I've been with the Digimon franchise for almost my entire life. I know that's sacrilegious for a lot of people since I'm such a huge Pokemon fan and it seems like I don't need one when I have the other, but I've been with the Digimon franchise for just as long as I've been with Pokemon, if not longer. I didn't have any of the original virtual pets, mind you, but the Digimon anime has been something I've rewatched numerous times throughout my life. It, perhaps more than anything, is fully representative of my childhood. So you may think that, with this information, I may not be fully impartial to the game(well, technically games, but I promise for the sake of length I'll try to only briefly touch on Cyber Sleuth) we're discussing today. And, honestly, you're probably right. Even still, I urge you to hear me out on this one, as we take a look at Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory.
Before we begin, I feel it's important to touch on Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, as while Hacker's Memory does a good job of standing on it's own as a companion piece to it's predecessor, it is just that, a companion piece. Cyber Sleuth puts you in the shoes of Aiba, a young man or woman(depending on what gender you choose at the beginning of the game, of course) who answers a request from two of his/her online friends to help them investigate a mysterious ghost sighting somewhere on a fictionalized version of the web named EDEN, a service that allows the user to upload their conciousness to the web and experience their experience physically. Aiba quickly gains the ability to use their own Digimon, and after encountering a mysterious tentacled creature, logs out of EDEN only to discover his/her body now exists in a half digital state. After meeting up with the eccentric Kyoko Kuremi, a detective who specializes in digital affairs, Aiba decides to become her assistant and goes on an adventure full of conspiracy, intrigue, heart and, most importantly, Digimon. To say anything more would be spoiling it and I highly recommend you play it for yourself. It's a great game.
Cyber Sleuth was a game I technically cleared this year but I didn't count it for the 52 because, really, all I had left was the final boss. And I'll admit, I procrastinated a lot on it. Not because I didn't like the game, far from it. I feel Cyber Sleuth, as much as it doesn't seem like it at first glance, captures everything I love about the Digimon franchise. It knows when to be serious without losing the inherent silliness present in the collectible creature genre. It has some off jokes and some bad dubbing, but it just serves to make it more charming. Characters frequently disappear for long periods of time or just leave the game altogether, but the game keeps focus enough that you'll only notice they're gone when you ask yourself 'huh, I wonder what happened to them'. It's a big, beautiful mess, but that's just Digimon and that's why we love it.
I was, instead, procrastinating on Cyber Sleuth as I had made the foolish mistake of deciding to 100% Cyber Sleuth, a goal that I have long since given up on as, you know, I have too many other games to do. If I have one complaint about Cyber Sleuth and, for that matter, a lot of Digimon games in general, it's the grind. You have to grind a lot in Cyber Sleuth if you're not going for 100%, as natural level ups will rarely get you to the point you need to be the later you get in the game. The game expects you to grind so much that there are Digimon and items that only exist to expedite the grinding process. And all this necessary grinding got to me. After a while I started to get burnt out on a process that was only half helping me beat the game and was half just me desiring, possibly in vain, to 100% the game. But, as the release of Hacker's Memory was fast approaching, I prioritized beating the original Cyber Sleuth rather than wasting my time on the grind. And as soon as I got back into the game proper, my love for it was reignited.
It may not seem like it since I just got done ranting about how horrible grinding was in the original Cyber Sleuth, but it was overall one of the best experiences I've had with an RPG this decade. In fact, if you would've asked me how I felt after finishing it, I would've said that, aside from the Xenoblade Chronicles games, Cyber Sleuth was the best RPG to come out in the 2010s period. It reminds me a lot of the original series of Digimon, Digimon Adventure, mostly in tone but also some plot points present in the game which, you know, makes sense. Cyber Sleuth was an anniversary game, you see, celebrating the 15th anniversary of Digimon video games. And I personally believe it does the entire series justice and I seriously recommend you all play it. I mention all of this, because I want to establish something. Hacker's Memory, the companion piece of Cyber Sleuth designed to be released on the franchise's 20th anniversary(the whole franchise this time, not just the games), had a lot to live up to.
When Hacker's Memory was first announced, I was really skeptical of it. It was during the period I was feeling burnt out on Cyber Sleuth and I was very cautious about letting myself get excited knowing the problems with that game. As well, I was cynical about it being a separate story in the Cyber Sleuth universe that still featured a lot of the characters and apparently the scenarios from Cyber Sleuth. I was worried that rather than giving us a story to stand on its own merits, Hacker's Memory would just be Cyber Sleuth 1 1/2. A batch of lazy retcons to insert the new characters into scenarios they didn't initially belong without them actually interfering with the original game's plot at all. But in the end I decided to pick it up as, even though I had my problems with Cyber Sleuth, it was still a fun game and overall I had a good time. And since most of Hacker's Memory was gameplay-wise identical to Cyber Sleuth, if the story didn't grab me, at least I would still have fun aside from that.
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory puts you in the shoes of a character that, for the sake of continuity, we'll call Amasawa. Before we learn anything about Amasawa's past, we're thrown right into the action. Amasawa is the new recruit of the hacker team Hudie, a group of hackers specializing in helping to bring order to EDEN. They're the kind of hackers that, in real life, companies would hire to hack their sites and bring them reports of all the security loopholes. They're hunting after a hacker who was involved in a secret hacking ring with the sole purpose of stealing the accounts of EDEN users and selling them for profit. We then learn, in a flashback, that Amasawa was one of the victims of this ring, and he became a hacker with the purpose of hunting down and reclaiming his account. He has also been receiving messages from a mysterious masked informant going by 'K', who is feeding him the names of the hackers in the ring constantly telling him not to trust anyone aside from 'K'. Can Amasawa reclaim his account with the help of his new friends and his Digimon partners? The answer may actually surprise you.
