MIDI Week Singles: "Pelf III" - Dementium II (DS)

"Pelf III" from Dementium II on the Nintendo DS (2010)

Album: No Official Release

Composer: Gareth Vilday & Jools Watsham

Publisher: SouthPeak Games

Developer: Renegade Kid

It is hard to listen to "Pelf III" and not be immediately reminded of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 (aka The Moonlight Sonata) and there is nothing wrong with invoking that song as inspiration for the motif that carries throughout the song.  Then at 0:29* there is a music box like tone to the song that seems to meander and wander around like it is a melody that is lost or trying to find its way.  It is almost like there is the inkling of a coherent melody, but then the song wanders more until the song does not fade out or loop, but just stops.  Then it repeats again without any of the cohesiveness that is frequently found in video game music.

I can speculate until my fingers are whittled down to the bone about why the song does what it does, but I would rather not put words (more than I already have) in the composer's proverbial mouth.  I will add though that while working your way through the frozen and snowy village of Pelf, having what could be considered a serene song out of context of the game playing, does add a feeling of uneasiness, coupled with the occasional screaming severed head and blood streaked snow.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

If You're Seeing Things Running Through Your Head

*P.S.  Depending on the arrangement and the performer, the melody in Moonlight Sonata also starts around the 0:25 - 0:32 mark, being the same time that the melody starts in "Pelf III."  Just thought that that was interesting as well.

First Impressions: Resident Evil: Revelations 2 - Little Miss (NS)

I had considered combining the articles for both mini-episodes of Resident Evil: Revelations 2, Little Miss, and The Struggle, but after spending one hour with Little Miss and realizing that the play-styles were going to be vastly different between the two games, I decided that I would dedicate one article to each.  I also found out that the other extra episode The Struggle does not take place immediately after/around the same time as Little Miss.  I had misunderstood the timeframe when I read that it took place "six months after. . ." since during Barry/Natalia's chapter when Barry says that he first got Claire/Moira's distress call six months before arriving on the island.  So The Struggle article may have to wait a while, but on with Little Miss.

Little Miss tells the story of Natalia Korda on the island leading up to her meeting Barry Burton at the midpoint of Episode 1: Penal Colony.  Even in E1:PC, I felt that Natalia was going to be an unreliable character to follow because her character seemed so out of place, which seems like it was one of the primary reasons she was introduced.  After playing Claire/Moira's chapter involving experimented upon murderous and likely insane inmates at an otherwise abandoned prison facility on an island in the middle of some large body of water, coming upon a young girl in a nearly pristine white night-gown is going to be out of the ordinary.  To say nothing about her ability to locate and detect the presence of creatures through walls and floors.  Kansas is long gone at this point; thankfully nobody (at least at present) has made that joke because it is a bad one.  You are welcome.

Without giving too much away, the basic premise here is that Natalia has a stuffed bear named Lottie from when she lived on Terragrigia with her parents and she is looking for Lottie who has appeared to have gone missing after Natalia flees the laboratory she was being held in.  While being experimented upon on the island, she is able to interact with Lottie through some type of VR-ish headset device where they communicate with each other.  To what end is probably a major part of her character arc and that has yet to be revealed at the end of Episode 1.  But throughout this episode, Natalia, along with the help of a part of Natalia's psyche, hereto referred to as Dark Natalia because she is wearing a dark dress.

What makes this interesting is that in Ep.1-2 when you play as Barry and Natalia, is that Natalia does not have access to any weapons apart from a brick so when you control two Natalias she is not all of a sudden packing a Walther PPK but stays consistent to her representation in the game.  Natalia is able to equip and use a smokescreen weapon (only after locating them semi-hidden throughout the stage), which can be used to block enemies from being able to spot Natalia for a short time. This section of the game would fit perfectly within my Weaponless Survival Horror article since the point of this episode all stealth based and you have to avoid the monsters in order to access the next area.  If you are spotted at all by any of the monsters, Natalia crouches down in a fetal position, you are audibly berated by Dark Natalia, the monster who spotted you glows red and you are essentially caught forcing you to start over from your last checkpoint.  While an interesting mechanic, I did find it frustrating about midway through the game as I was sure that I could not be seen, such as in an inaccessible room with barred windows, but when I had Natalia stand up to explore a desk, I was immediately spotted and had to start over.  One other interesting aspect of this was that each of the monsters had their own range for being able to detect Natalia, which I did appreciate since it meant that not every monster was a cut-and-paste job.  In one odd instance, I was Dark Natalia with Natalia hiding in bushes with a wandering/patrolling monster about.  Dark Natalia was scouting up ahead and when I saw the monster pass by the bush, I switched to Natalia, only to find that the monster had in fact passed through the bush, pushing Natalia along with it and when I switched characters, it then recognized the character and I was caught.  Thankfully this only happened one time otherwise it could have really gotten on my nerves.

