MIDI Week Singles: "Barin Ruins" - Crash Nitro Kart (GBA)

"Barin Ruins" from Crash Nitro Kart on the Game Boy Advance (2003)

Composer: Manfred Linzner, (original music by Todd Masten & Ashif Hakik), & Shin'en Multimedia

Album: No Official Release for Music from the GBA Title

Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games, Inc.

Developer: Vicarious Visions, Inc.

First off, I am not 100% sure who wrote the music.  I know that Ashif Hakik and Todd Masten wrote the music for the PS2 GameCube, and Xbox versions of the game, and some of that music was recreated and arranged for the NGage and Game Boy Advance releases.  Moby Games lists Shin'en Multimedia as the composer, which could be the company that Manfred Linzer worked for, who is credited on the Video Game Music Preservation Foundation's website.  I also could not find a longplay that included the credits, or someone who clicked on the Credits in the Options menu, so it could be up in the air and I will just list everyone potentially involved.

Now for the music.

There is something about the xylophone-like melody that comes in around 11 seconds that screams early 2000s music and I cannot quite place where I feel like I know it.  But this was the only track from the game that stuck out to me, so that is why we are including it today.  Never really a fan of Crash Bandicoot, I never picked up or tried this game, being pretty content with F-Zero Maximum Velocity in terms of racing games on the GBA.  Yeah, sorry I do not have much else in the way of deep analysis for this song, it came up and I liked it more than most of the rest of the music from the game, and so we are here.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

My Mission Has Failed, The Spell Has Been Cast

Why Do I Buy the Same Video Game Multiple Times?

The other night I booted up the Oculus Quest 2 (Is it the Meta Quest storefront yet?) and thought I would jump back into Layers of Fear VR.  Less than 10 minutes later, I turned the game off, not because I was not having fun and not because I was getting motion sick, but because I was terrified.  Here I am, a grown-ass man, playing a game for the third time on a third platform, and scared of a wheelchair that wheeled itself behind me without noticing it.  And I knew that something was going to happen with the wheelchair because I had a vague memory of something happening with it from a previous playthrough and because it just looked like it was more than a piece of decoration.  The question I asked myself as I took off the Oculus, was not why was I afraid in a game that has no monsters that can kill you, but why had I purchased a game that I had already bought and played on Steam, and Nintendo Switch?  Why was I playing a game again on a different system when I had already played the game twice before?  

I think there are multiple answers to this.

1. The first and primary reason is that I really love Layers of Fear.  I love the smooth and seamless transitions between things happening to and around you while you play.  I love that I can walk past an inanimate object, turn the corner of a hallway, reach out for a door and hear a creak behind me and the game plays a subtle scare chord as I look behind me to find the wheelchair that was 30 feet and around a corner now right behind me newly splattered in paint.  I want to support the developer and my primary way of doing that is to buy their game.
2. Secondly, this is not just rebuying the same game over and over again, this is buying the same game in a different format.  When I first got Layers of Fear, it was through a Humble Bundle for Steam.  I bought it on the Nintendo Switch because I love being able to play in handheld mode, I love the game and wanted to support the developer on their first game published on a Nintendo system (see the first point above), and I was interested to see how the port to the Switch was.  Yes, I could have just read a review, but I wanted to see for myself, and again, see the first point above.
3. Lastly, I then bought the game again (albeit, it was on sale) on the Oculus Quest 2 for the first two reasons above, and because I was genuinely curious to see what playing a first-person horror game was like in VR.  Never mind the fact that I had already played the game twice so I knew what I was getting into story-wise, but I was curious.  Would being in this virtual space be as scary as the first time I played the game on my laptop (through an HDMI cord connected to our TV) I played the game?  How would the game hold up graphically when I could get my virtual head right up to paintings, bathtubs, and bowls of fruit?  I wanted to know this, so I bought the game.

Now we have answered the question of why I own at least one game on three different systems.  Do people buy the same game multiple times for the same reasons?  Would someone buy Resident Evil 4 on the Game Cube, on Steam, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Android?  Maybe that is a bad example because I would be surprised if people have not done just that because it is Resident Evil 4.  Me, I have only purchased RE4 once on the Game Cube and have had zero inkling to buy the game again.  Except on the Oculus Quest 2 for the third reason above.  And in recent years (as in the last 10 years I guess), there have been remastered and remakes, which made me think about how many times I had purchased the same game on different systems for any of the three reasons above.

And I honestly do not think that it is too many.  And I would not count the games that are included on either the Nintendo Switch Online package in the NES, SNES, or N64 catalogs or the NES Classic or the SNES Classic.

The next bunch of games I purchased again was specifically games on various Nintendo handheld systems (Game Boy Advance, DS, 3DS) and the Switch for portability reasons, although there is also likely an element of wanting to show support to the developers that there is viability for their IP on this specific platform, although that is usually directed more towards indie games.

