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[Love live the PlayStation Vita.]

26

TalkBack / Demon Gaze Extra (Switch) Review FAQ

« on: February 10, 2022, 09:56:35 AM »

Love live the PlayStation Vita.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/59651/demon-gaze-extra-switch-review-faq

Review FAQ time, ya’ll. I utilize this format when a traditional review isn’t really coming together. For some recent examples, check out my reviews of Hyperdimension Neptunia V-II and Senran Kagura: Peach Ball. With that introduction out of the way, let’s get to it.

I hate to say it, but your prediction is coming true—the one about the Switch becoming the new Vita.

Oh, isn’t that lovely? The Vita was once the home of bizarre anime waifu games with questionable content, but now those games have arrived and continue to arrive on the Switch. We’ve already got two Gal*Gun games, a couple Neptunia games, and a few Senran Kagura games—with a third on the way in April. And today we can talk about another one: Demon Gaze Extra.

Uh-huh.

Demon Gaze was a 2013 Vita dungeon crawler (think Etrian Odyssey) that was mildly successful and received largely middle-of-the-road reviews. For some reason, it’s been cleaned up and ported to the Switch as Demon Gaze Extra (DGE) and, well…

Yes?

It sure is a video game.

Hold on a second, what makes this version "Extra?"

I have no idea. Based on the videos I watched, there don't appear to be many noticeable differences. In fact, I've included a Vita screenshot in this article (on purpose) because I thought it was a Switch screenshot. I saw that exact same thing, although some of my player character portraits were different.

Not a fan?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the game, but it’s wholly underwhelming for a lot of reasons. First of all, the dungeon crawling isn’t nearly as interactive as Etrian Odyssey. Since you can’t draw the dungeon map yourself (which probably would be possible on a system that boasts at least one art program), maps feel impersonal and simplistic. They also tend to be loaded with damage-dealing tiles like lava or poison gas, which can be negated by using a specific demon (more on this later). Enemy encounters are usually random, but there will be times where encounters show up as icons that you can’t avoid.

When you’re not trying to find and battle demons in dungeons, you and your party are encouraged to take up quests, but most are poorly explained, or accessible before you can really do anything about them. Quests also inevitably involve leaving, and then returning to, your home base. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but in DGE, every time you come back home, you’re charged rent. You could leave, go to a dungeon, realize you forgot to buy a critical piece of equipment two seconds after arriving, and go back home and you’ll be charged rent. And like Etrian Odyssey, rent increases each time you walk through the door.

In Etrian Odyssey, at least, you’re only charged if you decide to sleep (restore all HP/MP).

That’s not great. Is it a problem, though? Is casheesh hard to come by?

It’s not actually that hard to find cash. You’ll collect gems throughout your journey, mainly by killing monsters. Gems are sorted into several categories, like “Sword Gems,” “Hat Gems,” or “Shield Gems.” Each of the game’s dungeons has a handful of spawn points where you can place up to three gems, which triggers an encounter. Different gem rarities produce different results. Winning the fight nets you a random piece of…well, sword equipment, hat equipment, or shield equipment in this case. The most common gem type is the “Nameless Gem,” which gives you a random prize, but often something low-level. I fell into a nice rhythm where I always bought two or three “Nameless Gems” from the Inn’s item shop, used them in the dungeon, and then sold the spoils back to the item shop to recoup the cost of the gems and my rent, along with any other equipment I found but didn’t want. I eventually amassed a nice nest egg by doing this.

What do you use the money for?

Buying increasingly-expensive equipment from the item and/or weapon shops, of course. You can try to rely on gem drops to improve your party’s firepower, but that’s not going to get you very far. You’ll want to buy mid-level stuff pretty quickly out of the gate. You can also find/buy furniture, revive downed party members, and recruit new party members—although each new party member (up to five) costs an order of magnitude more than the last.

Did you say furniture?

Yes! One of this game’s admittedly charming aspects is that you can place a piece of furniture in a party’s member’s room at the Inn to give them a permanent stat boost, and you can swap it for better furniture later on. You don’t, unfortunately, see the furniture. And that, in fact, speaks to my biggest issue with DGE: the aesthetic.

Lay it on me.

Here’s the thing, guys: It’s 2022. Even the Etrian Odyssey games, which were exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS, utilized polygonal character models, and those character models were animated. Your party members were represented by static character portraits, sure, but the environments and enemies were very pretty 3D characters. That’s not the case in DGE, which looks like a mobile game.

Hey now, even mobile games have 3D character models. Some of them, anyway.

Okay, fair enough. DGE looks like a cheap mobile game. The environments are 3D models, although they’re pretty barebones, tile-based maps. All of your party members are represented by static character portraits, the quality of which varies greatly from illustrator to illustrator. But the thing that kills me is that all the enemies, too, are static portraits that don’t animate (aside from maybe floating around the screen). I know for a fact that the PlayStation Vita can do better than this, and you’d better believe that the Switch can, too. Hell, the 3DS can! This may be an unfair characterization, but DGE just plain looks cheap.

That’s disappointing. How’s the combat? So many RPGs live or die based on the combat. I really like the combat in something like Dragon Quest VIII, but couldn’t stand the multitude of confusing systems in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Where does DGE land on that spectrum?

It’s more towards the DQVIII side of things, but lacks that game’s sense of teamwork, in part because your characters are mute, static character portraits. DGE has several different races, which are then divided into classes. You can have an Elven Paladin, for example, or a Dwarven Healer. Ideally, though, you pick a class that capitalizes on the chosen race’s base stats. You can have five party members total, with some on the front line, and some in back line.

Always with this front line/back line nonsense.

It gets old, right? I’ve seen this dynamic creep into just about every JRPG in recent memory, and I don’t really like it. Front-line characters attack while back-line characters provide support. In theory, you store your weaker characters in the back line so they don’t take the hits. The problem is that you can’t control them directly. Taking control away from the player is never the way to go in my book. But combat basically comes down to hammering your melee or magic attacks, making use of items when necessary; the usual JRPG stuff, but it feels weirdly impersonal, like you’re going through the motions.

Is there anything that sets the game apart?

In fact, there is.

Do tell.

The core tenant of DGE is that you’re a human who can trap and control demons who you defeat in battle. There’s a demon hiding in every dungeon (who is the boss) and if you defeat them, you can eventually take them into battle, where they provide AI support. This support generally means applying buffs on your party and debuffs or attacks on the enemies. Demons level up in battle, but it’s unwise to bring them out for every scrap—they have a set number of turns before they become uncontrollable, after which time they may go after your party instead. Doing battles without them revitalizes their turn count. Plus, different demons have different effects, both in and out of fights.

Ooh, what’s that mean?

It means that one demon can spot fake walls in a given area, and another demon negates environmental damage, like lava tiles. Clearly, switching up your demonic companion gives you a new perspective on every map, so exploration is (sort of) encouraged. I really like this system, and you can swap demons at gem circles.

I guess that's something. Anything else worth mentioning?

A couple things. There’s a lot of character interactions back at the Inn (and sometimes in the field). This occasionally devolves into potentially creepy anime trope territory, like sniffing panties or watching the loli character parade around in her underwear. Your tolerance for that sort of nonsense probably varies from mine, but I generally find it annoying. DGE requires a generous amount of grinding in order to get past the frequent roadblocks it throws at you. You may beat the boss, for example, but they will run away and become much stronger, and only in that fight can you truly defeat them. You’ll have to grind for money, gems, and items in order to suit up for the next encounter. After you beat the first two demons (Mars and Chronos), you’ll be thrown into an unexpected boss fight that will probably decimate your party, and you don’t have too many options apart from further grinding.

Of course, grinding and questing usually means leaving and returning to the Inn, which also requires paying rent all the damn time. There’s a storyline, but since all of your characters are mute character portraits, all the dialogue and interactions come from the Inn’s colorful cast, most of whom I didn’t care for. I just don’t see the appeal of DGE. In the very crowded marketplace of JRPGs, there are way better choices out there.

Well, they can’t all be winners.

Very true.

[I'm not the one who's so far away...]

27

TalkBack / Shadow Man Remastered (Switch) Review

« on: January 20, 2022, 11:27:00 AM »

I'm not the one who's so far away...

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/59420/shadow-man-remastered-switch-review

Night Dive Studios, one of my favorite developers, seems to specialize in taking old N64-era games and cleaning them up for modern consoles—video game preservation, but in HD. They already have an impressive portfolio, and much of their content is available on the Switch: Turok, Turok 2, DOOM 64, and Quake (which we don't have a review for...I should remedy that) are all extremely impressive and enjoyable. I must admit I was surprised to learn that Night Dive would be tackling the old Acclaim game Shadow Man, largely because I can’t imagine it has much of a fanbase. This is an ancient 3D platformer from 1999 that released on the N64, Dreamcast, and PlayStation, and was rated “M”—one of the few N64 games to be given that rating. Praised for its dark tone and ambitious design at the time, I was curious to see how this forgotten gem has aged over the last twenty years.

Like Turok before him, Shadow Man was originally a successful Valiant Comics title. When Acclaim Entertainment bought Valiant in 1996, it relaunched Shadow Man and began developing a video game series based on the character. Shadow Man is the alter-ego of Michael LeRoi, a former college student who became indebted to a voodoo witch after his family was massacred. LeRoi was rescued by Mama Nettie, a voodoo priestess, who sewed the Mask of Shadows to his chest, which allows LeRoi, as Shadow Man, to venture into the parallel world of “Deadside.”

It’s difficult to discuss Shadow Man Remastered without getting into the philosophy of game preservation. On the one hand, this game is an extremely faithful remake—which includes a lot of cut and restored content—of a 1999 3D platformer/adventure game, warts and all. Clearly, Night Dive did an extremely impressive amount of work here, restoring previously cut areas, unused dialogue, unused animations, cut or censored character models, enemies, and bosses, and various other additions. The control scheme has been modernized as much as possible, with a new weapon wheel, localization improvements, and changes to the control scheme (no more tank controls). Of course, they’ve also added a lot of toggle-able audio and graphical options, including a film grain filter, which I adore.

What Night Dive has not done (and rightly so, I think) is fix the game. Think of Shadow Man Remastered as a Director’s Cut, something closer to Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence than to Spyro Reignited.

The removal of tank controls doesn’t change the fact that combat is laughably simplistic.

The new lighting effects don’t change the fact that Shadow Man’s map is overwhelming and difficult to navigate. Sometimes infuriatingly so.

The new bosses aren’t necessarily good bosses.

On its face, the gameplay of Shadow Man Remastered is surprisingly barebones: you explore a profoundly confusing (but impressively massive) world looking for Dark Souls and little red masks. The more Dark Souls you find, the more powerful Shadow Man becomes, and the more doors he can open, leading to more areas of Deadside. He can trade in 100 of the little red masks for an extra heart container. At virtually every turn, Deadside is filled with death-defying obstacle courses and frustrating corridor mazes, and Shadow Man traverses this hellscape with what amounts to Tomb Raider controls: jumping, grabbing ledges, shooting, and dodge rolling. You’ll find new weapons, but none of them significantly improve combat. You’ll find items and “tattoos” that allow you to find new paths through old areas, but they’re few and far in between. Most troubling, though, is the lack of any sort of referrable map, and Deadside’s labyrinthine structure will confound your efforts to make your own.

There’s a fast-travel system, but it’s limited in scope. You have unlimited lives, but checkpoints only exist at the beginning of every major area, leading to frequent re-traversal (my solution: save often and reload that save when you die).

All that said, Shadow Man Remastered does hold a lot of appeal for me. Viewed through a historical lens, this game is ridiculously ambitious for 1999. To have such an enormous map with varied environments (well, as varied as 1999 graphics could muster) and so much freedom to move through them was, at the time, essentially unheard of. Shadow Man’s tone and aesthetic, while somewhat quaint now, was deservedly lauded at the time. Deadside is a creepy, macabre, but beautiful place—a weird combination of Silent Hill (released earlier that year) and Clock Tower. Granted, it sure does look like an N64 game with better textures and cleaner character models, but that’s what Shadow Man is.

Sure, the gunplay is nothing special nowadays, but the various firearms—both traditional and mystical—were inventive for the time, and Shadow Man’s ability to duel wield would have been a nice surprise.

Yet I daresay that you must be of a certain mindset to genuinely enjoy Shadow Man Remastered. This is not a game you can rush through, both by design and by virtue of its age. It contains zero handholding, and in fact I had to download the instruction manual for the N64 game to figure out what the items were and what the control scheme was. I think Shadow Man Remastered will appeal to a subset of a subset of the gaming populace: those who were alive through the transition from 2D to 3D gaming and the bizarre experiments it engendered, but also those who have fond memories of those rough-around-the-edges games, whose reach exceeded their grasp.

You may recall that I was pleasantly surprised by how ahead-of-its time Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was while playing Night Dive’s excellent remaster, but I’m equally surprised by how of-its-time Shadow Man has turned out to be. Still, I’m happy that Night Dive didn’t try to fix the game for a modern audience. This is game preservation as it should be—keep the wrinkles, warts, and missteps; add cut content wherever possible (as it informs the game’s original intent); let the strengths of the original games speak for themselves. Shadow Man is not a great game in 2021, but in 1999, it was ambitious and inventive, and being able to experience this game as it was meant to be released and played is valuable and enjoyable.

[The nice thing about this article is that it's timely.]

28

TalkBack / Zach's Favorite Games of 2021

« on: January 13, 2022, 09:13:45 AM »

The nice thing about this article is that it's timely.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/editorial/59344/zachs-favorite-games-of-2021

I don't play as many video games as I used to, but 2021 was a good year in that regard. I didn't play a ton of brand-new games in 2021, but rather tried to catch up on a bit of my backlog. My acquisition of an Xbox Series X in late 2020 has guided many of my gaming purchases, although I have a couple notable PS4 games on my list as well. Obviously, this isn't a strictly Nintendo-based list, because my time was pretty evenly split between all three of my consoles in 2021.

Best Nintendo Game: Metroid Dread

As if there was any doubt. Much like John Rairdin, I came away from Metroid Dread supremely impressed, and that’s after taking part in NWR’s 2D Metroid Game Club. Every part the experience was engrossing, from the fun combat, satisfying boss fights, and fast, butter-smooth movement. It looks great too, with sharp character models and lots of color flourishes. The zig-zaggy path through the map is initially confusing but Dread offers plenty of sequence-breaking opportunities. My only real complaint is aimed at the soundtrack, which isn’t nearly as energetic or atmospheric as previous Metroid games. Seriously, though, after not loving Mercury Steam’s previous Metroid attempt (Samus Returns), I’m kind of floored by how much of an improvement Dread is. I found the story to be mostly nonsensical, but there’s a story moment with Samus that I found surprisingly touching, and there’s another moment when Samus is leaving an area where I dropped my jaw and said aloud “oh fuuuuuuu…”

I wish she at least got her helmet off at the end, though. That was my favorite character moment in Metroid Prime.

Best Non-tendo Game: Guardians of the Galaxy

I know this game is technically available on Switch via the power of the Cloud, but it’s apparently not good (and for those of us with bandwidth caps, not practical). Based entirely on the high recommendations of all three co-hosts of the Player One Podcast, I bought the game on a Black Friday sale for Xbox Series X, and holy lord is it a fun time. If, like me, your Guardians of the Galaxy knowledge is largely confined to the Marvel movies, you may be initially put off by the off-brand character models for Peter, Drax, and Gamora but I quickly grew to love them (although Gamora is weirdly thin). The gameplay is extremely simplistic, involving light environmental exploration—which is largely corridor-based—and fun combat encounters where you work as a team to take out large groups of enemies. The game’s unique “Huddle” mechanic, where Peter psyches everyone up during long fights, is a lot of fun, too.