Hacker's Memory does a great job of instantly establishing that this is going to be a more personal venture than the previous game. Not too long after the intro you will be revisiting a lot of familiar locations and meeting a lot of familiar characters, but right off the bat the game let's you know that this story is going to be smaller and more personal and that's totally to its advantage. I compared Cyber Sleuth to the original Digimon series, Adventure, and while I love Adventure to death, it very quickly becomes too big for its own good. Seven kids lost in a bizarre world full of weird monsters and having to learn to survive until they can get home quickly goes full on fate of the world. Hacker's Memory, on the other hand, reminds me more of Digimon Tamers, the third series of Digimon. The story starts out simple, yes, but Tamers wasted no time establishing that this going to be darker and more personal than the previous Digimon series, and is often lauded as the best of the Digimon franchise as a result. And boy, 'dark' is a great word to describe Hacker's Memory.
Hacker's Memory, for the most part, plays like Cyber Sleuth does. There are minor gameplay adjustments that usually are for the better, but the core of it is Cyber Sleuth through and through. You engage in Digimon battles with up to three of your Digimon being on the field at once, solve a variety of cases that let you learn more about the world and its inhabitants, beat a variety of bosses that have ridiculously skewed stats and absorb crazy amounts of damage and, of course, grind. The game does have a lot of minor changes and improvements that aren't necessary but help a lot. In the first game, your case board, entrance to EDEN and entrance to the DigiLab, an area where you take care of, Digivolve and store your Digimon, required a lot of tedious back and forth between rooms in the hub of that game. In this game, they are all more or less accessible from the same menu, making it more convenient. As well, Amasawa gets the ability to double his running speed, which makes dungeon crawling way more convenient, as well as the ability to warp back to a dungeon entrance without the need for an item. Like I said, not necessary additions, but good quality of life improvements just as well.
Hacker's Memory's character work is impressive. They not only have a fantastic batch of new characters that all get their own development and arcs throughout the course of the game, but we get to learn a lot about characters, both major and minor, from the original game that weren't given proper time in the light because the story ran out of use for them. A couple characters that were even super minor in Cyber Sleuth are some of the most important characters in Hacker's Memory. This expansion upon the world more than makes it a worthy companion piece to it's predecessor, helped more by some genuinely great world building that, at times, can seem a little clunky and like it's going in the lazy retcon direction but overall serves to create a world that feels very alive. I was more into the world of Cyber Sleuth in this entry than I was in the original, and that's saying a lot considering I already felt Cyber Sleuth was great.
Hacker's Memory doesn't pull any punches with its story and themes. Throughout the game, you'll be faced with themes like loss, identity, betrayal, depression and disease. The name Hacker's Memory morphs itself into so many different contexts throughout that you'll be stilling finding meanings for it after your journey is over. I will warn you of this though, Hacker's Memory will destroy you. At pretty much every point in the game, something truly sad is happening. I was fighting back tears throughout basically the entire latter half of Hacker's Memory because just sad thing after sad thing was happening with only the slightest bits of levity separating them. Some people may find this manipulative, but I feel like it's a testament to how well written the game is. I could definitely see the constant sadness getting to people though so if you're not great with those kinds of things, I'd recommend not playing it straight through without any breaks. It's a little overwhelming.
I haven't exactly talked a ton about the soundtracks of my previous entries into the 52, but I feel like it's notable in this game. For the most part, the music in Cyber Sleuth is just awesome. The soundtrack is a nice blend of ambient music tracks, j-pop style character themes and epic boss themes. I highly recommend checking it out. Some of my personal favorites are the main theme, which is a cool remix of the original Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth theme, the Under Kowloon theme, the Arcadiamon boss theme, the final boss theme(which unironically uses O Fortuna and I love it because it's just super cheesy) and the ending theme. However, the soundtrack does list some spoilers for later areas in the game so, if you have any interest in playing this completely spoiler free, I'd wait until after you play the game to indulge your need for the soundtrack.
Visually, this game is, for the most part, not exactly anything to write home about. Don't get me wrong, the game looks good. The characters are all super anime looking and the game is really bright and really colorful and really atmospheric at times. It does what it needs to do, looks good doing it, but doesn't strive too much for excellence. That is, except for the pre-rendered cutscenes. This game has a few pre-rendered cutscenes spread throughout and they are gorgeous. At first, you'd think that they were hand drawn with how beautiful they are. There's another area in the game later on that is, by far, the most beautiful area in the entirety of the game, but for the sake of spoilers I'll be keeping that one for myself. Maybe give you incentive to play the game.
I don't think I've ever been more happy to be wrong about anything that I was to be wrong about Hacker's Memory. It's not just worthy of being the sister to Cyber Sleuth, it surpasses Cyber Sleuth in every way. The characters are likable and relatable, the story is complex and emotional, the gameplay is quick and intuitive, the visuals range from good to some of the best you'll see in any video game, it's just wonderful. It's an early contender for both my favorite game of the 52 and my GOTY 2018. I got the feeling, while playing it, that you get the first time you play one of your favorite games of all time. It's just superb. It's without a doubt the best gaming experience I've had since I first got Xenoblade Chronicles in 2011 and I will undoubtedly be playing it again in the near future.
