Game #1154: Xuan Yuan Sword 7

 2021's most underrated gem.

 Wow, just wow. To think that I almost let Xuan Yuan 7, also known as Xuan Yuan Sword 7, pass me by. Equal parts RPG and Action game, the game oozes with quality from the very first cutscene up 'til the end of the game. It's nothing you haven't played before, but it's done oh, so well. 

 You play as Taishi, a hunter for hire that has a few tricks up his sleeve and is trying to restore his sister's real body, as he had to extract her soul and place it in an automata. Yeah, the story is kinda crazy, and I love just how nobody bats an eye at how weird some things are. You get to fight ugly giant monsters as well as an army of fellows that enjoy making weapons out of clockwork. I love it. I also found the story surprisingly engaging, as I enjoyed the main trio and their chemistry quite a bit. The villains were quite nasty too. The Chinese-to-English translation was acceptable, as the subtitles had a few typos or grammatical errors here and there, but nothing that made the plot hard to follow. I also enjoyed the character designs, for an Eastern game there's barely any fanserive. There's this female character near the end that takes her clothes because reasons, but it was a singular outlying case.

 For the most part, the game is a pretty linear adventure. While there are optional sidequests, if you don't partake in them you won't be doing much backtracking. The game world is basically made up of linear roads that connect every town with every dungeon, a bit like Final Fantasy VII Remake but more immersive, so you don't notice as much that the game is made up of corridors. In a way, it almost feels like Half-Life 2 or Dungeon Siege, in how the game is a continuous trek forward. Sure, you can go backwards, but you don't need to, and you rarely lose control of Taishi. It feels cozy, it feels like an adventure. Plus, monsters and enemies only respawn if you rest at a bonfire.... kinda like the Souls games.

 Combat is fairly simple. You get a stamina gauge, because of course, and you get a weak attack, a strong attack, a super attack and a dodge. The strong and super attacks is where it gets interesting, as you'll unlock a variety of stances as you advance through the story, and each stance changes your Strong attack and your Super attack. You could opt for hand-to-hand attacks that deal little damage but fill the critical gauge, which turns into a one-hit kill on basic enemies or a very strong attack on bosses, or maybe a Stance that grants you a wide slash, or maybe a super strong piercing stab. You can equip up to two stances at the same time, and swap them with L2.

 You get two CPU allies, Taishi's sister, Xiangce and Taishi's love interest, Hong. They are unplayable, but you can use L1 + square or L1+Triangle to have them use their special attacks, both running on cooldown. They also serve as invulnerable bait, as they'll help in combat and can't die, so they never become a burden. You have two other cooldown abilities, L1+Circle slows down time for a while and L1+X triggers a capture area that, if an enemy dies while standing on it, lets you capture their soul... which you can then fuse with other stuff to get more stuff.

 As with most modern games, there's a crafting system. You'll collect materials in order to upgrade 'buildings' in the Elysium sub menu, and you want to upgrade them in order to allow you to upgrade your equipment. While I don't think I ever felt like I absolutely needed to grind, if I wanted to upgrade every character's equipment the moment it became available I did have to grind, either for money to get the materials or to get the materials themselves. That said, that was only because I wanted the upgrades NOW, as eventually you'll get everything you need as you go through the game.

 There's an original chess-like minigame that is part of a lengthy sidequest that was actually kinda fun. I usually dread these minigames in these kind of games, but I enjoyed this one. Oh, and there are QTEs in the game, but they are incredibly lenient and give you ample time to take it easy with the inputs, so I wasn't too mad about them.

 There's one big complaint I have.... even on the normal difficulty setting, some boss fights can be tough, and I don't mind retrying them, however... loading times are too long. During the game itself, unless you fast-travel, you'll rarely, if ever, have to sit through one of them. However, retrying a boss fight means having to sit through another loading screen, and that wasn't much fun. Eventually I said screw it and went to the lower difficulty setting, because I really didn't care about sitting through the loading screen a again. But hey, I did most of the game on the Normal difficulty setting!

