Kennedy

Why Mother 4’s Rebranding is a Great Decision

March 2, 2017 Kennedy Articles, Blog

As some of you may have heard, the highly anticipated fan game Mother 4 has just announced that they’ve decided to rebrand the game. This was done mostly due to the controversial take downs of AM2R and Pokemon Uranium by Nintendo last year. As a fellow Nintendo fan game, Mother 4 had plenty of reason to believe that it not only could, but likely would also be taken down by Nintendo.

via http://am2r-another-metroid-2-remake.en.uptodown.com

“But it’s a free game! They’re not making any profit! So it should be fine, right?” Some of you may be thinking. As others may recall though, so were both AM2R and Pokemon Uranium. A common misconception about copyright and IP law is that to take legal action, the infringer (in this case, the fan games) has to be making a profit before the IP holder can take legal action–that’s not true at all. In what Josh Walters (attorney, law professor, advisor and chief of DeviantArt) calls “The Law of the Playground” in a panel he hosted on copyright laws in fandom at San Diego Comic Con 2012, there’s a slight difference in actual law and what’s written on paper. To paraphrase what he says, written law dictates that an IP holder can sue for anything as minor as fan art, regardless of its quality or whether or not it made profit, if they want to. However, the “law of the playground” dictates that, essentially, (and again: I’m paraphrasing so as to not quote an hour long lecture) if you do that then you’re going look like a petty jerk and likely suffer a barrage of bad press. Therefore, in cases like fan art, most IP holders go beyond not caring (from a legal standpoint) about whether or not you do it, but some even encourage it (after all, why wouldn’t they? Free advertising).

There is only, however, a certain degree to which the general public and companies tend to consider these minor infringements “acceptable.” Fan art? Acceptable–nay, often encouraged. Ripping movies from online and selling them for cheap? Not acceptable–might even get you in some degree of legal trouble depending on the extent to which you did it. Generally, the perception seems to be based on how much effort in the infringement that the infringer placed. Ripping a DVD or Blu-Ray? No effort or artistic value whatsoever. Making a fan game? Years worth of effort and lots of artistic value. I can’t confirm this, but I’d place a large bet that the the amount of income (if any) the infringement makes would also tip the scale in how acceptable it would generally be considered as well.

So how does this all tie into Mother 4? Because Nintendo is well-known to fiercely protect their IPs. And why wouldn’t they? They run a much higher risk than any other major game company for becoming a generic trademark. A generic trademark is when your brand name becomes so synonymous with the product that the name of the brand is usually used in place of the name of the product–for example, saying Q-tip for cotton swab, Aspirin for pain reliever, Yo-Yo for spinning toy, and even App Store for mobile gaming market. When your brand becomes a generic trademark, it essentially enters the public domain–therefore making it exceedingly difficult to take legal action if someone uses your brand name in a way you don’t want them to.

via imagenspng.com

Being the owner of some of gaming’s largest and most recognizable IPs, it should be no wonder why Nintendo might be scared of becoming a generic IP. They had a particularly bad scare in the 90’s, when they almost did become a generic trademark synonymous for video game console. They’ve become noticeably more fierce about defending their IPs since then–from taking down fan games (which, as I already explained, are considered copyright infringement in a court of law) to suing Pokemon themed parties. They have to be fierce about it–otherwise, as the most recognizable brand in video gaming, they and some of their IPs might come close to being generic IPs again. In return for their fierce defending of their IPs, they’ve had a lot of bad press about it, and certainly lost the faith and respect of several of their fans–especially those who loved some of their games so much that they wanted to express that love in the medium of another game, who will likely never think of Nintendo in the same way the once did again.

Some of you may be wondering if Mother 4 would still be affected by this because it does, after all, still have an original setting, original characters, etc. Point blank, yes, it is. They’re still using the Mother IP in the title, they revealed that they were putting Mr. Saturn in the game, and likely many more such concepts original to Mother. An IP doesn’t necessarily have to be the brand itself–it can also be identifiable hallmarks of the brand that make it itself. This can be anything from an aesthetic, concepts/characters/places existing in works of fiction, or even materials used in production. For example, Tiffany Blue. Yes, the color. It’s arguably the biggest hallmark of the Tiffany brand, and therefore, even using that blue is considered copyright infringement if you’re using it in a way when it can be confused with their brand. In other words, if you want to paint your house Tiffany Blue, that’s fine. If you want to sell your product in a Tiffany Blue box, then there might be a problem. If your product is jewelry, then you have a lawsuit on your hands if Tiffany Co. ever finds out. In this scenario, Nintendo is Tiffany Co. and Mother 4 is the artist packaging their jewelry in a Tiffany Blue box.

Luckily, judging by the trailers and the information we’ve been given about the game up until now, this won’t have an astronomical affect on the game. To quote the OP of the AMA, “This is still the story of Travis and his friends fighting the mysterious Modern Men. Leo still lights his smokes with paranormal fire.” In other words, although there will certainly be noticeable changes, the game is still itself. It will have a different name, but it’s still the same story. Whether or not this will affect gameplay is yet to be said, as far as I can see.

If they were to say that this game was inspired by Mother and drop some subtle references here and there, then legally speaking, that’s fine. Case in point: Undertale, which does this many times. Therefore, if Mother 4 took this approach by removing all the explicit uses of Mother/Earthbound IPs, they’d be in the clear, and unable to be touched by Nintendo. On the other hand, by keeping its name and the Mr. Saturns (among other characters/concepts original to Mother) they would put themselves at a likely risk of being taken down by Nintendo. As not only a huge fan of the Mother series, but a big fan of the work that the Mother 4 team has been showing in their game, I’d really hate to see this happen. Therefore, their protecting themselves from copyright infringement by rebranding and joining the ranks of games like Undertale and LISA as Mother-inspired games, they’re making a good decision not only for themselves, but for their fans who will want to play the game and see to it that it’s preserved. Nobody, least of all them, wants to see years worth of effort go to waste. That’s why rebranding is the best thing Mother 4 could’ve done for themselves and their fans right now. I, for one, am no less excited for this game than before.

via hardcoregamer.com

Fire Emblem Heroes: An Addictive, Economic Mess

February 26, 2017 Kennedy Reviews

“[Making mobile games] is absolutely not under consideration. If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo.” –Satoru Iwata, 2011

This time 5 years ago, Nintendo was vehement in its stance of never wanting to make a mobile game. Today, however, is a different story: Nintendo has released Miitomo, Super Mario Run, and now Fire Emblem Heroes. Released earlier this month, Fire Emblem Heroes made more than $2.9 million within 24 hours of its release–giving it the third highest gross revenue for a mobile game on release (only behind Pokemon Go and Super Mario Run). With an average of ~$50,000 in daily income and ~8,000 daily installments, Fire Emblem Heroes seems to be doing pretty well for itself a month later, making more in a day than most mobile games make in a year. As incredible as these numbers must sound, however, they don’t necessarily speak on behalf of the quality of the game. Let us not forget, for instance, that despite being the best selling mobile game of all-time (currently), Pokemon Go is still constantly accused of being a buggy mess–and although it’s constantly being patched, new glitches always seem to come up in place of the ones that were just fixed. I’m not saying that these glitches make the app bad by default, just that–despite its overwhelming revenue–it’s far from perfect. Fire Emblem Heroes, of course, is the same way.

Let me start this review off by saying that I really enjoy this game: In the past few weeks I’ve been a Fire Emblem fiend. Nintendo really seems to try to be pushing making 2017 the year of Fire Emblem and they’re already off to a wonderful start through this game. Fire Emblem Heroes takes the bare bones mechanics of a typical Fire Emblem game and combines them with a heap of sweet, sweet fan service. Not the trashy kind of fan service we’re all used to in anime games, but fan service in showing us older characters that many of us haven’t seen in years–for some of us (especially considering that 6 Fire Emblem games were never officially released in English) at all.

via mic.com

“Fire Emblem Heroes takes the bare bones mechanics of a typical Fire Emblem game and combines them with a heap of sweet, sweet fan service.”

But nostalgia and love of a given character shouldn’t blind anyone from the faults in this game, of which there are plenty. Whether or not they’re so bad that they weigh the game down I’ll address shortly, but what I would like to make clear beforehand is that although this game is definitely designed so that non-fans of the Fire Emblem franchise can play it, too, it’s definitely pandered heavily toward fans of Fire Emblem. Although this isn’t necessarily a problem, it is something worth keeping in mind for now.

 

 

Gameplay

If you’ve ever played any Fire Emblem game then you know how to play Fire Emblem Heroes. And if you haven’t played a Fire Emblem game, then it’s a fairly simple–with a few in-depth aspects (though they’re hardly present in Heroes)–strategy RPG: Making teams, moving them across various fields, and using strategy to kill the enemy. Fire Emblem’s simple gameplay transfers very well on mobile: It’s easy to learn, hard to fully master.

via rankedboost.com

Gameplay is where Heroes, like the rest of the Fire Emblem franchise, shines. The game offers many modes of combat (EX: Story mode, training, arena, etc.) to give the player a well-rounded experience and has a good variety of difficulty settings for all, giving players of all skill levels a way to have fun. Combined with the team building aspect, this can make for some quick, fun battles–which is perfect for the mobile platform.

The gameplay is very simple and straightforward–which for a mobile game, is ideal. Strategize, move your character(s), attack. Even though fans of Fire Emblem can jump into this game easily, it’s still designed so that non-fans–even of the strategy RPG genre–can still grasp it quickly and easily. Although it’s definitely a watered down version of the Fire Emblem gameplay (as it lacks classing up, a variety of attacks, etc.) it’s watered down in a way that’s ideal for a quick, yet enjoyable game: Something heavily emphasized in mobile games, making for an addictive experience.

 

 

Sound and Visuals

For a mobile game, Fire Emblem Heroes looks and sounds pretty sleek overall. It has an all-star voice acting cast (all of whom do an excellent job–despite the large cast, there’s not a bad actor in the group), a traditional “Fire Emblem-y” soundtrack, and the visuals are all solid. The only thing off putting about either of these things is the differing styles of art. Most of the characters are done in the very modern anime style seen in Awakening and Fates have, or something similar to it. Yet a lot of these styles have small nuances that make them look incredibly different when characters are put next to each other. More over, characters with radically different art styles like Arthur and Gunter look horrendously out of place. Although this alternate artwork isn’t bad (in fact, they’re all very well drawn) and, as an artist, I can sympathize that asking one single artist do do illustrations for the entire roster is a very tall order, I wish that they at least would’ve kept it more cohesive and avoided making some characters look like they’re in the wrong game entirely. Without knowing anything about the game, would you believe that these are all characters as the way they appear in the same game?

 

Story and Writing

Although I’ve not played the entire Fire Emblem series, I’ve still yet to play a Fire Emblem game with a notably interesting story–and Heroes is no exception. But due to the generally casual nature of mobile games (like Heroes) a super in-depth story isn’t necessary. The game gives you incentive to beat enemies and summon heroes and that’s it–but under these circumstances, that’s all it needs to do. Although it would’ve been nice to see something more clever than, “WOW we’re traveling across the different universes WOW look at all these characters from different worlds” (read: Kingdom Hearts) it gets the job done in this case. It’s not clever, but it doesn’t need to be clever. And given how needlessly complex the stories have been in some Fire Emblem games, having one that’s simply unoriginal is better than having one that’s trying too hard. On the story vs gameplay spectrum, Fire Emblem has always more heavily gravitated toward focusing on gameplay. Therefore–especially in a more casual setting like a mobile game–a clever or interesting story, while always a good touch, isn’t necessary. Fire Emblem Heroes neither falls nor succeeds in this department.

 

Exchange Rates

This is, without a doubt, where Heroes fails the most. Microtransactions are what keeps the mobile gaming market afloat: As such, as a game developer, it’s important that you make your audience want to buy them. Ideally, the microtransactions help the fun value of the game, but aren’t a necessity. When you emphasize the microtransactions too much, they make the game feel like a pay-to-win game, which your playerbase will catch on to fast and likely pander it for that reason as they grow increasingly sick of it. On the other hand, if you don’t emphasize them enough then nobody will buy them and your game won’t make a profit. It’s a very fine line. Sadly, however, Fire Emblem Heroes seems to lean heavily toward the free-to-play, pay-to-win model.

Scenario: You’re playing the story mode on Heroes. You’re horribly stuck, but you notice that one of your units of a different weapon class is doing much better than your other units in this map. You decide that you’ll add another 1 or 2 of that class to your team to help you win the chapter–but you notice that you don’t seem to have any other units of that class. So you decide to do a full summon (which is 20 orbs) with hopes that you’ll get a unit of that kind. But unfortunately, RNGesus didn’t smile on you today, and you don’t get one.

via rankedboost.com

Since you’re stuck in the story mode and unable to progress, if you don’t have any more paralogues left or the occasional quest that offers an orb, then sadly, you’re screwed unless you’re patient enough to horde your sign in bonus of 2 orbs each day for 10 days and hope that next time you’ll get one. But odds are you’re not. So you decide to buy orbs. Knowing that a full summon costs 20 orbs, to pay for a full summon would cost you $13 each time. Or if you know that you’re going to want to do a few of them, the “best” deal you can get them at (in terms of cost per orb) is 140 orbs for $75. The catch is that you have to spend $75–something very few people would be willing or able to do. But even if you are willing and able to do that, there’s still no guarantee you’ll get what you need since the summons are all RNG-based. Most famously, there was a player who dumped $1000 into the game and still wasn’t able to summon Hector.

Bottom line: Orbs are imperative to the game, and obtaining them can be a slow process. You can easily go days–maybe even a week–without being able to summon anything, which could drastically affect the rate at which you play then game. Worse than the rate at which you get orbs, however, is the rate at which you get feathers: 20,000 of which are required to rank a hero up. At the most, you can get feathers in the arena–usually 1,000. More typical than that, however, are interactions with characters that usually get you about 5. Not 50, not 500, 5. I shouldn’t even have to explain how ridiculous that is. Surprisingly, there’s no way to purchase feathers. What you can purchase, however, is stamina potions which you’ll desperately need if you want to be able to grind for feathers long enough to get 20,000.

The stamina in and of itself is also a major exchange rate issue, as there’s no way to upgrade it and many parts of the game require upwards of 10 stamina to even attempt once–keep in mind that the stamina is capped at 50, and currently there’s no way to upgrade that. With the wait time to restore stamina being as long as it is if you want to restore a significant amount, it makes grinding for anything a major hassle.

via rankedboost.com

It’s not surprising that the exchange rates in this game are so awful as I’m sure it’s done in part to make up for Super Mario Run. Unfortunately for Nintendo though, like they did in Super Mario Run, they’re making it incredibly obvious that they still don’t know how to price things fairly in a mobile game–both microtransactions and in-game-currency transactions.

