Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 2

Game review: Brotato for Epic Game Store

Bro. Bruh! This game…if I were inclined to review games based only on the first day of play-time, Brotato would have not only been a 5 star winner, it would have been on my games of the year list. A lot of this comes down to its similarities to Vampire Survivors, but also to sharing some features of The Binding of Isaac.

Let’s get the story out of the way first. You play a potato who is killing waves of purple aliens. Yep, that’s it. If I make that sound bad, it’s really not. Sometimes it’s good to play a game where the whole premise can be summed up in a sentence, and all the real intricacies comes from learning to master its core mechanics.

In this case, the core mechanic is simplicity defined. You don’t have to push any buttons to attack, because that’s done automatically. All you have to do is learn to move, either to dodge attacks or move in just close enough to deal some damage of your own.

Most of the potatoes can carry six weapons, but one bro can only carry one, another can’t carry any, and another can carry up to twelve, but they start getting penalties added the more weapons that they have. All the potatoes have different stats, and with most, it’s a mixed bag of useful buffs married with one or more debilitating handicaps. For instance one potato can only use primitive weapons like sticks and rocks, and they can only upgrade their gear to tier II. This is why every character can be a huge pain until they finally get the right stats to make them shine.

There are twenty waves to fight through for every run, and as you might expect, each wave adds more aliens, many of them who start shooting back. As you play and pass challenges, you can unlock other potatoes with different abilities, and after beating the game’s twentieth wave of aliens on Danger level 0, you unlock Danger 1. Beating each harder level of difficulty leads eventually to Danger 5.

Folks, it was both Danger 5 and the last two challenges that stripped the shine off of this game like a sand blaster on a new paint job. Let me start with Danger 5. After banging my head on it for almost a full day, I went online to see if anyone could suggest the best character to win with. Almost all advice suggested that instead of fighting the two bosses, it was best to just run out the timer. So I tried that for another two days with absolutely no change in my progress. I finally won using a character who gains a massive damage boost by upgrading their six weapons to the highest tier, killing both bosses like…well, like a boss. After that, I dropped the game back to Danger 0 for what I thought would be two easy-peasy cakewalks.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaaa-aaaah. But no.

See, the last two goals were leaving ten trees alive on a single wave and holding onto 3,000 materials. Both are tied directly to the same problem I ran into with Danger 5, RNGesus being a finicky and fickle bastard.

Let me back up to my failing runs of Danger 5 to explain how the random rolls made so many runs painful. To win at that level of difficulty, I needed a specific set of attributes. There are status upgrades, stuff like damage, melee damage, ranged damage, and elemental damage. Most weapons will use one type, but others can use two, something like ranged and elemental, or melee and ranged. Then there’s stuff like attack speed, HP regeneration, life steal (which doesn’t work at all unless the weapon has a life steal status, something I didn’t figure out for a few hours), dodge, and armor.

Ideally, for King Potato, I needed all six swords to be fully upgraded to tier IV, and I needed stat increases for melee damage, HP regeneration, attack speed, dodge, and armor. Anything less than a score over twenty-five in all fields led to dismal failure long before reaching wave 20. In fact, I usually wiped out around wave 16 with rage inducing regularity. This is because I couldn’t get the stats I needed, nor the equipment.

It is possible to re-roll stats and items in the shop between waves, but each time I do it, the price to re-roll goes up again, and I might blow through 1,000 materials and still not find the thing I needed. I even had a run where I got to wave 11 and still only had two swords, and I couldn’t upgrade them either. Other runs failed because I didn’t have enough armor, or enough HP regeneration, or my attack speed was too slow, so the hundreds of aliens on-screen pushed my potato into a corner and started dancing the mashed potato.

So obviously, it isn’t hard to see why holding 3,000 materials was hard, but I’d unlocked a potato named Jack who got bonus materials. I was sure it would be easy, except there are fewer aliens on Jack’s runs.

While playing this same challenge over and over with every character, I started to notice that no matter who I played with, I always got damn near the same amount of materials. Every. Single. Time. That was when I realized I had to pick Old Potato because the size of his arena is smaller, and then aim to buy all slingshots without paying to upgrade them. By not needing to buy anything, and also taking advantage of the weapon’s ricochet to take out more aliens, I got the challenge done by wave 12, where every other run before left me around three hundred materials short at the end of wave 20. Even if I won the level, I’d lost the challenge.

The last one, keeping trees alive, I again thought I knew which character to go with, Lumberjack. But instead it was beaten with the One-Armed potato, so named because he can only use one weapon. What was ruining my runs with Lumberjack is his ability to chop down trees with one hit, which actually made the challenge harder with him.

Here again, I needed a day to get a winning run, but this one was lost hunting for a very specific item: making more trees grow per wave. I’d rightly guessed that I needed three of these to get the goal, but RNGesus was not feeling generous. Again, I had so many runs that I won, but I still lost.

It was during the MANY days of running the last two challenges that I also nailed down the other nitpick that was bothering me. Every upgrade is made useless, even playing at Danger 0. There’s a challenge to collect 50 speed upgrades, yes? But even after doing it, the aliens can still run down the potatoes because they’re getting speed upgrades too, and theirs are better than mine. Going all in on armor? Doesn’t matter. The aliens get a damage boost so you might as well not bother unless you’re already maxed out HP regeneration and dodge. Dumping all upgrades into damage and the specific damage type for any weapon yields meager gains in on-screen damage numbers because the aliens are bulking up their health,

What I’m saying is, the game isn’t hard because of the hordes being overwhelming. It’s hard because under the hood, the game is making sure you never feel like you’re making progress. It makes me think of games like Dark Souls, and how at first, even the littlest minions could wreck my character. But then I would upgrade my sword and strength, maybe get some better armor and add some health, and now those first mobs just wilt under my attacks.

But getting to wave 10 and beyond, even the littlest aliens of Brotato also have more health to counteract all damage upgrades, and they hit harder to ignore upgrades to health and armor. It doesn’t feel good to play, except in smaller doses, and even then, only if the RNG will let me make a build that doesn’t suck.

I will add that the shop does something nice that most rogue-like games do not. If I see an item or weapon I need, but I can’t afford it, I can toggle a lock below them, and the shop will hold onto them until I buy them or toggle the lock off. There’s no more finding just what I needed, only to lament because I’m two coins shy of the price.

Before I get to the score, I just want to say, this is probably the hardest game I’ve played all year, and it damn near broke me. Part of it is because there seems to be characters who are perfect for certain challenges, and they’re actually counteractive. But the larger part is needing the perfect build to make the challenges possible, and there are many, many, MANY times when they won’t come together no matter how much I re-roll and waste resources.

I really struggled on how to score this because of those last few challenges, but I also remember that up to Danger 4, I was telling the hubby it was a fun game, even if it was hard. So using that as my standard, I’ll give Brotato 4 stars. Even so, I will only recommend it to folks who have the patience to keep smashing their heads and hands against a seemingly impossible challenge, or the stubbornness to push through it because they wanted to have a final review ready for this year. (That would be me, although this isn’t the last review thanks to a small flood of cheap indie games that all took less time to play.)

But if you are the kind of gamer up to the challenge, this could be a great way to…vegetate? Yeah, I’ll see myself out.

Game review: Shakedown Hawaii

You know, I’m starting to wonder a lot about myself. Last year, I loved playing a serial killer in Party Hard, and now here I am mostly loving Shakedown: Hawaii, a game about an evil CEO learning to embrace his inner mobster. If not for the end game, this might have even been a 5 star review because I loved being evil, which makes me wonder: dudes, what the hell is wrong with me?

But let’s start with the plot. The CEO of Feeble Industries is watching TV when he sees a report that his empire is failing. His CFO Ron explains that streaming is killing his video stores, online shopping is killing his retail empire, and most of his other enterprises are falling behind as new technologies supplant the things he’d invested in. So this CEO decides to get “aggressive” to return to prominence.

I think the best part of this story is how many times the CEO discovers how modern business models are forcing him to pay more for bullshit like convenience fees or HD streaming, and he’s mad, but not because they’re fleecing him. No, he’s mad because, as he says, “Why aren’t we doing this kind of con already?”

