Ah… isn’t this the life? No worries, no cares, no real responsibilities to take care of, nothing like that to hold you down. Just driving along at 185 mph, letting the brisk sea air flow through you, looking at all of the sights along the way, and enjoying it all with a gorgeous babe right by your side the entire time. Sure, you may crash the car a few times, and get rightfully scolded by said babe for doing so, but those are just a few road bumps on the highway that we call life. It’s all perfect, isn’t it? Well, guess what? You gotta WAKE UP! None of that is happening, cause you are still in your cold, dark house, you are all alone, and you have never felt any of those sensations before. Instead, you are just playing OutRun, and wishing that you could ever feel anything close to that just once. But hey, I guess there is no harm in pretending that you can for a while anyway.

So yeah, this is another arcade racer that I have been curious about for a while, but I didn’t get around to it sooner than before I started typing this review. I had just assumed it was yet another generic early arcade racer with nothing to show for itself, and that’s it. But, it was developed by Yu Suzuki, the same guy who made After Burner and Space Harrier, both of which I ended up really liking, so I trust the man to provide a game that will give me a good time, and that is what I did end up getting with this game. For being an early 80’s arcade racer, it is a pretty good time, and while it doesn’t do too many exciting things compared to other racers, it does provide that good ol’ arcade racing feel that is great to experience.

The graphics are pretty good for the time, having the same look and style and feel as that as both Space Harrier and After Burner, which may make it seem repetitive, but as someone who is a big fan of this look and style, I am all here for it, the music is pretty good, with there being plenty of tracks to choose from at the start of the game, and while you can’t switch between tracks while racing, the selection you do get is pretty enjoyable to vibe to while driving, the control is about what you would expect from a game like this, but for what it is worth, the steering and driving feels fast and smooth, yet heavy enough to be satisfying enough to get the hang of, and the gameplay is very simple, yet it manages to provide enough fun and satisfaction for those looking for a good ol’ arcade racer like this.

The game is your typical old school racing game, where you take control of Generic Racing Man who drives a Ferrari Testarossa, go through one huge tracks with plenty of different routes to travel down, race your way towards any of the final goal points before the time runs out, make sure to shift gears, turn, and brake when absolutely necessary to maintain a consistent speed so that you don’t fall behind, and try your best to avoid all of the other cars that are on the road, because you are apparently the only person racing here, and you are crazy. Again, for the most part, it is exactly what you would expect from an old school arcade racer like this, but like with many old school games like this, that doesn’t make it bad whatsoever.

If I had to describe this game in one sentence, I would say it is Rad Racer, but MUCH better. It plays almost exactly like that game, from the perspective of your car, the main objective, and how you play the game. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I would say that Square intentionally copied this game exactly when making Rad Racer… which they probably did, but still. What Rad Racer doesn’t provide you though is this invigorating sense of speed, which OutRun manages to provide almost perfectly. I mentioned this in After Burner as well, but this sense of speed that Suzuki manages to achieve in these games is extremely invigorating, seeing all these different objects and cars zoom by you as you are driving through it all, the animation on the guy and girl in the car that is simple, but effective in detailing how fast they are going, and all the different buildings and setpieces you can see in the background as you drive. It looks extremely pleasing and wonderful after almost 40 years, and it does help the player get more into the game as a result.

Not to mention, the game does manage to do some things that Rad Racer didn’t. For one thing, instead of splitting up the many levels into separate tracks, for this game, you are constantly driving on one big track the entire time. That may not sound like much, but what helps is that, throughout the game, there are multiple routes that you can take to explore different parts of the track and try to reach specific goals. For one run, you may go towards the left sides of the tracks the entire time, and in another, you may just take all of the tracks on the right side, or you might even swap between which direction you go down for more and more playthroughs. This adds a lot of replay value to the game, and while it doesn’t change up the gameplay too much, it does allow you to see a lot more of what the game has to offer, so that is nice.

If none of that sounds appealing to you though, then you probably won’t find too much to love about OutRun. It is still an early arcade racer in many ways, having not too much depth or excitement compared to other racers that have been released later, which doesn’t bother me personally, but it is something to take into consideration for those who are more picky with their game choices. Also, just like with Rad Racer, this game is REALLY hard. There may be fewer stages, but from the beginning, you will need to constantly be going at blisteringly fast speeds if you want to even stand a chance at making it all the way to the end, and considering the many tight turns that you have to take, along with all the different cars that you will need to avoid on the road, this is much easier said than done.

Overall though, despite its simplistic nature and how challenging it can be, OutRun may just be the best arcade racer that I have ever played from the 80’s, providing a great sense of speed, extreme satisfaction when you manage to make it very far, while all still looking and sounding great after being out for so long. I would definitely recommend it for those who are fans of old school racing games, or even for those who couldn’t really get into Rad Racer if they played that before, because while this game may not be that much different in the gameplay department, the presentation may do a lot to change your mind. And hey, unlike with Rad Racer, Sega didn’t immediately abandon it after two entries, so that is also a plus for fans of the series.

Game #448

Dev Guy is a micro-adventure game about a developer who, after a series of unfortunate events, is led to believe that thievery from fellow developers in his apartment complex (who he will openly scorn) is the only way to make a game by a deadline after the one he was initially developing became lost in a crash. It is over in less than an hour, free, and made by an amateur developer with no qualms about the absurdity of their first published creation. It's got parodies of brony fandom work, otaku work, and self-indulgent 'think-piece' games, all portrayed with varying degrees of cynicism—of which I take none as inherently genuine.

Despite all this, the rudimentary nature of Dev Guy almost feels comforting? Like, it's the type of thing that reminds me of all those XBOX360 Indie Marketplace titles made by people just getting started on their path to game development, or hobbyists willing to try to market to a bigger artist. The Steam marketplace is somewhat akin to this, although the scale of comparison is even wider and thus more unfair: This was never designed to compete with anything or be marketed as anything other than a goofy hobbyist project. I think people who see this as anything else are either looking too deep into it or are being rather brash about a free 30-minute indie game as opposed to actual problems in the gaming industry. Trust me, your ire is not with this guy.

I’ll confess: I’ve never beaten a single Zelda game in my life. Sure, I grew up a Nintendo kid playing almost nothing but Mario and Pokemon, but for some reason I never really felt enticed to give Nintendo’s most critically acclaimed series a serious shot. I’ve tried out the opening hours of Wind Waker (something that I desperately need to finish one of these days) and have played plenty of scattered hours of Ocarina of Time at a friend’s house, and yet it wasn’t enough considering the series has eluded me until now. So, it felt like a solid challenge to cap off 2023, given my recent run with time loop adventure games… and that poyfuh recommended the game to me over a year ago. It took a while to muster up the commitment, but I finally got there! Feel free to take my readings here with a grain of salt given my lack of nostalgia for Zelda, but hopefully I can bring something different to the table by focusing on what impact it had upon a relative newcomer.

For lack of better words, The Legend of Zelda is an adventure game series. Maybe the adventure game series. Quite a few good friends and users I closely follow have commented about how Zelda is really a mish-mosh of different genres, which in essence forms the adventure game. Innuendo Studios has defined this as “games that tell stories using puzzles,” though this is a very loose definition as both narratives and puzzles take many different forms. Essentially, the genre has become a blanket term that has come to incorporate many different types of games. Zelda, as the platonic encapsulation of adventure games, has as a result, come to include many different types of genre-specific gameplay in one cohesive product. To sum this up, here’s a bit that I’ve jokingly brought up with friends: every game is basically Zelda, because Zelda is basically every game.

