Game EXP: Bad Dream: Coma, EqqO, & Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (NS & NDS)

 

Bad Dream: Coma

Systems: PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 

Release Date: March 9, 2017

Publisher: Forever Entertainment

Developer: Desert Fox

Time Spent: Don't Know (~4-6 Hours)

[The Reason: I really wanted to finish the game with the Good Ending but could never figure out what it was that I needed to do.  The game only has an auto-save feature and every time I started my last save, it felt like there was something I needed to do in a certain amount of time, but I could never figure out what it was.  So I never ended up writing the Game EXP article for this. ]

A lot of what I could say about Bad Dream: Coma I covered in our First Impressions article over two years ago.  I did finish the game by the end of June 2021, but I only got the Bad Ending and I did not feel that I could write an article based on that one playthrough, especially since the game informs you if you have performed an action that cancels out one of the possible endings.  So I played through again after my first playthrough with the intention of getting either the Neutral or the Good ending.  There were a couple of specific actions I knew I needed to avoid, like killing the crows on the bridge or killing the spiders in the hospital, and I did follow a guide at times, but only when I questioned whether or not an action would have adverse consequences, especially if it had been a while after the game had last autosaved.

Bad Dream: Coma was probably more unsettling and creepy than it was actively scary, but I think that has to do with the fact that it can be difficult, with some exceptions, to make a point-and-click game scary in the same way that Layers of Fear or Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs have point-and-click elements (often) without any real physical threat.  But as unsettling as the game became, I never felt that it crossed the boundary into either disturbing or offensive considering the M rating for "blood, gore, partial nudity."

As far as point-and-click games go, I really enjoyed this one despite not being able to figure out the Good Ending, but there were a lot of elements that I did appreciate.  From the game telling you if you did something that eliminated a possible ending to having distinct screens for how many possible endings you have left (i.e. if you can only get the bad ending, the environmental art for your specific location as well as what is interactable and what you can find can change).  There are other games in the Bad Dream series, and I really think I should pick those up and I know that part of the reason why I had not was because of not feeling like I had adequately played through and written about Bad Dream: Coma.  So maybe that has now changed.

<o>

EqqO

Systems: Windows, Android, Nintendo Switch

Release Date:  January 29, 2019

Publisher: Parallel Studio & Nakana.io

Developer: Parallel Studio

Time Spent: Don't Know (~4-5 Hours)

[The Reason:  I pretty much cover in the article why I had such a hard time writing about EqqO.  It really just boils down to that I had a hard time trying to find the right combination of talking about the game mechanics and the heaviness of the story itself, and I was never able to find a happy middle ground.]

EqqO is a game that is all about how a mother copes with the trauma of her missing child.  The game's story is told from the perspective of the mother telling what happened to her child, Eqqo, after he goes missing following the arrival of a warlord passing through their village.  This was a particularly heavy game, especially considering that Conklederp and I had recently become new parents.  The ending, in particular, was a beautiful culmination of the story told in the game and through the story that was difficult to watch, but not from a "how could they show this!?" perspective, but because the story itself was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful.  I mean, it's a story that a mother is telling to come to terms with the loss of her child.  

Thankfully, the gameplay itself is all about solving puzzles and avoiding environmental hazards to continue through to the next room, so all of the heavy emotional storytelling is told in cutscenes and voiceovers between stages.

I highly recommend EqqO if point-and-click puzzle games set in a 3D space are your type of game, but just a very massive big heads up that the story here, while beautiful, does deal with themes of child loss and associated trauma.  I am very glad that I played this though.

<o>

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Systems: Nintendo DS, iOS, Android

Release Date: November 27, 2008

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Level-5

Time Spent: 26 H 11M

[The Reason:  I will get to it in this article, but what really held me back from writing this as a full article was how overly disappointed I was in this game.  This was the third game I played in the Professor Layton series (being the third game after all) and loved the first two, so I was pretty shocked by how I felt with regarding the quality of the puzzles and the optional side-quest-type puzzles here.  But let us just get down to it then.]

Like the previous two entries in the Professor Layton series, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future plays like a visual novel and point-and-click adventure game where you frequently are asked by characters to solve puzzles in order to progress through the story.  What I found most disappointing about Unwound Future, was that, to me at least, felt like Level-5 was scraping the barrel in terms of the quality of several of the puzzles.  There were several puzzles (Puzzle #027 and Puzzle#041 come to mind) that felt like the answers were more subjective than they should have been.  I also felt that the side-quest puzzles like the Parrot Delivery, the Picture Book, and the Toy Car Courses all felt completely disconnected from the main story.  Like what did putting stickers in a Picture Book have to do with solving the mystery as to how Professor Layton, Luke, and Flora were traveling back and forth in time?  At least the Tea Set minigame from Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box felt appropriate for something that would be fretted over by the characters and was something that you could use to directly interact with specific characters.

