequent recently, since I'm pretty rusty), I still have a lot of fun. The adrenaline rush of all the shells being thrown, all the karts being bumped, and the acceleration to the finish line all add up to one of the best competitive/multiplayer game series. When I was younger, my sibling said that "there was always a way back in Mario Kart" (or something like that). Meaning that even if you get into 7th place on lap 2, anything could happen and you could very likely get into 1st place in lap three. This ability for comebacks is really what makes these games shine, in my opinion.
I think the problem with Super Circuit is that it foregoes a lot of the aforementioned things - yet, I can't find a reason to blame it for doing so. Mario Kart on the GBA seems like a tough enough thing to attain. Still, a lot of sacrifices were made for this goal.
The tracks are kind of boring, is my first critique. To explain: I think while the idea of having a static backdrop and a pseudo 3D track is kind of what most GBA kart racers opt for, I also think it kind of takes away a real sense of exploration of these tracks. A sense of landmarks. Luckily, there are environmental obstacles and little graphics scattered about in a lot of the stages, such as Snow Land with all it's penguins. However, it never really breaks up the monotony of the stages.
Of course, I can't imagine any way they wouldn't have static backdrops and integrated some kind of pseudo 3D onto the GBA (kind of like some games did). This would likely not turn out well.
Yet, the theming of the levels was kind of bland - in other games we get stuff such as theme parks, cruise ships, and generally atmospheric areas to explore. I think the problem is this game opted more for "enviroments": swamp, sky, etc. which are kind of basic and not as fun to explore - since they are environments without landmarks or places to go.
Drifting is also kind of miserable, though I can't blame this game in particular, since the F-zero GBA games also control miserably in this way. Maybe (probably) I'm bad at the game, but it is a complete bump-fest and boy is there no sense of sticking to the ground or generally of being able to drift around corners smoothly. In fact, I found my strategy was always to slow my kart when going around corners. This was probably the basic Mario Kart strat before drifting came into play, but still, I don' like it :( (it's probably a me issue).
Super Circuit was a game that I found had kind of a blandness, even a loneliness to it. It definitely doesn't pop out at you, and while a lot of this can be attributed to the inherent difficulties of trying to put a Mario Kart game on the GBA, I think the game can take some responsibility for what seems like a rushed game without much intrigue as far as level theming, fun mechanics and the like go. It is fun, don't get me wrong. I do not want to be too hard on it, but it's just not my first pick for Mario Kart, although I can see myself playing it to wind down.
Now, I will admit, my Mario Kart experience is pretty much limited to Mario Kart 8, 7, and DS; also having experienced some of the Wii game at parties and such, however.
I do know what I love about Mario Kart though, and that is the interactive environments (all the different shortcuts, things that pop up on stage, and the like), and in general just a ton of possibilities and learnable skills that make getting better at the game fun. Hell, even the times I lose in Mario Kart (which have been frequent recently, since I'm pretty rusty), I still have a lot of fun. The adrenaline rush of all the shells being thrown, all the karts being bumped, and the acceleration to the finish line all add up to one of the best competitive/multiplayer game series. When I was younger, my sibling said that "there was always a way back in Mario Kart" (or something like that). Meaning that even if you get into 7th place on lap 2, anything could happen and you could very likely get into 1st place in lap three. This ability for comebacks is really what makes these games shine, in my opinion.
I think the problem with Super Circuit is that it foregoes a lot of the aforementioned things - yet, I can't find a reason to blame it for doing so. Mario Kart on the GBA seems like a tough enough thing to attain. Still, a lot of sacrifices were made for this goal.
The tracks are kind of boring, is my first critique. To explain: I think while the idea of having a static backdrop and a pseudo 3D track is kind of what most GBA kart racers opt for, I also think it kind of takes away a real sense of exploration of these tracks. A sense of landmarks. Luckily, there are environmental obstacles and little graphics scattered about in a lot of the stages, such as Snow Land with all it's penguins. However, it never really breaks up the monotony of the stages.
Of course, I can't imagine any way they wouldn't have static backdrops and integrated some kind of pseudo 3D onto the GBA (kind of like some games did). This would likely not turn out well.
Yet, the theming of the levels was kind of bland - in other games we get stuff such as theme parks, cruise ships, and generally atmospheric areas to explore. I think the problem is this game opted more for "enviroments": swamp, sky, etc. which are kind of basic and not as fun to explore - since they are environments without landmarks or places to go.
