January 2019 = VR

Holy moley Angelina Jolie in a kimono no obi! I recently finished up Horizon: Zero Dawn, which required me to sprint through a ~5 hour main quest line on Ultra Hard New Game +. It was nice to get the story all at once instead of spacing it out over dozens of machine-hunting and sidequests.

Finishing a AAA title always gives me satisfaction and the most first world problem dilemma: what do I play next? This usually results in a week of avid tv or movie streaming while I mull over what game I'm going to complete next. This time while I do that, I get to spend time with my latest acquisition: PS VR. This system is better than I could have imagined. 

I'm gonna getcha!

Virtual Reality is one of those things where doing something mundane like throwing a tennis ball between your hands provides much more entertainment than the real thing. I usually think about the physics and programming involved to do these everyday things realistically and it sends my mind spinning. Growing up, we saw wireframes and random geometric objects that were usually supposed to convey hacking in 3d or a war simulator. Most recently, in Black Panther, that Vibranium-sand that opened the movie with a legend that turned out to be a real Wakandan invention. Err, I guess that was AR (augmented reality), but it was an interactive digital model, so nyah. Anyway, the real VR product is loads better. It's really hard to convey in words and 2d pictures the thrill of solving puzzles by physically moving your body to get a better vantage point, or dodging attacks or even tilting virtual objects and moving your face closer to see details. The gameplay doesn't need to be complex to be enjoyable in VR if you're like me and are wowed by the tech itself.

CoD: Jackal Assault doesn't even let you
do pilot controls...F MINUS

There are at least 200 PS VR titles of varying quality. I don't do horror, so that cuts out half of the selection, and that leaves puzzle games with almost no art direction. Low polygon count and tech specs don't necessarily mean the game has to look ugly; an art director coordinates that stuff. Then there are the must have VR titles: Astrobot: Rescue Mission, The Playroom and Beat Saber.

The Playroom VR is free to download and comes with a set of multiplayer games and even has a trophy list! In one of the titles, the VR headset player is a monster who is stomping through town (the player headbuts obstacles) while up to 4 controller players run for their lives across the city. The tables turn when they get to a platform and huck items at the monster's face. In another title, the VR player is supposed to aim their flashlight on ghosts to scare them away while whoever's looking at the TV can describe where the ghosts are. And that's another thing: all of the titles I've played have a TV display at the same time the VR person is in the headset, which enables multiplayer and gives observers more to watch than a fool with a glowing face.

Then we get to Astrobot: Rescue Mission, which sets the standard for VR. JapanStudio has created a family-friendly cute Mario alternative. This game plays like any of the 3d Mario games, except with VR enhancements like perspective puzzles and hidden items that will have to constantly looking around. The graphics are solid, the colors are bright, the music is good, and the game is stable. I haven't seen any glitches and the game is incredibly user-friendly. This game has really, REALLY cool boss fights and my wife and I are trying to space out our sessions so that we can savor the experience.

I bought this rig after playing Beat Saber, which is the other killer app for PSVR. In the headset, you are dodging walls and slicing boxes with dual light sabers to cool electronic beats. Anyone watching you will see that you're dancing, and it's quite amazing to see two genres that emerge from the same actions, depending on perspective. It's like a horror movie that's a comedy if narrated from a different character's perspective.


Other than VR, I wrapped up a few smaller developer title and started playing a game that's been missing for 10 years: Onrush. Onrush is the new Burnout. This is a car game that forgoes racing and instead encourages you to destroy other drivers to win. OnRush captures the sense of speed really well, and there is no racing in it: instead, there are objectives like hitting targets to prolong a countdown, keep speed inside a zone while fending off attackers, or knocking opponents into traffic and other wholesome ideas. Onrush was one of the free PS+ games in December 2018, and is fun as hell!

Winter break Pt 2 ft superhero movies

Avengers promo? They have promos all the time.
The listed regular price of $22.99 never happens.