Honestly, there were times when going from the entrance of one area to the exit felt repetitive in that there was little to no puzzle solving, just sending Dark Natalia up ahead to find out where the monsters were, because the monsters are unable to respond to a semi-physical manifestation of a person's psyche, mark the most inconvenient monster and then avoid that monster.  Rinse, repeat.  At the end of some of the areas, Natalia would come across a letter from Lottie who becomes more-and-more depressed at being left behind and neglected.  These letters were pretty creepy and sad at the same time, especially when Lottie talks about harming itself even though Lottie is a stuffed toy, the way it is presented is very effective.  This is what kept me playing the stages and going forward.  And once I realized I was making my way towards the beach where Natalia would eventually meet Barry, like in the beginning of Ep.1-2, I was trying to put to memory what locations were like as I anticipated that I would be coming back through here in Ep.2-2, especially since some of the routes lead to dead-ends or to rooms that did not contain anything of interest even though I snuck past a handful of the monsters.

An entertaining part of Little Miss was seeing/hearing/watching the interactions between the two Natalia's, often with Dark Natalia berating Natalia at every chance she could get.  Even when Natalia was spotted by one of the monsters, Dark Natalia would quip back with lines like, "Looks like you're toast!" "What a shame!" (in a very sarcastic tone), and other demeaning   Little Miss really had a lot of cross over with what I imagine was going through Gollum/Smeagol's mind in The Lord of the Rings and I was perfectly okay with those similarities.  Once I made this connection, which admittedly came later than it should have, I was eager to see how/when Natalia would actually come into this power/ability on her own.

At the end of the episode, I was pretty satisfied overall, although I did feel that it could have been a little shorter and still gotten the hide-and-seek point across a lot quicker.  The most unsettling part of Little Miss was definitely the postcards from Lottie, being read in a child-like voice but the content being depressed and angry at Natalia and talk about hurting itself (which is odd because Lottie is only a stuffed toy), but I just found it very unnerving and a lot more effective than evading walking flesh golems with chainsaw attachments on their legs.  Presently, I did not feel that I was learning any spoilers in-game from playing Little Miss out of release order and instead playing somewhat chronologically, although to do that accurately I would have had to have played Little Miss right after finishing Ep.1-1.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Come To Me, My Hand For To Ask


P.S.  And for everyone wanting to know how I performed in the level, this was my ranking.  Not amazing, but not bad either.  And in my defense, since there was variation in the ranges that each monster could detect Natalia in, there was a fair amount of trail-and-error throughout the episode.

A number of the times Natalia was found were primarily from not being hidden when I thought I was, like hiding in a bus while Dark Natalia was scouting, trying to get through an area that I did not realize that I did not know that I had skipped, or by accidentally pressing the button to stop crouching.  During the first couple of zones, I had the number of times being found down to fewer than five, but that is just anecdotal so you will have to take my word for it.

The Emulator Hour draws Nigh!

Lately I’ve been feeling my retro-gaming roots.  I’m currently in a deep-dive of Zelda games, having played through Link to the Past, Zelda II and currently Link’s Awakening.  On top of that, I played about halfway through a gamed called Legend of Zelda: Shadow of Night, which is a ROM hack version of Zelda II—a Fan-made sequel to Zelda II. 

In order to play Zelda II and the ROM hack, I hacked my SNES classic, which was remarkably easy.  So I’ve added a bunch of NES and SNES games to my SNES Classic, and so far just one Game Boy Color game – Link’s Awakening DX.  I’m even considering committing a cardinal sin of a Console War Veteran, and adding some Genesis games.  I can’t help it!  I’ve got that retro-gaming fever, and the genesis has an entire library I’ve barely touched. 

