Phelios (Genesis) Review

 

Phelios (Genesis) Review

Release Date: 1990

Date Played: 22 June 2022

Phelios is one of the more unique vertical shmups on the Sega Genesis.  Instead of opting for the standard spaceship theme, Phelios opts for an Ancient Greek setting that is a breath of fresh air for a genre that can often get rather stagnant. Published by the venerable Namco, Phelios was originally an arcade game before being ported to Sega’s 16-bit system where it gained more popularity.

Ultra hottie, Artemis, has been kidnapped and imprisoned by the Titan, Typhon.  Telepathically, I assume, Artemis calls out to her boyfriend, Apollo, to come and rescue her.  Apollo, the sun god, notorious womanizer, and actual brother of Artemis (the game doesn’t mention this… gross) sets off through 7 stages of vertical shmup fun to save his lover/sister.  Mounted on the back of Pegasus, you’ll be killing countless enemies, recognizable bosses from Greek mythology, and flying over vast terrain that ranges from the clouds over Mt. Olympus, to underground caverns, lava filled lakes, sky fortresses, rivers, and the underworld.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is as simple as it comes.  Phelios is essentially a one button game.  You can move with the D-pad, and shoot with any of the other buttons on the controller.  The button can be held down to charge your attack for additional damage.  To the right of the screen is a picture of a sword, and the longer you hold the fire button, the more it’s filled.  When it reaches its maximum after about 2 seconds, you can fire a super charge shot that deals additional damage.  Don’t worry about having to take your eyes off the screen to see if the gauge is full, the constantly beeping alarm will annoyingly notify you when it’s maxed out. Of course, tapping the fire button will fire smaller and weaker shots, but you’ll barely be using them in the game. The charge shot is so much more useful and powerful that it becomes your main mode of attack. It’s obvious that the game was designed around using the charge shot all of the time as it has the ability to pass through destroyed enemies, so a single charge shot can take out an entire enemy wave.  Sadly, this more or less turns the game into a timing challenge where you have to learn to rout the game based on when to release your charge shot rather than dodging enemies and their bullets.  The gameplay centers around knowing which enemies are coming and blasting them with the charge shot as soon as they’re on screen so they don’t have a chance to fire at you. This makes Phelios more of a memorizer shmup rather than a reflex one.

In addition to this, you’ll get several powerups in each level that will increase your speed up to 2 levels and can also provide you with a couple of options to increase your firepower.  Having Apollo fully powered up is somewhat helpful, but not as much as many other shmups. The game throws so many upgrades at you that you’ll be fully powered up 30 seconds into the first stage. Also, whenever you die, you’ll get several upgrades just as soon as you respawn at the checkpoint, thereby ensuring you are mostly powered up at all times.  On top of this, there are several additional weapons you can get temporarily in some of the stages.  These include a beam shot (only found in the first level), homing shots, and a ricochet shot.  These special upgrades are a lot of fun and are very powerful.  Unfortunately, they only appear rarely and feel like more of an afterthought than a real feature.  

You can take 3 hits before you lose a life and you only have 3 lives to start with.  Luckily, you get a 1UP every 50k points (maxed at 400k), so you can get up to 8 additional lives to help you on your way. You’ll need them too, because while the game isn’t extremely difficult, it has some cheap and unfair sections that love to eat away at all your extra lives.  There is a checkpoint system in place that makes the game much more difficult.  Usually these are to give you a chance to power up your ship so you can make it through a more difficult section, but in Phelios you fully upgrade so quickly that there’s really no need for a checkpoint system (as being fully upgraded isn’t that much stronger than your base shot). It just makes the more difficult sections frustrating when you have to play them over and over again. I think the game would have been much better if it gave you fewer lives but allowed you to respawn right where you die. To make matters more difficult, your character sprite is rather large and it can be hard to dodge some of the enemies on screen. So, you’ll be dying a lot at first and will have ample time to get used to the checkpoint system. The game is also too long, clocking in at around 45 minutes and has no level select. Which means you’ll need to spend a fair amount of time playing through the early stages just to get in some practice for the latter ones. This can be a real motivation killer and you’ll have to push yourself through some tougher sections through sheer force of will.

There is a novice mode of the game that’s easier, but only lets you play the first 4 stages of the game. You’ll have to dive into the Advanced mode if you want to experience the full game.  If you’re able to beat the final boss, you can take a shot at Expert mode.  Weirdly enough, if you want to play this mode, you’ll need to beat the entire game on Advanced mode each time you turn on your Genesis because there is no battery backup in the cartridge.

Presentation:

Phelios’ presentation is the best thing it has going for it. The Greek mythology theme really does stand out and gives the developers some awesome content to work with.  The first stage blasts right out of the gate as you see Apollo and Pegasus flying over some impressive parallax scrolling clouds as you blast away at dragons and… butterflies.  You’ll soon dive into a temple where you’ll face off against a horrible looking Medusa.  After vanquishing her, you’ll get a cutscene of the scantily clad Artemis asking you to save her in the most “Genesis” sounding voice sample. These cutscenes appear between every stage and show how Artemis is being tortured and progressively more and more…. um, derobed.  This was undoubtedly the motivation to get a lot of male gamers in the 90s to keep playing the game. I have no doubt that it worked.  Artemis might be the best looking 16-bit character ever committed to cartridge and is the standout thing that most people remember about Phelios.  

