PAX 2019 was a hit!

I guess _I_ was enforced...

This year, I Enforced and attended my third Penny Arcade Expo! My section was Classic Console Freeplay, which is one of the many things that sets this gaming convention aside from other 'gaming' conventions: actual gaming! To explain: Tokyo Game Show has a few dozen developers showing off their games, and if you're not in line to play a demo, then you're looking at booth babes, cosplay or gaming-related merchandise. I would say (ridiculously hot) cosplay is the main draw, and game demos and swag are tied seconds. Tokaigi, held in the same space (Makuhari Messe in Chiba) as TGS, is a little more about actually playing games, with consoles, PC and handheld stations. I did a quick run-through of Seattle ComiCon, and saw a lot of gameplay with prizes (awesome!) and a shitload of cosplay.

Zagreus and Aphrodite (Hades) and Red (Transistor)

PAX, however, probably has all gaming conventions beat: there are giant rooms for tabletop games, a room of beanbags for handheld gaming orgies, an entire floor dedicated to the current 2 consoles, another floor of PCs, another 2 floors for console and PC tournaments, a floor for classic consoles (from NES to Wii/PS2/Xbox), gaming trivia all around downtown Seattle, pin collecting and swapping, digital slot machines that dispense prizes randomly to attendees, and scavenger hunts. There are even run-of-the-mill cardboard puzzles. Of course there's cosplay, anime, trinkets and discussion panels, but the amount of gaming here is next-level.

I was on the team that checked out games to attendees who would sit down at stations and play with friends. There were 32 stations, and most were in use the entire 4 days. Considering loans are 30-minutes at a time, that's a lot of activity! There were faces we saw all four days, as it's a great time killer for certain events. Sometimes, you just don't want to stand in line for 3 hours to play a 20-minute demo. In general, I worked my normal full-time job, and did PAX for the 3-day weekend, and now I'm lumbering through my normal workweek. Sleeping 8 hours took priority over attendance, so I only showed up a few hours early to tour the expo before my shift, and didn't hang around much after.

HOWEVER. I definitely saw some shit!

Lead voice actor Logan Cunningham!

For me, PAX belonged to SuperGiant, the makers of Bastion, Transistor and Pyre (review here). One day, the key dev team held a panel where they told their story of working on these games and how the team met teach other. I got to meet the lead voice actor but was too nervous to do more than tell him I was a fan and smile. I didn't tell him that in the 2 weeks of playing Bastion, I narrated everything I did around the house in a gravely voice. After my enforcer shift, SuperGiant's composer put on a concert with key tracks from those three games as well as their newest, Hades. There was also an orchestra and his other vocalist. During that sweet hour at the Paramount, we were treated to a light show, some anecdotes and almost every duet from their games. Chills the whole time. Getting so much exposure to this independent developer was an amazing experience. If Motion Twin (Dead Cells) ripped through PAX, I would have met my two favorite small developers and that would just be hard to top.

I also went to the Make-a-Strip panel, where Penny Arcade founders Jerry Holkins (Tycho) and Mike Krahulik (Gabe) drew a brand new comic and answered all kinds of questions from their e-nor-mous fan base. To think that these two average-looking dudes from Spokane started the 15-year-strong convention for almost 100,000 people from all walks of life to flock to Downtown Seattle by writing a comic about two roommates playing videogames and talking shit.

If you can make it to Seattle for the Labor Day weekend, then sign up to Enforce at PAX in May!

SuperGiant composer Darren Korb

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.

October opus: Sonic Mania Plus...

Sonic the Hedgehog is 28 years old this year but has lived more than half his life in shitty games. Our blue friend had a home in 5 great speedy platform games in the early 90s. Then, some bigger changes in technology and some really terrible direction lead SEGA to produce poop for the next 20-odd years. Nintendo has always taken new tech in stride and implemented it in the titles quite well. Think of each system's new Mario or Zelda game and how well it uses its console's gimmick: Mario's movement in Super Mario 64, Z-targeting in Ocarina of Time, Link's Master Sword moving 1:1 in Skyward Sword via the Wiimote Accelerometer, and more recently, using the Wii U's touchpad to sketch blocks in New Super Mario Bros - nTh iteration.

