River City Ransom: Underground (PC) - A Throwback to the Future

It took a very long time for me to get my first Nintendo. I actually had to wait until my first communion where I started receiving envelopes upon envelopes of money. And young Cannonman counted, and counted, and counted until he hit that magic number to which I went to my mom and asked if I can leave the party to go buy my Nintendo. She made me wait a day.

I made some missteps as I purchased games, but there was no greater achievement than was getting one side scrolling brawler I especially loved. Problem was, the only place that seemed to have a copy of it was our local Blockbuster (if you even remember those). My mom took a shot, asked if it checked out often and if we could buy it from them. Staggeringly, they actually said yes and what would follow would be almost a daily playing of this game for near the remainder of the NES life cycle, and honestly multiple times after the NES became irrelevant.

28 years later, Conatus Creative kickstarted a 4 year development of a true sequel to the Americanized version of said game. And while I didn't kickstart it, I did anxiously follow and watch through its torturous development. It took its time, and there was a lot of delays along the way. But now? It's finally here... 

RIVER CITY RANSOM: UNDERGROUND(PC)

RCR:U starts off with you replaying a condensed version of the final moments of the original River City Ransom: In 19XX Alex and Ryan approach the gates of River City High on a mission to take back Ryan's girlfriend Cyndi and break Slick's control over the gangs of River City. This functions as a tutorial to teach you the new controls of the game and catch you up to speed on the story of the first game if you didn't play it.

The game flashes forward 28 years to the year 19XX where Cross Town High as now be converted to the new River City High, and members of a local gang the Flock are running late for class. But when they reach their lecture, the TV turns on with an announcement from Mr. Merv, the millionaire behind Merv's burger joint (where the smiles are still free). He is irate that someone kidnapped his precious angel, and has security footage implicating the Flock's leader Chris as the culprit.

Merv offers to make the ones who bring vigilante justice to the Flock very very rich, and so begins a wave of attacks against the Flocks remaining members: Glen the Shoutaken fighter, Provie the Breakdancer, Bruno the Luchador, and Paul the Boxer. The gang scrambles to escape by chance come across a much older Alex and Ryan. They suspect Slick is behind this, and join the gang to take the streets to figure out what the hell is actually going on.

From the moment I hit start, I was right back where I left off almost 30 years ago.

First off, I have to appreciate the nod to the original series and how they found a clever way to work in the lore from the previous game. It was a cool way start the game and gave my nostalgia a kick right from the onset. And even if you never played it prior to this one, it essentially gives you all the story from the original in one little bite sized tidbit. The story of this game isn't anything really revolutionary, its basically just a simple framing device of motivation for you to start wandering the city and start wailing on baddies.

But there is one big story line error that I have to address right at the gate: Cyndi is/was RYAN'S girlfriend. It says so in the original game, and is confirmed on the wikipedia page. But this new installment of the game follows along the plot under the impression that Cyndi and Alex were an item. Now, maybe things changed over the 28 years, maybe we are supposed to believe that certain things happened. But left my own thoughts, certain things don't add up. I won't press this further though not to spoil anything.

That being said, it would be a disservice to say that this game has no story. The folks at Conatus Creative did a pretty exceptional job with what little the previous game left us with, and weaved together a handful of stories to flesh out a pretty lengthy campaign. Considering I can beat the original River City Ransom in under 12 minutes, giving me enough story to keep me playing for several nights was excellent. Even hit me with a few surprises along the way.

The biggest difference to the game though is in the fighting engine. Now it keeps somewhat true to its roots that you start off with punches and kicks and you need to learn techniques along the way to give you more moves to trash baddies. But in the old RCR this was basically all done with 2 buttons. RCR:U operates under an 8 button system so no classic controllers for those hoping. It now is a punch, kick, dedicated jump button, grab, manual block, special button, Item Use, item switch, and taunt (on the analog).

It adds a pretty big degree of the complexity to the game because now you just aren't mashing one or two buttons the entire time. You could, but you would be under-utilizing your abilities by late game. Like the previous game it will involve a bit of grinding of enemies to raise money to get new techniques. Before you just needed to be able to afford a book and then use it. RCR:U now has a leveling system in place where you need to reach a certain threshold to be able to purchase the abilities from dojos scattered across the map.

