Capcom Month Round-up

For Capcom Month, I decided to color outside the lines a bit with three games from established Capcom franchises and two indie games that are heavily inspired by Capcom works. Taking this approach gave me a great variety of aesthetics and gameplay styles, which made for a really fun and interesting month. With the exception of Monster Hunter, I streamed all of these on my Twitch channel.  Here's a roundup of mini-reviews for each game that I played:

Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger iX

While technically not made by Capcom, I kicked things off with the third game in Inti Creates' Mega Man-like series, Gunvolt. Rather than playing as Gunvolt himself, this entry follows his rival Copen in his battle against the nefarious Sumeragi Corporation. While this entry still delivered the tight pixel art action the Gunvolt series is known for, I found that I enjoyed this one a little less than its predecessors. Copen's move set doesn't work quite as well for my playstyle as Gunvolt's does and I didn't particularly care for this game's supporting cast. Thankfully, the game featured a great rogues gallery of over-the-top villains and a kicking soundtrack which helped elevate things a bit. Ultimately, I'd say this is the weakest entry in a strong series but still a solid action game in its own right. 

(You can find my review of the original Gunvolt here: Gunvolt Review )

Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 6 hours

Devil May Cry

While I've been aware of the Devil May Cry series since its debut, I didn't actually have my first foray into Capcom's stylish character action series until Devil May Cry 5 in 2019 (DMC 5 review). I had such a blast with it that I immediately added some of the older games in this series on my to-do list and #CapcoMonth provided the push I needed to finally dive into DMC 1 via the Devil May Cry HD Collection. I was pleasantly surprised to find that despite this essentially being an anti-aliased PS2 game, it still holds up great in terms of gameplay and art direction. While there are a few elements that haven't aged well, namely some awkward camera angles and having limited lives with spread-out checkpoints, I still had a lot of fun on Dante's first adventure and will likely tackle DMC 2 & 3 at some point in the future.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 6 hours and 25 minutes

Resident Evil 3 (2020 Remake)

Similar to Devil May Cry, Resident Evil is a Capcom series that I didn't fully come to appreciate until fairly recently. After loving Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil 7 (but having mixed feelings on Resident Evil Zero), I was looking forward to playing another modern entry in one of video gaming's most beloved horror franchises. Gameplaywise, RE3 Remake plays very similarly to RE2 Remake, in that it's a third-person action-adventure game, however, the pacing of RE3 is much brisker than its predecessor. The focus on more linear level designs and big action set pieces gave this game a tone that felt much more like an action movie than a horror movie. Once I got used to that, I had a good time blasting zombies and other monsters as this game's especially badass depiction of the recurring series heroine, Jill. Ultimately, I think I prefer the more atmospheric adventure game approach of RE2 Remake and RE7 but this was still a really fun ride.

(You can find my review of Resident Evil 2 Remake here: RE 2 Remake Review )

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 9 hours and 34  minutes

Monster Hunter Rise

You've likely noticed a theme at this point, but Monster Hunter is yet another Capcom franchise that I've been aware of for a long time but never really dug into before. In this case, Rise is the first Monster Hunter game I've ever played. I found right off the bat that while the basic gameplay loop is very simple (fight monsters, get crafting materials, make stronger weapons and armor, repeat), almost everything else about the game is needlessly complicated. It took me several hours to get through back-to-back tutorials, figure out the controls, and learn to navigate the clunky UI. However, once I managed to get through all that, I found Rise to be a really enjoyable experience. Having only a limited story and minimal world-building, the single-player campaign is fairly bare-bones but still satisfying, and the online co-op mode is a lot of fun whenever I actually manage to coordinate with other people to play. However, for me, what elevated this game from "good" to "great" was the presentation. I absolutely loved this game's medieval Japanese fantasy setting, catchy music, cute animal companions, and cool monster designs. I don't think I'm going to be someone who plays every MonHun game that comes out, but I'm really glad I took the time to get into this one.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 25 hours (Single-player campaign and few co-op sessions)

Nina Aquila Legal Eagle 2

After seeing the foundation established by the first game (see my review of Nina Aquila 1 for more info), I was keen to see where this indie Ace Attorney-like series would go next. Improving on the original in almost every way, Nina Aquila 2 offered a much more interesting case to investigate, a more complex story, and some new investigation segments to break up the courtroom drama. However, what set it apart was the scene of the crime: a hotel hosting an anime convention and trading card battle tournament. This opened up a lot of opportunities for humourous writing that mixed legal drama with anime fandom. I also enjoyed the Yu-Gi-Oh-inspired minigame that is integrated into the campaign as Nina gets dragged into the world of competitive trading card battles. While both the minigame and puzzle-solving parts of the mystery felt a little too easy for my tastes, Nina Aquila 2 was still an overall fun and charming package. I'm looking forward to playing the third game sometime in the future!

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 9 hours

 Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #CapcoMonth event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List

Shantae and the Seven Sirens

In celebration of #WayForwardMarch, I played through the fifth game in the Shantae series, Shantae and the Seven Sirens, on my Twitch channel. Having played and enjoyed several other WayForward games in the past, including the previous two Shantae games, I had a fairly good idea of what I was getting myself into here but was still excited to check out the latest exploits of everyone's favorite half-genie.

Background:

Shantae is an indie 2D platformer series that stars the half-genie belly dancer, Shantae, and a colorful cast of supporting characters that include pirates, zombies, and mad scientists. In this entry of the series, Shantae must explore an island with a complex series of underground passageways to find her fellow half-genies that mysteriously went missing. Unlike previous entries in the series, Seven Sirens features one large continuous map rather than a series of separate smaller levels, which gives it a much more explicitly Metroid-like feel. Also in proper Metroidvania fashion, as Shantae progresses through her adventure, she gains new powers, usually in the form of animal transformations, that improve her ability to overcome obstacles.

