Game EXP: Jack N' Jill DX (NS)

Disclaimer:  Jack N' Jill DX is game I received from developer Rohan Narang, Publisher Ratalaika Games, and Twitter person IndieGamerGirl as part of the #IndieXmas2018 event to help get the word out on indie games developed for various systems and platforms.  The stipulation upon receiving the game free of charge was to talk about the game, with no promise of further compensation for either a good or a bad review.  Simply talk about the game.  And that is what we are here to do.

The first thing that struck me about Jack N' Jill DX developed by Rohan Karang, was that the monochrome color palette closely resembles that of the original Game Boy, but the graphics and art design are clean and sharp.  So do not go thinking that the visual aesthetic also includes the chugginess of Super Mario Land or Castlevania: The Adventure.  The music is also similar in tone to Game Boy era music, but takes advantage of the ability to have more than a few fingers worth of tones.

The basic premise of the game is a fairly simple one.  You play a blob, either Jack or Jill (with Jill wearing a bow, but otherwise, both characters play the same as the other), and you press the A button to start running, and then press A again to jump over obstacles, collecting coins along the way until you reach your counterpart waiting at the end of the stage.  I feel like it is a decent mix of  the runner-on-rails model of BIT.TRIP.RUNNER with the platforming and goal of reaching your partner in Super Meat Boy.  The controls are not quite as tight and accurate as Super Meat Boy (or nowhere near as manic), but I do not think that JNJ:DX is trying to be another Super Meat Boy, but instead its own game that feels influenced than anything else.

Before I get to the music in the game, from composer Nicole Marie T, I want to talk about the one sound issue that almost sounds too much Game Boy era sound effects.  In the third world, ice blocks are introduced that break after you run/scurry across them.  As you go across them, they break apart with a rather loud banging noise that sounds probably very close to if you hit an ice block with a sledge hammer and processed that sound through the audio chip in a Game Boy. Let me give you an example below.

I think an equally effective tinkly-splish-shattering sound rather than this meaty bang would have been less harsh on the ear drums and the inner ear.

As for the music now, that is a completely different matter.  Nicole Marie T. has written some music that not only fits perfectly with the visual aesthetic, but it also fits in well with Game Boy music in general, but it not as harsh as a lot of Game Boy music was forced to be.  The title music is a perfect example of the catchiness as well as the tone for the rest of the game.

This opening track is perfectly suited to bring the player into the world of Jack N' Jill and the music for the individual worlds as well.  One possible criticism, although not necessarily on the part of Nicole Marie T., is that each world is made up of 20 levels.  The same song plays throughout the world and only changes when you make it to the next world.  Sometimes by the 10th level out of 20, you might start aching for a new song to play, especially if the levels are becoming more increasingly difficult (looking right at you World 5-1!).  However, just like BIT.TRIP.RUNNER, when your character dies and you are taken back to the beginning of the level, the music continues and does not stop.  Again, this continuation of the music, for me at least, keeps me in the game and coupled with the near instantaneous restarting of the level does not let the player dwell on the characters death while they wait another five seconds to try the level again.

Presently, I am on World 5-1 which is 57% of the way through the game and I can definitely see myself finishing the game, especially over while on the two hour flight down to SoCal this weekend.  There is a lot of content to this indie title including being able to buy (with in-game earned currency) different colors to play the game in as well as cosmetic items such as hats and hair for either Jack or Jill.  There are also challenges which are essentially Achievements (for the Switch version at least), but do not pop up in-game when you earn them.  There is also apparently a Mirror Mode which I presume is the entire game, but played in stages where the world is mirrored.  So maybe there are an additional 140 levels after the first 140 levels?  That could be interesting.

So that is really it for Jack N' Jill DX, or at least all that I really want to say.  There is some more to the game but coming across it on your own is a lot more interesting than me telling you that in each world, a new skill or game mechanic is introduced, but done in such a way that the learning curve is not at all steep.  See how boring that was.  So go play the game for yourself if you like.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

To Its Final Round

P.S.  You can check our Twitter feed where I talk a bit more off the cuff (maybe?) about Jack N' Jill DX as well as talk about other games that have been featured on IndieXmas2018.

Game EXP: Midnight: Deluxe (NS)

Disclaimer: I received Midnight: Deluxe free of charge from IndieGamerChick (who is not employed by either Petite Games or Ratalaika Games) with no expectation other than to play and talk about the game.  "Talk" was not a promise or expected promise of a good or positive review, only to talk about my personal experience playing the game.

