iyellatcloud
1993
Mega Man X is like the Chrono Trigger of '90s action platformers; genre-transcendingly good by virtue of having great presentation, excelling at everything it does with no notable weak points, and being extremely welcoming to novices - it feels like what you would get if you eugenically bred platformers for a hundred generations. As with Chrono Trigger, there are some who would see its relatively low difficulty as a weak point, and its extreme polish as sterility; however, it's really hard to argue with how refined and slick the entire experience is. The hidden items and power-ups are rewarding to find, and the levels are short enough that backtracking through them rarely feels like a chore. The controls are smooth, intuitive, and satisfying (bar one little niggle I'll get into later). The bosses have their own unique gimmicks and a wide repertoire of moves, but never feel unfair because you always fight them in a large enough space that their attacks don't "gotcha" you out of nowhere. I know that the difficulty curve works from experience; this was one of the first games I completed (sans cheats) as a kid because it was so good at teaching and motivating me to get better that I went from trundling along and DPS-racing every enemy I came across to flying past obstacles while holding down my charge shot within a few days of picking it up.
Some of the negatives:
- The four Sigma stages sagged a little, with their rehashed bosses and lack of secrets or power-ups to discover making them feel like padding
- The one negative on the controls was the fact that double-tapping left or right would cause X to dash; given that some bosses require careful adjustment of positioning through little 'baby steps', it felt way too easy to accidentally dash straight into an oncoming attack. I wish there were a way to disable this in the options and have the dash tied only to a button.
- Earlier games in the Mega Man series felt a bit railroady in terms of needing you to have the exact right weapon in order to hit a boss' weakpoint; I feel like MMX occupies the other extreme, where you can play nearly the entire game with the buster only and all the cool weapons you acquire being heavily situational. They're super cool, but the low difficulty means that you're never really incentivized to get really familiar with their use.
That said... if the above points are the worst thing about your game, you did an exceptional job. This was a formative experience in my video gaming life and a must-play for anyone at all interested in this genre.
Some of the negatives:
- The four Sigma stages sagged a little, with their rehashed bosses and lack of secrets or power-ups to discover making them feel like padding
- The one negative on the controls was the fact that double-tapping left or right would cause X to dash; given that some bosses require careful adjustment of positioning through little 'baby steps', it felt way too easy to accidentally dash straight into an oncoming attack. I wish there were a way to disable this in the options and have the dash tied only to a button.
- Earlier games in the Mega Man series felt a bit railroady in terms of needing you to have the exact right weapon in order to hit a boss' weakpoint; I feel like MMX occupies the other extreme, where you can play nearly the entire game with the buster only and all the cool weapons you acquire being heavily situational. They're super cool, but the low difficulty means that you're never really incentivized to get really familiar with their use.
That said... if the above points are the worst thing about your game, you did an exceptional job. This was a formative experience in my video gaming life and a must-play for anyone at all interested in this genre.
2010
A simple way to sum it up is to say that Breath of Death VII is a proof-of-concept/demo of Cthulhu Saves the World; it's an extremely short and no-frills outing whose chief purpose seems to be to take the engine and mechanics of CSTW out for a test drive. And as someone who really liked CSTW's spin on traditional JRPG mechanics, Breath of Death plays pretty much the same, which is not a bad thing at all! It also has the same irreverent and scattergun approach to humor, some of it being clever (the MC being a silent protagonist because he doesn't have a tongue), some of it worth a chuckle or two (a French zombie who periodically yells "LE BRAINS!" mid-conversation), and some of it falling flat.
As to be expected, this game is slightly less refined in pretty much every way that counts - the exploration not as engaging, the game balance and difficulty curve slightly wonkier, the presentation not as slick, and the game too short in order to fully explore the mechanics and abilities to their full potential.
And that's all forgivable given this game's place in Zeboyd's resume as a first RPG outing, and it would be churlish of me to expect more from something I essentially got for a dollar. However, on further thought, I actually wish that this game switched places with Cthulhu Saves the World - CSTW's silly premise would have worked better as a test-drive, and Breath of Death would actually have made a better fully-fleshed-out game! It has a far more interesting setting, with vampires, zombies, and ghosts becoming the dominant species on Earth following cataclysmic nuclear war; a setting that is more or less wasted given the near-total absence of any kind of worldbuilding or anything, really, to differentiate this postapocalyptic undead society from any other medieval game. There is even a decent late-game twist that ties directly into the setting, that could have been played for drama and poignancy had the writing actually been more than an excuse-plot with one-note humor.
It's a very decent game for what it is and led to far bigger and better successes for its dev team... but if any of them are reading this, I think a remake would kick all kinds of ass! The setting deserves better.
As to be expected, this game is slightly less refined in pretty much every way that counts - the exploration not as engaging, the game balance and difficulty curve slightly wonkier, the presentation not as slick, and the game too short in order to fully explore the mechanics and abilities to their full potential.
And that's all forgivable given this game's place in Zeboyd's resume as a first RPG outing, and it would be churlish of me to expect more from something I essentially got for a dollar. However, on further thought, I actually wish that this game switched places with Cthulhu Saves the World - CSTW's silly premise would have worked better as a test-drive, and Breath of Death would actually have made a better fully-fleshed-out game! It has a far more interesting setting, with vampires, zombies, and ghosts becoming the dominant species on Earth following cataclysmic nuclear war; a setting that is more or less wasted given the near-total absence of any kind of worldbuilding or anything, really, to differentiate this postapocalyptic undead society from any other medieval game. There is even a decent late-game twist that ties directly into the setting, that could have been played for drama and poignancy had the writing actually been more than an excuse-plot with one-note humor.
It's a very decent game for what it is and led to far bigger and better successes for its dev team... but if any of them are reading this, I think a remake would kick all kinds of ass! The setting deserves better.
1993
I kicked 2023 off with Shadowrun Returns on Steam, and with the year coming to a close I thought it'd be interesting to pay a visit to its SNES uncle. And this game really started off strong, with a more effective narrative hook than Returns; before you even select "New Game" you watch as your character is gunned down by a hit squad and left for dead, only for a mysterious shapeshifter to cast a spell on you before leaving. You wake up in the morgue with a splitting headache and amnesia and have to piece together what you were doing before. And while this may sound a tad derivative, the Cyberpunk-Noir atmosphere and the way the game slowly opens up in a nonlinear way really make the difference - the vibes really do a lot of the heavy lifting here!
Mechanically there are plenty of interesting ideas as well (mostly adapted from the tabletop ruleset): the ability to spend karma (experience points) to raise specific stats, spending money to hire mercenaries to fight on your side, and later on finding a character who will teach you various magic spells in exchange for various random trinkets you've (hopefully) been collecting. The execution is mixed - it's not hard to raise your stats to the point that you can go without hired help, and few of the spells are particularly useful - but the effort is appreciated.