Drifting is also kind of miserable, though I can't blame this game in particular, since the F-zero GBA games also control miserably in this way. Maybe (probably) I'm bad at the game, but it is a complete bump-fest and boy is there no sense of sticking to the ground or generally of being able to drift around corners smoothly. In fact, I found my strategy was always to slow my kart when going around corners. This was probably the basic Mario Kart strat before drifting came into play, but still, I don' like it :( (it's probably a me issue).
Super Circuit was a game that I found had kind of a blandness, even a loneliness to it. It definitely doesn't pop out at you, and while a lot of this can be attributed to the inherent difficulties of trying to put a Mario Kart game on the GBA, I think the game can take some responsibility for what seems like a rushed game without much intrigue as far as level theming, fun mechanics and the like go. It is fun, don't get me wrong. I do not want to be too hard on it, but it's just not my first pick for Mario Kart, although I can see myself playing it to wind down.
Dreamcast Marathon -
E.G.G. should be a miracle: a 2D Zelda-like on the Dreamcast with almost impeccable atmospherics is a rare treat on a console packed with, for lack of a better term, more brawny than brainy experiences; I think of games like Crazy Taxi and batsh*t fighters and beat-em ups in the Power Stone and Dynamite Cop category, or breakneck fast 3D platformers in the Sonic Adventure category.
Not that the aforementioned games don't require any strategy or thinking, but they are almost tiring in their hyperactive insistence on frantic showcases of (at-the-time) pyrotechnic visual wizardry. I never thought of the Dreamcast as a inherently 'relaxing' console, not even as one for relaxing action games. Not that it's particularly starved for such a thing (Shenmue, for example) but it doesn't exactly shine in this category of games.
E.G.G. fulfilled that specific niche for me as a Zelda-lover and a Dreamcast owner, as well as relaxing game enjoyer. If I were rating it on vibes alone, it would be 4 stars, easy. However, the gameplay is quite tiring - and not easily overlookable. For one, the combat is very clunky.
The knockback from enemies is extraordinarily irksome. For some of the enemies move extremely fast, to where it's impossible to get a good vantage point to hit them; and really, they are more likely to hit you (even if you sneak up to them) with how fast their response is. This means your HP can drain from like 200 to 0 really fast, and I'm not kidding.
Also, there is really only a few dungeons in this game, and only 1 main one named Fogna. This is pretty cool in concept, but I'll be danged if it doesn't lead to some ultimately painful backtracking. I would have enjoyed more interesting variety in the setting, even just artistically. Although it is stunningly beautiful, it wears thin, because the games setting never really varies that much. The areas seemed to blend into each other a little too much. We have weird little desert/shrubbery areas, and some mechanical sci-fi areas, but not much more.
By far my least favorite part was how is every time you select to continue - it doesn't start you off at the HP you were at on the room before, but bumps it down to not even half of your full HP. So you can die at a boss, select continue and well, too bad, you're back at like 55 out of 200 HP.
There is a lot of positives to this one - but I'm going to shelve it and give it another chance. It's biggest merit is it's spectacular art style and music - and being a unique game for this system. However, it took a lot of patience, at least for me.
(My total play time was about 5 hours 40 minutes)
E.G.G. should be a miracle: a 2D Zelda-like on the Dreamcast with almost impeccable atmospherics is a rare treat on a console packed with, for lack of a better term, more brawny than brainy experiences; I think of games like Crazy Taxi and batsh*t fighters and beat-em ups in the Power Stone and Dynamite Cop category, or breakneck fast 3D platformers in the Sonic Adventure category.
Not that the aforementioned games don't require any strategy or thinking, but they are almost tiring in their hyperactive insistence on frantic showcases of (at-the-time) pyrotechnic visual wizardry. I never thought of the Dreamcast as a inherently 'relaxing' console, not even as one for relaxing action games. Not that it's particularly starved for such a thing (Shenmue, for example) but it doesn't exactly shine in this category of games.
E.G.G. fulfilled that specific niche for me as a Zelda-lover and a Dreamcast owner, as well as relaxing game enjoyer. If I were rating it on vibes alone, it would be 4 stars, easy. However, the gameplay is quite tiring - and not easily overlookable. For one, the combat is very clunky.
The knockback from enemies is extraordinarily irksome. For some of the enemies move extremely fast, to where it's impossible to get a good vantage point to hit them; and really, they are more likely to hit you (even if you sneak up to them) with how fast their response is. This means your HP can drain from like 200 to 0 really fast, and I'm not kidding.