With the in-game power these major factors, they slow the game down exponentially, making the game much more frustrating than it needs to be. Unless you get really lucky, this game makes it really difficult to be good at it as you progress–making purchases feel necessary. In other words, the free-to-play, pay-to-win model. The solution to this problem is simple: Either reduce the number orbs necessary for a summon, the number of feathers necessary for an upgrade, and the cost for stamina, or simply lower the prices of orbs, increase the number of feathers you win in arena/by talking with characters, and make it so that players can upgrade their stamina.

 

Fan Service

For years now Fire Emblem fans have wanted a crossover game to see their favorite characters fight alongside each other and create their dream teams: And, albeit watered down, this game delivers. You can play with a team of characters all from different Fire Emblem games if you want to. The Fantasy Fire Emblem team possibilities are insane. As the roster is now, there are representatives from every Fire Emblem game except for Path of Radiance, Radiant Down, Gaiden (soon to be known as Shadows of Valentia), and Thracia 776. Although that may seem like a lot of games–and certainly the surprising absence of Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn is felt–when you remember that’s only 4/14 games suddenly that doesn’t seem so bad, right?

via rankedboost.com

The only notable problem to be seen in the characters present is the heavy focus in characters from Shadow Dragon & The Blade of Light, Awakening, and Fates. Although these are without a doubt the biggest 3 games it still feels cheap that they make up the overwhelming majority of the roster. To be more precise, they account for 72/108 playable characters in the game–that’s about 2/3 of the roster all from the same 3 games, leaving the other 7 games to divide that last third. Fates boasts the highest number of characters from it with 30 whereas the game outside of “The Big 3” with the most characters from it is Binding Blade with 19. The game with the fewest characters from it (without having none) is currently tied between Sacred Stones and Genealogy of the Holy War, which each have 2 . A big part of the fun of this game is seeing characters from the games you’ve beaten fight again–much moreso for the fans of the older games that haven’t had much love or attention. Although it’s understandable why there would be a focus in the newer Fire Emblem games, it still feels cheap that they account for a majority so overwhelming that it’s 2/3 of the roster.

Arguably a bigger problem than the heavy saturation of the roster is the absence of characters from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn–particularly Ike who not only won the popularity poll held before this game by a landslide victory, but appeared twice in the top 5 due to being in both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. In total, Ike had 51,555 votes–almost double the next most popular male character (Roy, 28,982) and a few more thousand than the most popular female vote (Lyn, 49,917) making him the most requested character for Heroes. There were 3 other Radiant Dawn/Path of Radiance characters who appeared in the poll results (Micaiah, Mia, and Nephenee). Although Nintendo is almost certainly holding them for an event–probably for whenever the game starts to lose speed and the daily users starts its inevitable plunge–they chose a very unfortunate group to hold. By holding the most requested character, Nintendo has effectively angered several fans and made them feel like their votes in the poll never mattered, which is awful PR.

Despite the roster’s shortcomings, it’s still very satisfying seeing them acknowledge some of the older games and characters that otherwise never got much attention. Many fans can finally build the dream teams from across franchises that they’ve always wanted to–that is, if their teams were almost exclusively characters from Shadow Dragon & The Blade of Light, Awakening, and Fates (which in light of their overwhelming popularity, isn’t a difficult request). Hopefully Nintendo and Intelligent Systems will continue, like in the most recent event (Family Ties) to release characters from older games to break up the heavy saturation in the current roster.

 

Where this Game Succeeds

via forbes.com

Heroes’ strengths lie mostly in gameplay and fan service: This game is fun to play, point blank. If you enjoy strategy RPGs, regardless of whether or not you’re a Fire Emblem fan, you’ll enjoy Heroes. The gameplay is simple enough without feeling too easy, and yet still offers a good transition into difficulty as you progress–to the point where many chapters are notably difficult regardless of the difficulty setting you’re on. Even if you just want to jump into a higher difficulty the game will allow you to do that as well, no problem. Heroes accounts for players of all skill levels.

If you’re a fan of Fire Emblem–even if you’ve only played one title–it’s really satisfying when you get a character that you know of or want. This is even more true for fans of the older games who can finally see some of their favorite characters get some attention, love, and new art. It’s also a great gateway into getting newer Fire Emblem fans into older games in the series–something Nintendo will probably be emphasizing more when they add characters from the second Fire Emblem game to it since it’s being remade in May as Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia, but is being overshadowed by the fact that currently more than half the roster is from Awakening or Fates.

If you don’t care about the exchange rates–if you’re just playing this game to battle and get a team that you’re satisfied with early on–then this game is fantastic. The Fire Emblem battle system translates very well on mobile. Sure enough, this does feel like a Fire Emblem game. Although this is clearly catered toward people who are already fans of Fire Emblem, the slightly watered-down version of the Fire Emblem gameplay would also make for a good way of introducing potential new fans into the franchise–although I could imagine them also finding it frustrating not knowing who any of the characters are, that also might help them make a decision in which main series Fire Emblem series they’d want to start with if they like the gameplay enough to want to try the fleshed out version of it.

 

Where this Game Fails

via primagames.com

When Super Mario Run hit the mobile market, the main object of criticism with it was its exchange rates: That game itself was fine, but that it was the nuances of being a mobile game that hurt it, most notably its exchange rates which ultimately hurt it not just critically, but financially as well. Unfortunately, these problems were even more apparent in Fire Emblem Heroes. Like most mobile games, this game is designed to encourage purchases, but it crosses the line from the purchases helping to the purchases being necessary in many aspects. It becomes free to play, pay to win unless you have really good RNG luck. Although it’s definitely possible to play this game without making a purchase, it’s also significantly more difficult–and therefore, significantly more frustrating. This problem could easily be remedied by either bringing down the prices of the microtransactions or bringing down the cost of feathers/orbs/stamina potions necessary to do things, but until those are done this remains a glaring problem.

Aside from the exchange rates, this game is horribly disorganized. UIs are unwieldy, notifications that the player has already read will always come up on startup, and explanations are either too lengthy or simply not present. From a technical standpoint, this game is a mess relying heavily on the Fire Emblem logo to look cleaner.

 

Summary

All in all, this feels like a demo for the Fire Emblem franchise. Although it’s not the complete experience and certainly lacking in some areas, it does give you a basic idea of what the franchise is in a nutshell. You can tell it’s not done, but the potential is plain to see. It’s just a matter of seeing whether or not Nintendo or Intelligent Systems will fully realize that potential. As the game is now, it’s decent–but it has the potential to be great, and with very little effort on Nintendo or Intelligent System’s part.

via samurai-gamers.com

 

“[Heroes] feels like a demo for the Fire Emblem franchise. Although it’s not the complete experience and certainly lacking in some areas, it does give you a basic idea of what the franchise is in a nutshell.”

 

 

 

 

As they enter the mobile arena, Nintendo’s made it very clear that they still don’t know 100% what they’re doing. And although they are getting some things exactly right, they (unsurprisingly) seem to fail when it comes to handling the hallmarks of making a mobile game work like exchange rates, not relying too heavily on fan service, and organization. Yet by the same token, what they have done in Fire Emblem Heroes they’ve done well: They’ve chosen an ideal IP to bring to mobile (as it was already very portable), they’ve made it so that it’s not necessary to be a Fire Emblem fan to enjoy this game (even if it’s exponentially better if you are), and they’ve made a very easy-to-digest version of the Fire Emblem gameplay without making it too difficult. In fact, they’ve added difficulty settings to it to cater to players of all skill levels, making the game feel neither too easy, nor too challenging (unless of course it’s a matter of needing different units on your team, which I already addressed, falls into them needing to improve their exchange rates and therefore, making it less of a hassle to summon new heroes).

Fire Emblem Heroes is an enjoyable game, and as a fan of the Fire Emblem franchise (most notably some of the older games) I really like seeing a crossover game like this with several of Fire Emblem’s most well loved characters. (But of course, if it were up to me, Owain, Inigo, Lute, Lucius, and Artur would be in this game, too, but that’s neither here nor there.) On top of that, it has a very addictive quality to it thanks to the gameplay. Although a very watered down Fire Emblem game, it still feels very much like a Fire Emblem game, albeit riddled with exchange rate holes. If not for the exchange rates, this game could be wonderful. They are, however, so imperative that they weigh the game down with it.

 

This game has the potential to be wonderful, but until Nintendo or Intelligent Systems fixes it, it’s simply okay.

via lparchive.org

My Final Fantasy Wish List

January 29, 2017 Kennedy Articles, Blog

There aren’t many game series that have managed to not only survive, but thrive as long and as well as Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy has practically become synonymous with the JRPG genre and in many ways, is its mascot. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Final Fantasy is without sin, though.

Kennedy makes a sick joke

Get it? I’m hysterical. via finalfantasyunion

I find it hard to call myself a longtime Final Fantasy fan in light of just how long it’s been around, even in the States (1990) but I have been a fan of Final Fantasy for just over a decade now, and I have played most of the main series games and many of the sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. In other words, I know my way around the franchise well enough to know exactly what I want from it. Ever since the release of 15 I’ve been thinking a lot about things I’d like from the franchise since it’s been changing so much in its last few entries: New concepts that could be interesting, old ones that I’d like to return, things it should hang on to and let go of, and so on. So without further ado, here’s my wish list of things I want to see in Final Fantasy.

 

via fanpop

Remake or Re-Release of Crisis Core

Since Final Fantasy 7 is getting remade, it’d only be appropriate if its wonderful prequel, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, got a remake, too. Or at the very least re-released. It was originally released for the PSP in 2007 (or, if you live anywhere but Japan, 2008) and is, in fact, the tenth best selling game on the PSP. Despite being a clearly well-loved and well-selling game, a very crucial part of the Final Fantasy 7 story, and yet on a handheld console that was largely overlooked and underrated, Crisis Core never got a re-release of any kind. Not even on Steam, where you can find a sizable portion of the Final Fantasy franchise, for better or for worse. I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy 7 lately, and the only thing it’s making me want more than to sink my teeth into the remake is a chance to replay Crisis Core. Not only is Crisis Core simply a wonderful game, but it fleshes out 7’s story entirely–but sadly, unless I want to go buy another PSP, I can’t do that unless it’s re-released. Once the remake is out, we’re going to see a flood of new Final Fantasy fans wanting to get into the series and older fans wanting to relive it. Crisis Core is a large part of reliving the joy of Final Fantasy 7, and Square Enix can bank on that easily. There’s no reason for them not to re-release it.

 

via gematsu

3D Remakes of Final Fantasy 5, and 6 (or at least 6)

Currently, Final Fantasy 5 and 6 are the only main series Final Fantasy games that were never made or remade in 3D, despite 1-4 all getting 3D remakes on the DS (7, of course, is when they started getting made in 3D right off the bat.) Final Fantasy 5 I can sort of understand why it was never remade in 3D: It’s not one of the particularly more well-loved Final Fantasy games, generally has okay reviews at best, and is generally only well-known for being the first Final Fantasy game to expand the job system and add more customization options. In other words, it’s easy to see why it wouldn’t be high on Square Enix’s priority list for Final Fantasy.

The reason Final Fantasy 6 hasn’t been remade in 3D escapes me completely. There’s no reason for it not to have been remade in 3D. Final Fantasy 6 is constantly hailed as one of the greatest entries in the series. Many fans agree that its antagonist, Kefka, is the best in the whole franchise, the gameplay is more polished and perfected in 6 as opposed to the other 16-bit Final Fantasy games, the characters are very well-written, this was the first time a Final Fantasy game dug this deep into its story, it was emotionally gripping, the list of reasons why this game is so beloved can go on forever. This makes it all the more curious why it never got a 3D re-release or remake of any kind, sans a very poorly made mobile port with some slightly 3D sprites (which, in case you’re wondering, doesn’t constitute being called a 3D remake.)

If I haven’t made it clear enough, if only 1 of these games were to get a 3D remake, it should be 6. It confounds me how it hasn’t been remade in 3D yet. The gorgeous visuals and jaw-dropping atmosphere are 2 of the biggest hallmarks of Final Fantasy. So why not, Square Enix, bank on one of your most loved games and make it the visual indulgence we’ve all imagined it to be for over 20 years now? After the 7 remake is done, 6 should, without a doubt, be the next to get remade. If Square Enix wanted to take the next decade or so and not make any new Final Fantasy games and focus on remaking some of the classics instead, I honestly wouldn’t have a problem with that.

 

via hardcoregamer

A return to turn-based combat

If this were a numbered list, this would be number 1. If only one thing on this list were to happen, I’d want it to be this. I didn’t care for the combat in Final Fantasy 12. It got worse in 13. I give 14 the same leeway I give 11 because they’re both MMOs and therefore should be played differently because they’re a different genre of game, and of course, I’m not a fan of the gameplay in 15. One of the hallmarks that made early Final Fantasy stand out was its turn-based combat with a timer that was used in the first 9 games. In 10, the timer was removed and it was purely turn based. Final Fantasy 11 is when the average player could start noticing some pretty large changes to the traditional Final Fantasy combat, but as I already said, it’s an MMO–obviously the combat would be different. Enter Final Fantasy 12, which in terms of gameplay, feels like an identity crisis from start to finish. The timer from the early games is still there, but it’s not turn based–it’s a Frankenstein of gameplay elements. It’s the game that transitioned the series from its traditional turn-based combat to action JRPG combat.

Make no mistake, I like action JRPGs. In fact, there are many I love–most notably the .hack//G.U. trilogy which is one of my all-time favorites. The problem lying in Final Fantasy as an action JRPG series is that the gameplay is messy, gimmicky, and in many cases, needlessly complex. It had its time to experiment, but has failed not once (12), not twice (13 and all its spinoffs), but 3/3 (15) times now. Many fans miss the turn-based combat this series branded itself with–including myself. Change can be good, sure. And yes, there is a shortage of popular turn-based JRPGs (as opposed to action JRPGs) in recent years. I think that’s all the more reason Final Fantasy should return to its turn-based roots, especially if they choose to bring back the style from 10 which (in my opinion) was the best gameplay the franchise has ever had. Not only will several older fans be happy, but it’s an effective way to dominate the sizable niche of fans who prefer turn-based JRPGs (which is likely to be become bigger real soon with the release of Persona 5 on the way) and improve the overall quality of the games in general.

 

via movienewsguide

If you’re going to require watching an anime to understand a game, at least attach it with the game

This has been brought up on the podcast a number of times, but if your game–Final Fantasy or otherwise–practically requires you to watch an anime, please attach the anime with the game somehow. Put it in the case. Attach it with the files on Steam. Put an option to watch it in the main menu. Something. The original .hack// series attached DVDs with the .hack//Liminality anime with the games, so why can’t Final Fantasy do it, too? If it’s more of a spin off (like Advent Children) then this isn’t necessary, but in Final Fantasy 15 they practically make it a necessity to watch Kingsglaive and Brotherhood–yet they’re no where to be found with the games. Luckily, Brotherhood is available on Crunchyroll but Kingsglaive, however, isn’t. You have to pay $13.99 to stream it or buy it on DVD/Blu-Ray, unless you’re okay with pirating it. (Square Enix certainly isn’t, which makes it all the more baffling why it’s not more accessible.)