And speaking of Flora, I know that Layton and Luke ragging on her has kind of been a gag throughout the series, but in this game, it came off as very 1950s, women should know their place and stay in the kitchen vibes.  Constantly putting her off as an inconvenience, an annoyance, and reminding her of her faults from the first game was very off-putting and maybe I am just more aware of it in my old age, but when Layton and Luke were telling Flora that she should not get involved because the situation was dangerous and that she had no place being excited about their situation (which all characters had shown some level excitement at one point before this interaction) had me very annoyed and our male protagonists.  And a 14-year gap between now and when the game was released is not an excuse.

The story, I was fine with, with all of its twists and turns consistent with a game in the Professor Layton series.  A lot of the time I just kind of had to go along with where the story was taking me, even if there were a lot of elements that seemed waaaaay beyond far-fetched.  I guess if it is not too much to ask the player to suspend their disbelief and believe that all the citizens of a village have been "replaced" by robots, then believing that a near-perfect replica of London was built underneath the actual city of London.

But that is really just my feelings about Unwound Future.  Good story, some good puzzles, some bad puzzles, and all bad mini-game puzzles within the context of the story but not necessarily bad in and of themselves; except the Parrot Delivery mini-game which I found to be dreadfully inconsistent with the rules that it tried to create.  Not the best feeling to have when closing out a trilogy, but that is just me.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

What Put Us Here In The First Place

MIDI Week Singles: "Cantes de Confesi​ó​n" - Blasphemous (NS)

 

"Cantes de Confesi​ó​n" from Blasphemous on Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, macOS, Switch (2019)
Composer: Carlos Viola
Album: Blasphemous (Original Game Soundtrack)
Label: Bandcamp
Publisher: Team17
Developer: The Game Kitchen

As much as I did not like the Desecrated Cistern, I really enjoyed this theme.  Having this music made trudging through those dank pits of rancid water with dripping pools of slime and acid so much easier to endure.  Honestly, having a piece of music that is enjoyable to listen to made every trip to and through the Cistern was a smart design choice as I personally found myself having to revisit this area quite a few times.  Be it to make progress in the area before hitting a physical and metaphorical wall that impeded progress, or just using this area of the map as a way-through to the Mountains of Endless Dusk, the Wasteland of Buried Chruches, or stopping off in Albero to drop additional items and tears off at the Order of the True Shrine Church, I would often find myself traveling through some section of the Cistern.

And how about that intro to the song as a way to kick off this piece!?  I love it every time.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

A True Damnation When I Turned Away

P.S.  As I listen to this song over and over, I am actually reminded a bit of Matt Uelmen's theme for the village of Tristram from Diablo and Diablo II.

Game EXP: Silent Hill, Blasphemous, & Heroes of the Monkey Tavern (PSP & NS)

Silent Hill
Systems: PlayStation, PlayStation Portable
Release Date: February 23, 1999
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Team Silent

Play Time: Unknown

[The Reason:  Well, there are two reasons why this particular article languished, and that is because I actually started it back before we moved over from TwoBoysAndTheirBlog in a partially written state.  The second reason was that I did not really know how to approach this game and to talk about it.  I apparently did not do everything I needed to do thereby not seeing everything in the game, or at least a lot of story elements and so I felt that my experience in Silent Hill was very limited.  I also found that I was frequently comparing the game to the 2006 film.  So let us just gloss over all of the dynasty talk regarding this first game in the franchise and jump right into it.]

I picked up Silent Hill back when it was still available on the PSP through Sony's PSN store; sadly that is no longer the case.  I had wanted to play the original Silent Hill for some time and this seemed like the most feasible way of getting to play this wonderful granddaddy of a survival horror video game from 1999 and unless Konami decides to rerelease this game in some format, this might be the only way I could play it without emulation.  I had previously dabbled a bit with Silent Hill Origins on the PSP, but I gave up after just under two hours; I plan on restarting that game though eventually.  But we're here to talk about the first iteration of the Silent Hill franchise.

Apologies for the poor picture quality.  My other camera cheated on me with my phone.