 I really, REALLY enjoyed Xuan Yuan Sword 7. It had an interesting plot, a bunch of likeable characters, a solid even if somewhat simple combat system, and a great sense of adventure that kept me invested in exploring the game's world further. It's easily the best game I've played so far in 2022, which might not be saying much considering it's just February, but hey, the game is fantastic, and you can tell that the budget wasn't Triple A high, and yet it feels just as good as some of those over-bloated and over-funded games, playing just as well as them but showing an amount of love and care that most of those games lack.

 9.0

Game #1153: X-Men - Destiny

  Destined to be deleted... by the judge's orders!

 X-Men: Destiny's story is legendary, as the developer was forced to destroy every remaining copy of the game due to some legal shenanigans with the Unreal Engine. It was also a legendary flop, a game that promised a lot but underdelivered spectacularly.

 Basically, part of the promised appeal of the game was following your created character, except you don't. You get three pre-made archetypes: A dumb jock who looks cartoonishly large and hits on every female character becoming the butt of the joke, an asian teen girl that looks like an edgy tryhard and a fascist anti-mutant bloke who becomes a mutant. None of the characters get all that much story, just a slightly different prologue and a few different lines. When the game first starts, you get a choice of three different powers: A defensive power, a DPS power and a power that focuses on Area of Effect. Animations are shared between characters, although each power makes more sense on a specific character, for instance, the DPS blades and acrobatics make more sense on the girl, although you can have the cartoonishly thick joke pull off bladed somersault kicks like the best of them.

 Regardless, all three character archetypes are unlikable at worst and tolerable at best. Not being able to edit their faces or bodies was a huge miss on the developers' part. Another big selling point were the moral choices between Magneto's Brotherhood and Cyclops' X-men. Well, I played the game twice, to get the Platinum trophy, and I can tell you that your choices barely matter. At most they'll change a 3-minute sub-mission during a stage. At most. You can even play the entire game making Brotherhood missions and then pick the X-men side at the end. It's that inconsequential and lame. The boring plot actually turns against the game on repeated playthroughs, as there's just too much unskippable dialogue and cutscenes. It's a beat'em up, I want to beat people up, why do I have to sit through so much meaningless babble?

 Gameplay is simple to a fault. Light attack, heavy attack, dodge, block/parry and jump. You get four combos: Weak x4, Weak then Strong, Weak twice then strong and Weak thrice then strong. That's it. At certain points during the story you'll be able to pick your 3 other powers, picking between two choices each time. You get but a brief description of both, no video, not a chance to try each out, no nothing. These powers consume energy from your Mutant Gauge, but... maybe you are better off not using them. You can upgrade all of these with XP earned by defeating baddies.

 Where the game gets a bit more interesting are X-Genes. You can mix and match four of them: Outfit, Offensive, Defensive and Utility. Outfit it's just cosmetic, to get your character to cosplay using the colors and some motifs of a popular character. Offensive usually adds some effects to your attacks, like Fire damage over time with Pyro's or just overall stronger attacks with Juggernaut's. Defensive might give you more defense, like turning into Diamond with Emma Frost's or Ice with Iceman's, or heck, Toad's makes it so that you expel poison that weakens nearby enemies' attacks, heck, Surge's turns your dodge into an offensive dash. Utility is a bit more interesting, for example, it might lengthen your HP or mutant gauges. Picking all four Genes of a specific character grants you a bonus mode that consumes energy from your mutant gauge continually. Whichever the case, many of these passive abilities trigger more frequently the more Mutant Energy you have store, which kinda defeats the purpose of using Abilities.

 It's a shame the game is so basic and unimpressive, as the X-Genes idea was fairly decent, and, to be honest, I had fun coming up with the best genes for my playstyle. But planning out my build can only be so much fun when the rest of the game is so dull.

 4.5

Game #1152: Thor - God of Thunder(Wii)

  Thunderous clapback.

 Thor on the PS3 was a pathetic attempt at bringing Marvel's god of thunder to the videogame realm, however, surprisingly, this Wii iteration is slightly better, although it's still quite a few ways off from being a good game.