What I’m trying to say here, is that Majora’s Mask, much like the rest of Zelda, is not so much about any one single game mechanic so much as the coalescence of them all. No one particular element is going to stand out as exceptional because many games before and after have surpassed them, but the whole is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Much like how a classic adventure game is a fusion of different game mechanics, Majora’s Mask focuses on the intersection of different narratives and activities to evoke “the adventurer’s spirit.” It’s very easy to be critical of specific mechanics and ideas presented within the game in isolation (and I absolutely will be due to my point of reference), but they nevertheless come together to create a game unlike any other.

I suppose the easiest way to explain the premise of Majora’s Mask is to describe it as a cross between a metroidvania (item/ability gating) and a mystroidvania (knowledge gating). The time loop facilitates both of these aspects: as Link repeats the three-day cycle to gather information regarding Termina’s workings, he also gains new key items (both classic Zelda tools like the Hookshot and masks to wear/transform), learns new songs for his ocarina, and gains access to new areas and allies that can further aid his progress. The pressing issue then, is that Majora’s Mask doesn’t fully lean into the strengths of either genre.

Majora’s Mask feels underwhelming when compared to traditional metroidvanias, because key items feel underutilized. Much of this is due to the lock-and-key nature of the puzzles. Classic Zelda games focused on items with multiple facets via both dealing damage in fights and traversal/exploration: one classic example is the hookshot, which can let Link grapple up towards wooden surfaces/chests while also acting as a ranged weapon capable of pulling items and enemies towards him. However, Majora’s Mask focuses on the collection of masks as the vast majority of key items, and most are used for one exact situation (i.e. Don Gero’s mask lets you talk to frogs) and nothing else. Additionally, the masks aren’t very balanced in terms of utility, as some masks are useless once obtained (i.e. the Troupe Leader’s mask) while some are so conventionally strong that you’ll be constantly relying upon them (i.e. the Bunny Hood increases Link’s running speed and agility, so it’s a godsend for general traversal and boss fights).

On the other hand, Majora’s Mask also feels a little lacking as a mystroidvania, because there’s relatively little observation involved when compared to similar titles. The Bomber’s Notebook is your main tool is your main tool to keep track of everyone’s schedules across the three-day time loop, but it’s a bit limited in scope. There’s only twenty inhabitants recorded with schedules, and of those twenty, at least a fourth of them can be stamped as resolved by simply speaking to them once at the right time with the right item/mask. In fact, there’s only two side-questlines that force Link to commit to strict and specific time limits across the three-day cycle (Kafei and the main Romani Ranch quest). As a result, completing the Bomber’s Notebook is surprisingly straightforward, and usually doesn’t require more than one iteration of the time loop to follow and solve each case, given that Link has the appropriate items on hand when necessary.

That's not to say that the time loop is a net negative in the scope of Majora’s Mask, but rather that in comparison to other time loop games since then, it doesn’t capitalize as much in its execution. For example, there is very little usage of the time loop in regards to its four main dungeons. As Scamsley has pointed out, the presence of a time loop should lend naturally to speedrunning (via both knowledge gating to clear the dungeon faster with skips and ability-gating to use obtained items for shortcuts), but this is more or less made redundant by beating the dungeon’s boss, as the game is content giving you a direct teleport to refight dungeon bosses in subsequent resets instead. Additionally, almost all of the time-sensitive content is located within Clock Town; while it’s quite satisfying figuring out how schedules play out in the main hub, it feels like a squandered opportunity to not include enough specifically timed events elsewhere to fully utilize the three-day cycle. The presence of owl statues throughout the map sort of speaks to this; rather than have the player spend time traversing on foot and potentially stumble upon other time sensitive events, the developers would prefer for players to jump to whatever destinations they had in mind as to avoid wasting time in areas where these time-sensitive quests didn’t exist.

On top of all of this is a general clunkiness that exists between many of the game’s various systems. There’s just enough quality-of-life to where the game feels thoughtful for its time, but also plenty of wasted time here and there that made me wonder if the developers could have gone a little further. The sheer number of key items in the menu is a huge culprit; with only three key item slots accessible at any time (and the ocarina/three transformation masks constantly taking up slots), the player is constantly roaming through the four menu screens to select the appropriate item for each situation, and it’s made worse because most items are used once and then immediately replaced as a stream of inventory puzzles. There’s also a ton of downtime from having to watch the same cutscenes over and over even if you’ve seen them in previous loops, and from being subjected to the same non-skippable Song of Soaring animation every time you teleport to an owl statue. At the very least, you can skip the mask transformations once viewed for the first time. Parsing through the three-day cycle can also be a bit annoying; the Song of Double Time does at least let you skip a full twelve hours ahead to the start of each day/night cycle, but oftentimes the timed events in question begin at midnight or midday, meaning that you’ll have to wait around for a few in-game hours since the Song of Double Time plants you at 6 AM/PM. Finally, I think it’s an interesting idea resetting the player’s rupee and general ammo count (i.e. bombs, arrows, Deku Nuts, etc) with each new loop while allowing the player to farm pre-existing Rupee chests that have been opened in previous cycles. However, while there is a bank that allows the player to store Rupees between loops, there’s no item storage facility to stockpile ammo between loops, meaning that the player will likely spend a few minutes at the start of each loop whacking bushes and enemies for basic resources (or at least eat into the player’s account to buy supplies at shops, if they don’t spend time farming chests for the Rupees instead).

Honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when trying to judge Majora’s Mask against today’s standards of what we consider a “good” adventure game. I do have other scattered complaints, such as boss fights being generally underwhelming (I might have legitimately spent more time fighting dungeon mini-bosses than the four main masked bosses themselves), certain tedious side-games like the RNG-heavy Dampé grave digging or the Goron race with rubber-banding AI, a few overused mini-bosses such as having to fight Wizzrobe six different times, and how outside of the Stone Temple, mask abilities are never satisfyingly blended together in puzzles/quests. The cherry on top of all this is the presence of the Stone Mask, which I’d say is a bit too good since it lets you completely ignore most dungeon enemies. That in itself made me question the quality of that one forced stealth section in Great Bay; if the optimal solution is to wear a mask which lets you outright ignore the entire system, then should it even exist? Even from the perspective of someone who’s never cleared a Zelda game before, I find myself nodding in agreement when others claim that Majora’s Mask shows its age a bit more than Ocarina of Time.

But that’s not really why we play Zelda games, right? Despite the clunkiness of some mechanics and the many areas of potential improvement, many of us are willing to sit through and accept these flaws because the general experience is the selling point. The obvious argument to be made is that while plenty of MM’s mechanics feel undercooked, the actual mechanism of gameplay is constantly shifting about to suit the specific context. In a sense, Majora’s Mask can be viewed as an antecedent to the modern possession game: the basic control scheme remains the same regardless of the mask worn, but the functionality of the basic control scheme differs. This allows the game to stick to a grounded and consistent formula even though Link’s toolkit is constantly evolving on the fly, and while there are occasional moments of jank from certain side-games, most are over in a flash and still contribute positively towards the final goal of gaining enough knowledge and utility to prevent the impending crisis.

