I have always, and will always have a place in my heart for Yoshi's Island. It's one of the few video games from my childhood that I have vivid memories of. Long before The Ocarina of Time doomed me to play video games for all of eternity I rented SNES games from the local Video King. On multiple occasions I picked up Yoshi's Island and tried to get Baby Mario home!
It controls like a dream, and has a distinct sense of style. We're here today to praise its music though. I love almost every song in Yoshi's Island, but its map theme sticks out to me the most. After every stage you're thrust back to the map screen so that you can pick a new stage. This wonderful music plays every time, so you hear it quite frequently. It never quite gets stale though, because it changes as you advance. Each new world adds a new layer to the song.
If you listen from the beginning you can hear the central theme. Then the weird bongo beat makes its way into the song. Each following addition is subtle, but in the end you get what sounds like a full band playing the tune. It's a really cool effect that I think adds a lot to this otherwise simplistic song.
January is always a slow month for new releases, and this is one January where I am totally okay with that. I have a lot of games in my ever increasing backlog... Good thing I'm not playing them and have opted to play a ton of old games instead!
So, as you may have noticed, I've been streaming a lot more often lately. I am trying as hard as possible to share my love for Inazuma Eleven. I streamed all the way through the first game in less than a week and now I've moved on to the second. You can always check that out at Www.twitch.tv/drac96
I'm still working my way through Sunset Overdrive, but my interest is waning as the game goes on. That's the only "new" game I've been playing. I've spent a lot of time replaying old games this month. I replayed Pokemon Snap a few nights ago, and have been going through the original Super Mario. However, I will be writing here about the Donkey Kong Country series. I had never beaten the second one before, but now I have.
To go along with my more frequent streaming I did a playthrough of the Grim Fandango Remaster. Even though I played through it a few months ago for Extra Life, I still felt the need to play through the Remaster twice this past week. On my first playthrough I just wanted to see what it was all about, so I went through the game to get all of the trophies and listen to the director's commentary. I then went through it again on stream and beat it in under five hours.
Buckle up, it's game time!
Sunset Overdrive
It's official. I have been stricken with open world fatigue. Open world games are cool, but there is rarely anything compelling to do in the large open world, and the mission structure is almost always boring. Sunset Overdrive isn't really any different.
Yes, it has a whole load of style, but I just can't really ever get into it. The game is at its best when you're traveling seamlessly throughout the world. In terms of movement it reminds me of Jet Set Radio Future, but without roller-blades. For some reason the main character has magical shoes that allow him to grind on all surfaces, and he can inexplicably dash through the air. To me that's the best part of the game. The movement mechanics feel great, and make me as a player feel like I'm doing some legitimately cool stuff.
Traversing the world is fun, but shooting isn't.
Where it falls apart for me is that it is just another third-person shooter that takes place in an open world. Insomniac is great at creating zany weapons, but in the end you're still just shooting energy drink crazed monsters (basically zombies) with guns. It's even more frustrating, because almost every mission is a fetch quest, or deals with defending a single point. That sucks.
It's a shame the gameplay makes me feel this way, because I think Insomiac had some great ideas. The movement is amazing, and the world is filled with color and interesting characters. Normally these kinds of games keep me occupied, but I'm just getting a bit tired of them. I haven't played it in a few weeks, so hopefully when I boot it up later toady I'll feel refreshed. If not, I'll just have to take a break from open world games. It doesn't help that almost every release in recent memory has been open world...
Donkey Kong Country
During the SNES era I didn't personally own a lot of games, but I did rent a whole lot of them. I remember renting Donkey Kong Country one and two quite often. I personally was able to beat the first game, but never got a chance to do the second. For Christmas one year I was given Donkey Kong Country 3, which I still have now. I was also able to complete that.
New Years Eve Noukeo, Landers, and I were going to try and complete all three games on stream. However, Landers got sick, so we didn't go through with it. A few weeks later Landers and I decided to sit down and try to play through them all. We beat the first two games, but it took us nearly ten hours. We then went through the third game another day and that probably took us around two hours.
This isn't your Grandpa's Donkey Kong!
Just as I remember, these games are fairly difficult. Donkey King Country 2 is especially devious. The first two games took us a long time, because we weren't used to how the series handled at that point. If we did another run through, I'm sure we could do it much faster.
Prior to these play sessions I didn't like Donkey Kong Country 2 very much, but I've come around to it now. The music in it is incredible, possibly moreso than the other two entries in the series, which also have great music composed by Dave Wise. In fact, I'm listening to the song Klomp's Romp from the first stage of the game as I type this!
