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Streets of Rage 4 It felt a little stiffer than I would have liked, but ultimately the intuitive comboability of the game won me over, at least compared to my experience with TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge . Where bosses in that game felt like they were just rolling through their movesets and phases, with little regard for what I was doing, the ability to interrupt (some, not all) moves and pick them up with OTGs meant that the game never really ground to a halt on my first playthrough. Only one boss – the one with a shield which uses ranged attacks – really frustrated me at first encounter (frustrated in the emotional sense, not the difficulty sense). I did find it painfully tricky to avoid enemy attack patterns, but part of that was poor positioning and restraint on my part. Hopefully as I keep dipping into it, I’ll overcome my sillier instincts. Streets of Rage 4 ’s concessions to the casual audience are also more comfortable than Shredder’s , in terms of both my own preferences and the...

West of Dead I’m stretching it a bit to say I finished West of Dead . I did beat the final boss, but then he told me that he was bound by three souls and I hadn’t really beaten him blah blah blah. I’ll dabble here and there, but I’m not committing too much more time to it. Personally, I think it would have been a better move to polish out the mechanics and craft both a more engaging gameplay loop as well as more handcrafted combat encounters rather than rely on the willingness of players to commit to runs of procedurally generated content… but of course I’d say that. As it is, I’m really not sure why this was a roguelike. There’s pretty much no interesting power gains (ooh, big decisions like health or damage or alternate damage oh my), the guns are fairly samey, the abilities and charms do little to break it up. The slow pace of unlocks only adds to this sense of inertia, of being stuck. At least there’s ludonarrative harmony there, I suppose, but creating an array of unsatisfying t...

  This post contains spoilers. I once read that knowing spoilers going in makes experiencing a work of fiction more enjoyable. I think that’s bullshit.    The first time you experience something should be marked by unknowing, by eagerness and anticipation and uncertainty. Directors, writers and designers plan around this - not always in the best or most enjoyable ways, but then everyone's a critic. I don’t think we should be spoiling things for ourselves. In fact, I'd say that leans in to the predigested, preapproved way many of us consume media, both fictional and non-fictional. It’s unrewarding and even unhealthy at times. But I've spoiled things for myself a lot.   When I was younger, I read a lot of TVTropes. Most classics, hell, most media beyond children's books, came to me predigested. Almost every story that I encounter nowadays comes to me as a known quantity, not through deliberate exposure but rather osmosis. Rare is the time I choose to exper...

We’re basically done with the week or two of not-E3 that we’ve been given this year. Announcements have sputtered out of showcases, showcases that don’t have the same draw for me as they used to. Part of that is getting older, having less time to waste and less tolerance for marketing. But most of my disillusionment is in the form that marketing takes. Most games at this year’s showcases were shown off with short trailers, split between CGI and “in-engine” cutscenes. If we’re lucky, there’s a bit of highly disguised “gameplay” in them. The experience is mind-numbing in totality. Unlike movie trailers, these can’t convey a full sense of the product. Part of that is on the marketing departments. These trailers just aren’t that great at building excitement. But it’s also due to the nature of the medium. There’s so much more work you need to do to define a game. Most films are audiovisual experiences in the one to three hour range. Games have so much more variance; in length, in scope, in ...

GRID Legends touts a nemesis system (unfortunately no relation to Shadow of Mordor ’s), one which feels like a massive missed opportunity. When you annoy other drivers too much, they become rivals… and that’s about all that happens. As far as I could tell, these organic “rivalries” never lasted beyond a single event. They only developed from contact, not any less aggressive transgression. There was little I could do to influence the system. When I hit them they got mad. When they were mad they hit me back. Not much else to it. If this was more similar to the ongoing Nemesis system exploited by Talion and Celebrimbor, there would be something here, a real sense of engagement with these other drivers. As superficial as it was, it left me focussed on its empty promise. I don’t know why this concept was in the game - certainly not so prominently - if all they really do is detract from the final product. The conceit of the story mode is something similar to a sports documentary series. In ...

 I’ve dipped my toes into two licensed games recently, Middle-earth: Shadow of War and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun . They exist in a similar space to me, competently made games with awkward or painful elements, moments that feel far too jerky and unrefined. Fun enough, but unremarkable on the whole (yes, even the vaunted Nemesis system does not rise to the level of “remarked” - it’s fine, a point of interest, not as special as you might like, shouldn’t be patented). What particularly stands out, to me, is the way the license layers on top of these games, altering my personal reception of them in odd ways.   Licensed games are nothing new, although I feel I’ve played relatively few. A few Star Wars ones, like most gamers, some big names like Fist of the North Star , alongside smaller IP like Battle Chasers . By and large, though, the games I play come from video game franchises. Video games are my primary entertainment medium, and I’m generally disinterested in the compromis...

I have barely any interest in e-sports. I’m not really interested in discussing whether they - or chess, or similar - should count as sports. For the record, I don’t count them as such and I don’t approach them the same way as a viewer but I’m not gonna hate on them. Really, professional video game players are roughly equivalent to high level athletes, but with much lower profiles. I certainly remember comparable behavioural complaints in the FGC to recent NBA scandals, for example. No heroes no idols, etc. I’ve only really engaged with e-sports in two forms. Quite a while ago, maybe eight to ten years or so, I got casually interested in DOTA 2 , both playing (very, very badly) and watching (very, very ignorantly). Both before and after this period, I watched a lot of FGC tournaments, across most of the big games. This included Street Fighter IV and V , Guilty Gear Xrd , Under-Night , a little bit of Tekken and Mortal Kombat , a nice big range. I haven’t watched much in the last few ye...

  9 Monkeys of Shaolin was released in 2020 by Sobaka Studio. I believe it was their second game. Although many would describe it as a beat-em-up, it eschews some of the hallmarks of the genre in favour of an experience that courts more mainstream attention. With a level-based (rather than arcade) campaign, skill trees and item unlocks, and a focus on story sections, I would consider it more broadly in the 2D action genre, refuting the more specific descriptor. I enjoyed my time with it, although it was not particularly ground-breaking and in the end broke itself.   9 Monkeys most obvious departure from the beat-em-up formula is the prominence of its story. Not every mission is heavy on the story, but the opening prologue includes a forced loss which leads to protagonist Wei Cheng’s recovery and training in the care of Buddhist monks. Wei Cheng ultimately masters their techniques and takes a new name as he joins them, achieving first revenge and then overcoming a threat o...