In summary, I don’t mind watching an anime to better understand the world of a Final Fantasy game–but if you’re assuming your audience has seen the anime (as Square Enix does with Final Fantasy 15) then give them access to the anime. There’s a difference between using an anime to help your storytelling and requiring the anime to help your storytelling–Final Fantasy 15 is the latter. If you’re going to do this, attach the anime with the game. It highlights its importance to the story. If you’ve bought the game, you’ve bought the anime with it. Square Enix doesn’t even have the courtesy of making Kingsglaive more accessible, which is, for lack of a better phrase, a scummy thing for them to do–not to mention confusing. Is trading accessibility for a higher price honestly more profitable for them in this scenario? Anime is one of the easiest things out there to pirate or stream illegally. I honestly think that if they charged a reasonable price for Kingsglaive, Square Enix would see many more people more willing to pay the extra few dollars to support it. But by asking so much to see it–especially after paying for the game with a retail price of $60–that seems like more money than necessary. Again, this wouldn’t be a big deal if it were a spinoff like Advent Children was, but unless you want to be left without context several times in-game, watching not just Brotherhood but also Kingsglaive is a necessity.

 

via idigitaltimes

Keep the camera from Final Fantasy XV in future entries

There isn’t anything in Final Fantasy 15 that puts a bigger smile on my face than when I see Prompto has taken more pictures. It’s charming, culturally relevant, and a good way to share the game and get some free publicity and discussion on social media.Final Fantasy 15 is the first time we’ve seen such a large integration with modern technology in a Final Fantasy game, and for the most part, makes it work really well! Whatever direction Final Fantasy 16 takes–traditional fantasy (EX: 10), futuristic/dsytopian fantasy (EX: 7), or something with a more modern feeling (EX: 15) I really hope that Square Enix finds a way to integrate the camera. In fact, photographer can be a permanent class in Final Fantasy for all I care. Regardless, it’s a light hearted break to see our protagonists having fun during the rest of the despair and tragedy going on in the rest of the game–I hope it stays. In fact, I hope we’re eventually able to take our own in-game photos as well.

 

via vizzed

Bring back the questionable fashion choices

If you’ve played almost any Final Fantasy game before 13 you know exactly what I’m talking about. Skirts made out of belts, hats the size of your torso, a new character sporting a midriff for each day of the week, and who can forget the indescribable “style” of the blitz ball uniforms. With a few exceptions (most of the characters from 7 and 8 and a few other miscellaneous characters here and there) up until Final Fantasy 13 most characters in the series had wonderfully bad fashion taste. But of course, most of their attire fits in well with the universe–if anything, it helps build the universe. A glance at any character from Final Fantasy 9 will tell you that we’re dealing with a very traditional fantasy game–just as a glance of any character from Final Fantasy 15 will tell you that there’s less traditional fantasy in this entry.

But man oh man, despite that, I still miss the wildly imaginative–often over imaginative–designs given to characters. I consider these over-the-top fantasy designs practically a part of the Final Fantasy branding because they were used for so long. There’s nothing wrong with not having them, though–like I said, in a subtle way, it helps build the world. Such as in 15, they might not be necessary. But to someone who’s become so accustomed to the questionable designs of Final Fantasy–which is likely the vast majority of fans–it’s a little disappointing playing a game like 8, 13, or 15 and not needing to pause for a minute to wonder how someone’s hair is staying the way it is and how many hair products they consume in a daily basis. Or how part of an outfit was even crafted or where it was bought, let alone staying on their body. Or feeling pure shock and awe seeing a cosplay of it and wondering how the hell they did it. In 13 is when I think we saw the transition. If you went out dressed light Lightning, Vanille, Serah (her 13-2 costume, not her 13 one), or Noel you’d probably get some strange looks, but in the right environment (I say because of Fang) I think you could get away with dressing up as anyone else without anyone batting an eye. Will we ever see a character with hair as gravity defying as Cloud or Seymour again? God, I hope so. I miss the sensation of being able to look at a character design covered in 50 fabrics, a few unnecessary pieces of armor here and there, a dozen belts and zippers, probably either a midriff or a deep v-neck (maybe even both), and hair that would make Marie Antoinette jealous and without knowing anything else being able to identify that it’s a Final Fantasy character.

via avclub, illustration by Nick Wanserski @NWanserski

 

Kingdom Hearts: The Epitome of Gameplay over Story

January 13, 2017 Kennedy Articles, Blog, Reviews

Warning: Major Spoilers for All Kingdom Hearts Games Ahead

It’s an argument as old as time: Story vs Gameplay. Alongside Console vs PC, this is probably the second most argued thing by the gaming community as a whole–and most will probably tell you that it depends on the game–after all, I don’t know anyone who played Bayonetta for the “story” or anyone who plays a Telltale game because they can’t get enough of making decisions that ultimately won’t matter. But on the other side of that, the gameplay in Bayonetta is nothing short of exhilarating and The Wolf Among Us brags a story more interesting than most other games. As far as the gameplay vs story debate, although it does certainly depend on the game (after all, I don’t start a new visual novel game expecting much, if any gameplay–and I don’t play fighting games because I want to know the story) in my opinion, the best games are the games that have both of these 2 factors working together in tandem and with equal force.

What do I mean by this? After all, what separates a game from other means of telling a story is the gameplay–should the gameplay not be the main focus of the game? Not necessarily if the game is a game meaning to tell a story. After all, if the story is good enough, it can outshine any lack of gameplay (or poor gameplay) and keep the player interested anyways–which is the foundation of the visual novel genre. Alternatively, if one’s gameplay is good enough, the player won’t care about the story because they’re having so much fun–which is what a lot of fighting games rely on. There’s no right answer in the story vs gameplay debate, but we can identify which one a game focuses on despite its efforts–and Kingdom Hearts being such a complex case of this is a great series to analyze in this lens.

It’s hard for me to remember a time when I completely understood the story of Kingdom Hearts. And believe me, there was! In my middle school and early high school days (about 10 years ago–when ReChain of Memories wasn’t out in English yet and 358/2 Days was hardly more than a rumor) you could’ve asked me anything about the franchise, no matter how obscure, and I could’ve told you the answer–well, if there was an answer at least. The story of Kingdom Hearts has always been one that’s tried to shroud itself in mystery when it can. That wasn’t enough to stop Kingdom Hearts from being my favorite game series for a few years, though. Needless to say, when a new game would come out, I’d buy it day 1. I wanted those questions that not even I knew the answer for to be answered. And as more games came out and more questions were “answered” it became more and more apparent to me:

The story of Kingdom Hearts has always been vague, and it will stay vague until the end.

Every time a question was seemingly answered, it never came without a catch–another dozen questions arise, the characters don’t know the full story, someone teases that there’s more to it than that and either won’t tell you what you’re missing or at least won’t tell you until much later, people forget about the answer and it becomes irrelevant, or in some cases, it becomes important again later and it’s revealed that the “answer” you thought you’ve had all this time was wrong all along. It’s one thing to do these things once or twice–in fact, it’d be hard to imagine a good story in which everyone knew everything all the time–but it’s another to use them all the time and for every possible conflict and character, as Kingdom Hearts does.

Take for instance the purpose of Organization XIII. In Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2, we’re told it’s a coalition of strong Nobodies who have joined together under Xemnas who seek to open Kingdom Hearts to regain their hearts and become whole again. Nothing too wrong with that, right? Enter Xion in 358/2 Days: Suddenly, it becomes apparent to us that there’s more to their purpose than they say since Xemnas went out of his way to make a (faulty) clone of Roxas in case he “proved useless” but despite the implications that came with that, we weren’t told anything more. Birth By Sleep comes out, we see the origins of Organization XIII: It was originally a research project lead by Ansem the Wise and Xehanort on heartless and memories (particularly the restoration of Xehanort’s memories) gone horribly wrong, ultimately resulting in them becoming Nobodies. Finally, Dream Drop Distance: Xigbar reveals that the true purpose of the Organization was to create vessels for Xehanort–the members, who were on some level, all at least part Xehanort (though only Xigbar and Saix were aware.) Alternatively, they were also possibly meant to be the 13 Seekers of Darkness to fight the 7 Lights in the inevitable keyblade war that would follow.

via imgur

Organization XIII is just one of the dozens of major elements that make the “everything but the kitchen sink” story that is Kingdom Hears. Sadly, it’s also one of the easier elements to explain since it’s a group, rather than a single character–all of whom are surrounded by clones, vague symbolism, Alzheimer’s symptoms, more clones, cardiology problems, and at least 1 major identity crisis per game. If I had to compare the overall writing in Kingdom Hearts to anything, it’d be an overdramatic soap opera or telenovela with too many twists and turns–to the point where it’s clear to anyone who watches it for more than 10 seconds that it’s trying far too hard.

Actually, comparing Kingdom Hearts to a cheap soap opera or telenovela is still a bit generous since the same soap operas don’t aspire for the same level of symbolism that Kingdom Hearts always is, yet always loses itself in trying so hard, effectively turning any traces of symbolism into the player wondering if anything said in a given conversation is meant to be taken literally. (Read: Any time anyone talks dramatically about the concepts of light and darkness and if it’s supposed to be symbolic of good and evil, or if they’re talking about a literal force, and how wildly inconsistent it is.)So despite how obviously the story has lost itself in its own alleged symbolism, why are there so many people who defend the writing in this game to the death? Two words: Forced Drama.

How do soap operas and telenovela play up a situation, even if it doesn’t entirely make sense to the audience? Editing. Dramatic music and sound effects. Dynamic camera angles. Over-the-top acting. And when one starts making money, the writers come up with a cheap excuse to draw the story on longer than it needs to be. How does Kingdom Hearts do it? Editing. Dramatic music and sound effects. Dynamic camera angles. Try-hard acting. And what has Kingdom Hearts been doing so well these last few years? Cheap excuses that have been drawing out the story longer than it needs to be.By clearly establishing an easily identifiable relationship between the main characters and knowing right when to time the music, Kingdom Hearts has done a stellar job of making you think a moment is dramatic and heart wrenching when in reality, it’s either completely insignificant (or will become insignificant), or just plain makes no sense and is merely happening out of convenience. The best example of this I can give is Axel’s death in Kingdom Hearts 2. Axel was (and still is) my favorite character in Kingdom Hearts–so like most, his death scene, no matter how underwhelming, really upset me. Even back then I knew it was a really underwhelming scene–and frankly, poorly timed as well. Axel has come seemingly out of no where, helps Sora fight off one horde of nobodies, and dies thinking of Roxas.

So to understand this scene, first we got to understand why he died in the first place. Why it was necessary. Was it necessary? Absolutely not. Up to this point, the only things that have killed Organization XIII members was fighting with either Sora or Riku–not a kamikaze attack. Not just any kamikaze attack, but one that not even Axel seems to be aware of. In the cutscene preceeding his death, Axel says, “I think I liked it better when they were on my side.” to which Sora asks, “Feeling a little…regret?” “Nah, I can handle these punks. Watch this!” and then Axel explodes. At least, that what it looks like–he’s still in one piece, somehow completely devoid of burns, yet it still kills him.

So what’s the reasoning in killing the only member of the Organization that isn’t completely against us?

  • To reveal that he was the one who kidnapped Kairi and where Sora can find her and a route there–something that also reveals that Axel has had a change of heart (pun intended) and is now on your side, therefore letting you sympathize with him more in his final moments.
  • To show us that Axel has been a good guy all this time–that he’s never stopped thinking about Roxas and that all he’s done up to this point was selfless, despite how it may have looked–and thus show some character development for him.
  • To rid the game of the biggest nuisance in the Organization since he’s the only one that Sora (or perhaps more accurate to say Roxas, who is a part of Sora) likes and probably would be unable to kill himself because of that friendship.
  • To up the sense of drama at the end–the sense of just how many enemies Sora is against and how hard it would be without friends and how powerful the enemy is. Sora couldn’t defeat all these nobodies that Xemnas could control–he needs someone else to help him, and Riku isn’t quite an option yet. So who else could Sora call a friend? At this point in the game, Axel is the only one who fits the bill.

So yes, killing off Axel definitely wasn’t an accident. It was the way it was done that was sloppy. As I mentioned before, it was underwhelming. The attack that killed him didn’t look like something that would kill him. The way he spoke before doing the attack wasn’t how someone who knew they were about to die in a move of self sacrifice would speak. It was the tone and words of a new ally who was confident that he was more powerful than you and that he could prove it–without serious consequences. And when Sora realizes that he’s fading away, Axel still speaks casually–not just unlike someone who’s dying, but unlike anyone who’s even slightly injured. So why is this out-of-the-blue death still so sad? Because they start playing the sad music which this game is so famous for. Because we see Axel talking about his one and only friend, saying “He… was the only one I liked. He made me feel like I had a heart.” So we get sad. Not because Axel is dying, but because the game is giving us the cues to be sad.

Axel’s death was nothing more than a convenient way for the game to give some exposition, character development, and a route to your next destination all in one convenient scene. But what makes a character death emotional is when it’s more than than that, when it’s more than a convenient plot device like this is and nothing more. A truly gripping character death isn’t just looking to be convenient, it’s looking to be meaningful–and due to the underwhelming and too-sudden timing and method of his death next to how convenient his death would be, it’s easy to see that his death was, indeed, just a plot device. It’s not sad, the game just gives us the cues so we think it’s sad. And it’s not hard to play up these cues since they gave him a few redeeming lines at the last minute. Just to further this point, nobody ever looks back on Axel’s death. It’s not something Sora ever looks back on (very surprising, in light of how highly he seems to value his friends) for strength, it’s not a scene anyone goes back to thinking, “We couldn’tve done this without Axel.” Axel is literally never mentioned again by anyone–very surprisingly, since this is supposed to be a sad scene, right? Not surprising at all when you realize that this is just a thinly veiled plot device wrought of convenience because leaving Axel alive would be too problematic at the time (after all, can’t have a member of the Organization running around, can we? Especially one looking for Roxas) and the writer’s inability to write a good death and using the editors as a crutch to make up for it.

