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Messages - Oronalex

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TalkBack / Afterlove EP (Switch) Review
« on: February 13, 2025, 06:05:40 AM »

Track After Track of Visual Novel Goodness

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/69957/afterlove-ep-switch-review

In March of 2022, the world lost the creator and writer of the visual novel series: Coffee Talk: Fahmi. Through him we were given dozens of stories about friendship and love through the lens of a prominent member of the Indonesian game developer community. Despite not being able to see Afterlove EP to completion, his presence and influence are felt throughout the entirety of its 4-6 hour voice acted story.

Afterlove EP is a story of loss amongst a friend group, how it’s fractured their relationship, and how they find their way back together. Rama is part of a three piece band called Sigmund Feud with his friends Adit and Tasya. Shortly after a gig, Rama’s long term girlfriend Cinta passes away from illness. This sends a shockwave through the band that causes Rama to become a recluse for a year. After finally coming out of his grieving sabbatical  he finds that the world is different, his friends are different, and he has to learn to finally accept what this new world means to him. This is especially confusing when Cinta still talks to him in his head.

At its core, Afterlove EP is a visual novel. You are given a calendar, and are open to interact with the world and your friends for two events per day, once during the day and once at night. This means that you can choose how you spend the days whether it's working at the local coffee shop, chatting with the local bookstore poetry host, or playing your latest demos with the record store clerk. Both of which seem to be flirting with you. There are only five small maps to explore but they feel lived in and are fantastic representations of Jakarta (with actual landmarks) and its culture. At the end of each week there’s a band practice where you play a version of Guitar Hero and have band meetings, and once a week you can choose to go to therapy.

Now I want to really emphasize the therapy aspect here. Very early on it becomes clear that Rama has not grieved for Cinta fully, and is recommended therapy by his friends. Historically, therapy hasn’t really been depicted in any kind of properly serious way in video games that I can remember, but here it's given the proper level of respect and care.  Rama has genuine ongoing discussions with his therapist that are thoughtful, and insightful. These sessions paint a picture of anyone grieving, but also the insecurities and hopelessness that the death of a loved one can cause. I found the therapy sessions to be some of the most authentic writing I’ve seen in a long time regarding mental health and mirror that of actual full fledged medical professionals. Capturing something so private and exposing these internal conflicts was an impressive feat.

Continuing that train of thought, I found the interactions between friends and Ramas fluctuating state of grief some of the most natural and inspiring conversational writing in video games period. Not everything is a deep or complex moment, but they always felt realistic to some of the conversations my friends and I have on a weekly basis. There are even hidden moments you can discover that recount special memories of Rama and Cinta’s relationship. These heartwarming moments are hidden around the maps and worth discovering to contextualize more of the connection between Rama and Cinta, which is all the more heartbreaking when you remember that you are reliving their moments out of grief.

I’ve been a long time fan of the Coffee Talk series and the development team at Pikselnesia but I think Afterlove EP may be the team at their peak. Fahmi handpicked this team to work on his vision and in his passing they have crafted something special. A love letter to Jakarta, but also deeper discussion processing your trauma through grieving that will leave you with tears in your eyes. I understand that visual novels are always a hard sell for most consumers but I cannot get over how much I loved Afterlove EP. The characterization and writing are top notch. I felt a genuine connection with the members of Sigmund Feud and the world of Afterlove EP. That’s what games like this and Coffee Talk are built on, connections. Whether it's just listening to your friends vent frustrations or finding common ground with someone new, there’s something special about what these games bring to the table. I for one recommend everyone pull up a stool and listen for a while. You may find a new best friend.


2
TalkBack / Hello Kitty Island Adventure (Switch) Review
« on: January 30, 2025, 06:12:25 AM »

Putting The Adventure Into Animal Crossing

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/69822/hello-kitty-island-adventure-switch-review

Taking us back to 2020, people flocked to the breakout Switch hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a life-sim island game where you gather resources to build houses as well as friendships. These new neighboring inhabitants became your best friends, and amidst the pandemic, that’s something that everyone sorely needed. Daily friendly interactions and endorphin-releasing tasks are some of the more poignant bullet points on the list of many that made Animal Crossing: New Horizons lightning in a bottle. Yet, it never really hit for me.

   Bringing us forward to 2024, I was given the opportunity to play Hello Kitty Island Adventure on the Nintendo Switch at Summer Game Fest, and I was quickly enraptured. Its use of the Hello Kitty IP to create such a warm and welcoming environment for players drew me in, but then it expanded further with a massive island map to explore. I was excited for the future, especially since it was already a hit on Apple Arcade, with a year's worth of content waiting to transfer over. The one thing that stuck out back then though, was the performance, which really left something to be desired. Inconsistent frame rate and hitching were just a few issues to name, but I can happily say that those worries are almost entirely solved.

   Starting off our adventure into the Hello Kitty world, we are given our own personal customizable avatar, then we are quickly dropped out of a plane into the aforementioned island. From here it’s a smattering of quests to find your friends, collect items, and unlock more and more sections of the sizable map. Finding and meeting the characters is a quick and easy process of exploration, but they come with such varied personalities that I always wanted to learn more from them. Badtz-Maru is a mischievous but also conspiracy-having cool guy on the island, always willing to trade comic books with you. Pochacco is a fitness enthusiast who wants to get you hyped on photography. They even have guest character Retsuko, the angry, metal music loving red panda from the Netflix series: Aggretsuko. Considering I’m someone who feels completely ambivalent towards the Hello Kitty franchise, this was all new to me.

   The characters are lovable, fun and all bring something new to the table. What really drew me in though was the exploration. The island is actually pretty big, with a lot of activities strewn about to keep me active. With Animal Crossing, I felt the fun was a little too passive for me, but here, I was always hunting for new items, quests, and characters, making new discoveries along the way. The world map is peppered with resources, upgrades, and a lot of activities that span foot races, mini puzzle dungeons, photo ops and even mine cart rides. Usually these kinds of games can overwhelm me, but this was that perfect sweet spot of content. My exploration usually led to a new dungeon or even an entirely new part of the map. It felt a little more engaging to me than what I had experienced previously in other similar games.

   Hello Kitty Island Adventure also continued to expand in unexpected ways for me. Every time I felt like I had explored most of the island, I’d discover the haunted island or interwoven underground mines, or even the under sea kingdom. The progression pacing is set in such a great way that you never really finish an area, before the next is unlocked, complete with (of course) more new characters, quests, challenges and crafting materials. It was honestly kind of surprising how much this hooked me in.

   Dipping deeper into the mechanics, generally speaking Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a scavenging game, finding all sorts of items littered on the ground in every nook and cranny. Climbing a volcano will most assuredly lead to a rarer crafting material, while strawberry boxes found all around the island can be gifted to certain friends. It’s a really satisfying loop of exploring for new materials to complete quests, craft or gift to friends to boost friendship levels to unlock new cosmetics or quests. Crafting is great for making new tools for exploration, or even crafting furniture to decorate homes similarly to Animal Crossing. Rarely did any material go to waste.

   The dungeons, on the other hand, are similar to Breath of the Wild. Bite sized mini puzzles that teach a new mechanic, awarding a special chest once completed, and an optional hidden chest for the more intrepid. They are inoffensive little one-offs that are breezy but forgettable. I actually found that there weren’t nearly enough of them, and wanted more from this part of the island's features.  Still, there’s a lot more to discover in the game with cooking, bug collecting, hat trading, egg photography and so much more. Each time a new mechanic was introduced, I was excited to re-explore the island with a new goal that recontextualized what I was seeing.

   That also speaks to the live service aspect of Hello Kitty Island Adventure itself. There are daily login bonuses, quests, and a steady stream of event updates that will introduce even more to the already bustling island. This can be seen on the original Apple Arcade release which has been going strong with updates since its original release in 2023. On top of the promise of lots of future content, it seems that developer Sunblink has also figured out the frame rate issues and muddy visuals that plagued the Summer Game Fest Switch demo. The game’s frame rate does a good job at staying steady for the most part. but there is still some choppiness in certain gameplay transitions. It’s not perfect but a giant improvement. The visuals are also crisp and look as good as Animal Crossing did on Switch.

      As someone new to the Hello Kitty franchise, I have fallen in love with Hello Kitty Island Adventure. It provides the charm of an Animal Crossing game, but focuses on the exploration, creating moments of adventure and fun across the way. Taking a mine cart ride through a volcano with your friends is a blast, and wandering through a haunted house with Kuromi the goth character is hilarious. The frame rate and visuals have seen a vast improvement from previous demos. While I do wish there were more of certain activities like the dungeons, I cannot wait to log back in to see what new adventures will await my next year of updates. Hell, I’m excited to log back in to do my dailies!  I always kind of understood the Animal Crossing series, but Hello Kitty Island Adventure is what I’ve always wanted them to be. At this rate, I better start shopping at the local Too Cool store for Badtz-Maru merch. That character just gets me.


3
TalkBack / Nine Sols (Switch) Review
« on: November 26, 2024, 06:39:33 AM »

Very much like Hollow Knight, Nine Sols is the unsung hero of 2024

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/69286/nine-sols-switch-review

I have been quoted in the past as claiming Hollow Knight to be my game of that particular console generation. To me, it’s quite literally the epitome of a near perfect video game. The phenomenal art work, perfectly orchestrated music, and high precision mechanics made for one of my all time favorite metroidvanias. It’s a game I try to revisit for at least a few hours yearly, just to be re-immersed in the world of Hollow Nest once again. While I anxiously await its long lost sequel Silk Song, I may have stumbled into something on almost equal footing to one of my favorite games of all time.

   Nine Sols is described as a mix of cyberpunk and Taoism to create a unique new style called Taopunk, and it’s something I never knew I needed. In the world of Nine Sols, we play as Yi, a cat life form known as a Solarian. His race of people came to the blue planet to use the Apemen for their own purposes. Yi is betrayed and is left for dead amongst the Apemen. It’s here that we start our Journey, awakening and being rehabilitated by the Apemen he grows a kinship with them. It’s from here that he decides to go against his people and take down the 9 Sols of the Solarian council, and find the true meaning behind his betrayal. Throughout the game you will unlock a central hub with a lovable cast of characters like Shuanshuan, a child of the Apeman tribe that has taken a liking to Yi as a role model. I was always excited to return to my hub after every boss battle, if only to see what new dialogue had been unlocked with my friends.

   The story is told visually through gorgeously hand drawn graphic novel scenes and animated cutscenes.  It’s from the very beginning that 9 Sols doesn’t hold anything back. Starting with Yi’s initial betrayal, we are presented with some pretty intense gore, which took me aback, but also prepared me for the intensity and brutality to come. Less so in the gore but at the level of action and story that was to come. I read over every single log entry and focused on every NPC conversation out of pure awe of the world they were building. I was enthralled. Learning the backstory of every member of the Sol council and their histories with Yi was such a wild ride. Though not without trepidation as some of its writing has a tendency to punch down. Specifically on one particularly heavy character that has a tendency to be mocked for his weight. Nine Sols should be better than that, and it more often than not is. It just kind of sucks when it’s not.  

