Phil Villarreal's Blog, page 90

PHIL ON FILM: "Aquaman"

For my written review, click here.

"Football Manager 2019 Touch" Review

A micromanager's dream, "Football Manager 2019 Touch" lets you wear a GM hat and delve deep into the bowels of a soccer club of your choosing, manipulating every aspect of the enterprise from concession sales and ticket prices to training regimens, transfers and lineups.

Some may be put off by the "Touch" moniker, concerned that the game is a slimmed-down, mobile version of the expansive PC edition, but instead they should see it as a value-added proposition. The additon of a touch screen makes menu manipulation quicker and more fluid than a keyboard-and-mouse setup.

The Switch edition is robust and content-rich, overflowing with team-building aspects to crunch, massage and rearrange. The fluid, aggressive AI makes it difficult to lock into any particular mode of operation to find success.

It takes an adaptive mind and a proactive mentality to find consistent success. A decent measure of luck also helps. Smart, incisive risks tend to be more rewarded than conservative minimalism. This is, after all "Football Manager" rather than "Football Passive."

New additions include tactical options that include the famed Spanish Tiki-Taka and the hyperaggressive Gegenpress method. Training has also been overhauled, adapted to real-world regimens, and the top two German Bundesliga divisions have been added as well.

Stylish presentation and an intuitive interface are key in a management-focused title such as this, and the dev team at Sega thoroughly nails that aspect. A voluminous and wide-ranging effort, "Football Manager 2019 Touch" is as exhaustive and endlessly intriguing on-the-go soccer biz sim as you could hope for.
Publisher provided review code.

"Battle Princess Madelyn" Review

A true descendant of the 80s, "Battle Princess Madelyn" is drenched in retro charm.

Developer Casual Bit Games go to great lengths to make their effort look just like an arcade game you'd find 30 years ago. The cut scene visuals subtly flicker in the way a CRT monitor would, and characters are big, detailed and expressive.

The framing motif echoes "The Princess Bride," with a book-toting grandfather reading a book to a sick child who would rather be playing video games. The grandfather and girl appear in the story, of a princess-turned-knight who leads the effort to fend off evil that has infiltrated the world of the living.

With the ghost of her slain puppy in tow, Madelyn wears armor and jumps in the manner of Arthur in "Ghosts 'n Goblins" and "Ghouls 'n Ghosts." Just as in those classics, there's more going on than the standard beat-em-up it appears to be.

As creepy monstrosities pop up from behind trees and walls, you slay them, speak to NPCs, track down hidden items and unlock new paths. The light Metroidvania flavor keeps things from growing stale.

The game is beautiful and inventive, with visuals that simulate the look and feel of 8 and 16-bit fare of the era. The throughline of subtle humor mocks conventions of the time, while sticking enough to established customs that it could pass for a genuine creation of the 80s, vacuum sealed until it could be released today.

"Battle Princess Madelyn" is a heartfelt and comedic lark with charm to spare. While not as sadistically frustrating as its forebears, it retains a similar sense of joyful discovery. Its spunky hero is truly one for the ages.
Publisher provided review code.

"Mini Metro" Review

A piece-shifting puzzler in the vein of "Pipe Dream," "Mini Metro" takes a simple premise and quickly heaps on complexity. The difficulty ramps up significantly, forcing you to adjust your thinking and tailor your tactics to the level at hand.

You shift and rotate paths from one station to another, with a limited amount of track to use. To advance, you need to make the most efficient use of limited resources, adjusting on the fly to keep your mini metro track paths tight and reliable.

Different colored pathways enter the fray, forcing you to make a chain reaction of changes when you adjust something that is out of place. A tinkerer's dream, "Mini Metro" gives you plenty to adjust and rejigger in order to sort out the ideal solution. The array of track permutations available to you is staggering, but also liberating.

It often takes a bit of trial and error to stumble onto the right solutions, but the longer you play, the greater sense you have of how to manage the tasks set before you.

"Mini Metro" isn't spectacular, but its meat-and-potatoes execution is admirable. An ideal for on-the-go Switch gamers looking to engage their minds in a productive, deductive pastime while killing time, the game puts you on the express route to puzzle game bliss.
Publisher provided review code.

"Below" Review

With the roguelike genre having made a strong comeback to prominence, developers have outdone one another in an effort to distinguish themselves from the pack. Leave it to Capy Games to push the genre's unforgiving aspects to their limit.

With "Below," Capy has unleashed a punishing, adamantly old-school take on roguelikes. With no ability to pause, one-hit permadeath coupled with forced restarts and zero handholding in the form of tutorials.

Even with the archetypes from older games firmly in place, there are still technological improvements, even if some are a bit anochranistic. Kinect owners on the Xbox One version can monitor your room surroundings to adjust procedural iterations of the levels.

Much of the allure comes in feeling your way through the formidable systems. To get the full effect, avoid online walkthroughs and go into the game blind. The less you take into it, the more you'll get out of it.

The story involves a grim power known as the Darkness that has put the realm in a chokehold. You arrive at a beachhead and can light a campfire, scrounge for items, spelunk in caves and find and utilize incongruous items.

Feeling your way through the inventory and action system is rewarding, providing an immense sense of discovery that empowers you as you go through. Although death is frequent and harsh, you're meant to learn harsh lessons from your failures, coming back with redoubled efforts hardened by the wisdom granted by gameplay experience rather than artificial statistical buffs of standard RPGs.