But it’s the story and characters that kept me coming back, and more specifically the discussions between them. They never shut up, but it’s always entertaining and genuine. Drax, largely reduced to a punchline in the MCU movies, gets a very strong arc here, and Mantis is hilarious. As a big fan of Frank Cho (please be surprised), the mere presence of Lady Hellbender put this game over the top for me. The soundtrack is also fantastic, including the bevvy of licensed music and original rock ‘n’ roll album which you can just sit and listen to in the opening cutscene.

Graphically, the game is beautiful, with imaginative alien vistas and great animation. I’m not sure how much flarkin’ legwork the Series X patch it doing, but you can’t argue with the results.

Best Game I Reviewed in 2021: Axiom Verge 2

When I was speculating about what the sequel to Axiom Verge would be, I never thought it would (a) not involve Trace; and (b) not involve Contra-like gunplay. Fittingly, perhaps, Axiom Verge 2 does not involve Trace and does not feature any gunplay. Instead, you take the role of a woman from Earth named Indra who becomes stranded on a parallel world—Kiengir—and spends most of her time trying to find a way back. In doing so, she learns of the planet’s war-torn past and finds unique technology to help her get around. The ties to Axiom Verge 1 are there, but they’re mostly subtle. Combat is relatively rare but surprisingly melee-flavored when it appears. Drone exploration makes a triumphant return—upgraded and better than ever, and the drone can access a secondary map that’s extremely fun to explore. Despite the surprising divergences from its predecessor, Axiom Verge 2 still manages to feel like Axiom Verge. It’s a wonderful game and I can’t wait to see what Tom Happ does next.

Please look forward to my perpetually in-progress breakdown of the games’ complicated lore.

Biggest Disappointment(s)

Last month, I finally successfully pre-ordered an Analogue Pocket, but my excitement was quickly tamped down by the news that it would not arrive until Q4 of 2022. Similarly, I would very much like to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart but Sony seems dead-set on selling PS5’s exclusively to bots and scalpers. To add insult to injury, Walmart and Best Buy are only selling (online) to customers who are enroll in their paid programs. For a system that came out at the end of 2020, it’s borderline offensive that both, but especially the PS5, remain out of reach for so many customers. For my Nintendo entry, I was very disappointed by WayFoward’s Bloodrayne Betrayal. I remembered it being a super hard game back on the PS3, but I didn’t remember why. Ugh, just don’t play it.

Best Game I Finally Played in 2021: Robot Dinosaur Zelda

I’m not sure how long I’ve owned the PS4 disk of Horizon: Zero Dawn, but in 2021, Sony offered it for free on the Playstation Store. I downloaded it, gave the disk away, and finally sat down to play what I’ve come to call “Robot Dinosaur Zelda.” I became instantly hooked, basically playing the game nonstop for about a month in the summer, which led to a Platinum trophy. This is basically Breath of the Wild with archery combat and robot dinosaurs (but sadly no climbing), and I would wager that there’s no feeling quite like taking down a rampaging mechanical tyrannosaur with grenades and armor-popping arrows. Even with maxed-out skills, you still have to approach combat strategically and it’s unwise to try and brute-force your way through a flock of robotic oviraptorids. Horizon’s lore is bonkers and learning about how the world wound up relatively human-free and robot-populated became highly motivating, though I was largely unmoved by the game’s primary storyline of a group of humans trying to control the machines, which resulted in hero Aloy’s quest to run errands for everybody in the realm to prevent disaster and fight approximately a billion Glinthawks. Robot factories (dungeons) and the ruins of ancient human strongholds provide a lot of fun as well and tend to involve some measure of Prince of Persia-esque platforming.

The game is also just plain gorgeous, providing some of the most beautiful environmental effects I’ve ever seen in a video game, and shockingly brief and rare load times on my vanilla PS4. Most of the game’s humans (including, sadly, Aloy) tend to fall headfirst into the Uncanny Valley, but goddamn the robots look amazing. I can’t wait for Horizon 2: Forbidden West which hits next month.

Best Game I Started in 2021 but Haven’t Finished Yet: DOOM Eternal

DOOM Eternal is fucking metal.

I was surprised how much I loved DOOM (2016), so when DOOM Eternal came out, it was a day one purchase for me. I ripped and tore my way through the campaign in no time, wholesale ignoring all the lore that the developers seemed to take incredibly seriously (sorry guys). I’m not particularly good at DOOM Eternal—at least compared to videos I’ve seen on YouTube—but it’s supremely enjoyable. This may be my favorite modern FPS franchise. Somewhere around August, the DLC (“Forgotten Gods”) was on sale, so I picked it up but haven’t played more than an hour because I got distracted by other things (see above). It’s also hard as nails, but I fully intend to get back into the Super Shotgun swing of things in 2022. DOOM Eternal is another game that already looked incredible in its launch state, but the Series X patch knocked it out of the park. Exploring a demon-infested future Earth provides a lot of stunning sights—at least when you can pause to appreciate them between waves of demons—and I was constantly delighted by what I saw. Being on this franchise’s art team must be great fun.

As in the first game, DOOM Eternal’s heavy metal soundtrack provides an excellent backdrop to the flamethrowing, chainsawing, spike-goring, heavy rifling action, and it’s even managed to cross over to my group D&D campaign, where our Dungeon Master routinely plays DOOM Eternal music during boss fights.

Best Game That I Played Through Several Times Since Release: Control

In early 2020, when it was on sale, I bought Remedy’s Control for my neglected Xbox One. I played through much of the game but eventually got sick of the spasming framerate and minute-long load times between (frequent) deaths. Control is gorgeous and clearly a fun, well-made game, but it ran like butt on my Xbox One. Unwilling to upgrade to Microsoft’s middleware console (Xbox One X), I bided my time until I could get an Xbox Series X. My some miracle, that actually happened in December of 2021. And the first game I played? Control. With the benefit of essentially zero load times and a butter-smooth framerate, I blew through the entire game and both DLC expansions in about two weeks. I feel comfortable saying that Control is one of my favorite games of all time. My parents bought me the Ultimate Edition for my 2020 birthday, which got me a free next-gen graphical upgrade in early 2021. I was sad to see, however, that the Ultimate Edition doesn’t carry your game save over, so I started a new game just to see the beautiful ray-tracing and reflection effects (which are fantastic, by the way).

And wouldn’t you know it, I found myself replaying the entire game and both DLC expansions again. I still dip back in from time to time, mostly to show the game to friends. Control is fun to, well, control, because the powers that you accrue over time function in a both a Metroid-vania exploration sense but also tend to augment your combat abilities, which are frequently exercised. No two fights are the same, so they’re never boring. The true star of Control is The Oldest House, a gigantic Brutalist structure, constantly shifting in perspective-bending ways, that you spent the entire game exploring. The environments never stop being the stars of the show, from the most mundane office spaces to the extra-dimensional Black Rock Quarry and Foundation and the vast emptiness of the Astral Plane. The game is also packed to the gills with lore, much of which is quite funny.

Based on how the “AWE Expansion” ends, it sounds like the recently-announced sequel to Alan Wake may tie directly into Control, so I guess I should play Alan Wake. Control is another game available on Switch through the power of the Cloud, but I couldn’t tell you whether it’s good or not. John Rairdin did a video comparison, though.

Biggest Source of Shame in 2021: Not Finishing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2

I love this game so much. I have it on Xbox Series X and I've gotten through most of the first and second games' campaigns.

However.

I am currently angry at Microsoft because of this: allegedly, if you have the Digital Deluxe version of this game (which I do), you get the Xbox Series X upgrade version for free. Nope, it shows up as fifty bucks on the Microsoft Store. When I follow the Microsoft Store's instructions, I get some bullshit saying that I simply can't choose the Xbox Series X edition, because it's part of a bundle. But I also can't select the standalone Xbox Series X edition, because that costs fifty dollars. What do you want from me, Microsoft? I even bought the $10 upgrade patch to be safe, but no dice. I tried calling Microsoft but was connected to a customer support bank in India and I could not get the guy on the phone to understand the problem. I was then accidentally (I'm sure) disconnected and I was too frustrated to call back.

Get it the **** together, Microsoft.

Best Game From 2015 That I’m Still Playing Nonstop in 2021: The Binding of Isaac

In 2015, fellow NWR contributor Adam Abou-Nasr bought me a New 3DS game called The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and I haven’t looked back. I genuinely fear how many hours I’ve pumped into that game, especially after getting Afterbirth+ on Switch. Seriously, there are still things I haven’t accomplished in that never-ending game. Just recently, the final piece of paid DLC, called Repentance, dropped and I was powerless to resist. It adds a couple new unlockable characters, a metric poop-ton of new items, and whole new alternate path through the game featuring new bosses and a gauntlet of increasingly ridiculous final bosses—which I still haven’t beat! Please look forward to an upcoming episode of Intervention in which my friends and family try to get me to go a treatment facility for my Isaac addiction.

Best DLC of 2021: Senna Forever

It’s been a minute since I finished Horizon Chase Turbo, which was my Game of the Year in 2018. This fall, that team released a massive single player campaign called “Senna Forever,” which chronicles the career of Brazil’s Aryton Senna, often considered one of the best F1 racers. I sank a ton of time into this impressive campaign. You can read about it in my review, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Best Multiplayer Game I’m Still Playing in 2021: TowerFall

Sorry guys, it’s not Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, although I continue to log hours in that and have been enjoying most of the new characters. It’s also not Fortnite, a game my honorary nephew keeps asking me to play with him and I always rebuff him since Fortnite is hot garbage. No, dear reader, it’s something much older and low-tech: TowerFall, from Matt Makes Games. If you’ve never played this local-only multiplayer extravaganza, you’re really missing out. Up to four players try to shoot each other with arrows in a screen-sized platforming arena. There are a host of items and environmental effects that gives the game a real Smash Bros. sense of randomness and leads to a lot of hilarity. Win or lose, you’ll have a great time. It also now includes Celeste from her self-titled precision platformer that I really wish I liked more than I do.

Most Anticipated Games of 2022

Well, assuming it actually comes out in 2022, I’m really excited about the Breath of the Wild sequel. I know it’s not going to happen, but wouldn’t it be cool if Metroid Prime 4 hit sometime this year? Speaking of Metroid Prime, the conveyor belt of rumors surrounding a Switch port of the Trilogy eventually have to produce said port, right? If that’s announced for 2022, that might be my most anticipated game of the year.

But if we’re going with games that have been announced for, and will probably release in, 2022, I’ve got several.

First and foremost, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, from Dotemu and Tribute Games. It has a vague “2022” release date, but every time they show a trailer it looks so damn good, and as a TMNT superfan, I’m going to enjoy looking out for all sorts of in-jokes and homages. Can’t wait for that one.

In a similar vein, I’m eagerly anticipating River City Girls 2 from Arc System Works and WayForward. The original is fantastic, and the sequel looks to be the same game but just more of it in every sense of the word. I think it has a “Summer” release window but I would not object to an earlier shadow drop!

Finally, and you should’ve seen this one coming, I’m pretty excited to play Neptunia X Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars in the spring. Everything I’ve read about the PS4 release says that it’s a little light on content compared to other Senran games, but the Switch release allegedly includes additional difficulty modes, outfits and “sub events,” whatever that means. Let’s be real: the game could just be Asuka and Vert chewing gum and I’d probably buy it.

[Speedrunning: The Game]

29

TalkBack / Aeon Drive (Switch eShop) Review

« on: November 18, 2021, 01:49:33 PM »

Speedrunning: The Game

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/58977/aeon-drive-switch-eshop-review

If you’re the kind of gamer who goes bananas for speed running, have I got the game for you. Aeon Drive is a fast-paced platformer where your primary goal is to get from the start of every short stage to the end in the fastest possible time. This is different from something like Super Meat Boy or Celeste, where precision is the most important factor—not necessarily speed. Aeon Drive takes the opposite tack—while precision platforming does come into play, you're trying to plow through each of the game’s 100 stages in about 30 seconds, give or take.

The threadbare story sees our heroine, Jackelyne (usually shortened to “Jack,” which I found distracting) crashing her spaceship into the futuristic city of Neo Barcelona and racing through stages in an effort to find energy cores for her busted ship. For reasons I was never clear on, she only has 30 seconds per stage to do this or else her ship’s AI will Groundhog Day her back to the start of the stage. Thankfully, each stage is littered with little batteries to pick up and collecting five will let Jackie add five precious seconds to the timer.

Any platformer that deals with speed running must have rock-solid controls, and I’m pleased to say that Aeon Dive largely meets that demand. Running, jumping, sliding, and attacking all feel great, but it’s Jackie’s teleportation ability that gives this game a little extra oomph. She’s equipped with a knife-like object that can be thrown and stuck to platforms in any direction, then a quick tap of the A button will teleport Jackie to the knife’s location. This allows her to bypass various deadly obstacles, find bonus items, and just plain move through each stage quicker. I found that teleporting correctly has something of a learning curve—you’ll quickly be asked to throw the knife very accurately in between spiked floors or through narrow shafts. Once it clicked, I was fine, but it probably took the majority of the first ten stages before I really felt comfortable with this mechanic.

Jackie will also get sent back to the beginning if she’s hit by an enemy or environmental hazard, which means that getting certain bonus items becomes an exercise in tedium, which I did not enjoy. Most stages have at least one bonus item to find and grab (gems, hot dogs), but they're entirely optional and usually off the beaten path. This is not typically the kind of game I enjoy; Mighty Switch Force (and its sequel) is the singular exception. I did, however, find myself enjoying Aeon Drive once I suppressed my urge to get 100% completion. I’m sure there are people who will enjoy clambering all over each stage, but I’m just not that guy. Thankfully, once I quelled that part of myself, the game went by rather quickly.

I would not call myself a fan of game’s aesthetic. Different levels are essentially palette swaps of the same city environment. Granted, the backgrounds will change every couple zones, but the foreground elements are basically the same. You can choose different color schemes for Jack but I wasn’t particularly drawn to any of them. Her run animation appears to be missing a couple of crucial frames. The musical score is peppy, though, with some toe-tapping tracks that kept me going. Each different level (zone) includes at least one new wrinkle, like moving platforms, jump pads, or breakable walls, but for the most part you’ll be doing the same thing throughout. While this does mean you can finish Aeon Drive in 1-2 hours, it also means that it becomes somewhat rote by the end.

It does have a multiplayer option and online leaderboards for each stage, so if competitive speed running is your thing, Aeon Drive delivers. For me, it’s an interesting curio that I’m glad I played, but won’t be returning to often.

[A touching tribute to one of racing's greatest stars.]

30

TalkBack / Horizon Chase Turbo: Senna Forever (Switch eShop) Review

« on: November 07, 2021, 09:32:38 AM »

A touching tribute to one of racing's greatest stars.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewmini/58908/horizon-chase-turbo-senna-forever-switch-eshop-review

One might assume that, as Brazilian developers, the folks at Aquiris Game Studio would be big fans of Brazil’s Ayrton Senna, widely considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Formula One racer of all time—and you’d be correct. I know next to nothing about professional racing sports or their stars—except of course NASCAR’s Ricky Bobby—but thanks to Aquiris and this lovely Horizon Chase Turbo DLC, I’m considerably more knowledgeable about the remarkable career of Ayrton Senna.

