MIDI Week Singles: "Wario Puzzle - BGM 3" - Super Mario's Picross (SFC)

 

"Wario Puzzle - BGM 3*" from Super Mario's Picross on the Super Famicom and Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online (1995)

Composer: Toshiyuki Ueno

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Ape Jupiter

I love picross puzzles.  Ever since, I think, Pokemon Picross on the 3DS, then My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (also on the 3DS) I have been a sucker for this genre, although I have not purchased any picross games because my brain is still telling me that "They're simple puzzle games and I don't know about spending money on them when I could just play them for free so I will just wait for another free game or demo to be released, and hey Super Mario's Picross was added to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online app!!"

Anyway, the context to all of that is that I have impressed myself with the Wario puzzles.  The context on that is that there are two sets of puzzles, Mario and Wario.  On the Mario puzzles, you have the option to fill in some of the puzzle from the start, as well as giving you penalties when you fill in the wrong square, and you have a 30-minute time limit.  On the Wario sets of puzzles, you do not have a time limit and nothing is corrected or penalized if you fill in the wrong square, so the only way of knowing if you mark the wrong square is if the squares do not line up with the clues along the side of the puzzle.  All of this context is to point out that I end up spending a lot more time on the Wario puzzles, often agonizing over a single filled-in square, so I am more familiar with the Wario music.  This particular track I love because it reminds me of a lullaby and is more calming than some of the other tracks, although none of them are really high energy.  I just enjoy this piece when it is playing and is a perfect track to fill out a 20x20 puzzle that ends up taking just over 30 minutes.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumetal

P.S.  *Because there is no official soundtrack, I decided to create the title myself.  The "Wario Puzzle" because it is from the Wario set of puzzles, the "BGM" because that is the menu option for selecting which music you want to play if you do not want the track that the game automatically selects, and "3" because this is the third of currently three available tracks.

#IndieSelect: Chess Knights : Viking Lands (NS)

Disclaimer: I received a copy of Chess Knights: Viking Lands by Minimol Games from publisher QUByte Interactive for 420MacMan's #IndieSelect.  The game was given and received without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and that experience be shared through social media channels.  All pictures and words unless otherwise noted are my own from my own experience playing the game.

I have played a number of Minimol Games' chess puzzle games (Unlock the King, Knight Swap) so I kind of felt I knew what I was getting myself into, or at least the quality of the game that I was about to start; although aside from the screenshots in 420MacMan's original Twitter post, I did not know anything about how the game played.  I have also played a decent amount of chess, but I am not a particularly great player as I can have trouble imagining the board even just a few moves ahead of where the pieces are.

When I turned on Chess Knights: Viking Lands (or just Chess Knights for simplicity sake), I was unsure of what exactly the game was going to entail.  I clicked on the Tutorial tab to check see what the game needed to tell me to understand what I needed to do, and because in Unlock the King I felt that that a basic understanding of Chess needed to be known, but here there is a rundown of how the Chess pieces used here can move.  But the rest of the tutorial consists of the barest of bones in terms of controls.  You use the L/R buttons to select the specific Knight you want to play, you can rotate the camera with he Right Joystick, and you can zoom in/out with the ZL and ZR buttons.  That is it.  No goal, no objective. that is it; aside from telling you how the Knight, Queen, Rook, and Bishop move, and that the Knight can jump over obstacles (remember that one for later because I apparently did not).  I should also point out (because who would I be if I did not), was that Knight was misspelled as "Knigh" under the "Knigh Move" tab in the tutorial.

When I started the main campaign, I had a mix of emotions ranging from this being a fun concept all the way to what the hell is going on and holy crap these controls are horrible.

Let us start with the controls because those are integral to actually being able to play the game.  Whenn using a controller, you  use the Left Joystick to rotate a red arrow around the current Knight you are using to then select an available space to move your piece to.  This move mechanic is strange to me for the sake of simplicity as I do not see the reason to have a floating arrow until you point towards a square you can successfully move to, which then highlights that square red you can move to.  Why not just have the game automatically highlight the closest square you can move you when you point the cursor and still utilize the rotating joystick mechanic when selecting the square, but not have the floating arrow?  Does that make sense?  Essentially having the floating arrow implies that there is guesswork with the player being like, "Can I move here, here, here, here?"  If the controller controls were giving me so much trouble, why not just use the touch screen functionality I hear you vehemently ask?  Well, I did try using the touch screen a couple of times, but I personally found that I was never able to zoom in close enough to feel that my sausage fingers were not covering no less than four squares with every press, which was not too much of a problem when selecting where I wanted the Knight to move, but selecting the piece whenever they were clustered together became a little bit of a hassle.  

And then there was the camera controls, which actually function well enough as you can rotate the camera on both the X and Y axis and you can zoom in and out a bit with the ZR/ZL buttons.  But again, I never felt like I could zoom in close enough to have the touch screen be a viable controller with the size of the screen.  Most of the time though, I would keep the camera directly above the playable area, mainly because that is how I can best look at the full chess board, but also because I do not need to have a dynamic view of the board.  And this approach works out fine.  Until you rescue one of the pieces and now all of a sudden your controls become flipped 180 degrees.

