Familia Mishma
El acantilado familiar
Yo te arrojo a ti
Luego tú a mí
Yo te arrojo a ti
Luego tú a mí (Miren eso!)
Luego tú a mí

Kasuya Mishma
Compréndeme
Es mi deber, te tengo que fortaleser
Se me ha ocurrido una forma espesial
¡Tirarte de lo alto del acantilado familiar!


Familia Mishma
El acantilado familiar
Yo te arrojo a ti
Luego tú a mí
Yo te arrojo a ti
Luego tú a mí (Miren eso!)
Luego tú a mí

Al final del Tekken 7 me tiraste a un volcán
Y con eso en el 8 ya no voy a estar
Me pone triste, hijo mío, y voy a llorar
Con esa solución con la que fuiste a dar
Para a tu viejo acabar
Olvidaste a los Mishima
Y su legado morirá
Espero que mi nieto Jin lo vuelva a retomar
Por qué no me arrojaste del acantilado familiar?

Familia Mishma
El acantilado familiar
Yo te arrojo a ti
Luego tú a mí
Yo te arrojo a ti
Luego tú a mí (Miren eso!)
Luego tú a mí

In all the time building up to this game and Mario Wonder, I have constantly argued about what "soul" means for a video game. To have a "soul" means to have substance, a reason to exist in the first place, something of inherent value. There are many games I would argue that have a vast "soul," Fallout New Vegas, Lobotomy Corporation, hell, even something like Tsukihime has some value buried deep down inherently. So the question then becomes, what does a game with no "soul" look like?

Enter Sonic Superstars.

While this game may have the facade of Classic Sonic down, it lacks any of the charm that makes any of those titles feel fresh and exciting. Every stage feels dead and lifeless as if they were put into an AI Sonic Level generator and shat out like pig slop; All the most generic and bland concepts. We have bitchless Green Hill, we have bitchless Chemical Plant, We have bitchless Death Egg Zone, everything so utterly devoid of true originality.

None of these stages brought any semblance of joy to me, even with the physics being relatively similar; going through these vapid, boring worlds left me tired and unhappy. While the game isn't offensively bad in the way that something like Sonic 4 is, it represents an arguably worse issue: Pure Unadulterated Mediocrity.

Starting first with the Chaos Emeralds, while the Special Stages are mostly mindless nonsense, the Chaos Emeralds have functions beyond granting you your Super State. Each Emerald has individual powers, a concept not seen since Tails' Adventure on the Game Gear. In theory, these would all be very cool, but in practice, almost all of the abilities are situational at best, and borderline useless otherwise.

What is the purpose of the Vision power when the game doesn't blatantly tell you to use it? Fucking nothing, absolutely nothing. The ability to turn into water is so situational, given that most of the areas in the game don't have water, and it isn't even that helpful when used. I guess the beanstalk one is helpful, but if you play Tails (like me), it doesn't serve much purpose. The ones I got the most use out of were the Screen Nuke (the first one you get for some reason) and the Slowdown Power. The slowdown power was helpful in particular instances in boss fights, and well, the Screen Nuke is part of why this game isn't even worse in my eyes because let's talk about the bosses.

Sonic Bosses have never indeed been the pinnacle of boss fights, especially in Classic, but usually, they were a relatively speedy process. Superstars decides to nix that and make it so that bosses can only be damaged at certain times, removing the strat of multi-hitting a boss that the older games and even Mania used. This results in fights where you must wait before you can do anything. Waiting in a Sonic Game, indeed, we have reached the point of stupidity I didn't think was possible. The Screen Nuke exists because it can essentially chain hits on bosses, annihilating them to make them less lengthy… Not that it matters because some of these later boss fights start getting so long you'd wonder if you're playing Sonic or a JRPG.

Not to mention this game still falls into annoying tropes I hate, like random shmup level near the end of the game that plays like shit and wastes your time. Hell, at one point in the final level, the game has you go through the same four level gimmicks in a row, like three fucking times, and then the next act have you do it all backward; I cannot make this shit up.