Sadly, after the first epic level of the game, things start going downhill.  The stages start getting long and repetitive with boring terrain and annoying enemies. It feels like a lot of them drag on forever.  This is very clear during the lava, ice, and lake stages.  They feel like they will never end and just keep throwing the same sorts of enemies and ideas at you over and over. On a positive note, the final stage mixes things up and somewhat redeems the tedium of the rest of the game. It just feels like less care and thought went into the middle section of the game. With the boring backgrounds, difficulty spikes, repeated assets, and general laziness in the presentation, you can tell that the developers didn’t really have the resources they needed to pour their hearts into them like they did the first level.

The graphics are decent enough for a Genesis game and have that gritty and stony look to them that you would expect. The first level feels colorful, fast, and really shows off what the Genesis can do.  This isn’t really the case for the other levels, sadly.  The soundtrack is mostly ominous trumpet fanfares.  It works well for the game and does give a sense of regality and epicness.  However, the tunes are rather pedestrian and there isn’t anything catchy for you to want to repeatedly listen to.  It’s a long way from the best shmup soundtrack on the Genesis. 

Conclusion:

Phelios is a slightly better than average game overall.  It has some highlights that help it out, but also has plenty of low points that keep it from being truly great. Honestly, the best thing it has going for it is its Ancient Greek setting.  Without that (and the Artemis cutscenes), this game would be relegated to the tons of other middle-of-the-road shmups on the Genesis. It has its moments, for sure,  but the heavy reliance on using the charge shot all of the time weighs thin.  The same can be said for the overly long and repetitive levels that fill up most of the middle sections of the game. On top of that, some of the cheaper and frustrating sections of the game are made that much more irritating by the unnecessary checkpoint system.  

If you’re a huge shmup fan and a collector, you’re probably going to have to shell out some real cash to pick up a physical copy of this game as its value just keeps going up and up.  For the rest of you out there, try it digitally.  It’s a good and memorable time if you can get it for a reasonable price.

Pros:

• Unique setting and atmosphere

• Moderate difficulty for a shmup.  Actually beatable by the general public.

• Great first level

• …Artemis

Cons:

• Too much reliance on the charge shot

• Stages can be boring, long, and repetitive

• Can’t play the full game on Novice mode

• Music is lackluster

• Unnecessary checkpoint system turns the game into a drag

• Some cheap sections of the game can be frustrating

Final Status: Beaten

Final Score: 7/10 (Good)

Dungeon Encounters (Switch) Review

 

Dungeon Encounters (Switch) Review

Release Date: 14 October 2021

Date Played: 20 June 2022

Are your favorite parts of an RPG the combat, level grinding, and item farming?  If so, Dungeon Encounters was made especially for you.  If, on the other hand, your favorite parts are the story, interesting characters, and inspired world building, then this game may not do much to pique your interest. Developed and published by Square Enix, Dungeon Encounters takes the standard JRPG format and strips away everything that isn’t related to combat. That includes the aforementioned story and environments, but it also includes graphics, animations, dialog, and music. It has been met with some mixed reviews from the public with people both praising and lamenting its simplicity. 

The premise is that a 99 floor dungeon has appeared and everyone wants to go explore it.  You select your party of 4 from the available characters and dive right in.  There is no difference between the characters other than their portraits and some slight defensive gains when leveling up. Stripped away are character classes and unique abilities. Most character stats are tied to the items you equip. This essentially turns your characters into nothing more than living mannequins to hold your weapons and armor for combat.  Likewise, the dungeons themselves are represented by nothing more than a grid system.  There are no buildings, terrain, NPCs, music, or anything else that you might expect to see in, well… any video game.  Locations of interest are marked on the grid based map with numbers.  White numbers represent shops, healing fountains, items, stairs to other floors, etc., while black numbers represent combat encounters.  You won’t know what the numbers mean until you encounter them.  After that, notes about what they are appear in a reference in the game’s menu. It’s a bit cumbersome to remember that tiles labeled, “06” are healing fountains and, “9B” has that annoying enemy you don’t want to deal with, but it does serve to maintain the austere premise of the game.  As you continue to explore the dungeon, the tiles you’ve walked over change color and you’re given skill points for fully exploring entire floors of the dungeons. These skill points are essential to your success in the game, so it’s imperative to explore as much as possible. This is easier said than done because many of the floors have hidden paths, riddles, and overpowered enemies that will impede your progress.  You’ll have to do the best you can and come back later when you’re stronger. The dungeon layouts aren’t randomized, but the enemy placement is. So, if you’re struggling, you can move to a different level of the dungeon and immediately come back to rearrange the enemy locations. The riddles are usually in the form of number array math problems where you have to find the missing numbers from a pattern.  These numbers give you the coordinates of a secret item. They can be challenging, and will take some serious thinking to solve some of the harder ones. There are also wandering characters hidden down in the dungeon where you have to use context clues to find a specific tile to find them.  These characters can be very helpful, but are kind of annoying to locate.  I know these sorts of puzzles are supposed to be one of the big features of the game, but they just didn’t do anything for me.  A lot of these locations you’ll have to physically write out the coordinates on a note to yourself so you can remember to find that specific square on the grid several floors down (or up). There’s nothing on the grid to show they are there, so you are essentially running around and clicking on empty spaces until you find something.

