Video Game Villains: Gruntilda "Grunty" Winkybunion

Rare’s masterpiece is usually considered to be Banjo-Kazooie. I feel I agree with this take, even if my personal favorite is the foul-mouthed Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

The platforming and jokes placed Banjo’s first adventure into player’s hearts, but an important Jiggy in the puzzle was the villain of the adventure; Gruntlida.

A typical witch at the end of it. A green-skinned horror who suddenly wishes to be the fairest of them all. Despite also being proud of her gross habits such as picking her nose in public and showering in cheese. Not a full personality truth-be-told, one that outright contradicts itself as she both wishes to be beautiful and considers ugliness to be better than beauty. Yet her jokes still landed and I found an honest-to-God charm in her always speaking in rhyme as if she escaped the pages of Dr. Seuss.

Now the opening video at the top shows her resurrection from Banjo-Tooie, and I picked that game as I feel this was where Gruntilda’s real personality was fully fleshed out. Completely forgetting the world of beauty, Grunty now loves the violence of destruction and is motivated purely by the joy of revenge. She’s even meaner this time and far more of an active threat.

Gleefully ruining the lives of NPCs and even casually outright killing an entire family of Jinjos with no remorse, the darker atmosphere of Banjo-Tooie shows itself with how much of a menace Grunty and her two sisters are. We now see the aftermath of her beating her loyal servant Klungo almost to death, and even her two sisters aren’t spared from her pointless cruelty as the two will eventually die before the final boss fight just because they lose too many points in the trivia game.

Speaking of the trivia game, I find this to relate to an aspect of Grunty’s character that each game kept intact: Her love of games. No, I’m serious, even in Banjo-Kazooie it’s clear she loves the boardgame that she makes Banjo play, she loves the trivia game in Tooie to the point she uses leftover questions in the final fight, and every encounter with her in Nuts N’ Bolts is her challenging you to a minigame with specific vehicle mechanics.

She’s also surprisingly fair in terms of losing. For a villain anyway. She throws a fit, but she doesn’t go back on her word. If she wagered a Jiggy, you win the Jiggy she wagered. Her final fight questions will make the fight easier if you answer correctly, just like she promises. And while killing her sisters is a much darker example, bear in mind that dying was the stated penalty for losing, so her own flesh and blood do not change her mind in sticking to what she states are the rules of a game. The closest she comes to breaking a rule is that she will throw a tantrum and cancel the game at the last second in Tooie, but even in that case, she doesn’t stoop to killing Banjo when she has the trap already aimed at him. She just runs off and prepares for another fight.

I found myself fascinated by this character trait as it truly does flesh out what would be a generic villain. She is a witch and later a skeleton, which is not exactly the most unique idea for a baddie. But a games master and rhyme master on top of that, well there we go!

A simple character whose execution leads to someone truly remarkable. And she only got better as time went on. She’s at her most generic in Banjo-Kazooie, then Tooie ups her threat level and gives her motives better weight, and finally, Nuts N’ Bolts just does the simple solution of keeping her constant menace and humor while allowing her to rhyme again. I can’t deny it, the rhyming is important to me. When she was forced to stop rhyming in Tooie I felt a part of her character was erased for a dumb joke, and I really do think giving that trait back to her was all Nuts N’ Bolts needed to create the best version of Gruntilda.

A classic bad guy. One of the all-time greats for platformers. Gruntilda is just as important to the series as the playable heroes it’s named after. Such an ugly face, yet an important one, and I think she would be just as proud of both those observations.

All images belong to: Rare, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

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What Was Special About Rare

I’ve been tackling my backlog this year, harder than usual. I planned it out back in January, but it’s been May and June when I really started crossing off game after game. The biggest reason for this is that I suddenly felt like going back to Rare Replay.

Jetpac Refueled is surprisingly pretty fun for how limited and arcadey it feels. Perfect Dark is incredibly fun to skate around blasting the enemies away, and honestly, I feel it’s disappointing sequel PD Zero is more mediocre than outright bad. I was stuck in Grabbed by the Ghoulies many years ago but somehow I picked it up again this year and managed to beat not just that level I was stuck on, but made it to the end that same night. A bit of an odd game but a gem that needed better sales. Kameo turned out to be fairly average, but still a fun enough game with interesting gameplay concepts.

I still need to jump back into Blast Corps, and Jet Force Gemini, but I somehow found time to play the ancient games like Gunfright and Jetpac original.

And okay, you likely just care what I think of Banjo-Kazooie. The original was beaten by me a long time ago and it’s pretty much Rare’s most competently made game. Not my personal favorite, but the one I think has the least issues. Can’t say the same for either sequel, but don’t get me wrong, I’m actually in the camp that finds Nuts & Bolts to be pretty good! The vehicles are fun and the open choice in how to win the puzzles is a great change-up to the formula even if hardly anything else feels like classic Banjo.

Of course, Tooie is also classic Banjo, and I’m sorry but I did not have a good time with it. I think every idea offered is a nice addition and I think the story and jokes are a step above the first game, but the ideas don’t gel with each other and instead just drag the gameplay down by a lot. It probably has Rare’s best final boss but honestly, that’s not saying as much as you might think.

Rare, or Rareware, (or Ultimate Play The Game if you wanna get really retro), really are one of my favorite developers for the classic games scene. Sure Insomniac offered great gems but Rare I did not grow up with and yet still find charm when I play their back catalog.

So if I could explain Rare games in just a few words, what are the phrases that come to mind?

Well for starters: Unfair difficulty!

Credits: Microsoft, Rare, Bandai Namco, Fromsoftware

Heed my advice on this, when you play any of Rare’s older games, either play a game where you have infinite lives by default, or open the options menu to give yourself infinite lives. And even then, good fucking luck my guy. I cannot for the life of me beat Snake, Rattle, and Roll. The bullshit final boss, (who’s just a hopping severed foot by the by, which is also a standard enemy type so hello there blatant recycling), is programmed to instantly fully heal back all health after a set time of not taking damage. That time frame seems to be a second or so. Rare Replay lets you rewind time and I still somehow magically miss or go just too slow and the damn foot goes back to full health. It’s asinine even for the NES, the kind of thing I’m positive a play tester told them was bad and got promptly ignored. If you can beat this thing without the cheat codes, I think you’re made of crack.

Don’t know how I would have beaten Gunfright if not for the rewind feature, either. You have to win twenty duels with AI that just moves around randomly and shoots whenever. And yes, it’s random, because when I would rewind they’d move to entirely different patterns than the last time. You just have to guess better than a fortune teller if you want to beat it “correctly”.

Banjo-Kazooie is a pleasant breeze, part of the reason I consider it Rare’s best-made game. I won’t ride on Tooie’s harsh difficulty too much as I already said I don’t like it, so let’s continue with pointlessly hard Rare games I do like.

Well, Nuts & Bolts does sometimes break its own rules and expect you to roll with it, such as how I only earned three Jiggies in Terrarium of Terror because I’d just had enough of that level’s BS. Ghoulies like I already said I was stuck on, but frankly that game’s just hard because there are a lot of rules you can suddenly have to obey, and the camera controls take a bit to get used to, not to say it’s the worst camera Rare ever made.

Allow me to share with you my favorite Rare games. I’d place Banjo-Kazooie in third place really, and Viva Pinata is such a blast (even with its problems) that I have to give it the silver medal. And maybe you’ve guessed it, but my all-time fav is Conker. And while it is in my personal top ten games, boy do I have a hard time recommending it to people because it’s also one of the hardest games I’ve ever beaten.

If you’ve never played Conker, but have heard of it, I’m sure there’s one of two thoughts going through your head. Either: “How is the funny squirrel game hard?” or “How is the allegedly funny squirrel game hard?” Conker’s humor has aged poorly for some, but not everyone. Same for its story, I have seen people criticize how slapdash and random the plot points are but I think that works as a parody of 3D platformers since, well, that’s also how it works in those games. You just jump from one completely different area to the next, the only reason this time it’s a joke is because Conker’s just a sociopath alcoholic trying to get home.

But fuck me the difficulty needed to calm the hell down. The zombies are practically impossible, the war sections demand perfect platforming despite the controls being honestly not perfect themselves, I remember my high school theatre teacher had played the game too and complained about the electric eel but frankly, somehow I had no issue there.

As for my worst moments: I died countless times to the spinning underwater saw blades. Ugh, and the final boss, Jesus, if you ever want to send me into a spiral just put on the most monotone British accent you can muster and go “Throw out the alien, and shut the bloody door.”

And on top of that, Conker has another boss who may be the hardest in all of gaming: Its own camera. I hear a lot about FromSoftware setting the scale for hard games, but not a single person calls the camera controls hard in those games, so there is unironically a good chance Conker is harder thanks to the game actively fighting back at plenty of times. There is nothing harder than a tough fight where you’re looking the entirely wrong way and can't do much of a thing about it.

I still love the game, and I still want to play it again soon despite how much it grinds my teeth into dust. All that said, I should probably give the Live & Reloaded cut a chance. Less swearing but if the camera actually works then that’s a fine trade-off.

I think if you ask most people, (well okay most YouTubers), Rare was this incredible developer who delivered fun-first gameplay styles, with wacky and well-realized characters who often stack up to what’s currently out there. The kind of games that inspired the competition generations later. Many think it’s a shame they do nothing but Sea of Thieves now, but frankly well you’re “stuck” in your best-selling game ever and raking in more money than you ever did before, that’s the kind of horrible fate I think I’d wish on myself most days.

But Rare’s insistence on difficulty is the bigger talking point, I feel. It’s Rare who thought Snake, Rattle, and Roll should have an invincible final boss. It’s Rare who felt Conker needed a bad camera. And hell, if you think I’m only guessing or being overly negative, go check out two things.

In Rare Replay, there are loads of behind-the-scenes videos, and in one of them, a developer openly states how much fun they had changing Battletoads Arcade just for the sake of making it harder and harder. Even had the gall to admit it was just to sucker more quarters out of arcade patrons.

If that’s not enough, Chris Seavor had a short-lived commentary series for Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Where he notably struggled with the gameplay, and yet found the time to state how they were forced to change the camera controls for Live & Reloaded because “players like having control over that these days”. He then stated that he preferred the stiff and unresponsive camera of the original.

That’s Rareware, everybody! One of the greatest game developers of all time, who happened to love making players pissed off way more than needed. Some of the best of the best, truly, but my popped blood vessels have their own opinion.

Image copyright belongs Rare, Nintendo, and Microsoft, most images pulled from Xbox store page.

Video Game Villains: The Bosses Of Spyro The Dragon

I can thank the original Spyro the Dragon for showing my younger self what a video game can do. I’d played educational games on the PC, and Spyro wasn’t even my first PlayStation title, but it was the one that directly told me about breaking boundaries. Just to see what was on the other side. I hadn’t ever wondered what lay beyond the overworld before, I hadn’t realized I should be curious, that I should look for every advantage I may find. I just knew how to click on an object or how to jump.

Something Spyro also showed me was how, sometimes, a bad guy is just there to be an obstacle to overcome. I feel like I knew that even at the time, not that I could articulate this fact. Spyro The Dragon has some very minimalistic bosses who serve no purpose nor character other than being a guy Spyro beats up to get gems.

Youtuber Caddicarus went as far as to say they are some of the worst bosses in video game history. He was likely being hyperbolic for the sake of his style of video, but in my personal opinion, I have fought so many worse video game villains. I beat Immortals of Aveum if you want proof I’ve slugged through pointless bosses. I can’t help but agree with him for one character though, which would be the main villain of Spyro the Dragon; Gnasty Gnorc.

His introduction was the opener of this episode, and the reason I showcase a cutscene at the start of these blog posts is to try and condense the core reason I picked said villain in the first place. Maybe not their greatest moment, but certainly the moment it stuck with me how said character worked as a villain. Gnasty Gnorc’s intro isn’t an exception, but that’s only because, outside of the opening, there are zero cutscenes featuring him. And zero is also the number of cutscenes featuring any of the other bosses.

Gnasty comes in to state the reason Spyro has to run around and free the other dragons. That’s it. Literally it. He’s not deep and was never meant to be, he’s an object given a name. Heck, his backstory doesn’t technically exist, the dragons call him ugly, and “that tears is”, which means we’re only told there’s personal beef between Gnasty and the dragons but not even a shred of what the beef is. They do say in the interview that Gnasty learned a type of magic that turns gems into minions, so sure, that explains the beef; Gnasty steals the dragon’s gems and uses them to create an army of minions. The why is never answered, he could just be some punk-ass thief who thinks he’s bigger than that, and the dragons brushing him off could be evidence of the theory.

I’ve been snarky but haven’t explained why I agree with Caddicarrus for just Gnasty Gnorc. That’s because his fight sucks. It’s really bad, even as a kid I was surprised at how lackluster it is. He just stands up top shooting energy at you, then Spyro kills some bandits carrying keys, uses those keys to get to Gnasty’s level, then Gnasty runs away in this big loop until you attack him once, then runs through a chamber of lava where just one more hit kills him. On my first ever go around, I died quite a few times to misjudging the platforms at the end, but not to Gnasty himself. When I finally landed the last blow, kid me was surprised it was over. I had fully expected another phase.

Spyro bosses have three hit points, each and every one, until suddenly they don’t. That was a mind-screw as a kid, being smart enough to realize that if Doctor Shemp and Toasty needed three hits, I should expect Blowhard to also need three fire breaths. But then, Metalhead only had two cycles, followed by Jacques and then Gnasty as well. The bosses get weaker as you go along, such a strange concept when you say it out loud.

To be fair to the second half of the bosses, they reside in levels much harder to navigate. It’s the level Jacques resides that’s the real boss, with him just being the pushover you kill without thinking much about it. Yeah, just like Gnasty, he wasn’t a threat as a kid, but his stupid ass level gave me a headache! Still not a fan of it to this day.

