CrossCode (PC): The MMO I always wanted.

Despite what people a number of people feel about them as a gaming news site, I read a fair bit of Kotaku in my day to day life. Mainly because of a few select writers who I enjoy the work of and have some pretty similar interests as far as games go. One of those writers is Mike Fahey, and in his write up at the end of last year he listed his top ten games of 2018.

One of them, I had never heard of before. Wasn't even remotely on my radar. Had nice looking pixel graphics, and boasted itself as an MMO that's really not. Strange, I thought, but ultimately clicked away. But then I started to see the title popping up in some other sites top 10 lists. Now that had my attention. How can a game that appears on so many people's best of lists get by me? Well, that merited a deeper look.

CROSSCODE (STEAM)

CrossCode opens with us in control of a dark haired woman racing through a dark foresty area. She is on the hunt for her brother, and shadowy voice implores her to stop. She vehemently denies, saying that she is trying to stop her brother from working to death. The voice spawns monsters to stop her which the girl quickly dispatches. After tearing through the enemies put before her, she does find her brother just to see him collapse from exhaustion.

We are woken up in a different location. Our hair and outfit are slightly different. An operator tells us that our name is Lea, and we are actually logged into an avatar of the futuristic MMO called CrossWorlds. In the vein of Sword Art Online, Crossworlds is a game where the players are actually implanted in the game to a heavy degree of the 5 senses. Unfortunately, we are told there has been an accident and that we are in a coma in the real world, and we are being placed into the game to try to find out what happened.

To make matters worse though, our speech unit is damaged. We can understand fine, and give minor visual responses but we are told that in order to solve this issue and hopefully find some answers, we need to play the game just as if we were any other player in the game. Lea remembers the basics of how to use her Spheromancer class in the game and after running into a friendly Pentafist named Emilie in the rookie island, she and her new friend jump into the game of Crossworlds to hopefully learn what's happened to her.

Loaded for bear

CrossCode is going to be an interesting game to try to review because the mechanics of this game borrow from so many different various elements that it doesn't really fall into just one genre of game. For example like I explained that the Lea is logged into an MMO, but you would incorrect to assume that's what this game actually is. The MMO aspect of the game is used as a framework for the story and the world.

What I mean be that is, yeah there is some questing that is done in the style of an MMO. You need to go talk to NPCs who give you quests to do, and you'll go into the world and fight mobs to collect items or kill a certain amount of enemies. As you wander around the world you'll see other players just running around, fighting their own things, or just hanging out. All of these are computer controlled. This is a fully single player experience, but it does a very good job of presenting the illusion that this is a living world with other players doing their own thing. 

When I describe the game, I describe along the lines of a 16-bit Zelda game such as A Link to the Past.  It's stylized in a way that it would look at home on the Super Nintendo with a top down view of the world, primarily a 2d play, but there is some degree of verticality to the maps which allows for some platforming and parkour when wandering around the world.

The combat is going to be the real meat and potatoes of this game. It's core is a hack and slasher with bit of Souls to it. You can run around and slash with a couple of swings with a single button press, you have a block that pulls up a shield and can parry if timed correctly, and you have a dodge move that has some invulnerability frames that lets Lea gracefully spin from harms way, which she can do up to the three times. 

But it she wouldn't be a Spheromancer without some spheres, and that's where her ranged attacks come in. When using the right analog (or I assume mouse on PC) the combat becomes almost a twin stick shooter. Holding a direction will bring a pair of lines for Lea's aim together, and once lined up you can unload a continue stream of projectiles at an enemy, which is handy for fast or flying foes. You can also charge up your first shot to ricochet off walls or break enemy guards.

As you play through the game and unlock your circuit board, you open your skill tree which allows you to learn multiple techniques for special moves for your Melee, Ranged, Dash and Shield. What is nice about this is as when you commit to an ability path, once you fill out the 3 spaces for it you can actually flip between your options so if you don't care for how one ability plays you can try the other option to see what works for you better. Even further in the game you start unlocking elemental grids which provide you with even more options to fight with, so you do have a bit of freedom to design your character.

Having familiarity with your Techs will let you set up the right attacks for them

Now while I've gone into the specifics of the combat and referred to it as the meat and potatoes of the game, it would actually be pretty foolish to assume the game is just battling. That's what I did and I was promptly set up for some gameplay whiplash. As you play through the "story" for Crossworlds you come onto these "instanced" dungeons where you have to go without your party. And while these do contain a significant number of fights usually capped off with a spectacular boss fight, you learn that CrossCode is in fact a serious puzzle game as well.

Actually, when thinking about it, this game might actually be more of a platform puzzler than it is an action adventure because depending on the size of your giant space brain, the puzzles can be a major stumbling block. I am more than man enough to admit that there were a number of that I had to look up a solution for because I just was not seeing it on my own.

I love Emilie. She is just the right level of earnestness and naivety to make her impossible to hate.
Might be one of my favorite iterations of the best friend character. 

Sometimes the puzzles are just a matter of following the right path, and parkouring off the right environment pieces to get you from A to B. Sometimes the solution will require you moving around bits of your environment so that you can fire a projectile in the proper path to hit all the necessary points before coming on a final switch. Sometimes you will have to use the temples element for an environmental variant to the puzzles.