Essentially, many of the previously mentioned shortcomings end up inverting in on themselves. While Majora’s Mask has plenty of rough edges due to its rushed development and heavy re-use of assets, it’s these rough edges that lend so much towards its personality. I love how absolutely absurd and deranged the writing becomes, and the adventure game structure lets Majora’s Mask take complete advantage of the situation. One minute you’re tracking down a circus performer so he can spill his life story about joining an animal troupe since humans are also animals, then the next minute you’re fending off these zombie lantern alien ghosts with searchlight eyes so they don’t kidnap your new friend and her cows before the sun rises. The seeming lack of focus with the constant barrage of minigames and side-quests keeps the player constantly guessing what the next twist of events will bring, and the game is more than happy to ask rather than answer questions.

The backing time loop connecting all of these events together is really what drives the message home. Even though it’s absolutely tedious having to watch the same cutscenes over and over again, nothing illustrates the plight of Termina more starkly than forcing players to endlessly relive the day’s events and realizing that they are the only chance this world stands at reaching a new timeline. The ending credits bring such a gratifying emotional rush because the game deliberately withholds any semblance of permanent catharsis until you finally break through. You can’t help everyone in a single time loop, and they will never be free of their troubles until the moon stops falling. Until then, they’ll be hopelessly repeating the same tasks three days at a time, waiting for the dawn of a new day that will never come.

At the end of the day, I could keep finding things to nitpick about Majora’s Mask, but I also can’t imagine the game without these shortcomings since they form an integral part of the game’s identity. The masks might be glorified gimmicks, but they’re fantastic symbolism that are forever carried with you upon your journey even as time is constantly erased, and ultimately strengthen the adventure game aspect by assigning you new tasks to peruse. The time loop might not be fully utilized outside of Clock Town and contain extended gaps of waiting to get to important events, but it’s the forced repetition of the three-day cycle’s events that enforces the gravity of the situation upon the player. Individual characters aside from Skull Kid might not have the fleshed-out backgrounds that I had hoped for, but it’s a non-issue when Majora’s Mask is ultimately the story of Termina itself, formed from the intersecting schedules of all the different characters and elements at play. Separately, I think all of these elements are easily picked apart, but meshed together, they contribute to this pervasive nightmare of abject misery where even in the face of imminent death, fleeting moments of joy and comfort are enough to humanize the fantastical elements of Termina and keep the player moving forward towards a better future.

The story of and surrounding Majora’s Mask fascinates me, especially when learning that director Eiji Aonuma has since expressed regrets regarding its development. I and many others, however, see nothing to be ashamed of with their final product. If anything, Majora’s Mask is classic Nintendo at its core: instead of making a product that was visibly better than its competition, the developers took a chance and sought out to make something that was visibly different. The Wii is often cited as the most prevalent example of this “blue ocean strategy," though I firmly believe that Majora’s Mask was Nintendo’s first notable crack at it. Having to follow-up a game considered by many as the greatest of all time with an even shorter development period was a daunting ask, but as far I’m concerned, they absolutely succeeded. It doesn’t matter that other time loop adventure games have since outclassed their grandfather; there’s simply nothing like Majora’s Mask, and I doubt there ever will be.

If you were Mina, what would you get a guy like Soma for the holidays?

He's got a massive arsenal of weaponry that spans beyond the generations of all legends passed down through history, from a sword with no name to Excalibur to Positron Rifles and Death's own scythe. He has that lovely white furred coat, where he most likely also keeps a purple Game Boy Advance that every cool kid keeps around on their person. On top of all this, he even has the power to rule... a power only he possesses which grants him dominion over every soul he comes across. He is a man who has everything... even dive kicks...

God, he's so cool.

However, cool people will often not know that they are "cool" or perhaps "even cooler". For them, these things are just commonplace. Sure, the materialistic possession of every mythological weapon through the ages and the power to rule will convince oneself that they are cool for the first few weeks that they come across these awesome cool things, but overtime they just become a regular occurrence. These cool things don't come with helpful advice, moral support, or even a pleasant conversation. Maybe Soma could summon an Imp to be his second player, but is that imp really gonna give it to him straight or have anything to say beyond "yeah thanks master, gee you're swell master"?

That is where folks like YOU come in, people who offer their support through thick and thin. Without them, how would you know you're even cool without someone there to tell you that they believe in you before your fight with your own inner demons? That person who doesn't mind when you ask them for a lift to work, because you don't want to garner unwanted attention by using Black Panther soul to dash through everyone on the sidewalk when you're running late. Someone whose gift will be more cherished than any sword made of gold or absurdly powerful holy weapon found in a hidden treasure hoard behind a waterfall in the basement of a floating castle within a total solar eclipse above Japan.

That is how they know they are way past cool, by being friends with you.

Happy holidays.

Talking about what Destiny was meant to be back then seems mandatory when speaking of the game itself, and how couldn’t be? This was Bungie’s new baby, THE Bungie that created one of the most prolific shooters in all of videogame history, jumping onto not only a brand new IP, but what was meant to be the ambassador of the ‘’next-gen’’, a console exclusive (in the most literal sense of the word to this very day) that supposedly would redefine a new kin of MMO, a more welcoming, smaller scale one, but that also kept all the spectacle and fun of the sci-fi shooter genre. It didn’t matter what TV channel you were watching; you were bound to see AT LEAST one ad with Destiny as its main focus, the marketing bills must have been off the fucking charts for that one, it was insane. Talking about all this and what would happen after is, under any eyes, the only sensical approach, something so intrinsically related with the final product, whenever it wants it or not, that you can’t look the other way; the story practically writes itself.

Today I have a different story.

Back during the 2000’s and early 2010’s, my father liked videogames, and by that I mean he REALLY was into gaming. At first he never really had much of a interest for them aside from trying out some arcades back when they still were a thing in my hometown and playing on his friends’ personal computers and Ataris from time to time when he was a kid, at least from what he told me; by the time 90’s rolled around he believed that was a train he wasn’t meant to catch, a possible pastime too young for him, something that not worth getting into. Over a decade later, he would clearly change his mind, and tho that interest would be lost in 2016, during those years his appreciation for the medium wouldn’t be something that he’d speak of, but it was clearly visible to me. With what was back then the best gaming laptop you could get (back before the age of the LEDs) my father would discover his love for Shooters, both of the first and the third person variety, sandboxes, and even simulation and strategy like Age of Empires. He liked those types of games and every time a new big release would come around, he knew what he’d do when he had spare time and my mother had to go to work, and he gained even more interest in other aspects of the medium little by little; he even began to toy with emulators at some point! Me, on the other hand… I was what you would call, a Wii-lad.

By that I do not mean I was a Wii user only (tho for a long while I was), rather that I was rather closed to what some refer to as some ‘’hardcore’’ experiences, and tho I highly dislike that term along with ‘’casual’’, it is true that during the early 10’s I was anything but a shooter enjoyer. I was a fan of platformers and more simpler experiences, something that still holds up today, but that was especially true back then, to the point it was pretty much everything I played and enjoyed playing. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that, even if I prefer to be more open to every possible style of game as I am now far more, but the fact of the matter is, as you may have been able to point out, is that there wasn’t much overlap between my father’s tastes and mine. We both enjoyed the medium, but struggled to actually connect through it; that isn’t to say we didn’t try and that we didn’t had wonderful experiences, the memories of he playing Super Smash Bros Brawl with me and me watching him play Far Cry 3 and even sometimes helping him beat parts he just couldn’t are one I cherish to this day, and while those moments were cool as hell and wonderful, they were clearly moments in which neither of the two were fully comfortable with adventuring outside our own gaming comfort zone; there was still that clear lack of a middle ground, something that caught both our interests, something that we both could truly enjoy and talk about, something that really didn’t seem to be happening any time soon.