If you want to reference a good heroic death scene to compare this to–one that’s not the love child of poor writing and needing some last minute exposition–I’d point you toward another Square Enix game, Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, in Zack’s death scene. Not only is it clear that he knows he’s going to die saving Cloud, but as we see in Final Fantasy VII, it’s something that stays with him. Something that haunts him. Something that’s formed him into the character he became because he’s tried in many ways to become Zack. Not just him, but Aerith as well. It’s emotionally gripping not just because there’s rain and sad music, but because we already saw so much character development for Zack throughout the whole game and how badly he wanted to be a hero–and seeing that he’s finally come full circle and become one. To drive the point home, it shows you Zack’s life flashing before his eyes. And because, if you’ve played Final Fantasy VII, you’ll realize that his aspirations for Cloud would only be half fulfilled because he was unable to protect Aerith, whom Cloud associates heavily with Zack. It’s emotional, it’s gripping, it’s something that affects the characters.

In short: Axel’s heroic death isn’t sad because it’s just a convenient plot device with sad music and no ramifications.

Zack Fair’s heroic death is sad because it has ramifications. Because by this time we know him incredibly well and how his story has come full circle and now he’s passing it on to Cloud, who’s changed radically by Zack’s death and will ultimately feel failure to protect his legacy by failing to protect Aerith.

If it wasn’t enough that they were insulting Axel’s character so much to only kill him (sloppily) for convenience, they went and did one of what I consider to be cardinal sins of writing a good story:

They brought him back to life in Dream Drop Distance. For no reason. No explanation. He literally just showed up.

And what’s more, like everyone else now, he can wield a keyblade because why the hell not.

via tumblr

The whole game operates under the same formula as Axel’s death: Use the music and camera angles, make people think it’s sad by forcing the emotion, and then BAM! Make it irrelevant somehow–In Axel’s case, by bringing him back to life for no reason. Just when the game makes you think it’s sad, it makes you happy again. You’re feeling a wide range of extreme emotions when you play through this series, so even when you don’t understand what’s going on, you still feel emotionally involved because the game is giving you the cues for when to be happy, sad, etc. And that’s why so many people confuse the fragments of story in Kingdom Hearts with a solid, understandable, well-written story–because they feel emotionally involved.

By now you probably think I hate Kingdom Hearts–and I don’t. Because it’s finally time to look at the other side of Kingdom Hearts: The gameplay. It’s an action RPG with several menus. Gameplay is kept constant in the main games (Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, and Birth By Sleep) and gimmicky in the “in-between” games like Chain of Memories, 358/2, ReCoded, and Dream Drop Distance. In the main games, the gameplay is generally the same–attack with one button, use magic with another, and then use items. Menu is in the bottom right, use it! Personally, I think Birth By Sleep had the best gameplay as it used that simplicity and added special combo attacks and a better way to aim. Regardless, there’s something satisfying about hitting mashing a button and see Sora (or whoever else the protagonist may be) act accordingly, nearly at the same speed as you. And what’s more, the games do require several elements of strategy in some of the battles–they’re not all easy. You can’t just keep mashing attack and win all the time. And it’s fun. It’s satisfying. And they mix up the gameplay (for better and for worse) in just enough games to make it feel all the more diverse and refreshing. From a technical standpoint, Kingdom Hearts is just. Plain. Fun.

In recent games, they’ve especially boosted this with adding more fun to be had than in combat: By adding mechanics with Unversed and training them in Dream Drop Distance, by sliding around in Birth By Sleep (and based on the trailer, we’ll see this again in 2.8 and 3), using the enemies more creatively, and of course, bigger, flashier, more colorful, borderline cinematic looking attacks. It’s fun to watch this happen–it’s fun to make it happen.

It’s hard to play a Kingdom Hearts game and not say you didn’t have at least a little fun. From a technical aspect–visuals, soundtrack, and most importantly, gameplay, Square Enix nailed it with Kingdom Hearts. I think that’s why I care so little about Chain of Memories, which has gameplay that’s the antithesis of all the other Kingdom Hearts games by using deck building based combat–which is significantly slower than the normally fast paced, hot bloodedness of the rest of the series which is so easily and readily fun to play right off the bat. It’s satisfying, it’s not mindless, and there’s different ways you can play the game if you don’t like playing it in a certain way. (EX: Using more magic, or using a certain kind of magic, as opposed to normal attacks–or focusing on abilities rather than regular attacks and magic.)

I don’t hate Kingdom Hearts. In fact, I quite like it. What I don’t like–no, what I don’t understand–is how a series that was the brainchild of the same man who made Final Fantasy 7 (and many other wonderful JRPGs) could’ve also thought of the hot mess story that is Kingdom Hearts. Lost in its own symbolism and the clearest example of what happens when you make a few too many sequels and come up with any excuse you can to force drama and carry the series on far longer than what it should’ve been, Kingdom Hearts fails in every possible department of story telling. I guess that’s what happens when you try to mix Disney charaters, Final Fantasy characters, and a few original characters. It sounds like the beginning of an awful “X and Y walk into a bar” joke, but alas, it’s the unfortunate basis of one of the most well known JRPG series of all time. But for every bit that the storytelling is bad, the gameplay is absolutely wonderful. It’s satisfying, fast, and increasingly diverse and cinematic. Again: It’s just plain fun.

In the story vs gameplay debate, Kingdom Hearts is the clearest example of how if a game’s gameplay is good enough, it can outshine even the worst of stories. If your editing and soundtrack is good enough, you can fake having a good story under the guise of “emotional involvement.” As such, joins the ranks of other convoluted but fun games like Bayonetta and Metal Gear. Not bad games at all–in fact, they’re excellent games. But God forbid movies ever get made about them, removing their gameplay and relying entirely on the overly complex story to entertain the audience.

Kingdom Hearts is what happens when an idea that would work for no more than 3 games gets drawn out far longer than necessary in an attempt to make money. The story becomes cheap, convoluted, and inconsistent, the excuses and reasoning behind character’s actions (and thus the characters themselves) become one-trope caricatures, and the strong emotions you felt in those first few games gradually become forgotten. If Kingdom Hearts didn’t have stellar gameplay to save it, this series likely would’ve died years ago.

Oxenfree: The Most Disappointing Game of 2016

December 31, 2016 Kennedy Reviews

As 2016 comes to a close, gamers everywhere are talking about gaming’s best and worst of the year. When talking about the worst that gaming had to offer this year, I could pick the low hanging fruit by talking about No Man’s Sky or Mighty No.9 but there’s very little to say about them that hasn’t already been said at this point. Instead, I’d like to tell you about Oxenfree: The most disappointing game I played all year.

As its described on Steam, “Oxenfree is a supernatural thriller about a group of friends who unwittingly open a ghostly rift. You are Alex, and you’ve just brought your new stepbrother Jonas to an overnight island party gone horribly wrong.” It has very positive reviews on steam, particularly positive reviews off of Steam, there seems to be an element of thriller to it–which I appreciate–secluded ghost island as a setting, gorgeous stylized graphics, the choices matter tag, so when I see this I’m thinking this game looks like something right up my alley. Months later, after being very high on my radar for quite a while, I finally got it and by this time, I’m looking incredibly forward to it.
Immediately once I start playing it, the first thing I notice is that this game runs like a potato on my laptop. In its defense though, my laptop isn’t too good for gaming. In any case, it took decades for a single scene to happen because there’s a lot of conversation in this game and talking speed is fine, but the animations for characters talking is incredibly slow because of the aforementioned potato-ism. And so each conversation was like a battle to the death with my impatience because after any sentence would end, I was generally waiting an extra minute or 2 to hear the response to it because the talking animation is still going. But as I said, I more or less excused the game for this since my laptop was the reason this was happening, and I didn’t have another way of playing it. This complaint wasn’t necessarily the game’s fault, but it certainly didn’t aid toward my attitude of it as the game trudged on.

via nightschoolstudio.com

So our story is that these high schoolers are going to an island on some kind of  school trip–except that the rest of the group isn’t there yet? But also because our protagonist didn’t want to be alone on the anniversary of her brother’s death? The reason for their being there isn’t exactly made completely clear, so right off the bat the writing needs some help.
Now, our main characters are a group of high schoolers. And very early on I started thinking that, in the nature of writing realistic high schoolers, all these characters are shit heads.  You play as Alex, who’s very much a special snowflake. We’re already off to a bad start because the only thing I hate more than characters who are written to be special snowflakes just for the sake of being special snowflakes is when the main character is a special snowflake just for the sake of being a special snowflake. And what’s worse is that this game goes out of its way to remind you that she’s a special snowflake on multiple occasions, only driving the nail further into the coffin.Then we have her “friends”: New step brother that nobody’s friends with yet, quiet girl, the guy who brought pot brownies, and bitchy girl that nobody likes and there doesn’t seem to be a reason why anyone invited her in the first place.
But again, I tried not to think about this too much since that’s just the nature of writing a set of realistic high schoolers. High schools are full of shitty people. So again, I let this one go thinking, “Well, these characters are high schoolers and high schoolers are shit heads, so it’s natural that they’d be shit heads. …Even if they’re shit headier than most high schoolers buuuuttt—”
Our supernatural situation is presented fairly early on after the world’s longest campfire game of exposition, courtesy of my laptop, and it’s that the ghosts are triangles…? At first I thought that was fine, a little weird but fine, I’m sure it’ll all make sense later on, it’s still only the first hour of the game. This’ll definitely be explained later on. (Spoiler alert: It was never explained later on.)

via polygon.com

If it isn’t already really obvious, by the one hour mark, I was already having to actively try to make myself like the game. After all, it looked so interesting and the reviews were so good–maybe it just had a slow start? Maybe the characters would get better? In any case, after your contact with the triangle ghosts, you and your “friends” get separated, (y’know because ghosts) but you’re able to find a way to communicate with each other so now you and your step brother are gonna go pick em up. And the process is…long, to say the least. Between the lagging on my laptop and the needlessly long and winding roads in the game, traveling from spot to spot was a pain, to put it simply. It was a pattern of click a few inches away from Alex, wait for her to finally catch up, wait a little longer, click again. For several hours of the game. (That alongside making decisions and adjusting your radio is all the gameplay you’ll see in Oxenfree–it’s very much a story and decision driven game.)
50 years later when you finally find them, you guys start to make a plan for how you’ll escape. Luckily for us, turns out Alex used to go to this island all the time with her dead brother, so she knows where the dead owner of the only house on the island kept a boat that’s surprisingly not dead. So they go to the house, and FINALLY we have some kind of more direct communication with our ghost pals via the girl that nobody liked or missed anyways. If the writers wanted the ghosts to possess a person with hopes that it’d put our moral compass in a tizzy, they chose the worst character for the job. (Not that there were any good choices, but this was still the worst choice.)
Up until this point, the ghosts have been screwing with us, making small fragments of time repeat, photobombing, etc. but sit down, friends. Let me tell you what finally made me admit to myself that I wasn’t having fun with this game, and that’s the brand of “creepiness” that this game uses.
Here’s where we enter the wonderful realm of subjectivity: What one person finds creepy, another may not. But like all things, there are many things that most people agree is creepy. And like all generalizations, these generalizations will evolve with time. So what this game uses to creep us out are red eyes, small time loops, radio static noises with mixed voices, intentional visual “glitches”, never explicitly stated satanic themes, and of course, those weird triangles.


When something is creepy, that means it creates a feeling of discomfort within us. Like robots in the uncanny valley, seeing a middle aged man look at a 16 year old girl for a little too long, or even something more conventional like a black cat walking under a ladder. Another big part of what makes creepy things creep us out is whether or not we’re used to it. Taxidermy is another thing that creeps most people out, but do you think that when a taxidermist looks at their collection they get creeped out? Probably not because they’re so used to seeing it that they’ve got used to it. It’s normal. And this is where Oxenfree falls.
Red eyes. Intentionally glitchy graphics. Radio static and mixed voices. Satanic implications that are never blantantly spelled out. These are all things you’ll find in other recent games that try to be creepy, or on an edgy 12 year old’s tumblr. Hell you’ll find these things in a Hot Topic. Red eyes? Okay, that’s a trope that’s been used since the beginning of time. Free pass. Intentionally glitchy graphics? Satanic themes that are never blatantly spelled out? Both things that have become very fashionable when trying to portray something as creepy in a more horror oriented way.
Satanic themes that are implied by never blatantly stated are especially trendy lately. Not just in movies and games, but even in fashion–I can’t tell you how many girls I see sporting clothes or accessories with ouija boards these days. It’s hip, it’s trendy, and why wouldn’t it be? Because by the looks of all the recent horror movies, sometimes-explicit but usually just implied themes of Satanism or the devil are in.
As for the intentional visual glitches? Huge trope right now. Found footage and “based on true-ish events” movies are HUGE right now, and this trope is a STAPLE for them. And this trope translates very well into games, so we’ve had no shortage of its usage lately. Undertale. Pony Island. The Stanley Parable. I can go on, this goes back as far as Metal Gear.
Bottom line, the only traits they use to portray creepiness are all, in my humble opinion, trite, cliche, and overused. But because they’re what’s fashionable right now in this wonderful age where unexplicit Satanic themes that are never fully explained or explored are popular, of course that’s what they’re going to go for. The low hanging fruit. And I’m bored of that brand of creepiness. I’ve been bored of it for ages now. And because I’m used to seeing it so often in media, it’s no longer creepy to me. And worst of all, this game uses the most textbook version of that brand of “creepiness” as a crutch to distract from it’s poorly explained story,  featuring characters that I just don’t care about.

via kotaku.com

Suddenly, the only reason I was playing this game was in hopes that everything would be explained or that the story would take a total 180, but neither wish came true. Such is the nature of a lot of stories like this, the evil, supernatural force is never quite explained. It’s just there because it happens to be there, and unluckily for you, you happen to be there, too. Go figure. The rest of the game went by like this. A story that was never fully explained, featuring characters that got no better despite the game’s efforts, gameplay that felt more like a chore than gameplay, I wasn’t getting any enjoyment from this game anymore.
That’s not to say it had no positives though, it did do some things I enjoyed. The visuals, first and foremost, are fantastic. Second, I will preach to the ends of the earth that if at least half of your game’s gameplay is based in making decisions, there BETTER be different outcomes to these decisions–and I don’t mean a Telltale, oh it was different for 3 seconds but both options resulted in the same outcome anyways kinda different, I mean completely 100% different. And these different paths better lead to different endings, and on that front, Oxenfree absolutely delivered. Despite how slow and painful conversations were, I still felt like all my decisions actually held weight–and lo and behold, they did! In fact, it does that thing at the end where it gives you a percentage of how many other players made the same decisions as you, and I love that. I wish more games did that.
And finally, it’s not like this game didn’t even try when it came to the writing. There were these brief, evanescent moments where you can tell that they were trying to care about the situation more, or sympathize more with a character, or even just trying to really get you caught up in a moment. But alas, just as quick as you could tell that they were trying to make some headway with the writing, just as quickly it seemed to stop.

via indiehaven.com

The best example I can give of this is in that campfire game at the beginning. You can ask Jonas if he went to juvy and he’ll say no. Of all the questions you can ask Jonas this one seems the most far-fetched, especially at the time. Like, who do you have a crush on? How do you feel about your new family? How’s school? Have you ever been to juvy?And from right then and there, even though he denies it, the sole fact that such a standoff question in a game void of silly or irrelevant options is even there tells the player that he’s been to juvy. There’s no reason for the game to even bring it up otherwise. So the whole game you’re waiting to hear it him admit it. And it makes you curious about him. Why was he in juvy? Why won’t he tell us? You become curious about Jonas.
And then, close to the end of the game, when he finally tells you, he doesn’t even treat it like a big deal. He’s like, “Yea, I beat up a kid because he threw a baseball at my head and went to juvy. Didn’t say anything earlier because…aaaahhh I dunno’. “And then it’s never brought up again. There seemed to be no reason for it, other than for the sake of making you curious about him, ultimately with pretty much no payoff. Now, if he had told us about juvy–if maybe some event happened there that changed his personality, or even just being there changed him and he described what it felt like to be there, that’d be one thing. That’s payoff, because now we’re getting some tangible character development through backstory. But we don’t.  Like, that conversation could’ve been anything else. We don’t learn anything new about Jonas that we didn’t already know without being told.
Seriously, you can replace the word “juvy” in their conversation about it with the name of any other place and it doesn’t make a difference. You can make it Walmart. And nothing about his character changes. That’s how you know this isn’t giving us any character development. It’s not even used as a way to show that now he feels more comfortable around Alex, because he flat out says that he’s telling Alex this so that she’ll know before someone else in their group finds out and uses it against him. The strategy was there in this attempt at character development, but since the payoff wasn’t, it doesn’t do us any good.