Today we are having a special Game EXP article because of 2018 IndieXmas run by IndieGamerChick over at her site.  During IndieXmas2018, game codes are handed out (free of charge) to help spread word of mouth (good or bad) about indie games released on all systems far and wide, except maybe the Jaguar and N-Gage.  So, this Game EXP article is looking at Midnight: Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch, although it is also available on other systems, but I am going to exclusively talk about it on the Switch.

The first thing that struck me about M:D, was that the game was described as being a golf-type game where you slingshot your illuminated block (whose name is Midnight) through a puzzle-type screen towards the goal.  My first thought was, "Okay, so golf meets Angry Birds, I can do this."  Then it took me a couple of minutes to figure out the control scheme, even though the opening level has on screen text about how to fire/shoot.  Since I still had Angry Birds in mind, I thought that you had to pull back and fire to send Midnight flying.  A couple of minutes later, I realized that you do not pull back, but instead point in the direction you want to go.  After feeling frustrated at not being able to play what seemed like a rather simplistic game for a minute, I felt a bit like an idiot.

With the Switch version of the game, developers Petite Games added touch screen functionality, which I thought was a brilliant move that makes the Switch version feel all the more exclusive.  However, after the first level, I instinctively used the attached Joy-Cons and not the swiping motion on the touch screen.  There were times that I did try to use the touch screen controls, but with the frequency that I needed to restart a stage (upon deciding that I shot myself into a bad situation, or just generally tried to improve the number of shots I took each level), I did not see any other option but to hit the X button.

And I hit that X button a lot, especially in that first screen shot, which is from the 3rd level in the game.  And the biggest distracting thing about having to constantly hit the X button and restarting a stage, was that the music in the background would start a new song.  I do not know if this was meant as a deterrent from manually restarting, but even when Midnight died (overshooting off-screen in certain stages, falling/flying into buzz saws, landing on spiked fences, or being hit by serrated spinning sword blade-things) the music would change.  This problem for me, and even Conklederp commented on the abruptness of the change, was that there might have been upwards of 10 songs, which all sounded very calming and serene, but when stages last maybe 10 seconds when completed accurately, only hearing 1.5 seconds of a song before restarting to then hear a new song for 2.5 seconds got a little weary on my brain-ears.

In the end, I do not know how much time I spent playing (due to the Switch not presenting that until after a certain amount of days past), but by the end of Level 46 of 70 stages complete (having 51.47% of the game completed), I felt like I was reaching a Super Meat Boy level of difficulty that I do not know if I was ready for.  On most of the levels, I did replay them in order to get two stars or higher (fewer launches means more stars, you know, like golf), mainly because I felt like achieving only one star was only skirting by and only putting the bare minimum into the game.  And after 46 levels, I felt like I had genuinely played the game and that the remaining 19 levels would have felt like a slog.  Maybe there was more innovation after that 51st level, but it started to feel like all of the levels after 50 (the one I played) were there to pad out the game.  

I might come back at a later date and finish those remaining 24 levels, but for now, I have played  through 65.7% of the levels in Midnight: Deluxe earning 78.8% of the stars, which is not too bad after one night of game play.  And most importantly, it was a fun game.  Now Petite Games just needs to fix the issue with the music and I would have no major complaints.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Saw the Danger, Yet I Walked

First Impressions: Darkest Dungeon - Ancestral Edition (NS)

I am going to leave this article a fair amount shorter than I probably would put into a First Impressions article, but I feel like there is only so much I can say about a year old game that has already won a number of awards on a lot of the systems it has been released on. 

First off, I started Darkest Dungeons: Ancestral Edition three separate times.  The first was shortly after first receiving the game, then I put it down while I tried to finish Battle Chasers, and Thimbleweed Park.  The second time was because I felt that after over a months absence I should start over as I had put fewer than 30 minutes into the game.  The third time I started because I did not fully understand the control and button mapping, and made an error sending out a small group instead of the full contingent of four companions that I had in my roster.  Since then, I have made a couple of mistakes, not using items when I though I was, using the correct item at the wrong time which lead to three of my characters dying from their own individual heart attacks and one survivor needing two weeks of mental recovery in the abbey before I even considered sending her out again.