So what are these bosses anyway? Well, Gnasty Gnorc is the leader of the Gnorcs, some invented fantasy creature for the Spyro universe that phonetically is a mishmash of Gnome and Orc. Toasty is a sheep on stilts wearing a brown coat and wielding a scythe with a jack-o-lantern for a head, which tells you just how hard some of the creature design goes in Spyro 1 (Toasty’s probably more iconic than Gnasty if I’m being real, maybe he should have been in Hero's Tale instead).

Back on track; Doctor Shemp is a large yellow/orange Gnorc wearing a metal apron and waving around a shaman stick. Not sure why he’s named after one of the stooges. Blowhard is a traditional long-bearded wizard but instead of a torso, he’s a tornado. Metalhead is a giant robot Gnorc and the only gimmick fight of the game; you have to destroy his little antennas instead of attacking him directly. You can even trick him into throwing minions into the antennas, it’s honestly my favorite boss, no competition. Jacques is just a jack-in-the-box come loose. Sure he’s got a creepy green face, sort of, but yeah weakest design and a low spot for the game overall.

There are no motives for these bosses, and heck, you don’t even have to fight them! Spyro The Dragon is a collectathon, and collectibles are required to go to further hub worlds, but it’s pretty easy to get the required amount of collectibles without stepping foot in every level from a world. A boss in Spyro 1 is nothing more than a special level, something where you step in and expect a challenge from a slightly harder foe than normal, and the level itself will even have other gems and dragons to collect that have nothing to do with the boss, even though all of the boss levels are named after the boss! The designs are too good to call them afterthoughts, work was clearly put into them and I find most of them to be fun enough for what they are, but to pretend these are traditional villains is a massive step.

And you know what? These kinds of bosses are rare in games now. Video games have evolved in the story department, heck even the following Spyro games had their stories directly explain the bosses and give them a greater purpose. I love well-written villains and games with great stories, but as I said earlier; Spyro the Dragon is the game that showed me what a video game can really be.

Spyro the Dragon is a fun-first type of game. A classic game that gives you a good enough excuse to run around and collect the collectibles. You have a bad guy you need to take down, and know just enough about him to understand why you should take him down. It doesn’t need a backstory for Toasty, or an epic cutscene where Metalhead breaks down the door and monologues about his desire for evil or revenge or what have you.

All Spyro the dragon needed was a Gnorc who doesn’t like being insulted, and 5 other bosses you can fight before him should you wish to. They’re simple, they’re no threat, and besides, they are ugly. But at the end of it, I love that I’ve fought them so many times. An obstacle with a face, never anything more, and I still cherish them to this day for wearing that concept like a badge of honor.

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*Credit for featured image: All images used property of Sony Interactive, Universal, and Insomniac Games.

The Villains Of Video Games: Xemnas (Kingdom Hearts)

Kingdom Hearts had something to prove when it came to the original characters. Sora, Riku, and Kairi led the series a great foot forward, but that still left original villains needing to prove themselves. Now, Riku fell to the dark side of course, and Chain of Memories showed a section of Organization XIII. But, as Riku found redemption and many players jumped into Kingdom Hearts II without knowing Chain of Memories would be important, the only original villain to leave their impression was left with Ansem the Seeker of Darkness.

A fine villain for what he was, a subject for his entry, but ultimately a plot-twist villain that is nearly spelled out should you look for the signs (i.e. reading the Ansem Reports). I’m a Kingdom Hearts 1 fan, yet it’s not a twist of my arm to say that game doesn’t have the best villain of the series. That villain is the main antagonist of Kingdom Hearts II; the Nobody Xemnas.

Xemnas led Organization XIII, a shadowy Organization even if you did play Chain of Memories on the GBA (Something I still haven’t). The threat of the Organization was left a mystery until the halfway point of KHII, leaving them to feel around as enigmatic as Yen Sid describes them. In a flash, we get their true motives and the backstory of specifically Xemnas, something that back during release was honestly a bit infamous.

To tell players that the man they defeated, was not, in fact, ever a man named Ansem. That Ansem the Wise was someone else, only the teacher of the man who would steal his name and attempt the throw the universe to darkness on a lark. Xehanort was the man you killed, his Heartless side, whom also created the Nobody Xemnas. This smug slow-talker who can’t even step out of the shadows as long as he still has Nobodies to throw at you.

And as I said, over the years I’ve grown to love Xemnas. I’ve played all the games released on console (aside from Melody of Memory), and I know Kingdom Hearts loves feeling like it’s pushing bigger punches than it really is in the writing department. KH1 and Re: Chain Of Memories have great writing, but starting in KHII, we instead saw mediocre stories that would somehow manage to have great moments anyway.

The Organization and the Nobodies are sort of this, see, the game focuses so much on telling the players that Nobodies are emotionless and non-existent beings. The authority figures of the game outright hate the Nobodies, and this hate gets passed on to Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Even when I was younger I felt this was a bit mean; why should I be forced to believe people unfortunate enough to stop existing must be evil by default? Likely why this backstory would later be retconned. As for KHII itself, Xemnas’s ultimate plan was to awaken Kingdom Hearts and force the entity to grant Hearts, therefore existence, unto every surviving Member of the Organization. Genocide is the means to his end, sending Heartless to swallow the Hearts of countless, and then have those Hearts be unleashed through a Keyblade. Only done so when the Heartless in question is killed.

It’s dark when thought about, darker than it already sounds, and yet still Xemnas feels this is his only option. He doesn’t feel bad about these atrocities, as, he can’t. He’s emotionless, and not even a real being anymore. He isn’t capable of caring, and unlike his subordinates, never really tries to ape his forgotten emotions either. Xaldin mimics the psychology of a domestic manipulator, Saix loses his cool after perfectly maintaining it for dozens of gaming hours, Demyx is panicky and seems to understand fear on a real level, and going back in time with Chain of Memories shows us Larxene’s sadistic streak. But, Xemnas barely raises his voice and only speaks in terms of incorrect facts. Things he completely misunderstands, to the point where I now get the impression that Xemnas straight-up doesn’t remember what emotions were like, despite how other members ranging from Axel to Saix openly brag that they remember what emotions were like, hence the ability to copy them.

The motion Xemnas is going through though are barely one-track, even when he tries to manipulate the heroes he just points at them and tells them to gather more Hearts, lacking all the wordplay and mind games of Saix, Luxord, or Xigbar. Even when Kingdom Hearts is shattered, and he knows his dream is gone, he speaks with the exact same cadence he did when he cheered his victory. I remember him being smug when I was younger, but as an adult, he now just sounds matter-of-fact, with the facts in question being half-lies and other things he isn’t capable of understanding. Out of every Organization member, it is Xemnas who feels like someone not allowed to cry out in pain. Xemnas is unforgivable but quite understandable.

I’ve danced around it, but what exactly happens with the retcon is only a shame for Xemnas. Just think for a moment, taking in everything Xemnas is; how should a villain like Xemnas react to hearing everything he did was completely pointless, as he was growing a Heart again anyway? The retcon makes sense, as while it may spit in the fact of Yen Sid and Ansem the Wise, neither truly comes across as all-knowing (especially the latter). It’s a fact that feels right, and something that paints over every previous feeling with almost the same coat of paint anyway. You still feel bad you killed Demyx, and are less surprised Larxene was such a cretin.

Xemnas however, underwent a complete re-write that was a slap in the face to his character. Xemnas was not Xehanort nor The Seeker of Darkness, he was his own self, a bit of themselves with his own goals and needs. But Dream Drop Distance instead ushered in one of the least-liked Kingdom Hearts story ideas, especially in my book, that every game must in fact be building to the next one whether you like it or not, and especially whether it fits or not. Xemnas became nothing but another Xehanort, despite how obvious it is that there were other ways to have him react to the retcon.

Like many other Organization members, he could have just been simply horrified at the news. Stunned that he did unthinkable acts for well and truly no reason. Of course, as Xemnas was recycled as a villain for Dream Drop and KHIII, there’s even another option: just make him succumb to the sunk-cost fallacies. Xemnas spoke in incorrect facts he believed in, I see no reason he wouldn’t have heard about the retcon and simply ignored the epiphany. Just a calculated response; he had no idea it was unnecessary so he shouldn’t be held responsible. That if he felt like he needed to do it, why is everyone judging him at he did it? An obvious lie that men like Xemnas tell themselves every day. It’s why Dream Drop Xemnas is such a let-down, because it feels like nothing was done to justify fighting him again. Hey everybody, remember Xemnas? Because he’s back again and about a seventh as interesting. Another Kingdom Hearts staple.

I will say these complaints were heard, in what I think was my favorite bit of KHIII. Look, I’m not on the boat ride claiming it was actually a good game this whole time. It’s bloated and somehow just as rushed as it is padded, but as I said before, ever since KHII this series managed to stick mediocre scripts with stellar sections. And Xemnas’s death is maybe its most stellar.

Sora politely asks his foe how he really feels. Puts it together that someone who put his co-workers into the slaughter only because he wasn’t allowed to process the emotional discourse, is very likely suddenly full of guilt now that emotions have come back to them. And Xemnas, admits it. His lackluster cadence manages to shrivel, making something, sorrowful. KHIII’s main villains, all of whom overstayed their welcome, range from patting Sora on the back for killing them or just gloating that they will always be evil anyway. Xemnas is the one who comes to realize just how much of a monster he is, just how much blood is on his hands just because he did not think to stop. While the other villains see Sora as an annoyance or as an equal when he defeats them, it’s Xemnas who fully understands why Sora is the better man. His call out that having feelings and embracing them must make you unfathomably strong, sounds so perfect as a closure to everything about his character.

A villain like Xemnas only comes when a writing team truly believes they are saying something. I think that’s why he’s one of the many highlights of KHII, and one of the few highlights of KHIII. When he’s the epitome of Nothingness, how seeking for existence without a care who gets hurt, he’s a stand-out villain you both enjoy defeating and wish you could talk down. He’s not a good Xehanort, but why did he ever need to be? Nothingness and yet layered after all.

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EVERY GAME I PLAYED IN 2021! (PART 1)

It looks like we have a yearly tradition on this blog now, where I pull out an Excel document that catalogued all the video games I played to completion the previous year and say my thoughts on each one. A little bit later than the last time, but considering I made a 2-hour video in January about my favorite art/media experiences of both 2020 and 2021, I think it’s fair to say I had good reason.

That said, the 2021 games that made it into that video won’t be covered as deeply for this second time, I go over them pretty well in the video so I’ll only share thoughts that skipped my mind. I also won’t at all be covering the games I reviewed separately on my YouTube channel, there’s not even enough left for quick thoughts due to the nature of the games I reviewed. While I was originally going to make an exception for Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, it made it into the 2-hour retrospective so there’s no air left anymore other than to say again it’s an all-time favorite and a 10 out of 10 I highly recommend.

With the formalities out of the way, let’s begin:

- Shrek Super Slam -

I bought a Nintendo GameCube off of eBay at the start of 2021, with the intention of not just diving into retro gaming after some disillusion with modern gaming, but also because I no longer own my childhood PlayStation 2 let alone it’s games and felt it would be interesting to try different versions of some of those games if I have to buy them again anyway.

Super Slam had to be first as it was my first PlayStation 2 game, and yet honestly even I am surprised it still held up as well as it did playing it again. This was a great test to get used to the controller as muscle-memory came back quickly, as did the reasons why this game is very fun. I have very little complaints about it, which is why it got a mention in the video and unironically so. I ended up completing all the bonus objectives, unlocked every character and stage, even did them a bit faster than I expected as some challenges seemed pretty hard even with the prior knowledge. Admittedly some of that was control or timer based and once I got it things went much easier.

Just a very solid fighting game with the characters from the first two Shrek films, and even brand new characters that fit the world and style so well part of me always wondered if they’d be used for a future film. Like I said, the right choice to test out the GameCube.

8/10

- Madagascar The Video Game -

I suppose it really isn’t shocking the next game for the GameCube was also a Dreamworks game. I’m also going to break a few hearts now and say this is the last GameCube game on the list, as while I did play around with some other games I bought, this was the last one I beat and that’s the criteria.

Again the PS2 version is from my childhood, as is the film, and both of those things have aged a bit to me much more than the Shrek examples. Madagascar the film is mediocre with some great moments, and honestly so is the video game, I guess it’s a perfect adaptation despite how much it deviates! Marty, Alex, Gloria, and Melman do all feel fine to control and the environments work quite nice. The Penguins are an okay change-up but they felt a lot less fun than I remembered and a bit more stiff. The game is a bit slower too, and I think it’s because I’m older and not because of the different hardware, I doubt the PS2 version actually felt different than the GameCube version ultimately.

That said, some jokes land well and again nothing in the gameplay is really offensive or unplayable. This licensed game reeks of needing too much free-time with nothing else to play, I think I liked it more as a kid due to a limited library and now that I don’t have that, it’s just an alright game I have nostalgia for instead of a game I’ll play a lot. Will definitely go back to the Shrek game more often.

5/10

- Red Dead Revolver -

I’d previously played the second and third Red Dead games, I’ve even covered my thoughts on Red Dead Redemption II both on this blog and that already mentioned video, but until 2021 I hadn’t played the very original Red Dead game. Revolver, from the PS2 era and one of the few games picked up for the “PS2 on PS4” program, all shiny with HD upscaling and trophy support. I’ve talked fondly of the program and a couple of those games already, but unfortunately I won’t be as fond speaking of this specific game.

For it’s time it would not have been all too bad, but by today it feels very confused in what it wants to do. A lot of games were back then, trying to mix things up and experiment, give something unique and for the time a lot of that experimenting worked for me. Even the Madagascar game I just discussed did that exact same situation with it’s rotating cast of playable characters. Heck, while I don’t like I game I do understand what it was going for and can understand if there’s still a fanbase.

Red Dead Revolver is a love-letter to both the corny westerns and the more serious ones, it’s always silly but people are still dying with chunks of blood and gore flying out of them. It’s very arcade-like, something I would not mind trying again with this series despite how far away that is from Redemption II.