Similar to previous DLC packs, Senna Forever is presented as a separate campaign. In it, players have two options: relive the racer’s run in Career Mode or take on a block of courses in Championship Mode. The latter is essentially Senna Forever’s version of Tournament Mode from the main game: you try to come out on top in an increasing number of races, and doing so will unlock new Senna-specific cars. I believe all the tracks here are new, which is appreciated.

The Championship tracks are pulled from Senna Forever’s main Career Mode, which follows Ayrton Senna’s rise in the F-1 arena. This is the most fun, goal-oriented way to play Senna Forever. Each of the mode’s five “chapters” consist of six races in which players are tasked with earning three “Senna Marks,” which are essentially goals for each race. Usually they’re pretty general, like “collect all the coins” or “get a perfect start,” but other times they’re oddly specific, like “get gas on the 2nd lap” or “don’t use any boosts in the 1st lap.” I’m not sure exactly how these goals reflect how Senna ran any particular race in real life—coins are extremely rare in actual F-1 races—but the Marks give you something to shoot for apart from simply winning races. After the third and sixth races, you get some details of that era of Ayton Senna’s career.

Two wrinkles to the gameplay change up how Senna Forever plays from the main game. Unlike World Tour mode, Senna’s car never earns permanent stat boosts. However, before starting every race in both Career and Championship Mode, you’ll select a different modification to your F-1 car. You can improve the tires (good for rainy weather), improve the speed (good for courses with lots of straightaways), or improve the fuel efficiency (which allows you to get gas less frequently and an extra Nitro boost). You’ll be able to see whether it’s raining or not and the layout of each course before selecting your car mod. Second, pressing the X button in Senna Forever puts the camera in the driver’s seat so you can see what Ayrton Senna sees. While very cool in theory, I found the first-person view difficult to get used to and it definitely made races more challenging. Folks who play a lot of more realistic racing games will probably feel right at home, though.

I was surprised by how well the F-1 cars fit into the overall aesthetic of Horizon Chase Turbo. Courses are still colorful and gorgeous, and the music is just as bombastic as ever—the new tracks aren’t so much brand new as remixes of existing tracks, but I didn’t care. This game’s soundtrack is just so phenomenal. Senna Forever is a great addition to Horizon Chase Turbo, and I was happy to have an excuse to jump back in. And better yet, I learned a lot about one of the sport’s greatest players.

[Steel thy zipline!]

31

TalkBack / Steel Assault (Switch) Review Mini

« on: October 05, 2021, 11:00:00 AM »

Steel thy zipline!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewmini/58580/steel-assault-switch-review-mini

It would seem that Tribute, the studio behind such wonderful games as Panzer Paladin and Mercenary Kings, has gotten into the publishing game. They’ve partnered with developer Zenovia Interactive to produce Steel Assault, a tough-as-nails but mercifully brief action platformer. Even though it’s fun and inventive, it also toes the line between difficult and frustrating.

You play as Taro Takahashi, a soldier armed with a mean energy whip and zipline, out to defeat the evil General Magnus Pierce and his band cybernetic malcontents from taking over the world—which already appears to be in a post-apocalyptic age. Steel Assault looks and plays like an old 16-bit mascot platformer, and, personally, it reminded me of a GBA game. Tako Takahashi may not have the most complicated moveset in the world, but it gets the job done: he can double jump, slide for a few frames of invincibility, whip his energy whip in eight directions, and use a zipline (also in eight directions). The zipline really sets Steel Assault apart: Taro will often use it to bridge gaps between platforms, both horizontally and vertically. He can attack while moving across the zipline, as well.

The game moves at a very fast pace, and I found that I could beat Easy mode in less than an hour—although some of that time was repeating the final boss, who’s surprisingly tricky. Taro has a good-sized health bar, but health pickups are exceedingly rare. Thankfully, the stages are quite short, and his health refills upon entering a new area. You’ll also do a lot of melee combat, and your enemies are refreshingly diverse. However, there are times where the difficulty seems to stem not from enemies that are themselves tricky to take down, but instead because there are so many enemies on-screen at once.

Some fun Contra-like segments have Taro utilizing a gun turret to take down aerial assaults, including a pretty awesome robotic monster. The boss fights are incredibly fun and require some inventive thinking on your part to avoid attacks. That zipline will come in handy! If you die—and you often will—Taro will continue from the beginning of the last area he entered, which is usually on the boss’ doorstep. Steel Assault offers several difficulty levels, each an order of magnitude more difficult than the last.

Another big part of the game’s charm is its commitment to the 16-bit aesthetic. The game begins with a fun animated opening, and each level has its own title card. Several toggle-able options include a CRT filter, degree of CRT curvature, border art, and something called a “bilinear filter,” which gives the screen an additional layer of noise that I found exceedingly delightful. My biggest knock against the game has to do with the slide. In theory, Taro is invincible while sliding. The problem here is twofold: First, the slide is ridiculously short and there’s a brief recovery period—you can’t really chain slides together; and second, you have to press down and B to slide. In a feverish boss fight, that’s not a great combination. I would have preferred that the slide had a dedicated button, like A (which isn’t used for anything). The slide could stand to be a few frames longer, too. As is, I rarely used the slide effectively. This is a shame, because an effective slide would have made the higher difficulty levels much more tolerable.

I feel like I say this with a lot of games, but I really enjoyed Steel Assault until I didn’t anymore. Up to that point, it was really fun, and I have to commend Zenovia Interactive on their effective graphical filters, which are a big part of the appeal.

32

TalkBack / Re: Castlevania Advance Collection (Switch) Review

« on: September 30, 2021, 01:33:15 PM »

Just wanted to mention real quick that there is an option to change the button layout in each game under the system pause screen (ZL), under Control Settings. I changed my jump button to B and attack button to Y there for each game. I don't know if the reviewer missed it by accident, but wanted to let everyone know!

Oh snap, thanks Quantaur! I tried to change the button layout in Control Settings but I couldn't figure out how to make the changes. I'll try again tonight and change the text if I figure it out.

[Uh, Dracula X is not Symphony of the Night.]

33

TalkBack / Castlevania Advance Collection (Switch) Review

« on: September 29, 2021, 11:01:00 AM »

Uh, Dracula X is not Symphony of the Night.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/58524/castlevania-advance-collection-switch-review

Well this is a pleasant surprise. A little more than two years after the release of The Castlevania Anniversary Collection, we’re treated to The Castlevania Advance Collection, which contains the three fantastic Game Boy Advance games (of increasing quality) and…the SNES’ dismal Dracula X, itself a “demake” of the Turbo’s Rondo of Blood. I previously reviewed all four of these games when they were released for the Wii U Virtual Console, so if you want the basic gist of them, check the links below. Here, I’ll be giving my updated impressions of the games and what makes this Collection unique.

The games included here are Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow, and…Dracula X for some reason. We’ll talk about that last stinker in a minute, but first, let’s talk about the good games.

I’ve soured a little on Circle of the Moon since replaying it on Wii U. Protagonist Nathan Graves moves stiffly, and the size discrepancy between the tiny, but detailed, character sprites and the massive rooms they inhabit borders on hilarious. Warp points are few and far in between. There are some areas with extremely cheap enemy placement. The bosses tend to be extremely hard, and in fact Circle of the Moon is an order of magnitude tougher than Harmony or Aria. I got a lot more into the DDS system this time around, though, and was impressed with the wealth of effects created—it also clearly inspired much of Aria’s Soul System. Despite its sometimes crushing difficulty, I think Circle is a beautiful game with great music (I was wrong in 2014) and is well worth playing through (and you can unlock multiple stat-changing modes).

Surprisingly, I found myself really enjoying Harmony of Dissonance this time around, although my core complaints about it remain: navigating the castles is a real bear, since there are locked doors or stone barriers all over the place. The garish color scheme—an overcorrection of Circle’s muted colors—is just as bad in a different way. The music has a bizarre 8-bit quality to it, and the sprites are too big, too pixelated, and don’t animate particularly well. Juste’s jump is unusually floaty. All that said, I really like the design of the castle(s), and even though most of the bosses are ridiculously easy, I enjoyed being over-leveled and slaughtering them without any resistance whatsoever. Dracula’s final form might be the easiest Dracula fight in the franchise’s history. And hey, there’s a Boss Rush mode that you can absolutely tear through.

Aria of Sorrow remains my favorite entry in the entire Castlevania series—certainly the best of the Igavania games. It’s a slimmed-down, fast-paced game with an inventive collect-a-thon aspect (enemy souls) and a fun castle design. The plot is actually interesting for a Castlevania game, and the overhauled magic system—in which you absorb enemy souls and use their powers—is fun and leads to a lot of experimentation. The spritework is far superior to Harmony, as is the music and general level design. You’ll still need to equip certain things to get the true ending, but those things dovetail with the plot so well that I’m always impressed. In terms of difficulty, it’s eminently approachable but more difficult (in places) than Harmony, which is another welcome change. If you only play one game in this collection, make it Aria of Sorrow.

But seriously, Circle and Harmony are well worth experiencing as well.

We don’t even need to talk about Dracula X because you absolutely should not play it. The fact that this game was included instead of Symphony of the Night or Rondo of Blood—both of which inform the Advance games—is an utter mystery to me. I don’t understand why Symphony, in particular, remains out of reach for Nintendo systems. The original PSOne version is currently available on the Xbox store (it was an Xbox 360 Arcade game), but the retranslated Dracula X Chronicles (PSP) version, as well as that game’s version of Rondo of Blood, is currently only available on the Castlevania Requiem “collection” for PS4. The only other way you can play Rondo of Blood in 2021 is to break out your TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine Mini—which of course everyone has access to, right? This is patently ridiculous, and Konami is doing gamers a disservice by releasing two Castlevania collections that just happen to lack two of the series’ most important, influential, games.

And no, Dracula X is not an SNES port of Rondo of Blood. The two games do share art assets (which don’t look as good on SNES) but in terms of gameplay and level design, there’s no comparison. The only other thing I’ll say about it is that the final battle with Dracula (spoilers?) involves bottomless pits, hard-to-avoid fireballs, and infuriating knockback. Look, just don’t play it.

These ports were handled by M2, who remains the best at what they do. There’s a gallery featuring key art from all four games, as well as scans of the boxes in each region and instruction manuals—but no concept art, which I found disappointing. You can also listen to the soundtracks of each game and change the region—Japan, Europe, or North America. Unfortunately, your save files cannot swap regions, so if you start Circle of the Moon in Japanese, you’ll have to finish it in Japanese (which I don’t recommend).

The three GBA games have handy “Encyclopedia” options in the system menu (press ZL during each game) that displays helpful information about enemies, drops, magic combos, etc. This is especially helpful for Circle of the Moon, although it does not display the button combo you use to activate summons (half circle from down, to forward, to up + B). You can also change the button configurations for each game, although rather than simply pressing the button you want for that action, you have to press A first, which brings up a menu of actions for that button. A bit more complicated than it needed to be, but appreciated all the same.

You can also create save states, which will make some of Circle’s more difficult boss fights less frustrating, and rewind by holding ZR and pressing left on the D-pad or left stick. You can rewind a surprisingly good amount of time, which will make Rondo at least semi-tolerable (should morbid curiosity get the better of you). I will say that all three GBA games look better in Handheld mode than blown up on a 50-inch television--a consequence of their handheld origins.

So while the bells and whistles aren’t necessarily anything to write home about, the GBA games at the core of this Castlevania Advance Collection are easily worth the price of admission. I remain flummoxed and annoyed that Konami is holding Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night hostage for the time being, but hopefully that will be resolved someday.

[Certainly not the review I thought I'd be writing.]

34

TalkBack / BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites (Switch) Review FAQ

« on: September 14, 2021, 10:35:00 AM »

Certainly not the review I thought I'd be writing.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/58345/bloodrayne-betrayal-fresh-bites-switch-review-faq

I feel like I'd done enough of these Review FAQs that an explainer paragraph probably isn't necessary, but just in case you're unfamiliar with the format, here's an example. I generally fall back on the Review FAQ format when I'm having trouble putting together a more traditional review, as was the case here.

Hey Zach, you seem down; what’s up?

Yeah man, the last couple days have been rough. I’ve been revisiting a game I remembering enjoying—more or less—back in 2011 and finding that now, in 2021, I’m not having a good time with.

Well that’s no good, what is it?

BloodRayne: Betrayal, which has been re-released on modern systems with some new features as BloodRyane Betrayal: Fresh Bites.

Is that the game with the sexy dhampir with scythes on her arms?

Yeah.

So you’re telling me that a half-dressed vampire girl slicing monsters to pieces isn’t winning you over?

Surprisingly, no.

Wow, this must be serious. First, though, I don’t really remember that game. Explain…as you would a child.

Here’s the elevator pitch: Betrayal is a 2D character action game in which BloodRayne travels through fairly large levels, slicing up monsters as she encounters them (which is often) and then traversing platforming obstacle courses in between combat encounters.

Okay that all sounds perfectly fine.

It does, doesn’t it? And in fact, Rayne’s combat prowess is not one of my issues with the game. To the contrary, she shines in battle, with a surprising number of flashy attacks, a dash, and the ability to both suck the blood of her enemies (to gain health) or infect and weaponize them against other baddies. She also has a giant pistol and, later, a badass heat ray.

So the combat is good?

It is, although it gets a little bit rote at times. There’s a points-based system where you’re rewarded for decimating your foes quickly and stylishly. You can mostly ignore this, because it seems like you have to be unreasonably good at this game to hit even the most generous time bonuses. Encounters often just wind up feeling like kill rooms that go on just a little too long, with several rounds of enemies appearing in every fight.

Do they ever shake up the formula?

Sometimes you’ll have environmental hazards to deal with, like a saw blade overhead, toxic sludge around you, or cannonballs being shot your way. Usually, you can use these things to your advantage, which is cool. The combat is never boring, though, and when you really get into the groove, it’s a joy.

Okay, so combat is fine but maybe gets a little boring. How’s the platforming?

In a word, terrible.

Uh oh.

It’s like WayForward knew that the game couldn’t just be eight hours of killing monsters—which is true—so they tried to take Rayne’s combat moveset and apply it to platforming sequences that become increasingly demanding. The problem is that the controls are just a little too loose for what they want you to do.

Maybe give me an example?

There’s a sequence towards the middle of the game where Rayne has to outrun a giant buzzsaw while jumping and dashing between platforms that decrease in size as she goes, and some of them move, and there’s instant-death toxic sludge beneath her. The controls aren’t as precise as they need to be, though, so you wind up under or over-shooting the platforms, or dash at the wrong time, or accidentally fall after you’ve landed because you think she’s not fully on the platform.

Or another time where, in the final level, Rayne has to bounce across toxic sludge by air-kicking floating insects that are a set distance apart, oh but also there are laser beams that will shoot between bugs, so she has to jump, attack, bounce up, dash to avoid the laser, hit the next bug right on the money, bounce up, dash to avoid the laser, etc. All this might be perfectly serviceable except that Rayne is in shadow, as are all foreground elements, but instead of the background being white or light red—you know, colors where you could still see the foreground—it’s an image of dancing flames, which is both too dark and too motion-heavy to adequately see anything in the foreground (which, as a reminder, is black). It’s terrible level design.

Neither of those sounds fun, especially the second one. What’s going on in the final level?