I'm sure all this will come across as foaming at the mouth, but you must understand I love Sonic. Sonic is my favorite platformer franchise, and I am so sick of seeing it fall back into mediocrity when games like Mania prove that this franchise can move forward. But here at Arzest, I can see the only thing being moved forward is level gimmick after level gimmick, hell there was even a Gimmick Programmer in the fucking credits.

There are other things I could say: Unlimited Lives is stupid, the character-specific and fruit stages are literal wastes of time, the music is forgettable minus the one Tee Lopes track, and every level looks boring.

The profound lack of soul comes from the fact that Sonic Superstars is what happens when you make a mass-produced Sonic game, gentrified Sonic the Hedgehog. All you have are some dull level concepts and a bunch of wasted potential.

To think I wanted to make a video comparing this game to Mario Wonder… I have to scrap it because it'd be like comparing a Coughing Baby to a Hydrogen Bomb.

I should start by saying I have never played Quake II before and have no ties to that original release, so unfortunately much of the improvements or lack thereof are likely lost on me with this shiny new remaster from Nightdive.

I played and adored the remaster of Quake in 2021. A distinctly 90s package that managed to feel refreshing over 20 years later, offering an approach long abandoned by first person shooters. Now, 2 years later, Nightdive releases their overhaul of Quake II and it is magnificent. A more fast-paced, objective based run-and-gun that feels less scaffolded off it's predecessor and more like a new vision of Quake.

Gone are the dull-grey castle structures, knights in armor, Shamblers, and dark ambient tracks of NIN. There are minor 3D cutscenes and a narrative through-line as you blast your way across Strogg territory. It is up to you and you alone to strike at the heart of the alien enemy. The levels are more varied and larger, going between maps often to complete objectives. The levels transition between interiors and exteriors, always elegant and logical. I especially enjoyed the many skyboxes of the exterior environments. You will meet the sorry souls captured by the Strogg, watch them be decompressed or liquified by their machines. They cry with madness and pain until you either run past them or put them out of their misery. The narrative is simple and doesn't get in the way, but it makes you feel like you're fighting for something and that you've accomplished an important misson when reaching the finale.

The combat itself isn't all that different from Quake. You are given 8 different weapons ranging from your projectile-based pistol, to the BFG, and of course the super shotgun. The enemies are deadly, you can't stop moving or you're done for. I used the super shotty most of the time naturally, turning much of the enemies into bloody gibs every 1 to 3 shots. Some of the bigger bads can take up to 8 missiles. You'll do a lot of enemy managing, taking out the smaller targets first. Occasionally the enemies will friendly fire and they will turn on each other, giving you a temporary ally or distraction.

A fantastic game that looks incredible and has punchy, quick combat. The enemy designs are varied and nasty. All of the Strogg look like they need to be put in the dirt, miserable messes of flesh and steel. The Flyers in particular are an insane design. I can't wait to play all the other campaigns included, especially MachineGames inclusion CALL OF THE MACHINE. I loved their inclusion on the Quake remaster. They really push the engine into new and interesting territories, often appearing much more impressive than anything in the base game.

There's all kinds of games that are a piece of the creator's childlike wonder, glee, beauty, et cetera. I'd find it difficult to name one that has the same kind of resonance this emanates from start to finish. Gentle, elegant, earnest and bringing you along the ride through a wonderfully crafted landscape of dreams. Sour, dance, play and gymnastics your way through the circus stage made for you. Fears and anxiety are formed only to melt away in the light.

I'll keep thinking about it as the music swells and shifts over the coming days. A lasting impression, of which Oshima himself noted that above all else, they wanted a character and an experience that someone would look at and think "the future looks bright." I'll dance atop that spire of hopeful joy they made.

Un ejemplo perfecto de lobo con piel de cordero.

Bajo el disfraz de la monería y la amabilidad, unas dinámicas devastadoramente consumistas. Nada se hace como fin en sí mismo, por el gusto que pueda dar, sino para conseguir más monedas (y en este juego no sólo hay bayas, como en los demás, hay hasta 3 clases de dinero) o más espacio en el trastero. Es decir, el fin es la pura acumulación de riqueza y bienes. Pescar, bucear, hablar con tus vecinos, se vuelven actos mezquinos y egoístas bajo esta perspectiva.