All I can say is some these will TEST you. Which can be frustrating because the story frames solving these dungeons like races against your friends. Like I said, I got stuck a lot. It wasn't until a friendly fan of the game in my Twitch chat told me to use visual cues on the floors of the puzzles to get a better idea of how to solve some these. It really did help a bit, but sometimes you can forget early mechanics that if you didn't use, would make the puzzle unsolvable, like remembering you can hop on fences.

So close, yet so far away

Outside from the puzzles, the actual combat can be very challenging as well. A lot of the enemies that you come across have their own unique weaknesses and patterns, so very rarely is just running and slashing away going to be the best way to dispatch something. It can work, but not always well. Then you have to bear in mind unless you use limited items to recover health, it doesn't restore until you finish fighting your combo chain. The more you beat enemies, the more valuable drops they give you, so its beneficial to beat a long string of baddies, but you have to be careful to mind your health.

To the CrossCode's credit, the options provide a very significant amount of customization to the overall game. Right from the onset, you are warned by the developers that this game meant to be a challenge, but if it's proving so difficult that you are not having any fun, you have options to bring down the battle and puzzle difficulties. It's a nice gesture and it gives the "git gud" scrubs less of an opportunity to be so insufferably smug when someone is struggling.

In addition to learning attack patterns and elements, you have to be mindful of ledges too.

CrossCode was a very weird game for me, because it was a game that I kept putting down. It's not because of a lack of interest of will, it is just a game that constantly got caught up in a retail release schedule as I played my games through the year. But there is something so inherently charming about it's whole presentation that always kept it in my mind. When I was playing something major like Red Dead Redemption 2, I always kept thinking "Soon as I finish this, I can get back to CrossCode".

It's story is interesting because it deals with a lot of fronts. First we have Lea's primary story, which is about her trying to figure out what happened to her. This is expounded to her by a character who is developer to the game, basically speaking to her directly. Then we have the Crossworld's "story mode" which is what we learn as Lea plays through the game with the friends she meets, and her interactions with those characters. Then we also have the front of what Crossworld's actually is, which we had a glimpse of at the start of the game and is told in flashback sequences. There is a lot to take in, but it does eventually tie together, (mostly. I'll get into that).

The game also has a sense of humor about itself. Lea, despite being a generally mute character is a very expressive character. She responds with overblown physical comedy and it really goes a long way to accentuate her personality depending on the scene. It also works for scenes when Lea was visibly emotionally shaken. Radicalfish games did an excellent job of finding a way to make you empathize with a silent protagonist.

And man, CrossCode LOVES pop culture references. I basically freaked out when in the very beginning the game when one of the first npc quests parted me by saying Aziz Ansari's big line from the "Steak Night" episode of Scrubs. You find an "Umbrella corp." in one of the cities and you can't enter because of an outbreak they are having. For the Halloween event, you have to collect "Jack's flames" for a character that is CLEARLY Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas. I can see from the coming update that there are more character references to be made soon.

Soundtrack is pretty good and it was very fitting for it's overall theme. Described by it's composer of Deniz Akbulut, the CrossCode OST is heavily inspired by Japanese game music of the late 90s using electronic beats, melodic tunes and epic JRPG Scores. This is a fair way to explain it, because the best description I had for it was "Video Gamey" which again, is perfect for it in this case because of the visual styling, story delivery, and accompanying gameplay. There are handful of decent tracks, but I wouldn't consider too many of the 60 to be overly memorable.

Oh Look. Its Doogie Noogie from A Bad Dream Before Kwanzaa. 

There really isn't a lot I have to complain about on this one that isn't in some way addressed. Like for example, when I complain about this game, I would often comment that these puzzles really do make me feel dumb as hell. It was very rare occurrence that I ever jumped into a room, saw the puzzle, and figured it out at a pretty quick clip. Now you can argue that having a solution guide embedded into the floor design is technically good game design, but there was very little indicating that's what they were doing. There was too little visual cue because I pretty much never noticed it until it was pointed out to me.

I could complain about the combat challenge, but I can only think of one real instance where I actually had to turn the difficulty down on a mob fight just so I could actually complete the quest. there was a pretty significant amount of frustration and trial & error, but outside of the one instance there was no fight that I wasn't eventually able to overcome under my own skill level.

Because the game is framed like an MMO, I could complain that some of the questing is the same MMO grind that bores me when I try to play a game like that, but it didn't bother me in this one. This is probably because the game is not an MMO. There is a story at play here with a defined ending, and because I'm not just killing mobs to open the next mission, I am motivated to continue because I want to see how things unfold.

I loved lightning techs, I used them almost exclusively because I love rapid fire damage.

And without spoiling anything? The ending feels unfinished. I get that this was a kickstarter game and they were probably trying to make a deadline to appease their backers, but it was a mild let down. In my first playthough I got a bad, pretty unsatisfying ending. I come to find out that you have to find a very out of the way NPC to trigger a small quest line which slightly changes the ending, but allows you to open the path to good ending.