It’s too hard for pointless reasons a lot of the time, I was actually enjoying the first levels a lot for the atmosphere and hints of story but after the cliff level not only did the difficulty spike rear it’s head far too high, but the disjointed nature of the story did as well. There’s tons of playable characters and they all have to connect to this plot and I wish they didn’t. This would have worked better as vignettes if they wanted to keep the multiple characters, or they would have had to scrap the other characters besides Red if they wanted to keep the story.

I got a big mad at it some times, but like some other retro games I’ve played I think it was good for it’s time but now something I give a negative score to as I don’t see the point of going back to it. Madagascar the game had nostalgia going for it so maybe this game is actually better, but this game also annoyed me much more anyway.

4/10

- Fallout 4 -

As I said in the video, I love this game and really don’t care about the things some long-time fans feel isn’t up to snuff. The crafting is fun and rewarding, the quests are great to complete, the world still feels realized and unique, the characters are both lovable and hateable in the right circumstances. I don’t mind the loss of the karma system since it’s clear to me the companion system has taken it’s place and effectively so. While I can see why the story writing is considered weaker to many, I don’t really see that as so bad a thing since this game is more fun than the previous ones and again the character writing is still great in the right places. New Vegas does branching a bit better but even then I feel overwhelmed by that game and don’t honestly feel every choice is as fleshed out as others feels. 3 is more concrete in the binary path of it’s main plot and the open-ness of the side stuff, so yes while there is a bit less choice for the side content here in 4 again there are at least things it does with the combat and companions that I am okay with the trade-off, and 4 is more open in it’s main story as you can flip whenever you want until it’s finally time to make your decision, and it makes it clear how final that decision is.

And as usual, the DLC is great. The story ones are fun and add new ideas and characters, and the creation stuff honestly gave me more than I expected and actually help out way more than I thought. I had only played the Xbox One version before, and with my new PS4 copy from that year I managed to earn every single PlayStation trophy in the span of only a month or so, and even with the prior knowledge that is a relatively small amount of time. Those tickets were the biggest nightmare, even making a whole settlement happy wasn’t as time-consuming

I really love this entry and my complaints are incredibly minor. 3, 4, and New Vegas are all thrown into a pile that fans pick their favorite out of, and honestly I don’t think that’s fair to any of them as each one does have unique attributes that just get ignored or outright insulted if it’s not the favorite, something I’m guilty of too. Ultimately it’s the one I play the most of the three and I think I’ve stated my reasons well enough. It’s also a Bethesda game and so it’s too buggy and clunky to be perfect, but when you have a favorite you ignore that for the score anyway so here we go:

10/10, but like a buggy and clunky 10 so theoretically a low 9 or a high 8 that I love like a perfect 10 despite itself.

- Spider-Man PS4 -

I suppose let’s “rip the band-aid off now” despite how really it’s not a band-aid and wouldn’t even need a description like that if game opinions didn’t cause so much pointless debate versus other media.

This game is fine. Sometimes pretty good and very fun, certainly above mediocre, but at the end of the day it’s fine.

While very competent and again quite fun plenty of times, part of me wonders if this game kicking out the sour taste of bad Spider-Man games is why some people really latched onto it like they did. For quite a while this fairly new game was “the best Spider-Man game ever!” and while it’s still very highly regarded I am seeing that statement slightly die. Sure, there are some concepts done better here than in previous Spider-Man games.

The gadgets really feel fleshed out and are a great evolution of not just this character but also from Insomniacs Ratchet & Clank games. The way it treats collectibles is a highlight, once you unlock one type you can just immediately go collect all of them without any need to unlocked another ability or finish a story beat, once it’s on the map you can grab it. You also don’t need the gold medal in every challenge in terms of in-game completion bonus nor the trophies, bronze is good enough, and as someone who is getting tired and annoyed at how much you have to do in some games I love that Insomniac recognizes that beating something with a good score really is enough plenty of times. There’s a lot of technical things right with this game, enough that I do think playing it again might make the score higher.

But let’s cut the chase for real here:

This story is stale and not always interesting. I heard plenty of people say this is one of the best Spider-Man stories ever, and I could only find myself agreeing with that if I read and played a lot of Spider-Man stories and found them full-on bad or boring. I didn’t like having to get back together with Mary Jane as it felt cliched and incredibly tired considering how often I see these two have relationship issues in other stores. The corny jokes sometimes just felt genuinely not funny instead of “ha ha the characters think he’s not funny”. I also think the villains are sometimes there just to be there, which isn’t too different than other superhero games but as an Arkham fan I also know it can be done so much better now that I felt more should have been done since there is a bit of Arkham influence here, hopefully next time there are more villains whom are only in side quests instead of forced into the main plot as that helps so much so.

Again, I think it’s worth another try, but I also think I’ve enjoyed a lot more Spider-Man games more than I did this. Mechanically it’s fantastic, but plot and character wise I wasn’t nearly as strong. Maybe that won’t bother me a second time and I can just melt into the combat and web-zipping instead.

6.5/10

- Super Mario 3D World -

This one got a full segment in the video, not just tacked on during the montage like Fallout 4 and Shrek Super Slam, so it’s just best to mostly skip this one. As I said there, it’s such a fun game and I didn’t even play Bowser’s Fury yet! Sometimes jumping around as Mario is all I need as he and his friends control so incredibly well, and this series really understands that games are often at their best when they are fun.

9/10

- Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy -

Mostly can say the same thing here as 3D World, but I am also going to do something I realized during the video editing made much more sense to do here in the blog post. I will quickly chop up my thoughts on each individual game in the set:

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney - Amazing how well this first game holds up and how much it can pull you in. Despite sometimes feeling non-sensical, once it pulls you back in it feels so right you don’t care anymore. Lovely story and great introduction to the series.

Justice for All - Weaker, but not always. Some cases feel so good and the new gameplay mechanics do feel right at home, as do the new story ideas that pay off very well both here and later.

Trails and Tribulations - Easily the best, a near perfect culmination and great send-off for this story arc. Best cases out of the three even with how iconic some of the early ones are.

8/10 - Ace Attorney

7/10 - Justice For All

9/10 - Trails and Tribulations

- Dead Rising 2 -

I’m in a weird spot with this game in that, a lot of me swears I’ve talked about it off-hand on this blog before but I really don’t have a clue if that’s true or not. It could have been on a post I deleted when I revamped the blog, it could be something that never made the cut the first time, I could have never actually done it, and it could just be staring me in the face and I don’t know where to look!

I love Dead Rising 2, it’s a favorite of mine and that’s why it was the first game I played after I was finally able to move back into my apartment. I played it on the Xbox One where everything feels buttery smooth and just like many other times I went from start to finish without any worry on what to do.

The Dead Rising games not only have zombies as the antagonistic force, there are also human villains and an in-game timer. It’s wise to just play the game without trying to beat it when you first go in, as you carry your level and such when you start over. If you keep at it, you can even master the games to the point where just like I said, you actually can start at level one and beat the whole game no problem. You’ll have spare time, bosses won’t be such a hassle, and you’ll get the golden ending while barely even having to pay attention.

I really need to remember my own advice and finish Dead Rising 1 some day. I gave up because it felt hard, but of course it did, that was also how Dead Rising 2 felt the first time I played it and it’s such a long ago memory I have to remind myself I once truly sucked at it. If I can get this good at Dead Rising 2 I can also master the original, but I’m positive I will still prefer this sequel. It’s a game with a time limit that is somehow a fun blast and practically soothing to the soul. I love it, from blood to guts to combo weapons to psychopaths to orange juice.

10/10

- Dragon Ball FighterZ -

When it comes to FighterZ, it’s placement on the list is not so much that I finally played the game this year, it’s that I decided to finally finish it. I enjoy fighting games but am not all that great at them, and sometimes I get through some or even most of the story campaign and just end up telling myself I’ll finish it some other day. That was the case for FighterZ even though I was really enjoying my time with it.

Dragon Ball FighterZ is a mechanically well-structured game, even as someone bad at fighting games I found combos easy to figure out and the characters felt different to play while rewardingly so when I found ones I liked. I stuck with mostly Majin Buu, Krillin, Vegeta, and Nappa, so when it came to the final story arc and I was stuck with Android’s 16 and 18 it was a bit too jarring and then I just forgot to finish it.

But, I picked it back up, learned how to play as those two and finally finished the story. It was worth it as now I can play as Android 21, so the roster is close to full (I don’t have the DLC). I can picture coming back to it, doing the story again with the characters I’ve enjoyed playing as the most. All in all, there’s lots of reasons this is considered one of if not the best Dragon Ball games.

8/10

- Halo The Master Chief Collection -

As said in the video, I decided to get the collectibles across all the games in this collection. I may be short one data pad, but I got everything else. Every skull, every terminal, countless easter eggs and I even did a lot of the playlists. The playlists personally sell this collection for me more than anything else, the remaster of 2 is beautiful but if there’s any gameplay improvements to 3 I can’t tell and I’ve played 3 a lot. I’m also fairly critical of Halo 1, and even though I liked Halo 4 it’s not one I go back to much. ODST and Reach were great additions, but again, I mostly play this game by opening up a playlist I haven’t done yet.

This has become a game I just play when I want to listen to some podcasts and the like. I assumed that might end when I got the collectibles, but since there’s still some playlists left, that may not be changing anytime soon after all. A great collection and one of the best releases on the Xbox One, which admittedly showcases how few first-party releases there were and why Microsoft really needed the change ups that thankfully seem to be happening in full force.

10/10

- Batman Arkham Knight -

Arkham Knight got a very decent amount of time in the big video, so I will wrap up my thoughts pretty well with some stuff I didn’t mention.

Did you know that during the opening where you play as the cop, there’s a bit where a nightmare citizen grabs you and forces your hand in the air after you’ve drawn your gun, and you can fire all of your bullets harmlessly into the ceiling? If you do, you can still keep clicking it empty after you are freed, so you don’t end up killing any of the civilians.

Also, massive spoiler so feel free to skip, but you know when Joker finally takes over Batman’s body and you gun down the rogue’s gallery in Batman’s head? Riddler hides behind a hostage and you’re supposed to just fire your shotgun as Joker would never care. BUT, if you angle it right, you will only kill The Riddler and the hostage does in fact survive, she cowers in fear but the game acknowledges you avoided killing her as she even mumbles to herself. It’s such a nice little touch you the player can do, and in a way, technically foreshadows that Joker really isn’t fully in control like he thinks. Batman did not allow him to kill an innocent.

Great game that I understand why I hated it first go around. First time playing, a 4 or even a 3, but on replay?

8/10

- Dead Rising 2: Off The Record -

When I bought the Xbox One version of vanilla Dead Rising 2, I actually purchased the bundle with DR 1 and Off The Record. Off The Record for those that don’t know is an example of a practice Capcom is fairly fond of, taking a game they already released and making a brand new version of it that’s mostly the same but with minor changes that do add to the formula in sometimes big ways. It’s a mixed practice, sometimes this new version is the better by far and sometimes it’s weaker but still at least contains what you loved from the regular game.

The latter is my feelings for Off The Record. I can see why some fans might like this version better; Frank West has a dedicated fanbase and it’s earned as he does have a unique character that is admittedly less cliched than Chuck Green. There are some new survivors whom are just as interesting as the regular ones, and the returning survivors and psychopaths mostly feel no different so they basically at least still work as well as they normally do. There is some new dialogue both spoken and written to re-justify some of the scenarios and they don’t detract nor add other than sometimes it’s pretty funny to watch a survivor gush over Frank as it’s so poorly timed on their part between the zombie outbreak and Frank’s fallen stardom.

I really don’t like the new final boss fight though. The special ending secret boss has a new phase I also really didn’t like but I’m mostly talking about the basic final boss, whom I could not figure out the pattern to.

Sandbox mode was a great addition though, allowing the player to have an overtime mode without going through a game over is a fun concept even if you can level up way faster as the game wasn’t really ready for the amount of PP you get from taking pictures.

It’s a solid and fun game, based on a much better game, but like I said I can actually imagine people preferring this version so all-in-all I think this was a worthwhile experiment this time.

7/10

And there we have the end of part 1. Part 2 will be coming soon, probably before this week is over but we will see. Thanks for reading.

Celebrating (and criticizing) The Villains of Pokémon! (Just the games)

This year, 2021, is the 25th Anniversary of the Pokémon franchise. As with practically everyone else in my age group, I have a connection and history with the games and also the anime. Even when there isn’t an anniversary I enjoy reminiscing about my past with Pokémon and talking about my present and future with Pokémon. Some of the games I love to their core, some I honestly just think are okay with some very clever concepts or ideas, and even the one I really didn’t like still had some unique takes.

I think the biggest element, at the very least one of them anyway, that showcases both the strengths and the weaknesses of the series writing and immersion is the villainous groups you encounter and defeat as the protagonist. Sometimes the game has a great villain, one who sticks with you, one you are proud to say you defeated and whom you can’t help thinking about among many other video games baddies. Then there’s the complete clunkers, villains whom failed at depth or true motivation, felt flat on arrival and never became any better, but that admittedly you do can’t forget at the very least.

From the would-be fascists, to the organized gangsters, to the phoney animal rights groups, to the environmental extremists, to the juvenile delinquents. Evil is all over the map in the world of Pokémon and just like with Disney villains, these characters are a market all their own and thoroughly worth dissecting. So, let’s do so. Let’s look at them under categories instead of purely individually to save a bit of time and to help out some of the lesser characters. Some of them are my all time favorites, some are examples I’d use for what not to do.

And if you enjoy posts like this, be sure to check out my Patreon to help keep this blog floating!