Respecto a la amplia capacidad de moldear tu isla a tu gusto, el juego se revela igual de podrido ideológicamente. No hay respeto por el mundo, por la gente con la que lo cohabitas. Absolutamente todo gira en torno a ti y a lo que puedas conseguir tú. Mejores gráficos, una isla más grande, más eventos, pero todo al gusto del consumidor. Y por tanto inerte, sin vida. 𝑨 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆-𝒔𝒊𝒎.

"Pero es un juego para niños, no hay que darle tantas vueltas, hombre."
1. No, no lo es, todos los millenials que conozco juegan a esto.
2. Incluso si así lo fuera, con más razón se critica la entrada más abyecta de la franquicia.

Dig Dug is my favourite classic arcade game. Something where both its mechanical depth and its immediate charm work spectacularly well in tandem. The experience of learning how to get good at an old arcade game often involves outside learning, reading up on clandestine techniques discovered from decades old Japan-only player guides and deeplearning AI bot routines, but Dig Dug gives you enough on-screen to intuit how to become a better player.

It's comparable to Pac-Man and QIX, but offers a far more compelling set of rules than either of them. A single-screen game where monsters roam and chase you, but you can move in any direction. You create tunnels as you move, and when an enemy gets in your tunnel, they beeline straight for you. This can be exploited to lead them towards traps, crushing them with rocks, or if you get desperate, you can take them out by getting your pump and inflating them until they burst like a balloon. The lower on the screen you kill an enemy, the higher your score, and if you manage to crush multiple enemies at the same time, that'll increase your score further.

I think a lot of people try Dig Dug, only use the pump, and dismiss it as a bit of a cute novelty, but once you learn that your priority should be crushing enemies, it really starts to come together. That's when the draw towards trying again becomes truly powerful.

When you become really familiar with the game, you'll start to learn the characteristics of Pooka and Fygar AI. You'll be temporarily inflating enemies and running away, to keep them at bay without blowing the points you could get from them. You'll develop strategies you'll lean back on in specific scenarios. I've developed a very specific route through Level 1, in an attempt to reliably maximise my score early on, but I don't even know if it's the best way to approach that layout of tunnels, rocks and enemies. That's what I like so much about Dig Dug. I'm leaning back on what's worked for me, but another player might have completely different solutions. It's why I've largely tried to block-out professional and speedrunning communities. My relationship with the game is the one sacred element in my enjoyment of videogames. I don't want to be told the "right way" to do it. Just leave me alone with Dig Dug. I don't need to get Twin Galaxies in on this shit. I'm not interested in learning someone else's dance routine.

It's that freedom that Dig Dug presents. You can go in any direction at any point. It's Pac-Man, but you're creating the maze yourself. You can get greedy and invite the whole screen of enemies to chase you towards a trap, but you'd better know exactly what you're working with. An unexpected detour could be the death of you.

On my best sessions, I've been setting up false paths to slow down enemies, and seeing them reliably waste their time in empty corridors while I construct my master trap elsewhere. When you know what you can really do with a Dig Dug screen, there's no denying that this game is lightyears ahead of its competition. There's so much freedom, and the threat of failure is always real, present and on-screen. The risk/reward dynamic is so tangible and alluring. Knowing my own tastes, it's a game I'd strongly recommend to classic Metal Gear fans.

One thing I'd like to make clear is that players should be wary of the console ports. If it's not running the arcade version, you probably don't want to waste your time on it. I've been really impressed with the MSX version, replicating the precise AI quirks of the arcade game in a version with more rudimentary presentation, and I'm able to approach scenarios with the same techniques I've learned on the arcade version. The Famicom/NES version tends to get ported a lot, and I'd strongly discourage the purchase of My Arcade systems that emulate it. If you really want to challenge yourself to learn the depth of the game's quirks, I'd encourage you to try the PS4/Xbox One ARCADE GAME SERIES: DIG DUG release and chase the "Dig" achievement, where you have to clear an entire screen of dirt while keeping at least two enemies active on the screen. It's not something you'll be able to do without knowing the game inside out, but again, you'll be able to intuit all of that by playing it.

Dig Dug is a game I'll never stop playing. Something that has really built my respect for Namco and simplistic game design. Everyone likes a Pooka. It's knowing how much you can get from them that really makes Dig Dug great.