The problem with this is the stores are all limited to just the item and price. It would have been nice if there was some indication of what level I needed to be in order to actually purchase the technique. Or if this attack is later part of a combo that requires me to have another technique in order to actually use. I know this is something they are working on in a patch, but the game really does have a explanation issue.

This is kind of an issue for really all of the items in the game. Flavor text is fine and all but you really don't get it until after you've made the purchase and used the item, so you can effectively be wasting a lot of money learning just what stuff does and even then I forget what things are useful. You could argue that this is keeping in spirit what the original RCR set before it, but just because its how it was before doesn't necessarily mean its good for now. Some of these are constraints of the system limitations back then. There is no reason these items couldn't have explanations as you roll over them.

That being said, once you get your techniques actually unlocked and have the controls down a bit, using your special moves to combo and air juggle is an absolute dream. My first play through I went with Glen the shoutoken fighter and I managed to produce together a quick striking combo that lead into a hurricane kick air juggle that ended with dragon punch that would absolutely mow down anything in my path, regular enemies and bosses alike. It takes time to get there, but when you do it feels fucking awesome.

Once you get combo-ing down, you feel like a skillful badass.

RCR:U tends to follow a somewhat similar progression to its predecessor: Fight a boss, tells you where to go next, fight next boss. How it differs compared to the previous though is that the map of River City is significantly larger and a lot less linear. The objectives are on the map are sometimes unclear as well so it took a little effort to move along in the game, sometimes to the point of frustration.

I'll give you some examples, in the early goings there is a mission where it tells you where to fight the next boss. It tells you to go to the factory but you face appears on the same spot on the map for 3 very different areas. He doesn't appear immediately though, you have to get his attention. What this means is you have to continue to beat baddies for a somewhat nondescript amount of time before the boss actually makes an appearance. There is little to tell you that you are actually doing this properly, so you might find yourself running in circles.

There is another section where you have to find an old boss from the previous game, and the story tells you to go to another specific location. But if you aren't paying close enough attention, you might never see that you can actually climb up a fence along the wall that opens you up into a brand new area that is easily missed even though the map shows you are technically in the right area. If you are like me and flew past it multiple times, you will find your progress completely halted. None of them are game-breakingly annoying but a little more direction would have been appreciated.

As you can see from the character design this love letter to the original RCR as everything is painstakingly designed to look like the original game, but its so much more detailed than that. On top of having 8 playable characters, each character unique fighting style that makes them all play differently and meticulously animated to be fast, fluid and detailed. There are very few characters that share animations for any real reason.

You get a more tangible list of where you stats actually are at in this one.
So when you eat food, you know what you can stop buying when you max out.

On top of that, all of the baddies in the game over various gangs, on top of also being uniquely designed, also feature their own unique fighting styles specific to their respective gangs. It certainly explains why the development cycle took so long, because the amount of original moves in this game are mind bending. But I feel the game is much better off for it because everything about them feels original. No palate swap of T-shirts here.

The music... eh.. I'm not sure how to rate this one. Conatus brought in the talents of Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpiece) who has some established credit as a game composer for such games as Fez, BitTrip Runner, and Hyper Light Drifter. As I played through the game the music was fine, I guess. But I wouldn't say any of it was notable. Wasn't even any callbacks to original game. I dunno, it just didn't feel as memorable as it could have been.  For a composer who has some pretty notable soundtracks under his belt, that is a little disappointing.

In addition to being a good single player game, the campaign mode of the game supports up to four player co-op. It doesn't appear to add any more enemies for you to fight along the way, so it might be easier to team up with friends. There is also a battle mode which up to 4 people can duke it out in a smaller area for kind of a Smash Bros mode if you will. And whats really cool about this is almost all the enemies characters and bosses are available for use in this mode so you actually get to try out some of their niftier move sets.

The problem is unfortunately the abilities are not unlocked for this mode and its scales with how you've played. So for example if we jumped into a round of that game, My Glen who I've used most and have all the moves unlocked for, would have a significant advantage over Ryan who I didn't play at all and the majority of his moves are unavailable. Battle mode should just have everything unlocked with all stats maxed out to balance the playing field.

Apparently, the game contains a significant number of secrets buried in the game as well, with one of the developers tweeting out that some of the secrets haven't been found yet. That actually impresses me. When I completed the game on my first run I ended around 85% complete, so there is reason for me to keep coming back to play it so that's always a plus.

