Nier Automata (PS4): Learning 2B Human.

I really wanted to like the "first" one of this series. A seemingly under the radar release from SquareEnix from what seems to be a completely new property? Sure, I'll give that a shot. And the initial impression of the game was actually pretty good. I was happily plugging along slashing at enemies until "the event" stopped me. A single soul-cleaving fishing game of pure unfiltered hate for the player that was required to proceed with the game. After 45 minutes of controller snapping frustration, I had not caught one single fish. Left with a broken spirit, that was the last time I picked up that game. It had its niche audience but ultimately faded away.

Then surprisingly at an E3, this title surfaced again. A new faster paced action, new female protagonist, and what looked to be a very cool combat trailer. But then I saw it was done by Platinum Games, makers of Bayonetta, which I love. THAT caught my attention, and they released a demo of the intro chapter of the game and signs were positive from there. So while I never was super ingrained into this series, I rather eagerly dove into this title in the hope that fishing would not thwart me yet again...

NIER: AUTOMATA(PS4)

I've come to learn that Nier: Automata actually has a longer and more convoluted story line spanning way far back into the Drakengard series on ps2. But you can play Automata without having known any of it and still enjoy the game. That's what I did, so forgive me if I get part of the story wrong. Here is the setting as I understand it.

Our story begins in the distant future, well past the year 11945. During what was know of the 14th Machine War, aliens descended upon earth wielding bio-machines and attacking the human populous. Being pushed to the brink of extinction, humanity actually had no choice but to abandon Earth and escape to the moon. There, they developed (very goth Lolita) combat androids known as YoRHa to try to fight and take back their home world from the machines that now overrun it.

As years continue to pass the game starts with us in control of 2B, a YoRHa series-2 combat model flying down to earth with a unit of YoRHa fighters to take down a Colossus class machine. Her unit is decimated but she survives and continues the mission. She is joined up with an scouting class series-9 unit called 9S tasked to provide her support. After a massive battle with the colossal machine, 3 more colossi enter the fray and force the two badly damaged units self destruct in order to wipe out the machines.

Their data luckily is backed up and they reloaded to new bodies on "the Bunker", the lunar base where YoRHa runs their operations. After a brief rebooting segment (which will become the hacking minigame), the two are tasked by the YoRHa commander to return planetside and assist  fighting and scouting for the resistance movement on the surface, in the continuing conflict of the machines. Specifically with the odd behavior of the machines in the nearby desert, and it's from this point where the game world really opens up.

Oh good. Starting the game with a tragic sacrifice. That's a good sign.

So I kind of had to give away the a majority of the introductory level of the game but it was kind of necessary to give the story context because much like Platinum Games likes to do, the game starts you off right in the action. Now the reason I was so into the idea of trying this edition of Nier is because Platinum developed it and as you might remember from my Bayonetta 2 review, I love the combat system that they put forth. So I was expecting more of the same: Fast paced hack and slashy action in post apocalyptic world.

But what I wasn't expecting is how the game switches its play styles on you, sometimes multiple times in a level. The game starts off with 2B descending with yer aerial unit and you begin to be attacked by machines, So it starts of as a vertical bullet hell shoot em up in the vein of an Ikaruga for example. Then as the level progresses you get a camera shift and now it turns into a multi-directional bullet hell shooter like Geometry Wars. I am a big fan of these kinds of games, so that was a welcome little surprise.

The bullet hell can actually be pretty forgiving. So long as you keep dodging, you are fine.

Once you actually touchdown on land, it then shifts to more of what I was expecting. It seems to be your relatively standard spectacle fighter style of action game. If you played either of the Bayonetta titles or Devil May Cry it's going to feel right at home for you. Analogs for move and 360 degree camera, light attack and heavy attack, Jump and dodge buttons. You also have a little support robot to provide covering fire and various heavy shots depending on what weapon you have equipped on it. So you better have spider hands, because all of the buttons have uses and you can fully customize them.