- The Several Rockets -

Team Rocket is unavoidable in a Pokémon character discussion, whether or not you are focusing on just the villains. In some ways I’d argue this is even more true for the anime (which I will also be tackling the villains of), but to say they didn’t leave an impact on the games core formula would be a lie. If we never had Team Rocket, there wouldn’t be villains in these games. The original Red and Blue/Green is known today for still changing the world yet aging differently for many, and one of those ways is that the story is notably lacking. I’ll admit I only ever played the remake Fire Red, but as someone who’d started with Gold and Silver and constantly played Ruby and Emerald, it is clear there’s less of a focus on a true overarching narrative in the first games compared to gens 2 and onward but the sense of adventure itself works as a story, especially for immersion as the characters are given simple yet effective elements to connect to.

Team Rocket in Fire Red does feel a bit lacking in some regards because of this, they don’t really seem to have an overall plan and are just doing whatever they feel like as criminals. Not that this really is a bad thing, as the game is more in the slightly-forgotten genre of adventure, having meandering villains whom you still constantly come across do work to help sell that sense of going on a great journey. The manga and the anime do flesh out more of Boss Giovanni’s true goals, but as a criminal enterprise whom just so happens do be a gym leader is a good way to make just another boss fight feel more connected to the player’s journey, you get a final showdown with a character you’ve been directly fighting already, capping off both that part of the story and preparing you for the final stretch in the same blow. While the villains tended to get much more involved in following games, Team Rocket as a whole still gave players a unique NPC to battle against, where the stakes were higher and the chance for heroism could be felt.

In fact, Team Rocket themselves became villains with more story than Team Rocket!

In Gold and Silver, Giovanni is stated to have just vanished and the organization is in dismay. They refuse to disband, instead, they are doing even dirtier deeds in an attempt to convince Giovanni to come back. The shift is noticeable when looking back-to-back. To give credit of course, in the first game a member does murder a Marowak off-screen, and it’s the darkest action any character commits in the game. As for Gold and Silver:

They cut off Slowpoke tails to sell them as goods while keeping the Pokémon alive and imprisoned, they mess with the radio frequencies around the Lake of Rage to drive the local Pokémon into a violent frenzy and forcibly evolve them to make them more profitable, and said signals are created with a group of Electrods they are clearly abusing in order to make them stressed and angry. Money and power were mentioned in the first games, but their sequels make it very clear those are the two things Team Rocket cares about, and lack any empathy for anything they could use to gain said money or power.

Along with the spike in evil actions we also gained a bit more character. The Rockets hierarchy ended up being given names, and the remakes Soul Silver and Heart Gold even gave them more unique designs and screen time. Petrel, Archer, Ariana, and Proton are now remembered characters specifically for these entries. Some were in the original versions, some even had a mention in the very first games, but fans remember Soul Silver and Heart Gold’s Rocket Executives for their cool designs and personalities. In some ways, Team Rocket is a more powerful team with Giovanni gone, since these four truly took charge.

Although after Ultra Sun and Moon, I can’t finish speaking about Team Rocket without mentioning Rainbow Rocket. Sadly, I can’t talk about it too much, as while I bought Ultra Sun I ultimately gave it to my nephew as well as my 3DS before I played that much of it. I loved Pokémon Moon but like many fans I didn’t give the Ultra versions that fair a chance, and I’ve now since heard they changed up a lot more than I expected and have minor regrets, but not enough to fully regret giving away the device. Maybe they’ll get a Switch port, it’s not too unlikely with now much Nintendo is embracing the practice for this generation finally.

I do know whom Rainbow Rocket is though; a Giovanni from another reality where he won and learned how to jump realities, teaming up with other series villains whom also won in their continuities. It’s an interesting concept, especially considering just how different many villain’s goals were. Of course, the does also bug me. Archie and Maxie hated each other, but both would be appalled by Ghetsis and Lysandre, and while they might understand Cyrus though but the word is might. Ghetsis also was too self-centered to be a true team player but then again that might mean I’d be happily waiting for the expected twist. Without playing the game I can only say it’s an interesting idea with holes I have no idea if they filled up or smoothed out to work.

And yes, Giovanni and surprisingly Archer make their appearances in the Let’s Go games, doing the same good job that is there in the originals but just somehow better for me personally this time around.

Money grubbing and heartless, Team Rocket became iconic and started the trend of needing to defeat evil before becoming the Pokémon Champion. Although sometimes those villains are more evil than others, even when talking about just the Rockets.

So less go for something even less evil than the nicer Rocket members. Let’s talk about the teams who kind of only barely qualified.

- The Punk Youths -

Villains whom are really nothing more than rascals are the newest idea. Because of that, we only have two examples. Team Skull, and Team Yell.

Despite both having similar ideas; taking a more obnoxious type of youth and making them the bad guys, purposefully downplaying a role usually saved for genuinely evil or at least dangerously misguided type, Skull and Yell proved to be very different characters at the end of it.

Skull were actual delinquents, showing up wherever they were just to annoy and pester the local townsfolk. Further into the story you end up realizing these are, kids, mostly homeless and unwanted kids at that too. Even with some of the misguided villains we had before, they ended up becoming the least evil and most sympathetic types we came across in the series. Even second-on-command Plumeria ends up coming across as a tough-love motherly figure just trying to keep everyone happy and in-line, and real boss Guzma just reveals himself to be a bit of a stand-offish punk who’s more easily used than he thinks.

Yell doesn’t even do things as bad as that. They are just the fans of trainer Marnie, and are way too loud in their embarrassing levels of support. In short, they’re sports fans with a favorite player. They don’t have a leader, unless you want to count Marnie as they certainly see her as one, even if she certainly doesn’t. Sword and Shield reenvisioned the Pokémon journey as a grand sport that only a lucky few were even able to truly last in, so having obnoxious sports fans whom aren’t actually evil in the slightest were pretty much a perfect antagonist for that type of adventure. Some fans felt Yell was either not used the best or was too close to Skull, but as I said, I think they worked great and were radically different under a similar sounding outer layer.

Both teams had one big similarity too; both were eventually red herrings to the true villain. Skull traded off for a villain whom really stuck with me, and Yell led to a villain I genuinely was hoping wasn’t going to happen as that one felt like a repeat and nowhere near as interesting. But, those villains did also at least have different personalities, so they will be in their own sections. Honestly, let’s do the latter next:

- The Well-Intended -

Sometimes the worst of crimes come from the best intentions. The Pokémon franchise has no problems showing those kinds of bad guys, and their intentions varied, even as much as the very first time they tried it.

As I said in the third part of my Games I Played in 2020 list, Pokémon Emerald is my favorite game. As such, you better believe I can talk at length about Team Magma, although maybe not as much about Team Aqua. See, I started Gen 3 with Ruby, so Aqua was originally a group of heroes or anti-heroes at first to me, until they showed their evil sides in Emerald alongside Magma yet while still opposing them.

Magma’s goal was to heat up the Hoenn region, feeling that there is not enough land for the Pokémon that live on it and using any means they can to do so. Aqua feels there isn’t enough ocean for all the Pokémon in it and want to cause a massive rain to expand the seas, again using any methods. In Emerald you admittedly spend more time fighting Magma, but considering Maxie and Archie’s different personalities it’s more fitting for the both of them. Maxie is the more intelligent and calculating one, while Groudon is on his radar it seems to be his final idea instead of his only one, he’d rather try out the volcano first and he even has another last ditch effort he planned in advance with the rocket fuel. As for Archie, he’s more aloof yet brutish, his only goal is Kyogre and as such every thing he does is just part of that one plan, and while it does have it’s steps they also do sometimes seem to just be randomly thought up at times.

For both being environmental extremists, both basically using forced climate change to gain what they think they want, and both seeing their error of their ways almost as soon as their plan comes true, Magma and Aqua were still radically different in terms of how and why and they’ve both stuck with me over the years even if you don’t have to twist my arm to make me admit I like Magma more.

Speaking of Magma, while both teams have higher ups whose names I remember (Tabitha, Shelly, Matt), it’s Courtney who has my attention the most and that is now true for many others. She’s basically a grunt with a good design in the original Ruby, a psycho who is still redeemable in the manga, and even more psycho and somehow redeemable in Omega Ruby. She’s loved for her design and for being easily the darkest character from both teams, while not really erasing this gens ideals of having anti-villains who mean well yet don’t understand what they are really doing. Courtney might love fire, but she was still a flawed human willing to earn up and do better. All of which is very impressive for a character that ended up being cut from Emerald!

Now when it comes to the rest of the well-intended, we pretty much have solo characters and a half-example for a team. So, let’s start with an example I feel, may honestly be the weakest example we’ve had, so I guess spoiler warning for Sword and Shield:

Chairman Rose spends a good deal of Sword and Shield feeling like a goofy and well-meaning CEO. However, the last CEO from a Pokémon game turned out to be the true villain, and since there was also a team of rebellious youths as the fake-out villains, myself and many others assumed well in advanced Rose was going to turn evil. And unlike the previous twist villain, Rose fell completely flat for me.

I was really hoping Team Yell and rival Bede would be as evil as the characters got, just obnoxious fans and a mean spoiled rival whom both turn out not evil by the end, which really worked for the overall adventurous atmosphere. I suppose I can say one thing good about Rose is that at least his motive is far different, Rose believes that true tragedy must befall the world in order for it to truly prosper afterwards. There’s a myth in Galar about that exact thing happening, and with the philosophy of “it’s always darkest before the dawn.”, sure, I can see why someone might be deluded enough think it really is the best thing. He’s still evil, but he counts as well-intended which makes him different from the last twist villain yet ultimately a lot less interesting.

He’s not just another twist villain after a twist villain, he’s also just a character who feels more flat than the last twist villain. Even his design doesn’t feel as good, his own henchwoman seemingly has more character, and while I do still like the game he’s from I will say he’s not only the weakest part of it, he’s now one of the weakest villains from the games and it already starting to be the first one I’m forgetting about. There’s one whole team I despite more, but I won’t forget them, and that might mean Rose is technically the weakest villain in the whole game series.

So we’ll now go from weakest solo villain, to a group whom I have started to understand a bit better over the years. I don’t know if they entirely count for this slot, but whenever I think them over, I kind of realize they almost fit here as there’s a sympathy I feel for two different reasons. One is that how the whole group is just being duped, and one is how the leader duping them has reasons the game did a decent enough job making the sympathy come through. It’s not who you think I’m talking about, believe it or not, I’m talking about Team Galactic and Cyrus:

Who you likely thought I was going to talk about, he’s next.

Honestly, I think even as much as I used to really not like Team Galactic or Cyrus, thinking back on my Platinum experience there’s a dramatic irony and tragedy there that while not as well-written as it should have been, is worth revisiting to try and really understand their plight.

So that starts the question, what exactly is Team Galactic after? I don’t mean Cyrus, whose end goal is to create a new dimension purely for himself, I mean what do Team Galactic actually want? That’s the thing, I still really don’t know what the individual members want. Sure, it’s been over seven years since I last played Platinum, which is still the version with the better writing for Team Galactic from what I understand, but I really don’t know what Team Galactic was trying to do.

And neither did they.

The grunts, Charon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, they all believed in what they were told was Cyrus’s vision but every single one of them was being played. While the Commanders where closer to Cyrus than the grunts, and did a lot of the scientific work for him, they were always going to be cut out of the final goal and that ultimately means they were doing all this work for nothing at all. Considering some grunts even mention building a better world, they end up counting here for that reason. Some Galactic members really thought they were doing evil to build a new world, not to destroy everything for the sake of one lonely man.

And that’s Cyrus ultimately too, a lonely man who feels nothing anymore and just wants something for himself. He’s still more evil than Magma, Aqua, even Rose and Giovanni, but when you dive into how he turned out this way there is a sympathy that’s not completely unfounded.

Team Galactic is as uneven as I felt they were the first time I played, but honestly, only now am I realizing that was more intentional than I thought. They are a group of people who do not really know what their own motives or end goals actually are. It’s why there’s so many genuinely malicious members and so many jokesters who are not taking anything seriously. I won’t defend some decisions from Gen IV, and am happy they didn’t come back, but Team Galactic are far more interesting than I once considered them to be.

And now dear readers, we talk about the sympathetic well-intender you were expecting:

You know you’re popular when you get a Nendoroid

Natural “N” Harmonia, one of if not the most popular of Pokémon game villains. N’s goal is to change the Pokémon world, because after multiple friendships with wild and abandoned Pokémon he not only learned how to understand what they are saying, he learned exactly how often Pokémon are abused and mishandled by their trainers. In reality this is a good thing to want, it’s morally sound, it’s just both the methods he is using and the people truly behind him that put in on the path of villainy.

And yet, N is also the most successful villain in the franchise too. NPCs who oppose him fully in the start end up listening to him in the end anyway, he gains respect from those who initially brushed him off. N does change hearts and minds, and more impressive, he even changed the hearts of real life players. Like I said, N is possibly the most popular villain to this day, and after Black and White, there was a bigger focus on Pokémon being your dear friends whom deserve your love and attention. This was part of the idea of course, The Pokémon Company was ready to start deconstructing their premise, and with one great villain they sure as hell did.

N was thoughtful, charming, sympathetic, considerate, regretful, the most successful villain from Pokémon was the one who wasn’t actually evil at all. It’s easy to see why Team Plasma was divided between members who truly saw him as their king, and members who actually knew what the real goal was.

So with that said, we have to go to the type of villains who are the opposite of N. From the character who does not ultimately count as evil, to the ones who count as nothing but evil.

- The Purest Of Evil -

The Pokémon Company clearly likes sympathetic anti-villains, considering they ended up being the biggest category. And yet, when they decide to take off the gloves and let the players fight against real evil, we got characters who were truly frightening in how far they were willing to go. While I found one to be one of their least interesting examples, the other two will stay with me for their haunting glare alone. Let’s start with the most recent, the twist villain of Sun and Moon:

So again I need to state I barely played Ultra Sun, but did hear about the differences in story. I know that Lusamine was given a new reason to search for the Ultra Beasts, a sympathetic motive and retool. Honestly, while again I didn’t play it, I can consider that sympathetic take a reason why I didn’t finish it.

