Rock and stone

December 18th, 2022
9:01pm
Hazard 5
Egg Hunt with Ebonuts as a secondary objective

Another day playing Deep Rock with two of my friends that have already played this game for over four hundred hours to the point that Hazard 5 is the only way they can even be challenged more. I played Gunner and my friends picked Scout and Engineer respectively due to their synergy. The mission was going smoothly until a meteor hit in our map and we decided to try and do it. The rock crackers spawned way higher up than anticipated and we didn't have a driller so we spent the next twenty minutes trying to set up cables to the rock while fighting for life and death during it. Just as we got the first cable, two bulk detonators show and almost wipe us if not for the fact that I had Iron Will and managed to recover. Our engineer has essentially placed platforms on every location of this big room just to properly place cables and we were already regretting not bringing a driller (I should've went driller). We ended up deciding for our scout to go actually complete the main objectives while I help our engineer with the cables because sunk cost fallacy was starting to kick in. We eventually ran out of Nitra (ammo and health) and our Scout and I managed to get the rest of the materials to actually leave because we essentially had enough ammo for one more group of enemies. My friend insisted we do the event because after spending thirty minutes setting up cables just to leave, it would probably hurt so we ended up doing it. We got destroyed almost immediately. 50 minutes in that cave and we failed utterly with nothing to show for it. But it was the most memorable and fun experience I had in Deep Rock Galactic regardless and why I finally decided to write my thoughts finally.

I love co-op experiences and more specifically co-op hoard shooters of the first person nature.

I've played every notable one from the original Left 4 Dead, Payday 1 and 2, both Vermintides, both Killing Floor 1 and 2, every Borderlands game even the recent Back 4 Blood and the weird part is despite their flaws, with my most hours being over one thousand hours in Left 4 Dead 2. I had fun with each of them to an extent although the "It's more fun with friends" idea does play a large role in my general enjoyment of these titles. I remember being so happy when I got my first laptop and a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 after I made my steam account. Ever since falling off Left 4 Dead 2 and hopping on more competitive team shooters (Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch), I was looking for "the one". The one co-op game I can always come back to in my late twenties that I did for Left 4 Dead 2 in my teen years. Deep Rock Galactic has proven in the two years since I've owned the game and the one hundred and sixty five hours I've poured into it by myself or with my friends that it might actually be "the one".

If I had to spell it out a bit more, Deep Rock Galactic is a co-op first person shooter in which assume the role of one of four dwarves as you do extremely dangerous mining work for Deep Rock Galactic, the namesake of the game and the big corporation you work for. You start right off the bat that working for Deep Rock Galactic is essentially like working for Amazon in that you're completely expendable and are doing the bare minimum to even keep you here. There's no real narrative device driving the experience here other than giving you a premise and the means for it. Going deep is like your nine to five, killing bugs and mining morkite is another Monday for you.

Once you pick a mission from the multitude of main mission types and varied biomes, you're off into the dark depths. The game has four main classes each with a variety of tools as your disposal. The gunner is the guy that never lets go of the fire button with his big minigun, shield to protect your team when a swarm is upon you and a zipline as a utility navigation tool for your team; the engineer is great at holding down a spot with his shotgun and turret which can provide covering fire when you need to transport heavy rocks or precious minerals with being able to create platforms that look like nilla wafers as his utility navigation tool; the scout is your most quick and nimble class with his iconic grappling hook on a low cooldown that lets you dance around the cave in record time as his navigation tool with his utility to the team being a flare gun that can light up even the most dim of areas; last but not least is the driller with his crowd control, explosive armament and his drills for arms as his utility to the team as he can quickly dig through anything to make opening or even tunnels to quickly escape oblivion. No one class is better than the other and if you're missing one, you're gonna sorely miss it with my recent experience but the best part is that everyone can synergize well and it never feels like you're lacking something with a team of one each. An iconic combo is engineer creating platforms in high up places for Scout to grab materials or objective for instance. The caves themselves are one of the crowning jewels of this whole experience too. From an outside perspective, it sounds like procedurally generated would lack polish or even detail that a handcrafted level would make but it complements with the classes well as it allows player expression in how you want to approach things. You are not limited to the walls of the game at all and everything is destructible from the bugs, the walls and everything in between. I think giving the classes these tools to mold the environment into what they want is the best thing you can do when you approach making maps like these. It never feels tedious since you can always forge your own path and you never have the same experience even though I feel like I've seen some similar room layouts but with so many variations to them with how everything can be destroyed that I never notice this and even acknowledging the fact that I'll never notice this. This is all how you can magical moments like my initial memorable recent experience.

Fortunately there's a lot more to it with customization of your own dwarves themselves with a huge majority of the cosmetics being completely able to earn without spending a dime other than the cosmetic dlc packs. The game even has a season pass that's free and doesn't even incite FOMO (fear of missing out) due to the items in the pass eventually being able to be earned ingame later on at no cost. I really think this is one of the best strengths of Deep Rock Galactic: being able to stop playing for a while and come back with feeling like you missed out or behind in any sense. Even the current christmas event gives you every cosmetic you missed out on just for logging in. Apart from fashion, there's customization in the gameplay sense in your tools of the trade. Every class as of this point in time has three main weapons, three secondary weapons and four types of grenades with the weapons having aesthetic customization along with being able to tune the specifics of each gun. More ammo, faster firing speed, more damage to more elaborate tuning like making your plasma rifle shots do splash damage instead of precision damage. The best part is that each weapon acts, shoots and even feels completely different from each counterpart. An example is that the Scout gets a regular assault rifle, the universe equivalent of the M1 Garand or a plasma rifle that shoots out quick plasma balls extremely quick. Gameplay customization goes a bit further with being able to modify your armor properties, how your utility tools work and which grenades to use and even a perk system. Passive perks that grant passive bonus and more active ones that range from giving you a second chance at the cost of going down again soon, hover boots so you can mitigate fall damage more of even the ability to befriend a bug and make them your own ally. Once you get promoted (level a class to 25 and complete the assignment designated to it), you get access to overclocks and deep dives which act like extra things to do more than just purely endgame stuff. Overclocks is where you can unlock more customization options for your guns and dwaves from a fashion sense but also can completely change the way a gun acts and even works. Some are pretty safe but some upgrades, some are an exchange of good and bad and some are drastic like changing the grenade launcher into a fat man from fallout with way less ammo. You can really make most things work too which is the coolest thing but I feel there's never a rush to get something as it feels more lax in progression in general.

Something I don't usually talk about is the community in online games since they're usually par for the course in my experience but Deep Rock Galactic makes playing with randoms surprisingly fluid and fun with how chill everyone usually is. There's a ping system and people are usually quick to talk if they want someone to something specifically but missions in Hazard 3-4 (I usually play these with randoms) go pretty smooth with no problems at all. Even Hazard 5 which leaves little room for error has some people helpful people that rarely rage and know exactly what to do, they rarely put you down and try to bring you up rather which is pretty refreshing. I did get one person that decided to spam platforms in the drop pod so we couldn't leave but that was one incident out of over a hundred of hours of gameplay. With that said, this is just my personal experience mostly playing with randoms in these Hazard levels and there's always a solo experience that's great too if you prefer to play with pause or none of your friends are online right now.

