A Hat In Time (Steam): A surprise hat thrown in the ring.

Sometimes there are games that you hear about and just from the couple of sources you trust you know that you are going to want to try it. That was kind of where is was at with this one. I heard the game mentioned a couple of times and I heard some pretty positive reviews about it without reading too much into it.

So naturally when the steam summer comes around I have games like this one locked, loaded, and ready for purchase. It dropped a bit so I jumped on this one. It sat in the backlog for a bit, but while looking for something new to play on my Thursday stream and this seemed like a good change of pace. So with that, we donned our best cap and dove into.....

A HAT IN TIME:(STEAM)

So contrary to what I had assumed, this is not about time traveling girl in a dashing top hat. That's only part of it. Hat Girl, as she is known, is an alien simply flying home in her spaceship. But as she passes over a specific world, a member of their local mafia bangs on her front screen demanding a toll. Hat Girl refuses and the Mafia smashes her window, causing her vault to fly open and suck out these glowing hour glass "time pieces" as well as herself out into space to the planet below.

There, Hat girl meets a local trouble maker in a red hood and a dashing mustache, hilariously called Mustache Girl. Initially, after Hat Girl helps her get free from the Mafia, Mustache Girl agrees to help find the missing time pieces if Hat Girl helps her run the Mafia out of town. Things go well until Mustache girl learns the time pieces can be used to actually alter time, and has the idea to use these to be time traveling heroes and ride the world, and other worlds of their bad guys.

Unfortunately, Hat Girl needs to them to power her ship and get home so she declines. Mustache girl claims this is a selfish use of them, and after stealing from Hat girl and dissolving their friendship, it then becomes a race to see who can collect the time pieces first.

Spoiled a little of the story there to give context, but that is more or less the framework of the story and its as good a motivation as I needed.  As I eluded to in the intro to this one, I basically went into the game pretty much not knowing a thing about. But now that I have played through the game from start to finish, there is only one way I can describe it:  A Hat in Time is a love letter to the 3D Super Mario platfomer. So expect a good number of comparisons to it.

At the onset of the game, Hat Girl has pretty limited bag of tricks. She can run around, and jump, and has a umbrella that she can swing at enemies. When she is airborne and someone comes into range, you can hit the attack button to do kind of a homing flying dive at a baddie. Its a generally invulnerable move but its not fluid or fast. So you will more than likely bash things with your umbrella until you are prompted to use the aerial attack, usually by bosses or specific enemy types.

You have 3 primary objectives every time you drop into a new level. You need to A: collect pons which are gems that will let you unlock new buttons for you hats which give you new passive abilities. B: collect balls of yarn which allow you to unlock new hats, which give you new active abilities like dash, bombs, etc. and C: collect that level's time piece, which allow you to progress to the next chapter of the game. 40 time pieces in total.

As I sort of mentioned before, it draws a great deal from the formula that made Super Mario 64 work so well. Each chapter of the game is broken up into 4 to 8 acts which drop you into that world to go after a new time piece. And like much like its inspiration, each change of act might produce some subtle changes to the level on top of your ultimate goal.  For example, in the first world of Mafia town, the entire place is somewhat of a tropical beach island city.

Man, the Mafia are friggen jerks.

But in one of the acts, Mustache Girl turns on all these giant faucets that basically make them spout out lava instead of water, so now any of the water you could previously swim in now causes damage and require more precise platforming. The goal to unlock the time piece is to navigate around the new terrain to reach said faucets and turn them off. Worlds are generally open so you can explore around and see what changes and learn where you can go now or what ability you might need to come back later.

After completing a certain number of acts (you don't need every time piece) you can move to the finale of the act which usually results with a fun, interesting boss fight and the closing of the story for that set of worlds. All of them individual to each other so while it does lead to a big final story arc, each chapter feels contained and different so they feel different, fresh, and unique.

You can always replay levels to go back to reload on pons or try to get more yarn to get new hats for more abilities. It is entirely possible to beat the game without having all of them because I was able to do so and do so without much difficulty. As you play, you can also find time shifts. Again, much like in the 3D Mario games and would say Mario Sunshine in particular, time shifts are these kinda surreal floating in space pocket levels that usually involves some trickier platforming to complete in basically a wide infinite undersea/spacescape. Most chapters have 2 or 3 of these.

So I'm not gonna lie, There is a lot to love about this game. First off this game bills itself as "A Cute as HECK platformer" and I'm hard pressed to disagree. Everything about the art style gives me a nostalgic Saturday morning cartoon feeling about it. Cartoony style caricature with big eyes and character proportions. A lot of absurdist scenery. Each world has its own differing theme with characters to go with it be it a train car of birds, a forest of ghosts, or a mountain of shamanic goat people. In the recent DLC update, they also added a "retro" mode to make the graphics looks like they are on the N64, and somehow that feels like it fits just as well.

Hat girl, who never actually has a full speaking line I think, has a lot of little character building animations that will happen when she idles or during the course of the story or level. She is a bit of a fun loving prankster and when approaching enemies she stick her tongue out and make a "bleeeeeeeaahh" sound at them. She'll make faces at people and tease. But she is also a sweetheart and if she befriends someone she'll blow kisses that have little hearts. This game is adorable.

In more than one level, she'll have to sneak around silently. During these levels of the game you will notice that if you aren't using your dash, you will see that she is walking around holding up her hand in a finger gun pose like she's playing that she's a spy. It's a lot of these little animations that end up giving Hat Girl so much character to her personality without having to deliver a single line of dialog.

There are some pretty great supporting characters too. My hands down favorite is the antagonist from the 3rd or 4th act, a ghost called the Snatcher. He basically traps you at the start of the level and yanks your soul out, and then forces you into a contract to be his fixer. Everything about this character makes me laugh. His voice, the 4th wall breaking cynicism of his boss fight, he even has brief Undertale reference if you are looking for it.

One character I was expecting more from is the shopkeeper you use to buy new button abilities for your hats. He is a ghostly, spectral character with a floating mask and broken speech. Just from his overall design I expected there to be more story, or content relating to him. He ended up just being a shopkeeper like he said he was, which actually kind of impressed me because that is an awful lot of attention to detail for a character that essentially has no bearing on the story.