And that's basically all I can say without spoiling the game in detail. I urge you to play it. It's just so good. I said a ton about it and still feel like I barely scratched the surface of why I love this game. It's hard to articulate it. I want to go back in time just to experience it for the first time all over again. I almost feel like I could end the 52 right now and not miss anything. But, I still have more games to get to and, honestly, it's not like the world stops just because I played a fantastic game. So, join me next time, when we'll be swapping from Digimon to Pokemon, for Pokemon Sun. See you guys then.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
The Mummy Demastered - 3/52
So before I begin, I feel like this is an important thing to note. We're talking about a licensed video game today. Now, if you're familiar with the stigma of licensed games, this is already a negative for you, and that's completely fair. Games based on other forms of media generally range from mediocre to really bad. But I urge you to stick with this one because, in my opinion, the Mummy Demastered is not only good, it's great.
Before we begin talking about the game, might as well briefly touch on the movie. The Mummy is a 2017 horror-action movie starring Tom Cruise, who at this point I'm convinced is trapped in a Truman Show scenario and doesn't actually know that he's in movies. He plays a soldier that I assume has a name, but let's be real here, you're just going to call him Tom Cruise. He and his buddy, a soldier who probably also has a name but he's pretty much just Jake Johnson so we're rolling with that, accidentally stumble upon an Ancient Egyptian tomb(or prison, the trailers say prison but, like, someone died so it's still a tomb). After investigating it with the stereotypical hot archaeologist that's in every Mummy movie, they unleash the evil Princess Ahmanet who wishes to turn Tom Cruise into the Egyptian god of evil, Set. Or maybe the Egyptian god of death, Anubis. They kind of go back and forth whether it's Set or the god of death. I mean, it can't just be that they didn't properly do their research in a Tom Cruise action movie. Anyways, hijinks ensue, they fight the Knights Templar, join the Avengers and Tom Cruise becomes an aardvark. It's admittedly not a very good movie.
With everything I just said you may be doubly pessimistic on the Mummy Demastered. But the game is very clever about how it uses it's source material and it weirdly arises from a stipulation in Tom Cruise's contract. Tom Cruise, you see, has never appeared in any of the video game versions of his films, as his contracts only allow the actor's likeness to be used in promotional shots and posters for the film in question. So, knowing that you can't actually use Tom Cruise in this Tom Cruise movie game the game's developers, WayForward, a company that I'm personally very fond of, decided that you'd be playing as a nameless soldier either way, so why not go all in on that by making your soldier nameless, faceless and, most of all, expendable. But, I'm getting a tad ahead of myself.
The Mummy Demastered is yet another example of a Metroidvania, a genre I talked about in my post on Strider. And, as good as I believe Strider was, the Mummy Demastered blows it out of the water. The game is far more challenging and far more rewarding, made doubly so by the lack of health restoring rooms. Normally, I'd call this a negative towards the game, leaving players without the ability to reliably restore their health, but this is actually a purposeful part of the game's design and, honestly, it works. The game functions really well as a horror movie adaptation despite being a run and gun shooter with an upbeat soundtrack and loads of powerups and upgrades. You never feel like you're fully at an advantage while playing the Mummy Demastered, especially given the game's absolutely brilliant gimmick.
You'll very likely be dying a lot playing through the Mummy Demastered. Here's the thing though, whenever you die, it's not just starting back at the last save spot or checkpoint. I mentioned before that your character is expendable. And indeed, whenever you die, that soldier you were playing as is gone. You pick up as a new soldier without any of your additional weapons, health powerups or ammo capacity increases. You then have to go back to where your previous self died and retrieve everything that you may have dropped. Only problem? Your previous self is now one of Ahmanet's zombie minions, able to use everything that he or she had at the time of death, albeit without the extra health bars to keep things balanced. This single-handedly makes the Mummy Demastered stand out in the genre and I would love to see this idea continued in future monster-movie inspired games.
But there is another side to this. The Mummy Demastered is a fairly difficult game without the zombified previous versions of yourself. Enemies are absolutely everywhere and, while mostly follow simple patterns, usually spawn infinitely. The difficulty spike in this game is steep, especially in the upper London area of the game, where you have multiple giant rooms of various different kinds of infinitely spawning enemies. I died mostly in this area and ended up piling up previous versions of myself that I would then have to fight and hope I didn't die before killing them and getting my stuff back. The game is at least fair in that no more than two zombified soldiers can appear on the same map, but used in conjunction with infinitely spawning enemies and the fact that you start off each new soldier with only 99 health, which doesn't even fully restore when you pick up the previous soldier's other health packs, and you can get walled here very easily.
Bosses in this game are absolutely magnificent. Not only are they absolutely gorgeous examples of pixel art, inspired both by Egyptian mythology and various SNES/Genesis games, but the size and scope of many of them make each encounter challenging and memorable. Well, except for one who is memorable in a very different way, but we'll get to him. The Sobek boss fight in particular is a beautiful mash of Super Metroid's Kraid and Crocomire fights and it's just wonderful. I wish this game had some sort of boss rush mode just so I can revisit specifically the bosses I love them so much.
So, aside from difficulty, is there anything I don't like about this game? Yeah. The final boss doesn't work properly. At all. It's kind of magical, really. I'm not sure if this is actually true for all copies but looking online, other people have mentioned that this has happened to them so I'm assuming this is a pretty common glitch. Picture this. You're sitting at the save room before the final boss, ready to fight whatever last challenge that this game that has, up to this point, been beating you like a dog. You hold your breath as you most likely jump through the doorway because, you know, that's how you do it. First form. Ahmanet herself standing before you. She starts attacking you and you try your best to dodge while getting some shots off. She goes for another attack, this one maybe a bit easier to get through scot-free, but you won't be able to get anything off on her before she goes into her next attack, a copy of the first. You know how to dodge it better this time, of course, so you roll under the fire, take some shots, she teleports, summons a couple zombie goons for you to fight and... she stops. Completely.