If you are asking yourself, why bother. I will put it to you like this.  The writing in this game is pretty amazing.  It is heavily inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (minus the antisemitic and overt racism) and there are times when a game tries to capture a period piece involving eldritch and cosmic horrors, but they just do not get the dialogue correct.  It just sounds too contemporary.  It is like someone read the Wikipedia page for the Cthulhu mythos, felt that the story should take place in the 1930s, but has no grasp on what books, stories, or dialogue sounded like.  Even the game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which got a lot right, still had journal entries and spoken dialogue sounding like something out of 2006.

Darkest Dungeon on the other hand, nailed the atmosphere of Lovecraft and the sound of words (as opposed to me cannot seem to write well enough).  Granted it is not a perfect match for 1930s weird fiction, but damn it is wonderfully written.  The opening intro reads as follows:

Ruin has come to our family.

You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor.

I lived all my years in that ancient rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of conventional extravagance.  Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power.  With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune, on swarthy workmen, and sturdy shovels.  At last, in the salt soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil.  Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness.  In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity.  Until consciousness failed me.

You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial.  It is a festering abomination!  I beg you, return home, claim your birthright, and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows. . .of the Darkest Dungeon.

If that text at all intrigued you, I recommend (highly recommend) watching the opening cinematic.

I have never heard of the voice actor Wayne June, who speaks the part of your ancestor and makes frequent comments and narrations during the game, but his voice is perfectly suited to the script that was written for the game.  If the above introduction has at all interested you, I also highly recommend watching the cinematic that begins the game once you start your file.

Now, on top of all of that is a lot of game mechanics that I feel I am still working out.  Be it five hours in finally figuring out how to find out the names of items and what they do before I buy them, and I think so far this is my biggest complaint for the Nintendo Switch port of Darkest Dungeon,  that and the text can be tiny at times.  The button mapping is not always as intuitive as I would have liked and there are times when if feels more natural to play it as a touch screen game, but some of the windows when playing in hand-held-mode are just too small for my yeti sized fingers trying to scroll or zoom in/out with two fingers.

And that is where I will leave it for today, which is more than I had originally planned on writing.  The writing, voice acting, and atmosphere of the game is amazing, but the button mapping could use a bit of work.  There is a decent chance that there will be a First Impressions Part II before the end of the year.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Too Late I Heard The Howling

First Impressions: Arena of Valor (NS)

I feel like I have never been a big MOBA person.  I tried out League of Legends briefly and did not get into it.  I tried out Dota2 and played that for an hour or so, but it ultimately did not stick.  I also briefly dipped my toe into Dead Island: Epidemic before that game was taken offline, and while I did have some fun playing that for a couple of hours, in the end I decided that it was not my thing.  So going in to Arena of Valor (after spending a weekend with the beta) my hopes were not too high, but if it turned out the same as all of the others, I would have lost a bit of time, but no real money because AoV is one of the few free to play games currently available on the Nintendo Switch.  So I gave the full game a try, albeit without using any real money on purchasing anything, so still approaching it from a free-to-play perspective.

Why do we not jump to the tl;dr now.  Earlier in the week, I decided to delete Arena of Valor off our Switch.  Not because I was not having any fun, I was frequently having fun when I was winning as opposed to getting gang-shanked forcing me to, in a sense, stare at my lifeless corpse for X number of seconds on the battlefield while our team's towers fell around us.

For those of y'all who are not familiar with Arena of Valor, let me try and break it down quickly.  You pick a type of map (5 vs 5, 3 vs 3, or 1 on 1), you then choose a character who has a particular play style (tank, ranged, magic, etc), you then attempt to destroy your enemy's guard towers which eventually leads you to attacking and destroying their home base.  If you die, your have a respawn timer that, for lack of accuracy, starts at 15 seconds, and grows longer (in essence punishes you, forcing you to play better) each time you die; there was one game in particular where I was killed no fewer than eight times and my respawn timer was somewhere just over a minute.

One aspect that I was frequently impressed with, even while I frequently died myself, was that I found that I was matched with other players who were all or about the same level that I was.  I do not mean skill level, but in-game level based on experience gained while playing.  However, that in-game experience on my side did not directly translate to actual experience in being a better player as I did spend some time trying out other characters and not trying to specialize in the one.  Maybe that was a big part in why I would have bouts of losing?

