First Impressions: Arena of Valor (NS)

I feel like I have never been a big MOBA person.  I tried out League of Legends briefly and did not get into it.  I tried out Dota2 and played that for an hour or so, but it ultimately did not stick.  I also briefly dipped my toe into Dead Island: Epidemic before that game was taken offline, and while I did have some fun playing that for a couple of hours, in the end I decided that it was not my thing.  So going in to Arena of Valor (after spending a weekend with the beta) my hopes were not too high, but if it turned out the same as all of the others, I would have lost a bit of time, but no real money because AoV is one of the few free to play games currently available on the Nintendo Switch.  So I gave the full game a try, albeit without using any real money on purchasing anything, so still approaching it from a free-to-play perspective.

Why do we not jump to the tl;dr now.  Earlier in the week, I decided to delete Arena of Valor off our Switch.  Not because I was not having any fun, I was frequently having fun when I was winning as opposed to getting gang-shanked forcing me to, in a sense, stare at my lifeless corpse for X number of seconds on the battlefield while our team's towers fell around us.

For those of y'all who are not familiar with Arena of Valor, let me try and break it down quickly.  You pick a type of map (5 vs 5, 3 vs 3, or 1 on 1), you then choose a character who has a particular play style (tank, ranged, magic, etc), you then attempt to destroy your enemy's guard towers which eventually leads you to attacking and destroying their home base.  If you die, your have a respawn timer that, for lack of accuracy, starts at 15 seconds, and grows longer (in essence punishes you, forcing you to play better) each time you die; there was one game in particular where I was killed no fewer than eight times and my respawn timer was somewhere just over a minute.

One aspect that I was frequently impressed with, even while I frequently died myself, was that I found that I was matched with other players who were all or about the same level that I was.  I do not mean skill level, but in-game level based on experience gained while playing.  However, that in-game experience on my side did not directly translate to actual experience in being a better player as I did spend some time trying out other characters and not trying to specialize in the one.  Maybe that was a big part in why I would have bouts of losing?

On that note, I was not a particularly bad player.  I tended to stick using one of the free mage options, Kirxi, mainly because she was not a tank, I was not expected, or capable of leading charges or being in the front line, and acted more as attack and area of effect support.  If I was playing 1 on 1, I would usually choose someone who could take more damage without having to spend a cumulative 5 minutes in a 10 minute game waiting to respawn.  And while there are more than likely, spreadsheets and whatnot devoted to properly building Kirxi and all of the other free-to-play and earned heroes, I really only added skills and abilities that I thought sounded good based on how I was playing.

What ultimately made me decide to delete Arena of Valor off the Switch was looking at the backlog of physical and digital games I had actually paid money for and knowing that I really wanted to spend time with those games and not just the free game that I probably would have sunk more time into if I did not already have a queue.  And as is the case with MOBA's, or at least from my perspective, is that there is no end game, although I know that there is some bits of lore that I either missed or just went right over my head.  Having a random group of characters fighting against each other for no real discernible reason is going to make me lose interest.  Maybe if you were forced to join a faction and from that faction you had a cast of characters who had equivalents on the other team(s).  Like if Bethesda came out with an Elder Scrolls MOBA that had something to do with various people being pulled into the realm of one of the Daedric Princes (not Sheogorath though because that would be too easy of a choice) and forced to fight each other for their own amusement.  That might be something I could get behind.

But anyway, this is where Arena of Valor stands for me.  It was a fun game that contained very little substance that I did not feel compelled to sink any more time than I already had because I have plenty of other games that I am actually wanting to play.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
What Will It Take For Us To Realize?

MIDI Week Singles: "Castle BGM" - Super Mario World (SNES)

"Castle BGM" from Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)

Composer: Koji Kondo

Album: Super Mario World

Label: Warner-Pioneer

Developer: Nintendo EAD

Publisher: Nintendo

Deciding on this song to feature this week was almost a no brainer.  As mentioned last week, Beardsnbourbon and Co. spend the better part of a week with us here and we picked up nearly where we left off, playing Super Mario World with the goal of finally beating it.  We have beaten the game independently before, but not together, and for me it has been a looooooooong time since I've sent Bowser to his inky exploding grave full of broken Mechakoopas.  And actually the first time that I have beaten the game by not taking the Star Road.