Where the game falters is in its UI. It uses a point-and-click interface which, on the SNES controller, is unsurprisingly clunky. Using different buttons for shooting, casting, investigating, and picking up is unnecessary - why not just a dedicated 'action' button? And if all this merely added up to clunky menu-hopping I might still be inclined to give it some goodwill, but the point-and-click system also extends to the (real-time) combat! It makes aiming an absolute pain, and reduces 99% of combat to standing in one spot and DPS-racing the enemies - moving around strategically in between shots simply isn't a usable approach because your enemies aren't constrained by the point-and-click system and can aim instantaneously.
Add in some extremely obtuse requirements for progression and some very suspect balancing (the most dangerous enemies are rats!) and you have a game that becomes quite a chore to play at points. Still, if you're willing to use a guide, this is a relatively streamlined sub-10-hour experience that's worth trying out if you're into this genre!
Also one of the characters looks like Robin Williams with elf ears.
Mechanically there are plenty of interesting ideas as well (mostly adapted from the tabletop ruleset): the ability to spend karma (experience points) to raise specific stats, spending money to hire mercenaries to fight on your side, and later on finding a character who will teach you various magic spells in exchange for various random trinkets you've (hopefully) been collecting. The execution is mixed - it's not hard to raise your stats to the point that you can go without hired help, and few of the spells are particularly useful - but the effort is appreciated.
Where the game falters is in its UI. It uses a point-and-click interface which, on the SNES controller, is unsurprisingly clunky. Using different buttons for shooting, casting, investigating, and picking up is unnecessary - why not just a dedicated 'action' button? And if all this merely added up to clunky menu-hopping I might still be inclined to give it some goodwill, but the point-and-click system also extends to the (real-time) combat! It makes aiming an absolute pain, and reduces 99% of combat to standing in one spot and DPS-racing the enemies - moving around strategically in between shots simply isn't a usable approach because your enemies aren't constrained by the point-and-click system and can aim instantaneously.
Add in some extremely obtuse requirements for progression and some very suspect balancing (the most dangerous enemies are rats!) and you have a game that becomes quite a chore to play at points. Still, if you're willing to use a guide, this is a relatively streamlined sub-10-hour experience that's worth trying out if you're into this genre!
Also one of the characters looks like Robin Williams with elf ears.
1999
I only had a Genesis at home well into the early 2000s, so a lot of my early experience with the 32-bit era was courtesy of the many afternoons spent on the PS1 at my cool uncle's place. We'd take turns watching each other play, and he let me play Resident Evil when I was 13 (as I recall, he was also the one who introduced me to Doom at the tender age of 9).
So it came as a surprise to me when I saw a copy of Silent Hill lying around at his place, recognized it ("hey, it's kinda like Resident Evil right?") and he flat-out refused to let 15-year-old me play it. A fact that, on finally getting around to playing it just now, I will be forever thankful for.
The RE series' brand of horror focuses on startling the player and grossing them out - much of its iconic feeling of tension and dread comes from the resource-management aspect of the mechanics. By contrast, Silent Hill's flavor of horror focuses on, well, horrifying the player. It's really telling that one of the first items you find is a radio that spits out white noise when an enemy is nearby, as if the game is telling you it doesn't need to resort to jumpscares to be scary. Indeed, the shock appearance of new enemies when going through old environs - a favorite technique from the Resi and Doom jumpscare toolboxes - is almost never utilized in this game! Nevertheless, it managed to evoke a primal feeling of unsettled dread in me as I played - it was not uncommon for me to spend what felt like hours in the nightmarish otherworld only to look at the time and see that 15 minutes had passed!
Resident Evil invites you to engage with it as a game once the initial horror aspect has worn off - it's all about knowing where the resources are, the optimum routes to get where you need, the mastery of movement, and the good judgment to put it all together. Silent Hill is comparatively clunky in all those respects, but as a 32-bit horror experience it really has no parallel.
Not to say that this wonderful first outing in the Silent Hill series is perfect - I think its chief weakness lies in its pacing. It feels rather unfinished, with plenty of sequences in the second half (especially the trip to the lighthouse and a nondescript second sewer level) somehow feeling both too skimpy and needlessly 'fillery' at the same time. And I spent an inordinate amount of time being lost - my first run was over 10 hours and my second (where I didn't do anything particularly different besides just knowing where to go) was 4, which equates to roughly 60% of my first run wandering aimlessly around.
I really do hope that in addition to the inevitable increase in production values, the later games in the series will manage to preserve the special brand of nightmare that this game hit on in its first try. If you'll excuse me, I'll go hug my daughter now.
(Endings unlocked: Bad, Good+)
So it came as a surprise to me when I saw a copy of Silent Hill lying around at his place, recognized it ("hey, it's kinda like Resident Evil right?") and he flat-out refused to let 15-year-old me play it. A fact that, on finally getting around to playing it just now, I will be forever thankful for.
The RE series' brand of horror focuses on startling the player and grossing them out - much of its iconic feeling of tension and dread comes from the resource-management aspect of the mechanics. By contrast, Silent Hill's flavor of horror focuses on, well, horrifying the player. It's really telling that one of the first items you find is a radio that spits out white noise when an enemy is nearby, as if the game is telling you it doesn't need to resort to jumpscares to be scary. Indeed, the shock appearance of new enemies when going through old environs - a favorite technique from the Resi and Doom jumpscare toolboxes - is almost never utilized in this game! Nevertheless, it managed to evoke a primal feeling of unsettled dread in me as I played - it was not uncommon for me to spend what felt like hours in the nightmarish otherworld only to look at the time and see that 15 minutes had passed!
Resident Evil invites you to engage with it as a game once the initial horror aspect has worn off - it's all about knowing where the resources are, the optimum routes to get where you need, the mastery of movement, and the good judgment to put it all together. Silent Hill is comparatively clunky in all those respects, but as a 32-bit horror experience it really has no parallel.
Not to say that this wonderful first outing in the Silent Hill series is perfect - I think its chief weakness lies in its pacing. It feels rather unfinished, with plenty of sequences in the second half (especially the trip to the lighthouse and a nondescript second sewer level) somehow feeling both too skimpy and needlessly 'fillery' at the same time. And I spent an inordinate amount of time being lost - my first run was over 10 hours and my second (where I didn't do anything particularly different besides just knowing where to go) was 4, which equates to roughly 60% of my first run wandering aimlessly around.
I really do hope that in addition to the inevitable increase in production values, the later games in the series will manage to preserve the special brand of nightmare that this game hit on in its first try. If you'll excuse me, I'll go hug my daughter now.
