Mozillo's Games!

Mozillo's Games! This is my gaming area! It's where all my writings and videos about video games are located! Feel free to check out my more personal blog for more random nonsense, but this is mostly just going to be my own content and the like.

[mozillogames]

I’ve moved house.

Hello there friendly neighbourino! I have moved my writing blog to far reaches. Reaches far far away. So far away it’s another website. This website even,  BUT WHY THE MOVE?! Wordpress has better organisational tools and it’s easier to read something I may have written or produced 3 weeks ago than Tumblr.

Remember when I spent an entire evening fine tuning HTML on this tumblr blog? Well it was all for naught, and I can’t even edit HTML on Wordpress without dealing out the dollar.

My writing tumblr blog is deader than dead, what’s deader than being dead? Ice dead? Anyway, my posts will still auto post to my normal shit storm blog (mozillo.tumblr.com) but alas Tumblr is shit for writing.

If you want, I even gone and wrote a thing over there RIGHT NOW (days ago) about Death Note and the hot mess it is. OVER HEREEEEE

So that’s that.

[mozillogames]

You'll Sacrifice Your Time to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Because it’s really good.

Hellblade: Senua’a Sacrifice is a short, but intense, game that sees you travelling through beautiful landscapes, taking on Norse gods and even doing the odd puzzle all while dealing with the main character’s psychosis along the way. It’s an incredible experience that deals with some interesting subject matter and both expresses it tastefully and informatively, but also presents a gripping story and some intense gameplay.

Hellblade is a difficult game to try and describe without revealing too much of what makes it work. Even harder still given that it’s the sort of game that a lot of people will dislike, given the amount of walking and listening involved. At the same time, I’d say it shows some wonderful examples of design, going with the idea of say it, don’t plaster-your-game-with-UI it. There’s no UI at all, the closest thing you’ll ever get is the pause screen, and meanwhile everything else is in world and in the scenery, or within Senua’s own head.

If you hadn’t heard already, Senua, the game’s main character, suffers from psychosis. This manifests itself, at least most obviously to the player, as voices in her head. These voices are manifestations of people she may have dealt with in her life, such as the former slave, Druth, whom Senua found in the woods and who went on to teach her about the beliefs and culture of the Northmen, the Vikings who were raiding their lands. Others take the form of the Shadow which is an embodiment, of sorts, of the idea that Senua is cursed, tainted or worse, a thought you may see put upon her while growing up. There are also the Furies which are the general voices that will constantly plague Senua’s journey with their whispers and taunts “She’s going the wrong way” “She doesn’t know where she’s going” “Look at her, she’s scared” they’ll say as you pass through caves and forests.

These are the voices that act as the closest thing you’ll ever get to a UI or a tutorial while in the game. They whisper “Focus, you need to focus” as you approach some form of glyph or stone or perhaps they give a cursory warning about an attack from behind or even when an enemy is low on health and ready to be finished off. This is the main area of expert design that I so love in this game. The use of audio keeps you on your toes as you never fully know your surroundings or if what you’re doing is right, you can only see what’s in front of you. So the use of the voices as indicators of information means you have to always be listening out to them, even when they don’t help by creating fear within the player.

Hellblade does wonders to induce fear within the player and it’s rarely through any classical horror elements, or at least, classic video game horror elements. Basically nothing jumps at the screen and makes a loud gargling noise and in a lot of instances there isn’t actually any perceived threat. Instead the music builds up, the voices begin to flutter into a panic “They’re coming!” they’ll say with increased panic as the sky begins to turn black and the world distorts. You feel your heart begin to thump and your body become covered in a flop sweat that you thought only a snake could evoke (snakes are evil and scary), but you continue on, pressing onwards to save your beloved.

That’s ultimately the story though. Set during the Viking raids of northern Britain, Senua is a Pictish warrior who has set off to Helheim, the underworld of the Northmen, the Vikings, to save the soul of her beloved Dillion. Setting off from Orkney, after nearly all the Pictish folk were slaughtered during such a raid, Senua enters this fantasy land that reflects her understanding of the Northmen as well as their culture and gods. I say it’s a fantasy land, only because it’s nothing like what you’d find in the reality of you nor I, however to Senua it is very much real. There’s never the point in the game where they reveal that what Senua is actually fighting is a sheep in a field somewhere, instead it maintains that Senua’s reality is her reality whether it actually be real or not. While the areas you traverse reflect aspects of Senua’s life or those around her, an area of darkness where you’re pursued by a beast to reflect her childhood trapped indoors, or an area of mystic perception puzzles based around the god that the Viking raids were carried out in the name of, including their barbaric practices.

I can’t say that Hellblade is inherently fun, you can’t exactly smile your way through a beach covered in wrecked and abandoned ships or as you walk through a settlement that’s posted with flayed corpses left hung up to be feed for carrion. Everything is out to get Senua, including her own mind, so it’s very hard to ever feel safe and comforted during her quest, but this makes the whole thing ever more enthralling. The game remains fresh, for the most part, throughout the whole game both in setting and what it’ll have you do. The few constants within the game are the combat and the rune puzzles.

The latter involve trying to locate a Nordic rune within real life and this could be how some crossbeams line up to form a shape, maybe the flayed corpse lines up with another post to create another rune or even just the reflection of some driftwood to create another. These puzzles are simple, yes, but a lot of them are based around perspective and looking at objects in different angles, as well as acting as a wonderful way to get the player to actively look around this beautiful game and it is beautiful, there are lots of corpses everywhere but they look pretty, well, not pretty, but good. Well, not good, but you know, impressive? How do I word this without sounding like I’m attracted to flayed corpses? I guess there’s no way.

Combat! There’s combat in this game and it’s surprisingly satisfying for a lot of the game. Overall a simple system of heavy attack, light attack, block and dodge, and I guess there’s a kick as well, the spectacle of it comes from the nail biting manner of a lot of the combat. As you take on large groups of squid headed warriors the swapping between targets as you suddenly have to doge out of the way of an attack from behind can lead your heart to jump immediately to your mouth. When a voice in your head, almost literally so when using headphones, shouts “Look out!” or “Behind you!” the warning seems so much more real you feel the need to listen.

Combos may be simple, and the system is about as complex as being able to parry and riposte, but it works very well. It’s tight, whatever that means, and not overly complicated to muddy the whole system. The enemies are often just different enough that you can’t just walk around slamming the light attack button without a care in the world, as well as enemies willingly attacking you while your back is turned, which is something a lot of games seem to always struggle with. Sadly, where the combat often begins to fall down, you may have seen this is an issue, is that some combat sections tend to be very long and drawn out. With an adaptive difficulty that makes the game harder the better you play, if you want, you can find yourself fighting on a single bridge for well over thirty minutes as more and more angry shirtless men with shields, axes and even bigger axes just keep on coming.

It’s more a case of fatigue than anything. Having focused so harshly for so long it begins to wane and your reflexes drop making death an ever closer reality as you find yourself being knocked to the floor more and more. Then if you do find yourself finally falling in battle you might find that you’re back at the start of the bridge and stuck fighting the same dudes again, but maybe now with fewer enemies and they may not take a few hundred hits this time.

Death is possibly a permanent destiny in Hellblade. Within the opening area you’re given a haunting image of Senua falling to the floor, clasping to try and get away from the rot that crawls up her body, ultimately killing her for good, a chilling image of what may be. You’re informed that if you fall too many times, it may cause an absolute end to your journey. Whether this is true or not has yet to really be seen in a lot of circles that said the game is also very forgiving about death and whether or not it chooses to increase the rising rot. That said the sense of dread that comes with every near death encounter sets in that panic all the more.

Overall, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a fantastic game. There’s a lot of enjoyment to be had in getting completely overwhelmed by emotion, anxiety and fear, sort of. A lot of the game reminded me of my time in a mental health ward, as well as was reminiscent of my own personal experiences with the stuff. It’s the sort of game that had me almost quivering and trembling with anxiety and other trembling sensations, making me have to put the game down. However, during these brief stops I thought of little else but playing more Hellblade, and I had to go to work, and sell Hellblade to people.

It’s a great contender for a Game of the Year™ spot and is a game I find myself thinking about a lot, late a night. All those dead bodies, just hanging up, flayed. Oh boy.

[mozillogames]

Overwatch Wants You to Have a Summer Ball With The Return of Lucio Ball

If you haven’t looked outside you may have missed that it’s now summer, although if you live in the United Kingdom you may have looked outside and you could be forgiven for not thinking it so. While the average person may want to go outside and enjoy the sun or rain, or snow if you live in the southern hemisphere (Does it snow in August in Australia? That’s pretty wild), others see the summer as a great time to continue sitting indoors playing video games and Overwatch has brought back its enticement of The Summer Games.

With this summer time spectacular sees the first repeat of an event within Overwatch’s one year history. This means the return of all previous Summer Games skins, emotes and the like, such as Weightlifter Zarya, Sprinter Tracer or even the boxing Bastion emote or Junkrat Highlight intro. With the returning skins, they’ve all seen a price drop from the normal gold cost for event skins. Instead of being three times the gold cost of items of the same type, last year’s loot drops are now of equal value to their normal counterparts with the idea being that they’re old hat so, while they are still timed exclusive, they aren’t as new and shiny as the skins and items released this year. This also means it’s the first time in which last year’s summer skins can be purchased with the in-game gold as that was an option released off the back of backlash last year’s event.

New items this year keep to the general sporting theme, with more heroes having medal based victory poses and a couple of sporting skins such as Reaper’s dirt biking skin and Junkrat’s cricket skin. This time though, what with there not being an Olympics taking place, there are also general summer based skins to grab. These include Widowmaker in a bikini, a shirtless McCree with bleach blonde surfer hair, Sombra in diving gear and Soldier: 76 as everyone’s dad at a BBQ. Needless to say people are very excited about these skins for a variety of reasons, most of which involve fulfilling some kind of fantasy.

As Overwatch tend to include a special game mode people, namely me, were excited to see what new mode we might get for this year’s summer games. Sadly, mainly for me, again, it wasn’t anything new, but instead saw the return of a new and improved Lucio Ball. Everyone’s favorite watered down Rocket League. I guess you can kick off the football season (I believe that’s something that has started again) with your own Overwatch brand of football, and yet even with the improvements Lucio Ball still feels a little empty. This is partly down to the large and open pitch, as well as the long periods of down time, especially if you’re stuck in goal.

Other Overwatch events have felt intense and heavily objective based, sadly Lucio Ball feels manic and has a lot of people chasing the ball aimlessly or worse, just getting bored and giving up after the first goal has been scored. This year there’s the introduction of competitive Lucio Ball which just adds an extra two minutes to the game timer but doesn’t do much to make people play better.