In my playthrough of the game, after 14 hours and 200+ deaths, my encounter with the first phase of the final boss renders her completely unable to move. And it's not like she just completely froze either, I was still able to damage her. She just apparently forgot that we were fighting, as she entered her stance for the cutscene between phases, letting me wail on her until phase two began. I was a bit underwhelmed but, you know what, it also made me smile. I'm kind of used to games glitching out on me and at least this one was beneficial for once. So I finish her off and it's onto the next phase. This is it. Set, the Egyptian god of Evil himself. Fate of the world time, baby. Surely this will be the fight I've been hoping for to end such a great adventure.
...yeah, he froze too. I don't even know why this one happened, there were no future cutscenes that involved Set that the script could've cut to. He just stopped. And for a while I thought I was going to have to reset because it didn't appear like he was taking any damage. But, sure enough, he was taking damage from each hit. He strangely seemed to have less HP than the boss of upper London, Khepri, god of scarabs. Though I feel like that one is just because I had the strongest guns in the game at the point I fought Set while I was still using some pretty basic equipment when I fought Khepri. And with that, I beat Set, the ultimate incarnation of evil(who is an aardvark), escaped from the collapsing area and finished the game. And, honestly, I would've felt disappointed except for two things. One, glitches that benefit you are funny. I may not have had the big final boss fight I was hoping for to end such a great experience but, you know what, it was still a fun fight because of how ridiculous it was. And two, this is actually accurate to the movie.
The Mummy, as I've mentioned before, not a great movie. It's pretty slow and unfocused, working on setting up a future cinematic universe rather than making a good mummy movie. A cinematic universe that likely will never manifest because the Mummy was so reviled. But... I gotta say, I actually enjoyed the Mummy a bit, and it comes down to a few simple elements. One of which is Sofia Boutella, who I'm convinced can do no wrong even if she does mostly star in pretty mediocre to bad films. But the other main component in all this is actually how they handle the Tom Cruise character and, in turn, how it relates to the game.
Tom Cruise's nameless soldier guy spends most of the movie getting beaten and laughed at. He constantly ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up either in a big fight scene that he's severely outclassed in or someone is messing with him, sometimes beyond the grave. Take out the gun fights and all the setup for future monster movies and you got yourself a pretty fun slapstick comedy. And this lines up perfectly to the game. Tom Cruise spends most of the movie at a disadvantage. He gets kicked around constantly and is almost always in danger of being killed, yet always avoids death by the will of Ahmanet. It's almost as if the movie was made off the game rather than the opposite.
So what we've got so far is a great, if not really flawed, licensed game that accurately portrays the source material it's based off and surpasses it on all fronts, however low of a bar it may be. But that's not all. Go back to my disappointing final boss fight with Ahmanet. It was, as I've mentioned, a few middling attacks, a couple minions summoned and then she just went down. Well, in the movie the climax is pretty much a joke. Tom Cruise gets slapped around some more because the movie knows exactly what we want, Ahmanet imbues him with the powers of Set, they briefly ally themselves before Tom Cruise's ego is able to successfully fight off an ancient god and then Tom Cruise easily smacks around Ahmanet, killing the mummy, turning into an aardvark and... becoming the Mummy now I guess? Either way, whether intentionally or not, the glitched out final boss fight is a somewhat accurate depiction of the climax of the movie. Bravo. Brava.
If you couldn't tell from how much I had to say on the subject, I fell in love with the Mummy Demastered over my playthrough. It expertly combined my love of Metroidvanias, my love of horror movies and my love of not having to actually pretend I care about Tom Cruise into one of the best games I'm sure I'll play for the 52. If I had immediately played this when I bought it last year it would've made my best list easily. It's just a great game and I urge you all to give it a chance. And with that, we're all caught up with what I've currently finished of the 52. I hope you've enjoyed my thoughts so far, especially this one, I'm super proud of it. And we'll kick back here next time with either Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory, Pokemon Sun or Soul Axiom. See you all then.
With everything I just said you may be doubly pessimistic on the Mummy Demastered. But the game is very clever about how it uses it's source material and it weirdly arises from a stipulation in Tom Cruise's contract. Tom Cruise, you see, has never appeared in any of the video game versions of his films, as his contracts only allow the actor's likeness to be used in promotional shots and posters for the film in question. So, knowing that you can't actually use Tom Cruise in this Tom Cruise movie game the game's developers, WayForward, a company that I'm personally very fond of, decided that you'd be playing as a nameless soldier either way, so why not go all in on that by making your soldier nameless, faceless and, most of all, expendable. But, I'm getting a tad ahead of myself.
You'll very likely be dying a lot playing through the Mummy Demastered. Here's the thing though, whenever you die, it's not just starting back at the last save spot or checkpoint. I mentioned before that your character is expendable. And indeed, whenever you die, that soldier you were playing as is gone. You pick up as a new soldier without any of your additional weapons, health powerups or ammo capacity increases. You then have to go back to where your previous self died and retrieve everything that you may have dropped. Only problem? Your previous self is now one of Ahmanet's zombie minions, able to use everything that he or she had at the time of death, albeit without the extra health bars to keep things balanced. This single-handedly makes the Mummy Demastered stand out in the genre and I would love to see this idea continued in future monster-movie inspired games.