On that note, I was not a particularly bad player.  I tended to stick using one of the free mage options, Kirxi, mainly because she was not a tank, I was not expected, or capable of leading charges or being in the front line, and acted more as attack and area of effect support.  If I was playing 1 on 1, I would usually choose someone who could take more damage without having to spend a cumulative 5 minutes in a 10 minute game waiting to respawn.  And while there are more than likely, spreadsheets and whatnot devoted to properly building Kirxi and all of the other free-to-play and earned heroes, I really only added skills and abilities that I thought sounded good based on how I was playing.

What ultimately made me decide to delete Arena of Valor off the Switch was looking at the backlog of physical and digital games I had actually paid money for and knowing that I really wanted to spend time with those games and not just the free game that I probably would have sunk more time into if I did not already have a queue.  And as is the case with MOBA's, or at least from my perspective, is that there is no end game, although I know that there is some bits of lore that I either missed or just went right over my head.  Having a random group of characters fighting against each other for no real discernible reason is going to make me lose interest.  Maybe if you were forced to join a faction and from that faction you had a cast of characters who had equivalents on the other team(s).  Like if Bethesda came out with an Elder Scrolls MOBA that had something to do with various people being pulled into the realm of one of the Daedric Princes (not Sheogorath though because that would be too easy of a choice) and forced to fight each other for their own amusement.  That might be something I could get behind.

But anyway, this is where Arena of Valor stands for me.  It was a fun game that contained very little substance that I did not feel compelled to sink any more time than I already had because I have plenty of other games that I am actually wanting to play.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
What Will It Take For Us To Realize?

MIDI Week Singles: "Peaceful Village" - Crystalis (NES)

"Peaceful Village" from Crystalis on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1990), Game Boy Color (2000), & Switch (2018)

Composer: Yoko Osaka

Album: No Official Release

Developer: SNK

I will most likely write about Crystalis in a week or two, but for right now, I wanted to use this song, which is the first town music you hear after your purple haired character wakes up from a futuristic chamber and walks out of a cave into the Town of Leaf.  So early in the game, you do not spend a whole lot of time in the Town of Leaf, or at least I did not as I was out in the field killing monsters in order to gain XP and gold to level up and buy better equipment.  "Peaceful Village" however, is very stereotypical RPG town music in that I do in fact find it peaceful.  It is also the first village that you come across and so then it is in essence, home.  And this is some good "home" music at that.

The other main reason I am sharing music from this 28 year old action RPG is because it was recently released on the Nintendo Switch as part of "SNK 40th Anniversary" collection of console and arcade games.  If you were not able to play the original NES game, you might have played the faulty Game Boy Color game, but I would highly recommend the Switch port.  And for reasons that will become clearer in a few weeks, "Peaceful Village" as a song is indeed just like coming home.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Monthly Update: October 2018

September ended up being a slightly different month gaming-wise than I had originally thought, with games that I had played a couple of years ago coming back into the fray, a game that over the last 10 weeks had spent over 100 hours playing, and games that I do think I had every previously played before.  Board games have not really been happening though, but out Facebook Dungeons & Dragoning has seen a couple of updates each week which has progressed the story in a way that I have been very happy with, including one accidental event that I may actually take time to write about here if I could find a way to have in make sense in written form for those not familiar either with D&D or our group.

Around the beginning of September, Vorlynx and his family came up to visit, partly because we live up here, but also because he was filling in on bass for a friends' band that was playing up in Washington.  While up, I introduced him and Chreekat to the pre-alpha release of TABS, aka Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, which I had not really tooled around with for quite some time.  After that, and to continue with the hilarity that comes with video games and beer, I showed them Rock of Ages, which we played all the way up to the Renaissance and then were not able to build up our defenses fast enough, and avoid the wrath of the War Pope.  The following evening, saw Streets of Rage 2 being pulled up on the Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics client on Steam, which I had never before played, much to the chagrin of 2004 Retro Gamer editors.  After making through a number of stages, I downloaded the Battletoads mod so we played up until the Turbo Tunnels, but trying to get through that one two players is some other kind of difficult.

I am now solidly in the middle of Dead Space 3, and this time around, I have become paranoid about building the best gun that I can without consulting the Internet for advice, although I know I could just pop over to the Dead Space subreddit and get a lungful of advice.  I think I want something similar to Ripley's pulse rifle/flame thrower from Aliens, but I just need to find the right parts and attachments to make it do what I want.  I am still very sad about Visceral Games, but I think after Dead Space, I will do another runthrough of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and write about it here after a nearly 8 year absence from that game.

