Game #896: Garou - Mark of the Wolves

  The true king of fighters.

 Lemme tell you a little secret.... Garou: Mark of the Wolves is one of my favorite fighting games of all time. I've longed to own a legit version of the game, so I'm really glad Limited Run Games decided to release this one.

 Look, I don't think Fatal Fury is one of SNK's best IPs. I grew up with a bootleg Famicom version of Fatal Fury 2, which I'd play alongside bootleg Famicom versions of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. But as iconic as even this Chinese cheap 8-bit renditions of MK and SFII were... FF had no staying power, with me anyways. Cheng, the fat guy, was memorable because of how tough and cheap he was, and I sorta liked using Kim and his bicycle kicks, but that's about it. What's more, I never got to play Fatal Fury on the Arcades. Regardless, eventually I got into Emulation and discovered the SNES/Genesis ports of the first couple of games, before graduating to the big Arcade releases. I think the first time I really liked Fatal Fury was with Real Bout 2. The game looked amazing, and both Rick Strout and Li Xianfei were brilliant designs. It wasn't enough for Fatal Fury to make it into my favorites, however. And then.... I came across this weird game called Garou: Mark of the Wolves.

 It was love at first sight, as this game has some of the best character designs in the series. Not all characters are winners, I'm biased against kid characters, so I hate Hokutomaru, Freeman looks like Benimaru with his hair down and while Kevin is supposed to be Blue Mary's counterpart, he looks like another take on Terry, with his huge confident smile and his blonde American looks. Those characters aside, everyone else is a winner. I love the fact that Terry grew up, and he looks the best he has ever looked. I loved having successors to the characters from Fatal Fury(And Ryo, from Art of Fighting) as to let the plot move forward, but above all, Rock Howard is my favorite fighting game character EVER. EVER. He is EVERYTHING I look for in a fighting game character. And the animation? It's some of the best SNK had ever made by the time.

 Thankfully, my love for the game isn't just skin deep. I love the T.O.P. system, basically, you pick one third of your life gauge, be it its beginning, the middle or the final third, and once your health drops into that third you enter T.O.P.(Unless it's the first third, in which case you already start in T.O.P.). As long as your health remains inside this third, you get health regeneration as well as access to a powerful T.O.P. move that differs between characters, so it's sort of like a come back mechanic, but not busted. That aside, the game system is pretty fast, which I really like, and it added things like 'Just Guarding' and 'Guard Crush' to the series. If anything, I'm disappointed this re-release has no tutorial or manual to let players learn how to play the game and about its original systems, like T.O.P.

 While it's more or less a straight NeoGeo home console port, it does have a few neat extras, like a few art pieces, a few bonus modes like Survival and VS, as well as making the two boss characters, Kain and Grant, playable from the start. It's not much, but hey, it's nice. They also retain SNK's delicious original wonky translation.

 So far, so good. Great game, plays well, a bunch of extras... But no matter how you slice it, this is a 50mb rom inside a 50GB blu-ray disc. It's pretty darn egregious how Limited Run Games are releasing these roms by themselves. They could've easily made a 'SNK Fighters compilation', heck, I'd take even a Fatal Fury only rerelease. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that I finally get to own this game, but it feels sorta underwhelming.

 9.0

Game #895: Naruto Shippuden Ultimate NInja Storm 4 - Road to Boruto(Switch)

 Well, let's try this one more time.

 Back when Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 - Road to Boruto first released Cyberconnect 2 swore up and down that the older system couldn't handle Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 because of the graphical enhancements, mostly done to the particle effects. Well, here we have UNS4 running on the Nintendo Switch, a machine that's barely more powerful than the PS3/X360. Concessions were made to get the game running on the Switch, but boy, did the get it right.

 Well, the Story Mode is as disappointing as it was on Playstation 4. Ever since they started re-creating the entire story of Naruto with their in-game graphics on UNS2 the games became something truly special for fans of the series. And then comes UNS4 and 40% of the story is told through anime stills, and most of them are fairly ugly, featuring characters looking very off-model. Well, this mode is still a pale shadow of what it could've been. In order to get the in-game cutscenes running smoothly on Switch, they've gone from running in-game to  simple pre-recorded cutscenes. Sometimes they can get a bit pixelated but they get the job done. This time around I noticed that quite a few things were changed in the adaptation. Some work better here, since it's a videogame, others do not, but it's still a decent adaptation of the series' final stretch.