(Endings unlocked: Bad, Good+)
1998
I try to play games in the mindset of the year they came out in (and given how many old games I play, this tends to be pretty easy). I played this game more or less blind, and within that framework the opening sequences were mindblowing. The tram ride has plenty of cool little worldbuilding details and bits of foreshadowing - both in the sterile recorded announcements and the background events - which you're likely to miss the first time because you're too busy taking it all in, or because you're like me and are testing out the controls, having this theoretical physicist amusingly bounce around like a hyperactive puppy on his way to work. But the point is that the game doesn't force feed anything to you: this all happens in real-time instead of in a cutscene and the world keeps on spinning whether you're paying attention or not. Just a few minutes later, you can discover a ladder in an elevator shaft that leads nowhere in particular - but it's there because it makes sense for there to be a ladder there. Several hours later, you can eavesdrop on enemy conversations to get a little bit more background on the story... or you can just interrupt them mid-conversation and shoot them full of holes before they can react. It's all delightfully immersive.
...until you wander close enough to a falling elevator to trigger the NPC dialogue of the people inside, having them take time out of screaming in terror to cheerily wish you a good morning. Because of how groundbreaking this game's ideas were, and how much intricate scripting is required to make something so immersive, one gets the feeling like Half-Life, more than most games of its era, is held together by duct tape - one only need to search for early builds of the game where NPCs would randomly drop dead for no reason to find evidence of this. It feels like the devs, much like the ill-fated scientists of Black Mesa, were experimenting with something they didn't quite know how to handle yet. And you know what? In the name of progress and innovation and art, I can handle that.
What I can't handle, however, is the fact that when you take its innovations out of the question, Half-Life's gameplay just isn't good. There are small things like enemies not giving any indication when they've been hit (which sends all boss fights into "what do I do and am I even damaging them" territory) and an abundance of 'gotcha' moments, but the biggest flaw is something more fundamental: this game is a mirror image of Mirror's Edge. Where Mirror's Edge had fantastic parkour mechanics but forced the player into functional but clumsy gunfights, Half-Life does the opposite: you have satisfying gunplay and great weapon variety but you're forced into numerous platforming-heavy sections in a game where Freeman's fancy high-tech suit seems to be made of an inside-out banana peel. The iterative level design works in theory, but it's built on top of platforming mechanics that feel so slippery and inconsistent that it feels less like organically-increasing difficulty than bullshit stacked on top of bullshit.
What's that you're saying? I can somewhat read lips so it looks like you're saying "skill issue" but I can't be sure - I can't hear you over the sound of the bugs. At least half a dozen times I randomly got stuck and unable to move, and on two of those occasions it happened right at the start of a chapter which autosaved, which meant that I had to reload from a much older save.
I can't decide if Half-Life is the worst great game I've played or the greatest bad game I've played. It's brilliant and unrefined, it's exhilarating and infuriating, it's a classic and it's a relic - and as a landmark in gaming history it's also an absolute must-play even if you're someone like me who engages with games as entertainment first and art second.
...until you wander close enough to a falling elevator to trigger the NPC dialogue of the people inside, having them take time out of screaming in terror to cheerily wish you a good morning. Because of how groundbreaking this game's ideas were, and how much intricate scripting is required to make something so immersive, one gets the feeling like Half-Life, more than most games of its era, is held together by duct tape - one only need to search for early builds of the game where NPCs would randomly drop dead for no reason to find evidence of this. It feels like the devs, much like the ill-fated scientists of Black Mesa, were experimenting with something they didn't quite know how to handle yet. And you know what? In the name of progress and innovation and art, I can handle that.
What I can't handle, however, is the fact that when you take its innovations out of the question, Half-Life's gameplay just isn't good. There are small things like enemies not giving any indication when they've been hit (which sends all boss fights into "what do I do and am I even damaging them" territory) and an abundance of 'gotcha' moments, but the biggest flaw is something more fundamental: this game is a mirror image of Mirror's Edge. Where Mirror's Edge had fantastic parkour mechanics but forced the player into functional but clumsy gunfights, Half-Life does the opposite: you have satisfying gunplay and great weapon variety but you're forced into numerous platforming-heavy sections in a game where Freeman's fancy high-tech suit seems to be made of an inside-out banana peel. The iterative level design works in theory, but it's built on top of platforming mechanics that feel so slippery and inconsistent that it feels less like organically-increasing difficulty than bullshit stacked on top of bullshit.
What's that you're saying? I can somewhat read lips so it looks like you're saying "skill issue" but I can't be sure - I can't hear you over the sound of the bugs. At least half a dozen times I randomly got stuck and unable to move, and on two of those occasions it happened right at the start of a chapter which autosaved, which meant that I had to reload from a much older save.
I can't decide if Half-Life is the worst great game I've played or the greatest bad game I've played. It's brilliant and unrefined, it's exhilarating and infuriating, it's a classic and it's a relic - and as a landmark in gaming history it's also an absolute must-play even if you're someone like me who engages with games as entertainment first and art second.
The overwhelming consensus of the small sample size that have played this game is that it's shite, so I decided to give it a try just for laughs and it's...fine. Aggressively, relentlessly, violently Fine with a capital 'F', but fine.
The negatives are obvious - Kenshiro moon-jumps higher than early 3D fighting game characters, hitboxes are kind of weird, and the whole thing is really barebones to the point that it's possible to finish the whole game in less than the runtime of an episode of the anime.
Then again, it's a licensed game that unlike its contemporaries captures the heart of the source material: being a buff martial artist that causes people to explode by punching them. There are recognizable characters from the anime, Kenshiro hulks out and breaks his shirt after collecting enough powerups, and enemies' death animation (squirming and exploding) is about as detailed as can be expected. I also like that the game did enough to distinguish punches and kicks: kicks have longer range but send your enemies careening away sky-high so you're better off punching them to death and collecting the powerups they sometimes drop. (Or you can just literally jump over everything but that's neither here nor there) The finicky hitboxes actually (partly inadvertently I'm sure) lead to a semblance of technique and strategy in boss fights - there's a sweet spot where your short range punch can hit them but they punch through you and do no damage because their hitbox ends up behind you. So you end up moonjumping into that super-short-range sweet spot and unload some punches into him before retreating, like a postapocalyptic Mike Tyson pressing into a taller opponent's chest.
Look, it's a barebones low-effort mess, but it's kinda fun in its own way and sustains interest through its short runtime. I promise this is me being as objective as possible and has nothing to do with my screaming ATATATATA at the top of my lungs while I played.
The negatives are obvious - Kenshiro moon-jumps higher than early 3D fighting game characters, hitboxes are kind of weird, and the whole thing is really barebones to the point that it's possible to finish the whole game in less than the runtime of an episode of the anime.
Then again, it's a licensed game that unlike its contemporaries captures the heart of the source material: being a buff martial artist that causes people to explode by punching them. There are recognizable characters from the anime, Kenshiro hulks out and breaks his shirt after collecting enough powerups, and enemies' death animation (squirming and exploding) is about as detailed as can be expected. I also like that the game did enough to distinguish punches and kicks: kicks have longer range but send your enemies careening away sky-high so you're better off punching them to death and collecting the powerups they sometimes drop. (Or you can just literally jump over everything but that's neither here nor there) The finicky hitboxes actually (partly inadvertently I'm sure) lead to a semblance of technique and strategy in boss fights - there's a sweet spot where your short range punch can hit them but they punch through you and do no damage because their hitbox ends up behind you. So you end up moonjumping into that super-short-range sweet spot and unload some punches into him before retreating, like a postapocalyptic Mike Tyson pressing into a taller opponent's chest.