It wouldn't be farfetched to call Deep Rock an "ugly" game due to the amount of polygons being lower than a Rick and Morty fan's IQ but then you realize this game is only like 3GB with me starting out two years ago when the game was only 1GB. In 2020, the game was just about as big as a PSP game with still a lot to do. The game does a great job with the environments themselves being extremely unique with their own dangers themselves. In terms of general performance, it's pretty good and wouldn't be too hard to run on relatively modern computers except when swarms comes and on higher difficulties when there's more of them in general. The soundtrack is just as excellent with music switching from ambient electronic when things are going smoothly until mission control picks up several praetorians are here with the sound of the minigun slowly revving up. When all is said done, it's time to go and the bugs won't let you leave as it becomes everything or nothing as hell literally dragging your heels to keep you here as you rush towards that drop pod since it won't be there for you forever with a triumphant synth playing over when nobody is truly left behind.

I can understand the format not being for everyone and I don't think it's a perfect game for everyone in general sense but it's hard to deny Ghost Ship Games's labor of love that has paid dividends in the gaming space to the fact that I sing its praises and even bought the supporter upgrade in support of these devs. Every gameplay oriented update is free and the only DLC is cosmetic packs not to mention the game is regularly on sale for 9-14 bucks with the current price being 9.90 at the time of writing this review. If you want something to play with your friends, this should be the first pick.

Rock and stone.

Building connections

It's funny how life works sometimes. I never had the original intention of playing Death Stranding until a friend gave it to me out of nowhere for giving her something for Christmas and yet here I am several weeks later thanking her once again after going for every achievement and over a hundred hours. The reason I bring this up is that it relates to how Death Stranding wants you to experience the benefits of being part of something more than a single entity hoping we don't regret it.

I had a lot of reservations going into this one with how I knew that if the gameplay didn't keep my hands moving and my mind contained throughout the whole experience in that I wouldn't like it but Death Stranding has a surprising amount of depth in how to approach every delivery. The act of just delivering and constantly running around isn't what makes Death Stranding completely unique in this facet but the act of "walking" and "traversal" makes this one of the most engaging experiences for a first time. All of this wrapped in one of the most heavy handed and odd writing style for a Kojima game in my opinion makes this one of the best open world games by a long mile.

It's probably the first time in a while that I felt like it was quite obvious what Kojima wanted to tell with this title. The world is disconnected from everything due to an deathly apocalypse called the Death Stranding. Everyone is out for themselves and too scared to even go outside relying on porters to survive like our protagonist, Sam Bridges. Sam never had a connection to the human society except for one moment and then it being taken away has let him believe that connections are meaningless and only bring pain. One of the best parts of his development was going all over America, meeting new people and helping them bring stuff. There's a personal satisfaction when you've done all you can and their best reward isn't some random item or overpowered item but opening that door for you and letting you in. Doing all this made me feel the change was genuine as I felt the same way too, I ended up helping everyone except one person. I won't say who it is but one of the preppers you meet is really sick and their deliveries consist of bringing medicine to them. I ended up doing this for a while until I almost maxed them out until I decided to do story and hold on delivering packages to them. After a while, I decided to deliver one final package to this person so I can max out our connection and then I wondered why they didn't pick up when I came but saw a BT. After I delivered my package and received an email from them asking where we were and only hoping we were continuing the good fight before sharing the news that they moved on from this world. It's a small thing but it made me sad that I couldn't deliver that one final package for them. To my dismay, I found out you can keep them alive but you had to constantly deliver to them throughout your whole experience but people will probably tend to move on from them from a gameplay standpoint like I did. "Why go back when you already maxed them out?" is what people thought until this happened but it's just surprising that it actually happened. With all that said, the supporting cast are interesting and even with cheesy names like Deadman or Heartman (guess what this guy is all about), they still manage to hit the right spots in the emotional space with the game beginning how it ends in a sense.

I feel like watching Death Stranding's gameplay is deceiving yourself in the sense you only see it in its simplest form. When you watch someone going up the hill carrying something in their hand, you expect not much is happening on the controller or attention span but to someone actually holding the controller, there's a lot going on and this is one of the best strengths of Death Stranding. Open world games tend to have this problem of going from point A to B being some of the most minut interactions in their games with the player running forward or being in a vehicle and driving there but in Death Stranding, the world puts up a fight. It won't make things easy until you work to make them easy. Running up hill requires you to manage stamina and your balance along with any cargo you might have, holding an item in your hand isn't just a button press but requires holding down the trigger button based on your hand. I initially thought it was tedious to constantly hold down the trigger to hold something in your hand but it does make sense. When you're holding an item in real life, it's not a touch but a constant effort of holding and holding down the trigger represents that your arm is in constant effort of holding up the arm which I thought was pretty intuitive. The gameplay loop mostly kept my hands and fingers on the control going through a death torn America trying to get a video game collector an old PSP system. Fortunately that's not all there is to the "traversal" as the game gives you plenty of tools to circumvent the worst the world and the terrain has to offer. Starting out with ladders and climbing hooks and then turning into elaborate structures like ziplines and bridges. You can eventually build a network of structures that make the world a little easier on you and your boots but that's not all. The online experience is what I feel is the definitive experience for Death Stranding as you don't just your world but a shared one. Various signs of life, tools rusted out from use long ago, and networks already set up are here to help you as your tools and structures help them. You are never alone. It starts to feel more like collective doing everything it can to make everything easier which is how it should be. Personal satisfaction when I poured the most effort into making roads for everyone to get through easier and the only form of thanks is "likes" which don't really serve much of a purpose is all you need sometimes. It also helps that the world just provides a variety of challenges to confront to endless ravines, rocky surfaces, to snowy mountains that tax every facet of your health and tools so you'll need to stay connected to make the most of everyone's efforts. There are vehicles in the game and you're probably thinking "well that'll just make everything easy and trivial like every other open world game" but actually using them might make you think otherwise. They're mostly for flat surfaces or roads you already built since the rocks on the ground will immediately stop you on your tracks to frustration even more so with trucks that provide a lot of cargo space for bigger orders but become bordering on wielding outside of anything but roads unless you know how to drive up the terrain properly. All these tools and I'm reminded of Metal Gear Solid V where Venom Snake had every tool and gun in his arsenal to perform stealth and missions however he wanted in an open world environment and now Death Stranding gives you these tools and structures to perform deliveries and missions in any way you wanted in an open world environment as well.

Apart from "traversal", there's two forms of combat in Death Stranding in which you fight the living and fight the dead. Fighting MULEs which are the human combatants will eventually be required of you and you'll hopefully prepared some tools for it. Early on you'll have a Bola gun that only really ties them up for you to incapicatate later until later on when you get non lethal conventional weapons like assault rifles and shotguns. I really think you can approach these camps early on in a stealthy manner and it would work for the most part and feel a bit fun since you don't have much but eventually when you get the bola gun, you can just shoot them at mules that essentially just run towards you anyway so it stops being a challenge. Later on though, MULEs get a huge upgrade in capability that makes them pretty fun to go against for a while in that they're actually trying to kill you with guns. It's pretty jarring that they do this considering actually killing someone is something you don't want to do. BTs initially feel like this horror mechanic in the preferred way is to go past them undetected since you don't really have any single way of fighting them for a bit and I liked this dichotomy of relaxing traversal and having to keep focus on going through a BT infested zone in the world. You do eventually get tools and weapons that let you fight BTs more efficiently that it unfortunately feels like an annoyance more than something you should be scared of at some point. Boss battles rely on these huge creature like monstrosities that take a lot of damage to defeat and will probably run out of ammo if it wasn't for the other players coming from the tar and helping you by throwing blood bags and rocket launchers. I do recommend playing on Hard at least to keep this a bit challenging and not completely mindless as you will still die pretty quick without armor on Hard. Overall I find this aspect of the game adequate but it was never really the focus of the experience but a good way to break up the action.