I’ve hacked a number of systems to play NES games, including the Dreamcast and Nintendo DS.  I’ve been through the NES library a bunch of times, and I have some mainstays, including  Zelda II, Faxanadu and Dragon Warrior 2.  But now that I’ve been scratching that retro itch, I’m starting to expand my horizons a bit.  I’m taking aim at the Playstation 1, a system for which I have conflicted feelings, yet nonetheless plenty of pleasant memories.  Plus, I’ve heard that there are some emulators that will actually improve PS1 graphics, give them a nice hi-res treatment.  For now, I’m just thinking about trying to pick up a Playstation Classic.  Fortunately, the terrible reviews caused a dramatic drop in price, and I should be able to find one for $30.  The games I’m hoping to play are Resident Evil: 2 (another emulation mainstay) and maybe FFVIII.  But I might also pick up the FFVIII remaster for Switch, when I finally buy a switch.  Which should be any time now!  I am getting closer and closer to pulling the trigger on that one.  It’s just so hard to get into a new system, dropping $300 just to get started, and then another $59.99 if I want a game! Yikes!  Buuuut, I really love the selection of indie games on the switch, and that’s what I really hope to play. 

In the meantime, my emulation fever has got me checking thrift stores and garage sales for a PSP or a Wii or a Vita or an Android tablet, or a firestick, or maybe I’ll try to mod my Wii U after I buy the switch.  There are so many possibilities, and this is a fun obsession. 

-D

MIDI Week Singles: "East Garden" - Sweet Home (FAM)

"East Garden" from Sweet Home on the Family Computer (1989)
Composer: Juzo Itami / Junko Tamiya*
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom

Sweet Home is a game on the Famicom that I have known about at least since 2012 when I saved four or five separate YouTube videos of the Japanese film of the same name to my account and presently, I have yet to watch it.  I did recently find a single 1h42m video of the film so I will definitely have to watch it now.  I bring this up because Sweet Home as a lot of people already know at this point is often credited as the inspiration for the first Resident Evil game, even made more obvious by the fact that Capcom developed and published both games.

Now, I have never played Sweet Home in any format although there have been fan-made English translation ROMS of Sweet Home, but I am secretly hoping that Capcom will see the profitability of rereleasing it on the Switch, either in the form of a separate downloadable game, or allowing it as a late entry on Nintendo's NES Online library.  From what I have understood about when "East Garden" plays in the game, is that there is a storm happening outside, which could be the reason for the staticky drum beat about every 1.5ish seconds incorporating the sound of thunder into the song.  Then there is the melody that really only lasts about 25 seconds before repeating with the rest of the song.  Lastly, holding the song together is whatever the musical run is called that opens the song (my last music theory class was 17 years ago).

We have used Junko Tamiya's music before with her music from Little Nemo: The Dream Master, so I was at least somewhat familiar with her style with the NES sound chip.  And out of the all of the music that I listened to from Sweet Home, this is the track that stuck with me, I really liked it, and beyond that, I have nothing else.  



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
There Is An End To Lonliness


*P.S.  I use the asterix because two sources I have found [Video Game Music Database under the alias of "GON", and Video Game Music Preservation Foundation] have credited Junko Tamiya as the composer of Sweet Home, while Wikipedia has the composer as Juzo Itami.  It could also be that Juzo Itami was just another alias (in the era of aliases used for Japanese video game composers) for Junko Tamiya.  Perhaps more research is in order.

First Impressions: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition (PC)

While writing about Mass Effect 2 a while back and restarting the first Mass Effect, I came to the conclusion that I did not want to sit through that game all over again, repeating everything that I had previously done, either with the same outcome in mind or perhaps coming up with a new one.  That idea seemed daunting and the last thing I want to do is play a game and feel weighted down by self imposed obligation.  So I decided to leave the Mass Effect universe (for now?) and decided that it had been a long time since I had been in the Northern Kingdoms of The Witcher series.  I already had The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition on GOG and thought that this would be a great game to play while I was not lying in bed playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses.  Plus, if you have not seen the opening cinematic for The Witcher 2, I highly recommend it.  No, seriously.  I will just wait here until you come back.  

Good?  Good.

One of the first things I found rather amusing was that despite this game having come out in 2011, I am still not able to run the game on the highest graphical settings on my laptop.  There are times when the game takes a second or two to load textures when faces fluctuate between looking like something rendered on the N64 and an Xbox 360.  And then there was the opening minutes of the arena tutorial when my computer was really chugging, even during cut scenes, only to realize that my computer was not plugged in and the system was trying to run off of the battery.  Plugging in gave the computer a boost in performance, but still not enough for the game to run as smoothly as I would have liked.  It is still completely playable, but I do not think it is running at 1080p 60fps, so maybe it is not playable after all?