With the end of September saw the end of Season 5 of Fortnite, and the start of Season 6.  I decided that I would not purchase the Season 6 Battle Pass even though I had more than enough V Bucks to cover the cost without spending any real money (that's what happens when you Scrooge McDuck your V Bucks by not spending any of them during the entire season.  I figured that I would hold off playing Fortnite as much as I did last season, if only to give my brain a rest and focus more on games that I bought, like Battle Chasers: Nightwar.  I feel like I am making a final push to finish that game, which has been a real blast and will definitely garner a Game EXP article by the end of the month.  That being said, I did replace Fortnite with Paladins - Champions of the Realm for my free game of the month.  I may get around to talking a bit about Paladins, but at the moment, I do not see myself putting as much time into that as I did with Fortnite.  Maybe Arena of Valor next month?

For future game releases, I am really looking forward to the 19th, which is still the tentative release date for Dark Souls on the Switch.  Presently, I and very much considering doing a Deprived run, partly because I want the challenge, but mainly because I love the idea of fully customizing my character into whatever I want them to be.  Although I am honestly not looking forward to the Asylum Demon fight.  And for games that I will have to wait longer to play, there is The Evil Within, which I recently discovered had a playable demo on Steam.  What I also discovered was that my computer maxed out at 10 fps and would frequently play at a fluctuating 8-9 fps, which is genuinely not playable at that state.  I could play through if there were occasional dips down to 10, but when the starting area is consistently at 8-9, before anything begins attacking you, you know you are going to have a bad time.

And D&D as mentioned earlier in the month, has been progressing better than I could have expected, which is what I already said.  But it is progressing in a more input laden manner than I had intended, but that is something that I am perfectly okay with.  In the current event, I gave the PCs a description of what was happening as well as a list of 'choose one' options.  However, being the group that I love, they voted, but then added comments in order to help further color the encounter.  As each person commented, I replied with how I felt the interaction would go, figuring that this was only a few seconds before I had the event proceed to its next step, which will probably happen tomorrow, October 2nd.

Why don't we leave it there for our look back at September and glimpse ahead to October?  There will be plenty of time to talk as the month progresses.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Won't You Please Follow Me?

Monthly Update: September 2018

Well, September has finally arrived and with it, Nintendo's release of their paid online service.  I have been reading a bit of speculation from online sources about, going into the minutia about what all will be included beyond already what Nintendo has announced.  For instance, what exactly will be part of the Special Offers?  Will eight different people on eight different Switches across the country be able to take advantage of the Family Plan, or is it up to eight accounts on a single Switch?  There is a lot that is simply not covered in their FAQs, or covered in as much detail as some people, myself included, would like out of Nintendo, especially this late in the online game.  So I guess we will just have to wait and see come mid to late September to get some/most/all of the answers.

And because I know you want to know how my gaming life is going, I just reached the flotilla in Dead Space 3 after having completed the first two games (DS on Easy, DS2 on Normal, and DS3 on Normal).  I have also reached a pretty decent game plan going into Week 6 in Fortnite.  Primarily playing in the evening after the daily challenge has been released so I can decide if I want to keep it or trade it for another one, because Play with a Friend is not always possible when you are a semi-anti-social introvert that does not interact much with people online to begin with.  In One Strike, I have managed to conquer Japan in two modes on Easy and I think that I am finally getting a feel for the various fighters and am able to recognize their tells for when they are attacking or when their defense is about to stop.

Then there is of course Battle Chasers: Nightwar where I play in large chunks a couple of times per week.  I have found the pacing and leveling in the game to be quite interesting, and more different than other RPGs and JRPGs that I have played in the past.  Here, it is very obvious when the game wants the player to move onto the next area, by either not awarding any experience points after a battle, simply allowing you to pass over enemies on the world screen, or offering you minuscule amounts of experience points that would require many hours of grinding in order to level up.  So the only option is to either move on, or try that dungeon again on a higher difficulty setting (which may or may not be a fruitful and productive endeavor).

As we are approaching the fall seasons (and by extension October), and probably also brought on by playing through the Dead Space series again, I feel like my hankering for some horror games is going to creep up on my psyche again.  At least I have both the Layers of Fears DLC Inheritance, Hollow which is a sci-fi horror game.  And it was announced last week that Bloober Team's recent game >observer_ when they released the trailer, although a release date has not been given yet.  And of course there is Outlast II which I would still like to pick up for the switch, again to support horror games on the system, but mainly because (and again), I do not think my computer could run it well enough for it to be entertaining.