…and then Destiny was announced.

To my father, it looked simply astonishing, a visual sci-fi spectacle that seemed tailor-made for him; his favorite genre in all mediums brought to life in a way that was a sight to behold, a cosmos worth traversing and shooting through. To me, it looked like the coolest fucking thing I had ever seen, a space odyssey made videogame that promised adventures galore; I myself was also very much into sci-fi, and maybe that was what made Destiny tickle my ‘’only platformer guy’’ bone and made it crumble, this was not the first time a game presented me with worlds I desired to explore, but it was the first time I saw it to this scale and promise. This became the thing we would talk about every time videogames would become the main topic, we jumped onto that hype train and didn’t let it go for dear life; we knew everything that was coming out about and all news, but not much beyond that, we didn’t really knew who Bungie was, or what some of its promises and buzzwords like ‘’MMO’’ could really entail or not be, but it didn’t matter. Every image, every trailer, we were there watching it and talking about it, it became less of a game and it turned into something more, an experience to share even before it was for us to play. And then, during that year’s Christmas season, tho I cannot recall the exactly, my father came back home with a copy of the game; a present for me as much as it was for him. I still remember waiting together for everything to install, a process that took like half a day thanks to Destiny’s sheer size for the console and the shitty wi-fi we had back then, and it almost completely killed the mood of child-like excitement we both had… almost.

The moment that bar filled completely, we sat down, I took the controller, and what followed was… the cutscene that made everything kickstart, the character creator through which we made a space wizard alien destined to safe the entire solar system, those quite jingles that lead to that angelical soundly chorus that rose as the menu showed that mysterious whiter orb at the center of all, even higher than earth, and as we begun our adventure through the desolate wasteland of what once was Earth, being alive when we really shouldn’t have and fought against dangers that should have beaten us into a pulp, is nothing short of… magical, something that no game had made me felt ever, something that I couldn’t find the words to even begin describing, something neither of us could stop looking at in sheer awe. For but a moment, Destiny transcended even further, became something I could have never anticipated, something that back then I could only call… perfect…

What follows is a collection of thoughts of everything I dislike about Destiny:

The faults of Destiny, are so apparent that I’m surprised the disc didn’t crumble as soon as I touched it, some things now so utterly obvious it’s kind of adorable. Destiny is eternally confused, something that by definition works, but tries to bite so much it’s not that it can’t chew it, it’s that it can’t even bring itself to close its mouth. Its promises of a ‘’Small-scale MMO’’ don’t go much further than the main hub and the one or two other folks you can come across during the missions: if you aren’t planning on playing it alongside one or two friends directly, then what you’ll get is an experience that encourages meaningful player interaction so little that most won’t even bother making the slightest interaction during the levels themselves; most didn’t even bother engaging with PvP ‘cause… why bother? Not much is truly gained through direct conflict, and even tho random jolly co-operation can happen and it can be pretty fun, even at release most of the time what would you encounter would be players much stronger than you repeating past missions to farm exp and loot, and by proxy rendering the mission you were about to play pretty much to a cinematic with a bit more interaction. There are clears attempts at creating a more in-depth space for interaction for a console only environment, but it doesn’t stick the landing at all; the main central area is nothing more than a very empty street market 90% of the time, and again, this is an environment in which the bulk of players won’t bother to connect a mic, something that in an online matchmaking mode can completely fly and doesn’t even affect the experience, but for a supposedly far more open and interaction dependent shooter like this, it makes night and day. It all feels half-cooked, and the reason is obvious; Destiny also needs to work as a single player experience, something just one random fella on its own can fully beat, and the results of mixing both design philosophies are less than desirable.

Bungie was clearly aiming for the stars, to accomplish something different from what they did the last 5 times, yet they seemed too scared of getting inside the rocket; Destiny’s own foundations is highly inspired by Halo, which is a prospect that in paper sounds great until you realize this isn’t the basis of that series expanded to completely new horizons, but rather it directly clashing with the new elements and promises, resulting in this weird amalgam that compromises both visions. There are no grand encounters or missions; with the exception of the first and final one for each of the levels, all tasks can be summarized by ‘’go to x place and kill this thing/scan this this thing, repeat x number of times’’ with no great surprises in between; the down-time is always the same, the enemies you can face are always designated by the planet you are on, and every single encounter with enemies is an arena style fight divided into ordes each and every time, which it’s definitely the easiest way to design levels in which three players have something to shoot, but not the best way to design actual interesting challenges for neither of them, much less for only one. The game cannot even create challenges that interesting despite having an admittedly non-stop-moving basis to work from; the act of shooting and using abilities IS fun, not gratifiying once you realize you have to do it again and again, and so, because the arenas where the fight happens are never really that varied, the only way the game can generate difficulty is by throwing bullet-spongy bosses and high level enemies… notice how I didn’t use the word ‘’engaging’’ there. It’s just more mindless blasting, and again, there’s room for coordinated strategies if you have a buddy or two to play with, but that simply is not a real possibility when you are alone or random strangers, and so, it'll come a point when you’ll get stuck at a certain mission, and inadvertently, the game encourages you to repeat past missions to slowly level up, which encourages farming, which then encourages looting, which then encourages selling, which then encourages buying, and that encourages the entire process to play out once again with some pointless visits to the Cryptarch thrown in there from time to time (seriously, why would you be able to buy him encrypted weapons for only to decrypt them right after? That’s just gambling with extra steps). I’ll give the game this: it’s not a fun process, like, at all, but it is a marginally engaging one.

Bungie’s reluctance to abandon the old ways are also present in the way the wastelands where the missions take place and everything in them are designed; the four main areas are essentially mini-sandboxes, small open levels with certain parts restricted to certain missions, but that are completely free to explore otherwise, and hold some random encounters and fights across the map. I… like them, these zone really feel like desolate places, divided in cut and clear zones taken by different factions and commanders, areas that hold quite the amount of secrets and are super fun to go through with the speeder. Sometimes the optional combats in the open areas are even more fun than the ones found in main missions simply because they feel like they take place in an actual location and not just in an abandoned warehouse or ancient ruin, I genuinely don’t have much complains with how these are designed. My problem, instead, comes in how… static they all feel. Everything I mentioned is forever the same; batallions of enemy will be right there were they once stood after returning to the planet, the Vex and Cabal will be fighting in the exact same places locked in that neverending shoot-out, nothing will change with new descents or missions, it’s as if time loops every time you come back to the main-land. This wouldn’t be a problem if you visited these places once, but you don’t, you traverse them MANY times, and I’m convinced that they would have implemented changes here and there after certain missions… if it weren’t because, once again, this is a mini-MMO, and the one of the three players could have been on Mars a thousand times while other could be arriving on the first time; the game simply cannot craft variation in a way it doesn’t fuck up with the experience, but by also doing nothing, it can’t avoid shooting itself on the foot.