Pros

• Having been making 2D platformers for decades, WayForward knows how to make one of these games control well and Seven Sirens is no exception. Shantae's jumps, attacks, and special abilities all feel great. I especially liked her salamander transformation, which allows her to climb on walls and airdash.
• Shantae's move set is complemented by cute and charming character art and animations. The attention to detail and personality imbued into not only the game's heroine, but the supporting cast, enemies, and NPCs do so much to make this game (and the rest of the Shantae series) so endearing.
• While I missed the immediately danceable signature sound of long-time series composer, Jake Kaufman, I still found plenty of tracks to like from Seven Sirens' 4-person sound team. The overall sound is a bit more varied than the previous games with some traditional Shantae bops as well as some nice mellow pieces.
• I'm not particularly invested in the story or "lore" of Shantae, but I definitely enjoy the humor in these games. There were quite a few scenes in Seven Sirens that gave me (and my Twitch viewers) a good chuckle.

Cons

• Seven Sirens provides a big map to explore, but, much of the level design is fairly bland. It was not especially interesting to uncover new areas nor does it offer the platforming challenge of rgw previous games' more linear stages.
• This game has really fun boss designs but the battles themselves aren't actually that exciting. I got through most of them just spamming attacks and using the plentiful healing items that are collected while exploring.
• Dialog in Seven Sirens is only partially voice acted in a way that I found exceptionally jarring. Often within a given scene, characters would go back and forth between being voiced and silent seemingly without any rhyme or reason. I would have rather they had a few key scenes fully voiced and left everything else quiet.
• At the beginning of my playthrough, the performance of this game on PC was quite rough despite it not being particularly graphically demanding. Load times were also quite long. About halfway through, a patch came out that mostly resolved this but this game was already a year old at that point.

Overall, Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a by-the-numbers Metroidvania that's elevated by an especially charming presentation. As a result, I got a lot of enjoyment out of playing it even though it's solidly in the middle of the pack gameplaywise. 

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 12 hours and 30 minutes, 67% item completion

Adventure & Puzzle Game Round-up

Over the past few months, I've really been going all-in on Community Game-Along events on my Twitch channel. I've found they're a fun way to keep my queue varied and interesting. The previous two month's themes, #AdventureGameMonth and #PuzzleGameMonth, smoothly flowed into each other to provide 60+ solid days of putting my brain through its paces!

Here's a roundup of mini-reviews for all 7 games I streamed for these events:

Day of the Tentacle

As someone who really enjoyed other Lucas Arts adventure games such as Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island series, I've been meaning to play this classic title for quite some time. Once I started playing, I was immediately struck by the distinctly 90s cartoon aesthetic and sense of humor that reminded me of shows such as Animaniacs and Hysteria. The gameplay, however, took a while for me to get my head around. Switching between controlling 3 protagonists exploring the same environment in 3 different time periods made for some novel puzzle designs but also made it much easier to get stuck than in a more conventional point-and-click adventure game. As a result, I found myself alternating between having fun engaging in cartoon antics and being frustrated when I kept having to wander around the same locations over and over to figure out what the game wanted me to do next. That being said, I'm really glad I played this but it hasn't displaced Monkey Island and Grimfango among my favorite Lucas Arts games.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Nina Aquila Legal Eagle (Chapter 1)

This one was a real curiosity for me. Essentially, Nina Aquila is an indie developer's recreation of the gameplay of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney using the RPG Maker engine. While Nina Aquila still looks and feels like an RPG Maker game, I was quite impressed with how well Tanuki-sama Studios managed to work the engine to create a game with the same general structure and mechanics as Ace Attorney. As for the content of the game, the court case itself is entertaining but much more straight forward than Phoenix Wright. Nina Aquila was released episodically on itch.io and the first chapter that I played during #AdventureGameMonth was an effective proof-of-concept that has me looking forward to trying out the subsequent chapters in the future.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Note: The first two chapters of this game were included in the itch.io Racial Justice Bundle 

Call of the Sea

Taking a break from my usual indie and retro games, I decided to check out this highly regarded Xbox Series X launch title via Xbox Game Pass for PC. As you would expect from a brand new game first-person adventure game, it featured beautiful and lush environments that were really cool to explore. I also found the 1920s Lovecraft-inspired story to be quite interesting. The game's puzzles featured a good range of difficulties, however, there were one or two that just didn't make sense to me at all and I ended up having to look up the solutions. Unfortunately, the overall very positive experience I had with Call of the Sea was marred by some pretty serious performance issues despite my PC comfortably meeting the system requirements. This is a game I'd definitely recommend playing, but on Xbox Series X, since supposedly that version runs much more smoothly, or waiting until the PC version has been out longer and gets patched.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Note: This would have been an easy 4-star game if not for the technical issues. 

Carto

Another recent Game Pass release, this indie puzzle adventure game stars a character who can edit the game map, thereby changing the layout of the world around her. Throughout the game, you collect new map pieces that you can fit together in different ways to create new environments, solve puzzles, and help various NPCs. It's a short and sweet game with a unique hook, cute graphics, and a quirky sense of humor. I definitely recommend checking this one out.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Manifold Garden

When I first saw previews of this game, I immediately knew it would be a must-play. Manifold Garden is a first-person puzzle platformer that, at first look, might seem similar to Portal. However, only a few minutes of playing it reveals that it's a completely unique experience. For starters, your character cannot jump but can instead instantly change the direction that gravity pulls, suddenly making walls, ceilings, and the surfaces of any object in the environment traversable. On top of that, each level is a maze of surreal Escher-inspired environments that loop back upon themselves This means that if you fall into a pit, you'll soon find yourself falling through the sky rather than hitting the bottom of the level. Manipulating the gravity and exploiting the looping level design leads to some really interesting puzzle scenarios. In addition to the mechanics, I really loved this game's visual design which increased in intricacy along with the puzzles. Overall, this was easily my favorite game that I streamed during both #AdventureGameMonth and #PuzzleGameMonth and in general, is one of the best puzzle games I've played in a long time.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Caution: If you are at all prone to motion sickness, there is a strong chance that this game could trigger it.

