Game EXP: Inside (NS)

 

INSIDE

Systems: Windows, iOS, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Release Date: June 29, 2016

Publisher: Playdead

Developer: Playdead

Time Spent: ~5-6 Hours

I played INSIDE over the course of about 24 hours.  The first night I played from around 12 am until roughly 3:30 am, both a testament to the game itself and the battery longevity of the Switch OLED; and even then it was only down to about 15%.  That next afternoon, I played for a couple of hours (after a brief look-up on how to solve a particular puzzle because I again was overthinking every element of the puzzle except the obvious solution) and then finished it later that evening.  I was a little confused about the meaning of the ending, of which I have since learned that there are two, but I agree with the general consensus of what everything led to and what it meant.

Just a brief warning, the game does involve a child being put into deadly situations not dissimilar to Playdead's first game LIMBO, but less fantastical and more realistically dystopian where giant spiders are replaced by packs of guard dogs and automated machines akin to the Sentinels from The Matrix if they were attached to tracks and rails.  I had suggested to Conklederp that it probably wasn't a great game to watch me play since I am not a pro gamer and there were plenty of times where the boy character was killed over a dozen different ways.  While I will not be showing screenshots of the character dying, it will be brought up to a degree as part of game mechanics and the like.  So just a heads up that if that's not something you want to read about, then there are obviously no hard feelings there.

INSIDE feels like the natural evolution from LIMBO, where you played an unnamed boy looking for his lost sister, here, you play as an unnamed boy running from various antagonists straight out of an episode of The X-Files.  Like LIMBO, you also start out in a forest solving minor environmental puzzles that only require you to move and jump, and pretty early on, the threat comes not from the sides like a typical side-scrolling platformer, but from the background as men with flashlights and guns exit cars and patrol the surrounding woods looking for you.  Why they are looking for you is the primary crux for nearly the first half of the game as you run through various environments like woods, highway offramps, cornfields, pig farms, and eventually to industrial areas filled with your first big jump in puzzle mechanics.

Once you reach this section of the game, you start controlling other human-like creatures called husks (more on them later) through the use of a psychic-like helmet that lets you either move them left or right, or they follow you.  At this point, the puzzles become a bit more complex because not only are you moving around the characters and making sure that they stay out of danger, but you also now have other people to think about and how they interact with the environment.  After this section (which includes the one puzzle I had to look up, although it did not involve the husks) you continue through the industrial-like area although it takes on a more scientific-lab-like appearance and there is a lot of water.

The water stages are where the story starts to get really strange and where I lost the thread of the plot until I finished the game and looked up what actually happened.  Thankfully, these areas were not as problematic as your stereotypical water stage and were actually quite fun.  There was a fair amount of "figure it out as you go," but since there were so few buttons that actually functioned in the game, determining how a submersible worked and its additional functions was quite easy.  There were a couple of sections that required significant amounts of dying to figure out how I was supposed to solve particular puzzles how a black-haired swimming creature moved and how I was supposed to manipulate the environment to block their path.

The last quarter of the game is really where things kind of went off rails, or at least what I thought I understood what actually consisted of the rails in this game.  Without getting too heavy into spoilers (and because I didn't take too many pictures specifically to avoid spoilers).  Most of these areas were in a lab-type setting which I was thankful to actually be in after the water levels and the water-based puzzles which often required a different type of problem-solving process than the first half of the game.  It was here that I felt pretty confused and just pushed forward, solving puzzles not because I understood what was going on, but because I thought maybe I might have a better understanding at some later point.  But, there were a lot of very cool set pieces that I don't think I have experienced before in a game, even if the avenue was some of the strangest I have played and seen.

Then the game ended.  When I looked up the different interpretations of the story, I nodded along thinking, "Yeah, okay, that makes sense."  Then I saw that there was an alternate ending, which again, kind of made sense.  But what are these orbs that everyone is talking about?  I don't recall ever collecting, let alone seeing anything that could have been described as an orb that could have been collected.  And after watching the first minute of a video, I know for certain that I never collected or interacted with anything that looked like that.  Scratch that, I did find the fourth orb but must have forgotten about it because nothing immediately came from doing whatever interacting with the orb did.  And while I do enjoy alternate or hidden endings, I think I feel a little miffed/bitter because of how well hidden these orbs were and that you needed to collect all of them in a single playthrough to see something potentially integral to fully understanding the full story.