Even when I know that this mechanic is there and I can either rotate the camera 180 degrees or just invert my brain when pointing with the red arrow, there is still a second or two where I feel completely disoriented.  To say nothing of the levels where you have Knights starting on opposite sides of the board which means the control scheme becomes flipped when you select those Knights to move.  Through at least the first 30 stages (through the first three of four worlds) I have not run across a stage where Knights start out on more than two sides but that would not surprise me at all if that comes across in the final stages.

My other gripe with the game is that the difficulty curve becomes rather steep, especially if you happen to forget that the Knight can jump over obstacles like boxes, barrels, wooden planks that would otherwise block the path of the enemy pieces.  In some ways being able to move around obstacles seems to favor the Knight, but then the clogged up spaces means that there are now spaces that you cannot access making your movement around the board all the more constrained often forcing you to actively avoid the enemy pieces.  Thankfully in most of the of the stages beyond the first couple, you are given at least two Knights to use to rescue your other pieces, but they can also be used to sacrifice themselves to take enemy pieces.  Unlike regular Chess, in Chess Knights, you cannot actively attack enemy pieces, but instead you can move your Knight into a position where they will be captured, but the enemy pieces is also captured too.  This does however mean that rescuing more than one piece could take longer as you have to move the one Knight all over the board, but as there is no requirement ot have X number of Knights at the end of each stage to continue, I have found no reason to not sacrifice pieces to help clear up the board of enemy pieces.

Or is there?

When you start the game, there is a menu option called The Lost Ones that is locked.  After I finished the first world of Njord's Bay, the game gives you a prompt, that not everyone was saved and if you want to go back and save them.  Presumably, this means to replay the levels to rescue all of your pieces without losing any of the Knights.  I say presumably because there is no deeper explanation as to who specifically these Lost Ones are.  I played through the first two levels in Njord's Bay, but the layout of the stages as well as the number of Knights you have is different.  It would seem that The Lost Ones are just more stages that are more difficult than the regular stages?  At present I have completed the first three Lost One stages and they are noticeably more difficult, or at least on par with those in the third world, Yddrasil Way.

Not that the game needs to be more difficult for me as I am stuck on World 3, Stage 30 which is deceptively difficult.  You start on an eight by nine grid, with four Knights and only have to rescue two other pieces at the other end.  You are going up against two Bishops, two Rooks, and two Queens.  Only the Bishops and Rooks move while the Queens remain still, but they are positioned in a way that they manage to cover 65% of the board and two of the Knights have only one move to make (and back) while their second move would cause an attack by one of the respective Queens on their side, and I believe that at least one of the Rooks also has to be taken out to make it through the center of the board.  I have managed to partially rescue one of the Pawns, but I have not managed to get them back to the starting/safe zone.  This is where my playthrough of Chess Knights has remained for the last four days, and I do return every day trying to find some solution that I was too much in my head to see, but I am still very much stuck.

I know I have complained quite a bit about the controls and camera controls, the difficulty jumps and the in-game descriptions of your objectives (or lack thereof), but when I am in the zone, I do have a lot of fun.  I enjoy Chess puzzles, I really enjoy the aesthetic and the game runs smoothly for the most part.  I can appreciate what Minimol Games is trying to do here, but there just is not enough polish in the form of proof reading (and in one case button prompts have been switched), and revamping the camera and control system to help make it feel more intuitive and less like the game is trying to trip you up.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
You Can Sing About Change

P.S.  If you would like to see me fail on 3-30 and how the enemy pieces move in their routes to make it difficult to get back to the starting/safe zones, have I got a short 30 second video for you.

MIDI Week Singles: "Stage 4" - Batman: The Video Game (NES)

 

"Stage 4" from Batman: The Video Game on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)

Composer: Naoki Kodaka

Album: No Official Release 

Publisher: Sunsoft

Developer: Sunsoft

It has been a long time since I played Batman on the NES, and when I say a long time I am counting time in terms of decades.  Specifically, three of them, which might be older or just so than a number of people reading this, but hey we know our target audience.

Anyway.

The point is, while I have played Batman, I know for certain that I never made it to Stage 4, the stage where this music plays, which is kind of sad for me because this is my favorite track from a game full of amazing music; we previously covered some of the Batman music in the now semi-extinct Game Scores features, but that was nearly a decade ago in and of itself.  Sadly that is really all I have to say about this track.  From the opening on MIDI strings (so I tell myself) and the melody, to the amazing sounding drum track that is just more than a snare-hit but is essentially a full MIDI drum kit, is something that was not all too common on NES era soundtracks.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Hear His Plaintive Cry

Demo Time: Project TRIANGLE STRATEGY™ (working title) Debut Demo (NS)

 

Project TRIANGLE STRATEGY™ (working title) Debut Demo (hereto after referred to as Triangle Strategy because I do not have all day) is a tactics game from Square Enix and developed by Artdink that use the same HD-2D technique engine that was used in Square Enix's 2018 Octopath Traveler (originally title project: Octopath Traveler so there is a good chance that Triangle Strategy will be the name that sticks).