   It’s here that I really want to dig into my favorite parts of what make 9 Sols so special. First of all, it has the picturesque refinement and allure of Hollow Knight, in the way that if you just stopped at any screen, you could frame that image as a painting. There were several moments throughout my playthrough of Nine Sols that I would screenshot for desktop backgrounds. It’s just that scenic. There are so many small details worth admiring, to the sway of Yi as he would float aimlessly through combat to a boss would eat eyeball looking fruit in the background of a particularly difficult encounter. I found myself re-watching my own footage or watching videos on the game just to see more details in the animation that I missed due to being hyper focused on the combat. This game is a living breathing world to admire that lovingly mixes its eastern Tao influences with a mechanical cybernetic aesthetic.

   Speaking of combat, it’s something that many have compared to the From Software Souls-Like game Sekiro. That comparison is an apt comparison in that it’s highly focused on the parrying aspect. In combat you utilize your dodge, and parry but parrying is really a deflection that builds energy for you to use your Foo Charms, that you attach to an enemy and explode for more damage, which the developers call a reverse deflection. So while it’s perfectly fine to dodge, the real mechanics lie in figuring out the perfect timing to deflect. If you aren’t perfect on your timing you still deflect but you take a little bit of a damage. That damage then can heal over time.

   What makes combat so fascinating is that there really isn’t any kind of benefit to hacking and slashing your way through it. Every enemy can do a sizable amount of damage to you, and you have a healing pipe that has only a certain number of charge uses, so really the only solution is to take every encounter slowly and methodically. Eventually you unlock shortcuts to avoid some of the normal enemy fodder but in the boss battles there’s really no other solution but to learn it. While you can level up and upgrade through the skill tree, or get use of parry attacks and arrow blasts, those don’t matter enough to brute face any encounter. You just have to die, and you WILL die plenty.  Luckily there are respawn points outside of every boss room, so there’s almost zero retracing of steps there, just banging your head against the game's difficulty.

As far as upgrades, there is a skill tree that enhances new abilities or adds additional abilities to others. There’s also a jade system where you can install new parts to Yi that can enhance his combat to add new features like stunning enemies when using his Foo charms, adding a level of customization to your play. It’s fun to experiment with different Jade builds, especially when it comes to the boss battles. The boss battles are an absolute stand out, with really unique mechanics. One early fight had me working against two different enemies. One strong and slow, one weak but quick. Once they were defeated, the main boss would resurrect them, leaving themselves open to attack. I was able to then figure out that by killing one, I could have the main boss on the field open to attack almost all the time by killing the enemies one at a time. It became a very focused dance of varying my attack targets and dodging the others. This example is a perfect snapshot of my experience with the bosses. Figuring out a plan through trial and error, then executing it. A boss encounter starts with flailing, but eventually my vision clears and I can see the path forward. Like a well fought chess match, Nine Sols is tough but fair.

   Outside of the art and combat, 9 Sols is an entertaining enough platformer with a sprawling interconnected map that enticed me enough to explore every nook and cranny. You’ll unlock wall running, stealth sections, jumps, double jumps, and grapples in your traversal kit. These always aided in finding new areas I had missed, usually rewarding me with currency or extra upgrades. You WILL have to backtrack though, because unfortunately Nine Sols really doesn’t have any kind of waypoint system. Initially, an NPC will tell you where to go for the first boss, but after that it’s up to you to explore in every direction, unlocking new traversal mechanics that allow for further exploration. Coming off of recently playing Ender Lillies, another similar Metroidvania without a waypoint system, I wasn’t really as irked by the amount of backtracking, but still it’s a quality of life addition that helps respect a players time and Nine Sols simply doesn’t have it.

   I’ve spent a lot of time recently re-discovering my love of the Metroidvania genre by digging into lesser known titles like Ender Lilliies or Pronty but Nine Sols sparked something inside me. It rekindled what was a smoldering ember to a roaring fire. The beautifully realized Taopunk world, and chess-like combat are a match made in heaven. The superbly orchestrated soundtrack matches the eastern mythology depicted throughout the game to a T. The performance on the Switch is also largely good, with some elongated load times or slow down when entering new areas, but those are mostly subdued enough to move past without much notice or corrected themselves quickly. Nine Sols as a  whole was such a delightful experience that it is quickly moving up my Game of the Year list as I take further reflection on my time with it. I, of course, would have preferred a waypoint system or some stronger writing with the handling of some character NPCs, but I’m finding myself largely still thinking about how much I enjoyed Nine Sols. Its overall score is firmly planted in  my brain, but where it stands in the larger Metroidvania hall of fame is yet to be seen. I think I need to take some time to meditate on it.


4
TalkBack / Crow Country (Switch) Review
« on: November 22, 2024, 09:54:12 AM »

Survival Horror Minus That Pesky Horror

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/69221/crow-country-switch-review

Crow Country is a new throwback survival horror game that challenges what people might really want from the genre. SFB Games has crafted a fascinating experiment here by toning down a lot of the horror elements, and streamlining the puzzle mechanics. What we get is a tighter gameplay experience that distills down the survival horror genre characteristics into their baseline elements. The game asks a hyper specific question up front: What is your favorite part of Survival Horror? Is it the graphics? The jump scares? The puzzles? Size of the map? What makes the Resident Evils and Silent Hills stand out over regular horror? I started Crow Country as a fun experience for Halloween but ended up with something deeper to ponder.

   Our journey begins with our protagonist, Mara Forest, arriving at the abandoned amusement park: Crow Country. Mara is searching for the founder Edward Crow who has mysteriously disappeared. Mara is armed with a handgun and her own cryptic motivations. She finds clues, solves puzzles and saves a cavalcade of other people also investigating the enigmatic nature of Crow Country and its founders. It’s a relatively straightforward plot with a few twists and turns but for the most part moves forward at a predictable pace. It checks enough boxes to be engaging, especially when it comes to the other cast of characters that appear but that is not exactly what stood out most for me.

   Attempting to rekindle that nostalgia feel, Crow Country’s visual style leans heavily into the Playstation 1 era with its graphics. Grainy filters and blocky featureless character models are used in conjunction with a Resident Evil inventory system to really hammer home those happy memories in the reward center of your brain. The camera is tilt shifted, but can be turned to display more of the environment. Each level felt like a Halloween themed diorama, with tiny little details to discover upon closer inspection. I personally spent way too much time within each map, combing over every single component, only to be rewarded with flavor text to make me laugh or further flesh out the world that I easily could have missed otherwise. Your in-game actions are expertly scored alongside a soundtrack with a deep level of dark atmosphere, dripping with suspense and intrigue. The music pushed me into a deep sense of unease and never let go.

It’s from there that I have to dig into exactly what stood out most to me about Crow Country: The Puzzles. I love the Resident Evil series, but specifically for the puzzles. The suspense and horror aspects are more of a deterrent with how heavily it gets towards the tail end of those games. Here in Crow Country, the focus is solely on exploration and puzzle solving. Find a door that needs a passphrase? You best believe that you will come across a staff memo that will have someone complain about exactly that and provide you the answer. Finding a computer terminal that needs credentials? Boy howdy is it satisfying to find the keycard an hour later in a safe, two buildings over. The map of the amusement park is also somewhat small, so getting stumped means going to other rooms and trying to see what’s missed. Backtracking isn’t really a chore on a map this size. Additionally, with the theme park aesthetic, there's a special charm to finding the mermaid trident to unlock the path forward.

   Pretty much instantly, the park does become flooded with varying types of monsters such as zombies, blobs and tree beasts, but most can be avoided by quickly running past. When that isn’t possible, the developers have provided a trusty hand gun, as well as other types of guns and weaponry found throughout the park. Yet, again, as if to say “let’s not make the game too scary” ammo and health packs are a dime a dozen, so enemies really are a non factor here. This is a welcome switch up for me because that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to find two different colored gems to try to fit into the eyes of a statue to open up the next  area of the map. Of course, if you want to take those monsters out, the gunplay very much follows the original Resident Evil where you hold the gun out, then aim slowly and methodically. This is probably the weakest part of Crow Country. Aiming is super imprecise, and has a really wild kind of sway to it, so running away past enemies was my preferred option.

   By lowering the fear factor, SFB Games has changed the focus of what the game presents and instead leans heavier into atmosphere, and puzzle solving. Fortunately, those are exactly my favorite parts for these types of games. Give me a big spooky house with lots of items to find and clues to solve and I’m in heaven. A haunted house escape room so to speak and Crow Country delivers perfectly on those fronts. It isn’t until later in the game that combat becomes a necessity and that’s where my enthusiasm wanes. The finicky aiming is frustrating enough to generally want to avoid it at all costs. Outside of that Crow Country is highly successful at what it delivers. A tight package of intriguing puzzle design and nail biting ambiance that is perfectly tuned in difficulty. There’s even a hint system in place to ensure you don’t get stuck too long on any single puzzle. I loved my time with Crow Country and it will definitely be making an appearance on my Game of the Year list.


5
TalkBack / The Plucky Squire (Switch) Review
« on: October 22, 2024, 09:07:34 AM »

A Mile Wide but an Inch Deep

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/68842/the-plucky-squire-switch-review

For a lot of games to be successful, they need to grab your attention from the jump. The Plucky Squire came hot onto the scene during a Nintendo Direct back in 2022, and I’ve been keeping an eye on its development ever since. From freshmen developers All Possible Futures and famed indie publisher Devolver Digital, the game delivers a fairy tale story book aesthetic with a mixed media reality-bending hook. It presents well and is a game that I have shown off to people, if mainly for that eye-catching visual hook, but is it just a flash in the pan one-trick pony? Or is it more than meets the eye?

The Plucky Squire follows the tail of Jot, the hero squire of a children's book series who always saves the day from the evil Humgrump. It’s a pretty idealistic scenario that generally ends the same way. That is until Humgrump figures out a way to banish Jot out of his own storybook. With the help of his friends and the magical wizard Moonbeard, Jot is able to jump in and out, while also interacting with the book itself to stop the villain before the kids that love the Plucky Squire books lose all interest. It’s a pretty straightforward story that has a few twists and turns along the way, but generally doesn’t stray too far from the standard hero villain quest. That makes it good but predictable. It’s pretty obvious from the jump what’s going to happen, and it doesn’t do much to surprise. So despite keeping a solid trajectory, it’s also less exciting, especially in the later dungeons.

The action of being exiled from the storybook is the main selling point of The Plucky Squire. Jot gets transformed from his classic hand illustrated paper hero to a fully 3D character that looks almost claymation in design. From here, you are free to move around the desk where the books are located, performing fun mini dungeons that, once completed, progress the story further. These dungeons are usually make-shift castles or forests made from paper crafts and other desk objects combined in an adorable way, and the puzzles have you turn from 3D to 2D and vice versa. You can also interact with your book to solve puzzles inside the pages. One example had me turning to previous pages to find an object I needed, while another had me lift the page only slightly to make a block that was blocking my path slide across the map. It’s a visually stunning mechanic that worked well when utilized.

The main crux of your exploration requires combat. At a very baseline level, combat is similar to the original Legend of Zelda. You have a sword and a roll, but that’s kind of it. During your exploration though, you will find collectable light bulbs that can be used to purchase new moves like a sword spin, sword throw or increased damage. These can also be used to purchase in game art as well. Although the new moves are rather unnecessary, it helped to break up the monotony that made up a lot of the combat. The enemy variation also helps but for the most part, it was boilerplate, which again isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Especially with the random smatterings of other types of mini games, it's nice to have an anchor point.