Overall, the return of the Summer Games in Overwatch is wonderful giving players a chance to grab old event skins they may have missed as well as new ones. Overwatch has changed the way their loot boxes work to decrease the number of duplicate items gained, to the point where in ten boxes I have yet to receive a single duplicate item, which is a hefty change from previous boxes where I’d be lucky to only get two duplicate items.

Lucio Ball may not be for me, but others are in to it as they are actual football. At least no one needs to go outside now.

[mozillogames]

You’ll be Nier to Automata-ically Buying Nier Automata

Nier Automata always managed to surprise me the more and more I played the game. A game that’s built on its side quests and the characters that they involve, it works with interesting concepts of life and consciousness that’ll leave you feeling confused about your own existence, and then you’ll pull off some sweet looking combat combo and all will be good again in the world.

If you have no major experience with the Nier franchise prior to this game, or even the Drakengard series of which Nier is a spin-off from, I’m not sure how as there’s a distinct lack of dragons in Nier, you might be worried that you might be missing some concepts from previous games, but fret not, as far as I can tell, outside a few references here and there, Nier Automata can be played blind and still be an incredibly enjoyable experience.

If you were like me, you may have first witnessed the game when Yoko Taro, the game’s director, stepped out onto the stage of the Square-Enix E3 nightmare of 2016 wearing some bizarre mask that seemed completely alien and just added to the already baffling press conference. Regardless of this, the Platinum Games collaboration had me, and many others, intrigued and as it turns out the game is very impressive and fun.

The story takes place several thousand years in the future in which a mysterious alien race almost wiped out all of mankind with its army of machines. The few remnants of the human race escaped to the moon and then created humanoid androids to fight on the front lines to take back Earth and clear out the machines. Glory to mankind, and all that.

Following 2B, a female android designed for battle in which the B literally stands for “Battle”, you’ll find yourself interacting with fellow androids of the resistance as well as machines themselves as you explore the land and try to rid the world of the vile machines. Except, not all machines are vile or, at least, evil. There are numerous machines out in the world who are more than friendly and want nothing more than to live a happy life, or as close to one as they can get. It’s these interactions that provide a large bulk of what makes the game so wonderful.

The side quests provided by various machines and androids can range from helping a lost child back to their parent, that’s a machine child and a machine parent, teaching a machine about various aspects of life and the human condition or even a machine that learns the tenements of martial arts, with a big axe. On the flipside, your fellow androids have quests that reflect the length of this war with the machines, as they’re all exhausted and tired, often looking for resources to repair themselves or their friends or even just hoping to learn what happened to their lost comrades.

If you wanted a game that’s main theme was that of heavy existentialism then this is the place to look. While 2B talks about the cycle of life and death, in reality it’s something that affects very few in this world of robots as there’s always another body that their consciousness can be put in to, or another version to take their place and a lot of people start questioning their identity when that starts happening. It’s this crossing of the darkness that is life itself with the lunacy of an amusement park and the unhinged nature to be found with beings that have no true concept of death that makes the game such a delight.

The game itself plays as any sort of action orientated adventure game, with plenty of stylish moves and combos to use when destroying waves and waves of machines. Nier Automata takes a spectacle fighter and mixes it up with constant changes in perspective, turning the game into a side scrolling brawler or even a top down shooter. Incorporating bullet hell mechanics into a third person combat game may sound like pure, unrivaled madness and yet it somehow works and leads to a lot of the bosses working in an oddly unique manner. This all adds up to unique take on an already stable system and it pays off surprisingly well, while the combat is nothing to blow your horn over, it’s by no means a terrible process.

The combos and combat of the game are beautiful pieces of choreography for each weapon and character that had me often just stood in the middle of nowhere admiring 2Bs sweet moves, AND NOTHING ELSE, don’t look at my search history.

Nier Automata manages to break the shackles of its predecessor, which was generally not very good, and struts hard and fast with a stylistic piece of existential panic and confusion. The story progresses into ever darker tones and you’ll see characters you grow to love over the game change in front of you and leave you feeling a little hollow. The story, or at least the pacing, takes a massive dip in the middle of it all as you’ll find yourself repeating certain parts, but there’s at least enough new aspects introduced that the game in its whole doesn’t completely grind to a dull stop.

It’ll keep you surprised as to how far the game is willing to go to tell a story and keep you second guessing yourself, one moment that truly blew me away was when I realized there was a dialogue conversation going on during a loading screen so as to “avoid detection”, or something. Every character and group of characters struggle with humanity as they develop more and more personality whether its simple machines, to the androids of your party and even going so far as the simple companion robots and watching this all take place is where the game really shines.

Some of the few faults I have with the game stem from the difficulty, or the lack of it. If you find yourself taking part in a fair number of side quests, which you should, you’ll find that the cataclysmic events that take place in the story die all too rapidly. When a large boss is shortly disintegrated by your small pod’s gunfire, when you’re really meant to be punching this robot in its dumb giant face, the boss fights no longer seem impactful, but then maybe you’re not meant to spend hours of time just doing almost everything.

Overall, Nier Automata is a wonderful game. It has one of the best sound designs that I’ve seen in some time with three different versions of each track that all cut into one another at just the right moment to really add to those heavy hitting quests. The side quests seem to be where a large portion of the game’s enjoyment comes from, just witnessing the strange characters in this world. That’s not to say that the main story isn’t interesting, but watching a machine commit suicide because it realized about the futility of life is something that’ll haunt me for some time. It’s a great game.

[mozillogames]

Valkyria Revolution Is More Revolting Than Revolutionary

The strategy RPG franchise, that is the Valkyria series, has a rather odd history. Valkyria Chronicles was first released back on the Playstation 3 but from there on was quickly condemned to the PSP and then only Japan. The series got a new breath of freshness when the original game was rereleased on both the Playstation 4 and also on PC which lead to a, hopeful, new lease of life on the franchise. It’s sad to say that the new lease of life with the Valkyria series is Valkyria Revolution.

Set in an alternate, alternate history, that’s an alternate history to the already alternate history the series is known for, where a mineral known as ragnite has led to a large industrial revolution within the small nation of Jutland. It has also led to the use of magical powers within the military, that’s how alternate this alternate, alternate history is. These magical powers are used by the troops of the Anti-Valkyria Squad, or the Vanargand, whom you are in charge of, and almost exclusively by them. The Valkyria are no longer some mythical force that was thought to bring devastation and catastrophe. Instead, they’re fully real and used by the fake Russians, the Ruzi Empire, to take over fake Europe.

Jutland fight back and start a war of liberation against the grand Ruzi empire in a show of surprising military force for such a small nation. So starts the campaign that puts you against the Ruzi forces as you penetrate deeper and deeper into Ruzi lands, taking them over as you go. The extra layer in this story is that the whole war is orchestrated by a small number of individuals who have made sure to place themselves in various organizations so as to influence the flow of war, all in the name of revenge against fake Russia. Now while the story seems like it has some interesting trains of thought for a game about war, the handling is where the game almost immediately begins to fall down.

While the game repeatedly tries to bring up interesting plot developments, such as the toll on a country’s morale that war brings, Valkyria Revolution will rapidly avoid addressing them in any meaningful way. A common occurrence is that someone will ask whether there is a difference between a war of liberation and invasion, to which there is never an answer given, and this’ll apparently make everyone in the country sad, sad enough to turn the whole town grey. Like someone had such a bad night that they did the opposite of painting the town red. This bout of sadness is almost fixed as rapidly as it came because one of the characters spent about 10 minutes talking non-stop about politics and found some way of wording things that meant the people of Jutland no longer had to feel guilty about sending thousands of their own to their deaths all in a bid to acquire more land and kill a lot of Ruzians. Raisins?

Cut-scenes are aplenty and not even that, they’re incredibly long and rarely animated. The limitations of the Vita come through, Valkyria Revolution also came out on Playstation Vita to appease all two owners of the console, as most lengthy sections of discussion become a group of motionless characters looking at one another, with not even their mouth gums flapping, primarily as you’ll be staring at the back of the speaker’s skull as everyone looks on, emotionless. The once beautiful cell-shaded franchise has become bland and generic in graphics, but with a terrible canvas filter over the entire game. They’re also so woefully boring, characters descend deep into the politics and laws of war, contemplating all the ways to control a war, but with all the excitement of the Galactic Federation’s Senate. Which is none.

So while the hours of tedium that are found in the cut-scenes and story are a total write off, what about the gameplay? It’s also pretty dire. Don’t come looking to Valkyria Revoltuion if you’re a big fan of the original tactical RPG gameplay seen in Valkyria Chronicles. Instead, the wonderful system that revolved around positioning your small squad amongst bushes and sand bags has been replaced with a system that involves running into a large crowd of enemies and swinging your giant glowing sword at them all, and they die instantly. There are a few mechanics that remain of its predecessors; you can still use a multitude of guns and grenades as well as ducking behind cover or around a corner. The only issue is that every single one of these have little use or purpose when swinging your giant sword is a lot easier than rummaging through a menu.

You can use magic as well which ranges from something as simple as a flame sword strike to dropping actual meteorites on your foes, they say war never changes, but I think Valkyria Revolution has made war change for the worse. When you’ve been given magical powers that have the same effects and then some of a gun or grenade I find it hard to see a reason to ever touch that whole side of the ability wheel.

Missions rapidly become repetitive and it’s not just because a large chunk of the game is based around doing the exact same mission over and over. Story missions are forgettable and as generic as the many “Free Missions”, the extra and constantly generated content that allows you to just never stop playing the game and grind your life away. Most missions will involve a simple process of running along the story path and swinging your big sword at everything that comes your way. There’s rarely anything that feels like a particularly unique layout or one where the map’s layout plays any part on how you’ll go about running head first into the enemy and taking them all down with your repetitive sword swings.

Valkyria Revolution is a poor direction for the series to go in, it has so little to do with the previous games that it could have been named anything else and we’d all have been spared the pain. It operates more like a threadbare Dynasty Warriors game, but without even the satisfaction that’s to be seen in the flashy combos and over the top moves. The game is jam packed with needless filler, from the story and cut-scenes, which all go on far too long, all the way down to the gameplay and missions, as each mission is long and repetitive and there are even missions within the story that are completely throw away and act as nothing more than padding.

I cannot not recommend this game enough. Valkyria Revolution was a pain to complete and does nothing to try and win you over to liking it, unless you like giant anime boobs, but even then there are barely enough to redeem this game. I just hope that Sega don’t kill off the entire franchise.

(Check out some gameplay as well, hoo boy)

[mozillogames]

An Interesting and Unique Tale in Tales of Berseria

Tales of Berseria is a strong addition to the Tales of franchise and works with interesting plot directions and delightful characters to provide a solid installment to the series. Its action-based combat is fluid and energetic and has enough of a learning curve that you’ll find yourself slowly building more and more of a combo the further you progress into the game making you look back at your earlier gameplay in absolute shame.