The demo itself is interesting, at least for me, in that it starts you off at Chapter VI "Remember Me" which takes place in the middle of the game, presumably after you have already had some character-building time with who I believe to be the main characters of Serenoa, Benedict, Roland, and Frederica.  What I kind of do not like about this starting-in-the-middle business is that by this point in the game, it would be assumed that you already know a lot about the combat system, the best way to cast spells both instantaneous and delayed spells, as well as the best way to use Corentin Jenner's ice magic or Anna Pascal's thriving and backstabbing abilities.  Being thrown into the middle of the story did not bother me so much, because it happens all the time in video games, movies, books, etc, but I was not feeling totally comfortable with the abilities of the characters is where I came to issue.  Which then made me wonder why not just include the opening of the game or the tutorial levels as the demo?  I guess there may not be one, but thinking about the tutorial stages for Final Fantasy Tactics and the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance series, they all had introductory stages to orient the player.  Or maybe it is still being worked on?  Whatever the reason, this is the section of the game we were given to demonstrate the overall feel of Triangle Strategy.

During this opening section, what appears to be the "triangle strategy" is introduced, which thankfully did not have anything to do with the weapons triangle that is often used in the Fire Emblem tactics games (where sword beats axe, axe beats lance, and lance beats sword; or red beats green, green beats blue, and blue beats red; you get the idea).  The triangle appears to be more of a moral compass imagined as a scale, tipping one way, the other, or not at all.  I think it might have just been a coincidence that my decision, being the second of the listed three answer choices gave me a balanced decision, as later in the game I got a balanced decision outcome again when I chose the answer that was the third choice of three.  I do wonder how much of an effect this has on either the outcome of the game, the reactions of other characters and NPCs, or if there is just a reaction to your choice then the game and story unfold regardless of your choice.  The illusion of choice I guess.

The two battles that I fought in (although it appears that there were more depending on previous choices, as evidenced by the questionnaire that was emailed to me about a week after playing), the mechanics were pretty straightforward tactics battles.  On a turn, the game would highlight the area blue where you could move your character, the enemies attack range was highlighted in red, and if those two areas overlapped, being where you could be attacked if you moved into that space, would be highlighted purple.  As mentioned above, because this section of the game happens after five previous chapters, I did feel less than prepared starting the first battle as far as unit placement goes, not knowing anyone strengths, weaknesses or how characters could react to the environment and the terrain elevation (with there being ladders in a couple of areas on the map).  The mechanics felt pretty familiar, and the bottom of the screen showing turn order as well as being able to move your character back to their starting location after moving them (if you do not like their position for attacking, defending, etc) was nice to have, especially being new to this game, but I do like it as a mechanic rather than the touch-move in Final Fantasy Tactics.

Outside of the scripted scenes and the opening battle, you could scan over the map area, which did feel kind of small if this is the entire playable area in the game, but the map contained colored markers for where events were happening; although I did not really take notice of the green markers until my second time on the map.  There are red markers on the map which denote main quest events and green markers which denote side quests which are all optional.  Once I realized that green markers did not always remain after playing through the main quest, I made it a point to witness all of the game events, mainly because why not?  Most of the optional events added flavor and exposition to the greater world at large as well as the conflict going on in this world, while others seemed to be quite integral to the story.  Leading up to the final battle in the game, I managed to acquire another member to the party, a character who essentially sounded like a Geomancer, but once the last battle started, I realized that they were not in my group.  So either you can only have a limited number of characters per battle and there is a swapping mechanic that I was unaware of, or you can have more characters than what you start out the demo with, but you have to manually place new characters in your party, again, with a mechanic that I was unaware of.  So this last potential party member went unused.  Another optional event had a Bannerman of Roland pledge himself and his troops to his aid for the final battle, but once the battle started, it was only the main characters in your party, so I do not know if the show of force from them was theatrics, or if there was no real in-game effect that their troops coming to your aid offered.

By the time I finished the demo, I had sunk a few hours into the game, about 2/5ths (maybe?) dedicated to the two battles,  and thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the experience, even if the battles caused about as much stress as they usually do in tactics games. I was probably a bit more cavalier with the lives of some of the characters than I would have been had this been the full game seeing as how nothing could be transferred (which again makes sense since this demo happens in Chapter VI).  As mentioned above, I was not 100% on board with the voice acting, but that could change with time or an entire re-recording, but I doubt that will happen.  

One last thing that I want from Triangle Strategy is the ability to recruit random characters that have no in-story ties to anyone else.  Randomly generated characters like what made up 90% of your party in the Final Fantasy Tactics (and FFT Advance games) and Darkest Dungeon.  I just like mentally creating personalities for these characters outside of the main characters that populate your group in games like Fire Emblem.  Like in Darkest Dungeon, I recruited two Templars at the same time and decided that they were twins and that they would only go on missions with each other.  If one had to be rehabilitated in the church or bar, the other would stay behind to make sure they were alright.  I guess I just like role-playing characters who do not have built in characteristics, but maybe that is just me.  There is probably more of a wishlist to come, but that may just have to wait until the final demo that will probably be released a month or so before the final release.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
One Goes to the Morgue, and the Other to Jail

Demo Time: Bravely Default II (Final Demo) (NS)

Maybe I should not be writing an article after only playing 09:26 of a game that allows for you to play for five hours?  I mean, I only experienced about 3% of what was available, although I guess you could speed your way through the battles and dialogue to see more than the average person, but what would the point be since you cannot carry over your game from this demo to the main game?  This demo, apparently the Final Demo, lets you play the first five hours of Chapter 1, happening immediately after the prologue, so it does make a bit of sense that what you would have done in the prologue would have in-game consequences to where you are at in Chapter 1.  Too many variables.  But again, for me, I stopped after just under 10 minutes because I felt that I had gotten all I needed to know out of the game.  But please continue to read on because I apparently have more to say.