Combat is your standard turn-based style that you see in most JRPGs. Everyone can equip two attack items which usually include one melee and one magic as well as a couple of armor/item slots.  The enemies all have defensive and magic armor that you need to deplete that you can deal actual damage to their HP.  It adds a nice strategic element to the game as you can’t simply 1-shot most enemies and you’ll have to carefully figure out your course of action by reviewing the turn order. This goes for your characters as well as they all have both defensive and magic armor. For a lot of the game, these armors are usually depleted in a single hit. Meaning, boththe enemies and your characters are usually killed in 2-4 hits.  You have to pray that one of your characters doesn’t get hit with 3 magic attacks in a row, because that will most likely be curtains for them. Enemies also have lots of annoying attacks that can poison, petrify, steal your gold, and just eat your character in 1 bite.  There isn’t really a way to deal with these until you locate skills on specific tiles placed around the dungeon. These skills can be equipped for the whole party but require the usage of skill points (the ones you get for exploring the floors fully). These skill points are limited in the allocations until you explore more, so choosing what skills you want to equip takes some careful consideration. This is also where you’ll be able to equip your only healing/resurrection skills.  So, you’ll need to equip your best skills using your limited skill points before many of the more difficult encounters to have a fair chance. There’s nothing quite like having one of your characters petrified and turned to stone.  They are too heavy and you can’t carry them with you.  So, you have to leave them behind and make a mental note of the coordinates where you left them on which floor and continue to explore without them until you find a gorgon shrine somewhere else in the dungeon.  Then you have to use it to input the coordinates of the petrified character to return them to normal.  Then, you have to traverse all the way back to where you left them and add them back to your party.  It’s a HUGE pain to do this and after it happens to you, you’ll do everything in your power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  So, before going into combat, make sure you have your petrify immunity skill equipped. There are lots of instances of having to backtrack in the dungeons to do stuff like this. I personally didn’t find it very fun at all and it pretty much made me wince every time it occurred. The grid system is so boring to look at that backtracking over the same areas again and again becomes very boring and tedious.  The lack of music while exploring doesn’t help at all.

Every 10 floors or so, you’ll encounter a town which is just a large group of white numbers that will allow you to heal and purchase new equipment and spells. You’ll really need to stay on top of keeping your characters maxed out with the best equipment you can afford.  This means you’re going to be doing a fair amount of grinding for money and rare item drops.  The enemies can be rather unforgiving in this game and it’s not too hard to get your party fully wiped out. If this happens, you have to go back to the starting area and pick all new characters and then try to progress all the way back to where your other party died and try to save them by carrying them one at a time to the nearest resurrection shrine.  Also, once again, extremely tedious.  If, by an unlucky turn of events, all the available characters in the game become unusable due to being K.O.d, petrified, or what have you, you can start the game over from the beginning but maintain all of your levels.  You will lose all of your equipment, skills, and dungeon exploration, unfortunately.  Grind, grind, grind.

In terms of the presentation, the character model walking around the map looks decent, but that’s really all there is to catch your eye.  I mean, you’re looking at a grid with numbers on it. The color of the background changes every 10 floors but that’s all you’re going to get in terms of variety.  Even the enemies are repeated over and over and just get stronger as you progress. The combat music and victory music are interesting in that they are themes from classical favorites arranged for 3 part electric guitar (and nothing else… keeping with the minimalistic aesthetic).  You’ll hear Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in the first area and A Night on Bald Mountain in second.  There’s also hits from Wagner, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, and Chopin. This is capped by the fantastic L’Alesienne March by Bizet for the victory music (one of my favorites).  It’s a nice selection, but I wish they had included some songs outside of the combat scenarios. Also, while I love the distorted guitar arrangements, the mixing is thin and the guitars sound very trebly and tinny. Coming through the Switch’s speaker in handheld mode can be a bit off-putting as it’s pretty shrill.

The game’s overall length seems to clock in around 40-50 hours based on how much grinding and backtracking you need to do.  Sadly, after 6 hours or so, you’ve seen everything the game has to offer.  The combat encounters don’t get much more complex and the enemies just have more health and hit harder. The weapons and the spells are all basically the same and just deal more damage as you upgrade them.  As another reviewer put it, “I realized the game was just the same thing over and over with switching out lower numbers for bigger ones.”  Unfortunately, I have to agree with that assessment.  It's all the tedious parts of playing a JRPG without any of the narrative, environments, characters, and charm.  You know those parts in JRPGs when you get into a dungeon and your characters just aren’t quite strong enough and you’re struggling against every encounter?  Maybe a couple of characters in the party are K.O.d, or you’re low on healing items, or you’re just trying to make it to that next save point so you can have a reprieve.  Dungeon Encounters basically feels like that most of the time. When it doesn’t, it feels like you’re just steam rolling over everything with little to no effort.  So, there are somes slight balance issues and difficulty spikes that the developers are counting on you grinding through.  

Conclusion:

Dungeon Encounters isn’t a bad game. It’s just that it feels like the combat system to a more grand and epic JRPG that doesn’t exist. The combat is engaging, fun, and addictive.  It’s just that it gets very repetitive without the other RPG elements to spread it out. The fact that it’s drawn out to the length of a standard RPG despite missing those elements means that fatigue will set in rather quickly. 