Ironically, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta luminary (and Platinum Games founding father) Hideki Kamiya actually wasn't in charge of or developed for this project. He was given input on the combat mechanics but ultimately wasn't part of it, which is actually a surprise to me because the familiarity to his previous works is abundantly clear. 

Even playing with this familiar combat style, there are camera shifts that can take place in battle which will drastically effect how you play. There are a lot of platforming segments that turns it into a 2d Castlevania style action game, and others where it turns into a top down hack and slasher. Thankfully through all of these shifts the game still functions well on its controls and never gets really too disorienting. It's incredibly clever how it makes use of a few camera shifts to make the game feel like a new experience. This is done exceptionally well in some of the boss fights.

You'll see how during the fight the camera shifts above for a top down segment mid-fight.

Automata is an open world game in a post apocalyptic setting but what I enjoyed about this more than others, is much like the setting in Horizon: Zero Dawn, nature and wildlife have taken the world back. Sure there are remnants of buildings, factories, sewers and an amusement park, but wild moose and boars (and seemingly nothing else) roam the lands in harmony with the number goofy toy looking robots. While certain areas don't open up until storyline contexts occur, the maps that you get are pretty expansive with lots of little side quests to find along the way.

I should make special note of the side quests here. Many of them are not required to actually progress in the game, but it should be made note of that blowing past them your first time through like I did would be doing yourself an injustice from a storyline context. Each of the side quests will usually result in a little bit of banter between 2B and 9S, and this these moments that really flesh out the characters, the world, and their relationship to each other. After completing the game you have the ability to jump around the story to complete the side-quests at your leisure, but this is the one time I would advise to do as many as you can as you play the story. Some of them have multiple parts, so be sure not to miss them.

Probably the best aspect of this is game, the use of the actual video game tropes as part of its story meta. Automata does this to such a degree I haven't seen since I played Undertale. As mentioned before, we are controlling androids. So naturally, the game features a series of menus and HUDs that are very mechanical and pixelated in nature in a very Original Game Boy monochromatic color scheme. But this isn't just a cute design aesthetic for the player, this is actually what the androids see. It is actually their internal workings and meta spills into multiple game aspects.

For example, The game features an upgrade system to where you can add, merge and remove microchips that allows you to customize your abilities: give you more attack power, make you run faster, allows you to heal over time, gain more experience, etc. But in this chipset also contains you HUD chipset and OS. They are listed right there in the chips. So you could feasibly remove your HP gauge chip or GPS chip, and when you get go back to the game sure enough your life bar will be gone, as well as the mini map you had.

And when I say your OS (operating system) that is no bullshit. The flavor text of the OS chip says right out that it is what allows you to function. To remove it literally means death. If you ignore that warning and pull out the OS chip anyways?  The screen fades to black on you, you get a reminder to take greater care when adjusting your CPU, and then get a credit roll and need to start over from your last save.

You get 3 sets to customize your chips, so you have backups to use if you happen to die.

Another such example comes in with saving. Automata very pointedly tells you at the onset that this game does NOT have an autosave and that it must be done manually. At first, I was sort of annoyed by this because honestly at this era of gaming we have all become pretty used to autosave at this point. But from a storyline perspective, it makes total sense. 2B and 9S are androids gallivanting across the world and fighting robots, meeting the many cyborgs and robots along the surface, and collecting valuable data about the human society that has been lost to time.

But that data means nothing unless it gets backed up to the servers. Hell their very own ability to survive catastrophic damage is reliant on their ability to literally back up themselves back to the YoRHa bunker, so as you play through the game you will need to find an defend multiple server locations all along the map. These allow you to save your game given you are in range of them to do so (bluetooth still sucks apparently). Finding this also will eventually unlock the fast travel system, as well as allow your map to become more clear and detailed.

Some of the endings involve you dying. These will usually not require you to reclaim your chips.

It also affects your ability to play sometimes as well. Without venturing into spoiler territory too much there are certain instances in combat and gameplay that allows the game to make some screwy visual tricks that just sell the experience better. At one point I thought it was a cutscene until I realized I was still getting my ass kicked and needed to move. It's just and exceptional way of playing with the 4th wall of the game without overtly smashing through it like Deadpool. Taro Yoko may be an insane person and developer, but he certainly knows how to stick to the narrative he's built.

Nier: Automata features an absolutely exceptional soundtrack from the beautiful mind of Keiichi Okabe. I need to state that right off. It is very classical inspired featuring varied orchestral instruments accompanied by three very incredible vocalists all singing in English, Japanese, and French respectively. In the overworld, or in the resistance base the music is very melodic, chill, and soft as if to auditorily present that this area is safe, or the expanse is wild but calm. Walking the YoRHa bunker is devoid of music as the androids work in the silence of outer space.

But then you get into battles or boss fights, and the operatic intensity rises with increased tempos and more pronounced vocals. There is one such spectacular boss fight called only Beautiful Song, which just mirrors the boss' desire to be beautiful in appearance and tone as if performing for an opera (see above boss fight video). And the song "Weight of the World" that plays during the final credits sequence of the true ending, my god.... That song? It's perfection. It's the reason I really gave the soundtrack to closer listen in context to what I was playing. Compiled with the spectacular final true ending sequence, it's probably my favorite part of the game.

If I had to make one complaint about the music, is as beautiful as it is? It might be too chill, bordering on boring. I know that doesn't make sense considering how I gushed for two paragraphs, but what I mean by that is this: On more than one occasion, while I was playing the game slouched in my bowl chair like the disgusting slob that I am, the music was just so chill that I would nod off while I was playing it. For a medium that is meant to keep you engaged and alert, that's not actually a good thing. It's the primary reason it took me so long to get through it because I would keep falling asleep while I played. Given my history, that's not usually a selling point.

That said, this is a great soundtrack to catch a nap to. I do at work all the time too, 2B.

I do have a bunch of little annoyances with Automata though. The aforementioned chip idea for stats is cool and clever, but it doesn't do the best job of explaining how to best condense your chips to make the best of your limited space. By increasing the potency of your chips, it more often makes them require more space. Makes sense, but it also will sometimes basically scare you off from spending a chip you like for fear of not having to reorganize your whole chip set over again. It took me forever to realize the little diamond next to them is saying the chip is as small as it can be. So you really only want to merge those with other diamonds.

It also can make the game almost insultingly easy. Once I discovered chipsets like auto-heal, offensive heal, and deadly heal the game became a walk in the park. With a combination of those chips on I was restoring health for damaging enemies, killing enemies, and not taking damage. It still left me plenty of room to boost damage and speed, so I basically would be able to shred things with reckless abandon because if took too many hits, either I'd use a healing item automatically, or just back out of the fight a few seconds to heal up and dive right back in.

Which made the occasional cheap death that would come the fuck out of nowhere even more infuriating. I might have only died in the game like 2 or 3 times, and they happened in the exact same spot because I would just be ripping around the area at high speed forgetting about an environment insta-kill. This also clued me in that this game also does the Dark Souls thing where if you die, you lose everything you have equipped. Not everything, all your stored items and money are still available, but your chipset you were using are with your body, and if you don't go get it back, they are gone forever. Not expecting that after a cheap death is infuriating because then you are extra careful not to lose your carefully crafted character.

Your map is next to useless. The minimap might point you in a general direction, but the three dimensional monochromatic pixel map for a guy with partial red/green colorblindness makes finding your way to side quests or objectives kind of difficult to track down. There have been multiple points where I was right on top of the path I was allegedly supposed to take or on where a quest was supposed to be to find out I was several stories up or down where I was supposed to be. I was getting flashbacks to the new Doom and how little the map actually told me where to go.

You really need to go back to the theater after the boss fight there.