In a lot of ways, this is like a top-down GTA clone, but there’s so much freedom in how I can choose to play the game. I can pull the triggers to fire, or use the face button, or even use the right analog stick turning this into a right lovely twin stick shooter. Whatever feels good for you, go for it.

Then there’s the variety of mini-games used for the titular shakedowns of local businesses. Some require smashing the furniture or shelves to get the clerks to agree to protection services, which also allows the CEO to buy the shops outright for extra profit. But other shakedowns ask the CEO to intimidate customers, intercept and hijack delivery vans, conduct scare mongering campaigns amongst the locals, or to simply leave a bad Yelp review. So even though a large part of the game is all about buying out businesses through shakedowns, the methods to get each business remain mostly fun and fresh.

Then there’s buying up all the real estate at cheap prices so the CEO can eventually jack up the rent. Since this causes the poor to flock to the trailer park, he buys that too, then burns down a forest to double the park’s capacity. Well, I say burn down, but the flamethrower is ridiculously easy to kill oneself with, so I opted for stealing a truck and mowing down the trees. Which, yeah, not realistic, but still kinda fun.

In addition to these local activities, the CEO has contracted “Al,” who handles side quests to “liberate” farms from a cartel in other countries. Many of these early missions involve showing up with only a bare minimum of weapons on hand, but Al can pick up guns from the locals to become a one man killing machine.

Then there’s the CEO’s son Scooter, AKA: DJ Jockitch, who is desperate to become a famous rap artist. He figures the way to do this is gain street cred as a gangster, but the gang he joins give him jobs that are frankly pretty mediocre. His exploits eventually lead to a city-wide gang war, but it’s less because he’s a badass, and more because his former boss carries a grudge for way longer than is healthy.

There’s so much more to cover with the plot, but it’s all spoilers, so I’d rather move on to why this didn’t get that coveted fifth and final star. Mostly it has to do with the end game suddenly getting ridiculously hard. The last shakedowns had counter clerks decking themselves in bullet proof body armor, meaning the only way to fight was having a supply of grenades or Molotovs on hand to defeat them.

But then the cartel shows up, and the game just got dumb. Al is tasked with fighting across town against a flood of ever spawning enemies. Even after completing his first task, he has to flee to the airport, again pursued by enemies armed with every gun and rocket launcher in the game. Even then, I might have been okay with it, except for how the game’s police handle all this. Despite five or six guys using SMGs and automatic rifles, killing the local with reckless abandon, the passing police see nothing. It’s only if Al fires back that the cops go, “Whoa, that is uncalled for!” Same goes for fleeing in a vehicle. The cartel plows through a sidewalk of pedestrians in front of a squad car? It’s fine! If I so much as tap a bumper while fleeing from four vans full of crazed killers firing indiscriminately, there’s now cops and killers trying to give me a bad day.

Then there’s the final level, in which almost everyone is bulletproof, Al gets next to nothing to defend himself with, and the final boss is bullshit. He gives the impression that I should be learning patterns and getting better. But if I hid behind cover to wait out his Vulcan cannon bursts, he just stomps the ground to make a piece of the ceiling hit Al and knock him out of cover. I won by ignoring his pattern and just shooting and jumping like a noob.

After finishing the main game, I tried out the free roam mode. I had expected this mode would task me with taking over the city and building up my arsenal without the story and its related side quests. But that’s not the case at all. Instead, my selected characters starts with 99,999,999 dollars, a full arsenal of fully loaded weapons, and all the properties already owned. So it’s just there to provoke the police and see how long I can survive at the highest most wanted levels, and that didn’t even appeal to me in Grand Theft Auto V. It’s a bit of a letdown, is what I’m saying.

If I have any other issue with the game, it’s a minor lament about the music. Just like in GTA, when getting into a car, the radio starts playing music, and you can change the stations. Which is fine, but every song is really short. Sure, they’re just video game techno loops, but let a song play for longer than ten seconds before changing to the next, you know? Besides that, most of the music is good, so I wouldn’t have minded if they played for three minutes or so.

Setting aside the end game difficulty spikes and the free roam disappointments, I’d still give Shakedown: Hawaii an enthusiastic 4 stars. It’s a great short game that understands what makes parodies funny, and the variety of side missions means even the seemingly most repetitive part of the game manages to stay fresh up to the end. I’d recommend it for fans of the old school GTA games as well as anyone looking to blow off some steam by blowing away some evil corporate overlords. Yeah, you’re replacing them with another older overlord, but isn’t that always the case?

Game review: The Spirit and the Mouse

I think that as a lot of us gamers get older, we tend to forget that games are meant for the young. We romanticize the challenges of our first games while downplaying all the games we played that were more accessible. Yes, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, and Ghouls N’ Ghosts gave me many sleepless nights trying to finally beat them. But there were many other sleepless nights because I’d gained so many free lives in Pac-Man that I couldn’t lose, or spent late nights with Super Mario Brothers, Bionic Commando, and Castlevania, games that I had beaten many times, but I just wanted to do it one more time.

In that particular mindset is where I want to talk about The Spirit and the Mouse. Its story is simple and straightforward, the controls easy to understand, and the challenges within are easily surmountable with only a few harder challenges here and there. It’s a game meant to welcome the new kids, yes, but it’s also ready to offer some nostalgia to the older gamer not married to their hardcore pride. Perhaps best of all, it’s short, done and dusted in a few sessions. It stays around just long enough to be fun, and never overstays its welcome.

The story is introduced in a few minutes. A mouse living in a small village in France decides it wants to help people be happier. It sees a woman lose her favorite scarf and gives chase to retrieve it. Instead, it climbs the highest metal pole in the village right as a freak lightning storm delivers a guardian spirit. The mouse receives the spirit’s power and is tasked with making people happy, so it would seem that fate has smiled on the little furry dude.

Now, here’s where things get silly. You see, all over town, all people really need to be happy—truly happy—is electricity. Every problem comes down to needing le jus in la langue française as the locals would say. Yes, it’s dumb, but just run with it. The story is cute enough that it’s worth playing it through even if the idea makes your little grey cells quiver in rage.

In each case, making someone happy involves finding a magic fuse box, which is missing its sparks. The sparks are out and about doing goofy shenanigans instead of their actual jobs. So you do a little task for them, usually involving a fetch quest and some light platforming, and they go back to work, et voila the human is happy again. From there, you return to the guardian spirit to take on more jobs.

You can also collect sparks to level up skills and light bulbs to buy new skills, but this is the lightest kind of Metroidvania. There’s only two added skills to unlock new areas, and the village isn’t big enough that you can forget where to go. Like I said, it’s the kind of game you’d give to a very young kid to get them into the hobby before chucking the poor fools off the deep end into Dark Souls or The End is Near.

Once it seems like the mouse has made everyone happy, the titular spirit is ready to bounce, but the mouse insists there’s one last person who needs help. This requires going back to each section of the village to recruit help in helping this last person. And this is where my one complaint comes in.

Once the last mission is near completion, I’m tasked with climbing a tower similar to the one at the start of the game. But despite getting the button prompt to start climbing, the game got glitchy and refused to grant the mouse access. It was only after several minutes of pressing all the buttons and cursing that I finally got the prompt to work right. But then from there, it was a hop, skip, and a jump to an ending that was adorable, worthy of a short kids’ cartoon from Dreamworks.

Setting aside that one glitch, I’d call this a perfect introduction to gaming for the young or young at heart. Every side quest has just the right length to invite that “just one more” itch that make so many genres of gaming addicting, and the mouse’s earnest desire to help is delightful even if the method of delivering happiness is a bit dumb and convenient.

In the end I’ll give The Spirit and the Mouse 4 stars. It’s a good time that lasts around ten hours if you go in for all the collectible stuff, and then you can just leave it in your library until a niece or nephew wonders what makes games so fun. Then you can have them play this before ambushing them with Metal Gear V.