For the most part I enjoyed Silent Hill, although I was pretty confused on a number of points, most of all why Harry and Cheryl were visiting the town of Silent Hill in the first place.  I did feel that a lot of the time I was simply running from one creature or another while outside and not really able to take in any of the sites to get a feel for the town.  I could not say how much environmental storytelling was going on and I am certain that I missed a lot because when I finished the game, I was notified that I had reached the "Bad Ending."  This apparently meant that everyone was dead at the end of the game.

Assuming that my PSP survives the next decade, I would like to return to the game to play through it again, unless it gets remade or HDified in a way that preserves the experience of visual limiting fog and running away from nearly everything on the screen.  Maybe if the Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team is received well, Konami will give them a chance on the first Silent Hill.  Or maybe give it to another studio who are adept in retro-style survival horror games.

<0>

Blasphemous

Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linus, Mac OS, Nintendo Switch

Release Date: September 10, 2019

Publisher: Team17

Developer: The Game Kitchen

Time Spent: 31H 30M

[The Reason:  I actually had a fair amount written about Blasphemous that I kept adding to, reworking, editing, and ultimately not being happy with.  When I stopped, I was about halfway through everything I had written, roughly 900 words, before I actually got to talking about playing the game.  There were ramblings about the Kickstarter, what I had heard about the game along with supporting articles/websites, and different builds and patches for the game before I even started playing.  I also got caught up in the world and the lore trying to find all of the correct names and terminology for things so I at least sounded like I knew what I was talking about.  And then, once I actually got to writing about the game, I found myself writing what was turning out to be a very unhelpful and poorly planned out walkthrough]. I would like to think that I am 100% the target audience for Blasphemous.]

I grew up Catholic, but around the age of 20, I decided that the frequency that I was not going to church on Sundays (mainly due to college marching band trips), that I was feeling that I was not missing something from my life.  So I have a bit of a background in Catholicism and Christianity but do not even think of trying to quiz me on Bible lore or character arcs because even while attending catechism, I could not tell you who was begetting whom or what the significance of the mustard seed was.  As a kid, my favorite story in the Bible, and the handful of Bible-lite books I had growing up was the story of the beheading of John the Baptist, mainly because more often than not, there was an artistic depiction of John the Baptist's head on a plate.  Jump ahead to my high school years when I discovered the heavy tome of paintings by Hieronymous Bosch at my Grandma's house and I was very much captivated.  I think it was around this time too that I read The Inferno and loved how creative the book was with the various punishments for the different types of sins.  I got a lot of Bosch and Dante vibes from Blasphemous.

So Blasphemous played a lot like a 2D side-scrolling Dark Souls with different levels of customization.  Instead of different types of weapons, you had Sword Hearts and rosary beads as accessories that could modify your damage given and received, health recovery, movement speed, spells, etc.  Depending on how many rosary beads you had found, and which beads you had equipped could greatly affect your own experience playing the game.  Additionally, there have been several overhauls of the game since its initial release, altering the map, voice acting, color palettes, enemy placement, difficulties, and a lot of other changes.  This made talking about my own experience playing difficult in that I felt that I would have to talk about specific versions of the game being played and what I had equipped while going through specific areas, which would often change depending on what types of obstacles I faced.

There were also a lot of included DLC expansions that were pre-installed in the Switch version that expanded different areas of the maps and often included option bosses.  While I did explore as much as I could and even though I did complete Miriam's challenge, I do not think I took out any of the additional bosses as I found them to be discouragingly difficult.  I probably could have played around with what rosary beads and Mea Culpa Hearts I had equipped to find the best combination (or just looked it up online), but I eventually gave up on them to just go and beat the game.  Overall, there were plenty of times that I felt underskilled and overpowered just making my way through areas taking as little damage as possible, but just like Dark Souls, it was all about actual out-of-game experience that made me a better player and better able to enjoy the game.

So yes, Blasphemous was a fun, albeit very difficult at times game, with an amazing sense of hypocritical religious lore baked into the world that I devoured while not always fully understanding.  the music was great too, but you likely already knew that.  And now there is Blasphemous 2, which I am obviously excited about; but I may need to read a lore retrospective.

<o>

Heroes of the Monkey Tavern

Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch*

Release Date: September 26, 20216

Publisher: Monkey Stories

Developer: Monkey Stories

Time Spent: Unknown

[The Reason: I honestly am not 100% certain why I never published this article.  I think part of it was that I had accidentally deleted or lost a lot of the screenshots I took apart from the two that I have included below and I just got kind of lost in trying to figure out what to write.  So I have decided to include, almost in full everything I had previously written, but since we already did a First Impressions article, I think you kind of get the gist of this game and if it would be something up your alley, or down your dungeon, or up your tower. . .moving on.]