I at first was not even sure that I wanted to download and play Bravely Default II for reasons that now seem silly on my part.  I knew about Bravely Default and Bravely Second: End Layer when they were released on the 3DS but I never played them for reasons that I think had to do with not wanting to pay full price for a 3DS game at that time.  I think I might have even retained a bit of a sour taste in my mouth from my experience with Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light the same year that Bravely Default was released.  And then I did not consider Bravely Second because I never played the first game.  So when Bravely Default 2 was being announced for the Switch, I was a little confused as to what was being released.  For the longest time, I thought that it was just a port of Bravely Second (forgetting that the second game in the series was not just Bravely Default II).  I was then under the impression, after finding out that this was its own game and not a port, that because I never played either of the two previous  Bravely games that I would be lost by jumping into the middle of a story (and not in the good kind of way that is designed to make sense) with pre-established characters and backstories that I knew nothing about.

So I started Bravely Default II (Final Demo) on the Normal difficulty setting, was told about the five hour time limit, that the game file from the demo will not transfer over to the final game and began my journey from wherever I was to the city I was directed to go to.  I moved my characters around on the overworld map, rotated the camera 360 degrees and engaged in battles with a couple of visible monsters; I think I got into a total of three fights in two ecosystems and fought two different types of enemies.  I was still not 100% sure about the fighting mechanics and what the Brave and Default were in the fight menu, but after reading an article on The Verge, that made a little more sense; I was thinking it was similar to the SP meter in Octopath Traveler (being my only point of reference), but it appears to be a bit different, but I am sure that that will be covered in the as yet unplayed Prologue.  After the three battles, I decided that I had a semi-good-enough feel for combat and headed into the first town I found (being what I think my goal was), watched a conversation between some of the characters that I was not really following, and then called it good.

I feel like I am already familiar with the character art style as it was used in the aforementioned Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light, but the two things design-wise that might take more time getting used to is the naming mechanic for these characters [Seth (??), Gloria (Estefan), Elvis (Presley), Adelle (Adele)].  That might be a bit shallow and I really hope that they do not take on the personality traits of their namesakes, or at least Elvis doesn't because I already do not like the look of Elvis here.  The petty side of me really wants him to tip his fedora at some point to a woman and say "M'lady" just so I can dislike him even more.  This probably means that I will end up liking him if/when I play the full game.  The second thing was the voice acting for the characters I was not sold on.  Sure it is a personal taste thing and nothing against the people who were hired and performed their lines, I just recognize that I am an old person who grew up and was/is used to not having dialogue spoken in RPGs that I play, but there are a number of obvious exceptions like Fire Emblem: Three Houses.  

That is really about it.  I feel like I got enough out of those meager nine-and-a-half minutes that I spent, which was much shorter than the time I have spent writing this article that I am now tracking the price for the physical game on a couple of websites as I am not really in the position to shell out $60 on another JRPG when I already have a few lined up (and I am sitting happily at 18h32m in Final Fantasy XII on the Switch).  Maybe Christmas 2021 I'll have something to ask for, or it will already be added to my spreadsheet on Google Drive, which is sitting happily at just over 2,000 hours.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Clinky Noise

MIDI Week Singles: "Downhill Theme" - Slalom (NES)

 

"Downhill Theme" from Slalom on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1987)
Composer: David Wise
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Rare

Slalom is a game that I have semi-fond memories of.  In elementary school, I would sometimes go over to my neighbor N's house around the corner and we would play Nintendo games.  One of the games of his that I recall frequently playing, but never for more than a couple of attempts was Slalom.  This game is stupidly difficult, but really only once you get to the second race.  The first race is kind of a warm-up for everything else the game throws at you.  The game plays like any other racing game on the NES of that era, with the player controller their vehicle (in this case a beautifully shaped-butt skier) through a twisting course with other players in the way.  But Slalom ups the difficulty by also throwing trees, snowmen, sledders, and moguls.

The music here, composed by David Wise, does not change between courses, meaning regardless of the course you are on, you will hear this track, so it kind of gets ingrained in your brain.  Unless you give up on the third course after you keep slamming into one of the dozens of kids sledding IN THE MIDDLE OF A SLALOM COURSE!

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I'm Tired of Screwing Up, I'm Tired of Going Down

First Impressions: Little Nightmares: Complete Edition (NS)

Like a lot of games that I have on the Switch, Little Nightmares: Complete Edition by Tarsier Studio has been sitting in my To-Play queue for some time and the other night I decided to re-download it again and play it before going to sleep.  Before I started, all I knew about the game was from the Switch release trailer from two-ish years ago, which shows you that the game is reminiscent of LIMBO in that you play a character in a platformer in a dark setting (both in color and in tone) with semi-light puzzles and the occasional large monstrosity chasing you.