Taking INSIDE without the stupidly-well-hidden alternate ending, I really did enjoy the game and think it's a great follow-up to LIMBO without feeling that Playdead is a one-trick pony and I still don't fully understand how/why Polygon could put both of these games together and say that they're "essentially the same experience."  That would be like saying that Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 are "essentially the same experience" because in both games you play as a plumber in a platformer as you rescue a princess from a large cow-like turtle crime boss.  LIMBO might be easier to stomach for some people who would rather not watch a more realistic-looking child be killed in dozens of ways over and over (because I'm a bad gamer), but I enjoyed the storytelling in INSIDE a lot more.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

The Wound In Me Is Pouring Out

P.S.  Oh, and the game played wonderfully on the Switch, with zero crashes, and no noticeable frame rate drops.  I was actually pretty surprised and how smoothly everything ran and looked during the entire game.  Just wanted to throw that out there for people who are looking at various platforms.

MIDI Week Singles: "Mountain Village" - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)

 

"Mountain Village" from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask on the Nintendo 64 (2000)
Composer: Koji Kondo
Album: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Game Music Soundtrack CD Set
Label: Nintendo Power
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD

Interestingly, "Mountain Village" only starts once Link finishes running up the snowy mountainside and reaches the outskirts of the Goron village that is frozen over, whereas "Hyrule Field" is used in the opening run up the mountain.  I assume this gives some surprise and suspense the first time the player climbs the mountain to find the condition of the frequently warm and fire-based region and denizens.  I probably didn't realize it at the time and until I listened to this track on the album, that the blustery wind sound effect is not part of the environmental soundscape, but an integrated part of the soundtrack.  As for the music itself, the glass-sounding chimes are reminiscent of the ice-like nodes and blocks of ice that cover hole/cave entrances.

I couldn't find anything that connects "Mountain Village" with the "Goron City" theme, the "Bolero of Fire," the "Fire Temple" theme, or the "Ice Cavern" themes from Ocarina of Time, but I could be wrong as it would not surprise me if Koji Kondo did something to a previous theme to make it sound like an entirely new one.  Either way, "Mountain Village" does a great job of just sounding desolate, anxious, and cold all at once.  Perfect for the end of the year.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

The Overcast Sky Consoling Me

Random Thoughts About RPG Popularity in the US During the '90s.

I've talked about JRPGs and RPGs a lot over the years.  I grew up playing games on the NES and SNES, like Dragon Warrior, Ultima III: Exodus, Final Fantasy I/II/III, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger.  Dr, Potts and Dellanos we in a similar camp.  Granted I didn't play or was excited about every RPG that came out as I didn't play any of the Dragon Warrior sequels or any of the AD&D (Forgotten Realms) games on the NES, or any of the Breath of Fire, Lufia, or Romancing SaGa series on the SNES.  In the mid-90s, being a kid with no income apart from my weekly allowance for doing chores beyond what I was regularly expected to do, I could really only afford one or two NES games ($19.99 - $39.99) or one SNES game ($39.99 - $74.99) a year, apart from the game I might get for my birthday or Christmas.  So it's really only natural that we had significantly fewer games than what we have access to these days and the games we had we replayed a lot.

I played through both Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy on the NES multiple times, so when the SNES was released and then there were articles in Nintendo Power about the release of Final Fantasy II later that month in the US, I remember us being really excited about this new standalone installment.  That was probably the most expensive SNES game I bought, being $74.99 at KB Toys, although I don't think I bought it until sometime in late 1993 after the SNES dropped in price to $99; I don't recall if Dr. Potts had already gotten the game at that point or not.  I know that he bought Chrono Trigger and I borrowed it to play it, and I remember watching him play Final Fantasy III before I got my own copy sometime in 1994.  I can't tell you how many times I beat Final Fantasy II & III over the years, but I wouldn't be surprised if that number was in the double digits.

I bring all of this long-winded context up because I am always in shock whenever I read about the history of JRPGs in the US, or say, watch a video from The Gaming Historian about Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and see how generally unpopular JRPGs were until Final Fantasy VII was released in 1997.  I feel like I knew that JRPGs were less popular in the US to some degree, but seeing this reflected as a fact in subjective numbers is just mind-boggling to me.  It's strange seeing the US sales for Final Fantasy II on the SNES being only 15.8% of the total number of units sold (250,000 : 1,330,000) in Japan.  Because in my little world, which I felt was only accepted and reinforced by both Dellanos and Dr. Potts, was that RPGs were where you found quality stories set in a high fantasy setting that wasn't specifically "The Hobbit" or "Lord of the Rings."  They were also where you could spend so much more time, with games taking 30+ hours to beat and requiring a save file whereas most games expected you to beat them in a single sitting.