Obviously, there is Layers of Fear.  I do have the BioShock: The Collection on Switch after I had already purchased it on PC and Steam.  Then there was Final Fantasy VII, which I first bought on PC back in 1998 and again on Steam, as well as Resident Evil ReMake on the Game Cube and Steam.  I would be tempted to say Dragon Warrior on the NES and the Dragon Quest I & II that was released on the GameBoy Color, but we did technically get our NES copy of Dragon Warrior free with our Nintendo Power subscription back in 1990.  I've also purchased Doom and Doom II on both Steam and Switch, partly to see if Doom II on the Switch also made gave me motion sickness.  Oh, I did buy the Final Fantasy I & II Dawn of Souls that was released on the GameBoy Advance while still having the original NES cartridge that I am pretty sure I bought.  At the time I do not recall Final Fantasy II being available outside of fan translation ROMS and I had zero qualms about replaying the first Final Fantasy.  I also have copies of Kholat and the Amnesia Collection on the Switch for all of the same reasons mentioned above.  But I also picked it up the Amnesia Collection because I realized I had not played either Amnesia game since I first played them back in 2012 and 2013 respectively.  And while I technically do have three different versions of Skyrim, one of those was an automatic acquisition because I already bought Skyrim on Steam, and anyone who had it was given a copy.  I got Conklederp a copy of Skyrim on the Switch thinking that she might want to start up a new character and play that way, but that ended up not being the case and I think it's been over a year since either of us has touched the Switch port.  I also picked up Dark Souls on the Switch for the same reason that I bought games for a second time on the Switch.  

I did buy the NES cartridge of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest right before I moved up to the PNW and I do not think I have actually played the physical game, but I did buy it for the Virtual Console on the 3DS, and I did buy the Castlevania Anniversary Collection on the Switch.  I also got the Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition on the Switch although I bought and played the hell out of the original game on my PC back in 2003, I never beat all of the DLC, specifically, I was stuck on a section of Hordes of the Underdark shortly after the massive battle in the Underdark; I think I have started three or four different characters and have finally decided to stick it out with my Half-Elven Paladin.

In a similar albeit slightly different vein, I did buy Pandemic on the Switch while I already have the board game.  I bought it partly because it was/is going to be delisted from a lot of online marketplaces, but also because I really like the game and the ability to play it in a single-player mode seems like a lot of fun since Conklederp and I do not have a lot of time to sit down to play a multi-hour board game after The Squire goes to bed.

Sure, there are other games that I would likely buy a second time around, like the Dead Space series, or Eternal Darkness if either of them ever came to the Switch.  I am also likely to buy again Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion on either the Switch (or Steam Deck whenever that is supposed to come in during Q4) because I had a lot of fun with that on the PSP.  And I will 100% buy Final Fantasy Tactics if it is on the Switch and/or Steam Deck when that is finally announced and released, as well as Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster which will likely be on the Steam Deck because apparently, Square Enix has no interest on releasing that game on the Switch; and I had no interest in the atrociousness of the HD smoothified monstrosity version of the game, and I never bought the GBA port because, at the time, I did not feel like I needed/wanted a portable version.

So yes, I guess, I will buy multiple copies of the same game on different platforms, but only specific games and for specific reasons, usually one of the three reasons at the top of the article.  As to why other people buy multiple copies of the same game across different platforms, you will likely have to ask them as I can only speak for myself and speculate until the bees come home.  I think my one caveat is that I do not see myself buying a second copy of a game, be it on the same platform or on a different platform without the intention of playing the game, to have only as a collector's item.  I do not have the disposable income or the space in our house to have multiple copies just to have them, if I am going to buy a game, for the most part, I plan on playing that game (stop looking at my Steam and Switch queue).

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

When The Senses Are Shaken

P.S.  Only slight apologies for the semi-stream of consciousness in the middle paragraphs where I just start listing games left and right without a thought about any semblance of organization.

P.P.S.  And now that I think about it, I do not think I have multiple physical copies of the same game.  All duplicates are either a digital copy of a physical game or a physical copy of a digital game.  I think, but I will get back to you if this is not the case.  Because I care that much.

P.P.P.S.  I decided early on that I was not going to link all of the games I mentioned in this article because that would be too many games and I am not made of time you see.  Yeah, I decided it was okay to be lazy.  And that is okay.

MIDI Week Singles: "The Alps: Grand Cambre" - The Climb 2 (OQ2)

 

"The Alps: Grand Cambre" from The Climb 2 on the Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2, Meta Quest 2 (2021)

Sound Designers: Bartosz Piekarski, Dominik Zingler, Gabriel Arlauskas, Jonas Obermüller, Simon Lomet

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: Crytek

Developer: Crytek

I realize that this is not really music, just background ambience, but it was something that I had been thinking about for a while and I really wanted to use this for a MIDI Week Single.  Something I appreciate in games is when developers know when to use music, and when to hold back.  Crytek very easily could have had someone on their sound team compose music that would play while you scramble along the face of a mountain a few hundred feet above a roaring river while hang gliders soar overhead, and maybe that would have worked, but instead they went the minimalist approach and only included soundscapes based on the location you are currently climbing.  As you climb along the route in "Grand Cambre" the sound of the environment changes, so you do not always hear the sound of the river and waterfall, and may be replaced by the sound of wind whipping against the cliff face, accompanied by the chirps of marmots peeking out of their holes to find out what this crazy person is doing outside their hovel.