Re-re-return to Vampire Survivors

I know, I know. “Again? Aren’t you tired of this game already?” Well, as long as Poncle keeps putting out both free and paid DLC, probably not. Additionally, while I was on the PC grinding through the last free update, Space 54, and the latest paid DLC, the Contra homage titled Operation Guns, I was also digging in to complete all of the base game content on the phone version of the game.

So, here we go again. First, tucked in Space 54 is a new weapon that looks dinky for the first few levels, Phas3r, but both at level eight and evolved to Photon Storm, this thing can clear the screen of all enemies. It can do this even on a single weapon challenge run with the adorable new character Space Dude. But if you add his gun to any other character, it’s an instant win. One the right build, it can even kill the grim reaper at the end of a run. Yes, it really is that powerful.

Then there’s Bat Robbert, whose weapon is bats. They fly in at angles, and at low levels they can be quite frustrating by not going where I need them. If Bat is hit by an enemy, another stream of bats will go to that enemy’s location. (Which again, at early levels isn’t great because by then, said enemy is elsewhere.) Bat’s big deal is that at regular intervals, getting him to critical health will give him an increase in max health. You have to get back to full health and level up before doing it again, but when pairing this with Hollow Heart and Metaglio Left, Bat can eventually get so much health that he can tank hits from the grim reaper and kill that dude. Plus, once his weapon, Pako Batiliar, evolves to its final form, Bat can walk through mobs of high-level enemies like I do through a warm spring rain. It’s good stuff.

The level is also fine, sprinkling in some regular enemies with new arrivals like little green men, robots, and space ducks. But aside from playing on a few runs to unlock all the free loot inside, I found it too restricting. It’s all narrow rocky walkways until halfway through, and there’s a lot of downtime with nothing to kill even after using power ups to increase enemy frequency and strength.

On the other hand, there’s Operation Guns, which bring in two new maps, one with three boss fights, and a whole lot of new mechanics all meant to emulate Contra. It all works, and it ends in a boss fight with a giant mecha beast that’s very familiar to old school Contra fans. As an added bonus, there’s also a hover-cycle race level that plays as a less frustrating version of that one awful, dreadful, infuriating Battletoads level that prevented me from ever seeing the end of the damned game. (Not that I’m bitter or anything.)

But, set aside the level and all its brilliant goodies. What this update brings is ELEVEN new characters, all with guns that evolve into insanely powerful variants. I’ll give just one example. Remember the OG Contra spread gun, and how you and your siblings and/or cousins would debate who got it first because it’s so bad ass? Well this version evolves so that the character has two jet-shaped drones who are also using spread guns. You don’t even need anything else after getting that gun, because it is stupidly overpowered. I love it.

But I love all the guns, and adding them to any of the original characters creates monstrous new builds that can wipe the screen even with the game cranked up to the highest difficulty levels. It’s absolutely glorious, and when you consider that I only paid 2.49 for what amounted to twenty hours of new content, that’s about a good a deal in gaming as you’re ever going to find.

Then there’s a new adventure mode, which…I don’t really like. But I didn’t like the first two adventures offered for free, and I didn’t like the adventure offered with Legacy of the Moonspell either. I appreciate the idea behind the mode, offering a structured and curated new experience with a smaller cast of survivors and weapons. But honestly, I don’t care for having no way to control my progress until I’m halfway through a slow and painful slog with my least favorite builds. At least with this new addition to the mode, it’s much easier to hit a few goals and quit early to move on to the next set of goals. But if I’m always quitting out rather than playing, doesn’t that say something about how little fun I’m having?

It doesn’t help that with the DLC maps being mazes, they all have more detailed maps to let you know where everything is. But the remixed DLC adventure modes feature similar mazes with no maps. So at least for the first runs, I spent several runs just trying to figure out where the goals were. Just make a map more detailed if the level is a maze, you know?

But maybe I’m alone in disliking Adventures mode. Besides, it’s one add-on outside of the main game, which I absolutely love. When I consider the base game is five bucks, and it has given me many, MANY hours of fun, the fact that one optional part doesn’t work for me is better than fine.

But let’s say that despite my constant praise for the game, you’re still thinking, “I don’t know, I might need that five bucks for food or a Starbucks coffee,” I have a proposition for you: there’s also a free version for phones and tablets.

But before I endorse this version, there are two caveats. First, how good is your eyesight? Mine’s turning kinda shit as I grow older, so I can only do a couple rounds before I need to stop to rest my eyes. Which is why it’s taken me this long to finally unlock everything a second time around. If your eyesight is great, or if you’re okay with squinting, then you can play the whole game for free and then decide if you want to buy the PC version to reward the developer, or just buy the DLC on your phone.

The other caveat is, there’s ads. In a twist of mobile standards, all the ads are optional, and none are ever forced on you. But there are ads to get an extra revival, and another to get bonus gold after the end of a round. I’ve sometimes taken both, and every single time, it’s the same ads for Hero Wars. Seriously, I have to wonder what I said into my spying phone that made the makers of Hero Wars advertise to me constantly on YouTube, every gaming site, and every free app I use. Just fuck off and die in a grease fire, Hero Wars, because I ain’t never playing you…again.

Anywho, the point I’m trying to make is, you really should play this game. If you’re broke or still somehow uncertain about whether you’ll like it, go get the free version. But if you do get the PC or console version, be prepared to get the paid DLC add-ons, because they are all worth their asking price. The way I shill for this game, you’d think I work for Poncle. But I don’t, and I’m just so in love with this game that I want everyone to play it.

That’s it for me, but I should give a heads up that output on the blog is likely to be slow in the new few months. The old PC isn’t up to playing the newer games I’ve bought, and I’m still a couple months out from being able to buy something newer and more powerful. On top of that, I’m about to spend a lot of time committed to “butt in seat, words on screen,” to finish up a novel and two collections of short stories so I can hopefully have new stuff out just before Christmas. There might still be some rambles or a book review, but know that my silence is because I’ve got to get fictional and can’t devote as much energy here. I’ll be back soon enough, probably with a review of Elden Ring and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. (Both games I own, but can’t play on my ancient rig.)

See you soon-ish, y’all.

Mobile’s Toxic Effects on All Games

Bear with me for a bit, because this ramble will get around to a point sooner rather than later. The thing is, after bouncing off a few games this month, I went back to playing Dark Souls and Dark Souls III a lot. Mostly it’s just to try out weapons and builds that are outside of my normal roster of characters. I’m not even playing to beat the games. It’s just a nice routine while I wait for something else to tickle my fancy.

Inevitably, there always comes a point where grinding is unavoidable. I don’t mean grinding to get XP for more levels, though that can also happen if a character’s build is found wanting against certain bosses. There’s grinding to buy items, like the 20,000 soul Tower Key or the equally priced Crest of Artorias. There’s grinding to get faction items like a Sunlight Medal or Proof of a Concord Kept without going online to fight other players. (Our 4G modem would give invaders fits, so generally, I play offline. You’re welcome.) You might need to grind to get a weapon to drop that can’t be bought from any of the vendors. Then there’s grinding to get upgrade materials, continuously fighting the same guy over and over to get enough titanite for that shiny new sword the other enemy finally dropped after two hours of being stingy.

I don’t like grinding in any of these cases, but when it’s inevitable, I tuck in and get it over with because I know that in a few hours, I can get back to the fun parts. But every time, it’s just so boring that I have actually fallen asleep mid-grind. Again, it doesn’t last that long, but I would love for games to have a lot less grind to them.

It’s a pity that mobile games have reached the point where the grind is the game. I’ll be using two examples, one proper free mobile experience, and one that’s part of my Netflix subscription. First up is Dungeon Boss Respawned, which as a Netflix game has no ads or microtransactions. I’ve been playing it for months, and it’s a nice way to pass the time doing laundry or doing my business in the bathroom.

The fun part is making four member teams out of the different monsters. Some of them have special buffs that apply only to their own kin, like goblins and skeletons, so they work best with allies of the same magic race. But others are useful in whatever crew they’re added to, making them more essential at higher levels.