Look, it's a barebones low-effort mess, but it's kinda fun in its own way and sustains interest through its short runtime. I promise this is me being as objective as possible and has nothing to do with my screaming ATATATATA at the top of my lungs while I played.
2011
This game's name is fitting - your character has no personality or backstory to speak of, and I'm sure that a colossal minority of people who play the game as intended (i.e. permadeath) will never ever face off against the titular dark lord, so the true main character of this roguelike is the dungeon itself. Sprawling, labyrinthe, and hideously unforgiving, the dungeon lures unsuspecting players with the siren call of monsters and loot, and before they know it thirty hours have passed - I speak from experience here. The skill system also promises tremendous customizability and replay value, with a multitude of skill branches making a wide range of character builds possible, and a handy option of randomizing your skill pool for obsessively-compulsively indecisive players. Some of my characters (like my vampiric character with no melee skills) were doomed to fail from the start, while others fared far better - my best character was a mage with near-infinite MP supply who could summon dragons near-indefinitely to draw aggro while sneaking in some massive hits with his staff specialty. He made it all the way to Dredmor (and unfortunately was ground into paste with one hit).
A pity, then, that the moment-to-moment gameplay just feels really dull. The floors are huge, there is very little variety in room types, and nearly all enemies follow the same AI pattern - and while an inconsistent difficulty curve is a feature and not a bug with roguelikes, there were plenty of lull periods where I just found myself going through the motions of opening doors and summarily killing enemies, and the game fell into the roguelike cardinal sin of feeling like a chore. A good dungeon crawler tests your resource management and calmheadedness by steadily throwing challenges at you to wear you down, and while Dungeons does that pretty well, it's unfortunate that the more painful "death by a thousand cuts" was what the uninspired dungeon design (plus clunky UI) inflicted on my patience.
Dungeons of Dredmor is an odd one - it's undeniably deep, has great customization options, and is in a genre where addictiveness is a given. But the innate lack of variety in its gameplay plus the lack of any story or gameplay gimmicks/hooks mean that this game probably would mainly appeal to roguelike purists... and based on the last 35 or so hours I've spent on this, I know I'm not one.
A pity, then, that the moment-to-moment gameplay just feels really dull. The floors are huge, there is very little variety in room types, and nearly all enemies follow the same AI pattern - and while an inconsistent difficulty curve is a feature and not a bug with roguelikes, there were plenty of lull periods where I just found myself going through the motions of opening doors and summarily killing enemies, and the game fell into the roguelike cardinal sin of feeling like a chore. A good dungeon crawler tests your resource management and calmheadedness by steadily throwing challenges at you to wear you down, and while Dungeons does that pretty well, it's unfortunate that the more painful "death by a thousand cuts" was what the uninspired dungeon design (plus clunky UI) inflicted on my patience.
Dungeons of Dredmor is an odd one - it's undeniably deep, has great customization options, and is in a genre where addictiveness is a given. But the innate lack of variety in its gameplay plus the lack of any story or gameplay gimmicks/hooks mean that this game probably would mainly appeal to roguelike purists... and based on the last 35 or so hours I've spent on this, I know I'm not one.
2013
My experience with Rogue Legacy was about as erratic and unexpected as the flight path of one of those stupid haunted painting enemies: I went in expecting a fun little diversion, only to get sucked in by the Skinner box mechanics. Then I hit the proverbial wall labelled 'skill issue' and got really frustrated, wanting to finish the game just so I could say I gave it a fair shot but ready to give it a 2.5 or 3 star review. And as I kept soldiering on... something happened. I started to enjoy myself, I kept going on "just one more run for today" out of enjoyment rather than spite, and my dreams were replaced by a neverending torrent of varied projectiles and spike traps. I completed the game, sat down to write this review, decided "eh why don't I try a bit of New Game Plus?" and 5 hours later I'd completed a run of NG+.
I suppose the question here is: is this procgen Roguelite Metroidvania a fantastic game, or is it an addictive but mediocre one? And I suppose the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
It's easy for me to list why this isn't in the top tier of Metroidvanias or Roguelites: the randomly-generated levels are serviceable but samey, lacking the deliberately-curated pacing of powering up through exploration and discovery that the best examples of the genre all boast. The simplistic jump-and-slash-and-cast gameplay leaves very little room for the emergent gameplay I like in my favorite Roguelites (see Streets of Rogue) - in fact, many of the challenge rooms are tailored for a specific loadout of skills/gear and are impossible to complete without them. And the game's unique selling point - the randomly-generated traits each hero has - are an underused design space, adding very little to the gameplay. There are some interesting ones like OCD (gain MP for breaking stuff), but the vast majority of them are either extremely situational (you don't trigger spike traps), purely cosmetic (baldness), or utterly infuriating (vertigo, which flips the entire screen upside-down) - leading each generation's new heroes to blend together after awhile.
What makes Rogue Legacy a very good game nevertheless, are these two principles:
- Getting good at a hard game is one of the most rewarding experiences as a gamer
- It's better for a game to be motivating than "fair". A game can be the most brutally unforgiving bastard ever made, but if it keeps me around long enough for me to get good, then it's done its job better than a more well-balanced game that didn't hook me in for whatever reason.
It's in this aspect that Rogue Legacy excels. Your gear and stat upgrades are always passed on to the next generation, so instead of powering up through exploration and discovery like in a typical Metroidvania, you actually power up by dying. And by respawning you not at the main hub but the upgrade screen, the game takes some of the psychological sting out of the (often bullshit) deaths and gives you the impetus to just try another run. And as the runs piled up, not only did my character get better but so did I - I know I got better because I cleared each new area faster than I did the last, and I rather unexpectedly beat the final boss on my first try! The much harder NG+ which featured upgraded versions of every enemy with bullet-hell attack patterns was dispatched in just over a third of the time as the vanilla run. And really, the extremely simple gameplay requires and refines all the skills that a good platformer should have - clever use of movement tools to evade enemy attacks, near-pixel-perfect knowledge of hitboxes and hurtboxes, the ability to instantaneously assess all the threats in a room and decide what to do first, knowing when to say "screw it" and explore somewhere else first... the flow state I was rewarded with after sticking with this game through my frustrations was well worth it. And when a character you meet later on laments that he's forgotten what the sun feels like, I could only nod and say "Me too, game. Me too."