Speaking of the incidental assortment of mini games, Plucky Squire is full of them. Boss battles can be paired down versions of punch out, stealth sections, drumming rhythm games or an awful bow and arrow shooting gallery. These kind of show up half haphazardly and are gone just as fast with little to no depth to them. The get in, get out type games that show up with no warning and are easily forgotten afterwards. Additionally, there are word puzzles strewn about the world, like you will see the story book text that says “the giant stone boulder blocked the path” and you can remove the word “stone” and replace it with a word from another sentence to make it a clear or cheese boulder that you can easily move of the path. These happen more than the mini games but are still just as easily forgotten. On any given storybook page, you will see 3 sentences, with only one word to be swapped out in each sentence, so there’s a finite amount of words to swap. It’s a neat puzzle mechanic that is used in the most obvious of ways that it rarely registered as a challenge.

That’s the biggest complaint I can say about The Plucky Squire. It’s slight, it’s as thin as the pages you turn in the game. All game mechanics present are fun but barely there and easily forgotten. The punch out sections could have been fun if that was more of a focus and built more into that style of gameplay, but it's not. The word puzzle challenges could have worked so much better had it been expanded upon, but instead they are used so sparingly that it feels like a throw away. If that wasn’t enough, upon arrival in any puzzle area, the camera pans to all parts of the puzzle giving you all the pieces in play, and multiple hint systems in place throughout. It’s like the game gives you the simplest puzzles possible to not hinder your progress, and even then, it screams the solutions at every turn. It’s like the game doesn’t trust you to figure it out on your own. The Plucky Squire feels almost insultingly easy.

Developer All Possible Futures has done enough to prove they can really create something visually stunning while also weaving together a whimsical fairy tale story. On the other hand, it also feels like they had something to prove, with too many ideas, and instead of honing in on any one or two, decided to shove them all in at once. Even with all my complaints, it never took away from the fun that’s inherent within the simplistic gameplay and story. With all the mini games and mechanics being so slight, any grievances were short lived as I progressed further into the games 8 hour run time. The game really moves at a pretty brisk pace, with a slight drag at the finish line. Outside of that, I would definitely recommend The Plucky Squire, if anything for that visual 2D hand drawn art transition to 3D. It’s a neat trick and one I’ll remember for some time to come. This is a case for games as an artform, even if it’s technically shallow.


6
TalkBack / Gori: Cuddly Carnage (Switch) Review
« on: October 09, 2024, 07:45:23 AM »

Remember When Games Were Good? Gori Remembers

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/68764/gori-cuddly-carnage-switch-review

I’ve been eagerly anticipating Gori: Cuddly Carnage since its demo dropped on Steam back in 2020. Since then, the demo remained live but with little to no updates from Angry Demon Studios. Then in April, we finally got a release date and my excitement was once again rekindled. I mean, who’s not excited for an anthropomorphic cat dressed as Marty McFly wielding a vulgar trash talking Hoverboard and fighting murderous toy unicorns with knives for hands? But since my initial discovery in 2020, does Gori live up to the four-year hype I’ve made up in my head, or is it less than the B game of my expectations?

   To answer that question, we really need to discuss the idea of a B game.  B games as a concept originally came from the idea of games being AAA or indie, with an experimental middle section known as the B game. This was back around the PS3/Xbox 360/Gamecube era and there was more money to be spent on weird one-offs. Some of my favorite games are B games, like Psychonauts, Dante's Inferno, Psi-Ops and Driver San Francisco, to name a few. Now the middle ground market for B tier games has all but fallen out, and we rarely see the likes of such games anymore. Enter Gori: Cuddly Carnage.

The game's main premise is that Gori is a lost toy cat trying to make it back home to his professor owner, while also battling through waves and waves of killer unicorn toys (fittingly named murder-corns) led by a murderous jack-in-the-box. Then you have to complete a series of levels to build a special laser pointer to defeat your adversary. The levels are pretty linear in direction, but themed around varying toys like an arcade, doll house and carnival. They all have fun themes and are interesting enough to keep me moving forward, but they do suffer a bit in overall design. Thematically they are all pretty unique in their puzzle design but oftentimes it can be unclear where the next direction to go is. When they do include branching paths or more open space, backgrounds tend to blend together to the point of confusion. In one instance, I solved a puzzle in a room, but it was a dead end. The solution was to backtrack to a second room, complete that puzzle, and then completing both wings would initiate a chase sequence. I spent roughly ten minutes trying to figure out where to go in that first dead end room. It’s not the end of the world, but any time wasted feels bad.

   The gameplay can be best described as a character action hack-and-slash game. Our hero, Gori, is a lovable little kitty that stands on his hind legs, dresses like Marty from Back to the Future and has a dedicated “meow” button (which is bonus points in my book.) Despite having only meows, Gori does enough to be cute and comedic when paired with his infamous Back to the Future 2 hoverboard that talks in a Borderlands ClapTrap kind of way with a lot of bleeped out vulgarity and wise cracks. The hoverboard’s comedic chirps are funny in short bursts but wear thin real quick; luckily, a simple “meow” response from Gori would usually save the moment for me. There’s voice acting, sometimes to the game’s benefit or its detriment. The comedy is hit or miss, with more misses than hits for me. Your mileage may vary.

   The main action of Gori comes in two flavors: platforming and combat. Gori’s movement is solely based on F.R.A.N.K. the hoverboard, so they can glide, boost, jump, double jump, wallride billboards and grind rainbow rails. Since it’s a hoverboard, it’s all rather unwieldy. His movements are wild and unpredictable, and it’s easy to miss the landing or slide right off of them. Fortunately, it's a quick respawn, but the process can be a tad frustrating from time to time, especially during gauntlet sections where you are being chased by something or boss battles that require precise movements to do any kind of damage.

   Which brings us to the Cuddly Carnage’s combat, also completely via F.R.A.N.K. the handy dandy hoverboard with extendable blades (think the Blades of Chaos from God of War). There’s a basic hack and slash, but there’s also a heavy attack that breaks enemy’s shields. Gori also has his own shield that reflects enemy projectiles, which is helpful. Lastly, Gori has a bazooka that can fire projectiles against enemies with a time slowing effect to make sure you can accurately line up those shots. All moves can be enhanced by a boost meter that accrues  over time.

The combat is definitely the stronger suit of the two gameplay elements because every piece fits together seamlessly, and the game does a good job of mixing in the different types of enemies. Slashing up enemies, then moving to do glory kills for health and boost energy, then grinding a rail while shooting other enemies all flows in a real satisfying way. By keeping combos going, you’re rewarded with a grading system and upgrade currency, but really it’s getting into that flow state that drove it all home for me. Hitting a perfect combo while still getting more boost juice or health pickups was definitely the high I was looking for, though running out of said boost juice would cause the combat to come to a screeching halt.  That’s where I think I stand on the combat as a whole. It feels amazing when you hit that flow but really sucks once you’ve run out of boost and have to scramble to find a rail to grind or wall to ride to refill it. This can be mitigated through upgrades, but can feel bad early on.

The concept of the B game has largely been lost to time considering the risk to try something new at that budget point. Gori Cuddly Carnage feels exactly like those games did. It’s attempting to craft a unique IP with style and attitude, while experimenting within those older sensibilities–a throwback if you will. It still suffers from the problems that games like MediEvil suffer from: full of fun ideas with tons of personality but just not quite there when it comes to polishing and fine tuning. With Gori, the hoverboard platforming mechanics just aren’t as precise as they could be, frustratingly so, and that ends up being a lot of what you are doing in these levels. Especially with boss battles, the expectations of the game aren’t entirely clear and can leave you fumbling. Also this game takes a pretty steep hit in the graphics department due to the Switch’s lower power to handle Gori’s fur.  I stand by my hype for this game and love the fact that these games can still exist in this space. I pine for the days of the B game, and will support devs who continue to hold that torch, but I also am realistic in that there’s nostalgia definitely clouding my lenses here.


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TalkBack / Arranger (Switch) Review
« on: July 22, 2024, 09:25:00 AM »

A Mind Bending Arrangement of Ideas

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/67979/arranger-switch-review

I’ve never been able to solve a Rubik’s Cube. I mean, I can get one side, MAYBE two, but after that I’m completely lost. Arranger and Furniture & Mattress LLC., have done well to break down the core Rubik’s Cube mechanic into a fully fleshed out game. The tricky part with these kinds of puzzle games is trying to find the balance between approachability and difficulty. It attempts to find new and innovative ways to use the features of the game while still avoiding that frustration point, but does Arranger ultimately hit the mark or does it struggle with its puzzle-y nature?

   Arranger begins simply with a girl named Jemma, a young girl who was orphaned by their parents at a nearby town while being chased by someone or something. Growing up in the walled city, Jemma rarely felt like she belonged. You see, Jemma is not like everyone else; she has… powers to manipulate her surroundings. This is where I have to stop and really break down what makes Arranger so unique.

   The key conceit around its environmental interaction is that the world is a giant grid that Jemma is essentially the center of. Imagine a chess board, and Jemma is a chess piece, but instead of moving the piece itself you take the entire track and move it. So to move Jemma to the right, the entire row moves to the right, including people and objects in that row. The same goes if you want to move her in any cardinal direction, with no diagonals. If you are on the edge of a wall or end of the map, moving against the wall will make you come out the other side as if you were playing with a Rubik’s Cube. Once you see the mechanic in action, it just clicks.  

The puzzles of Arranger are based around moving Jemma, while also remembering that her movement affects large swaths of the world. Sometimes you will be tasked with taking a sword and moving it up to an enemy to attack it, or other times you will have to move three objects across a map to combine them. The real puzzle is moving said items within limitations, such as gaps in the map, impassable blocks or moving them in the right order while also moving Jemma along. One specific puzzle had me moving pieces of a satellite dish across an island town full of bridges. The narrow passages made for tricky navigation but you were also given a small raft that could provide another space to move to when needed.

These moments are where Arranger shines. The puzzles present these challenge scenarios that have the goals pretty clearly laid out for you, and the solutions are rarely out of reach. The difficulty level is tuned in just such a way to avoid frustration. I would stare at a puzzle, working the rows and columns, inching towards the inevitable solution, then A-HA! Like a lightbulb, everything would click. It’s a balancing act, and Arranger achieves that balance of building in opportunities for those light-bulb moments. The game confuses you, teases you, pushes you, but doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle, and I love that. Being someone who easily gets frustrated at puzzle games, Arranger made me feel competent, but for those that it doesn’t necessarily mesh with, there’s an accessibility option to “skip puzzles” to continue the story.

Speaking of story, Jemma’s quest is one of adventure, excitement, and helping people within her world, but it’s done with a lot of levity and humor. Since Jemma has this power to shift the world around, everyone around her sees it and reacts accordingly. No one is safe from the Jemma sliding trick. Story characters will be shifted around in all manner of ways, and they will let you know exactly how they feel about it. Also, characters will often comment on the absurdity of the events unfolding. One key example is a scientist helping you disable their mechanical birds because “what was I thinking” and constantly heckling their past self. The only major complaint here is that Arranger is relatively short, to the point that I was pretty surprised when I noticed the ending approaching, when in all actuality I felt like I had just gotten my adventure started. I wasn’t ready for the game to be done, and I felt like the puzzle mechanics had more room to grow. There’s something to be said for not overstaying your welcome, but there was still meat on this bone.