I’m nowhere near the end of the game yet because I’m not allowed to level up my favorite characters the way I want to. Getting shards to upgrade them requires activating various levels of their “story.” There’s not really a story, though. Each character must engage in increasingly longer grinds to get a number of shards. Fight in 30 dungeons with this monster on the team. Fight in 20 dungeon of a certain element type and 40 dungeons of any type. Now kill 100 enemies of a certain element and fight in 65 dungeons. Rinse and repeat.

But once any character levels up to a certain point, the game says, “You can’t level this guy up until you level up twenty other characters to story level 3.” Where I’m at now, I can’t level up the characters I like until I grind through to story level 4 with 50 characters. Doing that will take another month, at least.

That’s what turns a good time into a problem. The grind isn’t just inevitable, it’s the whole point of the game. Keep doing the levels over and over to grind every last monster, or else you can’t level up the monsters you like.

We haven’t even covered the other two gates blocking progress, Evos and gold. It isn’t enough to upgrade a monster. They also have to be ascended, which involves collecting little pill shaped monsters called Evos. Ascending a monster gives them a new attack, and all monsters can be ascended twice. In addition, gaining XP means the monsters level up, and each time they do, you have to spend gold to level up their abilities.

So, you’ve got a level 50 monster who just ascended and got a new attack, and now you need gold to pay for every level of improvement. Which means you’re out two million gold. For one monster. If you aren’t buying gold with the other in-game currency, crystals—doled out for completing daily goals—grinding for gold in the levels is even more tedious and slow.

The grinding nature of the game is part of the reason I will walk away from it for days at a time, because I don’t like opening the game knowing I won’t make any forward progress towards the end-game. I’m just there to grind some monsters I don’t like to make more grinding progress with the monsters I do like.

But let’s move on to Sega’s new cash cow, Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage. It’s a rhythm game married to a bunch of visual novels all taking place in the same city. The visual novel side really isn’t for me, but I completed two of them just to see what the characters were like. In both cases, they’re made up the same stereotypes: shy girl, energetic girl, quiet boy, and asshole boy. (There’s also all-girl bands, but I don’t know if I can sit through another hours long visual novel just to arrive at the same hokey ending again.)

Unlocking each chapter rewards some currency, but there’s like fifteen currencies, and each of them are doled out in such tiny amounts that purchases can only be made once a week. Ooooor, you know, you can spend real money to buy stuff faster.

That’s all normal mobile bullshit, but then there’s the rhythm game, which is well established with many other entries in Hatsune Miku’s franchise. You hit notes as they connect with a target, and your score is based on how many you hit.

NOT IN THIS GAME. You played badly? You get a C. You hit every note with a perfect score. Fuck you, you still get a C. To get a better score, you have to grind and level up every single member of the band to raise their talent level. You have to buy special upgrade items to furnish their stages, also to raise their talent levels. Those all require different currencies. Adding insult to injury, there’s a player rank, a character rank, and a character trust rank, all of which require grinding forever to “improve talent.”

Then of course you can get extra currencies as prizes if you sign up for the monthly “season pass.” So then you can pay real money for extra currencies, but you can also pay a monthly subscription to make the grind slightly less grindy.

But don’t forget, this is also a gacha game. So you start off with a bunch of 1 star losers, and you can eventually draw 4 star versions of the same characters. But since they’re level one, you either grind to raise their talent level, or you pay just to get the new 4 star singer up to the level of the 1 star singer. On top of this, there’s the “Paid Gacha,” which promises slightly higher chances of getting upper tier singers in exchange for regular cash injections. Some of the promoted gacha events in this game are also Paid Gacha exclusive, so all us minnows can go fuck ourselves with a fishing hook.

I love Hatsune Miku games. Almost every song works for me, and this is pulling songs from a lot of past games along with some new songs. But it really kills my enjoyment of the game to hit a full combo, all perfect and great notes, and still get the same score as if I fucked it all up. Skill isn’t even what’s important here. It’s my commitment to an eternal grind.

What really sucks is how console and PC game publishers have watched this rot infect the mobile market, and their take away was, “Wait, so we can sell people a full-priced game, and then we can exploit them too!” Ubisoft intentionally lowers the XP value of enemies in some of their Ass’ Greed games, then sells an XP booster so you can avoid the grind they baked in. Both Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo have locked up cars and asked for more money to gain access. And who could forget the fiasco of Shadow of War, with microtransactions and grind so egregious that the player outcry forced the publisher to cut them out?

It’s only going to get worse from here unless there’s a similar outcry on every single push to exploit the players. But there are whole genres where the players have just come to expect this kind of abuse as normal. Sports games exploit their players year over year, and the reaction is either a half-hearted shrug or a lame statement like, “Well, just don’t use the microtransactions.”

I have a different suggestion. How about we just don’t buy their games? They’re convinced that gaming is a perpetual money engine, but simple sales aren’t enough anymore, so they HAVE to exploit us or they won’t make more profits. Lately, they’ve begun whining that season passes, loot boxes, and overpriced skins aren’t profitable enough. No, now they’re actively talking about shoehorning commercials into all our games. Because ADS EVERYWHERE is what saved magazine publishers and news websites, right? Right.

No, these guys are fucked, and eventually the poison that polluted mobile games is going to lead to console and PC game publishers crashing their own markets. That will leave all of us waiting for them to pull their collective heads out of their asses to course correct back to the real point of their industry: making fun games that distract us from the dreadful entropy creeping up to consume us all.

Well…that got dark. Maybe I should cut back on all the Dark Souls binging, Anyway, see you next week, yeah?

Game review: POOOOL for Steam

Back in the far distant past, which is to say last year, I got sucked into the browser version of Suika Game. Despite being very simple to play, I could play it all day even as the wonky physics drove me bonkers.

Well now there’s a game called POOOOL, and it’s like Suika Game, but with balls on a pool table instead of fruit in a jar. Hitting two white ball together makes a red ball, hitting two red balls together makes an orange ball, and so on until you connect two giant purple balls to clear them from the table. Simple, right?

No, not quite. Every ball entering the table is on the same spot, so unlike Suika Game, you can’t aim for a better shot elsewhere. Using a mouse to first click on the table and hold it while pulling the mouse in any direction determines the angle and power of the shot. So there’s a bit more to consider than just dropping fruit in a jar.

At first, I made a huge mistake by clicking on the newest ball and drawing back. It’s a mistake because reaching the bottom of the screen limits the power of the shot, and once the game starts placing larger balls in the starting position, they barely travel more than a few centimeters. I eventually sorted out that it was better to either click on the ball I wanted to connect with across the table, or to click just outside of the table’s border if I wanted to try a bank shot. Then I would draw a line back to the new ball, and maybe even draw past it if I thought the shot needed more oomph.  After getting the hang of it, I got a high score of twenty thousand.

Much like Suika Game, I’ve sunk a lot of time into POOOOL, but I admit, this time the wonky physics have soured me on playing it all day. For one thing, the smaller balls have an insane amount of kinetic energy and little friction. If I power shoot one into a lager ball to move it out of the way, the smaller ball will often hit the ball, hit two banks, and then slam into the same ball from the other side, moving it right back to where it was before.

But once the table starts to fill up with balls, even the loosest rules of physics go right out the window. Power shots cause little to no reaction from hitting multiple balls together, and using a light shot can sometimes make every ball explode into motion. There’s no discernible rhyme or reason to it, so in the higher levels, it all just comes down “take the shot and pray” rather than having any kind of strategy to escape a packed table.

I’m not saying I hate it, though. It’s fine in short sessions, making it a great game to play with morning tea or just before heading to bed. But if I play too many games back to back, the jank really starts to chafe my sensitive gamer sensibilities. There are rules to every game, but if the rules change or start working completely different mid-game, why that’s just insanity.

I’d still give POOOOL 4 stars, because like I said, it is great fun in smaller doses. I’d recommend it to fans of puzzle games, but it’s really fun for anyone looking to smack a few balls together.

And in conclusion, uh huhuhuhu, I said balls. (Sorry, I blame SNL and Ryan Gosling for resurfacing teenage drunk memories.)