I think that's all I really had to say today.  Just frequently surprised (over and over again) whenever I hear how poorly JRPGs sold overall in the US during the first two generations of consoles.

You can go back about your lives.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Cast My Eyes Downward Upon the Seaside

Bouncing Off Mobile Games

Building off of Monday's article, I wanted to briefly run down a handful of mobile games that I have tried over the last four or five months that I just bounced off of.  This is not so much a critique of the games themselves, just a list of a handful of games that I attempted on my Pixel 7a that I have played without yucking anyone else's yum.

Genshin Impact

Developer: miHO YO

I first heard about Genshin Impact a few years after Breath of the Wild had been released as a game that looked like its visuals and some mechanics borrowed heavily from BotW.  I had tried to download it once on my previous laptop, but the 64.5 GB secondary download size was a bit of a turnoff since it wouldn't install on my external hard drive.  Jump ahead six years and I installed the whole thing on my phone, albeit I was only able to run it on low settings across the board; so was I really playing it at all?

After playing for a few minutes in the starting area on my way to the castle, I totally understand the comparisons to Breath of the Wild, but that seemed about it.  Moving the character was fairly intuitive on the touch screen and I could invert the vertical camera so I wasn't running around looking at the sky or the ground the whole time.  I did some swimming, I did some climbing, I did some collecting of flora, fauna, and fungi.  I climbed a little embankment.  I listened to this game's take on Navi with a significantly larger vocabulary.  I fought a couple of goblinoid-type enemies.  Then I stopped and uninstalled the game.  The controls and combat were fine as were the overall visuals, but it just didn't click with me because it felt like I was playing a much bigger game than what I was expecting from a mobile game, which I guess is a good thing.  But, with a game this large, thinking about either Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, I know that I would not enjoy either of those games nearly as much if I were playing on a phone with touchscreen controls.

I think that's what it boils down to, touchscreen controls with a game of this apparent scale and scope.

Honkai: Star Rail

Developer: COGNOSPHERE PTD. LTD.

The new game from the Hoyoverse, aka the same company as Genshin Impact, which I actually started before downloading/playing Genshin Impact.  This game was more of a 3rd person turn-based JRPG with, what felt like, a heavy emphasis on strategic combat rather than button-mashing JRPGs of the SNES era.  There was one early battle in which I died because I missed something in one of the tutorials and was not using the correct type of attack against the correct enemy.  Instead, I thought I could power my way through the fight since you gain all your HP back after each battle regardless of how poorly you performed in the battle.

My hangups with Honkai: Star Rail was two-fold.  First, I felt like the game was doing a lot of handholding and front-loading of mechanics, information, and general world-building exposition.  I never felt that I was able to get a good foothold on the game and how to play it before the game threw a new mechanic at me, and at the rate I was playing, maybe 15 minutes or so a day, I was going to miss and/or forget something key to understanding the battle system and then progress would grind to a halt, or at the very least, a very unpleasant trudge.  And second, like Genshin Impact, I felt that I was not going to enjoy this type of game on a mobile touchscreen device.  Were this a game on the Switch, I think I could probably like it more.

I know people are likely to say that I didn't give this game a chance, but I just felt that this was not the platform that I was going to enjoy this game.

Street Fighter Duel - Idle RPG

Developer: Crunchyroll Games, LLC

You would think that an idle game would be perfect for what I was looking for.  Something I could log in, hit a "collect rewards" button to gather resources and experience points and close a couple of pop-up windows asking me if I want to pay real-world money for additional and premium resources.  Go through fighters from the Street Fighter universe whom I've been tangentially familiar with for the past 30 years.  I know there was something about training a character and having them fight against random people on the street, bad guys presumably, but I couldn't tell you more than that about any intricacies with the story.  But I don't know, this just didn't click with me.  

I played the game a bit after I first installed it, and opened it up a couple of times that same week, but then nothing.  Although "playing" might be a bit of a stretch as it felt like a lot of what I was doing was following forced in-game prompts to press this button and then use this resource to speed up time, and I get that it's a tutorial, but these kinds that are so front loading heavy I feel like I might never learn because I'm just pressing the highlighted button.  So I never came back.  I saw it sitting there in my "Games" folder on my phone, Ken (I think) angrily staring back at me wondering why I hadn't logged back in in over a month.  Eventually, I just uninstalled the game when I realized I had no intention of playing it again.

Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle Earth

Developer: EA Capital Games

Similar to Street Fighter Duel - Idle RPG, Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle Earth did a fair amount of hand-holding and info-dumping rules and mechanics early on, although I was able to start doing actions on my own without the literal finger prompts.  The game jumps the story from The Fellowship of the Ring ahead to the encounter at Weathertop, more akin to the events in the movie than what happened in the book (which wasn't that), but that's not going to be a make or break moment for me.  I'm not playing a Lord of the Rings game for its accuracy to the source material, especially a mobile game, and while I wouldn't want to play a first-person shooter as Hobbits during the Scouring of the Shire, I can understand how different narratives work in different media.

Oddly enough, what was the biggest turn-off was how easy the game felt in each of the turn-based combat encounters.  There were some context-specific enemies that the game prompted you to attack either with specific characters or actions, but the damage done by each of the different types of enemies never felt that it was significant enough to actually present a danger to the characters even if you were to attack randomly.  I understand wanting the player to feel stronger than the enemies, but this felt completely different in that there was no real challenge.  It just kind of made me feel like, "Why am I even here?"

Retro Bowl

Developer: New Star Games Ltd.

I first heard about Retro Bowl during an episode of "The Besites" back in September and while Chris Plante did describe the game perfectly as a 2D visually inspired Tecmo Bowl with a management sim aspect to it, I just didn't click in the way I was hoping it was going to.  The game starts off by telling you that you should be the manager of not your favorite team to give you something to work towards rather than starting off with your dream job.  That sentiment from the game, I feel is a good way to describe the overall take on the game.  This isn't so much a game about playing football, although you do do that, but its primary focus seems to be that of a team management sim.

I played through a couple of games, to at least get a feel of the mechanics while actually playing football, as well as the in-between of how the game expects and or wants you to manage your digital football team.  This was the part of the game that interested me the least.  Keeping track of your salary amounts compared to what your team's salary cap is, quality of training and rehab facilities, hiring and firing of stadium staff, free agents, it's all a lot to keep track of even if it is simplified that, presumably, the Football Manager series.  What's that. . Sorry, wrong football, but you get my gist.  I even had a team ask for a higher pick in the following year's draft pick when I was trying to trade for one of their players.  It's not what I wanted out of a mobile football game, which probably means I should just play Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff instead, which apparently is the time of year to jump back in.

Now, before you accuse me of being an out-of-touch curmudgeon who is incapable of enjoying games on my phone, I'll have you know that I actually removed one game from this list while going through the writing process.  GUBBINS is a daily Scrabble-like word game from Studio Folly where you select letter tiles from a stack and then swipe across your letters-turned-words to score points.  There are frequently modifiers that can add additional letters, take letters away, or further modify those letters depending on the specific tile (or Gubbin) being played.  I had originally written the game off after playing it twice, but then, after going back and accepting it as a once-a-day puzzle, I had a lot more fun.  You can play more frequently if you opt to pay a one-time payment of $5.49, which also unlocks additional modes of play, but as it stands, if I think of it like WORDLE as a once-a-day play, then I tend to have a lot more fun with it.

So that's our take on several mobile games (specifically Android, although they all appear to be available on the Apple Store as well) that I briefly played to some extent.  We may or may not have an article up for Monday (December 25th), we'll just have to wait and see how the weekend shapes up.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Step Out From Your Mould

MIDI Week Singles: "A Little Light Snowfall" - Yoshi's Woolly World / Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World (Wii U/3DS)

 

"A Little Light Snowfall" from Yoshi's Wooly World on the Wii U Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World on the 3DS (2015/2017)
Composer: Tomoya Tomita, Misaki Asada, Kazumi Totaka
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Good-Feel

If ever there was a stage theme that encapsulated a winter stage, a Hallmark movie, and consuming knitted enemies and shooting out balls of yarn at puffy cotton ball clouds to form additional stepping stones.  Maybe this track is a little too on the nose as I could easily imagine it as the title music to some romantic-comedy Christmas-themed movie on Netflix about a royal Christmas wedding or a wonderful retelling of "The Prince and the Pauper" all set behind the backdrop of Christmas.