I have to commend the developers for trying something new and I think a stripped down JRPG is a good idea.  But, perhaps they took it a little too far and expanded what was left a little too much.  If you are the sort of person that skips all of the dialog and cutscenes in an RPG and just tries to get to the next battle, then try this out. If you’re the sort of person that rushes through the battles as fast as possible so you can get to the next bit of story, skip it altogether.

Pros:

• Good and addictive combat system

• Innovative and new concept

• Can pick up and play in small bursts

• Awesome combat music

Cons:

• There is no story or anything else outside of combat

• Game gets very repetitive and recycles a lot of its own ideas

• Exploring the dungeon floors feels tedious and a bit like a chore

• Game is too long and overstays its welcome

• There’s not really anything to look at in the game and is little more than a graphically improved spreadsheet.

Final Status: Played

Final Score: 6/10 (Ok)

Strafe (PS4) Review

Strafe (PS4) Review

Release Date: 9 May 2018

Date Played: 18 June 2022

Strafe has a cool premise: Blend the fast and tight gameplay of old school shooters like Quake and Doom with the popular rogue-like stylings that are worming their way into every game these days. It was a good enough concept, but it totally failed in almost every conceivable way. It was developed by Pixel Titans and published by Devolver Digital. It was met with a less than lukewarm reception on consoles, but fared slightly better on PC.

Gameplay:

Strafe is an absolute mess of a game.  There's no other way to put it.  Not only is it poorly designed and relatively unfun, but it's also a buggy mess that is barely playable much of the time. 

You're a scrapper who's sent out into a hostile environment to collect... scrap. You start off the game by selecting from either the shotgun, railgun, or machine gun and then teleport into the first level.  In rogue-like fashion, you'll soon discover that all of the levels are procedurally generated and have a randomized layout. This seems good in theory, but falls very flat because these fast-twitch shooters rely on precise and well thought out level design that can be memorized.  The ability to fly through the levels while blasting away all the baddies is the main draw to these games and gives that sense of momentum that is so exhilarating. Obviously, that's what the developers had intended.  But, unfortunately, you can't do that here.   You have to hang back and play more conservatively than you want to because there's no way to know what's coming up ahead. You'll find yourself funneling the mindless and frustrating enemies into choke points just to mow them down. 

However, just because you're killing tons of enemies, don't think the game is easy. Strafe is unfairly brutal in a bad way.  Most of the early enemies just run directly towards you no matter where you are. This can be a huge issue since there is an overwhelming amount of them.  They will pop out of previously cleared areas and make no sound, so you have no idea they are behind you until you take damage. You have to pop around corners to try to observe the upcoming rooms and find a course of action.  Of course, there are enemies that hang onto the walls and ceilings just out of sight that love to drop down on you once you pass by.  Of course, they are silent and you won't know they're there until you've already taken damage. It's an annoying gameplay loop, and there are so, so many instances of unavoidable damage.  That's a real issue since you only have one life and health refills are rare.

Your starting weapons are puny and don't feel good to fire. There's no impact to them or sense of weightiness. Not only that, but the upgrades and other weapons you find throughout your run of the game don't improve matters much.  These upgrades  are scattered around the levels that increase your fire rate, health, armor, etc.  But they don't really seem to make you feel any more powerful and the awesome synergies that can be found in most rogue-likes are absent here.  Also absent is a perpetual progressions system.  There is really nothing to unlock other than difficulty modifiers and teleporters to let you skip the first few levels of the game. So, you're not going to be able to improve or alter the way the game plays on subsequent runs. The game will play exactly the same as the first time you played it.  It's a real oversight on the developer's part.  These meta-progression systems are an essential staple of rogue-likes, and without them, any failed run feels like wasted time.

In addition to this, the game has real framerate issues on PS4.  Aiming can be difficult because of the choppiness of your movement, and hitting enemies can be a challenge. This is even the case when the enemies are right up in your face and it feels like you can't hit the broad side of a barn. When rooms fill up with enemies, the framerate drops into the single digits and makes the game neigh unplayable.  Since you only have 1 life, this usually spells the end of your run.  Even if the game performed well, the aiming feels very slippery and you can tell it's more suited to a keyboard and mouse setup.  It's obvious that this port was an afterthought and PC was the main focus during development.

There are 4 levels in the game that are each broken up into 3 sections.  Sadly, because of the randomized nature of everything and the necessity to play so conservatively most of the time, things begin to all blur together and get pretty boring rather quickly. Although, I can't say I was ever able to make it to the latter levels because of the buggy nature of the game.

I also encountered bugs that included key items falling through the floor, shops taking money for ammo and not dispensing it, and numerous crashes between the levels. On my best run, I got stuck on some terrain and wasn't able to progress.  I had to start over.  The game has a pretty substantial patch that seems to fix some of these issues.  Personally, I played the game with the patch, and still encountered all of these issues.  I can't even imagine how bad it would be without the patch. 