 It's another beat'em up, and it shares quite a few similarities to the main game. It follows the same story, although it tells it in a very different way. Character designs are a bit more cartoony, but they work well, on the other hand, cutscenes are told through ugly stills. Almost as if to make up for that, it features a full episode of Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes, an episode focused on Thor as you'd expect. Speaking of extras, this game has more unlockable costumes than the PS3 version, which was a very welcome bonus.

 As a hater of all things motion, having mandatory motion controls wasn't much fun. Weak attacks are performed with the A button, but strong attacks... are done by shaking the Wiimote. While pointing with the Wiimote to throw the hammer could've been appropriate, in this game you must hold down the C button, to have Thor spin the hammer, and then shake the nunchuck, Thor will just throw it against the nearest enemy. There are Wiimote and Nunchuck shaking QTEs which weren't very nice, and there's no way to move the camera around which is as cumbersome as it sounds. Using elemental powers also involves shaking the Wiimote, but dodging? Now that's a doozy, you use the tiny Dpad, and how you dodge depends on where Thor is facing, which is needlessly confusing.

 There are a couple of flying stages which weren't half bad, as you point at stuff and bring it down with Thor's thunders. I felt the high destructibility of the environments to be quite fun, even during the on-foot stages. It's nothing worth writing home about, but it felt good. That said, the framerate isn't very solid, although it's playable...most of the time.

 The fighting is acceptable, but some sections where just TOO long. That said, it's not like it's horrendous, plus, you can buy upgrades with earned experience points, and you can equip up to four runes to grant Thor some passive buffs. As your combo gets longer, all your combos get perks, such as increased range, which was a neat idea, and once the counter reached 50 you can spend your combo counter on a super Storm, which resets the combo counter to zero but deals a ton of damage. Not a bad idea!

 While it's still not very good, Thor on the Wii is definitely a better pick than its PS3 counterpart. It seems like these developers actually wanted to make something decent, it's just that the budget wasn't there.

 4.0

Game #1151: Captain America - Super Soldier(Wii)

 Captain Waggle.

  I always thought that the Captain was one of Marvel's most boring heroes, so color me surprised to find out that Captain America: Super Soldier wasn't just a decent PS3 game, it was also a fairly decent, albeit quite different, Wii game!

 While the plot follows the same structure from its PS3 counterpart, heck, you even fight the same bosses, the way the story is told is completely different, even if you get to fight the same bosses. The main story beats remain the same, start off fighting Hydra soldiers in the trenches, get your plane shot down, find radios to communicate with your buddies, rescue the Invaders(Dum Dum Dugan, Bucky), a brief segment without your shield, etc. But how these things happen is quite different, so you could say it's an alternate dimension! The art-style is completely different as well, instead of going for realism, characters have very top-heavy, slightly cartoonish proportions. I thought it'd looks rather nice, and I appreciate how colorful everything is... considering it's the Wii and oh so many games went after the washed-out color palettes. Oh! You can also unlock the same two alternate costumes as in the other game.

 While this version keeps the Arkham-inspired combat, the game is not Metroidvania-ish as it's now divided into well-defined stages, there is no backtracking here. Exploration had a fair amount of puzzles, and most of them usually involve chucking your shield towards stuff or using your shield to reflect stuff onto guarded generators. There's a fair bit of platforming and acrobatics, but they are somewhat pseudo scripted. Basically, when Captain faces towards a platform, if an arrow appears on top of it, pressing jump will make Captain jump towards the platform without fail. It feels almost as if on rails, and to be honest, when you chain a few of these together it feels somewhat... cool. Because Cap will always land these jumps. 

 You always get a handy arrow on the top of the screen pointing you towards where you need to go next, however, exploring off the beaten path may net you hidden collectibles. They reward you with experience points as well as concept art, although collecting all the Zola Relics type of collectibles will net you the Comic Book Captain America costume.