Every part of the game with the Snatcher is my favorite part. I love this character.

They throw in a lot of little game mechanics in this one to change the feel of it too. I mentioned the stealth levels that borrow mechanics you might see in a Metal Gear game. In one level you are just racing forward as the stage falls apart around you, using your gear to navigate the jumps properly to keep moving forward, like you might see in Uncharted, Tomb Raider, or even Crash Bandicoot really. At one stage a character wanted me to doctor up my picture for a movie, and so I am basically doing an MS Paint job over my picture as part of an actual story mission. It's hilarious.

Hat In Time also does some camera tricks like Nier: Automata did change the feel of a segment. The game for the most part is generally 3D in all its segments, but one boss encounter with the Mafia Boss, the game sticks a 2D plane for the entirety of the encounter. It limits the range of movement which requires you to have more precise jumping and timing of your aerial attacks to complete. Some of these changes also completely change the tone and feel of the game from level to level.

The game has some very funny writing. It's incredibly cheeky and plays with a lot of the tropes you expect in video games. A lot of segments are very sarcastically written. And while I have called this game a love letter to 3D Mario titles, there is a lot of love to go around as there are references upon references in this game, such as the C.A.W. agents from the Murder Mystery level, which are clearly drawing inspiration from the G-Men from Psychonauts.  There is even a text adventure on the ship that you can play that has some rather hilarious outcomes if you continue to play it. It even turns a trope I generally hate on its head and made it feel hilarious and new, while also providing me a much more difficult moral choice than I was expecting.

Right down to how they deliever their lines, the agents of C.A.W
are a direct parody of the agents in Psychonauts.

This soundtrack completely nails it. This is an OST that sort of does a lot with a little, and ends up giving us a ton. Each stage has their own unique theme, so naturally they all have a complimenting song that go along with them. But as you complete each of the acts in each stage, The song remixes to adjust to the changes of level, thus giving it the song a different feel while still being the same theme for said level.

But then, the game blindsided me with the exceptional rock-as-fuck boss fight themes. I first noticed it with the fight with the Snatcher and its highly covered theme "Your contract has expired". So it caused to me to go back and listen to some of the other encounter themes and almost every one of them is fantastic. I am really loving Contract and "The Battle of Award 42". Pascal Michael Stiefel absolutely knocked it out of the park with this OST. Some of you might be hearing some of these songs in my upcoming Extra Life highlight reel.

The game has a decent length to it as well and what I like about it is that it does not require 100% competition to get through.  It tells you right at the onset that there are 40 time pieces to gather, but you don't actually need all 40 to play through all the main chapters of the game. You DO need most of the hats to navigate through all the levels, but you don't need all of them. This allows for some additional replay value after you have completed the main story. If you wish to do the DLC chapter, it does require a bit more completion than required to finish the game, but I consider that post game content and don't hold it against it.

In addition to all of this, for the first day of its release they gave away the first DLC chapter away for free. While I can never be rid of the bane that is DLC, I appreciate gestures like this. The devs also released an update that provides modding support for fans to customize the game, and a multi player split screen mode that looks to provide some fun cooperative play/teammate trolling as you can hit the other player. I personally haven't had the chance to try the multiplayer, but for collector missions or finding time riffs, this seems like it could be useful.

Awwwww.. These girls...

There are some minor complaints at best. There is a looseness to the controls that 90 percent of the time feels generally feels pretty great when you are playing, but it becomes a massive annoyance when trying to time a jump right at the edge of a ledge. More than once I would be trying to time my jump and go over the edge because I wasn't hitting it as soon as I felt I needed to.

There is an air dash kinda move that you use to extend the length of your jump, which I hate. Not that mechanic doesn't work, but it also functions as your slide move when going down a hill. Again, also fine. The problem comes in is because this animation doesn't cancel itself, or with any of the main actions such as jumping again or swinging your umbrella. So in the occasional tight situation I would be trying to navigate tight platforms, land my extended jump, then die because I was scrambling to swing my umbrella or jump out of the way. It's annoying and seems like an easily fixable issue, and may be with upcoming patches.

As with most 3D games of this nature, there is some camera fuckery that can be a mild aggravation.  When having to do some wall jumping, climbing, or worse yet when you have to land on narrow platforms, you also need to sort of guide your camera while you jump to make sure you stick the landing. It's not exactly fluid and not comfortable to do, so chances are you will be making more than one attempt to hit a jump. This is incredibly frustrating when trying to jump on a clothesline because of the narrow target to hit. The level "The Big Parade" was probably the most frustrating example of this.

This is more of a personal complaint, but I would have liked health to be a little more forgiving. I wouldn't say this game is exceptionally hard, but hearts aren't as common as pons are. Unlike 3D Mario games where you get 8 health and coins restore it, Hat In Time only gives you 4 and only specific heart pickups restore your health. This makes the latter stages, and specifically the DLC update on a WAY higher difficulty curve than the rest of the game, which can lead to some frustration.

But ultimately, these are minor complaints on an all around solidly built game. The fact that this was done by an incredibly small team and basically shared in bits in pieces instead of working together at one office makes it even more impressive to me. A Hat in Time hits all the right points for me for a new property: fun characters, good soundtrack, great replayability, adorable art direction, the right amount of skill to be challenging without being frustrating, and so on.

Sometimes when there is a buzz around a title and you take a cursory glance at it you know that it's going to be right for you, and that is exactly where I put A Hat in Time. This game is appropriate for everyone and has a little something to offer everyone's gaming tastes a bit. I very much enjoyed this game and give it a wholehearted recommendation to anyone who is looking at it.  I just wish that I started it sooner.

Sorry Mustache Girl. But every British sounding
woman just sounds like Tracer to me now.

Child of Light (PC): Wait, Ubisoft made this? There must be something amiss.