Not even the narrative is safe from Destiny’s eternal confusion; I’m not gonna act like I’m a seasoned MMO player because I’m simply not, but even as mostly a bystander, I can understand why many of those games stories revolve around the world itself or some major characters. You simply cannot make each and every player the main character, and so, you make them a part of the world, be it dividing it by factions or anything else, all of your player base is the protagonist, and even if they are not the real major players of the story, they serve a humongous part on it, they feel seen and like they can actually make a difference. Then here over Guardian-land ft. Nolan North (Peter Dinklage was sent to an undisclosed location), you do actually play a major part as the main character! You appear in the cutscenes, you talk with leaders and kingship, you are the hero… but you are also just a hero. It’s like the game really wanted to put players at the forefront, but then it said ‘’oh shit wait, hold on a second’’ and realized that wasn’t going to cut it if they wanted to make players feel like this is an actual expansive universe, so your guy is just… there, present in the cutscenes, yeah, but with everyone else doing the major talking and exposition; there’s a ton lore and exposition, but there’s not much actual story. There’s a conflict, yeah, dark bad light good and all of that, Ghost and the other fellas aren’t shy on telling you why you need to go ‘’pew-pew’’ around the solar system, but there’s not actually much happening: no real character moments, no real feeling of advancement, you just party along and see what’s up, and at the end after killing the big bad you get a cool weapon that’s probably useless from a character that appears randomly like 4 times and… roll credits! It’s obvious that DLCs and expansions were always a own with this, but as it is, the thing that came in the disc back in 2014, it feels unfinished, rushed, and like it doesn’t really know what to do with its storyline aside of having you at the side so you can see the cool character you made alongside a bunch of people I don’t even remember the names of. The game is in this constant tug of war with itself, this conflict that loops forever, and one that had never a clear answer for. It’s a fun enough shooter with so many issues and half-baked stuff I fell I’ve left a ton yet to speak of, one that doesn’t even scrap that level of greatness it promised, one that is barely a shadow of what the studio probably wanted it to be…

Now, I’ve been the one telling you all of this, the me of 2023, the me 9 years after the game originally released, talking about the problems now I see with this game, as I were to play it for the first time now… but that’s not what happened… and my me of 2014 and my father had a whole other version to tell.

To be right there, not at they it launched or during the first months after the game’s release, but just there, sitting down in the couch, with the controller in my hands, and letting myself be completely immersed in these lost passages of a dying cosmos, seeing this larger than life of a decaying empire wither again only bathed by the light of stars or the last rays of sun after another day without hope, to explore them as I made my way through war and darkness with my father sitting by my side, also completely submerged in the game and handing him the controller in a part I just couldn’t beat or when he just wanted to explore somewhere, that is something I still cannot find the words for.

To adventure in the chasms of the moon and fight against the restless legions of the Hive as they charge using all the might I can muster, exploring the green yet lifeless overtaken jungle of Venus, facing monsters beyond what I could even call ‘’alien’’ and discovering what secrets lied beyond the rift and the oldest imaginable truth encrypted in the twisted form of the Vex. To explore a no man’s land only to find another random fellow guardian, to par against each other, or to, despite no words being able to be spoken, to communicate through each other with dances and gestures, only to go back to the Tower and encounter bigger groups of players, and interact with any tools available, to trade, to explore, to just have fun. To find constant tangible rewards that make you feel as if every small victory, every mission beaten, every level up, everything amounts to something, something worth of rewarding, and something that makes you feel stronger. To create your own adventures, to play alongside friends and help each other find things the other may have never heard about, and lose yourself in the exploration and the thrill of the fight.

To talk with my father about it, about how immensely unbelievable it all is, how incredibly amazing it is to reach a new planet every single time, to theory about what’s truly behind this story, and to see who can go without dying the longest.

And to be right there, at the door of another reality, facing off against the warlords of time and metal, to be unable to defeat the impossible alone, and for my father to pick up the controller and managing to defeat it, both celebrating it was done, we had beaten this grand, seemingly never-ending adventure, that is something I think I’ll never find the words to properly describe.

Destiny, in its earliest of days and for a specific type of player, is everything that a true videogame should be; a chance to explore the unknown and discover what so many couldn’t, and do venture alongside friends, fight alongside friends, fight against friends, perhaps even meet new friends, those are tales that the people that grew up with Destiny aren’t shy of speaking about. The moments I played with friends were few and far between back then, but for me, Destiny was always the game for me and my father to play, a game that managed to be everything that we could have ever dreamt of and beyond, a true consistent experience that gave us so many memorable moments it was truly hard to just stop playing after we have done so much, after we had been through so many space voyages. Destiny was a place for fight, but it also was a place for peace, to seeing the limits of the small little worlds; it may have never been everything that it promised, but it certainly felt like it.

Destiny, as a game, may be nothing more than an unremarkable experience.

…but its memories are irreplaceable.

Form 2016 onwards, my father’s love for the medium started to fade, while mine kept on going and my interest went even further beyond, and I can’t say for sure I would have given a try to other games so relatively soon, such as the likes of Doom (2016), if it wasn’t for it. And even after he stopped playing altogether my father still kept a huge appreciation for videogames, and he was more than happy tho help me expand my horizons: teaching me the ropes of certain series and genres, giving a chance to some fighting games to play them along side me, or details such as gifting Maio Odyssey the day it released, one before my birthday. The things he taught me, even the ones related to gaming, are still ones I’ve never forgotten, and through each and every point during out Destiny playthrough, the laughs, the conversations, the pure joy in the act of sharing a moment to play a game together, those are ones I won’t forget. Ones I never want to forget.

Soon, it’ll be 2 years since he passed away. Even now, saying and writing that feels surreal, like a nightmare that shouldn’t even be happening. But it did. With each day that follows, it doesn’t get easier. For a while I thought it never could. Some memories were even locked, remembrances that my brain decided to hide as to not hurt me, as maybe an attempt to try and make it easier. The memories of Destiny were among them, for a while I couldn’t even recall anything about the game, it just all felt too close, too real, a place forever gone, and knowing what that implied would just break me apart. But now I do know that to do that is nothing short of foolish, it might not get easy, but with each passing moment, with each day, I accept it, little by little, and I grab onto those memories. Memories worth cherishing. Memories worth celebrating. Memories that I’ll keep alive for as long I’m able to. I never want to forget Destiny, not only because it feels as if I’d forget a part of him, but also because those memories warm me, they make me happy, and I’m glad to still have them within me.

Tomorrow is Christmas day. It also would have been his birthday.

He always said he didn’t like Christmas much because it was also a reminder of how old he was getting. And I just wish he could have gotten older, that he could have seen more….

It’s during these days that those memories, and among them… memories of playing Destiny together, memories of celebrating together.

I wish I had a more concrete answer for what I’m trying to express, a true finality, but no amount of words could truly define it, and I guess there’s never really one to begin with, for worse… but also for better. I’ll move forward and I already do, not only for him, but for myself, I’ll carry those memories within me forever, as I form new ones. To everyone that has experienced loss, hold on tight to those memories, remember them with joy, ‘cause they are worth, and as you do it, keep on going. Not only for them. But for yourself.

Memories worth shedding a tear for.

Memories worth smiling for.

