Game #1292: A Short Hike

 We've time for one short hike before New Year's.

 Full disclosure, I actually played A Short Hike last year with my girlfriend, but this year gave us a physical release, and so, I give it a proper entry. I started from scratch, and finish the game in about an hour, it is a short hike after all!

 The game is immediately charming as it looks very jaggy, like a DS game. Characters are anthropomorphic animals, coated in cell-shading which makes them pop. The entire game is set in a small Island, lots of lush greens and yellows, it's quite pretty to look at. What may not be to everyone's liking is the game's humor, there are plenty of NPCs who talk in ALL CAPS and get overly-excited over dumb things, it's no Shakespeare, and it may be a bit too dumb for some.

 The game has a single objective, reach the top of the Island to get reception on your phone to call Claire's mom. How you go about it... that's on you. The entire game is open-ended, you are thrown into the island and left to your own devices when are where you go is up to you, however, your main goal will actually be to collect golden feathers which govern your mobility. Each golden feather gives you an extra jump and increases the amount of time you can climb and dash, the latter is mostly needed for optional content, however. So as open ended as it is, the more feathers you have, the higher you can climb the island, which means access to more areas, and more areas means more NPCs, activities and, yes, even more golden feathers.

 The game is a ton of fun, and there's so much silly stuff to do and find. For instance, a couple of NPCs will ask you to play Beachstickball with them, in which you try to hit the ball with a stick towards the other player. You'll also come across treasure maps, so that you can dig for treasure with the shovel you find. You can even find a bucket, to water flowers that grow into trampolines, and, if you search well enough, you'll even be able to drive a boat, and even partake in a checkpoint race through the sea! There are other simpler quests, such as finding a certain item somebody found, or find X amount of seashells. There're a lot of activities, and since the game is rather small, it's not too convoluted. When I first played with my girlfriend it took us little over 2 hours to finish everything we came across, this time around I finished most sidequests in little over an hour. And it was just as fun as it was the first time around.

 What adds to making the game such an entertaining romp is how agile Claire is. From the very beginning of the game you have access to a very smooth glide that helps you get towards most places, and the more you play, you are rewarded with more and more mobility, so that the entire Island becomes a playground. Even growing plants adds more trampolines, which means more ways to gain air and just travel around the small island. It's quite brilliant really.

 A Short Hike it's exactly what it says on the tin, but it's also one of the most amusing games released in the past generation of games. It's well designed, with a very brisk flow that keeps rewarding the player in some way, the golden feathers you get the more fun you'll have moving around, but also, access to more areas, then there are all the sidequests which will either gain you new tools, to open up more places, cosmetics, or even more golden feathers. It's a really fun cycle, it's a really great game.

 8.5

Game #1291: Valis - The Fantasm Soldier Collection

90's anime babes!

 Valis is this obscure set of games that eventually turned into a hentai game, seriously. Well, Valis: The Fantasm Collection brings the first three games to the Switch. These are 2-D Sidescrollers from the 90's, featuring an armor-bikini clad heroine who battles monsters and the like. To be honest, this collection is as skimpy in content as Yuko is in clothes!

 For startes, only the Turbo-CD versions of the games are here, which, to be fair, are probably the best versions of these games. But, y'know, the first time I discovered these games was on the Genesis, via Emulation, so I've some nostalgia for those. Adding the Genesis roms wouldn't have been too much extra trouble, so it's a bit of a letdown. There's not much in the way of extra content, such as artwork, only getting the US and Japanese cover and instruction booklets. At least we get Save Stages and a Rewind feature that works in chunks, which is interesting.

Valis 1

 This one is really good. It starts with a fully voiced rudimentary cutscene that lasts too long, but that alone shows you that a lot of care went into the game. It felt like a very corny, basic anime, and I loved that. As you go through the game you'll occasionally get more of these. Not too shaby! And the sountrack is full of bangers.

 Jump, Attack and Slide, those are Yuko's only abilities. She can also use magic by holding down up when you press attack, if you've got MP to spare. At first I thought the slide's only function was to showcase Yuko's panties, because Japan is like that, but you'll actually need to use it to slide through thin air into certain platforms.

 As you break stuff you can pick up power ups that gives Yuko's slashes different beams. There's a homing beam, a spread-shot beam, one that shoots bouncing balls... which is very helpful to take down the large waves of enemies coming your wave.

 The game is unfair in every way you'd expect out of a 2-D platformer of the era. Move a little too far to the left and the enemy you just defeated will respawn, leaps of faith, and a ton of times enemies will jump out of nowhere unless you know where they are coming from. This would be frustrating if not for the Save States and the ability to rewind, which evens out the odds.

 I actually liked Valis 1 a lot. It hasn't aged the best, it's quite unfair, but this port gives you the ability to make it more fair and thus be able to enjoy this little gem.

Valis II

 Well, at first I was shocked, shocked! After going through Valis I, this one looks so chunky, and plays a bit more slowly! The cutscenes seem to have more colors but they don't look as sharp. The stages look quite basic in comparison to the first game and Yuko can't even slide. So I searched online, was this some sort of Genesis port? Maybe only Valis I was the PC-Engine version? Nope! This IS the PC-Engine version of Valis II, so what's the catch? Turns out Valis I on PC-Engine was released after Valis IV, it was actually a sort of remaster! Which explains why this game feels like such a big step backwards.