As I've mentioned before, the multiplayer aspect of Death Stranding is essential to fully enjoying this experience. Apart from being in a shared world where you can see other people's structures and struggles, you can see warnings of danger, deliver their lost cargo for them if it's on the way anyway, help them with weapons or tools if they really need it or donate materials so everyone can use them. There's a lot of ways to help the collective of people you're with and I think it's the best use of asynchronous multiplayer yet. The traversal also doesn't get made easy by this as you have to face the challenge yourself at least once before you get connected in specific areas too.

The sound of metal clanking against the weight of your cargo, small medleys playing during specific moments in the world. The music and sound of Death Stranding reaches a high note in what was used and how it was used. The highlight is the usage of music throughout the game playing these licensed haunting and serene songs from Low Roar and Silent Poets to give a few examples. It really helps to reflect how quiet the world can be in its photographic view of america based on Iceland from what I can tell. Going down a snowy mountain and it becoming a grass hill while this is playing is a zen like experience that's hard to describe when the game puts you into this reflective state of mind. My favorite original piece has to be this and when you hear it makes it one of my favorite experiences I've had in a bit. The whole song feels somber and later on sounds like one of Sufjan Steven's electronica efforts. I do understand why they didn't have a music player for this game considering its use during certain moments but they could've made it a reward for completing the game or a 100% reward at least.

With all that said, I can understand that this game isn't for everyone or a purely perfect game to anyone but I think in terms of how this game carries out itself is extremely rare and something I wish for more in the industry in general. Death Stranding practices what it preaches and then some with some of the most innovative open world gameplay I've played in a long time, themes I can understand due to my personal isolation barring COVID and the fear of connecting with people. I always felt like every link I made with people is something tangible people can eventually cut off and cutting something always hurts. Reaching out might not be so bad after all. Even in the way BTs are, even in death we are always connected and are never gone from this world as long as that connection is there. We are always connected.

Fostering those connections

If you want to know my thoughts on Death Stranding, please click on this as I'll mostly be going over my thoughts on the Director's Cut additions in this review.

It's really funny when you give Death Stranding a director's cut considering how much Kojima himself said that what we got was what he envisioned and more just corporate speak for a definitive edition of the game with better graphics and new gameplay additions that are pretty popular during the console generational leap going on right now and the past few years.

We can ignore the usual suspects: better graphical tech, quality of life stuff, extra cars and mission to focus on the big additions.


The new ruined factory area and missions are pretty cool additions as I've realized that you mostly always fight and operate in these outdoor and open spaces and being an actual indoor location brings some much needed variety in the folder with a pretty good arc and conclusion.

Open world additions like new roads being able to be built and new structures like jump ramps, cargo catapults and chiral bridges bring a bit more versatility into the fold granted I never understood the use for cargo catapults as much.

One of the most surprising ones is an actual racetrack in which you do time trials in an effort to unlock the cool and click roadster which looks like an expensive car that goes really fast but completely awful for rough terrain so only good on roads. A few new additions like a firing range to test stuff out and drills for more opportunities to actually use guns in general.

Apart from new enhancement to already existing gameplay systems such as better melee, being able to replay certain moments, new regular orders. This is pretty much your run of the mill definitive edition with extra content in which I feel that you will probably appreciate the quality of life more than the actual additions but considering that this version is the most accessible, it's the best version of Death Stranding barring some performance issues.

Satisfying synergy

It's something when a deck building game can grab your attention as much as Slay the Spire did for me. I think it comes from a want more than a need: Wanting a turn based rogue-lite/like that prioritized classes and different abilities that gave the pick up and play format that I appreciated from the rogue-like/lite genre. Darkest Dungeon technically filled this niche but runs became too long to stay invested for when I prefer just doing a quick max of an hour run before moving onto single player experiences once more. An intermission before starting a new journey so to speak into the boundless video games I have yet to play.

Slay the Spire's narrative element isn't really apparent from playing the game itself but there's a few puzzle pieces you can put together. The spire is your enemy, the cause of your rebirths is a whale ancient called Neow as you go through three acts and areas to do the titular duty: Slay the Spire. It's here just as set up for the meat of the game which is exploring the said locations itself.

The most satisfying element of playing is finding out combinations, making the most of what you can and truly deciding your own path without any real filler in between. Changing, removing, transforming and altering yourself is how you'll eventually get your first clear as you progress through several challenging floors of enemies, elites and bosses. Finding each classes has dedicated builds and synergies that work extremely well and feel extremely rewarding when you can pull the off and the sheer variety of cards and their actions really let you go in depth with how you want to act. Playing a big deck with constantly drawing cards or playing a small deck that relies on luck less but getting that perfect card at the perfect time? It's all possible in a run. There's a lot of variables and factors you can grab and address to go through each time that it never feels easy or monotonous but the fun is making do with what you can get since truly trying to strive for each build might actually harm you in the long run since you're relying on card drops at that point. I think it's best to not play with any guides and figure out your own combinations until the higher ascensions (difficulties) when you truly want to do everything the game has to offer. Average runs of Slay the Spire can take up to forty minutes to an hour from my experience which is just barely long enough to fill that pick up and play situation I'm looking for in games like these.

The art of the game is alright but there's a few things that leave a bit to be desired like some of the card art being first drafts still and the models but it's really hard to care much since I feel like the gameplay does so much to elevate the experience anyway. The soundtrack is good with boss tracks raising the tension pretty well and area themes feeling like you're in a D&D session of sorts which fits.

A lot of popular rogue-lites/likes from my experience are purely action oriented and as much as some of them are fun, I do wish there was something like this where you can take your time a bit and properly plan things out and Slay the Spire fills that niche perfectly for me. If you take the time to think things through and find out some clever combinations yourself, you can get a clear no problem and it's all about doing it your own way. The game always keeps its hand close to its chest but you're playing with a full deck. Use it.

Explosive slow motion helicopter obliteration

If you were a kid during the mid to late 2000s, we've all had moments of lost concentration when we had a computer in front of us. The temptations were always too strong especially me hopped up on Concerta with an ADHD diagnosis. I just could never do my work being in front of this at the time, huge mechanical devices that connected us kids to the world be it regular office towers to colorful apple computers but I digress, too many times me and some classmates just hopped on Halo or Counter Strike 1.6 shared through the network or played flash games from Mini-Clip, Heli Attack 3 being the one I remembered the most.