Yeah so the final level is basically Rayne escaping the castle (spoilers?)—the foreground and all the characters are black, the background is also black apart from the dancing flames, and the camera is tilting left and right. And you’re expected to perform acrobatic platforming sequences and lots of combat encounters where enemies overlap, or blend in with the back/foreground. I got through it, and the second half of that level isn't nearly as egregious, but good lord that first half. 28-year-old Zach might have powered through something like that out of some sense of pride, but 38-year-old Zach accepts that bad decisions were made in that final level.

If there’s a persistent platforming theme, are there collectibles?

There are—“treasure” boxes that are rather superfluous and only exist to boost your score, and Red Skulls. Most levels have at least a couple Red Skulls, and collecting four or five lets you improve your health total or pistol ammo total. Several of the Red Skulls are in places where you only have one shot to get them per level (or you can try dying and restarting from the checkpoint). More health and ammo certainly helps, but won’t really relieve your frustration during demanding platforming sequences.

So what’s new about this Fresh Bites version apart from being on modern consoles?

They’ve brought in Laura Bailey and Troy Baker as Rayne and Kagan, respectively, the original voice actors for those characters (on the PS2 games), which is cool. They’ve also re-balanced the difficulty from the original, which was nearly masochistic at times, but I think this change mostly applies to the combat encounters and how much damage Rayne takes/does. And it's something you can turn off on the stage select screen--although I don't know why you would. But for the platforming, even if they did pull back on the throttle somehow, 38-year-old Zach is not as spry or as patient as 28-year-old Zach.

Anything else?

Beating the game unlocks an art gallery, which is...fine.

You know, we didn’t really talk about the game’s art or music.

As you know, Disembodied Voice, I’m a sucker for 2D, hand-drawn art. And Betrayal does, in fact, look pretty great. Few studios are as good at this as WayForward is. Rayne’s animation is fabulous and I absolutely adore her respawn pose and the way she kicks the door off her transport coffin if you press Y when she lands at the start of a stage. Her combat animation is over the top and great fun to watch, although I rarely had time to appreciate it during fights. Enemies are a little less animate, but still full of personality. I was a bit disappointed by the dearth of distinct enemy types. If I never see another blue-coated vampire dude again, it’ll be too soon. The bosses, though, are fantastic—especially the towering, hard-rocking demon who caps off the game (before the terrible escape level, that is).

Jake “Virt” Kaufman did the music, so it’s already excellent, but he also provides a nice gothic-sounding soundtrack that’s distinct from his familiar Shantae or Mighty Switch Force tunes.

After you get into the castle, levels all tend to look pretty similar, and the game doesn’t always do a good job of telling you where you can and can’t land or wall-jump. In terms of design, you’ll be utilizing Rayne’s high-rising backflip for a surprising number of jumps that could’ve just be solved with a slightly-higher normal jump or a short secondary jump, a la Rachet & Clank or the old God of War games.

Hey, did you play that new God of War game?

I did.

What’d you think?

Well, it’s not a God of War game so I didn’t really like it.

Touché!

Anyway, Rayne herself is more covered-up than her previous incarnations which is probably easier to animate but—because you’re talking to me—a little disappointing. I always preferred her BloodRayne 2 outfit because, again, it’s me.

So you did…not like it?

I did not. I mean, look, I’m a big fan of tough-as-nails platformers. My adoration for Super Meat Boy (but not its sequel), Hollow Knight, and The End is Nigh is well-documented. But the reason those games work so well is because the precision platforming is designed hand-in-hand with the protagonist’s moveset, and you very quickly develop a sense for that moveset and exactly what he or she can or can’t do. Here, it seems like WayForward tried to apply Rayne’s existing combat repertoire to platforming challenges, which absolutely doesn’t fly. The inconsistency with which her wall-jump can be deployed is a testament to this—it seems tacked-on, incorporated to justify some of the platforming segments and superficial exploration without really taking advantage of it.

The combat is generally enjoyable, but the scoring system is never explained and appears to require superhuman skill (or far more practice than I’m willing to entertain) to get good grades in. The platforming is generally miserable. The bosses are a lot of fun, though. Betrayal looks and sounds great. More often than not, though, it feels like work. Tedious, exhausting work. And 38-year-old Zach doesn’t have the patience for that anymore.

[We've got questions about the upcoming remaster and WayFoward has answers.]

35

TalkBack / BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites Interview with Adam Tierney

« on: August 23, 2021, 06:20:10 PM »

We've got questions about the upcoming remaster and WayFoward has answers.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/58175/bloodrayne-betrayal-fresh-bites-interview-with-adam-tierney

As you good people may or may not have heard, the old PS3/Xbox 360 game BloodRayne Betrayal will soon relaunch in a "New Bites" remaster on the Switch. For those unfamiliar with the series, Terminal Reality's BloodRayne began its life in 2002 with the PS2's BloodRayne, got a sequel two years later (Bloodrayne 2) before going into a vampiric dormancy until 2011, when WayForward resurrected my favorite dhampir in a 2D action platformer. Ziggurut Interactive holds the license now, and already re-released slightly-updated versions of the first two games on Steam. In case you're wondering, the sequel is the better of the two. The BloodRayne series is also well known for a trilogy of terrible Uwe Boll films, which you should avoid at all costs, and was the first video game character to pose for Playboy which, I mean, let's just say that CG renders have improved a lot since 2002.

At any rate, I recall having a lot of fun with BloodRayne Betrayal and will be looking to revisit it in early September. WayForward's own Adam Tierney was good enough to answer my (and Neal Ronaghan's) questions about the upcoming remaster. Enjoy!

Nintendo World Report (NWR): Was BloodRayne Betrayal always going to be so combat-focused? Given Rayne's abilities, I can certainly see an alternate universe version of Betrayal with Metroidvania tendencies.

Adam Tierney (AT): I think so, as far as I can recall. It’s true that WayForward does produce quite a few Metroidvania games in addition to brawlers and action platformers like this one. But given Rayne’s arm blades and unique style of attacking from the first two games, I think it was decided pretty early to go heavy in on the combat for this game.

NWR: What’s the process like for planning, animating, and iterating on the animation of a character like Rayne? Unlike Shantae, who basically has a hair whip, Rayne has a seemingly bottomless supply of flashy melee attacks.

AT: I would characterize Shantae as more of an action platformer, where the emphasis is on moving your character around the environment, timing jumps between platforms, and looking for the right path out of each area. But BloodRayne features a deeper system for combat and mobility, at the expense of some platforming complexity, at least in the earlier stages. The process for any of our games is deciding what sort of a mix between exploration and combat feels ideal for the brand, and then we’ll start planning out unique animations and attacks to support that style of play.

NWR: I will always and forever love the fact that Sean Velasco directed innocent, feel-good platformer A Boy and His Blob and then turned around and directed gothic gore-fest BloodRayne Betrayal. Historically, how has WayForward been able to balance between happy/cuddly/cute worlds and darker more violent fare? Are some teams focused more on different styles? Is there a lot of cross-pollination?

AT: Yeah, there’s no real consistency. I think every director at WayForward has done their share of all-ages kid games and darker fare as well. At WayForward, our guiding light is to go after the kinds of brands that excite us, and craft gameplay that feels like the best fit for each brand. That said, I think if you look at the kinds of games that WayForward developed back in the early 2000s versus today, we’re now moving away from kids games for the most part, other than kids brands that we personally love (like Trollhunters, TMNT, or Adventure Time) and most of what comes out from our studio as we head into 2022 and 2023 will be mostly action game brands or original titles aimed mostly at older gamers.

NWR: WayForward has made a variety of side-scrolling games. What makes Betrayal stand out from the rest of WayForward's library?

AT: BloodRayne Betrayal is one of our most complex and nuanced games in terms of character mobility and combat flow. It takes more getting used to than many of our games to really master the combat and mobility, but the payoff is one of the most aggressive, satisfying playable characters we’ve ever built for a game. And of course, it goes almost without saying, but BloodRayne Betrayal is the bloodiest game WayForward has ever produced. We even developed a dynamic fluid blood system for the game to accommodate all the gushing red that sprays from Rayne’s enemies in the game.

NWR: One of the new features of this remaster is that you brought in veteran BloodRayne voice actors Laura Bailey and Troy Baker as Rayne and Kagan, respectively, to provide voice work. Was said voice work ever planned for the original?

AT: It was briefly discussed, but back then we were still really getting our legs under us for VO work in games. Nowadays, it’s pretty much expected for any major WayForward title. And though we had quite a bit of VO in our Batman game on Wii a few years earlier, that was all recorded via WB, so we didn’t really know how to spearhead VO ourselves as a studio yet. It was fantastic to get Laura and Troy involved with this game, though, especially because Rayne and Kagan were two of their earliest performances in video games. And the game always had plenty of dialog, it was just text-only. Hearing that dialog fully voiced now, it’s hard to even remember the game without it, it’s such a natural addition.

NWR: How did that collaboration come about for the remaster? I imagine it took a little practice to get back into character for them—BloodRayne 2 was in 2004, after all!

AT: Not for pros like them! Within about a minute each, Laura and Troy found those voices again. We’ve worked with each of them a few times over the years and they never fail to impress us. We were also lucky enough to fill out the VO cast with Patrick Seitz and Todd Haberkorn, two of our favorite and most frequent voice actors, and they did a great job as well voicing all of the game’s minor characters.

NWR: I think when most people—myself included—think back on BloodRayne Betrayal, they think of two things: the jaw-dropping 2D animation and the absolutely brutal difficulty. I’m excited to see how good the game looks on modern HD displays, but I do have to ask whether you’ve tweaked the toughness at all. I recall the original crossing the line from “this is really hard, but doable” to “this is frustrating and masochistic” in several places.

AT: Yeah, we have. We’re not afraid of putting a brutally tough video game out there, but we’ve been told by some fans over the decade since Betrayal was originally released that a few areas felt so tough, they just weren’t that fun, or had become a huge dropoff point for people unable to complete the game. So we tweaked a few of those areas, and also slightly adjusted Rayne’s health and damage values, for what felt to us like a fairer gameplay experience. That said, all of these adjustments are on a toggle in the menu. So if you want to play the game with none of those changes, just as tough as it always was, that’s still an option for gamers.

NWR: Any tips for getting a good grade in each stage?

AT: You’ve really just gotta get into that perfect flow of combat and mobility. My advice would be to watch speedruns of the game on Twitch or YouTube, see what gameplay methods those experts are using, and try to learn some of those yourself.

NWR: Aside from the voice work and HD-ified graphics, any other bells and whistles you can tempt us with in this remaster?

AT: The added VO, HD visuals, and difficulty adjustments were the major adjustments, beyond console-specific features such as HD Rumble on Switch and Activities and DualSense controller features on PS5. We really didn’t want to tinker with too much because we still feel the game is great as-is, so we tried to limit adjustments to areas of clear benefit. I can say that there is a physical edition of the game planned with some very cool bonus items, though, so keep an eye out for that.

NWR: One of the nice things about the ten-year gap between the original release and now is that Betrayal will undoubtedly find a new audience. Might this be the first in a franchise resurrection? My favorite dhampir’s only been in three games, and I was surprised Betrayal never got a successor.

AT: Cross your fingers! It is not lost on Ziggurat and WayForward that there hasn’t been a new BloodRayne game since Betrayal. If the response from gamers toward Fresh Bites is positive, we would all love to work on more, brand-new BloodRayne adventures in the future. As for bringing WayForward’s older, licensed catalog games back to life, we gave a similar treatment to Double Dragon Neon this past December. And there are a few more beloved, classic WayForward games currently being updated for modern consoles, but you’ll have to wait and see to find out more on those…

Well, color me intrigued. I'm pretty thrilled that the difficulty's been revised, but even happier that it's a toggle.I also really look forward to hearing voice acting; I had actually misremembered that the original release did not have it. Fresh Bites drops on September 9th, ya'll; I'm excited to revisit it. Thanks to Adam Tierney and WayForward for granting us this fun interview!

[Once more unto the Breach, dear friends!]

36

TalkBack / Axiom Verge 2 (Switch) Review

« on: August 11, 2021, 09:00:00 AM »

Once more unto the Breach, dear friends!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/58042/axiom-verge-2-switch-review

It’s hard to believe it’s been six long years since Tom Happ gifted the world with Axiom Verge, a game I’ve since played through several times on several different systems. Essentially summarized as Super Metroid by way of Contra with a surprisingly heavy, sci-fi story, Axiom Verge has been living, rent-free, in my brain since its release. It’s not perfect, and the best version is, surprisingly, on Wii U, but if you’ve managed to avoid playing Axiom Verge over the last half decade, you should correct that mistake. Since the sequel was announced in an Indie World Showcase from December 2019, my frothing anticipation has only increased. And now it’s here, and I’ve played it, and it’s wonderful.

You won’t be controlling Trace in Axiom Verge 2, but instead a woman named Indra who finds herself transported to a parallel version of Earth that’s seemingly been overtaken by machines. The game’s most immediate differentiator is the change in scenery: whereas Axiom Verge 1 took place largely in dark, subterranean caverns, the sequel is content to show you the surface of the planet—a planet that is not, in fact, Sudra. Another big change is that Axiom Verge 2’s focus is not on combat, but exploration. Indra will find a handful of melee weapons and a couple projectile attacks, but nothing compared to the overabundance of imaginative firepower from the previous game. Instead, you’ll quickly be able to grab ledges, climb walls, and perform an impact attack that damages enemies and destroys cracked walls.

In addition to finding a steady stream of ability-increasing items, Indra will also find “Apocalypse Flasks,” which are analogous to skill points. You can customize her abilities using these vials for increased damage, health, and hacking potential. Once Indra finds a drone, it receives its own line of upgrades. As in Axiom Verge 1, Indra will also come across health upgrades here and there.

There was plenty of drone gameplay in Axiom Verge 1, especially once Trace gained the ability to warp to the drone’s location. In this sequel, the drone is essentially Indra’s co-star, as it can—and must—travel to an alternate map that runs parallel to the main map called the Breach. Oh yes, the Breach—the abstract storm between worlds that kept the Rusalki from killing Athetos in Axiom Verge 1—is now traversable. The Breach plays like an entirely different game, as the drone has its own suite of abilities (including a grappling hook) and the level design is tighter and more compact. The Breach has a unique aesthetic that I really enjoyed, complete with catchy chiptunes (the whole game has great music).

Most of the game’s upgrades have to do with exploration, drone abilities, or Breach exploration. I also haven’t touched on another key aspect of Axiom Verge 2—hacking. The first game presented players with the Address Disrupter, which pixelated enemies in order to change their behavior. Here, Indra can “infect” any mechanical object, mobile or otherwise, and have direct control over its subroutines. As you sink skills points into your infection ability, your powers grow. Indra can cause platforms to move, doors to open, or enemies to work for her. Many larger enemies have multiple parts to infect, and at higher levels you can effectively cripple your foes. The drone can also infect, which adds another layer to combat.

Indra won’t come across any traditional boss fights, but there are plenty of larger mechanical monsters to defeat, and doing so provides Apocalypse Flasks. These fights can be tense if you’re not well prepared, but upgrading your infection abilities makes them considerably easier.

You may be wondering about the sequel’s story. There’s not much I can say without edging into spoiler territory, but it does eventually link to the plot of Axiom Verge 1—just not in the way I expected. While I really enjoyed the connection to Axiom Verge 1 and the parallel story of what’s going on in this alternate Earth that Indra’s exploring, I found Indra herself to be underdeveloped. Part of it is because there’s not as much dialogue in Axiom Verge 2, but another part is that I miss the character portraits of Axiom Verge 1, where I could really get a good idea of what Trace looked like, and his expressions during story segments. In Axiom Verge 2, characters speak using word balloons and character portraits are passé. As a result, I didn’t feel as connected to Indra as I did to Trace.