 Each Magic spell comes with a number of uses, instead of an MP bar, and you can find pick ups that permanently extend your health bar!

 Once I got used to the fact that this game is, in a way, a technical prequel, I actually got to enjoy it. Besides, the game feels a bit more fair, there are not leaps of faith in here. Still, I found the original to be more fun.

Valis III

 Sliding is back, baby! Or rather, this is the game that actually introduced sliding into the series. Yuko doesn't get alternate sword beams this time around, and the length of her beam depends on how long you wait before each slash. To compensate for this, Yuko is joined by two other characters, Cham and Valna. There aren't HUGE differences between characters, but the three spells(Thunder, Fire, Ice) are used differently by each heroine, and their basic attacks are different too.

 Alongside sliding, you can swap characters at any moment, save mid-boss fight, and now magic is governed by a magic gauge, much like Valis I. There's a new high jump by holding down up before pressing jump, which is a bit quirky, but not too uncomfortable. 

 Much like the other games, there's some cheapness in the enemy placement, but with rewind and save states, it's not too bad. That said, some parts are just annoying. I hadn't been using the Ice magic, so I didn't know its properties. At one point during the Water stage you need to freeze enemies in order to stand on top of them and make the jump. There was nothing hinting me towards this ability. Later on, on the Ice Caves, at one point you have to gauge the distance of your slide so that you don't overshoot yourself, yet have enough room to perform another slide, because there are spikes on top, in order to reach the next platform. Without Savestates, that part would've been incredibly unfair. The game looks better than Valis II, it's less chunky and a bit faster paced, but still lagging behind Valis I.

 Overall? It was another good platformer, but I had more fun with the other two, as some of the level design choices in the game were a bit suspect.

 The Valis trilogy is a neat little set of games to own if you enjoy 90's platformers. The game should've included more extras, like artwork, and there's no reason as to why they didn't include either Valis IV, the final game on the Turbo Engine, or at least the Genesis versions of these games, even if they are inferior, it would've made for a much more complete package. But what's here is quite serviceable considering the games are pretty decent.

 7.0

Game #1290: Dusk Diver 2

 World's most improved sequel.

 Dusk Diver did nothing for me, so I wasn't planning on buying Dusk Diver 2. Then I played Xuan Yuan Sword 7 and decided that I wanted to try more Chinese games, which led me to buy the sequel, and boy, oh boy, was it a good decision.

 DD 2 is bigger and better in every way, shape and form than the original. The Story wasn't very interesting, and I think such was the case with the original, but this time around it felt more anime, and more silly, and more cliched. I didn't care about the characters and I found most of them to be very stupid and anime. But it's a longer game, the main campaign takes longer, and there are a ton of sidequests to complete. Many of the sidequests seem copy and pasted, there are about 4 sidequests in which you must refuse to buy something 3-4 times before engaging into a fight. Most of the sidequests are bout talking to an NPC and finishing a fight.

 Not off to a good start, eh? Well, the game is better where it really matters: Gameplay. The combat system is much faster paced. The basics are still here, weak and strong attacks, summon a character for a tag attack, enter a super state... but now we've got more stuff. Holding down the R button lets you use any Super attack you've equipped to Y, B or A, which consume stamina that slowly refills over time. Or you can use the new Perfect Dodge, by dodging at the last possible second, which slows down enemies for a short-while, a la Bayonetta, and restores a chunk of your SP gauge. Pretty cool, right? Well, A is a unique attack per character. Oh, yeah, MULTIPLE PLAYABLE CHARACTERS, BABY! All four characters are on-screen at the same time, the CPU taking control of the other three. Every character has their own unique moveset and properties, which is mindblowing. And yes, the three KunLun gods from the original game are your new playable allies. How amazing is that? You can swap characters at any moment too!

 And that's at first, near the end of the game you unlock a fifth playable character, although you can only have four at a time in your party. And finishing the game unlocks another 3. THREE!!! And, I must repeat, they have their own movesets? How crazy is that!? Like in the first game, you can upgrade your stats via experience points, the one caveat is that the experience pool is shared between characters. I just levelled up Yumo and Bahet, while ignoring Le Viada and Leo since I don't like them. As soon as I unlocked the fifth character I started pumping levels into her since I liked her too. The game can be challenging if you are not careful, particularly later in the game when enemies can take you down in a few hits. To counterbalance this, you can bring items with you into a fight, allowing you to heal and revive fallen allies.

 The fighting system is fine, I liked it. It's no Bayonetta or DMC, but it allows you to juggle enemies and what not. The one issue I had with the combat is that early in the game, no matter how much points in Strength I gave to Bahet and Yumo, enemies would take forever to die, but midway through, their life gauges become less spongy. 

 It sounds too good to be true, and on Switch, it is. The framerate is, quite honestly, dreadful. It runs slightly better in docked mode, and during fights it TENDS to be stable, but certain environments can tank it hard. The very first area in the game is the worst, hilariously enough, but it's never a consistent 30, which is a shame, because the game is SO good otherwise.

 Dusk Diver 2 is an easy recommendation for anyone that enjoys Action games, however, I'd suggest getting anywhere but the Switch. If I can find it cheap, I'm certainly buying it again on PS4.

 6.5

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