Witchway

Compared to most of the other puzzle and adventure games I played, Witchway was pretty simple and straight forward. As a witch with telekinesis, you navigate a Metroidvania-style world by moving blocks around to create platforms and activate switches. While not anything particularly revolutionary, it sported great music, adorable pixel art, and just enough puzzle complexity to fit its 3-hour run time. This game did what it set out to do and was a nice break from the meatier games I tackled during #PuzzleGameMonth.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Note: This game was included in the itch.io Racial Justice Bundle 

Hue

My last game for these events was another 2D puzzle platformer, but with a bit of a twist. Hue takes place in a mostly black and white world with few key interactive objects rendered in bright colors. The protagonist has the power to change the background color of the levels which makes any object in the environment of the same color disappear as it blends into the background. By carefully switching colors in the right sequence, the player can navigate obstacles and avoid deadly traps such as spikes and lasers. I found that the way this game brought a unique mechanic to otherwise traditional puzzle platforming gameplay was enough to set it apart from other games in the genre. I also really liked the game's crisp high-contrast aesthetic and very well-balanced puzzle difficultly. 

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Putting my puzzling skills to the test for two consecutive months was a real challenge and a lot of fun! That being said, I feel like my brain earned some much-deserved rest. Time to go watch some anime!

Horror Game October Round-up

When people think about "horror" games, they immediately think of survival horror and jump scares associated with games like Resident Evil. And while that is certainly a prominent segment of horror games, "horror" is more of a theme or flavor that can be applied to a variety of game genres. In celebration of #HorrorGameOct, I decided to devote my Twitch channel to streaming and exploring horror gaming in a variety of forms.

Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2

After absolutely loving the first Bloodstained, I came to this one with unreasonably high expectations. What I found was a game that was still really good but didn't quite recapture the magic of that first experience. That being said, the new playable characters were fun, especially the corgi in a mech. If you're a Castlevania fan, all three Bloodstained games are easily must-plays.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃

Resident Evil 7

My prior experiences with Resident Evil games have been pretty mixed. While I would rank several of them among my favorite spooky games, others have been an exercise in frustration. The first impression this game gave me was not a good one, the introductory areas seemed tailored for the VR experience but felt off as a regular player and the "killer rednecks" trope this game leans into has become quite tired for me. However, after pushing through that stuff and into the meat of the game, I found that the game did a great job of taking the classic Resident Evil formula and updating it with more precise first-person controls and a great sense of atmosphere. Overall, it didn't quite eclipse my favorite game in the series, Resident Evil 2 Remake, but I would still rank it very highly among survival horror games that I've played. 

Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃

Halloween Forever

This little retro-style indie platformer was included in the Racial Justice Bundle from itch.io earlier this year. It sported cute Halloween-themed sprite work, simple but polished mechanics, and a moderate difficulty curve. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a short spooky game that can be completed in a single evening. 

Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃

Silent Hill 4

Until this year, my only exposure to the Silent Hill franchise was watching the Silent Hill movie back when it came out in  2005. While I wasn't a big horror game fan back in those days, the movie piqued my interest enough to put trying one of these games on my very long-term to-do list. This year, when Konami made SH4 available on PC via Gog, the opportunity to check off that box finally arrived. Though I struggled with this game's jankyness and awkward controls at first, I eventually came to appreciate this game's mysterious atmosphere and surreal take on horror. Considering that series fans often consider SH4 to be the worst game in the series and I still had fun with it, I think I'd enjoy the other Silent Hill games if Konami elects to make them available on PC.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃

Castlevania 3

As a big Castlevania fan, it's always bugged me that I was never able to finish one of the most beloved games in the series when I originally played it. This year I finally decided to see it through! This time I ended up playing the Japanese version of CV3 (via the Castlevania Anniversary Collection) in order to enjoy its enhanced soundtrack and more balanced difficulty compared to the Western release. With this game's multiple characters, branching, paths, diverse environments, and stellar score I can absolutely see why it's a fan favorite. Some of the more punishing aspects of NES game design still lead to some frustration but I managed to complete a "pure" playthrough without the use of save states or cheats!

Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃

Clock Tower: The First Fear

Hearing that this SNES and Windows 95 point-and-click adventure was a major source of inspiration for later survival horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, I was very curious to give Clock Tower a try. Early on, I was really impressed with how effectively this game conveyed the atmosphere of horror despite the limitations of its 16-bit platform. I also liked, how much detail and personality was put into the character animations, particularly for the game's primary villain, the Scissor Man. Unfortunately, the aesthetic qualities of the game were really the only thing I enjoyed. As an adventure game, I found this game to be extremely opaque, even by 1995 standards. Many times, the solution to making progress was not a function of puzzle-solving or logic, but meeting some kind of arbitrary criteria such as entering and exiting a room multiple times or repeatedly inspecting an object until your character decides that she wants to interact with it. It also didn't help matters that for a game that involves a lot of wandering around and trial-and-error, your character walks extremely slowly and running even a few yards almost immediately depletes her stamina. As a result, I found playing Clock Tower to be interesting from a historical perspective but a subpar adventure game experience.