Stay safe and strong, everyone.

Happy holidays!

…and happy birthday, Dad.

Proud backer of this on Kickstarter. Played through all 3 of the currently available routes (I think there are a couple more still in the works) and found the whole thing really engaging. The relationships run the gamut from sweet and wholesome to textbook emotional abuse and all make for interesting stories, the lofi soundtrack is great, and I loved the ways the game plays with its presentation and interface during certain key moments.

My only real gripe (other than the unfortunate number of typos) is the semi-blank slate player character. Partially it’s just personal preference; being prompted for my name and pronouns at the start of the game gave me real bad “I do not want to be perceived” feelings. But also, I feel like there are so many central details about the player character (friendships, sexuality, upbringing, choice of major) that are out of the player’s control—not to mention the story beats where the player is specifically denied agency—that it ends up kinda at odds with asking the player to define and take ownership of the character.

Is it better to be overambitious and fail than to be competent but safe? Is a story well told made bad by a poor conclusion? I think those two questions sort of give my opinion on Harmony: The Fall of Reverie away but there is a lot more to it.

I think there are broadly two schools of thought when it comes to branching in Visual Novels/AdventureGames/narrative focused games etc. As mentioned in a previous review, I will call 1 the "Jon Ingold" school wherein the branching is almost entirely opaque. Not to say you will necessarily be entirely ignorant of how your choices or actions will affect the story (even in Heaven's Vault there's a few "will you do X or Y?" moments) but you'll not be allowed to see the internal workings of how the story determines the way forward. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" as it were.

Chrono Trigger, Heaven's Vault, (I believe some Silent Hills follow this model as well but I have not played them so I cannot confirm) follow this model and its easy to see why. Its perhaps easy to lose all mistique and worry the player will try to engineer the story rather than experience it, making choices for what they think they want out of it rather than let the designer lead in reaction to their natural choices. On the other hand its no secret this can cause a lot of frustration, there's a reason why a lot of games come with Flowcharts and the like and in a way; gaming the system and engineering the story can be a lot of fun, like solving a puzzle in a way.

On the other hand the "Flowchart Method" used in a myriad games can also be a double edged sword, it can make the story less mysterious, the story's cohesion may be broken with blatant save scumming or become frustrating in a different direction wherein a player will not understand how to navigate said system instead of a designer changing the story on the fly in response to user input.

Similarly there is a subcategory I'm going to call the "Uchikoshi Method" which I guess technically should be the Yu-No method but whatever I shill for the man. This is a transparent method of branching wherein the act of using the flowchart to your advantage is not only allowed, but made diegetic and canon to the story. This has its own set of pitfalls and honestly I'm planning to write an absurdly long piece about VLR when I replay it soon so I'll leave it for then.

Now, why did I spend three paragraphs subdividing VNs here (by no greater authority than myself btw)? Well, in relation to my point about HTFOR's overambition, this game appears to combine all three methods described above into one. Yeah.

I can definitely see the motivation behind this. Harmony puts a lot of stock into its flowchart, every single mechanic is related to its navigation; for better and for worse. If nothing else, I admire the courage in making something whose writing and planning must have been a right pain in the ass and it somewhat works.

But before I get into that in depth I should lay the groundwork for the rest of the game. Harmony : The Fall of Reverie is set in Atina, a fictional city state in the mediterranean run by a sinister corporation, a sort of cross between Hong Kong, Valencia and Athens or something along those lines. Although everyone speaks like they're Bri'ish but never mind.

You play as Polly, who comes back after many years to her hometown after her mother's disappearance. Quickly, she discovers she has become Harmony : An Oracle for a parallel world named Reverie, composed of Aspirations which are personifications of Human's emotions: Bliss, Bond, Power etc. With this power she can see the future, which manifests as being able to see the ingame flowchart in universe. Together with these Aspirations, Harmony's choices lead the story forward of an unfolding intrigue involving the sinister corporation, her missing mother, love, freedom etc.

I really enjoy the aesthetic aspect of HTFOR, the expressive 2D art, the 3D and 2D environment art, the music and sound design, these are all great. The voice acting is decent too (Oh and I inmediately noticed when Nora spoke I was like "Hey that sounds a lot like Philosophy Tube and lo and behold Abigail Thorn shows up in the credits) and the writing is from a first playthrough at least, pretty good, nuanced and entertaining, a lot of focus is given to mythologies and stories, social injustice and the sacrifices made for change.

Im not well versed enough in greek myth to make much sense of it, Polly is actually short for Polyhimnia ; a muse. The communal center turned house where they all live is called the Naiads, which I believe were Greek nymphs? I quite liked the detail of Chaos' paint changing slightly within scenes, it was a nice touch. This ignorance is however why I enjoy this site, whichever blind spots I may have someone else will fill in and give their perspectives on the matter which I can read and get a broader view of the work.

There is also some pretty good LGBT representation, though one character only revealed they were (I want to say NB? Their profile said they had a legal pronoun change and they say they like short hair as it helps them not be mistaken for a woman but I swear Polly refers to them as her at one point but maybe I misread?) at a particular, missable node. There are however at least two other gay characters.

Now, about that branching. I do think it works for the most part, there is a surprising amount of complexity to the game which tries to marry a lot of things. Essentially, your choices are somewhat transparent in the sense that as the story is divided into acts and scenes, which are further subdivided into nodes, your actual visibility of how the story will unfold is limited firstly to the current act or subact, which helps to make things less overwhelming and secondly by the node visibility being tied to various conditions, which you may choose to unlock if a choice mentions which nodes will be revealed as a result. There is also the bond crystals, essentially certain actions favour certain aspirations and other require their cooperation, thus you need to weigh up who you're helping and how that affects the decisions near to you. Furthermore, each act ends with a decision requiring a certain amount of bond crystals from one or more aspirations and further still there is a global running tally of how many bond crystals you have acquired and favouring a certain aspiration in this factors into one of the final choices in the game!

That sounds like a lot, doesnt it? Thats cause it kind of is? But it also kind of isnt. For the most part the game straddles the line of choices being tough to make (though that may be the executive dysfunction talking) but not overwhelming, though I did feel at times that I was always making the worst decision. Now, in theory that can work (Disco Elysium comes to mind) but there is something about your choices in the various acts locking you out of choices in subsequent acts that always feels like a kick in the teeth. Its that thing that theyre trying to have their cake and eat it too, have engineerable short term choices (the individual nodes can be fucking tiny as well, like 2/3 lines of text at times, although it does make the pacing pretty tight, I clocked in 5 hours and it felt like 3) with opaque long term choices which force you out of certain paths. And again, in theory Im fine with that, but at points it just fucks me up.

Case in point : the ending, which I am going to talk in general, nonspecific terms, but some people are really sensitive about these sorts of things so feel free to leave now if youre bothered by this sort of thing : I do recommend the game despite it all and I honestly would welcome more perspectives about it.

The game definitely acknowledges the ridiculousness of the complicated flowchart and demands and needs of the various characters and aspirations which pull on Harmony from a thousand different directions but its still a bit much. And well, if you are planning on playing this game : go all in on at least 1 aspiration! Dont attempt to keep each in balance cause honestly the game seemed disappointed I went for that, which kinda blew but again I have only seen 1 playthrough so perhaps I am misreading it. This is sort of the issue in reviewing any game. I have "finished" it but I have nowhere near enough of a perspective to judge it holistically, but at the same time making oneself fully familiar with the systems of these games can be either extremely hard or ruin the enjoyment entirely, thus making the exercise moot.