Game review: Bloons TD 6 for Steam

Tower defense is a genre I don’t have any strong opinions on. I’ve played a few and liked them well enough, but not so much that I go out of my way to find new entries. I saw Bloons TD 6 was on sale on Steam stupidly cheap, and I vaguely recalled it had been released on Netflix. So I figured it would be good for a Versus series post.

I mostly focused on the PC version, for reasons that I’ll get into later, but let me start of by saying this is a mobile game, complete with microtransactions, paid for currency, and painful grinding baked in to encourage spending. As usual, I was able to ignore all of that to just focus on the game itself, but if you have trouble with spending too much in mobile games, this probably isn’t for you.

The story is easy enough to cover. Bloons (balloons) have invaded the land of monkeys! Gather your forces to repel the invasion!

Yep. You don’t get much simpler than that.

The first few levels are a tutorial to cover “tower” (monkey) placement and investing funds to improve their abilities. Each popped bloon will offer an instant reward, and another reward is added at the end of each round. Failing to stop the bloons from exiting the level will cause a health meter to lower to zero, at which point it’s time to restart or walk away for a little meditation about troop placement. Oh, and because many bloons are carrying other bloons inside, letting one escape can often take a lot more than just one health point. The higher level MOABs (Mother Of All Bloons) can take all the health points in one hit, so it’s fairly important not to let them escape.

Next is summoning heroes. Only one of these units can be deployed in each encounter, and once they are on the field, they level themselves up without money. Heroes are…interesting, in that they all have something that makes them useful, but they also all have huge disadvantages. For instance, Quincy, the first hero available in the game, can level up to see “camo bloons.” This is important because many rounds in the medium and hard difficulties will throw out enough camo bloons to end the encounter. On the other hand, Quincy’s bow is useless against armored lead bloons, and again, several rounds will just chuck a bunch of these out to see if there’s a hole in your defense.

There’s another hero, Striker Jones, who is armed with a bazooka, and he can take out the lead bloons, but he can’t see camo bloons. My current favorite hero, Sauda, has fast sword attacks, and she can see camo bloons right from the start. But as might be expected, she can’t break lead bloons. Like I said, every hero brings with them extra consideration for where to use them and how.

As for how to best deal with lead bloons, go with sniper monkeys over cannons. Cannons require a separate tower with radar scanning to see camo bloons, and they are more expensive to deploy than snipers. Plus, a line of five or six snipers can wipe MOABs from across a map while cannons have much poorer range and less stopping power. I know, that doesn’t make sense, but that’s video game logic for you.

Every easy version of a map is accurately labeled. With few troops deployed, and even with bad unit placement, it’s simple to reach the end of 40 rounds without losing a single health point. Medium isn’t too stressful, either, but it does start to throw in little tests to see if you’re paying attention to which round you’re in. Fail to get the right units on the field and upgraded properly by a certain round (usually 30 of 60), and whoops, it’s game over.

But hard mode is where most levels really begin to test your ability to know which units to put out and upgrade, where to drop them, and when to do it. Certain levels have less available space for deployment, so every deployment has to be the right choice.

Then you get into challenges for each difficulty, and at the medium and hard difficulties, these are tough. But this is also where I start to chafe at the mobile game tactics.

Completing all levels can award loot boxes with insta-monkeys, or units that can be added to the field without paying money. Sounds great, right? Weeeelllll, here’s the thing. You don’t get many of them, and to buy more you need to use the same in-game currency that you use to buy new heroes and to invest points in the research skill trees. Sooner rather than later, you’re out of cash, and your choices are to grind levels for more cash (fed at a painful trickle) or go on over to the shop and buy a bundle with real world cash.

The challenges seem geared toward making players use up their few insta-moneys so they have to pay to play. It is true that if you just keep restarting on losses, eventually you can sort out a way through. At least, that’s been the cases with me for the beginner maps. I am way too nervous about trying the challenges on intermediate and advanced maps because the beginner maps are already testing my strategic chops on medium and hard difficulties. Seriously, trying to win Impoppable, Half Cash, and Apocalypse challenges on beginner levels is already stressful enough for me, thanks.

The combination of constantly needing to grind for cash with having to repeat challenge levels between six to nine times for one win has got me to the point of wanting to move on and play something else. This is not to say I’m ready to delete the game. I can see coming back to do a few new maps, followed by grinding some older maps for more cash. I just can’t see turning this into a daily habit. No matter how different the layout of the maps are, at a certain point, the gameplay is just placing units and watching the cash level rise. It’s good for brief visits, but it’s never going to get my attention for more than a few hours at a time.

Before I close out, I should mention the Netflix version, which eliminates the store and cash grabbing. Unfortunately, I can’t call it the superior version, because using a mouse makes controlling certain units so much easier. Playing on a Samsung with a six inch screen still can’t prevent unit deployment from being fiddly. On a twenty-three inch monitor, where my finger isn’t blocking my view of the unit, I can drop surgically precise ranks to use the real estate more efficiently. Oh, and the music coming out of tinny speakers versus proper headphones can’t be ignored. Every level has its own music, so for once, it’s a mobile game that I don’t mind wearing my headphones for instead of just playing it muted.

In conclusion, I’d give Bloons TD 6 a surprising 4 star score, but with the caveat that it is a mobile game that will try to exploit you and your wallet. If you can ignore the store and just focus on the core loop, it’s actually a pretty good time for fans of tower defense and strategy games.

Game review: Hades for Steam

Oh, this game, y’all. I am glad I got it on sale, at a steep discount, and before I get to the actual review (with spoilers, so this is your only warning), I need to offer you full disclosure. I have sunk eighty hours into Hades. In that time I have beaten every boss with every weapon available, except for the eponymous end boss. I’ve beaten him two times, once with the gauntlets, and once with the spear. I’ve unlocked every ability from the magic mirror in Zagreus’ room, and fully refurnished the house of Hades.

But I have not beaten Hades, because the grind finally soured me to the point that I would rather do anything else beside play this game. What kills me most is that this is Greek mythology, which has been my jam since I first started borrowing books of parables from the public library at nine. Not even my love of Greek mythology can see me through to the end.

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: Zagreus is the defiant son of Hades, who learns that his birth mother is alive and well on the mortal plane. With help from his adoptive mother, he makes plans to traverse Tatarus, Asphodel, Elyisum, and the labyrinths that divide the afterlife to the mortal world. Each room he clears reveals a new gift from the gods, who are eager to help him ascend to Olympus. If at first he can’t succeed, he can die, and die again.

I’ll be honest. I went into this with lowered expectations because I haven’t liked a single Supergiant Games title yet. I bounced out of Bastion because the constant narration was irritating. I did finish Transistor despite the stupid talking sword, and despite the game constantly trying to find ways to ruin the one thing that made it fun, pausing the action to set up an elaborate plan for dispatching multiple enemies.

Hades coulda been the one to work for me. It had great art, great music, the narrator can go hours without saying anything, and then I have to press a button to acknowledge him instead of him just assuming I want his intrusion on my latest killing spree.

But then there’s literally everything else that I slalomed between mild dislike into full hate for. I know you want to ask, “If you hated it so much, why did you play 80 hours?” Because dear reader, I thought if I just knuckled in and soldiered on, I’d get to the credits and do a proper review. But I didn’t even get an achievement for beating Hades, or get to see any end credits. Why? Because to get to the “end game,” you have to escape ten fucking times. (That’s in quotes because even then, it’s still not over.) After the second escape, the game actively punishes you for continuing, and they call them Pacts of Punishment. I’ve tried them all, and they all suck, and this is for a game that already sucked the joy out of itself twenty fucking hours in.

Where do I even begin? Oh, how about the controls. Zagreus has a dodge move that isn’t long enough to avoid damage from bosses, but is just long enough to land him on a trap, every, single, time. You don’t aim where he attacks. You just mash the buttons and pray that he feels like hitting the enemy in front of him instead of pivoting to attack a wall. (and then take a fist in the ass from the aforementioned enemy.)