On a scale from 1 to 10 I’d give Oxenfree a 4. It’s not that it was bad necessarily it just wasn’t good, either. Even when you put away how poorly this game ran on my computer and how I just don’t care for the generic, edgy 12 year old on tumblr brand of creepiness that this game uses, the writing just isn’t good. You can tell that they’re trying to write it well, but the magic just never happens. Strategies to help emotionally invest the player are certainly there, but never with any payoff. Especially in light of how much I wanted to love this game, it just makes it all the more disappointing for me. But will Oxenfree be remembered in 2016 alongside the likes of Mighty No. 9 and No Man’s Sky? Certainly not. On the contrary, this game is mostly praised. But for me, at the very least, although this wasn’t necessarily the worst game of 2016, this was easily the most disappointing.

via destructoid.com

My Top 5 Most Replayed Games

November 27, 2016 Kennedy Blog

The idea of a game’s replayability being one of its main selling points is, I think, a really interesting idea because the standards for replayability have evolved with the standards for video games in general. After all, when you say you want replayability in a game, do you mean that in a sense that it’s fun and you’d like to relive the fun? Perhaps you skipped some content in the game that you’d like to go back and find? Maybe you want to take another look at the writing in the game now that you know the conclusion? Or are there multiple endings that you want to discover? Or perhaps you’re playing a game in which you make very important decisions and you want to experience the game from other answers? Perhaps it’s something else entirely? Regardless of reason, there are several reasons one could have for replaying a game. Admittedly, I probably don’t replay as many games as I should. Moreover, most of the games I’ve replayed I’ve only replayed once–maybe twice if it was short. Yet I also think that gives more gravity to the games that I have replayed more than once or twice because it speaks in volume on behalf of their timelessness. The only stipulation that I’m putting on this list is that there’s only 2 games on here that I can recall the exact number of times I’ve beaten them–the others are approximations which will be listed.

 

5. Harvest Moon: More Friends in Mineral Town

“Beaten” 3-5 Times
via gamefaqs.net

via gamefaqs.net

I have the word “beaten” in parenthesis because you don’t necessarily “beat” Harvest Moon–you just get to a point where you’ve done pretty much everything, so you start over and try something new. And that’s exactly what I’ve done with my first and favorite Harvest Moon game, More Friends in Mineral Town. I’d usually get to about a millionaire status before I’d start to get bored of my farm and want to try something new–making new friends, making them at different times, trying new crops, trying to get certain events, although I never did marry anyone else since Cliff was my waifu4laifu. Outside of marrying everyone, I’m pretty sure I’ve otherwise done everything there is to do in this Harvest Moon entry.

 

4. Kingdom Hearts

Beaten 4-6 Times
via wikipedia

via wikipedia

I’ve made no attempts to conceal the fact that I’m a JRPG junkie. The first JRPG I ever played was Okage Shadow King, but the first JRPG that I fell in love with and even beat was the first Kingdom Hearts. Regardless of how I feel about the franchise now and what it’s devolved into, it will still always hold a special place in my heart for being the JRPG that got me into JRPGs.  I got Kingdom Hearts shortly after it came out in the States, but because I was so young and such an inexperienced gamer, I could never even figure out how to beat the ambush on Destiny Islands. It wasn’t until a few years later, shortly after Kingdom Hearts 2 came out, that I would decide to revisit it to see what all the hype was about. Needless to say, I was hooked. I made it a point to replay it at least once every other year or so, eventually. And when the 1.5 Mix came out in the States, I replayed it yet again. Because I’ve replayed it so much, I know what to expect and exactly what to do anytime I enter the game now, and replaying it now has become very relaxing for me.

 

3. Devil Survivor 1 and 2

Beaten 6 times each
via eurogamer.net

via eurogamer.net

I didn’t expect to fall as in love with these games as I did, yet here I am: Having played each to 100% completion. These games are oozing with moral ambiguity–who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? You can just as easily argue one over the other–and I adore not just games, but any kind of story like this. Antagonists who are arguably more justified than the protagonists, protagonists who may or may not be in the right depending on how you look at it–I think stories involving these kinds of factors add a HUGE layer of interest and involvement to the story, especially if it’s a story in which you’re in charge of several important decisions, as you are in these games. Because I got so interested in the story, and more importantly because I thought each side was equally right and I wanted to see what would happen had I sided with one over the other, I ended up getting all the possible endings to both games: 6 in each.

 

2. Spongebob Squarepants Battle for Bikini Bottom

Beaten countless times, but less than the #1 game
via youtube.com

via youtube.com

I can’t tell you how excited I was for Christmas 2003 when all I wanted was a copy of this game–and lo and behold, my amazing parents got me a copy. The ad made it look amazing, despite all the technical problems of Revenge of the Flying Dutchman I still had lots of fun with it, and most importantly, I was 9 years old–I loved Spongebob. There was no reason for me to not be excited about this game. Needless to say, upon playing it, it exceeded my expectations. With a wide variety of levels, collecathons that added a lot of replayability to the game, and just plain being fun, it’s really easy to understand why anyone would replay this game as often as I did. Like many of the other games on this list, I didn’t want to stop until I’d hit 100% completion–which, by the way, was no easy task for me in light of just how much there is to do in this game. It’s aged incredibly as well, on top of that. To this day I’ll re-play it if I want to play something more relaxed even though there’s nothing new for this game to offer me–it’s just that fun.

 

1. Jak & Daxter

I’m not sure numbers go high enough to reach the amount of times I’ve beaten this
via wikipedia

via wikipedia

Ask any passionate gamer about the games that got them into gaming and they’ll usually have one or 2 particular games that turned them from someone who casually enjoyed video games to a full-blown gamer. This, to me, is that game. The first console I ever had was a PS2, and at first, we mostly just had racing games. This was the first non-racing/non-puzzle game we owned and my sister and I fell in love with this highly-praised platformer immediately. I didn’t know games could be this fun–and so, both my sister and I would play it endlessly. We wanted to experience everything this game had to offer. And when we did, we wanted to do it all over again. And again. And again. There’s so much variety in this game that it definitely never felt repetitive–an absolute must for any games hoping to have any replayability to them. I still replay this game every so often, in fact–hell, I can still 100% the game in a few hours, no problem. It’s aged wonderfully. There aren’t many games that have enticed me as much as the colorful world of the first Jak & Daxter game–mixed with the nostalgia I have for it, this is a game I’ll still be replaying in years to come.

 

 

 

As always, feel free to comment with your most replayed games and why you’ve replayed them so much! Do you think replayability is important for a game to have? How much replayability is too much?

More Games that Especially Deserve a Digital Re-Release

November 6, 2016 Kennedy Blog

A few months ago I wrote a short list of games that especially deserve a digital re-release. The key word here is “short” because there’s many more games than I listed that deserve to be re-released on an online gaming distribution network like PSN, Steam, the Nintendo E-Shop, etc. Some, however, deserve to be re-released and therefore made much more available to players more than others. Most notably games that are harder (read: more rare/expensive) to obtain despite being well-loved, therefore making it difficult for both old and new fans to play them. As the gaming market starts to lean more and more toward digital releases, it’s important that these games don’t get left behind–which they currently are. So today, to remedy this, I’d like to draw your attention toward more games that especially deserve a digital re-release.

 

 

Super Smash Brothers Melee

via venturebeat.com

via venturebeat.com

Go back to 2001 and Super Smash Brothers Melee was the talk of the town. Everyone had it, everyone loved it, everyone played it religiously. Today? Less people still have it even though everyone loves it and the competitive scene for Melee is still very much alive. This game is 15 years old, yet it’s still played at EVO.
Because it’s on the Gamecube, there’s no way to practice online for it–which really sucks for players wanting to play other players that aren’t in their fucking house–let alone hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Normally I wouldn’t call this such a big deal, but because the competitive scene for Melee is still very much alive it’ll definitely affect you if you can’t practice effectively.
This game is still incredibly beloved and widely played–both competitively and casually. In fact, that’s what’s made it so expensive these days–it’s not that it’s a rare game by any means, it’s the best selling game on the Gamecube, it’s just that nobody wants to give their copies up since it’s the staple of the Gamecube library. Considering that 3 Smash games–2 of them being very well received, no less– have come out since Melee and yet Melee is still arguably the most popular Smash game out there should speak in volumes. Nintendo would make buckets of money if they re-released it and gave it an online feature. No balance patches, just let us play it online. That’s all it needs.

 

Blood Will Tell

via hardcoregaming101.net

via hardcoregaming101.net

Often called a big hidden gem on the PS2, Blood Will Tell is a highly underrated game that definitely deserves a re-release. Have you ever heard of Osamu Tezuka? If you have, good. If you haven’t, have you ever heard of Astro Boy, Black Jack, or Metropolis (2001)? Then you’ve heard of Osamu Tezuka. Although Tezuka is well-known for being called the “god of manga” or “godfather of anime” what a lot of people tend to forget about him is that he also made a story for a video game, too: Blood Will Tell. The game is based on one of Tezuka’s manga, Dororo. For reasons that aren’t completely clear, it’s considered to be a somewhat rare game and prices tend to run in the $50 vicinity. Between the lack of accessibility interested players have, the fact that it was inspired by a Tezuka manga, and the fact that it’s a Sega game, it genuinely surprises me that this game hasn’t already been re-released in one way or another.

 

Ninja Five-O

via hardcoregaming101.net

via hardcoregaming101.net

If you know even the first thing about collecting rare GBA games then you know about Ninja Five-O. This game is, without a doubt, the most rare and expensive game on the GBA. For reasons that aren’t completely known, Konami didn’t distribute many copies of this game–very unfortunate for them because this game is constantly showered in praise from the lucky few who’ve had the opportunity to play it. To find even a cartridge of this game is an incredible find, but to find a copy complete in box in 2016 is almost unheard of. Especially in the midst of the tough times Konami’s been going through since the start of all the drama that erupted between them and Hideo Kojima, the cancellation of Silent Hills, and the exposure of their horrendous business practices, it makes me wonder why they haven’t bothered trying to get a re-release of this game on the Nintendo E-Shop yet–clearly it’s a well loved game that would sell just fine with lots of curious players who’d line up to play it.

 

Super Mario Sunshine

via youtube.com

via youtube.com

This one kind of speaks for itself, honestly.

 

Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness

via gamefaqs.net

via gamefaqs.net

The year is 2005: The Pokemon 2000 movie is still fresh enough in everyone’s mind, Pokemon Emerald came out not too long ago, and what looks cooler to a young Pokemon fan than Shadow Lugia? I remember watching the commercial for it and desperately wishing I had a GameCube even if this was the only game I could play on it–it looked incredible. 11 years later and there still hasn’t been a Pokemon game quite like Gale of Darkness–by which I mean, an RPG. For that matter, there were no console Pokemon games for the Wii U, so it’s been a while since we’ve seen a Pokemon game on console. Like the other games on this list, it’s expensive (such are the highlights of the GameCube library) and loved by those who have played it–making it only harder for new fans to play it.

Especially in light of the recent surge of new Pokemon fans this year (from all the 20th Anniversary events and/or Pokemon Go) I definitely think there’s a lot of merit in re-releasing this game, both for old fans who want to relive it and new fans who are intrigued by it but don’t have $90 on hand to buy it–and that price is assuming, of course, that they already have a GameCube.

 

Hopefully when the Nintendo Switch arrives, a GameCube library in the Virtual Console will arrive with it. Especially considering how much more Nintendo-focused this list is compared to the last one, don’t forget to leave comments on games that you think especially deserve to be re-released. Like I said on the last list: The common thread in these games is that they’re hard to obtain physical copies of: They’re all rare, expensive, and at least 10 years old. If you have any other major reasons you’d like to see a certain game or a group of certain games getting  re-released for, be sure and let us know.

The Life, Death, and Brutal Desecration of Silent Hill

October 23, 2016 Kennedy Articles

There’s a small town in Pennsylvania called Centralia. In the 1950’s it had about 2000 residents. Today, it has about 10. The reason being because there’s been a mine fire burning beneath Centralia since 1962. The fire was originally meant to be a garbage incinerator but needless to say, it got out of hand. To this day the fire still burns. There are signs in the city warning people to leave because the fumes could cause injury or death. Centralia became a ghost town: A ghost town that would help inspire one of the finest game series of all time, Silent Hill.

Known for its highly psychological, atmospheric, and symbolic horror, Silent Hill instantly became a paragon of perfection for survival horror games when it was released in 1999. Its first few sequels maintained this status, and for a while Silent Hill was arguably one of the best and most consistent game series on the market. After making 4 highly successful games, Team Silent, the team who had been developing the games, dispersed in 2005. For almost 10 years, the once incredible franchise entered what seemed to fans like an inescapable slump until the release of PT–Silent Hills–in 2014. A collaborative effort between Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, PT was going to breathe a desperately needed new life back into the Silent Hill franchise, but a few months later the project was cancelled and even removed from the PlayStation Network. Needless to say, the Silent Hill franchise has experienced a number of horrors itself. Today, I’d like to walk you through those horrors and explain the incredible history behind one of the finest and most influential horror series of all time, Silent Hill.

via ask-alessa-gillespie.tumblr.com/

via ask-alessa-gillespie.tumblr.com/

Often called Konami’s response to Resident Evil, the first Silent Hill Game, simply titled Silent Hill, came out for the PlayStation 1 on January 31, 1999. Despite being a Japanese game, it came out in North America 2 months before it did in Japan–highly unusual, even today. Silent Hill tells the story of Harry Mason as he searches for his adopted daughter who has run away to a mysterious town called Silent Hill. Whilst looking for her in the ghost town, he encounters monsters, a fiercely religious cult, and traces of the horrifying history of the town. Silent Hill was met with incredibly positive reception, selling over 2 million copies and was included in TIME’s 2012 list of the 100 Greatest Games of All Time.

