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.
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 Then it was rescinded this week.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.
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.
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.
My city is in week 3 of an occupation. I’d use that wording if it applied to any other long-term protest. Protests have end dates. Occupations do not. There have been many occupations in recent years, most of them making the “news” are first BIPOC related. Many, many more protests, but certainly a lot of occupations as well. Absolutely support anyone’s ability to protests a cause. Doesn’t mean I agree with the position or that people have to listen, but they still have that right. They need that right.
It’s interesting to see how the political spectrum applies to this. If you agree with them, then it’s all good. If you don’t, then you want the police to come in and arrest everyone. If it was BIPOC related, then the right was vehemently against it. The recent ones are vaccine related, and the left is against.
There are plenty of laws in Canada that prevent these sorts of events, though laws are applied with context. In some parts of the country, the laws were applied verbatim and all that resulted was protests (Quebec and the National Assembly are big example). In other parts, there were clear occupations that took place. Coutts, AB is one, the Ambassador Bridge another, Pacific Highway are three examples where occupations were present and after a few weeks, the laws were applied and arrests took place.
Ottawa’s was the first, and located in a quad precinct. The city police, provincial police, national police, and finally the parliamentary police all have some skin in the game. Coordinating all of that, and not inflaming a clearly agitated group is a real nightmare. The location itself is primarily residential, government, and office buildings. These are not groups that get national empathy, nor do they impact the economy at the same scale as say, the auto industry near the Ambassador Bridge. The motivation to clear this is borderline political (though admittedly, surveys indicate national support of the protests is quite small.)
Which makes it all the more entertaining when you realize the downstream impacts. The larger political parties are drawing their borders on the issue. The leading Liberals just enacted the Emergency Measures act to put a line in the sand and apply financial restrictions. (It is easy to speculate what this will do crowdfunding platforms and banks in the future, as the infrastructure and process will be there to audit GoFundMe et al.) The only declared candidate for the opposing Conservatives is still supporting the protestors, which is effectively an albatross that will haunt that party for a long time. The provincial leaders aren’t doing much better, as they could have clearly addressed this weeks ago, and chose to either be completely silent, or borderline supportive.
And sure enough, this particular behavior has inspired others across the globe, though in nearly all cases they appear to be protests instead of occupations. Great! They can get a message across without destruction / anarchy and people can either get on board or not.
Today, Ottawa’s police chief resigned. It was clear that was the only available outcome to this event. There will be enough digging into what worked and didn’t work in the future, but the fact remains that after 3 weeks the occupation is still there. And that there’s hot tubs and a music stage built in recent days didn’t help any cause. It’s clear someone needed to pay the price for this event, and he was the prime target.
It will be interesting to see what happens next. And more so, what happens long term.
As predicted, Chrono Cross is getting a remaster. Also that it’s PC & Switch. April 7 no less.
The video is pretty quick to watch through. I was hoping for more from this. Sure the FMV were not going to get touched, and the core mechanics either. What appears to be done here is the application of a filtering layer on the main game content, and a HD textbox layout. Something that emulators have been doing for years now. And it would be hard to ignore the fact that SquareEnix has had a horrible time remastering anything without kitchen sink patches.
Features include:
・3D models converted to HD ・Refined character illustrations ・Higher-quality background music ・Switch enemy encounters on or off (which is odd, because this game didn’t have random battles) ・Background filter feature (not sure what this is) ・Battle enhancement features to make combat easier (I guess this will simplify field effects?) ・Auto-battle function (this will be interesting given the 40 characters) ・Switch between imitation pixel font and HD font ・Change screen resolution (this one is worrisome since it was built for 4:3)
Still, for $20 I can think of much worse places to spend money. I won’t pre-order and will probably wait a month or two so it gets patched properly, but it’ll be a nice summer pick up game.
I had another post up about a recent Kotaku article about D&D. It’s a really good example of platforming a very divisive topic that even those moderately supporting the concept will have trouble jumping on board with. It reminds me of an old SNL sketch.
I won’t comment much further on it, except to highlight that these types of topics that focus on gatekeeping are emblematic of the similarities between the far right and left, and why those in the middle lack a whole bunch of empathy for either.
Instead, I want to lightly touch on the fun divides that this pandemic has brought about. It’s really quite fascinating. Social media gives zero opportunity for any actual discourse or debate – everything is a sound clip or 140 characters. Long form constructs, such as blogs, are still pretty much 1 way conversations. A comment reply is rarely as long as the originating post. Video formats give you the non-verbal aspects, but actually finding them is like a needle in a galaxy hard.