That's another thing about the map. It is both simultaneously huge and small at the same time. You are going to spend a lot of time back and forthing across the world from place to place and it's always going to take a few minutes to do, but when I actually think about it there is only like 5 to 7 locations in the whole game. Now to compare, this is essentially what they did in Lightning Returns: FF13 and it does give the game a sense of bigness to explore. But if you play through the game long enough, you are going to notice that you in the same areas an awful lot.

There is a weapons and upgrade system, and you can also find additional gear of the body's of players littered across the map, and I'm going to tell you right now? It all means next to nothing. I played through 3 times and never found any of the items to upgrade my little pod support, so it apparently doesn't mean much. Weapons only have 4 levels of upgrades, but your chipsets will play the bigger factor on dealing damage. There are lots of little items you pick up, and I'll be honest I don't think I used any of them. If you are using auto-heal, almost 90% of the items are useless.

The hacking mini-game work just like the flight units, and is surprisingly strong.

As I said before, the story is very convoluted. And while I very much enjoyed it, essentially playing only this game of its entire narrative spanning almost 5 games (There were 2 releases of the original in japan), I am left with a whole lot of unanswered questions. Why if they are androids are they programmed to experience emotion and personality, yet have directives to not experience or display them? Why if they are machines with databases, was human history so lost that they only loosely understand the concept of shopping? If the YoRHA are Androids, and the robots are Machines, Then what is the Resistance, Cyborgs? There are a bunch of other more spoilery questions I won't get into, as well.

But I suppose the biggest story thing to complain about it is even after playing through the major endings, I still don't really understand what the story point was. There is a lot of existential crisis and realization throughout the story of the game, and I truly did feel for almost all the characters I was presented with. But by the end of it I was left with a very "what exactly did I learn here?" feeling. That doesn't make it bad by any means, but apparently I don't have the super intelligent space brain required to see the deeper meaning here. Luckily, if you stick to focusing on the characters, it's still a very enjoyable experience.

The game also has a mind-numbing 26 endings. One for each letter of the alphabet. Granted a significant majority of them are very jokey endings, many of which you might get entirely by accident by making the wrong decision or walking the wrong direction. But to get the 5 major endings of the game to truly see everything, you are going to have play the game through a couple of times. The game pretty much tells you this after you finish once: "Congrats on beating the game! But you reeeeaaaaaallly should play it a few more times. wink wink."

There is also an trophy for trying to look up 2B's skirt too many times. Honestly this is coming from Platinum who has never had any problems with fanservice in there games so this doesn't surprise me. Especially after the whole controversy about someone taking a screenshot of 2B's surprisingly detailed robot butthole, (I stand by the theory that if she's an android operating at high speed, there needs to be an exhaust system right?). You can self destruct to blow off her clothes as well, but as I mentioned above the game can be easy. It never occurred to me to even try that until my sister told me I could do it. This is a game where the fanservice honestly wasn't necessary in any capacity.

But through all of these niggling little complaints, it is totally totally worth it. It took me a little bit to get the ball rolling on the story but once I was in I was completely in. From a technical standpoint the game is practically flawless. I can't think of any mechanic fault that wasn't intentionally put there for story context. Platinum Games once again just delivered a home run on a property that a lot of people didn't give a chance here in the west, and now it is being met with well deserved critical acclaim.

Again, the rage quitter has little rage about here. I came into Nier: Automata only expecting a few things and I got all of them, but some clever use of cameras, music, and playing around with the very mechanics of the game to make them in-story relevant really put this game over the top for me. It got me to spend hours watching videos of spoken word classical concerts of the series misty eyed as I watched the cutscenes behind the singers.

A lot of the reviews are saying "masterpiece" which I think is a little much. If the game has flaws it can't be a masterpiece (looking at you Breath of the Wild), but there are a whole lot of 8's, 9's, and 9.5s and I am very hard pressed to disagree with any of them. Nier: Automata was fucking fantastic and it completely turned me around on the franchise. Maybe enough to make me go back and re-try the first one. Absolutely worth your time and highly recommended.

Oh yeah, the fishing isn't impossible in this one.
and more importantly, it's optional. 

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.

Rage Quitter Omniderp #2