Look, my love for Team Magma and Plasma should have made it clear I do heavily enjoy villains with depth and sympathy, however, there are plenty of times where being sheer evil is the more interesting character. Lusamine in regular Sun and Moon is an emotionally distant and abusive parent, she sees no value in her children nor employees as anything other than a means to an end, and her end is nothing but an obsession she just plain has. She has no real grand reason for the obsession, she just has it and it’s enough to drive her to the lowest of actions. She’s vile and cruel, one of the most disgusting characters the franchise ever saw, and it’s why I enjoyed defeating her so much. Sometimes a villain is a villain, someone who does not really have a heart and who can’t be talked down, and Lusamine was one of the few in the game side of the franchise. A true wicked mother that is more real than some people may want to admit. Like Rose, there was also a feeling she wasn’t nearly as nice as she was letting on, but unlike Rose there was legitimate foreshadowing and her character fit the story a lot better.

Sun and Moon are still great entries for many a reason, and while I’m sure there’s tons of merit in Ultra Sun and Moon, I’ll take the truly terrible and irredeemable bastard we got with Sun and Moon Lusamine any day.

But just because true evil can be interesting, that doesn’t always mean it is:

While I have a bit more appreciation for Platinum and it’s villains as the years grow on, I think I dislike X and Y and Team Flare even more the older I get. I understand the competitive side was finally allowed to flourish starting here and I won’t take that away from anyone, yet I still have to stick with my guns that the story and characters from this generation are still the weakest and worst of the games.

Let’s not mix words here, Team Flare were a team of genocidal lunatics, self-obsessed fascists, they were purposefully meant to be the darkest and vilest villains yet, beating even last gen’s true monster. In so many ways I still can’t fathom, this all feel completely flat on it’s face.

Why was Team Flare constantly making really bad fashion jokes? Why was Lysandre so obviously evil to the point where it’s not even funny to joke about it? What was the point of having an Elite Four member mention off-hand that they were a member, as if that ultimately matters for a character we’d only see once and for a few minutes at most, why not a gym leader or the professor if you really wanted a shocking reveal?

If the point was to be sickened, to be shocked at the depravity, then they needed to cut the comedy by a lot. Yes, have some comedy to add levity, that’s more than acceptable especially for a kid’s game. But I ended up never taking a single member of Flare seriously, and for characters allegedly capable of killing all life, it’s an absolute shock that I could not be bothered. Even Galactic, back when I couldn’t stand them, felt more interesting and intimidating than this group of attempted mass murderers.

I will remember Lysandre as one of the biggest failures, so he will be remembered more often than Chairman Rose, but I hope something you may have noticed is that I didn’t name any of his followers. I do not remember their names, and I can’t be bothered to look them up. X and Y have more forgettable characters than other games, and sadly the ones I did remember were mostly the ones I hated, Lysandre being the biggest example. I am okay with villains who are pure evil, but it’s a character you really need to know how to write. They didn’t this time. Lysandra and Team Flare ended up so bland that any threat level they were clearly supposed to have just dried up every time one of them opened their stupid little mouths. To have characters with the power to kill all existence have absolutely no threat level is an embarrassment, let only any fictional villain with nothing interesting about them.

Which is an even bigger shock for a company that did it very right in every single way only one game generation before:

The only solo villain I think can make the argument for being even more popular than N Harmonia, would be his adoptive yet abusive father Ghetsis Harmonia. Ghetsis goes to the depths of evil that no other Pokémon villain has yet to go to still. Adopting a child just to mold him into a mouthpiece, building a group under false pretenses while making absolutely sure to still fill it up with members who gleefully know what they were really up to. Ghetsis is the walking nightmare of the Pokémon mainline games, for years we’d heard about trainers who only saw Pokémon as nothing but tools, but all the past villains had some sort of redeeming relationship with their Pokémon as even the cold and emotionless Cyrus managed a friendship evolution of Golbat to Crobat. No such thing this time, Ghetsis’s choice of Pokémon only boiled down to what worked most effectively as a weapon, even carrying into the sequel where he now searched for a legendary Pokémon for the sole purpose of using it as nothing more than an ice cannon, even bragging about how he was positive anyone trapped in the ice would still stay alive and would only be able to watch the horrors without being able to do anything.

Team Plasma gets up to criminal activity under his care even when they are playing up their false good intentions, but once he’s caught and sheds the façade he barely maintained anyway, the team’s very appearance shows his true nature. No longer the white knights whom allied themselves with N, they now dressed like agents of terror and acted like them too.

Ghetsis is a level of evil we hear about in fairy tales and hope don’t really exist, making him the perfect counterpoint to N’s naïve yet good nature. He’s not remotely afraid to kill, he enjoys tormenting others, he wants to rule the world and most likely crush it to pieces soon after. Out of ever fight you’ll have, he’s the one you really want to completely beat forever, the world is better off with him no longer ruining it.

The mainline games have almost every type of villain; greedy gangsters, world dominators, misguided animal loves, hopeless cynics, obsession chasers, even as simple as loud jerks. You can’t love them all, at least I certainly couldn’t, but the mark is passed more often than failed and I’d say that’s very good especially with the amount of homeruns.

Tune in again soon for another discussion, where I look back at the villains from the TV series and movies. And as stated before, you can keep this blog alive with a simple pledge to my Patreon! Either way, thanks for stopping by and reading what I had to say this time.

EVERY GAME I PLAYED IN 2020 (PART 3)

And here we come to the finale of my gaming journeys of 2020. This final list has 12 entries, and some of those entries are going to be the games I have the most to talk about. I’ll try and be as quick as I can for the other games, but they must also be given their fair chance. There’s not a single bad game here, although there will be some criticisms very harsh.

I think it’s best if we have not much else before we dive in. As always, you can keep this blog running by purchasing The Romance Novel, and please enjoy this lookback at the tail end of 2020 gaming-wise for me.

Donut County

http://donutcounty.com/

Donut County is an indie puzzle game that never ceases in it’s unique charm and gameplay. The premise alone; that you are a donut delivery service worker who is instead delivering holes, is the kind of concept that suits the nature of video games better than other mediums.

There’s also Donut County’s likely intended but maybe accidental social remarks, the corruption of greed and industrialization, invasion of said things among unsuspecting citizens. It’s a story that only takes two to three hours, and is thoroughly wonderful through them. There’s still a debate within gaming on if being too short is a bad thing, but like many others, I’d rather enjoy every second of a tightly-packed game than try to force myself through a complete slog. I beat Donut County in a nice afternoon, and the afternoon was nice because I spent it playing through Donut County. Like another short indie gem Firewatch, this is a game that needs to be always played in a single sitting, letting the entire experience happen without pausing for another day. Donut County is lovely, the opposite of trash, as it can be described.

Rating - 9/10

Nightmares from the Deep 2: The Siren’s Call

https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/nightmares-from-the-deep-2-the-sirens-call-switch/

I do remember my experience with Nightmares from the Deep 2, a game I’ve never played the original for yet one that I have certainly played the exact same experience for. Don’t get me wrong, hidden object games have their place in not just gaming but also for my own personal tastes. Buying this game and playing it was no accident, I felt the urge to play a hidden object game and the pitch for this one on the store page is what won me over.

Nightmares from the Deep 2 has a solid story, it’s all excuses to find objects, but it’s sensical and feels rewarding to go through to the end. The name implies scary imagery, and it didn’t really scare me personally but the sudden jump scare cords and zoom-ins weren’t annoying either, so it might do either to you should your tolerance for either be different from mine.

Hidden object games without the franchise name of “I Spy” tend to be considered old lady games, but they can still be a fun evening should they not be too frustrating. Their biggest problem being how yes, they do all feel the same but with a coat of paint. I’ll likely never play this one again, and any other game like this from the same studio would have been practically the same game, but it was still fun and these are still a decent thing for a lazy afternoon.

Rating - 5.5/10

Spy Fox 3: Operation Ozone

https://store.steampowered.com/app/292260/Spy_Fox_3_Operation_Ozone/

Humongous Entertainment is still beloved by many for their fun, creative, and colorful point-and-click adventure games. The company may not really get up to much of anything anymore, but at least these well-aged games are easy to legally buy and play.

Spy Fox was probably the better written franchise the studio did. They were for slightly older kids, so wittier jokes and references were seemingly more allowed. Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, and Freddi Fish were far from uninspired of course, but I find the puzzles were a bit more sharp here even if they aren’t exactly hard for an adult.

Out of all the Spy Fox games, I’m going to go on record saying I think this one was the best. The set-up is fresh, the villain the nastiest, the environments fantastic, even in a sea of gems it managed to shine brighter. A high rating may look weird for those who’ve yet to play the catalogue, but for we nostalgic to the games, the rating will seem pitch-perfect:

Rating - 8/10

Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate

https://store.steampowered.com/app/267490/Batman_Arkham_Origins_Blackgate__Deluxe_Edition/

And like I promised last time, we are back to Arkham once again. Well, we’re really in Blackgate, and this time Batman moves left to right and sometimes up and down.

Blackgate was an interesting experience, especially in my first run-through. See, the game is pretty short because to fully experience it, you have to play it three times with you purposefully choosing a different third boss each time. The third boss always sets up a final trap themselves you have to diffuse afterwards, and not only that, those traps each have one specific item to unlock which you keep on those further playthroughs. Those plus the other items will go towards 100%, giving you more batsuits and goodies to try out.

And the thing is, I really didn’t like that first playthrough. Some stuff was cool, but bosses were terrible, death happened to me several times from cheap shots I had little time to learn from. I could do the correct method and the game would refuse to believe it. The developers might have realized that, because by looking through every crate, on just your first playthrough you can unlock a batsuit were you do not take any damage anymore. This changes the game for those new game plus playthroughs. You not longer worry about dying, only in planning how to grab that 100% in your own way. Which, I did.

Maybe not great to play it’s first time, Blackgate Deluxe is shockingly clever in how it treats and rewards completionists and that makes it an oddity that I came around to. It’s mediocre since I can’t recommend it too much to non-completionists, but I think there is still some kind of audience out there for it should they be interested.

Rating - 5/10

Red Dead Redemption 2

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/rockstar-reveals-plot-details-red-dead-redemption-2-1139857

Red Dead Redemption 2 has the honor of being one of the most critically acclaimed video games ever made, yet listening to genuine opinions tend to actually range from “very perfect, no problems!” to “It’s great and I want to love it but the gameplay is frustrating.” I played the game when it came out, and without a doubt was in the latter camp.

I can’t deny with any fiber of my being that the story and characters of the game are some of the strongest I have experienced in any form of fictional media. Arthur Morgan proved to be one of the greatest examples of playable characters and it will be a very long time before he’s topped in any fashion. He’s the kind of man who would empty his purse for a beggar, and the kind of man who would rob a beggar, neither contradicting thanks to just how believable he can enter situations and how he reacts based on a combination of the writing and the adaptability of the games control output.

The moral choices pop up far more than the original, being harder than before too. I play as good characters, and yet found myself so morally grey both times I played this. Sometimes it was too sensical to do the morally dirty thing, I felt horrible yet could not regret allowing Arthur to do it. I loved his flawed man who does have plenty of bad in him, but whose heart is gold enough that redemption is something you know he is more than capable of. I’m almost impressed by those who earn the bad endings, the name of the game is Redemption and the themes are of redemption, being able to peel that away smells of wanting the game their way so much I do have to admire their will in some ways.

Fishing in the game is so fun I kept doing it just because, even after fishing every type of regular fish and doing the legendary fish quest. Clothing options were so open and fresh that there is nothing like it even in simulation games with similar ideas. The environments are fresh and beautiful. The hand-to-hand combat involves thinking even if you try giving up and using a knife. Side missions are all unique with characters whom all broke my expectations in ways that earn my love or hate for all the right reasons. Even shopping adds this nice idea where you can use the catalog or just buy the item by picking it up and confirming.

And.

Horse riding still feels imprecise despite the last game nailing it. Guns have a great range of color but engravings honestly felt lacking in amount and variety. Cleaning them is a great idea but it’s hard to tell when they work poorly since sometimes it’s after long use and others you start missing not long after cleaning. Gun fights don’t feel as inspired as they did in RDR 1 or GTA V. The epilogue is too long and has too many random evil gangs for the sake of it. 100% demands too much despite not needing literally everything in typical Rockstar fashion, for once they didn’t cut back enough and had too many collectible side missions making only some feel worth their weight.

So the question is, how much of that really bothered me the second time?

I played on PC on lower graphics this time, and despite how muddy it looked, it still looked great. The horses seemed to control better, which was either from using a keyboard or from experience. That last word means a lot, so many problems feel lesser after experience. It demands too much experience, but then again, it’s a game that turned out to be really worth replaying.

I kinda loved the game the first time, this time, I really loved the game.

Arthur Morgan’s story was worth going through again. As was John Marston’s, Dutch Van Der Linde’s, Bill Williamson’s, Micah Bell III’s, every character gets to shine and they all earn the respect and love and/or hate to do it all over again. I almost even got 100% completion this time, and I still say it’s too much, but this time I can also say I think I can do it.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a very strong type of game. I still cannot be sure it’s for everybody, but even then, maybe everyone needs to try it anyway.

Rating - 9.5/10

Maneater

https://www.cnn.com/videos/entertainment/2020/05/22/swim-as-the-shark-in-maneater.cnn

Maneater was a $40 game with plenty of polish and tons of fun things to do. Remember when that happened more often? Budget games that lacked the grandiose elements of the Triple A market and many times were more worth that money than those more expensive games?

Maneater sees you play as a deadly shark, whom can eat so much she comes across as more like a black hole than a shark. Shark controls pretty well, with minor clunkiness where I still felt like I was in control most of the time. She could still flip around or freak out, but this did feel intentional while not as ridiculous as Surgeon Simulator or Octodad, which I still feel are good comparisons.