What we get instead are opinions caked in more opinions. Relationships with seemingly reasonable people all of a sudden take a very quick turn into something else. Anti-vaccine is a deal breaker for me, full stop. Luckily we’ve only had 1 family in all our contacts that went over that deep end, enough to move to Mexico. It’s the more minute items. Any attempt to have a conversation about the topic was quickly directed to Facebook research and hidden agendas. Pretty hard to have a relationship there.
The trucker protest in Ottawa is making national news. What was originally a relatable event to protest the restrictions for cross-border truckers (which affects less than 10% of all of them, is required in the US as well, and has had no real impact on supply chains) devolved into a more anarchist bent. They wanted to reverse election results (sound familiar?) and replace the Governor General. Well, they got rid of one leader, just not the one they expected. But the message now has been warped to something else, and seen replication in other parts of the world. This is going to be an interesting social marker in our country for some time, where the fors and againsts have a wide gulf and no true path to reconcile.
What will be interesting is how this particular model is applied in future protests, by other organizations. There are numerous examples of first nation protests having nowhere near the impact of these protests and them being broken up quickly and railed against. This particular event is showing a new method of causing disruptions and what society seems to be willing to tolerate. And how conversations about new protests approaches develop. Is the method of protest debatable, or the actual topic itself?
It’s an interesting time, with some very complex answers. And it would appear that few want to find a way to mend bridges, simply build more chasms.
Back to politicking for a bit. There’s a simple matter that it take little effort to critique and a ton of effort to lead. Quick sound bites and headlines are the meat of an opposition, and the ‘easy’ method is simply to simply focus on the negative. The hard part is to actually propose an alternative, because if it was easy, it would have already been done.
I’ll pick on politics here because it’s the the most prominent example that most everyone can see. A person will have an idea, then people will think of every reason why it won’t work. These are often very, very minority views on a topic, which is the purpose of democracies after all, to give a voice to as many as possible. But there’s a difference between a voice and actual power. If 99 people agree, and 1 person dissents, then odds are that 1 person is just going to have to live with it.
There are a lot of things my wife and I don’t agree on. I don’t just pack up my bags, or stage a protest when that happens. I find a compromise, or in some cases one of us simply ‘wins’.
In Canada, the Conservatives (right-leaning) booted their ‘socially centrist’ leader and now need to find their 3rd leader in 2 years. The why of the boot is interesting, primarily due to him being elected as leader as a ‘socially right’ and then swapping platforms to an actually electableone. The challenge with the “right” is that they just can’t seem to get any messaging out that isn’t offensive to wide swaths of the population. If your platform is only targeting the older white CIS male, I got news for ya, that’s not a demographic that is growing.
Now we get to take the popcorn out and see who tried to take the reigns of a party that can’t figure out its own identity. Are they going to take someone with zero experience leading but oodles of biting sound clips (Pierre Poilievre)? Are they going to go with someone who’s only platform is pro-life (Leslyn Lewis)? Will they take a “red” center-leaning candidate (Peter McKay)? Will they even bother trying to please the fringe, or just focus on what’s in the majority’s interest? Or will they shift further to the right and give up the middle? Or maybe, in the weirdest of spots, simply split up to avoid distractions?
One things for sure, people will have plenty to complain about.
I took a run through this game on the Switch in the fall, posted my thoughts, and it’s been a bit like that hum of a song that gets stuck in your head. I took another stroll through recently. My first run was about 45hrs total, this recent one was just around 20hrs. The “boss walls” just weren’t there this time, with more than a few that I took out on the first attempt. And yet…
There have been 3 DLCs for the game, most recently in December. The first (Dawn of Sorrows) was what I like to consider the kitchen sink patch – lots of quality of life changes, new bosses, and NG+. The second (Strife and Ruin) was a tie in with Bloodstained for some challenging timed platforming runs and a boss rush mode. The final one (Wounds of Eventide) adds some new zones, equipment, skills, and a new ending to better set up the sequel. I didn’t have access to this last DLC when I had my first play.