All of that aside, this is a great track for stage 5-5 in Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World on the 3DS, and maybe my view of this song is clouded by the fact that I really enjoyed stage 5-5 as it was fun with just the right amount of challenge to not feel like it was a game for babies.  All of the wintry elements are here too, from the jingle bells, the xylophone, the flutes, the strings, and for whatever reason, even the French horns seem to have a wintry feel.

Great song from the game and for this time of year.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Anywhere the Wind is Blowing

Going Back to Two Classic Mobile Game Sequels

Well, there's a horrible mouthful of a title for you.

A while back, I decided to look back into a couple of mobile games mainly because I was looking for a short-form game I could play on my phone at work while waiting for our eclectic kettle to heat 8.5 oz of water to not quite boiling for my instant coffee.  Not that Fire Emblem Heroes isn't that, but sometimes I feel like I want to play something that isn't a tactics-lite game and since Spirit Stones is no longer a thing anymore, I figured I would go back to two mobile game staples.  My thoughts went to the 2009 classic Angry Birds and 2013's Plants vs. Zombies 2.  After a brief look through the Google Play Store, I couldn't locate the original Angry Birds which I've just learned was renamed Rovio Classics: Angry Birds and/or Red's First Flight, depending on the platform store of your choice, so instead I downloaded Angry Birds 2, released in 2015, but both iterations of that original game no longer seem to be available for Android.

To make a longer story shorter, I was disappointed and disgusted by both.  And promptly uninstalled them in under a week.

A lot of what ended up turning me off from Plants vs. Zombies 2 back in 2014 (less than a year after its initial release) still holds true, although I only made it to the second world.  This time around, I felt like I was inundated with popup ads for either in-game boosts or for other advertised products.  I was also annoyed that the Snow Pea Shooter that I had purchased back in 2013 was no longer tied to my Gmail account/login*.  There really isn't a lot I can or want to say about this game aside from I (still) really don't like how monetized everything feels and while I do recognize that it is a free game and that EA needs to make their money somehow, it felt exceedingly predatory in a way that made me feel like I was dipping my fingers into some sticky substance that made my fingers smell bad.

Angry Birds 2 was another beast altogether but still part of the same bad-smelling tree.  Everything from a loose grasp on which birds were firing in what order, a loose explanation of the exact function of the cards and how they worked, poor level design that allowed for lack of a better term, gotcha moments, and so many instances of forced ad watching and monetization to continue playing.  Maybe it was because I chose the wrong or less efficient angry bird for the next selection of levels while progressing through the story mode or maybe I just lost my touch after not playing many of the now 29 games in the series.  But it really just felt gross in the same way that it felt like my fingers were touching something physically revolting.  

I assume this is what a lot of people were talking about in regards to Diablo Immortal when they were taking the game seriously.  Maybe I was trying to take PvZ2 and AB2 more seriously than I thought?  I thought I was downloading a free-to-play game that had been out for nigh-on a decade or more.  I dunno.  I just felt repulsed by how much each of these games was trying to ask if I wanted to supersize my free-to-play meal and how easy it would be for The Squire to click "Yes, buy that pack of gems and additional birds to fire from a slingshot for $14.99" and I no longer wanted that on my phone.  I know that all of the free-to-play games I have and actively play like Fire Emblem Heroes, Mighty DOOM, Diablo Immortal, and DuoLingo all have some form of popup ads both for their respective in-game products and for unrelated third-party services, but for whatever reason, these two games in particular felt different.  Maybe it was the frequency, maybe it was something else that I have yet to admit to myself.

Thank you for your time, and please leave 5¢ with the receptionist on your way out.

A real-life ad from Angry Birds 2 that I had to watch to continue playing if I didn't want to cough up real-life money, and pretty accurate about how I felt overall.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Am So Far Away

*P.S.  While grabbing additional pictures from Plants vs. Zombies 2 for this article that I ended up not even using, I re-downloaded the game after uninstalling it.  This time, I received a pop-up notification saying that there were two accounts associated with my email that I would have to select to continue playing, with the only real discerning information being that one account had a couple hundred gems and the other had zero, so when I selected the higher gems account, I found that my original game was somewhat restored, but only in that I had access to the Snow Pea, but none of the actual progression, so I would have to restart from the beginning.  And I don't feel that the core gameplay has changed since 2014 enough for me to want to attempt the horror that are the beach levels.

How and Why I'm Still Playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

This article isn't meant to be my Game EXP article for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but I may just reference back to it (in its entirety?) when I do get around to writing it sometime next year.