 To celebrate this re-release, Namco released Boruto's two villains as playable characters, as well as 'Road to Boruto' skins for most of the main genins as well as the Gaara siblings as paid DLC on PS4. Thankfully, these new additions are present on the Switch cart, no need for additional downloads. A bit lazy? Sure, but I like having new characters, even though I dislike Boruto and these two should've been playable from the get-go. Heck, even Adult Konohamaru has an in-game model as well as animations, he probably should've been playable too. Ah! But I'm not complaining, as this version has everything the PS4 original had and then some. 

 But what matters is how the game runs, and I'm happy to report that it plays really well. Fights can maintain a very stable 30 FPS, I only noticed major drops during the more cinematic ultimate attacks, which isn't too bad since it's just cutscenes, as well as when I was traversing the overworld in Boruto's Tale mode, which once again, isn't critical to this game's enjoyment. So, yeah, CC2 did a superb job in scaling down what they needed in order to get the game running well without sacrificing too much graphical fidelity.

 Alright, fine, I admit I may have been a tad too harsh on the game back when I first played it on PS4, but c'mon, the Story Mode being such a HUGE step down from previous games' really soured the whole experience. And while I'm still baffled by how much they cut corners, I was able to appreciate the game more for what it was, a fun, simple anime fighter that allows you to play as a ton of different characters from the world of Naruto. It's also quite a looker, while it's not the best looking or cell-shaded game I've ever played, it does a fantastic job of looking like a playable anime, and CC2 are masters of style, bestowing some very fluid, cool animations to most characters Plus, I'm really impressed with the job they did porting the game to Switch, so there's that.

 7.0

Game #894: Panzer Dragon(Switch)

  Maybe it's one of those 'you had to be there' games....

 Panzer Dragon is one of those games that you've always head about, but unless you were a Sega kid, you never really played. Maybe if you were one of the few original X-Box adopters you got a bit of a taste of those late 90's Sega properties, but otherwise, you never really got to experience it. Well, after going through this game... can't say I care much about it.

 Panzer Dragon is a on-rails shooter, like Star Fox, but a bit different. For instance, while your dragon is moving on-rails at all times, you'll have to use the directional pad to shift your rider around in order to aim to the left, right and behind your dragon. It's a bit clunky, and 360 degree camera control would've been better. For you see, when you look sideways or behind you, the camera gets super zoomed-in, which was awkward to say the least. You can use the right analog stick to zoom out a bit, but still.... I mean, it's not like dodging incoming fire is easy, as your dragon barely moves around the screen, so you're better off trying to shoot down enemies before they get to shoot. To help you keep up with incoming enemies, you have a radar which shows you on which side enemies are approaching. It gets a bit annoying the few times it's hard to pinpoint if you should be looking left or in front of you, but it's not too bad.

 You have to means of offense. Tap the shoot button to make your dragon rider shoot with his gun, or hold down the shoot boot and aim over different enemies to use your homing laser. The homing laser is infinitely more useful, but some enemies and bosses are more vulnerable to gun fire. And that's the game, there are no screen-clearing bombs, no evasive maneuvers, no nothing. One thing to keep in mind is that the game is super oldschool, it runs on credits, and while it's very easy to gain 1-2 credits per level, you only get a bit healed between stages and if you die and use a credit you have to replay the entire stage again, even if you got to the boss. I was a bit antsy when I realized this because I was playing on Normal and I didn't want to replay the entire game again(Since I wasn't liking it too much) but I managed just fine.

 The game is super short, I finished it quicker than I did Donut County, a game that's often lamented as being too short. Still, what really hurts the game are the incredibly long loading times. They are almost a minute long, which is surprising for a game this brief. In its defense, it looks really good, but I would've easily taken worse graphics if it meant shorter loading times.