 Combat is really neat, you use B to punch, Z to counter and C to throw the shield, You can hold down C to slow down time and aim at multiple enemies. There are no super moves, like in the console version, however, you can get upgrades so that when landing a combo, every third hit will be a knock down, every sixth hit will be a be an AoE and every ninth will be an almost certain knockout. The combat actually flows better than the console version, for the most part, as the Captain is a bit more nimble and moves from enemy to enemy a bit more like Batman. It's not perfect, sometimes you might be aiming towards an enemy and pressing B but Cap will still maul on the one he picked, and sometimes, like in the  console version albeit more rarely, you will just punch thin air and ruin your combo. So, while you have less tools, I felt it was smoother.

 Different enemies will require different strategies. Big enemies, if you throws your shield at them, will just grab it and chuck your shield towards a wall. Swordswomen will avoid any hit that isn't a shield throw. Enemies with electrified batons must be countered first. Robots must be attacked with their own bombs after you get one of them stuck on your shield. It works well I feel. Something I really liked was that when deflecting bullets with the shield, you can use the pointer to aim the ricochets! That was pure brilliance. What wasn't so cool was that bosses have waggle QTEs, and if you shake the wrong joystick you will get hit. At least it's the only instance of QTEs in the game.

 As you defeat enemies, break stuff, find collectibles and, optionally, complete Zola challenges, you'll obtain XP. Whenever you level up you get a choice of three upgrade paths: Shield, Combat or Star. Eventually you'll get everything, so there's no need to fuss.

 As enjoyable as the game was, some bits felt a bit... buggy. Sometimes, admittedly quite rarely, when running around the Cap will slow down as if he was wading on water. Eventually he gets out of it. Climbing stairs is a bit iffy too, sometimes you'll need to jump because it seems some short steps are, sometimes, a bit too high for him to run up through. There's also this area in which you must jump over platforms on top of electrified water, and the next platforms appear when you land on a platform... well, sometimes platforms that should appear would disappear, so I had to either jump to the previous platform and then back to the one I was on, or just jump quickly before it disappeared, and I'm sure it wasn't intended to work that way.

 Well, color me surprised! Captain America: Super Soldier on the Wii is just as good as its HD counterparts, although in very different ways. The combat lacks tools, but feels tighter thanks to having to fight enemies in different ways and the engine feeling more responsive. The Metroidvania aspect was gutted, but in its stead we get more puzzles and collectibles. The graphics are weaker, but the artstyle makes up for it.... in short, I think that this game is worth a look EVEN if you played the HD version.

 7.0

Game #1150: Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg

 An eggcelent pick for game #1150.

 As far as games I've always wanted to play but never could, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is a prime offender as the game was only available on the Gamecube... and as a rather obscure PC port. Regardless, my adult life is all about fulfilling my childhood wants and needs, so here we are.

 This is one weird platforming game, as you take control of a character dressed like a chicken. By himself, Billy is pretty much useless, being only able to jump or cockadoodledoo. Billy's full moveset is only available once you grab onto an egg. Now you can ground pound, bounce-jump, dash or shoot the egg towards incoming enemies. You can also simply just roll-over enemies to kill them. You can find fruit, hidden in the environment or dropped from fallen enemies, in order to feed the egg, just roll with it, and once it glows gold you can use the cockadoodledoo to hatch the egg. It may contain a helper animal, a 1-UP, or other power ups such as powering your egg with different elements or giving you remote control over eggs.

 Initially, every level starts with 5 available missions, but as you rescue Billy's friends you'll open up 3 extra missions in every world in which you play as them. It's just cosmetics since they play exactly like Billy. There are 7 worlds with a total of 8 missions each. The first two missions are the only ones you must finish in order to open up the next world, the first has you finding the golden egg and then hatching it without it breaking and the second one is an easy boss battle. The next 6 missions are made up of a coin-collecting mission, a boring find 8 chickens missions, a defeat 100 enemies mission as well as other objectives such as reaching a specific place. It can be a bit predictable at times, but since every world is quite different, it's not as repetitive as it could've been.