The Tales of franchise has a shaky history. Despite being one of the longer running JRPG series, there have been a lot of installments that have fallen flat rather than standing out to be something truly notable. Despite this, the action combat has been a staple of the series and it’s progressed from a single axis of movement and engagement to a more dynamic system with a lot more free movement on the battlefield, like what you’ll see in Berseria.

Tales of Berseria’s unique selling point, as it were, is that the main party is formed of ne’er do wells such as a man who refers to himself as the “Grim Reaper”, a couple of demons and a lady who demands that she’s an “evil witch”. Your epic quest for justice, mutual understanding, saving the world or maybe even saving a princess isn’t present in this game, instead your journey is one based on revenge and payback, which is basically another way of saying revenge.

But why so much revenge? What could someone have done to earn such ire from our protagonist? It’s simple really, he killed her brother, despite being a weird adoptive father figure, tried to kill Velvet, turned her into a monster and then proceeded to throw her in jail where she was left to rot and eat demons for the rest of her life. He’s not a nice man. But obviously this wouldn’t apply to those you come across in your quest, they honestly couldn’t care less, but they all have similar tales and dark histories that all drive them in their individual stories.

For each member in your party there’s a separate story going on in the world, but it’s not such a jarring clash of tales where you find yourself having to stop the revenge train because Magilou needs to read a book, or something, instead there’s a high level of crossover with everything that takes place. While breaking into a monastery might be wonderful in your quest to kill Artorius, it also has a potential to give some information that’s very useful for Eizen so he’s got some reason to hang out as well.

Their motives for taking part in this journey could be anything, Velvet wants to stab Artorius in the face, Rokurou wants to stab his brother in the face, Eizen wants to find his captain (which later involves wanting to stab someone in the face) and Magilou also has some grudge against someone, which may or may not devolve into a desire to stab them in the face. Have you realized that you’re not playing the “good guys” yet? The point is that on your large quest in Tales of Berseria you’ll be terrorizing towns, burning down warehouses and killing those who get in your way. Your team will do anything and everything in order to achieve their goals and it was a refreshing change of pace in an RPG where the characters don’t talk about virtue and righteousness, instead it’s a lot more morally grey and it’s one of the stronger points of the game, even if I have mostly talked about stabbing and burning things.

While the exorcists in theory fight demons and provide safety to settlements, there’s a high level of corruption and abuse of power. While there are some exorcists who are virtuous and care for others, there are also exorcists who strongly believe in the enslavement of malakhim and see them as nothing but sub-human tools. Meanwhile with the main party, well, they’re evil. Velvet has little to no care for human life if it means getting ever closer to taking down Artorius and getting her revenge. Even her actions that lead to trying to save the world are driven by this goal, with the logic being that by weakening Artorius she can finally end him. That said, they are also inadvertently ending the oppressive nature and lust for power of the exorcists, you know, swings and roundabouts.

The characters don’t just stop with having interesting stories, they also have, well, character. There are an awful lot of hijinks that happen with this odd ensemble of personalities and it works exceptionally well. Due to most of the characters being devilish in some way or another there’s plenty of banter and comical conversations that kept me very entertained throughout most of the game. The optional skits can see your group discussing the exact type of beetle you might have, devolving into two fully grown men almost having a childish fight as they try and prove who knows the most about beetles.

There are odd moments where the young child of the group ends up having growing pains of sorts as two of the female characters are overly protective of him, viewing him as a younger sibling, but at the same time getting too close for his own comfort. Then there’s Magilou who just likes being an agent of chaos. The characters and the writing surrounding them may not make them seem human or real, but is ultimately enjoyable and keep things going at a fast pace, even when the main plot begins to grind to a halt.

There’s an unfortunate section of the game that feels like needless padding. It’s a very JRPG thing to do where the party realize they need to break the seven seals, collect the seven chaos emeralds or attune the seven elements and several hours are spent exclusively on just that, but with little natural progression in between and Tales of Berseria is yet another guilty party in this. The story and progression almost literally grinds to a halt towards the end of the game as you work through the run up to the final chapters of the game. It was a segment that became a struggle to get through, mostly down to the slowed pace and aimless nature, as your characters literally just go to random spots and hope something might happen. That’s actually the story.

When you’re not enjoying the mixture of blind rage and light banter of your party as they work through the story, you engage in combat an awful lot. Building on from previous Tales of games the combat uses an intense system based around trying to get and maintain combos all while shouting out the names of your moves and screaming a lot. The combat system can seem outwardly complex, but by the end of the game you’ll be dodging as if it was your full time job all the while kicking a squid in the chops  and devouring its essence in order to keep your chop kicking going and finishing off with a big mystic arte for good measure. Looking back over my own gameplay the combat from later in the game is an incomprehensible mess, but when you’re in the moment it all makes sense and it’s like you see the source code, meanwhile when I saw my combat from the start of the game it was sluggish and lumbering. When a combat system starts off as alien but quickly becomes second nature it’s a wonderful realization and it’s something that definitely occurs in Tales of Berseria, and that’s without even once looking into the minor stat increases you can jump into with the equipment system.

Tales of Berseria takes place in the same world as Tales of Zestiria, but the locations all have different names as well as the terminology all being completely different. That said there is still a delightful feeling for series veterans when a location becomes familiar to you or you see the origin of something that appears in the earlier game. This continues into the side quests of Berseria that sees the introduction of some familiar characters as well as allusions to events that may come to pass in or around Zestiria. That said, there’s a severe lack of notable characters in the game. Outside of the main characters and the main villains who all sneer at you throughout the game there are almost no memorable characters or interactions. Everyone begins to feel faceless and unimportant, mostly because they are.

Tales of Berseria is still a great JRPG. Its story has a unique twist on it that was a pleasant surprise and didn’t even have too many bleeding heart moments. The characters and their interparty conversations were a true delight to behold a lot of the time as they just seemed so out there but also odd when you remember that your party are literal demons, a reaper and an evil witch. The combat is fun and engaging and the natural learning curve works great to keep things fresh, but also challenging. Sadly a lot of the bosses are all too human in nature or just a squid, but bigger now, which then means I don’t actually remember any of the bosses outside of the individual characters I fought, and even then I only remember the main characters.

The story is interesting and involves a lot of intertwined narratives, but does have moments where it really slows down to a tragic level. The main characters and villains are all really interesting and fun, but anyone memorable rapidly falls short at that list, there’s no Yeager and his daughters Droite and Gauche, like in Vesperia, and it does lead to the story turning into a bit of a haze. The story was great while I was there, for the most part, but sadly it does turn into a memory of a vague, enjoyable haze. Which may not be the best endorsement but it’s probably the best Tales of game for some time.

[mozillogames]

It May Not Be A Tragikarp, But Magikarp Jump Has It’s Faults

The Pokemon Company has taken to the mobile market once again, and while their newest endeavor, Magikarp Jump, may not be as much of an international sensation as Pokemon Go, it’s arguably a lot more fun, doesn’t have terrible servers and doesn’t involve having to put on any pants, so it’s a pretty nice win, overall.

Magikarp Jump is a game based around Magikarp, obviously, the down trodden fish who is often chastised for being more or less useless, especially as they often only have the move Splash. In the Pokemon games, at least, Magikarp have their redemption where if you manage to level the damn thing up enough they’ll evolve into a giant ferocious Gyrados, basically a constantly furious sea beast that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. Here in Magikarp Jump, however, your Magikarp remains docile and simple, left to flap around on the floor, probably suffocating for your amusement. This is fine because Magikarp Jump takes place in a land where they LOVE Magikarp. People can’t get enough of the things and instead of making them fight, trainers compete by seeing whose Magikarp can jump the highest.

If the premise of the game itself isn’t enough of a hint, Magikarp Jump has a delightful sense of humour. Some examples include the opening of the game where “Mayor Karp”, he’s not actually a mayor, he’s just a crazy old man obsessed with Magikarp, is lamenting over the downfall of the local area in the Magikarp Jump league, he exclaims ‘Our Magikarp are more like Tragikarp these days’ which had me chuckling outright. There’s a random event where the ambiguous gender of the player character is questioned and the avatar begins to sweat under the pressure, but who cares because there’s Magikarp to be jumping. There’s even an event where Mayor Karp decides to give you some words of wisdom, where upon rambling on and on about Magikarp, or something, a text box pops up to inform you “Nothing Has Happened”, which is just ludicrous.

So while the premise and the idea of the game is very enjoyable, as well as the colourful cartoony graphics, what’s the actual gameplay like? It’s ultimately quite simple, you train your Magikarp up through a variety of randomly selected workouts and feed them randomly spawning berries that fall into the pond you keep the fish in, slowly building up your Magikarp’s JP, Jump Points (I think), and eventually you decide to take on the league. The league of Magikarp jumping. A simple battle occurs, the two characters step up to one another, Magikarps in tow, and then a lone command appears for you to press, “Magikarp, jump!” and so they jump. Whoever has the higher JP value is the one to win the contest. It’s a very simple game as you’re either clicking through the training or event dialogue or burning through the jumping leagues.

Essentially, Magikarp Jump is an exponential numbers game. As you level up your trainer, the maximum level of your Magikarp increases more and so does your maximum JP. Where I’m at now, when my Magikarp is level 30 it’ll have around 500k JP but when it hits level 40 it’ll be around 2 million JP. The leagues also rapidly increase in required JP to defeat each combatant, again the example where I’m at in the game right now has me having to defeat an enemy value of 138k JP on the first round and it rapidly racing up to 1 million JP by the tenth round, out of twenty rounds. Once each Magikarp reaches its maximum level you see how far you can get through your current league and then they’re sent off to retirement and you get a new Magikarp with a potentially higher maximum level and rinse and repeat until you win the league.

This would be fine if not for one annoying factor. The training doesn’t fully increase exponentially. The way training works is that you get a training point once every 30 minutes, to a maximum of three, and when you train the workout you do is chosen randomly out of those you have available to you. This can be anything from the very first one you’re given all the way to the newest thing you’ve bought or upgraded. So you could randomly gain, for me at least, 5.5k JP or 500k JP. Less than 1% of your maximum value or actual progression. This leads to a lot of the game involving waiting for half an hour to gain the ability to train your Magikarp only for it to gain absolutely nothing. This leads to your training and progression rapidly slowing to a crawl because as your numbers all increase, your viable options for training regimes that give you a decent amount of JP also decrease.

A bit of a rant, I know, but the fun romp with Magikarp can quickly become a tedious grind. You can level up the training equipment with an ever increasing amount of coins, but in the relative way that exponential number games work, you could increase your punching bag from giving 1k to 5k JP, great that’s a 5x increase, however smashing a rock just intrinsically gives 80k and can be easily upgraded to 100k, as an example, actual values names and values vary, of course.