And still better with the 2d D-pad.

Sonic...hasn't received the same treatment. The SEGA Saturn title used an isometric view and analog controller for Sonic 3d Blast to go with the new CD-quality audio. The music worked; the rest was awkward. Then while Mario was messing around on Sunshine Island (Gamecube), SEGA decided Sonic needed vocals and we were treated to unskippable, poorly-acted, awkwardly paced and stupidly long cutscenes in a game with only a good first level. This trend of underwhelming Sonic games with only good first levels repeated for years. But even with the music, there's been a prominence of guitar-heavy rock music with lyrics in most of the titles since Sonic Adventure that were hit and miss.

THEN, a few years ago, a fan updated/remade a few Genesis-era Sonic games. This all culminated into Sonic Mania, a return to roots with a blend of the only 5 Sonic games that matter: Sonic 1-3, & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Sonic Mania blends these so thoroughly into a great shiny package and hits on almost everything great about the series. For example, two desert levels Oil Ocean (S2) and Sandopolis (S3) have been conceptually blended. In the original Sandopolis, you were inside of a pyramid that consistently got darker until you activated light switches throughout the level. In Sonic Mania, you're running through an oil extraction site that gets hazy until you activate fans to blog away the smog. The blends manifest themselves in the music, aesthetics and functions like the haze mechanic I mentioned. There are so many stages that Eggman Dr. Robotnik has gone the way of Bowser and recruited the Hard-boiled Heavies to harangue the heroes in different boss forms.

The devs balanced speed and running really really well. The levels are loaded with springs and sequences that don't screw up momentum with obstacles. There are even those parts in the game where you're running so fast that Sonic almost moves out of the frame, and they're used sparingly enough for you to really appreciate them. Past titles have suffered from poor camera controls, camera tracking, or the simple fact that touching the controls during the speed sequences could kill Sonic. A lot of the titles may have only had one of these sins, but Sonic Mania doesn't commit any.

Sonic Mania is the most fun I've had in a while. The game is gorgeously colorful, the remixed soundtrack is amazing, and I'm considering buying it for the appeal of a playable soundtrack. Have any of you played a game again for its soundtrack?

Hang on, Geddy! Ohh wait-shoot em!

I actually started the month with a title called Owlboy, which is heavily inspired by Kid Icarus from the original NES. The game has a neat aesthetic and in true sci-fi nature takes its world of sentient owls, stick bugs, penguins and spiders as established; there's no irony there. The story has to deal with capture and pirates and stuff...and I was just playing the game to experience vertical platforming. I really liked the music and artwork. Even towards the end of my 14-hour journey to the platinum, I forgot controls occasionally since they were just a bit awkward.

Ohh my! Yes, yes. Quite riveting!

After Owlboy, I was waiting for Sonic Mania to arrive in the mail and discovered just how awesome one of the previous free PS+ games was. The game is called Foul Play, and the title card is a theatre curtain. I figured it would be some murder mystery or otherwise dialogue-heavy slow-paced game. It turns out that this is a beat-em-up game where you play actors in a series of Vaudeville plays, beating the snot out of baddies for the audience's enjoyment. Get combos, dodge, pop the fist-fodder into the air, whack, sock, evade and chuck enemies into stage objects to applause and a great soundtrack. One fact is that October has seen three fast and fun titles with great music and unique aesthetics.

Fireworks on muh screen!

How was your 4th, folks? I got to hang out with friends and watch The Rock's San Andreas and the new Tomb Raider. The former was a neutered "action" film that unraveled the moment you thought about how callous it is to make a movie with hundreds of thousands of people dying on and off screen while following a divorced couple's rekindled relationship. Ohh, and screw you, new husband, for making this divorcee happy! Tomb Raider was kinda boring but had some cool sound effects, and properly beat the shit out of Lara Croft, per mandate of the new game series.

Hell yeah she is!

In a much more efficient use of media funding, Gravity Rush has stolen my heart. I've wanted to play this PS4 remaster since even before January 2018, my Ladies' Month, and spent 30 disorienting minutes figuring out the (thankfully) simplified controls. The game involves a spunky heroine named Kat whose cat can decide which surfaces are up and down. You do this by floating, aiming at the surface you wish to stand on, and flying into it. This is all done with one button, and the camera will help you out most of the time. I'm having a blast playing this game, and I hope the story is brisk enough that the gameplay doesn't wear out its welcome.