Also, there is really only a few dungeons in this game, and only 1 main one named Fogna. This is pretty cool in concept, but I'll be danged if it doesn't lead to some ultimately painful backtracking. I would have enjoyed more interesting variety in the setting, even just artistically. Although it is stunningly beautiful, it wears thin, because the games setting never really varies that much. The areas seemed to blend into each other a little too much. We have weird little desert/shrubbery areas, and some mechanical sci-fi areas, but not much more.
By far my least favorite part was how is every time you select to continue - it doesn't start you off at the HP you were at on the room before, but bumps it down to not even half of your full HP. So you can die at a boss, select continue and well, too bad, you're back at like 55 out of 200 HP.
There is a lot of positives to this one - but I'm going to shelve it and give it another chance. It's biggest merit is it's spectacular art style and music - and being a unique game for this system. However, it took a lot of patience, at least for me.
(My total play time was about 5 hours 40 minutes)
2002
This game is magic, but it's kind of like a magic show that goes on for too long, where you want the magician to stop and let your parents take you home.
AlphaDream's pre-Mario & Luigi outing is somehow even zanier than a lot of things in that series.
(I'll get this out of the way too, the final dungeon goes on for waaay too long.)
However, this feels like unfiltered creative energy, while Superstar Saga feels like it's more filtered, polished and focused creative energy. Like water put through a sieve and partially de-mineralized, thus more digestible.
As a result, the game can fly too close to the sun with regards to how nonsensical and unapologetically left-field it is - and it often wears thin later on in the game. It felt like they were a desperate street magician always pulling thousand of tricks out of their hat in order to get passerby's attention. Impressive, but ultimately 'clingy' if that makes sense as an adjective for a game.
The story is interesting but majorly confusing - and not that it has to be the most well written for a JRPG intended to be excessively lighthearted. Still, I came out of this at the end kind of bone-weary of all the jokes, and really, really wishing for some of the plot points to be explained or even a dredge of character development. Characters like Rellek and Sofubi (names in the wonderful English translation) don't really have that much depth to begin with, or motivations other than "this journey sounds cool, I'll join you now K?"
The battle system is not all fun and games either. You basically attack only with techniques called Gimmicks, and you get more Gimmicks as you progress through one way or another (there are multiple ways to attain them). All of the Gimmicks require you to do a kind of Warioware-esque microgame in order for them to have much power.
Yet, I just really wasn't a huge fan of this system. Imagine a Mario & Luigi game where you can only use Bros Attacks. Then add that there are like (at least) 35 different Bros Attacks to choose from and ones for each character + you have multiple party members to juggle. I don't think this is the most optimized or polished RPG system, not by a long shot.
Yet, despite all these faults, it's a three star game because it's quite amazing, for AlphaDream's "first" attempt at this kind of thing. Yes, they had another amazing debut game for the Game Boy Color, "Koto Battle", but I'd say this is the first game of theirs in this kind of extremely zany style. I wonder how they managed to imbue this game with the kind of stylistic organization that would become a hallmark of all their later games (until the companies sad alleged going-away recently)? It's undoubtedly wondrous. It's really hard to describe, and you can only understand by playing it. The bouncy music, the feeling that I'm in the imaginings of a strange and unique child (like I was). Whimsical, almost mad genius-like (like I wasn't). Daydreaming their own strange fairy tale based on the ones they hear in school.
It's not without cliche though, and it actually has a lot of those damsel-in-distress plot points, but overall for it's stylistics alone it's bumped up half a star from what it would be.
Overall, I'd recommend you play this after you experience at least a few of the Mario & Luigi games - for then you will appreciate how far AlphaDream had come since this release, and you'll also see a lot of the lineage of those games here.
It's ultimately a pretty imperfect and sometimes annoying game - but endlessly charming, surprising and enjoyable. If the PS1 game "moon", as the story goes, was a deconstruction of RPG's from without, this game is a deconstruction from within and using RPG mechanics. It's about as flawed as something attempting that can be - yet it's worth taking a look at, even a brief one, for seeing an attempt at that sort of thing, a really colorful attempt.
(My play time upon completing the game was about 14 hours 53 minutes)
AlphaDream's pre-Mario & Luigi outing is somehow even zanier than a lot of things in that series.
(I'll get this out of the way too, the final dungeon goes on for waaay too long.)
However, this feels like unfiltered creative energy, while Superstar Saga feels like it's more filtered, polished and focused creative energy. Like water put through a sieve and partially de-mineralized, thus more digestible.