 I'm sorry to say, but I didn't really care for Panzer Dragon. I wanted to, I wanted to be in on this whole Panzer Dragon thing, but I found the game too clunky and the loading times too annoying. It's not like I'm against shooters like this, I really love Star Fox 64, another game from this era, so maybe it's one of those games that you had to be there and play it back when it first released to understand why it was/is so good. But I'm not, so I don't think I'll be coming back to this one any time soon. That said, I admit that I'd be willing to give the sequels a try, if they ever get re-released or remade, for something about its setting piqued my curiosity.

 5.5

Game #893: Dead Cells - Prisoner's Edition

  Guess it's time to return to one of my favorite games of all time...

 Well, Dead Cells - Prisoner's Edition marks the third time I'm purchasing this game. The original release was love at first sight, then I purchased the 'Action Game of the Year' edition which included the free DLC... which was a lie, as it was the same exact cart as the original release. Prisoner's Edition re-release includes a lot of physical extras, as well as a cart that includes the first batch of free DLC as well as the paid DLC. Sadly, a new wave of free additions were recently released that aren't included on the cart('Barrels of fun'), but, hey, it's a start.

 Well, as far as the game goes, it includes Rise of the Giant, which adds new mid-game content which is probably made up of the hardest levels and boss in the game, so if you get through it you'll be good to go for the final zones. It also includes the Bad Seed paid DLC, which adds new early game content, as well as new weapons, such as the only two-slotted melee weapon, that has both a weak and strong attack, making it a very unique weapon.

 Besides the four new areas and two new bosses, it also has the patches that included 'Custom Run' mode, that lets you customize which upgrades and unlocks to play with or without, the Costumes that you can unlock, a bunch of new monsters and weapons as well as a ton of rebalancing. For instance, double auto-crossbow traps were super strong way back when, so now you can only equip one of any weapon. There are some monsters that can now be found in areas they didn't belong before, as well as meeting new monsters earlier. The difficulty curve as you go up through the difficulty tiers has been softened, making for a much more approachable game. In other words, I think this is the best the game has ever been.

 The physical extras are pretty neat. We get a figure of the Beheaded holding a pan. It's really badass, although I wish he could've had a sword instead of the pan. Considering the game's sense of humor, it makes more sense for the Beheaded to wield the mighty Vorpan, but hey, I'd have preferred a sword. The vinyl is alright, not something I care about, the pins look pretty good and the stickers could've used a better presentation instead of coming on individual paper slips. My favorite extra, believe it or not, was Signature Game's coin, it's massive, it's heavy, and it's super cool. Overall, I think the goodies are pretty neat for the most part, personal preference aside, but I wish this version with everything on-cart/on-disc could've been available without the fluff. I'd buy the PS4 version in a heartbeat if I could get it with everything on-disc at a decent price.

 Lastly, I had played through Rise of the Giant, and while I had quite some stuff left to unlock, Bad Seed was most of the new content as far as I was concerned. But the game is so much fun, so addictive, that I clocked about 15 more hours into the game. Playing Dead Cells feels SO good, the controls are so responsive, movement is stylish, the animations are so quick and snappy, the sound design is so rewarding.... playing the game is something you can do for hours on end. If you ask me, Dead Cells is one of the best games ever made, and it should be as popular as Shovel Knight.

 10

Game #892: Batman - Arkham Knight

  A successful movie trilogy and a successful videogame trilogy? Batman was on a roll!

 Few franchises can claim to have a successful trilogy, but even fewer licensed games can claim that. With Batman: Arkham Knight now the caped crusader can lay claim to that too. Arkham City was a tough act to follow, and while Arkham Knight falls short of its potential, it's still a bonafide winner.

 The game picks up shortly after Arkham City, starting off with the Joker's corpse's incineration. I thought killing off Joker in Arkham City was brilliant, and I hoped they wouldn't go full comic book and revive him... but they managed to shoe-horn him into the game anyways. While the game's main villains are The Scarecrow and the 'new' Arkham Knight, Batman will be joined by a hallucinated Joker throughout 80% of the entire game. While it's not a terrible concept, it undermines Arkham City's powerful ending as well as the new main villains, because it's Joker who'll you'll be seeing most of the time, as he makes appearances as you traverse this bit of Gotham City. Oh, and Arkham Knight is exactly who you think it is, which isn't a spoiler by now, and I'm personally mad about it, because even though anyone with a passing knowledge of Batman guessed who he was, Rocksteady promised that it wasn't him. It was. And I believed them.