Describing what a movie is about is pretty easy. Most of the time it’s just a direct depiction of a story, so summarizing the plot is good enough. Things are a little different for games, because the gameplay and the story can be emphasized in varying degrees. For example, Tomb Raider seems to be about preventing powerful artifacts from falling into the wrong hands, when it's actually about jumping. As overly simple as that seems, its focus on the mechanics of jumping makes for the most compelling movement I've ever seen in a game. Modern games have jumping and climbing as an ancillary part of combat and exploration, but in Tomb Raider it’s the gameplay in itself. Even jumping straight up requires decision making, because grabbing onto things isn’t handled automatically. Forward jumps require you to actually build momentum with a run, and trying to jump before you’ve taken enough steps will lead to you sprinting off a cliff. While mostly used for combat, side jumps have their own niche uses, and so on. Every motion needs to be carefully considered against your list of options, because choosing poorly will make you lose part of your very scarce health supply. A system of limited save points also means that screwing up and falling into spikes can be extremely punishing, and you get used to taking every step seriously. It’s a nuanced and tense system for platforming that has gone woefully underutilized by the games of today. This is another case where I could describe all the little interactions and things you can do to improve your gameplay, but taking away the discovery would take away part of what makes this game so cool. In the latest Tomb Raider games, there’s nothing like this to discover. You'll automatically grab and stick to walls by moving the control stick and that's pretty much all that’s ever required. The sense of danger isn’t from the mechanics, but from the movie magic and visual spectacle. Even though the original doesn’t have those technological advantages, the sense of presence and personal involvement is so much greater than the modern interpretations of the genre. It accomplishes so much with so little that it's become one of my favorite games of all time.

-With the nerves to the limit, but with a smooth movement, justified by the style of animation. I don't know, I see it as a bit contradictory to the crazy and animated world that the game poses

-I haven't played any Wario Land, but here the approach of the double level design (hit and run) in communion with the two possible forms of mobility, until the two collide with each other, is super interesting.
but, there is the problem, that they collide in what I intuit is an impossibility to get rid of their formative references in terms of a "genre", called "the platformers".
The idea of ​​scoring through collecting and other chores at levels that force you to fluctuate between jumping, speed and momentum does not seem very appropriate to me if at the least I fail I have to repeat a sequence of three heights and four platforms, for very funny and schizophrenic that are the crash and fall animations.
Between the seams of the game, a speerun logic almost appears?
I don't see the great Peppino spaghetti being an avatar of total control in chaos, rather I see him suffering from chaos, heck, that's how the protagonist seems to be presented, as someone on the verge of sanity, breaking with everything he knows. crosses.




-So vacuously it has been possible to attribute to Signalis that its structure is a mixture without substance (partially correct, but I don't see it badly for a game whose one of its main reasons is "memory" as a concept) beyond the visual, I think this could perfectly apply to Pizza Tower: the weight, the speed and the alleys and unthinkable traps of Sonic with the framework of Wario Land? (I intuit, I reiterate that I have not played)

But I find another similarity with Sonic: the divergence between character concept and game concept.

you already know

Speed ​​vs Caution in Sonic

Chaos and humor vs Control and some precision in Pizza Tower

Am I the only one who feels this?

-The mixture is quite satisfactory, but why would that be enough?


-usually the internal coherences matter very little to me, and I hate applying the operational sense of the real world, I prefer the expression and the personality, at any cost. but here I find the expression in the same way as some contemporary games that rely entirely on the animations of their characters. And that's not bad at all, it's completely fine but I didn't find a situation where the comedy came from the game design instead of the characters and their animations. It's a bit picky, but I feel the same way I do when I watch one of the new Pixar-like CGI animated movies, with little interest in cinematography and space-time relationships.


I love the energy of this game, but at the same time it leaves me super cold

Accompaniment

The strong appeal of Pizza Tower style has already been spoken for. Its caught on like wildfire to the point of rampant fanaticism, friend of mine Appreciations articulates with a frenzy that

"I really think this game is one of the best indie games ever made and just like pizza in general, nobody dislikes all pizza. You will find something to enjoy here and odds are, you'll love it." Link

In more specific terms, Jenny accurately relates the appeal here to that of crass 90s cartoon animation.