As a result, the game can fly too close to the sun with regards to how nonsensical and unapologetically left-field it is - and it often wears thin later on in the game. It felt like they were a desperate street magician always pulling thousand of tricks out of their hat in order to get passerby's attention. Impressive, but ultimately 'clingy' if that makes sense as an adjective for a game.
The story is interesting but majorly confusing - and not that it has to be the most well written for a JRPG intended to be excessively lighthearted. Still, I came out of this at the end kind of bone-weary of all the jokes, and really, really wishing for some of the plot points to be explained or even a dredge of character development. Characters like Rellek and Sofubi (names in the wonderful English translation) don't really have that much depth to begin with, or motivations other than "this journey sounds cool, I'll join you now K?"
The battle system is not all fun and games either. You basically attack only with techniques called Gimmicks, and you get more Gimmicks as you progress through one way or another (there are multiple ways to attain them). All of the Gimmicks require you to do a kind of Warioware-esque microgame in order for them to have much power.
Yet, I just really wasn't a huge fan of this system. Imagine a Mario & Luigi game where you can only use Bros Attacks. Then add that there are like (at least) 35 different Bros Attacks to choose from and ones for each character + you have multiple party members to juggle. I don't think this is the most optimized or polished RPG system, not by a long shot.
Yet, despite all these faults, it's a three star game because it's quite amazing, for AlphaDream's "first" attempt at this kind of thing. Yes, they had another amazing debut game for the Game Boy Color, "Koto Battle", but I'd say this is the first game of theirs in this kind of extremely zany style. I wonder how they managed to imbue this game with the kind of stylistic organization that would become a hallmark of all their later games (until the companies sad alleged going-away recently)? It's undoubtedly wondrous. It's really hard to describe, and you can only understand by playing it. The bouncy music, the feeling that I'm in the imaginings of a strange and unique child (like I was). Whimsical, almost mad genius-like (like I wasn't). Daydreaming their own strange fairy tale based on the ones they hear in school.
It's not without cliche though, and it actually has a lot of those damsel-in-distress plot points, but overall for it's stylistics alone it's bumped up half a star from what it would be.
Overall, I'd recommend you play this after you experience at least a few of the Mario & Luigi games - for then you will appreciate how far AlphaDream had come since this release, and you'll also see a lot of the lineage of those games here.
It's ultimately a pretty imperfect and sometimes annoying game - but endlessly charming, surprising and enjoyable. If the PS1 game "moon", as the story goes, was a deconstruction of RPG's from without, this game is a deconstruction from within and using RPG mechanics. It's about as flawed as something attempting that can be - yet it's worth taking a look at, even a brief one, for seeing an attempt at that sort of thing, a really colorful attempt.
(My play time upon completing the game was about 14 hours 53 minutes)
I don't think a single series, other than Zelda, has been as important to me in my development as a child and as a gamer. Literally looked up all the solutions to the puzzles when I was a kid though.
1996
Pretty interesting cooking RPG for the 3DO, that is extremely rare and expensive sadly. Couldn't get much out of it, since I didn't really follow what was happening (none of the dialogue is in text, it is all spoken). It moves at a very slow pace, to be frank, but it is interesting to see the lovely graphics and how far they could push the 3DO. You can literally talk to every NPC. It's also neat to see a game officially sponsored by Yukio Hattori, a professional celebrity chef in Japan. A fun and oft relaxing curio, with some really really actually difficult cooking segments, and some not so difficult (at least to where I got) RPG segments. Most of the game is gathering ingredients from the money you get from fights to make these recipes, which allow you to progress. I only really got like halfway through the second 'area'. Give it a try, it's definitely worthy of getting more attention, but you need the patience of a cat-herder to be able to power through if you don't know Japanese.
1999
Shenmue wore its ambition on its sleeve. It's a massive game, not just in terms of overworld (which is expansive for it's time), but in terms of budget and sheer amount of people involved. As I was watching the credits, I was struck by how long they were, and it has to be the first game that I know of that hired stunt actors. What makes Shenmue interesting and revolutionary to this day are not only the graphics, but how it attempts to make a "cinematic game", mixing action-movie segments with more mundane life simulation.
I find you come across an interesting conundrum when you try to make a "cinematic game". Cinema is based on 'cuts', that is, they aren't necessarily showing the full routine of the main character, generally only the scenes it finds relevant to its plot. Shenmue on the other hand, includes all of it. If it's an action movie, it's one of the most "realistic action movies" I know of.