I suppose the question here is: is this procgen Roguelite Metroidvania a fantastic game, or is it an addictive but mediocre one? And I suppose the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
It's easy for me to list why this isn't in the top tier of Metroidvanias or Roguelites: the randomly-generated levels are serviceable but samey, lacking the deliberately-curated pacing of powering up through exploration and discovery that the best examples of the genre all boast. The simplistic jump-and-slash-and-cast gameplay leaves very little room for the emergent gameplay I like in my favorite Roguelites (see Streets of Rogue) - in fact, many of the challenge rooms are tailored for a specific loadout of skills/gear and are impossible to complete without them. And the game's unique selling point - the randomly-generated traits each hero has - are an underused design space, adding very little to the gameplay. There are some interesting ones like OCD (gain MP for breaking stuff), but the vast majority of them are either extremely situational (you don't trigger spike traps), purely cosmetic (baldness), or utterly infuriating (vertigo, which flips the entire screen upside-down) - leading each generation's new heroes to blend together after awhile.
What makes Rogue Legacy a very good game nevertheless, are these two principles:
- Getting good at a hard game is one of the most rewarding experiences as a gamer
- It's better for a game to be motivating than "fair". A game can be the most brutally unforgiving bastard ever made, but if it keeps me around long enough for me to get good, then it's done its job better than a more well-balanced game that didn't hook me in for whatever reason.
It's in this aspect that Rogue Legacy excels. Your gear and stat upgrades are always passed on to the next generation, so instead of powering up through exploration and discovery like in a typical Metroidvania, you actually power up by dying. And by respawning you not at the main hub but the upgrade screen, the game takes some of the psychological sting out of the (often bullshit) deaths and gives you the impetus to just try another run. And as the runs piled up, not only did my character get better but so did I - I know I got better because I cleared each new area faster than I did the last, and I rather unexpectedly beat the final boss on my first try! The much harder NG+ which featured upgraded versions of every enemy with bullet-hell attack patterns was dispatched in just over a third of the time as the vanilla run. And really, the extremely simple gameplay requires and refines all the skills that a good platformer should have - clever use of movement tools to evade enemy attacks, near-pixel-perfect knowledge of hitboxes and hurtboxes, the ability to instantaneously assess all the threats in a room and decide what to do first, knowing when to say "screw it" and explore somewhere else first... the flow state I was rewarded with after sticking with this game through my frustrations was well worth it. And when a character you meet later on laments that he's forgotten what the sun feels like, I could only nod and say "Me too, game. Me too."
1999
Dragon Valor has quite a lot in common with the D&D arcade brawlers Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara; beyond its identity as a beat-em-up with some rudimentary RPG mechanics, it also features branching paths (that all converge at the same end boss), shops where you can buy gear to power yourself up, a small selection of spells you can cast in real time, and a satisfying repertoire of moves you can use against enemies. Dragon Valor's moveset is one of its undeniable strengths, with a good range of moves ranging from a rising slash (for flying enemies), a downward smash (for small enemies), and a versatile 3-hit staple combo that you can cancel into either a dodge or a jump kick. The combat has good game feel, with everything feeling appropriately weighty and beating up on monsters feeling satisfying.
The overall game experience isn't a very strong one though, and in many ways Dragon Valor is a victim of the trends of its era. The 3D graphics and shifting camera angles - to be expected from a game of this age - overcomplicate the platforming and some of the combat because you often have to react to hazards and enemies coming from offscreen. The devs were aware of this and chose to include one of my least favorite examples of fake difficulty - hazards that take advantage of blind spots in the camera's positioning to score cheap 'gotcha' hits on you.
The other trend of the mid-PSX era (which in many ways carries over to today) is the need to include lots of content in order to make the buyer think they got a good deal. Dragon Valor is pretty long by beat-em-up standards, and features a Phantasy Star III-like generation mechanic that gives the player up to three different paths through the game depending on who the main character of each chapter ends up marrying. While this sounds great in theory, plenty of the assets are reused across paths, and the game seems to run out of new ideas pretty early on. When I play a game with branching paths I tend to replay it at least once to experience as much of it as possible, but one single 8-hour playthrough of running around uninspired dungeons with haphazard enemy/hazard placement is more than enough for me.
Dragon Valor does have a few other niggling flaws - a lack of co-op play, an overabundance of boss i-frames resulting in poorly-paced boss fights, a script that takes itself way too seriously, and dialogue that reads like it was written by an alien who'd read about people but never actually met one - but the nuts and bolts of a good game are all here, if only the devs went more with quality over quantity.
The overall game experience isn't a very strong one though, and in many ways Dragon Valor is a victim of the trends of its era. The 3D graphics and shifting camera angles - to be expected from a game of this age - overcomplicate the platforming and some of the combat because you often have to react to hazards and enemies coming from offscreen. The devs were aware of this and chose to include one of my least favorite examples of fake difficulty - hazards that take advantage of blind spots in the camera's positioning to score cheap 'gotcha' hits on you.
The other trend of the mid-PSX era (which in many ways carries over to today) is the need to include lots of content in order to make the buyer think they got a good deal. Dragon Valor is pretty long by beat-em-up standards, and features a Phantasy Star III-like generation mechanic that gives the player up to three different paths through the game depending on who the main character of each chapter ends up marrying. While this sounds great in theory, plenty of the assets are reused across paths, and the game seems to run out of new ideas pretty early on. When I play a game with branching paths I tend to replay it at least once to experience as much of it as possible, but one single 8-hour playthrough of running around uninspired dungeons with haphazard enemy/hazard placement is more than enough for me.
Dragon Valor does have a few other niggling flaws - a lack of co-op play, an overabundance of boss i-frames resulting in poorly-paced boss fights, a script that takes itself way too seriously, and dialogue that reads like it was written by an alien who'd read about people but never actually met one - but the nuts and bolts of a good game are all here, if only the devs went more with quality over quantity.
1995
Suikoden features young hero Tir McDohl (I called him Rohl so he sounded like a fast food mascot with a speech impediment), as he realizes the corruption of the empire he works for and goes from being the sheltered son of an imperial general to the leader of a resistance movement. It’s from here that the game’s biggest and most unique ‘hook’ comes from, in the form of recruiting 108 ‘Stars of Destiny’ to join your army. Searching the world to recruit people to your cause is a great idea and fits right in with the game’s plot – and its implementation is mixed.
I love that the 108 Stars are not just characters who join you in battle, but also people who move into your headquarters and provide a service (e.g. shopkeeper) or even something functionally meaningless but flavorful (like a painter who completes more and more of a mural as you bring him materials to work with). Being able to recruit people of all sizes, shapes, trades and ages and watch your headquarters gradually grow gives a tangible gameplay expression of the military and ideological momentum shifting towards the Liberation Army. I also loved that the game encouraged you to experiment with your party makeup by having any underlevelled characters shoot up in experience and catch up with the active party very quickly. However, I still did find that the (over 70!) playable characters started to blur together after awhile, and Suikoden had the exasperating habit of continuously throwing characters in and out of your party without warning. This, combined with the fact that each character has their own individual inventory that can't be accessed unless they are in your active party - meant a positively painful amount of backtracking and menu-hopping every single time a story event changed your party makeup.