Upon starting the game and deciding that I would play as Six, the yellow rain slicker equipped character from the logo, I was taken aback a bit by the lack of story or narration as an introduction, I think because of how the trailer introduced the location and the environment, I now feel like I have inside information that you would only normally find out as you progress through the game.  I am either in Chapter 2 or Chapter 3 (I can say that because when I click on Chapters there are three options) but I feel like I have played at least three hours and I am only just discovering that there are things to do besides moving from one room to another and running away from whomever the touchy-feely guy is (that the trailer says is the janitor).  

Apparently, there are small-little bipedal creatures with white hats on that scamper about the place and look like they are always running away from you.  I did find one after rummaging around an office where I found some kind of security camera, and then after chasing it up a flight of stairs, I picked it up, the game made a "happy" noise, and then I was able to carry it with me.  So I carried this little creature until I had to climb through a window into a bedroom and left it outside.  Then there are lanterns that you can light with your lighter and every time I do the autosave icon pops up on the screen, so maybe those are like the save-lanterns in the Penumbra series?  Lastly, there are these statue-jar-vase things that seem to be purposefully placed in out-of-the-way locations like the top shelf in a bathroom, that emit a cloud of black smoke and an ethereal sound effect (along with the sound of shattering pottery).  What do all of these do?  I can not say for sure, but I do know that I have managed to unlock one piece of concept art, which might be my undoing because I love concept art, not to imagine what the came could have been because of cut content, but where the game started out, where it changed, where it stayed the same, and being able to say, "Oh hey, I remember that character/scene!"

That being said, I do not know if I am going to be adamant in replaying levels to try and find all of the statues, lanterns, or small-flitty-characters, especially if there are moments that I just do not want to have to replay over and over again, but thankfully there are chapters that I can go back to rather than playing the entire game all over again; but I am not ruling that out as I do enjoy a good replay provided it is the right game.

But so far, Little Nightmares is about what I was expecting, although  little better looking on the Switch than I had thought.  But I have noticed that the battery drain while playing is pretty high, with the battery % dropping about 1% every 2-3 minutes, or maybe more when the game is loading after you die?  Also, I die semi-frequently, so there is that.  I think my one (current) complaint is that the loading (specifically after you die) takes longer than I would normally like, although I have not timed it, but I probably will for the full Game EXP article now that I have brought it up.  But all of that aside, I am really enjoying Little Nightmares and will likely pick up Little Nightmares II, but maybe I will wait for the Little Nightmares II: Complete Edition in a year or two.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Fear is Selling

P.S.  Sleep well.

First Impressions: Metro 2033 Redux (PC)

My first experience with this franchise was back in December after playing Metro Exodus during the weeklong playtest for Amazon's Luna cloud gaming client.  I then picked up the first game in the series Metro 2033 Redux through GOG after discovering that the copy that I had on Steam would not play for whatever reason.  I liked the post-apocalyptic setting and a first person survival horror game based off of a novel series of the same name was very appealing.  Even after playing less than an hour of Metro Exodus I probably should have had a better idea of what I was getting into but so far that has not been the case.

When I read that a game is survival horror, the first game that comes to mind is Resident Evil (1996) and the Resident Evil remake (2002) on the Game Cube.  I am sure there are dissertations on what survival horror can be defined by, but to me, it is a feeling of dread, not characterized by fast-moving over-powered enemies, but being caught in confined spaces where panicking is often worse than the actual damage that the enemies can do.  So far, for me at least, Metro 2033 Redux is less survival horror and more a first-person action shooter with supernatural and horror elements.  

But this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Currently, as of this writing, I am only about six hours into the game, Bourbon has just been captured as he and the playable character of Artyom are attempting to reach the Polis Station.  The game has been somewhat stressful as like in a lot of survival horror games (Resident Evil, Silent Hill), ammunition is somewhat scarce, which is made more so by the fact that this is a first-person shooter where you normally kill enemies and scavenge ammunition off of their corpses.  In Metro 2033 Redux, you are often going up against large mutant creatures who are trying to eat you with their teeth who all take more than a couple of shots to take down, so scavenging resources off of naked monsters is going to be next to impossible.  You can collect ammunition and special bullet-currency (more on that next) from corpses of other survivors when you are out in the tunnels and on the surface, but half the time if seems like those bodies are already picked clean.  More often than not, by the end of each stage, you typically have a lot fewer rounds of ammunition than what you started with.  Which is very much an aspect of survival horror, so I can appreciate that.  Somewhat.

Because this is also a first-person shooter though, conserving ammunition is something that I have had to make a conscious effort to do, as previously mentioned since the mutant enemies do not carry ammunition.  Combined with that that this is a post-apocalyptic setting, having there be piles of bullets and shells lying around is not going to be commonplace, which makes you wonder why there are not more people taking the Daryl Dixon route and using bows and crossbows.  But having a limited amount of ammunition is both a genre-defining decision as well as a narrative decision so we will run with it.  Whereas normally I might hold down the firing button willy-nilly in games like Wolfenstein or Left 4 Dead, in Metro 2033 Redux, I do not have the luxury of finding a cache of bullets and so I do a lot of single-shot click-firing even when using the Bastard.  And then there is the issue with the currency in-game.  In this world, ammunition is used to buy everything, but I have not figured out if there is special ammunition used for currency, or if any rifle ammunition (based on the logo that pops up when you collect it) counts as one denomination of currency.  Am i literally shooting away my money?  I have no idea, but when you are faced with the future purchasing power or immediate survival, I am going to be choosing immediate survival.