Score: 🎃🎃

American McGee's Alice

This dark and twisted take on Alice and Wonderland is something I've been wanting to play for a really long time. At first, the controls of the game felt really off to me, but once I got my head around the fact that this was a 3rd person action game made in the Quake 3 engine, everything started clicking. While 3D graphics and game design have come a long way since this game was made, exploring the surreal worlds of Wonderland was still an experience that totally held up for me. I'm looking forward to playing the sequel next year.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃

Rusty

While it might be especially trendy now, indie studios cranking out Castlevania-like games is by no means a new phenomenon. Rusty is an early 1993 PC game about a whip-wielding vampire slayer on a quest to rescue damsels in distress and defeat an evil count (sounds familiar doesn't it?). Suffice to say, I didn't go into this game expecting to see anything particularly original or high quality. Much to my surprise, the game was actually pretty good! I liked the graphics and music quite a bit and I appreciated the way it deviated from Castlevania by incorporating a more maze-like level design. Unfortunately, this game's level design can also be a source of frustration as each level has a relatively short time limit and Rusty's movements are a little too stiff to pull off some of the maneuvers the game asks of you. As a result, I found Rusty to be an interesting experience that was worth playing, but it would've needed more polish to stand side by side with its source of inspiration, Castlevania.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃

 Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #HorrorGameOct event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List 2020

Strider (2014) Review

Strider is one of Capcom's series that I've often admired from afar; I've watched Twitch streams of the 8-bit and 16-bit games, and I've looked longingly at the box art of the PS1 game as a broke kid in Walmart, but I've never really dug into any of the games myself. So to close out my celebration of #CapcoMonth, I decided to finally jump in with the most recent entry in the series, Strider (2014), which I was able to pick up as part of a Humble Bundle.

Overview
Strider (2014) is a 2D "Metroidvania"-style platform game that serves as a revival of Capcoms's classic ninja action series. In the game, an elite ninja operative, Strider Hiryu, must infiltrate a heavily fortified cyberpunk dystopian city to assassinate an evil dictator. As he explores the city to gain access to the dictator's stronghold, he acquires a variety of new abilities and faces off against the dictator's generals. This review is based on the PC version of the game.

Pros

• Being a ninja is awesome! From the get-go, Strider can climb almost any surface (including ceilings), slide, dash, and flip through the air. Even with his most basic starting sword, he can pull off rapid slashing attacks in multiple directions that have both ground-based and aerial variations. There area lot of games about ninjas out there, but this one really stands out for absolutely nailing the lightness, speed, and agility that you would expect of a classic anime ninja.
• The game features a couple of cool set pieces, like fighting a dragon flying through the sky that breaks up the regular gameplay and solidifies this as a Strider game and not just a generic ninja Metroidvania.
• While much of the music is fairly indistinct, the electronic remixes of classic Strider tracks are very catchy and kick in at just the right time to enhance the action.

Cons

• With a few exceptions, the game's environments are primarily drab industrial areas that don't make for a particularly memorable setting.
• Strider's difficulty was often inconsistent. In some cases, I would breeze through several areas and boss battles, only to be hit with an abrupt difficulty spike. However, on the normal difficulty level, even the spikes were approachable as long as you have a good grasp of the mechanics.

While Strider (2014) lacks some of the bells and whistles that many newer Metroidvania games might have, this game nails the most important facet of the genre: character locomotion. Ninja-ing my way through the dystopian future landscape and cleaving through waves of enemies always felt satisfying. For that alone, I can comfortably recommend Strider (2014) to any Metroidvania fans. This experience also has me interested to go back and try the older Striders that I missed; maybe I'll finally pick up that PS1 game that my younger poorer self missed out on.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 6 hours, 17 minutes (Normal difficulty, 68% map completion)

Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #CapcoMonth event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List 2020

Duck Tales Review

While I generally consider myself to know my classic games pretty well, I have to admit that I tend to dismiss licensed games offhand. Thus, Duck Tales wasn't on my radar until rather recently. In fact, I wasn't aware of this game's classic status until I started noticing how frequently its music was featured on video game music podcasts and name-that-tune events.

Overview
Duck Tales is a 2D platformer based on the animated series of the same name. In the game, Scrooge McDuck must explore six sprawling levels to recover his stolen valuables. Scrooge's unique ability is to use his cane as a pogo stick to traverse the environment. He can also use his cane like a golf club to whack small objects across the screen. This game was originally released for the NES. I streamed the PC version via the Disney Afternoon Collection on my Twitch channel.

Pros

• While this game only has six levels, it gets a lot of mileage out of them due to their massive size and intricate designs. Exploring the various pathways of each level looking for secrets is easily this game's standout feature.
• Scrooge's cane mechanics are pretty novel for a game of this age. Bouncing on enemies and across spikes using the pogo cane is a fun form of traversal once you get the hang of it. I also appreciated the way you could use the cane to dispatch enemies from a distance by hitting rocks at them like golf balls.
• Duck Tales features some very cute sprite work the manages to exude personality despite the limited rendering capabilities of the NES. For example, when Scrooge is about to whack something with his cane, you can see his tail wagging back and forth. This animation is only a single pixel moving back and forth but it still manages to make a big difference in terms of making the character feel alive.
• The music in this game is a real treat. Thanks to video game music podcasts, I already knew this game had some catchy tunes and I can now say from experience that it features catchy chiptune bops from start to finish.

Cons

• Duck Tales does not offer any way to save your progress in the game; there are no save points or passwords. In fact, there are not even continues. Thus, if playing this on the original hardware, losing all three lives completely resets the game to the beginning. This sounds like a very frustrating way to experience this game. Thankfully, the Disney Afternoon Collection version adds the ability to use save states. Using save a state at the start of each level made it much more enjoyable.
• To initiate a pogo jump, you must first hit the A-button to jump and then while in midair hit the B-button while pressing down on the D-pad. I found this to be a little cumbersome for an action you have to execute so frequently and quickly. Messing up the coordination on this set of inputs lead to many accidental deaths before I got used to it. Since the B-button serves no other purpose while airborne, I think it would have made far more sense to have the B-button alone initiate a pogo jump whenever Scrooge's feet are off the ground. 

