Game #1289: Unpacking

 There's a lot to unpack here.

 I've actually owned this game for a while now, but I purchased it for my girlfriend and watched her play it. But, since I didn't want to end the year on such a sour note as Johnny Bazookatone was, and since Unpacking finally got a physical release this year, I finally played it for myself. 

 For starters, this game is quite clearly not the kind of game I enjoy. It's a sort of pseudo-puzzle game, in which you slowly unpack objects from boxes and place it inside various different rooms of various different houses. It's a puzzle because some objects have right and wrong places, although you can always turn off this mechanic in the Accessibility Menu in case you simply want to have fun placing everything and anything wherever you think fits best. But you shouldn't, at least on your first playthrough...

 ...because the best thing about this game is how it tells its story. Each chapter or house represents a different year of our mysterious protagonist's life. There's not dialogue and no cutscenes, besides a little flavor text after you finish a stage. And despite this, by what items the main character has on each year, they manage to tell a story. There are houses in which you've got little room for your stuff, be it a roommate or a lover, and this too is to tell its story. It's hard to talk about it without giving too much away, because slowly piecing everything together by yourself, or reading some hypothesis afterwards online, is part of the game's charm.

 Despite some objects having 'right' places, there's a lot of freedom in how you display and organize everything, which is pretty neat. Most items can be rotated too. The game is made entirely in 2-D, and there's some gorgeous sprite art at play here. Still, one of the best things about the game... is that it allows for touch controls! The game is a couple of hours long, but I'd say it's just the right length for the kind of game that it is. The only complaint I have is that the game only tells you when something is not in the right place AFTER you've put every item outside the boxes, but it's more of a nitpick than anything else.

 Something that would've been super welcome would've been some sort of in-game glossary of items. While most of them are pretty accurate representations of what they are, a few, particularly if you've never seen them in real life, like the Panini maker, are impossible to know what they are. No wonder the subreddit has a ton of people asking what some things are, I've even seen people asking about the Gamecube!

 Unpacking is a brilliant game, and I don't think any other form of media has told its story in quite the same way as this one. That alone is reason enough as to why this game is worth a look, and this is coming from someone that likes his games fast and explosive. Oh, and by the by, it ends on a super cheesy song. I love it.

 8.0

Game #1288: Johnny Bazookatone

 To the jail-house rock with this one!

 So there I was, watching a video on the story of PS1 longboxes, and footage came up of a 2-D platformer I didn't even know existed. I googled something akin to 'Ps1 Purple hair Elvis 2D' or something like that, and somehow I found Johnny Bazookatone on the first result.  I ordered the game, and decided it'd be a nice quirky game to play come this Christmas. I've taken better decisions, I'll tell you that much.

 Well, booting up the game presents you with this bizarre overly-long intro that plays to a bangin' tune. I decided I was in for a good time. I was not. The game is a 2-D platformer in which you play as a purple haired Elvis look alike, and armed with a machine-gun you must... umm, the only way to know what the story is all about is to read the instruction booklet, but hey, the game has plenty of lengthy pre-rendered cutscenes between stages that... fail to convey any type of story. That said, while I usually dislike pre-rendered sprites, I do feel that the graphics in this game are very charming. 

 Well, the game is horrid, barely playable at all. You can jump and gun, a bit like Earthworm Jim, but you also have a charge attack that is useless unless you charge it for a few seconds... but no enemy ever gives you that much time to charge it. The run is super weird, you have to hold down a button, and upon first pressing the button, you will perform a weird twirly jump. In order to use keys you must suck them up with the O button, for whatever reason. On the other hand, I found gliding cute, because eventually you'll figure out that shooting downwards while jumping lets you slow down your descent, which is a pretty cool idea and feels nice to use.

 But the game is extremely hard and punishing, thus, completely unenjoyable. And it's not because it demands precision, but because it has all the problems a bad 2-D platforming game has. Plenty of times, it's impossible to figure out what's below you until you drop down. You can hold down Down to look down below, but oftentimes it won't help, so you'll just have to do the jump and hope there isn't an enemy or an obstacle below you. This makes the game dreadful. But then there's the fact that it's impossible to predict when enemies are coming from, you'll just be moving left to right and they'll just pop into existence before you understand what hit you. This problem is ever present. Sometimes, what can hurt you just doesn't make any sense, I somehow made it to stage 6, full of broken elevators, and I touched a plant that looked like a background element and it hurt me. And if you die midway through, it's back to the first stage. And the invincibility cheat won't save you from bottomless pits, and don't you dare judge me, even the Continue? guys went for cheats, because it's that bad.