So, I got a Sinemia membership, which is one of those subscriptions where you can see x movies for x dollars per year. You go to Fandango and check your theater for seats, sign into the Sinemia app and manually enter the movie showtime, upon which a credit card number is generated, which you go back and enter on Fandango to get your tickets. At this point, you are charged about $3 and Sinemia pays for the rest. When you show your confirmation email to get in at the theater, you also sign into the movie through the Sinemia app. It's a bit convoluted, but even with the not-really-hidden surcharges, you're shelling out ~$6 for a primetime showing. Not a bad deal with some patience and reading.

Anyway, my first experience got me into a showing of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, which was a great way to round out Black 2018. Like (my previous review of) Dragon Quest XI, the movie was a living, breathing comic book. After coming off JRPG stories of insisting that darkness is bad and light is good without really explaining why, Spiderman deals with sympathetic villains and twisted 'good guys,' and my brain was almost stuck in the mire of Japanese character writing. This movie hits quick and good, and knows its place in its own world as well as the real world. It does a recap of Spiderman's existence, and kind of eye rolls its way through a 1-minute backstory. Isn't this like the 5th retelling of Spiderman in the last 15 years? 2 of the 5 lyrics in the 90s cartoon tell you all you need to know about Peter Parker: 'radioactive Spider-man.' Anyhow, I don't want to spoil the movie, but one thing I appreciated was that while 15 year old Miles Morales had awkward moments, that wasn't the entirety of his character. It's nice to acknowledge that teenagers are complex human beings, too.

Dolph Lundgren as an advisor? Sure.

The next night, I saw Awkwardman, which had all the teenage awkwardness and bland morality to be expected of a movie with a high budget. King. Kill king. Get power. Power good. Jokes. The score reminded me of Man of Steel in the sense that the one-song soundtrack was great...but it felt like one continuous song. It manifests itself when whoever is Black Manta decides to be Black Manta, which I thought would be his theme. (Dude! Sick!) And then, you hear the three-note theme when he's preparing to do something sinister. (G'hee! Awesome!) And then he disappears for an hour of the long-ass film to some inter-kingdom squabble, and you hear the theme again. At that point, it's just a rogue theme that plays whenever the hell it feels like it. Rupert Gregson-Williams, who previously kicked our asses with the Wonder Woman soundtrack, just wasn't utilized here. I know that the effects will look great in 4k, but at my showing, the actors' heads floated on bodies that weren't theirs, and there were loads of awkward effects like putting the trident up to his face. What the fuck? Point it at someone, it's a weapon! Lastly, the giant sea creature that gave that awkward-ass roar when Arthur...ehh...wins at the end and makes a generic-ass speech. I laughed a lot during Aquaman, and definitely enjoyed the experience. I'll be watching it again, but it was awkward as I've ever seen!

Liam Neeson approves!

In gaming news, I started Horizon Zero Dawn, and boy am I glad I waited. In spring in 2017, I had reached a divergence of this game, Far Cry Primal and Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I was pretty sure they'd be similar experiences, and ultimately chose to be disappointed by BotW and pleasantly surprised by FC Primal. Horizon Zero Dawn is pretty much Far Cry: Primal, though, and that's not a bad thing. The hunting and gathering are pretty minimalized and you spend more time fighting the dino-machines and conversing than preparing for your journey. Crafting is pretty quick and you can bypass it with money, but that requires more stopping to fight on the way to your mission destination. I paused through the main story and have been doing side quests and stuff and got back to the main story after a week or so of other stuff. Just when I was about to make fun of the story for having a really predictable twist, the scenes start to elaborate and this is where it's really shining. The world was destroyed by human greed and overambition, sure. The plan to save humanity is where the writing in HZD establishes itself and I'd encourage everyone to play it.

Other than that, I have been really thoughtless about frugal gaming. While HZD was only $10, I had an instant love affair with PS VR and splurged on a used bundle. Going forward, I'm going to challenge myself to go as long as I can without spending money on games this year. Foot, prepare to meet Mouth at a later date!

Thanksgaming + Winter controller break

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD was on sale for $10, and I have almost no experience with fringe FF games. It's definitely a relic of its time, with cutscenes upon cutscenes of emotionless dolls that pepper little bits of action. The game was originally a PSP title and is structured for short play sessions. I might be used to new games that tell you everything about where to go and what to do, but I keep getting lost in the middle of missions because I have a short attention span, and this game is just not sucking me in. There's a main cast of 13 characters, all named after poker cards, and you can swap them in and out in groups of three. I might eventually develop a taste for this, but there are more pressing games to complete.