Thankfully I could reload my save, so I did so. The ending changed by a few lines and actions, and just as I got ready to proceed further and see where it was going?  Nothing. I was able to go back into my game and do missed quests, but the option to go "to the future" was locked off, because that content isn't there yet. Or at least, it's heavily implied that the content will be added later. So I don't get to see how the story actually ends, and the dangling plot threads are left untied. Ironically, the NPC players are suffering from the same fate, because when you get to Crossworld's final dungeon, they players are all lamenting that it hasn't been included in the game yet. Misery loves company I guess.

Smug Lea is best Lea.

But my biggest problem is the confusing and somewhat annoying equipment system. See, you an buy equipment in towns, and that is usually enough to keep your gear leveled with you and the area, and that's fine. But you are told that getting item drops to trade for equipment is usually better. This is where the fight combo chain thing I mentioned earlier comes in. But even if you get your combo chain to S-rank and hold it for a long while, it still takes quite a bit of time to get the drops you need for some items. Almost 90% of the time by the time I got the drops I needed for an item it was already outclassed by the new stuff I bought,.

Or, more frustratingly, when it wasn't? It didn't seem like the equipment is actually better. This is a game that has a friggen ton of various bonus effects to each item, so its incredibly hard to outfit your character. It feels like its giving you a lot of room for customization with items, but its so convoluted and confusing I never know if I'm making the right move. Like say I have a weapon that gives me decent stats, but has no effects. Then I find a "better" weapon, it has a brawler stat, and has a status effect, but then it gives me a massive ding to my HP and attack. I'm being told that this is the better weapon, but it never feels like it because they are unbalanced by what is taken away. It was frustrating because it made trying to grind for items feel like an arduous chore that wasn't worth the effort.

I can only wonder how much faster I could have beaten
 this game if I understood what most of this shit meant.

But its hard for me to complain that much because no matter how many times I put it down, it was a game I kept coming back to no matter what made me put it aside in the first place. Once I really started to understand how the puzzle mechanics work and story really got rolling, I found myself incredibly immersed in this one. I am looking froward to some DLC updates because I really do hope this story continues, because its the only dimmer on this overall solid experience, and even then it was a mild disappointment at best.

CrossCode came out to little fanfare, but its certainly starting to catch the right set of eyes. And now this once PC only experience is about to come to the Switch and the PS4, and that is only a good thing to help this game really get out there. More people should play this game. It's an incredibly solid experience that blends a lot of familiar game elements to make it feel truly unique. It's got a sense of humor about it that keeps it from taking itself too seriously, but also does a good job delivering it's emotional punches of the story. The puzzles are well thought out and clever, the combat is fun and challenging. Its only 20 bucks and is at least a 50-60 hour experience with updates on the way. I can't ask for an better entertainment dollar and give CrossCode a strong recommendation. 

Also, with a code, Lea will idle and do Caramelldansen.
Fucking. Sold. 

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4) - New Setlist, Same Symphony.

One of my initial downfalls of getting suckered into Kickstarters was when Castlevania luminary Koji Igarashi made a particularly bonkers teaser basically calling out Konami for giving up on what brought them to the dance, and just giving up on their most popular video game franchises. After being told "people don't want that kind of game anymore", he took the crowd sourcing platform to prove that wasn't true. 65,000 thousand people and 5.5 million dollars later I think he's successfully made his point.

But then development happened. Almost 5 years of it. The problem is, when you promise the moon and people pay you exorbitant amounts of money for these promises, you are going to be expected to deliver on them. So to say that this new game had a rough development cycle would be a massive understatement, but I'm getting ahead of myself. First? Let's at least see if they delivered on the game portion of it.

BLOODSTAINED: RITUAL OF THE NIGHT(PS4)

Bloodstained begins in 18th century England. The industrial revolution barreling forward and the Alchemy guild is worried about losing their influence of the nation's wealthy patrons. To maintain control, they intend to sacrifice people infused with demon shards to summon demons to the world, basically to scare people into believing in the guild's necessity. From the experiments, two shardbinders were successfully prepared to be sacrificed: Gebel, who barely survived the procedure, and Miriam, who fell into unnatural sleep just before they were to sacrificed. 

Miriam awakens a decade later to learn that Gebel has survived, and has now aligned with the demons. He has apparently summoned demons to the world and has taken refuge in a demonic castle to take vengeance on the guild. As a shardbinder, Miriam has the ability to fight back, and so she travels with some of her remaining guild compatriots to try to stop the demons, help the people, and hopefully save Gebel.

So ok, admittedly that's not a whole a lot of framing, but its enough for what we came here for. We want to wander a big castle, fight monsters, get more abilities, and cover a massive map. So let's get the major comparison out of the way because it is going to come up a lot: is Bloodstained a Castlevania game? Yes, in everything but its title. If anything, you can you see it as the culmination of all of Iga's previous Castlevania experiences and best ideas. It's going to be difficult to discuss everything becuase this game has a LOT of mechanics.

The obvious comparison is going to be Symphony of the Night which will draw the strongest comparison because it is more or les s the quintessential definition of the term "Metroidvania" as a genre because of the franchises departure from level based gameplay. Like SotN, Bloodstained starts us off with a brief tutorial area to teach us the basic controls of the game before letting us loose in an incredibly large and sprawling castle. We are free to explore until we find dead ends until we come across the necessary item or boss that allows to change how we travel or open new paths.

My initial complaint was slow movement speed, but ultimately it was never too much bother.
You do eventually get speed boosting items. 