 I didn't finish the game, I only went through the first six stages and that was enough, the game is terrible. Stage 3 was peak bad level design, for starters, it's the first level in which you are introduced to keys. I spent like 20 minutes going up and down the same four floors not knowing how to open doors, until I looked up a video. Turns out there were keys waiting to be picked up... behind metallic grate walls that obscured them. It was even hard to notice in the video that there was a key spinning behind it. Why would they do this? It's even worse, because the level goes on forever, and you have to go up and down finding doors to open, and it's so poorly designed that a mistimed jump can drop you down several floors because screw you.

 Well... Christmas is ruined. Johnny Bazookatone was a horrible way to start this Christmas, so, hopefully, it's not the last game I play this year. There's got to be something good to finish the year with, and this ain't it.

 1.0

Game #1287: A Plague Tale - Innocence

 Unlike the plague, do not avoid this one 

 Considering how much I despise stealth sections in games you'd assume I hate stealth games, and you'd be right. Thankfully, I decided to give A Plague Tale: Innocence a try despite how much I dislike stealth, and I found one of the most interesting tales I've played in a while.

 The game tells the story of Amicia and her brother, Hugo, whom she barely knows as he spends most of the time locked inside his room due to a mysterious illness. Set in the middle ages, a plague of millions of murderous rats invade the village they are living in, and at the same time, mysterious assailants come to Amicia's village and murder her parents and servants, so she escapes alongside the brother she must now protect. What really got me into the story was the characters, since Amicia and Hugo meet a loveable bunch of rogues who'll set out with them, and it's easy to get to love all of them. The story is very bleak, there's a lot of death and injustices going about, which sold me on this vicious crapsack world. It's a well told story, and very entertaining.

 So... yeah, it's a stealth game. You play as Amicia who must carry Hugo by the hand, avoiding soldiers and rats alike. You can separate from Hugo, or other companions in a few missions, but if you stay far away from Hugo for too long he will get scared and start making noise, which makes sense and makes for an interesting mechanic! Thankfully, Amicia is not helpless in the slightest, as she is armed with a deadly sling. There's no penalty for slaying every single helmetless soldier you come around, so why don't you? You can also hit metallic stuff or throw pots to distract guards.

 But what's really interesting is that you are encouraged to explore your environment for resources that you can use to upgrade Amicia's equipment and to craft valuable alternate ammos to aid you. There's an acidic bomb that will force a guard to remove his helmet, thus allowing you to kill him, one to set torches on fire, the only way to make a safe haven from rats, one to extinguish fire and one that makes rats quickly dash toward the source of impact. Having all this tools to play with when it comes to making it towards wherever you need to made the game feel very dynamic, which I loved. And there's so much stuff to do that it makes it feel as if there are multiple ways to go about each section.

 It's also very puzzle-like, particularly when rats are involved. You might need to turn off and turn on various light sources to guide them elsewhere and thus allow you to travel without getting eaten alive. About the only part I didn't like too much was Hugo's chapter, you get to play as him once, and his chapter drags on for a little too long, and since he doesn't have all the tools Amicia has... he wasn't much fun to play as.

 I didn't think I would, but I had a lot of fun with A Plague Tale. I was fully invested in the story and seeing the whole thing threw, but adding to this, I actually found the gameplay to be fun, as all the various tools at your disposal meant that I was doing more than simply waiting for guards to move around and clear the way. It's really good! 

 8.0

Game #1286: Ultimate NES Remix

 Nintendo's own off-brand Warioware. 

 I wanted to like Ultimate NES Remix, I really did. I love WarioWare, even though I don't own every game in the series, so having a WarioWare clone using Nintendo classic NES games sounded amazing, but it's not half as good as it could've and should've been.

 For starters, and what I felt was a crime, there's no sort of 'Random' mode. You get a list of games such as Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Mario, Kirby, as well as three sets of 25 "quirky" challenges each using those games, and you pick which challenge to try from that list. I know it's not WarioWare, but part of the appeal of mini-challenges like these is playing them back to back, and having them being randomized makes it even more fun. So having to pick from a list feels so dull.