Sometimes I need to trust my instincts better. This game showed up on the Playstation Store fairly early in the life cycle of me owning a PS4. It had a downloadable demo and a cute aesthetic to it. And the demo had a cool battle system. I thought was an interesting demo, but in my head I was like "That's not bad. If that comes out on the PS+ freebies I'll snag that one." It never did.

Almost 2 years finally passed and I realized I could get PSN cards from my gas station with points. So I did, fully prepared to pay the 15 dollars they were asking for it since it was summer and there weren't a lot of PS4 releases. But as I was doing this, the Steam summer sale happened, and I'll be damned if that very game didn't drop to 3 bucks. There was no reason not to jump on that deal. So I did. I took my sweet ass time getting to it, but now that I have I am glad that I did. 

CHILD OF LIGHT(PC)

The tale of Child of Light opens with a limerick telling us that in Austria, there is a place called Five Hills that is ruled by a beloved Duke, and his wife. They bore a daughter named Aurora, but while Aurora was still very young, her mother passed. The Duke raised Aurora alone, but was still very happy. He fell in love a 2nd time and remarried to a mysterious duchess. On the Friday before Easter however, Aurora went cold in her slumber and was found dead by morning. The Duke was utterly distraught and became bed ridden.

However, Aurora found herself waking up in a curious place called Lumeria. Thinking to be in a nightmare she is found by a firefly named Igniculus who guides her to an alter where a Sword lies. She frees the sword and challenges the guardian there and rescues and old sage who informs her Lumeria was once bright, but a dark queen named Umbra has take over and banished the light. She has a mirror that can return her home, but can only do so if she returns the light of the sun, moon and stars. Aurora is reluctant, but has no other choice.

Sounds kind of like a children's story book doesn't it? That is probably the most apt comparison for Child of Light when comparing most of the aspects of this game. Its entire design is meant to emulate that of the children's story book from the language, to the character and art design, the presentation, and honestly even how the story plays out. 

At it's heart the game is a JRPG. But I hesitate to rush the comparison because it blends a number of elements of different styles. For example, My brain wants to say it reminds me of classic Final Fantasy, but if I wanted to be accurate, it would say its more akin to the 2D MMO Maple Story. All of the maps are 2D sidescroller, but very early on you gain the ability to fly on the map, so it actually blows up the various locations pretty significantly. It sometimes suffers from invisible wall syndrome but it the maps never lock you in a box.

Enemies are scattered around the map so encounters aren't random, but you will need to do some minor grinding. This is where the game really shines because I loved this combat system. So you fight either alone or with a teammate and it follows your pretty typical timed battle system, but instead everyone shares the same wait bar. Depending on character or monster speed they move up the wait timer at varied rates, but when you reach 10% left you get to choose your action. This section of the timer is the Casting bar and your action affects your speed for the remainder of your wait before wailing with that attack or spell.

But this is where fights get interesting, because if you manage to attack an enemy when they are in the cast timer, they get interrupted and knocked back down the wait timer. So depending on your attacks and how fast they cast, you can constantly prevent your enemies from attacking you. However, this is a double edged sword because the enemies can do the very same thing to you, and nothing can swing the momentum of a fight than having one or both of your actions interrupted and allowing the rest of the baddies free shots at you.

This is where your firefly buddy comes into play. You can control him with the mouse, 2nd thumbstick, or additional controller (so yes, this could technically be played co-op). All he can do is fly around and flash but he is more useful than you think. In Battle, if you hold your flash on an enemy, it slows down his wait timer and allows you to play catch up, which can be incredibly handy in interrupting an enemy's attack. For many boss fights, this is pivotal. You can also use him to hover over one of your party members, and if you hold his flash on them, they recover a small amount of HP every second or so.

This is not infinite however, so on each battle you will find two plants with "wishes" on them. You can collect these to give your characters a small HP and MP boost, and completely refill Igniculus' flash. It forces you to be strategic about manipulating the time in your favor and using your free healing opportunities at the right moment to not be wasteful. In some of the boss fights proper time manipulation is almost a necessity because a poorly timed interruption can result in a massive chain that paralyze and damage you, allowing them to land even more free hits.

Inniculus' flash is also usable in the map as well. You can use him to stun enemies you pass to prevent them from harming you, or if you wait you can get behind them and set them up for a surprise attack. This usually will give one of your characters a free action to start, and your teammate not that far behind. It also can be used to collect hard to reach treasure chests and items that Aurora cannot reach on the map, and he is also used for a handful of locked door puzzles. 

So let's just get the biggest flaw of the game out of the way now, because its a pretty persistent issue and will probably turn a number of people off to the game. The prose in this game is not great. When you make the decision to do the entirety of the games story and dialog in limericks, you are truly handcuffing yourself to conversations that do not flow naturally.

In some cases it can get tiresome, but as people who watched me steam it noticed, there is a significant number of instances where they either use the same word twice to make it rhyme, or they use two words that sound similar but don't actually rhyme. I may be an English major, but I wasn't good at it and even I know that isn't how it works. The geniuses who write Critical Miss touched on this beautifully.

But if you can look past some of the rough prose in this game, almost everything else about it shines beautifully. I mentioned the art style emulates children's story books, which gives it a nice watercolor pallet that compliments the overall design. This also allows it to give you a pretty diverse cast of characters. Which might I add, has an insane number of characters for an RPG that plays as short as this one. On top of Aurora, other playable characters include Rubella the jester, Finn who is kind of a gnomish mage, Genovefa the.... lizard, swamp thing, and a massive daruma-like ogre called Oengus just to name a couple.

It's strange that the game gives me so many characters to pick from considering I can only have two in the party. You can switch them on the fly, and the game doesn't require you to have Aurora actually in the fray. But I tend to dump all my stat raising items onto the hero, so she seldom left the front line. And once I got Oengus, I basically was shredding through fights. But to be fair, all of the characters have pretty varied skill sets so you can use them as the situation arises.

In addition to each character having a pretty deep skill tree (generally 3 paths you can fill out), you also collect gemstones called occuli that give you various stat boosts. These can be combined to make bigger gems, or new types of gems. Once I realized that a diamond gave you an experience boost, I pretty much dumped everything into making a the largest diamond I could so I was raking in 25% bonus experience for Aurora all game. I also loaded her up with increased dodge when casting and high powered Light attacks (since little seems to be immune to light).