If soundscapes are your thing, then just sit back and relax to the sounds of a waterfall in the alps, the occasional eagle screech, and the infrequent sighs of the player character as I just stand there on the starting platform for almost three minutes just taking in the scenery.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Anything Less than the Best is a Felony

First Impressions: #IndieSelect: Dropsy (PC)

I received a copy of Dropsy on Steam from Indie Gamer Chick to be played for #IndieSelect.  The game was given and received without expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and the experience be shared on social media to help spread the word about indie games.  All pictures and words unless otherwise noted are my own from my own playthrough.

Dropsy
Systems: Windows, iOS
Release Date: September 10, 2015
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developers: Tendershoot, and A Jolly Corpse

Dropsy by Tendershoot and A Jolly Corpse and published by Devolver Digital is a pixel-art love letter of sorts to the point-and-click adventure games of the 1990s, like Maniac Mansion, and the Monkey Island series.  I had originally not planned on doing a First Impressions article but then the game took a turn for the difficulty of the classic point-and-click games and now here we are.  I have access to, at the present, 41+ different screens/areas with various amounts of people who need help with something or at just transition screens and areas that I know I have not yet unlocked and items that I still need to locate.  I had hoped that this might be a little bit easier in terms of not feeling overwhelming especially since there does not seem to be a beautiful hint system like in Thimbleweed Park. So I knew that I was likely not going to be able to finish this in the week that I had thought I might have been able to.  So now we are here with a First Impressions article instead.

While there is no specific hint system, you are able to somewhat decipher what it is that each person wants, or at least have a general idea about what you need to eventually do.  The little girl that is crying over a dying rose would likely want a new rose to bloom in its place.  The houseless fellow panhandling on the street with a thought bubble going between a figure crying in the rain (which just means that someone is sad) and a couple of coins falling into a cup would likely want someone to offer them some money.  The woman shouting in a church about how clowns and heavy metal music will lead you to the devil. . .yeah, I am not sure if you are supposed to help her or just play the Satanic cassette tape to distract her to steal the sandwich to give to the other houseless person who appears to just be hungry but they are blocking a hole in the wall that is currently empty but will likely have something useful later in the game after you do 27 more tasks.  The puzzles do not necessarily seem too obscure in their solutions, but again, it is pretty overwhelming knowing that I have 41+ screens to walk through at four different times of the day to see what changes, especially after you help someone during the day, then their night routine might change.

I keep going back-and-forth about using a walkthrough for when I feel stuck (which is currently often), but with so many screens and just a handful of currently accessible items, I know that I will likely find solutions to different puzzles while trying to figure out how to solve a completely different puzzle.  Like, I know that I am supposed to steal back the tire that the bird (to who I earlier gave a box of generic brand Twinkies to) stole from the guy who works at the circus that Dropsy works/lives at because the tire is also flashing on the overworld map, but how many additional steps do I need to do before I can get back the tire?  And while we are pondering things, what was that fire at the beginning of the game all about, and how/what/why was Dropsy swallowed by a face/mouth on the ground after/during the fire?

So yeah, I will likely continue to play Dropsy, but you will have to forgive me if the full #IndieSelect article takes longer to publish than most of my others if only because I end up being too stubborn to look up a walkthrough because it really is a serotonin burst when I figure out a puzzle/clue on my own.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And I'll Never Be A Poet

P.S.  Oh yeah, and you have your dog companion who can also perform tasks and collect (but not hold onto) objects.  So there is that too.

MIDI Week Singles: "Dyrford" - Pillars of Eternity (PC)

 

"Dyrford" from Pillars of Eternity on Windows, OSX, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch (2015)

Composer: Justin Bell

Album: Pillars of Eternity (Official Soundtrack) & Pillars of Eternity (Deluxe Edition) (Original Soundtrack)

Label: CDBaby

Publisher: Paradox Interactive, Versus Evil

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

I have kind of played Pillars of Eternity.  I have started it up twice, the first to see how much it reminded me of Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine, and wow, yeah, 2000 vibes all over again, but I did not continue because I must have been playing something equally large at the time because I did not play past the opening prologue group-around-the-fire scene.  Then I started it up a few years ago, and the same thing happened.