When I first started the game, I was happy to see the option to upload my save file from the first game, although I was not sure how much information was going to be brought over, but I was happy to do so; another plus instead of playing Mass Effect 2 and the issue that started this all.  So I first started the game using mouse/keyboard controls, being the way that I played The Witcher, so it seemed only natural, but because of the updated fight system here, I found the controls felt very awkward and in the arena tutorial, I felt that I was playing like crap.  So I started over, this time using an Xbox 360 controller, the controls felt a lot more intuitive.  At least for the most part.  Rotating the camera still felt a little jarring at times and not as smooth as I had while using the mouse, but overall, I found that I did prefer the controller with this new format for combat, especially with all of the added combat mechanics.  Somewhat surprisingly, I still played like crap during the tutorial and the game recommends that I play on Easy.  Sure fine, I will play on Easy difficulty.  No shame.  Sure, no shame. . .

I guess combat is one of the biggest changes that I have noticed in the game, and I am still not 100% comfortable with the changes.  The first Witcher game had a completely different feel to it, and not just because I was using mouse/keyboard controls, but the combat here does feel a lot more tailored to use on a controller.  During the arena tutorial, I did feel too inundated with information about all of the options to use against enemies such as daggers, bombs, traps, and five different spells that use in-universe names that are not always clear as to what they do.  In the first game, you slowly gained the different spells, often giving you time to use them frequently enough to recall what each one does on the fly.  Here, all I can frequently remember is that Igni is a fire spell because it looks like Ignite.  And I got very good at the combat in The Witcher, and I liked that both your steel sword and silver sword had three different fighting styles based on who you were attacking and if you were being attacked by a group.  I know that sounds more complicated, but combat in The Witcher seemed more RPG oriented than a straight-up action game.

Currently, I am just over six hours in and during the prologue sequence where you are able to somewhat determine the events that lead up to the present moment, I felt a combination confusion as being lost within the greater story, and that the story itself was one that I was not finding myself all that interested in.  With looking forward to playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt - The Complete Edition on the Nintendo Switch in the nearish future, I had hoped that I would be drawn back into this world rather quickly.  Going into Chapter 1 and beginning my exploration of the river port town of Flotsam, it was here that I was reunited with Geralt's male buddies, Zoltan Chivay and Dandelion; Triss Merigold was introduced in the introduction which fit it well with my choices from the first game; I chose her over Shani to look after Alvin when the choice arose as I thought a sorceress would have better luck than a field doctor.  I think it was the combination of all of the time I spent in Vizima in The Witcher, all of my run-ins with Zoltan, Dandelion, and Triss there, as well as finally acquiring some Witcher Contracts that really gave me the feeling of, "Yeah, now I'm back."

I was a little surprised when I looked up the game on HowLongToBeat and saw that the completion time ranges from 25 hours to 53.5 with an average-ish of 34 hours.  Granted the completionist time for The Witcher was 54 hours and I ended up taking 24 additional hours, but an average of 34 hours still seemed very short.  At this point in my ability to find time to play games, I am actually not too concerned if The Witcher 2 only takes me 40 hours, but I am anticipating more than 50 because that is just the way that I play these long-form RPGs.  Talk to everyone, read everything, and take in as much of the world as I possibly can.  And I intend to do just that.  I also intend to read the next book in the series, Sword of Destiny.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Through Forests Deep, Over Mountains High

First Impressions: Resident Evil: Revelations 2 - Episode 1: Penal Colony (NS)

I started Resident Evil: Revelations 2 on Nintendo Switch for a couple of reasons, the first and foremost being because I bought it during one of the previous sales when it was 25%+ off, secondly because I love the Resident Evil series, and lastly because it was October and that seemed a good enough reason to play a survival horror-related video game.  Survival horror in that at least the first half of the first Resident Evil: Revelations was a survival horror and the second half was more like an action-horror, but at least it wasn't an action game with a sprinkling of horror, the way that Resident Evil 5 was, but I have already gone down that corpse hole.  All I knew going into this game was that it featured Claire Redfield, who I do not think I had seen since Resident Evil: Code Veronica X and Barry Burton who was also MIA since the original Resident Evil, and that the game was told in an episodic style.  So I booted up the game and dove back into the post-Umbrella Corp world of Resident Evil.