If you manipulate your crafting right, you can make something called a
Princess Stone. I never did, and it didn't seem to affect me finishing the game.

But out of everything that I loved about this game, I think the music is what hit me the hardest. The game's score was produced by the lovely and extremely talented Cœur de Pirate. Again fitting for the stage it has set, much of the game is accompanied by chime, flute, string, and piano melodies. Most of them are primarily a variant of the "Theme of Aurora" which pretty much had me hooked at the opening title screen, and this style worked well for me when I played Atelier Ayesha because the song was fresh in my head, so when it changed in feel to match the scene at hand, that subtle difference felt powerful.

And standing tall amongst the soundtrack to this game, is a song that didn't even get sold on the OST. The battle music is appropriate and there are various different battle tracks throughout the game, but there is one boss theme in particular that feels truly epic. I don't mean that in the slang,"holy shit that's awesome" style of epic. I mean how the orchestral music raises and falls, accompanied by an operatic chorus that remains uptempo. This song pretty much constantly kept the heart rate up and made each boss fight where I heard it feel truly important, and when they started to go bad, it felt that much better when I overcame it. I am a huge advocate of proper score to compliment a game and on this one Ubisoft nailed it.

Wait, Ubisoft? The same people who pump about a billion Assassin's Creed games? Far Cry, Rainbow Six and every other Tom Clancy game? I didn't believe it either. Ubisoft Montreal put this game together and asked famed Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano to produce a promotional piece for the game that was equally gorgeous. Who would have thought they could break away from the Triple-A money generating machine to make something different and beautiful. Honestly, I was shocked. 

So if I have to nitpick some complaints about the game outside of the excessive use of limericks, it'd have to say I was disappointed by the length. It took me only 10 hours to level up to 50+ and completely shred to the ending. And after a bit of necessary questing, the game moves kinda breakneck to the finish basically skipping having one last final dungeon and tosses you into the final boss fight. To be honest I wasn't ready to leave that world yet. I wanted there to be more.

You get Rubella first. Her Tumble ability isn't strong, but her sheer speed and cast
time basically lets you control the timeline. She is an invaluable teammate.

They provide you a new game plus so you can play it again on a harder difficulty and keep your levels, items, and occuli but the game really doesn't change. So unless you love gathering collectibles (you weirdos), you probably won't feel the need to go through it a 2nd time soon. I tried to and inside a couple of fights I didn't really feel the need to continue. Gathering collectibles sucks.

And honestly, items in this game seem pretty pointless too. Throughout the adventure you will constantly find yourself picking up potions with various effects. Some restore health, magic, some cure status affects, boost your attack or defense, hasten you up the timeline, give you immunity to things. And every single one of them means exactly dick. Unless I needed to revive a party member (which happened rarely in my case), every other item in the game didn't seem as a important as knocking  a baddie down the timeline was to me. So for a large portion of the game, the items went completely unused.

At least Quicker and Bicker rhyme.

There is a degree of sidequesting to do in the game, but I hesitate to call it "sidequesting" since most of them seem to be able to be done as you continue on with the main story of the game. There were only a few of them I actually had to backtrack for, and only one them I actually missed (which would have given me another party member, but that dounk would have just ridden the bench anyways).

And this is nitpicky, but I wish I had a clearer explanation of the crafting system when I started because had I known I could use my small stones to make bigger stones, I wouldn't have wasted time mixing things early. I use 3 difference colored stones to make a diamond. I use 3 diamonds to make a bigger diamond. But had I known I coulda just mashed all my colored stones together to make bigger ones, I probably would have saved a lot more resources making big valuable stones faster.

But ultimately, as I said prior these are pretty nitpicky complaints to a game that I thoroughly enjoyed. To say I blew through this game wouldn't be an exaggeration. I played it in like 2 or 3 hour chunks but honestly if I probably could have smashed this game in a sitting if I had the day off. Everything about it kept me totally immersed in this world and I loved pretty much every moment of it.

To that regard, I am disappointed that I had waited so long to give this game its proper chance. Among a slew of mediocre reviews, lukewarm responses, and complaints about the language used I fell victim to hearsay instead of just getting it when I enjoyed the demo. I wish I had sooner. Child of Light isn't going to shatter the gaming industry and revolutionize how RPGs are played, but it gave me a wonderful 10 hours of a children's story to get lost in. It would have been nice to be my PS+ freebie, but it is absolutely worth the 15 bucks they are asking for it.

I wished I wasn't right about Norah...

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (PS3): Super Sony Brothers Brawl

My disconnection with Nintendo is pretty well documented at this point. Just after the SNES they really started to let me down on a pretty consistent basis. I'd get a few things I'd really like but for the most part I bought all that much. But one game that would sort of bring me back was Smash Brothers. I didn't own it or often play it, but I'll be fucking damned if my friends are going to be better than me at a game. So I got good with one or 2 characters and if a friend fired it up I wouldn't be totally lost.

So I had to laugh when Sony decided to throw their hat in the ring with, let's be honest, a complete knock off of the concept so long after Smash Brothers had already become the standard. Reviews were lukewarm, the price kept dropping, but I never bit on this one. I don't have friends over so it never seemed worth it. But it finally got marked as a PSN freebie so might as well download it to see what it has to offer.

PLAYSTATION ALL-STARS BATTLE ROYALE

As you might expect, this game doesn't have much of a story. Games that tend to be mash-ups usually don't and when they do they are typically pretty abysmal, (honestly Cross Edge still gives me nightmares). But to best summarize the stories of the game, you basically get a miniature telling of the story or something akin to it from the protagonist of that game. So when I first fired the game up I instantly gravitated to Nariko of Heavenly Sword.