Two years later, the highly anticipated sequel, Silent Hill 2, was released on the PlayStation 2 and XBox. The story, completely unrelated to the first game, was about a man named James Sunderland who received a letter from his deceased wife that says that she’s waiting for him in their “special place” in Silent Hill. The town is almost completely abandoned, save a few people: Most notably a woman who has a striking resemblance to his wife, and a little girl who seems to know something that James doesn’t about the whole ordeal. Perhaps the most well-known aspect of Silent Hill 2 is Pyramid Head–one of the bosses of the game–who has since become one of the mascots (alongside the nurses, who appear in every entry) of the Silent Hill franchise.

via technobuffalo.com

via technobuffalo.com

Like the first Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2 was endlessly praised upon its release. It sold over one million copies during its first month in North America alone. To this day, it still receives endless praise–IGN included it on their list of the Top 25 PS2 Games.

Acting as a direct sequel to Silent Hill, Silent Hill 3 came out 2 years later also on the PlayStation 2 and PC. It takes place 17 years after Silent Hill: Heather Mason (Harry’s daughter) is being harassed by the same cult that her father had conflict with in Silent Hill–they want her to birth their god and bring destruction and deliverance upon the world. Refusing to help them, Heather returns to Silent Hill to nip this problem in the bud and find out why the cult wants her, specifically. In doing so, Heather unveils more history about the town than any other Silent Hill entry. Like the other Silent Hill games at this point, Silent Hill 3 was barraged with praise upon its release and dominated Japanese sales charts for weeks.

The final entry that Team Silent worked on, Silent Hill 4: The Room, came out a year after that (2004) for PlayStation 2, XBox, and PC. Although it didn’t receive negative reception, it wasn’t overwhelmingly positive as it had been for the previous 3 entries. This is generally blamed on an emphasis in combat in this entry–something very unusual for a Silent Hill game, and as such, it wasn’t very fleshed out. Reception was generally lukewarm, but leaning toward positive. A review on Eurogamer said it “has gone backwards to the extent that it’s no longer our favourite horror series.” Still, the story of this game seemed to save it: You play as Henry Townshend, as he tries to escape the confines of his room. In doing so, he begins to have horrifying visions of everything around him, therefore beginning a conflict with a serial killer. The main thing that set this game apart from other Silent Hill entries (other than the use of combat) is that it doesn’t take place in Silent Hill: Rather, an apartment in a town called South Ashfield. After this game was completed, Team Silent split up to work on other games. Knowing that the Silent Hill franchise had become a cash cow at this point, however, Konami refused to let it end with The Room. Many say this game is where the decline of Silent Hill began.

In 2006, a live action Canadian-French movie about the first Silent Hill game (also titled Silent Hill) was made.  Despite replacing Harry Mason with a mother figure and including Pyramid Head (who, at this point, was exclusive to Silent Hill 2), the movie generally was able to well adapt Silent Hill. Highly praised for its stunning graphics but highly critiqued for its complicated and rushed story, it grossed about $100 million worldwide. In doing so, it also introduced several new people to the game franchise–including myself.

A year later, Silent Hill: Origins was released for the PSP. Taking place a year before Silent Hill, Origins tells the story of Travis Grady as he searches for information for a girl that he had once saved from a fire, and his search leads him to Silent Hill. Meant to have gameplay and elements that more closely resembled the first Silent Hill, critics panned it for feeling too similar to it–to the point where it didn’t feel like a new game. Some critics, however, liked that about the game, and for that reason its scores are generally okay. A year later it got a port on the PS2 which was panned for the same reason, in addition to lower quality graphics: A sin for the Silent Hill franchise, which has always prided itself on its visuals. So began the death of Silent Hill.

Later that year (2008) Silent Hill Homecoming was released on the PlayStation 3, XBox 360, and PC. It’s worth noting that this entry never came out in Japan for reasons that, to this day, still aren’t very clear. It was the first time that a Silent Hill game had been produced by a Western development team: Double Helix Games. The story follows a soldier coming home from war, Alex Shepherd. Upon his return, he finds out that his younger brother has gone missing. His search for his brother leads him to where else? Silent Hill. During his search, he uncovers a lot of information about his family’s past, cultist activity, and his town’s past. Development for this game is well known for having been a very messy process: There was a change in development teams, several ideas were scrapped to the point that it was almost a completely different game than what Konami had originally promised, and it had issues with several censorship laws–most notably in Australia and Germany, where it almost wasn’t released. Despite its hardships, it received very lukewarm reception but leaning toward negative for being very unoriginal and predictable. For anyone who was still in denial, this game is what made it abundantly clear that the once great Silent Hill was in the midst of a decline.

In 2009, a re-imagining of the first Silent Hill, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, came out on the Wii, but was eventually given ports to the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2. (Yes, you read that correctly: The PS2.) Despite meant to be a re-imagining, many say it feels more like a cover of the first Silent Hill, as many gameplay elements have changed to fit the Wii: Most notably an increase of combat and changing a few elements of the story. Although receiving decent scores from critics, the game didn’t sell particularly well. It wasn’t until it was ported that it was finally able to break even.

The next Silent Hill game wouldn’t come out for another 3 years–Silent Hill Downpour for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. Having waited an extra year for the usually biannual franchise and having just had a game that was decent in a pool of mediocrity that the franchise had become since the end of Team Silent, many had high hopes or Downpour. What they got was critically lowest scoring Silent Hill game ever at the time. The game is about a prisoner named Murphy Pendleton who enters an alternate dimension of Silent Hill and in doing so, unlocks several repressed memories. The game was highly panned for, blatantly put, painful mediocrity with poor gameplay and even technical problems such as freezing up on more than one occasion. The reason Downpour is only arguably the worst entry in the franchise at its time is a reason that came out only a week after it: Silent Hill HD Collection. Simply being a PS3 port of Silent Hill 2 and 3, it’s hard to imagine what could’ve gone wrong, right? Everything. Everything went wrong.

It had been 9 years since the release of Silent Hill 3 and even Konami knew that the franchise was in the midst of a major decline. Perhaps reminding people how wonderful the franchise used to be might encourage sales of the newer entries? If nothing else, perhaps they could cash in on people simply wanting ports of what are generally called the best entries in the series (alongside the original Silent Hill.) And so, an HD port of Silent Hill 2 and 3 was underway  by Hijinx Studios. What Hijinx didn’t anticipate, however, is that when Team Silent left they took a lot of their files and data with them: Hijinx only had unfinished codes to work from making the development process so horrific that it’s almost legendary. There were few textures and sound effects in the files they were given, and perhaps most infamously is that in Silent Hill 3, Heather was completely blue. Upon completion, many agreed that although upscaled, the graphics were actually worse than they were in the original versions of the game. The audio quality dropped substantially, as well. The cherry on top of it all was that it had several glitches and was generally very buggy. Needles to say, the HD Collection was the epitome of a hot mess.

During October of the same year, a second Silent Hill film was made: Silent Hill Revelations. This time, it was meant to be an adaptation of the third Silent Hill game. Despite this, it contained only fragments of the story of Silent Hill 3, and fans and critics alike panned it horrendously for not just being a weak adaptation, but a weak standalone film as well. Additionally, the jaw dropping graphics that were praised in the first film were noticeably absent from Revelations, which only dug its grave even further. It grossed $52.3 million worldwide, essentially half what the first Silent Hill movie had made.

Konami needed a good Silent Hill game for it to bounce back on, so they made Silent Hill: Book of Memories for the PlayStation Vita later that year. All they did was drive Silent Hill further down the pit which they had forced it into. Receiving even lower scores than Downpour, Book of Memories is generally referred to by fans as the worst entry in the series, barring the HD Collection since it’s a port. It’s the first Silent Hill game with a nameless protagonist–that being the player. On “your” birthday, you’re given a book with your entire life in it, and if you change the contents of the book, then your memories will change accordingly. You attempt to make some changes to your life, but needless to say, it doesn’t work out. Perhaps the best quote to describe the game comes from Greg Miller while he was working at IGN who wrote, “If you just want dungeons to crawl through and couldn’t care less about polished menus and engaging stories, great. Everyone else, don’t feel bad if you skip Silent Hill: Book of Memories.”

Silent Hill was in a horrendous decline. Fans knew it. Konami knew it. Everyone knew it. Would it ever return to its former glory? Without Team Silent, was this franchise doomed to fail? Not quite. In August 2014, a free demo was put on the PlayStation network called P.T.–or Playable Teaser. Developed by Kojima Productions (under the alias of 7780 Studios) this short teaser was absolutely brilliant: Critics and fans and even people who hadn’t played a Silent Hill game before adored it: A review by Erik Kaine on Forbes says, “I found myself getting more and more anxious as I descended the increasingly creepy building, looping the same hallways over and over again. Everything from lighting to sound design is pitch perfect, with a few great jump moments, but mostly just a rising sense of dread.”

via businessinsider.com

via businessinsider.com

At the end of the teaser, it was revealed that this was a teaser for a new Silent Hill game called Silent Hills–in addition to that, it was revealed that it would be a collaborative effort by Hideo Kojima (creator of the Metal Gear franchise) and Guillermo del Toro (director of films such as Pan’s Labyrinth and Pacific Rim.) At long last, a Silent Hill game that could restore Silent Hill to its former glory was underway. It had been a long time since Silent Hill fans had been so excited to play a new Silent Hill game. For the first time since the release of Silent Hill 4, there was hope for the franchise.

That is, until Kojima left Konami.

Many of us probably remember drama that went down between Kojima and Konami during early 2015, but just in case, suffice to say, there was a lot of conflict between the two, resulting in Kojima’s departure. On April 25, 2015 P.T. was removed from the PlayStation Network–2 days later, Silent Hills was cancelled. So begins the brutal desecration of Silent Hill.

Hope shouldn’t be lost, Konami told the fans of Silent Hill, because they were working on something Silent Hill related. Although it had been a long time since a good Silent Hill game had been released, skeptical fans still were listening attentively. Surely, after the genius of P.T., surely this must be something good, right?

Alas. The new Silent Hill project that Konami said it would make in place of Silent Hills was a Silent Hill themed pachinko (slot machine.) Needless to say, fans were outraged. Fans are still outraged a year since its announcement. A P.T. inspired indie game called Allison Road recently resumed production after about 2 months of being cancelled. Konami hasn’t breathed a word of Silent Hill since the pachinko machine announcement a year ago, so perhaps an indie game inspired by it is what Silent Hill needs right now.

To quote Steven Hopper in his earlier review of Silent Hill Downpour, “Being a Silent Hill fan is a lot like watching Eddie Murphy movies. You keep thinking back and remembering the glory days, while quietly thinking that maybe this next one movie will be the one to restore him to Beverly Hill Cop/48 Hrs. glory (or in Silent Hill’s case, the days of Silent Hill 2 and 3). However, time and time again, we are ultimately disappointed among the Norbits, Klumps, and Homecomings. But we keep with it, remembering the good days, and in the case of Silent Hill, recognizing the key strengths of the franchise, and hoping that some capable developer will put the series on top of the survival horror heap where it belongs.”

via thenerdstash.com

via thenerdstash.com

Would you Kindly Read my Thoughts on Bioshock: The Collection?

September 18, 2016 Kennedy Articles, Reviews

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t hate the recent glut of collection games that have been coming out in the last ~5 years. And just so we’re all on the same page, a collection game is a re-release of a game or several games, now in an HD format. I do wish that a lot of the studios remastering their old games would make new content, yes, but now that gaming is making such graphical and technical leaps faster than ever, I think it’s important that older, beloved games aren’t left behind and get forgotten, and eventually unplayable because there’s simply no other way to play them unless you have their original console. For both new and old fans, it’s a hassle unless a re-release of the game is made. Bioshock is an interesting case: It was released in 2007 on the PS3/360. It’s almost 10 years old, but in the grand scheme of things and the typical age of games that get re-released on collection discs, it’s not that old. Additionally, Bioshock is a beautiful game. Despite being an early title in its console generation, graphically it remains one of the most beautiful games on the PS3/360–both it and it’s sequel Bioshock Infinite that came out late into the PS3/360’s life in 2013. So why re-release them?

Personally, I don’t think that the creation of the Collection was necessary right now. Make no mistake, I’m very happy to see these games re-released: Bioshock is my favorite game of all time. Bioshock Infinite is another one of my all time favorites. The only qualm I have about re-releasing these games is the timing. The oldest game in this bunch is the first Bioshock, which will be 10 years old next year. Especially considering how graphically advanced Bioshock was at the time it came out, I just don’t think it needs to be remastered in HD just quite yet. It’s only one console generation behind, after all. Bioshock Infinite, on the other hand, is barely 3 years old–it’s plenty recent enough that people still remember it, love it, talk about it, and play it all the time. If that wasn’t enough, there’s several packs on the PS3 and 360 available right now with 2/3 games on it (Bioshock 1+2, Bioshock Infinite+1), and a version of Infinite you can buy with Burial at Sea already on it as well. To me, it feels as though the Collection was just released so there could be a PS4/XBOne port of the series. Personally I don’t think most games need to be remastered or ported–especially when they’re so readily available on Steam, as each Bioshock game is–until they’re at least 2 console generations behind.

via store.steampowered.com

Does this look like it needs to be remastered in HD? Honestly? via store.steampowered.com

So let’s get into the meat of this review: Is buying the Collection worth the sweat of your brow? Allow me to first make the disclaimer that I bought the physical PS4 version of this game since my PC isn’t powerful enough to run any of the Bioshock games–even if it was, I don’t have 70GB available to put it on. In any case, as far as my experience with Bioshock: The Collection goes, the short answer of my earlier questions is yes, it’s worth it if you’re a fan of the series and you see yourself replaying any of these games at least a few times, or you want everything on 2 convenient discs rather than 2-3. If this is your way of getting into the franchise, however, you’d probably be better off buying the games separately on Steam/PS3/360 until the price goes down.