The game is gorgeous, with big outdoor environments and lively backgrounds. It’s one gigantic map now rather than being subdivided into distinct areas as in the last game. Before too long, Indra gains the ability to warp between save points, which is something I asked for specifically in my Wii U review, and I’m thrilled it’s been implemented here. Wayfinding and item cleanup is still something of a bear, however: the map doesn’t mark where items are or what has already been found. You do have a “reminder” mark for the map, and I recommend using it. Among the very first things Indra finds is a compass, but I did not find it particularly helpful. It will point you toward waypoints (which you tend to get through dialogue) but it will often point you towards things you can’t get to for a long time.

My only other real complaints about the game has to do with Breach-jumping. To get in and out of certain areas of the game, you’ll have to pay a good amount of attention to the structure of the Breach vs. whatever area Indra is in. In some cases, you’ll have to manipulate Breach portals. This led to a lot frustration later in the game once I knew where I had to go but couldn’t figure out how to get there. I’ll just say this—when in doubt, use the Breach Attractor. There are still a few Apocalypse Flasks that I’ve no idea how to obtain, but I’m sure the Internet will have a guide up in no time.

Axiom Verge 2 is a fantastic evolution of Axiom Verge 1—it feels like a different game, but with enough gameplay and story connections to remain familiar. My issues with the protagonist and wayfinding pale in comparison to the addictive exploration and beautiful vistas that Axiom Verge 2 revels in, and I can’t wait to speculate wildly about the storyline.

[You stare into the void, and the void stares right back.]

37

TalkBack / Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (Switch) Review

« on: June 30, 2021, 08:24:00 AM »

You stare into the void, and the void stares right back.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/57708/doki-doki-literature-club-plus-switch-review

Visual novels are usually pretty far afield from my wheelhouse. When I do encounter them, they’re typically broken up by gameplay segments featuring bouncy ninjas or meta-joke-wielding cyber goddesses. I remembered hearing, however, about Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) back when it was originally making the rounds on Steam—a visual novel with a psychological horror twist—so I raised my hand when the review code came in. I’m certainly glad I did: DDLC starts innocently enough, but quickly descends into disturbing places, and I am here for it.

The setup is simple enough: you are needled into joining an after-school poetry club by your longtime friend and next-door neighbor, Sayori. The club is presided over by a girl named Monika. In addition to Sayori and Monika, there are two other members, Yuri and Natsuki. For the most part, this is a visual novel through and through: you’ll be pressing the A button a lot to move dialogue forward while various character portraits cycle to indicate who’s talking. After each story sequence, everyone will “go home” to write poetry to share the next day, which is where the bulk of DDLC’s gameplay takes place.

You’ll be asked to choose twenty words to incorporate into your poem (you never see the finished product). Your goal is to woo one of the three club members—Sayori, Yuri, or Natsuki—and each of them likes different kinds of words (you cannot romance Monika). The narrative will move forward when you show off your poem the next day. You’ll occasionally be asked to make choices that further affect the story, like whom to spend the weekend with.

All three roads, however, eventually lead down a dark path. Without getting too far into the weeds, all three classmates start acting strangely, and you’ll start seeing some interesting glitches that bring to mind something like Eternal Darkness. Part of the game’s structure is in restarting or loading up saved games, and this is where you’ll likely be introduced to DDLC’s meta-game: a virtual desktop. Here, you can view unlocked character portraits and music tracks, as well as gaze into the “game’s” file directory—another important aspect of gameplay.

I must admit I was surprised and lowkey disturbed by how far DDLC goes in terms of character arcs. To give you some idea of where you’ll be headed, one character eventually reveals that she’s spent most of her life depressed and hits you with something of an emotional hostage situation. Another of the girls starts interpreting your interest in her (via poetry) as infatuation and responds in kind.

DDLC definitely has a “what is reality” vibe that kept me interested, even as I found myself having to restart to move the narrative forward. Despite the restarts and reloads, DDLC is quite short. Thankfully, this version of the game also includes a few side stories that get you more familiar with your fellow club members, should you want to spend more time with them before things go sideways.

Doki Doki Literature Club doesn’t disappoint as an off-kilter visual novel. If you, like me, tend to avoid this genre, you might consider DDLC as an exception to the rule if you can handle some disturbing content.

[This game has charm to spare, but that only goes so far.]

38

TalkBack / Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition (Switch eShop) Review

« on: May 20, 2021, 05:19:08 PM »

This game has charm to spare, but that only goes so far.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/57176/save-me-mr-tako-definitive-edition-switch-eshop-review

Just over two years ago, my colleague Jordan Rudek reviewed this quirky little platformer and enjoyed it overall, but had some criticisms that made me hold off on dropping the hammer on purchasing the game. Since that time, we’ve learned that developer Christophe Galati parted ways with original publisher Nicalis, in part because they just wouldn’t let the man patch his own game because it didn’t sell well enough. Harsh toke, Nicalis! We’ll also since learned that Nicalis isn’t the best company to associate with anyway. Anyway, Save Me Mr. Tako was de-listed from all storefronts following the split, and Mr. Galati partnered up with Limited Run Games to release this enhanced, some might say definitive, edition of the Brave Little Octopus.

This version offers some improvements to the previous build. Perhaps most importantly, Tako now has a life bar: he can take two hits while retaining his hat, will lose it on the third hit, and will perish on the fourth. Tako’s hat-loving otter friend (I assume he’s an otter) will occasionally give you hints as to where to find other hats as well. You can swap the game’s difficulty at any time in a specific house in the Octopus Village. Mr. Tako wears its Game Boy influence on its sleeve, and there are a dizzying array of Super Game Boy color schemes and screen borders to choose from. If you don’t want to constantly mess with color selection, you can simply select “Auto” to let the game choose the color for you based on Mr. Tako’s location. There’s also a music player, should you feel the urge to relive the game’s many upbeat tunes.

If you’re unfamiliar with the life and times of Mr. Tako, here’s the general story: octopuses and humans are at war. Tako’s warmongering brother, Bako, is leading the eight-limbed army and he expects his younger brother to fight alongside him. Mr. Tako, however, does not have hate in any of his three hearts and rescues a captured human girl from Bako’s men. Tako then follows the army’s relentless march, rescuing humans they’ve captured, and generally gets involved in their plans of conquest and in the lives of various humans along the way.

In practice, the game unfolds a bit like Kirby’s Adventure: each “level” takes place in a small “overworld” map, within which appear numerous doors to specific stages or towns. These stages represent Tako’s movement from one story beat to the next but can be revisited at any time to find any important items (mostly captured humans) that you missed the first time through. Stages generally maintain that Kirby feel, with simple platforming, enemies to avoid, and the occasional off-the-beaten-path secret to find. Tako collects gemstones, one hundred of which earns him a 1-up. Extra lives, which look like feathers, are also judiciously sprinkled throughout each level. You will never be short on lives, which was another quality of life improvement of this Definitive Edition, as it sounds like the original game limited you to 9 lives.

Being an octopus, Mr. Tako can fire ink blobs at enemies that will freeze them in place, allowing him to use them as platforms to reach higher ground. Our hero does have a semi-limited supply of ink in his squishy body,  but he can find ink refills with some regularity.

In addition to his ink shot, Mr. Tako will come across a variety of hats in his travels. Hats grant our hero alternate attacks (mostly), like an ink blob that’s more like a Super Mario Land Super Ball, a short-range whip (really just his arm), archery arrow, or enemy-stunning flower “creep.” Some hats have no effect on Tako’s moveset and function as quest items. Tako will eventually find a short-range sword that actually kills enemies rather than freezing them in place, which can be handy in some situations but may limit your ability to move vertically in any given stage. Thankfully, Tako can equip two hats at once and switch between them by pressing X. He can also change hats at checkpoints, should a lengthy stage have one. There are a whopping fifty hats to try and find, although many of them are superfluous.

My biggest problem with Save Me Mr. Tako is that you’re mostly doing the same thing in the 30th stage that you were doing in the 3rd stage—the only real difference is how long the stage is. There are rare instances of taking control of another character, and while these segments provide a nice change of pace, these characters, regardless of species, still have an ink meter. When you play as humans, the hitbox is still based on Mr. Tako, which leads to some hilarious cases where the human’s head disappears into the ceiling during a jump. They also don’t necessarily endear you to the characters you’re controlling. Another issue is that there’s really no way to keep track of your quests, which are numerous and easily forgotten. Certain hats (like bombs) may help to progress in certain quests, but it’s never really spelled out as neatly as I would’ve liked. For the most part, you’ll going to want to keep a notepad by your Switch for writing these things down. Quest completion tends to reward you with gemstones and extra lives with the occasional new hat thrown in for good measure.

The plot is interesting to a point, but there are so many subplots, story tangents, and side characters that it just starts to feel like padding. The story is at its best when pitting Tako and Bako against each other.

The game wears its Game Boy inspiration on its sleeve and has a flawless aesthetic. Everything about the production, from the pixel art and color selection to the catchy chiptunes, will make you think you’re playing a lost Game Boy game. Christophe Galati really knocked it out of the park. I just wish the gameplay was a little more interesting! Despite my misgivings, I really do enjoy Save Me Mr. Tako, and if you’re nostalgic for the golden age of handheld gaming, this game absolutely delivers in spades.

[Matt answers Zach's burning questions about Shantae's humble GBC origins.]

39

TalkBack / Shantae Series Interview with Matt Bozon

« on: April 27, 2021, 03:35:48 PM »

Matt answers Zach's burning questions about Shantae's humble GBC origins.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/56978/shantae-series-interview-with-matt-bozon

Today, the original GBC Shantae game gets a long-awaited re-release on the Switch. I just posted my review of the plucky heroine's maiden adventure, and I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to bother Matt Bozon, the Shantae series director and WayForward's creative director, with some questions about that landmark game. Thanks to Matt, of course, for entertaining my fanboy ramblings; it's always a pleasure.

Zach Miller (ZM): Could you talk about Shantae's origin story? Where do she and her charismatic castmates come from, and how was that original GBC game made? It's quite a technical feat for the GBC.

Matt Bozon (MB): Shantae’s story begins in 1994 with my wife Erin, who came up with the character and game concept following our time together as animation students at CalArts. It was all about a hair-whipping, belly-dancing genie who could ride animals and summon magic. It sounded really fun! I helped out by fleshing out the world and the cast, introducing Risky Boots, Rottytops, Sky, and Bolo. We got help from programming legend Jimmy Huey, who helped pitch the game around to various publishers. It wasn’t until a few years later, when all three of us were working together at WayForward, that Shantae was greenlit for production, this time reimagined as a Game Boy Color game. After getting our feet wet with Xtreme Sports, which was our first GBC title, we moved straight into development of Shantae. We worked on the game for about two years, with other team members joining as needed. As for the technical wizardry, Jimmy found ways to get more tiles, extra colors, and even the illusion of parallax scrolling and translucency out of the GBC through a variety of programming tricks, somewhat blurring the lines between GBC and the Game Boy Advance. Compared to similar games of the era, I think it’s still pretty impressive!

ZM: I know that Shantae's overworld and basic dungeon layout is inspired by Zelda II and Castlevania II (or at least, I have always assumed), but the animal transformations are wholly unique. The closest analogy I can think of is Super Metroid, but even that feels wrong. Where did that originate, and how did you decide on her animal forms/powers?

MB: Erin loves animals and dancing, and the idea of Shantae combined both. Her earliest designs had Shantae riding the animals, or sending them off on tasks based on their abilities. Players could take control of a monkey to collect out of reach items, ride an elephant to bash down barriers, or summon a tiger that could leap over long pits. Later it changed to having Shantae belly dance to transform herself into the animal forms directly, which eliminated the need to backtrack or swap between Shantae and her animal friends. Erin also wanted a heroic lead that didn’t rely on a traditional gun or melee weapon, so she came up with the hair-whip attack, inspired by the TV show I Dream of Jeannie!

ZM: Shantae's original publisher was Capcom; I've always wondered if you have to get their sign-off to continue the series without their involvement or re-publish the original game on 3DS and Switch? Did they ever entertain a sequel?

MB: Capcom focused mainly on the game’s distribution. So there were no set expectations for the series moving forward. But Capcom did entrust us with a Dolphin development unit sometime around 2002 in hopes that we could come up with a Shantae GameCube sequel. We did some very early exploration into this idea, but ended up focusing on Shantae Advance instead. GBA was where most of the work-for-hire jobs were coming from and, as always, we had to find creative ways to keep the lights on! So, unfortunately there was no second Shantae title with Capcom, though we have enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with them ever since!

ZM: Was it challenging to port the game to 3DS or Switch? I seem to recall hearing that Risky's Revenge had to be basically rebuilt for mobile, which was then ported to modern systems. I have to assume porting a 20-year-old GBC game would be just as difficult.

MB: We were very fortunate to have Limited Run Games handle the porting, and they entrusted the task to Dimitris, aka Modern Vintage Gamer, who knocked it out of the park. There were definitely technical challenges that I’m sure he’d be able to explain – but some challenges were in knowing which of the game’s little quirks were legacy bugs or exploits versus things that needed “fixing.” The quest is vast, and while working with him, I’d sometimes remember something from the original production that never was in the final product. Between Dimitris, WayForward’s QA team, and myself, we were constantly returning to the original cartridge, counting frames, checking for oddities, looking under different reflective light sources (remember, light bulbs were usually yellow, or burning-hot halogens – not LEDs – when the original game was color balanced). The original game had a very limited release back in 2002, and really has never been exposed to a large audience – returning only once in 2013 to Virtual Console. So in many ways I feel that the game is about to be put through its paces for the very first time by a wider audience! I’m really looking forward to hearing what new fans think of the original game.

ZM: I was kind of floored when I heard that Limited Run was actually making new GBC carts of the original game. How did that amazing idea come about? I didn't even think GBC cartridge parts were being made anymore (lord knows I preordered it immediately).

MB: I don’t know how they pulled that off, but we were similarly shocked to hear that this was even a possibility. It seems like it would be prohibitively expensive, especially considering that Shantae required the biggest cartridge available. But it would still be orders of magnitude cheaper than finding one of those original cartridges, new in box or even used. So, our hats are off to LRG for pulling this off!

ZM: One thing that I've (personally) appreciated about the Shantae aesthetic is that the character designs trend towards older "good girl" art (I'm thinking of guys like Gil Elvgren or George Petty) while also being more cartoony than either. Was that intentional or am I off my rocker? The series has also seen a lot of variety in character art--do you have a favorite? Has her "look" stabilized in this Half-Genie Hero/Seven Sirens era?

MB: Wow, that’s a very interesting question. Growing up, those artists could be seen all over the place, but no, I don’t believe there was any direct influence. But we did create Shantae’s look to be highly posable while retaining a strong silhouette, much like the artists you mentioned. The art style was really sort of a hybrid approach – we developed our own unique style, but there were plenty of influences from anime and manga. Some examples include Dirty Pair, Ranma ½, Outlanders, and Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, and there were many others as well! Right now, it’s hard to say if there’s one go-to Shantae style. Erin and I both often consider Half-Genie Hero’s portrait and box artwork to be the most “evergreen” of the designs. But the interpretations by Studio TRIGGER have been flavoring a lot of our decisions recently, too. Honestly, Shantae translates to varying art styles pretty nicely, so there’s always room for a new look!