 I enjoyed the originality and the game mechanics a fair bit, but it does have a few glaring shortcomings. Some jumps are just nasty, as it's all too common for your egg to reach the top of a ledge, but not your character. When this happens you must wait for the egg to de-spawn and re-spawn. If you're lucky you'll have access to another egg for a quick attempt, but if it happens again, you are screwed. If the platform is large enough you could try to air-dash after the jump, but some platforms are too small for this to work. Red rails are pretty nasty too, while you can ride on them on your eggs, sometimes your character will just drop off the ledge. It's better to approach them with a jump. On that note, some of the latter levels feel unfair in their difficulty, the last world in particular relies on slopes and rails, and if you don't get the jump just right you're going to lose a life. The final boss was kind of annoying too, as some of its attacks require some pixel-perfect cleaning(it makes sense in context) for it to work. Oh! And the camera, while serviceable most of the time, is too slow and cumbersome during boss fights. Luckily, every boss but the last one is very easy, but still, you will take some hits because there was no way to redirect the camera fast enough towards the boss.

 Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is a clear case of the good overweighing the bad. Its flaws can be quite annoying at times, but at the end of the day, the game's highly original take on the genre is quite a treat, and when the mechanics work, they work well, playing the game is a lot of fun and at times it felt like an Arcade game, thanks to its speedy, score-based gameplay. The colorful graphics, and the child-like aesthetics also make it impossibly cute and charming. At the end of the day, I can understand why this is such a cult-classic. Sega, where's the sequel?

 7.5

Game #1149: Thor - God of Thunder

 God of bad videogames.

 As per usual, full disclosure, I didn't finish Thor: God of Thunder, and I really don't care, as the game is hot garbage. The latest entry in my quest to play more hack and slash games that eluded me, Thor was definitely not the game I was looking for. 

 When I first booted up the game I was a bit hopeful, developed by the same team as Rise of the Argonauts, the first thing I found in the options menu were alternate costumes and the ability to change the color of Thor's powers. Those are neat options in and of themselves. And then, I started the game...

 This is one of the dullest beat'em ups I've ever played. You use square to attack with your hammer, and can end your combos with Triangle for power attacks or R2 for hammer throw attacks. Pressing triangle by itself lets you use your Wind, Thunder and Lightning powers, while pressing R2 by itself lets you throw your hammer. You can guard with L2, and you get a useless dash with L1 that seems to lack any kind of invincibility frames. Combat is immensely unsatisfying, as attacks lack any kind of weight to them. Combo attacks are limited and boring. You can purchase upgrades, but all of them felt as uninspired as the combat itself. You can also search for hidden collectibles for permanent health and power upgrades, although some of these collectibles can only be found in the highest difficulty setting.

 The game is hard. The stages are easy, but the bosses are incredibly unfair, there's little you can do to avoid some of their attacks, and the only way to land hits is by being patient, and even then, they might simply go through your attacks, and since your dash is useless.. it's not much fun. Giant enemies are particularly bad because they end on glorified QTEs that take forever, as you slowly climb onto them and then mash Square or triangle. There's one boss in particular, Ulik, that is incredibly hard to defeat unless you cheese him by hammering him from afar. Once he is 'dead', a set of four QTE inputs must be pressed, you barely get time to react and you get tiny little prompts on the lower right corner of the screen. Thankfully, it's always the same four buttons, but until you learn which buttons these are... you will get hit, and maybe die, as you get them wrong or don't get enough time to react. It was awful.

 But what broke me was a stage with a morale meter, and you lose if you lose all morale. The checkpoint doesn't get me enough morale to defeat the giant enemy before it expires, so basically, I was screwed. And I didn't really care, I was looking for excuses to drop the game anyways.

 Thor: God of Thunder was pretty bad. Maybe not as bad as I remember the Iron Man 2 demo being, but still pretty bad. Sega has had such a bad track record with their MCU games that it's such a marvel that Captain America came out so good. Sadly, it's not like Thor fans have a lot of choices when it comes to videogames, but the DS version was relatively decent even if a bit overrated.

 3.0

Game #1148: Castlevania Anniversary Collection

 Party at Drac's castle.