It's been [years since] I finished Heroes of the Monkey Tavern.  If you are unfamiliar with Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, I would recommend reading the First Impressions article we posted at the beginning of the year, which contains most of the pertinent information about the game, graphics, controls, and musings during half of my first playthrough.  In the end, I traveled up 10 floors of an oddly designed tower to face the final boss and be showered in gold coins.

By the time I finished, I admit that I still had not mastered accidentally having characters drink their health or mana potions when my thumb accidentally grazed the left Joy-Con joystick.  There were also times when fighting that I would accidentally hit the wrong left or right shoulder button and rotate 90 degrees instead of selecting the next character.  There were several puzzles that involved spikes, fire, or both that I would probably still be stuck at if I had not lucked out and immediately saved right after making it out of the room alive (before having to head back through the same room.)

*I just wanted to mention that since I bought the game and last played it (2019 I think), the game has been delisted on the Nintendo eShop and I could find no explanation as to why.  It is still available on Steam though.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Bow Down to the Infernal Lord

Game EXP: Last Day of June, SUPERHOT VR, & Fire Emblem: Three Houses (PC, OQ2, NS)

Last Day of June
Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: August 31, 2016
Publisher: 505 Games
Developer: Ovosonico
Time Spent: Unknown

[The Reason: This one was a little hard to write which I actually get to in the body of the article.  There was another reason that fundamentally changed the game for me, which is also a spoiler which I will get to below, because it is story related.  So that's really it.]

I finished Last Day of June a [few years] back, but I felt like I needed some time to process the traditional game mechanics that made the game a game, the entire story, and the method of storytelling.  I previously talked about playing through the first couple of hours in a First Impressions article back in mid-September [2019] where I already briefly covered the general mechanics of the game such as affecting the timelines of the various characters you play, but there is a lot more to it than that and significantly less daunting than I had thought it was going to be.

As I speculated, events that you do with one character's story have an effect on the village when you play a new character.  Piles of leaves that previously dotted the walkways disappear when you rake them away using another character.  If you collect the rope for the boy to have him fly a kite with the old man, he will no longer be playing with the dog, unless you collect the rope to tie down the boxes on the truck, then the boy will be playing with the dog instead.  When I was able to confirm that the mechanics in-game would operate in this way, I was afraid that this method of playing through one storyline to alter another in order to access a new area/item was going to be a mental chore of keeping track of what does what in what timeline in order to do what in another.  Thankfully the way that Last Day of June utilizes this is just enough to make it clear that that is how the game works, but not so much that you need a flow chart.  Each character that you can play has only two possible paths for them to take in their story and how it affects the two main characters, however, some events in one story will open alternate paths in another, but they always seem to be obvious enough to not induce headaches.

You know what, I think I am talking myself in circles so my advice is to play the game for yourself and you will see what I mean.

~*Spoilers*~

[I also read a while back that as you play as Carl in each of the stages, that he is actually able to go back in time to try and change the events that lead to the car crash killing June.  I had played it as him going back in his mind to see how things might have been different.  Then at the end of the game, the cannon explanation is that while Carl is able to travel back in time, he manages to switch positions with June right before the accident where he ends up dying instead of June.  This was a bit of a shock to me as by the end, I had interpreted that Carl had always been the one to have been injured in the accident and that the actual game was Carl's mind trying to interpret and make sense of what happened.  That in the final stage as the world starts crumbling away, that was Carl finally dying.  I actually like my head-cannon significantly better because it was what I saw and felt while playing the game, or at least when I was coming to realize that June was not in fact the one who died during the car accident.]

<o>

SUPERHOT VR
Systems: Rift, PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest 1/2

Release Date: April 30, 2019
Publisher: Superhot Team
Developer: Superhot Team
Time Spent: 2H 11M 54S

[The Reason: I waited a while to write about SUPERHOT VR for a couple of reasons, the first being that I was surprised that it only took me just over two hours to go through the main campaign.  Granted there are additional modes that you unlock after beating the game that are variations on the levels you already played.  The second was that I found out while doing research about the game that the levels in SHVR are drastically different than the ones in the original version of the game and that there was in fact a continuous story that was happening in both versions of the game.  If you want to read a semi-more in-depth description of the game and its mechanics, I'd recommend our First Impressions article.]

SUPERHOT VR was an absolute blast to play and I had been wanting to play it since it was first announced for PC probably sometime around seven years ago.  I feel like, along with Beat Saber, SHVR is one of those quintessential games for any VR system because of how immersive the game is.  Levels play out in 360 degrees and it can be very easy to forget to look behind you for an enemy combatant while slowly trying to dodge another enemy in front of you with a shotgun.