Magikarp Jump is still enjoyable. It’s a simple game that doesn’t require a lot of dedication, something you can quickly deal with on the toilet, before going to bed or even during a slow period at work, but sticking true to form of all exponential number games, the exponential increase in the amount of grinding that takes place is a bit off putting at times. I went from feverishly checking my phone every couple of hours to sometimes forgetting about the game for two days all because of the overly defeating feeling of having waited an hour and a half only to have gained a whopping 2% towards your Magikarp’s total. The writing and design is still delightful, when you fail in the league there’s a chance someone may come and cheer you on to make your Magikarp feel better, but then there are also events that have a chance to straight up kill your Magikarp and the days spent trying to level it up are all wasted with literally nothing to show for it, so swings and roundabouts, I guess.

[mozillogames]

Sony’s E3 2017 Conference Definitely Shadowed My Colossus

No, I don’t know what that means, shut up.

Sony, as always, have a lot to live up to. They’ve previously done very well at E3, opting to basically give the fans exactly what they want and last year could be hard to follow with just how many big announcements Sony made, throwing them to the crowd like $1 notes to a strip club.

The show started in an interesting fashion. Continuing on from last year’s live music, we were shown some pleasant South Asian music with an interesting waterfall show behind them. Some might say this all went on a bit too long, but the summoning mechanics for video games get more and more complex these days. It turns out though that this was all for an Uncharted: The Lost Legacy trailer, although it was incorrectly playing through the room audio, so I assume it also sounded decent as well.

We moved swiftly onto Days Gone, the zombie game that was teased at the end of the last show, now with more gameplay and something that could possibly be a story. Overall, it is definitely a game with zombie hoards in it, I can say that. The masses of zombies were all very impressive, using them to out some thugs and then the second instance of a zombie bear of E3 appeared. Never thought a zombie bear would be such a common occurrence.

Shaun Laydon appeared on the stage, looking as shaken as I would if the stream audio was as fucked as it was, it was fixed by this point but it’s not gone smoothly so far. He briefly touches on the subject of how well the Playstation is doing right now, mentioning it’s recent exclusives that have performed impressively well both commercially and critically, mentioning Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh and even Persona 5, by name! It felt good for the western arm of a company to acknowledge even obscure Japanese titles like Persona 5 and showing how Sony try to support those sorts of titles.

After yet another year of Shaun Laydon basically telling Microsoft to do one, he introduced a game from a franchise that even he himself greatly loves. Monster Hunter. Yes, that’s right, it’s coming back to consoles with Monster Hunter: World, a realistic looking addition to the series and I’m rather excited for it, also because of it’s PC release. While the game’s art style looks more like actual dinosaurs than the bright and colourful creatures seen in the recent Nintendo based games, I’m hoping for that glimmer of strangeness to still exist in the game.

It was after this that I felt a quiver in my loins from a castle and bridge that I hold increasingly dear to my heart. Shadow of the Colossus is getting released again, now even more HD and beautiful than before. While it’s not Team Ico, I love having the excuse to play Shadow of the Colossus again. Following that we also saw a story trailer for Marvel vs Capcom Infinite played and it looked pretty fun, Dante and Rocket Racoon seem to be friends.

Playstation VR continues to exist as does Skyrim, so it was once again showing it’s annoying face in yet another conference. I’m sure someone enjoys seeing Skyrim this much, just not me. You know what I am excited for? The showing of Final Fantasy XV VR and just the sheer madness that occurred during some extreme fishing. Monster of the Deep is a VR fishing experience based around Final Fantasy XV and if it’s as overly Xtreme (not like the Xbox One X) as the trailer was, it’ll be glorious. There were also a bunch of other VR games and it seems like Sony are definitely trying to continue to support Playstation VR, at least for another year.

As the shadow was beginning to wrap up God of War smashes onto the screen, well it was more like rows onto the screen, with more gameplay and story to be revealed. Overall God of War is looking to be an impressive addition to the series and the Norse mythology has me excited, just from my own slight understanding of the subject. Kratos possibly causing Ragnarok, and thus killing a lot of gods, by teaming up with Jormungandr looks to make God of War a standard mythological wonderland, full of murder.

To close the show we got to see gameplay of one of the bigger announcements of last year, Spider-Man. Showing off the movement through buildings, vaulting over vents and other obstacles and even the dynamic combat, it all looked rather impressive. A little like the Arkham games, but with more colour and less brooding and x-ray vision. It was all rather impressive, the sprawling metropolis of New York City as well as the moments where Spider-Man swung upwards to see some enemies, just there. The world is massive, but seemingly alive. Watching the man spider swinging through the city left me incredibly impressed and I can almost see myself buying the game just to swing around the town.

On face value Sony had an impressive show, while it was definitely a follow up conference, showing gameplay and more trailers for the games they announced last year, there were still enough announcements to keep everyone rather surprised. The fast pace of the show helped a lot with very little time for anyone to talk and no one got bogged down in awkward developers telling you how great their baby is, instead it was a constant stream of content. However, a lot of what was shown didn’t have a release date and those that did varied greatly in accuracy, from “Early 2018″ to just “2018″. All the games shown were impressive and are shaping up to be magical, but when it comes to games out this year, or what’s left of it, there was a bit of a poor showing. Although, my interests in Detroit: Become Human and Destiny 2 have been piqued more than previously.

[mozillogames]

Ubi-ously, the Ubisoft E3 2017 Show Was Pretty Good

That was a terrible attempt at a play on words, obviously, OR DO I MEAN UBIOUSLY?

Ubisoft took to the stage this E3 and were the ones to watch, as it were. In theory they had some heavy hitters to show off, such as Assassin’s Creed Origins, Far Cry 5 and I guess that was it. Taking things differently for the first time in several years, Aisha Tyler was nowhere to be seen, instead Ubisoft have gone for the same style as everyone else and get the developers to talk about their own games, and thankfully cut out on the new trend of YouTube personalities.

The show started out and already was showing how bonkers the show is going to be. Shiggy Miyamoto, or Shigeru Miyamoto to not his friends, turns up to the stage fisting a Bullet Bill from Mario and hands Yves a gun himself. Cue power poses together and a new buddy cop drama is spawned. Mario & Rabbids Kingdom Battles is revealed. Things get weirder where it turns out that the game is basically Mario X-Com, it’s a mix that you never thought you’d ever see, but I’ll be darned I’m seeing it. Things get weirder, it looks good. As much as I struggled to enjoy the Rabbids when they first came around, this game looks like it might be very fun, although there was little shown of the actual humour so who knows, it might be horrible cringe worthy Rabbids/Minions based screaming.

Ubisoft shot itself in the foot somewhat here, the world was still in a fevered frenzy about Mario & Rabbids when a man stepped onto the stage and decided to reveal more about the world of Assassin’s Creed Origins, arguably one of Ubisoft’s biggest games this year. The trailer they showed included wonderful footage of animals wrestling one another and some people going about their business, as well as what looked like an actual jackal man, like with an actual dog mouth, so that could prove to be pretty mystical. I think Ubisoft chose wisely in shifting 30 minutes of gameplay to their after show, so they can actually talk about it in more depth and so it’s not really boring. Although everyone was just talking about Mario & Rabbids, so no one saw it.

The Crew 2 was announced, now with more crew cuts but also fewer real cars, but also following the Disney Pixar logic, Cars, Cars 2 and Planes, The Crew 2 now has planes and boats and even off road vehicles, the most outlandish addition. Still based in America, the land designed around the car and automobile, but the planes and boats all look rather boring, even if they are little stunt planes. There’s just no frame of reference on water or the sky so boats and planes often feel boring. Also South Park: The Fractured But Whole still exists, it’s got a release date if you missed that a couple weeks back. Very little new footage on that one, it was more of a mega cut of previously seen trailers, so you know, woo.

Ubisoft brought out some new games, Elijah Wood starred in a trailer for Transference, a VR game that looks straight out of Black Mirror, the second mention of VR through the majority of the press conferences.  Then in came the mysterious pirate game that has been rumoured for so long and definitely wasn’t merged into Black Flag (It definitely was, but they just spent too much time on the boat combat engine) and it looked alright. Potentially limited, yet again, from potentially forced multiplayer, in that we went to the Indian Ocean, where PvP happens, to observe something that vaguely resembled boat on boat combat, whether it was actually meant to be player against player was never fully explained as near invincible pirate hunters came to play and that was apparently an indication that the match was over. I didn’t even know there WAS a match. Overall Skull & Bones could at least be the second best pirate game to come out next year from a major developer.

There was a brief musical interlude with an odd dance segment that might make you start no longer trusting the water you were drinking. Just Dance 18 is a thing, probably featuring “recording artist” Bebe Rexha and her songs, song? Who is she exactly? But that doesn’t matter because it’s now time for what looked a lot like No Man’s Sky, except now with an actual spaceship tapped to you controller, or at least a model of a space ship. Starlink: Battle for Atlas looks to be the newest toys to life game to take most of your money. I don’t know what I think of it. I’m probably not the target audience for it, even if the guy talking about it was talking as if it’s definitely aimed at 20 to 30 somethings.

As the show began to wind up to a close, there was a brief moment about Steep, a game that I routinely forget about even when I hold it in my hand, but then we were onto Far Cry 5 with a new cinematic trailer to show the villain, as it were, and then something that vaguely resembled gameplay which showed off a large number of companions that you can have with you, such as a dog or your real life friend, of which I have none. Other than that it would appear that Far Cry 5 may have gone for a slightly light hearted way of doing things, with footage of a man being threshed by a tractor and thresher as well as the general tone of the trailer itself, so it might not be entirely horrible, although it looks like Ghost Recon, if Ghost Recon were set in flat farmlands of America and not the rocky hills of South America.

Finally to close up the show Ubisoft shocked everyone. I think the moment a pig’s hoof came into view, eating noodles, everyone knew what had happened. Beyond Good and Evil 2 was once again confirmed to still exist and maybe be worked on. We’ve had things like this before but this time with the CGI trailer the general themes and idea of the long awaited Beyond Good and Evil 2 seem more realized than ever before. A lot more swearing than before, Beyond Good and Evil 2 looks like it’ll be rolling with a good sense of humour as seen previously and could be quite promising, although, as with many of these long awaited games, we’ll be waiting until 2022 until the game is released, like the Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Overall though, only Ubisoft could somehow overshadow their own large games, games that are coming out this year or early next year, with some of their other games that aren’t nearly as large or broad appealing. Mario & Rabbids: Kingdom Battle and the Beyond Good and Evil 2 reveal stole the Ubisoft show, but thanks to this it ended up being a very solid show. One of the few shows that can proudly claim to have a large spectrum of games on display and even something that would appeal to almost everyone, Ubisoft’s press conference has definitely been the strongest contender at the moment. Sure, there wasn’t exactly a lot that appealed to me, but its broad range turned out to be a fun and interesting show.