Or how about the bosses? Despite them having ten or so attacks with very short tells, the fine fuckheads at Supermassive felt that was unfair. So they added traps to most of the boss fights. (The minotaur and King Theseus don’t have traps, but at half health the king calls on a random god to start laying down area of effect attacks, so it’s pretty much the same thing.) Most spawn minions because it was really unfair if all I had to do was pay attention to the boss’ miniscule tells and avoid dodging onto traps. (which, by the by, is easier said than done because Zagreus’ aim with his dodge is just as terrible as it is with his attacks.) Hades himself has two health bars, lays his own traps, and summons minions despite having a billion hit points, a wheel of fire attack, and the ability to negate all damage over time by simply disappearing. In all these boss battles, if you finally do get a good build that does lots of damage, they will turn impervious, preventing you from dealing any more damage until they feel like it.

If all I had to do was suffer through one run in this, I’d have been done at around forty hours. (Theseus and the Minotaur were a long-time sticking point until I realized I had to whack the bull first) But no, after the first fight with Hades ended, Zagreus died from exposure to the mortal world. I then went to a Wiki and saw that to get the proper ending, I had to keep going. Even after that, there’s more to the story that requires even more escape attempts. Which is so fucking stupid because there’s absolutely no reason to go somewhere that you know you’re deathly allergic to.

Let’s talk about the story with more detail. Zagreus wants to meet his mother, Persephone. She’s hidden herself on the mortal plane so well that not even her mother Demeter can find her. So Demeter is freezing the world to death. Ares is engaging in so many wars that Hades is swamped with new arrivals. The rest of the gods are bickering like children at a Christmas dinner. Hades has Nyx’s daughters fighting to keep Zagreus contained despite knowing that Nyx is assisting his escape attempts.

All of this tracks, and if it had just told that story in a shorter and more straightforward way, I’d have eaten it up like Jelly Bellies. But no, almost every interaction with every character goes the same way. Zargeus asks a direct question, and the character replies, “I couldn’t just answer that. You better go talk to a different character.” So he goes to that other character to ask the same question, and gets: “Oh, that’s not for me to say. Ask the other guy again.” You have to do this stupid fucking loop ten or fifteen times just to get an answer to a question. By the way, “the other guy” in the conversation is often hidden in a room in one of the levels, and you might not get to that room on a certain run. You have to grind for days just to get one fucking question answered. Hell, even the end of the game is all about escaping over and over to ask Mommy why she can’t come home every once in a while.

More to the point, why was Hades even bothering to try and keep Zagreus in the underworld? All he’s done for the kid’s whole life is whine about how he’s useless and stupid. So the kid says, “I’m going Mother’s house,” and suddenly he cares about keeping the kid? And honestly, if he’d just let Zagreus walk out, most of his questions would be answered within a few walks on the mortal plane. Touring Hell coulda been a lot less torture if just beating this asshole once had led to a cut scene and credits. But no, I have to keep suffering through more of Hades whining, and for what? To fill up the heart meter of a god I give less than two shits about.

Then there’s the fact that aside from one boss, most don’t acknowledge that I’ve been repeatedly owning them. Theseus in particular is a real sticking point for me. He fucking knows Zagreus is the son of Hades, making him a demigod. He also should know I’ve hoisted his anus on a spear more times than I care to count. Yet, every single meeting, he says shit like, “You return, vile hellspawn. I must away with you, you vile blaggard.” Dude, I’ve killed you ten times in a row, and the only reason I haven’t finished the game is because 1: Hades is a cheating little bitch; and 2: even winning results in the same bullshit return to rinse and repeat.

Oh, and the currencies, I mustn’t forget them. Do you like mobile games that have too many different currencies? No? Well good news: this game has eight! Charon Obols are used to buy stuff in Charon’s shops in the levels. These don’t carry over from run to run, and like most rogue-lites there’s never enough to buy the stuff you really need. (There’s also a Pact of Punishment to raise prices and make doubly sure you can’t afford anything.) Titan blood, initially taken by defeating the first boss with each weapon the first time, is used to upgrade or modify Zagreus’ weapons. Dark Crystals are used to modify Zagreus himself through a dark mirror in his bedroom between runs, and Cthonic Keys are used to unlock the mirror’s higher tiered options. Gems and Diamonds are used to modify Hades’ home. Then there’s gift booze, and gift Ambrosia, both used to bribe every character into liking you a little more. At some point, their little character screen shows a heart with a lock on it, which is the sign that it’s time to hit them up with the Ambrosia.

All of the premium currencies are only given once when beating a boss with a new weapon until the Pacts of Punishment unlock, then that creates a new set of collections, called bounties. Regardless, there’s still way more stuff to buy, upgrade, and unlock than can be scavenged by beating bosses. So to address that, there’s a currency exchange shop. Ten gems can buy one Cthonic Key. Five Keys can buy one gift booze. Ten of those will let you buy one diamond. Two diamonds will get one Ambrosia, which can then be traded for one Titan blood.

Let that soak in. To get one upgrade for one weapon, you will need to grind four around four hours. Some of those need two Titan’s blood just to unlock. It’s all just busy work with little to no payoff, like working as a fry cook. Why do video games, the thing I play to have fun, feel the need to turn my playtime into a full-time job, complete with a whining manager?

I haven’t even touched on the fact that aside from the spear, most of the weapons are garbage unless they get modified during a run with the Daedalus hammer. Even then, to get better damage, they have to be granted Boons from the gods. This sound fun, yes?

Hahahaha. But no. Getting a specific build is itself another kind of grind. Even after unlocking the ability to reroll rooms, it is possible to make it all the way to the last level and still not have the modifications and Boons you wanted.

I’ll give an example. I noticed that Ares has two boons that seem tailor made for the gauntlets. One inflicts a curse called Doom. After taking a hit, an enemy has a sword appear over its head. A second passes, then the sword drops. But another boon make it so that the damage from Doom multiplies with each hit. Since the gauntlets hit four time in that short window, that’s a lot of damage. So I wanted go for that specific build to see if it would defeat Hades.

It did, but first I had to go through thirty-six runs, many ending without me even getting Doom. I could reroll room to get an audience with Ares, but his three choices were always for stuff that I didn’t need for the build.

I cannot stress this enough. Getting that one good build can overcome every other complaint I have with the game. But to get there, I have to suffer through many, many terrible builds. It doesn’t feel good to reach Elysium and have every fight with every minion drag on because they have five hundred hit points, and I have to keep hammering away on them for upwards of twenty seconds. Then, even though I’ve cleared the room twice, here’s another round of the same damage sponges. Whee, fun. Or not.

And yes, I know there’s a mod to pull up only the “seeds” that I want to play. But if I have to modify the game to make it fun, that should say something about some fundamental flaws in its design.

Lastly, there are “prophecies” to fulfill, or checklists, in other words. Because in a game that was already tedious, of course there are checklists. Each weapon has a checklist for each Daedalus Hammer modification. Every God has a checklist for all their boons. There are Duo Boons to check off, and legendary boons. There’s a checklist for the fishing mini-game. All of these require huge amounts of time to complete, and the rewards for them are paltry.

Finally, here we are at the summary for a janky, tedious, stingy hamster wheel that doesn’t even have the courtesy of wrapping up a single side quest without dragging on for days or even weeks. And yet, I’m still going to give Hades 3 stars. Because in all that time I endured, there was one moment with each of the weapons that I got the right build, and then the game was fun. Those few gleaming moments could shake off my hate and leave me grinning over every hit. I didn’t even mind losing on those runs. But for every time that golden build came together, there were twenty or more shit runs.

So…I mean if you love grinding for little to no reward, maybe this game is for you. But it sure as shit isn’t for me.

My anime watch list, volume the second

These last few months, Crunchyroll’s subscription has been worth every penny, and now that they have profiles available, I’ve successfully sold hubby on exploring the service to find shows that tickle his fancy. So what have he and I been watching?

Black Clover
In a world where everyone has a certain amount of magical skill, Asta is an orphan who can’t cast any magic. But on the day when everyone of a certain age summons their grimoires, Asta manages to find a special black book and summons an anti-magic sword, making him the most powerful force for equality the world has ever seen.

This is one of hubby’s selections, but I liked it enough that I’ve hung out to watch it even though the first major villain arc had me constantly lamenting, “I can’t wait for these guys to learn how wrong they are.” Someone better pick up that phone, because I called it a hundred episodes back.