Outside of that major complaint, everything else proves to be a master class in being an indie darling. The game features beautifully crafted cartoonish artwork from David Hellman (who previously did the art for Braid) and a wonderfully whimsical soundtrack by Tomas Batista of ETHEREAL and Per Aspera fame (who promised me we would be able to stream it upon game release.) I really enjoyed my time with Arranger*** It made me feel both dumb and smart within minutes of each other while also providing me with an enjoyable new cozy game to dig into. The game never reaches extreme highs, but it remains consistent without a lull. To its detriment, however, I really could’ve used another hour or two of content here. The story wrapping up felt jarring, rushing to an ending that I wasn’t ready for. It really says something when I’m upset that I had to leave a game world, but here we are. Arranger threads an excellent balance of difficulty and accessibility while showing a lot of heart. If only a Rubik’s Cube could do the same.

*** I experienced an impassable bugged puzzle in my playthrough near the end that halted my progress but it was made clear I was near the end. This has since been fixed and I really enjoyed the final puzzles that lead to the games conclusion. Taking a long range view of Arranger, I feel like it's a clever puzzle mechanic that is used in enough permutations that it continued to feel fresh throughout. It's a masterclass of measuring its difficulty to remain approachable and understandable. Even in the games final moments, I would instantly get confused about what they would ask of me, and slowly work my way to a satisfying solution with a little bit of time. I can honestly say, this may be one of the best puzzle games of the year, if not the last couple. The difficulty never felt insurmountable while maintaining its story intrigue. Looking deeper into the mechanics, I was in awe at the clever nature each solution took. At the end of the day, Arranger is a complete package of puzzle, story, heart, art and music. If only it stood out more from a mainstream aspect, but the least I could do is yell it from the rooftops here: Play Arranger!


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TalkBack / Metal Mind (Switch) Review
« on: July 03, 2024, 11:08:24 AM »

Indie Rogue-like provides plenty of customization but little else

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/67741/metal-mind-switch-review

Metal Mind is a top-down bullet hell roguelike that wears its inspirations on its sleeve, while also adding a new spin to a now well worn genre. Developer Whirllaxy Limited have made use of a wonderful pixel art style to craft a unique mech cyberpunk shooter, but how does it fare within an already jam packed roguelike category of games? The answer isn’t a decisive one; despite its interesting additions, Metal Mind also suffers from problematic port handling. Let’s dig into it further.

   Metal Mind’s premise is that you are a small robot going from room to room, killing enemies before moving to the next room. The floors are split into interconnected rooms with a boss at the end. Once you’ve beaten the boss, you move on to the next floor. The bosses are the most interesting parts of the gameplay, producing bullet hell blasts and big sweeping movements. They vary from leaping robotic gorillas to giant floating robot brains and spinning tops that shoot grenades.

While these are the more unique encounters, on a room by room basis, you get pretty repetitive enemy fodder. The enemies do have some variation, but you see a lot of repeats very quickly. The rooms themselves do provide some interesting terrain, though, with conveyor belts, regenerating bombs and traps that can hurt everyone universally. These add a good wrinkle considering the enemy encounters remain rote and uninspired. Occasionally, the room goal shifts away from killing every enemy to kill more before an AI rival robot does, or stop an enemy from stealing all the treasure chests, but these tasks are few and far between. There needed to be a bit more done with these alternative room goals.

Through your exploration and defeating enemies you will unlock upgrades and gear to swap into your robot. You will also find shops to purchase these as well. Things like secondary weapons, dash boosts, turrets, homing weaponry, and equipment are all on the table here. Equipment can be slotted into your head, torso, and legs, which allow for shorter cooldowns, quicker movements, and all sorts of adjustments. What I liked best about these is how they changed the look of your robot as well as how much fun it was to mix and match to try a new build. There are also skill trees that allow you to unlock perks, but oftentimes I found that the perks I actually wanted would be halfway into a tree, so they didn’t feel as beneficial as I would’ve liked.

Despite the many ways you can adjust your style with Metal Mind, I often found the minute-to-minute gameplay frustrating. The UI elements often made it confusing to equip or unequip gear, or make a selection on the skill tree. Specifically due to the controls, the button mappings weren’t as one-to-one as I would prefer, and I found myself often fighting against them. Even down to the selections on the menu, sometimes they were D-pad only, while others were solely on the joysticks. It was confusing and often led to me removing items or selections accidently.

The UI issues withstanding, Metal Mind is still a competent roguelike that provides simple, fun shooting, but that’s kind of it. The action doesn’t vary enough to keep players engaged, there’s almost no story to speak of, and since you can’t replenish your health (only your armor), you can see a run being doomed based on one bad room. I found myself actively discouraged to continue on and push for a boss and instead restarting the run entirely. That’s not a good feeling. In a space where there’s games like Hades or even classics like Enter the Gungeon, I can only recommend Metal Mind as a budget intro for people who want to poke at the genre and not dive in head first. Metal Mind might be better for players new to the genre, but the roguelike enthusiasts will likely need to find their fun elsewhere.


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TalkBack / Summer Game Fest Preview: Hyper Light Breaker
« on: June 26, 2024, 07:47:05 AM »

Hyper Light Breaker takes the series in a new rogue like multiplayer direction

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/67670/summer-game-fest-preview-hyper-light-breaker

Hyper Light Breaker was being demoed at Summer Game Fest, and I was given the opportunity to play it. I was a giant fan of Hyper Light Drifter and had some experience with Solar Ash, so I was excited for the opportunity to jump into their Early Access prequel. The change in style, progression, and general direction was quite a pleasant surprise after some hands-on time with it.

Starting from the beginning, Hyper Light Drifter was a blend of old school NES Zelda with some soulslike elements and a deep and mysterious lore that was as hard to decipher as the in-universe language. It established a cult following that was excitedly followed up by its 3D explorative follow-up, Solar Ash. Now with Hyper Light Breaker, a prequel to Drifter, they are taking bits and pieces of other games to create a unique boss rush multiplayer experience.

The game begins with picking varying classes that come with specialty weapons and modifications. Then the game opens up to a big map with lots to explore including loot caches, challenge towers and mini bosses. Tackling the mini bosses will unlock keys to the map boss. You have three lives to grind out gear and mods, level up, and take out the mini-bosses.

These three lives are all you have to complete a map, and once those lives are done, the map completely resets and so does your character. You can always return back to the hub to spend your currency on permanent upgrades, but for the most part it’s all about that grind. Breaker also has a drop in-drop out multiplayer that will allow you and your friends to work together towards completing the maps and eventually get to the final boss. It just has to be within those three lives.

Movement is impressively fluid, with a light attack, strong attack, and then abilities on cooldown. There’s also a hoverboard for quick movement across the map. Once I was in game, the movement and combat really clicked. I was able to mark the map and explore different points of interest for loot and enemies. I can imagine how chaotic this game could get when you have a full squad, especially since there’s a chaos timer that will up the difficulty the longer you stay on a map (similar to Risk of Rain). That’s exactly the feeling Hyper Light Breaker gave me once all was said and done: a more complex version of Risk of Rain, but with the brilliantly colorful world that only the devs at Heart Machine can provide.

Hyper Light Breaker will be coming to Steam Early Access first in 2024, but it’s unknown where it will land as far as consoles go in the future. Heart Machine does have a history of putting their games on Nintendo Switch with both Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash appearing on the console, so only time will tell.


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TalkBack / Summer Game Fest Preview: Hello Kitty Island Adventure
« on: June 19, 2024, 07:38:58 AM »

Hello Kitty Island Adventure leaves Apple Arcade for the Nintendo Switch

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/66928/summer-game-fest-preview-hello-kitty-island-adventure

Hello Kitty Island Adventure was announced as a timed console exclusive for the Nintendo Switch in today’s Direct. It was previously released on Apple Arcade but it is now coming to modern consoles complete with all its previous content updates.

I was given a hands on demo of the game running on the Switch during Summer Game Fest, and while not optimized yet (with a considerable amount of hitching) it was clear that there was an extreme amount of content present in this game: specifically over 80 hours of linear content, dungeon exploration, customization and quests. I specifically gave my character giant void eyes that looked horrifying, paired with a fancy hat. The combinations all work well within the universe for whatever aesthetic you want.

Exploring the island reveals the plethora of Hello Kitty characters involved, each with their own personalities and preferences. I instantly fell in love with the characters and was excited for all the quests that came with them, which were usually fetch quests. Get five mannequins for the fashionista penguin, or get 3 umbrellas for the paranoid conspiracy theorist cat, it’s all got a real strong charm to it.

   The island is bustling with new things to complete and areas to explore. There are underwater mermaid comedy clubs or hidden Mayan temples. It’s all here and ready to explore. After my thirty minute preview, I was practically ready to install Apple Arcade to dig further into what was waiting for me at Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Luckily, it will be coming to the Nintendo Switch in 2025, so there’s not long to wait for this hot new Animal Crossing style cozy adventure!


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TalkBack / Summer Game Fest Preview: Tales of the Shire
« on: June 19, 2024, 07:38:40 AM »

A Lovingly Crafted Tolkien Cozy Game Shows Promise

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/67534/summer-game-fest-preview-tales-of-the-shire

The newest cozy game out of the Nintendo Direct today was Tales of the Shire coming to all platforms via Private Division, with Lab 42 doing the port for Netflix Mobile Games. A farming life sim based in the Lord of the Rings universe, it is set to release in Holiday 2024 and had a trailer in today’s Nintendo Direct.

I had hands-on time with Tales of the Shire at Summer Game Fest and was impressed in their attention to detail within the lore, but that’s by design as the story and dialogue was written by a Tolkien professor in conjunction with the Middle Earth Estate. Even further than just lore and dialogue, Hobbit names, and architecture all remain consistent with the Lord of the Rings fiction, so the dev team is striving for authenticity.

Despite being attached to such a prolific series, this game stands on its own as it’s a side story divorced from any of the action of the main series. In step with this idea, there is zero combat to speak of but has its main focus on relationship building through cooking, crafting and decorating your home. Foraging for ingredients and performing quests for new recipes are the main drive but as you progress, you will be tasked with varying recipes with more seasonings or ingredients to tailor a meal to a specific person's tastes.

While the cooking mini games help you get nuanced with your recipes, there’s also gardening, fishing and foraging to gather the ingredients needed. Think Stardew Valley, but for Hobbits. They also up the customization game here by allowing for high levels of adjustments from colors and wallpaper, to door and archway architecture. The customizer also allows you to get as detailed as your imagination can get. Want to add books one by one to your bookshelf? Sure! Or want to move the entire bookshelf with everything on it? Go for it. You can get as modular as you want.

There’s a big emphasis on cozy games as of late but the devs of Tales of the Shires have done their homework. They have put in a ton of love and care into it, as well as kept it thematically accurate for the hardcore fans. One thing is for sure, if it’s got a dedicated button for skipping down the road like Tales of the Shire does, I’m all in.