I feel that this series gets a lot of undeserved flak. People seem to think that the platforming hasn't aged well, and that the graphics look terrible. I still think the graphics look good, and they were top notch for their time. It's even more impressive when you think about how all three games were made within such a short time frame. The platforming is still some of the most satisfying I've ever played as well. It's something that's easy to learn, but hard to master. The series certainly ramps up in difficulty too. The first game starts easy and gets very hard. The second game starts easy and then immediately becomes punishingly difficult. We lost around thirty lives on a single level. After that we really had to step up our game. By the time we got to the third game I couldn't tell if it was much easier, or if your skills had just evolved from playing two.
This series is one that I have very fond memories of, and it was nice to see that reality matched up with my nostalgia for once. We're still planning on streaming it sometime, but we don't have any solid plans yet.
Grim Fandango Remastered
I'll say it before and I'll say it again, Grim Fandango is one of the greatest video games ever made. There are two games I attribute my continued video game obsession with, and they are The Ocarina of Time, and Grim Fandango. I first played Grim Fandango when I was around ten years old. It came out in 1998, and I played it a few years later. I was obsessed with Manuel Calavera and his journey through the Land of the Dead.
My dad worked in a computer store, and I would visit him there all the time and play a bunch of games. They mostly built computers and sold components, but they always had a shelf of software. It rarely ever sold, so the same games would mostly be there. One box that always caught my eye was Grim Fandango. Eventually I convinced them to let me play it, and I ended up with a burned copy of Grim Fandango. My dad left that job, but eventually went back to it a few years later. When he returned Grim Fandango was still there, and they decided to just give it to me. Sadly, I don't have the box, but I do have the original game discs.
I love all Grim Fandango related art.
It's been seventeen years since the game's original release, and now it has been remastered. The original publisher LucasArts was shut down when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. In a recent deal brokered by Sony the studio headed by Grim Fandango's writer Tim Schafer was given permission to remaster the game.
While I've played Grim Fandango countless times, many people have not. To make matters even worse it doesn't run easily on modern PCs. It only works, because fans have made programs and patches to get it to run. However, now anyone with a modern PC, PS4, or Vita can get in on the action. I've seen a lot of people complaining about this as a "lazy" port, but that's just plain wrong. As someone who's played this game recently I can tell you that the character models look a whole lot better. A whole bunch of lighting was added, you can play in 16:9, there are new camera-related controls, and director's commentary. Most important of all it's now available to many people in an easily approachable format.
I still think this would be the coolest tattoo ever.
I can't stress enough how much I think people should play this game. It is legitimately one of the best video game narratives I have experienced, which is helped by the fact that it's 90% narrative! The whole world comes together so well. Hell, it had incredible voice acting even in 1998! If you haven't checked this game out, you definitely should. At the very least you should watch my Extra Life stream where I played it.
Let the Hunt Begin!
There may have been no new games this month, there will be one in February. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate comes out on February 13th. Due to GameStop sucking, I won't be getting it until at least the 23rd. I won't get into it, but there's some stupid reason that they had to order the Monster Hunter 4 New 3DS bundle through their website. So I had to pay in full and get screwed on shipping!
I don't really care when I get it, because I'll get plenty of use out of it no matter when it comes. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was my first entry into the series and I played it for almost 400 hours. This game has more content, and new mechanics! I bet I'll play it for even longer than Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I'm very excited.
Next month be prepared for some serious Monster Hunter 4 talk. See you guys next time.
For the fourth episode I thought it would be best to bring everyone down a bit. Recently I've been noticing how becoming what is theoretically an adult has changed my video gaming habits. If you want to hear about that for about a half hour then I suggest you listen to this. Enjoy!
You know what? I don't have an introduction for this week. I played two older games and a newer PC release. I enjoyed all three. How much you ask? Well let's find out together. It's game time!
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
Now that Ace Attorney 5 coverage has been picking up my urge to play more Ace Attorney has picked up as well. Last month I finally finished Apollo Justice, but it just wasn't enough to whet my appetite. In order to relieve my insatiable hunger for more Ace Attorney I picked up the final US release of the series Ace Attorney Investigations. It's slightly different from the normal Ace Attorney Formula, but only very slightly.
This isn't just your run of the mill Ace Attorney title. It's all about investigating crime scenes as prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. It may as well be called Ace Attorney: CSI Edition. I expected playing as a prosecutor to be far different than playing as a defense attorney, but sadly that is not the case. This is still essentially the same game it was before, except you never truly go into the courtroom. Somehow Edgeworth gets mixed up in a series of murders. Obviously as a big time prosecutor he must get to the bottom of what exactly transpired in each given scenario.
You can walk and run around small environments!