WoE adds a new zone that is like that Mario Kart race where you’re going backwards on a highway. Everything until that point is pretty good, and then the rules change a bit and it’s super hard mode. I died more getting to the boss of this zone than I did at the boss. The DLC also brings two bosses, the one at the end of that hard zone (a giant snake, which is an awesome fight) and then one in a secret chamber in your main hub. I tried that boss at various points, and it required a specific set up of skills, including one that provided invulnerability for most of her 3rd phase. It felt amazing taking her down.
And the story extension is also worth noting. The penultimate boss gets her own story arc, which adds a needed extension to the lore to the game. It was somewhat cryptic as to what the “Miracle” actually was, and the curtains are revealed. Blasphemous is a weird game, in that the story itself is a significant draw, but is a right mess to understand the messaging throughout. It was super satisfying to come out the end.
Now the reason this game has stuck so much is because of another game – Metroid Dread -which I played just before the holidays (~8hrs for 100%). I think one of the interesting bits in a metroidvania is the choice to player engagement. Dread does nothing to change the combat mechanics from start to end. You get a gun, you get missiles, and you get a parry. What you get to change things up is movement skills – dash, run, spin (borderline fly). This makes traversing the game not only faster but safer – and honestly super smooth. There’s no story to the game aside from 3 key points (the start, 75% point, and final boss) which means exploration for exploration’s sake. There’s only 1 ending – which is crazy in the genre today. The challenge comes in two flavors – memorizing boss patterns (every boss can be cleared without taking a hit) and the EMMI robots. EMMI robots feel like an RNG element, and any RNG that 1-shots you is not fun. Once they are cleared, the game becomes so much more fun.
Dread being the grandchild of the genre really accentuates how much the cousins have taken over. Playing through it I couldn’t help but think “Blasphemous did this better” or “Bloodstained was more engaging”, or “insert other metroidvania”. I’m not saying Dread is bad, far from it, but it’s not great. The only risk it takes is to add an insta-kill mechanic. Look at what Ori gave us? Hollow Knight? Guacamelee? This cycles back to a previous post where indie/small developers are taking core concepts and making magic from them. For all the garbage we get in the AAA space, and we gamers love to complain, there is still a massive amount of awesome and fun out there to find.
I picked this up during the Switch holiday sale. It’s an odd game, with a mix of quite a few genres. Isometric combat, heavy use of dodge and small health pools (Dark Souls-ish), and a bit of the Zelda model of getting new toys to unlock new areas.
I think the Zelda comparison is better than Metroidvania, in that backtracking is entirely optional here, where in the other genre its required. There arereasons to backtrack, as collecting everything gets you the “true” ending, which can only be completed after you’ve done the main campaign. I think that’s a better model than forcing you to collect doodads and secrets before the last boss – again because this is more Zelda and Metroid.
The art style is solid, the controls are simple yet responsive, and the enemy variety is more than sufficient to require you to think on your toes. There are also plenty of environmental hazards, so that positioning is more important than pretty much anything else. It’s a game where you will die, a lot, and it never truly feels punishing. Which gets me to the level design point.
The game tends to focus on three level designs. The first (Cemetery) is a sprawling mess of being lost. There’s no map, no indicator of where to go and what to do, so you’re just going to explore until you figure it out. This is a problem after the first 2 bosses, as there’s no good indicator of what comes next. Less a fan of this.
The second is the loop forward. This is where there’s a single path that is barred at multiple stages, and you take “off ramps” of challenges to unlock the next gate. When you die (you will, many times), the path forward is shorter. This model is up there with Metroidvania, where new shortcuts are established as you go forward. This creates a high tempo gameplay, which is where the game really shines.
The third is the cloverleaf. This is where there’s a hub and you take leaf paths out, complete tasks that increase a counter in order to get to the next area. You’ll have to visit the leaves multiple times as each path unlocks more on another leaf. This is the Zelda model of dungeon design where it’s frankly more of a puzzle.
Bosses are an interesting bit. It’s pattern-based, and success is based more on flawless execution than much else. There are very few bosses, which is really quite fine by me. And each has a particular quirk that you need to discover to find success. The Frog King for example… if you don’t figure it out, then the floor will give way and the battle is over. Thankfully the pace of the battles is super quick, and you always feel like you’re progressing.
This is one of those more quirky games that doesn’t fit in a mold so well. That is was developed by a team of 2 people is simply bonkers. I’m certainly not done with studio games, but someone needs to take a serious look at how creativity works when we’re getting a dozen+ quality games a year from extremely small groups.
Leo's Life 