The game is a side scrolling shooting game where the main objective is to survive and destroy aerial vehicles (not just helicopters) to progress to the next level. Levels range from a snowy field, a jungle, the red rocks of a canyon to a secret lab in visual design and introducing new enemies on the ground floor to keep making things challenging. One of the coolest things are the huge variety of weapons in this game from regular conventional weapons like shotguns and rocket launchers to shotgun lasers, "drunken" rocket launchers to a literal black hole launcher that eats everything on the screen. The gameplay feels a little simple on paper but what gives this a little tiny edge is the time distortion letting you slow down the action and it's hard to go wrong with slow motion action at your own discretion. With that said, you'll be aiming up a lot of the time but that's the name of the game here. This is Heli Attack 3, baby.

The era of flash games have come and gone with flash being a thing of the past in general and even trying to remember the times I had being a kid keeps getting harder and harder for better or worse. Probably played Bloody Rage where you had Freddy Kruger fighting Goku or Thing Thing where you just had gory as fuck shooting available from a middle school computer. It's not too hard to play Heli Attack 3 online still but the training map is kind of ruined due to the inability to read the actual tips and the levels themselves still being really glitchy as it is probably due to not running on flash itself from what I can guess. A blast from the past that still feels pretty fun with crazy aerial destruction when the only other choice back then was actually doing your work but can you imagine that?

Making a point in the worst way possible

It's easy to criticize anything and everything, Tender Frog House takes this idea and keeps hammering the nail past the wooden plank, past the floor and past the actual earth itself to the point you actually lose touch what the whole thing was to begin with.

At first, bringing criticisms to the "twee" or the "comfy" genre of games felt like the one thing the creator of the game had going for it in terms of their own ideas until they kept constantly quoting other people and losing the point later on. It just feels like a lot is being said but nothing from the heart or substantial is coming out. I will say you should always have the freedom to speak your mind and have your own opinions on things because that's how passionate discussion about the medium we all love as video games comes to be but it doesn't feel like I learned anything at all with the thirty minutes I spent on this title. All of this while satirizing the games you're criticizing as hell spawn. I got no personal vendetta against the main point since I'm not a fan of the genre being criticized but you need to stand on your own two feet and not rely on quotes that make it feel an AI wrote the whole script for your games because that's how it feels. Soulless and wasting data. I will say I don't inherently completely disagree with some of the points being made but you can put some effort until making those points that isn't just extremely floaty text that makes it hard to read like come on dude, you can't just put the whole fucking paragraph there of what Adorno said and expect me to read it especially when it's cut off like that.

This is also accompanied by a quickly grating midi piano piece and even from a technical side, the game crashed twice with the web version and the downloaded version with having no option but to skip dialogue to get to where I was again. I get having a save feature or some safety net is moot on a game like this but when all there is to the game is clicking a text box, something has got to give.

I'm usually not this negative when it comes to games and especially when it's a single person project, video games are hard to make. It just feels like this game wants to make a point in the most obnoxious and condescending way possible with quotes from people I haven't even heard of until today. It doesn't even narrow in on anything and just veers off the deep end and can easily lose anyone trying to understand what the game is trying to say. Only a deep curiosity will get you to play this game or someone wanting you to experience this "game" and I'd probably just avoid this and play something else. You can either play this or a game of Dota 2 and I hate to say this but I'm preferring the latter.

Finding your true self

Some might consider Dragon Quest VI to be the "black sheep" of the series, an entry that doesn't fit the conventional archetype a series has already presented itself but I feel like this claim is furthest is from the truth. It's very true Dragon Quest VI does a few things different in terms of how it presents exploration and the pace of a story being a bit erratic not to mention returning the job system from Dragon Quest III with a few quirks but I feel like that's how every entry fixes a little bit of the possible stagnation that really sticking to the formula brings. In all honestly, I actually enjoyed my time with Dragon Quest VI. Not a perfect game by any means, but it was trying out a few new spices here and there and maybe using a different part of the meat but it's still the "mom's cooking" of japanese role-playing games the series has become known for.

It almost feels odd to explain in detail what happens in Dragon Quest stories due to their true designs of being the chosen one and defeating the great evil that brought monsters to the land but Dragon Quest owns it really well that it's hard to mind. The weirdest shift in the narrative design is what happens after a certain point, the game feels really streamlined and things are happening, characters are developing until a certain point. The game really opens up and it's up to you to figure out where to go next. For a majority of the game, you don't even find out about the big bad until you are on the final fifth of the game when the name is finally uttered. The stories throughout the game relies on smaller more personal arcs you experience in the various towns, helping the various townspeople out such as fighting a strong lizard-type enemy in a cavern while carrying a huge coffin to my personal favorite short story of climbing a cliff to make a "badge of courage" to a little kid that never got the chance to live his own life. I think the small personal stories despite not contributing to the overall overarching narrative are great but I do understand that it doesn't really bring anything forward until you eventually get a little lore dump and then it's a rush to the end in a sense. The characters are good with Carver being a personal favorite, a big man with a big heart with a sense of humor to boot. Milly is the kind and motherly figure of the group harboring her own woes and development is tied to another character you'll find out about later. Nevan just kind of seems very dismissive of you and the world until the gods tell him to join you and that's pretty much how he joins. He is the personification of the nerd emoji but the guy has a good heart. The characters don't really develop much until you do their arc which really stems from the very late parts of the game with some of them never developing at all which is kind of sad but party chat always does provide a bit of insight on their thoughts at the very least. One of the biggest things I can attest to is the weird pacing in general with how the game carries itself. I'll just say there's multiple world maps you have to progress through and with that makes a longer game being it took around 45 hours to beat this one compared to barely 30 in some of the earlier longer titles before but the thing is also having to juggle progression constantly between these worlds which feels a bit like it was taking more time than it needed to just not leave the premise of what it was trying to do underutilized.

To my general surprise, the gameplay in Dragon Quest VI has improved a bit in the general sense that you finally have specific physical actions for the physical attackers in the game. One of my biggest complaints for the series early on was that going physical really just meant only being able to really just attack and that's pretty it and now you have a huge variety of physical moves to do from niche attacks that do more damage to flying enemies or group attacks and so forth. Other than that, the gameplay will feel right at home with anyone that has played Dragon Quest before barring the biggest change being vocations and how the vocation system works. After a certain point, you are able to change vocation which are essentially jobs in any other series and you can essentially change the stats and how your characters fight. In terms of what you can actually use: You got your regular physical fighters now upgraded with new abilities, your classic mages specializing in medical or harmful magic, the odd ones like dancer, merchant and gadabout (also known as jester) that do very specific things. There are also advanced vocations that pretty much serve as specialized upgrades in the sense that they require you to master two beginner vocations to grant access to them and then the ultimate vocation being the "hero" vocation which requires mastering four advanced vocations for everyone but the main character which only needs one. It sounds fun until you start to realize how slow the process is to leveling vocations which is extremely slow. I try not to grind at all in Dragon Quest to keep the challenge up but I did spend around an hour and a half grinding in purely recommended vocation spots and even after that I couldn't level up my main character to even get the "hero" vocation that already had ridiculously less requirements than everyone else and ended up beating the game without my hero ever getting that vocation which kind of sucks considering how much powerful your hero usually gets in the end. It was a bit underwhelming honestly. The one cool thing about these vocations is that any skill you learn on a vocation is permanently learned on the character regardless of vocation so you can eventually have every skill on everybody but it seems arduous to do so considering how much time you'll even need to spend doing so.