After the intro cinematic, which did a pretty good job of setting up the world, where it fit within the context of the other Resident Evil games (kind of, but I have still had to look at timelines), I began my journey with Claire Redfield in the format of a 3rd person shooter that the series has been a fan of since Resident Evil 4.  With weapons and ammunition appropriately scarce, I knew that we were back to good ol' survival horror.  Kind of.  Since the series has taken on more of an optional co-op method of play, Claire is joined by Barry Burton's semi-estranged daughter Moira, who is also kidnapped and taken to a dilapidated prison complex along with Claire.  Now, Claire and Moira, although they are both controllable by the player, they both serve different purposes, with Claire being able to wield guns and knives, while Moira uses a flashlight and a crowbar.  Once both characters were available, I actually found that I preferred controlling Moira to Claire for a couple of reasons.

While taking control of the flashlight, Moira is able to (somehow) stun enemies that aggressively come at the two women.  The flashlight can also be used to highlight otherwise hidden objects such as gun ammunition, the old reliable green herbs, and random jewels that can be used to purchase in-game skills/attributes, which I know seems odd and does not make a lick of sense.  So while controlling Moira, I felt that uncovering ammunition was more important than taking control of a character with a gun, especially while exploring, but even then, the AI would not seem to attack enemies while Moira was in the process of stunning them, since my whole goal was to preserve ammunition as much as possible.  Thankfully, the computer-controlled AI seems to have improved since my fiasco from Resident Evil 5 that was Chris Redfield's back absorbing 85.47% of the bullets fired off by Sheva, and AI Claire would actually be pretty conservative with her shots.  However, as was the case in RE5, the AI still loved to liberally use green herbs to heal me, even if I felt that I could hold off a bit longer.

Even though the Resident Evil franchise use to be all about their puzzles, there were not too many in this first part of the game, which makes sense story-wise, because why would you have puzzles in a prison?  Most of the puzzles as such were about locating an object needed to gain access to an area that gave you a key in order to access that control panel behind the locked door in the control room that activated whirring iron maidens that allowed you to finally exit the hell hole you found yourself in.  You know, those kinds of puzzles.

Then there was Dad Bod Barry Burton's chapter as he goes to rescue his daughter Moira.  The character play-style was nearly identical to that of Claire and Moira, with Barry being the one to use weapons and the still unexplained appearance of the Eight-Year-Old (I don't actually know her age yet) running around in a nightgown Natalia being the one who can locate hidden objects and when needed, bash downed enemies with a brick.  Combat with Barry and Natalia is a bit different however as it is revealed that Natalia can sense the locations of enemies, and later is discovered the weak points of specific mid-tier creatures.

In an actual co-op game, I could see the person controlling Natalia telling the person controlling Barry the location of the weak point while avoiding enemies, rather than wasting ammunition on otherwise spongy monsters, but having Natalia be a person's main would definitely be up my alley.  As a single-player experience, I would have thought that switching between characters would inevitably leave the other character open to attack, especially in close quarters, but so far and from my own experience, there might be a split second when you switch characters that allows you to react.  This has allowed me to use Natalia to quickly spot the weak point, switch back to Barry and target that weak point, allowing me to use 4-5 rounds of ammunition rather than multiple clips.  And kudos to the Natalia AI for doing a pretty decent job of avoiding enemies while I control Barry to take out the creatures.

One last thing that I found to be stupidly hilarious, in part because it was even included in the final game in the first place, and second because it was included when you sign up for a Capcom account and agree to link your game to their website, was the inclusion of a Cowgirl costume for Claire and whatever an Urban Ninja outfit is supposed to be for Moira.  Now, the only way that this could possibly make a lick of sense in the final game, is if in the main story, Claire and Moira, when they are kidnapped, are put into these outfits as a way of humiliating them by way of showing them that, "Hey, we removed your clothing and put you in these ridiculous outfits.  We could have done whatever we wanted to you, but we did this.  So keep that in mind."  But this is not that type of game, and my theoretical reasoning for this existing is a very dumb idea.  There are alternate costumes for Barry and Natalia as well, but thankfully we do not have the option to see an eight-year-old in a pair of daisy-dukes, although had that been an option for Barry, I might have gone that direction; Barry's outfit is that of a Russian-esque commander and Natalia is wearing an outfit based on her pink teddy bear who wears a blue coat and hat.  There are other costumes for the characters to wear, but these were the "Thanks for linking up your Capcom account awards."  So whosever idea this was at Capcom, knock it off.  Now.