But there is another side to this. The Mummy Demastered is a fairly difficult game without the zombified previous versions of yourself. Enemies are absolutely everywhere and, while mostly follow simple patterns, usually spawn infinitely. The difficulty spike in this game is steep, especially in the upper London area of the game, where you have multiple giant rooms of various different kinds of infinitely spawning enemies. I died mostly in this area and ended up piling up previous versions of myself that I would then have to fight and hope I didn't die before killing them and getting my stuff back. The game is at least fair in that no more than two zombified soldiers can appear on the same map, but used in conjunction with infinitely spawning enemies and the fact that you start off each new soldier with only 99 health, which doesn't even fully restore when you pick up the previous soldier's other health packs, and you can get walled here very easily.
Bosses in this game are absolutely magnificent. Not only are they absolutely gorgeous examples of pixel art, inspired both by Egyptian mythology and various SNES/Genesis games, but the size and scope of many of them make each encounter challenging and memorable. Well, except for one who is memorable in a very different way, but we'll get to him. The Sobek boss fight in particular is a beautiful mash of Super Metroid's Kraid and Crocomire fights and it's just wonderful. I wish this game had some sort of boss rush mode just so I can revisit specifically the bosses I love them so much.
So, aside from difficulty, is there anything I don't like about this game? Yeah. The final boss doesn't work properly. At all. It's kind of magical, really. I'm not sure if this is actually true for all copies but looking online, other people have mentioned that this has happened to them so I'm assuming this is a pretty common glitch. Picture this. You're sitting at the save room before the final boss, ready to fight whatever last challenge that this game that has, up to this point, been beating you like a dog. You hold your breath as you most likely jump through the doorway because, you know, that's how you do it. First form. Ahmanet herself standing before you. She starts attacking you and you try your best to dodge while getting some shots off. She goes for another attack, this one maybe a bit easier to get through scot-free, but you won't be able to get anything off on her before she goes into her next attack, a copy of the first. You know how to dodge it better this time, of course, so you roll under the fire, take some shots, she teleports, summons a couple zombie goons for you to fight and... she stops. Completely.
In my playthrough of the game, after 14 hours and 200+ deaths, my encounter with the first phase of the final boss renders her completely unable to move. And it's not like she just completely froze either, I was still able to damage her. She just apparently forgot that we were fighting, as she entered her stance for the cutscene between phases, letting me wail on her until phase two began. I was a bit underwhelmed but, you know what, it also made me smile. I'm kind of used to games glitching out on me and at least this one was beneficial for once. So I finish her off and it's onto the next phase. This is it. Set, the Egyptian god of Evil himself. Fate of the world time, baby. Surely this will be the fight I've been hoping for to end such a great adventure.
...yeah, he froze too. I don't even know why this one happened, there were no future cutscenes that involved Set that the script could've cut to. He just stopped. And for a while I thought I was going to have to reset because it didn't appear like he was taking any damage. But, sure enough, he was taking damage from each hit. He strangely seemed to have less HP than the boss of upper London, Khepri, god of scarabs. Though I feel like that one is just because I had the strongest guns in the game at the point I fought Set while I was still using some pretty basic equipment when I fought Khepri. And with that, I beat Set, the ultimate incarnation of evil(who is an aardvark), escaped from the collapsing area and finished the game. And, honestly, I would've felt disappointed except for two things. One, glitches that benefit you are funny. I may not have had the big final boss fight I was hoping for to end such a great experience but, you know what, it was still a fun fight because of how ridiculous it was. And two, this is actually accurate to the movie.
The Mummy, as I've mentioned before, not a great movie. It's pretty slow and unfocused, working on setting up a future cinematic universe rather than making a good mummy movie. A cinematic universe that likely will never manifest because the Mummy was so reviled. But... I gotta say, I actually enjoyed the Mummy a bit, and it comes down to a few simple elements. One of which is Sofia Boutella, who I'm convinced can do no wrong even if she does mostly star in pretty mediocre to bad films. But the other main component in all this is actually how they handle the Tom Cruise character and, in turn, how it relates to the game.
Tom Cruise's nameless soldier guy spends most of the movie getting beaten and laughed at. He constantly ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up either in a big fight scene that he's severely outclassed in or someone is messing with him, sometimes beyond the grave. Take out the gun fights and all the setup for future monster movies and you got yourself a pretty fun slapstick comedy. And this lines up perfectly to the game. Tom Cruise spends most of the movie at a disadvantage. He gets kicked around constantly and is almost always in danger of being killed, yet always avoids death by the will of Ahmanet. It's almost as if the movie was made off the game rather than the opposite.
So what we've got so far is a great, if not really flawed, licensed game that accurately portrays the source material it's based off and surpasses it on all fronts, however low of a bar it may be. But that's not all. Go back to my disappointing final boss fight with Ahmanet. It was, as I've mentioned, a few middling attacks, a couple minions summoned and then she just went down. Well, in the movie the climax is pretty much a joke. Tom Cruise gets slapped around some more because the movie knows exactly what we want, Ahmanet imbues him with the powers of Set, they briefly ally themselves before Tom Cruise's ego is able to successfully fight off an ancient god and then Tom Cruise easily smacks around Ahmanet, killing the mummy, turning into an aardvark and... becoming the Mummy now I guess? Either way, whether intentionally or not, the glitched out final boss fight is a somewhat accurate depiction of the climax of the movie. Bravo. Brava.