Presentation:

The game is supposed to look like a game from 1996, and I guess it does.  It has those clunky graphics like Quake and does a good job of evoking the look of games from the period.  Sadly, even though it looks the part, the game has no artistic style and is boring to look at.  Almost everything is the same gunmetal gray corridors and rooms.  As you progress further into the game things never really change much and remains underwhelming.  The enemies are also really boring and uninspired. You can blow off parts of their bodies, which I guess is novel.  But it really messes with the kill animations of the game and sometimes it's difficult to tell if an enemy is actually dead, or if parts of them are just falling off.  The peashooter feel of most of the guns don't really help to remedy this.

The music is also extremely underwhelming and has no memorable points whatsoever.  It's kind of a synth-guitar sound that tries to rip off better games from the 90s, but totally fails. There are no cool hooks or riffs to latch on to and just seems to meander around while you play.

On a very positive note, this game has the best tutorial I've ever seen.  It features a live action training presentation with a fantastic VHS filter on it that stars a sexy lab tech who is training you on how to be a metal scrapper.  Hillary Vetter, the actress, does a phenomenal job in this role and is the best part of the game. It's full of fantastic humor, great sets, memorable one-liners, and enough charm to almost justify purchasing the game.  Her delivery of, "There's more to scrapping than just collecting scrap and scrapping it" is one of the hardest I've ever laughed playing any video game and if the rest of the game lived up to the caliber of its tutorial, it would be one of the best games of all time.

Conclusion:

Strafe is not worth playing.  Even if the game worked (which it doesn't), it is a boring and tedious mess of bad gameplay design and failure to capture what makes the games it's trying to emulate fun. Literally every part of the game, excluding the tutorial, is a waste of your time if you decide to play it on PS4.  Perhaps you can have some fun with the PC version, but the version I attempted to play just doesn't function.  I feel like the developers had a simple concept of blending Quake with a rogue-like and just had no idea how to achieve anything they wanted to do.  

This is one of only a couple of games I've played in the last several years that was so buggy and poorly performing that I literally couldn't finish it.  

Pros:

• The most interesting, funny, and awesome tutorial I've ever seen in a game

Cons:

• The game is a buggy mess and doesn't work

• The framerate is so bad you can't aim

• The randomized levels make the game less fun, not more interesting

• The enemies have annoying A.I. and deal cheap damage

• Boring and uninspired presentation

Final Status: Played

Final Score: 3/10 (Terrible)

 

Ninja Master's (PS4) Review

Ninja Master's (PS4) Review

Release Date: 2019 (1996 Originally)

Date Played: 15 June 2022

I'm not sure if Ninja Master's is just a typo or is actually a grammatically possessive statement that's referencing a missing word.  Ninja Master's... Revenge, maybe? Demise, Fall... I don't know.  I'm going to decide that it's a typo because that's one of the only things that makes the game stand out from the ton of other games just like it.  Whatever the case, this was an arcade game for the Neo Geo MVS released back in 1996.  It was then ported to the Playstation 2 back in 2008.  Then, that version was ported to the PS4 on the ADK Damashii Collection, which is the one we'll be reviewing here.

Ninja Master's is a 2D fighting game much like most of the games on the Neo Geo.  It was developed by SNK and ADK and is a competent, yet generic, fighter. It is set in feudal Japan and tells the story of a demon names Haoh who made a deal with an evil warlord named Oda Nobunaga.  After Nobunaga died and his reign ended, he reappeared years later and started causing havoc once again. So several ninjas have set out to defeat him and the demon.  The protagonist, Sasuke, is trying to exact revenge because his father was killed by Haoh and is supposed to be the main draw of the game.  Unfortunately, he's the most generic and boring character of all.  I can't believe the developers decided to make him the main guy.

It's a good enough plot for a fighting game. Which, I guess, is all you can hope for with any plot in the genre... good enough. We just need something to get us into the action.

The fighting happens just like you'd expect.  You select a character, and try to win a best of three match against your opponent before moving on to the next fight.  You have your standard move set like you would see in a Street Fighter game and the abilities to do small combos as well.  There are a couple of gimmicks.  Firstly, since all of the characters are ninjas, you all have weapons which can be sheathed or drawn at any time.  This basically gives each character two fighting stances.  Also, there is a gauge at the bottom of the screen that fills up when you deal/take damage.  You can activate this to deal some devastating damage.  Other than that, the game is just what you'd expect from a 90's fighter and if you've every played one before, you'll feel right at home.  All of the 10 characters have their strengths and weaknesses and are generally fun to play. 

The sprite work is good just like any Neo Geo game should be, but the characters are mostly generic and aren't very inspired to me.  I feel like they could use some pizzazz and flair, neither of which any of them have. They have a few nice details, but after seeing what SNK can REALLY do with a fighting game, this one feels a little phoned in.  The backgrounds are nice, but don't really have anything to make them stand out or be memorable.  The soundtrack has that stereotypical Kabuki sound to it that every game set in Feudal Japan seems to have. It works, but isn't exactly going to get your blood flowing.

The real problem with the game isn't its general lack of creativity. It's that it is an arcade game that was emulated on the Playstation 2, then, that port was emulated on the PS4.  So it's an emulated version of a game that's emulating another game.  It runs decent enough on the PS4, but the graphics are very muddy and dark.  The vibrant colors of the Neo Geo version are gone, and everything looks like it has a layer of grime over it.  Also, the U.S. physical release of this game released by Limited Run Games is all in Japanese.  What!?! The physical copy of the game, that I own, and was published and sold in the United States, is all in Japanese. When you go into the game's menus to look at the move sets, you can't figure out what's what because none of it is in English. This means you have to go online to figure out how to do the special moves, or just be stuck experimenting. 