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A puzzlingly beautiful RPG has a lot of promise

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/66923/summer-game-fest-preview-arranger-a-role-puzzling-adventure

I had the opportunity to play Arranger: A “Role Puzzling” RPG at Summer Game Fest and the debut game of Furniture and Mattress LLC. You play as Jemma, a quirky young orphan who goes on a quest to learn about her mysterious past, and how she has a powerfully different way of interacting with the world. I only got to play the first 30 minutes but I was left hooked by its whimsical soundtrack and perfect a-ha moment inducing puzzles.

   The game itself is hard to describe as when it comes to Jemma, the entire world is a sliding puzzle. The world is isometric but instead of moving along the tiles, Jemma stands still and the strip of tiles she's on is what moves. Think of it like this: every path is a strip on a Rubik’s cube. Once she gets to the edge of the land she's on, much like a Rubik’s cube, she will come around to the other side, and while the rest of the world behaves like normal, this is the chaos that surrounds Jemma.

The sliding ground effect is used for a good amount of clever writing as well as puzzle design. Characters are constantly referencing how everything falls apart around Jemma, including characters on ladders who fall to the ground because paths move around when she’s nearby. As far as puzzle design, the demo showcased the charm and chemistry of the environment and characters, but also the thought provoking puzzle design that had me scratching my head at moments, but then figuring it out right at the cusp of frustration.

Arranger really excelled at finding that perfect balance, to make you feel real dumb but follow it up with a feeling of being the smartest person ever. In one of the simpler puzzles, you are in a room where there’s a wall and locked door in the center, and you solve it by going to the edge of the room, and off the map, making you come back on the other side of the locked door. It’s a wild concept but once you’ve wrapped your head around it, the whole world of puzzles opens up to you. I was drawn in and couldn’t wait to see what was next. I wanted to see how it all worked, and the different ways they would use this mechanic.

Another key take away from Arranger was the fantastic art, from the same artist behind Braid, and the fantastic music scores that accompanied the world you explored. I found myself tapping along to the tunes as I progressed, and I was so excited that I inquired if the soundtrack would hit Spotify, and it absolutely will. It also had a special mode that if you were struggling on a puzzle, there was an accessibility option to skip forward, so you can still experience the story. The demo ended as you entered the outside world, but boy was I ready for more. Arranger is one I’ll be keeping an eye out for come July.


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TalkBack / Hauntii (Switch) Review
« on: June 14, 2024, 02:11:34 PM »

A Hauntingly Good Time

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/67411/hauntii-switch-review

I had the opportunity to play Hauntii last year at Summer Game Fest. Pitched as an adventure game set in Limbo, Hauntii sees you playing as a ghost who explores the afterlife, which was a big selling point to me. So when the opportunity to review Hauntii came up, I jumped at it, and let me tell you, it was not what I was expecting.

   What drew me in was the setup and atmosphere: the story of a dark ghost first entering a spooky ethereal world of the afterlife. Eventually you meet your perfect match in a white ghost, and together you work towards recreating your memories from your life in the land of the living. While exploring, there are hints and whispers of an elder civilization on which the afterlife was built, but these are only vague allusions to what could be, and unfortunately they aren’t paid off. Hauntii isn’t as focused on the narrative as it is on the playground it presents.

There are two ways to interact with the world: shoot your essence in a twin-stick shooter fashion, or haunt something to obtain a new ability or two per haunted object/creature. There is a finite amount of essence gauge, but later on there are upgrades that allow that to be nearly infinite. The haunting ability, though, makes for some interesting maneuvers. Sometimes you turn into an enemy that can body slam, leaving a fiery area of effect; other times you’re a bug that can jump from tree to tree. It readily varied up the gameplay, and had me constantly looking for the next thing I could control, to see what new powers were available to me.

   What made Hauntii so unexpected is its format and delivery. The moment to moment gameplay is more akin to Super Mario Odyssey than anything else: a world built around smaller maps, each one with hidden stars strewn throughout for you to find and collect. Some are hidden on the outskirts of the map, or through possessing different creatures, while others are rewards for hidden challenges. There are races that will have you jump through rings as a bug, or some that will require you to haunt a turret enemy and defeat all the enemies in a combat arena. There are stars essentially everywhere, to the point that I would sometimes venture to the far reaches of the map, to be rewarded with a hidden, far-off star.

   The stars are actually used as an upgrade currency, where you will put them into constellations. Once a constellation is completed, you can upgrade the amount of essence you shoot, your number of hearts, or how often you can dash. These upgrades are helpful but generally the gameplay remains the same. What really makes the stars interesting is in how creative the team at Moonloop Games gets with situating them. I was always super excited to just see a shimmering star off into the distance, only to spend the next ten minutes deciphering how I was supposed to get it.

   These little victories are what pulled me through because overall the story takes a steep backseat to anything else going on, and is hard checkpointed by star count. When progressing through the small-sized maps that interconnect the world, I would be having a great time until the story would gate me off, leaving me to backtrack to hunt for more stars. Luckily, the atmosphere and hauntingly (pun intended) beautiful orchestrated soundtrack are incredibly well done. I was chilled to the end by every flute solo and piano arrangement. I would absolutely go to see this soundtrack performed live based on its sheer elegance.

   Hauntii does a fantastic job of providing a smaller scope adventure across an enigmatic underworld. Collecting stars and haunting varying enemies gave a sense of discovery around every turn. It’s beautiful in its delivery and make-up, but that’s what also holds Hauntii back: its restricted scope. It doesn’t dream big enough for what could have been. The gameplay, while fun and engaging, is super limited. Haunting and shooting aren’t enough to keep you hooked. When reflecting on my time with Hauntii, I think about the music and the art, and less so on how it played. Hauntii is a breathtaking experience, but it just doesn’t do enough with it. This game makes a compelling case for videogames as art, but it stops short when it comes to the actual mechanics.


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TalkBack / Summer Game Fest Preview: Sky of Tides
« on: June 12, 2024, 10:12:28 AM »

A multimedia presentation for fans of Disco Elysium

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/67405/summer-game-fest-preview-sky-of-tides

Sky of Tides, developed by Lofty Sky Entertainment, was being shown at Summer Game Fest. A beautiful mix of interactive animation and Disco Elysium-styled narrative adventure, it’s looking to be an incoming sleeper for 2025–fully voice acted with a presentation that is set to wow.

   Initially, the game poses as an unassuming story-focused adventure, boasting an Isometric view with crisp, clean animations. Under the surface, however, is a full multimedia experience that can inspire future generations of gamers to come. The team at Lofty Sky are mostly female, and aspire to create characters that would’ve inspired themselves as children. The main character Rin follows that template, as she is slowly trying to find a balance amongst her people as a leader, and bringing the shattered world back together before war breaks out.

   The developers have called the game an “anti-RPG” in that most narrative RPGs create dialogue choices that explore multiple personality types and outcomes. Sky of Tides, on the other hand, strives for something different. You can still play on those archetypes, but the goal here is to maintain a balance between the five different personality traits in order to create harmony amongst your people. It’s an interesting concept that may polarize the audience but it’s definitely a change of pace for the genre.

   One thing that was presented to me was how the experience of Sky of Tides features a variety of multimedia forms. Once you’ve completed its fully voice acted campaign and received the main ending out of the 32 possible, you are treated to a five-episode cartoon series. This series delves further into the narrative of the story, but from a different point of view, giving more context for Rin’s actions and behavior. This video series contains up to 45 minutes of content and adds an additional layer to the game as a whole. The devs were mum on whether this content will be released somewhere else at a later date but it’s a premise that had me excited to jump into the world of Numen. Keep this one on your radar, especially if you love game mechanics akin to Disco Elysium.


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TalkBack / Summer Game Fest Preview: Fear the Spotlight
« on: June 12, 2024, 10:02:00 AM »

First of the Blumhouse games re-releases to scary excitement

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/67393/summer-game-fest-preview-fear-the-spotlight

Fear the Spotlight is the first of the announced Blumhouse slate of indie horror games that were announced at Summer Game Fest. Developed by the married partners dev team of Cozy Game Pals and originally released on Steam, Fear the Spotlight has actually experienced quite a Cinderella story in the way that Blumhouse discovered them.

   Fear the Spotlight is part of a new wave of indie horror that uses retro styled graphics to build atmosphere and suspense. The idea is that where the graphics may lack, your mind fills in the blanks. With this hands on demo, I got to play as the main character Amy, a bookworm who befriends the local goth kid in class Vivian and together they break into the school after hours to perform a seance, which of course goes horribly wrong. Post seance, you are left roaming the school as apparitions haunt you just out of sight, with some really cool visual effects. The Summer Game Fest demo closes on an escape sequence, but I was left intrigued.

The gameplay will revolve around survival horror elements with puzzle sequences. I was also assured that the game will still also have a cozy vibe with no combat to speak of despite being reminiscent of the original Resident Evil. Especially in its menus that allow you to rotate and analyze every item for clues. One of the unique twists the game takes is, instead of the health EKG pips from Resident Evil, now it’s Amy’s lung color, as she has asthma and needs inhalers to heal. It’s a charming bit of flavor that the Cozy Game Pals bring to the table.

Speaking to the developers, they were able to give me more insight into the game’s development, including how the game was originally released on Steam, but then Blumhouse approached them about improving the game with time and money. It was here that the couple made the decision to pull the game from Steam, and improve on it, adding in bonus content, and setting a new re-release date of July 25th. The game will also be on all platforms including mobile, with ports done by the 22nd Century Toys team who worked on Untitled Goose Game and Pikuniku.


16
TalkBack / Summer Game Fest Preview: Critter Cafe
« on: June 11, 2024, 08:15:39 AM »

All the fun of a cat cafe without having to pick fur out of your latte.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/67390/summer-game-fest-preview-critter-cafe

Straight out of a game jam and the mind of indie dev Eleanor Gregory from Sumo Digital is Critter Cafe. Deeply rooted in the cozy game zeitgeist, as well as the Cat Cafe crazy, Critter Cafe has you saving mythical creatures and housing them in your cafe sanctuary. It feels like a fever dream of mashup ideas but creates a surprisingly satisfying loop of management sim and exploration, all in a warm blanket of cuteness.

   Building and managing your cafe is just the beginning. Decorating, color matching and designing a cafe all your own is the name of the game, and there’s a deep level of customization. Once you have the cafe to your liking, it’s time to explore the world in search of critters that need your help. These creatures are stranded in other dimensions, calling out to you from hidden portals found on the world map.

   It’s in these portals where you are given environment puzzles that teach you movement mechanics organically by building upon yourself. One example has you pushing blocks to unblock paths, but later on you are using those blocks to create elevated pathways. They build upon themselves over time to create a natural learning curve, and considering there is no combat, these are nice little bite sized treats.

   There’s also a business management mechanic where you open your cafe to serve customers via mini games. On top of that, you pick the creature who accompanies you during the business day, to help grow your bonds and get new perks. There are also side quests that help you plan private parties based on aesthetic, color matching and a creature to go along with their private party. NPCs will also point the player towards new creatures in need of help throughout the story. The game mechanics go on and on, but never in an overwhelming way. Critter Cafe looks to be a new cozy game sleeper that people should check out. Especially considering we all want to save these adorable critters.