The rest of the game can mostly be characterized as 'safely decent' - the graphics look like they could have been made on the SNES but feature some nice sprite art and zooming in/out effects, the translation is fully functional (more than can be said for many of its contemporaries), and combat is your standard round-based DQ-style affair, with a little bit of character customization thrown in via magic runes which can be equipped on characters to give them certain abilities and attributes. There are even some nice subtle QoL touches - if you ask a character to heal or revive someone, they will do it even after all enemies are defeated so you won't forget to do it later!
One thing that was much better than I thought is the music. Even in a genre in which every game seems to contain a banging soundtrack, Suikoden stands out. The score's versatility is a particular highlight, nailing a number of different musical styles very well (there's a clear Dragon Quest influence here with castle themes written in a Baroque style) - I appreciate that the more Eastern-influenced tracks didn't sound too on-the-nose either. My personal highlight of the soundtrack was when Neclord, the scenery-chewing Dracula expy who demands bridal sacrifices from the surrounding villages, welcomes you to his boss fight by sitting down at his pipe organ and hammering out Mendelssohn's Wedding March in a minor key.
Overall, Suikoden represents a really strong start to a beloved series that I’m only just starting to get into. I’ve heard the sequel does a lot of things better and I’m really excited for it!
I love that the 108 Stars are not just characters who join you in battle, but also people who move into your headquarters and provide a service (e.g. shopkeeper) or even something functionally meaningless but flavorful (like a painter who completes more and more of a mural as you bring him materials to work with). Being able to recruit people of all sizes, shapes, trades and ages and watch your headquarters gradually grow gives a tangible gameplay expression of the military and ideological momentum shifting towards the Liberation Army. I also loved that the game encouraged you to experiment with your party makeup by having any underlevelled characters shoot up in experience and catch up with the active party very quickly. However, I still did find that the (over 70!) playable characters started to blur together after awhile, and Suikoden had the exasperating habit of continuously throwing characters in and out of your party without warning. This, combined with the fact that each character has their own individual inventory that can't be accessed unless they are in your active party - meant a positively painful amount of backtracking and menu-hopping every single time a story event changed your party makeup.
The rest of the game can mostly be characterized as 'safely decent' - the graphics look like they could have been made on the SNES but feature some nice sprite art and zooming in/out effects, the translation is fully functional (more than can be said for many of its contemporaries), and combat is your standard round-based DQ-style affair, with a little bit of character customization thrown in via magic runes which can be equipped on characters to give them certain abilities and attributes. There are even some nice subtle QoL touches - if you ask a character to heal or revive someone, they will do it even after all enemies are defeated so you won't forget to do it later!
One thing that was much better than I thought is the music. Even in a genre in which every game seems to contain a banging soundtrack, Suikoden stands out. The score's versatility is a particular highlight, nailing a number of different musical styles very well (there's a clear Dragon Quest influence here with castle themes written in a Baroque style) - I appreciate that the more Eastern-influenced tracks didn't sound too on-the-nose either. My personal highlight of the soundtrack was when Neclord, the scenery-chewing Dracula expy who demands bridal sacrifices from the surrounding villages, welcomes you to his boss fight by sitting down at his pipe organ and hammering out Mendelssohn's Wedding March in a minor key.
Overall, Suikoden represents a really strong start to a beloved series that I’m only just starting to get into. I’ve heard the sequel does a lot of things better and I’m really excited for it!
1999
"Give me the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."
Forrest Gump
"I mean, the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."
Final Fantasy VIII
"Perfection."
____________________________________
If you'll excuse the corny meme transcribed awkwardly into text, I just wanna say that Laguna is not only the true main character of FFVIII, he is the best main character in the FF series. Endearingly goofy and relatable, he also has some of the best character development squeezed within relatively little screentime (and secondhand accounts from people who've interacted with him).
And if you'll excuse me jumping excitedly from point to point, I have to draw a parallel with another movie (or book, if you prefer): Battle Royale. The entire premise of the story - addressing deliquency among the youth by sending one randomly-selected class a year over to murder island - is such monumentally stupid policy, but it's still an awesome movie because of the way it really explores the character and motivations of everyone in that class through the lens of extreme circumstances. See also exhibit B - Gantz - for a manga whose strength lies in viewing how each character copes with being called into extreme danger, and whose quality arguably plummets once a logical 'plot' starts to reveal itself.
I tend to view FFVIII's much-maligned reveal (you know the one) in much the same way as the above two examples. Ok yeah, it's contrived! But it throws the actions and personalities of every party member into sudden context. These are all orphan child soldiers (which we already knew) carrying various mental and emotional scars which they can't begin to work through because they have no memory of what scarred them in the first place. Quistis' inappropriate behavior towards Squall - and Squall's reluctance to reach out and form any kind of connection - makes more sense. As the only one who still has a memory of their orphanage days, Irvine's reluctance to shoot at Edea makes more sense. And my favorite of the bunch is actually Zell - the kid who deep down is kind of a big dorky nerd but acts loud because he also desires to be cool. He's always the first to protest when the party decides to go against orders, but Seifer knows how to play him like a fiddle ("fine, stay here. I don't want any boy scouts.") It also manifests in him being the de-facto Mr. Exposition when he's in your party, giving you plenty of information about where you're going, resulting in an (optional) subtle bit of character development from Squall who goes from "Thank you Mr Know-It-All Zell" to "I should give this guy more credit".
And that's what I like about the game - big romance aside, the character work isn't grand and sweeping and theatrical - it's just a lot of little moments that subtly shade each person's character. There's isn't a whole lot of point to much of it, but that's what the vast majority of dialogue is like anyway - a lot like what hanging out with friends is like. I do have to say that FFVIII is helped immensely by possibly being the first FF with a truly excellent localized script. It still has its blemishes, but it nails a lot of the nuances that make the subtle character work possible. This is the first time I'm playing the game as a dad, and young Ellone's no-filter "Uncle Laguna says yoo dress weird but you're a nice person!!" is 1000% something a little girl would say.
The intimate character stuff is good, but let's not ignore that the large-scale stuff is phenomenal. This is actually the first FF game I played so I could be speaking with my nostalgia shades on, but this game is probably the one with the best-directed cutscenes, perhaps ever. Practically every setpiece left me with my jaw hanging when I first played it in '99, but even now, between the beach landing at Dollet, the clash of the Gardens, the first glimpse of the city of Esthar, and the scenes on Lunar Base, I'd be hard-pressed to single one out as a favorite - perhaps the creepy Sorceress Parade, with its absolute banger of a soundtrack complete with dancers doing the moves from Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Mechanically the game is controversial, but there's a lot of fun to be had once you get to know its ins and outs - there are so many ways you can tweak your playstyle that will lead to a very different experience of the game. I just finished a self-imposed 'bigamy challenge' where each character stays with the same two randomly-chosen GFs, and it forced me to get really creative with how I approached combat - especially since only two characters had any way of boosting their strength.