One mechanic in the game that I do not recall having used before is that when above ground and in certain toxic areas, the player character Artoym (and NPCs as well, but to a lesser extent) are outfitted with a gas mask and disposable filters.  The filters last only five minutes before the game prompts you to replace them and the game does tell you that you only have a cumulative amount of time left.  You are told about gas masks and filters in the opening of the game, but due to the game having a very limited UI HUB, it is sometimes difficult to tell how long you have been wearing a mask, how much time you have left before you run out of filters, what the toxicity level is if your mask is off, or even how much life you have and if you really should use one of the three health packs you have stored.  I tend to play survival horror somewhat dangerously in that I will often see how far I can go on as little health, sometimes cheesing the game if I know that after a cutscene or if I make it to a populated station, my health will be fully restored and I will be able to save a health pack for when I really need it.  But again, that is something that I have comes to terms with after a couple of hours.  Sort of.

In the above-ground section of Moscow, most of that level is above ground, meaning you need to have enough filters to run through a maze of areas to get to wherever the exit for the stage is.  This is normally fine as at this point you have been following the smuggler Bourbon, but here you become separated as some flying monstrosity threatens to pick you up and smash you on the ground (or in my case, actually do it a number of times), and trying to find your way away from the aforementioned flying mutant while trying to listen to your guide's directions became nearly impossible.  So I ended up running from building to building, trying numerous places where I thought I was either able or supposed to jump across a radioactive river or duck inside a partially collapsed building because I could just barely crouch/crawl through a broken window only to find out that there were only bodies to loot and a pair of non-violent mutants cowering in the corner away from me.  It was a very tense level, more so when I finally came across Bourbon (by accident) and then had to engage in a fight against a mass of violent mutants (and the flying one too for good measure) where I was killed three times before I finally figured out where I was supposed to go during the fight.  

That was where I ended up leaving off before writing my First Impressions.  Right now, the game feels like it follows the format of having to explore a stage, a couple of areas where you fight mutants and gathering supplies, followed by a final encounter against a large number of mutants designed to deplete you of all/most of the ammunition you picked up earlier in the stage.  Then there will be a stage in a station where you are either railroaded through to another series of tunnels, or you might be lucky enough to be able to purchase weapon upgrades, additional filters, or just get some world-building exposition from NPCs.

But you know what, I am having quite a lot of fun if I do not think of Metro 2033 Redux as a survival horror game and instead think of it as a first-person shooter with horror elements (kind of like Doom 3).  The setting of the Moscow Metro reminds me a bit of the subway and tunnels in Fallout 3, which is not a criticism, but I wish that the health and filter mechanic was a little more obvious.  But this is the first game in a series so one would think that there will be some improvements when I get to Metro Last Light Redux because there are some creepy moments and the gunplay does feel pretty good, and unless something really bad happens in terms of game mechanics (run out of filters right after an autosave or run out of money before a Station and I do not have enough money to make any additional purchases, or the game just pulls an asshole move and becomes super-cheap in its attempt(s) to kill me), I do not see myself stopping after finishing this first game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I've Been Chewing on Tin Foil

MIDI Week Singles: "Hello, Happy Kingdom" - Super Mario RPG (SNES)

 

"Hello, Happy Kingdom" from Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1996)
Composer: Yoko Shimomura
Album: Super Mario RPG Original Sound Version
Label: NTT Publishing, POLYSTAR
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Square

It may not be too often that March 10th lands on a Wednesday and I figured I that there would be no way I would pass up this opportunity, so that is what we are doing today.

When I first started playing Super Mario RPG (oh so many decades ago) I enjoyed the music, but I was not in love with it.  Then when you first enter the Mushroom Kingdom castle area (it has been oh so many decades since I last played) and this song started playing, my memory tells me that I stopped progressing and just ran around a lot so that I could listen to the music.  Any time I came back into this specific area, I would let the song loop a few times before progressing.  When I (100% legally) downloaded the soundtrack this was the first song that I sought out and is easily one of my favorite songs from the entire soundtrack.  I love how bobby the song is when it starts, then at 0:45 the instrumentation kicks up and the whole MIDI orchestra joins in on the main theme, which is fun.

Really what else do you need on March 10th than something fun.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
How Could We Go Wrong?

Demo Time: Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version (NS)

 

It has actually been a while since I played the demo for Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version on the Nintendo Switch, but the experience left enough of an impression with me that I wanted to talk about it nearly four-and-a-half months later.  The two main things with Control is that it is being played on the Nintendo Switch, and that it is being streamed on the Switch as opposed to being run completely off of the Switch's hardware, which from what I understand (which is not a whole lot) would otherwise be impossible; unless Panic Button were to have something to do with it.