Playing through the original version of Duck Tales was a pretty cool experience; I can definitely see why it's considered a classic. Given that the few minor issues I had were mostly the product of NES-era game design, I'm very curious to try Wayforward's remastered version of Duck Tales to see what kind of tweaks they may have made. Either way, I definitely recommend trying out Duck Tales via the Disney Afternoon Collection to anyone interested in 8-bit classics or Disney cartoons.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: About 2 hours and 30 minutes

Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #CapcoMonth event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List 2020

Resident Evil Zero Review

I have tried to get into the Resident Evil series many times in the past: in-store kiosks of the original PS1 games, playing through the Gamecube version of RE1 due to the instance of a friend, and being coached through the opening section of RE4 at a party. In each case, there was some sticking point (often the control scheme) that kept the series from really clicking with me. That all changed last year when my wife and I had a fantastic time playing through Resident Evil 2 Remake. Now that I've come to appreciate what this series is all about, I thought it might be interesting to go back to an older game in the series for my next #CapcoMonth game.

Overview
Resident Evil Zero is a survival horror game that serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. It is the fifth game in the series and the last to be made in the classic pre-rendered adventure game style of RE1 before the series transitioned to the full-3D action game format of RE4 and its successors. Resident Evil Zero's unique feature is that it features two protagonists, Rebecca and Billy, who must work in tandem to navigate zombie-infested environments to discover the origin of the T-virus. This review is based on the PC version of the game, Resident Evil Zero HD, which I streamed in its entirety on my Twitch channel.

Pros

• It's been a long time since I've played a game that uses pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles. While it can be an impediment to action and navigation at times, the aesthetic appeal of this style is hard to deny.
• While most of the Resident Evil games feature underground scientific facilities at some point, and this game is by no means an exception, I appreciated that RE Zero offered some new types of environments to explore as well. Starting off on a luxury train in motion was a nice change of scenery. I also liked the abandoned church in a later section of the game.
• Alternating between controlling Billy and Rebecca added an interesting wrinkle to exploration and puzzle-solving. Since Billy and Rebecca each have their own distinct abilities, this character swapping mechanic reminded me a bit of the classic puzzle game, Lost Vikings.
• The puzzles in the game make for some surprisingly good brain teasers. However, I have to admit that the contexts in which they appear in the game often make very little sense. Why would it be necessary to solve a number puzzle to activate the emergency brake on a train, or map out a logic puzzle to reset a power breaker?
• The PC version's mouse and keyboard controls were easy to pick up compared to how I remember the gamepad controls of the original RE games feeling. Using WASD to move the character and the mouse buttons to use weapons and interact with objects felt pretty natural. A few exceptions existed in areas where the camera perspective would abruptly change, leading to momentarily disorientation. 

Cons

• The inventory management in this game is extremely cumbersome. Each character only has six item slots with many items and weapons consuming two of these slots. The game does not offer any opportunities to expand the size of your inventory or store items externally. As a result, a disproportional amount of my gameplay time was spent shuffling items around between my characters or dumping items on the floor to free up space. I would then have to backtrack across the map any time I needed to retrieve an item I had dropped. The other games in the series solve this problem with item storage boxes located at each save point. It baffles me why the designers of this game decided to omit this feature.
• Resident Evil Zero retains the slow door opening animations present in earlier RE games every time you move between rooms or floors in a building. While these screens may have been necessary to accommodate loading times on the PS1, I don't see why the PC version of RE Zero elected to keep them. This slowdown coupled with the large size of Zero's map exacerbates the issues with backtracking that result from poor inventory management.
• While the controls of this game are generally improved over earlier RE games, I found that they were very fiddly when it came to trying to pick up specific items on the floor and interacting with certain objects in the environment. The frequency with which you have to shuffle your inventory by picking up and dropping items really highlights this particular issue. 
• Due to the issues above, the game feels tedious after a while and outstays its welcome. In order to spare myself some time and frustration going into the game's final area, I elected to use a cheat to replenish my ammo supply rather than trudging back and forth across the map to collect all the extra ammo I had dropped in various places throughout the campaign.

In summary, I was initially really enjoying this journey back to the classic Resident Evil style but over time, quality of life issues made the game feel like a slog. I think similar to my experience with Final Fantasy 13, using cheats to spare myself some late-game tedium was the right decision and keep me from being soured on the overall experience. There's enough interesting ideas here to make RE Zero worth a look for RE fans or those nostalgic for the pre-rendered style that was popular 20 years ago. For everyone else, however, I'd say this is an entry in the Resident Evil franchise that can comfortably be skipped.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: About 20 hours

Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #CapcoMonth event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List 2020

Many years removed from its original release, this is still a very pretty game.

My scorecard at the end of the game reports an artificially low playtime since the game requires reloading your last save after every game over.

Azure Striker Gunvolt Review

Long time readers know that I am a regular participant in Chic-Pixel's Community Game-Along events. With April's theme being Capcom games, I had a lot of options. For my first #CapcoMonth game, I selected Azure Striker Gunvolt. This game wasn't developed by Capcom itself, but by ex-Capcom employees at Inti Creates. Gunvolt is heavily inspired by Mega Man, which isn't among my favorite retro series, so I had previously looked the other way when Inti Creates decided to take their own spin on this style of game. However, after getting some hands-on time with one of the Gunvolt games on the show floor at MomoCon last year (impressions), I could immediately tell this was more than a simple Mega Man clone and the first game ended up on my Steam wishlist as soon as I got home.

Overview
Azure Striker Gunvolt is a 2D action game in the style of Mega Man. The game is comprised of action-platforming stages that culminate in a boss battle; the order that these stages are played is up to the player. However, unlike Mega Man, Gunvolt does not defeat his enemies purely by firing projectiles at them. Instead, he tags enemies with a needle gun that does minimal damage but increase's the target's electrical conductivity. He then emits an electric field that strikes down each tagged enemy with lightning. (You've probably figured out by now, why the main character is named "Gunvolt".) Azure Striker Gunvolt takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk setting with heavy anime influences. This review is based on the PC version of the game, which is available via Steam.