I don't know who this article is for or why I feel the need to justify my current 277 hours, although I apparently am 42 hours past the completionist number of hours on HowLongToBeat.  At this point in the year, the game has already been nominated in several categories for The Game Awards and won "Best Action/Adventure Game" so it should be no surprise at the quality of the game.  But I wanted to give a bit of an update as to why/how I am still playing and why I haven't really written much about the game since I first started playing last May.

First off, to understand why I am taking so long to briefly understand how I'm playing the game.  I never used any of the duplication glitches.  Maybe it's a bragging point mixed with a bit of pride, but I like the rate of progression in the game and if I had maxed out my Zonai battery within the first 15 hours, then I wouldn't feel that sense of accomplishment after killing Colgera in the depths and be awarded 100 zonaite charges for one little battery blip.  

Secondly, I often find myself roleplaying with Link, but only in semi-loose terms.  I like to have him sleep during the night, even when there aren't any actual benefits to him sleeping at a campfire, although yes, you do get heart/stamina boosts when you sleep under specific circumstances.  But I like to have Link sleep, preferably in a bed.  Now, I'm not going to completely go out of my way to find a bed to sleep in or a campfire to rest next to.  If Link is up and about in a cave or the Depths and it's 4:30 AM in-game, I'll just keep playing as normal.  It's just that if I find myself near a stable and normal-ish sleeping time, I'll stop in.  I have probably wasted hundreds of rupees on paying for beds at stables and inns because if it's anywhere between 10pm and 3am when I roll up to those smoking equine nostrils; which is probably also why I still have around 20+ free stay vouchers at the stables.  This is probably also why I only have a couple of complete suits of armor upgraded to max, and why I only bought one piece of the Flamebreaker Armor set; that shit's expensive.

Thirdly (?), you may already know by now as I bring it up frequently with open-world games, that I typically don't like to use fast travel.  I do use fast travel on occasion, but if the world is interesting enough and there are places to visit and things to do along the way, then I would rather just run/walk or take some other mode of transportation.  There are obvious exceptions in Tears of the Kingdom though:

• Can fast travel out of the Depths, but only from Lightroots, and only under two circumstances:
• Either back to the starting island, usually point right outside of where you first wake up.
• To the corresponding shrine on the surface.
• Also obviously use the Recall in specific locations where it allows to you pass through to the surface, but this isn't fast travel.
• Can fast travel anytime and anywhere on the starting island.
• No rules on boarding a horse, which is kind of like fast traveling for the horse as there have been times when I've left horses in locations and didn't want to go back halfway across the map to pick them back up.  Horses are allowed to move magically.
• In one instance, one of my horses fell into a river that I could not get them out of, so I just had them boarded at the next stable I came across.

Speaking of horses, I have the maximum number of horses allowed by the game along with all the horses I acquired in Breath of the Wild, but for the most part, I will usually only use the first horse I acquired, Bull (named after the Kevin Costner film Bull Durham, because most of my horses are named after films/characters starring either Kevin Costner or Signourny Weaver, e.g. Locksley, Dunbar, Ripley, Barrett, etc) whom I rescued from Bokoblins and has a gentle temperament.  Bull is a literal workhorse with a "Pull" rating of four stars, but a "Speed" and "Stamina" rating of only two stars, so Bull is not really running very fast for very long.  My kind of horse.  I do have faster horses, including Zelda's super-fast gold horse, but I haven't done any of the Horse God quests where you can, supposedly, revive dead horses, so I'd rather not lose any of those unique horses, and holy shit, no, I don't think Bull is expendable, I'm not that kind of person.  I love Bull.  

Anyway.

I go through phases where I use horses a lot when traveling between locations, but sometimes I know that I will be using blocks that fall from the sky, use Recall on them so that I can get airborne so that I can use the glider (and Tulin's ability) to fly further.  Or if I know I am going into the Depths, I might leave the horseback at a stable before jumping in to do some exploring, although I usually will only go into the Depths if I am trying to uncover part of the map, if I need more zonaite, or if a quest leads me down there.