My biggest critique is how the story was reworked in the VR adaptation, in that I was surprised that there was even a narrative connecting all of the different locations and levels together.  To me, it just felt like I was in a small apartment (the HUD) and playing through different stages presented as a puzzle.  I did not really give much thought as to why the apartment was becoming more degraded with broken equipment as the game progressed, but apparently, that was part of the story I had 100% missed.  I had read that some people were upset with the redesigned levels, that one ending where you committed suicide was taken out because the developers thought that that was not the best way for people to experience the game and that there were better ways to construct the narrative and I agree 100% with that statement.  Especially in a VR setting, putting a digital representation of a gun to your virtual head and pulling the trigger is a strange mindset to ask the player to go.  Granted the whole of the game you have these red enemies shooting at you so that could also be a very real and legitimate reason for not wanting to play this.

You know what, I am just going to include a video I took of a playthrough from the seventh stage, "Corpo Office" which shows a sequence of five stages, most of which I have to playthrough multiple times because I kept getting hit by the Welcoming Committee.  Just a quick heads up though (heh), that if you are prone to motion sickness, the video below might make you nauseous as I do a lot of ducking and weaving and even I experienced a little bit of motion sickness and it is my own video.

So that, in a nutshell, is SUPERHOT VR.  There is some pretty far out mechanics later in the game that I wanted to keep hidden for now, and also it was something that I would often forget at times that I could do, especially in stages that I found particularly difficult.  But this is a fun game to just come back to for 15-20 minutes.

<o>

Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Systems: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: July 16, 2019
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Intelligent Systems, Kuo Shibusawa
Time Spent: ~120+ Hours

[The Reason:  I actually had an entire article written for this game, or at least the first half since there is a time jump in the game that felt like a natural splitting of the articles.  However, I never came back to write Part II because I could not figure out how best to write about this game that from my perspective, had two possible endings through six possible routes; I know now that there are only four routes to the two endings.  Because of the choices I made as far as which house I decided to become The Professor for led to a series of possible outcomes, and on top of that, which students if any I recruited away from their starting houses would change possible outcomes for the various characters, and how I decided to take the story leading up to the time jump could ultimately lead to another set of outcomes.  It honestly just felt too overwhelming to write about an entire game when I had only played maybe 16.6% of the playable game (and this was before the DLC was released at that) even though I had reached an ending.]

As I stated above, there is so much to this game.  I know that I spent just over 120 hours on my first playthrough and that was taking one of four possible paths in the game, before the DLC that added another house to the mix.  There are just so many choices, some benign and others that will directly affect the outcome of the game.  Do you choose a male or female Byleth to play as?  I chose a female because I usually find that more interesting from a fantasy narrative standpoint where more often than not, the protagonist is male.  Which house do you choose to be the professor for?  The Black Eagles, the Golden Deer, or the Blue Lions?  I decided to go with the Black Lions because Dimitri seemed too steeped in willfully blind racism and the members of the Golden Deer seemed a little more aloof.

In the first half of the game, there were a lot of game elements from on-foot exploration, mini-games like tea time, sparing contests, academics, cooking, dining with students (I actually did not do this because the only way to start this was to have dinner with Sylvain and I refused to engage with that pompous piece of trash), fishing, and courting one of the students to be your future romantic partner, which is actually a pretty messed up and problematic power dynamic (although you can also romance any of the applicable school staff as well).  I did end up using a guide for both the tea time mini-game to choose the correct questions and responses to help build my relationships with various characters, as well as another guide in knowing what gifts specific characters would prefer to receive.  In the end, I recruited Ingrid away from the Blue Eagles and I tried to recruit Leonie (since I brought her along on a couple early training missions) but that ended up not working out.  I also chose to recruit Seteth, Flayn, Manuela, and Shamir, but Seteth and Flayn left after I decided to side with Edlegard against the Church of Seiros, because of course, I am going to side with someone who is actively fighting against the bigotry and holy righteousness of a conservative religion.  Although, when the choice came up in-game, I actually chose to side against Edelgard at first out of anger for what felt like her betrayal during the fight under the school, then there was the cutscene where I actually saw what it was she was doing and to the extent of why she was doing it, I realized I had actually made the wrong choice and reloaded my save file and decided to remain with the Black Eagles; thereby Seteth and Flayn left and decided to stay with the Church.