17
TalkBack / OTXO (Switch) Review
« on: May 01, 2024, 12:12:47 PM »

A Hotline Miami roguelike for players much better than I

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/67053/otxo-switch-review

Super Rare Games is a developer with a fabled collection of games in its catalog. They generally tend to take well worn ideas from big name games and lean into the mechanics further. This can be seen in Super Mecha Ball, which is heavily inspired by Sonic 3D Blast, and Post Void, a gritty roguelike Doom style game. OTXO (pronounced Oh-Cho) is a new indie roguelike that wears its Hotline Miami inspiration so blatantly on its sleeve that it could be confused for a new entry into the series. It’s fast paced, gritty and unforgiving but these are OTXO’s main selling points.

The game opens up as you are given a mysterious mask that instantly gives amnesia (weird right?) and transports you to a beach in front of a giant mansion. It’s here that we discover that our family has been kidnapped, and our task is to save them by fighting wave after wave of enemies and bosses to save them. There are many employees of the cryptic mansion

For the uninitiated, OTXO is a top down, run and gun shooter. Aiming is 360 around your body with the left stick, and you can throw and pick up new guns on the fly. You kick in doors to rooms and just start blasting away, clearing out rooms and building a combo counter. As easily as you are to dispatch your enemies, they can dispatch you. To offset the action, you can hit a slo-mo bullet time mode that lets you take your time and use precision. This is an auto refilling gauge, so once it’s used, you’ll have to give it time to recharge.

   At the start of each run you can talk to NPC’s to purchase new guns, adjust the guns that will appear in the run, and liquor which gives you a run wide buff. There are also collectibles, artifacts and new liquors after your first few levels, so there’s a lot of ways to update and adjust future runs in your favor. The currency comes from the enemies you kill, and the higher the combo, the more money you get.  You are incentivized to keep your combo going, especially since money doesn’t carry over from run to run.  It’s extra important to get as much as possible for future upgrades.

Let’s get this out of the way early, I am NOT good at this game. There, I said it. Aiming on the sticks is an issue I personally have with twin stick shooter style games. On top of that, the unforgiving nature of this game makes for punishing repercussions. That’s kind of where I sit on OTXO as a whole. It’s punishing, period. No bones about it, and your enjoyment of this game is if you are up for that kind of punishment.

The major comparison here is the obvious Hotline Miami, but to that point, Hotline Miami was very heavily story driven. Failing a level meant a quick restart, continuing to bash your head against something until it inevitably breaks. OTXO won’t inevitably break. By how it’s built, it’s “get good” or don’t play. Finishing a single level doesn’t mean anything. It isn’t until you’ve completed a few levels at all do you get access to your possible run upgrades. Then, these unlocks aren’t always for the current run but other future runs. So, progression is entirely skill based and impossible through sheer will.

   There inherently lies my issue with OTXO. It really hits the classic Hotline Miami tropes. Kickass techno music that enhances the action? Check! Fast paced shooting and response action? Check! Limited but expressive pixel art? Check! Unfortunately, after that, it all comes to varying degrees of skill, to the point that progression can be entirely halted if you get on tilt. I personally had to step away from the game because the more frustrated I got the more time I wasted making stupid mistakes, and with OTXO, those are the ones you just can’t make.


18
TalkBack / Balatro (Switch) Review
« on: February 19, 2024, 06:00:00 AM »

I Can’t Stop Playing Balatro, Send Help

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/66288/balatro-switch-review

Steam Next Fest happened this February and one particular demo took the world by storm: Balatro, an addicting roguelike poker game by way of developer Local Thunk. While I can describe it in genre, it’s hard to describe the effect this game has had on my brain chemistry. I usually game in small bursts, with longer sessions a thing of my childhood. My first session of Balatro was two hours and my second session was three and a half. This game is a real problem for me, in the best way possible.

   So breaking down Balatro is breaking down the basics of poker. With poker, you are trying to make the best 5-card hand, by taking and discarding cards. The special hands you are trying to make are: pairs, three of a kind, four of a kind, two pair, a straight (5 cards in sequential order), full house (three of a kind and a pair), flush (all the same suit) and a royal flush (Ace to 10 all the same suit.) That’s the basic setup but like any good indie game, it takes a well worn premise and turns it on its head.

   The spin to Balatro lies in its roguelike elements. You are playing poker to score points within 4 hands. You play against the small blind, big blind, and the boss, increasing the score necessary to proceed each time. Once you defeat the boss, you go to the next round, with even higher score goals. Between each game, you get rewarded with cash to spend on upgrades that are specific to only that run. Completing more runs and using more upgrades unlocks more variation on decks to play with, which come with their own bonuses, but it’s the upgrades that are key to a successful run.

   The upgrades come in a couple different flavors. You can purchase and hold up to five different Joker cards that are set perks like straights can have gaps, so you have a bigger chance at getting a straight or multipliers for specific cards, like clubs or even numbers. Then there are celestial cards that come in randomized foil packs; these level up your pairs, straights, flushes and other hands. So having a pair can give you two or even three times more points than before. Hands can be leveled up multiple times as well in any single run.

There are also Tarot cards that can adjust cards' suits or copy other cards, and other upgrades that can add bonus effects to individual cards within your deck like holographic effects which add multipliers, or gold plated cards that boost your monetary payout. Lastly you can outright just buy more cards for your deck, so there are higher chances of getting the cards you want. There also are specialty seals for increased gold, effect triggers, or random creation of other cards; I can go on and on.  The tutorials leave something to be desired so you really have to experiment to get the most out of everything possible, but there’s just so much to dig into and mess with that each run feels entirely different, and that’s where Balatro has gripped me most.

I’ve had sick straight runs where I will have a Joker that will allow gaps in my straights, then a second Joker that will give me bonus points for even numbered cards. With that I had also used celestial cards to level up my straights so that each one would be worth more points. I would play a Straight of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. All even numbers, qualifying as a straight due to my Joker and with straights at level 3, and boom over a thousand points easily. Then on a separate run, I had pairs up to level 5, as well as Tarot Cards found in Arcana packs to double up on specific cards, and finally had enhanced my pairs to give bigger multipliers. It’s an infinite well of possibilities, and each run can change your strategy entirely.

Outside of the rising point thresholds needed to advance, the boss at the end of a level adds a separate negative modifier wrinkle that you have to push through. These can come off as mean spirited but they are just things to plan around. I had an amazing straight-focused run that was put to a screeching halt when a boss would only play my cards face down, so I had no idea what I was playing. Another boss would only let me play a specific hand once, so I had to vary my style up. Of course, I later found a Joker that I could sell to nullify a boss’ modifier. Sure, that would’ve been great LAST RUN! I was mad for all of 30 seconds before I jumped back in for another one. It’s the perfect “one more run” game. Even now, I had to make a declaration to myself that I couldn’t play any more Balatro until this review was written, but let's be honest, my Switch is right next to me ready to go.

Balatro is flat out a smart game. I don’t even like cards! Yet here I am theorycrafting new ways to play. Should I make a full house deck? That might seem risky, but if I use Tarot cards right… no no. Not now. It’s what I’m thinking about when I’m not playing Balatro. A 20-minute round before bed easily turns into, “holy crap, how is it 3AM?” This is even before finishing the game with different decks and daily challenges are turned on!  In generation remix, hell, in generation make-everything-a-roguelike, this may be the best one of 2024. I’m eagerly awaiting the official release just so I can hear about my friends' epic runs. It’s just that good. Now, please, let me play my Balatro in peace. I got an idea for a sick flush strat that I want to try out. So I'll catch y'all later.


19
TalkBack / Bahnsen Knights (Switch) Review
« on: February 07, 2024, 12:07:59 PM »

Bahnsen Knights lead to Bahnsen Days and on and on

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/66207/bahnsen-knights-switch-review

In a version of a post-apocalypse, the 1986 world of Bahnsen Knights is ravished by mysterious tornados and the world has gone into disarray. Just this premise alone makes for an intriguing world mythos where infinite stories can spawn. LCB Game Studio definitely has a specific vision by having a line of games called Pixel Pulps, as Bahnsen Knights feels ripped directly off the drugstore shelf, which works both in its favor as well as against.

   Pulp Fiction stories started in the 1920s but lost popularity in the ‘90s. They were short stories that ranged from detective thrillers to out of this world sci fi and in this way Bahnsen Knights fits the bill. It is a short visual novel that leans heavily into the bright neon of the ‘80s but with a gritty comic art style. You are playing as undercover FBI agent Boulder who has done horrible things to infiltrate the Bahnsen Knights cult (lead by a former car salesman), and to find his former partner Cupra, who disappeared mysteriously. Most of all, Boulder just wants to get back to his wife and child.

   Like most visual novels, the story funnels Boulder through multiple locations and scenarios as he struggles to keep up his cover amongst the lowlife lieutenants of the cult while investigating their crimes. Choosing to engage with each member builds a trust meter that can later be used to expand dialogue options. There are also specific opportunities to investigate areas or lockpick for more evidence. Any evidence collected can be sent to the FBI via a card system. There are also mini games for driving and lock picking that come into play at limited instances.

   The game’s issues come with the multiple choice nature of the experience. With trust systems, evidence systems, and timing-based mini games, the expectation is that there would be branching paths, but for the most part there really isn’t. None of the systems seem to come with story impact. The story is what it is, and there are just different ways of playing for your own convenience. One example has you gaining the trust of a bartender to find your way into a back room, but there really isn’t a way to get into the backroom without his trust and the game doesn’t allow you to continue unless you go into that backroom. Once inside the backroom, you have to search for evidence but finding the evidence didn’t yield any results once reported so there wasn’t a lot of variation. It felt like a poorly implemented illusion of choice, and that carried through the entirety of the game.

   Once I rolled credits on Bahnsen Knights, I hadn’t felt like I played a game as much as I participated in a very simple visual experience that wanted to be more than what it was. The mechanics here are all ideas that never pan out to anything substantial, which makes me think this actually was more of an experiment–trying out inconsequential mechanics before releasing something more cohesive. That’s the hope at least because as of right now, Bahnsen Knights is a game that speaks at you instead of to you. It’s got interesting ideas but nothing concrete….yet. I’ll be keeping an eye on LCB Game Studios and Chorus Worldwide Games because Pixel Pulps is something I would be interested in, if fleshed out more. This just ain't it.


20
TalkBack / Born of Bread (Switch) Review
« on: January 22, 2024, 09:58:15 AM »

A Game With Tons of Personality But Needed More Time In The Oven

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/66078/born-of-bread-switch-review

It wasn’t until the pandemic that I hooked up my old Nintendo 64 and finally played Paper Mario. I had never understood what made it so special to others. I never got the hype around the engaging combat, the humor, the art and style; it all blew past me. There were other games like it and sequels galore, but nothing could quite explain what made it special until I experienced the delight for myself. Now seeing games like Sea of Stars and Bug Fables, I get the same sense of reverence for that series. Similarly, Born of Bread by WildArts Studios shows a level of love and care that can only come from fans of the Paper Mario series, but they’ve also attempted to add their own unique spin. Does Born of Bread stray too far from the formula, or does it achieve the high bar Nintendo and Intelligent Systems set back in 2000?

   As is the format in many classic RPGs, our hero starts from humble beginnings–the humblest of beginnings, a loaf of bread. Loaf is a flour golem that over the course of a roughly 15-hour adventure, faces off against enemies from another time to save the kingdom. Throughout the journey, you are acquiring a quirky cast of misfits to join your cause, from a lost raccoon, to a child detective; it’s easy to fall in love with each and every one of them. That’s something that Born of Bread has in spades: personality. Every character, from the single line NPCs to major villains, feel like fully fleshed out individual personalities.