It's combat system can be broken down to multiple parts spanning from pretty much every Castlevania from 1997 on. Miriam can equip what feels like hundreds of weapons that can drastically change how you approach your fights. Do you want a slow but heavily damaging axe to wail on baddies with singular precision strikes? Or do you want to put on some boots for weaker but quick damaging kicks to deal lots of damage very quickly.  You have a TON of options.

Sub items and abilities make their return from classic Castlevania and Aria of Sorrow soul stealing in the form of shard collecting (hence Miriam being a shardbinder). As you fight through throngs of baddies they will occasionally drop shards which allow Miriam to use in different ways as you have a number of them you can equip at once. For example, one is mapped to a single button to use like an old Castelvania game like a dagger or axe. One is tied to the right shoulder, typically one that has an ongoing effect (such as the dash). You can turn the right analog to aim Miriam's arm, and used the trigger for a targeted shot, and you can also have a passive and familiar equipped as well. By end game, Miriam will be loaded for bear.

.

Thanks to the myriad of collectibles and book cases scattered throughout the castle you will find a number of books that give the weapons techniques too. So on top of their normal abilities you have more technical moves you can pull off as well. For example with some weapons you can do your standard "hadouken" quarter circle forward on the controller with an attack, and it will cause you to fire a projectile, or use a jump move, or heavy slash. They change with the weapons so there is a lot of freedom to play around.

From Order of Ecclesia NPC side questing returns. While you explore the castle you will often make trips to back to your home base location to buy new gear, upgrade your shards, fuse new equipment and so on. At your base there are a handful of NPCs there who give minor quests. One old lady wants food, one very angry lady wants you find monsters and KILL THOSE MURDERERS DEAD. You have a farmer who will plant seeds for you, and a woman who wants to bury nickknacks and old equipment.

Dis is Chompy and Snaps. They need to calm down.

Most of these provide varied rewards, and some of them are trickier to complete than you might think. Hunting the monsters is easy enough, but finding the correct drops for you to cook the right food dishes or craft the right gear for you to bury is going to take some patience and elbow grease to do. I am on a New Game+ run decked out with an high luck stat set of gear to try to increase the drop rate and even then it feels like the regularity of what drops is sparse at best. Typically the rewards for doing so outweigh the cost to create the item, but you will probably find yourself hitting a wall on the equipment one. "Oh I need leather shoes, oh I need a beret, oh I need Excalibur." Whoa, whoa, whoa lady. A bit of a jump there.

Bloodstained took a bit of a beating in the early kickstater because of its look. I got hooked by the concept art but when the E3 beta came out for backers, its 3d modeling was rough at best. They since polished it up to a nicer looking cel-shaded style of models, but there were a lot of little mistakes with eyes, eyelashes, mouth animations. They quickly patched some of these design problems out, but for a game that had a 5 year development it sure felt awfully unpolished. Ultimately, the gameplay animation and character design is good looking and satisfying, but I do wonder if 3d render was the way to go.

This mechanic annoyed me, because it only appears like 2 or 3 times in the game.

So you have plenty of time forget it existed before you will need it again.

The game has a pretty exceptional score, although probably pretty similar Castlevania fanfare if I am being completely objective. But it does have some, pretty notable tracks to it that will dig into your ear and set up shop. Some truly great tracks are Exorschism, Voyage of Promise, and Gears of Fortune. I really liked this soundtrack a lot and feel Michiru Yamane did an excellent job.

The voice acting however, I am a bit less charitable to. I wouldn't go out of the way to say that it's bad because the lines are delivered competently enough, but because of how the dialog is written it never feels smooth or natural. From what I understand, the English delivery of the dialog feels flat and uninspired in comparison to the Japanese language. Some of the conversation feels like it excruciatingly repeats things we have already learned. This is really unfortunate because a look at the voice actors in this one? They really assembled a pretty great cast who have done lots of voices from games I loved.

Play on, sister.

As I kind of eluded to, I felt the story was fine. There were some twists in the game that were almost painfully predictable, and there is one really big one that kind of buries the lead to ending sequence of the game, but ultimately I don't feel it really impeded my enjoyment on that front. Most people don't play metroidvania style games because they are super invested in the rich plotline. And if I am being totally honest here, having some what hokey story with some cheese to voice acting really kinda falls in step with what a lot of us loved about Symphony of the Night. Maybe that was the intention? If it was, that's brilliant.

There's also a shit ton of easter eggs in the game and hidden bosses to find. A lot of nods to Iga's previous work. Breakable walls which I know is a big thing for some Castlevania fans. there a bunch of items that change Miriam's appearance, and there is a room where you change her hair and appearance as well, which is was an unnecessary but fun little distraction that I enjoyed.

Sometimes you just need to summon a chair and take a break.

I am not sure how I want to approach my usual "What I didn't like" section of this review, because a number of the problems that I have/had don't necessarily come from the game itself. Some of  these problems stem from being a kickstarter backer of this project. For example, had I not kickstarter backed this game, would I have right to complain about the development time? Nobody likes when a game is delayed, and this one got delayed a lot. But when you back you get this feeling of entitlement I guess. So when you slate it for two years, and it takes you five? You better expect some backlash.