The game in a graphical sense looks just as great as any Dragon Quest Nintendo DS can look, not much is ever changed between the trilogy of games re-released on the DS in terms of general presentation and graphics. The soundtrack for Dragon Quest VI is alright at best, very few songs I generally like Saint's Wreath that really fit in with the bittersweet moments this game has throughout sharing its smaller tales of the worlds we're in. I think the soundtrack overall is a bit weaker than I would've liked but it gets the job done.

Definitely not the low point I personally thought and serves as yet another adventure and an extremely loose finale to the zenithian trilogy, Dragon Quest VI might be using different ingredients this time around to develop the iconic japanese role-playing style it's known for but it's still manages to ooze the charm and experience I've come to expect from the series. If this is what fans consider one of the lowest points of the series, I'm extremely excited for the rest of the entries going forward. An epic of self discovery through parallel realms.

Echoes of a golden age

It almost feels like bringing something back from the past decades of video game history is considered "retro" now a days and almost always seem derogatory in copying the originals but I never really understood the sentiment. The beauty of video games is that they always build off each other and present new ideas especially when it's a genre that has been found lacking in recent decades. Turn based JRPGs still exist of course but always in the form of more low budget titles from big publishers because they're really cheap to make now with no real passion put behind them other than a few projects here and there. I was always eyeing the scene for the independent scene to make a JRPG reminiscent of the SNES-PSX days and while there are some great turn based JRPGs made by indie developers already, I always felt they lacked the traditional ambitious "adventure" feel that made the games we loved what they are today. Chained Echoes comes as a pleasant surprise for me, a heartfelt and passionate ode to what loved and defined us and recreating the feeling that almost seems lost after a while.


One of the game's greatest strengths and one you'll notice immediately is the pacing of the whole adventure. The game starts off very strong and fast which is something you aren't really used to as JRPGs tend to have pretty slow starts as it is and this alone pulls you in pretty quick. It slows down a little in the middle and the pacing always varies if you decide to do side content in the game but the overall journey I would say is just bordering on excellent. It tries to have that ambitious narrative with a lot of threads and intrigue and for the most part succeeds barring a few things that are left unexplained unless you do the side content. The characters are good here too with interesting backstories that I actually felt for even though I kinda wish there was more content or even a side quest relating to each party member to flesh them out a bit more. One qualm I do have is with the game's writing though as it really really dry here and leaves very little to the imagination. I feel like a game's writing helps you able to imagine the characters talk when there is no external voice and dry writing makes you imagine them doing a very bad performance at least from my perspective. I know some people don't like the flowery writing a la FFT or Tactics Ogre but I always felt like it gave more emotion to what's going on and the ideas and concepts of Chained Echoes are done pretty well without being blatant about it.


I could talk about the battle system in this game for days if I could, I have a few minor annoyances with it but it's overall amazing and really challenging that makes you think about every move. There's a lot going on in a regular battle to keep track of and it almost feels like a tug of war with how one of the main mechanics work with the Overdrive Bar. Think of the Overdrive Bar as a momentum meter and something to keep you in check that rewards diverse play over boring strats as doing so will put you into a zone where you do more damage, take less damage and halves TP cost while being in the overheat zone makes you take a lot more damage and things can go really bad really quickly. Each character has their unique moveset and passives that let you build them however you want to an extent with the addition of class emblems that augment your stats and give you new actions a character would've never learned otherwise. Only having eight skill slots which is your bread and butter throughout the whole game is gonna feel really limiting but this also keeps in mind that you can also swap party members on the fly essentially having eight on the field at any given moment and the game rewards you for doing so too with a small reprieve of "cooling". With this said, there's no overleveling in Chained Echoes and there's little reliance on stat bloat as obtaining the resources for growth are mostly story based so you'll always be at a range of where the game wants you to be. The other form of fighting is fighting in these cool mechs called Sky Armors and I kind of wish they were more realized in how you can customize them. The moves you learn in them are completely up to the two weapons you equip with no way to mix and match which I would have loved considering after deciding the pair of weapons I wanted on each that I didn't bother with the others as much. I only got a little burnt out on the combat when some encounters were unavoidable despite having no random encounters and after I got the skills I already wanted on my characters that every fight almost played out the same barring bosses and every grimoire shard became less and less important but the boss fights do enough that I still have a strong positive impression of the gameplay.


It's not a JRPG without dungeons and a world map as you'll go to a lot of locations as well that are very varied in visual design and in traversal. From the cold vertical mountains to the horizontal archipelago, there's a lot to do and see outside of combat in terms of bolstering your strength. Finding recruits in the world giving you bonuses, side quests that reward you excellent rewards and even new party members, and a reward board that feels like a stamp card that rewards you for completing specific tasks in the world in a chain so to speak and it's also how you'll get most of your class emblems and extra grimoire shards when you need them which gives a much needed reward system to interact with the world a bit more other than the initial first time through. You eventually get the ability to fly over the zones instead of running which lets you explore even more areas so it's always a good idea to return after a while.


I will say the work done for the sprites are pretty good here and really shine with the bosses and enemies later on while being a colorful world just to look at in general. The soundtrack is something I didn't expect to be this good at all, it has some traditional orchestral tracks that feels at home with a game of this genre but it also has some tropical ass strings in my favorite area theme, an eerie and serene theme going through fields of flowers and ash. The battle themes are pretty great with my favorite one being the one where guitars are just shredding as you fight in literal space. Huge props to the composer for this soundtrack. The dude did not have to go this hard and I'm glad he did.


Funny how I always try to keep my reviews shorter but for JRPGs, it feels like word vomit and I can't ever seem to stem it but I love the genre so much and I can easily tell the people that made this game love it as much as I do. It goes without saying that if you're a fan of JRPGs that this is a huge recommendation and I hope it doesn't go overlooked by the popular masses because it doesn't have a Square Enix or Atlus logo on it. Keeping the genre of fighting literal gods alive. Video games are extremely difficult to make and especially solo endeavors but it makes it that much more special when you take years to craft something in hopes of shining bright to the ones that shaped you growing up. Congratulations to Matthias Linda because your title shines just as bright.

Turn the dial on my words

Playing video games for a long time, you already know the spiel about how the modern AAA video game industry is. It's easy to understand why considering making video games keep getting more expensive the more ambitious they get to the point that taking a risk feels like a waste of money to the corporate entities of the world. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the hobby and whatever new comes out for the most part but it all what makes Hi-Fi Rush even more special in this regard. The comparison to it with titles from the sixth generation has been done ad nauseam and in a completely positive light and for good reason. Out of left field, a pure passion project inspired by the games of almost twenty years ago with unique graphical design and heart.