Another thing is that there was a choice relating to the future of the city state and what would have been to me the most interesting option became locked because of choices I had made previously and which IMO makes no sense why.

Actual Spoilers Now :
I led a goddamned revolution against MK, couching myself upon the outrage of the populous against its corpo masters but because of some minor bullshit in how I handled the situation later, the option I had to choose was basically status quo liberal democracy : Cringe! I could have also chosen some bullshit thing related to the ancient cultures that created the aspirations in the first place but the way it was phrased it sounded like we would be ruled by a city full of those greek Statue profile pics from Twitter with names like "Retvrn to Ancient Virtue" and only talk about how women having any autonomy is how Rome fell or whatever nonsense.

So Im left with a sour aftertaste. For all its faults I think Harmony is interesting and honestly it kept my attention its entire runtime, so its just doubly tragic how it couldnt stick the landing. I would still recommend if you are interested in branching narratives and a mixed collection of mediterranean cultures.

Reggie Fils-Aimé famously said “if it’s not fun, why bother” during Nintendo’s E3 2017 showcase. For some, these have become words to die by. An easy phrase to parrot when the individual faces a system they can't come to terms with. Some see it as a harmless way of saying they don't enjoy what they're playing, but I have never appreciated its implications.

If your definition of “fun” equates to anything you like, this quote probably resonates with you. But I've rarely seen the word used that way, and instead, this obsession with fun’s necessity in games seems more damaging than anything.

“Fun” is fast, approachable, and easy to control. An immediate stoking of the attention span, constant engagement, or a light enjoyment lessened in friction. Some see Dark Souls as unfun due to its slow, heavy movement and methodical combat. Dark Souls 3 is “fun” because it's quicker and lighter; you can roll faster, further, and more often. Nothing is wrong with either approach, yet one is sometimes dismissed.

Not everyone defines the term this way, but I’ve seen it used to debase games with an unconventional design. Traditionally “unfun” foundations have a harder time finding their place in communities who won’t acknowledge its worth unless it’s immediately satisfying. I remember this phrase being used during Death Stranding. It was picked apart, labeled as “unfun” because it’s a package delivery walking simulator. Who wants to be a delivery man, right? Even “walking sim” has become dismissive, used to label things as lesser.

Regardless of Reggie’s intention in the full quote, which specifically emphasizes that games are also a journey, even inviting the player to “open their mind,” that snippet has shifted into a rallying cry for people to do anything but. If something must be “fun” to be worthwhile, and that definition of “fun” is remotely limited, it denies ideas that don't fit under a narrow bracket. It is a quote accompanied by frustrating ignorance.

Not everything needs to be fun. Other artforms aren't seen this way, so why are games different? Is it because they're interactive? Is interactivity meaningless without fun? Art is feeling, and there’s no single feeling a work has to evoke to be successful.

Playing Resident Evil reminded me of my stance on this.

It isn't fun. It's claustrophobic, stressful, and frustrating. No encounter, room, boss, or weapon is traditionally “fun.” It's an unforgiving, labyrinthian puzzle; a constant check of resources where memorizing rooms and locations is vital. Even saving the game is limited to a resource, one I often found myself without and had to make huge stretches of progress knowing one mistake could send me back an hour.

Bosses are a cold, calculated check of your mindfulness towards collecting and preserving as much ammo as possible. You enter a boss room, move only a little, and fire everything you have. They die and you move on. You wasted ammo, and that made progressing more difficult. No part of this balance between figuring out the path forward while wasting as few resources as possible was fun, alongside trying to figure out at what point the player should save.

Yet Resident Evil is enormously good and I’m enamored. I've reversed my tune on the Ink Ribbon system after years of avoiding it in other titles in the franchise. The fear that arises from knowing one mistake can ripple; your decision to not save means you're risking everything, or being too frugal by going nearly an hour without a save, brings rise to an unmatched tension.

Games don’t have to be fun to be worthwhile, successful, or good. Art is too complex, and limiting any medium in this way sucks. It’s not something to be afraid of, either. Fun absolutely rules, but I’m tired of people treating it as a necessity. I’m tired of being seen as lesser when expressing love for old, unconventional, or mechanically complex experiences. I’m tired of new things being inherently better because they’re faster, more fluid, and easier to control. No feeling is worthless and games can accomplish anything. Just keep an open mind, experience it, and vibe. Fun isn’t everything.

If you support that quote and think “that's not what fun is, it's just whether or not you like something,” then that's fine. We can disagree. But I’ve seen people use the requirement of “fun” to shit on non-traditional systems before. People shouldn’t be afraid to say something isn’t fun yet still love it. There's so much more to feel :)

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 was the first game in the Pirate Warriors series and the first Musou I played. Initially, I was somewhat excited about it as I had gotten into watching & reading the series a short while before the game was released and because it covered pretty much the whole story. A few months after it came out, I was able to purchase a copy. Even though I was somewhat hyped for the game, that wasn't enough because I would drop the game after getting to Arlong Park due to my inability to commit to finishing games and because I got bored of it rather quickly. Well, I completed the main log & the dream log and all I can say is that it is the best out of the Pirate Warriors series.

As I previously mentioned, the game covers just about everything up to Dressrosa. Unlike the first two, every location from every major arc is in this game each with slightly more detailed maps than the last entry. Since Dressrosa was incomplete at the time this game was released in Japan, Dressrosa has an original story. It's a good way of adding an original plot similar to what Pirate Warriors 2 did with its story and adding the location without having to wait for the manga & anime to finish the arc. Personally, I'd rather they go the full Pirate Warriors 2 route until the series ends, but them doing this every 3 arcs or so is serviceable.

In terms of gameplay, its just like the other games. If you've played any kind of Musou game, you know exactly what you're getting. The only differences are the new locations and characters.

The newcomers added are all welcome additions that were either NPCs in previous games such as Lucci & Moria or brand new characters like Fujitora, Sabo, and Doflamingo. They even threw in Shanks who was every bit as fun to use as I expected. From what I can tell there were no cuts from Pirate Warriors 2 so I can respect them for keeping every previous playable character in.

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 once again improves upon the first two Pirate Warriors games making it the definitive Musou adventure for Luffy & crew. One Piece & Musou fans won't want to miss this one.

The legacy of the title may be enough to where it will be remembered for many years to come, but the quality of Night Trap wasn’t even close to being on the same level to compare to said legacy. Sure, the game wasn’t terrible, but it was pretty much the poster-child of cheap FMV CD games for the early 90s, with not much else to show for itself other then providing a hilarious “movie” to watch alongside it, which is probably a smarter thing to do than actually trying to play the game. But nonetheless, the game was still successful enough for Digital Pictures, selling 400,000 copies by 1998, so logically, they went ahead and continued making these FMV games for quite a while until their defunct in 1996. One of their most noteworthy titles that would follow Night Trap would release just one year later, and would simply be known as Double Switch.