So after playing the first chapter for just over two hours, my current playstyle is to have either Moira or Natalia as my main character in order to explore and then switch over to Claire/Barry when things start getting harry, or in Moira's case, if there are more than two enemies that are moving too fast to be able to stun quickly.  The feeling I am getting so far from this game is that it will progress similar to the first Resident Evil: Revelations, that the first third of the game will be more of a survival-horror with the rest being more firmly action-horror.  I could see this transition happen at the end of Chapter two, or at the beginning of Chapter 3, kind of like a James Bond action intro, but I am still not 100% sure, since 50% of the playable characters are unable to use firearms, that is unless Barry and Claire meet up and just start mowing everything down.  But that will have to wait for the next chapter for me to find out.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Two Worlds So Far Apart


P.S.  And for those of y'all who are interested in how I actually performed during Chapter 1, here is my scorecard, at least for Barry/Natalia's chapter because I apparently did not grab a screencap after finishing Claire/Moira's chapter.  I will do so for Chapter 2 though.

Wait, there are flea-looking collectible things you can shoot too

MIDI Week Singles: "Trace of Riddles" - Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)

"Trace of Riddles" from Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS, Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch (2012)

Composer: Takeshi Miura

Album: Resident Evil: Revelations Original Soundtrack

Label: Suleputer

Publisher: Capcom

Developoer: Capcom

Since I appear to be on a Resident Evil kick, I was rereading some of my articles and came across the paragraph in my review of Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS where I apparently gushed about how much I enjoyed the music.  So this week I went looking for the soundtrack which was surprisingly easy to find considering the game started out as a 3DS exclusive back in January 2012 with the soundtrack being released the following month.

Nailing down a specific track was a little difficult since like a lot of music from the Resident Evil series is there to create a feeling of dread and does not always translate well to a song that you can sit back and listen to.  And with recent games in the series involving a lot more action than you would normally find in a survival horror game, I still wanted to choose a song that felt like it came from a Resident Evil game and not a Michael Bay / Paul W. Anderson collaboration; I still think "Ride on Sea" is a great track, but it does not scream RESIDENT EVIL in the way that I was looking for.

This is why I chose to use "Trace of Riddles" by Takeshi Miura.  Now, I cannot specifically recall where in the game this music played, maybe it was as the name suggests, played when you are taken to a separate screen to solve one of the in-game puzzles?  What I do like about this track is its use of what sounds like a combination of a sonar ping and melancholic whale songs, and how it incorporates those sounds with the piano and other ambient percussion and the rest of whatever instrumentation is being used.  To me, this is very much Resident Evil music since this game takes place on a cruise liner, something kind of soothing if you are not paying too much attention, but when you are, you know that something is now quite right in Raccoon City.  Or in the Mediterranean Sea.  Your choice.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 and Reviewing Episodic Video Games

I realize that the concept of this article is about seven years too late, but that is just how we work here at Stage Select Start.  Rarely will you find us covering the new and biggest AAA release.  We like to look back as a way of looking forward (an attempt at being prophetic?).  This article will exist because, as you might have gathered over the last seven years, I enjoy talking about video games and this is an attempt at my thought process, in the case of episodic games, to break down my thought process in writing about them.

I recently started playing Resident Evil: Revelations 2 on the Nintendo Switch, and after reaching the end of Episode 1: Penal Colony, I was reminded in the most straight forward way possible, that the game plays in episodes, similar to a lot of titles from the now defunct Telltale Games Studio.  Which then got me thinking about how I wanted to write about RE:R2, since there will be no more Telltale Games (although their library was purchased by LCG Entertainment, with Skybound Entertainment having already purchased the rights to The Walking Dead titles), although now that I think about it, I personally have not seen as many episodic games in the last year or so; or they are just not on my radar.

As of the moment, my plan is to write and post a First Impressions article for each of the four chapters/episodes in the game, then write a Game EXP article that looks back at the game as a whole experience.  I think what entices me about this format is that it allows for bite-sized chunks of words to be written, rather than one larger piece that covers 8+ hours of gaming; I am told that each chapter takes about two hours.  I may even cover the Mercenaries-type Raid mode, and I will definitely cover the shorter released side stories, "Little Miss," and "The Strugge," except now I have to decide if I want to play the side stories where they fit chronologically in the story, or after the story concludes in Chapter 4: Metamorphosis.  At the moment, I am leaning heavily on playing them now since I finished Chapter 1: Penal Colony and those side stories fit in between when Claire/Moira's story ends during Chapter 1 and Barry/Natalia's story begins.  Also, depending on the length of each of these side stories, I may include them in one article or split them into two.*

Agghhh!