We're introduced to our less than bright protagonist, Chai at the very start of the game entering a campus in hopes of getting an easy way into accomplishing his dream of being a rockstar. Things somehow go wrong and now labeled as a defect, must fight his way through in hopes of keeping that dream alive and eventually with the help of his friends, find out what's really going on with Project Armstrong. The game does an amazing job bringing into this colorful and vibrant world where you can hear and see the beat of the soundtrack of your life. Trees vibrate, your own steps fall into the beat along even standing feels synchronized to the world. The overall tale that's told is one that doesn't make you think hard but it's one with a lot of meaningful messages and a heartwarming penultimate track that really brings it all together that made me tear up at that point, Hi-Fi Rush truly earned that moment then and there as one of the best games of the year for me but there's so much to unpack. The characters themselves bring something unique and charming to the table not just in the gameplay sense but how the dynamic between them works and how even weak by themselves but together are worth more than the sum of its parts. The writing comes off as something from a very mature Cartoon Network show to a really mild Adult Swim 15 minute run bordering on the TV-PG rating mostly due to the language as it is. It doesn't take itself seriously and ironically that's how I feel I can take the game seriously in everything else, it feels intentional because it was intentional.


Chai by definition is a "loser with nothing going for him" but his true calling is hitting things with a guitar and he's really good at it. The combat will feel immediately recognizable to fans of the character action genre with exploratory segments followed by arenas where it's time to fight it out. The rule of the game, more like rule of the world really is everything is on the beat and they really mean it. Chai attacks on the beat regardless of the timing of the button press and enemies act accordingly to the beat too creating this predictable ebb and flow that makes combat surprisingly more easy to understand compared to a lot more complex character action games. The best thing is you don't even need to attack on the beat to do damage as Chai will just attack when the beat comes but attacking on beat is more of a want than a need here. I think this is great as it makes the game a bit easier to get into and doesn't punish people for not hitting the beat. There is reason to hit on beat though as you'll do more damage and it's one of the requirements for getting a good rank. You can totally beat the game playing it like a regular action game but don't expect to get a high score which I think is a fair compromise. Another facet of combat is the assist system, Chai can go solo but he's nothing with his bandmates. Each one provides a solution and a unique element to Chai's moveset. The only annoying thing is when enemies have armor or shields that are only able to be destroyed with the assists and sometimes you'll need multiple summons to be able to finally attack, these moments can kill the pacing of fighting a bit but it's not that bad. The few moments where the action stops in a 1v1 scenario having to do a mini rhythm minigame in the form of parrying is actually fun too especially just feeling the beat. It took me a bit to get into the literal rhythm but once it clicks, it's like vintage video games at its best. Exploratory segments between the arenas feel right at home with me due to the games from the era in where you can try to find secrets in the level right before a big fight. There's also platforming that I think is just average and you can jump and dash to the beat too if you find yourself in that zone but it's never that huge of a focus despite doing it a fair bit throughout the game. The platforming is okay at best and you can jump and air dash to the beat as well but it's never really required here. I do wish there was a few more fights in the game but I think all things considered, they probably ran out of budget at some point and wanted to make the most polished experience they can and they really succeeded.


Some might find the art style ugly but I think it hits the era perfectly. The art style reminds me of mid 2000's Cartoon Network era cartoon shows bordering on those also found during an early Saturday morning. It gives more credence to the fact it tries to really hone in on that specific time in video game history where people wanted to experiment more and purely thought about how fun an experience is before meeting some quota for content. The intended soundtrack (including the licensed tracks) are extremely amazing and used almost perfectly especially during the penultimate track, I won't even link the music because experiencing it for yourself is the one of the best parts of the game. You gotta earn that shit because Hi-Fi Rush did. Mixing regular rock and fortunately changing things up with a little bit of Jazz, electronic, and even a bit of classical makes you feel surprised what you can do with a guitar.


There's always something seeing someone with self worth issues fixing everyone's and their own problems with a guitar. There's no easy way to achieving your dreams and there's nothing you can't do as long as you got people that care for you in your corner. Hi-Fi Rush is truly a pleasant surprise in every meaning of the word and priced perfectly that it feels much more compelling to try it out for yourself. It's a nice change of pace from seriousness of adult life and going back to when watching cartoons after finishing your math homework was a luxury. I hope the positive reception of the game sends a message that the market for experimental small scale titles in the AAA space never truly left, companies and publishers just felt so risk averse to the point this title should have never came out but it did and I'm grateful for that. You can always go solo and make some decent music but if you team up and make a cool ass band, you can change the world.

Bite size absurdity

Wario always struck me as one of Nintendo's bigger than life characters whenever he appeared. From his first appearance in 6 Golden Coins which I liked as a kid, to his platforming adventures and eventually into a series of miniature games that bring the absurdist nature of Nintendo and the character in general. Surprisingly enough, this isn't my first experience with WarioWare as I've gotten Twisted! at a used state in Funcoland during the early 2000s. There's isn't too much to WarioWare but it's one of Nintendo's most interesting concepts of a game at the time.


Not much of a story if anything here with Wario wanting to make a video game in yet another scheme to make money, fitting for the character. Wario isn't alone in this endeavor however as he brings the help of his friends to create minigames for him ranging from a pair of ninjas, a scientist to one groovy man named Jimmy. Each character is charming and gets a little bit of time to show what they're all about and the genre of games they bring are different from games that are based on different genres like Sports or Science Fiction. My favorite one has to be 9-Volt with his penchant for bringing classic Nintendo games in a much smaller and faster format.

The main appeal of the WarioWare series is the minigames and later on how each game utilizes the hardware specific features of the console it's on. Being the first iteration, your main controls are just the directional pad and the A button. The variety of minigames range from those that utilize quick reaction time, accurate button presses to challenging your intelligence on the fly. The games themselves aren't just restricted to their own individual playlists but also can be mish-mashed in remix modes that bring it all together so you really don't know what to expect which I think is the best part of WarioWare. Bringing into the end these boss stages that tend to be longer and more elaborate affairs until you realize these are only for 30 seconds to one minute how fast you've really been going. From one game of skateboarding and jumping and the next instance to picking your nose, you never really know what to expect in these games as Nintendo usually feels pretty safe and sterile in its approach to games at this point in time.

I find it hard to hate on this formula as it never overstays its welcome and the gradual pace of unlocking new minigames seems to give you something to do afterwards other than beating your best score, but I'd be remiss to say I do miss the eventual addition of capsules that Twisted! brought. It's extremely hard to forget the charm of this game which makes it so much more than just a minigame collection.

Trust in providence

What feels (and might as well be) a passion project from Josh Sawyer and the folks at Obsidian, Pentiment feels unique and niche in its approach of a period piece. It's admittedly hard to gauge how much love went into the time period due to my personal knowledge of religion, the holy roman empire and God but what's here is a well written role playing mystery game that really makes you think about every small decision you make while tackling our protagonist's own woes.

Beyond the alps lies a small Bavarian settlement called Tassing and alongside it being Kiersau Abbey where most of His followers congregate and spread the word of His grace, a young artist tries to make something of himself in hopes of creating his masterwork and returning home. Sadly events unfold and you quickly find yourself in the center of something sinister, Pentiment's gives you a question, a couple of hints and limited time. There are some things that will never come to light but the world forever moves forward as you try to find the answer everyone is seeking. The characters of Tassing are the bread and butter of the whole experience and extremely easy to invest yourself in. Listening to their struggles, reminders of how awful being at the lowest part of the social pyramid really meant for these people at the time and the extremely limited futures women had as well. One constant throughout is the love of His word and kindness, it feels like something that people hold onto despite the grotesque conditions everyone faces. Text scribbled and printed differently by person showing how educated and different everyone else is to coarse writing for the peasants to fine print for church members and to printed word for those that are familiar with printing. Pentiment ultimately offers you a mystery and a few side activities but somehow makes it accessible for anyone to understand due to the game highlighting terms, places and people some people not know to help them paint a better picture of the period.