I bring all of this up because I have not actually been to the village of Dyrford and have not heard this piece outside of the soundtrack, but I love it whenever it comes on because this music alone makes me want to pack everything up and just live in what this music presents as an idyllic small forest village (presumably with their own fresh water source and no issues with parties of raiding Orcs or whatever the equivalent in the Pillars of Eternity universe are).  Tell me you do not feel the same when the music swells to peak-idyllicism at 2:35 and again at 2:51.  Strolling up to a stone and wooden cottage on a slightly crunchy path through a partially lit forest glade with scattered beams of sunlight through the canopy of pine trees, with a hint of the previous night's rain.  

Damn.  We gotta go hiking in the Gorge again soon.  Or Forest Park.  Or in the Willamette National Forest.  Or the Tillamook State Forest.  Or Mt. Hood National Forest.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Something Beautiful and New

Game EXP: husk (PC)

 

husk.

Systems: Windows

Release Date: February 3, 2017

Publisher: IMGN.PRO

Developer: UndeadScout

Time Spent: 6.8 Hours

husk is an interesting game, although having played Kholat which was developed by IMGN.PRO whereas husk was developed by UndeadScout and published by IMGN.PRO, I had an idea about what I was getting into both in terms of narrative and expectations about the game itself.  The biggest difference between Kholat and husk and will likely be the last comparison between the two, is that husk was linear and had an easier-to-understand storyline, although that storyline does involve alcohol parental abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, and generational trauma, so just a heads up that we will likely be covering that to some extent as we go through the events in husk.

husk starts out on a train with you the player Matthew Palmer, his wife Ellen, and daughter Ann as they travel to Matthew's childhood home of Shivercliff, WA upon the request of his estranged father.  I played the majority of the game with medium-level graphic settings across the board, and the opening interaction with Ellen and Ann was not at all conducive to the quality of the rest of the game.  Granted, there were never any other characters for Matthew to interact with for the rest of the game so having reactive character models aside from the monsters that attack you later in the game was really only necessary here in the train car in the beginning.  That being said, this opening scene did not give a good first impression for the rest of the game, which is possibly why only 30.7% of people on Steam who started husk made it through the prologue; also the prologue takes fewer than 10 minutes.  Literally, the entire prologue sets the mood as you discover that after leaving to go to the bathroom, you are unable to locate either Ellen, Ann, or any other person on the entire train.  You do some linear exploring (because trains run in a linear line), solve one minor puzzle and unlock a door which is the extent of the types of puzzles in the rest of the game, then the train derails and you wake up outside of the train just outside of Shivercliff.

Like any game, there were things that I liked about husk and things that I thought could have been done better or ironed out a bit.

I would describe husk as a survival horror walking sim as there is a lot of walking, and only two weapons, a metal pipe, and a slow-firing gun with limited ammunition; you can perform a melee attack with the gun too.  Without spoiling too much, there are monsters in this game that you can either avoid, stun and run away from, or kill, all depending on your environment and how much ammunition you have.  Ammunition is pretty scarce, with you usually having fewer than six rounds of ammunition and at one time I managed to have 13 bullets, but this was towards the end of the game and I ended up not using them before the gun was taken away and I never used it again; I probably could have had 12 bullets earlier in the game (to earn the Horder achievement where you need to have 12 bullets) had I realized that I could just bash padlocks with the gun instead of shooting them and wasting two precious bullets.

husk occupies an interesting middle ground of walking sim and survival horror, similar to the first game in the Penumbra series by Frictional Games (Amnesia, SOMA).  There are enemies that stalk the various areas within Shivercliff and once spotted, the music intensifies, you are chased and after a few hits, depending on the enemy that is hitting you, you will die.  Depending on where you are in the game, you do have weapons that you can use to either stun or kill enemies, but like all good survival horror games, ammunition is scarce enough to warrant its own achievement if you have 12 or more bullets on you at any given time.

Combat is mediocre at best, but husk does not feel like it was developed with tight combat in mind, and might have even been an afterthought because once you kill an enemy, most of the fear associated with them is significantly decreased, even with dwindling reserves of bullets.  When enemies are first introduced in the game, you have only a pipe that had previously been used to bash open padlocks and when used on an enemy, briefly stuns them so you can run further away before needing to turn around to unleash another round of bludgeoning attacks to give you time to enter a new building or close a door behind you.  These types of encounters I was perfectly fine with because my only real recourse was to run away.  Once the gun was introduced, conveniently enough in a police station, and I found that I could kill these creatures, I did feel powerful enough to not worry when I saw one stalking hallways or crouched behind a crate awaiting my arrival.  When I ran into them in the system of intertwining tunnels in the caves near the ocean, I had enough ammunition to patiently wait for them to charge at me whereupon I would pistol whip them to stun them, step back, then take a well-aimed shot to the head and repeated the process until they died after the second shot.