I honestly thought that the time-jump mechanic, as to how and why it happened, felt a little cheap, but I understand that the storytellers wanted to get the player deep into the war that followed without all of the hassles of having you play through five years of war.  I was also a little surprised at the number of battles against former students there were from previous houses, although it only makes sense that they would exist in this game.  As the game progressed and it felt like a war against the other houses was inevitable, I knew that it was going to happen in one form or another, but I was really interested, and impressed, with how these combat encounters were handled.  These enemies, former students, felt so much more fleshed out than one-sided bad guys in the bad army.  Some battles were particularly tough to get through (emotionally), but they also felt appropriate to the story and the characters involved.

Part of me is torn about replaying the game because I know what the "False Church of Seiros" is and what they represent, so I do not know how I could replay with a different house and knowingly side with them, although I guess the same could be said for people who went up against Edelgard as I know there is a lot of online animosity towards her character.  I could just choose the Black Eagles again and choose not to side with her, but at the same time, I am somewhat interested in seeing how the story unfolds with the other houses as well.  If only you could choose to still side with Edelgard when she declares war while still choosing either the Golden Deer or the Blue Lions, but that is a path I have already played. . . so many choices.  The point is, there is so much content in this game as a result of all of the choices you make, as well as all of the content that you can only see if you choose a particular house at the beginning of the game, with character interactions and where their story leads in the end.  I probably will play through this game again. . . maybe after I retire and I have more time on my hands between all of the other games I have not yet played.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Mirror Falls Behind You

MIDI Week Singles: "Fertile Rondo (English)" - Bayonetta 3 (NS)

 

"Fertile Rondo (English)" from Bayonetta 3 on the Nintendo Switch (2022)
Composer: Naofumi Harada
Singer: Julie Nathanson
Album: Bayonetta 3 Original Soundtrack 
Label: Wave Master Entertainment
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: PlatinumGames

There are a couple of reasons why I chose "Fertile Rondo" as the MIDI Week Single.  First, when this song happened in the game, I was just in awe of the composition, and the singer (Julie Nathanson).  I was not expecting an opera sequence in this game, let alone one that fits so well within the Bayonetta universe.  Secondly, how this boss fight operated was genius in that it was not overly difficult as it was essentially a rhythm game, but to a song you had never heard before.  There was still plenty of stress however as all proper boss battles should be capable of, but for the most part, it was a really fun boss battle and very unique for the entire series.  The Bayonetta series has had its share of context button-mashing quick time events with some being overly punishing, but this one I would have happily played again just on its own because of how amazing the whole scene was.

There were a lot of people credited with writing music for Bayonetta 3, specifically 16 people, not including Hirochi Sakaguchi who wrote the original theme to Bayonetta and was the music supervisor on B3.  All of this to say, I could not find an interview with Naofumi Harada about his inspirations for "Fertile Rondo" but the two that immediately jump out to me are the "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" aria from Motzart's The Magic Flute, and the "Diva Dance" section from the opera sequence in The Fifth Element.  There is another version of the same song sung by Ririko Nanase who does an equally phenomenal with the part, bringing a slightly different tone and feel.  I feel that I am slightly biased towards the version that I played because it was the first one I heard and left an impression on my video game-playing heart, but the number of times I have listened to both versions of the song in the week leading up today is probably well into the double digits.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

P.S.  And the halfway point where the skeleton hands hold up glowsticks and start dancing to the music is hilarious, and I loved it.

P.P.S.  There is a great developer video diary from PlatinumGames showcasing the music in the game, although sadly there is no direct mention of this particular piece.

P.P.P.S.  Seriously though, from about 2:55 through the end of the song, chills every single time.

Game EXP: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Bayonetta 3, & Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (SD & NS)

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/X/S, Stadia

Release Date: November 15, 2019

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: Respawn Entertainment

Time Spent: 31.6 Hours

[The Reason:  Honestly, it was because I just never got around to writing about it. I played the game, I had a mostly great time, and then I moved on to other games, Celeste maybe, and when I thought about the game, I felt a little overwhelmed at what to write about, which turns out was the theme for all of the games listed today.  That's pretty much it.]

I am going to be brief in my article about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as played on the Steam Deck.  As far as a Star Wars-themed third-person action-adventure exploring game in the vein of Dark Souls meets God of War, this was a lot of fun.  I enjoyed exploring the time between Episode III and Episode IV (or between the end of the second season of Star Wars: Rebels after Vader disbanded the remaining Inquisitors which is to explain why you never hear/see them in A New Hope. . .See, there I go again, and one of the key reasons why I found this hard to write in the first place, is so many connections to past characters and events that it is easy to get lost in tangents).  