Yes, you do the exact same thing in the normal Ace Ace Attorney Games. You check out the scene, gather evidence, and talk to people. The main difference is that you get to walk around! I know, it's a mind blowing change that would lead you to believe that it adds to the game overall. Surprise, it doesn't. Even though you can walk around the crime scene you still aren't allowed to leave until you find everything you need to. The only benefit walking around conveys is that you can walk to other pieces of interest instead of navigating a menu, which is equally effective. Although I assume drawing out full sprites for every character takes much more work.
Edgeworth is a smart dude, so he can use logic. Examining things sometimes allows him to deduce things about the scene or crime at hand. These deductions are added to the brand new logic menu. In the logic menu you can fuse two pieces of logic alchemy like into a piece of evidence, or another piece of logic. It's not anything mind-blowing, but it is different.
Kay is great and I hope she's in Ace Attorney 5
It's cool to see Edgeworth in the side of the Ace Attorney franchise that we never see. However, I would have preferred something a little more different than the main series. It would have been a cool spin on everything if you actually did have to go into the courtroom as a prosecutor. Proving someone is guilty would actually be quite different than trying to prove their innocence, plus every person you defend as Phoenix or Apollo is innocent. Sadly this ends up being more of the same with a few minor changes.
Even though it's more of the same I still love it. It's nice to be able to learn more about Edgeworth and Gumshoe firsthand. The new characters they introduce are actually quite well done too. I really hope that Kay the lovable ninja/theif makes a guest appearance in Ace Attorney 5. The story is still quite good, although I don't think it's quite on par with the rest of the series. What sucks is that this game didn't sell well when it was released although I can kind of see why. Due to that fact, the second Ace Attorney Investigations may forever be a Japan only release.
Super Metroid
For years I've heard about the greatness that is Super Metroid and now that it's been released on the Wii-U virtual console for a whopping 30 cents I've finally gotten around to playing it. At first I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to my expectations, because people really like to talk it up. Thankfully this is one of the times where the game actually lives up to the hype. It's one of the most atmospheric 2D adventure games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. It's easy to see how people look to this game and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night when they try to explain games of this ilk and their quality.
Super Metroid hasn't been all fun and games so far though, it has also been quite sobering. It's a common complaint that modern games hold the hand of the player a little too often. After playing a few hours of Super Metroid I can now say that modern games have made me soft. Games today are chock full of tutorials and hints to get you through difficult spots and let you know the game mechanics. This game is nothing like that though. Samaus is more or less dumped on planet Zebes and then you're left to your own devices. Sometimes upon picking up weapons and power-ups there will be instructions on how to use them, or what they do, but that's not always the case.
I love the title screen for this game.
You have to figure out where to go all on your own. There is nothing there to hold your hand. There are no magical bread crumb trails, or pop-up hints when you're taking too long. There were multiple times where I came to a complete stop, because I literally did not have what I needed to advance. I've had to backtrack on multiple occasions and gotten completely lost, even with a map. What's weird is that Super Metroid is a product of the era when I started playing games. It's not like I'm unaccustomed to games of this difficulty, it's just that I'm not used to having to figure things out all on my own anymore. I'm actually glad I'm having trouble finding exactly where to go and what to do. I actually enjoy banging my head against the game until I make progress. It's not like the game is impossible to figure out, it's just that it takes more than one look to figure out exactly what you need to do.
For fun I decided to hit up the Miiverse to see if anyone else was having the same type of experience that I was. People weren't exactly having a sobering epiphany about how modern games like to hold your hand and stroke your ego. Instead I saw countless posts about people getting frustrated, because they couldn't figure out what to do in any capacity. More often than not people were taking screenshots of where they were to ask for help. It's crazy to think that there is a whole new generation of gamers out there who might not like this type of game, because it doesn't spell everything out for you. Thankfully I still like figuring things out for myself, so I'm going to continue playing. Sometimes working to figure something out is more rewarding than getting it immediately on your first try.
Game Dev Tycoon
Many moons ago I bought my first android phone. At that time I entered the world of mobile gaming by purchasing Game Dev Story. As you may have surmised it was a game about game development. The goal of the game was to make the best video games you possibly could. In order to do so the game required you to hire and train employees in game making. They would all toil away by putting points into your game, which would then be reviewed and make you money or completely tank. The cycle would then continue until you either got bored, or lost all of your money. Most of the time I got bored, but that didn't stop me from buying Game Dev Tycoon for the PC this past week.
I know what you're thinking. Game Dev Tycoon sounds almost exactly like Game Dev Story. Guess what? You're right, they are almost the exact same game. In fact, they're so similar it surprises me that there is no type of legal action involved. While the games may be very similar I still find what Game Dev Tycoon has to offer appealing to a certain extent.
Get ready for a lot of bars and sliders.