[mozillogames]

Bethesda Didn’t Have Many New Colossi This E3 2017

I’ll be honest right now, I didn’t actually watch the Bethesda conference live. Staying up until 5am to watch videos about video games is a privilege I give exclusively to Sony. Instead I resigned myself to watching the conference when I woke up, watching it over my cereal, delicious cereal. To be honest, could you imagine staying up until 5am to watch the Bethesda conference this time around? I feel sorry for them, it wasn’t as impressive as last year’s show, that’ for sure.

Bethesda opened the show, rather oddly, by gathering a lot of children in a room based around 18 rated content and asked them what their parents did, given that most of these children had barely broken double digits yet, so probably hadn’t even played GTA V at this point, mostly to reveal that actual humans make these games.

It’s pretty bad that I literally just watched the show and I am struggling to recall what transpired. One of the things to kick off the show was a severe lack of Todd Howard, which already bodes ill, however there was also a focus on VR. Throw backs to Fallout 4 being on VR all those moons ago may finally be coming to fruition now, and that’s not all because Doom is also getting a VR thing. Doom VFR, in which I assume the F is for Fun, looked pretty cool. It was Doom but with more difficulty in moving around, so if that’s your thing and you own one of these expensive pieces of equipment, well you may as well get it because what else is there?

Skyrim and Fallout still exist. Who knew? Mods also still exist and are still being supported on various platforms, now with further attempts to curate and make them more accessible, there was also a brief clip of Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch, which would have been an outstanding reveal were it not for Skyrim being featured in the original Nintendo Switch announcement trailer. You can also play as Link, this time without the use of any mods, which is fun. Also Dishonored 2 is getting more content, which always pleases people because they’re pretty fun games with an interesting setting and story, so there’s definitely a few heads turned on that front.

Quake Champions, now with more gameplay. It reminded me a lot of Overwatch, in some aspects, but then I’ve been saying that a lot this E3, but the game continues to look rather impressive, although the trailer was somewhat limiting in anything truly telling, it looked like they’ve got the FOV set to “Very High” which will please many fans of Quake and Unreal Tournament. Gosh, I realize I sound incredibly uninterested, but when you’re presented with the Elder Scrolls: Legends, a game that I’m not actually sure if it’s out yet or even what platform it’s on, it’s hard to get excited for things. Bethesda even released a trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online, a game that has been out since 2014 and also had an expansion come out earlier in the month, but the expansion was barely mentioned. It was just a friendly reminded that ESO exists, it looked very nice, though. All the trailers looked very nice.

There were two big announcements during the Bethesda conference, at least they would be big if it weren’t for people already working the releases out from their promotional material released months ago, one of which was The Evil Within 2 which had a very impressive rendered trailer that had me begin to feel like I completely misunderstood what sort of game the first one was, well not completely, but magical hand powers seemed new.

The other reveal was Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus, the next alternate history sci-fi shooter, this time set in Nazi occupied America for a rather odd twist on familiarity. Overall it looked really impressive, while I’ve never really played many Wolfenstein games, outside of Wolfenstein 3D and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, the setting and gameplay looked rather impressive and pretty high octane, definitely something I might find myself picking up this year.

Sadly I think Bethesda may potentially take home the award for fewest things featured, while they may be the only conference who can proudly claim that everything shown is either already out or coming out this year, there was very little actually shown that was new, Bethesda seemingly resting rather heavy on Skyrim and Fallout being games that they released, still to this day. Skyrim came out in 2011, why is it still relevant in 2017? Don’t get me wrong, Bethesda produce some good content, but this show felt lacking in anything that wasn’t DLC or something that had already been released several years ago. Not to mention most of what was shown boiled down to pre-rendered trailers, which while they looked incredible, fall flat very quickly. They did look very good though.

Also there was no Todd Howard, what the heck man, maybe we’ll finally be getting the next Elder Scrolls game next year?

[mozillogames]

Microsoft Held You Softly At E3 2017

Microsoft’s Press Conference was arguably a lot more eagerly awaited than EA’s, which kicked off proceedings of E3 yesterday with their rather lack luster show, and it turned out to be a fairly strong showing from Microsoft. Phil Spencer proudly announced that they’d be showing 42 games at their show while constantly maintaining the smug grin that I now think might just be his normal face. However, the games weren’t exactly the big actor on the stage in this show.

Project Scorpio was finally going to be revealed with all the juicy details one might expect. Big numbers like 1172MHz and even bigger words like teraflops. All in all, Microsoft could have made up the numbers and figures as 90% of people will end up turning to the nearest person who actually knows what any of it means and look for a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Apparently with Project Scorpio it’s a thumbs up. But wait, do I mean Project Scorpio or do I mean Xbox One X, I think the X is for Xtreme. I hope the X is for Xtreme. I’m already calling an issue that only I will have to deal with, Xbox One X sounds a lot like Xbox One S, as someone who works in game retail this will confuse about 90% of mums and dads. Pray for me.

It’s odd to think that the big “reveal” of the Xbox One X can be glossed over so easily, but we’ve known all the information about it already, outside of the X, which is definitely for Xtreme. It’s just that everyone outside of the name and what it looked like was mostly known already. It looks like a grey Xbox One S.  Now the question on everyone’s teraflopped lips was how does it make games look? What better way to show how a game can look good than with a car game, things which traditionally always look unnaturally good.

It also wouldn’t be a car game reveal without an actual car. Hidden away in the weird space church that was the Microsoft Stage was an actual car. Someone somewhere looked on with more than a spooky building from an actual car being in the room. Phwoar. Kiss your dad for me, there’s an actual car in the room. Outside of that Forza Motorsport 7 is a game that exists with fake actual cars now with more weather effects than ever before, still, it’s not exactly Mario Kart.

In a more impressive display of the Xbox One X’s graphics we saw what could possibly be gameplay for Metro Exodus. It looked really quite nice, in a million shades of brown kind of way, although the lack of UI of any form begins to raise questions about whether or not it’s representative or not. I’ve never played a Metro game but the big mutant bear looked cool, so that’s always a plus.

This was when Phil Spencer strutted out to proudly announce they were taking the wind out of Ubisoft as the big space god voice made one of its many announcements. Assassin’s Creed Origins flew onto our screens and its set in Egypt! This was a massive reveal because no one knew it was set in Egypt, and haven’t known about it for literally months. By the way it’s been known for literally months. Gameplay to be shown, and sadly revealing that it still looks a lot like every other Assassin’s Creed game, except that it’s gone back to Black Flag, which is at least a step in the right direction. Where would we also be with a Ubisoft game without it including every game mechanic from every game they’ve ever released, now with eagle/drone.  Also the gameplay showed a lot of aspects that really began to turn me off. The combat still looks clunky and awkward and now there’s an equipment loot system and RPG leveling elements, because damage numbers were always a big part of Assassin’s Creed games.

One of the biggest announcements, while possibly reactionary, was that Player Unknown: Battleground will be coming to Xbox One, although let’s be honest, that bubble will have burst by the time it hits Xbox One in September or November, whichever one it was. Microsoft began to pick the pace up a little bit as they started showing a plethora of games. The quickest turn off to a game was with Black Desert, a game that looked interesting and cool at first, and hints of a Japanese/Korean Dragon’s Dogma, only to have it ruined by turning out to be an MMORPG. There were some really interesting indie games like The Last Night which had one of the best art directions of the entire show (EDIT: but is also made by GamerGate supporting developers who continue to say awful and outlandish things, I’ll give it a miss). There was CodeVein as well which looked like a Dark Souls-esque JRPG that could be silly fun as well as many MANY others that had my interest piqued, the main issue with a lot of them is that they will all be released on PC or even released on PS4 as well.

Cut to Sea of Thieves. Still looking oddly interesting but we’re still not entirely sure how the multiplayer actually works. Would I need to get the same 10 friends together each time I wanted to go to the seas like some complex D&D group or will it end up being more of an MMO experience in which who decides who is captain, are we all the captain. I’m the captain now?

Following on from pirates with their raping and pillaging, except not that, was an odd insert with Super Lucky Tales. It’s a cute platformer taken straight from the 90s, which parents won’t buy their kids because they look at the design and think “Well, my child can play 18 rated games really well, so this is probably too easy”, you think it outrageous, it’s an actual statement I’ve had said to me by a parent about Shovel Knight while I was at work. Either way, a pleasant surprise in the sea of 18 rated murder sprees. However this did then lead straight into Terry Crews shouting at you and confirming that Crackdown 3 does still exist, hooray. Also Cuphead finally has a release date, after several years of existing only in the ether.

The barrage of fun looking indie games continued as Microsoft burst into a full sprint to reveal their 42 games in a montage that gave enough time to each game that you might have read the title or even comprehended what was going on. Some notable games in the barrage of titles included Ooblets, which looks incredibly adorable and is some weird Harvest Moon Pokemon game, from what I can tell, as well as Tacoma which just looks kinda cool.

If it seems like I’m rushing through things here, blame Microsoft, they had 42 games in their show and sped through them with little time to spare. Phil Spencer finally revealed the secrets behind his trip to Japan, other than to get all the figurines he ever wanted, Dragonball FighterZ, because Zs are cool. It’s a fighting game by Arc System Works, so it looks astonishingly good and visually impressive, but you know, Dragonball was all Spencer could walk away with? Maybe he really likes Bulma, understandable really.

In an odd tripling for a paragraph, we also saw some more information about Shadow of War, or Shadow of Wardor as it should be called, which revealed that it is in fact a sequel to the last game, so expect more of that. Not something I’m really into, except the accents were 10/10 and there was a decent level of humour to be had with some characters, although this is countered by a man calling himself “The Machine” and shouting about revenge. Life is Strange, not just a follow up to my prior line, has a sequel coming out. Again, something that I’m fairly sure everyone knew about already, but you know, cool! Also Ori and the Blind Forest is going to have a sequel with Ori and the Will of the Wisp which looks set to continue having really depressing images of dead animals and parental figures that tragically die in front of your eyes like it’s Bambi.

Some of the final things in the show included a price for the Xbox One X, which will set you back $499 or £449, as well as backwards compatibility for Original Xbox games which is great, if your mum probably hasn’t sold them all in a car boot sale. Why release new games when people can just replay the ones they already own and feel like they’re getting a service. Xbox One X, it’s still a dumb name, I just hope the X is for Xtreme.

The show essentially wrapped up with more information on Bioware’s Anthem. This time they revealed more of the setting, the graphics and vague gameplay with a definitely scripted segment of gameplay that somehow made me less interested in the game, EA taking a page out of Ubisoft’s book. Giant creatures that look like they were ripped straight out of Horizon Zero Dawn, the setting of Anthem is still not entirely clear other than you jump down from the city and fly threw tubes and tunnels like you’re The Thunderbirds. It also turns out that it is probably just Destiny by Bioware, bit of a disappointment really on that one. Shotgunning aliens in the face can be fun and all, but a shotgun is also a little unimaginative.