Whether you can get into Black Clover depends a lot on how much enthusiastic shouting you can tolerate. Asta is an energetic teenager who thinks everything is AWESOME, and he’s not afraid to shout it at the top of his lungs. But that energy and desire to connect with everyone also ends up winning him a lot of allies, including people who were initially dismissive of him for being A) an orphan; B) a peasant; and C) unable to cast magic. If you can stick through to the point where Asta discovers his own unique super powers, the fight scenes get a lot more intense. Like, blowing up a mountain intense.

Mashle
In a world where everyone has…a certain amount of magical skill—wait, have we done this one? Let me check my notes. Ah! Right, Mash Burndead is an orphan who can’t cast any magic. His adoptive father makes him work out to over come his handicap, and Mash becomes super strong. After a police agent discovers his secret, Mash is forced to join a magic academy to become the Divine Visionary, and his physical fitness makes him the most powerful force for equality the world has ever seen.

Obviously, I was already reading the manga, but as we watched Black Clover, I kept noting all the ways the two shows share common themes and character tropes. The difference is, Mashle is much closer to a true Harry Potter parody. Like Asta, Mash is dumb as a box of rocks. Both work at making friends of enemies, but while Asta is 100% manic energy, Mash is more laid back, and only gets rattled when others start asking about his “magic.” Definitely worth a watch for the many, many jokes, but also for the fights as they get progressively more insane.

My Hero Academia
In a world—wait a second! Hmmm…okay, right. In a world where most people have some kind of super power, called quirks, Midoriya Izuku is a boy with no super powers. Y’all, I swear, I wasn’t planning to stack the deck for the season with all cartoons with the same theme. I’d started My Hero Academia on Netflix and just saw that there were more seasons on Crunchyroll. Anyway, Midoriya impresses the number one hero of their world, All-Might, and the hero lets Midoriya inherit his power. This in turn allows Midoriya to attend the prestigious UA high school, which is where all the best heroes go to train.

Where this differs from Mashle is how quickly the world’s super villains start to enter the story. A simple field exercise escalates to all out war, and while there’s a few “breather” episodes involving an athletic competition, it’s not long before that war jumps back to the main focus.

This one is an easy recommendation for anyone coming from Marvel or DC comics looking for a way into anime. But it’s also great for anyone who likes an underdog story, as Midoriya goes from being the butt of all jokes to being a great superhero. Just go into it knowing that in spite of all the flash and bright colors, there’s a lot of darkness and what-the-fuckery, and some of that is on the heroes’ side, too.

The Weakest Tamer Began A Journey To Pick Up Trash
In a world where—OH COME ON! What was I thinking? In a world where all magic users have from one to five stars of skill, a young girl’s tamer skill is rated at zero stars. This makes her an outcast from her village, and the asshole village elder even puts a bounty on her head in the hope of sacrificing her to avoid bringing misfortune on the village.

Guided by the mysterious voice of her past life, the girl takes the name Ivy and poses as a boy, soon encountering a rare slime who shouldn’t live longer than a day. She keeps it alive and even manages to use her tamer skill to bond with it. From there, the two have many adventures while scouting out trash piles to loot old potions from. (The slime’s favorite food source.)

This show is just totally adorable. Despite her fears of others, Ivy keeps meeting real heroes who see this kid on their own and just want to do the right thing. Obviously, there are bad guys and monsters too, but somehow, Ivy keeps running into the right people to help her on her journey. There’s also a lot of financial math that only applies to this world’s economy, but each time Ivy freaked out and started running numbers, I just thought it was adorable. By the end of the first season, she’s demonstrated that zero stars doesn’t mean zero talent, and I really can’t wait for season two to see where this goes.

Dr. Stone
In a world where everyone has been turned into stone statues, a young scientist breaks free and sets about reviving the human race and recovering the old world through science.

This is another hubby selection, but before I get to the mini-review, I want to talk about an old episode  of Super Friends where there were two gases, one red and one green. They would shrink or enlarge whatever they came into contact with, except humans. Wonder Woman asks a scientist the obvious, why don’t they work on us, and this scientist says, “The gas doesn’t affect humans because of our superior intellect.” This line had me running out of the room to scream at my bewildered aunt at how stupid the idea was. She sent me back to the TV, where the next segment featured the line, “At the landing of the international space station,” and that was the last episode of Super Friends I ever watched because even at eight years old, that level of stupidity was repugnant to me.

Where am I going with this? Dr. Stone follows Senkuu Ishigami, who somehow remained mostly conscious despite his brain being turned to stone, and he spends THREE THOUSAND AND SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS COUNTING THE SECONDS. First of all, how can he do it when it’s confirmed that the petrification effect isn’t a shell? Second, wow, spending nearly four thousand years being aware but unable to see, hear, feel, or move? That’s Hell, and no way is this kid going to pop out going, “Yay, time to reboot humanity.” He’d have gone insane by then.

But later on, it turns out the reason he could break free on his own was because his use of his brain was consuming calories, and that his body was eating the petrified shell. This isn’t even the dumbest thing that happened in the early episodes. There’s a lion pride led in their hunt by a male, and two protagonists somehow outrun them to revive the greatest fighter of their time. Said fighter punches the male lion’s nose and kills it instantly, making the females run away. And then, despite having no knowledge of tanning or any tools, this guy skins the lion and wears his obviously tanned hide. Said fighter also declares that he will resist all attempts at returning the world to the way it was because “Science bad, nature good.”

What I’m saying is, as a kid, this would have been booted from my queue because it’s so stupid. But Senkuu and his friends manage to be just funny enough that I’m willing to let go of individual scientific blunders. Having said that, I have frequently walked out of individual episodes because, “Nope, that’s way too stupid for me to suffer through.” But like I said, it’s a hubby selection and it’s not my call to axe it.

That Time I Reincarnated as a Slime
Finally! A completely different premise. A well respected office manager in Japan is killed and ends up reincarnating in another world as a slime with a unique power that makes them way more powerful than an average slime. Using their powers and knowledge of management and organization, they slowly build an army of monsters that catches the attention of some very powerful enemies.

This one is admittedly a harem anime, so there’s lots of ladies falling all over Rimuru. But the joke is, the human body he’s able to approximate is mostly female, but without genitals. It would also seem that becoming a slime has made him bisexual, as he’s frequently commented that one of his male soldiers is “totally hot!”

The only complaint I have so far is, there’s not really any stakes despite the implied threat of bigger bosses. Rimuru always has an answer to deescalate the tension. Maybe that will change soon, but for now it’s just a low stakes cute cartoon about a slime creating the first country for monsters. Which is a pitch unique enough that I’m on board, even though I wish there was more danger and less cheesecake.

Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai
This one is another pure nostalgia selection like Robotech from the first list. Back when I was just discovering anime and manga, I had a friend who drove from San Antonio to Dallas every weekend to visit his parents. He also stopped at an import shop that offered subscription boxes for manga. Not the collected reprint books, but the actual phone book-sized tomes that run twenty to thirty titles a week.

It was in these manga that I first busted out my dictionaries to learn what was really going on, and Dragon Quest was well into its third act. So yeah, I never saw how the story started, but I loved how it ended. And now, almost thirty years later, I’m getting to see the full story. So far, Dai is pretty amazing, and the first villains are surprising for having actual character traits instead of “Muah ha ha, me evil!” I’ll stick with it, and I recommend it to fans of fantasy looking for something exciting without going all grimdark.

Haikyuu!
Going back to my early manga reading days, I would read everything in those massive tomes, even for sports manga that I have no interest in the portrayed sport. They can turn anything into a tense drama, so a show about a high school volleyball club is an immediate yes even without me knowing the premise.

You might want more, so here we go: back in middle school, Shoyo Hinata attended a school where he couldn’t drum up enough players for a proper volleyball club. However, he manages to pull together enough students to attend a tournament where he gets thoroughly trounced by Tobio Kageyama, a setter considered a tyrant by his own team and is thusly dubbed “The King of the Court.”