If you couldn't tell from how much I had to say on the subject, I fell in love with the Mummy Demastered over my playthrough. It expertly combined my love of Metroidvanias, my love of horror movies and my love of not having to actually pretend I care about Tom Cruise into one of the best games I'm sure I'll play for the 52. If I had immediately played this when I bought it last year it would've made my best list easily. It's just a great game and I urge you all to give it a chance. And with that, we're all caught up with what I've currently finished of the 52. I hope you've enjoyed my thoughts so far, especially this one, I'm super proud of it. And we'll kick back here next time with either Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory, Pokemon Sun or Soul Axiom. See you all then.
Monday, January 22, 2018
Strider - 2/52
I often feel like Strider came into my life at just the right point. I had very recently gotten into Metroidvanias after years of saying I hated them due to the fact that Metroid Prime, a game that I now love to death, was too difficult and obtuse for kid me. I initially bought this one during a PSN Flash Sale a while ago knowing basically nothing about it other than the fact that I kept hearing the name pop up on various gaming channels I follow. Heck, I didn't even know when buying it that, technically speaking, I bought the wrong Strider. Not to mention that Strider itself is a series where all but one of them are just solely named 'Strider'. But when it came up on the cookie, I gave it a go and I'm forever glad I did.
Strider is the 2014 reboot of the 1989 NES game 'Strider', not to be confused with the 1989 Arcade game 'Strider', though both are in the same series. In it, you play as Hiryu Strider, the last hope of a world conquered by an evil dictator with mysterious powers. Along the way you'll do battle with his robot army and his many generals, all of which I could totally see myself buying for $9.99 at my local toy store. Strider gave off sort of a GI Joe vibe to me, but the story is simple and non-intrusive enough for the genre it's a part of and I just loved the 80s cheese of it.
Strider is, as mentioned above, a 'Metroidvania'. Metroidvanias, for the uninformed, are a subgenre of action-adventure games that are characterized by a large interconnected world map and a design meant to encourage exploration above all else. Strider itself doesn't actually do much to separate itself from other Metroidvanias, admittedly, but it's very good at what it does. The map, while a bit linear, still manages to contain a lot of secrets to keep players exploring. I'd even maybe recommend if you've never played a Metroidvania, starting with Strider. It's a simple game, but it's an intuitive one and a great entry point into the genre.
Strider is not without its faults, however. The map segments itself per each area and if you're just going for main story, this isn't a problem. The game will basically always tell you where you're going next. However, it's super easy to get lost and not be able to find your way back if you're going for 100%, as the segmentation of the map means you don't have a clear idea how it connects back on itself. Some areas make it super unclear how you're supposed to ever get back there at all, in fact and the late game fast travel power-up proves largely unhelpful in getting you quickly around the map. Which leads into another problem, the various gear and powers you're given throughout the game seems mostly unnecessary. A lot of powers you get you'll end using to open a door or hit a switch, and then just go back to using whatever you've been using the whole game because the starting power just makes things way more efficient in the long run. Which is unfortunate because these things discourage the point of the game, which is exploration. At that point you're basically just exploring to find the ten health upgrades hidden around the map and nothing else. Shame.
My playthrough of Strider went largely smoothly at first. I was going through the game at a decent pace, not breezing through it but also not getting walled. The first big hiccup didn't come up until the Sewer area of the game where the game crashed on me. Three times. I had to play the same section of game four times over in order to progress. And then after that, back to smooth sailing. I don't know what it is about the Sewers in particular, but it also only seems to be a main story thing, as I didn't have any of the same issues when I went back to explore for any items I didn't get the first time through. It's a very annoying feeling when the biggest obstacle to playing the game is the game itself not wanting you to play it, but I was having so much fun that I decided to keep going anyways. Which was a good call, Strider is super fun.
I enjoyed my time with Strider. Regardless of it's problems, Strider is just a really fun game. I was actually having a hard time talking about it because I didn't really have that much to say about it initially. It was a game I got from a random draw and just sort of chilled out with for a while. It was a very no-stress game, something I admittedly don't get a lot of since I'm usually playing massive 100+ hour long RPGs and discussing the various themes and characters and storylines present. And something I didn't get out of the next of the 52, the Mummy Demastered.
Strider is the 2014 reboot of the 1989 NES game 'Strider', not to be confused with the 1989 Arcade game 'Strider', though both are in the same series. In it, you play as Hiryu Strider, the last hope of a world conquered by an evil dictator with mysterious powers. Along the way you'll do battle with his robot army and his many generals, all of which I could totally see myself buying for $9.99 at my local toy store. Strider gave off sort of a GI Joe vibe to me, but the story is simple and non-intrusive enough for the genre it's a part of and I just loved the 80s cheese of it.
Strider is, as mentioned above, a 'Metroidvania'. Metroidvanias, for the uninformed, are a subgenre of action-adventure games that are characterized by a large interconnected world map and a design meant to encourage exploration above all else. Strider itself doesn't actually do much to separate itself from other Metroidvanias, admittedly, but it's very good at what it does. The map, while a bit linear, still manages to contain a lot of secrets to keep players exploring. I'd even maybe recommend if you've never played a Metroidvania, starting with Strider. It's a simple game, but it's an intuitive one and a great entry point into the genre.