Pros

• I really enjoyed the game's core mechanic. Loading up as many enemies as possible with conductive needles and then unleashing the electric field to zap them all at once was very satisfying.
• For an otherwise pretty straightforward action game, it has a surprisingly involved story. While this story leans heavily into anime and comic book themes and tropes, I found it to be entertaining and a good way to break up the action. I would absolutely watch an anime series or movie with this cast of characters and setting.
• This game has a kicking soundtrack that features synthy instrumental tracks for the general action as well as vocal electro-pop songs that play during certain story events or when certain criteria are met during gameplay. The vocal tracks are very catchy and would always get me hyped whenever they would come on.
• Gunvolt has great 16-bit-like pixel art that is embellished with higher quality effects for certain elements like the electric field. This can make for a pretty chaotic display during the heat of battle, but I found that I really liked the way it looked once I learned to be able to keep track of the action. During dialog and cutscenes, characters are represented with nice-looking anime portraits in a visual novel-style presentation. 
• As someone who struggled with some of the Mega Man games, I appreciated that Gunvolt adds several features that make getting through it a little more manageable:
• Each level features multiple checkpoints including one right before the boss room. You can continue from these checkpoints as many times as you would like until you beat the level.
• The game includes some light RPG mechanics that allow you to level up your character and upgrade his gear. I only made minimal use of this feature because I felt like the game's difficulty level wasn't high enough to necessitate replaying each level multiple times to grind for XP and crafting materials, but it's nice that it's an option for players who get stuck and want to increase their chances of success.
• Every once in a while, an angel-like character will appear and resurrect you when you are about to die via a mechanic called "Anthem" (there's a justification in the game's story for why this occurs). In addition to resurrecting you, Anthem temporarily powers you up and changes the music to an especially catchy song. Sice Anthem occurs by random chance, it only triggered a few times for me during my playthrough, but it often saved my bacon during multiple-stage boss fights and the song that played added to the excitement of the battle.

Cons

• Gunvolt has some dialog that takes place during gameplay. This dialog is voiced in Japanese and displays in textboxes with English subtitles. With how busy the screen can be in the midst of the action, I found this dialog to be very distracting and ultimately had to disable it. For example, in one case I had a character exclaim "Watch out for those spikes!" while I was platforming; the problem was that the dialog box displayed over the spikes, causing me not to see them and skewer my character as a result. Thankfully, the mid-action dialog didn't seem to be essential to the story, so I don't feel like I missed out on much by disabling it.

After loving the last Inti Creates game I played, Bloodstained (review), I was pleased to find that this studio had knocked in out of the park with another excellent 2D action platformer. I'm already looking forward to playing the next two games in this series! I highly recommend Azure Striker Gunvolt to anyone who enjoys retro-style action, even those who aren't fans of Mega Man, Gunvolt's source of inspiration.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 9 hours, 52 minutes (includes reaching both the "normal" and "true" ending)

Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #CapcoMonth event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List 2020

Ori and the Blind Forest Review

Keeping the #PlatforMonth train rolling, I decided to play a game that I've had recommended to me by quite a few people, Ori and the Blind Forest. This Metroidvania from Moon Studios and Microsoft was originally released on Xbox One and PC in 2015. This review is based on the "Definitive Edition" of the game on PC. I live-streamed my entire playthrough of the game on my Twitch channel.

Observations:

• This game features gorgeous painterly visuals. The aesthetic reminds me of Ubi-Art games like Rayman Origins and Child of Light. In general, I really liked the look of the game but in some cases, it was hard to discern what was an interactive object/platform and what was just part of the background art. A lot of stylized platformers have this issue, however. 
• For a game that initially looks very cute, it goes to some very dark places thematically, both in terms of atmosphere and storytelling. The mysterious and forlorn tone of the game reminded me of classic European fairytales (i.e. the pre-Disney versions). I found this to be intriguing but could see it being offputting for children or players expecting something lighter from a platformer.
• Unlike most other games in this genre, Ori features very few fixed checkpoints on the map but instead allows you save almost anywhere at the cost of a small amount of MP. Since it deviates from the norm, I initially found myself having to do a lot retraversal any time I lost a life because I kept forgetting to save. Once I got used to it, however, I came to really appreciate the flexibility of the system. In some of the tougher areas, it was nice to be able to save every few minutes.
• Similar to a game like Monster Boy (review), Ori's world is comprised of a large main map with a few separated dungeon-like areas. I like this structure since it provides your exploration with defined destinations rather than just having the whole game be comprised of aimless wandering. Also, segregating these dungeons from the rest of the map allows them to introduce unique mechanics that help break up the gameplay. For example, there is one dungeon that focuses on manipulating the effect of gravity; this mechanic wouldn't make sense in the overworld but is a lot of fun within its own dungeon.
• The gameplay of Ori focuses heavily on movement over combat. In fact, many of the boss encounters playout more like escape sequences rather than battles. Not only does this work well from a thematic standpoint, it also plays to this game's strengths. Ori is a nimble character with a robust move set of aerial maneuvers such as wall jumps and air dashes. After receiving a few powerups, Ori can traverse many environments without ever touching the ground. This approach to platforming reminded me of one of my recent favorites in the genre, Celeste (review).
• The game features an RPG-like skill tree and experience points. While this gives you some flexibility in how you set up your character, I found this to largely be a superfluous feature. In a game so heavily focused on locomotion, I didn't see much point in putting points into anything other than the movement skill branch of the skill tree.
• In order to be more atmospheric, most areas of Ori feature pretty minimalistic music. The moody soundscape is occasionally broken up by grand orchestral swells for dramatic effect. While I appreciated what this approach accomplished artistically, my preference tends to lean toward persistent melodic pieces that I can enjoy humming along to or listening to on their own.