All this writing about the Resident Evil series really cements how much I love these games, despite being frustrated with where the series has gone since the release of Resident Evil 4 back in 2005.  It also makes me want to replay the series from the beginning and having games 0 - 4 (including Code Veronica: X) on the Game Cube only drives this desire; I do have Resident Evil HD on Steam, so that is an option too, but I would also like to find a way to play the games that I have not played like Resident Evil: Survivor, Resident Evil Gaiden, Resident Evil: Dead Aim, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.  I would also need to repair my 3DS to play Resident Evil: Revelations or purchase it (again) on either the Switch or on Steam.  I digress however.

So look forward this Friday to a post about my experience playing Resident Evil: Revelations 2 on Nintendo Switch.  Now if I could find the soundtrack to the first Resident Evil: Revelations, I think I might have an entry for Wednesday's MIDI Week Single.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

[song]


*P.S.*  
For other episodic games, I think this will be my preferred format.  Posting a First Impressions article for each chapter followed by a Game EXP once the entire game is finished.  Yeah, let's do that.

#IndieSelect: Aldred, Knight of Honor (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Aldred, Knight of Honor on the Nintendo Switch from developer/publisher QUByte Interactive through Indie Gamer Chick and Indie Gamer Xin's #IndieSelect.  The game was given and accepted without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and experiences are shared through social media channels.  All of the words in this article unless otherwise noted are my own from my own experience playing Aldred, Knight of Honor.

As far as medieval-themed retro-styled platformers go, Aldred, Knight of Honor on Nintendo Switch has a lot going for it while maintaining an SNES era retro feel and still falters in a couple of instances that come across as cheap shots against the player.

Alfred, Knight of Honor starts off with the standard backstory for why Aldred is running, jumping and honorably killing his way through the kingdom.  Standard Big Bad Evil Guy wants to take over everything and you are sent out to stop him by traveling through variously themed stages vanquishing evil and rescuing captured prisoners.  Both the single pane form of prologue storytelling and graphical choice are very reminiscent of both Devious Dungeon by Ravenous Games/Woblyware, and Daggerhood (also) by Woblyware.  

Let us start off with some of the criticisms I have for the game, because ending on a high note is much more respectable, and because I have a lot more negative things to say about the game than positive, so the next couple of paragraphs might be kind of rough.

The first of those criticisms being that you start off the game with the ability to double jump.  Maybe it is because I come from the school of Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night where you earn the skill to double jump, and I realize how gate-keepy that sounds.  For me, I want to earn the ability to double jump because it seems like such a high-level ability that borders on the stance that if you have double jump from the start, why not just lower the height of platforms or just extend the jump height?  That is just nit-picky and I recognize that.

On the topic of mechanics, one thing that has annoyed me on more than one occasion is that the Y-Button is used to both attack, and to talk to the shopkeeper who often appears halfway through most of the stages.  When you are near the shopkeeper and press Y, you are unable to attack any enemies that are also near you, but instead, the shop menu opens up so that you can make purchases.  The problem here is two-fold.  The first being that when you press Y and expect an attack to happen but doesn't, that is going to be annoying in-and-of-itself.  The second is that when you are in the shop menu, you are susceptible to attacks from enemies, which can become a serious issue if you go to attack a flaming skull only to have the shop menu open and while trying to navigate out of the menu in a panic, the flaming skull attacks you again and kills you.  Yes, this did happen to me on one occasion.

The other issue is one that I have seen a lot of people complain about is how the layout of some of the levels can lead to traps or enemies being off the screen and when over half of your game is built around exploring the area to either collect purple coins or to release captured prisoners, this type of level design can come across as cheap.  In some instances, the screen will move down so that you are able to see the top couple of pixels of a platform, possibly to try to get the player to be a little more patient than they might be otherwise in an action platformer, but in other instances, the drops can lead to pits or monsters.

Something irritating is that there are no effigies to destroy or prisoners to
rescue in the last level in Stage 1, but there is still the same grey box
showing what you have collected and what you are missing.

Something that I would definitely add to the game is the ability to go back to the Stage Map screen.  As the game stands currently when you start the game from the main menu, you select which stage you want to start in on, and when you complete that level you automatically move onto the next stage.  To go back to the map screen, you have to exit back to the main menu, select Continue, then select which level you want to play.  It is just a couple of extra steps, but in a game that visually shows you which items you missed in the stage or if you missed rescuing a prisoner, going back to a level select screen in as few steps as possible should be something to consider.