 Well, once you get past that, then the challenges themselves is what you get. And from the boxart, the trailers or even the presentation itself, you'd expect this wacky take on classic games. It's not. There's some merit to it, but challenges are more about relieving iconic moments from the games. To the point, that sometimes it feels like a glorified guide or tutorial. For example, the final Excite Bike challenge is about finishing a lap first without falling from your back, all the previous challenges teaching you how to play. Sometimes they try something a bit more interesting, like having to do the infinite lives trick on the original Super Mario Bros., but for the most part... it's dull. The Remix and Bonus challenges, 75 in all, is where the fun is. For example, in one you have to get to the top of Donkey Kong's maze as Luigi... and once you get to the top, the game asks you to return to your original starting spot! These challenges are the ones that trailers were trying to sell this game off of, and this is easily the game at its best.

 Games and challenges are unlocked as you earn Stars by beating challenges, depending on how fast you go it's how many stars you get. It's hard to really get stuck, since failing a challenge unlocks the next one, at least when it comes to individual game challenges.

 Speaking of those, it's kind of weird how they are divided. Sometimes, just entering a room is a challenge in and by of itself, but sometimes you get a string of 3-5 different, separate objectives making that one challenge. And they have varying difficulty, so sub-challenge 4 might be incredibly hard, while the sub-challenges 1-3 and 5 were easy as pie. It makes the game feel uneven, did anyone care about any sort of consistency?

 Besides all these challenges, the game includes two other modes. Nintendo World Championship, which is a novelty that wears out its welcome after a single playthrough, basically emulating the real Nintendo Championship from the 90s, but using Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bos 3 and Dr. Mario instead of the original games(Rad Racer and Tetris). So it's not even accurate. And then there's Super Turbo Mario which is the entire Super Mario Bros. game at twice the speed... which, once again, is a super lame novelty.

 Ultimate NES Remix is disappointing, since the game was sold of as some sort of Videogame-themed WarioWare, but when it comes to its own merits you'll discover it's lacking any. Despite the presentation, despite the trailers, the game feels very dull and boring, honestly, I'm sticking to WarioWare.

 4.0

Game #1285: Valkyrie Elysium

 Stranger of Paradise, Valkyrie Profile edition.

 You could say I enjoyed Stranger of Paradise a little too much, and you could be right, either way, Square Enix decided to recycle that formula for Valkyrie Elysium, to varying degrees of success. This is more beat'em up than JRPG, and any connection to previous Valkyrie games was lost on me, as this game reimagines Odin and his Kin, while giving us a new Valkyrie to follow.

 The plot is not as incomprehensible as the one in Stranger of Paradise, I'll give it that much, but it isn't very interesting or original, and every twist you'll see coming a mile away. The way it's told leaves a lot to be desired as well, both Valkyrie and her four Einherjar are pretty boring. 

 As for the game itself, it plays like a PS2 game but looks like a PS3 game. I say this as praise, as it feels nostalgic, plus, I'm fine with a modern game not having the mandatory crafting mechanics or the dopamine chest checklists. Sadly, it doesn't play like a good PS2 game.

 Valkyrie has access to about 6 different weapons, being able to equip two at a time on the digital pad. You can perform different combos by using Square and Triangle, and as you upgrade your weapons you gain access to more attacks. You can dodge and block as well, dodging and block at the last moment does confer some benefits to the player, as you'd expect. Holding down R2 and pressing any face button performs Divine Arts, which consume crystals from the Arts gauge, which refills as you attack enemies, while holding down R1 and pressing any face button summons whichever Einherjar is slotted to that button for a short while, these run on the Summon Gauge, that refills when picking up blue souls. Lastly, Valkyrie can use L2 to grapple on to an enemy, this can even be done from the air!

 The thing is... combat isn't very satisfying. Valkyrie's attacks and animations feel slow and weak, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't much fun stuff you could do with the combat system. The PS4 version at least even suffers from some framerate issues. There's a weakness system at play here too, locking onto enemies will tell you what they are weak to, attacking them with the right element Art will fill a gauge, that once full leaves them incapacitated for a spell. There are two ways to use the right element, either use the right Einherjar, who will install their element on Valkyrie's weapon for as long as they are active, or by using an Art. 