Update: Since starting this post a week ago, I've gotten the platinum. I probably put 16 hours into the base game and all expansions, and was excited to play the whole time. The most challenging mission in the game has a perfect run of 3min30sec and took me about 20 minutes overall to ace through research and repeated attempts.

Overwatch. I've been playing the new Symmetra and a great deal of FFA deathmatch. After 2.5 years of naively trusting strangers to group up in balanced teams, there is now a create-a-group feature where you can assign roles. While it takes an extra minute to fill up, you can finally avoid the K:D ratio bros that will fill your last team slot with Genji (instead of a needed healer or tank). The problem is that the system isn't quite intuitive, and there is no usual info box with an explanation. How...cantankerous!

More like "Turn-it-up!" Ah...that was lame.

I started Rayman Legends, which is a really huge game. This Ubisoft platformer series has a great aesthetic that reminds me of Nickelodeon cartoons and certainly doesn't take itself seriously. It's one of those games with slightly floaty controls, but the levels mercifully aren't designed for precision. Rayman was a franchise I overlooked pretty much since the first game in 1995. Legends is pretty fun and not frustratingly challenging so far. I dig it!

Gaming and Graduation

Holy moly, folks! 2018 is hummin along, with my most recent viewing of a seizure-beckoning Incredibles 2, and a significant reduction in gaming time. I just finished up a graduate-level grammar class and Washington heated up a bit, educating me on just how much warmer a TV makes the room. Back to Incredibles 2, the movie was quite awesome save for the one poor choice of a scene involving a really intense strobe light. I don't have photo-sensitivity, but I closed my eyes for sure. Don't let that keep you from seeing it, though I can't really say that it's a big screen movie, since the action is really well directed and you pretty much always know what's going on.

It def gets dicey in this game

Games! I finally platinumed Children of the Zodiarcs, which is an entertaining and beautifully drawn tactics RPG. You're a bunch of orphans making your way through seedy neighborhoods, killing those who need to be killed. My only complaint is that the soundtrack is very minimal, so about half of my gameplay was without sound. If you want a play style that feels like a board game but has the convenience of digital interaction, this game is for you. Also, plus points for having a black female lead.

Art direction +1 Lookit dem colors!

Also finished up everything in God of War. My biggest shame for being frugal is that really good games like God of War that have a shorter path to platinum usually end up getting borrowed, and the dev never sees my money. At the same time, I gotta look after Number One, and I can't be spending emotions on businesses either.

I spent a good deal of time playing Overwatch during the anniversary event, where they unlocked all the skins and even game modes for almost all of June. The game that keeps on giving.

Omae ga mattaku shinisoudaze!

In game-related news, E3's finally shown me more than a buncha zombie survival games, and Ghost of Tsushima is one title I'm very excited for. Sony musta bribed the devil with all the great exclusives coming to the PS4. Assassin's Creed Odyssey looks great, though I haven't played any titles since AC II. Cyberpunk 2077 might be the most compelling of the batch, and I'll know not to rush into it. I screwed up my Witcher experience (same developer) by starting my first play on HARD. I gave up on that playthrough, but might give the game another go before Cyberpunk comes out.

What got you most pumped at E3?

May Gaming: Dad of War

This game is awesome, Boy.

Whaddup, Nahmi.

Deadpool is going to have to wait, folks. The lead up to this weekend involved an indie (Cardboard Utopia, Canadian) title called Children of the Zodiarcs, which is a tactics RPG with dice-rolling to remind you that RNG reigns supreme in these kinds of games. Between battles, there is deck building and dice crafting, and Children brings all the best parts of a combat-based tabletop game without the feeling of being locked into a 6-hour game that just. Won't. End...*cough*. The battles last from 5-20 minutes and that's all you need to commit. Mechanics aside, the playable characters are brown in majority, and the dialogue is funny and mercifully skippable if you have to replay a level because your character died :). The music is not a strength, and you might need to grind to your own soundtrack, but the game was also $10, so I can't complain. The aesthetic is neat, the drawn portraits are beautiful, and the change of pace to tactical RPG combat is a relief to balance the shooters I'm playing.