Lastly, Conklederp and I recently finished watching an odd show on Netflix called Occult Crimes, and started watching Matt Groening's new show Enchantment, which I will definitely be writing about sometime this month.

So, let's leave it there for right now.  I've got 70+ episodes of The Clone Wars to rewatch.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

First Impressions: One Strike (NS)

I picked up One Strike last night for a stupid low price of less than $1.00.  It was an impulse purchase because I was getting heavy Bushido Blade vibes, a fighting game that I loved when Dr. Potts introduced me to it maybe 20 years ago?

Simply put, Bushido Blade was a fighting game set in Japan where you choose a fighter, equip them with a weapon, and fight.  Visually it looked a bit like Tekken(but less floppy) with katanas and war hammers.  What made Bushido Blade significantly different than most fighting games is that you could easily kill you opponent with a single strike, but not in the way that you could die from a single combo (two I guess) in Killer Instinct.  The trailer for One Strike seemed to promise the same feeling of a fighting game where you could kill someone with a single strike, hence the title.

Ha!! Blocked!

The one big thing that I was a little worried about, primarily because I was not sure about how the game would control.  The graphics looked simple enough, but maybe QubicGames over compensated by making the controls needless complicated?  It turns out that the controls are pretty simple with the L/R buttons and triggers activating a dash, B is defend (for a limited time), and Y is Attack.  With one character, I did find out that they require two quick Y presses in order to attack, the first to ready the weapon, the second to strike, but perhaps it is because that it was supposed to be similar to a nodachi?  Of the six playable characters, I have only used two, but I am very intrigued to see how others fare, and whether or not one feels more over powered than the others.

Ha! Killed!

From what I can tell so far, unlike Bushido Blade, here your character decides what weapon you use so there is nothing in the way of customization.  At least not yet.  I do not know if later in the game you can choose a color setting for your character, since you do go up against yourself in a different color scheme, I suppose it is possible.

So, of the 10ish minutes that I played on the Easy difficulty setting, it definitely is a game that I am going to play often, and in short bursts, which is what I was hoping that it would be.  And I have only played one of four of the possible modes of play, so I know that there is still plenty left to explore.

If you happen to be looking for a nice and semi-short fighting game that is bare bones in all of the best ways possible, QubicGames' One Strike is a very satisfying way to go.  Until you die.

Ha-ork!!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Their Blood Runs Hot as Fire

Game EXP: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (NS)

With the Castlevania series seemingly not going anywhere, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is about as perfect an answer as one would be hoping to receive.  That answer is in the vein of NES era Castlevania games, specifically Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.  Now it has been a while since B:CotM was released, but I have just been sitting on this article for just the right time to release it.  Okay, it was because I was not sure how to go about writing it.  You got me.

This seems eerily familiar. . .

The only real negative thing I can think of to say about Curse of the Moon is that the game is almost too eerily close to an NES Castlevania game for it not to be an NES era Castlevania game.  The colors are spot on.  The sprites are perfectly limited in their color palette, with the exception of a boss or two which are almost more reminiscent of an SNES color scheme.  The music sounds like it could have come out of an 8-bit cart, although it is much more crisp and I did not notice tones cutting out to make way for sound effects, but I could be wrong on that.  You have multiple sub-weapons that are powered by items gained through breaking lanterns and killing enemies.  There is even a score that seems half a hold out from the arcade era, and half to figure out when you have earned enough to gain an extra life.  It's 10,0000 I believe.  The point is (eh!?), is that CotM does a fantastic job in recreating that Castlevania flavor and tone that was present in the first three games that were released on the NES.

In a large castle being attacked by a zombie. . .I think I've done this before?

One other Castlevania bit is that there is little in the way of story.  You start out as the hunter Zangetsu, who kills demons and sensing a strong demonic power emanating from over that way, he goes out in search of his quarry.  Along the way he encounters other hunters who have been imprisoned by various demons and they join him on his quest.  That is about the gist of the whole story.  Like the first Castlevania game where Simon Belmont travels to Castlevania to kill Dracula.  Simple as that.  There were a couple of times when I couldn't remember if I was in fact after Dracula, probably brought on by the similarities in graphics and gameplay, but that never got in the way of my enjoyment.  I could talk a bit more about each of Zangetsu's companions, but I will leave that up to the player, if they want to look up that information on their own or be surprised the first time they play the game.