 There are a few problems with this system. First of all, you can eventually unlock situational summons, such as summoning an Einherjar when you are downed on when you break an enemy gauge. You can have up to two Einherjar active at the same time, but you can just summon another one and it will cancel the last one. Here's the thing, say you are fighting an enemy weak to fire... if a situational summon triggers, the element of your weapon will change, and it's not like you can change it at any moment, if you are in the middle of a combo.... tough luck, your element changed. It's very annoying, and sure, you can turn off situational summons, but I shouldn't need to. Another issue is that there are about six different elements, but you only have four Divine Art Slots... so be ready to pause the game to swap Arts every now and then, at least if you want to maximize the combat system. Haven't some sort of way to toggle between builds would've been amazing, since this could mean that you'd have another pair of weapons and items at the ready.

 Mind you, it's that the combat is bad, it simply is average. It's a beat'em up with nothing of note. In game like Dynasty Warriors, you feel powerful as you easily and explosively mow down hundreds of enemies. Devil May Cry is more about being creative with how you defeat your enemies. Here... it's just about mashing buttons to bring down enemies. And that's the only thing it has. You can use Arts to expedite the whole process, but that means losing on Proficiency XP for your weapons, so you do you. Combat feels super slow, since Valkyrie moves and attacks very slowly. It doesn't help that the first sword you start the game with is easily the best weapon in the game, as the other ones feel slow or clunky. 

 There's this weird "CP" system at play, even though you unlock different abilities, some of them have different CP cost, and you can't go above 500, so you might have to turn some of them off.... but why would you? 500 is the most CP you can have. Well, turns out this change on Hard Mode... to 430. Yeah, I don't get it. Maybe they'll add more abilities or difficulty settings via updates? I don't know, but it's one of the most superfluous systems I've seen in recent times.

 When I said the game is a beat'em up, I meant it. The closest thing to puzzles is pressing switches, which are next to the door they open, selecting an Einherjar to clear an obstacle, or finding a key, which is never farther away than two-rooms distance. Sometimes you might need to press L2 to use your soul grappling hook. So why explore? To find Sad Flowers! Sad Flowers is one of the dumbest collectible, because all they grant you is a single sentence of someone's laments, sometimes it's just the sad neigh of a horse, and I am not making that up. That said, you need to collect all green Sad Flowers if you want the good ending. It's not a very involved game, as you see.

 The game does Sidequests in a very weird way too. While you might 'find' them during a main chapter, do not be deluded, you didn't activate it. On the very first chapter you find a Soul that mentions a ring near the church. So I searched. And searched. And gave up. Well... you can only properly engage sidequests from the Hub, in-between chapters. And every sidequest transports you to the location, so you must do them 1-by-1 even though they take place in reduced versions of the maps from the main game. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can feel a bit tedious since loading times in the game are a bit longer than I would've liked.

 Valkyrie Elysium is an incredibly basic beat'em up, and look, there's nothing bad about that, I like basic beat'em ups like Final Fight. However, Final Fight is two hours long at most, this is a 15 hour game, so if it doesn't want to wear out its welcome it'd better have some sort of hook to keep you interested, or at least some very satisfying combat, so that even though I'm mashing square, I'm getting some sort of dopamine reward. This game has neither. Using the soul hook to grapple on to enemies is cute... at first, but there really isn't much to the game. It's not bad, but you could do much better. And I'm sad, 'cause they decided to bring back Valkyrie Profile with this, and it will quite obviously sink the series, a series it's barely connected to.

 5.5

Game #1284: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - All-Star Battle R(Playstation 4)

  Performance vs Portability.

 I think I don't really need to go over how great JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is again, at least if you're into JoJo. But yeah, I liked the game so much I decided to get it a second time, third if we're counting the original PS3 release!

 As for this port.... it's amazing, it runs at 60fps and has very brief loading times. Look, loading times on the Switch were pretty decent, but these ones are amazing. So, does the better performance make it a better game? Yeah, game looks super smooth, and it's more responsive to boot.... which is why I bought this game again, when playing it with other people, this'll be my go-to version. That said, portability is just as great, since I love playing on my bed, which is why the Switch version is just perfect for just playing around.