So keeping everything I have just said in mind, let me give you a recent experience (as in Wednesday night) of me playing Tears of the Kingdom:

• Plan on finally starting the Water Temple quests for the Zora and head to the Ruto Mountain region.
• While in the Zodobon Highlands, I recall I wanted to "turn in" information to the Goddess of Power statue in North Akkala (Part of the quest to repair/revive the Mother Goddess Statue).  I go to the nearest stable, Foothill Stable to pick up Bull, and ride to South Akkala Stable where I spend the night.
• In the morning, I ride out to the woods west of the road, between Ordorac Quarry and Octoroc Lake where I leave Bull, then head to the Spring of Power.
• I'm told I need Dinraal's claw so I head to the general area where I think Dinraal flies.
• Along the way, I find a Korok who's lost its friend.  I attach it to a nearby sled and a fan but am attacked by a Stone Talus before I can get everything in position.  I keep trying to run away with the Korok so I can just do the Korok thing.
• I spot Dinraal off in the distance, heading northwest, and the Korok goes rolling down the hillside, in the wrong direction of its friend.  I chase after it by using the glider and the Stone Talus cannot follow down the hillside.
• I spot the Korok against a rock in a wooded area, just north of North Akkala Valley.  I also spot a Red Lynel a few hundred feet away, and it attacks when I land.
• I kill the Lynel, then decide to just "carry" the Korok to its friend.
• I can still see Dinraal in the distance, but not too-too far away, although it is flying away from my current location.
• I chase after Dinraal on foot and manage to catch up to it just northwest of Rok Woods after constructing a hot air balloon that I accidentally fell off of and then the balloon disintegrated on the second attempt, followed by riding a stone block back up in the sky using Recall and Ascending up through various parts of the mountain just south of Skull Lake.  
• I don't know how to make this sound nearly as interesting and exciting as it was to actually do.  It only took a couple of real-world minutes, but chasing down a flying dragon "on foot" was pretty exhilarating
• I catch the thermal created by Dinraal land on it between its tail and back leg, so I walk along its back picking up Dinraal shards as I make my way to its head.
• We're now somewhere between Lake Darman and Eldin's Flank when I finally jump off Dinraal and manage to shoot its claw.  I follow the claw to the ground as it literally disappears into the rocks, but then respawns a few hundred yards away and further west.  I'm in the East Deplian Badlands, just south of Mayak Shrine where I collect the claw.
• I start to head back to the Goddess of Power statue in Akkala.  On foot.
• I do some running and climbing and decide that maybe trying to climb up Death Mountain would be easier/faster and more interesting than running "around" it.  While looking at the map, I notice that I have three Lightroots I haven't unlocked in this specific area of the Depths yet, so I take the Death Mountain Chasm (after scaling the mountainside) into the Depths.
• I unlock Katijabis Lightroot.
• I unlock Tayamik Lightroot.
• I then noticed that I hadn't been to a large alcove area south of Tayamik, so I go there and ended up fighting a Flux Construct II.
• I then head south and unlock Kisomom Lightroot.
• I notice that it's 1:30 AM (real-world time) and that I can put my laundry into the dryer (after the washing machine ran after I delayed it to start after our dishwasher finished), so I save the game and do that. 

As you can see, I still did not make it to the Zora kingdom to start the Water Temple quest and, I think, my final temple.  Since I am in the Depths and have one more Lightroot to get to in semi-close proximity, I will make my way that way out east, but I'll also keep my eyes out for those small-scale mines and any additional Yiga Clan forts I haven't visited/raided yet.  Then I'll likely fast travel back to the starting island, convert any zonaite charges into one or two battery blips (if I have enough charges), then fall/fly off the starting island and head back in the direction of the Zora to (maybe) finally start the Water Temple.  I also have a lot of unexplored land in the desert.

At this point in the game, I am not really uncovering many more shrines or finding as many caves/wells/Koroks anymore, and there are still a lot of sky islands I haven't visited yet.  Every so often I get the urge to just beat the game so I can feel okay going back to longer games I haven't finished yet like The Witcher III, Kingdoms of Amalur, and Triangle Strategy, or starting new games like Octopath Traveler II, Final Fantasy X-2, and Bravely Default II (you know, sequels), but then events like the one described above happen and it just refuels that sense of wonder and awe that this game and world have managed to supply me with for the last 277+ hours.