She gives a small monologue and some stills of introspection about her and the power of the Heavenly Sword, much like she did in between the chapters of the actual game.  It runs for about a minute or two and then plunks you right into the game. You get an animated cutscene between her and another character near the end of the game (in my case, Dante from DmC: Devil May Cry {which confused me, Kratos would have made more sense.}). After which you fight some floating digital head things for a final boss, which rings a little familiar to Smash Brothers giant hand. The closing is a few more stills and another monologue. It's nothing flashy but I suppose it works.

Sorry longtime DMC fans. It's the skinny andro-prettyboy Dante.

I was curious to see if this was the norm for the game's standard, so I fired up a 2nd game this time picked Nathan Drake of Uncharted. Much like the previous playthough, I was treated to a handful of stills of Drake and Sully sitting at a table on a beach discussing a map that Drake has found, and that how a map this detailed has to lead to something. I'm curious how that will work for characters like the Big Daddy or Sackboy, but I guess to give the single player mode some substance it works.

I guess the first thing that I noted about the game is how......unpolished, it felt. The opening menu is just a flat background with some menu options. It's functional, but boring. The music that plays during the menu also just felt kind of uninspired and generic. I don't think I could hum the Smash Bros. menu to use, but I know it has a very boisterous and dramatic feel to it, and it's notable enough that I distinctly remember it. Even the character select menu has a boredom about it. Two lines of portraits with a bigger selected one on the bottom. Again, it's functional but lacking a bit of pizzazz.

Not a whole lot to it.

Then we have the actual game, and it functions in that same kind of platform fightery way you would come to expect. You are placed on some notable level from the of the character's respective games and you are to duke it out with one to three other characters on screen at any given time. The story mode seems to be the same each time so it usually opens up with Chop-Chop Master Onionhead's dojo from Parappa the Rapper. This will eventually fall apart to have I believe a metal gear firing rockets at you from the distance. 

This brought me to my next point of contention. The controls of the game felt very loose, nothing ever seem to react for me as immediately as I wanted it to. Now, this might be something that is kind of the norm for Smash Bros. players, but it never felt right to me. I assume the control schemes are similar: You have three attack buttons and jump button, each of them providing different attacks depending on the direction you are pressing when you attack, and item to pick up items, and your "super" button. 

How the game works differently to Smash Bros is in Playstation All-Stars is you don't have the running percentage of damage taken. In this, the more damaging your attacks are the faster it fills up your super gauge. You can still score kills for knocking somebody off the stage, but the fastest way to do so is to rack up specialty kills. Admittedly, this takes away some of the feeling of danger and might make you more likely to dive headfirst into combat because if nobody has a super charged, you are not in a lot of danger to be killed.

To give you context, I started playing my story mode with Nariko and much like her original game, the Heavenly Sword breaks apart for fast chain blade combos. So it was very easy to wailing on the square button and let her start to liquefy anything in her path. But these are light attacks so my little gauge would bump up in increments to 5 or 7. If I ventured over to the other buttons they would do slightly more damage depending on the move.

By concept alone, some characters are just more fun to play than others.

Once I would hit one full bar, I could trigger a special where Nariko summons Kai and blows up a barrel. If enemies are caught in the blast I am awarded a kill. At level 2, Nariko produces a cannon like on the castle battlements and can fire off shots at the other players. The aim is minimal but you get a few shots and any that connect score a kill. At level 3, gets that heavenly glow, and her chains extend to full range and enemies who are caught are quickly ended.

It was an interesting way to try to have the same feel of a Smash game but without directly copying the system. The problem I have with it is I don't feel that it really emphasizes the tension you get when the battle sways. When you see that percentage staring to climb, you really get the weight that you can be blasted of at any moment. In Playstation All-Stars I might have occasionally checked to see if some else had a charge up. I barely touched the dodge/block button because I never saw the need to. I never had some eminent feeling of being threatened.

The only time things really kicked up was a later stage matchup where I noticed one of the computer players actually ringing up a number of kills, and there was concern that it might take the round. Due to some last minute heroics on a level 3 special I managed to pull that one away, but it was the only time in the entire play though where I felt things got a little a tense.

Is there no truly notable villain to be the final boss of this mess? Is just random
geometric face the best they can do? It's pointless and stupid. 

I think one of the other drawbacks to this title (and probably why it took so long for it to be produced) is the overall roster. Some of these characters make sense to me, but some of them don't. If we are looking at legitimate stars exclusive to the console, then guys like Nathan Drake, Kratos, or Jak & Daxter make sense. But people like Raiden, the Big Daddy, or Dante don't make sense to me because their games cross platform. Sure some got their start on PlayStation but hell, Bioshock came to the PS systems last.

And then you have the reaches, Kat from Gravity Rush was in a single game on a console that didn't sell well. Fat Princess you play a character who is ultimately nonfunctional in her own series and is more or less offensive to an entire gender. I would argue that Cole McGrath from Infamous absolutely deserves to be in this lineup, but putting in both an evil and good version of him feels like you are padding out space because you just don't have enough "branded" characters to put in the game. Although in Sony's defense, Nintendo has pulled this shit too. (Looking at you Star Wolf and Lucas). The bottom line here that Sony doesn't really have enough independent notable properties to really flesh out a roster like this.

This roster forced me to give credit to Nintendo. They may just put out the same few
games every year, but they managed to flesh out a pretty meaty roster for Smash.

There are a smattering of other game modes such as a training mode, a challenge mode, and naturally a multiplayer mode. None of them are remarkable or interesting enough to even bother to comment on other than "hey look, there they are"

I'll give credit that the alternate costumes are kind of cool. I don't know why but I have always been a fan of alternate costumes in games and love to try to unlock them, but absolutely started to loathe it once they started putting DLC tags on them. They really should be rewards, not costly extras.

Ultimately, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale pretty much was exactly as I expected it to be: a flat, uninspired knock off of an immensely popular game that has been done already more competently in previous installments. I'd be hard pressed to say it's a bad game because it's at the very least functional, but I personally didn't have much fun with it. Maybe I would enjoy it more if I played it with friends but I honestly don't think it will be in my memory enough to even bother to try it.