If I had played Ori and the Blind Forest when it had come out back in 2015, I think it would have been a mind-blowing experience and an easy 5/5. However, in the Metroidvania-rich gaming landscape of 2020, it's hard not to compare this game to subsequent games in the genre that I liked a little more. All that being said, Ori is still a fantastic game and accomplishes everything it sets off to do masterfully; I highly recommend it to fans of Metroidvania games.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 9 hours

Acknowledgment: #PlatforMonth is part of the Chic-Pixel monthly game-along calendar. Check out this page for the full line-up: 2020 Master Game-Along List

Four Job Fiesta 2019 Wrap-up

This past weekend marked the close of my third Four Job Fiesta campaign! Once again, I managed to finish the game in even less time and lower levels than in previous years. Here are some highlights:

• This year's Name My Butz charity auction was our most successful yet! The top bidder donated $20 (US) to Child's Play and selected the name "Waffle" for our party leader! As a special thanks to our generous donor, I let her pick which class Waffle would be assigned next whenever she was watching the stream.
• At the Wind Crystal, I rolled a Thief. Considering this class can only use knives, it had decent physical damage output but without the ability to equip heavy armor, their toughness left a lot to be desired and made for some very tough early boss battles. The Steal and Mug abilities proved to be very useful, however.
• My Water Crystal job was a returning one from my 2017 campaign, Red Mage. As is typical of Red Mages, they were valuable in the earliest parts of the campaign, primarily for healing but became obsolete about halfway through. After that, I got a little more utility out of them for their rod-breaking ability (i.e. sacrificing an elemental weapon to cast a higher level offensive black magic spell) during a few key boss battles.
• The Fire Crystal delivered a blessing in disguise: Bard. I initially thought this class would be a dud but it proved to be extremely useful. Particularly, Bard's ability to put regular enemies in a sleep/stop state made random encounters so much easier. The Bard also has some very useful full-party buffs for boss battles. I'm really glad that this year's Fiesta gave me an opportunity to learn this previously overlooked class!
• At the Earth Crystal, we had another repeat: Chemist. Even more so than last year, the weight of the last few dungeons almost completely rested on the Chemist's slender nerdy shoulders. Since I lacked any strong physical attackers this year, the Chemist ended up being my primary damage-dealer, using various Mix! formulae to attack bosses ("Holy Water + Dragon Fang = Holy Breath" was easily the one I used the most). Thankfully, the Thief in my party was able to steal plenty of reagents for my Chemist to use.
• The battle against Exdeath was quite difficult this year since I was almost entirely reliant on buffs and chemistry to keep me alive and deal damage. After several failed attempts at level 35, I backtracked a bit to grind up to level 40 and gather more chemical reagents. While on paper, Waffle was my Chemist, everyone else in the party was still making use of the Mix! ability nearly every turn. After using buffing mixtures like Dragon Power (temporary +20 to level), Goliath Tonic (temporary double HP), and Turtle Guard (Shell + Protect) in the first phase of the final battle, it was just a matter of mixing up as many Holy Breaths (Holy elemental damage) as possible while keeping everyone's HP up. I ended up taking down Neo Exdeath with all four party members still alive!
• Between donations from the auction, Twitch viewers, and my own contributions, $60 went to Child's Play this year. While I didn't beat my previous record, I'm still happy with this result and very thankful to the generosity of the donors! Next time I do this, I'll try to come up with more interactive ways to encourage people to donate (like the auction) since that seemed to get the biggest response. 

While I had fun with this year's campaign, I found it a little harder to keep motivated this time around. This was due to a combination of having two returning classes, which made the campaign less varied than before, and my work schedule being a lot more hectic, making it tougher to schedule streams than years past. I was glad that I played the mobile version of Final Fantasy 5 this year, so I could still make progress even when I wasn't able to stream. Thus, I may take a break for next year's Fiesta depending on my schedule. I will also be a little quicker to reroll if I get repeat classes going forward.

All that being said, I wanted to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated or tuned into my streams!

Tales of Symphonia Review

While it didn't quite make my original list of gaming shames, getting into the Tales series has long been on my to-do list. After all, it's the number #3 JRPG series (after Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest), so it represents a pretty big hole in my gaming experience as an RPG aficionado.

I consulted with a lot of Tales fans to find out where I should start this prolific series. The responses I got varied wildly; often one fan's favorite entry would be a game another fan despised. However, almost no one seemed to object to the 2004 GameCube hit, Tales of Symphonia. It also helped that the remastered version was on sale on Steam for $5. 😁

Background:

Tales of Symphonia is a fantasy action RPG that uses a combo-based combat system, similar to a fighting game. The story follows Lloyd, a teenage boy serving as a bodyguard for his childhood friend. Collette, who has been selected to go on a cross-country religious pilgrimage. While this game is a part of the long-running Tales series, its story is completely approachable on its own.

Artistic Qualities:

• This game went the extra mile with character design. Not only are the main characters all a distinct cast of anime people, but even the most basic enemies have detailed models and unique animations. Part of the fun of entering a new dungeon was seeing what new monsters I would encounter.
• The characters, while fairly tropey by today's standards, are well developed and likable. The dialog is generally solid but at times can be a bit too chatty, especially considering the huge volume of dialog in the game as a whole. 
• The story has interesting themes; it heavily focuses on discrimination and WW2 allegories while also mixing in some Norse mythology and sci-fi. The tone, however, is all over the place. At times the game jumps back and forth between grim drama and very light anime comedy. It was often jarring but did keep things from feeling stale.
•  I tried my best to keep up with Symphonia's lore and backstory. After a while, I began to feel like the game's writers made it complicated for the sake of being complicated (there are lots of alliances and betrayals, secret organizations, conspiracies, etc).
• There are fully voiced story-centric cutscenes as well as dozens of text-based support conversations. Sometimes after a long cutscene, it was frustrating to immediately get pushed into several additional heart-to-heart scenes in which the character reacted to the major events of the previous cutscene. Many of the support conversations were amusing but sometimes felt like too much.