"Below" doesn't hold back when it comes to giving gamers an authentically brutal experience, and that motif allows some of the game's rougher edges to seem forgivable. Capy Games didn't strive for perfection, but thrives in the way it sets gamers up against obtuse, borderline unfair challenges. If you're up to the ordeal, you'll be intrigue in what lies "Below."
Publisher provided review code.

"Katamary Damacy REROLL" Review

The concept was so simple it was a surprise that it was never copied. The concept was so insane that it's a wonder it was ever even conceived, much less executed. "

Katamari Damacy" was a wacky action/puzzle/collect-a-thon that had players manipulate a ball around various levels, gathering objects in its wake that made it bigger and bigger.

As the Prince, you do all this to please the sardonic, eccentrically domineering King of All Cosmos, who demands that you craft giant Katamari balls to replace stars that have fallen out of the sky. The goofy setup was a starting point for a cavalcade of nonsensical jokes and non sequiturs.

Fourteen years after its original release, the relentless charmer has tujmbled back into public consciousness, popping up in a remake on PC and Switch as "Katamari Damacy REROLL."

The game doesn't reinvent the wheel, or Katamari for that matter, and that's just as well, because the mechanics that entranced gamers in 2004 remain every bit as alluring.

The latter's dual analogue sticks make for an ideal control setup, allowing you to use one for directional force and the other to change the angle at which you address the Katamari. If you're playing on your TV, you don't need to manipulate the sticks at all, using wrist twists to direct your Katamari.

An all-ages romp, "Katamari Damacy REROLL" is a relentlessly paced lark that, like a Katamari, only gathers stature and momentum as it rolls along. Playing it on the Switch feels just right, as though the PlayStation 2 version was just a beta for its eventual ideal landing spot. The King of All Cosmos would be pleased to see the new star hoisted into the skies.
Publisher provided review code.

Book Report: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I went through phases of appreciation, satisfaction boredom, annoyance, and outright resentment. Bradbury's stab at a sci-fi YA adventure is worthwhile due to its thought-provoking monologues and interesting depiction of evil's influence and utility in mankind.

Will and Jim are 13-year-old boys who are sucked into the bowels of a traveling, Mephistophilean carnival that is run by a tattooed devil incarnate who intends to harvest their souls, as well as any other small-town bumpkins they can manage. They ignore their parents' wishes and take it upon themselves to expose the demons on their own, Hardy Boys style.

The teen empowerment fantasy fuels the narrative through its most ridiculous moments. I could tolerate the many needed logical stretches to stay present in the story, but Will's twerpiness drove me over the edge. It got to the point where I cringed whenever the next idiotic phrase came out of his mouth, and I rooted for his failure and death.

His dad, who becomes a major part of the story later on, is more tolerable, but at times equally annoying. How he comes to know everything about the carnival, where its denizens came from how to neutralize the operation and what its future held, is head-smackingly dumb.

Christian Rummel's narration in the Audible version does Will no favors, deploying a whiny voice that makes him even harder to stomach. A more straightforward reading would have salved the irritation a bit.

The ending is almost laughably insipid, as though Bradbury has no idea what to do with his endgame and just went with the first, dumbest idea that occurred to him.

Even on a somewhat off day, Bradbury is a brainy, thought-provoking writer with much to say that's worth pondering. This is not the author at his best, but the good moments manage to redeem the awful.

Publisher provided review code.

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PHIL ON FILM: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"

For my written review, click here.

"Escape Doodland" Review

Playing like a sprint through the hyperactive imagination of a 14-year-old, "Escape Doodland" stands out with its distinctive artistic flair.

Every corner of the screen looks like freehand pen or colored pencil sketches. The backgrounds and characters bubble with miniscule grotesque, intricate details that emerge from idle sketching.

It's impossible to play the effort from flukyMachine without a big smile on your face. Giant monsters chase you down through the outrageous 2.5-D, endless runner platformer stages.

Balance and precision were not on the table during the conception stage. This is a mean, nasty and often hilarious game that is purely out to get you.

Sticking to the juvenile motif, you use farts as diversionary weapons and boosts for speed and jumps. What the character ate to generate all this fuel is worthy of NASA research.

Expect to die early and often, through increasingly sadistic means. You find yourself chomped, chewed, swallowed whole, splattered and ground to bits. The trick is that the game manages to keep you eagerly coming back for more instead of scaring you off. That's the mark of precision conceptualization and design disguised as a haphazard mess.

Publisher provided review code.

"Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP" Switch Review

Inventiveness is the currency in which Capybara Games and Superbrothers traffic in "Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP." The wildly creative narrative reinterprets action/fantasy and puzzle game tropes, all set to a distinctive score by Jim Guthrie.

The 2012 blast of fresh indie game air, which made an impression on the scene when it debuted on PC and Smartphones, re-emerges on the Switch.

The less time spent explaining/rationalizing the loopy plot the better. There are plenty of oddball story beats to digest, but "Sword & Sorcery" is more about emergent gameplay that occurs when you tinker with the odds and ends of the design.

Zany humor pulses from every facet of the gameplay. Still more surprising is the heart that emerges. A brainy, artful creation, "Sword & Sorcery" is challenging in more than one respect. Like an engaging portrait or novel, there is plenty to sift through and discuss.

On the downside, the commitment to an eclectic sense of style may scare off gamers used to more traditional experiences. Strictly for those who lean toward the unconventional, "Sword & Sorcery" hints at what mobile gaming could have become had it not plateaued during the middle of the decade.

Finding a welcome landing spot on the Switch is a welcome and fitting next act for a game that might have otherwise faded into oblivion.
Publisher provided review code.