I had a couple of issues with the story early on, especially with BD-1 just showing up, latching onto Kal, and feeling like I somehow missed a cutscene where Kal questions the intentions of this droid where everything else on the planet is hostile and killable.  Don't get me wrong, I loved BD-1, its design, its personality, and its penchant for diving headfirst into any box/crate with a hinge, I just felt that there was something that I missed because at one moment there was no droid, and the next Kal had a shoulder droid buddy.

There were times when I overthought the game design such as running into the same stormtroopers in the same locations after resting at a bonfire. . . sorry, Jedi Meditation Circle.  From a game design perspective, I understand that you need things for Kal to kill to gain experience to fill out his skill augmentation tree, otherwise, you would need to have location/context-based skill learning (which does exist here for a couple of Jedi specific skills) a much smaller skill tree, and very little feeling of customization.  I get it.  But if I think too hard about it, it seems silly lore-wise, that enemies could respawn as they do, especially the wildlife.

Because a fair amount of this game focuses on exploration, I did try to 100% each area/planet I was on, although I know that I missed a few BD-1 item boosts and I did not find all possible paint coats for the Stinger Mantis, this ship piloted by Greez Dritus; although I did actively find all of the plants for Greez's hydroponics bay/window/nook.  While there were cutscenes of Kal interacting with his shipmates, Greez and Cere Junda, I would have liked there to have been more of these interspersed between traveling to different planets.  Nothing plot specific, but just moments to have Kal interacting.  Maybe some lightsaber training with Cere, going through movements or cooking with Greez.  And not make a mini-game out of it (which I could see someone wanting to give the player something to do), because Star Wars does not have enough moments where people just sit and talk, or perform an activity that is not directly related to the plot.

Anyway.  I thought Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order hit a lot of the notes I was looking for in both a well-designed (for the most part) game and a story within the Star Wars canon while not being in the position to "save the universe," but just another story in the universe.  I know I will eventually get to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, but considering I waited three years before playing this, I will likely get to the sequel during the Steam 2026 Winter Sale.

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Bayonetta 3

Systems: Nintendo Switch

Release Date: October 28, 2022

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: PlatinumGames

Time Spent: 12h 47m 20.23S

[The Reason:  There are so many different ways I tried to write this article, and a lot of them came back to constantly comparing and referencing the previous two Bayonetta games.  So much so that I found myself no longer talking about Bayonetta 3 itself specifically, but how it was different.  I also found myself torn between liking a lot of what was in this game, and purposefully spiting other aspects of the game and level design.  On top of that, there are so many different genres in this one game that I briefly considered writing separate articles for the open world exploration, the combat, the kaiju combat, the boss combat, the Umbra Trials, Jeanne's stealth missions, to say nothing about the overall story and the world of Bayonetta going forward.  And that is why we are here.]

Did I like Bayonetta 3?  Yes, I think so, for the most part.  There were several evenings that I started playing the game and was forced to stop around 2:30-3:00 AM when the battery on the Switch flashed 5% battery power at me.  I found the combat engaging most of the time and as 85% of the game is centered around combat, that is an important mechanic that you have to get right.  Although I had plenty of issues with the Umbra Trials, that is a combination of a skill issue and a game development issue punctuated by my lack of skill.  While this game emphasizes replayability by telling you of additional tasks after you beat the level, I found myself only replaying a single level once, not including the times I had to replay one of the Jeane-focused levels.

I recall reading people being upset about the ending and while somewhat unexpected, it did kind of make sense.  Was I sad that Bayonetta and Jeanne didn't "end up together," sure but Bayonetta's relationship status throughout her entire life always felt kind of fluid.  I think my biggest takeaway was that I was able to better follow the story in this game than the previous two games, although I did still consult the Internet for a couple of finer points; like how/why Luca was now a rampaging interdimensional werewolf because that seemed like it needed more screen time (although I could have done with fighting that bastard a lot fewer times).

I honestly do not even know where to start with this game.  

I felt that the combat felt very good in that triggering Witch Time felt easier and more consistent than in Bayonetta 2, and significantly easier overall than in Bayonetta.  I also never found myself trying to farm halos or the other form of in-game currency in that I did not go back and replay levels and with the exception of a handful of encounters (as in levels where you needed to progress in a specific direction while the level fell away under you or you died), I never found the game overly difficult to the point where I felt I would not be able to proceed.  That being said, scattered throughout each stage there are plenty of mini-quest/game-like mechanics such as the aforementioned Umbra Trials that proved to be too difficult to pass as well as mid-stage puzzles that I could not complete.  I also did not always try to find the Umbran Tears (a hidden cat, crow, and frog that would sometimes actively avoid the character) that would unlock a new version of that same level to further unlock additional outfits, weapons, and other things I did not bother with.  I guess you could say that I primarily played for the story and did not try to unlock everything, let alone try to get a Pure Platinum score on every combat encounter.