 Those gripes with the plot aside, I'll commend it for being quite dark. This story features a tired, worn and furious Batman, who's fighting both his enemies as well as himself. Barbara and Tim Drake play bigger parts in this plot, which I liked, but as a HUGE Nightwing fan I can't say I approve of making Barbara and Tim a thing. Speaking of Nightwing, he gets a voiced role too, albeit only on Sidemissions. Both him and Catwoman share the dishonor of being relegated to side content, and being damsels in distress for Batman to rescue, which, y'know, not cool.

 One of my few issues with Arkham City was how most side content wasn't marked on the map... and that's a thing here too, which is quite annoying. I somehow managed to finish everything without a guide, but sometimes it just feels as if you are stumbling onto stuff, which isn't my idea of fun. I still can't believe I noticed Azrael was on top of a statue on an island, which I just happened to fly by just that one time because I don't know. I don't think this is good game design, and the fact that they haven't changed it yet is quite disappointing. The side content itself is very disappointing, as most of it is made up of repetitive sequences. The Penguin/Nightwing side mission has you tagging a van, knocking on the door which triggers the exact same animation of the thugs opening the door to Batman and getting scared every single time, having to evade them then chasing them to a battle arena. The Firefly sidemission is made up of finding a burning building and then chasing FireFly on the Batmobile 3 times. Or rescue 16 firefighters from mobs of enemies. Or clear about 10 enemy checkpoints. Or defuse about 12 bombs by fighting waves of enemies. It's quite dull to be honest. The base game has no bonus content, and while there are about 63 challenges, you can only use Batman. Catwoman, Robin, Azrael and Nightwing can only be played very briefly on very short segments. 

 The Riddler's challenges return, and there are 243 of them, which is fine, would be a decent extra like in previous games.... except that the ending of the game is locked behind this collectathon. Not even a bonus 'True Ending', but the game's only ending is locked behind this busywork. What were they thinking? What a baffling, dumb decision.

 Arkham's gameplay was polished to a sheen with Arkham City, so for this installment it was mostly about tweaking things. Batman retains his move repertoire from the previous game from the get go, but early in the game Batman gets a new suit, and with it, new variations on the things he can do. Now you can counter with a throw, perform a three-enemy take down(Which can be upgraded up to five enemies), that allows you to target different enemies as you take them down, and the Triple Boost Grapple, which lets you soar through the skies faster than ever before. There are a few new tools too, and a few new enemies to contend with, like charging enemies that must be taken down with a batarang, to make things harder. I can't really fault them for this approach, the previous game was excellent, so they went with a rather safe choice of adding small variations on top of what worked.

 And then there's the Batmobile. Your mileage may vary on this one. I thought it was alright. My biggest issue were the controls, they were a bit hard to grasp. I kept entering Battle Mode when I meant to drift. That aside, I eventually learned to like the Battle sequences against drones, they aren't particularly exciting or creative, but they were somewhat fun. On the other hand, races were a mess because you're expected to go fast, but the Batmobile just doesn't turn or drift very well. To add to the hilarity, there's a checkpoint before a Drill boss battle that behaved very randomly. Sometimes it spawned me behind the drill, which forced me to kill myself by driving onto the drills, other times it'd respawn me with the drill on top, instantly killing me and reloading, and other times it respawned me correctly. 

 The good news is that at a core level, Batman: Arkham Knight is very fun. Combat is fun, albeit a bit less precise than before, stealthily taking down enemies is still satisfying, and moving around the city is fun. That said, it's a shame most of the side content is so repetitive, that they were afraid of letting go of the Joker which crippled what they could've done with the new villains, and hiding the ending behind busywork was just dumb. In some ways, it's the weakest Arkham game Rocksteady made, but it's still a really good game, and a decent send off to one of the best licensed videogame series ever made.