Being put in the shoes of someone entangled in something deep, your only way through is finding the answer. Pentiment feels more like an adventure game with specific role playing elements that promotes replaying the game again for different answers. You decide where you've been, what you studied and what type of person you are and that can help get you far or even more further behind than ever before. You're only given a few leads and you can't pursue them all (for the most part), time is of the essence. I really appreciated this aspect of Pentiment as these decisions really stay consistent through the rest of the game for the most part. It'll get brought back up in dialogue or even keep a person on this earth to find a different answer than you would've gotten otherwise. Traveling around can be pretty tedious at times and admittedly the game can feel like a real slow burn at times compared to more narrative adventures. Some dialogue can be extremely long winded unless you're a huge fan of catholic reform during the 16th century. It almost feels like this game was made with the encyclopedia skill from Disco Elysium going into maximum overdrive over this time period. The general gist of history and the time period and enjoyable but after a while it feels like a history lesson that veers away from the main narrative for too long.

The overall presentation and art style is immaculate as it does an excellent job recreating the art from the tomes back then. Page flips served as loading screens, a journal essentially serving as your general hub of information, the way people are drawn in general. It serves to bring further immersion that you almost feel like you're in an actual part of history in a way. The soundtrack is good especially when the church hymns are sang in His grace but the sound design is also great from birds chirping to hear the livestock and buzzing at a farming plot. It's all familiar sound at the time, no bombastic music but the mundane life of being a peasant at times.

Despite being in the past, Pentiment provides a lesson for the main three facets of time and existence: the past, the present and the future. The clock will never go backwards and what's done is truly done and it will be remembered forever not by the masses but by those special around you. As long as your existence is recorded on this earth via a picture or in writing, you will have existed but not all of us are so fortunate. As of now, we'll live on through people and we can only hope we make the right choices in that we'll be remembered in a bright light instead of a shadow of someone else's life. Back then, all people had was God for a sliver of hope. It was in the greetings and their goodbyes and they always thought He had a plan for them despite the harsh reality they had. It's never a bad thing to believe in something because when logic and reason fails you, all you have is hope and that might be enough for you to see the next sunrise.

Method in the madness, Methodical Metroid

I can safely say I've never been too much of a fan of Nintendo's most prominent works. I've never been into platforming so I've never been too much into Mario, never been too much into the specific flavor of action-adventure titles that Zelda brings other than Breath of the Wild (shocker I know). The only point of interest I mostly have outside of their RPGs (Fire Emblem and Xenoblade) is Metroid, a fast platformer but more than that to the point it's created it's own subgenre called Metroidvania, platforming with mostly non linear design and item progression to a certain extent. I really like this approach to platforming due to the item progression reminding me of the power progression I enjoy in RPGs. Coming into this now, I was really excited to try out Metroid Prime. First person titles are a bit uncommon coming into the creation of Prime and especially from Nintendo considering this is their answer to bringing Metroid to the three dimensional space. Probably lacking the knowledge of creating a first person title, Nintendo sought help from Retro Studios which brought their knowledge of creating the Turok titles from a different time. This should've been one of my favorite Nintendo titles ever, my love for first person shooters and Metroid being the one of the only main (arguably) Nintendo series I care about should make this something magical and for the most part, Prime got that home run but not without a few strikes.

The game opens up with a partially powered up Samus answering a distress call like it was just any other job until it becomes much more than that and Samus ends up losing her few power ups and lands on the mysterious Tallon IV to explore further. Admittedly I wasn't too invested in the story, the thing about Metroid titles is that they always feel like separate chapters in Samus Aran's life and nothing too spectacular since it never gets into personal development about the character itself and it's never really felt needed unless it goes into why she's cool. The game does give you a lot to digest in the terms of logs and items to scan giving you information about enemies, pirate logs and even how some items operate. I sadly wasn't able to digest all of it due to my attention span but it's there if you want to truly immerse yourself with information about where you at and what you're up against.

I've admittedly only played a few Metroid titles (Metroid (only for 2 hours), Super Metroid, Fusion, Zero Mission and Dread) so my perspective on Metroid might not be wholly complete but I always felt like the speed, item progression, level design and backtracking were kind of the hallmarks of what makes a Metroid game excellent. First person Metroid might sound like a fever dream to the uninitiated at first but I'll just say it plainly: it works. The moments where you are jumping platform to platform, going through rooms, the item progression and the gates and it just all feels familiar. I also have to preface in mind that I played with the standard first person shooter controls since trying the regular vanilla controls for thirty minutes and I couldn't do it at all. Even when the game was design around it, my muscle memory fails to adapt to something that isn't the popular twin stick format and I'm grateful this remaster has that.

There's a lot more to unpack turning something into 3D, the gameplay and platforming challenges alone would probably cover pages of the intricacies but this was extremely faithful but I found myself annoyed and wanting with this game, more than I'd like to admit. Now I understand backtracking is almost a guarantee at this point in the series, the entire notion of returning to an area and finally opening that locked area is a dopamine rush for fans of the series but I always liked how fast 2D Metroid lets you go back, you tend to get movement abilities that let you zip through rooms at almost breakneck pace and I never minded it as much. With Prime however, you never really get anything movement related other than an extra jump and morph ball boost so you're constantly at a moderate pace when it comes to backtracking and there was a lot to go back to constantly. It started to feel annoying when enemies kept coming back and it was really hard to avoid without taking damage in compared to 2D Metroid when you can just completely ignore them or screw attack or dash through them which made the game feel like it was way longer than it needed to be. Some of the enemy design and general gameplay design also felt tedious as well, I do like the different types of weapons Samus gets but later on it feels like a constant swap-a-thon and swapping with the conventional first person shooter scheme takes a bit more effort when you're taking the brunt of it. I completely understand that combat isn't the main and sole focus of Metroid Prime, it's all about the exploration and adventure but I just never really had a moment where I just clicked with the mechanics. It might be in part due to the control scheme because even using super missiles had me do some weird grip where I had to move my thumb off the stick (R+ZR or R+A) so there was already a little delay in shooting the powered missile out. After testing some controllers out though, this might be purely a joycon controller issue with how small and naturally uncomfortable they tend to be. The boss fights are also pretty amazing as well and kept me on my feet for the most part with the last few bosses being really engaging.

The overall level variety is generally great and by that I mean we got the standard hot level, the cold level, the indoor building level, the forest level and the ruins level. Each level for the most part felt decent enough to traverse though and the move to 3D helps a lot with the general atmosphere of the game, never at the time you really see how Samus sees these alien worlds she tends to visit realized like this before. The soundtrack is great with some ambient electronic tracks that do a good job of setting the scene for each area with the ice level being my favorite track.