Also, when the PS4 emulates PS2 games, it maps the start and select buttons to the touch pad.  This is a real issue because most arcade sticks don't have touch pads on them.  When I tried to play it on my arcade stick, I couldn't even start the game because I didn't have access to the start button.  What a huge oversite.  This forces you to use a standard PS4 controller, which has a terrible D-pad for fighting games.

Lastly, and most grievously, the game has too much input delay.  It was originally made to be played on a CRT screen with no delay. The harder enemies in the game move lightning quick, so you need fast reflexes to deal with them. Double emulating it on the PS2 via the PS4 and then playing it on a modern flatscreen TV adds a noticeable amount of input lag.  If you're playing against your friends on the couch, it's a lot of fun and you may not care because you're both at the same disadvantage.  However, when playing the game solo against the computer, even on the lowest difficulty settings, the later bosses in the game are brutal.  Now, I'm no "expert" at fighting games and I do realize that this was originally an arcade game designed to munch your quarters.  But, I've been around the block a few times when it comes to fighting games and have played my fair share of them.  So, when I'm able to beat the first 8 enemies in the arcade mode without getting hit, and then, I can't even land a hit on enemy number 9... you know there's a real issue. It feels like the computer A.I. is always a step ahead and is blasting out attacks that you can't seem to block. That's because you've already gotten hit by them before you see it on screen. It's, sadly, almost unplayable the way it's supposed to be played.

Not only that, but in arcade mode, you still take some damage when you block, but the computer doesn't.  So, it will read your inputs and continually block while absolutely unloading on you.   It's just not fun, and feels unfair to play against the computer in this game and having a fair amount of input delay doesn't make it easier.  This is one you want to stay away from if you're playing solo.

Pros:

• Game is a competent fighter and is what you'd expect
• Sprite work and backgrounds are done well
• Playing with friends is always fun

Cons:

• The game is a bad port and looks worse than the original version
• The game isn't optimized for play on modern TVs and has too much input delay
• The game is kind of generic and doesn't have interesting characters
• The enemy A.I. is too hard and unforgiving when playing solo
• Can't play the game with most arcade sticks, so you're stuck using the terrible D-pad on the standard PS4 controller

Final Status: Played

Final Score: 5/10 (Mediocre)

Life Is Strange: Before The Storm (PS4) Review

 

Life Is Strange: Before The Storm (PS4) Review

Release Date: 29 August 2017

Date Played: 15 June 2022

Life Is Strange: Before The Storm is the prequal to the bizarrely amazing Life Is Strange that was released a couple of years before.  It's an adventure game developed by Deck Nine and Don't Not and (oddly) published by Square Enix.  It received generally favorable reviews upon its release and while it's considered a great addition to the story of the first game, fails to match its ambition and exciting storytelling.  

Story/Gameplay:

Before The Storm tells the story of how Chloe Price, the misfit and loose canon from the first game, came to develop her relationship with Rachel Amber, another important character from the first game. 

Chloe, who has recently lost her father, has become a sort of pariah in the town's local private school.  She's transformed from honor student status with a bright and sunny disposition into a edgy, snarky, substance using burn-out who is walking a fine line with every authority figure in her life.  She's no stranger to vandalizing property, owing money to drug dealers, and antagonizing her mother's new boyfriend.  She's a teenage miscreant, and the developers really want you to be very aware of that.

One night, she sneaks out of her house to go see one of her favorite bands perform an underground show at a local abandoned lumber mill.  After bullying the security to let her inside, meeting with her drug dealer, possibly stealing some money and/or alcohol, and climbing up to a rotten and dangerous loft, she picks a fight with a local hood.  Right before he's about to attack, Rachel Amber, who is basically the school's prom queen, intervenes and saves the day.  They escape back down to the crowd and proceed to have an awesome time watching the show. The next morning, Chloe awakens to find out that Rachel Amber has posted pictures of them hanging out all over social media and the school rumor mill becomes ablaze.  "What is the school loser doing hanging out with the most popular girl in school?!?"

After this point, the game's three chapters tell a magical story of a whirlwind romance that develops between Chloe and Rachel.  It feels real to watch it happen and the developers really captured that chemistry and electricity you experience when you meet someone special. It's difficult to pull this off in a movie, let alone a video game, and watching how well the two of them grow together over several days is nothing short of wonderful.  

Of course, this being a Life Is Strange game, you can't just leave it as a basic love story. The game has a title it has to live up to, after all. There are crazy twists and turns, conspiracies, rebellion, danger, and all sorts of other shocking and enthralling events that take place as Chloe and Rachel decide to carve out their place in the world.  It isn't long until Chloe and Rachel's actions come back to bite them in a big way.  You'll have to make decisions for Chloe by selecting lines of dialog when encountering the game's vibrant cast of characters.  Like most adventure games, this will alter the game's story in some pretty significant ways and you'll have to live with your choices (at least until you do another playthrough). Things get more and more crazy and intense during each of the game's 3 episodes before finally coming to a strong and satisfying climax.  Just like any great TV show, Before the Storm will have you glued to your seat waiting to see how every cliffhanger resolves.