Showing off a rather stunning design, however, the game did look visually impressive, filled with little bits and pieces with the suits of armour the play uses to kill the local wild life, such as multiple rockets launching from one’s shoulder. It’s a game to keep an eye on, for sure, but even with a “gameplay” trailer, I still feel like I know very little about the game or even how online it is, just like the pirate game I’ve already forgotten the name of. The awfully scripted conversations that didn’t at least once involve one friend saying to another “alright fuck face” suggests drop in and out multiplayer, but is it more like everyone’s just running around fucking pigs and sometimes you’ll meet up to do a quest? Who knows?

Overall the Microsoft press conference was alright, I am forgetting more and more of it as time passes though, which doesn’t exactly speak for any of the big announcements that were in the conference. In terms of games there was nothing ground breaking and new in announcement when it comes to AAA releases, a lot of it has already been leaked or spoken of before leaving the show feeling more like the show of follow ups than the show of industry breaking announcements. For the most part the 30 or more indie games that Microsoft blitzed through held my interest a lot more than most of the other titles shown and that’s because I’d not seen a lot, or anything, on most of them.

Microsoft may have put a lot of its eggs in one basket, that basket having a giant X on it for Xtreme, which appeals to a VERY small percentage of the market. There wasn’t a lot driving anyone to go out and buy an Xbox One X in November, or an Xbox One for that matter, it was a lot of assurances for those who already own one, but little attempts to win anyone over with new IPs or long missed titles, like Fable, making a return. Also, what the fuck is Mixer and why was it mentioned so often?  

[mozillogames]

EA, It‘s In The Game, Or Is it This E3?

With E3 once again descending upon us like a cloud of...  poison gas, it’s time to gear up for the onslaught of press conferences at increasingly foolish hours, at least for those outside of America, like myself. E3 started again with the EA press conference, and unlike last year, I didn’t actually forget about it and miss it, go me.

EA decided to go with a smaller venue this time. No large, bombastic stage with giant screens that you could probably fit a house in, and not the other way round. This time the stage was much lower and the whole set up felt more involved, at least with the proximity of the crowd. But this new EA style of stage didn’t exactly reveal a new EA presentational style, and that they only had one song to play on their streams on loop for about 30 minutes.

The show started with a reminder that Madden is a thing. There were drums and an odd marching band, that was stationary, the non-marching marching band. I sat there hoping for the newest game mode to be added, Marching Band Mode, allowing you to march along with all your favorite sports teams. The best city march bands covered in the latest Madden. You’ll be sad to find out that no such thing exists, the motionless marching band was there to inform you that Madden will now also get a story mode, probably also devoid of the moment the professional sportsman abuses his partner or rapes an underage girl, or is a massive racist/homophobe, but I guess they can’t make it TOO realistic.

Eventually the Supreme Evil of EA, Andrew Wilson, slithered out revealing that the reason they’re doing this E3 press conference isn’t for the hot hot marketing and making a large dragon hoard’s worth of money, it’s for the players. Because they love the players. And money. With that reminder of how much they love players, and the players’ money, they quickly spun into one of many filler pieces about the community that surrounds EA, specifically Battlefield 1.

Did you know that people actively stream Battlefield 1 and make Youtube videos CONSTANTLY to this day? I say “to this day” as if Battlefield 1 is an old game, it came out 21st October. It all began to feel like the one year anniversary video that was seen with Overwatch, at the start of Overwatch’s One Year Anniversary. Honestly, I began to get the feeling that Battlefield 1 wished they had half the community Overwatch had. Instead of cosplay, fan art, a shocking absence of porn, that you got with Overwatch, you just had YouTube “personalities” (I use the term loosely) screaming into their cameras. Outside of this awkward and incredibly forced segment about YouTubers and people are almost definitely like you and me, but they’re not as they all earn several thousands and become completely detached from the common game player, you had the big reveal of more content coming out. Which is sweet, did we see any gameplay of it? I don’t think so. There was sweet concept art of Russian ladies who will kill lots of people, but there wasn’t much else other than more content, which is fine.

Outside of riveting presentation that definitely wasn’t read off an auto cue, we got sweet sweet football. FOOTBALL! That’s right, you can rest easy now, FOOTBALL is coming again. FIFA18 is coming out and what did they talk about with the game? Well, there’s the sequel to The Journey, which now means that for the first time you probably have to play one FIFA game before the other. For the first time ever, a football game has an actual sequel in the traditional sense. Well, that’s if The Journey was the main appeal of FIFA, but it’s … well it’s the football isn’t it. More football than ever before. This segment was also introduced with another segment revolving around what I can only assume to be YouTuber’s and the like, all chomping at the bit to find out what has happened to Alex Hunter, what team is he going to go to, who will sign him? Is he actually real? Apparently he’s not an actual football player, who knew.

Smash cut, it wasn’t a smash cut but we’re pretending it’s one in this write up, to ANOTHER YouTuber, or “YouTube Creator”, I don’t think he created YouTube, he was too young, talking, badly, about the new Need For Speed, with probably other YouTube people also in the background. Need For Speed is back, with a revenge! Wait, that was the other game. With a payback. Nailed it. In this brief “gameplay” segment we witnessed that Burnout is still alive, its soul is just trapped in the horrible cage of Need for Speed. There was also a bit where a lady jumped onto a truck, the truck then exploded for some reason and then the lady burst out of the back of the truck driving a car. Going 0 – 60 out of an exploding car. I don’t know what I should think of it, it was odd. You punch cars with your car, but it also looked really slow and boring. I miss Burnout.

Something odd happened in the EA conference, they announced something new. It may shock you to read this, I know, but dreams do come true. A Way Out, a game from the people who made Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, with EA. EA really wanted to let everyone know that it was with EA and that nice games can’t just exist, they have to exist WITH EA. Overall, A Way Out looked really interesting. A forced co-op game, with even more pressure on split screen co-op. It revolves around trying to break out of prison, or something, but it’s the case that if one player is in a cut-scene the other can just walk around and rummage in the bins or do other sneaky things. The gameplay trailer was actually rather convincing, shame it was one of two games that EA hadn’t actually announced before, and also wasn’t plagued by YouTube personalities. Shame I don’t have any friends to play A Way Out though. Or just friends full-stop. No friends.

Where would EA be without mentioning Bioware? I don’t actually know as they managed to poke their head into the conference and in an odd turn of events, arguably the biggest reveal for EA has been held off for the Microsoft conference, a teaser trailer will have to suffice, so says EA. Anthem was the name of the new game and all we know about it is that there’s a wall, monsters and suits of armor that look like Titans from Titanfall, I’m predicting a Monster Hunter style game, and hopefully it’ll just be good. I guess we’ll find out more on this new EA game from Microsoft, thanks EA, back to the games we already knew about, eh?

To close the show came Star Wars Battlefront 2, I know, I didn’t know a sequel was coming either, except we all did and I’ve heard the trailer roughly one thousand times. Watching The Supreme Evil, Andrew Wilson, tip toe around the negative response Star Wars Battlefront received, “constructive feedback” they called it, the triumphant announcement that Battlefront 2 will have three times the content rang a little hollow, basic arithmetic shows that 3 times 1 is only 3, but hey that’s just me. Thankfully EA put a lot of effort into the Star Wars Battlefront 2 presentation as it had someone talking who sounded like they had an actual pulse. I think everyone came to attention when the sassy, attractive Imperial trooper lady strutted onto the stage with all the authority, and leather/latex, of some kind of Star Wars dominatrix.

The most shocking reveal of the night around Star Wars Battlefront 2 was that there was going to be around 30 minutes of gameplay to be shown, solidly. Unyielding. Also that all future content is going to be free. Although, EA free will most likely translate into loot boxes, micro-transactions and things not really being free. You know Overwatch? Imagine that business model because EA REALLY wish they created Overwatch, seriously, it’s a large undertone I got from the entire presentation. Make one of their games Overwatch, please. I wish the sassy and attractive lady presented the entire EA conference, she could read off an auto cue with the sounds in her voice that suggested life, and that’s almost the minimum I expect from a presentation.

Overall, EA’s conference wasn’t anything to write home about. It was overly reliant on YouTube personalities to try and sell the games. The idea being that these “famous” people you like are seen liking the game, your idols are there playing the game, it must be good. Ignoring that they all got sweet, sweet money for the privilege. The idea that if popular people are seen doing a thing, it must be popular. YouTube advertorials ran through the conference like a disgusting streak, whether it was awkward presentational skills seen with Need For Speed or the tedious and boring commentary that surrounded the gameplay segment at the end, which included one player not even playing Star Wars to start with, they were playing NBA. I think it created a new rule for television and broadcasting, never work with animals, never work with children and never work YouTubers.

It was a disappointing highlight reel of games that had already been long since announced, all of which have become so recurrent that everyone knows what the gameplay will be and what the game is just by saying the title. FIFA18, it’s just more FIFA. Madden, more Madden than ever before. NBA Live, more of everyone’s second favorite NBA franchise (out of two). It’s tried and tested series and franchises that lead the whole conference to feel hollow and empty. The attempts to make it engaging, by involving YouTuber’s and this fake sense of community that EA tried to force through the whole conference didn’t make up for the lack of games. I think in total they showed eight games. Not too bad for an hour long show, some might say, but when you take into account that both Anthem and Battlefield didn’t have any gameplay at all to show, three were sports games that are more or less copy and paste and then you had a long line of Star Wars multiplayer, which I guess we can at least confirm was actual multiplayer and the only non-scripted segment of the night, there wasn’t much to see. If you want to see some great EA reveal, come back in the Microsoft one, that’s the take home message.

[mozillogames]

You’ll Never See These Mini-Games Coming.

Because they don’t really exist.

I take a look at all the sweet sweet near non-existent mini-games within Persona 5. My second episode of looking at mini-games and I’m already stumped looking for things that don’t exist.

It’s a riot of a video though, so check it out! If you’re interested though I also have a Review of Persona 5 and even a look at my hero and favorite character, Yusuke.

[mozillogames]

Let’s Watch Over The First Year of Overwatch

It’s odd to think that Overwatch has been out for an entire year, as of today. Well, officially out, let’s ignore all that time everyone spent in the various betas leading up to release. I think I alone spent about 100 hours in the game before it’d even come out, odd how things like that work. Regardless, Overwatch is a whole year old today, so it can probably walk and talk by now, I think. How do babies work?

Why is Overwatch turning a year old such a large deal? There have been millions of other games that have turned a year old, many of from the last year. That’s just how time passing works. For most of those games however, they’ve been resigned to be forgotten to history, left to be bundle fillers at any video game retailer. The Division came out last year, do you remember Tom Clancy’s The Division? Of course you don’t. While games like The Division and Uncharted 4 find themselves selling for the low end of £10, or less, Overwatch holds its value to this day and continues to be one of the more heavily bought items, even if there is rarely any stock of it available.