Unlike with Night Trap, I didn’t know much about Double Switch when I initially went into it, as it didn’t quite have the notorious reputation that Night Trap had. I had assumed that it was just gonna be yet another generic FMV game that would scream “90s” in every way possible, which would be fun and entertaining enough to at least watch rather than play. Nonetheless, I went into the game, and I found that it was mostly what I was expecting, but surprisingly, I actually found it to be better then Night Trap, not just in terms of its gameplay, but also in terms of the movie that was being presented here. Yes, it does still carry some problems with it, as well as the movie itself having enough of that 90s cheese that could turn off some viewers, it was enough to keep me entertained, and the gameplay was satisfying enough whenever you got everything figured out.

In terms of the movie portion of the game, the story is completely insane, with there being a central plot that you need to focus on, while also being occupied by plenty of other sub-plots that are about as ridiculous as you would expect, which makes the story way more entertaining to watch, even if you once again can’t pay attention to most of it when you play the game yourself, the characters this time around are very enjoyable, with there being many different types of them here rather then just focusing on one group of high-school girls for most of the time, and each of them have just the right amount of bad line delivery and hokey acting to make them a joy to watch, the acting is appropriately bad, but once again, it does make watching the product much more entertaining, so I wouldn’t have it any other way, and the way that the characters move around and talk are overexaggerated and stupid enough to where you will keeping wanting to see what people do rather than focusing on the main objective.

As for the game itself, the gameplay is very similar to that of Night Trap, where you take control of……. yourself, I guess, look through a series of cameras that are placed all around the hotel that Double Switch is based in, use the many different traps located around the building to thwart the plans of any thugs that enter the building, gather plenty of different codes, as well as the locations of more hidden traps throughout the building, so that you will be able to make progress through the game while finding out what it truly going on around here, and while you do all that, enjoy some of the goofiest 90s FMV that you will ever see in your entire life. It is all pretty standard for a Digital Pictures product like this, and for most of it, it really only uses the movie footage as a means to draw players in, which was already enough for me, but thankfully, in comparison to Night Trap, there are some improvements to the gameplay here.

First and foremost, unlike with Night Trap, the locations of the thugs you trapped aren’t scripted. Yes, there are obviously scripted events that you will need to pay close attention to, but in terms of the regular thugs that you need to trap to proceed through the game, they all appear in random locations at random times, which makes it so that you can’t just blunt force your way through it using a guide, already making this more preferable than Night Trap. In addition to this, this game is also a lot more forgiving. When it came to Night Trap, you had to do all of it in one shot, going all the way from the beginning to the end and accomplishing the tasks almost perfectly, which made it really suck whenever you fucked up just one task, and you had to start all over again. Thankfully, in this game, there are three separate levels, or “Acts”, that you go through, and whenever you fail in one of these acts, you only get sent back to the beginning of the act rather then the beginning of the game, which is much more preferable then what we had before.

However, as is natural with these kinds of Digital Pictures games, there are still several things that are holding it back. For one thing, while I did say this game was more forgiving then Night Trap with the acts, the regular difficulty of the game was ramped up to make up for this. The amount of things that you have to do specifically in such a short amount of time, while also making sure to trap plenty of thugs in the process, is absolutely insane, and if you just fuck up even one of these specific tasks, such as missing a part of the security codes, or not using a specific trap in a specific event, then you will have to start all over again. What doesn’t help this is that there are specific traps that are ridiculously timed, especially in the later acts, where there will be a trap that you can activate at multiple points, and if you don’t activate it at the point that the game wants, then you automatically lose. Needless to say, this is extremely frustrating, especially when you need to utilize a separate trap button for a lot of the traps that affect the main story.

Overall, despite still being ruthless in plenty of places and having a lack of innovation for this type of game, I would still say that Double Switch is still an entertaining game, not just in terms of the ridiculous FMV cutscenes that play throughout, but also because of the satisfaction that you get from getting all of these codes and activating all of these ridiculous traps at the right time. I guess I could recommend you playing it for those who were fans of Night Trap, but for those who actually want to keep their sanity intact, then I would recommend just looking up the Double Switch cinematics all slapped together on YouTube, because again, that is the most enjoyment that you can get out of this game. Also, I wanna point out real quick that Lyle the Handyman, one of the main characters in the game, is played by Lee Ermey, the same guy who played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, so that is pretty cool. I just wished they allowed him to talk in a similar fashion to how he talked in that movie.

Game #422

What I will NOT say about this game is any form of admonishment for its portrayal of an incestuous relationship. It is simultaneously true that depiction of this type should ideally be handled with care, but in the same token it is also true that incestuousness in Andy and Leyley is one decidedly portrayed as negative and not to be endorsed or repeated. To understand this is a fundamental component of media literacy.

What I WILL admonish this game for is its writing of Ashley. It is one thing to portray a female character as a controlling freak in a heterosexual relationship (which is already its own can of worms), but when you pair this with the emotional and frequently romantically charged whining of her diatribes in chapter 1, it comes off as nothing less than a stereotype of the 'crazy bitch' that is manipulative and erratic to no end while the angelic male of the situation is forced to comb through the abuse. It is a frankly disturbing portrayal of how codepency actually works and is extremely concerning to witness. The fact that she's supposed to be annoying only works to such an extent, especially considering that Andrew had been putting up with this almost 'psychosexual' behavior at the very least when they were both school-children. It's not just unrealistic that codependency necessarily happens like this, it's probably a harmful portrayal if viewed anywhere outside the lens of intentionally exaggerated sexual fantasy- Which is, from a random outsider's perspective, not entirely apparent.

Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on this flight?
Dad: nudging me that should've been you
Me: Not now dad
Dad: Not asking for a FMV point-and-click deckbuilder to help, are they?
Me: Dad, there's a medical emergency happening right now
Dad: Go and see if the "Little Baldwin" card helps

This is one of those games that I really do like and respect, but it doesn't cross over into my favorites for one reason or another. I don't share the common complaint about Metal Blade being busted (mostly because I've always saved Robot Master weapons for bosses the couple of times I've played), but I do think Boobeam Trap is a terribly-designed boss, simply for how easy it is to throw away an entire run by a single misuse of Crash Bomber. Maybe that long, silent corridor at the start of Wily Stage 5 gets tedious on retries, but you can at least get Bubble Lead back up to full there if needs-be; why couldn't that be in place for Boobeam? I also have been spoiled by the pre-Wily stages of later Megas Man. This is a big part of why I always used to call 3 my favorite to the series. 9's proved that I don't need that, but some sort of interstitial sequence helps make these games feel more complete, even if the only buffer between Robot Masters and Wily is a cutscene.

But 2's a classic for a reason. My aforementioned grievances aside, the game's one of those that's immaculately designed. After all the experimentation of the first game to find what approaches did and didn't work, 2 steps confidently forward and hits home run after home run. Quick Man. Crash Man. Air Man. Wood Man. Metal Man. Bubble Man. Heat Man. Wily 1. Moment after moment of great level design set to great music followed by great boss fights. Such a variety of level archetypes, showing that even though the developers had settled on a general gameplay style, they were still keen on experimenting with themes and challenges within that style.

(I guess Flash Man and Guts Dozer are okay, too.)

I understand this was made in a hellish 8 month dev cycle, compounded by the fact that this was the first Mega Man to incorporate submissions for the Robot Master designs. Things wouldn't entirely improve from there - Mega Man 7 had four months in the oven - but I'm at least glad all the hard work paid off, and they really stuck the landing with this one.