 As someone that really likes the Castlevania series, Castlevania Anniversary Collection was right up my alley, a collection of most of the early games in the franchise. People that enjoy the Metroidvania outings need not apply, as this is a collection of the Classicvania variety. 

Castlevania

 The game that started everything, you play as this little vampire hunter that wields a whip as his weapon of choice. Stiff jump-arcs that you commit to once your feet leave the ground, sub-weapons that consume hearts(Including the Dagger, the Axe, the Holy Water, the Cross and the Stop-watch) as well as a high difficulty level. You'll learn to hate the fleamen and the medusa heads. The game has aged a bit, definitely, but I had fun. While a Rewind feature is sorely missed, Save States made the game more enjoyable in this modern age.

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

 Talk about a game with a bad rep! I tried the game before, using emulators, and it always felt boring and needlessly boring. And the poor translation does make a somewhat confusing game even more confusing. But it was fun. Instead of it being a linear romp, this is more of an adventure game, as you get an open world-ish to explore, and you'll need to get items to get through obstacles... as if it was a proto-Metroidvania. I managed to reach the first Manor by myself, but afterwards, feeling lost, I started using a guide. With a guide in hand, the game is fun, as long as you can live with having to consult a guide as you play. And you need a guide. What does each item do? Where to use the garlic? Why would you try using holy water on empty houses? Forget your pride, and start the game while using a guide.

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

 Castlevania 1 is a great game that has aged a bit. Castlevania 2 is a great game under the right conditions, but Castlevania 3 is sublime. It takes after the first CV, so back to stiff movement and linear stages. But now you can recruit one of three possible characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Add to that the fact that the game features multiple choices as well as different bosses. This game is amazing. That said, it's also cheap and hard, like most games of the era. Once again, Save States help alleviate this.

Super Castlevania IV

 You can whip in 8 different directions, the future is now. That aside, it feels like a smoother take on the Classicvania formula, as Simon is slightly more nimble this time around. This was the first CV game on the SNES and it looks the part. It's pretty lengthy and features fun stages. While it starts off super easy, the latter stages are TOUGH.

Castlevania: The Adventure

 The first entry on the Gameboy, this game is.... the worst game in this collection, and it might very well be the worst Castlevania game out there. Sub weapons are not a thing in this game, for the first time ine the series, and you lose your whip power ups when you get hit, which is just criminal. The cherry on top? The game is super slow.

Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge

 But oldschool Konami, the good Konami, wasn't about to give up on the system. Sub-weapons are back into the mix, you no longer lose your whip power ups and it plays faster, making it very enjoyable. In a bit of a twist, you can play the initial four stages in any order. It's not as good as the console games, but for a GB entry, it gets the job done and then some.

Castlevania Bloodlines

 The only Castlevania on Genesis, this one is the weird one of the bunch. It plays like a cross of CV1 with CV4. You get two playable characters, one fights with a spear, can attack upwards and perform high jumps, while the other one fights with a whip, can swing on ceilings and attack downwards when jumping. There are four different sub-weapons in the game, the Dagger, Holy Water, the Boomerang and a special subweapon you can only use when fully powered up. Subweapons consume crystals instead of hearts, your maximum weapon power up only lasts until you get hit, and the game features a very unique set of bosses that you haven't seen before, except Dracula and Death. It's... I wouldn't say it's among my favorites, but it's not a bad game by any means.

Kid Dracula

 Now this one is even weirder, as the connection with Castlevania is a bit tenuous. While you could argue weather Kid Dracula is, well, a Kid version of Drac or if he is Alucard, one thing is certain: This feels like a parody of Castlevania. You'll come across familiar obstacles as well as familiar, but cute-ified versions of enemies from Castlevania. As for the game itself, it's a pretty easy 2-D platformer, and you get new powers pretty much after every level, keeping things interesting.

 Overall, I thought Castlevania Anniversary Collection was a great way to relieve these classics. I would've liked a rewind feature, but having a save state is enough... even if it's the bare minimum. There are a few other bells and whistles, such as Japanese versions of every game as well as an art gallery too. All in all, I had a blast finally playing these games from beginning to end.

 8.0