When we picked up where we had left off, we were in the Forest of Illusion at Roy's Castle.  Which was odd because both of us could have sworn that we had already taken out Roy, but the Nintendo Classic thought otherwise, so into the castle we went again.

As is the case with a lot of the BGMs in Super Mario World, this is a just variation on the primary "Overworld BGM," but being in the depths of the castle means that the melody is played in a minor key and only a little unsettling.  There are plenty of other differences between "Castle BGM" and "Overworld BGM" besides the key, such as the tinkling sounds in the beginning and how the song is broken up, but it is all done in such a way that it is very easy to forget what it is that you are listening to.  Just more kudos heaped upon Koji Kondo then.

And Kudos to Beardsbourbon for dealing the killing blow to Bowser as Luigi!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Always Need More To Get By

a little about Wolverine

I finished Wolverine, the long night podcast, and I enjoyed it the whole way.  The series really had a lot going for it, but never felt too jumbled.  The leads are secret agents that have a sort of Mulder/Scully relationship with one being more analytical and one more passionate.  Their relationship plays out in the hunt for Wolverine, which goes parallel with the story of small town full of secrets, a wealthy family that owns half the town, and a mysterious death cult.  Each character has a story and all are given due attention.  In just 9 episodes, the show explores its themes and characters in depth, and ties up lose ends in a satisfactory manner.  

The story takes place between Logan's time in Weapon X and joining the X-men.  He's still very rough, conflicted and violent.  Most of what you hear of him comes from testimonials from people in the town.  Some hate Logan, some ally themselves with him, and everyone is at least a little bit afraid of him.  

Wolverine is by far the most popular X-man, it is not surprising Marvel's first ever narrative podcast featured him.  He appears in 9 different X-men movies, including 3 of his own.  All of that can lead to a bit of Wolverine burnout.  What starts to get to me is Wolverine's air of 'cool anti-hero.'  He drops, fully formed into the X-men movies as a super-cool badass fan favorite.  

But from a long view, Logan's story is compelling.  He's been through a lot of Trauma, and struggles with guilt, pain and rage.  Through the course of the countless stories about Wolverine, he develops and matures a great deal, to the point of actually being co-headmaster of the Xavier School for the gifted.  

A few years ago, I got it into my head that I wanted to check on all the various X-men animated series that have been produced since the mid 90s.  One of my favorite was called Wolverine and the X-men.  When I first watched it, I rolled my eyes a bit.  Of course they put Wolverine first, everyone loves Wolverine.  And while that may be true, the show did a great job with his character.  It takes place some time after the school has broken up, and Logan sets about trying to bring together the scattered former teammates and friends.  He's much more mature than the wisecracking rage-aholic of other series.  

Suffice it to say, I've been on a bit of an X-men kick.  Since discovering Wolverine: the long night, I've listened to an independently produced,  2 season podcast called X-men: The Audio Drama.  I'm not sure what I'll do next, but lately I've wondering if there any quality Novels set in the X-men universe.  

-D

MIDI Week Singles: "Still, the Road is Full of Dangers" - Super Mario RPG (SNES)

"Still, the Road is Full of Dangers" from Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1996)

Composer: Yoko Shimomura

Album: Super Mario RPG Original Sound Version

Label: NTT Publishing

Developer: Square

Publisher: Nintendo

I asked Beardsnbourbon earlier for a game without giving him any context and he told me Super Mario RPG, and I immediately knew which song I wanted to use for today's MIDI Week Single.  The two main reasons I used "Still, the Road is Full of Dangers" is because it is one of my favorite songs from the game, but also because Beardsnbourbon and Co. drove the stupidly long distance of 1250+ miles yesterday to get to us here in the PNW.  Hopefully though their road was not full of dangers, although it looked like they might have passed through upwards of 12 construction zones and possibly two cleared accidents.  But at least they arrived safely last night.

The great thing about this song, is that it contains a number of melodies from "The Road is Full of Dangers" heard earlier in the game, but is seems that once Mario ventures to the Mushroom Kingdom, all of the grandeur heard in "Hello, Happy Kingdom" gets transferred to this iteration of the song.  There are a few other road traveling songs in the game, depending on your location, but "Still. . ." is by far my favorite.