Finally, I love FFVIII's world and its lore. It doesn't spell everything out, but you do have access to a ton of optional information that adds context to what you're doing. And - fitting for a game that is all about fate - almost everything is connected to everything else, just waiting for you to talk to the right person and make the right connection. The fact that the movie starring Laguna as the sorceress' knight is the inspiration for Seifer's romantic dream - and ostensibly the reason he uses a gunblade - is something I only caught this time, and the game is all the richer for it.
I know that this review overlooks a lot of flaws - but I know they exist. Perhaps the best way to summarize the issues with the game is that it's kind of a mess. The writing, the pacing, the mechanics, the way the lore is presented - it's all kinda messy. But it's a mess with heart, it's a mess with substance, it's a mess that - like its characters - reveals more and more layers as you peel away the surface, and its a mess that does so many things so exceptionally well that I can't help but love it.
FFVIII is one of the very few games that I've done a complete 360-turn on. The flashy graphics and fantastic cutscenes made a huge impression on me at first. Then for a while I found the game to be rather cringe, the mechanics needlessly complex, and the game generally unrefined compared to its cousins. After four completed playthroughs, the 360-degree turn is complete: it sits second on my list of favorite FF games, a position that is entirely subjective but also entirely earned.
Forrest Gump
"I mean, the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."
Final Fantasy VIII
"Perfection."
____________________________________
If you'll excuse the corny meme transcribed awkwardly into text, I just wanna say that Laguna is not only the true main character of FFVIII, he is the best main character in the FF series. Endearingly goofy and relatable, he also has some of the best character development squeezed within relatively little screentime (and secondhand accounts from people who've interacted with him).
And if you'll excuse me jumping excitedly from point to point, I have to draw a parallel with another movie (or book, if you prefer): Battle Royale. The entire premise of the story - addressing deliquency among the youth by sending one randomly-selected class a year over to murder island - is such monumentally stupid policy, but it's still an awesome movie because of the way it really explores the character and motivations of everyone in that class through the lens of extreme circumstances. See also exhibit B - Gantz - for a manga whose strength lies in viewing how each character copes with being called into extreme danger, and whose quality arguably plummets once a logical 'plot' starts to reveal itself.
I tend to view FFVIII's much-maligned reveal (you know the one) in much the same way as the above two examples. Ok yeah, it's contrived! But it throws the actions and personalities of every party member into sudden context. These are all orphan child soldiers (which we already knew) carrying various mental and emotional scars which they can't begin to work through because they have no memory of what scarred them in the first place. Quistis' inappropriate behavior towards Squall - and Squall's reluctance to reach out and form any kind of connection - makes more sense. As the only one who still has a memory of their orphanage days, Irvine's reluctance to shoot at Edea makes more sense. And my favorite of the bunch is actually Zell - the kid who deep down is kind of a big dorky nerd but acts loud because he also desires to be cool. He's always the first to protest when the party decides to go against orders, but Seifer knows how to play him like a fiddle ("fine, stay here. I don't want any boy scouts.") It also manifests in him being the de-facto Mr. Exposition when he's in your party, giving you plenty of information about where you're going, resulting in an (optional) subtle bit of character development from Squall who goes from "Thank you Mr Know-It-All Zell" to "I should give this guy more credit".
And that's what I like about the game - big romance aside, the character work isn't grand and sweeping and theatrical - it's just a lot of little moments that subtly shade each person's character. There's isn't a whole lot of point to much of it, but that's what the vast majority of dialogue is like anyway - a lot like what hanging out with friends is like. I do have to say that FFVIII is helped immensely by possibly being the first FF with a truly excellent localized script. It still has its blemishes, but it nails a lot of the nuances that make the subtle character work possible. This is the first time I'm playing the game as a dad, and young Ellone's no-filter "Uncle Laguna says yoo dress weird but you're a nice person!!" is 1000% something a little girl would say.
The intimate character stuff is good, but let's not ignore that the large-scale stuff is phenomenal. This is actually the first FF game I played so I could be speaking with my nostalgia shades on, but this game is probably the one with the best-directed cutscenes, perhaps ever. Practically every setpiece left me with my jaw hanging when I first played it in '99, but even now, between the beach landing at Dollet, the clash of the Gardens, the first glimpse of the city of Esthar, and the scenes on Lunar Base, I'd be hard-pressed to single one out as a favorite - perhaps the creepy Sorceress Parade, with its absolute banger of a soundtrack complete with dancers doing the moves from Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Mechanically the game is controversial, but there's a lot of fun to be had once you get to know its ins and outs - there are so many ways you can tweak your playstyle that will lead to a very different experience of the game. I just finished a self-imposed 'bigamy challenge' where each character stays with the same two randomly-chosen GFs, and it forced me to get really creative with how I approached combat - especially since only two characters had any way of boosting their strength.
Finally, I love FFVIII's world and its lore. It doesn't spell everything out, but you do have access to a ton of optional information that adds context to what you're doing. And - fitting for a game that is all about fate - almost everything is connected to everything else, just waiting for you to talk to the right person and make the right connection. The fact that the movie starring Laguna as the sorceress' knight is the inspiration for Seifer's romantic dream - and ostensibly the reason he uses a gunblade - is something I only caught this time, and the game is all the richer for it.
I know that this review overlooks a lot of flaws - but I know they exist. Perhaps the best way to summarize the issues with the game is that it's kind of a mess. The writing, the pacing, the mechanics, the way the lore is presented - it's all kinda messy. But it's a mess with heart, it's a mess with substance, it's a mess that - like its characters - reveals more and more layers as you peel away the surface, and its a mess that does so many things so exceptionally well that I can't help but love it.
FFVIII is one of the very few games that I've done a complete 360-turn on. The flashy graphics and fantastic cutscenes made a huge impression on me at first. Then for a while I found the game to be rather cringe, the mechanics needlessly complex, and the game generally unrefined compared to its cousins. After four completed playthroughs, the 360-degree turn is complete: it sits second on my list of favorite FF games, a position that is entirely subjective but also entirely earned.
Trying to adapt a TTRPG into an arcade beat-em-up is tricky business: it's not a genre that easily captures the breadth and depth of character customization or the sense of complete freedom and nonlinearity that draws many people to D&D. Shadow over Mystara understands this and chooses not to focus on that at all; instead, it plays up the 'teamwork' angle, with different character classes able to help each other with complementary skillsets. The cleric can immobilize enemies for a bulkier character (like the dwarf or fighter) to wail on for major damage, and magic users aren't great on their own but make excellent crowd control and are able to hit slippery bosses with ease. The result is one of the most collaborative arcade beat-em-ups out there that doesn't try to overreach but is excellent at everything it does.