Maneater wasn’t a surprise or anything, but it was a very fun game that I actually ended up getting two copies of. She’s a brutal little girl that shark, and her game really utilizes that. This is the kind of game I always say would make it on my “game of the year” list if I worked for gaming journalism, since purely fun smaller games like this need more praise for being exactly what they are without wearing the gimmick out and being easy to get right back into. It’s on consoles both current and future-that-didn’t-really-come-yet-to-most-of-us-because-they-are-hard-to-get, so I really do say give it a play. Blood and guts are sometimes all you really need, and the added comedy from the nature documentary spoof really adds even more.

Rating - 8/10

Hitman Absolution HD

https://www.destructoid.com/stories/hitman-absolution-and-blood-money-headed-to-ps4-and-xbox-one-real-soon-537815.phtml

I’m saying it. I know Hitman fans weren’t hot on this one for the changes to the settings and game world style, but I really enjoy Hitman Absolution personally.

I can’t fault people for loving the James Bond inspired wacky and open games that came before it. I can understand being disappointed it’s a lot different. However, changing the formula doesn’t instantly mean a product is bad, sometimes the black sheep has a lot to offer. Absolution added a lot that ended up staying, how you can finally garotte and immediately go into a drag, how you can knock people out with your bare hands instead of needing an item with the side effect that it takes time, the instinct system that got retooled later but isn’t that far off from the hardest difficulty versions from here.

Now, speaking of difficulty, this time playing it I actually do have a criticism. I don’t dislike the linear levels, I think linear game design can lead to very clever and unique gameplay and also storytelling. Absolution has great levels with the linearity, however, that stays true only on normal. Once you try a “professional” difficulty level, things go a bit more south purely because some levels are not built around doing it.

You have to stealth at all times now since combat is much riskier than on normal, and as a stealth fan I’m actually fine with that, on paper. The problem with Absolution is how some levels were pretty clearly designed more for action stealth from the get-go, and harder difficulty makes them shockingly hard for all the wrong reasons.

Attack of the Saints or King of Chinatown add simple more amount of guards that the styles I did on normal weren’t as easy so I thought more outside the box and still had a solid times. Levels like Rosewood Orphanage were frankly broken in the enemies favor, there’s too many of them and the levels was clearly meant for a player to happily wipe out these professional killers who went way too far, which is basically impossible in a difficulty level that tries everything to make that gameplay style impossible. I remember being able to sneak about the level on normal once or twice, but on professional they leaped out of corners and huddled around the item I needed. Full instinct wasn’t enough to blend in, there wasn’t enough time to hide bodies. I finally beat the level by instincting, grabbling the item, then mashing instinct again, and I genuinely think the game glitched and gave it to me since I did that method several times in a now and it usually failed within a heartbeat. Also, just in general, I never liked the level Hotel Terminus and I still feel that way.

However, I still beat the game and I still loved it overall. It was more challenging in ways I didn’t care for this time, but I didn’t put it down, and I even still went back for all the challenges and all the collectibles. I have Platinum now and I’m incredibly happy I do. Fans won’t be ready to forgive this entry for a while, but I’m with the critics on this one. On it’s own, it’s a strong game with some noticeable problems depending on the level or difficulty.

Rating - 9/10

Saints Row The Third Remastered

https://www.pcgamer.com/saints-row-the-third-remastered-is-coming-next-month-and-it-looks-great/

Another game that riled some feathers in the fandom that I loved so so dearly. And like the last one, this is the remastered version for PS4, but this time it really is remastered and not just a port job.

Good God the graphics are weirdly realistic, especially for such a bombastic and goofy game. For my money some of the style has been erased so I will still prefer the original version, but the graphics are incredible despite that.

I wish that was my only complaint, but I also felt some of the controls did not work quite as well as the original. I don’t know if it was button lag, or framerate issues, but I’ve played buttery smooth on both PC and Xbox One Backwards Compatibility for the original, and a remaster should at least be as good as those ways to play the original.

So now that my criticisms are out of the way, allow me to gush about one of my favorite video games ever made!

The wacky nature of this game delivers tons of fun gameplay, from the side stuff you can do on the Bosses’ phone or from icons in the game world. I love all of the Saints; Oleg the smart muscleman, Pierce the whiny yet lovable scamp, Kinzie the kinky super genius, I know Shaundi is divisive compared to her past self since she’s radically different, but I think she still shines in the comedy department while keeping the new characterization. Your choices weren’t moral decisions in this game, just which type of fun thing you wanted to play with, and boy that could be just as hard, although I just remembered you absolutely get a final moral choice for the ending but that one’s lovingly not hard to make honestly.

Engaging, bombastic, crass, Saints Row The Third is still all those things and this pretty version is not a bad way to experience it at all. Again, somehow the original is still better and still easy to get since it’s even on Switch, so the rating has to reflect that but it’s barely going to look like that.

Rating - 9.5/10

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2014/10/30/kingdom-hearts-birth-by-sleep-final-mix-i-revisit-the-best-kh-game-in-2-5-hd-remix/#/slide/1

Birth By Sleep has a very big reputation. It was everyone’s favorite Kingdom Hearts game until more people started playing it. See, fans who were devoted enough to play it back on PSP were all enthralled by the new story, the tragedy of the three main characters, the bigger impact on the lore of the franchise. Once it got on the PS3 and later PS4 and Xbox One, the rest of the fanbase and newcomers sometimes had that reaction but seemingly just as often were massively off-put by the floaty combat, the mechanics, and finding the story and character nowhere near as well-written as they’d been hearing for years.

When I played the game back on PS3, I had every single one of those bulletpoints for the critical half. I hated the game, it frustrated me how the grinding was far more enforced than ever with spongey enemies, how bosses were allowed invincibility frames when the player wasn’t, allowed bosses to easily escape attacks and suddenly juggle the player without many options to escape. I hated the command deck and the way new commands and especially abilities were tied behind alchemy of the moves. Ven had my interest but Terra and Aqua were flat and uninteresting, not to mention Eraqus being thoroughly unlikable.

However, I gave the game a second chance on the PS4. This time, no, I didn’t hate it.

I didn’t fall in love with it at all either.

The command deck is still not as easy to use as the one from Dream Drop Distance, and the alchemy is still a silly requirement for unlocking new abilities. However, this time I noticed that anytime you learn a command you can always then buy that command at a moogle shop, meaning I never really lost a command I just had to start from the beginning with it’s level. A pain but not an immense hassle.

I still find the main trio undercooked, but less flat this time. Terra, Aqua, and Ventus suffer a lot from needing to go to all of the same worlds, I feel that if each character had each world they visit to themselves only that they would have had better chances at the character development the game really acts like they got. Raident Garden, the Land of Departure, and the Keyblade Graveyard worked fine sharing the three of them, but for example I think only Ven should have had the Dwarf Woodlands since he got to meet the most characters and interact with them more, or how only Terra should have had Enchanted Dominion and Deep Space as those two worlds helped establish character growth and would have worked far better without Ven’s pointless feeling visit and Aqua’s horrible fight with Dragon Maleficent especially.

I also realize how last time I practically never used Shotlock or Links, and they make a world of difference to the gameplay. Links help remove character weaknesses when used right and are powerful, and Shotlock can remove enemies from a room or wipe out more than a whole health bar from a boss. From here onward Kingdom Hearts started having too many mechanics, and even here it was easy to forget they existed, even though they are sometimes essential to winning a fight.

The story is, fine. It does not break ground, it’s cliched, and as I explained has pacing problems from how the game forces all three characters to go everywhere when picking and choosing would have been far better. It has some highlights though. In fact, that’s how I’d describe the entire game.

It has it’s highlights. The Mirage Arena was full of challenges while the other minigames were poor, some worlds had very nice stand-alone experiences despite still following the movies and not always mixing with another character’s world story too well, the Unversed sometimes looked cool and had some interesting mechanics but sometimes were painful to fight, Xehanort wasn’t as pointlessly masterful as he gets later and has some great lines and scenes even if this is where he took too much of the spotlight, and bosses ranged from pretty unique to wishing I could skip it from how unfair it was. But, I really cannot forgive how this is the first time the extra secret bonus movie is a playable level, it’s too much work that I didn’t do and don’t know if I ever will, I settled for the regular bonus and the horrible final fight that turned out to be.

End of the day, this is not the best Kingdom Hearts game but I found it had more merit than when I played it before. It’s not a bad game, just a mixed bag with very noticeable flaws you kind of need to work around, as they will make or break you.

Rating - 6/10

Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix

https://kingdomhearts.fandom.com/wiki/Puzzle

Kingdom Hearts II isn’t the best game in the series either but boy do I see why so many people feel it is! The original will still hold that title in my heart, it’s exploration and warm simplicity still beats most other games I’ve played in my life even now. Still;

Kingdom Hearts 2 goes for a far more complex narrative that may be confusing but at least there was a purposeful mystery angle to it to justify the feeling. The combat is overhauled so much that the player is basically creating a ballet with video game violence and it rarely lets up for even a nanosecond. Especially with the major improvements final mix brings.

I don’t like everything in final mix, I still say the mandatory Roxas fight is too hard for a story fight and that not every data fight nor Mushroom XIII are worth the inclusion, but other than the story fight I can’t complain much as I feel non-mandatory stuff rarely detracts from a rating unless it’s truly egregious and that’s not the case here despite how daunting it felt before I got the Platinum trophy a while back.

The best thing it added though, is critical mode. Video game difficulty is not a perfect medium, some people love extra spicy challenges while people like me are only out to have fun and find plenty of hard modes to not bring that fun. Critical mode for Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix is easily not just one of the best hard modes I’ve ever played, but is the only way to play the game for me now. I played this game again last year, and it was Critical for just that reason. I had no trophy this time, I just wanted to replay the game and it was my instant reaction.

The gameplay is phenomenal, the story does work, the characters are wonderful, and dare I say the artstyle makes the graphics hold up. I may love the first game more, but nothing will stop me from saying II is a masterpiece of a game as well. It could have ended here or after Days, and I’d have been satisfied, and I think a lot more fans than they realize would have too.

Rating - 9.5/10

Pokémon Emerald

https://nintendowire.com/news/2020/05/01/pokemon-emerald-is-now-15-years-old-in-north-america/

Pokémon Emerald is a game I’d be able to talk for way too long about. I mentioned it before in a Pokémon game review, but this is my favorite of the series and currently my favorite video game period. While Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch theoretically gave me more of what I look for in a game, there is no game I played more than Emerald and that will never change.

I love the graphics of this game, which hold up for someone who is not fond of pixel art all that much thanks to a vibrant color palette that also has clever use of darker shades. I love the pair of villainous teams who are truly out to better the planet despite how simple-minded and short-sighted they ultimately are. The fights, sceneries, so many elements are basically iconic to me: fighting Maxie both at the top of Mt. Chimney and the space station, Archie before he unleashes Kyorge, champion Wallace whom does work as a water champion since it fits the region, Flannery’s difficult to understand yet easy to remember gym puzzle, New Mauville, Sootopolis, secret boss Stephen Stone, the ridiculously impressive Battle Frontier, even the cave with only Smeargle and items.

Ruby and Sapphire’s glow-up was the best the series ever had to offer, not that I’ve been lacking for great picks afterwards either. It’s the one I think of when I think of Pokémon and even just when I think of the joy video games can bring you. Every gym is great, every character is great, the Pokémon are chosen perfectly for the region and the region itself is so well designed. Yeah, Gen 3 is my favorite generation of Pokémon purely due to this one game being it’s star attraction. Every Gen has one, but Emerald was the gem of gemstones it turns out.

Rating - 10/10

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory

https://www.facebook.com/DigimonGaming/posts/digimon-story-cyber-sleuth-hackers-memory-will-include-two-new-female-characters/764664913707197/

From Pokémon to the franchise a surprising amount of people assume ripped it off. Thanks to the names and the fact both have people interacting with monsters as friends I sort of understand, but to make it short Digimon started life as a Virtual Pet for keychains and then grew to manga and anime, it’s much less consistent with it’s rules on how that works than Pokémon since it does multiple continuities even though they will always have similar within the franchise so they don’t feel out of place. Both are fun franchises with their ups and downs but really couldn’t be much less alike since both keep to their own strengths and neither have tried to copy the other honestly at all.

Cyber Sleuth was a Digimon Story game, a spin-off dating back to at least the Nintendo DS. The focus was on having Digimon partners for party members while experiencing a story line, and Cyber Sleuth was held in high regard among the line as it continued to have an excellent story while also buffing out the massive issues older games had. I didn’t play them, but I understand it was fixes to gameplay difficulty asking way too much of the player without being fun or rewarding in return, and I believe also less bugs. I did play Cyber Sleuth and I loved the game, feeling it a normal 7 for RPG fans but a 9 for Digimon fans as it really captured the best the franchise does for character strengths, hateable villains, heartbreaking moments, and I was happy to hear that game was getting an interquel called Hacker’s Memory.

I played it when it came out too, and at first the shock of a great Digimon game wasn’t there so I wasn’t as instantly surprised, yet felt it was better anyway. Then I played even more.

Hacker’s Memory is essentially a perfect game despite needing the first game to understand some of the story elements.

Hacker’s Memory is excellent in how it treats RPG narratives and characters. You aren’t the ultimate hero, you are a nobody who has their own story that earnestly has nothing to do with the main plot. You get to taste herodom, but you are still a face in the crowd, never the chosen one and never able to change how the story has to still go. No matter how great or bad things go for you, it’s only your story, which funnily enough means you have more personality than the real hero whom must be stuck with RPG tropes.

It makes your victories truly feel like yours, and your crushing moments even worse. Chitose, Wormon, Ryuji, Yu, and Erika. Your trusted companions who are side characters just like you, never mentioned before and shown why. No matter what they will mean to you.

Other sides of the real main characters, new mechanics to freshen up the monotony, better online, customization, and hell now you can even get the game bundled with the first on PC and Switch. I got Platinum in my replay, and you need to play both. Enjoy that first game, because the real game is right after.

Rating - 10/10

And that my friends, is the end of the list. This took around as long as I couldn’t help but assume. Among the mess of the past year, it was good to have some very great games to keep me sane. I don’t like how the game industry treats it’s employees, pumps out soulless cash grabs, overcharges for DLC and minor details, and so I will always champion great experiences I'm clearly not getting many other places these days with video games.