So let’s look at this first year of Overwatch and the trail it left, not like a gross slug trail though, a majestic… COOKIE TRAIL. Yes, cookies. When the game released Overwatch already had a well-established user base, mostly from this prenatal access to the game that seems to be all the rage with Blizzard. Launching with less of a bang than Heroes of the Storm, as there was no awkward and tedious launch event, Overwatch officially launched and all the servers exploded at once. Nerds, me included, played until the small hours of the night trying to be the very best, like no one ever was. The game was well received and everyone loved the game, even me!

With the eventual release of ranked Overwatch went from a delightful romp to an intense stress fueled competition, while it did lead to the normal gameplay being a lot lighter and less elitist, you’d probably be some low level scrub if you were caught playing in Quick Play. The start of ranked was a little shakey, to be honest. Not only was it delayed a bit, but the system had a lot of flaws. The coin flip method of solving ties was the main complaint that most players had, as well as just some fine tuning to the RP and reward system in general. An odd tiered system where it was reported that if you were ranked 50 or more you were in the top echelons of players, despite the ranking system going all the way up to 100.

The Summer Games event also graced Overwatch around the same time. Coinciding with the Rio Olympics, Overwatch released many new sports based skins, emotes, sprays and more. It’s sad to say that the event was met with a less positive attitude than I fear Blizzard expected. The special game mode that went alongside the event felt like an under developed Rocket League, which also suffered from a glitch or hack that allowed a rogue McCree to spawn instead and just kill everyone. The main source of community ire, however, was from the way the event lootboxes worked. The event items could only be acquired through boxes, and any duplicate event skins would go towards your gold coin count, used for purchasing items yourself. The main issue here was that event skins couldn’t be bought and any duplicate event items were ultimately worthless for the event. It all began to stink like Blizzard just wanted everyone to spend money on loot boxes.

As the event came to a close the second season of Overwatch came around. All the major upsets from the first season were gone, for the most part. In the unlikely event of a tie, you’re no longer rewarded with a waste of time, the sudden death system was reworked to work a lot better and no longer punishes fast winners with a coin flip of fate. Everything was coming up Milhouse, one might say. Confidence in the game began to rise once again as it became an increasingly stable and strong experience, they even released a new character, Ana, who managed to merge into the game seemlessly. This was further cemented with Halloween.

Overwatch’s second attempt at a seasonal event and boy did they go all out. Opting for a hoard mode defend-the-point style event, it became an incredibly fun event and, with increasing difficulties, quite a challenge if you were looking for it. The skins and relevant items that all came out felt somehow better and more well designed than the summer games ones and you could buy the skins if you had the gold built up, they were at 3x the price of normal items, but duplicates no longer felt like wasted money or time. All was well in Overwatch.

Since then it’s gone on to have more competitive seasons, continuing the stable gameplay that they settled on in season 2, and have had three more major events. Christmas, naturally, in the winter with cute festive skins and sprays for everyone, as well as the introduction of the Arcade, for those who wanted to play the game but with a few extra quirky modifiers. Sombra was finally released after a long and rather disappointing ARG, as well.

Chinese New Year saw Mei take center stage with new seasonal game modes and skins. Overwatch even went on to win numerous awards, such as Best Multiplayer at the Gaming Baftas, as well as other nominations, as well as even being one of my own games of the year, although I doubt that had any major impact on continuing to cement it in the gaming world like the other awards the game has won.

Most recently saw the release of the Uprising Event, the closest Overwatch has ever been to having any form of playable backstory. Players got to experience Tracer’s first mission with the Overwatch organization as you blasted through the streets of London as robots run riot, and it proved to be quite difficult, although a fan favorite.

Then finally we have today, well, yesterday! Overwatch’s one year anniversary! A simple party event that doesn’t exactly have any overall theme, outside of sweet dance moves, and not even any notable themed gameplay mode, however, instead, it was a wonderful time to reflect back on the year, as I have just done here, as Blizzard and Overwatch released a wonderful summary video that thanked the community for their support. The wonderful thing in all this was the inclusion of many, MANY pieces of art, animation and cosplay done by the community. It didn’t include the vast quantities of Overwatch based pornography, but that’s somewhat understandable. Instead Overwatch continues to show that it’s a game that’s based around its community. There’s a tremendous amount of communication between the player base and the developers and it shows with each new lot of patch notes. The ranking system wouldn’t have been changed so dramatically if it weren’t for the community having so much feedback, the same goes for the events and how they proceed.

That’s why it feels like such a big deal with the first birthday of Overwatch, it’s not only an outstanding game, but its strong connections to its community are what have made it such a favorite of the gaming community. Overwatch gets involved with its fans and I feel that they just want to show that. So here’s to you, Overwatch, you’re a good game.

[mozillogames]

I Personally Loved Persona 5

That’s read like Persona-lly. A hard O.

Persona 5 is a delightful entry to the series. It’s been smoothed down from its previous, more brutal, predecessors and is incredibly more accessible and modernized for the gaming world today. Oozing with style, the game is rife with visually stunning menus and scenarios that make your eyes water from its stylistic design. Quite frankly, it’s a wonderful game.

The game shows off it’s rather outstanding stylistic design right from the word go with it’s opening title sequence being a classy musical number with minimalistic colours and smooth musical number, straight down to the title select screen itself with silhouettes of the characters lazing around a train station as the camera spins and rotates around with each selection, revealing the hidden words and menus around the room.

It’s this level of detail that shows off one of Persona 5’s strong points, it knows it’s a JRPG and thusly you’ll be spending a lot of time in combat and rooting through menus so the game just makes them rather beautiful to look at. Selecting one item from the main menu causes the cut out main character to move around into a new position to maybe get a look at his gun as you’re changing your equipment or moving towards his mask and face to observe your persona. Even the main shops have this similar level of pizazz as the merchants in the background shift around striking a new pose, whether it is the punk doctor moving her long legs into a new slouching position or the cool, mafia dad hiding his face with his cap.

Loading times are all hidden behind these stylistic turns that involve a brief animation of people hustling and bustling on an underground tube train and these small touches make the game so wonderful. I realize I’m over three paragraphs into a review and I’ve exclusively talked about menu screens. Odd, I understand, but you need to understand how pleasant these things are.

The meat and bones of the game is living the life of an average Japanese high schooler, studying with your friends by day, helping a politician out by night then maybe breaking into someone’s mind with your magical powers to change their personality and their heart. Does that count as the generic “All Japanese schoolers fight magical monsters, gosh how do they cope?” joke? I hope so, don’t dismiss the game being based around kids in school, surprisingly little of the game actually takes place in the school, for better or for worse.

The most you’ll see of the school building itself is in the opening segments of the game which introduce you to everything at a blistering 3 hour introduction (roughly). While the introduction does have some gameplay and dungeon crawling to it, it is a lengthy turn off events before you’re allowed to properly play the game. That said, the turn of events that transpire in the game are both shocking and gripping. The introduction of an abusive gym teacher who takes capital punishment to all new levels, even going so far as to try and elicit physical relations from one student and when that fails potentially rapes another, all leading to the attempted suicide of a student, which you watch happen.

The fun high school romp with colourful hair that you thought you might be getting quickly burns away to dark stories based around abuse and corrupt authoriative figures, which is why playing as high schoolers is so important to the game. Living your rebellious nature and taking on the world that acts constantly against you, as those in a position of power abuse it to live like kings, with the idea that those of the younger generation can do nothing but accept it. The main characters are those who fight back against this system of being told what to do by those in assumed positions of power and the theme of rebelling against unwarranted authority permeates through a lot of the social links as well.

There are stories of doctors who were almost forced out of the business due to their seniors throwing them under the bus or child prodigies being exploited by their guardian for money. Persona 5 continues in tradition of the rest of the series in that it is filled with these dark and odd stories as you meet people and learn about them and their problems eventually helping them out in your own oddly silent way.

But what about the meat of the gameplay? Well, that’s it for the most part, your day to day is a mixture of talking to your friends, working with your social links, maybe going to the local café to study and drink coffee. Perhaps you spend the day fishing, working at one of your part time jobs or maybe spending some time at the batting cages trying to hit some dingers. Time management is the game and bling panic is your name, is that how that saying works? There’s a lot to do in Persona 5 to the point where you’d be hard pressed to complete everything in a truly blind run, honestly I’d suggest to just make a go of it, see how you do as there’s always a second playthrough which you carry over a fair amount of progress in which you could always follow a walkthrough on.

When you’re not hanging out in beautiful Tokyo with the lights and the people, you’ll be thieving your way through dungeons, thieving in style. Persona 5 has decided to have structured dungeons instead of randomly generated ones that its predecessors had and this works wonderfully. Dungeons can have great design behind them as they now represent the inner psyche of your targets as they warp more and more as you go deeper into the palace. With stealth added to the mix for traversing around shadows and monsters for safety and getting the drop on them for a wonderful ambush. Dungeons are now full of great set pieces and even oddly surreal segments like jumping into paintings in a gallery to traverse the land between pictures, like it’s something out of Harry Potter.

Turn based combat makes a comeback and it’s not a slog. The various elemental weaknesses that you can exploit and can be exploited adds a lot more strategy to the battles than you may think would initially be there. Swapping between your personas to vary up your tactics as the need arises as well as changing your party members around in the middle of a dungeon to allow them to recover or make use of their undepleted, or is it pleted, mana pools. With a sprawling multi-tiered randomly generated dungeon, Mementos, to act as the extra dungeon for you to explore inbetween your main targets you’ve also got a host of smaller side targets with the requests that you get, these all have a little bit of story that can be as simple as evil person is evil, but even then you get a slight look into their inner weaknesses that may drive someone to bully through their insecurities or failure in other areas.

Persona 5 obviously has a few small flaws that could potentially annoy you a large amount, depending on how quickly you can get into the game or not. Combat lines are repeated with an upsetting fervor that, added with the single general combat music, things can become a little grating at times. This mixed with instant death skills that still persist to this day, despite the inclusion of normal magic skills to take advantage of the light and dark weaknesses, can still cause an unavoidable death and game over that’ll leave you rather annoyed, it’s less punishing now with regular checkpoints, but defeat that you could do nothing about is still a pain nonetheless.

Finally one of the biggest issues just comes from time management. Time management is a big deal in this game, every segment of time is precious, every day can be vital to your teenage life, let’s ignore my wasted years playing MMOs in my pants as a teenager, that during heavy story segments you can find yourself rocketing through days like there’s no tomorrow, although still finding yourself stuck in your room at the end of each day with your cat telling you you’re too tired to do anything so may as well go to sleep. The story is still wonderful and in traditional Persona style it ramps up quickly and you begin to fight gods or something, but having the reigns taken from you for so long in a game that’s designed around using each day to its fullest can be a little annoying. You’ll be sat there sweating as you think about how you’ll ever fit in time to hang out with the best character, Yusuke, while everyone keeps on forcing you to hang out and investigate the next target. I just want to hang out with my main gang dammit!