Strider is not without its faults, however. The map segments itself per each area and if you're just going for main story, this isn't a problem. The game will basically always tell you where you're going next. However, it's super easy to get lost and not be able to find your way back if you're going for 100%, as the segmentation of the map means you don't have a clear idea how it connects back on itself. Some areas make it super unclear how you're supposed to ever get back there at all, in fact and the late game fast travel power-up proves largely unhelpful in getting you quickly around the map. Which leads into another problem, the various gear and powers you're given throughout the game seems mostly unnecessary. A lot of powers you get you'll end using to open a door or hit a switch, and then just go back to using whatever you've been using the whole game because the starting power just makes things way more efficient in the long run. Which is unfortunate because these things discourage the point of the game, which is exploration. At that point you're basically just exploring to find the ten health upgrades hidden around the map and nothing else. Shame.
My playthrough of Strider went largely smoothly at first. I was going through the game at a decent pace, not breezing through it but also not getting walled. The first big hiccup didn't come up until the Sewer area of the game where the game crashed on me. Three times. I had to play the same section of game four times over in order to progress. And then after that, back to smooth sailing. I don't know what it is about the Sewers in particular, but it also only seems to be a main story thing, as I didn't have any of the same issues when I went back to explore for any items I didn't get the first time through. It's a very annoying feeling when the biggest obstacle to playing the game is the game itself not wanting you to play it, but I was having so much fun that I decided to keep going anyways. Which was a good call, Strider is super fun.
I enjoyed my time with Strider. Regardless of it's problems, Strider is just a really fun game. I was actually having a hard time talking about it because I didn't really have that much to say about it initially. It was a game I got from a random draw and just sort of chilled out with for a while. It was a very no-stress game, something I admittedly don't get a lot of since I'm usually playing massive 100+ hour long RPGs and discussing the various themes and characters and storylines present. And something I didn't get out of the next of the 52, the Mummy Demastered.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Oddworld New 'n Tasty: 1/52
I was admittedly not a Playstation kid growing up. I have few memories of playing the original Playstation over at my cousin's house when I was small, mostly centering around playing the first couple levels of Crash Bandicoot and playing about half of the game Animorphs <Shattered Reality> because I was a dumb kid who would play anything you threw at him and I totally still don't have that game today at all. Point is, I missed out a lot on the Playstation's library growing up and now, as an adult, I'm super glad that a lot of the cool things I missed out on are getting remade for the Playstation 4 so I can experience what I didn't as a kid because I was too obsessed with Pokemon to worry about anything else. And, so far, one of my better experiences has been with the HD remake of the very first Oddworld game, Abe's Oddysee.
Oddworld is a 2.5D sidescrolling puzzle platformer because, like, why just settle on one genre when you can be ALL the genres. In it, you take control of Abe, an average guy working as a janitor at a major food corporation, RuptureFarms. One day, Abe discovers that the head of RuptureFarms is intending on unveiling that their next big food item will be made out of Mudokon, the species Abe is a part of, and he decides very quickly that he must escape RuptureFarms, hopefully taking as many of his fellow Mudokons with him. Can Abe save his fellow man? I mean, I already beat the game so I know that answer is yes, don't know why I'm playing coy with all of you.
I have to admit, I wasn't super into the world of Oddworld when I was first playing it. I initially played all the way through the first section, the Escape from RuptureFarms, long before I played through anything else when I first purchased the game last year. I thought the puzzle design was really well handled, but the character of Abe was grating on me initially and I wasn't huge on the environment. I'm a little sick of dystopia, honestly. So I was cautious when it came up on the cookie early this year. But I strapped myself in, decided that no matter what I was going to beat this game and was very pleasantly surprised.
See, after you get past the first RuptureFarms section, you go to the native land of the Mudokon people and Oddworld quickly goes from being a dark, desolate place that you're attempting to escape from to a bright, colorful, varied world with some pretty interesting lore. We learn that the Mudokon are a deeply spiritual people who used to worship the land that they stand on, building large temples to its creatures. Abe is then sent on a mission to both of these temples to gain the true power of his people, in the hope that he may be able to break back into RuptureFarms and save all the rest of the Mudokon trapped inside. And while this is admittedly horribly cliche, the change in goal and in scenery was enough to keep me invested enough to finish the game.
Oddworld is what I like to call a 'Lemmings' puzzler. Abe uses vocal commands to communicate with his fellow Mudokons who will follow his every action basically one-to-one. Your goal in most puzzles is to use these vocal commands to lead your fellow lemmings to the safety of the magical bird portals, that Abe can then use his Chant ability to open. You'll, of course, have to do this while navigating enemies, traps and the game's sometimes clunky controls. It's a simple puzzle idea that the game expands upon greatly, creating many fun, clever and all around complicated puzzles for you to test your skills in. And die. A lot.
Going into my playthrough a little more, I'm pretty sure I died on every puzzle at least once and while I'll admit, a lot of it was my fault for just bad playing, some of it gets into Oddworld's real problems. Oddworld has too steep of a learning curve and far too many unclear puzzles, which could potentially turn off newer players to what is otherwise a really fun game. It's the kind of game that'll show you how to do a mechanic once, like, say, sneaking, and then instantly expect you to do long and complicated puzzle sections entirely while sneaking. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that Oddworld appears to have an issue with input lag. Several sections require precision platforming and often times I found the game wasn't taking my button inputs fully on time so I'd miss jumps and fall into pits or get shot by enemies or eaten or any of the other hundred ways to die in this game.
But, I persevered and I was glad I did. Oddworld is a fun, challenging and rewarding puzzle game and I highly recommend it if you own a Playstation and are looking for just a super fun, super weird game to play. It was a wonderful way to start off the 52 and, hopefully, a good sign for how this year turns out. I hope you enjoyed this read, please leave comments to tell me how I can improve and I'll see you next time when we catch up on the second game of the 52, Strider.