But, that can be the downfall of the game for some people.  The Life Is Strange games often feel like more of a TV show than a game.  You mainly just walk around and interact with various objects while the characters bust out clever quips about them.  There is some very, very light puzzle elements where you might have to look around a room for some clues, or locate a missing part to something, or look a journal to get some dialog to trigger.  It's all very simple and is clearly influenced by the Tell Tale games that were so prevalent for so long.  

You may also have to do some verbal jousting with some of the characters to get them to do what you want.  This mainly involves selecting various insults from a word tree to get them to bend to your will. It's pretty basic and all of the choices seem extremely obvious.  I don't think I selecting a single wrong choice in both of my playthroughs of the game.  In addition to this, you'll also have opportunities to vandalize various objects and walls with graffiti to earn the vast majority of the game's trophies.  

It's your basic modern adventure game.  You're here for the story... not the gameplay.

Presentation:

The game is starting to show its age a little bit from when it was released 5 years ago.  However, it still looks very good. It has a sort of washed out and soft appearance that really helps to hide a lot of the lower quality textures and helps it stand up a little bit better than games that go for a hyper-realistic look.  There a tons of little details tucked around the environments for you to see that really serve to fill out the game's world and make it feel real... which it does.  All of the character models are unique and nice to look at.  They mostly feel like real people, but not the sort of people you'd meet in real life.  They feel like the people you see on a TV drama, which is what the developers were going for.  

The voice acting is pretty decent all the way around with two exceptions. Rhianna DeVries (Chloe) and Kylie Brown (Rachel) do an absolutely fantastic job of bringing their characters to life. The whole game hinges on the relationship between these two characters, and it wouldn't work at all without the incredible performances of these two. The further you get into the game, the more you can feel the chemistry develop between the Chloe and Rachel.  It goes from stilted and awkward flirting (we've all been there) to touching, reassuring, and loving comments that bolster the relationship between these two teenagers. I can't give these two actors any more praise and I think they did a perfect job of representing two challenging characters.

On top of this, the game is accompanied by a fantastic indie soundtrack. It ranges from calm and atmospheric, to hard-rocking and energetic; and every scene in the game has a great track to go with. This was the case with the first game as well and whoever curated the music for the series really knows what they're doing.  

Conclusion:

If you like good stories in video games, then the Life Is Strange series is one of the best ones out there.  It really does a good job of creating likeable and realistic characters and then shoves them into these peculiar and often extreme situations.  While I agree with the general consensus that Before the Storm isn't quite as good as the original game, it really does serve as a fantastic prequal for it.  If you've already played the first game, you should play this for sure as it will make the events that unfold much more intense and impactful.  While Chloe's over-the-top rebelliousness was a bit much for me (I have two daughters) and caused me to wince a few times, seeing her soften as she developed feelings for Rachel really warmed my heart.  I loved not only seeing them become close but also was spellbound by all of the crazy stuff that unfolded around them.  

While it's short on gameplay, it's overflowing with charm and narrative.  I would recommend playing this game first, and then the original Life Is Strange right afterwards.  That's going to give you the biggest impact... and I hope your heart can take it.

Pros:

• Great characters
• Intriguing and charming story
• Nice presentation with fantastic soundtrack

Cons:

• Gameplay is light and mostly involves walking
• Puzzle elements are too easy
• Need to play it along with the first game to get full impact

Final Status: Completed

Final Score: 8/10 (Great) 

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (Switch) Review

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (Switch) Review

Date Released: 30 June 2021

Date Played: 9 June 2022

When Doki Doki Literature Club initially released on PC back in 2017, it was a cultural phenomenon that took the gaming community by storm. You couldn't go onto Youtube or Twitch without seeing scores of streamers playing the game and documenting their reactions to it.  The game garnered so much attention that it became a cult classic that's undoubtedly wormed its way into the mind of countless gamers around the world.  This is not only due to the fact that the game was initially given away for free by it's developer, Team Salvato, but also because of it's masterful and original method of story telling.  See, Doki Doki Literature Club takes a long standing and much maligned genre, the visual novel/dating sim, and turns it on its head by turning it into a horror game that subverts your expectations.  It deals with strong subject matter like depression, anxiety, abuse, and loneliness and presents them in a shocking manner that stands in stark contrast to its bubbly and cute façade.  Due to the game's plentiful surprising moments, it is extremely difficult to review because I don't want to spoil the content for anyone who's yet to play it.   

After the huge success of Doki Doki, the game has received a physical release in the form of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! on all of the major systems.  It has some additional content including 7 additional chapters that serve as a prequel to the story.  I'll be reviewing the Nintendo Switch version here.

Story/Gameplay:

Since it's a virtual novel/dating sim, the only real gameplay is making choices when prompted with a question/decision.  The rest of the gameplay experience is just reading.  

You play as an unnamed male protagonist who is pressured by his neighbor and lifelong friend, Sayori, into joining their school's literature club. On his first visit, he discovers that the club is full of (as he describes it), "incredibly cute girls!"  So, he decides to join in an attempt to woo one of the girls into being his girlfriend.  If you've ever played a dating sim before, you'll know that this is all par for the course.  Nothing about it feels any different than the countless other dating sims out there and if it weren't for the warning at the beginning of the game touting the horror elements of the game, then there would be little here to keep you interested (unless, of course, you're a huge fan of dating sims).  