In Bayonetta 3, because the scope of the story is so much grander than in the previous two games, you play as three different characters with just as many if not more different genres. with Bayonetta traveling to different realities and interacting with different versions of herself while you also play as Jeanne who is performing her own missions in the style of a side-scrolling arcade game.  AND, you also play as the new character Viola who is trying to do just as many things that I could have probably written an entire article just about her story, moveset, and implications of her character going forward with the whole of the Bayonetta series.

There really was so much going on with this game that even now I am having a difficult time what to talk about in so short a space.  And I haven't even touched the music, which has a noticeably less jazzy sound than the previous two games (there we go with comparisons again), but I enjoyed it a lot more because of how epic the songs made not only the levels but also the stakes of the story itself.  I can honestly see myself going back to this game sometime in the future and replaying it from the beginning, or at least replaying the levels on my current save file rather than trying to start a whole new game.

And because it is a thing for games like this, here is my final score along with total playtime and playtime per stage:

(I honestly think I did better than bronze overall, but maybe that's taking into account everything that I didn't find and unlock.  I don't see myself replaying to get a better score).

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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One/S/X, Nintendo Switch
Original Release Date: August 8, 2017
Publisher: Ninja Theory
Developer: Ninja Theory
Time Spent: Unknown

[The Reason:  I actually started writing this article a few times while playing the entire game.  I first started when I was only 45 minutes in, which is not very far, being maybe only after the first starting area.  I wrote a little bit sometime after the fight along the bridge, and then again after I had finished.  Part of my hangup was that I felt that I could not write about the game without talking about the approach Ninja Theory took towards mental health issues and its depiction of a main character who was experiencing trauma and various depictions of psychosis, subjects that I did not feel qualified enough to analyze and critique.  I have worked with people with different intellectual disabilities, people at various levels on the Autism spectrum, and people in varying stages of cognitive decline, but this was not that and after various attempts at writing this article I found myself interjecting my own experiences working with those populations only to realize that it was not the same thing and not really applicable.  So this article ended up not being written because of in part my own lack of self-confidence and not knowing how to best approach the article while acknowledging and respecting the game and its depiction of mental trauma.]

Yeah, I loved this game, which I played for the most part with a headphone splitter so Conklederp could listen to the amazing binaural audio mix while watching.  The audio mix was a real highlight of the game, even with just regular $7 stereo earbuds from Sony, and I am glad that I was able to experience slightly downgraded graphics to have a better audio experience than I would had I played this in docked mode on the Switch through the speakers on our 12-year-old TV.  But that never really bothered me as I was partially in awe that this game was even running as well as it did on the Switch, and I know that a side-by-side comparison would show a glaring difference, but in the moment, nothing but pure amazement.

The story itself was a little puzzling at times as the combining of realities for Senua and the player only compounded the confusion about what was real, what was in Senua's head, and what was there as a game mechanic because this is a video game.  Were the creatures Senua fighting only figments in her mind, or were they actually other people that her brain was warping into hulking monsters as a way of dealing with her past and present trauma?

Overall, I really loved this game, and in a way that I could definitely find myself playing it again in the future even though I do not think that anything would be different.  However, on any subsequent playthroughs, I may reference a guide to see an extended ending sequence or at least more to the story that expands on what already happens at the end of the game.  And maybe I'll pick it up for the Steam Deck next time to play at a slightly higher fidelity, if only just to give Ninja Theory a little more money as they don't seem to be coming out with games all that often.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Some Time We Can't Erase

P.S.  Coincidentally, I also just realized that all three of these games all have a picture mode that lets you pause the game at nearly any moment and move the camera to a different angle to then take in-game pictures.  I tooled with it only a little bit in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and barely in Bayonetta 3, each because I felt very interruptive to the gameplay and I never felt compelled to stop what I was doing for a good 10-15 minutes to take a picture.  In Hellblade however, I found myself wanting to take pictures and manipulate the color palate slightly to give a higher definition to the character models, and to just see a different angle.  Like that last picture above for Hellblade was from regular gameplay against a mini-boss and not a framed cutscene.  Gorgeous game.