As for the games I’d recommend the most, let’s end the story with them. The eleven games that earned a 9 or more! Take care everyone. Play some video games, eat something tasty, and stay safe so normalcy can come back.

Best of the Best!

Pokémon Emerald

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory

Sam & Max The Devil’s Playhouse

Brother’s A Tale Of Two Sons

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix

Red Dead Redemption 2

Saints Row The Third Remastered

Donut County

Destroy All Humans! 2

Pokémon Let’s Go! Pikachu

Hitman Absolution HD

EVERY GAME I PLAYED IN 2020 (PART 2)

And now the second part of my long, long experience with video games during 2020. They helped make the time shorter, better, longer, and worser.

At this point in my story, I’d packed up a decent amount of my things and headed back to my parents’ house because the country side was practically free from COVID-19 while my city was the only part of the state where it was thriving. Just under the wire too, as the Governor pulled a temporary block on traffic that upcoming weekend, a call we may never know how badly we needed. As for the gaming aspect, I packed up my Switch and all of it’s physical games, but my Xbox One and PS4 were left to gather dust. Console gaming would easily continue though as my beloved PlayStation 3 got plenty of use, enough so that I picked it for the heading image over the 4.

I got to clean house with old games I never finished, digitally bought more games and even DLCs while the PS3 store still existed (this was the year they finally pulled it’s plug so once again I was just under the wire), and this selection of games ranged from very average to quite great. Focusing now on two of my favorite consoles ever made now, let’s look at the second part of my gaming journey of the year! And as always, the best way to support me is to buy my most recent novel here!

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

https://store.steampowered.com/app/996580/Spyro_Reignited_Trilogy/

The Reignited Trilogy is jaw dropping in it’s artstyle. Spyroscope is such a genius way to recreate older games with better controls that I hope the technology is shared to other developers. Image the likes of Silent Hill, a series where the original code is lost, given a Reignited type of remake. With Spongebob also recently receiving a beautiful remake, I have hopes that other games that are good even with age to get that chance to shake off the dust and jump into the spotlight again.

So, I said I brought my Switch and I wasn’t lying. I played this on a Switch cartidge in handheld, and honestly Spyro did on occasion wig out when charging. I heard about glitches when I played this on the Xbox One but didn’t encounter them, not to say they don’t exist, this is just a reminder that sometimes glitches are console exclusive. The PS4 is the biggest seller, even though the Switch is serious competition right now, so my guess is most people played Spyro on PlayStation therefore the bugs were given more notice. Xbox One was practically bug free, Switch has some wonkiness in handheld mode but I can’t confirm for docked.

I did get those bugs on the PS4 version though…….

Yeah a few months in my state had a window where things were safer, so I returned briefly to grab more stuff. My PS4 being chosen since the Xbox One is just too big and heavy for a stop that quick. So, I also played Reignited on PS4. My third copy of the remake, which is also the fifth copy of these games in total for me. To be fair; I’ve done everything too. PS4 and Xbox versions, every trophy and achievement popped. Switch version was just story completion, but boy even just doing that was pure fun.

These remakes improve the first and second game so much, making the originals obsolete. As a Spyro: Year of the Dragon fan? I’m more positive then some of them were, as I think some stuff is also improved like Agent 9’s control scheme and camera, while some stuff is objectively worse but not game breaking. Also, the flying isn’t worse, we’re just not as used to it yet. In fact after playing three versions, I’m fully competent with them now myself. Swimming isn’t bad either, a bit floaty but unlike Song of the Deep it doesn’t make me irritated let alone angry.

If there’s some things in Year that I think were better in the original, I feel I can’t do a 10. However;

Rating - 9.5/10

Mortal Kombat 9

https://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Kombat-Komplete-Playstation-sony-playstation3/dp/B006ZTHFPS

I originally played Mortal Kombat 9 back when I was still in college, I want to say back in 2014. I liked what I played, but also, this was a game I borrowed from a friend of my mother (her kid wasn’t using it and didn’t mind) and figured I’d just buy it myself later on. This year, I still didn’t buy it, but my nephew gifted to me his collection since he didn’t want it and this was in there. I forgot to buy the DLC, and the Komplete Edition wasn’t the edition he had but that cover art was so nice I picked it for the picture.

Playing it all the way through the story, doing some ladder matches, I still quite liked it. Now, let’s also discuss how I get along with fighting games. I’ve always liked them, and I can understand the mechanics to ones I get really into, but that’s also the thing. I’m always decent at the single player, and decent is only decent. Mortal Kombat demands a bit more even for single player, and I could feel it, but not in a way I feel makes the game worse. I’m the type of person who calls out pointlessly hard difficulty, and even with some bosses feeling cheap, I can’t wholeheartedly say that’s what happened here. The controls were too good and the combos were too well defined to say “cheap difficulty”. I beat the final boss, and I cheesed him with a combo that felt right for me. There’s times cheesing it is actually a sign that the gameplay really is well done, and like I said, I came up with the method instead based on what was working for my personal play style even with help being something I could and did look up. It’s partly unfair, but advice online is to just cheese him, and if you can find your own method of cheesing, that’s a decent sign of good programing.

This game does ask a lot of you, in ways that mean as a completionist I can’t be bothered. The servers are down so online wasn’t a thing I got to experience anyway, and that might even say why I still liked this game, since there’s no way an online player would have let me take a step, let alone throw a punch.

Rating - 7.5/10

Ratchet: Deadlocked

https://ratchetandclank.fandom.com/wiki/Ratchet:_Deadlocked

When I bought my PlayStation 3, I started with a bundle that came with the HD ports of Ratchet and Clank 1 through 3. I was creeping up on my 50th Platinum trophy, and finally buying and playing the port of Deadlocked sounded like the right call. I’ll just say now that I did get the Platinum, and this was definitely one of the better Platinums from those first 4 games, maybe even the best one. And also, this game is an equal to the other early R&C games. It’s completely fun, the jokes land, and the corporate satire is still shockingly smart for a game series written with young teens in mind. Although that makes a bit more sense, young teens are cynical enough to be anti-corporate and youthful enough to enjoy goofy and silly humor. It’s a mix of being old enough to get what the joke is mocking, and young at heart enough to appreciate the goofiness.

As an adult with a college education, boy, those digs are layered just enough to be obvious while still being genuinely funny. Grand Theft Auto is not a series I can always call good-written comedy, but the jokes tend to still be funny since they are just juvenile enough that I can basically laugh at the joke itself. Ratchet Deadlocked is a better attempt honestly. The main villain Gleeman Vox is a reality TV host who kidnaps heroes to kill each other or die violently in an obstacle course, while also owning a news network that gaslights the populace into believing these known heroes are actually hardcore criminals. His greatest star is, a hero who went missing on purpose to live in the glory of the games and is treated on the network as still a hero. The news network, is named after main villain Gleeman Vox. Gleeman, Vox. It’s not subtle and no, I don’t think it’s tacky considering how long the thing they were mocking continued on. Reality TV too for that matter.

As for the gameplay, as fun as 3 and brings it’s own unique ideas. I have a fondness for the original, loved the second my first time playing, and also loved the third. With Deadlocked now under my belt, it’ll take a while if you ask me which is my favorite. Somehow, not having Clank with you still made great gameplay, and the series managed to continue it’s fun, funny, satirical gunfest for a fourth try.

Rating - 8.5/10

Scribblenauts Unmasked

https://store.steampowered.com/app/249870/Scribblenauts_Unmasked_A_DC_Comics_Adventure/

I love Scribblenauts Unlimited. I played it when it was new on PC, and I’ve played it countless times since then. My mother bought me the Switch version of it way back on Christmas of 2019, and that rerelease happens to come with Unmasked, which I also played on PC years back.

And, yeah. Unmasked was a big step down back then. However, in that period of my life, things were really not turning around and it affected how much I liked certain things. There were a lot of games I played and couldn’t get into, for reasons not remotely related to the games themselves. That’s why I skipped Unlimited for the time being, I wanted to see if I liked Unmasked more this go around.

And, I think it’s possible that I did? There’s some fitting character writing for the famous DC heroes and villains. Seeing Max and Lily be fans of the characters was okay, thankfully not annoying. The amount of obscure characters was fitting for the nature of the series and a nice addition for mega fans of DC whom play this. Granted, that kind of means you need to be a huge DC fan who are fine playing a very kiddy game. This game doesn’t really have sudden dark moments, and the gameplay is watered down compared to the shockingly open gameplay Unlimited did excellently. And yes, you need to be a huge fan, a casual DC fan might like some of this but there’s so many references a casual fan will not get. Do you know who Brainiac and Darkseid are? Oh you do? How about the Orange Lantern Corps? Yeah, little more lost aren’t you, and they are story based so you’ll have to hope the in-game explanation is good enough.

The grind for new levels was also annoying. Instead of new missions you could replay if you want but that will only reward you once, this time you get randomly generated quests from a sample bucket. And yes, they can end up screwing you over by accidently killing another quest giver even before you do anything, since it’s with licensed characters with code that demands they always fight certain characters. And, Mister Mxyzptlk will also sometimes force challenges that give bonus points but will honestly just screw you over since they never really work with the RNG of the quests.

I was going to say that I still liked it this time, but I also just forgot all of those problems until writing this. Sorry to Scribblenauts Unmasked, but while I can’t say bad game, I can’t say it’s worth it for too many even with it being included with a port of an excellent game.

Rating - 5/10

Batman: Arkham Origins

https://store.steampowered.com/app/209000/Batman_Arkham_Origins/

Oh hey, another DC game. I, kind of don’t remember if that was on purpose. This game I bought a digital copy from PSN, and also bought the Cold, Cold, Heart DLC. Not to spoil, but that wasn’t the only thing called “Batman Arkham Origins” I bought, but that’s in part 3!

Alright; so I’d previously played Asylum, City, and Knight. I really like Asylum and loved City, but I really did not enjoy Knight. There’s a few small bright spots, but that game’s story was a great fall from the rest of the series and the Batmobile was both overused and not fun, a mix of the two things you really do not want either of when designing gameplay gimmicks.

Now, Origins was the black sheep for some time. Rocksteady didn’t make it and the famous voice actors were replaced. The reaction from Knight was also divisive, which caused some gamers to give Origins another try, and the reaction became more positive for a decent number of them.

I’m not going to call this as great as City, but honestly, I think I enjoy this more than Asylum! Boss fights were a step-up from Asylum and had moments as great as the fights in City, with Copperhead being a new favorite of mine. The story is more interesting than Asylum with it’s twists and turns. The roster of characters gave both new information on heroes and villains we saw before and added some new characters to really expand the world.

The Riddler trophies are still fun to earn, the world map didn’t feel too reused, and the only real problem I had was Batman did feel a bit less comfortable to control this time but not enough to ruin the game. I’m just going to say it, please play this one if you didn’t think it was worth it at the time. I hear the PC port isn’t great, but the game itself has some great elements that the fans who looked over it are missing something if they continue doing so. Don’t forget the Freeze DLC though, it may just be a re-telling of the classic animated series episode, but it’s a great addition with everything it does.

Rating - 7.5/10

Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch/Pokemon-Let-s-Go-Pikachu--1382836.html

We’re about to start a minor trend for the second entry of my 2020 gaming list, a game that I have already talked about on this blog before. That’s not to say I have nothing to add, it’s just to say that I covered what I loved about this game so well that I don’t need to add that much more.

Well to start, I beat the game. While I was savoring the game back in 2019, the decision to eat through my backlog as quickly as I could while I had the free time meant I practically bee-lined to the Elite Four when I picked this back up. It’s still like I said before, Let’s Go took the Gen 1 experience and really made it that special experience I feel I never got with them before. I connected with my Pokémon in the way I always hope to, the gameplay loop was satisfying and entertaining, and I really loved the changes to the narrative. It’s somehow the events of the original, takes place well after the original, and also has minor things that happen differently. It’s messy to say, but amazing to see.

Between this and the live-action movie, we’re seeing that even after all this time, Pikachu really isn’t overrated as a mascot. The mainline games certainly had a divisive take, less so after the DLC but still there, but as someone who liked that experience I still say Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee completely deserved the more warm response that it got. I now own a real Pokeball, and I’ve played one of the best Pokémon games enough to enter my team into the hall of fame.

Rating - 9/10


Sam & Max The Devil’s Playhouse

https://store.steampowered.com/app/901399/Sam__Max_The_Devils_Playhouse/

If you don’t know Sam & Max, then you don’t know one of the greatest franchises I’ve ever personally come across. Sam & Max are the freelance police, complete pyschopaths whom uphold the law from genuinely evil people no matter how wacky the situation. Devil’s Playhouse was the finale to the game series by TellTale, just at around the same time they got mainstream popularity from The Walking Dead. I’m sure that series is great, but I stuck with my favorite nutjobs and their point-and-click comedy adventures when it came to TellTale. I even own the DVD cases which you could only buy from the site, a feature they took away way before the bankruptcy.

What made The Devil’s Playhouse different from the rest was not just Max’s new gameplay use of psychic powers, it was the earnest attempt at giving these two a more important and emotional story than before. No it’s not an arthouse or the like, but that’s also why it’s so good! It’s not overwritten for the type of media it is, we still get the nutty yet nonsense yet dark yet intelligent jokes the franchise always had, but we got just the right mix of earth shattering consequence and stakes that the series usually would have scoffed at. Played just straight enough to land, not enough to be out-of-place.

Save the World (which was season one) was a laughfest that still had a final villain, but those stakes were still just funny and only threatening enough to make it clear the bad guy deserved to lose. Beyond Time and Space (the second season) tried better world building and while a good game, felt underwhelming to the first in terms of being funny and fitting. Devil’s Playhouse was nothing short of being funnier than Save the World and more intriguing than Time and Space.