That is not to say that this game was not creepy and unnerving.  Knowing that I had a gun did help with knowing that I could defend myself, but it was the tension in exploring a claustrophobic house or walking through an apartment building to find a half dozen dolls sitting on furniture watching the static on a TV in an otherwise darkened room.  These were the times when I really enjoyed husk for what I felt it was trying to do.  Put the player in a familiar setting, make the setting unsettling, and have nothing happen.  There were the occasional jump scares where a monster would drop down out of a darkened alcove but I knew that I could kill it once it got to me.  It was when one would appear at the end of a lit hallway only to have the lights flash and it progressively got closer with each flicker of light, only to disappear before it got to you that really got me on edge.  It is the monsters that I could not kill, that I was not supposed to be able to kill that made me afraid.

There was one game mechanic that I found a little distracting and for people who feel that immersion is key to playing a survival horror game will most likely not be able to get past how the game highlights objects that you can interact with.  Any object that Matthew can pick up and or manipulate is outlined with a bright white line and is visible even if the object itself is not within your line of sight.  This could be something as important as a set of keys needed to unlock a door, a keycard to access an elevator, or just a letter from Matthew's father to a neighbor on a desk that exists only to further develop the story.  All of these objects are lit up for you to be able to find and easily interact with.  Which is all well and good, except there were multiple times when I could see the outline of some unknown object coming from a building I was slowly approaching.  Because of the white outlined item, I knew that I would need to get something over that way or behind a particular wall.  It was a little distracting, to say the least.  I also noticed that UndeadScout seemed to use only one or two different assets for all of the keys found in the entire game.  Just something I noticed while trying to stay focused on the story.

The story that unfolds as you play husk is really at the heart of the game, and how that story is told requires a bit of delicate footwork to not spoil much.  husk is similar to a lot of games that throw you into a person's life and story in the middle because they need to convey all of the history that you the player are not aware of and to do that in a way that feels natural.  As mentioned above, the story revolves around Matthew and the physical and mental abuse he suffered from his father growing up in the semi-isolated small town of Shivercliff.  It is pretty clear early on that there is very little love for Matthew's father, who is also revealed to be an alcoholic and abuser to both his wife and Matthew when he was younger.  The inklings that Matthew likely in turn abused his wife Ellen verbally and physically are scattered throughout the game, primarily through Matthew's self-monologue as he walks the streets and through the buildings of Shivercliff.  There were a couple of moments with Matthew's inner voice that took on a strange tone and really took me out of the game whenever this particular voice was used.

As Matthew searches through Shivercliff for his wife and daughter, he ends up visiting locations from his past that have deep significance to him when he was a kid, and at times, these moments of reminiscence seem to overshadow the fact that his wife and daughter are missing and that aside from the periodic creature roaming the town, there are no other people anywhere.  There is also a pulsating black goo that I never fully understood outside of its game mechanic to act as a barrier to prevent the player from accessing certain areas and just be all-around unsettling.  By the end of the game, it is obviously clear what is going on with Ellen and Ann and why they always seem to be just out of reach of Matthew although I never fully got the deeper significance of the faceless shambling creatures that would crop up.  They genuinely felt like they were there to give the player something to avoid and ramp up the tension, but to me, often felt unnecessary.  Sure there was the one outside the diner that was legitimately creepy and the one in the interrogation room of the police station had Licker-vibes written all over it, but I think that husk could have been creepier had there been no actual interaction with the creatures that roamed the streets; maybe keep the one with the forklift in the mannequin factory through, that was a nice touch.

There was a section of the game after the prince was revealed*, that just seemed to keep going.  As in, I understood what the point of the story was, it was revealed what had been going on with Matthew and his family in Shivercliff, but the game just kept playing.  I was still wandering through hallways, cornfields, and houses and I just wanted the game to be over at that point.  Maybe shave an extra 25 minutes off as I felt that it was only there to show more of Matthew's frustration with the situation he found himself in.  The end-end of the game felt very fitting based on the rest of the story between Matthew and his father and Matthew and Ellen, but I think that the game could have been a little bit more of a tighter experience had some fat been cut between when Matthew visits the lighthouse and when he visits his home (that will make sense if you play the game).

husk was an interesting game that I wanted to like more than I did, and I think a lot of what I liked about the game could have been better had it taken the Amnesia approach and had enemies that you could not kill.  The atmosphere was perfect and there were plenty of times that I did not want to go where the game wanted me to go because of what I thought might be around the next corner.  The music (which I realize I have failed to mention) was composed by Arkaduisz Reikowski (Kholat, Layers of Fear, The Medium) which was one of the absolute highlights of the game for me.  I do not think that I would universally recommend husk to someone if they were not already interested in first-person exploration games, and survival horror games, and are a little forgiving towards indie developers with a game that has a few non-game-breaking hiccups.  A game that was far from perfect, with a mostly well-conceived story.  I think.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

A Weak Smile Won't Mean A Thing to My Bitter Mind

*P.S.  I realize I haven't used the "prince" analogy in some time.  This is an inside joke of sorts that started with Conklederp and her brother Beardsnbourbon, where he accidentally spoiled a book they both were reading where a character was revealed to be the prince near the end of the story.  We now like to refer to key story points as "the prince," so that is all this reference is about.