The Collection is currently $60 and contains Bioshock 1 and its DLC the Museum of Orphaned Concepts and Challenge Room, Bioshock 2 and its DLC Minerva’s Den and Protector Trials, and Bioshock Infinite and its DLC Clash in the Clouds, Columbia’s Finest, and Burial at Sea episodes 1 and 2. In addition to all that, there’s interviews about Bioshock with Ken Levine (creator of the Bioshock series) and Shawn Robertson (animation lead and director in Bioshock 1 and Infinite respectively) sprinkled throughout. In other words, you’re getting every Bioshock game, all the DLC, plus some interviews. The only corner the Collection cuts is the multiplayer options in Bioshock 2. The reasons behind the cut of the multiplayer hasn’t yet been clarified, but as someone who never particularly cared for the multiplayer options in Bioshock 2 (or Bioshock 2 in general) it doesn’t particularly matter to me. It does, however, leave me extremely curious about why 2K would put so much effort into including literally everything else plus extras and leave that out.

The multiplayer aside though, each of the Bioshock games can be bought at a decent price if you’re buying physical copies–usually around $10-20 used, depending on the condition. In theory, you could buy Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite separately and only spend slightly more than half of what you would on the Collection–and that’s if you buy them all singularly, rather than buy them in a pack, as I mentioned earlier. Regardless of what you do, if you’re buying physical copies, you’ll likely be spending $30-40 on the whole series. On Steam it’s harder to gauge the price since they each go on sale so frequently. My best advice would be to wait for them to go on sale, and if you’re lucky, you’d probably be spending about the same price that you would if you’d bought physical copies–possibly less depending on the sale. In any case, although the Collection has graphics that are only slightly improved, exclusive interviews, and the convenience aspect of having the whole series right there, if the price of a game is your selling point then the Collection probably isn’t worth it unless the graphics, interviews, and convenience are worth an extra $20 for you.

via youtube.com

via youtube.com

Another thing several fans are critiquing the Collection for is that it hasn’t fixed some of the glitches in Bioshock Infinite. Although Bioshock Infinite isn’t necessarily a glitchy game, it does suffer from a few hiccups here and there. It’s usually just simple things like the occasional clipping graphics and textures, but there are a few small glitches. None of them are major, none of them break the game, and there’s not that many to begin with. Most of them are simply clipping graphics. Although none of them major flaws, they do feel very out of place in an otherwise gorgeous game. Most fans, myself included, expected that most of these small glitches would be patched up in the Collection, but so far, people are reporting that there have been no changes. The PC version, on the other hands, seems to have a few issues of its own that aren’t present in the console Collection, or the original versions of the games. For that reason and because as I already mentioned, the console ports are likely the entire reason 2K made the Collection in the first place, I’d recommend the console version of the Collection over the PC version.

If you’re already a huge fan of Bioshock who wants a new way to immerse yourself in the elaborate universe(s) of the game, I think the Collection is incredible. It’s convenient, has lots of extra content, and at the end of the day, it’s a current-gen port of 2 wonderful games, their DLC, and Bioshock 2. If you’re not a huge fan of Bioshock but a fan nonetheless and just wondering if this is a good port, it can be if you’re wanting a PS4/XBOne port of these games–otherwise, it’s probably a better idea to wait for the price on the Collection to go down. The current price tag of $60 isn’t outrageous, it’s the standard price of a new triple-A console title right now and is honestly a fair price for all the content you’re getting in the Collection, I just think it’s odd to pay that much when you can just as easily get the entire series ~$20 cheaper without missing too much of the content. If you’re not a fan of Bioshock and wondering if you should use this to get into the franchise, although you can if you want and should if you really like the idea of having all the games, DLC, and extra content on 2 discs, I wouldn’t recommend it solely because the graphics are only slightly better, I’m sure the extra content will be available online eventually, and you can buy each of the games individually with the DLC for a grand total of  ~$40.

Again, I’d like to emphasize: Bioshock 1 and Infinite are my favorite games of all time. As a huge fan of Bioshock, the Collection was worth it for me. I love the extra content and the convenience of the Collection, I just wish that they had waited longer to release it–until a time when the graphical changes could be noticeably better, until they could patch the hiccups in Bioshock Infinite, until the Bioshock games aren’t as extremely accessible as they are now. Until it were at least 2 console generations behind. These are games I will (and am, in fact, currently) replay time and time again. Additionally, listening to the interviews and learning more about the production of Bioshock has been a very fun experience for me. If you’re as big a fan of Bioshock as me, I can’t recommend the Collection enough. If you’re not that big a fan and just looking for an easy way to play the Bioshock games, it’ll likely be more budget friendly for you to buy them all separately or wait a few months for the price of the Collection to go down. Regardless of your decision, these games are astounding. If you’re reading this to find out whether or not I’d recommend the Bioshock games, Collection or no Collection, the answer is yes, I’d recommend them more than any other game ever made.

via platstation.com

via platstation.com

The 5th Boston Festival of Indie Games

September 11, 2016 Kennedy Articles, Blog, Events, Lifestyle, News, Reviews, Tabletop

This weekend we here at The Lifecast went to the 5th Boston Festival of Indie Games–or FIG for short. Not only was this my first FIG, but it was my first event as a member of the media/press, making this event all the more memorable for me. Not that I needed that for this event to be memorable by any means, because there were a myriad of amazing indie games–both tabletop and video–to play. The event was hosted by the MIT Johnson Athletic Center in Cambridge (which neighbors Boston) and hosted thousands of indie game developer teams and players who came to find out about all the new and upcoming indie games: Here are the titles I had the opportunity to play.

 

Cheer Up

cheerup

Upon entering the venue, we were greeted by Cheer Up–a simple but hilarious tabletop game. One person draws a question card–alongside the question, it’ll say what kind of cards the players need to use to answer it. A detail (D card), thing (T card), or action (A card) and in what order they need to go. The player draw 2-3 of the cards they need and use the cards to answer the question. The person who drew the question then draws a rule card to mix things up a bit–things like swapping cards, maybe you have to do something while you answer your question, etc. Hilarity ensues, and it absolutely did when we played a few quick rounds. Although a black and white printable version not featuring the cute face of the dev’s dog Niko is available for download on their site for free, the full, color version that we played isn’t available yet. We talked a bit with the dev who said he’s hoping to put it on Kickstarter soon–hopefully early October if everything goes well–and we definitely had a fun time with it, so we’ll definitely be on the lookout for it. I also need to thank the dev who was giving out free coasters just as I was thinking I needed some in my new apartment just the day before–so I think that was one of the funniest moments of the whole festival for me.

 

Now Everyone Get the F%$# Out!

fuckout

Developed by Star Cap Games, I’m actually no stranger to Now Everyone Get the F%$# Out! (henceforth FOUT.) There’s a monthly gaming event here in Boston called Game Over. It’s mostly a few fighting game tournaments, but there have been set ups for Rockband, Magic: The Gathering,  and other tabletop games in the past as well–including FOUT. Although I haven’t been to every Game Over since they started the event, I do go to as many as I can and I’ve made it a point to always look for where this game is set up. I always have so much fun playing it. Inspired by a wild house party thrown by the dev during her sophomore year of college when her roommate was desperately trying to study for a final she had the next day, FOUT is a game where you and your fellow players are trying to get people out of your dorm party so you can study. Everyone has a number of people in their room, and you’re given cards with party items (EX: bouncy house, pet rock, pizza, etc.) and each of those items has a fun rating. The higher the overall fun rating of your room, the more people there are. The person with the highest fun rating is the party animal, who gains people in their room at the end of each turn. The person with the least is the nerd, and they lose a person at the end of each turn. Of course there are items and event cards that can mix things up, as well. The aim of the game is to get everyone the f%$# out of your room so you can study. According to their facebook page, all the copies available of FOUT were sold at Boston FIG, but there are plans for making more.

 

Fall of the Last City

fallofthelastcity

Marred by a very lengthy explanation of the game that ultimately didn’t do us much good, this was definitely one of the more fun tabletop games we played at FIG. Set in a post-apocalyptic world and developed by Christopher A. Barney, Fall of the Last City was surprisingly the most competitive game I think we played at FIG. Using paths, bases, and soldiers, the aim of the game is for the last city to be taken over. You and your fellow players will try to create paths to get to the city, and take its resources and citizens to join you and help you get soldiers. Where this game shines, however, is in its alliance system. In a way that reminds me very much of the Nonary Game in Virtue’s Last Reward, when you cross path with another player, you have the option to challenge them. When in a challenge, you can ally or fight. If both players ally, then you exchange alliance tokens and you can freely use each others paths, and you both get resources from the city. If one person chooses to fight and one to ally, then the player who chooses to ally will lose a base and a number of soldiers. If both players fight, then the one with the fewest soldiers on hand loses those soldiers as well as a base. Having alliance tokens helps you win at the end of the game, so you’d think that everyone would just want to ally all the time, right? Wrong. Reducing the number of soldiers your enemies have–not to mention taking one of their bases–is a very alluring idea, so it made for lots of strategic and competitive fun during the game. This game has a lot of complex rules that take a bit to get used to, but once we got the hang of it, it was a very enjoyable game.

This game was originally intended to be an Ingres-esque board game on Google Glass, the dev explained to us, but as Google Glass became increasingly less popular, the idea of making it a tabletop game appealed more and more. Wanting it to be something Mad Max-esque and something more physical–something that wouldn’t require a large team of artists, but rather, something the dev could make with his hands–the idea eventually evolved into what it is now. Fall of the Last City isn’t available for purchase currently, but the dev explained to us that he hopes to have it on Kickstarter by the end of the year if everything goes well.

 

Kung Fu Shadow Fist

kung-fu

The first Vive game that any of us had played, Kung Fu Shadow Fist is a VR game being developed by Digital Precept. It’s a simple game where you use the Vive to fight off dozens of training dummies–a VR version of an arcade brawler. There’s no complex gameplay, the devs explained to us, and it’s a game focused on the speed of your hits. You don’t need to be a martial artist to play this, either, because you can slow down the speed of the game if you want. The game is meant to feel like an 80’s action movie where you’re fighting off a lot of bad guys, and rather than fighting one guy with 100 HP, the game wants you fighting 100 guys with 1 HP, they added.

Sure enough, it was exactly that. A really fun VR arcade brawler. My only complaint was that the shadow step mechanic, which is used to rapidly move you from one spot to another, still felt really unfinished since I never felt sure about where it would land me and at what speed. You can play this game without that mechanic however, and aside from that, was really fun. It’s currently in its early alpha stage and on Steam Greenlight.

 

Perception

perception

This was the game I had by far been looking the most forward to. I’ve made it no secret that Bioshock 1 and Infinite are my favorite games of all time, and this game is being produced by a team led by the lead level designer of Bioshock 1 and design director of Bioshock Infinite, Bill Gardner, and his new team, Deep End Games. Set in Gloucester, MA, Perception is a first-person horror game in which you play as a blind woman, Cassie, as she tries to find her way through a haunted house using nothing but her limited sight and echoes. While she’s there, however, she starts hearing things, and it quickly becomes clear to her that she’s not alone. Lots of research was put into the idea of using echoes to find your way through the area, Gardner explained to me, because it’s an idea he had been considering for years but wanted to confirm it was a real thing that people can and have done–and it is. Gardner explained to me how he even met up with a teacher from World Access for the Blind who explained it in full detail to him so he could fully capture it in Perception.

Just as the Bioshock games have a focus in their beautiful, detailed narratives, so does Perception. It’s very clear that (for obvious reasons) this game takes narrative inspiration from the Bioshock games, as there are tapes–audio diaries–you can find and listen to throughout the house and listen to that helps tell the player about the previous owners of the house and piece together what happened. Gardner explained to me that he wants to make sure that the narrative is clear in Perception, as there seemed to be a bit of confusion regarding the ending of Bioshock Infinite–therefore, he’s trying to step up from Infinite and make this narrative as wonderful as he can. Also similar to Bioshock, this game has a very rich, detailed area that it takes place in that’s practically a character itself since you find yourself so invested and interested in this house and what possibly could’ve happened to it.

This game is much like a game of cat and mouse, he explained to me. As mentioned before, Cassie isn’t alone in the home. There’s something else with her–a Presence. And when the Presence appears, you have to hide. As mentioned before, Cassie is blind and finds her way around by echoes. When you tap something–when you make an echo–an otherwise dark room will be clear to you for a few seconds Or, if there’s something in the room that makes sound (EX: a ticking clock) you can see things using that echo. It’s about your relationship with the space, and you’ll familiarize yourself with it, Gardner said. If you make too much noise, the Presence could come out, so there’s a level of risk involved with using the echos which only adds to the constant suspense looming in this game. I can’t wait to play this game once it’s complete, because there aren’t many games–let alone demos–that got me feeling the same sense of dread and nervousness that you feel in Perception. As a horror game, Perception has already very much succeeded.

This game was Kickstarted in May 2015 and is currently available for pre-order on Steam. Gardner indicated that he was hopeful about an early 2017 release date, and hopefully, an eventual physical release date. There was a lot of time and love put into this game that you can see (or hear, rather) in every inch of this game. This was, by a large margin, the finest game I played at Boston FIG this year.

 

Tailwind: Prologue

tailwind

Tailwind: Prologue immediately stands out with its creative concept: It’s a shoot-em-up game being developed by Cipher Prime. Rather than being a typical shoot-em-up that relies on finding a sweet spot to shoot from and moving forward, Tailwind throws it all on its head by reversing everything: It’s a shoot-em-up about a falling ship that focuses on movement and melee attacks. The dev called it “An aerial ballet.” Gameplay was very tight and from the few minutes of this game I played, I could already tell it’s a very unique experience. Visuals were gorgeous, colorful, and minimalistic. As the dev explained, they took aesthetic inspiration from games like No Man’s Sky and Fire Watch. This game was originally a Humble Original exclusive during April. Unless you were lucky enough to get it then, there’s currently no other way to get it currently, however, the dev explained that they’re currently looking into ways to add a multiplayer option and campaign mode.

 

Inariinari

One of the most visual games I played, Inari is an upcoming mobile title devloped by Spectrum Studios about a fox god whose shrine is destroyed. When the shrine is destroyed, so is the light shard–which you must now find pieces of throughout the game. A very solid 2D platformer, the devs explained to me that they wanted to make a mobile game that was aesthetically appealing, had solid gameplay, and a good soundscape. There’s a particular focus on the beautiful soundtrack which was developed by Zhao Shen, who helped make this game all the more immersive. There aren’t that many immersive mobile games out there, the devs explained to me, so they wanted to make a mobile game that had that sense of freedom-as though you’re soaring–and immersion. When I tried the demo, sure enough, it was a very gorgeous game with a wonderful soundtrack, and although the gameplay was very basic, it was also very tight and very solidified. This game shows a lot of potential–especially now that mobile games are starting to become a much bigger market.  The game is currently in a private beta that’s still taking sign-ups, but if everything goes well, should be out in early 2017 or Spring.

 

Maze Racers

mazeracers

This was a pretty interesting game–it felt really finished, and honestly like a game that you’d find on the shelf of the board game section of a major retailer. Developed by FoxMind Games, Maze Racers is a simple game: Using pieces of foam and your board, create a maze for a ball to get from point A to point B that your opponent has to figure out. The board is magnetic and there are magnetic strips at the bottom of the foam pieces, so everything fits really well–additionally, you’re given a little cylinder the same width as the ball so you can make sure it fits. Once one person’s maze is done, your opponent has a minute to finish theirs before you switch. The first person who can solve their opponent’s maze by getting the ball from start to finish and back again is the winner. It was simple, creative, and like I said, already seemed very finished. The game is currently available for purchase on Amazon.

 

Dragoon

dragoon-game

I didn’t get to play a full round of this game because the festival was beginning to close down, but I played it long enough to know that I enjoyed it very much. I’m clearly not the only one who enjoyed it, because it’s won awards at FIG in the past–which immediately got my interest. Developed by Lay Waste Games, Dragoon is a 2-4 player game in which you play as a dragon trying to hoard treasure and take over villages and towns. A simple, but charming concept. Each round of turns has 3 phases: Populate, Action, and Tribute. During populate, new villages and towns up for the taking appear. During action, each player takes their turn–they can move, play cards to cause events, take gold, towns, and villages, etc. And during tribute, you and your fellow players collect the gold from your villages and towns. The first player to 50 gold wins.

There’s currently a special edition of the game up for pre-order now on the site that ships in October–it’s the version I played at FIG, and I’ll vouch: It’s a very well put together game. It seems like a game that would work very well if it were also mass produced and sold at major retailers since it’s very easy to jump into and have a lot of fun with.

 

My Verdict: The Best Games I Played

city

Although some games were better than others, I didn’t play any bad games at Boston FIG. Every game brought me some kind of enjoyment, and I left the festival very thankful for that. I had a great deal of fun at Boston FIG, and I’ll certainly try to come back to it next year as well. There were a great deal of game devs already at the festival, but I’d love to see this event become even bigger–perhaps getting so many devs that it becomes a 3-day event that requires a convention center–very akin to PAX East. I think it would work especially well that way because PAX focuses on triple A titles, and though there are plenty of indie games, yes, wouldn’t it be amazing to see an entire convention center of nothing but indie games? The festival seemed all too short, so if nothing else, I wish it had gone later into the evening than it did.

 

Favorite Video Game: Perception

The most realized, professional game I played at FIG, Perception seems like it will be a fantastic game once it’s complete. It’s creative, clever, suspenseful, and gives the player such an unparalleled sense of fear I haven’t felt from a game in quite a while. If you haven’t already been keeping an eye on it, you should be now.

 

Favorite Tabletop Game: Dragoon

Although I didn’t get to play it for long, it became immediately clear why this game is so beloved. It’s a very creative concept with solid rules and it’s really easy to have fun with. My only nitpick with it is that I wish it could host more than 4 players.

Persona: The Ultimate Back-to-School Series

September 4, 2016 Kennedy Articles, Lifestyle

Chances are if you’re living in the United States and your school year hasn’t just started, it’ll be starting in the upcoming week. As schools around the country begin to go back into session, I think now is a great time to remind everyone why Shin Megami Tensei’s beloved Persona series is the ultimate back-to-school series.

For anyone unfamiliar with the Persona series, its one of the many–and arguably most popular–series in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise owned by Atlus. Shin Megami Tensei contains many series that, although usually not in the same universe, contain similar themes, enemies, combat, etc. such as demons, religion, very in-depth psychology, and they’re all either turn-based or strategy JRPGs. It’s very similar to the Final Fantasy franchise in this respect: There are multiple games and series that are under the umbrella of the same franchise by certain themes and gameplay. Like the Final Fantasy games, you don’t have to play any of the games in a specific order. Some of the more well-known series are the main Shin Megami Tensei series, Devil Survivor, Digital Devil Saga, and of course, Persona.

The first Persona game–Revelations Persona–was first released on the PS1 in the States in 1996, however the Persona series wasn’t very well-known until the release of Persona 3 on the PS2 in 2007. Persona 3 was almost an overnight success thanks to its improved combat, memorable characters, and the introduction of the social link system that would become a trademark of the Persona games. If Persona 3 is what put Persona on the gaming map, then Persona 4 is what made Persona its own country. Although the gameplay remained almost entirely unchanged from 3, thanks to the engaging story, critically acclaimed writing, and lovable characters, people couldn’t get enough of the award winning game. Atlus took notice and gave it a Vita port, two different anime series (and some movies for Persona 3), two fighting games, and even a rhythm game. Suffice to say, Persona 4 became a hit not just among JRPG fans, but gamers in general. But what about this series makes it the ultimate back-to-school series?

Is it because they’re (mostly) excellent games? No.

Is it because they just happen to have the player in their school a lot? No.

Is it because they all have a portable port of some kind that’ll allow you to enjoy them even at school? No.

Although all those things are true, the main reasons that the Persona franchise is the ultimate back-to-school series is its history and unique take on managing your school life.

via giantbomb.com

via giantbomb.com

In 1994, Atlus released Shin Megami Tensei If… (henceforth SMTI.) Only released in Japan, SMTI was meant to be a spin-off game for the main Shin Megami Tensei series. The main focus of the game was to focus on a smaller, more intimate environment than that of the main Shin Megami Tensei games: Therefore, unlike the rest of the Shin Megami Tensei games, it was set in a high school. Critics enjoyed the new setting, and rather than make more SMTI games, Atlus decided to instead make an entirely separate Shin Megami Tensei series that would take place in high schools: Thus, the first Persona franchise was made all because Atlus wanted to continue setting Shin Megami Tensei games in high schools.

The high school setting would be fully realized in Persona 3 when managing your time between school, friends, hobbies, jobs, fighting, etc. would become one of the most major gameplay mechanics in the entire game. The game has a calendar in its corner, and you choose how you’ll spend each day. There’s a plethora of options, but the one thing that’s not optional is going to school. After school, however, you’re free to do whatever you want–even stay at the school for things like clubs, student council, studying, and hanging out with friends. Even though time management doesn’t sound like fun, it’s one of the best parts of Persona 3 and 4.

Since it’s unavoidable and sometimes even dictates what some of your friends will want to do–or even if some of them will be available–school will be one of the biggest parts of your protagonist’s life, just like it is for regular students. Or is it? Yes, you can choose to not study, you can choose to never join a club or hang out with your friends at school or make new friends, but to do so is pretty unwise since you simply won’t be able to get the full experience of this game–not to mention the social links. Regardless of how you treat it though, school will be a big part of the protagonist’s life–a life that you, the player, are now managing. It’ll take up time, yes, but it’ll affect your friendships and social links and even get you new ones. Plus it’ll often have ways to boost your stats–particularly knowledge. It’ll often help guide the story along, as well.

via firsthour.net

via firsthour.net

Just as school is a major part of life for any student, it is in Persona. Because of the day-by-day calendar this series works off of, school will become a major part of your life in Persona. It’ll help earn and strengthen social links, up stats, and sometimes it’ll even guide the story. Because of its extreme amounts of influence in what the player does in Persona–in addition to the fact that the franchise was made for the sake of being a Shin Megami Tensei series that took place in a school–Persona is truly the ultimate back-to-school series. It treats school life in a realistic-yet-enjoyable way that no other game ever has–probably because that’s the whole idea around which the series was made. Part of the appeal of the Persona games is their immersion–immersion which the school setting helps create more than any other element in this game.

All of these games have a portable port of some kind–all on either the PSP or Vita–so they’re all very accessible and can even be brought to school with you. This critically acclaimed series is definitely not something you should miss–even if you’re not a fan of JRPGs. It’s very hard for JRPGs to pull off a modern setting with minimal sci-fi/fantasy involved, but like similar titles like Earthbound and The World Ends With You, Persona gets it right in a way that not even they do–it values time management, self-improvement, and being social much more than most other games in general. Alongside being the ultimate back-to-school series, the Persona series–particularly 3 and 4–is one of the ultimate game series in general. If all these other reasons for being the ultimate back-to-school series so far weren’t enough for you, let it be your ultimate back-to-school series because it’ll distract you from the mundane routines of back-to-school season.

via kotaku.com

via kotaku.com

Games that Especially Deserve a Digital Re-release

August 21, 2016 Kennedy Blog

I recently managed to finally get a game called Shadow Hearts on the PS2. I’ve been wanting to play this game for a while, but it’s been pretty difficult because it’s considered a rare game on the PS2 due to its limited release, and unlike several other games in this day and age, isn’t available on the PSN or any other digital game distributor. After years of hoping I’d find it–and if I did, that I’d find it at a decent price–it finally made its way into a favorite local game store of mine that I happened to have a gift card for. Due to its rarity and price though, I would’ve much rather have bought this game on a digital game distribution network like PSN or Steam, play it there, and then buy a physical copy if I ended up really liking it. Shadow Hearts is very much a hidden gem, and like many other underrated games, has managed to go under the radar of PSN and Steam for years. If its quality wasn’t enough to warrant putting it on a digital distribution network, then its rarity should. It’s very hard for new fans like myself to get into the franchise without emulation because the games are so hard to find–and because of their rarity, they’re usually pretty overpriced, too. Shadow Hearts is far from the only case of this happening to a game, though. There are many games right now that deserve to be put on PSN, Steam, Nintendo E-Shop, etc., especially as the modern market seems to heavily lean toward digital releases in the future. For some reason though, they simply aren’t there yet. Here are some other games such as Shadow Hearts that especially deserve to be made more accessible by being put on a digital distributor sooner rather than later.

 

The entire .hack franchise

thegeekclinic.wordpress.com

thegeekclinic.wordpress.com

I will sing the praises of .hack until the end of time. The .hack franchise–particularly the .hack//G.U. trilogy–is one of my favorite game series of all-time. This is why it breaks my heart all the more because this is such a difficult franchise for people to get into. There are two main series for .hack: The Infection quadrilogy and the G.U. trilogy. All of them are on the PS2. Each series had a pretty limited release, and the short of it is, they’re very expensive games. The first 3 games in the Infection series will cost you $20-$40 each depending on the condition, and then the final game, .hack//Quarantine, is worth about $150 if its in decent condition. Each game in the G.U. trilogy is worth between $60-$80 each depending on their condition. In total, you’d be spending at least $200 on the Infection series and $180 on the G.U. trilogy–$380 if you wanted them all. These games are amazing, but that’s just ridiculous. These games have a rather vocal cult following who all vehemently ask for an HD collection or digital re-release or some legal way of making these games more accessible. If nothing else, the G.U. trilogy turns 10 this year. What better way to celebrate than by breathing new life into an amazing franchise by bringing countless amounts of new fans into it?

 

Rule of Rose

via neogaf.com

via neogaf.com

If you thought $150 for a single .hack game sounded insane then strap in your seat belt because this game is undoubtedly the most expensive game on the PS2. Prices for Rule of Rose tend to run between $170-$350 depending on its condition. Why is it so expensive? First of all, it’s an Atlus game. Atlus games–especially at the time this came out (2006)–were pretty notorious for having low print runs despite generally being good games. Second, and there’s no way to sugar coat this so I’ll be plain about it, this game contains violent and sexual depictions of children akin to Lord of the Flies. Thankfully the sexual depictions are never explicit, but the implications are all there. It was banned in Italy and the UK,  made European politicians want a re-evaluation of the PEGI rating system, and even got mentioned at the French National Assembly because of the moral controversy it caused. It even appeared in The Times.

via hardcoregaming101.net

via hardcoregaming101.net

It’s pretty easy to see why it almost wasn’t released in the States. After almost a year of court battles, it received a very limited English release–even by Atlus standards. On top of that, despite all its controversy it didn’t sell particularly well and received only lukewarm reception. It’s pretty easy to see now why it’s so expensive, right? I completely understand why Atlus probably wants to forget about this game and not start more controversy, but it’s because it’s such a controversial game is why I wish it were more accessible. Just as Lord of the Flies received lots of controversy at its time, so has Rule of Rose–yet despite this, that’s why a lot of people read it: To see what was so controversial about it. Rule of Rose is no different. After all, it’s not every day politicians try to ban a game as hard as they did Rule of Rose. With a price tag as hefty as Rule of Rose’s, it’s out of the question for almost anyone to play it without emulation, and I’m sure there are plenty of willing players out there who would pay the standard $10-$15 on PSN to add it to their library and see what all the fuss was about.

 

Any Fire Emblem game before Awakening

via youtube.com

via youtube.com

Many fans agree that Fire Emblem Awakening breathed new life into the Fire Emblem franchise once it released. A previously niche franchise with few fans in the States, the Fire Emblem games that came out prior to Awakening spiked in price once the popularity of Awakening started catching on in 2012–even more so when Super Smash Bro’s on the Wii U came out in 2014 featuring several Fire Emblem characters. Ever since, more and more fans have been clamoring for more accessible, budget-friendly ways to play the Fire Emblem games that were released before Awakening–and even ones that weren’t released in the States. This isn’t the first time Nintendo has ignored the cries of the devoted fan base of one of their beloved but outrageously expensive franchises, and it certainly won’t be the last. Nintendo seems to be adding a lot of notable games to the Virtual Console lately, so why not show some love to one of its older franchises that goes largely underappreciated by them? Between Awakening, Smash, and Fates, Fire Emblem is enjoying a well-earned streak of popularity right now: Strike the iron while it’s hot, Nintendo.

 

Skies of Arcadia

via heypoorplayer.com

via heypoorplayer.com

Oftentimes called one of the best JRPGs on the Dreamcast and Gamecube, it’s hard to believe that this game isn’t more available as it is. Whether it’s the original Dreamcast version or the enhanced Gamecube port, Skies of Arcadia is definitely one of the rarer games on both systems–but it’s far from forgotten, both by fans and by Sega. In fact, Sega gave cameos to the main characters of Skies of Arcadia in Valkyria Chronicles. Moreover, this game has a very devoted fan base keeping this game still frequently talked about to this day. Yet somehow, Sega still continues to bank on the shaky odds of success in producing new Sonic games rather than re-releasing one of their other most well-loved games that’s otherwise pretty difficult–not to mention pricey–to obtain. If Shenmue can get a sequel after all these years, then surely there must be hope for another wonderful Sega franchise that’s been forcibly overshadowed by Sonic.

 

Obviously, these aren’t the only games out there in desperate need of a digital re-release: Feel more than free to comment with other games that you think especially deserve a digital re-release and why. The common thread in the games I think most deserve to be made more accessible are that they’re hard to obtain physical copies of: They’re all rare, expensive, and generally at least 10 years old. If you have any other major reasons you’d like to see a certain game or a group of certain games getting  re-released for, be sure and let us know.