Sam & Max’s identical grandfathers, General Skun-ka’pe, Charlie Hotep, Sal, Papierwaite, The Narrator, Norrington, Junior, Sammun-Mak, so many new characters whom only added and never substracted from the game.

Sam, Max, Sybil, Lincoln’s Head, Stinky, Girl Stinky, The C.O.P.S., Momma Bosco, Agent Superball, Harry Moleman, Jurgen, all returning characters we got new sides to and fleshed out better than ever before.

It’s fresh and funny still, the gameplay gimmicks work surprisingly well even on the PlayStation 3 version, and boy am I ready for Skunkape’s remaster coming in the future. I got every trophy for each episode, because this game deserved nothing less from me.

Rating - 10/10

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/skyrim

Hey, you, you’re finally awake. Awake enough to see that I’ve, to put it bluntly, complained enough about this game before. Here was the first time, here is the second time.

With two posts already, there’s barely anything to say. Yes, I got every single PS3 trophy, just like how I got every single Xbox One achievement. I have done everything with a pretend award other people can see. Twice. I’m an expert in this game, and I really don’t necessarily like it.

Like I said the first time I actually do like the main story despite gripes and I loved smithing. Like I said the second time I have come to appreciate the character writing of Ulfric Stormcloak despite finding a majority of other characters very flat. Like I said both times, the DLC is very good all-around even if I think the vampires are a bit flat when you side with them.

What is there to go back to? I’m done with the game, and of course I still have those pangs in my head that say it must just be that I’ll get it eventually or that my most recent experience was the objectively worst version so of course I was even more negative.

But, a lot of me still says; why? What’s there to do? Plenty of people still love this game, the warts do not bother them enough to get in the way. Well, sorry to say, these warts are just too big and bumpy for me with this game. I’ve loved games that I think I could objectively say were not as well made as this, I can even objectively say there’s quality in here that is sometimes overlooked. Of course, I don’t really need to go to bat for one of the most popular games ever made anyway. Ya’ll know why you like or don’t like it. I’m just not sure why I feel like I’ll bother again when I know I’ll probably like it less the next time. Although funny enough, I’m going to give it a slightly higher rating than last time since again, that was the PS3 version. We’ll call this the rating I’d currently give the updated versions.

Rating - 5.5/10

Hasbro Family Game Pack 3

https://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-Family-Game-Night-Playstation-3/dp/B003M986Y8

I’ll be honest with ya’ll, I forgot to mark this one in my Excel doc. Good thing I did a whole post about it already, huh?

Unlike Skyrim and Let’s Go, I think the past post is exactly enough. I broke down every game in this games collection, and I stand by all of it. I have touched it since, and will be keeping it in the collection, it’s just not a game with enough nuisances or ideas that several articles are needed. But still, read the entry for yourself, because the game is quite good with some serious hiccups and reading that ahead of time isn’t a bad idea for you retro game collectors now that the Xbox 360, Wii, and PlayStation 3 era is truly retro now. Not joking, they’re retro now, which for some reason is wild to me.

Rating - 7.5/10

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale

https://blog.playstation.com/2012/08/13/playstation-all-stars-battle-royale-moves-to-november/

So while I haven’t talked about this game in it’s own blog entry in the past, I did briefly touch on it when I reviewed Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion XL. It was to compare the two games, since both were serious attempts to try the Smash Brothers format for the Sony and Cartoon Network IPs. In the end I said I liked both games, but found myself more interested in the Cartoon Network one for it’s unique spins and decently fun mechanics for some of it’s characters.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was also the first game I played on PlayStation 3, it was the other game bundled with my system alongside the Ratchet and Clank HD Trilogy. I don’t think that has much of anything to do with, why I ended up not jelling with the game as much this time.

Earlier I said I bought DLCs while I could, and I did that here. I bought the remaining characters and stages I hadn’t bought already, and then played with them. With those two, I finished up the campaigns for every available character, and now that that means I really have done everything this game has to offer (I even did stuff online, I got Platinum a while back), I have the perspective that this game is not much more than a letdown.

Fighting feels alright, but some characters just don’t really click in a way that feels right for even just single player. Punch Time Explosion had bad balancing, but I do think the fun characters in that game played better. Combos were fairly generic all-round in All-Stars, some characters have nice animations in their attacks but roughly you might find one attack that’s good enough to spam and you’ll be doing that. Weapons aren’t very compelling, and I can’t even think of the assist characters if there were anyway.

It’s, shockingly unremarkable. I’m with the crowd that says a sequel would improve things, but also, I think it’s been so long since this game came out that I’m okay admitting this franchise failed and we can just move on. When licensed IPs like Punch Time or even the now currently meme’d Shrek Super Slam have elements I think did concepts of Smash Brothers-like much better, I’d rather those got redo’s or sequels and I’m really not even kidding. Those two games are worth finding in a retro store for 5 to 15 dollars. All-Stars, well, you can’t even get the DLC or play online anymore, and I don’t think the single player with base characters is worth as high as 10, and you can probably find it for less than 5 without much effort. I’m still up for a second try I suppose, but I’d go in more skeptic than other game franchises I’d also give a second try to.

Rating - 4/10

And that does it for part 2. Part 3 will be coming, well, shortly but not too shortly. For some reason a chunk of the final games happen to be the games I have the most to talk about. I’m planning on stopping at part 3, but that’s going to make part 3 very beefy if I had to guess.

Is Nostalgia Dangerous?

I've covered a topic quite similar to this many weeks go, under the title of "Why Must Our Artistic Tastes Change?". I'm going to continue on that sort of subject as I think it is important, one that many of us do not talk about, but does happen to every single one of us. True, it may not be as important as the subjects of morality or decent behavior, but if it's an important topic than it is worth talking about nonetheless, and if we start sweeping any of them under the rug than we run the risk of sweeping all of them under the rug.

The idea for this title and general post came about only an hour or so from it's first draft. I was watching Jim Sterling's Jimquisition on the backlash and critical reception for the video game Mighty No. 9, a game that when you really boil it down, was crowd-funded successfully in the first place because of fans nostalgia.

Jim goes into many other notable aspects of the specific game, so if you have not watched it I would recommend doing so after you read this post.

Video made by: Jim Sterling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR5TP129_pI

I heard many people argue that the biggest drawing point was that Megaman had not been given a new installment in so long that Capcom most likely abandoned the franchise, and fans were desperate for more. I sort of agree, however, knowing what people can be like, I personally feel that the Kickstarter would have been funded even if Megaman was still ongoing. It had the man everyone believed created the franchise, and when you have nostalgia for something, you can tend to jump on board without asking enough questions, or any questions at all.

I never played Mighty No. 9 and thus my only opinions stem from watching other people play it, which is also my history with Megaman. See where I'm going with this? No nostalgia for Megaman meant I had no interest in playing Mighty No. 9, and honestly, that should have been a warning sign. A good game is a good game no matter what you had to invest in the first place, personal nostalgias and investments should only be a non-required plus instead of mandatory. If I needed to love Megaman to even care about Mighty No. 9, than just how much did the game have to offer? Based on gameplay videos and let's plays, I honestly kind of hate what I've seen of Mighty No. 9, because even there I can see what is so wrong and underutilized with it. I've also seen a few things about Megaman, and my opinion always was "I doubt I would like it but I can see the appeal."

Megaman got lucky in it's nostalgia factor while Mighty No. 9 did not. From what my unbiased and admittedly hands-off feelings can muster, Megaman was good for many reason, but one of them was because of when it came out. Games have advanced so much since then, it is no longer impressive, but because it does feel like the old game that it is, the enjoyment factor is still there because it at least feels like a product of it's time. When something is revolutionary, it tends to still work while the thousands of copies instead feel stale. When Mighty No. 9 comes around and says "We can do that same thing today!" and does not feel like it learned any lessons from the past decades of gaming, you have a game that doesn't work right and the nostalgia glasses can easily shatter.

Being inspired is different from simply banking on nostalgia, and sadly, there are people and companies that completely do that latter and know it every second. I'll give Mighty No. 9 the benefit of the doubt and say that I do believe the game faulted because the developers did not know what they were doing, they were not malicious in their doing. Honestly, the developers own nostalgia is most likely something that helped blind them in the process. As someone who isn't a Megaman fan, I can easily say that the franchise has it's place in gaming history but it is now outdated and needs improvements to be relevant and comparable while still being what it is at heart. Take for example 2016's DOOM, which was beloved for doing just that. Growing up with this game, or becoming a big name because of this game, and it can be very hard to not see that, and instead see the potential for an unofficial spin-off to do exactly the same today and be just as good.

Sometimes, however, nostalgia dumps are malicious, hence my concern for the subject. They do this because quite frankly, it keeps working. Companies are not stupid, marketing research is done because it works so damn well, even when we catch on. We say won't watch that crappy TV show we got a promo for, but we do. We say we've heard the same lies from  politicians before, but he it's an actor from a reality show this time so maybe it's the pro-racist stuff that's the lie instead. Nostalgia can work that way as well, because we used to be the kind of person who liked that thing, and many times we just jump in blindfolded because of it.

I brought this up before in the "artistic taste" post, but think back to your childhood. Think of a movie you watched all the time, that you absolutely loved. Ask yourself if you've seen it since then. Ask yourself, truthfully, if you do like this movie now. The reality is, you have just as much a chance of liking it as you do anything else.

I'm not joking when I say I did my best to throw away my nostalgia goggles a long time ago. I don't like having opinions on something purely based on what I thought of it as a child, or even a teenager, or even my first few years in college. I only graduated college little more than a year ago, and there I things I loved then that I hate now. Ir has nothing to do with the fact I used to love it, it's just that I first saw it at a time when it appealed to me, and I now have the opinion I would naturally have if I discovered it only recently.

I can picture arguments for nostalgia goggles, and that would be franchises or fan specials, that sort of thing. There's a different word I'd use for that, and I used it earlier: Investment.

Here's an example: Digimon Adventure Tri. I did grow up on Digimon, however, as a child I really only liked Frontier. In high school I decided to watch the first four seasons again, and I really liked it. I'm older now, and I have watched those four seasons in both English and Japanese, I have played Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and I have seen what is currently available in America of Digimon Adventure Tri. I am a huge fan of this franchise, and it's not because of nostalgia, I just straight up love it (although there's a reason I put an image for Adventure 02 in the logo picture, my opinions on that season did grow more sour after the re-watch). I've invested a lot of my time in it, and yes, since I was a child. I don't count that as nostalgia, in fact, I kind of can't in some regard, instead I just count myself lucky that a franchise that matters so much to me was able to show itself so early on in my life.

Bonus fact, my favorite movie and my favorite TV show were also things I watched when I was a kid. I loved them then, but not as much as I do now, because my age and wisdom has changed my opinion. I don't go "I grew up with these, so I love them." I go "I love these and I also happened to watch them when I was young."

Now, just to clean my palette, I'll admit a hypocrisy. I'm only human after all.

One of my favorite Disney movies is Fun and Fancy Free. Only because I grew up with it. My honest, brutal, and unbiased opinion on the movie? The first half sucks but at least it picks up after Jiminy Cricket goes to that little girl's birthday party and Edgar Bergen shows up. I still kind of love it, because my younger self enjoyed it so much. I own it on Blu-ray, and the only way to get it on Blu-ray was to spend the extra money to get it as a bonus with The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which in theory is a much better movie that I've watched far less often than Fun and Fancy Free.

Also, every year, I watch Spot's Magical Christmas. That special isn't bad, I can objectively say it's legitimately good and has entertainment value even for older audiences. It's just that I'm way to old to enjoy it all that much, but it was a staple of my childhood (until I lost the VHS for a good chunk of time).

The reality of the situation is, there is really nothing wrong with understanding what you liked when you were a child, and how much enjoyment you got out of you younger years because of these things. The problem is letting those exact feelings betray you. I may be able to watch Fun and Fancy Free but if I thought it was unwatchable, I wouldn't hate the time I'd spent with it. I just wouldn't like the movie, and I'd move on that knowing it isn't anyone's fault.

I'm also very much immune to the opposite and far more damaging side effect, believing I still love it and everything about it. I see way too many people jump on board for anything tied into something they used to like. Be it the new Power Rangers movie coming out soon just because they grew up watching the show even though they had a completely different tone than the movie is promising, or the constant TV show reboots we get that sort of are reboots to older shows we liked before. Sometimes it's hard to sit back and think logically about something with a tie to your childhood. Of course I'm not saying you'll hate these, I'm just asking you weight it in your hands the same way you would something not tied to your childhood. Being objective is a good way to look at media, and it also means that if it ends up sucking after all, at least it'll hurt less because you didn't blind yourself beforehand.

And of course, try to stay objective to things you used to like as well. I spent a lot of time from senior year of high and my third year of college watching Nostalgia Critic (And yes I did pick that example for the obvious tie-inable reasons to the theme), and I don't regret doing that, even though the me of today wouldn't be able to watch those same episodes without sinking into my chair and sighing.

Again, only my opinion. It's just media, keep that in mind. My only real advice is to stay objective, that your nostalgia for franchises you love may actually just be a level of investment, and if you are younger and reading this, just try to understand now that you may or may not love everything latter in life as much as you did now (when it comes to media) but don't let that beat you up, because it was still your time and you should feel happy you got enjoyment value out of it. Somethings you might even love more.

Hell, whenever I disagree with someone on a movie or book or what have you, with their opinion being they liked or loved it and my opinion being I disliked or hated it, my only thought it that I'm glad they enjoy it. It's good to enjoy something and I wish I did too, but it just didn't work out that way. It's also okay to not like something, the only real negative is that it's too bad because enjoying things is fun, but you can't win them all.

At the end of the day, just try to be a little careful with how much you let nostalgia into your opinions on media. You don't have to throw the nostalgia goggles away like I did, I'm just pointing out than when you believe you loved something unconditionally and you are proven wrong, without the right bracing for it it can feel like a betrayal.

So, yeah. As silly as this may sound to some of you, without the right mindset, nostalgia can in fact be dangerous.