First, some brief context on Control because that might end up being important.  Control was developed by Remedy Entertainment and was published by 505 Games, releasing on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in August of 2019.  It was then ported to Amazon's Luna and the Nintendo Switch in October 2020 as a streaming game.  Essentially means that the game and its settings are being streamed to the platform instead of running off of the hardware, like how you could watch a movie on the YouTube app on the Switch, but could probably never have a game run that looks as well as whatever movie was just released that looks really good; because the last movie I saw in theatres was Pretty Strong back on February 24th, 2020.  There is probably just too much going on in a game that is supposed to be this good looking for the hardware on the Switch to be able to handle it well without either seriously downgrading the graphics or severe lag/stuttering.

When you start Control on the Nintendo Switch and like a lot of games ported to console, you are limited in your customization options such as setting resolution, graphics quality, and other similar settings you would typically find under Video > Advanced settings.  Here, you are given the option to play the game with a focus on either Enhanced Graphics or Enhanced Performance, implying that with Enhanced Graphics, the game will require more bandwidth and a more stable internet connection than the Enhanced Performance setting with reduced graphics which focuses on the game having a smoother experience.  Because I wanted to start out as grand as possible, I chose to run the game on the Graphics setting, although I was playing in handheld mode, which maxes out at 720p so it was going to be downgraded graphics from the start.  I could have played in docked mode, but intermittently also taking care of a 5 month-old at seven in the morning, this was the easiest way of doing things.

Before I started, I was unaware of the length of time you would be allowed to play.  Would it be relegated to a specific part in the game, would it be a 30-minute time limit?  There was no indication that I noticed that mentioned this.  I bring this up because when I started my first run-through I watched the opening intro cinematic which took up a whole 2m50s or 27.3% of your allotted time.  I also spent a fair amount of time tinkering with the in-game settings such as inverting the y-axis, looking at what the buttons did, and then there was a lot of looking around at objects, reading every document I came across, all things that you would do in a game that you are starting that you have never played before, which probably left maybe five minutes left to play, although I did not know this at the time.  

In the Enhanced Graphics setting, the game played very well (for my own tastes), probably maxing out at 30 fps with a few stutters here and there, especially in areas where there were isolated pockets of light compounded by trying to run all the time and making quick stops and sudden turns.  I felt that this setting was 100% playable, at least as far as running and reading was concerned.  

Well, it was a little bit of surprise when the game stopped suddenly and told me that the trial had ended and that I could pick up where I left off if I purchased the game from Nintendo's eShop.  Kind of taken aback at how quickly this demo/trial had been, I realized that I spent too much time messing around than actually experiencing the game.

My second play-through was using the Enhanced Performance setting and knowing that I was severely limited in time, I decided to skip the intro and ran through as much of the building as I could but still trying to so similar actions as the first play-through so that I could compare.  There was a noticeable difference in the quality of the graphics, but the game still ran very smooth and I might have already been in the mindset that playing on the Switch will have lesser quality graphics especially with games like DOOM, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, so I was already used to this type of experience.

The highlight of the second playthrough was the combat tutorial, both because I felt that it highlighted how well the game could play and how well it looked even with downgraded graphics, but also how satisfying firing the whatever-the-hell-the-morphing-block-gun-thing was but also the hand-to-hand combat as well.  There were slight stuttering issues but it never felt like it was a hindrance or anything more than what I have experienced while playing any other intensive game on PC, and never feeling that it was so severe that it was hampering my ability to kill whatever the shadow figures were.

This trial ended right as the next cinematic had started and while I was able to parse less of what the hell was going on besides being a third-person shooter, I feel like I was better able to see how well the game operated on the Switch apart from running through hallways and reading documents.  When I played Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version on Amazon's Luna client, I had the Switch experience semi-fresh in my mind and I actually thought that the Switch ran the game better than Luna.  The Switch version also had the option of settings which Luna did not, so that could have been part of it too, but by the end of my 20 minutes, I felt that this was a very pleasant and promising experience, actually leaving me to consider this version of Control.

What I went into the demo wanting to take away was really two things.  The first and primary question was whether or not our house could handle a game streaming service and how well this particular option worked on the Nintendo Switch.  I know that there are streaming options in Japan and has been an option there for nearly two years so it was nice that such a well-received game was getting similar treatment (along with Hitman 3, which I'm thinking I might give a go around now that I am writing this article).  The second was what I thought about this critically acclaimed game of which all I knew was some bits about the influence of brutalis architecture on the games setting and atmosphere from a TED Talk.  I normally would not expect a game, especially a modern AAA game to have me hooked with its story within a 10 minute window where you are expected to get enough story but still have time to play, but I was not entirely brought in, at least from what I played.  There was the hint of a story that I felt like I was dropped into in the middle of things and the idea of a game in an empty office building felt like corners were being cut so as to not have random NPCs walking around doing office building stuff.  Obviously I am not basing my entire decision to buy (or not) from what story I was able to parse from a total of 20 minutes of overlapping gameplay, but it has influenced my decision somewhat along with how the game played in both Graphics and Performance settings.

And really, that is a lot of what a good demo should do.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Tangle into Spacial Time

In a recent Twitter thread about the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2 coming out on the Nintendo Switch, I asked a rhetorical question that I realized I have not covered here yet, and that is the personal preference between physical and digital games on the Nintendo Switch and why that is.  Now, I am not here to go over the benefits and disadvantages of buying a physical game over buying a digital version, or to talk about the differences in load times in games.  I do not have any of the metrics on those, this is all just a personal opinion.  So let us go that route.