 So yeah, depending on what you want, either version of the game is great.

 9.0

Game #1283: Marvel's Spider-Man - Miles Morales

  It's Spider-men now.

 Considering how well the original did, it's no surprise Insomniac would pump out another Spider-man game, what not many would've expected would be a sort of mini-spin off in the form of Marvel's Spider-man: Miles Morales. In full honestly, it feels like an expansion pack of sorts to the original game, as it innovates very little, but adds new missions, skills and story bits.

 The plot takes place some time after the original game, with Peter showing Miles the ropes, but it's not too soon before Peter gets nerfed so that Rhyno easily wrecks him so that Miles can, in turn, easily defeat Rhyno. It felt forced, but thankfully that's about the only shilling they do in the game, afterwards Peter takes some time off to go abroad and leaves Miles as New York's only Spider-man. Seeing Miles come into his own felt pretty well done, and he makes for a slightly younger and dorkier Spider-man, which is quite endearing. And it's hard not to smile then the people of Harlem start calling him 'our' Spider-man. Oh! And for returning PS4 players, Pete has a new face and it looks terrible. He has a larger frame than Miles, and is supposed to be older... but his face looks like a baby's. It's awful.

 That said, the plot has kind of a big issue... it's highly political. From the usual wokeness of having white people being the biggest bad in the entire world, I swear, about the only named white characters, Peter is the only good one. Once again, the plot is about an evil white rich man, as per usual. The black villains are portrayed as sympathetic... and it works in the case of the Prowler, but as far as The Tinkerer goes... Yeah, they are very unlikeable and only come off as worse than the mandatory generic evil white guy. They also have characters for every color, there's a girl that mentions her girlfriend in a very forced way and is never seen again, and then there's a deaf character too. Incidentally, the deaf character was my favorite, she is a bundle of smiles and however sparse and brief her scenes were... I loved her. I hope she makes it into Spider-man 2! Lastly, they even shoe-horned in a BLM mural, which is funny considering how shady BLM is and how it has nothing to do with the game. And then there's a character mentioning how debates are not about who's right but about who talks the loudest, which is true, but once again, it takes me out of the game since it means to make social commentary about modern times. And it doesn't matter if I agree with the political messages it's forcing down my throat or not, it comes out as preachy and completely threw the immersion away.

 Before getting into the nitty gritty, they added some very welcome options when it comes to QTEs, namely, automatically passing them AND being able to hold down a button instead of tapping it. Thank you, devs!

 As for the game itself, it's much shorter than the original, and it reuses the same New York City, albeit now taking place in a very snowy winter. It looks pretty good! There are new collectible and crime analogues to the ones in the original game, so don't worry, if you like collecting goobers and what not, it's all here, albeit in a more limited fashion. Miles even gets a fair amount of costumes to collect, which is always a boon in Spider-Man games.

 Miles is weaker than Pete, and has access to less gadgets, however, the Focus gauge is now the Venom gauge, and you can use this gauge to perform all sort of Venom attacks by holding down L1. It makes Miles a ton of fun to use, because hitting enemies with Venom stuns them for a while and makes enemies take more damage for a short while, so Mile's fighting style is speedier and built around landing venom attacks to make enemies more susceptible to Mile's attacks. I think they did a fantastic job at differentiating both characters, and I hope they build around this for the sequel.

 In a funny twist of fate, I think the shorter length and smaller scale of this game is actually a positive. Modern open-world games can feel very bloated with worthless collectibles and what not, but in this case it feels just right. The game takes about 6-7 hours to finish if you don't dabble in the extra content, something I know because I did a second playthrough to get the Platinum, but the extra content adds quite a bit more, without it feeling like filler.

 Miles Morales is a pretty great game, I mean, of course, it uses all the basic elements from the original, which were already good to begin with! The swinging feels really good, and I think I appreciated how it feels and looks a bit more this time around, the combat is also pretty fun, and I loved the new Venom powers. I also loved this take on Miles, and I love his friendship with Pete. If anything, maybe, I would've added more time of Miles being a sidekick before becoming Pete's equal, because I've always loved seeing a character graduate from sidekick(Robin) to his own hero(Nightwing!), but that's just a personal thing, as I felt the plot worked really well, shame about all the cringy political stuff.

 8.5