My wife has been plugging away at the Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far, which is a 9-game anthology. She's beaten two of nine so far: Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories, which has shuffled cards into the action RPG mechanics. Weird. She's now onto KH 2. This one has lots of Disney IP including Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, and 1950's Mickey Mouse Land (or whatever you call it) . The characters have more variety to the sounds they make during combat, so hearing Wifey play while I do other things is a lot less annoying.

I have slowed down a bit on my favorite smaller-developer game of the year: Dead Cells. I'm not sure yet if the hardest trophy is the no-hit boss trophies, or beating the game on the hardest difficulty. I'm trying to do as many as I can because the game is about to have an overhaul patch that will make profound changes to gameplay. UPDATE: you can quit out in the middle of boss fights and the game will save, so I cheesed 3 of the 4 no-hit boss kills. I can definitely say that the harder difficulties are the harder trophies.

Dead Cells also came to the Switch, along with no other original titles. I think I'm mostly underwhelmed by the Switch because I have the Wii U and PS4. I think someone who missed out on the last 5 years of games has every reason in the world to get one. Me? Call me when Metroid Prime 4 rears it's gorgeous blonde head. No, really. I emailed a distress beacon to Samus Aran. One of my coworkers brought her Switch and Smash Bros Ultimate to the holiday party, and it was off the chain, so there's that!

Moving on, I started Gravity Rush 2, which has quite an amazing color palette. I don't know what to call it, but it uses magenta as its reference point and it's gorgeous. The game's maps used to feature several connected cities that you could fly/fall through, and in this sequel, they've added another axis. The result is that cities are now in different levels of the atmosphere, and it makes exploration vertical and horizontal.

Yall couldna added a brotha in this?

December was pretty much the month of Dragon Quest XI, which is the epitome of a JRPG. Silent protagonist to save the world plot, eventually ending up at a boss in space that takes up more than the whole screen? Check. Overcoming battles via brute force grinding? Darkness as the protagonist without explaining what's so bad about darkness? No black characters? Triple check.

JRPG/anime tropes aside, the game delivered on everything I wanted with one exception: the music is sub par. Instead of recorded orchestra with a proper punch and full range, you're treated to some corny synthesized trumpets and boring percussion that all has a childish feel to it, and it's all super repetitive over this 100-hour journey. Most games have the decency to have a few regular battle themes, a sub-boss theme and a boss theme, at the very least. This game has that count, but it's also almost three times as long as your average, and the boss music is bad.

Even nuns gotta get loose in Lonalulu

There's some variety in the towns, which are each based on a real-world culture. The beachtown, Lonalulu, has a kahuna and NPCs greet you with mahalo. Hotto, at the foot of Mt Huji, has citizens that all speak in haiku. Citizens of Gondolia all speak broken English that is peppered with ma bella, ciao and bene. Also, characters drink and are drunk, including nuns, and there are some side stories of loss and grief that are well done.

Visually, DQ XI is playing in a living, breathing anime world designed and colored by Akira Toriyama. It is absolutely gorgeous, and both this and Dragon Ball Fighterz are two strong entries for best art direction of 2018, both from the same original artist. Toriyama likes to put characters' eyes close together, and I'm not sure what the intended effect is, but it's hard to take the game's more mature plots seriously. All the men look like their names are Cody, and I'm sorry but a cross-eyed dragon isn't scary. The women in this game, however, are all ridiculously hot. Like, problematically gorgeous. There's something in the water in the world of Erdrea. There's a subquest to 'get puff-puff' in every town from a beautiful woman, and one of your characters gets multiple suits of questionably-effective bikini-style armor. I think the cherry on top was that to get the game's true ending, you beat a dungeon and are granted a choice of boons, one of which is to marry your best friend. Like...a genie has to make that happen?

Krystalinda, cast your spell on me!

To its credit, DQ XI doesn't waste your time with clumsy romance, and there are at least as many...dudesels...as there are damsels in distress. Also, the two top damage dealers in your party are women, so there's that.