   Unfortunately after that, the dough fails to rise anywhere near its lineage. Combat is a classic turn-based RPG style, with action commands to do extra damage, like hitting a button at a specific spot on a gauge, hitting a proper button sequence or holding a crosshair in the middle of a target. All are simple enough, but it's the defensive timing that really has issues. You can hit the A button at point of impact to negate some of the incoming damage from enemies, but it never felt comfortable to find the sweet spot nor did it feel impactful. Even with repeated encounters with the same enemies, I couldn’t quite get the timing right. I even found an equippable boon (perk items) that would display when to hit the button, and this only exemplified to me how unpredictable the timing windows are.

   The combat gets more complex in how new attacks are added to your arsenal. Loaf gets his attacks from using weapons found on your adventures. These weapons are slotted into your backpack in a Tetris or Resident Evil 4-like fashion, and the backpack can be upgraded when you level up. The other members of your team each have their own skill trees that are leveled up by finding hidden collectable lizards. What’s confusing is that there are tiers of abilities, but it’s not explained how to unlock the next tier. You really only learn through trial and error. There’s also multiple elemental types of damages, but I never really used this system too in depth, if at all, and I had zero issues with progressing through battles.

   I think this example of the basic systems of combat is what makes Born of Bread feel overcomplicated. The two separate combat attack mechanics are only the start of what there is to explain. In addition to your standard HP, some attacks take WP, but special attacks take RP, which get boosted a few points per level at your choice. Food items can replenish HP, WP, or RP, but also certain characters have specific tastes, so different types of food may provide them with bonus replenishment? There’s a viewership mechanic, where your fights are live streamed so the crowd may shout commands for you to do, for a WP bonus reward. There are boons to equip that once equipped can give buffs like more WP, or the ability to see each enemy’s health remaining. Some are more helpful than others, but sometimes it feels like some of these things should just be built into the game instead of taking up a boon slot. There are also collectable cards and color palettes that allow you to change character colors or menu icons in combat. As well, each character has special abilities that work in the world to create new pathways so you can swap to different party members for their traversal abilities.

All of the mechanics taken in at once feel overwhelming, and what makes it more damning is the fact that it’s all mostly superfluous. Making combat actions both weapon-based with an inventory system AND skill tree-based on scavenger hunting seems like they had two good ideas and couldn’t pick one, so they chose both. Having a boon perk system for added buffs is fine, but why include basic gameplay functions like displaying enemy type, health, or the timing window behind this feature? (Couldn’t these be options in the pause menu?) Collectable cards and color palettes are completely unnecessary and don’t have their functions explained at all, so I had to find out how to make those changes largely by accident. I love RPG systems but this seems like a lot thrown in just for the sake of having more. None of it felt impactful and I largely ignored these elements unless they became mandatory.

While the character personalities are fantastic, there is a “try hard” level of comedy within the dialogue that doesn’t feel natural. Every conversation comes with at least two puns and a joke; every other character has to break the fourth wall. One example is that the cast of The Office (of Steve Carell fame) appear in the game as characters, spouting classic catch phrases from the show. Some jokes hit, but when a game can’t let the jokes breathe and instead overload the audience, it can come off as desperate. There’s diminishing returns on the humor in this one.

By the end of my time with Born of Bread, I was left largely unimpressed. The overcomplicated systems, poor attempts at comedy, lengthy load times and handful of crashes left a disappointing impression on a largely competent story. I liked the characters and world plenty, but they couldn’t fully carry the weight of the bloat contained in the rest of the game. I enjoyed Born of Bread despite how much its flaws became more glaring the more I played, and I think that’s the most incriminating and interesting thing about it. The story kept me hooked and the charm of the world made me want to see it through to the end even though my issues with it never got any better. There’s something special here, buried amongst a lot of redundancy. Dial back some of the mechanics and forced humor–trim the fat (or crusts)–and this would be a definite recommendation. As it stands now, though, maybe wait for a Thousand-Year Door-inspired sequel.


21
TalkBack / Skater XL (Switch) Review
« on: December 13, 2023, 10:17:57 AM »

All Skill No Frill

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/65768/skater-xl-switch-review

After being announced by Easy Day Studios in 2019, Skater XL, the popular skateboarding sim on PC, PS4 and Xbox, has officially come to Nintendo Switch. Like the Power Wash Simulators and House Flippers of the world, Skater XL translates skateboarding’s technical body mechanics into an intricate physics-based playground. Think Tech Decks, as an example–a miniature version of what we’d always envisioned when playing the Tony Hawk series or watching the X-Games. And just like those, the reality is something different entirely.

First let’s talk about what exactly Skater XL is. I wouldn’t necessarily qualify it as a video game but as more of a hobby grade simulator.  I say “hobby grade” because it’s not something you play for points and there isn’t any kind of story or progression; you are there for pure self satisfaction. A lot like real world skateboarding, Skater XL is difficult to use, it’s clunky to play and more often than not you end up on the ground–at least at first.

It takes practice–and I mean hours of practice–but what exactly are you practicing? The gameplay follows in the footsteps of the Skate series, with the analog sticks used to complete tricks, but in this case each stick represents one of your legs. So to perform an Ollie, you would need to flick the stick representing your back foot, to kick the tail down. To perform a flip trick, you'd have to flick the back foot to pop the tail, then flick the front foot in the direction for whatever trick you wanted, but all against a tight timing window akin to what you would do in real life. You use the ZL and ZR buttons to turn, and R and L buttons to perform grabs.

The grinding system is also relatively intuitive as it comes down to jumping at the proper angle to get on top of it, and moving your feet the way you want to perform a grind. So if you want to say to do a 5-0 (back truck) grind, you would jump and turn your board to get the back trick on the obstacle, then move your sticks back to keep the back weight on your tail. Same with trying to slide on your tail, but you would need to turn your body mid air to get your tail on the obstacle. Manuals and nose manuals (wheelies) are also an interesting mechanic that requires exact balance on your sticks. Moving your back foot stick slightly backwards but not all the way, just in that middle point, will trigger a manual. So the complexity really stacks, as far as doing grinds, flips and manuals, sometimes all in one sequence.

The newly introduced Grab Anywhere feature allows you to grab anywhere on your board, depending on where your weight is shifted and how you are moving the sticks. It’s a fun system to play with and can lead to some hilarious backbreaking grabs that aren’t possible for any human with a spine. There’s also a replay editor where you can create your own custom edits and eventually make your own skate video. The editor could use some more functionality, as other games in the genre offer a more robust experience.

Despite what sounds like simplicity, there’s so much more depth to what makes Skater XL such a fantastic simulator. Turning your body to get into a slide or grind is just fine, but what if you were able to turn just your hips while keeping your shoulders straight? By turning your sticks on opposing sides, you turn your legs without turning your shoulders. This move changes the style of the grind to look almost like something completely different, but it also can be used to wind your shoulders for impressive spins out. It’s an internal system that isn’t overtly explained at all, and actually one of the many systems that aren’t explained in any tutorial. Things like bumping out, shoulder winding, manual shifting, transition skating, foot catches and more are internal systems built in for your exploration if you’re willing to do some research. There are some light challenges included in the game that go over the basics but the creativity and depth are only self created, which is both to the game’s benefit and its detriment.

I think that’s what has kept me playing 600 hours on PC and 20 hours on Switch so far: the endless customization. Despite being able to do a kickflip, how you angle the sticks, how you shift your weight after the flick, how you move your legs and catch the trick are all different. My flips may look completely different from those of another player, so spending time with this game feels personal. There are only eight maps at launch (with more to come with the community mod browser) with some real world locales, but they act as sandboxes for you to play in, so the fun comes from a personal desire, and less of a guided experience.

As far as the Switch version goes, we get the full 60 FPS treatment, making for a smooth experience overall. Graphically, we take a hard hit of 540p handheld, and up to 720p when docked. This leaves some muddy looking textures, and plenty of pop in. Outside of that, playing Skater XL in handheld is a feat of its own, mostly because the sticks on the JoyCons have very small angle windows, leading to a lot of spins being added to your flip tricks accidentally. In this case, a Pro Controller is the best way to play this game. There’s also a finite number of maps at the moment. The community mod browser that is already established on other consoles is coming soon to Switch, but without it the experience is a bit more limited. I mentioned in a previous Skater XL preview that the Switch uses digital triggers, so they do not adjust their function based on the pressure being applied. They are either pressed or not. In this case, I am surprised to report that turning your character still feels good, but in the replay editor, it's impossible to make a sort of slow motion effect because you would need to feather the triggers for that. That doesn’t hinder the gameplay, but it’s worth calling out.

While I’ve evangelized the greatness of Skater XL to me personally, I still have to ask who this game is for, and the answer to that is not many. One of my early career reviews was for Tank Mechanic Simulator, and I found myself asking a similar question, never once thinking I would be the one defending such a niche piece of hobbyist software. As someone who has played anything and everything with “skateboarding” or “skater”  in the title, Skater XL has been my favorite and closest to what feels like real skateboarding. I’ve been skateboarding for roughly 22 years, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found a similar feeling within Skater XL. Envisioning a trick in my mind, and then being able to practice it over and over until it’s absolutely perfect is exactly the experience I want from this. But that’s a personal anecdote, shared by many other skaters with the similar experience of a decade or more of dedication to the hobby. Ultimately, though, that’s not everyone; it’s a very minute subsection of the population.

I said from the beginning that Skater XL is barely a video game. It’s more of a digital representation of what it’s like being a skateboarder. Most of us don’t have an elaborate story other than being a kid with a skateboard and a curb to learn tricks off of. Skater XL provides exactly that, zero frills, no plot, barely a tutorial, and unimpressive graphics. It’s more of a dream machine for those kids in empty parking lots, but it’s not really a video game. Would I recommend Skater XL to most folks? Probably not, just like I wouldn’t recommend my own mother to step on a skateboard. As a sandbox for skaters to hone their skills, however, it’s second to none, with some Switch concessions, of course.


22
TalkBack / Thirsty Suitors (Switch) Review
« on: December 07, 2023, 07:04:06 AM »

All Style and Little Substance Left Me Thirsty For More

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/65710/thirsty-suitors-switch-review

There’s something to be said about bombast. Grandiose. Spectacle. And that’s a lot of what OuterLoop Games has brought to the table with their sophomore game, Thirsty Suitors, a hot new indie game that brings together a Sri Lankan version of the Scott Pilgrim story with turn-based RPG combat and Tony Hawk style skateboarding. It’s a crazy combination of genres that fits together a stylish story of returning home to confront your past. Unfortunately, this merger of genres doesn’t add up cohesively.

   In Thirsty Suitors, you play as Jala, a young girl returning home to confront the sins of her past. Of course, since she's been gone, her exes have formed an evil league with the sole purpose of destroying Jala. There’s also her combative family with an overly critical mother and grandmother and an estranged sister on the verge of getting married. There are a lot of challenges for Jala to face, and she’s not necessarily looking forward to them.

