2018 February II

Also, this game was released less than a week
after I posted the article!

My last post might've been a bit salty about not being able to play games with black characters. Well, there are at least 100 titles out there with brown characters. This turned out to be a great extension from what I was doing in January, moving to another underrepresented group in gaming. While most of these games are on older systems, Windows or mobile platforms, Broken Age was a free PS+ title that's been resting on my PS4 for over a year. Shame. On. Me. Well, I guess I'd better play it soon!

This image toooootally belongs to The CW

In the first half of February, I've done more TV-watching: Black Lightning has a long large, low-hanging pendulum that swings between cool and corny. While most of it's the former, with a dope soundtrack, beautiful actresses, current and timeless issues in the black community, and level-headed people in power doing their best, the show has taken the time to flush out the villains, so far. On the corny side, Black Lightning's suit looks ridiculous, and some of VFX reveal the show's budget; though they spent enough resources on some compelling writing. So far, Jefferson Pierce (the alter ego) has been more entertaining to watch than the superhero: he's a high school principal with influence and connections, as well as a kick-ass father.

CBS totally owns this hella Photoshopped image

Star Trek Discovery regained some of the ground it'd lost; I wasn't a fan of the writing in the show's second half, but the first season finished up alright. My girl Sonequa is still standing up for what's right, and kicking ass all over the universe in the name of Federation values.

Odds and ends. I finished up the platinum trophies for the Uncharted Collection, though I left the expansion trophies unfinished, since that would require beating each title 2 more times! Star Wars Battlefront II is a continued slog through killing hero ships as an XWing or TiE Fighter. There's also the fact that the community is getting really good at the game and there are fewer noobs to take out your frustrations on. I had a Jones to play Doom about a week before it went on sale for $5 at RedBoxes. That's been a welcome distraction in February, and Doom reminds me of a super-gory (and fun) version of Metroid Prime.

Mina can be descriptive at times...

Iconoclasts has proven to be a really fun game with only a few hard moments. I talked before about one factor of the great gameplay being how you traverse the map in less-than-linear fashion. Another hallmark of this game is the boss fights. You have a wrench that gets powered up, and a few different types of guns, and all the boss fights involve a combination of your newest powers, some aiming, and some pattern-learning. The fights are unique but easy to figure out,  and end with a badass explosion. I started the game on HARD, and found out how to defeat bosses after 2 or 3 deaths on average. The only non-positive thing I have to say is that I tuned out of the story because I couldn't follow it. The exchanges between characters are funny and full of energy; I just have no idea what they're talking about. All in all, this game is super easy to recommend, and getting the full trophy list isn't particularly hard, and you can even get it on the normal difficulty setting, as far as I know. The music rules, the sprites are crisp and well-done, the cast is mostly babes, and the boss fights will keep you going.

People.

I was also either struck by lightning or saw Black Panther and got an SNES mini classic used off Amazon in the same week. I will put out an entry about Black Panther soon, but the SNES mini is kinda cheap looking, but the interface is awesome, and I started Final Fantasy VI and hopefully will be able to keep the story intact. This game feels so good to play, and the soundtrack is one of the top. I remember finding out new secrets in this game from friends in middle and high school; there were hella. The 21-game library is something to savor, and if you're looking for one, I'd encourage you to do a search every couple days: I wonder if the hype wore off and they're more available now.

Gotta go, readers! Do any of you have an SNES or NES Classic Mini? What games did you beat? What memories were triggered with some of the games you played?

Games 2018: February

As what felt like the longest month in existence comes to a grinding close, I find myself wanting to continue playing games in themed bundles. With today marking the start of Black History month, Black Panther being released two weeks in, and me being super excited for both, it would have been nice to have February dedicated to games with black characters.

Yep, woulda been nice.

Would. Have. Been. Great.

Betcha didn't know!

It wasn't the hardest challenge to cultivate a group of female protagonist games, but games with black and brown lead characters simply don't exist outside of sports games. Now, I love Japan like a second home. However, Japanese gaming doesn't really have a place for nonwhite or non-Japanese characters. They just don't give a hoot.

Fortune favors the hot

Sure, there's hot-headed Barrett Wallace in Final Fantasy VII, fist-fighting Bruce in Tekken, never-miss, never-hit Fortune in Metal Gear Solid 2, and funky Zack in Dead or Alive, but it's also unrealistic to rely on a 98% homogeneous culture to produce games with racial diversity. That's where Western developers come in. Blizzard has brown characters in Diablo and Overwatch, and the Mortal Kombat games have Jax, Jade and the Lin-Kuei robot assassin Cyrax was revealed to be originally a brotha a bunch of titles back.

There's also the issue of keeping my game plan from financially spiraling out of control; ideally I should be cultivating the themed titles from my existing backlog. This is the perfect time to bring up the 2 games I bought yesterday. I saw 2 more female protagonist games that I just had to scoop up.

Beautiful people drawn beautifully

Over the first half of February, I will be going through Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and Iconoclasts. The former was apparently one of the best titles in 2017, and should be a short-but-sweet journey of less than 10 hours to platinum. Iconoclasts was just released (a week ago, as of this post), and is a 16-bit exploratory sidescroller with an all-girl playable cast. So far, I've played as the mechanic named Robin, who's got a big wrench and a big ass. Or is it just the jodpurs? Either way, the game has awesome music, great colors, smooth animation, and loads of character. What's more impressive is how fun the game is because of the pathing. The map works like any Castlevania game made in the last 15 years, but you end up crisscross areas to open other small places, making pathing more complex than left-to-right. I committed the ultimate financial sin and paid the full $20 for this title, but I'll just have to hope that the dev team sees my enthusiastic dollars for this great title.

I'll try and think of my next theme for games and get back to you. I've neglected to give my readers food for thought, so here goes: What's a theme of games I should play this year? What are some of your favorite games with leading ladies? What are your favorite minority characters in games?