Granted, due to the ridiculous amount of money they got, they made a whole lot of promises. So many that arguably, the game isn't even fucking completed yet. They are going to release all the content over time to the tune of THIRTEEN DLC updates. Holy eff'n hell. Now I don't know shit about shit when it comes to game development, but it sure seems like something is wrong when a game like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice which graphically is stunning, was able to pump out their in just under 3 years. While this game which would have fit at home on the ps2 took almost 5.

Some abilities are specifically just for movement, or function as keys that have no actual attack potential.

Then you have the colossal fuck ups of 505 Games involvement. First you decide to make the backer exclusive content "premium DLC" which basically means its not flippin' exclusive to backers at all, now is it? Then you don't even get it out a month after the game actually releases (I still don't have my codes for it). But then we have the fucking mindnumbing charging backers 60 dollars for an exclusive physical edition, THEN put the physical edition out in the store for 40. Big ole fuck you, right there.

But that isn't even the worst part, the Best Buy edition of the game comes with an exclusive steelbook variant of the games cover, which looks incredibly nice. But for the 60 dollar backers like me? I got a shitty cardboard slipcase. Many of which got damaged in shipping because they didn't have the courtesy of a padded envelope. But if that wasn't enough of a kick in the dick, they only made 500 extra of the steelbook and had the nerve to charge backers and additional 25 dollars for them. Making it now 85 to get what people at Best buy could get for 40.

Gotta find the weapon that works for you.

Now, they tried to spin it that the backers got access to content that balances things out, and I will admit that I thought the low res 8-bit Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon was excellent. But to say that getting this 10 dollar bonus, a cardboard case, beta access, and cheap DLC somehow balances things out is decidedly wrong, and even with weeks of damage control people are still furious. Rightly so, from where I stand.

And like I said above, for a game that had some a long development time, the lack of polish on this one is almost insulting. I couldn't believe how many graphical glitches I came across in my initial play though of the game. Thankfully they got on top of those quickly. But the game was full of technically glitches as well. These kind of bugs will be worked out, I know. But when the game breaks it really can go out of the way to mar my opinion of a game. If you look at my reviews for Death's Gambit and the Secret of Mana remake, game crashing is becoming a cardinal sin for me.

Some techs are easier to pull off than others, and depending on level and gear it can make or break a fight for you.

While I just said two paragraphs ago that I really liked Curse of the Moon its almost to Ritual of the Night's detriment. If there is any one gameplay thing that I could complain about its these two things: The difficulty curve and the boss fights. First off, After a pretty stable start it throws you up against a wall with a fight against another character. But if you get past it, its basically a gentle downhill slope to the final areas before the difficulty starts to ramp back up again. I did not find this to be a very challenging game after that fight and honestly that can be a problem of metroidvania's as a whole. Seriously, between Bunnymorphosis and the Portrait Shield shards? Anything that didn't cause curse was fucking laughable.

But with the boss fights specifically? There didn't feel like there was any real variance to how I needed to take care of them. Curse of the Moon's level based system made it a battle of attrition to reach the boss, and then needed to learn the enemy attack patterns and tricks to take them down quickly and safely. Ritual of the Night I basically could save before a boss, wait for them to make an attack and then unload with a fast attacking weapon until they dropped. I dealt with almost every boss this way. It just fed into the lack of challenge and feels like a disappointing step back.

This is one of the last hidden bosses you find. You might find his attack patterns strikingly..... Familiar...

On top of that, since I played Curse of the Moon first, at some point I started realize that I was going to be fighting all the same bosses from that game as well. There were no new ones, no extra ones. Some of them even used the same attacks. This actually diminished some of the surprise I had going into some of the fights because I already knew what to expect. If anything, I've already fought more challenging versions of it.

Let me just spoil something for everyone right now: There will be a part of the game where you need to swim. You need a shard from a specific enemy to do it. In the opening part of this game you fight these human teeth tentacle things. Once you open up an area with an underground lake, there is one more of those things in a different color palette in one specific area. You need the shard THAT ONE drops to get the water jet that lets you go under water. There, I just saved you like 4 hours of pointless wandering for an item that doesn't exist.

Literally almost everyone I know got stuck here. Finding that one specific enemy that gives water jet is key to progress.

I'm sure I can keep ranting on this one, but honestly that feels like I'm arguing two different things. So the ultimate question is, was Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night good? Honestly it feels like that's 100% dependent on if you were a backer or not. If like me, you backed the game, you probably feel short changed by a number of things, perhaps let down by what you didn't get, or what you don't have yet. I know some of the lack of polish bothered me.

But if you were to just judge the game by its own merits as if you just bought it digitally, leaving all the kickstarter stuff out of the equation? I would say that Bloodstained is an incredibly rock solid experience. For fans of Symphony of the Night it's going to feel like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes. Every complaint I possibly had is basically diminished by the fact that I picked the game up and basically didn't stop until I finished it. I think I wrangled up like 20 something hours inside of 2 or 3 sittings. And, because of the way the DLC is scaled, that means like Shantae and Shovel Knight I am going to keep coming back to it to play the new content. That's good for replayability.