ZM: It's also just a great time to be a Shantae fan. Apart from the games, there are T-shirts, a vinyl record, an upcoming art book from Udon, pins, some CharaGumin garage kits, and I'm probably forgetting a few things. Anything coming down the pipe that we can look forward to?

MB: Of the new products on the way, the Art of Shantae book from Udon is definitely a big one, collecting 27 years of artwork into one truly massive tome! We searched every nook and cranny for Shantae artwork, early designs, and even ideas that never made it into the games. Shantae fans will not want to miss it! We’re also working on a free update to Shantae and the Seven Sirens to open up a few more play options, as well as new merchandise. Shantae fans have been great at voicing which kinds of products they’d like to see, and we try to listen to everything! We know that fans would like to see more figures, manga, or even a show, so we’ll do our best to make as many of these dream projects come true as we can!

Well there you have it folks. Personally, I'm thrilled that somebody other than myself remembers Outlanders, which, along with Caravan Kidd (both from Johji Manabe) strongly influenced my own character designs. As always, thanks to WayForward and Matt Bozon for getting this fun interview together. If you're not aware of that Shantae art book from Udon, you are now. The publication date has slipped a few times no thanks to COVID, but it's currently slated for a June release. And hey, check out Shantae, which hit the eShop today. It holds up!

[What a long, strange trip it's been.]

40

TalkBack / Shantae (Switch eShop) Review

« on: April 22, 2021, 09:12:41 AM »

What a long, strange trip it's been.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56977/shantae-switch-eshop-review

Shantae, our favorite half-genie hero here at Nintendo World Report, has come a long way during her 18-year history. You can play through that entire history now from the comfort of your own Switch, as every Shantae game is on the eShop. This is something of a miracle by itself, as the series spans several disparate systems: Shantae on Game Boy Color, Risky’s Revenge on DSiWare, Pirate’s Curse on 3DS, Half-Genie Hero on Wii U (and other concurrent systems), and finally Seven Sirens on current platforms. Of those five games, it’s still the original that’s the hardest to find. It had a legendarily-low print run on the GBC, published by Capcom, who sat on it and until the Game Boy Advance had been released. Shockingly, it was not a big seller. Consequently, that cart is now one of gaming’s Holy Grails.

Miraculously, Shantae was digitized for the 3DS Virtual Console back in 2013 and I heartily recommended it back then. Limited Run Games is the publisher on this new remaster, and they’re going all-out: in addition to this digital version, they’re publishing a physical Switch cart and, by some black magic alchemy, they’re reproducing functional Game Boy Color carts. As if I needed a better excuse pre-order an Analogue Pocket.

Well, I guess I mean TRY to pre-order an Analogue Pocket. I think we all know how that turned out (spoiler alert: poorly).

With the entire series under my belt, the original Shantae game is nothing if not incredibly interesting. So many aspects of this series have continued onward, virtually unchanged, while other things have been significantly streamlined or dropped entirely. The exploration, in particular, is a little rough—traversing the long, horizontal overworld takes a long time and the large sprites take up a lot of real estate. You can’t see too far ahead or above you, which results in a lot of cheap hits or accidental deaths. Shantae loses a life when she falls into a pit or lands on spikes. This happens more than it should, so feel free to lean hard on the game’s save state feature (quick tip for the first dungeon: by holding down Y, Shantae can run across small gaps).

Transforming (and warping) is accomplished through dancing, but it’s a slower, more deliberate process that I’m glad has since been changed. Here, you press X to start dancing, then press directions and/or the A & B buttons in time with a beat to produce a result. It’s workable, but it’s kind of bothersome, especially if you don’t get the timing right. Thankfully, each animal form gets a workout. The monkey can climb up walls, the elephant can destroy environmental obstacles (and kill most enemies quickly), the spider can climb up many "background" walls, and of course the harpy can fly.

The original game also features a day/night cycle which reminds me a bit of the Light/Dark worlds in Metroid Prime 2: getting around at night is generally harder because enemies deal more damage and take more hits to kill. However, you’ll only find Fireflies (this game’s collectable de jure) at night, and collecting all fifteen Fireflies lets you access a new healing dance that’s actually not all that critical once you’re in the endgame but probably nice to have.

The game’s four dungeons, however, are a joy. They’re tightly designed and, while floor plan maps would’ve been nice, aren’t so large and sprawling that you’ll get hopelessly lost (although I did manage to get turned around too often in the ice dungeon). You’ll also find five Warp Squids per dungeon, and you can deposit four in each of the game’s five towns to learn a warp dance. This becomes critically important later in the game during item cleanup. There’s a dance parlor in Scuttle Town where Shantae can earn gems by essentially playing Dance Dance Revolution, and a dice game in Oasis Town where she can win big bucks by essentially gambling on dice rolls. Unlike the GBC Pokemon Trading Card Game, the outcome is not fixed so you can game the system by leaning on save states and win every match. The dice game is the only practical way you’re going to earn enough money to buy all the items and attacks. I was tickled to notice that your opponents in the dice game are the same characters who eventually return, for more dice-based shenanigans, in Pirate’s Curse.

Oh yes, Shantae is the only game in the series that gives Shantae new offensive melee attacks, including a jump kick, diagonal drill kick, and elbow charge. These attacks simply do more damage than her standard hair whip, and can be situationally useful, but aren’t totally necessary, especially the elbow charge, which takes forever to charge up and can be dangerous depending on where you are. The game also contains a few challenge caves which are traversed with specific items, many of which make their only appearance in this game, including the Vanish Cream, Float Muffin, Twin Mint, and Greedy Jar.

There is a little bit of jank in this port, and I can’t tell if it’s because the GBC game felt this way or it’s been introduced: The dance timing seems a little muddy, but also using items (by pressing up + Y) never feels natural, and only seems to work half the time. I would have preferred a dedicated button for item use. There are some nice new features here, though: you can select the GBC or GBA enhanced versions of Shantae: the enhancement is brighter and includes an optional Tinkerbat transformation that you can and should buy from Bandit Town, as it streamlines exploration. This essentially gives you two different save files to swap between, and both allow up to three save states apiece. There's also a lovely gallery of concept art from the game.

I did encounter a bug during my playthrough: in the ice dungeon, there are “barrel cannons” (for lack of a better term), and sometimes they just didn’t activate, which stops your progress. However, I found out that reloading from the last save point (don’t forget to save often, folks) as opposed to my last save STATE, fixed the issue.

The original Shantae is a lovely little game that too few people were able to experience, so I’m thrilled that it’s available for mass consumption on the eShop. Franchise fans should, of course, jump on this as soon as humanly possible, but folks curious about the series or who just want some GBC nostalgia will enjoy it too.

[This game is really (missing audio).]

41

TalkBack / What the Dub?! (Switch eShop) Review

« on: April 06, 2021, 09:22:26 AM »

This game is really (missing audio).

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56781/what-the-dub-switch-eshop-review

I’m a big fan of the Jackbox games, which are often a staple of my (now rare) game nights. I’m also a connoisseur, as I suspect many of you are, of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax. For those unaware, MST3K and RiffTrax are old, usually sci-fi, movies with essentially a running commentary of jokes from three comedians. What the Dub, from Wide Right Interactive, combines these two things into an excellent party game. Like the Jackbox titles, everyone will need a smartphone or tablet, and it supports up to twelve players.

Here’s the setup: everyone watches a short clip from an old movie, PSA, or educational film. Each of these clips will have some dialogue to give some context, and then there will be some obviously-missing audio. The clip ends, and each player looks down at their smartphone. You have 45 seconds to type something funny onto your phone. Once everyone has done that, the game plays each clip with the player’s entries added with text-to-speech automation. After all variations are shown, players vote on which one they liked the best (you cannot vote for your own clip). The more people vote for your entry, the more points you get. By default, there are only five rounds so games go pretty quickly.

The clips are usually excellent setups for jokes and it’s impossible not to get the whole room laughing as the clips are read out. What the Dub is short, uncomplicated, and easy to love; my friends and I really enjoy it. It’s kind of like Cards Against Humanity, but with movie clips.

There are some caveats that are smartphone specific, however, and these have also affected my experience with Jackbox games. First, if your phone goes to sleep at any point during the game, you will be kicked out of the round. You can jump back in by re-typing the room code, but it’s always jarring when it happens. If you’re going to play What the Dub (or any smartphone-assisted party game), turn off Battery Saver and do whatever you have to do to keep the screen on the whole game.

I do find that 45 seconds is not enough time to come up with, and type out, a real zinger. It wasn’t just me with this opinion--all of my friends brought up the time limit. Thankfully, What the Dub does provide a few options, including setting the number of rounds (from 3 to 10), extending the input time (to an impressive 112 seconds, although nothing in between), and even applying a curse word filter. That 112 seconds sounds like a lot, but since the game stop counting down as soon as the last person is done typing, it's not a big deal.

The only other hiccup, which probably can’t be helped, is that if your dub lasts longer than the original clip, the clip will (hilariously) simply freeze until the automated speaker stops talking. This can sometimes lead to some awkward lead-ins if there’s original dialogue after your entry, but can also be used to humorous effect. Of course, like any text-to-speech system, typos and misspellings will be read as normal, so check your work before you send off your entry (if you have time).

What the Dub is a great little party game in the tradition of the Jackbox series, and it will definitely see a lot of play at my house thanks to my own predilections.

[A fun, if somewhat redundant, collection of NeoGeo Pocket Color games.]

42

TalkBack / NeoGeo Pocket Color Collection Vol. 1 (Switch eShop) Review

« on: March 31, 2021, 02:49:31 PM »

A fun, if somewhat redundant, collection of NeoGeo Pocket Color games.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56726/neogeo-pocket-color-collection-vol-1-switch-eshop-review

I was pretty excited when SNK started porting NeoGeo Pocket Color games to the Switch, starting with fan favorite SNK Gals Fighter, because this was a system I completely missed. I imagine that’s the case with many of you, as the NeoGeo Pocket and Pocket Color couldn’t compete with Nintendo’s Game Boy juggernaut. The little rectangular handheld was known for its surprisingly adept handheld versions of SNK’s arcade fighting games, and in fact for a while, that’s all SNK was porting to the eShop. We’ve already reviewed many of them (see below), and I must admit I was getting tired of fighting games. They’re all good, quality handheld fighters, but do start to blend together. Surely the NeoGeo Pocket Color had more to offer?

Well, SNK just published the NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1, a compilation of ten NGPC games—which unfortunately includes all six of the fighting games you might have already paid $8 a pop for over the last year. The remaining four titles run the gamut from just plain bad to very enjoyable. You can check out our reviews for Fatal Fury: First Contact, King of Fighters R-2, SNK Gals Fighter, The Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny, and SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium for the verdicts on those—I’ll just touch on the games that are new to me and the added bonus features of this collection.

Samurai Shodown! 2 is, like the other fighters, a surprisingly competent portable version of an arcade series that, unfortunately, never really clicked with me. This game has one of the biggest casts of the NGPC fighters, and like Gals Fighter and The Last Blade, SS!2 has a strong grinding-for-collectibles aspect: you can earn what are essentially trading cards featuring character art, and these can be equipped to character to give them specific buffs or new attacks. Unlike the more freeform style of King of Fighters, SS!2 is more of an offense/defense dance, looking for opportunities to strike and deal as much damage as you can while rebuffing your opponents. It’s more methodical, but not really my thing.

Metal Slug: 1st Mission is incredibly fun, arguably moreso than it has any right to be. Missions are short, and you’ll spend a good amount of time in the Metal Slug itself, along with its air-based counterpart (which I refer to as the Sky Pop, don’t @ me). The two Metal Slug games benefit greatly from the rewind feature that’s standard to all of these ports. I found the Metal Slug itself difficult to control, as it was weirdly difficult to get the canon back to a forward direction after shooting up or behind me. Due to the limited number of buttons, there’s some awkwardness in swapping from your gun to grenades with the “+” button, but otherwise there’s not much to bag on here.

Metal Slug: 2nd Mission, which might be the most unimaginative sequel title I’ve ever seen, is even better than the first. The backgrounds are more vibrant and detailed, there are more enemy types, and individual stages are longer and, often, more complex. SNK must have realized that people didn’t like switching attack types with the “+” button, because here they’ve just made the “+” button for throwing a grenade; it’s a surprisingly elegant solution. In addition to the tank and Sky Pop, you’ll also take command of a submarine (which I refer to as the Marine Pop, don’t @ me), which launches depth charges upward instead of firing torpedoes forward. The Marine Pop stages aren’t great, though, as they rely heavily on ocean currents to force you around. The Metal Slug is still awkward to control, but they’ve made its segments a little more forgiving, with more health pickups to grab. Again, that rewind feature will get a workout here.

Dark Arms is just a bad game. Nothing is really explained (even the instruction manual is frustratingly cryptic), and I had to use a FAQ to understand what I was supposed to be doing. Basically, you are trying to find, upgrade, and level up various weapons by running around killing monsters. Unfortunately, this just amounts to traversing small areas filled with enemies and using your weapons to kill them, then applying the enemy’s “soul” (or something) to the weapons to level them up and, eventually, evolve them. There’s a threadbare story, but Dark Arms is a chore to play through. While there are some interesting ideas here, it’s just not worth the frustration, and definitely the low point in this collection.

Big Tournament Golf is basically the handheld version of the excellent 1996 SNK arcade title of the same name (or this slightly different name). I’m never able to resist the siren song of video game golf, and was pleasantly surprised by this handheld adaptation, even though it’s about as bare-bones as you can get (Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color, it ain’t). I also take some issue with your overhead field of view, which can be hard to read because it’s so brutally pixelated. I did appreciate being able to choose my shot type, which helps as many of these courses have unusually sinuous layouts. Apart from the green, holes lack any sort of topography, which takes some enjoyment out of the driving game. Perhaps because of this, Big Tournament Golf relies on ambient wind and an overabundance of sand traps to slow your progression. This is another game that benefits enormously from the rewind feature: if your shot isn’t going where you want, you can generally rewind just enough to get back to aiming, before you take a swing. I’ve never hit so many birdies in my life.

The usual features from the solo releases are retained here—digitized instruction manuals, multiple NeoGeo Pocket Color skins to choose from, and the glorious rewind feature. A few new wrinkles are added as well: a few of the NGPC skins are of the original, non-colorized, Pocket, which gives some of these games an interesting look (although not available for every game). You can also see 3D models of the games’ boxes, cases, and even cartridges, which I was quite taken by. Alas, my usual complaints are unaddressed—still no system-level moves list to display during the fighting games, and, related to that, instruction manuals don’t save where you left off. If I’m playing as Mai Shiranui and can’t access a moves list, at least let me go right to her page in the instruction manual! I also maintain that the Joy-Con and Pro Controller’s stick is not a great replacement for the NGPC’s clicky stick for pulling off special moves with any consistency in the fighters.

Two-player local play is still a blast, but some multiplayer features are necessarily left out of the collection, including card-trading in Samurai Shodown and a player-vs-player mode in Dark Arms.

You’re getting a lot of good games in this collection—Dark Arms seems to be the edge case here—and if you don’t have any experience with the NeoGeo Pocket Color, this is probably the next-best way to experience its library. I’m still a little annoyed that it’s so fighter-heavy but that arguably tracks with SNK’s arcade output. Assuming we get a Volume 2, I’d love to see Rockman Battle & Fighters (an NGPC version of Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters) and SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters’ Clash, a digital card game that predates Match of the Millenium. Since I assume somebody had to get a signature from Capcom to include Match of the Millenium in this collection, I’m hoping they’d be open to ports of those other two games in the future. Even if you’ve already bought some of the NGPC fighters by themselves for Switch, I’d recommend this package to have everything in one place, and you’ll get a couple of excellent Metal Slug games and a surprisingly fun little golf game.