The game is currently free on PSN for PS+ users and I've seen it for 20 bucks otherwise. If you need to get Smash out of your system without owning a Nintendo console this is probably a reasonable sub, but honestly I wouldn't blame you for skipping this one. Free was fine, I wouldn't pay 20 for this.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: A score of high notes.

So since February, I had paid for and been planning for a trip to RTX in Austin Texas. I had a lot of things I would like to do and places I wanted to visit, but having been to multiple Ohayocons and a PAX East, I feel I was somewhat prepared for what to expect. So despite the fun I was expecting, I knew there would be waiting in lines, and I knew there would be waiting at airports.

I have been eyeing Bravely Default for a while, and wanted to play it greatly, but I didn't want to start it before my trip. So I had this new 3DS XL and needed something to play on it. And then I remembered that trip to PAX east, I tried out an unreleased game by Square Enix. It mixed two things I liked, and seemed to be a good fit. But would it hold over? We shall see. 

THEATRHYTHM: FINAL FANTASY(3DS)

So yeah, story. This is a rhythm game so there really isn't one per say.  It would akin it sort of to Final Fantasy Dissidia: The world is in balance because of the two gods Cosmos and Chaos, and between them is rhythm, a crystal essence that controls music. Chaos as dispersed its power so Cosmos assembles heroes from the various Final Fantasy universes to collect Rhythmia to restore the crystals power.

And that's it. That is literally the entire extent of the story. And I suppose for a rhythm game that is all I can really expect. Dance Dance Revolution isn't exactly known for its stirring narrative. Bust a Groove never weaved an epic tale within the lyrics of the songs. Guitar Hero had a handful of cutscenes that were forgotten after about as long as it took to view them. So really, from a story perspective I got about what I expected out of this.

Not the cute chibi versions. Couldn't find a decent picture to use. Sue me.

No, Theatrhythm is about the celebration that is the Final Fantasy (FF) music catalog. And honesty I can't think of a better selection of soundtracks to make a rhythm game. I have spent many a workday at the various libraries I've worked at listening to Final Fantasy radio stations, as there practically isn't a bad song. I was very eager to jump headfirst into this one.

So the game starts off with a brief little prologue basically explaining the story as I just have, then it takes you to a screen where you assemble your FF dream team from a selection of one hero from each FF game. So naturally My team leader was quickly locked in as Terra from Final Fantasy VI (because 6 is best and if you disagree you are wrong, fuck you). I balanced out the rest of the team with a combination of Cloud, Tidus, and ugh... Lightning, because it provided me the most solid balance of stats across the board. Felt this was the best way to go because I really didn't know what to expect.

There are a few different game modes, but talking about one of them will really give you the biggest gist of the game. When you fire the game up, you can go to Series mode and how this works is you scroll through the list of the Final Fantasy Anthology going from one to thirteen. In it, you will play a simple prelude and epilogue song. These are optional but if you tap along with the beat you earn Rhythmia which is used to unlock things. Once done with that, you take on the 3 game types for that FF in no particular order.

Now the play is the same for all three, its just how they are delivered is what changes. So lets say I play Final Fantasy IV. I might start off with a Field Music Stage (FMS) and play "Terra's Theme", which is usually the overworld song. There is a circle which indicates where I hit the notes, and note icon's can be tapped, held, or swiped based on the direction of the arrow. It is pretty straight forward, but in FMS mode when you are holding a note, you might need to drag the circle up and down the line to maintain the critical rating (perfect). Sometimes you might have to swipe a direction at the end of a hold, but generally it follows a singular path. Of the three play styles, I find this one easiest.

Then you might move into "The Decisive Battle" in the Battle Music Stage (BMS). These are are the most fun to play because its where you are going to find all the fast, upbeat, and fun battle music from the FF universe. In this game mode, the note lines are broken up between the 4 heroes you have selected. the notes each fly at the hero and you need to tap, hold and swipe as they arrive. Essentially the same thing as the FMS but your eyes need to jump around the screen a bit more to keep up. These are my favorite songs to play.

Then we have the Event Music Stage (EMS) where you will be treated to a cinematic of CG animation or moments from the game while you try to play "Celes' Theme". I find this one to be tricky because besides things moving around in the background, instead of having the single line, the timing circle actually moves around the the screen along a singular path and you need to tap, hold, and swipe as it crosses the notes, and not vice versa. I find this to be the trickiest of the 3 game types because I never, EVER, can get the timing of the swipes down correctly and it only seems to get harder as the game gets faster.

I botch the arrows every time.

Once completed, you are treated to the game's ending theme where you can tap along as you did at the start. once you complete all five you total rythmia is tallied and added to your running total. In between the 3 major stages of the game you earn experience like you would a traditional final fantasy game and your characters level up and get increased stats and abilities. But what for? I'm glad you asked.

For the most part, the XP system seems to be fairly set with the exception of the BMS stages. In this mode, defeating monsters by performing the song well get you a pretty substantial boost of experience at the end of the level. As your characters grow stronger, they gain more HP to allow you to mess up more times during the song. Your increased stats also allow you to hit harder, which allows you to dispatch more enemies, thus allowing more experience to be earned.

And as you level, you unlock more abilities. Some of these are passive and take place within certain game modes, such as during the FMSs. Others are active, and are only triggered when certain stipulations take place such as hitting 20 goods on the tap icons, or when the 2nd monster comes out, or when you encounter a boss type monster. As you level up you get more Battle Points to allow you to equip better version of the abilities or more of them which eventually allows you dispatch even more. So naturally you want to use them, right?

Not so fast. Unfortunately using these items or abilities come at a cost, and if you are playing a music game, you will inevitably be a stickler for perfection. If you refuse to equip any items or abilities and go in equipped with nothing, this gives you a special stoic bonus at the end of each stage of like 200,000 points. You NEED these points if you intend to get an SS or SSS rank at the end of any stage you play. It is impossible to get higher than an S with items equipped, so equip or unequip accordingly for what it is you are trying finish.

Once you go through a round of those modes, you can play the songs again individually in the games challenge mode. This is typically where you will grind and play your favorite songs. But there is also a mode called Chaos Shrine, where you will play "dark notes" of the songs in the game. These are usually 2 different types of stages and the notes in the songs are switched up. They are usually harder, and the bosses in these areas drop better rewards, such as crystal shards. By collecting these you can unlock new characters from the various games, (I'm gunning for you Rydia). There is also a multiplayer mode but as we established: I have no friends and thus, didn't play that mode.

There are also songs to unlock as you play through, such as the "Blinded by the Light" from FF13 or "Dancing Mad" from FF6. This gives me a reason to keep playing so I am happy about that. There is also a large myriad of DLC songs to download for a buck a piece, but I intend to hold off on that since an updated release of this game will be coming out in September in Curtain Call.

The entire game is presented in this kind of cutesy chibi style of itself where all of the characters sort of resemble doll versions of themselves, or perhaps like the Tarutaru from Final Fantasy 11. It is a cutesy design and obviously because of the whole tone and theme of the game not meant to be taken seriously so it fits well. And it was cool to see some of the more notable baddies from the various universes all get a cartoony appearance in the BMS stages.

There really isn't a whole lot more that I can say about this. Its a music game that is functional, fun, and effective. It throws in some interesting RPG nuances that hearken back to the genre it draws from, it borrows hits from the incredible score from this timeless set of games with soon to be much more in the coming months. It's really turned out to be pretty much everything in wanted for a game of this kind.

Rydia would whip your fucking ass, Cloud. She didn't pussy ache about her
village getting destroyed nearly as long as you did. 

If I had to come up with complaints for it, I can only think of a few. One, the menus are kind of clunky an annoying. The entire game is navigated from the touch screen and nowhere else. which I guess is fine for play control, but when I am navigating the menus there should be no reason I couldn't move things along with the D-pad and the A buttons, that has been effective since video games. So I don't know why every time someone designs a new controller they need to fuck with what already works. Knock it off.

In addition to that, and I am not sure if this is a problem with my 3DS or the system as a whole, but the touch screen doesn't appear to be a sensitive as my original DS Lite was. I have only recently noticed it but if I barely tap the screen it doesn't seem like it registers as much as if I give it a more pressured tap. Not sure on that one. It might just be my system or something I just noticed but it hasn't really played a big factor until just recently.

And as I vented, DLC is like a buck a song and there is WELL over 50 different DLC songs that have come out, and additional characters as well. It sucks for the people who purchased this game at launch, I am fortunate because the better version will be coming out in a few months, just about after I start to complete this one so that is a pretty limited complaint to me.

As I have said previously before, when it comes to a new system I try to come up with at least 7 games that I know I would like to play before I buy them. And if I get a long play through out of them, then so much the better. When I was considered getting myself a 3DS, this was one of the first games that came to mind as a must have, if not top 3.

I am very happy to say that the game delivered on pretty much every front that I'm asking for. It may not have had every song I was looking to play but I haven't unlocked everything and I know I have about 100 more songs upcoming in the Theatrhythm: Curtain Call is sure to re-spark my interest in the game. But really? It was hard for me hate anything about this. It's Final Fantasy, it's a rhythm game, its pick up and play, its got great song selection, and its fun. I am doing a great job of raging on these blogs. >:|

6, 10, 4, 7, 9, Tactics, 1, 5, 10-2, 13-3, 8, Tactics advance, Mystic quest, 12, 13-2, 13, 3, and 2.

(of the ones I played, In that order.)

Trials Fusion: This is a horrible thing to do to yourself.

I tend to be a bit of a crabass when it comes to digital distribution of my video games. With things likes DRM controversies being more prevalent (still mad at you Capcom/EA), I tend to be a big proponent of having a physical copy of my games. No so much that I trade or cell my games, but that when I pay for something, I want to have a physical product that I can claim as MINE. Because of this I don't tend to purchase much stuff from PSN or XBLA respectively.

Steam has grossly weakened my defenses to this philosophy with their crazy sales, but since I was so adamant about it, I missed out on a lot of good arcade games. One such series was the Trials series by RedLynx games. Now as a fan of RoosterTeeth, I've seen plenty of videos on the game, and it just looked frustrating. Funny videos though, and that is pretty much all it took for me to be willing to try it. The demo of Trials HD was fun enough but it was never enough to move me to buy the game. However, I do have this shiny new PS4 and have been looking for stuff to play on it, so why not give the new one a shot?

TRIALS FUSION

Is there a long running narrative with the Trials series? I know there has been over ten installments of the game but from where I stand there doesn't appear to be an overarching story. Am I playing young motocross upstart Tad Tadderson? Out to prove that he's the most talented rider by riding over mountains of garbage or things that can explode and kill him all the while jumping his bike off cliffs? Fuck'd if I know and frankly I don't think you are supposed to care.

Although, perhaps that isn't totally true. As you play through the game your rider is given a tutorial from an automatic voice called "Cindy" she is upbeat sounding and perky and she basically gives you the instructions for how to play the game. And at first I kinda just shrugged it off in a "yeah yeah, just get to the fucking game" kinda fashion.

Many of the jumps will result in major airtime

But as I played along the game and completed more courses, I realized her tone of voice would change, she'd get a little more personable, friendly, like she was becoming emotionally attached to the rider. As the levels get more difficult and more chaotic, she starts to show empathy and concern for you. Even further still, she seems to be struggling with some form of internal guilt, as if she wants to share some big secret with you. There is also a secondary automated voice that she will go back and forth with in regards to the rider. 

I don't want to go into what exactly she had to say because they did a pretty good job with it, and I don't want to play spoiler. But I will say that it was an interesting way to weave a story into a game that basically had none, and made it much more interesting to listen in when she had something to say. I would akin it to how Portal weaved a story in with its tutorial, only without the psychotic charm of GLA-DOS.

Set in the future, the maps are set over varied terrain types.