Oddworld is a 2.5D sidescrolling puzzle platformer because, like, why just settle on one genre when you can be ALL the genres. In it, you take control of Abe, an average guy working as a janitor at a major food corporation, RuptureFarms. One day, Abe discovers that the head of RuptureFarms is intending on unveiling that their next big food item will be made out of Mudokon, the species Abe is a part of, and he decides very quickly that he must escape RuptureFarms, hopefully taking as many of his fellow Mudokons with him. Can Abe save his fellow man? I mean, I already beat the game so I know that answer is yes, don't know why I'm playing coy with all of you.
I have to admit, I wasn't super into the world of Oddworld when I was first playing it. I initially played all the way through the first section, the Escape from RuptureFarms, long before I played through anything else when I first purchased the game last year. I thought the puzzle design was really well handled, but the character of Abe was grating on me initially and I wasn't huge on the environment. I'm a little sick of dystopia, honestly. So I was cautious when it came up on the cookie early this year. But I strapped myself in, decided that no matter what I was going to beat this game and was very pleasantly surprised.
See, after you get past the first RuptureFarms section, you go to the native land of the Mudokon people and Oddworld quickly goes from being a dark, desolate place that you're attempting to escape from to a bright, colorful, varied world with some pretty interesting lore. We learn that the Mudokon are a deeply spiritual people who used to worship the land that they stand on, building large temples to its creatures. Abe is then sent on a mission to both of these temples to gain the true power of his people, in the hope that he may be able to break back into RuptureFarms and save all the rest of the Mudokon trapped inside. And while this is admittedly horribly cliche, the change in goal and in scenery was enough to keep me invested enough to finish the game.
Oddworld is what I like to call a 'Lemmings' puzzler. Abe uses vocal commands to communicate with his fellow Mudokons who will follow his every action basically one-to-one. Your goal in most puzzles is to use these vocal commands to lead your fellow lemmings to the safety of the magical bird portals, that Abe can then use his Chant ability to open. You'll, of course, have to do this while navigating enemies, traps and the game's sometimes clunky controls. It's a simple puzzle idea that the game expands upon greatly, creating many fun, clever and all around complicated puzzles for you to test your skills in. And die. A lot.
Going into my playthrough a little more, I'm pretty sure I died on every puzzle at least once and while I'll admit, a lot of it was my fault for just bad playing, some of it gets into Oddworld's real problems. Oddworld has too steep of a learning curve and far too many unclear puzzles, which could potentially turn off newer players to what is otherwise a really fun game. It's the kind of game that'll show you how to do a mechanic once, like, say, sneaking, and then instantly expect you to do long and complicated puzzle sections entirely while sneaking. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that Oddworld appears to have an issue with input lag. Several sections require precision platforming and often times I found the game wasn't taking my button inputs fully on time so I'd miss jumps and fall into pits or get shot by enemies or eaten or any of the other hundred ways to die in this game.
But, I persevered and I was glad I did. Oddworld is a fun, challenging and rewarding puzzle game and I highly recommend it if you own a Playstation and are looking for just a super fun, super weird game to play. It was a wonderful way to start off the 52 and, hopefully, a good sign for how this year turns out. I hope you enjoyed this read, please leave comments to tell me how I can improve and I'll see you next time when we catch up on the second game of the 52, Strider.
The 52
So, I've decided to resurrect this abandoned blog apparently as I've decided to issue myself a bit of a challenge this year. Inspired by let's player and Twitch streamer Proton Jon, I've decided to challenge myself to completing 52 games this year off my considerable backlog of 500+ games(link below), many of which I've never played. Of course, I only decided to blog my adventures after I was already three games in, so I'm going to be playing catch-up first and then I'll post one of these every time I clear a game that's eligible for the 52.
Now what makes a game eligible? Simple. It's a game that I must have done most, if not all, the work to beat in 2018. That way I can't cheap it out and just be like 'hey, I know I played almost the entirety of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in December of 2017, but I beat the final boss in 2018 so that's one check off the 52'. Another stipulation is that, while some games will be predetermined picks by me, most of the games I'll be doing will be randomly selected by a feature on backloggery.com called the Fortune Cookie. That way I won't take easy outs all the time like 'hey, basically the entire NES Mega Man series is 5 hours long tops collectively. Knock six games right off the 52 there.' And third, though this may not be true for the entire year, right now I'm limiting it to Wii, WiiU, DS, 3DS, PS4, Steam, PC and Switch. This one is just due to my setup, those are the only consoles I can conceivably play right now. All that said, I'll see you next post for the first game I cleared this year, Oddworld New n' Tasty.
My backlog: https://www.backloggery.com/edzoologist
Now what makes a game eligible? Simple. It's a game that I must have done most, if not all, the work to beat in 2018. That way I can't cheap it out and just be like 'hey, I know I played almost the entirety of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in December of 2017, but I beat the final boss in 2018 so that's one check off the 52'. Another stipulation is that, while some games will be predetermined picks by me, most of the games I'll be doing will be randomly selected by a feature on backloggery.com called the Fortune Cookie. That way I won't take easy outs all the time like 'hey, basically the entire NES Mega Man series is 5 hours long tops collectively. Knock six games right off the 52 there.' And third, though this may not be true for the entire year, right now I'm limiting it to Wii, WiiU, DS, 3DS, PS4, Steam, PC and Switch. This one is just due to my setup, those are the only consoles I can conceivably play right now. All that said, I'll see you next post for the first game I cleared this year, Oddworld New n' Tasty.
My backlog: https://www.backloggery.com/edzoologist
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