I don't want to say that I'll likely finish Tears of the Kingdom before the end of the year, but don't be at all surprised if I'm still talking about playing it after the first of the year.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Destiny Could See We Deserved to Have Another Day

Current Hero's Path Map of where I've been for the last 277+ hours (or at least, just on the surface):

MIDI Week Singles: "Coolwind Wastes" - Golf Story (NS)

 

"Coolwind Wastes" from Golf Story on the Nintendo Switch (2017)

Composer: Joel Steudler

Album: Golf Story OST

Label: Bandcamp

Publisher: Sidebar Games

Developer: Sidebar Games

Joel Steudler's track for the snowy and ice-covered course of Coolwind Wastes is wonderfully suited for everything about this particular course.  The jingly bells are a constant reminder that you're playing in a winter wonderland, while the early uilleann pipes are a melodic reminder that this is still a golf game.  The bells and glass chimes (glass marimba?) are perfect instruments to use for a winter setting while also mimicking the frequent frozen water hazards on the course.  I also love that there's the briefest hint of "Deck the Halls" sprinkled throughout the song.

This makes me want to revisit Golf Story and either replay it or see what else I can do after having already beaten the main game, even if it's just replaying courses.  I just enjoy a fun few-frills golf game with a great soundtrack to accompany me.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

You Have to Complete Level One

First Impressions: Evoland - Legendary Edition: Evoland II (PC)

Evoland - Legendary Edition: Evoland II: A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder

Release Date: February 7, 2019 / August 25, 2015

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Xbox One, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch

Publisher: Shiro Unlimited

Developer: Shiro Games

It's been a while since I played the first Evoland, nine years apparently, and I thought it high time that I played the sequel to a game that I loved on so many levels, but was still not without it's faults.  Evoland - Legendary Edition contains both of the games in the Evoland franchise which I picked up from Epic Games some time ago, so I figured this would be how I played the game.  My only concern is that I am only 53 minutes in (probably more though since I have died a few times, and there are specific save points so I have had to replay a few areas a couple of times), and while I have gone through three different game platform types, I'm still not sure if I should be writing a First Impressions article yet, but here we are anyway because I wanted to be here.

If you're not familiar with the Evoland series, I'll bring you up to speed.  The first game was designed in a way that started you off with a bare-bones Game Boy-era-looking game with few mechanics and as you progressed through the game, you unlocked new features, mechanics, and improved sound and graphics, all the while playing the same characters in the same story.  It felt pretty innovative for 2013 and it was oddly nostalgic as you played through different RPG eras, some a lot faster than others, and recognized specific references.  The game itself was short (about 3.5 hours), but that was part of its charm as it even said so in the subtitle.

Unlike the first game, in Evoland II there is a mix of three different art styles within the first five minutes which feels a little jarring.  You first start off in the traditional olive green Game Boy aesthetic, but instead of opening treasure chests to further develop the graphics and mechanics, instead, you are given directions from characters off-screen like you are in some sort of underground test chamber.  After a short combat tutorial, you are given some exposition from three mysterious figures, then whisked away to an opening cinematic told in anime-style still art about a war between humans and demons that happened centuries ago and something to do with three nefarious evil-looking figures watching over everything (although they appear to be different than the three who talked to you earlier).  Then, when your character awakens, you are in a 16-bit game world with 64-bit-esque character portraits when talking with specific characters.

I think it all just feels less coherent and cohesive than the first game as far as video game evolution and progression.  I understand that there has to be some form of evolution between the two games themselves and that part II can't just be a rehash visually and mechanically of part I.  Later in the story, as in maybe 30 minutes, you and another character are transported back in time, which then takes you to something more akin to an 8-bit NES-era game, although the character portraits don't change which feels like a missed opportunity.  So now it feels like there is a narrative decision in how the graphics and mechanics switch.  Which then leads me to believe that any future graphical improvements will mean that our characters will be in the future.

I dunno, maybe I just talked myself into being more 'okay' with the game than when I first started the article, but I think I like it more when the game is making a commentary of J/RPGs and video games in general than when it seems to take itself too seriously.  Yeah, I dunno.  Then again, I am now only 57 minutes into a game that is supposed to take. . .17 - 28 hours!?  

Huh. 

Huh.

Hmmm. . .

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

So Hard to Reignite Myself


P.S.  I didn't realize it before writing this article for Monday, but it was just over 10 years ago that Dr. Potts posted his article for the first Evoland.

P.P.S.  I don't know if it's me, but I cannot seem to find how to close out the game from the main menu.  There is no "quit to desktop" or similar option and I have tried multiple different button combinations on the controller and keyboard.  The only two ways I have gotten the game to close down is to either Alt-F4 or Ctrl-Alt-Del, which doesn't feel like it should be a thing.