MIDI Week Singles: "Asteroid Circus [Repulse Mix] (Stage 4)" - Zed Blade (Neo Geo)

 

"Asteroid Circus [Repulse Mix] (Stage 4)" from Zed Blade on the Neo Geo MVS Arcade (1994)

Composer: Manabu Namiki

Album: Manabu Namiki WORKS ~ OPERATION RAGNAROK ~

Label: SuperSweep

Publisher: SNK

Developer: NMK

Before listening to the music from Zed Blade, I had never played the game, let alone never heard of it.  By all accounts (meaning the video I watched on YouTube), Zed Blade is a side-scrolling sci-fi shoot 'em up akin to Gradius, Life Force, and R-Type.  I was a little torn on which track to feature from this game, which probably means we will be using another track down the road.

There were a few things I liked about "Asteroid Circus [Repulse Mix] (Stage 4)" that made it stand out a bit from some of the other tracks.  First, the song starts with pretty heavy guitar-like drones (I do kinda wish that the bass was kicked up though), and then at about 0:12, keyboards come in.  Honestly, this could have been the entire song but had that been the case I likely would not have used it as the MIDI Week Single because it would not have been as interesting.  Just repeat this for the rest of the song and repeat, and it kind of seems like that is what is happening because the next 40 seconds are just that.  Then at 0:52 a new melody comes in and replaces the keyboards, and that melody is catchy enough to carry the song through until it repeats around 1:45.

Granted it is a little hard to hear the quieter, less in-your-face melody once it starts, over the din of blaster and missile fire as you destroy incoming asteroids and enemy ships, but that is music in arcade games for you.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
A Seal Between Loyal Friends

#IndieSelect: Gateways (PC)

I received a copy of Gateways on Steam from Indie Gamer Chick to be played for #IndieSelect.  The game was given and received without expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and the experience be shared on social media to help spread the word about indie games.  All pictures and words unless otherwise noted are my own from my own playthough.

Gateways

Systems: XBLIG, Windows

Release Date: September 13, 2012

Publisher: Smudged Cat Games Ltd.

Developer: Smudged Cat Games Ltd.
Time Spent: 8 Hours 36 Minutes

If I wanted to quickly and inaccurately describe Gateways, it would be to say that it is essentially a 2D Portal.  And while not entirely inaccurate, Gateways offers a lot more complex and mind-bending puzzles than what would be possible in Portal.  Yes, there is a gun that creates portals for you to enter and exit while solving puzzles, but there is also a Resizing gun, a Rotation gun, a Time Travel gun, and a Multi-Gun that lets you combine elements from all four guns albeit with some caveats.  Gateways is a wonderfully thought-out game with puzzles that both stumped and impressed me in their complexity, as well as infuriated me at my lack of being able to think my way into finding a solution without assistance.

Gateways was released by Smudged Cat Games back in 2012 as part of Xbox's Live Indie Games lineup.  You play as the scientist Ed who finds himself in his laboratory unsure as to what just happened to him, who broke into his lab, and why his Gateway Gun has gone missing.  The first 20% of the game does in fact play very similar to a 2D platforming Portal in that you are introduced to the world, there is jumping on platforms and around enemies to solve puzzles until you find the gateway gun.  Like Portal, the Gateway Gun allows you to create portals on specific walls to access areas that you cannot walk or jump to.  Passing through one portal leads you to the other portal, and vice-versa.  There are a handful of puzzles to solve as each puzzle gives you greater access to the map, opening up new puzzles to solve while avoiding enemies and environmental hazards.

Before we go into a further in-depth description and analysis of all of the other types of guns you find in Gateways, because there are more, we need to do a little bit of housekeeping.  Along with different types of guns, you can also find additional Health (allowing you to take an extra hit), an extension on the amount of time you have with the Time Travel Gateway Gun (more on that later), and the number of echoes you can have running around when you go back in time (more-more on that later).  Scattered throughout the areas of the map are 500 glowing blue orbs that can be used to purchase solutions to puzzles.  Each puzzle is a specific location and the way that the game implements this help/hint system is pretty ingenious.  

Any time there is a puzzle to solve in the game to grant you deeper access to the level, there is a Help Kiosk that gives you the choice to purchase the option to see if this particular puzzle is currently solvable and if you then want to purchase the solution to this puzzle.  Because there are several guns that have different functions throughout the game, some puzzles require you to backtrack to solve more complicated puzzles, and because this is the type of game that often requires the player to attempt a puzzle multiple times, trying different angles and different types of guns, it may not be obvious at first if you can solve a particular puzzle if you do not have both high-jump upgrades or if you do not have enough echos.  In the late game, as I was going back to solve previously unsolved puzzles, on at least two occasions, I found out that even with nearly all of the guns and a bunch of upgrades, I still could not solve the puzzle, so rather than wasting any more of my time, I left and had a nice red mark on my map so I knew where to go back to when it automatically turned green when it became solvable.  If the puzzle is solvable and you are still having trouble (no shame, as I used this feature quite a few times in the late game), you can buy the solution, at which point the game asks if you want it to take over, and you watch as the puzzle is solved for you in real-time, and once you clear the puzzle, the game relinquishes control.  What is doubly great about this mechanic, is that if part of the puzzle is about getting through a difficult area, you can simply activate the Help Kiosk again (without having to pay any more Orbs) and the game will again take over control until it reaches the end of that puzzle.