Gameplay:

• This game has a very smooth difficulty curve. While there were a few bosses I had to try more than once, I never once had to grind. As those who have read my previous RPG reviews probably know, this type of balanced difficulty is something I highly value.
• Symphonia's battle system is fast-paced and mostly fun but has little strategic depth. Most enemy encounters, even boss battles, are just a matter of spamming your best combos and healing. I could see a lot of players liking the combat's simplicity, but for me, I would have liked something with a little more substance in a game of this length.
• This game featured lots of systems that I barely used. For example, you can cook food and have characters get assigned special titles. Whether or not I used these seemed to be of little or no consequence.
• Symphonia's campaign offers a few sidequests but is a mostly linear experience. That worked out well for this game; I liked feeling that I was always making progress (especially since I streamed the whole game on my Twitch channel).
• Like many older JRPGs, you can only save on the world map or a few specific save points. In dungeons, save points have to be unlocked using an item called a Memory Gem. Each dungeon has one Memory Gem that is dropped by one random enemy somewhere in the labyrinth. The game designers probably set this up as a way of ensuring that a player thoroughly explored the dungeon and had reached the necessary character level before advancing. However, I found this frustrating if I needed to stop playing mid-dungeon and couldn't find the Memory Gem. 
• I really liked how dungeons featured puzzles instead of just combat and treasure. Not all the puzzles were executed well, but I generally liked what they were going for.

Conclusion:

As I got into the game's later acts, I was feeling like the campaign was padded to be much longer than it needed to be. However, as Symphonia's credits rolled and I reflected on the 50+ hours I had spent with the game, it still left a positive impression; it was certainly a fun ride overall. It'll probably be a while before I play another Tales game (next year at the earliest), but I can see why this series is so popular and I will certainly return to it someday in the future.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 56 hours, 27 minutes (main campaign and a few sidequests)

Note: Streaming a full Tales game, as I did with this one, is a big commitment. It took almost four months of streaming nothing but Tales of Symphonia every week in order to finish it. I will likely stick to streaming shorter games from now on.

Acknowledgment: This post is part of the #Blaugust2019 event held by Tales of the Aggronaut. For more info about Blaugust, check out this article.

Bloodstained Curse of the Moon Review

After finishing off Momodora last week, I decided to keep the #HorrorGameOct train rolling and jump straight into another Castlevania-inspired 2D platformer, Bloodstained Curse of the Moon. Since this is short game, I finished it off in a single streaming session. Both the stream and the game itself were a total blast! Now that I've laid the demon king to rest, here's my review:

Background

Bloodstained Curse of the Moon is an NES-style 2D platformer from developer Inti Creates. This game was released earlier this year as a prequel to the upcoming Bloodstained Ritual of the Night. Both of these titles come from former Castlevania director, Koji Igarashi, with Curse of the Moon being based on the NES Castlevania titles, and Ritual of the Night being based on the PS1 and Gameboy Advance entries of the series. Wearing its inspiration on its sleeve, Curse of the Moon, features monster-slaying heroes progressing through spooky linear environments such as haunted forests and vampires’ castles.

Pros

• At first glance, Curse of the Moon looks like an NES game, but it features graphical effects than an 8-bit system could never pull off. The color pallet is much broader and backgrounds feature multiple layers of parallax scrolling to give the 2D stages the appearance of depth. Enemy sprites are larger, more detailed, and far more plentiful, than the NES would have been able to render. It makes for a beautiful retro-inspired presentation.
• Unlike the original Castlevania games, Curse of the Moon features a set of four playable characters than can be swapped in and out on the fly. Each character has unique abilities that can be used for both traversal and combat. Switching to the appropriate character at the right time can provide access to shortcuts through levels and have a substantial effect on the difficulty of boss battles.
• Curse of the Moon’s difficulty is much more forgiving than the NES Castlevania titles. There are options for Casual and Normal difficulty, with the former choice granting infinite continues and eliminating knock-back (i.e. your character won’t get pushed off a platform if he gets grazed by an enemy). Also, since each of the four player characters has their own HP bar, cycling through them allows you to take a lot more damage before seeing the Game Over screen.
• This game has some really cool boss designs. The large detailed sprite make them visually distinct and most of them employ a unique mechanic during their battles. Rather than just memorizing patterns, dodging, and attacking, these fights often involve making use of platforming skills and knowing when to switch to the right character.
• The level designs have some features that stand out from this game's 8-bit inspirations. I appreciated the way that utilizing each characters' special skills could significantly change the route the player takes through a level. I was also impressed with some of the visual set pieces in this game's levels such as the train barreling through the forest in the first stage.
• While it might not have the iconic tracks like "Vampire Killer" or "Bloody Tears", Curse of the Moon's soundtrack manages to come pretty close to reaching the high bar set by its source of inspiration. Veteran Castlevania composer, Michiru Yamane, hasn't lost her touch! I'm looking forward to listening to her pieces for this game again as well as any orchestral or heavy metal covers that fans arrange.

Cons

• Curse of the Moon is generally less difficult and frustrating than NES platformers, a plus in my book. However, the last stage or two represent a pretty big difficulty spike. Several areas feature instant-kill traps that require some trial and error to traverse. I ended up losing several lives in the last stage due to entering a room with a trap that would activate much faster than I could react if I wasn't already prepared for it. This felt a little cheap.
• Like the original Castlevania, Curse of the Moon can easily be beaten in a single sitting. While I personally don't consider this to be a negative, as I felt the length was appropriate to the type of game it is, I'm listing this as a con since some players might not feel that a 2-hour game is worth $10.

As someone who has been a fan of the Castlevania series for a long time, I came to this game with a discerning eye and sense of cautious optimism. I was thrilled by the result! Bloodstained Curse of the Moon is an incredibly effective spiritual successor to Konami's horror platformer series that delighted an old-school fan like me and will probably also offer a fun, but manageable, challenge to newcomers as well.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 1 hour, 58 minutes (Regular ending, Casual difficulty)

If you're curious about the #HorrorGameOct event, be sure to check out this blog post on Chic Pixel.