"At its core, Pizza Tower is an ode to all that 90s stuff that I love. It's a bit ugly in style, but in that deliberate Ren & Stimpy or Ed, Edd n' Eddy kinda way, and I warmed up to it almost immediately." ending her sentiments with "At the end of the day, yeah this is really fucking good. Believe the hype, etc etc" link.

Along with this I've felt the sensibility of Pizza Tower's strong appraisal in a lot of the rest of my online life to be it social media use, internet discussions, algorithm content praising the game, streamers enjoying it, etc. The hype seems neverending, it's a shame though because after completing it with a 66% mark I feel entirely disconnected from this perspective. The title overall feels like all style and no substance. All cheese and no sauce.

There are so many glaring flaws with Pizza Tower's (2023) fundamental design in my view that it leaves me baffled nobody else has spoken for them yet. In order to vent my frustrations most effectively I want to first take a step back and say that even though people have been laudatory it would be false to say there has been no criticism about where it falls short. To turn back to Jenny and Appreciations for a moment they've both offered something in this regard. Appreciations mentions that the down attack is finnicky as sometimes it will input a swipe attack over a ground pound, and that they felt no motivation to go 100%. In a more controversial post ponders on bigoted jokes that the developer plays into highlighting his sense of offensive stereotype as a form of humor. Meanwhile, Jenny focuses more on hit detection and the deception of health, particularly for her in the case of bosses though I should say I experienced this outside of just boss fights as well.

While I could quibble on the ways in which these are accurate or not (the one on stereotypes for gags is especially accurate, unfortunately, you have the happy merchant grabbing you (semitic stereotype), and large 'crosseyed' baseball player that mistakes you for a ball (retardation visual stereotype) just to name two. However I want to shelf those concerns and focus on the issues I have with the design fundamentals.

Pizza Tower tries to use a 'ranking' formula of design to motivate player engagement, something that you might be familiar with from 3D sonic titles like Sonic Adventure (1998) or platinum action titles like Bayonetta (2009). The problem is this badge mastery system contrasts with the nessecity to check in nooks and crannies for secrets, thereby slowing you down and killing your combo. No matter what you do your first run of any level is probably going to be around a B at best because you'll be trying to comb for the 5 ingredients on every level, which are necessary to complete the story. The idea here is that in freeing them it works as a reward motivator, but due to the fact that they and the secrets are often tucked out from a linear runpath, even slightly, they instead become a collectible you have to remember and stop for. More to the point this combines with digging for secrets and 'poking' for an optimal route. Unlike the concise 1 minute platforming tests like Dustforce (2012) or Super Meat Boy (2010), Pizza Tower's levels go on for anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes. This sets in a sense of fatigue at individual level mastery where you have to try and fail constantly to get it precise. The problem is that there's no tangible reward for getting better at the individual levels besides an overall progression mark. If you 'P' a boss or a level the number percent goes up, but nothing cosmetic or informative happens as a result of doing well or poorly, there's no unlockable content as an extrinsic motivator. NPCs in the tower don't comment on your performances. No clothing options are unlocked. Peppino doesn't calm down or gain confidence. It's just an achievement for achievements sake.

This is an issue because the 5 off path collectable ingredients you have to catch arent as optional for completion as they first appear. In the beginning the threshold ratio between ingredients needed from each level to unlock a new floor is 50%, one might think based on that that you may need to pick up ingredients but not worry about them too much but you'd be wrong. By the end that percentage rises to a dramatic 90%. The issue is since there is 5 ingredients per level you have to find you actually have to be thorough on each level in finding them. Based on whether the player knows this going in or not makes a big difference because the end you're going to be forced to go back to levels you had skipped over or didn't get all the ingredients from.