The next gun gives you access to the Resizing Gateway Gun which allows you to either shrink down to (roughly) half your height, or nearly triple your size if you pass through the larger of the two portals; the Resizing Gun creates a large portal and a smaller portal, and the size you end up as depends on which portal you exit out of, but you cannot get infinitely small or infinitely large.  Looking back, I can only think of one or two puzzles that required you to be larger than your default size, as the Resizing gun was primarily used to shrink you down to force you into small tunnels/hallways.  It really felt like a portable version of Wayne Szalinski's Shrinking Machine and I would not be upset about an entire game that gave you greater freedom to manipulate your height in either direction.  I just wanted more instances to use this gun to be bigger, but that is acknowledgedly more difficult to do in a map designed around platforming, spiked floors, and patrolling enemies.

The most confusing gun in the game and how best to implement it was the Time Travel Gateway Gun.  I seem to recall that the game did a decent job of explaining the basic mechanics of the gun, in that you needed to use the time-shifting function to exit the room you had just entered, but the developing complexity of how best to use the gun, the game did not prepare me for.  Let me see if I can explain how the Time Travel gun worked because again, it is still somewhat confusing.  When you first use the gun to place a portal on the wall (we'll call Portal A), it activates an on-screen timer, showing you how long you have until Portal A closes on its own.  Once you place the second portal (Portal B), Portal A closes and you have set the length of your time loop (that might be a bad way of describing it) if you do not enter Portal A before the timer for Portal B reaches the end, then it will close.  When you enter Portal B, you exit through Portal A at the time that you set Portal A, and you now see your past self (echos) doing whatever it was you were doing before you set Portal B and went through it.  If you happen to touch your echo in any way, both portals disappear along with your echoes and you continue where the collision occurred and have to reset your portals.  These potential collisions can get very tricky later in the game when you often have to have multiple echoes activating and standing on pressure-sensitive buttons to open doors.  This gets even trickier in the late game where the amount of space you can place portals is limited so the area around your entrance/exit becomes very hazardous.

The last type of gun you find is the Rotation Gateway Gun, which after playing the game for just over eight hours I find a little hard to explain without a visual diagram.  Unlike the primary Gateway Gun, which reorients you upon exiting the exit portal regardless if it is on the wall, floor, or ceiling, the Rotation gun can rotate the world based on where the entrance and exit portals are placed.  This is when the difficulty in the puzzles really ramped up.  Knowing where to place your two portals to get the desired effect was oftentimes confusing for me, and only once after watching the game solve a puzzle for me did I figure out that the easiest way to flip the map 180 degrees was to place both portals on the same surface (in this case being the floor).  There was one puzzle that required you to enter the same set of directional portals multiple times to solve the puzzle, something that had not happened before and I was not mentally prepared for that kind of solution.

The final gun you find is the Multi Gateway Gun, which combines all of the previous guns so that you can use more than one type of gateway at a time.  Previously, you could only have one type of gateway activated at a time, so if you want to activate the Rotation Gateway, you have to close the Resizing Gateways you have open and when you close whichever gateways you have open, you revert to normal (your size goes back to your default size, and any rotation from the Rotation gun reverts to normal gravity).  Before the multi Gateway Gun, solving puzzles was a little more straightforward in that once you figured out which gun you needed, then it was a lot of trial and error to solve the puzzle.  With the Multi gun, I was a little afraid that knowing which combination of guns was going to be confusing, and the mechanics around the Time Travel gun only compounded that fear.  Because when using the Time Travel function in tandem with the other functions, those functions have to be used first before using Time Travel, because once you place a Time Travel gateway, you cannot place any other gateways.  This is definitely one of those times when learning all of this was a lot easier by doing rather than trying to figure out what I am talking about by reading.

The rest of the primary puzzles that lead you to the end of the game required you to use multiple gateways to find the solution and this was when I used up the majority of my orbs to have the game solve the puzzles for me.  I fully admit that I used 415 orbs through some combination of determining if puzzles were solvable and having the puzzles solved for me.  No shame, because the mechanic was there in the game to be used if need be, and for a handful of puzzles, I really needed help.  Another thing I liked about having paid for puzzles to be solved, aside from the frustration of trying to figure out what to do after spending at least 10 minutes banging my head against the wall, was that there were a few puzzles that required solving just to move to the next room.  So when you went to the Help kiosk, you could activate the kiosk again (without paying again) and the game would take over control and solve the puzzle for you again.  Again, no shame in this, because that is what the orbs were for and an optional accessibility feature is a welcome feature.