Ether gives out a "Notice Me, Senpai" Joke. I Lol'd.

The difficulty curve can be mixed. I would say that this game is significantly harder in the beginning of the game because not having your abilities unlocked will set you back more than actual game difficulty. And the reason for this is because literally on any given map you have 6 enemies coming after you at any given time. And they aren't dumb enemies lining up for punches. Almost always they will be trying to pincer you on two sides and will cheaply knock the shit out of you. It can be incredibly frustrating. But then you will start to unlock your moves, and the game will lull you into thinking it has become too easy as you trash baddies. Until the last few levels are thrown at you which are long arduous slogs where if you die you have to start them all over again. Some consistency would be nice.

This is amplified on a level that has already been patched to be made easier. There is a mission where you have a carry a milk bottle from one end of the map to the other end of the map without it breaking. Taking a hit of any kind would cause you to drop the bottle. It was MERCILESS. Some enemies would dive punch you at the moment of screen transition and cause you to drop the bottle. meaning you have to walk all the way back to pick it up and try again. I couldn't believe I actually managed to do it and it took inside of a few days for the devs to tone that mission down a little.

The last few missions will really put your skills to the test.

There are a lot of little annoyances to game too that pad out the length for unnecessary reasons. For one, there is a pretty useless Day/Night mechanic in the game that doesn't really seem to affect anything other than making bosses appear or not appear if you clear out the right area at various times. Additionally, it also affects certain stores as well as some are open all night, some are only open in the day, and some only open after nightfall. There really is no reason for it.

Fast travel in this game is almost next to impossible. There is a subway system where you have to survive a small 30 second gauntlet to jump to other places on the map, but its not really an efficient system and there really aren't enough drop off points to make it a very expedient option. Near the end of the game they just get locked off completely, which is super annoying.

There are some platforming issues that are a massive pain the ass, Thankfully when you fall off a ledge that can kill you, it will re-spawn you back in the stage but not without taking away a massive chunk of health. But then there are sections with moving platforms where you will keep getting re-spawned over another pit, this can happen 2 or 3 times and if it goes that much, it will probably kill you. the game is not precise enough for that kind of platforming.

Pedestrians still wander around the mall areas, but now you can accidentally hit them or the surrounding area such as parking meters or arcade machines. This runs the risk of giving you a wanted level to deal with. When you have a wanted level, the game will continue to throw police officers to beat you down. There is no reward for beating them, and they only go away if you get back to a hideout or clear an area long enough to hide in a trash can.

I can't think of how many times I accidentally popped a pedestrian who
walked in front of me during mid-combo. Pricks.

And probably worst of all, is there are a decent number of items in the game that don't really have a functional use. Many of the items are expensive to get, so most of the time you buy them hoping for some big buff or payoff. But sometimes, they are just posters or nods to other popular games (there are a lot nods to other game character) that are meant only to decorate your hideout. If you save up like 40 or 50 bucks in the game to basically have it go to waste, that can be real fucking annoying.

There are obviously a handful of glitches and a lot of little problems still throughout the game, but Conatus Creative was really pushed up against the wall because they have already pushed this title back multiple times past their estimated release date. Even right up to the release date they were having issues to work out and just getting it going on steam for the release date seemed to be a chore. It really is an example of how difficult game development can be.

Like I said, all the individual movesets can get really insane.

But for all its flaws and faults, River City Ransom: Underground delivered on almost everything I wanted it to be. The combat is fun and engaging, they managed to prolong a bare bones story and make it interesting, the sprite-work is beautifully designed and animated, it boasts a reasonably long playtime, has some good replay value with the character variants, and the dev team appears to be be still working on more content for the game and hammering out bug fixes as they find them.

It currently goes for 19.99 on steam currently (it launched at a discount of 14.99) and I've pay a significant amount more for games I was finished with a lot sooner. If you the type of person who is nostalgic for the classic sidescrolling beat em up or actually played the original, Underground delivers. It is an incredibly solid play and was well worth the wait.

And yes, everyone still uses the Sauna together.

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...

Dust: An Elysian Tale (PS4): Another Indie Surprise

I said it before in Mercenary Kings review, but this PS+ subscription I have is more than paying for itself in the number of free games I've been getting. Between two consoles, getting 4 games a month is pretty sweet and considering how much the triple A's have been knocking it out of the park (they haven't) it's really a great deal.