   From here we go through a cavalcade of people from Jala’s past, usually in the form of turn-based combat. There are a basic attack, special taunts that open up a weakness in your opponents, and special skills. Your skills have affinities like rage or thirst, so giving someone a Rage Taunt could make them weak to rage abilities. Both taunts and skills cost WP, this game's version of mana, but basic attacks recharge some of that so there’s a push and pull to refill your WP before unleashing an onslaught of abilities.

Each special ability comes with a button press sequence for increased damage, reminiscent of Super Mario RPG. There are also super clever versions of summons, where you call in your mom, aunt, or other family members to come in and perform an all-out attack. When deep into a story-based battle, between rounds there will be conversation choices that can either help or hinder the next round but also affect the story itself. These dialogue options are great for exploring Jala’s effect on the story, but it can be confusing because choosing a dialogue option isn’t a one for one exchange. The dialogue option will say one thing, but Jala will voice something completely different, so it’s hard to feel like you have full agency behind Jala’s words and actions.

   When not fighting exes or suitors, exploring the world consists of Tony Hawk Pro Skater-style skateboarding segments. When you need to move around the map, it's by doing sick grinds and flip tricks on your skateboard. Also like the Tony Hawk games, everything is grindable or meant for doing crazy flips or running along walls. There’s a combo counter and score counter but it doesn’t really impact too much on world exploration. Later on, there are skateboarding challenges given out but outside of those side quests, skateboarding is generally superfluous.

   The third pillar of Thirsty Suitors is quick time event cooking lessons from your mother that act as more of a cultural exchange between generations but also a way for Jala and her mom to match quips with each other. Outside of that, the game acts as a pretty standard visual novel, exploring the city, getting into fights and winding down with touching moments with your father to close out the chapter. Despite the title of Thirsty Suitors, I was surprised at the sheer amount of horniness existing between the characters. There definitely is a lot of unique characterization and giant-sized personalities at play here.

That being said, Thirsty Suitors is a mile wide but an inch deep. While it oozes charisma and charm around every turn, each of its individual parts aren’t crafted particularly well. The combat feels rote. Finding the randomized weakness to taunt so that you can then attack those weaknesses feels slow and plodding. Even when hitting those weaknesses, the damage doesn’t feel significant and fights tend to drag. In a year that gave us similar but snappier combat in Sea of Stars, this felt like a snail's pace comparatively. On the other hand, skateboarding feels super unwieldy. It’s hard to control, and detracts from actual world movement to the point that I would have rather just walked from place to place, and that’s saying a lot coming from someone who loves skateboarding games.

Another major issue I found in Thirsty Suitors is its lack of character development. Jala doesn’t grow throughout the experience and is generally petty throughout. She remains the same and has a deep tendency to blame everyone around her for her issues, and considering dialogue doesn’t match the conversation choices, it feels like you don’t really get a choice in the story. Even the cooking lessons with her mother focus more on the snipes back and forth. I would rather have had a cultural discussion about dating rather than Jala’s journey to blame everyone but herself. Suitor after suitor felt like walking red flags that rarely ever grew past their initial introduction. There are even romance options to get back together with them, but after the amount of basic personality flaws provided at the offset, I never felt inclined to pursue any of them. The game does a clear job of showing you their flaws with few redeeming qualities.

Despite my qualms with the game, there’s no question how much style it exudes. Jala doesn’t walk down stairs; she wall flips down them, and before each battle she summersaults out of her jacket in preparation. These touches add a unique flare to a rather disappointing game. Gameplay mechanics all exist disjointedly as if they were all part of different games–all with a style of their own, but less fun to engage with. I would’ve better enjoyed any one of these systems had they been more fully fleshed out. As well, the game is certainly visually impressive but lacks depth to its mechanics and character growth. I’m incredibly happy to see more cultural representation in games, but I wanted more from the story than what Thirsty Suitors was giving me. It’s an outlandish take on the Scott Pilgrim story but lacks the same kind of fun.


23
TalkBack / Skater XL (Switch) Preview Event
« on: November 29, 2023, 05:48:34 AM »

I watched Skater XL being played on the Switch, and did some frame counting!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/65645/skater-xl-switch-preview-event

I was recently given the opportunity to preview Skater XL running on the Nintendo Switch. Previously released in 2020, this physics-based skateboarding simulator has been updating features and adding new maps and content to keep things fresh. Now with a Nintendo Switch release on the horizon, all that content will be ported over to keep it in lockstep parity with the PC version and that of all other consoles.

   For those new to Skater XL, it’s a skateboarding simulator with each stick on the controller acting as a separate leg or foot of the skater. From here you are given total freedom across 5 dev-created maps and 26 modded maps to skate to your heart's desire. Because using the sticks does not provide canned animations, all flip tricks are unique, and can vary wildly, depending on how you move the sticks. You turn with the triggers of your controller, so that will be a departure from other versions as the Joy-Con are digital single-input triggers and all other controllers use analog, which vary your actions by how far down you press them.

   The visuals take the usual Nintendo Switch hit with 540p up to 720p when docked and 540p when handheld. What really matters, however, is the frame rate. You don’t want to see any kind of hitching or sluggishness when the focus of the game is movement, and that’s where this port absolutely works. We get a full 60 frames per second, gliding across smooth as butter. In this way, there’s nothing stopping you from landing your sick tricks. Of course, you’ll also be able to capture and create fun skate video edits here as well given the replay editor is included in the Switch port.

   There is an immense amount of character customization as well, including the community mod browser, where people can submit their own custom art for people to use in game. That will also be brought over, so there will be an extra boost of content there right out of the gate, with new clothes and accessories added regularly.

   Easy Day Studios has promised that with the Switch’s release, we will be getting all the same content and updates day-and-date with PC and console, which is a nice departure from competitor Session Skateboarding Sim. I’m curious what the cadence of new content will be post Switch launch as this developer has generally not rushed content out the door, but nonetheless it’s an exciting time to be a skateboarding enthusiast.


24
TalkBack / Solar Ash (Switch) Review
« on: October 29, 2023, 06:23:58 PM »

More of a stop gap, rather than a full sequel to Hyper Light Drifter

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/65362/solar-ash-switch-review

From Heart Machine, Solar Ash was originally released on PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC in December of 2022. In keeping with the style and flair of its predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter, it brings in fast space-skating mechanics that give it a unique identity. While not a direct sequel, it does keep some core tenants of design and story but switches up genres entirely. Despite the changes, it’s hard not to compare the two, so we have to ask, is it comparable to the developer’s first indie hit? The answer is somewhere lost in the Ultravoid, so let’s strap on our space skates and dive in!

   Solar Ash opens on our Voidrunner protagonist Rei, who is attempting to save her world from being sucked into the Ultravoid, a massive black hole. Throughout her journey you’ll find out what has happened to all the Voidrunners who failed before her, engrossing you in tales of loss, grief, and moving on. These vignettes make for some touching moments, while also fleshing out more of the world (which exists in the same universe as Hyper Light Drifter,) and boy is the Ultravoid a wild and beautiful world. Graphically, the art is cell shaded, with minimalist detail and lots of neon, which makes for amazing visuals but can definitely lead to the Nintendo Switch chugging when particle effects are introduced.

   The main gameplay loop (and I do mean loop) is to find and destroy anomalies on the map. You get a scanner to find their approximate location, but the real challenge comes in finding the right way to them, and then destroying them in a timed chain sequence. That means, you really have to be able to move. The developers have stated that they based the game specifically around its traversal and it definitely shows. Rollerblading in space has never looked so cool. You can slide, grind rails, grapple hook points, wall ride, and double jump your way across the psychedelic visuals of the void, destroying the Anomalies as you go. Anomalies are destroyed by hitting beacons in a timed sequence. Once every anomaly challenge is completed, a boss is unlocked that you must ride across, essentially knocking out more anomalies on its back to defeat them. Move to a new map, rinse and repeat.

   Despite having a relatively short playtime of roughly 3-5 hours, this ongoing loop felt a little more checklist-y then I would have liked. Sure, the platforming itself was varied, but movement could be unwieldy and inconsistent. Jumps could throw you clear over your target, grind rails could go in incorrect directions, and some sequences were just damn near frustrating. One particular puzzle stumped me so bad that I ended up figuring out a glitch to get it instead of finding the intended path. It’s equal parts fun and frustrating. The most enjoyment comes from just moving around. Its fluid motion makes for engaging movement, even when sometimes the puzzles require more precision than I felt was necessary.

   Another frustrating setback is combat. Throughout your exploration, you will encounter enemies that you need to dispatch. There’s your regular laser sword swing, with a grapple to close the gap, but overall these encounters do more to slow the player down than enhance the experience. Considering the game shines best when in a flow state of movement, there seem to be a lot of different ways to get stopped in your tracks.

   Solar Ash comes in hot with its fantastic art style, free flowing movement, and minimalist synth soundtrack, but it also hits a lot of road blocks along the way. When you’re landing sick grinds, nailing grapple points and taking down massive bosses, it’s top notch. When it works it works well; unfortunately, it doesn’t always succeed and you end up doing so many repeated tasks that it quickly wears out its welcome. The story content is written beautifully, with a lot to say about heartbreak and grief, which makes it unfortunate that Solar Ash can be a drag to play. It seems we may need to wait for Hyper Light Breaker, to see a truly worthy successor but at least Heart Machine’s writing and style chops remain consistent.


25
TalkBack / A Tiny Sticker Tale (Switch) Review
« on: October 11, 2023, 07:05:24 PM »

A Tiny Sticker of Joy

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/65173/a-tiny-sticker-tale-switch-review

The new up and coming genre of “cozy games” has been inundating the market as of the last five years. Just this year alone we have Fae Farm, Mineko's Night Market and Garden Buddies, to name a few. It can feel very overwhelming, but I’m here to tell you Tiny Sticker Tale can definitely be the short little break you need between lengthy AAA titles.

   A Tiny Sticker Tale’s world is one filled with friendly anthropomorphic animals. You arrive on an island, sticker book in hand, to search for your father, while also tasked with helping the inhabitants of the island. Of course, there’s mischief and mystery afoot, so you have to be ready to explore the grid-style map–similar to the NES and SNES Legend of Zelda games. Moving from screen to screen to traverse the relatively small world makes for super simple navigation, as it takes roughly a minute or two to travel the entire map.

   The main interaction point for the game is the titular stickers. Most things in the world can be turned into stickers by moving to a sticker menu and picking up an object or person. Once in hand, you can put them in your sticker book to be saved for later. This is how you solve puzzles and assist the lively characters you meet along your journey. Does a character want to play his instrument for a crowd of five? Go find other characters and place them in your sticker book, then bring them back to make the crowd. Can’t get across a river? Simply find a bridge two maps over, take it into your sticker book, then place it over the water to get across. These sticker puzzles lead to some clever a-ha moments that are both adorable in presentation but also simple enough to rarely stump.

It’s not a particularly deep game, but that doesn’t stop it from just feeling like a warm sweater on a chilly day. Also considering its run time is anywhere from 3-5 hours total, it doesn’t need to be particularly complex to be a worthwhile experience. The one major gripe I had is that the ending tries to create a lot of emotional weight that just wasn’t there throughout the rest of the narrative. The plot provides some light followthrough with story, but mostly it’s sparse and to attempt a big sentimental swing felt tacked on at best. That still doesn’t prevent A Tiny Sticker Tale from being nothing short of delightful through and through. A bite-sized portion of happiness that is the definition of cozy games.


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