So happy safe travels to Beardsnbourbon both on their trip here and on their return voyage home next week.  I may have to come up with an appropriate returning home track. . .

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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Game EXP: Oxenfree (NS)

I actually finished Oxenfree on the Nintendo Switch a number of months back, but had this review article on the back burner for so long that I had nearly forgotten about it until recently.

Oxenfree is a pretty amazing game that is a combination of a point-and-click adventure game, meets The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series, meets another type of point and click adventure game (which TWD already essentially is) that I am unable to think of at the moment.  Maybe an interactive novel without the pages?  There is also plenty of intrigue, thrilliness, and some hints of something that Algernon Blackwood had written a modern story about teenagers in the Pacific Northwest .

But before I go into all of the things that I though amazing about this game, I want to talk about where I felt that the game fell short.

Setting up and context.  The game starts you off in a conversation between the main character Alex, and two of her friends, and even then, I was not always sure who was talking, how to respond and/or how to react.  There was no "Press B, X, or Y to respond" or any other tutorial for how the game was going to operate for the next couple of hours.  What it took me a lot of the game to figure out was the respective ages of the characters, which shouldn't be a big deal, but for me it felt like it was much needed information for playing Alex how I thought she would act based on her age.  With the static camera pulled as far back as it is, getting a decent view of the characters is pretty difficult too in order to determine age, but that seems mainly an artistic choice that I will get into later.  Another clue to determining their ages is from the voice actors, but even that is pretty ambiguous.  The characters do talk about school, and one of their reasons to go to Edward's Island is to drink, so I immediately thought they were college age, maybe freshman or sophomores.  I do not remember specifically what, when, or where it was that the final bit of information came into my brain-coffin, but it turns out the characters are all in high school.  I realize it is completely trivial, but to me, the whole time I was playing until about half way through, I felt like I was missing an integral part of the story and some context for deciding how Alex would react/respond to situations.

Definitely by the end of the game I felt like I knew the characters a lot better and I might have made decisions more from their perspective rather than that of someone playing a video game.  But that is one of the great things about Oxenfree, is that, it at least gives the impression that the choices you have made during the game matter.  I do wonder how the story would have unfolded if I had further explored an area before stuff went all buckwild.  What if I had talked to another character instead of the one that I did talk to and decided to take with me instead?  Obviously there are a finite endings to this game, but coming out of the game makes me feel like there are so many more than two.  Which leads us perfectly to all of the good things!

The storytelling in Oxenfree, the most amazing thing about this game was how the dialogue worked.  All of the dialogue in the game is spoken by voice actors, who all do an amazing job with their lines, and during conversations, you are frequently given the option of three responses, or the option of not responding at all, which is a perfectly valid respsonse.  What impressed me was that the person having a conversation with Alex would react to the response given by her in a way that made it feel that you were actually directing the flow of the conversation.  I quickly began wondering how the conversation would have been different had my response been different.  And there were plenty of times where I answered quickly cutting someone off, interjecting my words and immediately wondering what I missed.  And while it really was just one audio file stopping and another one starting, it somehow sounded like one person cutting another person off with the necessary inflection in their voice.  In reality, it is probably just my brain thinking that each line of dialogue was in response to the person who spoke before.

The story too is something that really gripped me, despite all of times that I was briefly confused as to the relations of characters and how well they knew each other.  Without giving too much away, there were times when events would happen that literally sent chills down my back, up my arms and along the sides of my face.  These were a combination of events having to deal with family and friends, as well as creepy-ass scenarios that really dealt more with game mechanics than the actual story.  But these mechanics (and you will know when they happen) never seemed to get in the way of the game telling the story, but only enhanced everything about it.  These creepy events only helped to illustrate what was happening on the island and what was at stake for the characters.  I cannot really go more into it without giving things away, that I was unaware of going into the game for the first time.