The movesets are expanded significantly from the previous game, and the bread-and-butter game feel is impeccable - it feels really great to wail on a bunch of enemies with a standard combo, send them flying with a charging attack and then continue to juggle them.
I will say that the single-player experience isn't balanced particularly well - some spots will require skills that your character may not have (like an enemy who can only be damaged with magic), and there are plenty of cheap boss 'grab' attacks that drain a lot of your health if you don't have an ally nearby to knock them out of the animation. But I suppose that really is part of the game's intention. Good stuff!
The movesets are expanded significantly from the previous game, and the bread-and-butter game feel is impeccable - it feels really great to wail on a bunch of enemies with a standard combo, send them flying with a charging attack and then continue to juggle them.
I will say that the single-player experience isn't balanced particularly well - some spots will require skills that your character may not have (like an enemy who can only be damaged with magic), and there are plenty of cheap boss 'grab' attacks that drain a lot of your health if you don't have an ally nearby to knock them out of the animation. But I suppose that really is part of the game's intention. Good stuff!
The last time I took a long break from writing reviews on this site because of health issues I got a few comments from people who noticed I was gone and were concerned. Seeing as it's been more than a month since I posted, I just wanted to reassure everyone: I haven't been sick, it's just that it's Four Job Fiesta season so I just did nine runs of FFV before deciding to play anything else.
Anyways! This little-known title that I played in my childhood dutifully goes through a laundry list of cliche tropes and bad design, most of them being drab affairs requiring you to hunt around uninspired levels to destroy McGuffins. Many of said McGuffins take a few hits to destroy but don't react to being hit, which leads to some confusion that could have been easily avoided by having them flash a different color or something - this is a flaw shared by the boss encounters, some of which are interestingly designed with several different weakpoints which unfortunately don't indicate whether you actually nailed the hitbox or not.
Special dishonorable mention needs to go to Greedly's stage: an obstacle course that is essentially three difficult obstacles repeated identically ad nauseam over the course of the level, making it both nearly impossible and terribly boring at the same time. Also, Captain Planet, whom you finally get to control in the final level, is disappointingly weak, can't attack upwards/downwards like the planeteers can, and can't even turn dudes into human trees.
There are some interesting ideas here that could have been turned into a decent game in the right hands, but there's a reason barely anyone remembers this one.
Anyways! This little-known title that I played in my childhood dutifully goes through a laundry list of cliche tropes and bad design, most of them being drab affairs requiring you to hunt around uninspired levels to destroy McGuffins. Many of said McGuffins take a few hits to destroy but don't react to being hit, which leads to some confusion that could have been easily avoided by having them flash a different color or something - this is a flaw shared by the boss encounters, some of which are interestingly designed with several different weakpoints which unfortunately don't indicate whether you actually nailed the hitbox or not.
Special dishonorable mention needs to go to Greedly's stage: an obstacle course that is essentially three difficult obstacles repeated identically ad nauseam over the course of the level, making it both nearly impossible and terribly boring at the same time. Also, Captain Planet, whom you finally get to control in the final level, is disappointingly weak, can't attack upwards/downwards like the planeteers can, and can't even turn dudes into human trees.
There are some interesting ideas here that could have been turned into a decent game in the right hands, but there's a reason barely anyone remembers this one.
1994
When thinking about why this game failed, it's easy to look at the terrible AI (it's possible to stunlock enemies with flying kicks even on the highest difficulty), the weird special move inputs (some of these special moves are even harder to do than specials in the original Street Fighter), or the wonky gamefeel (I have nothing to say about this - you really have to feel it for yourself).
But I think the biggest problem with Brutal: Paws of Fury is that it didn't really know exactly what it wanted to be, so it just threw a bunch of stuff at the wall and served us what stuck. The characters have a bunch of punny names (Dali Llama and Tai Cheetah are two of the reasons why this game didn't score lower) and the graphics are cutesy, so why does the main story take itself so seriously? And in trying to come up with a gimmick to spice the game up, they made the player start the story mode with no special moves at all (not even a taunt!) and have to grind for them, turning a bland game experience even blander.
It's a shame because the premise is actually quite cool and could have made for a nice 'cult-favorite' type of game if it had a bit more content and played just a little better.
But I think the biggest problem with Brutal: Paws of Fury is that it didn't really know exactly what it wanted to be, so it just threw a bunch of stuff at the wall and served us what stuck. The characters have a bunch of punny names (Dali Llama and Tai Cheetah are two of the reasons why this game didn't score lower) and the graphics are cutesy, so why does the main story take itself so seriously? And in trying to come up with a gimmick to spice the game up, they made the player start the story mode with no special moves at all (not even a taunt!) and have to grind for them, turning a bland game experience even blander.
It's a shame because the premise is actually quite cool and could have made for a nice 'cult-favorite' type of game if it had a bit more content and played just a little better.
Let's get this out of the way: Michael Jackson's Moonwalker is 100% a style-over-substance game. But wow, what style! Michael has a surprisingly varied and unsurprisingly stylish moveset which ranges from the cool (spinning around and throwing his hat) to the heavily situational (sliding down staircase handrails) and completely useless (moonwalking and the trademark crotch-grab). He also has possibly the slickest walk-cycle of any character from any Genesis game. But really, as an 80s kid who loves Michael Jackson and his music, the moment that I knew this game was for me was right at the beginning when he walks in through the door, flicks a coin into the jukebox and Smooth Criminal starts playing. At this point, I knew that no matter how bad the rest of the game was I probably wasn't going to hate it.
And the game did test my patience a lot past the halfway point - the final level in particular is an exercise in frustration, with so many attacks being aimed at you, often from off-screen. Some of the bosses utterly miss the sweet spot for challenge, either being braindead easy (if you know the exploit to beat them) or nearly impossible. And the final boss left me throwing up my hands in frustration saying "ohCOME ON SHOME ON!"
Still, as a 1990 style-over-substance game that is mostly playable, I always had a soft spot for it as a kid. And replaying it now, I'd say (imo) that it's aged better than most people give it credit for.
*Couldn't think of where to put this in the main review, but given how many of Michael's moves are put in mainly for the cool-factor rather than functionality, I think this might be one of the funnest Genesis games to watch a TAS of.
And the game did test my patience a lot past the halfway point - the final level in particular is an exercise in frustration, with so many attacks being aimed at you, often from off-screen. Some of the bosses utterly miss the sweet spot for challenge, either being braindead easy (if you know the exploit to beat them) or nearly impossible. And the final boss left me throwing up my hands in frustration saying "oh
Still, as a 1990 style-over-substance game that is mostly playable, I always had a soft spot for it as a kid. And replaying it now, I'd say (imo) that it's aged better than most people give it credit for.
*Couldn't think of where to put this in the main review, but given how many of Michael's moves are put in mainly for the cool-factor rather than functionality, I think this might be one of the funnest Genesis games to watch a TAS of.