Lost Ark Quick Thoughts

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February was a damn good month for games. And only games it seems.

Lost Ark came out, with a few years of content already onboard. And there is a lot of content. Almost too much.

I find these types of localized releases quite interesting, because the western sensibilities to F2P are much different than the east. Allods Online is still burned into my brain as to how to lose an entire playerbase with a single swoop (they put in a resurrection sickness that could only be cured with a cash stop item).

From what I can tell so far, Lost Ark doesn’t have a huge burden with their cash stop. The typical acceleration items are there, potions and random boxes and whatnot. The actual gameplay doesn’t seem to suffer from it though… and PvP is normalized, so even if you did boost a character with money, it wouldn’t go very far.

I should note that as with any F2P game with a cash stop, there is a plague of bots. They only seem to be in the city, and they zip through walls. Guess they are running an easy quest to make currency to sell. Literally dozens of them, one on top of the other.

But enough about that. There are plenty of other reviews, videos, and blog posts that praise the game. I am certainly impressed. What I want to point out is one simple matter.

This is what Diablo 4 should have been.

It’s really that simple. The combat itself is tight, there are plenty of skill options, there’s min/maxing, a long tail that is more than about gear score, group content that is more than just DPS. The whole demon/angel bit. This isn’t so much a dig at Blizzard – I certainly could – but more a reflection of how there isn’t a revolutionary bit to Lost Ark. They took the best parts of ARPG games, figured out how to include actual group mechanics, and plopped a rather effective cash stop on the side. Hell, this might be the first game Amazon Studios (as publisher) actually gets right.

I’ll be giving the game a bit more time over the next month, see what comes out of it. So far, it scratches all the right places.

A ridiculous Yoda attempt. Like John Carpenter good/bad.

China and Russia

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I am not a foreign policy hawk, but I enjoy reading up on the subject. The world as we know it has 3 primary super powers – the US, China and Russia. They are, in extremely simplistic terms, focused specific areas of market. Russia in raw goods (primarily energy), China in manufactured goods, and the US in services. There are other countries in the mix, but none of them are large enough to direct their market share like these three.

Politically, these 3 countries have a lot in common, in that the politicians are run by business interests. The slight difference here is that the head of state is all but permanent in Russia and China. Both are also ex-communist countries that still have that generational echo where the country is larger than the people within. This is a complete contrast to the US, where the individual takes precedence over everything (lawsuits don’t really exist in Russia/China, at least as we recognize them).

In terms of military strength, all of them are capable of mutually assured destruction, which is the only bar worth measuring. Digital war strength, well, the advantage is clearly with both Russia and China, primarily because they also control the methods by which information is shared within their countries. China is particularly resilient because of the Great Firewall. Russia has little defence, but a tremendously effective offence.

Foundations set, all 3 countries have a desire to increase their influence/control, as this increases the amount of money they can make. Recall the markets they control, and you get a better idea as to the type of control they desire. For a long time the US wanted more oil security, Russia wanted it’s raw resources back, and China needs more secure borders and material to make goods.

The US empire has been on a steep decline for a good decade now (this is a fascinating subject), their ability to expand is in the traditional sense is all but gone. Russia and China however are both relatively new to the scene and have been taking advantage of this retreat. Both have blustery leaders who will gladly throw a threat around with no intent to follow through. Which is also the case for retaliation, where there’s only so much bluff calling possible when you’re on multiple war fronts. The war in the middle east never truly pivoted, with that focus taking away any global ability to counteract other offensive acts. As any opportunist would, others took advantage. There really hasn’t been any noticeable resistance against either Russia or China.

The war in Ukraine (that’s what it is) is different for many reasons. Importantly, Russia dramatically underestimated its capacity to overtake the country and resistance capabilities. These are not protesters or poorly armed rebels. This is two countries at war. The quick attack and follow up propaganda just didn’t work, and that means that attacks will get more desperate as time draws on. Second, Russia underestimated the western resolve to impose sanctions. Russia makes nearly all of its income from raw material, which has been all but shut off. Now it’s a game of chicken of how high gas prices will get before the west caves, or Russia runs out of options. A desperate country with a deranged leader and nuclear capacity is not a good mix. Without firing a shot, the west has crippled Russia, and it’s a matter of time before their reserves run out.

Which in turn makes for an interesting view in China. Their method of power play was to put countries against each other. With a unified front, they are certainly doing the math as to how the country could potentially resist any similar sanctions. They could certainly survive, with an absolutely massive cash reserve, but it would be a constant drain on their reserves and push a lot of the millionaires/billionaires to lose money – those who are keeping the government in power. There’s a threshold here, where only a certain small % of the folks can be targeted (Jack Ma was untouchable until he wasn’t).

This is just a simplistic view of a hyper complex and interconnected puzzle. It’s not possible to isolate any one part and not impact another… that’s what globalization has done. No country can be self-sufficient in this age, to the point where their lifestyles can be maintained. Higher gas prices is one thing. Empty Walmart shelves… that may be a bridge too far.

The next few weeks are going to be very interesting on the global stage. With hope, this can de-escalate and find a long term solution without the continued loss of innocent life. But it’s a turning point all the same for how this tiny blue dot moves forward.

Switch and Steam Deck

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I was browsing the Nintendo e-store and found the primary reason why the Switch has a interesting battle ahead. This is a narrow sample of prices on the Switch and then on Steam

  • FF7 $22/$17
  • FF9 $28/$24
  • FF10/2 $60/$33
  • FF12 $60/$66
  • Hades $32/$29
  • XCOM 2 $60/$15
  • Cuphead $26/$22
  • Death’s Door $26/$22

Somehow, Breath of the Wild is still selling for the same price as launch, as well as nearly every other first party game. The perks of exclusivity I suppose. Not to mention Steam can manage to have a sale seemingly every other day.

All consoles are built on a software library. The size and quality of that library is the largest factor of that success. Not only does Steam already dwarf every other console, but it offers lower prices in almost every single case, often by huge amounts. I’m waiting for the next hardware version to come out, and most certainly giving it a go.

That said, nearly every time we thought Nintendo was out for the count, they’ve somehow managed to come back up.

Cost of Living Math

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Gas prices are reaching records, and I wanted to do a rather simple math exercise to see what that meant. I’m not going to go into why prices are as they are, that’s quite complex and perhaps another post.

  • In my city, gas is $1.85/L. In BC, there are spots at $2.20.
  • The average car has a 65L fuel tank, average truck is about 120L.
  • To fill a tank in my city costs between $120 to $220. In BC, that’s $145 to $265.

Next up, minimum wage.

  • In my city, minimum wage is $15, in BC it’s $15.20.
  • A 7.5hr day that’s net $112-$114. Gross depends on taxes and a few other deductions. Let’s be super generous and say it’s 10% tax, so ~$100 in the pocket per day.
  • A tank of gas costs between 1.2 and 2.6 days of work, at minimum wage.
  • Find a better job is often the reply. A daycare worker makes $16/hr, the people effectively responsible and raising children. Auto mechanics are at $27/hr. Nurses are between $33-47/hr. Teachers are about $45/hr.

Depending on the work you do, transportation options are quite limited. So what’s an acceptable amount of time spent to fill a gas tank, at minimum wage?

  • Half a day? You’d need to make ~$35/hr for a car, $70/hr for a truck.
  • A few hours? We’re in the $90-$180/hr range due to tax brackets.

The median family income in Canada was $62,000. For non-seniors, it was $93,800. Assuming 5 days a week, 50 weeks of the year that comes to: $248/d and $375.2/d. That’s a massive amount of income heading towards fuel.

Fuel Economy

So let’s look at the ratings for a bit. Their discrete values are always optimistic, to the point of frankly absurd, but their relative values have meaning. Let’s use 20,000km per year as the baseline, with 55% city driving, and fuel at 1.85 for regular.

  • Let’s say a 2021 Dodge Ram Classic. 11.9L/100km. That’s about $4,400 in gas per year.
  • Conventional SUV, like a Ford Escape, is 7.7L/100km, or $2,849 per year. Nearly half of a pickup.
  • A mid-size conventional sedan, like a Honda Civic is 7.1L/100km, or $2,627 in gas per year. Nearly half the cost.

Hybrid vehicles next:

  • A pickup, there are less options, like an EcoDiesel or a F-150 hybrid. Both run around 9.1L/100km, or $3,640 per year. About 30% cheaper than conventional.
  • An SUV, like a Highlander is 6.7L/100km, or $2,479 per year. Not any real difference with a conventional.
  • A mid-size, like a Toyota Camry is about 4.9L/100k, or $1,813 per year. This one is practically half of a conventional.

Electric vehicles now.

  • There are no electric trucks yet.
  • SUVs are extremely limited.
  • Mid-size cars have more options, though dominated by Tesla. The average annual cost is around $600 per year – or the price of 3 full tanks of gas for a pickup.\

Again, these are very optimistic numbers. I’ve used a Dodge Ram. I can assure you, it has never hit 11.9L/100km… maybe 14L/100km on pure highway, with 17 as mixed use. That $4,400 turns into $6,285 pretty quick.

I get that hybrid and electric vehicles can cost more, and that plug-in stations in Canada are really only options in urban settings. But I’m also aware that a pickup truck runs $60k, and cities are full of them that have never had a piece of lumber in the box. There are obvious choices and hard choices everywhere.

Personally, our 2013 Subaru Outback (tows + AWD) is at best 9.9L/100km and $3,600 a year. It’s due for replacement. Wife and I had a chat in the summer and hybrid was the only viable way forward… likely a Toyota Highlander at 6.7L/100km and $2,480 per year (32% cheaper). Recent prices have cemented that idea.

Certainly this is an opportunity to reflect on our energy dependencies and long term options. Perhaps this is the kick in the knees where our habits move towards renewables, and give us an actual change against global warming. It’s certainly an incentive for those who are able to work from home to NOT commute. And there’s going to be a price point where it simply does not make sense to drive at all.

Mining Nostalgia – Square Enix

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This is a weird topic, brought to you mostly by Square Enix themselves.

Without opening the history books too far back, quite a few gamers cut their teeth on Square Enix games, especially the RPGs (Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, notably). There’s a nostalgia factor here, where we are on iterations that have gone on for 30 years. Here in the West, we haven’t been fully exposed to that library – which has a substantial set of franchises.

Now here’s where things get a bit odd. Square Enix appears to have 3 main arms. First is FF14, which is without question their cash cow. Second is their modern IP development stream – which includes Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, and new IP such as Outriders. Finally, there’s the nostalgia miners, the remakes of older games sold on other platforms. The FF pixel remasters are a great example of supremely low effort development, with high margins on sales. There really aren’t any other dev/publishing arms that are able to get all 3 streams working… perhaps Nintendo if they could figure out how emulation worked properly.

Compounding this is the Square Enix board’s bar for success. The Tomb Raider remake sold 3.4m copies in a month and was “below expectations“. FF15 had DLC cancelled. Outriders sold gangbusters and didn’t turn enough of a profit to pay the developers. Marvel Avengers was an attempt at games as a service without understanding how that model actually works. Babylon’s Fall, which met with amazingly low review scores, saved a few bucks in development by simply taking them from FF14.

I have no doubt that game development is expensive, especially when you add in the AAA flavors. It takes a crazy amount of sales to recoup the costs of a big dev team. Somehow we can get Horizon Forbidden West, without any microtransactions to turn a profit, or at least be worth the investment. There’s some sort of challenge here in managing expectations – and Square Enix appears to be extremely optimistic in their projections.

A known IP has a chance of breaching the million copies sold threshold, not a guarantee. It has to be both working and good. (Cue the death of the SimCity). There’s a balance to be had here, where timing and luck have some factor. Titanfall 2 is arguably the best FPS in years, but it launched in the wrong window. BF2042 had a ton of pre-orders, launched broken, suffered refunds, and is all but gone now.

A new IP has a tremendous mountain to climb to get any attention, let alone sales. Hades, a game of the year winner, barely broke a million sold. Dead Cells hit 5m. There are literally thousands of games released every month, how does one stand out from the rest? Babylon’s Fall had rather poor PR before launch, plays like crap, and is nowhere to be found now. It’s a heroic effort to launch a game, let alone a good one.

Cash cow is too disparaging for FF14, more like it’s the sustainable mine. There’s little argument that the game delivers the best MMO experience in it’s genre. There’s also little argument that the cash stop has some of the craziest price points possible. Enough conspiracies that new items go up when another game fails to meet its objectives.

The nostalgia mining is also quite evident. Chrono Trigger was/is available on nearly every device imaginable. FF games have been sold, remastered, remade, and resold for over a decade – often at $30 or more. This is easy money, for the most part. They can’t yet figure out how to get fonts to work properly in any of these games, but the function mechanically and scratch that itch. I’ve had various remakes of the games over time, mostly on my (still functioning!!!) Nintendo DS. Very high odds I’ll pick up Chrono Cross too.

All of this makes Square Enix a very strange company to predict. For every Outriders, we see a dozen Babylon Falls. Somehow 3m games sold is a disappointment. Or that Marvel Avengers is deemed worth saving (perhaps this is due to the IP contract with Disney). I do hope that they learn from the past games so that we don’t end up with the EA approach of completely unrealistic goals that close studios. Not everything can be Game of the Year quality, and experimentation is good. Perhaps this is the best way to fund that innovation.

Crypto is a Scam – Full Stop

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Post is mostly a result of the recent Gabe Newell interview where he talked about a bunch of things – Steam Deck which appears to actually be the real deal, and how Steam’s toe into the crypto market had a 50% rate of scammers.

First, I want to differentiate the concept of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Blockchain is a different approach to chain of custody, where information is decentralized. Like if you bought a car, the government would have the record of that purchase. In a blockchain, that transaction would be a in a publicly accessible ledger that is shared, and through *internet magics*, difficult to tamper. Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is dependent on blockchain to determine who has ownership of said currency. It has nothing to do with the inherent value of the currency, which is part of the problem.

Second, this adage is core to the concept. An item only has value (in the monetary sense) to the buyer. A pair of Air Jordans cost a couple dollars to make, but are worth hundreds because buyers believe they are worth that amount.

Boiler Room does a really great job on explaining the pump and dump schemes of the stock market, arguably a better lens than Wolf of Wall Street (which is more a biopic on the effects of greed). The idea here is a simple one:

  • Find something with no inherent value (like a rock)
  • Collect many of these things, which has limited if no cost
  • Apply lipstick to say thing (let’s call it a pet)
  • Convince one person that this thing has value <– the first person is the hard part
  • Convince another person that this thing has more value because someone else thought it had value <– this is peer pressure/herd mentality
  • Continue selling this item until either
    • there is no more inventory to sell OR
    • people catch on

The interesting portion on crypto is that inventory is limited and that creation of said inventory is decentralized. It’s called mining, as it’s conceptually the same as normal mining – companies invest to collect resources, and efforts to collect more are exponentially more expensive. Crypto is created through solving complex mathematical problems, typically with video cards as they have the best processing power.

Bitcoin, one of the most recognizable names, has been mined 18.4 million times in 10 years. There are 2.6 million bitcoins left to mine, and that will take ~120 years to complete, in line with the exponential difficulty. So what to do? Well, you create a new crypto currency and mine the crap out of that, hoping that you can make a profit. Nearly every single cryptocurrency out there is predicated on a limited source controlled by a small group, them hyping it so that others believe there is value and buying said crypto, the seller skipping town, and the buyers eventually realizing it was all hype while the value crashes.

Did I mention that the wide majority of crypto currency cannot be exchanged against anything but other currency yet? You can’t buy an orange with it. If you had 1 Ethereum, you would have to convert it to local currency, and then use that to purchase something. This means that you need brokers to convert the currencies, which are using both blockchain (for the crypto) and standard ledgers to track the purchases. Again, in the wide majority of cases, these brokers actually don’t maintain standard ledgers, which make them a great haven for criminals looking to launder. This is why many brokers operate in tax havens, or areas where there are no extradition treaties.

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) are not crypto, but they do operate using blockchain. What is completely hilarious here is that you don’t actually own anything but the token. It’s like you owning the key to a mansion, but not the actual mansion. Public NFT (like say a unique GIF) are hosted in the public domain, with a key that is simply a URL. There is absolutely nothing preventing anyone from simply going to that URL and downloading the item. Private NFT (like say a unique skin in a game) are hosted on private domains, where the token is a unique entry that grants you access to the item. Of course, that item has absolutely no use outside of that private domain, and only exists for as long as that domain does. So it only has value for people in that ecosystem. Similar to crypto, there is a broker in this mix who takes a cut from the transactions. Can NFT make sense for a game like Battlefield? Is there more money to be made from reselling a single skin to single individuals, or the microtransactions of selling the same skin to thousands of people?

And I haven’t even gotten into the ecological costs of crypto and blockchain. It takes a ton of electricity to run the compute necessary for these items. Farms need to be strategically located next to easily accessible, and extremely cheap power sources.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that China banned all crypto mining and currencies last fall. The absolute dominance of the criminal market was a major driver, but the larger matter of the government wanting to clamp down on all currency exchanges was the fundamental bit.

This isn’t the creation of wealth, it’s the redistribution of wealth. People are investing in this with the hope that there’s an even larger sucker on the other end willing to pay more. And there always is.

Now for the real kicker. While there is a traditional war underway in Ukraine, there is an even larger financial war underway with Russia. Traditional banking is being blocked, which is causing runs on the ruble. People are withdrawing their money to another currency, with the hope that it maintains value. Crypto is an unregulated market with no central ability to manage. It is impossible for crypto to be sanctioned at the global level. It will be interesting to see how long that fact remains true.

General Fatigue

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I haven’t had a real night’s rest in weeks now, which is pretty frigin’ rich coming from someone who has pretty much everything going for them. That’s ironically part of the issue. I take some solace in there being some purpose, or logic in *waves hands* but these past few years have really pushed that to breaking point. The 2020 Australia bush fires until this point have been seemingly a barrage of events to test our joint sanity and cohesion.

I’ve tried to be optimistic, that my kids have some sort of more positive future than I was presented. I dunno anymore. Our leaders seem to only care about themselves and enrichment, and the dregs of humanity hunker in the echo chambers of social media. We’ve inflicted all this upon ourselves, put away our morals for the rush of the meaningless crowd and on-upping the Joneses.

It’s more disappointing than anything else. We’re supposed to be better than this.

February 24, 2022

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I use this blog as a outlet to the various ideas percolating in my mind. It allows me to refine them to some degree, which allows me to digest and store them more fully. The wide majority of the posts are gaming related, with theory and armchair designing. Some are based on current events… which let’s be honest, have sucked something fierce for a few years.

Trucker Occupation

We had a national state of emergency declared to clear out the occupiers in the nation’s capital, which was done over the last weekend. First time ever, and borderline sledgehammer for a mosquito. Astounding. Then it was rescinded this week. The end result is a full inquiry within 60 days, which is likely going to air a ridiculous amount of dirty laundry.

Those that participated are experiencing some very interesting consequences. Trucking organizations have had suspensions and seizures at the provincial level. In Canada, the wide majority of pandemic protocols are at the provincial level, not federal. Like wearing a mask is a provincial requirement. Federal mandates deal with international borders (the US requires mandates for truckers, so even if Canada removed it, they wouldn’t be able to cross) and airports (which are changing March 1).

It doesn’t help the cause that the “leadership” of this movement is either uninformed, or misinformed about how this country works. The whole bail review for Tamara Lich is a very sad representation of the matter. Telling a Canadian judge about your first amendment rights isn’t going to work. When you can’t articulate a position, or defend it with structure, it’s really hard to find progress. It turns into “old man yelling at clouds”.

There are going to be some long-term consequences of this event, namely in terms of domestic security, foreign interference, and new legislation. As per above inquiry, if its determined that there were sufficient laws and that they were not applied… that is not going to be a fun conversation. And then the non-stop political mud slinging that doesn’t even try to find common ground. It’s just all bad, and I don’t see anyone trying to actually mend fences.

Tangent – I had an interesting conversation the other day with someone who had very strong opinions on the topic. I tried to find some examples, or research that could help me understand that position. All I got was “it’s obvious”. Hard to find any common ground in that space.

Ukraine

Like what the actual heck is going on?! I am astounded the events have reached this point, like a super high stakes poker game where the people are the chips and the people calling will never be impacted. Either the western world decides to apply meaningful consequences, or this simply emboldens anyone to declare any country “rebel” and then invade.

I am hopeful for some sense of de-escalation and consequence, but more than mindful that this won’t happen in a couple hours. And overly cautious that this doesn’t escalate into a worldwide event that we haven’t seen in nearly 80 years.

I am having a very hard time digesting what’s going on here.

Elden Ring

In the continuing “numb to all reason” space, Elden Ring has had multiple early reviews come out and it appears like it will be the highest rated game since Breath of the Wild – and likely the highest rated multi-platform game of all time (GTA5/ME2 I think are the others).

Odd note, GMG has a 28% discount on Elden Ring. I’m sure plenty of folks will buy directly from Steam, but it’s a fair amount of savings.

In an age where it seems good AAA games are all but dead, it’s been an glorious surprise to see this hit market. Maybe, just maybe, developer leaders will pay attention to what actually works and find a way to restructure their plans. I think that’s asking a bit much, as the number crunchers seems to be running the shops, but one can hope all the same!

Today is a weird day. It feels like the world that I know is coming apart at the seams and whatever happens next is just some random D20 roll. It’s the first time in quite a while where I have not been optimistic about the future. In times like these, I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s words, and hope that we can find a way forward together.

Metroid Dread Redux

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I figured I’d give it another go, after having done a few more metroidvanias on Switch. While some opinions are similar, others certainly have become stronger.

Perhaps it’s best to recognized what Metroid Dread is not, and that’s a game developed by fans of the genre. Where other games take a scalpel to the genre, and focus on refinement of systems, Dread is instead a game that leans heavily on its predecessors and its lore. Morph ball, bombs, missiles, varia suit and nearly every other gizmo you collect comes from a prior game – it’s focused on nostalgia as the selling point. It’s also quite short as compared to pretty much everything else in the genre, but again, this is par for the course for Metroid.

The high point is the Nintendo polish. The game plays smoothly, and the visuals are crisp. Movement is still the chief highlight of Metroid. I have a fundamental dislike to any dbl jump that is input limited (i.e. it won’t work if you press too fast/too late), but that quirk aside the game feels fluid. There’s enemy variety and the enemies who may have posed a challenge at the start are like tissues in the wind by the end. The “core” bosses are good challenges as well, with the need to react defensively to attacks. It feels like you either ace or fail a boss, which is new for this series. Rarely do you need to focus on more than 1 attack at a time, which is simplistic when compared to the rest of the genre. Excluding the low points mentioned below, the game feels good.

The mid-point is the secret / unlock portions. The more equipment you have, the more access to upgrades you have throughout the zones. Maybe you need a morph ball to get into a nook, or a spin jump to reach the height. Shinespark puzzles (think a chargeable dash) are interesting, but the controls are quite finicky. It adds some optional length to the game. You don’t need any of it, as there are no “challenges” to be found, but it’s good padding.

The hardest of all Shinespark puzzles. This one took me nearly 30m to get the timing right.

The “miss” here is the lack of variety in content. There’s a single story, with lore that only makes sense at the final boss. There is only 1 ending. There’s no secret areas or quests along the way. To boil it to a theme; Dread lacks any concept of choice, which is fundamental to the genre today.

The low point continues to be the EMMI sections. They are RNG loaded in the enemy pathing, and often 1 hit kills. Even as you get stronger, it has zero impact on these sections, which remain insanely frustrating. The “puzzles” to defeat each are gated behind multiple gates between zones, and then finding enough runway to pepper them with special bullets. The good news here is that these zones are limited in size and when the EMMI dies, become “normal”. The greatest joy in this game is traversing an EMMI free zone, as they are often large and sprawling.

Which gets me to my largest of all gripes, and that’s zone design. A metroidvania operates on a trunk/root system, where there is a main channel with multiple offshoots. You will hit gates that you simply cannot bypass due to lack of equipment/skills, and there are going to be shortcuts that link up zones as you go through. What they all focus on is exploration.

Dread is linear through teleportation. You’ll be in a zone, need to reach the other side, but have to leave that zone, transverse another, and then come back to the original one. There are multiple “zoning” areas, which give you a good 10 second loading screen. I am still amazed to be writing that sentence in 2022. For a game that highlights speed of traversal, you’re put into these areas of nothing happening. It’s bonkers.

The 2nd playthrough of Dread made me appreciate the foundations of the game more, but the execution on the ideas even less. It brings few ideas to the table, and EMMIs in particular can be put back in a corner. You can get Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Dead Cells, Guacamelee 2, and Bloodstained combined for the price of Dread. All of which are better games.

Hollow Knight

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I had picked this up on PC on a sale a while ago, put in a few hours and something or other came up to distract me. The recent play through Blasphemous reminded me of that fact, and I decided to pick it up on Switch.

First, let me just say that the Switch itself is a near perfect platform for this genre of game. It’s quite ridiculous how the form factor lends itself to pick up and play, controller-based inputs. If the Steam Deck ever launched (or copied) and delivers anything close to this experience… there wouldn’t be much reason to use a Switch again. My Steam library (or PC library in general) has way more on it that is reasonable. I’m not seeing this as the whole Wii/Kinect/Move junk we saw before, this can actually work! And with Nintendo having netcode designed by a monkey intern, there’s another reason to move on. Price is likely the sticking point…

Back on track. Hollow Knight. A metroidvania game developed by a small studio, sound familiar?

The cell-shaded art is a standout, with extremely smooth and fluid movement throughout the adventure. It’s oddly important how much art cohesion is important in a game, more so that you can identify the protagonist, enemies, an environment with minimal eye effort. These games often rely on reactive movement in the exploration portions, or tells and memorization when it comes to bosses. The less work your brain needs to do on identifying queues, the better your reaction time.

The story is explored as you go through the game, with a purposeful lack of context in the initial set up. With multiple endings available, it’s entirely possible to miss the larger picture at hand. This is all standard for the genre (and something entirely lacking in Metroid Dread). Given the scope of this game (over 30hrs on the playthrough), there’s an interesting amount of lore here to discover.

The mechanics follow the genre as well, with nearly all gates blocked behind movement abilities that must be unlocked. Dash, wall jumps, double jump, and a move that simply launches you sideways. Movement skills/platforming elements are generally restricted to finding extra health or magic points, with the exception of the final optional dungeon. That’s a good thing, because it’s the only weak part of the game, with hit boxes and controls feeling a bit “loose”. I’ve been spoiled with Celeste I suppose.

You can access to a set of charms/spells throughout, which change the way you can approach combat. Maybe you want better spells, more healing, more health, or minions to help with damage. You’re limited in the total amount you can equip, which effectively gives you purpose-builds. I had one for exploration that increased the amount of money I made, while my final boss build was focused entirely on maximizing hit points. One particular spell upgrade boosts your dash so that you are immune for it’s duration… which still seems odd that it isn’t a default setting. You can’t clear the ultimate boss without it.

Exploration is interesting. Rather than having your map auto-update as you move along, it instead will only update if you have a base map (purchased) and then sit at a save point. You’re effectively a cartographer, which gives an interesting sense of adventure. It bears note that the map here is absolutely massive, with zero load times (again, Dread doesn’t do this). The path to the area boss is marked on the purchased map, but each zone has a ton of hidden content/shortcuts/connections to other maps to discover. You’re going to do a lot of backtracking across with new movement skills to move forward. It’s an interesting approach that isn’t for everyone.

Combat is the meat here, and combat is quite challenging. No question, the game is hard. You’ll die often enough while exploring, with the majority of the walls coming from bosses. Only 1 has any true form of randomness, the rest are all about memorizing patterns and taking advantage. I’d die 5-10 times per boss, figuring out the dance steps. The Grimm Troupe final boss was without question the hardest, much harder than the optional last boss (who is also incredibly hard). There’s a coliseum event, where you fight 16 waves of enemies, and it acts as a great training ground on how optimal combat can work. Video below is an optimal strategy for an optional boss.

The thing about this genre is that it needs to hit all the topics above, and find a way to integrate them. Clear art, great movement, twisted exploration, character development, multiple endings, and tight combat. That’s not a small order, but somehow it’s the small developers that are able to deliver. I keep picking on Metroid Dread, but it’s an outlier on a genre that has surpassed it.

Hollow Knight and Bloodstained are the high watermarks in the genre. Absolutely should be in a gamer’s library.