I realize I could probably go on for a lot longer (looking up at what I have already written), but I am going to close out on (briefly) talking about the other aspect of the game that really captured me.  The art and design of the game.  The picture to the left, to me at least, feels like one of those snow-scape early 20th century paintings that got turned into puzzles we had laying around when I was a kid.  Just how the proportions of the background are just off enough to make things easily visible and playable, but not quite from the correct perspective.  I do not know if this was done to make paths more visible or to try and create an uneasiness in the player, but either way I think it looks really beautiful.

I feel like I wanted to talk about the music, but sadly I cannot really remember it aside from that I know that there was music in the background (84.7% sure anyway) and that it did not get in the way.  Maybe I should track down the soundtrack and give it a listen on its own?

So, despite the one minorish flaw (through my own lack-luster brain) in the game, I love what Night School Studio did with Oxenfree and am eagerly awaiting their next project, Afterparty.  And, not that this is what they are doing, but I think a first person adventure game from them would be all kinds of fantastic.  Someone get them talking with Jessica Curry and The Chinese Room!!




~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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MIDI Week Singles: "Peaceful Village" - Crystalis (NES)

"Peaceful Village" from Crystalis on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1990), Game Boy Color (2000), & Switch (2018)

Composer: Yoko Osaka

Album: No Official Release

Developer: SNK

I will most likely write about Crystalis in a week or two, but for right now, I wanted to use this song, which is the first town music you hear after your purple haired character wakes up from a futuristic chamber and walks out of a cave into the Town of Leaf.  So early in the game, you do not spend a whole lot of time in the Town of Leaf, or at least I did not as I was out in the field killing monsters in order to gain XP and gold to level up and buy better equipment.  "Peaceful Village" however, is very stereotypical RPG town music in that I do in fact find it peaceful.  It is also the first village that you come across and so then it is in essence, home.  And this is some good "home" music at that.

The other main reason I am sharing music from this 28 year old action RPG is because it was recently released on the Nintendo Switch as part of "SNK 40th Anniversary" collection of console and arcade games.  If you were not able to play the original NES game, you might have played the faulty Game Boy Color game, but I would highly recommend the Switch port.  And for reasons that will become clearer in a few weeks, "Peaceful Village" as a song is indeed just like coming home.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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First Impressions: Wolverine, the Long Night (Podcast Review)

Wolverine, the Long Night is the first scripted podcast by Marvel. There are 9 episodes, it's done in interview format, two special agents investigating a string of murders in a small Alaskan town. So far, Wolverine has been a lurking figure in the background and has had no speaking lines. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the mystique of Wolverine. He's shown up in one story, wherein he saves a man's life by cutting off his arm. I think that's such a beautiful summary of who the mountain man, dirty Wolverine is. He'll save your life, but he might have to cut off your arm in the process.

I'm hooked, but I should probably listen to the three audiobooks I currently have out from the Library first.

-D

https://www.wolverinepodcast.com/

MIDI Week Singles: "Our New World" - Sid Meyer's Civilization: Beyond Earth (PC)

"Our New World" from Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth on the PC (2014)

Composer: Geoff Knorr

Album: Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - Original Soundtrack from the Video Game

Label: 2K

Developer: Firaxis Games

I really was not quite sure what I was expecting when I first put on this soundtrack.  Having only booted up Civ. V a couple of years back, being the only game in the Civilization series that I have had experience with, I think I was half-expecting this music to be your standard ambient science fiction fare.  You know, music that would play in the background while you build your colony outpost on some backwater planet, strategizing (sp?) your civilization to greatness.  What I was not expecting was music that was as full of hope and fanfare that I found with a lot of the tracks here.

Composed by Geoff Knorr, of whom I apparently have not heard before did an amazing job with his portion of the soundtrack, composing 14 out of the 42 tracks.  I decided on "Our New World" because it reminded me of both John Williams (not just Star Wars, but John Williams' style when it comes to fanfares), and Gustav Holst, but at the same time it did not sound like Geoff Knorr was ripping off any one particular composer.  I guess, to me at least, it sounds influenced by Williams and Holst, but without sounding like the Star Wars soundtrack or an excerpt from "Mars: The Bringer of War" or "Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity."