And while we are on the topic of collecting items in games, I want to bring up how that information is tracked and what effect it has on the overall game.  When you select which level you want to play, you can see if you missed any of the collectibles in a stage.  What effect that has on the overall game is, at least after completing the first stage, unclear.  The game does not keep a running score and picking up collectibles through every level has no bearing on the game, except for the three pieced medallion(s?) which increases your health (and presumably) other attributes depending on the color of future medallions (if there are any).  Lastly, the game keeps a running total of the number of creatures you have killed in each level, but that total resets in each level and every time you die and respawn.  In Devious Dungeon, you are awarded coins for having a large kill streak, but in A,KoH, again, it is unclear.

Lastly, one thing that I would add to the game are purely cosmetic changes.  There are two enemies in the game, one is a large shielded knight wielding a war-hammer who only attacks when it drops its guard, and the other is a large purple creature with golden armor who jumps at you and pounds the ground.  Both enemies wield large weapons (war-hammer, fists) but when their respective weapons hit the ground or Aldred, there is no additional sound or visual effect.  No booming crunch, no screen shake.  And there are events in the game that do cause the screen to shake, like when Aldred destroys one of the evil markers/effigies.  But here, with these two large enemies who do take more than the standard two hits to kill, there is nothing to give weight.

You're really going to want the sound on for this one since it's part of my point here.

Hokay!  Now the good stuff.

Alfred, Knight of Honor is a fun game.  The game story is pretty basic, or at least as complex of a story as the original Super Mario Bros. but for the type of game that Aldred, Knight of Honor wants to be, it does not need to be any more complex.  It is definitely a game that you can pick up for 30 minutes, play, pick up again a week later and not be confused as to what you were previously doing or how the controls work.  The music is also pretty good and definitely charming, but by the time you reach the second stage (the second map) I was hoping for some new tunes to match the new map palette, but sadly the same music was playing in the background.  There are some minor RPG aspects to the game like collecting gold that is used to purchase immediately consumed potions or one-time upgrades that boost your health, magic, item drop rate and the power-up ability that increases your attack speed, damage, and defense; oh yeah, there is a one-time-per-stage ability that covers your body in armor, increases your speed, damage, and defense.

JUMP!!

Oddly enough, despite nearly 59.01% of this article coming across as critical of Aldred, Knight of Honor.  I still think it is a fun game and the $1.99 price point is pretty damn cheap for there being at least 22 levels (not having finished the second stage at the time of writing), although I would not be at all surprised if there was a third and final stage after Stage 2, but by the looks of the trailer, there could very well be a total of five stages.  And the key point here is that the levels do not come across as filler either, at least during Stage 1.  And even after earning an item after beating the Stage 1 boss that allows access to previously closed off areas, there is a little bit of back-tracking that is purely optional if you want to further beef up Aldred.

So go ahead and give Aldred, Knight of Honor if you are looking for a decently packed game,in terms of content, and want something fun to play between bouts of Dark Souls or Darkest Dungeon.  Because sometimes a good ole hack-and-slash platformer is really all you want.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Let It Guide You Through The Dark

MIDI Week Singles: "Main Theme - Transcending Time" - 3rd Super Robot Wars (SFC/SNES)

"Main Theme - Transcending Time" from 3rd Super Robot Wars on the Super Family Computer (1993)

Composer: Shinichi Tanaka

Album: Super Robot Wars IV Powerful Music Battle*

Label: Kitty Records*

Publisher: Banpresto

Developer: Banpresto

I am not familiar with Shinichi Tanaka's music, mostly because it looks like all that he has composed music for game-wise is the Super Robot Wars series which looks like they have primarily received Japan-only releases.  I am also not a big mech person despite having grown up with Thundercats and Voltron.  That being said, if you had told me that this music was a cut track from one of the Mega Man X games, I would have believed you.

"Transcending Time" is just pure melody, pure energy, pure fun, just everything that you want out of a main theme.  That is really it.  This song is catchy and I immediately loved it upon first hearing it while starting my #AllTheSNESMusic journey after having finished listening to #AllTheNESMusic.

*I asterisked this because there apparently was no official soundtrack released for 3rd Super Robot War, but there was a soundtrack released for the fourth game in the series, which was also released on the Super Famicom and from what I can tell, is the same arrangement of the song.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I'm Wild About That Thing