You start off all by yourself making games in your garage. At first you can only develop games for the PC and G64, the cleverly renamed C64. You choose a platform, genre, and topic. In my case I always start by making Fantasy Rpgs for the G64. Once you choose what to make the development process starts for "real". Three different colored bars with sliders will appear. There will always be three bars, each one representing an area of focus. Sliding each bar will determine how much focus you put on that specific aspect of the game. Once finalized different colored bubbles will fly from your characters head. Design and Technology are what you want a lot of to make your game succeed. However, bugs and research will also be created. Once the game is finished you can push it out for release immediately or give yourself some time to fix the bugs. Shortly after release you will get four reviews from "famous" gaming publications. The reviews will dictate how well your game sells. After the review roundup it's time to make a new game and start the cycle all over again.
As your company makes games you'll gain money to put towards even better and new games. You'll eventually be able to research new technologies, design custom engines, hire employees, and market your games. New mechanics get rolled out at a regular pace to keep mix up the gameplay and keep it exciting. I use the word exciting liberally, because in reality this is a game about watching numbers count up and progress bars fill. There's something about it that's oddly satisfying to me though and I got pretty sucked in the first few times I played.
I always lose the game shortly after I make it to this office...
While the game is still enjoyable I kind of ruined it for myself. My first few play sessions I would make it up until the Super Nintendo era of gaming before my company would completely tank. The games my company was releasing were getting terrible reviews, even if they were technically better than the previous releases of the same type. After failing a couple of times I visited a wiki to discover what I was doing wrong. Apparently if the games you create aren't at least 20% better than the previous one of that type then they totally bomb. Knowing this totally broke any connection I had to the game, because now I can only think of the numbers. Yes the game is mostly just numbers anyways, but before it was masked by a sense of discovery.
Since I purchased the game I have received several emails from the developer. These emails seem to acknowledge the fact that the game can be pretty unforgiving at certain stages. They're planning to fix those issues in order to accommodate other play styles. Hopefully one of those play styles is mine. I'm going to wait until the new version of the game comes out before playing any more, because I really don't enjoy exploiting the system.
Get Hype For E3!
Now that we know a bunch about the PS4 and Xbox One it's time to start getting excited for E3. Since it's the dawn of a new console era it's sure to be exciting. We'll finally get to see a whole bunch of next generation titles, which are hopefully as awesome as I'd like them to be. Maybe we'll even catch a glimpse of the ever elusive Final Fantasy Versus XII, but only time will tell. I'll probably have a whole bunch of thoughts and opinions about E3 as it's happening, so check back in a few weeks to see all that good stuff.
In terms of games June is actually going to be pretty big. I thought that the summer dry spell had already started, but turns out that was just a brief respite from my extreme spending habits. Even though I've been hearing nothing but negativity surrounding the futuristic Remember Me. I still decided to pre-order it anyways. Hopefully that's good. Then you've got Animal Crossing New Leaf and Project X Zone for the 3ds, which I'm super excited for.
Maybe I'll even break down and buy The Last of Us, because every time I see a new trailer for it my brain tells me that I need it. Do I really need another zombie game though? I don't know, but stay tuned to Game Time to find out.
"I received my very first video game console as a gift from my parents when I was in Kindergarden at the ripe young age of seven. I remember crying in the middle of Wal-Mart when the electronics clerk said he didn't think there were any Super Nintendos left. My father insisted that the clerk check to see if there were any more left in the store. Luckily for my parents the clerk returned with a brand new console for me to take home. We rushed home to hook it up to our relatively old television. It was a miracle that thing worked as well as it did. It was an old brown Zenith that had been passed down from my Great Grandma. It has since died, but it did its job for quite a long time. I put Super Mario Bros. in the SNES, hit the power, and from that moment my life was never the same.
Prior to that moment I don't know if I had ever played any other video games, but I fell in love with what I saw and experienced. I couldn't believe that I could control someone else in a different world."
The above quotation recounts my first experience with gaming. I can still clearly remember that moment, because as the quotation states once I hit the power on the SNES my life was never the same. That might sound corny from an outside perspective, but if you're an avid gamer you know exactly what I'm talking about. The concept of controlling someone else in a virtual world, being them, grabbed hold of me and hasn't let go since.
I am now twenty-one years old and about to graduate college a semester early. You might think that I would have grown out of gaming by now, but that is far from the case. I now own over four hundred games spread across at least ten consoles, and both of those numbers will be steadily climbing for years to come. As I previously mentioned I am going to be graduating from college about a month from now. I'll be graduating with a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. So needless to say I like to read and write as well as game.
Over the years I've written a great deal about gaming, but I've chosen to keep most of it to myself. If I want to be a writer this behavior is unacceptable, which is why I am creating this blog titled Game Time With Manny. I've decided that it's time to get my thoughts and opinions about gaming out there and I couldn't think of a better place to start than the internet.