So to the everyman? I would Bloodstained is a good game, if not great. If you are looking for something to scratch that Castlevania itch, Iga is going to satisfy that it in all the right ways with this one, and for only 40 bucks that is incredibly reasonable for a game with this much playability. For the backers? Maybe they will come up with some extra bonus concessions for those who felt short changed. But ultimately? I am just happy that the game finally came out and it ended up being pretty good. Solid recommendation for this one.

"Arise myself and my shadow!"

Is forever burned into my brain.

Mercenary Kings: Kickstarting about 5 games into one package.

Around Xmas time I would occasionally pop onto places like amazon or whatnot and look at the crazy flash deals since most people don't get me games or such. I was looking at the massively discounted price for PlayStation Plus subscriptions, and on a whim got a few years of it, keeping me up to date for the next few years. What I have come to learn having never had this service until recently, is that the free games you get you keep as long as you keep the subscription.

This has been exceptionally handy with purchasing a PS4, because each month they keep releasing more and more quirky indie titles and in the dead zone early stages of a starting console, the new system needs games. This has actually provided me a pretty good number of different games to try which I have yet to review, but I have to take time to talk about this one because it stands tall over the rest of them so far.

MERCENARY KINGS

Mercenary Kings comes to us from the minds over at Tribute games, who brought previous indie success Wizorb and reunited the team behind Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game. Which means we are being treated to a wonderfully rendered 2D side-scrolling shooter in gloriously retro 16 bit pixel graphics.

The storyline for Mercenary Kings is a little lacking. The Mercenary Kings are an elite group of five military mercenaries who have been called in because Mandragora island, where the top secret Mandrake formula is being engineered, has been taken over by rival military organization CLAW and their leader Baron. A fruitless effort because CLAW has already made use of the Mandrake Formula, the battle is completely one sided and the Kings are cut down effortlessly.

But while the project's chief engineer has been captured, the other half of the project in Professor Bluebell managed to escape and meet up with the Kings with the secret of the mysterious mandrake formula. The bodies of King and Empress were recovered and through medical procedures, they were saved and given enhanced physical abilities to give them a shot at a little payback against the claw, and hopefully stop their aspirations of world domination using the mandrake formula.

So uh, how elite is this group if they could only afford one bed for recovery?

So this is probably an incredibly general gloss over of the story, and I'm not even sure all of that is right. I'll say right off that a significant portion of the story is pretty forgettable and ultimately not all that important. As you complete cutscenes there are usually little Metal Gear style vignettes between the characters to pad out the storyline and build the characters a little. But to be totally honest a lot of it is pretty bland and if you are like me will probably skip a good portion of it to get back to the action.

Speaking of, why don't we get right down to it shall we? The game starts off with a little bit of story and a small tutorial to acclimate you to the controls and let you hunt a few animals and find some chests. Once you complete this first mini stage you are treated to your base camp which is where you will meet all the various NPCs. Here is where you can jump into a private or public online game, check out the compiled bestiary, hang out in your characters tent (pointless), customize your characters color, buy supplies for the mission, or select and start your missions. There are more features you unlock as you rescue more of the team as you play through.

I feel a "Snake?... Snake?!.. SNNNNAAAAKE!" opportunity was missed here.

There are two very important people at base camp: one of them you start with, Prof. Bluebell, and from her you can purchase new mods for your character such as increased speed, more power, better healing, and so forth, but be weary what you take because they affect your weight, you do need to find the necessary materials in the stages to build these modifications. The other is one of the first people that you rescue, your gunsmith, and she is who you can purchase better equipment for your guns from, and thus she becomes the most important NPC in the base.

I don't play a lot of Borderlands but I am told that the mind bending weapon customization draws a strong comparison to that. When you talk to the gunsmith, you are given a list of parts of a gun you are purchase over several different types, each with stats to customize them in different fashions and producing different effects. I tend to use a sub machine Gun receiver for a high rate of fire and a light weight barrel and magazine so I an cruise at high speed while getting a decent number of shots before reloading. Not the highest powered weapon though.

The mods get more ridiculous as you go along... The Flusher... lol. 

You start off with a basic pistol, but you have options of handguns, magnums, assault rifles, sub machine guns, machine guns, shotguns, and sniper rifle parts spanning over receivers, barrels, magazines, stocks, sights and what ammo type you would like to use with them (which is the aspect that will have compatibility issues.) In order to purchase new parts you need to find the right materials in the levels, as well as saved up enough money to purchase the modifications, same as from the professor. So expect to chat these ladies often.

So once you have selected a mission to do, you are dropped off in the stage. The missions you have to do vary depending on what you selected. Sometimes its something simple like get from point A to point B. Sometimes you have to kill X amount of enemy, sometimes it wants you to gather X amount of a specific material, or sometimes you have to rescue hostages. Usually you will be doing them same map per rank of levels, but the changing objectives will occasionally switch between them or drop you off in different places.

This is obviously where the game shines. It its relatively simplistic in design and very familiar. Looking at the graphics alone, it looks likes the Scott Pilgrim vs The World game decided to cosplay as Metal Slug characters. Everything is detailed in very well animated 16 bit sprites that are brightly colored and given several frames of animation.

Apparently, I'm the only one with any love for the ladies. 