Ohh snap! We in trouble!

Speaking of shooters, I started Wolfenstein 2 and got a solid 2 hours in before I got hopelessly lost, losing my interest in the game, too. There is a map in this game with mission objectives and everything, so it's hilarious that I spent 30 minutes walking in circles, but I just wasn't connecting the dots. Ohh well, I'll try again later! There are priorities...

My friend Aaron broke some wonderful news to me that he'd completed God of War and was ready to loan it to me. After 6 other titles of revenge-driven, violent hatred of those-who-are-bigger-and-meaner, this game's director took a slower pace. I remember God of War 3 ended with a minigame where you repeatedly mash a button to mash Zeus's face, bloodying up the screen until you could only hear the meaty bashing. Don't get me wrong, Zeus was an asshole, and the multi-stage boss battle is pretty engaging and a raging climax for the angry series.

The new God of War follows an old gruff Kratos, who becomes a widower left with his somewhat-estranged son, Boy Atreus. The game starts with the two going about the death rituals of Kratos' wife Faye, and the last thing they need to do is place her ashes at the top of a mountain. On the first mission of training Atreus how to hunt, Kratos is terse with his son as they feel out each others' combat prowess and personalities. Assuming that the other God of War titles are canon, it's understandable that he's not the warmest father figure. He was tricked into killing his wife and daughter long ago, got his revenge, and then again on the dubious gods as the situation was escalated. Between God of War 3 and this one, Kratos settled down again, just to lose his new wife. I am only a few hours into the story, so I'm not sure if the previous titles are canon, nor how exactly Faye died.

That looks...painful.

Either way, as you go about trying to place her ashes on the top of a mountain, the seemingly bleak father-son banter of the excited youth being reminded to control his feelings and mind his surroundings gives way to the characters sharing their grief and eventually bonding. There are plenty of stories that start at a low or sad point that provides the catalyst for plot to get moving, and God of War is no exception. The narrative succeeds by having the memory of a character act as a passive third character who shapes the story every bit as much as the main two characters who are alive.

Gently down the stream, Boy.

The game feels a lot like a cross between Last of Us and Uncharted in terms of gameplay and production design. There is not one cheap texture in the game, all the characters look solid, Atreus' AI is intelligent enough to feel like a real partner. It's also obvious that the characters' relationship takes over the plot in the same way that Naughty Dog games do so often and so well. There is also some researched lore on Norse Mythology that amounts to more than everyone is naked and the gods are selfish that previous titles featured. While exploring, the characters tell stories to each other that are interrupted as soon as you get to an action point, and continued when things calm down. I first saw this in Uncharted 4 and it's a great way to enrich the mundane parts of the game. The combat is a little slower and quieter than the previous God of War games, but has a lot more variance to the attacks and is still really fun. So far, the violence is less visceral than ripping a (demi-)god's head off through a quicktime event as the music pounds.

The newest God of War is such a good experience. While there's no shortage of games powered on male fantasy, the grieving demigod hacking and slashing his way through realms to save the world is augmented by bonding with his son and being a protective father. It's an exciting, immersive experience and this major change to the series is as good as it gets.

FFXV DLC: F MINUS and other stuff

HREEEE

Downloadable content is a wonderful theory. Who doesn't want more of their favorite games? How about an expansion on some great IP? More levels, more equipment, how does that sound?

Your favorite studio might release an extra episode to your best game, adding an additional 10 hours of engaging storyline, maybe with a new character and some new items. I feel like Blizzard is the perfect example. The hefty expansions usually cost half the cost of the game, but they're generally a massive overhaul that both adds content and usually a extra mechanics to that combine with the basic game and adds depth. Brood War was an expansion to Starcraft that gave all 3 races more units, introduced the burrow mechanic, and added a 4th chapter in the campaign, complete with more cinematics. And new music tracks.