It's allowed me to build quite the little pile of shame of games I've downloaded and maybe sat with for like a hour or two. Today I would like to talk about a recently released title on ps4 (originally on the 360 in 2012) that I downloaded, expected nothing from, and honestly knew nothing about....

DUST: AN ELYSIAN TALE

The game opens up with a narrator recounting the tale of warrior who lays waste to a village, and the power contained within his weapon. It is a brief exposition as the game then cuts to a ronin looking character passed out in the woods. He is awoken by a floating, glowing sword. When the sword introduces himself as the Blade of Ahrah, the ronin is unable to identify himself. The sword tells him that his name is Dust, and that he was it was he who summoned the blade.

Before Dust can make sense of the situation, he is approached by a flying Nimbat who calls herself Fidget. She apparently the sword's guardian. So when it became sentient and floated off, Fidget gave chase. The three make a mutual agreement to figure out who Dust is, the purpose for the sword's summoning, and the eventual returning of the blade to where it belongs so Fidget won't get in trouble. The trio makes for the neighboring town of Aurora, but there is no shortage of monsters trying to impede their progress.

It's funny how my opinions on a game can boomerang on me in a matter of moments simply because of some subtle changes. The game started out and I was pretty impressed with the visual style, but then I was turned off by the characters being anthropomorphic, then I was impressed with the play control and combat engine, then I was turned off by some of the voices, then I was enjoying the tongue and cheek manner of dialog. I'm sure it won't be the last time my opinion changes on it. 

So, the game bills itself as an Action-RPG, but more accurately I would say that is more of Action-Platformer with RPG elements. I would akin the entire games style to that of Odin Sphere or specifically Muramasa: The Demon Blade. You are given a reasonably large 2d map to cover with platforms you can use to scale up and down on, which allows the grid based map to move in multiple directions. Enemies appear on the screen and your job is to hack and slash them as you move along. Sometimes you have to fight, sometimes you don't.

The combat is all very fluid and fast paced, which is a big plus for me in game like this. I like my combat to be fast and frantic. While the combos don't seem overly detailed as to where I've played (say like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta), there is enough variety to it that I don't find myself getting bored or just mashing the attack button. There are essentially a few simple moves to guide you through combat. Obviously, you can run and jump, and there is also a set of dodge buttons to let you quickly roll left or right. You need to not forget those buttons so you don't get wailed on by an a surprisingly tough enemy. Then we have our offensive abilities.

Your basic attack which allows you do a quick but heavily damaging combo, can be done while in the air. Your storm abilities, which is basically your super move button. At a stand you spin the blade furiously for light but continuous damage, but it also pulls enemies and items to you. When done in the air it produces a corkscrew attack that hits multiple times, but can also jump further distances.

Using the Parry is tricky, bigger enemies telegraph their attack but small ones move to fast.

In addition to that there is also a parry mechanic. If you can time your strike right to the moment an enemy swings, they get stunned back for a second or two and take more damage during that time, There are usually too many enemies on screen to really time this right, but there are some that insist you parry before you can do any damage to them. Typically, the game is well designed enough to not stick one of these guys into a horde of other enemies.

There is also a "magic" button that allows Fidget to enter the fray causing her to spray little magic bolts out, but when working in conjunction with Dust's storm abilities, her bolts burst into many and can wail on a baddie for 50+ hits. Low damage, but fun to do. As you play on, you unlock other abilities which allows you to create towers of fire, or chain lightning. And I have to admit, tearing up a group with chain lightning is super satisfying. 

Chain Lightning can really clear out a screen in a hurry,

Now, I've made the comparison to those two wonderful Vanillaware titles I love so much, but another apt comparison to the game are some of the newer 2D Castlevania games like most of the DS titles or Symphony of the Night. The maps as I walk through them give me the distinct signatures that there are locations that I can't access to start, so I am going to need other skills or abilities to find before I can backtrack and continue on such as an ability to slide in tight spaces, or a walk climbing ability.

But unlike a Castlevania or Muramasa its not one one large continuous map for me to travel. There is a world map of the various sections you pass through which allows you to fast travel through them as you need to for huge distances. In this particular case I feel it works better than having one giant world because its cuts down travel time and allows me to bounce around to tackle side quests. Some sections are the map are much larger than others, so it tends to have a good variety about it.