Putting the ratio threshold for completion this high is frustrating because its easy to miss an occasional ingredient, and many of the levels themselves are frustrating. Once you get near the finish line the story is practically begging you to climb back down and finish it out a little more through this padding mechanic. End game backtracking is meant to play into that sense of nostalgia and wistfulness, 'I came this far and now look, I'm so much better'. However, because of the amount of gimmicks and gags per level there's not a fundamental sense of player improvement. What happens instead is just a fetch quest followed by, to be vague about the ending, an effusive celebration of itself 'remember this boss? remember this mechanic?' it's ultimately shallow though, because you unlock nothing from being good at the individual levels themselves. This creates a contradiction where you are rewarded for doing the bare minimum but almost not at all for exceeding expectations, as the range between both becomes smaller as the game goes on. The S and P ranks for non boss levels are functionally 'challenge runs' of the game, you're likely to get a B or better without even trying. So by the end all you end up feeling is that you know a few more mechanics. There's no sense of growth or player immersion.

Contrast this to another platformer like say Celeste (2018) where the window of player ability to complete the game is incredibly large. There's a wound rope of difficulty around optional yet visible cherries and toggle accessibility options. Celeste respects the players time by outlining that the Cherries serve no explicit function, they are a side challenge that implicitly build a sense of character for the player, focusing more on building its story elements instead. On the other hand then Pizza Tower deceives the player by telling the them the collectibles matter but not making it clear how much they do. By keeping the rewards of its goals ambiguous it relies on the player to feel that desire to explore its levels and master them. When the player finds out that they don't get anything for doing these side quests it taints future experience of play. When I restart playing Pizza Tower again I know despite all the stats and checklists thrown at me that only the ingredients matter. The secrets, rankings, and achievements are meaningless. However since they aren't treated that way, since they are conveyed as important visual stimuli it becomes a part of play that gets in the way rather than enhancing it. In Celeste the cherries don't mean anything besides knowing how much goes into the pie at the end, but since you were always told that and then the story keeps quiet about their inclusion for the entire run, you can adjust on a new playthrough how much or little you feel like caring about that.

This was really difficult to word properly but the end experience is that I felt like I was being needlessly graded and told to backtrack rather than feel a part of the world. Something needed to have changed in this system for me to feel comfortable, either:

1. Easier: The levels needed to be overall shorter in length so I could master them

2. Less Grading: Less visual information about how 'well im doing' needed to be conveyed to me

3. More Lore: The secrets and rankings needed to unlock cosmetic or lore content in the world for me to feel more immersed for doing well

4. Less Padding: The ratio of ingredients need to complete needed to be a stable reasonable threshold 50 - 75%, and the final level needed to be cut

5. Less Obfuscation: The eye secrets needed to be removed entirely so that I could focus less on 'combing' levels for extra points and more on actual execution

Without any of these taking place this experience has become 'style at all costs' which while amusing in moments becomes distressing as a design philosophy. It feels like a design philosophy chosen to keep the player playing as much as possible so you can see all it has to offer. As nice as it looks, it comes off as desperate and frustrating.

Less abstractly a few other miscellaneous issues

-Proximity score doesnt matter since its just about collecting as much as you can and keeping a chain, so the score should only show up at the end

-Camera needed to be zoomed out from the player a bit more because you end up just flailing at high speeds as it is

-If you turn the HUD off a -5 still ticks in the top left corner during the runback portion which is very distracting

-The bosses only test your postitioning and not your ability to execute running maneuvers which feels not in pace with the point of the game

-They put the best song in the tutorial, a catchy bass song with tons of fancy hi hat use, the other songs aren't half as good so they feel weaker. Probably just shouldn't have even used it because it makes everything feel disappointing

-The levels that kill you based on time have an unreasonably high completion threshold compared to end level runbacks, meaning you'll have to repeat them more than you would a normal stage

-there needs to be more discreet 'Grading thresholds' between A and S rank for non boss stages. S Rank forces a 2nd run through the level out of a player which borders on challenge mode feeling. Adding a couple more ranks around this point in the scale would do a lot to implicitly reward the player for doing better.