What could be as sweet as one of these? I thought that Final Fantasy XV, one of my most enjoyed games in the last 10 years, would follow this pattern. Sadly, Episodes Gladiolus and Prompto both suck. Both of these cost $5, and offer a total of 2.5 hours of story content that fills in two very intentional gaps in the main game's storyline. Now, my FFXV playthrough was over 100 hours, so the ratio is underwhelming. The next slight comes from both modes having a one-on-one boss fight that showcases that the game's battle system was designed for facing mobs and large bosses, not for dueling. These two 3-minute battles will take hours to master, and only half the challenge is in intentional design. You'll spend the other half of your stress battling the terrible camera, and the random stumbles and shit your character makes in timing-sensitive fighting. The result is a crappy experience that detracted seriously from my opinion of the game. If the same dev team that made the base game put this junk out, I would be surprised. Also, Gladiolus's music sucks. The original FFXV score is a masterpiece; the one new heavy metal track you get isn't.

Prompto's playthrough is a little more fun, but if you're hunting trophies, it's ruined by this racing course on a ski-mobile. This piece of junk randomly flips over, and the camera is your worst enemy. I can't recommend either one of these DLCs unless you really want a crappy experience. I really hope Episode Ignus is better than Prompto, but who knows. Anyhoo, in completing as much as I could of this, I got the keys to the kingdom; access to my friend's digital library. Sony totally allows sharing digital games, as long as you activate the profile you want's account as the Home system and download it. Then, you log in as your own profile and you have access to it. Find a friend and agree on a few games you both like. Then, take turns paying for them and sharing them.

That said, this week was super productive: Battle Knockout Trivia, Infamous: First Light and Strider. The first game is a half-hour trophy list to get 100%, and has some decent highschool-level trivia, with a Japanese-accented English-speaking host. I didn't check the credits to see if it's actually a Japanese guy or if the game just thinks accents are funny.

Infamous was great. The game has a gorgeous aesthetic, with your character controlling neon at night, and takes place in Seattle (what-what!). The controls are super responsive, and the 4-hour playthrough of this standalone expansion is a little less than half that of the original game. You're then rewarded with some battle arenas to just let loose with all your powers and beat as many waves as you can. This is a stark contrast to how dreadful FFXV's DLC was.

Gravity orb-jumpin'

Strider is a slick 2d action game with platforming and hype music. This is a sweet update to an old Sega Genesis favorite.

Gaming Goals in 2017: Mid-year Checkin

I'm sure you do, Akash.

We are a week past being halfway done with 2017, which has been the absolute worst year for employment, but great for personal health and gaming. The biggest change, while not the most frugal of options, is that I joined a gym. Simply walking long distances just wasn't quite enough, and Seattle's handful of 90-degree days just make that a lot harder. The frugal part is that I've consistently gone at least 5 days a week, making the most of the $1/day that this costs me, compared to $4 per visit at the city gym. So, while that does compete for free time, I've still gotten quite a bit of time to mash the controller for dopamine.

Breath of the Wild is losing me. Between uncustomizable controls, way too many obscure puzzles, and the stupid survival element, it's just the wrong combination of game for me. I've put at least 25 hours into it and still have 4 heart containers, and die in 2 hits. But before I journey, I have to cook, but before I cook, I have to get ingredients. I personally despise survival games like Minecraft, Terraria, and this major component of Zelda: BotW. The game's got another 5 hours of my attention before I play something more fulfilling. I really want to like it!

Other than that, I've been hammering away at June's free Killing Floor 2 (on PS+), and spent a week or so knocking out a few added-on trophies for Gems of War, which is still free-to-play and still awesome. I think I harped on the graphics of Killing Floor 2 in a post, and I take it back. I had had gore turned down, and the monsters didn't dismember quite as much as they do on FULL GORE mode.

With all that out of the way, let's get to the Gaming Goals update: I've played five of the games on the list, acquired 2 on PSN Flash Sales, and am one week away from Final Fantasy XII, meaning I'll have covered 7 of the 10 games I wanted to in the first half.

Antipode? I smell Chrono Trigger...

One of those is called I am Setsuna, a classic-style JRPG released by SquareEnix. I feel like this game had almost no promotion on the PSN, which is a shame. The writing is a pretty standard Japanese story: Setsuna is going to be sacrificed and gathers members to protect her on her final journey. What makes it super Japanese is that the whole story is laden with sadness, and Setsuna constantly questions members if they'd really do that for her. She's surprised by people's dedication, and so overly emotes herself to being positive and innocent that it ends up being quite sappy. Also, the entire soundtrack is piano, adding to the melodrama, though it's pretty unique and amazing how distinct the tracks sound with one instrument.