 7.5

Game #891: Danganronpa Another Episode - Ultra Despair Girls(Playstation 4)

  Classic Danganronpa.... it's good to be back.

 Well, just got done reading my entry for Danganronpa Another Episode - Ultra Despair Girls on Vita, and I pretty much agree with everything I said back then, so I'll just comment on a few things that caught my eye this second time around.

 As far as the PS4 version goes, it looks decently, most assets were touched up, so there are barely, if any, jaggies. But the textures are super simple, in some cases they look very stretched. Some of the text and CGs can look very stretched and pixelated too, but most of them made the transition well, which is why whenever you do catch a pixelated text or CG scene asset it stands out so much. On the flip side, I remember the original version had a few framerate issues, but there are none to be found here, the games runs pretty smoothly.

 The story is SUPER messed up. It's about kids who got abused in different ways murdering adults, and as a consequence of that, these adults are just as messed up and want to murder these kids. As with most Japanese games, some of the dialogue can be a bit unnatural, which makes a few scenes come as less believable, but for the most part it's pretty good. I really enjoyed the budding friendship between series veteran Toko and the newcomer, Komaru.

 That said... just as I claimed when I played it before... the game is at odds with itself. There's WAY too much dialogue for a third-person shooter. It feels as if you can't go more than one room without triggering a conversation. I like reading. I like the Danganronpa visual novels, but since parts of the game are, well, made up of third person shooting, the humungous amounts of dialogue and and dialogue scenes really feel a bit tedious.

 Overall? It's decent. It's a decent time, but it's strictly for Danganronpa and/or visual novel fans. Coming at this game expecting a fun shooter will lead to nothing but disappointment.

 6.0

Game #890: J-Stars Victory Vs+(Playstation 4)

 Some things get better with age. Others age like milk. 

 I wasn't the biggest fan of J-Stars Victory VS+ back when I played it on PS3, but for whatever reason I was mostly satisfied with the time I spent on the game. Years later, here I found myself playing the oh so slightly better version, and yet, the only thing I found was a subpar arena fighter.

 Well, on to the things that are better... a steady 30 FPS. It's not 60, but at least it's super smooth, if it drops, it must only drop by 1 or 2 frames, because it felt silky smooth. Y'know how the American release of the PS3 version had this mini microsecond freezes? They aren't present here. Loading times were super brief, and considering how the game looks pretty nice, I'm willing to bet load times were improved from the PS3 version.

 The opening is really good, and it made me wish the game actually looked like that. It made me wish the sequel looked like that and not the uncanny valley monster we actually got. While it's got a smaller roster than the sequel, I'd say it's much more varied and interesting, it covers more series, although, as a consequence of that, this game's roster is mostly made up of main characters. So make of that what you will. Less supporting characters, but more series? This is your game. More secondary characters, but less series? Jump Force. Plus, as I stated before, there's more variety here. Super Lucky Man, D.Gray-Man(Although only as support characters), as well as a few other weirdos I never even heard about but add to the 'Shonen Jump celebration' theme of the game. What can I say? I think this is a better roster.

 But here's the problem with the game... it just isn't much fun. Things like combatants getting mercy invincibility after getting up just doesn't sit right with me. It forces a pause in the action, in which if you are the offensive party you need to take a step back, and that's just boring. How much fun you'll have with the game will also depend on who you pick to play as. For starters, movesets are super limited. But even then, some characters are more fun to play as than others. Pick Goku and you'll be able to chase opponents into the sky, he really gets a lot of fun stuff you can do. Pick someone like Sasuke, and you'll get a fair amount of things you can do. Pick Toriko or Zeta and just mash Square because their options are fairly limited. The fact that the game can go from utter dullness to complete averageness depending on who you play as really hurts the game

 What can I say, J-Stars Victory isn't very good. There's a certain appeal to watching you favorite shonen heroes duking it out, but the mechanics aren't very fun, and in turn, the action you see on-screen isn't very exciting either. Is there value to the game if you're a fan? Maybe. But I think going for any other anime battler would be a better choice.

 3.5