Trials Fusion is one of those fucking infuriating titles that seems deceptively simple all the while managing to be incredibly difficult. I sort of had a feeling this might be the case going in but it certainly didn't stop me. The controls of this game are functionally simple. You have a gas, you have a brake, you can lean forward, you can lean backward. If your jump is high enough, you can do tricks. Essentially that is all of the function that you get in the game. Its all predicated on the physics of the lean of your character and the amount of gas or break you hit.

I have heard it described as a knock off version of Excitebike and I have to mostly disagree with that statement. I say mostly because playing the game in its single player mode is a grossly different experience to Excitebike and when compared to playing it in multiplayer.

When playing single player you are started off on a tier of difficulty starting from beginner and working its way up to extreme. You are started at the beginning of the track and all you need to do is push forward until the game says you hit the finish. It clocks your time and gives a medal ranked on how fast you were. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, at first it is. Usually you get long straights to pick up the pace and series of jumps where you want to make sure you have your wheels below you when you hit the ground. Hell, ya might even do a front flip for style.

The ATV is a heavy ride, but the most stable. I've usually got the fastest times
from this option when it was available.

Don't expect this to be the norm though. Because as you play the track starts to add jumps that you need to time your distance correctly, land on hovering platforms, go up incredible steep walls, get over barrels and mines that blow up, make jumps without ramps, and so forth. Considering the lack of controls and the fact that there is no jump button, the difficultly increases substantially.

You aren't totally left to the wolves though because periodically through out there map there are checkpoints. So if you bail off your bike ore miss a jump, you can easily tap a button and you will be back to the last checkpoint you cleared. The timer continues as you go and you will have lost all your momentum so getting yourself back on track can sometimes be hard, and to make matters worse the game also keeps a running count of how many times you hit that button so when you finish the track, on top of the time it took you to complete it you will also be marred by the number of faults it took you. It's a humbling experience. You could always restart the track from the beginning, but that doesn't make things any easier.

The difficulty of the platform ramps up like crazy in the later stages.

Another subtle little insult the game likes to throw at you is when you start up a track that some friends have already played, you will have a little helmet icon with their name on the track with you when you play, so you can see just how fast they cleared it, roughly the path they took and where they got stuck. However, this only shows the friend who completed it the fastest. This is infuriating because you might be stuck in a certain spot trying to figure out how to clear a jump, and you'll just watch your friends ghost whiz by you and make you look idiotic. Eff you Redlynx, I can see how badly I am doing on my own.

There are also skill missions now where you have to try to get the highest trick total you can on a course which gives the game kind of a 2D SSX Tricky kinda feel to it if that makes any sense. Or there are challenge ones where you have weird restrictions like how far you can go without leaning on your bike. They add some ripples to gameplay and you usually get one or two of them per level of difficulty. 

The multiplayer experience I would say is more like the traditional Excitebike in the regards that you have four riders on 4 tracks. You can't shift up and down between tracks so you can't make the riders behind you tumble. Everyone has the exact same track to do and its a race to the finish on shorter and somewhat simpler courses. You won't get the crazy impossible jumps or precision platforming to do as it is a race after all.  If you bail or crash you are brought back at the next checkpoint so you are always still in the race. It was lets plays of this mode that made me want to actually play the game. But what I found bizarre is that there is only local multiplayer of this mode. I sort of appreciate that in this day and age because playing a game like this with your friends in the room is certainly more fun, but come on now Redlynx. I don't have that many friends. 

Now I would say the length of this game is directly proportional to a couple of things. Primarily how competitive you are, or how perfectionist you are. If you have either of these two traits you might be in for the long haul. As I mentioned, when you play a level and win, you are awarded a medal and for a while I was doing a pretty good job of getting golds. But after you complete all the levels and see the "end" of the game, it then unlocks platinum medals for faster times. Well fuck, back to the start I go looking for that perfect run on each track. (Spoiler: Its not happening)

In addition to this, on top of seeing your fastest friends ghost on your track (if they have the #1 time on your friend list) the game also will notify you of how many of your friends did better than you on a track. At time of writing I have only one other PS4 friend who has the game, and he knows who he is, but every time I log back into the game I can see that his dumb ass smashed more of my times. Which means that I have to go back and try to outdo him. The tracks are only like 2 minutes long, but I might be looking to give up 90 minutes trying to best him.

But the other big point is the track creator. Users can go online and create tracks for other users to play and rate. They are sorted out according to difficulty and some of them will be featured by Ubisoft and Redlynx. This is not a feature I would use all that often. I tried to dabble with the creator and it just came off as way too complicated for me. However, at time of writing there has already been ten thousand tracks created on the PS4 and its possible they are making tracks cross playable between consoles.

Because of this, I can very easily log into the game and find some new tracks to play, giving the game fairly limitless potential to continue to provide me content. And that is not something that I see all that often with the game.

There only real technical problem I have with the game comes into the fact that I think is only a problem because its a downloaded title. It might be the console itself, it might be my shoddy internet connection but occasionally I get a little bit of some slower and choppy menus. Its not always prevalent, and thankfully its not an issue when I am actually on the play track. I can reload the level or the checkpoint instantaneously and that is something I greatly appreciate. Especially in a game like this one where you will be starting over often.

I didn't really pay attention to the link so I bought the full version with the season pass, so it seems some DLC in my future, but aside from more tracks I am not sure how they will change the game all that much. In retrospect I probably could live without the DLC but I don't feel like I overpaid for the game. I clearly got 40$ worth of entertainment for it.  A good way to keep that in perspective is remembering that as a child I paid 50$ for Wrath of the Black Manta when I got my first NES... And that game was shit.

So I'm torn. I like this game, but fuck this game. Its a simple mechanic that is fun to play and challenging. But there is nothing more infuriating than seeing a friend's time fly past me, or having to hit reset on the level and see that big stinking 390 attempts and climbing in the upper corner insulting me the whole time. Its one of those games that I know with certainty that I will NEVER complete no matter how much I play it. So its replay value is incredible. Is a deep game? Ehhh, probably not. I probably could have gotten one of the old ones and had the same effect.

It was fun to play, and has some addictive qualities for the completionist, but its not really going to set the world on fire. It did what it needed to for me, provided a buffer between my next major game.  4 out of 5.