Best part is that I don’t have to try and find a working NGPC in good condition anymore.

[Shovel Knight x Metroid]

43

TalkBack / Cathedral (Switch eShop) Review

« on: March 03, 2021, 09:51:31 AM »

Shovel Knight x Metroid

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56466/cathedral-switch-eshop-review

Cathedral, a new eShop game from rookie developer Decemberborn, is in a bit of a tough spot: the eShop is already filled to the brim with Metroid-like sidescrollers with retro graphics—in fact, Neal Ronaghan already did a video about some of the better ones, and I know for a fact that more are in the pipeline. The challenge for Cathedral is to provide a unique experience that will cause it to rise above its competitors. Does it succeed? Yes and no.

Cathedral is what would happen if Shovel Knight and Super Metroid had a baby. You take control of an unnamed knight who, based on his death animation, seems to be an empty vessel akin to Alphonse Elric. The knight begins the game traversing the titular Cathedral, but quickly finds himself in a much larger world with an open floor plan. His goal is to travel to each of the realms and find four magical orbs that will open a doorway to another dimension where a great evil lurks.

Metroid-likes live and die by their level design, and I’m happy to say that Cathedral nails this aspect of the genre, with interesting platforming segments, environmental puzzles, and rewarding re-traversal. Visiting old areas with new equipment almost always pays off with a hoard of treasure, a new piece of equipment, or both. Interestingly, Cathedral has something of a Shantae-like structure: each major overworld area has its own dungeon to conquer and boss to fight off. The knight will find several types of equipment in his travels: armor buffs, new swords, equipable items (which act like Zelda dungeon items), and magical scrolls.

The scrolls are, perhaps, Cathedral’s most obvious point of divergence from its Metroid-like brethren: although you’ll find a wealth of scrolls, only three can be equipped at a time, and they can only be swapped out at Soul Shrines, which are relatively rare. Sometimes the effect is fairly benign, like upping your damage at low health, while others seem more crucial, like applying a double-jump. It’s an interesting take on what, in other games of this ilk, would probably be persistent effects, and I’m not sure I liked it. The knight also has a ghost-like friend who can be summoned with a shoulder button and briefly controlled in order to activate switches or collect gold and ammo. Often, however, the implementation felt half-hearted, as though it was intended to be a more important gameplay mechanic that was de-emphasized during the course of development.

If this rose has any particularly sharp thorns, they mostly have to do with combat and overall difficulty. Combat is unending, which is exhausting, and each enemy has to be dealt with in a specific manner. Cathedral combines the combat fatigue of Metroid: Samus Returns with the required precision of something like Hollow Knight. The knight has precious few resources: a standing attack, a downward thrust, a shield, and a crossbow-like gauntlet. Starting around the third major overworld area, though, enemies start doing significantly more damage while your armaments largely remain static. Several of the knight’s upgrades don’t have a combat component, so it rarely feels like you’re actually becoming more powerful. Extra heart containers are rarely found. You’ll die all the time, and checkpoints don’t feel consistently placed, leading to some areas being fairly forgiving, death-wise, while others more punishing.

The map is vaguely helpful in that it shows doorways, checkpoint statues, and soul shrines. You can also mark specific points of interest, which helps cut back on fruitless re-traversal. I’m unclear on why so many Metroid-likes are unwilling to implement the system in Metroid: Zero Mission, with one icon to denote the presence of an item, and another to show that you found the item and don’t need to come back. Axiom Verge has this problem, too.

Apart from the combat/exploration imbalance, I’m a little disappointed that Cathedral looks as generic as it does. Maybe I’m just getting tired of the “indie sidescroller with retro graphics” aesthetic, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate interesting character designs or backgrounds and tilesets. This is something Hollow Knight has in spades, and one of the reasons I liked that game so much. Cathedral never really sets itself apart, although it’s clearly going for a Shovel Knight vibe. In that it succeeds, but Shovel Knight already exists. The music, similarly, sounds altogether too familiar and loops a bit too quickly. Cathedral is a game without a strong sense of identity.

Cathedral is a fine Metroid-like in terms of level design, but I just can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t hit the balance between exploration and combat—the latter so often gets in the way of simply enjoying the former. If you’re a big fan of the genre and are itching for a fresh take, Cathedral is a fine choice that, for the most part, gets it right. Just expect to get tired of fighting your way through every room.

[I hope you like text.]

44

TalkBack / Azur Lane: Crosswave (Switch) Review

« on: February 23, 2021, 10:09:35 AM »

I hope you like text.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56388/azur-lane-crosswave-switch-review

Guys, you know I like me some fanservice-heavy anime girl video games. I haven’t played a good one in awhile, though, and Senran Kagura: Peach Ball barely counts. I was hoping that this little number, Azur Lane: Crosswave would fill my quota, but alas, ‘twas not to be. I’ll just have to wait until Pyra & Mythra hit Super Smash Bros. Ultimate next month. As for Azur Lane, the concept is a bit of a mystery to me, but there’s just not much in the way of actual gameplay.

The Azur Lane franchise is kind of a strange beast: it takes real-world naval vessels from around the globe and reimagines them as…“Shipgirls.” While the original Chinese mobile game apparently used the Boatbroads to teach World War II history, Crosswave has its own story which imagines the Dinghydames inhabiting their own world, being attacked by alien Lifeboatlassies called “Sirens.” The Terran Catamarancougars (okay, I'll stop) are divided among four nations based on the United States, Britain, Japan, and Germany. They’re all named after real world naval ships which, if nothing else, has taken me down an incredibly interesting Wikipedia rabbit hole as I both learn about these vessels and struggle to understand why the associated Shipgirls look nothing like their real-world counterparts.

There’s probably more to the story, which is a shame because I cannot be bothered to sit and read through all of it. Azur Lane: Crosswave is 75% visual novel, 10% menu navigation, and 15% actual gameplay. I will occasionally groan at how chatty the Senran Kagura games get, but they’ve got nothing on the extended conversations between multiple characters in any given Crosswave sequence. The game really needed fewer characters and/or a more impactful storyline; I will admit that at a certain point, I just started fast-forwarding through the dialogue, pausing only to look at whatever new Shipgirls were introduced (there are a lot of them).

It’s a real shame that there’s so little gameplay, because the gameplay is actually pretty fun. You recruit a team of Shipgirls (the roster expands as you go) and arrange them into a “front” group, whom you control directly, and a “rear” group, who apply buffs. When a combat encounter starts, you control your three front ships as though you were playing a third-person action game, activating attacks as your weapon reload timers fill up, aiming at large background vessels (which are actual battleships), smaller attack boats, and aircraft. Different classes of Shipgirls (battle cruiser, aircraft carrier, etc.) have different weapons—some specialize in torpedoes, others on aircraft, and still others in fast, but low-damage guns. You’ll usually also encounter between one and three rival Shipgirls to take out.

However, most encounters last less than two minutes. In fact, you’ll get a better grade if you can win an encounter within 120 seconds—a goal that is never out of reach. Winning matches earns you points to spend on the recruitment of new Shipgirls and materials which you’ll use to improve your arsenal. You can also replay fights in order to grind for loot. By grinding, you can severely overpower your characters, which will make you wish there were more fights and that they lasted longer.

When you’re not listening to never-ending conversations or engaging in Shipgirl skirmishes, you’ll spend a lot of time navigating menus. You can spend zenni and blueprints on new weapons at a store or power up your existing weaponry using parts earned in fights. I found this process largely frictionless, although the game doesn’t always give you a good idea of what some of these items ARE. Weapon titles within the same class are often difficult to tell apart at a glance. I realized that if you’re going to swap your Shipgirls in and out of your front line roster, you’ll probably need multiple copies of most weapons so that you’re not constantly swapping equipment..

Crosswave, however, doesn’t exactly encourage you to utilize your full Shipgirl fleet. You can run the whole game with three Shipgirls who you like (although it helps if the three are of different classes). Shipgirls level up upon winning battles, but experience is given so readily that you can swap in a low-level Shipgirl and she’ll be on par with her higher-level peers in just a few fights. In between conversations, you can scroll around the “world map,” which changes between story chapters, to find containers full of materials, optional story sequences, and optional fights. And that’s the whole game, folks. It’d be nice if the Shipgirl fights were more visually interesting, but Crosswave looks a little too much like a mid-tier Playstation Vita game for my tastes. All of the dialogue is fully voiced...in Japanese, which is something (and also diagnostic of most Vita games).

On the other hand, Crosswave already features Neptune from the Neptunia franchise--and I have to assume that the other Goddesses will move in eventually. That’s probably not enough to keep me coming back, though. If you like anime-based visual novels, you might get something out of Azur Lane: Crosswave. For me, though? I like a little more “game” in my video games.

[Less is more.]

45

TalkBack / Gal*Gun Returns (Switch) Review FAQ

« on: February 16, 2021, 08:51:59 AM »

Less is more.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56262/galgun-returns-switch-review-faq

If you good readers would like some past examples of this unique format, check out these recent reviews. Generally, when I find a traditional review is not coming together, that’s a pretty good indication that the FAQ format will be a good fit, as has happened here. For a little more homework, you should at least skim my review of Gal*Gun 2 from a few years ago. Now then…

Hey Zach, I hear you’ve been playing a new game.

Indeed I have, voice in my head. For some reason I decided to fall on the Gal*Gun Returns sword for the benefit of all our lovely readers.

Okay, that’s a little surprising.

How come?

If I recall, Gal*Gun 2 made you want claw your eyes out.

Oh man, did it ever. It crossed a very specific line—ogling and poking the bodies of young, high school-age girls eroded my soul. The shooting gallery stuff, where you shoot incoming amorous women with your “Gal Gun” was silly but mostly harmless, but holy lord, the more focused leering and vacuuming up their clothes? Kill me now.

Ugh.

Thankfully (?), Gal*Gun Returns is a far more vanilla, but more tolerable, game. Hilariously, Returns is a remake of the original game, developed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Gal*Gun franchise.

Is that even warranted?

That’s a very good question! The Gal*Gun saga primarily involves three games: Gal*Gun, Gal*Gun: Double Peace, and Gal*Gun 2. There’s also a VR game that I assume nobody played. My guess is that we’ll eventually get Double Peace on Switch, but yeah, this ain’t Nep-Nep.

Okay, well…how is it?

Thankfully, it’s not nearly as cringe-inducing as either Double Peace or Gal*Gun 2. You’re doing three things in Returns: shooting gallery segments, an early version of Doki-Doki Mode, and unique minigames depending on your paramour (see below). The shooting gallery is the same as it’s always been: you wander through school in first-person, shooting down love-struck girls. As you scroll the reticle up and down their slender frames, you’ll be able to see their weak points, and shooting their weak points puts ‘em down immediately. You don’t aim with the Joy-Con, you use the sticks, which works fine. Teachers (who are thankfully visually differentiated by outfit) take a lot more ammo to take down OR you can just hit Doki-Doki Mode and satisfy them that way.

Oh god here we go.

I know, but the saving grace here is that Doki-Doki mode is not nearly as exploitive as in Gal*Gun 2. Outer layers don’t fly off and the girls are not as…vocal while you shoot them in certain areas. But you’re still scanning their bodies and shooting them in the back, groin, butt, boobs, neck, and face for maximum “ecstasy.” If you linger too long on a particular body part, she may cover up, forcing your wandering eye to drift to other potential targets. Anyway, you fill up her “love meter” and that will detonate an “Ecstasy Bomb” that will hit all the girls onscreen so it’s kind of your “super attack.”

Jesus.

I know.

Is that it? Is that as bad as it gets?

Yes, thank Arceus. You have individual stats (intelligence, athleticism, fashion, and horny*) that will shift around upon completing a Doki-Doki attack. The goal is to get all your stats to 100, so you’ll want to save your specials for teachers, who generally raise most, if not all, your stats, while younger targets may lower one or more.

*rubs temples*

One thing that differentiates Returns from its sequels is that you’re asked, at the outset, to choose one of four girls to pursue in your quest for true love and you’ll then often find yourself in conversations with that girl. Sometimes you’ll be asked a question, and you only get three responses which broadly fit into three categories: squeaky clean, playing it safe, and horndog. If different responses affect the story, I couldn’t tell, and I don’t really want to find out by playing this multiple times. Each girl has a particular story arc, which is nice (I guess) and character-specific minigames.

What are the minigames like?

Well, in one, you have to hold a ladder while the object of your affection selects books from a library shelf, and you have to balance keeping her up while occasionally letting go to grab books. In another one, you have to quickly select a pose that she calls out (out of three choices) and then fight drowsiness by shooting sheep before they reach the other side of the screen. A later game has you trying to free your girlfriend from a cartoonish cage (or, in another, a plant monster) before she’s abducted, which was surprisingly hard to do. I actually enjoyed the minigames but there aren’t enough of them. You’ll spend 80% of your time in shooting gallery segments.

Anything else?

Once you beat the game, you can mess with the costumes of the students, teachers, and the four main girls. There’s even a bunny suit costume, which you can bet your bottom dollar I activated immediately. Beating the game also earns you zenni which can be used in a Gallery mode on concept art. There’s a ton of concept art, but that means you’ll have to play through game many times to unlock it all, which I’m not sure I’m willing to do. One thing that makes me chuckle about these games it that I’m pretty sure they all use the same assets: the school setting is the same between games, the girls don’t really look any different, the music rarely (if ever) changes, and the animations are canned and repetitious. They’re mostly differentiated by their dialogue/dating sim components, minigames, and degree of creeptastic voyeurism.

I’m still finding it hard to get past Doki-Doki mode since almost all the characters are very young.

Maybe you shouldn’t play it. However, if you can put yourself in an academic, emotionless state of mind, there really is some fun to be had, arguably moreso than in Gal*Gun 2. But you do have to wade through some…questionable…content.

*Horny is not an actual stat, but you wouldn’t be surprised, would you?

46

TalkBack / Re: Red Colony (Switch eShop) Review

« on: January 31, 2021, 02:19:53 AM »

What up, FrenchDog85! You bring up some fair points--I'll respond to everything in red.

Disclaimer: I have not played this game nor necessarily plan to.  And this isn't meant to bash the author of this review (at all, truly).

That said, and I realize these are likely typos as well, but the following sentences also have glaring errors:

"Everyone is, whether they want to or not, is developing a new hobby during the COVID pandemic." One is or the other would work; not both.

"I quickly learned that guns aren’t actually necessary to battle the undead, which is probably for the best since ammo is relatively scarce despite it being illegal to have in the Red Colony." 

Despite is an odd choice... The fact that it is illegal would be the reason it is so scarce.  Using the word despite would make more sense if ammo were abundant in the colony yet you couldn't find enough.

Good point on both! I'll fix 'em!

"Shut up, B*TCH, I’m talking! I’m gonna die, Maria. DRUNK IN MY F*CKING OFFICE while I watch your big t*ts and curvy-ass BODY…F*CK MY LIFE! You’re SO GOD DAMN HOT! If James hadnt shown up, I would have given you the world!"

I'm trying to find the typo... Only typo I can see would be the missing apostrophe in "hadn't".  Or a lack of a space after the "..." before "F*CK".  Obviously it isn't fully coherent sentences, but it's a drunk person's rambling.  And I'd guess the all CAPS is for emphasis, not accidental. 