Dual Tech? Sick!

The battle system is pretty much Chrono Trigger, with Techs (magic attacks) that can be combined to make crazy combos. The game is also super linear and doesn't have a whole lot of challenge, save 2 particular boss battles that eat your party alive. Other than that, nothing gives you too much trouble until you hit the final boss and the game world unlocks completely. At that point, you can return to the world, where there are hidden nasties all over the world map that require some massive grinding. Classic. JRPG. For me, this was a welcome change to FPS games and Zelda, and I am pretty damn pleased to have completed I am Setsuna.


Since we've crossed the halfway point of 2017, I'd like to add some more games I want to complete this year: Steamworld Heist, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Shadow Complex Remastered, Tearaway Unfolded, The Walking Dead 2, Pyre and Abzu. as well as finish Titanfall 2. The only one of these I don't have yet is SuperGiant Games' (Bastion, Transistor) Pyre. The majority of these were free PS+ downloads, but putting them here means I will commit to them and hack away at the stack. Remember, for the perfect marriage of anti-hoarding frugality and trophy hunting, I'm trying my damnest to stick to 3-games-out, 1-game-in. Also, I realized I've been applying this incorrectly for a year! Somewhere along the way, I simplified 1 disc-based game and 2 downloaded games into 2 games. Silly me! The best on my wallet would of course be to simplify to 3 games completed before paying for another.

I'll keep you posted! With my massive disappointment in the game of the year, Breath of the Wild, what was your huge gaming disappointment?

Springtime Gamin III

Mega-babe Fairy. Finally found the Breast of the Wild.

I started over on Breath of the Wild, and am making my way across the abso-friggin-lutely huge terrain, getting distracted from main quests and finding too many things without an easy way to track them.

2 con-babe sisters Sasha and Fiona.

Tales from Borderlands was one of May's free PS+ games, and quite a good ride. The game is what you'd expect from a TellTale/Borderlands crossover: the cell-shaded laughing-in-hell charm of a Borderlands game mixed with the wit and comic-book-style of a choose-your-own-adventure game.

The cherry on top is that no matter how you play, you get the platinum trophy by the end of the 10-hour endeavor. Mad shout outs to the composer, though, who went out of his way to create an amazingly done credits sequence song for each of the 5 chapters.

Choices, choices.

Tdtdtdtdtdtdtdtdtdtdt!

This month's free PS+ games were Life is Strange and Killing Floor 2. I've already written about the first title, which, as much of a burn it is to have paid for it only a few months ago, is a fantastic title to give away. Killing Floor 2 is a ton of fun. Fast-paced co-op zombie survival with classes that you level up through playing the maps over and over. It feels like more of an expansion than a fully-developed game, but damn is it fun! I say that because of the limited frames of animation, the graphics quality and system operation (super loud fan for processing that shouldn't be intense), and the quality of sound. None of these are terrible, they're just not hundred-million-dollar projects like Call of Duty, Mass Effect, or Final Fantasy. In other words, this game feels like it belongs on the previous generation. Again, it's incredibly fun to blow away zombies!

Access to sunken areas granted.

Last on the trophying was Xeodrifter, the 8-bit Metroid-style alien hunter game. The soundtrack, graphics and gameplay are all perfectly NES-era. You start off in a rocket ship and can go to any 1 of 4 planets. One of those has monsters that move really quickly and kill you, so you painfully learn to turn back. While exploring another planet, you might find an screen that you just can't pass. The game doesn't tell you what you're looking for, and even has its own alien alphabet. Instead, like Metroid, it guides you to follow the right path based on obstacles that you can traverse as you gather more equipment and items.

Rekt the boss with a few hits to spare!

The bosses have predictable attack patterns, but also can destroy you quickly. However, after 5 minutes or so, you'll be able to beat that boss if you're learning from mistakes. The other test of memory is trying to remember where in the maps you got stuck and knowing to return. You can of course follow a guide, but I found most of the stat-boosting collectibles and completed the game in about 3 hours. So, like the quintessential NES game, it encourages you to explore and try things without exposition, the soundtrack is super cool, and the game punishes you for mistakes, but the whole experience is short and pretty awesome. I think Xeodrifter is easier to recommend because it's a small commitment to a great afternoon.