An optional equipment pickup that I only found because I was doing some exploring after getting stuck on a puzzle, was the Time Suit.  The Time Suit allows you to be in the same space as one of your echos so you do not run the risk of resetting time by accidentally running into your echo.  Thinking about the final puzzle in the game, I do not know how more difficult that would make the puzzle, but I know that not having to think about that was a huge relief.  The other Time Travel Gateway Gun-related items you pick up in certain rooms upon solving puzzles, the extra echos and extra time were also welcome finds when I felt I could not solve puzzles.  I believe you need at least four echos out of the possible eight that you find, but that is only on the normal difficulty.

Yes, there are apparently two difficulties and I only realized that while trying to figure out the final puzzle in the game.  The thing with this last puzzle, is that there is no Help kiosk to solve the puzzle for you, which was a little worrisome, but I was able to solve the pentultimate puzzle so I thought that this last one was not going to be as troublesome as say, "Dancing on the Ceiling" or "Splitting the Laser."  After figuring out the different parts to the puzzle, where I thought I needed to have the Resizing gateway, the standard gateway, the Rotational gateway, and the Time Travel gateway, I realized that I was still not any close to figuring out the solution after 20 minutes of trial and mostly error.  I ended up browsing the Discussions section in Steam and managed to find a walkthrough.  The only problem was that this final room had two lasers that I had to redirect whereas the room I was looking at only had the one.  This was getting out of hand.  

I did watch Smudge Cat's walkthrough on the final puzzle and marveled at what they expected the player to have grasped by the end of the game, because I can tell you that I never would have been able to solve this puzzle on hard.  In fact, I was not even able to solve the puzzle on normal difficulty, even with all of the Time Travel power-ups (that extend the amount of time you can spend in the time loop, and the number of echoes you can have running around), trying to figure out where to place the Rotation gateway and how to wrap my brain around all of the hopping between Time Travel gateways was crazy.  Major kudos to Pup and their walkthrough of the final puzzle on normal difficulty because I would not have been able to beat the game had I not watched, rewatched, rewatched, paused, rewound, rewatched, and paused multiple times just to figure out what I was expected to do to solve this beast.  I easily attempted the final puzzle on normal no fewer than five times, with mistiming jumps, or not getting the Time Travel gateway in the right spot while trying to line it up with where I would eventually need it five steps from when I placed it.  And had I not had the walkthrough, I can nearly promise you that even if I had the gateways in the same correct place, I would have thought that I had them in the wrong place after failing on my fourth or fifth attempt.

Despite my frustration on the final puzzle, Gateways was a really fun game, that at times made me feel like a genius capable of understanding quantum entanglement, and other times incapable of describing which way is up.  Had I not been able to find a walkthrough on the final puzzle because the developers decided to purposefully not offer an in-game solution, I know that I would have a significantly less favorable view of the game overall.  I am impressed with people who have been able to solve the final puzzle without any kind of assistance and acknowledge that my brain had a hard time with both the Rotation Gateway Gun and the Time Travel Gateway Gun, especially in tadem with the Multi Gateway Gun.  I am even more impressed with Smudge Cat for thinking of a puzzle this complicated and at the same time hate them for it.  This is not necessarily a great way to finish your game and it definitely felt like whatever playtesters Smudge Cat used were also the same people who developed the game.  So thanks again to Pup for really redeeming the game for me in the end.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Out Of My Brain, On The Train

MIDI Week Singles: "Storyline" - Power Piggs of the Dark Age (SNES)

 

"Storyline" Power Piggs of the Dark Age on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1996)

Composer: Marc Baril

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: Titus Software Corporation

Developer: Radical Entertainment

"Storyline" is the stand-out track from Power Piggs of the Dark Ages, a side-scrolling action platformer.  Now, I have not played this game and of the two longplays I have watched, none of them featured this song, leading me to two possible conclusions.  That it was originally written to play between levels while exposition about the Piggs' adventure was told but was cut from the game when the in-between transitions were replaced with just the level title cards, or both longplays started their way through the exposition so I never saw where this song played in the game.

This is all really a shame because I felt that none of the music in the game sounded like anything that would give you the impression that this was a fantasy adventure game.  Even the music from the levels with titles like "Dark Age Donut," "Lost City of Swine," or "The Road to Wolff Castle," all sound like they could have been used in a brawler taking place in either modern times or the near future.  Only "Storyline" has any semblance that this is a medieval/dark ages fantasy game with its bouncy 3/4 or 6/8 meter resembling a dance at a Renn Faire.

So if you are looking for a single track from a game that may or may not have been cut because it sounds different enough from the rest of the music in the game to fit in with a 16-bit fantasy-themed dance party, you need to look no further.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental