It’s here! Let’s wrap 2017 up and never think about it again. We can still remember the games… just maybe nothing else.
Category: Switch
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Games of the Month – September 2017
So uh, wow. Right?
This end-of-year-rush isn’t showing any signs of slowing, and it’s great! 2017 has been a wild year for games. I’m super pumped to see everybody’s end of year lists, because outside of, say, Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda, I’m not sure what’s going to fill out the average Top 10. I’m fairly certain where mine’s headed thanks to a handful of wonderful surprises, (including one of the decade’s best platformers and one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time) but this year’s been such a smorgasbord of releases it’s hard to nail anything down for certain. And there’s still plenty more on the Horizon. But… let’s wrap September up so we can truck through Wolfenstein, The Evil Within 2, Mario, Assassin’s Creed’s potentially good soft reboot, and more. Jeez, there’s a lot to do.
1. Cuphead
Cuphead isn’t a game without issues. The platforming stages aren’t great. Too many of the bosses have cheap, unavoidable attacks leading to unnecessary trial and error. The discussion around the game has become so toxic that I feel like I need to distance myself from the worst of its fans. But still, I find myself wanting to return to its beautiful, brutal world again and again.
Though I don’t feel difficulty balance is among its strongest suits, Cuphead does do a lot of things well. It recaptures the feeling of facing off against a foe in a game like Mega Man or Duck Tales while amping up the scale tenfold. You’re still just a tiny dude with a peashooter, but now the boss battle is against a screen filling monstrosity with four or five forms. It makes an excellent case for boss-rush platformers… and if we don’t see a half-dozen riffs on this in the next couple of years I’ll be disappointed. And I’ve only barely mentioned the art, but oh man, that art. I would pay more money than I should for another handful of boss fights just to see what these brilliant artists would draw. Watching the bosses reel from an attack and change into an entirely different beast made each fight exciting, and I could never wait to see what was going to pop from the screen next. Remember when that boss girl was a blimp, then angels, then the MOON? Yeah, that was wild.
2. Gloomy Room
Grab Google translate on your phone to translate a bit of Japanese text, and get ready for the spookiest ten minutes of your life. Though the Gloomy Room demo isn’t the most complex room escape around, thanks to some stellar sound design and clever scares, it’s one of the most terrifying.
SPOILER: Kill some time in the first room if you escape too quickly and don’t get the hype. The part after the bathroom is pretty meh, so the first main scare is what you’re looking for here. Or just watch the first ten minutes or so of this.
3. SteamWorld Dig 2
…I bet the first one of these was really good too! This is my first entry into the SteamWorld series and it was a good one. Half Metroidvania and half grindy Skinner box, it somehow lands right in the middle and works well. Complete with surprisingly solid platforming challenges and more skills and upgrades than you can shake your Level 5 Flaming Pickaxe at, this one’s an early contender for best indie on the Switch.
Honorable Mentions:
Danganronpa V3: I bet if I had gotten further than the first chapter by now it would be much higher on this list. But hey, that first chapter was a trip, huh?
Golf Story: Again, a lot of stuff came out this month! My first couple of hours with Golf Story were good. I hope to have many more.
The Tomatoes are OK: Weird, surreal, and spooky. Me likey.
Metroid: Samus Returns: I haven’t enjoyed it as much as the hype surrounding it might have suggested, but it’s not bad by any means. The combat is satisfying, the upgrades come quick, and the pace is mostly solid. But, man, I do not enjoy killing the same boss 20 times in a row. Why did anyone think that was a cool premise?
Destiny 2: It’s more of what the first one was but slightly different! Yeah!
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Games of the Month – April 2017
Not ready to slow down, 2017 keeps on truckin’. Game releases are finally slowing down a bit now that we’re halfway through May, but that barely gives a breather from everything else we’re all still catching up with from earlier this year. Persona 5 seems like one I’ll be trying to finish for a good long while, and Battlegrounds is one I’ll continue to play and watch every good stream of. With The Surge and Rime right around the corner, let’s take care of last month’s unfinished business.
1. Persona 5
I’m about 30 hours into this one, and just finished the second major “Chapter” for lack of a better term. I have a feeling that if I ever finish this, it’s not gonna be anytime soon. Though I don’t think the writing is nearly as good as Persona 4’s, I’m still having a lot of fun with it. Despite some early story issues, a few of them have already ironed themselves out. Fair warning, this isn’t a game that you’re going to be able to recommend without several caveats, maybe even moreso than Persona 4 this time. The writing often feels awkward and mistranslated, the only woman character in the group so far is treated like a sex-object more often than not, and the main conceit of the story (focusing more on the villains than the protagonists) means that we get to know the characters less than we would have in Persona 4. Even though we’re stuck with more issues than I was hoping for, I’m still enjoying my time with it and am excited to meet new characters as the story goes on. I hear that some of my issues are touched on the further I get, so I’m hoping that happens sooner rather than later. The dungeons are fantastic though, and are a necessary improvement that should have been made before the fifth game in this series. As it stands 30 hours in, Persona 5 plays better than any Persona game to come before, and I’m hoping the story and characters can catch up.
2. Little Nightmares
Little Nightmares isn’t made by Playdead, but if I hadn’t known that ahead of time I’d have probably assumed it was. Sitting easily along Limbo and Inside, Tarsier Studios nailed the style they so obviously were aiming for. You play a small child in a raincoat making her way through a series of terrible, malicious environments. It’s dark, tense, and I kind of already want to play through it again. Clocking in at roughly three hours, you have no excuse to skip this one if you’re interested in this kind of platformer.
3. What Remains of Edith Finch
Following in the footsteps of Gone Home, the creators of The Unfinished Swan have crafted a short story about a girl returning to her childhood home. Where the similarities end, though, are when you explore the rooms of the family you used to know and the ones you’d only heard stories of. Once you find their quarters, you’re whisked away to take control of them in their final moments before they passed away see those moments through their eyes. What Remains of Edith Finch is essentially an anthology told inside the trappings of the now well-worn “Walking Simulator” genre that I tend to enjoy so much. If those kinds of things scare you away this one probably isn’t for you, but for everyone else, this is a very solid entry in that genre. It didn’t resonate with me as much as Gone Home or The Beginner’s Guide, but by the end I felt like I had finished reading a nice short story. Sometimes just being pleasant and good is good enough.
Honorable Mentions
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – The best version of the best Marion Kart game, and another reason the Switch is potentially the coolest video game system of all time.
Banana Boy – A weird arcade thing that you’ll play for about ten minutes and probably remember forever.
Yooka-Laylee – A game that had a lot of potential and lives up to about 40% of it. If you’re desperate for the return of Banjo… I mean, I guess this is an option.
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Games of the Month – March 2017
About time, right? Every time I’ve sat down to write this one, I end up giving a whole game its own treatment instead. And, y’know, Zelda happened. Then Persona… but we’ll talk about that one soon enough.
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Let’s Talk About Breath of the Wild’s Problems
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen me in the last month or read my latest post on the game, but the new Zelda is real good, ya’ll. I thought, instead of singing its praises all year long, I could take a minute to talk about the issues I have with the game after spending upwards of 80 or 90 hours with it. Yes, it’s up there with the most fun I’ve ever had with a video game, but it’s far from perfect. If Nintendo follows up Breath of the Wild with something similar, here’s how it could be improved.
I. The Reward System
One of the biggest issues with Breath of the Wild is its almost nonexistent rewards outside of the shrine loop. Since BotW loads you up with almost all of the permanent upgrades you’re going to get right from the beginning, there’s very little in the way of meaningful progress you make outside of gaining more hearts and stamina. That kinda sucks. The actual *play* of Breath of the Wild is so incredible, it’s easy to let this slide for a very long time. But when you’re dawning on your final hours and wrapping up shrines and sidequests I kept thinking, what exactly have I gotten from this?
The unique sidequests and mini games are fun, and I think Nintendo saw the act of doing them as the real reward, but after getting *another* stash of nearly useless rupees I found myself curious if this shallowness felt as obvious to anyone as as it did to me. Whenever you find a chest in a shrine or dungeon, what’s the best that can happen? You’re forced to drop a lame sword from your inventory to pick up a slightly less lame sword. The *one* occasion where they ditch this is when you get the Zora’s armor. That thing rocks and I couldn’t believe they would give you such a cool ability just as an equippable item. And then they never do it again.
Wouldn’t it have been better if there was a larger variety of equipment to find, or maybe even some kind of equivalent to Heart Pieces, or a larger arrow or rupee bag…or just… something? In trimming the fat from older Zelda games, I think Nintendo cut a little too close to the bone.
II. The Dungeons
-SPOILERS- If you haven’t finished the Divine Beasts you may want to skip past the next two sections . -SPOILERS-
So what’s up with these guys? If you’ve frequented as many Zelda forum posts as I have in the last month, you’ve probably heard the same complaint over and over: The Dungeons Suck, and are the worst thing Breath of the Wild did to the series.
I disagree.
I think I’m in the minority that believes the Divine Beast dungeons are (for the most part) very well crafted and are some of my favorite content in the game. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. I do miss the themed levels from the rest of the series, like the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time or the Snowpeak Ruins Mansion in Twilight Princess. The closest we get to that is the Salamander Beast, which culminates in you flying into a volcano to explore a giant lizard. That’s pretty awesome.
The Divine Beasts themselves were all exciting to explore, if a little on the short side. Instead of feeling like an expansive “dungeon” of Zelda’s past, they mostly feel like a larger, more involved version of one of BotW’s many Shrines. Each one has a gimmick, with the Elephant’s water spewing trunk being the most unique, but the Camel and Salamander’s level shifting rotations are super cool, too. The bird is the weakest of the bunch from start to finish. Its gimmick is to… slightly shift to the left or right. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely bland in comparison. Do I wish that Zelda dungeons of old were still scattered about? Absolutely. Would I wholeheartedly trade them and lose my unique, weird animal challenges? Probably not.
Would I kill a person to get a spooky shadow temple filled with ReDeads and Poes? Just give me a name and I’ll take care of the rest.
III. Boss Variety
Soooo… like what happened here? The first Blight you fight is fine. It’s not mindblowing, but it gets the job done as your first boss. Then you fight the second one and you realize that this is all the game has to offer. Get ready, because this is when I continue talking about Ocarina of Time’s Shadow Temple. It’s maybe my favorite level in gaming, okay?
This is the mini-boss of one dungeon in Ocarina of Time. Nothing in Breath of the Wild compares visually with how unique and weird Dead Hand is.
Then you ride a spooky ghost ship to the actual boss of the Shadow Temple.
What happened, Nintendo? You remember you use to make incredibly weird stuff, right? Each of the four bosses of the Divine Beast dungeons in Breath of the Wild are almost visually identical. *But* one of them stands out above the rest and helps me forgive them as a concept, if only for a moment.
The boss of the Camel dungeon is Thunderblight Ganon, a flying dude who shoots lightning and teleports quickly around the arena, forcing you to learn how to dodge and parry or be stricken down in moments. Once you master this section, he flies high above the stage, and you instinctively shoot arrows at him to no avail. He rains electrified pillars down at you and you’re forced to sprint around the room and avoid them as you come up with a new strategy. It took me a solid couple of minutes before I even considered grabbing these pillars with my magnet to send them flying back at him to win the fight. It’s one of the most frantic fights in the game that actually ends with a well-crafted puzzle, and I wish I could say that for literally any of the other main bosses in Breath of the Wild.
There are, surprisingly, some other really unique boss fights in Breath of the Wild. They just don’t come at the end of a dungeon. During the Gerudo quest to find away inside the Camel Beast, you sneak through a hidden camp full of thieves and end up fighting their incompetent leader in another of the game’s best fights. You do the typical stabba stabba stabba, but there’s also an element of using your other abilities to take him down. He’s also just a fun character that I wish ended up with more screen time.
Then there’s the giant dragon resting on top of a snowy mountain. You fight it by jumping off the peak and slow-mo shooting weak spots off of it until you bring it down. That blew my damn mind. Same goes for the Skeletal Hinox and the Desert Gobble Gobble Boy (that’s his name don’t look it up that’s just his name ok). These fights are optional in a Zelda game with the lamest collection of main bosses in the series. That’s weird, right?
All of this isn’t to throw unnecessary shade at Breath of the Wild. I’d be hard pressed to say it isn’t tied for my favorite Zelda game of all time. But at times it just doesn’t feel like a Zelda game, which I guess is what makes it such an oddity when compared to the rest of the series. It feels like a bunch of geniuses borrowed Zelda elements and slapped them into an unrelated open world masterpiece. And that’s okay!
Nothing is perfect, but getting pretty close still makes for one of the best games of all time.
(Nintendo, please make a weirder, darker side story using this engine a-la Majora’s Mask and I’ll never say anything bad about you ever again ok bye bye)
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Zelda: Breath of the Wild is Nintendo’s Modern Masterpiece
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild seems like the game Nintendo always intended The Wind Waker to be. In many regards, Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game to date. The aesthetics were more on-point than anything else in the series, the world felt wide enough that anything could exist in it, and the dungeons were just side attractions to what the game was really about: Exploring. I don’t know that anything outside of the Souls series has ever matched the feeling of sailing to a brand new island for the first time and discovering what secrets it had in store. A lot of the time…there wasn’t much, but the feeling of wonder and excitement about just the possibility of new things to see was enough to keep me sailing through that incarnation of Hyrule for the past two decades.
hippochippies 