-The happy merchant bit in the Slums really bummed me out, like what the fuck man

I want to end on one last note. Appreciations nailed one thing I agree on, they noted that "You've got yourself a winner in Pizza Tower and that winner here is adrenaline." My qualm is that rewarding adrenalinic high intensity action response puts a person in a more impulse driven mode. I'm not sure that mode is 'good'. Anecdotally, this specific form of adrenaline puts me in a state of frustrated anger once I start to feel like I cant do better or the game is fucking with me. That anger boils me up and tends to make me dysphoric as a result. I'm not sure how much this applies to other people but I'm not too convinced that rewarding a surplus adrenaline hormones on tap like this from titles like Sekiro or Pizza Tower etc is actually good for us? It certainly isnt good for me, that's why I tend to play 'non difficult' story focused titles. I've noticed people say I'm not trying hard enough, but I wonder especially looking at how social media rewards impulsive thinking if its possible people have it backwards. Maybe everyone else is trying too hard to get that spike, and telling me I need to, as well.

Look, I'm not saying that it's healthy I respond to action input with the rage I do by any means, but I'm far from the only rage gamer. Like, I've never seen somebody rage quit a visual novel for example. It's always the people fucking up in rhythm games breaking stuff, its always the League mates freaking the fuck out about not having place down a ward etc. It's never the Final Fantasy nerds having fits. Again these are all anecdotes but its just food for thought. At the very least it explains my preference against it and why I tend to be so critical of finding design harmony in it.

Mortal Kombat inflicted more collective brain damage to gamers than any other release. Thirty years later, many people still believe fatalities are cool rather than repetitive novelties.

This game has an embarrassing lack of depth. Fighting game characters should be distinguished by more than appearances and a couple of special moves. The basic techniques (rapid jabs, sweeps, etc.) all look and feel the same from combatant to combatant. There's a reason for the laziness: MK banks on blood to enrapture its audience. (What an absolute joke it was back in the 1990s seeing critics pretend this crap rivaled Street Fighter II.)

The fatalities themselves are not even that interesting in hindsight. That's because MK functions like pornography. Pornographic thrills in media grow more explicit to satisfy people's unending lust. The fatalities of today are much more gruesome and intricate. Even if they repulse someone, they grab more attention. The original finishers have thus become irrelevant to all but the most nostalgic of fans. With MK, you can't get no satisfaction because it's all about temporary highs, as opposed to timeless gameplay.

Resist the urge to pat MK on the back for being the most playable of the old fighters with digitized graphics. Transcending the likes of Pit Fighter and Way of the Warrior is like being able to back your car out of a parking spot with no accident, as opposed to ramming the vehicle into a stationary object. MK is the bare minimum for people who don't care about craft in video games.

It’s really incredible how much you can accomplish within a genre space with what feels like very little to work with if you’re only willing to step outside of convention even just a little bit. There’s a commonly tossed off criticism of modern AAA games that is often deployed unthinkingly or without proper elaboration, that they “look like HBO shows” or like Hollywood blockbusters, with the understanding that most Hollywood blockbusters these days look like shit even as they dominate pop culture. I’m guilty of using this shorthand myself. I think when people say this it doesn’t mean that it’s bad inherently for video games to pull from other mediums for filmic inspiration, only that it’s bad to unthinkingly chase trends and replicate the aesthetics of things that are popular despite an absence of actual artistic intent or merit behind the inspiration beyond that. I actually think that it is generally cool and good to take overt influence from your inspirations if you pull it off. Across its disparate chapters, Live A Live not only pulls popular tropes and story structures from the genres it flits between, but more than once openly, probably actionably lifts scenarios directly from popular movies and tv shows. It does so with aplomb, and the game is better for it. It steals these things and adapts them to the strengths of the formats of 90s Square Enix JRPGs and this is the key difference between wholesale merging the plots of Every Toku Show From the 70s through 94 and Akira and something like the way we talk about your average modern Sony Studios game. There's a lot more intentionality in the selections and the implementations here even as the actual references and stylistic touches are a LOT more overt.

But it’s not JUST that one chapter of this game is Just Alien Plus 2001 A Space Odyssey, it’s also that the game knows when to mess with the structural conventions of RPGs, and, wisely, that is Almost All The Time. Of the seven main chapters of the game, only two of them even remotely resemble a typically structured RPG, with regular combat encounters, story interludes, equipment, etc. And even then, one is set in caveman times and playfully communicates its small story entirely through pantomime. Each of the seven chapters is set in a different time period and the wide array of settings is utilized to get really playful with the verb sets without ever actually changing the fact that you interface with the game via traditionally JRPG means.