All the members of the literature club are given an assignment to write a poem each night and share them with the group the next day.  Writing said poem consists of selecting 20 words from a series of lists and attempting to select the word that most closely associates with the personality of one of the four girls you're most interested in dating. Sayori is the girl next door (literally), Yuri is the dark and mysterious girl, Natsuki is the small, snarky, and cute girl, and Monika is the out-of-your-league homecoming queen type.  After "composing" your poem, you'll present it to everyone in the club as they, in turn, reveal their poems to you. As you focus your compositions more and more towards the girl of your choice, their attitudes change towards you and the content of their poems shifts from observations about the world to more romantic leanings towards the protagonist. These poems are all really done well and are very thought provoking.  I personally enjoy poetry, and have read my fair share, and I thought that the different writing styles of all the girls were quite unique and their content had some real merit.  It's certainly much better than the average poems I've read over the last few years.

As you work to progress your relationship with the girls, tensions rise between them as they vie for your attention.  There are arguments and hateful comments, that begin to cause rifts within the group. Just as things begin to heat up (not only in terms of animosity between the girls, but also in terms of affection between you and the girl you've chosen), talks begin about preparing for the school's club festival.  This is where all of the clubs around the school set up an exhibit to show what they are all about and try to recruit new members.  This all builds up to your first "date" with the girl you've selected.  It's at this point, that the game takes a drastic shift.  Now, I'm not going to give anything away, but be aware that what happens from this point on is absolutely shocking and unforgettable.  Everything you thought you knew is thrown completely out of the window as a meta-fever dream of shock and confusion sets in.  It's unlike anything I've ever experienced in any other game and feels like a roller coaster that has you questioning your own sanity at times. 

I won't say anymore than that.  If you want to know more, you'll have to experience the game for itself. When I initially played it on PC, back when it came out, it became one of the most memorable gaming experiences that I've ever had.  It really stuck with me... and continues to do so even to this day.  

Presentation:

The game has a very cute presentation with lots of pink, hearts, cute girls, bouncy music, and everything you can think of to make a dating sim appealing.  Of course, it's made this way to trick you into thinking everything is ok before the whole experience goes haywire.  Still, it's very appealing and has a nice charm to it. If I had to describe the style, I would call it, "Female Japanese Middle Schooler."

The character designs are outstanding as is their artwork.  Of course, this is essential to make you want to date the various girls.  If they weren't charismatic and drawn in an attractive way, you'd lose interest before the game tone shifts. All of the characters are very likable and it feels like you really develop a connection with each and every one of them.  This is certainly reinforced by the writing and dialog in the game that is remarkably well done and very believable.  In a game that relies only on narrative, Doki Doki stands head an shoulders above most other video games out there and tells a story that could only be achieved through this form of media.

To round out the fantastic presentation is a catchy and lighthearted soundtrack that fits the game wonderfully.  It's overly cute to match the attitude of the game at the beginning and is... different when it needs to be.

Plus!:

The console releases of the game have some additional content like promotional art that you can unlock, a sound test of the game's soundtrack, and more.  In addition to this, are 7 chapters that focus on the creation of the literature club and how all of the girls became friends and came to overcome their initial struggles with learning to accept each other.  It's a nice gesture, but I feel like these additional chapters don't really serve to make the experience better. Since they are not interactive, you're essentially just watching 4 girls bicker and try to act as pseudo therapists towards each other as they try to explain how everyone should try to be more accepting of personal differences.  It's a noble topic for sure, but it comes across as very preachy and honestly doesn't fit with the tone and concept of the core game.  It truly seems as if it's written by a different person and has a strong "fan-fiction" feel to it that is pretty off putting.  

Also, there are some essential "meta" elements to the PC version that really take advantage of combing through the game's files.  This isn't possible in the console versions, so they present the whole game in a sort of virtual machine setting with a fake desktop, fake email inbox, and file browser.  There's not really any way to get around this part of the game and I think the developers did a fine enough job translating the Doki Doki experience to consoles.  Sadly, it does ruin a little bit of the magic of playing the game the first time compared to playing it on PC.

Conclusion:

Doki Doki Literature Club is one of the most memorable games I've ever played. The world, characters, and experience that Team Salvato created are fantastic and I will never forget my first time playing this game.  While the PC version is the best version of the game to play, you shouldn't pass it up if you only have access to the console versions.  You can play through the whole game in a single session or two, so it's jam packed all the way through and there feels like very little wasted time when you play (excluding the 7 bonus chapters).  If you can handle being shocked and weirded out, and don't have an aversion to reading, you should play this game right away.  Don't just watch a streamer play it or watch a reaction video.  You need to try it out for yourself.

Pros:

• Very memorable story and general experience overall
• Likeable characters that are well designed
• Unlike any other game I've ever played
• Free on PC!
• Base game is a perfect length and doesn't waste your time

Cons:

• The Plus! content doesn't fit well with the rest of the game and feels disjointed
• Playing through the game multiple times loses a lot of the impact of your first experience with it
• The "virtual machine workaround" on the console versions loses a lot of the magic of actually playing on a PC

Final Status: Completed

Final Score: 9/10 (10/10 on PC)