Let's talk characters for a moment. I have to be honest, I have a real real hard time taking anthropomorphs seriously in almost any context. It works in Disney movies but in any other circumstance I just think furries and I become tuned out of the story. Things were not helped much when Fidget became a staple to the story. She's kinda part cat part squirrel with bat wings, big green eyes, and an incredibly squeaky voice. To be totally honest, it almost turned me off to the game completely.

But then something happened. For the most part, all of the dialog in the game is fairly straight laced and serious. It does a good job of painting that I am about to go on some kind of epic adventure. Fidget however doesn't fit that mold. Hilariously, you could almost compare her to Marvel's Deadpool because she has this nearly 4th wall breaking sense of awareness that she's in a video game, and its made for some pretty hilarious exchanges. Sometimes she'll tell you to hit a certain button and the characters won't get what that means, other times she'll reference that enemies didn't save their game.

My favorite exchange so far comes from when you meet the merchant for the first time. He is explaining to you what his wares are and that if you find blacksmiths they can make you new weapons and equipment. He mentions that you need to have specific materials to do so, but if you sell him the materials you find, he can restock them for sale later. Fidget immediately responds in an incredibly raspy version of her voice "Ah! You'll buy them at a high price?!" To which the merchant confusedly says "well yes?". This is was a clearly overt nod the Resident Evil 4 merchant. Once I gathered she was that kind of character, I found myself looking forward to hearing her talk and didn't care about how she sounded anymore. 

But more than that, I find that the dialog in this game is pretty competently done over all. All of the voice actors portray their parts well, and none of it to this point has felt hokey or cheesy (not like say, The Evil Within). When in dialog segments it does sort of the still character RPG exposition, but they aren't just stills. The character images sway, have reactions, have a bunch little tiny movement nuances to them that make the exchanges feel more alive. Mugen Souls did this and it was the only good thing in that game, something I wish Disgaea 4 had picked up on.

Since we are on the topic of sound, lets talk music a bit. I've been a very firm advocate that a perfectly placed and well done score can drastically change a games feel. Some games hit it brilliantly, like Final Fantasy X where every song has its place and fits its mood. Some games miss the mark completely, like Mugen Souls where it feels out of place, or is just grating and annoying. And then you have the games that have music to just have music. Flat, uninspired, and unmemorable.

That's where I feel Dust falls under. Which is a shame because it does so well in all other areas, its all washed over with generic fantasy soundtrack you could hear in any RPG or Movie. A lot of the Tales games have this problem. Its not to say its unfixable, but you really should have one or 2 really strong songs to provide a memorable experience. Sometimes that's all it really takes.

Take Atelier Ayesha for example: like most Atelier games, the music is incredibly flat and generic. But there is one song that one that tends to occur fairly often, enough to the point that I recognized it when it played. Then, for the final battle, it gives me that same song only a more symphonic variation of it complete with vocal accompaniment. Suddenly a song I just recognized had this incredible emotional weight as I played the final boss. There was easily a few places Dust could have really used this to drive the point home on its story elements.

I felt that the combat in this game has that perfect blending point of complexity and simplicity. They give you only a small myriad of attack functions, but using the in different combinations allow for different combos, having multiple styles of magic allow you to play to one that is more your style, and the combat is fast enough that it allows you to dice through enemies at a quick pace without them being complete pushovers. Something like say Bayonetta will give you about 30 billion combos depending on what weapons you have. It can be overwhelming.

The only real major difficulty I had was in the very early goings of the game when I didn't have much in the way of equipment, nor did I have a good enough sense of how to level my character properly. I would find myself going up against of group of enemies and one of the large ones would take out massive chunks of damage. Learning that you can quick key healing items helped, but it took a little bit of grinding before the game of the pace started to pick up for me.

All in all, for a game of zero expectations that I didn't pay a dime for, I got a very good amount of replay value in Dust: an Elysian Tale, at the very least 15-30 hours of time. That's better than a lot of retail releases go. Nothing about the game is going to shatter any molds but it provided an entertaining experience with a twist or two without being predictable. I would say its story kinda fizzles out by the end but all things considered I'd say this one is worth a recommendation.

The amount of Fidget fan art on the Internet is nothing short of ridiculous.

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.