Overall, Persona 5 is a wonderful game. It has a few niggling annoyances but to say I put in over 100 hours into my first playthrough and don’t really remember any major moments that I’d regret playing it is a massive testament to its variation and griping nature. With enough style to make Paris Fashion Week blush and a soundtrack that’ll have you tapping your foot to most segments I can greatly recommend Persona 5 to just about anyone. Don’t be put off by the length playtime, it keeps you driven enough that there’s always something to work towards and keep you moving. Delightful characters and there are moments in Persona 5 that I don’t think I’ll forget for some time, the themes of rebellion and society are great and the constant dabbling in Jungian psychology and the collective unconscious that the Persona games are known for continues to be a major strength.

[mozillogames]

I’m Openly Bored of Open World Games

Hoo boy, aren’t open world games everywhere these days? I hope I can’t be the only one who sees the latest open world game and almost immediately switch off from any interest in the thing. We’re reaching a critical mass of underwhelming, and rather simple, open world games that focus more on the fact that it’s an open world game than anything else, ultimately to their own downfall. While there are a few good open world games, there are a lot of bad ones as well, a flood of bad ones.

I used to like open world games, maybe it was because I was younger and had near limitless time on my hands and no major commitments outside of video gaming, sure there was school but I tended to sleep through that and just turn up to the exams at some point. All gloating aside, when you’re a wee lad of 15 or so the idea of spending an entire afternoon, from about 4:30pm until 3am, walking across a map meticulously picking up hundreds of icons on a map, slowly revealing the next chunk of the quilt and immediately preceding to mop up the clutter that lines it.

What appeals to you as a child, however, may not continue to cause a twitch in your nethers once you get older, except for Final Fantasy VII which will always cause me a stir somewhere upon my person. Now that I’m an old man at the disgustingly ripe age of somewhere in my 20s (I haven’t the time to remember or work out my age) I find myself with an actual job that I have to pretend to be good at to get money and thus eat for my own sustenance. Time has become rapidly precious and, while I may be currently playing through Persona 5 for a second time mere minutes after just finishing it, I don’t have the free time to disengage my brain and roll around an open world for the thrill that is map cleaning.

My main issue with open worlds doesn’t even necessarily descend from my lack of time in my life, instead they just tend to be so boring. Many open world games now rely heavily on padding out gameplay with increasingly cluttered maps and extra objectives, an ever increasing amount of Riddler Trophies, more Animus Fragments or Feathers than ever before, or just another hundred encampments to clear out, it’s all rather exciting, isn’t it?

There are definitely open world games that can really work, The Witcher 3 is a great example, but also things like Fallout 4. The games focus so much more on the quests that you come across that they drive your exploration of the world and point you in a direction to head to, maybe a dungeon or a building or just anything. The point is that someone put some thought into a quest chain, and they are generally chains, that may branch into more quests and you end up with a spider web of things to do. If you look at Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Final Fantasy XV, two franchises that recently jumped into the open world pool, the quests are simple and forgettable. Normally someone tells you to get them something or kill monsters in a location and once you’ve returned with your simple and forgettable task completed you get a quick and hasty “thanks” and that’s the end of it.

Outside of the exploration itself the reasons to spend 20 minutes running out in the open wilderness rapidly run dry, one of my main criticisms of the latest additions to two of my favorite franchises were just that. The game focused more on the idea that the game is an open world than the idea of your game taking place IN an open world. I find a lot of open world games these days create an old world environment and think that’s the game, running around an open world, maybe with a few story quests scattered around, is enough to warrant the open world itself and it really isn’t.

The sandbox is an easy way to extend the length of your game quite substantially. Driving around fake LA in Grand Theft Auto from mission to mission can take literal minutes or more of your life, you’re not even really doing anything other than trying to drive in as straight a line as possible to make the journey quicker. What little I played of Ghost Recond: Wildlands was much to the same, driving through the vast and empty scenery is a boring chore and I’m quite glad the vehicles in that defied any form of physics as it made driving straight to the objective a lot easier as your truck scales an entire cliff face.

On that note, quick travel. That’s an admission of a problem already built straight into the actual game itself. Quick travel acknowledges that walking through the open world itself is already tedious and needs to be done once and only once, to unlock the locations to then fast travel to. As I stated in my video, if you took the actual structured content in an open world game and cut out all the open world walking bits the games would be a lot more engaging, to me at least. I guess that’s all that matters, that I personally have fun over everyone else.

Something that also tends to occur with open world games is the lack of player progression. It’s harder to enforce progression of your character, such as skills or equipment, without having to build large walls around entire areas of your map. You know how in older Zelda games if you had the hookshot, bombs or any other piece of equipment it’d unlock new routes and new areas? You can’t have that in an open world game as it just breaks the pacing of the open world, instead you often find yourself with everything you’re going to see within the first moments of the game itself.

In the case of games like GTA or Saints Row 3 (the only one I’ve played) you can find yourself with all the guns or equipment pretty rapidly, the games are almost designed around acquiring rocket launchers in unlikely places and then flying military jets around like it’s not a major national incident. In GTA it’s not too difficult to break into a military complex and steal said jet within the opening hours of the game, what else is the game ever going to show me? What new equipment am I likely to get that’ll change up the game more than the high tier military equipment? At that point progression is no longer something in the game, outside of the, normally, mediocre story.

Yes, this is a rather broad brush and it doesn’t apply to every game, but it falls, once again, to open world games that rely more on the game just being an open world as their major selling point than anything else. The quests in The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 more than make up for the lack of equipment progression. The lack of this in GTA or Breath of the Wild leaves much to be desired as you find yourself doing the same objectives and actions time and time again.

I just long for more games that have structure to their gameplay. Dungeons or buildings or pathways to travel that someone has had to sit down and design with the idea that the player will actually walk through it. A well placed enemy or obstacle is a lot more memorable than 20 minutes of running through an open field maybe with a randomly placed enemy that’s vaguely placed or spawned to break the monotony. Or at least an open world game with engaging quests and characters that actually make me want to spend time in the world. If you’re going to make an open world game, wonderful, just don’t have that as your gameplay, the open world itself, put some actual effort into the game and try and write something interesting to go alongside it.

[mozillogames]

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Can Be a Little Grootutious

I’m so glad I thought of that title, time to start drinking.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a pretty decent film to say it has literally no plot. That’s how I describe it to everyone and you can’t stop me. Hitting the funny bone once again, the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy proves to be strong in a fair few aspects, if not lacking in any real purpose, other than having more jokes.

Now I was rather worried going into Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, when you’ve seen how much of an international merchandise gold mine baby dancing Groot became anyone would be worried that nearly every scene would involve some form of dancing twig. I felt that my fears were well founded when the very first scene is just that, a small child Groot dancing around to even more 70s tunes. The joke here is that while the titular guardians are fighting some dimensional hell beast we watch Groot dance around with not a care in the world while you watch enough CGI action that vaguely takes place that there’s probably a CGI artist that spent weeks working on it and practically no one actually saw it, I feel sorry for you buddy.

Fret not though, as far as I’m aware, having watched the film twice now, that was the only moment that Groot dances, in fact, Groot takes more of a back seat in this film, as it is sort of hard to write a child into an action film, and have them take part in all the action. Children just shouldn’t be murdering, or something. Instead Groot is mostly just raised by his three dads and one mum, one of his dads is also a raccoon, or trash panda.

The film had some entertaining writing in it. If you liked the first film, then the jokes are like that again, fun, dumb and zany. The first time I watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 I was cracking up with laughter throughout, the second time not so much, but I still had a hearty guffaw once or twice. It’s rather hard to talk about comedy when it’s good without almost ruining it.

Overall, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 once again proves that the best way of doing a superhero film isn’t whatever the heck goes on in any of the Avengers films, or Spider-Man, fuck Spider-Man. I’m going to reiterate my previous point made in my Logan review, a lot of superhero films comes across with the smug pop culture references seen in The Big Bang Theory. The jokes are as simple as Iron Man telling Thor to get on Tinder. It’s hilarious because you know what a Tinder is, that’s the joke. Tinder. Instead with Guardians of the Galaxy, it doesn’t lay it on too thick with the pop culture references, even though that’s literally one of the characters. That’s what he does, he makes references to Earth culture that literally no one else gets. But the jokes tend to revolve more around the mutual hatred for one another within the Guardians themselves, it’s the level of banter that you may remember from your time as a British teenager or from The Inbetweeners, although not nearly as awkward to look at.

Oddly the one who really stole the show this spin around the galaxy was Dave Bautista. Drax has found a new place in the world going from being a man set solely on war and fighting to a man set almost mostly on fighting but seemingly more so in just having a good time. He’s got a newfound joy for life that seemingly revolves around laughing heartily and still not wearing shirts. And his laughing is infectious, just at how large it is.

There’s plenty of enjoyment in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 but there’s little to no story. Remember back to 2014 with Guardians of the Galaxy, remember how there was like, direction and motive. The characters cut a path through space as they got to their goal. In the sequel the characters just bum around a planet for pretty much the entire thing. Not really doing anything other than cracking jokes at one another. The main issue for this is that the film is basically Chris Pratt’s origin story, or at least Starlord’s one. The rest of the characters awkwardly stand around not knowing what to do while Chris Pratt has an awkward father son bonding moment for most of the film, and then has a big fight for the rest.

I’ll be lying if I said that some parts of it didn’t exactly feel forced. The incorporation of the music felt significantly more forced than previously, with characters specifically asking for music to be put on for the upcoming murder montage, some aspects worked well, but at the same time I felt it felt like music because the series is known to use sweet 70s vibes. Then you’ve got a whole bunch of post credit scenes that are definitely NOT worth watching. It was entertaining the second time round watching my friends slowly watch the ending sentiments be destroyed by obscure references to Marvel. Let’s keep in mind that Guardians of the Galaxy was originally pretty obscure, it’s why the film was made in the way that it was originally, now you’re referencing no name things from that? Man, they were pointless and boring, don’t stay around for the post credit scenes, just enjoy the ending as is.

On that train of thought though, is it bad that I felt more feelings at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 than I did for Logan? Possibly, but the vague themes of family and fatheryness are more than enough to get the water works slightly going and there are some genuinely touching moments throughout the film, just a shame that there’s no plot, eh?

Remember Thanos? Remember how he’s like, the big bad for the Marvel Cinematic Universe? What happened to him? He’s mentioned twice in this film and is again just forgotten, like a fart on the road. I’m sure he’ll be in Avengers Infinity War, ironically “Infinity War” is a good way of describing the MCU in of itself, so there’s that.

Oh, yeah, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, it’s alright. It’s kind of funny, but suffers from a lack of movement in the story and doesn’t exactly do anything new compared to the original film. Focusing more on the comedy side of things works for a spell, but ultimately leaves it to rapidly be forgotten by time and space, also fuck Stan Lee.