OPINION

To Buy Physical or Digital?

When convenience conflicts with personal preferences.

By JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Opinion Columnist

The Nintendo Switch is the first video game system (console, handheld, PC) that I have bought a healthy mix of physical games and digital games.  Although I did purchase a number of digital games on the 3DS, but I do not think I paid over $20 for any digital 3DS games as I was still not convinced that I wanted to play digital games in that format.  On the PC though I had solidly moved over to a predominantly digital library once I started using Steam back in 2011.  The last physical PC game I bought was BioShock, but the biggest pull was that digital PC prices were far lower than that of digital games and I was not really playing any games that were just coming out and getting a physical release, mainly because the computer I was using then could not handle anything that was developed after 2006.

The cost of digital versus physical on the Nintendo Switch is oftentimes moot, with the price being around the same regardless of format (excluding sales from either the vendor or publisher).  If I wanted to buy Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, I would be paying $59.99 (in US dollars) regardless if I bought a physical cart or digitally from Nintendo's eShop (or even digitally from Target).  The majority of the time, if I were wanting to buy Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury I would opt for the physical cart for a number of reasons.

First off, I grew up with the original NES, a VCR, and a state-of-the-art 5 disc CD changer.  There was no option to have anything digital, so having physical media is engrained in my brain.  My first MP3 was from me burning a copy of the Ravenous soundtrack onto my laptop because I could, and this was in 1999.  Secondly, having grown up with video game cartridges, I would often trade (temporarily) games with friends because that was what you did when you were 14 years old, you had no money and you wanted to play SimCity without having to go to the video store to rent it (with your parent's money).  So having a physical option when there is the option is very much engrained when it comes to media.

In recent years, there has also been the issue of digital video games being delisted or in some cases, the music license for older games has expired and the music is either removed entirely or replaced with new music.  In theory, having the physical copy of the game would protect you, especially in the latter, although I guess a developer/publisher could require that a patch be downloaded to fix a music licensing issue, but I have not read about that happening.

When it comes to physical cartridges versus digital games, the two primary factors comes down convenience, cost, and to a lesser degree, availability (which is often directly related to cost).  In the case of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS, I never picked it up because I was in the mindset that I will pick it up eventually, then my 3DS broke and I kept putting off trying to either get it professionally fixed or attempt to fix it myself.  During that time A Link Between Worlds became a Nintendo Select title and the price dropped to $19.99 for both versions of the game, but I was not about to buy a game for a system that I could not play.  Then when I received the New Nintendo 3DS from Mjku I was again in the market, but the physical game was no longer in production (or very low production) and the price jumped back upwards of $35 (at least on Amazon as I am a bit leary around eBay with video games because I have inadvertently purchased bootleg copies that I only realized years after the fact).

But I feel like a lot of my decision comes down to convenience.  Larger and longer games like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim we have physical carts for partly to save space on the Switch harddrive because I do take a lot of pictures and videos for articles, and I do like to have a handful of games pre-downloaded games that are only available digitally (Fortnite, The Amnesia Collection, and Layers of Fear: Legacy) although granted there are some distributers like Limited Run Games, Special Reserve Games, and Fangamer who publish physical editions of games that are typically only available digitally.  I also find that I will usually only play one physical game at a time whereas with digital games, I will switch back and forth.  I might play Mario's Super Picross for 15-20 minutes after playing a couple of matches in Fortnite and then play another game that I received through #IndieSelect.  Physical carts will stay in the Switch for weeks at a time.  I will go through a month-long spurt of playing The Witcher III then swap it out for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity which has been in the Switch since I started playing it back in the end of December.

I just do not get to physical games as frequently as digital games and I still have a number of physical games that I have purchased that I have not even started yet, like The Outer Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, The Banner Saga Trilogy, and The Blair Witch (which I special ordered from Amazon Japan because that was the only way to get the physical cart that ended up being a special edition that came packaged with the soundtrack and I love the developer Bloober Team) and two of those games I have leant out to family/friends because I knew that I was not going to get to them as I was already playing a long physical game.

This rhetorical question about physical versus digital games came up specifically for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 because the Tony Hawk series is the type of game, especially when playing solo, that you can turn on, play a couple of stages, then move on to something else.  Being able to just close down a game, select Tony Hawk from the home menu and drop in to play a couple of stages, maybe a challenge I am working on, get frustrated and then go back to playing picross to decompress.

I still have not decided if I am going to pick up Tony Hawk as a physical cart or a digital purchase although I feel like I am leaning towards a physical purchase, because again, I have the mindset that physical media is better than a digital purchase because it is something tangible that I can hold.  And because I can loan them out to friends while I am working on another game.  So back to Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age I go, because I swapped it out earlier in the week when I was previously playing Age of Calamity.

Stage Select Start is committed to publishing a diversity of opinions from our writers, never trying to focusing on one particular mindset and actively engaging with differing opinions.  Unless of course if those opinions infringe on the rights of others.

JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian joined Stage Select Start in 2015 along with Dr. Potts after rebranding from their original site, Two Boys and their Blog which they started in 2012. @Jaconian