Its play style also rings of Metal Slug and classic Contra as you fly through the map blasting away baddies as they appear on the screen. But the levels aren't always linear and become even less so when you start to advance. In this regard I feel that the game rings familiar to something of the original Metroid or Castlvania or even Mega Man depending on what the layout of the level is. A great way to get acclimated to the stages are to start off with a gathering mission. This will allot you 30 minutes on the time to explore the map and collect whatever various gubbins you are set to find.

What makes this plan effective is you get a better idea of the layout of the maps, and the enemies tend appear in the same areas, and unless its a mission to clear them out they will respawn nearly indefinitely in these places.  So after doing missions like collecting you'll have a better familiarity for which paths are the easiest to take and where what enemies might show up. You keep the rewards you find as you play along, and get rewards at the end of the mission, but you get bonuses if you can complete these within a certain time frame. The first mission for example I couldn't do without equipping a pair of sprint mods and skipping most enemies.

Thanks to the PS4 removal of HDCP and USB use, I can finally start shooting some Next-gen Lets plays again

Throughout the stages you will occasionally stumble on NPC characters or chests around the map. Orange chests then to give up some kind of supply reward, usually something that the enemies of that area don't often drop or are less likely to drop, but there are also red chests that offer supplies to use in the map such as rations and first aid for health, C4 for big damage or path opening, grenades for damage, and shock bombs for capture. In addition to the chests, you also get a transceiver which allows you to have health and equipment airdropped, or lets you teleport back to the start, or quit the mission. Your transceiver use is limited though so use it wisely.

The game also features 4 player co-op, which is exceptionally handy for gathering missions. As you progress in the game, maps get bigger and the supplies you need are found in chests all over the place. So getting those extra bodies to fan out certainly help when you are racing a timer on a huge map. Since you are not handcuffed together, its possible you might never see a teammate, which can both good or bad. If the starting screen is any indication, it looks like the game could also feature split screen local co-op, but I haven't tested that.

I do have a bit of a problem with the matchmaking as it seems to be kind of random. I'll set myself to public and then while browsing a menu, I'll come back to see that there are 2 other guys running around my base waiting to start a mission. But then there will be times where I will wait for someone to drop in so I can pick a mission, then I am yanked from my game and plunked in someone else's, thus taking away my ability to choose the mission. So that can be annoying because unless you are inviting friends, there really seems to not be clear instructions on how to host a game.

So what don't I like about the game? Well, for one, its biggest knock against the game is buggy as shit. When I first downloaded the game I would get these drops in audio where the music would just stop for a second before continuing, like an annoying scratch on a CD in the middle of a favorite song (for you old people who used CDs). If this was the only problem I had with the game, then honestly I probably would have ignored it.

But it wasn't the only problem. Occasionally during play I will get these moments where the game will freeze for a second, and the cut back to real time. A lot of the times this isn't even an issue but there has been an handful of instances where I have taken damage from an enemy or miscued a jump because I missed that whole moment of animation. That's really annoying but its not even the worst problem.

The worst problem is that in rare (and sometimes not that rare) instances the game will just crash back to the PS4 desktop, and asking me if I want to send an error report. This is exceptionally infuriating because the time that it has most often happened to me is just after I have completed a mission. At the start and end of every mission there is a loading sequence where you see your guy/gal riding a chopper. On the way back once that finishes loaded you appear in camp. JUST as the load ends, the game crashes to the dashboard. And because you never made it back to camp, it didn't save your progress. Meaning the last mission you completed you had to do all over again.

This almost made me put the game fucking down for good, because I was doing an exceptionally difficult gathering mission that took me 29m:30s of 30 minutes to complete only to have it crash and throw out my progress. I only had one day where this kept happening to me, but hopefully this is something they patch up soon because the game is too good to be bogged down with annoying bullshit like this. '

The weapon shop menus can be kind of clunky and annoying as you play on. It starts off small and relatively easy to manage but as you play on you get a ridiculous number of options to pick from. What is annoying about this is the only filters the game has to offer are the things your purchased, and the things you didn't. This doesn't really filter things down all that much because ultimately you are going to be wanting to look at what new stuff you can buy.  What the shop menu needs is a filter so I can sort out the available items by gun type. I'm building around a sub machine gun build so I would be kind of nice to be able to just look at those parts.

I wouldn't mind if you there was more than 2 characters to play as too. You have all these characters at the base? Probably couldn't have been that hard to make a few more of them playable. Eh, maybe a future DLC pack?

I suppose the game can also get repetitive too. The missions don't often change as you move up in ranks, just the locations and the palate swaps and difficulty of the enemies do somewhat. Usually by some means of elemental damage, (the red guy attacks with fire? You don't say!). And I will say that it was kind of disappointing that you tease 3 different looking elemental baddies, only to have all three of the use the same attack pattern and AI. The bosses all suffer from this, once you learn the attack pattern it doesn't matter what color they are, they just become a fodder enemy. But then again, changing your gun type drastically changes you approach so maybe I am nit picking.

So I have this shiny new 400$ video game console, loaded with out the butt hardware and awaiting these awesome looking shiny new vidya gaimz and what am I doing with it? I'm playing a game that looks and sounds like it would be right at home on the Super Nintendo. And you know what? I am completely cool with that.