I was completely prepared to give this game a higher score but I felt way too annoyed and frustrated during the final stretch with the backtracking and generally tired of the platforming after a bit which feels like I can't give it much more justice here. I really do love the concept here and I still think it generally works really well and for a first attempt (albeit a remaster that fixes the control scheme), it's pretty solid. I'm more curious to see how Prime 4 will bring this sub series of Metroid into the modern age where the most prominent single player first person shooters are either fast paced arcade fun or immersive sims where interactivity is everything I feel like this remaster is a taste of what's to come.

This is kind of a personal review about a friend that's gone and looking back into some bad times so if this isn't your cup of tea then here is me giving you a warning now, thank you.

July 2020

Ex And Oh: "It really seems like the world is ending, like we're all stagnating"
Alex: "Being couped up like this has been rough for me, I was gonna travel a lot this year and this pandemic kinda shot that in the water"
Ex And Oh: "You're telling me, I never mind being stuck in one place but I just want to move on with my life, we were finally gonna meet up"
Alex: "Once this whole thing blows over, let's do that and get some pollo a la brasa bro"

Road of brightness, I will get there, and shinin

Lumines from the second you boot it always felt like a good time coming, but for me it's more bittersweet. It was one of my best friend's favorite games from the PSP's halcyon days due to his love for puzzles and the infectious fusion of music that Mizuguchi's more prominent works have been known for. Blending puzzle and rhythm puts you further into a zen like state that any other game with either or possibly can.

Ex And Oh: "Yeah I like Tetris, why what's up?"
Alex: "Heard of Lumines? It's from the dude that made Tetris Effect"
Ex And Oh: "Yeah I love Tetris Effect, waiting for the Switch version or for it to hit Steam to actually buy it, money is rough right now"
Alex: "Been playing more during my down time and haven't played it for years, the switch version is pretty cool with the rumble, you should give it a try"
Ex And Oh: "Yeah I will"

Shake your body, Shake your body, Shake your body

Despite my personal feelings, a huge variety of skins and music makes Lumines feel like a celebration in its basic challenge mode rather than an arduous climb to the top. Like the actual Tetris Effect before it, Lumines can incur the effect of seeing 2x2 blocks in life (at least for me) after a while. Even the soundtrack itself can incur good memories with how upbeat most of the soundtrack using electrical sound and calming vocals that serve as a reminder to despite attempting a moderately difficult challenge to also just take it easy and have fun.

Out for a walk, gone forever


Ex And Oh: "Hey this game is pretty sick, music is stellar and the gameplay is almost just as addicting as Tetris"
Alex: "Yeah the music is nuts, I sadly never got past 60% of the game but hearing shake your body gives me that happy rush I really need"
Ex And Oh: "Been wanting to try out more stuff and expand my horizons so thanks for showing me this, hope things are alright with you"
Alex: "I'm trying my best man"

Each run takes longer and longer demanding more and more from you to keep the board clear, a unique feature of the Switch version rumbles with the gameplay and music bringing a third sense into the mix of feeling Lumines. I feel like Lumines reflects life with its tempo changes, upbeat and faster songs to reflect the small moments of celebration and happiness and more ambient and slow paced songs to reflect the constant lull we face. Of course each life is different and each basic challenge in Lumines will always be the same but how we tackle it will always be different when we're given the same blocks.

Celebrating life, ours

Ex And Oh: "We keep losing brothers and sisters to this life, the only few people that showed me kindness are the ones to leave early"
Lisa: "im sorry man, losing a friend is never easy"
Ex And Oh: "Sorry for venting, it just keeps happening"

Beating the basic challenge left me surprising empty, all I could think about was my friend never getting the chance to even beat the basic mode. It sucks that this is all I can really remember him but a single game recommendation is just one of the many proofs in the world that he did exist, something he had trouble realizing himself and always wishing he can finally move forward in life when the world wouldn't let him. One of the many video games that can bring people together in a time that it feels like we're closing each other off.

Origins of an iconic vampire slayer

It feels odd to say that despite the variety of games I've played that there's still a few series of games that I've just straight up never touched due to my inherent bias that I don't like platformers that much. Coming into the original Castlevania though, I didn't know what to expect but what I ended up getting was a fun but challenging platformer.

The premise of the game and probably most of the series is simple: head into a spooky castle and defeat Dracula. The ultimate vampire as old as time itself. You generally encounter a decent variety of enemies as you climb your way up stairs and rooms of the castle and fight some pretty cool looking bosses in between, stuff you'd generally find in a setting like this.

Belmont's general gameplay is odd to describe as it feels rigid but also extremely methodical in that jumps don't have that floaty effect some people might be used to. There's also a tiny delay when your whip attack comes out so spamming it sometimes might not be the most ideal. A variety of items is also available providing more utility to aiding you on your journey and if used correctly can trivialize some of the bosses (looking at you holy water). All of this accompanied by the general challenging NES design at the time makes for a moderately frustrating but still a fun time.

I generally don't have the patience for platformers of an older generation but I think the original Castlevania was still a generally fun time. I have a lot of appreciation for it starting an entire series and nailing the groundwork for what would be one of the iconic vampire slaying forms of media we have today. Almost failing to neglect the great music with Stage 16 being my favorite track giving you that rush right before the end and you got a short but fun ride.

Light and darkness

Ikaruga's reach has no bounds as someone that has barely got a toe into the shmup genre has heard it. For some godforsaken reason, I thought this would be a good entry into getting my bearings on the genre and build upon some muscle memory to use in the future for the genre, this game destroyed me on my first run through on unlimited lives on normal. I "beat" Ikaruga but I was battered and bloodied that it almost felt hollow, anyone can win with unlimited lives and I enjoyed my time but I had to go again until I got a victory that felt earned.

The heart and soul of Ikaruga is the gameplay and it might seem simple at first glance but there has never been a more betraying impression. The main mechanic is being able to switch polarities to eat bullet rewards timing with charging your special homing lasers and extremely important to survival as well. The game starts easy enough and then throws some disgusting patterns that almost feel hard to predict until you memorize them and it all finally seems possible. The game doesn't throw a lot of bullets at you more than gives you these unique situations that require you to remember what to do and how to do it while dodging those said bullets. First run, I was legit dying every 9 seconds and then very quick improvement on my second run as I was remembering where enemies come from and naturally figuring out what to do to the point it was starting to feel like a puzzle game. The game's extremely short run time lets you know that you have to come back, you will get your ass kicked but you can always return and do better.

Something that fascinates me about Ikaruga is the general art for the game, it's some of the most beautiful art I've seen for a game of this genre with pieces such as this and even this character piece. This is official art and despite not seeing most of it despite the imagery and themes. Games like these aren't as exciting without an amazing fast paced soundtrack to accompany them and Ikaruga is no exception, surprisingly my favorite theme is the one you hear at the very end with the credits rolling and the imagery I refuse to spoil feeling like a period to a very hectic experience.

Despite Ikaruga's devastating difficulty (can easily say this is a personal skill issue too), the game's very first poem tells you to not give up which I feel is very accurate to the experience. To never give up, being strong means you will have more obstacles you have to overcome and so forth. Don't regret living, don't regret not giving up and maybe we will learn to understand each other for who we really are. The achievement might never happen but I only hope existing within the people close to you is more than enough.