That's right, Sigma and Ultron merged. Wait, what?

Finally, the demo of Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite is currently free to download, and lets you play a section of story mode. This 30-minute session is pretty easy, and the matchups are against throwaway henchmen bots, rather than characters in the game. The graphics are super smooth, and every character gets a shiny metallic look, which is pretty neat. The character design, however, is a different story. I think Ryu hasn't ever looked like a Japanese person, but his new wide face, hawkish nose and large eyebrows make him look like a dinosaur. Chun Li has looked super European for a few games, but the SF community is making a big deal out of this being the ugliest Chun Li to date. Also, you've got King Arthur (Ghosts and Goblins) that runs and moves like a dork, and Dante (Devil May Cry) who's known for being over the top and his move set matches that. Finally, there is Ultron-Sigma, a mashup of a total Marvel badass and...Mega Man X's nemesis. This game's setting is all kinds of crazy. However, if I had the characters from the dozen games and universes, I'd be crazy, too. Ahh well, the fighting is smooth, combos and super moves are easy like an MvC game should be. Get the demo!

Springtime Gamin II

The last few weeks were a jumble of awesome stuff. Guardians of the Galaxy 2, a funk club night with my friends on a birthday, and that same friend graduating from law school.  Congratulations, Chad!

However, given that I now work part time from home, there has been a lot of time to work that controller.

Overwatch has taken about half my gaming time...it's fun again. I'm finally being rewarded for hard work, as teammates are grouping up more, and I've switched to mainly playing support. I still have the arrogant complaint that whether it's Zarya or Zenyatta, I pretty often get gold medals for damage and eliminations. Why is this a complaint? This means DPS aren't doing their jobs, and I hate that this is normal. I'm not particularly great at taking out the enemy team, that means the other members must really be bad! Support should be medaling for healing and defensive assists, while your DPS is picking off the weak and racking up kills. I am stuck in a rank with a few good players, but most of them still will selfishly disregard good team composition and forming up to try the same inefficient lone wolf tactics over and over. This is why I'm trapped in gold and can't get out. Either way, it's still quite a miracle that the Overwatch community is still pumping a year after release; that's unheard-of for consoles! Congratulations, Blizzard!

Teleported here via that intense frog statue. Yep.

My last rental was quite a pleasant surprise; Earthlock plays and looks like JRPG. Bright, colorful graphics, turns, number damage, powered abilities after taking/doing enough damage, and a great soundtrack (link). The difference with Earthlock is that the developers are Norwegian, so there are some welcome differences. JRPGs usually miss the mark for relationship tropes, humor, and villains. Usually, there is unspoken or awkward love between two characters who never confront it, the humor is either about how a man likes women or a woman likes men, and the villains are usually the only Japanese characters who laugh. As much as I love certain parts of Japanese culture, I am so rarely blown away by the writing that goes into Japanese games and characters.

Might have to zoom in for this...

I love the way the robot talks in this game. 

This is of course where Earthlock stands out. There is no love interest whatsoever. No wasted scenes with awkward gasps and downcast eyes. Next, the game itself is light-hearted, but there aren't many jokes. This is shown through on-point localization and characters with a more colorful vocabulary than what's usually used in JRPGs. Finally, the villain is just a bad guy. I didn't notice anything particularly clever about the writing, but the story wasn't especially convoluted and easy to keep track of due to a short, 15-hour playthrough. That doesn't sound short, but the last RPG I played had a 110 hour save file.

You want it fast, strong, magical, or buff?

I wholeheartedly suggest this game to those of you who want the JRPG experience with a slight twist. It's got beautiful art, an amazing soundtrack, swappable party members and a custom level-up system. However, the plot is simple, there's minimal grinding, no random encounters, and a well-done soundtrack all along the way.

Because it's an arcade game...

I also tackled some PS3 arcade games: Marvel Super Heroes and Pacman Championship DX. Gotta keep the 2-games-out, 1-game-in factory working!

Spidey's victory quote cuts deep.

A burn that brings its own questions about the person who said it.

Pac-man on crack, man!