Now, I have no context for when this song is played during the game, but I feel like with all of the grandeur involved, that it is during a cut scene.  Perhaps after the colonizing ship sets down on a planet (maybe after some harrowing event because overcoming hardship makes accomplishments seem all the more memorable), the housing units are set up, the solar power generators are working.  Then the leader(s) of the colony climb up to a cliff/bluff/mountain/hill that overlooks the surrounding valley to look out on their accomplishment and their new world.  Or, the ship comes out of hyper space and this music is played as they begin their decent to the planet.  Either way, if I ever discover a new world, there is a pretty good chance that I will have this song playing in the background.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Won't You Come

Monthly Update: November 2018

Now that October is over, I am told that it is now NaNoWriMo, Movember, and November to the rest of us plebs.  And despite how few articles we got down to writing in October, there was quite a bit that I had actually wanted to talk about, mostly in the way of shows that Conklederp and I have been watching.  Hell, I even haven't gotten around to writing about Matt Groening's Disenchantment that we watched back in August.  But we finished with The Haunting of Hill House, nearly finished with American Horror Story: Apocalypse, and about 1/3 of the way through with Lore Season 2.  Not even to say anything about the second season of Castlevania that was released a week ago that we have not gotten around to watching, as well as the semi-good things that I have heard about Haunted.  I think a lot of this goes back to The Netflix Effect, and the fact that I am holding down a full time job (for the better part of this year), my first time since we started this iteration of our gaming site three years ago.

All of that being said, I am keeping busy dipping my whole leg into the free to play front with Arena of Valor and Paladins: Champions of the Realm after putting Fortnite on hold rather than sink another 100 hours into a game that I did admittedly put $9.99 into for the Season 5 Battle Pass.  But I do not see myself never playing Fortnite again, I will probably just wait until I like the look of the unlockable player skins for that season.  But for games that I have actually paid money for, after having my ass handed to me by what I presume to be the main boss (maybe not their final form though) in Battle Chasers: Nightwar with my characters at their maxed out level, I decided to take a short break and jump back into the world of Dark Souls.  This time around, I thought playing as a Deprived seemed like a good idea, and it really seems to only affect the early game against the Asylum Demon, but then as my humanity increased in Lordran I was able to pick up equipment that dropped as well as buying gear.  So I may or may not write a second review.  Speaking of loot drops, I also started in on Diablo III which came out last Friday and I know it is a six year old game, but I am definitely going to talk about it from the Switch perspective.  I also picked up The Way Remastered because it was on sale for a stupid low price and I had read good things about the game as well as the Switch port, so expect a review on that one coming up too (if I get around to finishing my review of Oxenfree anyway).  And in the world of Thimbleweed Park, I have found myself and all my characters stuck in an area that I cannot escape with no cell reception.  I have yet to use outside sources to look up how to proceed, but I feel like that time might be coming closer and closer.

And for games that are being released in November, there is the Diablo III port that releases today, as well as SNK 40th Anniversary Collection that will be released on the 13th.  If that last game doesn't mean anything to you, then perhaps these titles might.  P.O.W.  Ikari Warriors.  Crystalis.  And for the appropriate games, it includes both the console port and the arcade version.  And it includes (at some point that I cannot remember) a free DLC with a couple of additional games.  Then there is the Brawlhalla early access (test?), and a bunch of other games that are too numerous to mention here.

And sadly, I have not had much play time with Dead Space 3.  Actually, most of my computer time over the last month has been on my breaks while at work.  This is mainly due to my parent's dropping off a number of boxes that I had been storing at their house while Conklederp and I searched for permanent housing and last month, they made the trek up with a U-Haul trailer and unloaded it into any room in our house that still had room for umteen number of boxes and totes.  I apparently had a very collective childhood.  But at least we have only had to purchase one additional bookshelf.

On the other hand, I did start playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PSP, which is part of the Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles that was released 11 years ago.  This all started while watching Instagram user GameTracks play through on Twitch, and in anticipation of the second season of Castlevania on Netflix, which I mentioned waaaaay up there.

But most importantly is that Dr. Potts and Jane are coming up later this week for nearly a week.  Their reason includes a number of reasons for their trip, but I am excited that we've found some time to hang out and act like the mature adults we are.  Right now, we're planning on seeing Willow in an old church turned movie theatre and will hopefully get in a round of Mansions of Madness, because I do not believe that I have talked up this game enough over the last four years.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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