I dunno, most of the game feels like this. Lots of unnecessary cursing, typos, awkward phrasing, etc.

I guess in short, it wasn't the example I'd have used.  I trust that there are many other horrible things in the script... And I do not mean to flame the author truly.  Just juxtaposing his review with the one bit of script from the game posted.

Okay, here's the intro loading screen text:

"As I sat there angry in the park and dressed up for a night out with Jill, I felt my anger slowly faded away as the alcohol replaced it with excitement. We were about to celebrate the 100th Anniversary on the Colony. All of the sudden, everything went black...I woke up in a warehouse and the Colony was no longer the same..."

I mean...that needed another pass.

Also, I personally don't see anything glaringly wrong with the art in the one photo posted (other than obviously the proportions are intentionally not natural, like in most anime tropes).  If that's the only issue, many games have fault there!  Most are intentionally trying for non-realistic proportions...  I'm no aspiring artist though, and like what I see 

You can have unnatural, cartoony proportions with better art. Senran Kagura is my usual go-to, or Dragon's Crown, but I just mean that the art either needed more time in the cooker or a different artist.

Also, what was the origin of the virus (asked above) so I don't have to play a broken game hahaha!

Yessss...here it is. I honestly love this. It's so out of left field and swings for the fences!

About 100 years ago, the first generation of Mars colonists found a raptor, in perfect condition. How is that possible, you ask? Well it turns out that Earth and Mars used to be one planet, but 50 million years ago (which, by the way, is 15mya after the nonavian dinosaurs went extinct), Planet X (or an astroid) collided with Earth/Mars and split the planet in two! Even though the impact killed most of the dinosaurs, some dinosaurs survived on Earth and Mars. for a short time.

When Earth and Mars was still one planet, its gravity was 50% lighter, its atmosphere 40% thinner, and its land mass 30% bigger (which is not how planets work). And the reason you can't see this today is because planets tend to shape themselves into spheres over time. On Mars, though, the scar is still visible--the Valles Marineris canyon system. Sure, why not?

Anyway, the evil scientist wanted to clone a dinosaur from the perfect specimen found on Mars. Chickens and rats infused with raptor genes became very aggressive. Eventually they injected a human (like you do). The raptor gene affected his amygdala to the point where all rational thought disappears. In fact, the rest of the brain shuts down. But then people attacked by the dinosaur people also develop dinosaur symptoms. It was released into the Red Colony by a spy from the BLUE Colony. And so here we are.

[A new champion has arrived.]

47

TalkBack / Red Colony (Switch eShop) Review

« on: January 29, 2021, 09:19:00 PM »

A new champion has arrived.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/56098/red-colony-switch-eshop-review

Eagerly have I been anticipating this day, dear readers; some of you may recall DS game I reviewed in 2010 called Homie Rollerz, which I held aloft as the pinnacle of terrible game design. Since that day, I have, in the back of my mind, been waiting for its successor, a game so abysmal, so offensive, so achingly droll that it gains the sort of cult status only reserved for films like The Room and Plan Nine From Outer Space. Red Colony, my friends, is that game. It has no redeeming features, no low-budget charm, and no higher expectations of itself. It is the kind of game you’d expect to play while the Rifftrax or MST3K guys provide commentary.

In Red Colony, you take control of a scientist (?) named Maria, a woman who seems to have been drawn, according to my wife, in Microsoft Paint. Maria is animated like a marionette and is smartly dressed in short shorts, high-heel boots, and a bright red crop top. Her basketball-sized breasts bounce stiffly with every step she takes—a step cycle that is unbalanced, so she always appears to be limping. Even when she’s not carrying anything, she appears to be holding a gun.

Maria is on a quest to find her daughter and escape a zombie outbreak by limping through 2D environments. Sometimes, in order to avoid the undead, Maria can crawl on all fours under a table, looking down--instead of forward--as she does so. She’ll open a lot of cabinets and find all manner of items, many of which are not fully explained, and others which are 3D printing supplies used to craft things like…guns and ammunition, because firearms are banned in the Red Colony. Borrowing a page from Resident Evil, Maria can only save her game if she finds a USB stick (one save per stick). Every time Maria moves between rooms or up and down stairs, there’s a short cutscene of her moving into the new area. This cutscene does not take her current health status into account.

Many lockboxes and doors require codes, and the codes are almost always, conveniently, right next to the locked door. The codes are always four characters long. In one room, for example, a kid’s action figure collection, for some reason, has the numbers 1-4 written next to certain figures. On the other side of his room is a computer. Guess what his password is?

I quickly learned that guns aren’t actually necessary to battle the undead, which is probably for the best since ammo is relatively scarce. Rather, the solution to every encounter is to stab a few times, run a few feet away, and repeat until the zombie dies. If Maria is attacked by zombies, her health is shown by the condition of her clothing but here, rather than looking slashed or bloody, Maria’s fragmenting garments appear to be slowly fading away, molecule by molecule. Senran Kagura still leads the pack in the "torn clothes that still look good" category.

Though her daughter is seemingly always just out of reach, Maria will come across several friends and frenemies in her short adventure. One of her friends and colleagues, Jill, is what older generations might call a “loose woman” and is frequently inebriated. Maria's kid’s nanny, Emily, has apparently been sleeping with Maria’s husband, which leads to a lot of, shall we say, “charming” back-and-forth between the two of them. The game does contain a good amount of dialogue, such as this Pulitzer-winning passage spoken by Maria’s friend (?), Alan, who appears to be dying:

"Shut up, B*TCH, I’m talking! I’m gonna die, Maria. DRUNK IN MY F*CKING OFFICE while I watch your big t*ts and curvy-ass BODY…F*CK MY LIFE! You’re SO GOD DAMN HOT! If James hadnt shown up, I would have given you the world!"

Go home, Jane Austen, you've been outclassed. And this is nothing compared to the venom spewed between Maria and Emily. The asterisks are mine, of course, but that typo is in the game. Typos, awkward phrases, subject/verb disagreement, and inconsistent tense are all constant companions throughout Red Colony. I read some exchanges aloud until I realized that doing so caused my English degree to visibly decay. Too real, Red Colony. More than anything else, perhaps (although read on), this game needed a competent writer. We’re not that hard to find!

Speaking of writing, though, the high point of Red Colony occurs when Maria finds her way back to the lab, in which the frankly incredible backstory of the zombie virus is revealed. You don’t need any other part of Red Colony, only this explanation; I may have found a new religion based on the ideas presented here. Check the TalkBack thread if you want to full story.

We’ve discussed the awkward gameplay, paper doll graphics, and award-winning script, but I still need to talk about Red Colony’s biggest feature: the bugs, which easily outnumber the zombies. There are some real charmers, like the occasions when, upon entering a new area, Maria would demonstrate a new superpower: levitation. She would levitate for several seconds, moving left and right along the ceiling and phase through walls, as if blown by an invisible wind. Not all were so entertaining, though. During my first playthrough of the game (yes, there were multiple), I realized about halfway through that I didn’t need guns, and so I attempted to start a new game since there aren’t multiple save files, but this merely returned Maria to the game’s first room, but all of her collected items were intact. All doors and cabinets were already unlocked, but spent ammo had not been returned.

I decided to trudge on, getting through the rest of the game in one sitting—it’s absurdly short—and never saving my game. Unfortunately, I reached a what might be a bad ending (maybe there's a good ending) or simply a poorly-executed ending, and attempted, again, to start a new game. Once more, Maria was cast back to the first area, all of her equipment intact, but her clothes—and therefore health—in tatters, the result of that ending. Alas, I was unable to actually USE any healing items or save my game. It was as if Red Colony was being selective as to what it did and did not reset. Even picking up new health kits and USB keys didn’t allow their use. I allowed Maria to be attacked by a zombie just to see if Red Colony would go the Senran Kagura distance (it does not) and then found myself unable to continue.

I couldn’t go back to a save file because I hadn’t saved in the previous run, and attempting to start another new game immediately took me back to the “you died” screen, where I could only attempt to reload my save. It was like a programming version of Orobouros. I eventually had to delete the game and reinstall.

I also can't avoid talking about the graphics. The backgrounds actually look surprisingly good and varied, but the character design, I mean good lord. Just look at that screenshot (above). Everyone is, whether they want to or not, developing a new hobby during the COVID pandemic. Mine happens to be teaching myself to draw pinup art. You know, the kind of art guys like Gil Elvgren did so well. It's hard, I'm used to drawing extinct reptiles, so human anatomy is completely alien. But looking at the art in Red Colony has given me a boost of confidence. I'm doing pretty well.

Red Colony very much feels like a first draft of a game, from graphics, to script, to programming, that was somehow released on the eShop as a finished product. This would be like buying a puzzle, finishing the border, and declaring it completed. Frankly, I’m not sure how anybody could look at this game and think it was ready for prime time. If the bugs weren’t there, it might get by on its “so bad it’s good” appeal, but in its current state, it’s a disaster. Homie Rollerz, you finally have some competition.

[Double the Dragon, double the fun.]

48

TalkBack / Double Dragon Neon (Switch eShop) Review

« on: January 17, 2021, 02:10:00 PM »

Double the Dragon, double the fun.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/55986/double-dragon-neon-switch-eshop-review

The brawler genre has seen an uptick in popularity these last few years, the most notable examples (in my opinion) being the absolutely superb River City Girls from WayForward & Arc Systems Works and Streets of Rage 4 from Dotemu and Lizardcube. Both sequels updated the graphics and gameplay, while maintaining the spirit of their respective franchises. It’s a tough needle to thread, but I think both efforts were successful. Back in 2012, which seems like a different geological era now, WayForward partnered with Majesco Entertainment on a similar modernized reboot of the forgotten Double Dragon series: Double Dragon Neon. That game never came to the Wii U, but has now hit the Switch. How do Billy and Jimmy Lee stack up against their newer compatriots? Pretty well, in fact, as long as they’re both in the mix.

There’s a lot to love about Double Dragon Neon, maybe nothing moreso than the overwhelming ‘80s aesthetic, from the brother’s high-fiving buffs to the early detour into space and the game’s big bad, Skullmageddon, who bears more than a passing similarity to a certain cartoony Eternian overlord. There’s even a boss fight that reminds me of the multi-part Technodrome battle from the original NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. Unlike typical coin-op brawlers, Neon tries to keep you more engaged with dodge and duck moves (but no dips or dives) that, when timed correctly, refill your special meter and give you very temporary boosts to your attack power. When both brothers are brawling, they can initiate high-fives to cause various buffs or debuffs (don’t leave a bro hanging, dudes).

Additionally, enemies will often drop mixtapes, of which there are several varieties divided into two main types: stat effects (stronger defense, quicker stuns, e.g.) and special attacks (fireball, super powerful short-range punch, a dragon spirit, e.g.). One of each can be equipped at any time. Collecting multiple copies of a given tape strengthens it, up to ten copies. But wait, defeating bosses will net you Mythril, which can be used to pay a “Tapesmith” to further increase your tape limit. Players are encouraged to revisit previous stages to stock up on mixtapes and Mythril, and I can attest that is a great idea.

The brawling itself is fairly simplistic: Billy & Jimmy have punch and kick combos, including jumping attacks and crouching attacks. Stunning enemies allows an uppercut, and following that up with a ground-pound defeats most standard foes. You’ll also find weapons (which quickly break) and barrels to throw. Soda pop and batteries recharge your health and special meters, respectively. The trick here is that Double Dragon Neon almost requires you to get really good at dodging and ducking. Even low-level baddies can take off surprisingly hefty chunks of your health, so evasion is critical for success. I had a hard time getting the timing down on dodging—the window for a successful dodge is quite brief, so expect to take some hard knocks while you learn the technique.

Dodging complaints aside, Double Dragon Neon is great fun for two players (locally), especially if you and a friend really enjoyed those other two brawlers I raved about. As in River City Girls, if one bro dies, the other has a decent amount of time to revive him (using a patented ‘80s maneuver) before anyone loses a life. You can also stock up on extra lives (fairly cheaply) at shops--although you can only buy so many. I suspect, though, that two-player mode may be the only way to really enjoy Double Dragon Neon, as I found the game more frustrating than fun by my lonesome. It’s easy to get ganged up on by yourself, and boss fights especially become wars of attrition. Powering up your mixtapes definitely helps (I would argue it’s required for solo play), but that just means you spend most of your time grinding for mixtapes, Mythril, and moolah in already-completed stages and dumping a lot of money on extra lives.

The game looks fine, although you’ll see a lot of palette-swapped enemies. Personally, I prefer the pixel art of River City Girls or the amazing hard-drawn art of Streets of Rage 4, but the 3D models of Neon are clean and animate well. I’d also be doing a disservice if I didn’t mention the soundtrack by Jake Kaufman; there are some real toe-tappers in here, and a real departure from his Shantae and Mighty Switch Force tunes.

If you can get a friend on the couch with you, Double Dragon Neon is a big, dumb, fun dose of 80’s nostalgia.

[There were other NeoGeo Pocket Color games, right?]

49

TalkBack / Fatal Fury: First Contact (Switch eShop) Review Mini

« on: January 05, 2021, 02:43:19 PM »

There were other NeoGeo Pocket Color games, right?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewmini/55906/fatal-fury-first-contact-switch-eshop-review-mini

Back in its day, the NeoGeo Pocket Color received portable versions of all of SNK’s flagship fighting franchises, including King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and The Last Blade. It even got a cute spin-off, Gals Fighter. The first of these portable adaptations, though, was Fatal Fury: First Contact, and it’s the theme of today’s NeoGeo Pocket Color port for Switch. To be clear, it’s very cool that any of these games are getting Switch ports at all—the NGPC is not a system that was widely adopted in any territory, but especially in the West, because it was competing with the Game Boy Color. However, as we’ve already seen a handful of NGPC games on Switch, it has to be said that First Contact doesn’t live up to its predecessors.

I say “predecessors” somewhat ironically, because while First Contact predated its cousins on the NGPC, it was somehow pushed to the back of the line on Switch, and thus many of the fun extras we’ve seen in King of Fighters R-2, The Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny, and SNK Gals Fighter are missing here. Granted, there are a couple of unlockable characters but nothing beyond that. It's single player fights, two-player fights, and options.

The cast has some new faces compared to Gals Fighter and KOF R-2, though, drawn in the same charming Chibi style that we’ve become accustomed to. I’m again impressed by how well these games control, although I found super moves and “Evasion Attacks” unusually hard to pull off. Evasion Attacks appear to be Fatal Fury’s attempt at a parry, though, and I appreciate the chance to change up the usual fighting gameplay. One major difference from “past” titles is that each single-player run takes much longer, as you fight every other character. I’m oddly impressed by the backgrounds in this game, although they’ve been great in all of these NGPC fighters (especially The Last Blade).

The usual overlay features are still here, as is the single-system two-player mode. There still isn’t an on-screen moves list, although even a passing familiarity with the usual SNK fighter directional combos will serve you well here. Otherwise, there’s a big beautiful scan of the game’s manual for you to consult (just write everything down somewhere). While I remain tickled that these NGPC ports even exist, though, I am beginning to long for different things, especially since these fighters all look more or less like the same game.

50

TalkBack / Re: Super Meat Boy Forever (Switch eShop) Review

« on: December 30, 2020, 11:25:47 PM »

I'm glad you do! I go to this format when a traditional writeup isn't coming together.