This is both what makes Shenmue so compelling for some (like me) and outdated/boring for others. It's a game where you simultaneously have to chase after a Chinese cartel while still making sure you're home by ten. Where you are getting a forklift job at one instance, and then beating up at least a few bad guys at the next. And make no mistake, this game starts slow. You basically start with no clues on the whereabouts of the man who just killed your father. So, perhaps expectedly, a lot of the game is just asking people questions, and waiting. You can pass the time by... playing arcade games, and uhhh what else, maybe looking at stuff? I can see why some might abandon this game early, but I found the contradiction between the everyday routine parts of this game, and the high octane moments, to really make it an interesting gameplay experience. During the everyday-segments, I felt like I was living in a pre-internet Japan, more than anything (where these were probably realistic activities). I was actually thrilled by the routine of Ryo Hakuzi, and seeing where he was led next.
However, I understand this isn't a game that everyone, or maybe even most people, will find thrilling. It's worth admiring though, even if from a distance, for it's ambition and charm.
I find you come across an interesting conundrum when you try to make a "cinematic game". Cinema is based on 'cuts', that is, they aren't necessarily showing the full routine of the main character, generally only the scenes it finds relevant to its plot. Shenmue on the other hand, includes all of it. If it's an action movie, it's one of the most "realistic action movies" I know of.
This is both what makes Shenmue so compelling for some (like me) and outdated/boring for others. It's a game where you simultaneously have to chase after a Chinese cartel while still making sure you're home by ten. Where you are getting a forklift job at one instance, and then beating up at least a few bad guys at the next. And make no mistake, this game starts slow. You basically start with no clues on the whereabouts of the man who just killed your father. So, perhaps expectedly, a lot of the game is just asking people questions, and waiting. You can pass the time by... playing arcade games, and uhhh what else, maybe looking at stuff? I can see why some might abandon this game early, but I found the contradiction between the everyday routine parts of this game, and the high octane moments, to really make it an interesting gameplay experience. During the everyday-segments, I felt like I was living in a pre-internet Japan, more than anything (where these were probably realistic activities). I was actually thrilled by the routine of Ryo Hakuzi, and seeing where he was led next.
However, I understand this isn't a game that everyone, or maybe even most people, will find thrilling. It's worth admiring though, even if from a distance, for it's ambition and charm.
Probably my favorite post-Square, post Love-de-lic Akira Ueda involved project. Keeps the charming visual style of Contact while opting for a simpler adventure game with occasional boss fights and imho is all the better for it.
It matches up to be, along with "Houkago Shounen", the DS's version of Japanese summer vacation simulator type games (like Attack of the Friday Monsters for 3DS or Boku Natsu for Playstation)
Only issue is that the game is surprisingly short, when I got to the ending, I was surprised. I might have exclaimed "already?" Yeah, this game has 4 chapters and is only around about 5 hours if you only do the main story, I'd say. Still, there are sidequests in each chapter that add up to a replayable experience. You also unlock scenes by collecting people's tears each chapter (the gimmick the game centers around), and you get little scenes based on "pets", animals around town that you also unlock via tear collecting.
Really awesome third person pre-rendered graphics, odd but great music, and a weighty yet sentimental and nostalgic story of childhood. I honestly had no clue what was being said in the dialogue while playing it, and curbing my usually obsessive google translate attempts I just played through it without translating a bit of the dialogue. I did get a sense of the emotional weight of what was happening. It's a story of kids, their parents, and the sometimes misguided childhood desire for escape.
Really recommend this one.
It matches up to be, along with "Houkago Shounen", the DS's version of Japanese summer vacation simulator type games (like Attack of the Friday Monsters for 3DS or Boku Natsu for Playstation)
Only issue is that the game is surprisingly short, when I got to the ending, I was surprised. I might have exclaimed "already?" Yeah, this game has 4 chapters and is only around about 5 hours if you only do the main story, I'd say. Still, there are sidequests in each chapter that add up to a replayable experience. You also unlock scenes by collecting people's tears each chapter (the gimmick the game centers around), and you get little scenes based on "pets", animals around town that you also unlock via tear collecting.
Really awesome third person pre-rendered graphics, odd but great music, and a weighty yet sentimental and nostalgic story of childhood. I honestly had no clue what was being said in the dialogue while playing it, and curbing my usually obsessive google translate attempts I just played through it without translating a bit of the dialogue. I did get a sense of the emotional weight of what was happening. It's a story of kids, their parents, and the sometimes misguided childhood desire for escape.
Really recommend this one.