I think I have figured out why things like PlayStation, Xbox, and Kickstarter seem to be making a grab for games like this. It seems like the general populous has realized something that I have been saying since around the Playstation one era, is that graphics are not what make a game. A great game is what makes a game. So now we are seeing these incredibly high powered machines now getting these wonderfully retro designed games with features the old systems couldn't have handled because of size restraints.

Spoiler alert: Empress dies at the beginning

I think we are standing on the edge of a very, very exciting rebirth of retro style games. It's showing everyone that a game with a 2+ plus year life cycle of development with AAA everything doesn't guarantee success. But something with simple and solid mechanics and still produce an incredibly fun experience for just as long and at a fraction of the price. This makes me very excited and hopeful for the upcoming River City Ransom: Underground and hopes that that one also gets a console release.

At time of writing Mercenary Kings is free for Playstation plus users, and is 19.99$ regularly.  Despite the small handful of faults I could come up with the game is has still proven to be entertaining enough that for 20+ hours I am still playing it, still unlocking things, still trying to just complete the game. For an arcade game that is a hell of a feat, and even more so when I still have sealed full retail priced games waiting to be played sitting on my desk taking a back seat to these.

Mercenary Kings is currently available for playstation 4 and on steam, its an absolute blast to play single player or with friends, has a wonderful 16 bit charm, and once they get the bugs worked out might be a near perfect experience. Highly recommended title here and possible sleeper in the 2014 Ragey's. Get it.

Bird Week (NES): I was guilted into posting this.

So some of you may remember the first review to start Rage Quitter 2012 was Bastion (even though google has it listed as dec 31st). But as you'd also remember, I didn't write the review. Big Sister wrote that one. Well She sent me a review to put up for the site. After reading this, I thought she was kidding. She wasn't. I can't believe I am considering posting this. But since I probably won't have anything new to put up till after xmas I figure why the hell not? So kick back back and enjoy Big Sister's work in the first ever Rage Quitter Retro Review.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last few years, we’ve been bombarded with a particular casual game themed around birds. I won’t name it here, because I know you all know what I’m talking about. In the wake of 21st century graphics and hyper realistic in-game physics, it’s easy for us to become so engrossed in the now that many of us forget the past, and an even greater many have no awareness of it at all. It is for that reason that I’m giving you a dose of gaming history. For us to appreciate what we have now, we must appreciate what paved it’s way. Birds taking center stage in top-of-the-line gaming has come before, my friends, in a little game called Bird Week.

BIRD WEEK:(NES)

This 1986 Nintendo title is the true forerunner and matriarch of all bird based gaming. And don’t be fooled by the title. The game Bird Week features not one mere week, but a full year of riveting bird action. It is a desperate tale of danger, devotion, and the harsh reality that comprises the life of backyard birds. Our story centers around a delicate mother bluebird struggling to feed and protect her babies amid the threat of violent predators. Her deep, emotional struggle as she must leave alone her weak and vulnerable young ones to search out food, even at great risk to her own self. 

The game begins in the sweet spring, when life is simple. Butterflies are plenty, and the only real threat is a...uh..penguin? Flying around aimlessly. He’s not as menacing as you might think. He really just flaps back and forth, minding his own business, but, if you run into him, you die. Don’t worry, if the 5 star play control isn’t enough to help you dodge the flapping fiend, you are not without the bird’s natural defense: mushrooms.

You can easily pick up a mushroom from the ground, fly over the predator, and drop it on his head, effectively taking him out of the picture until you’ve had a chance to feed your babies all the sweet, succulent butterflies they crave. When the babies have had enough they fly away, and the level is over. Congratulations, mama bird. You’ve made it through your fist Bird Week.

Maybe it's supposed to be a hawk? I have no clue.

The year crawls on. Sort of. The next level is Fall, even though it should be Summer, then even more Fall, with extra trees, then Winter, and then Summer. But who has time to nitpick over the awkward passage of time when you’ve got babies to feed. Each level bring new menaces and every one of them is hell bent on stopping you from doing what you were born to do. Feed those motherfucking birdlets.

Level two “Fall”, bring a jumping ground squirrel. Think it’s not much of a threat? Guess again. If the game is to scale, that squirrel can jump 9 feet straight up into the air. Just enough to, say, KILL A MOTHER BIRD WHO TRYING TO NAB BUTTERFLIES. The hawk is still present as well, but the squirrel makes a deliberate attempt to harm you, just like any squirrel would. You have your trusty mushroom, if you can manage to get it without the ground dwelling villain knocking you out of the sky in the attempt.

Upcoming seasons bring other antagonists too. Flying squirrels, woodpeckers, something that looks like a panda coming out of a hole in the ground, bats, bees, owls. How can one survive? IT’S UP TO YOU. There is even a bonus level, for the highly adept who can make it that far, allowing you a seaside vacation where you can spend a carefree week nibbling dragonflies. Hope you got a sitter. Those babies aren’t going to feed themselves.

Don't Worry. Butterflies are plentiful year round.

The real drive when you play bird week is the sense of desperation and urgency that you feel. You have to survive. You HAVE to get that food. Because if you die, those babies die. That’s it. Game over. You’re cold in the ground and your precious little ones will be ripped apart by the violent predators that lurk ever near. What decent human being could let that happen? I challenge you to find another game that bring such a sense of intense emotional responsibility to the player. You won’t find it. It exists only in Bird Week.