Hinata vows to train through junior high and join a prestige high school so he can get his revenge. There’s just one problem: his first day at Karasuno High, he discovers Kageyama has also chosen the same school, and now they’re teammates. So it’s rivals to teammates, one of my favorite sports tropes, and all the rest of the team are just as fun to learn about. Where I’m at, they’ve just started their first friendly match, and they lost the first set but won the second. Kageyama says the other team’s setter isn’t the real star, and then another teammate arrives with just enough fanfare that I said out loud “Dun-dun-DUN!”

Even if you don’t care for volleyball, maybe give it a shot. Like, come for the rivalry, stay for the camaraderie.

So that’s the whole list, and yes, it’s a big list. I’m sure the next will have some repeats, as we’re waiting on new seasons of quite a few of these shows, and Haikyuu! has a new movie out that I’m hoping will stream here in Italy after I’ve got caught up on the seasons.

Next season, I’m hopeful to be looking at some new episodes of Mashle, One Punch Man, Kengan Ashura, and The Weakest Tamer Began A Journey To Pick Up Trash. Plus, there’s likely to be new stories set…in a world where magic is real. And I will be there for that, readers.

Thanks for checking in with this admittedly long post, and I’ll see y’all next time with another review, or maybe a rant. Could go either way.

Game review: Dread Delusion for Steam

Dread Delusion was brought to my attention on BlueSky in the Discover tab by a fan announcing that it had come out of early access. They described it as Oblivion-like, but with PS One-styled graphics. I went to Steam to check out the trailer, and it intrigued enough that I bought it and downloaded it the same day.

Before I get into the nitty gritty bits, I would like to say that what I really appreciate about the game is that it does retro nostalgia right. Yes, the graphics are clunky and similar to the PS One era, but the controls and camera are designed with a far more modern sensibility. I never once suffered with to trying orient myself even in tightly walled areas. I never struggled with the controls, even during more frantic bouts of combat. (Well, with one short exception, but that comes later.) There’s two different versions of fast travel to make tracking and backtracking less tedious. This is a game that wants to tickle you with nostalgia, but knows that not everything from the past was all candy sprinkles and Pop Rocks.

Starting out on a tutorial island of sorts as a faceless and nameless prisoner, player creation amounts to mixing three historical backgrounds that determine starting stats. Choosing one will make a character better at lockpicking or bartering, while another might make them better with physical damage or magic spells. No matter what is chosen, the first weapon given is a rusty sword. If you want to cast spells, you have to hunt them down later.

The story goes that a mercenary captain, formerly on the payroll of The Apostate Union, goes rogue and begins searching for an artifact that could break the world, again. That’s where the unique visuals come in on this game, because NPCs and books both speak of a World Rend event that tore the planet apart, leaving a bunch of floating islands that used to be…a bit lower in altitude.

There’s also a God War because a group of Wikkans were subjugating people and forcing them to worship their very real, tangible (and in some cases, super evil) entities. The Apostate Union killed a bunch of these gods, forced the Wikkans into hiding, and then went on to become the new evil dictators. (I kind of rolled my eyes when an Apostate quest giver, being questioned about the famine ravaging the land replied, “The famine isn’t the problem! These people are returning to worshiping gods!” Despite freeing these people from Wikkan rule, the Apostate is now happily hanging and burning anyone religious, because “both sides are equally bad.” Eeeeh, yeah, whatever, I’ll just run with it.

The bulk of the game revolves around rounding up four mutineers of the merc captain, each of which involves traveling to a new region of loosely connected islands and exploring and side questing until they can be found and recruited. To start, the player must find the captain’s former mentor, who offers vague leads on the others. One is an ancient warrior borne of technology and searching for some links to her distant past. Another is a seller of dreams (literally) living as a refugee in their own kingdom. The last is an undead mage capable of changing reality with a few choice words.

Each region has its own share of side stories and lore. The Clockwork Kingdom is run by a “machine god” who’s gone insane and has been ravaging the country while his closest human advisors do everything they can to pretend everything is peachy keen. The Endless Realm is a country of zombies now living in guilt for eating their neighbors and making do on flesh farms to keep them from going back to “the bad old ways.” Hallowshire is the quiet war battlegrounds between the Apostate and Wikkans. Underneath it all is the remains of the surface world, full of curses, angry ghosts, and fritzing killer machines.

It was thirty-six hours into the game on the surface when I failed to pass a speech check and ended up becoming hero-kebab, and that annoyed me so much that I deleted my save file and rolled up a new character. That character had plenty of speechcraft, but couldn’t handle a sword or pick any locks. I started over, needing four restarts to get a build I was okay with raising up. For all that trouble, the punchline is that passing the speech check didn’t change anything. I still got railed in the bad kind of way, and the story went on and ignored my suave communication skills.

Which is fine, and that’s on me. With most RPGs, big or small, I know that the main story beats simply can’t be changed. Beyond the main plots being on rails, enough changes can be made through interactions with various factions  and side quests that the ending narrated for me is likely to be very different than what you might see. It’s not just fine, it’s standard operating procedure because being able to wreck the main plot with an early decision just makes development that much harder. I respect that.

In any case, what this means is, I sunk eighty hours into this fractured world to reach the end, and while I respect the main story choices and most side quests, I also couldn’t help but be annoyed by doors. See, you can level up lockpicking as much as you like, but only a fraction of locks can be picked. Some will demand a higher Lore skill to open using magic locks. Some will demand higher Might scores to bash down the door. And a lot simply say, “You need a key.”

I want to say this is fine, but why even bother having lockpicking at all, when it’s mostly just meant to punish players for trying specialize their build? This is more frustrating because unlike a lot of RPGs, you don’t level up by killing enemies in Dread Delusion. You get XP by collecting floating skulls called Glimmers of Delusion. Collect enough of them and you get a level. A lot of these are locked in rooms, so you can see them through a window or a crack in the wall, and quite often, you get a message taunting you for not having the right skill to reach it.

The other problem for me was, while the first two regions are loaded with fascinating discoveries, loot, and side quests, the latter half feels a lot thinner and less well plotted. While early exploration leads to new gear, spells, or even just books to learn lore from, the next two regions feel larger while offering less to interact with. It gets easier to get lost, but heading off the beaten trail leads to a lot of blank areas that might pass out a few coins or a lock pick at most.

Even side questing starts to feel tedious. In one expedition, I’m tasked to talk to an NPC to negotiate their surrender. But first there’s a door to be unlocked, and I have to run all over to find the one NPC to unlock it for me. Once that’s done, the NPC I’m trying to calm says “Nope, fuck everyone,” so I have to run back to the quest giver, speak a few lines, then run back again to deliver a message. Then I run back again to finish the quest. There are two other quests in the same region with the same back and forth walking, and on the second, I would have happily killed the antagonist if the game would just let me do it rather than walk back across the island in The Endless Marathon.

But let’s set that aside and get to the closing parts of the game. After making me use drawbridges and teleport crystals for most of the game, I’m finally allowed to buy an airship to explore “the distant islands.” This sounded great, except there’s only two islands, and oh yeah, steering the ship is a massive pain in the ass. Now granted, one of those islands has a MASSIVE mechanical God Killer mecha to admire and explore, and I very much loved that. But I’m finally given a ship and told to explore, and I really wanted it to be less of a brief gimmick that’s useful for maybe one hour of game time at most. (Two if you get lost.)

So, exactly eighty hours in, I reached the final area of the game and confronted the merc captain. The narrator went over my decisions and their repercussions. I set down the controller while the credits played and asked myself the most important question for any game lasting that long: would I want to play it again? My answer is yes, because eventually I want to try a different build, maybe less of a charismatic mage and more of a rude tank. I want to try different faction actions to see how it changes the ending.

Which is why I’m going to give Dread Delusion 4 stars. It has a few quirks that I wasn’t fond of, but I do admire it for embracing a retro visual vibe while eschewing the inconveniences of those older console games. I liked it enough that I will be keeping an eye on developer Lovely Hellplace for future releases. I’ll recommend the game to fans of ARPGs that deftly blend grimdark with some much needed humor and humanity.