For example, the kung-fu themed chapter has essentially no true combat encounters, focusing on the story of an elderly master finding, selecting, and beginning to train three possible successors to his martial art. A couple times you beat up some like, muggers, but they go down in one shot. The combat screen is also used during training sessions with the students, and the attacks you use on them most frequently will be the ones that they learn. As you engage in more and more training sessions the students’ stats increase rapidly and it starts to become evident that this powerful master who mops the floor easily with the local town’s shitty rival dojo’s riff raff, is actually a frail man nearing the end of his life. This is communicated as well via the stats screen and the fact that by session 12 Li or Yuan MIGHT almost get you to take a knee as it is by the ever-more-frequent scenes of the master huffing and puffing when he gets up in the morning. And that’s all there is as far as combat goes! You COULD grind, I guess, in ONE zone in the map, but it’s out of the way of all of the story scenes, there are only like five non-random enemies there, and they don’t even spawn in if you ever have to walk through that part of the map for a story reason. And that makes it all the more effective when finally, at the end of this chapter, the water boils over and the drama arrives and the tension breaks into an explosion of real violence. The climax is way more impactful than it would have been if you had been fighting tigers and bandits as you walked up and down the mountain paths for the two hours leading up to it. Every chapter is like this, and three of them are potentially devoid of combat entirely if you feel like it.

Even when the game is at its most tedious, in the two chapters that lean the hardest into normal JRPG conventions, there are always strong aesthetics (for example Yoko Shimomura is here doing the definitive, standout work of her early career in a decade that includes osts for street fighter 2, Mario RPG, Legend of Mana and Parasite Eve), and even excellent encounter design to compensate for the fact that you’re participating in The Grind. The Mecha chapter is mostly made up of encounters where there is one weak enemy you can take out that will end the encounter immediately and get full experience but as you level up the pattern, numbers, and strength of his robot minions will become stronger or more complicated, which not only makes getting to the weak leader harder but also increases the risk/reward present where if you DO kill all the robot minions first you get items that upgrade your own robot party member, which is the only way to power him up because he doesn’t level up via experience points like your human characters. It’s a layer of tactical depth that isn’t present in most of the rest of the game’s encounters (some of them though! The ninja chapter is a notable exception and the wrestling chapter is entirely comprised of intense combat strategy puzzles with no play outside combat whatsoever – something for everyone!) but usually isn’t necessary because of the prioritization of other shit than combat.

Live A Live was directed by Takashi Tokita, most famous for his work as lead designer and/or director on Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger, and Parasite Eve, as well as SPECIFICALLY just event planning for Final Fantasy VII, and the scenario design was largely handled by Nobuya Inoue, famous for, well, this, and then for leaving Square a couple years later to cofound Brownie Brown and direct Magical Vacation, Magical Starsign, and Mother 3 before that company was tragically entirely subsumed into Nintendo’s first party support studio network. Clearly there is a design lineage here, with both of these creative leads interested in playing with the form and format of the JRPG – making games where atmosphere, narrative, and aesthetics take precedent over combat design or length. A lot of that DNA is present here in Live A Live, and it’s very telling that these guys, even an up-and-coming big shot like Tokita was made to exercise these design sensibilities in Square’s comparatively lower budget, smaller in scope, unpopular-even-in-the-country-it-got-released-in project of 1994, compared to the much more traditionally designed and obviously mass appeal Final Fantasy VI. I’m not a young adult in Japan in 1994 so I can’t say how much of this is a natural progression of popularity given Final Fantasy’s momentum as a series vs Square actively choosing to abandon this one to the wolves. Probably a little of both. Hopefully now that it’s getting a proper international release with the upcoming HD-2D remake, it’ll get some of the recognition I think it sorely deserves.

It's not that this game didn’t have any influence, but it definitely feels to me like that came more from the general interests and careers of its staff than from explicit love for Live A Live, which is a shame, because even with a shockingly, borderline offensively tedious final chapter this is easily, without question the most formally interesting and simply pleasurable traditional JRPG I’ve ever played. Games don’t get ANY better than Live A Live. A classic. A titan. Honestly shocking to me that they kept making these after this.