Always anxious about attacking large enemies with such a short reach.

One critique of the game itself, which I feel is not a negative thing to say, is that I was able to beat the game with only the lives that I earned while playing on my first playthrough.  Oh, I got hit plenty of times while playing on the Veteran difficulty setting (where enemies can knock you back a whole body length instead of only dealing damage) and I died I do not know how many times overall, but I was able to beat the game without ever coming across either a GAME OVER, or a Continue? screen.  Now I have played nearly every 2D Castlevania, with a few exceptions, and for all of the ones that have had multiple lives in the Castlevania I - III style, I have never been able to complete one on a single playthrough  (as opposed to in a single sitting).  I guess you could say that it felt like a Castlevania game created for a modern audience, using assets (albeit all completely new assets) created for a much older (30 something) audience who had grown up with the games.  It was designed to be challenging

What a horrible night to have a curse?

I feel like I could say a lot about Curse of the Moon, and then there are things that I am absolutely unable to talk about.  Like the "Curse of the Moon" mechanic that I just sort of stumbled upon while looking through the pause menu.  This curse, if you choose to select it, will take you back to replay any stage that you had previously played.  The major caveat here, is that when restart a previously played stage, you lose any and all progress you had up until that point.  Any extra health or armor you picked up, is now gone.  Any additional companions are no longer in your party.  The only reason I can see for this mechanic existing in the game is to replay a stage if you missed one of the permanent buffs (max health, armor, max magic, etc).  I did try using it once, but on a save file I had copied just in case it was what I was afraid of, and it was.  I was hoping that by going back to the first stage, that I would still have a character who could slide under certain barriers because there was one of those at the beginning of the game.  However, I found out that you really do just start out back with whatever you had when you first came upon that stage.  I even tried selecting the curse when I had another character, not just the main character selected to see if that made any difference.  It did not.  So as to what the main purpose is, I am not sure.

Overall, B:CotM did a fantastic job recreating the feeling of playing a very tightly conceived and executed game in the vein of Castlevania.  And for only $9.99 US (presently, and on the Nintendo Switch, other prices may vary depending on platform and any possibly sales), it's a fairly decent price for a well crafted game that doesn't bank everything on nostalgia.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Waiting to Take You Away

Monthly Update: August 2018

I feel like I can sum up July in six words.  

Battle Chasers: Nightwar.  

Fortnite.

Dead Space.

And for what it's worth, having a good old fashioned turned based JRPG and and two 3rd person shooter are a good combination of play style and mind sets.  Also the fact that Fortnite was free (without the $9.99 Battle Pass) makes it doubly awesome considering that I have presently put around 35 hours into Fortnite. Then taking the 15 hours I have put into Battle Chasers, and having played through the first Dead Space (for the third time), and playing through Dead Space 2 (for the second time) has pretty much been my video game playing for the month.

I did play a couple rounds of Paladins when that came out, and I will probably write about that game in the coming weeks.  I also played a bit of Dawn of the Breakers, which seemed like an over the top anime inspired mobile phone game that I have since deleted from my account.

And I should definitely mention Octopath Traveler seeing as how I did buy it, but have yet to play it.  I know it's a game that will eat up a lot of my time and I want to treat it like Final Fantasy VI considering those are what the visual design of the game reminds of.  But I do not want to be playing two turn based JRPGs at the same time.  I mean I might be able to enjoy both games at the same time, but there really is no reason to.  So I'm going to pull a 1990 move and swap with Beardsnbourbon so he can play it and I will finally take a stab at Super Mario Odyssey.

Not a lot happened on the movie front aside from seeing Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which wasn't a bad movie, but during a scene where a character wakes up after being tranquilized and is threatened with imminent death from an encroaching lava flow was played out as a comedy bit, I knew the tone for the rest of the movie was going to be similar.  And I was okay with that, because they were fairly consistent throughout the entire movie.  Which is fine.  It's not how I would have originally wanted the movie to be, but I can accept that because I came out of the movie entertained.

And speaking of entertaining movies, Conklederp and I now have tickets for a screening of Back to the Future at Oregon Museum of Science & Industry with a lecture beforehand by astrophysicist Ethan Siegel (who apparently is a favorite of Portland?).  We saw Fargo a couple of months back which included a 30 minutes lecture that looked at the detective film, film noir, and "film blanc" genres.  We were apparently impressed enough that we're now going back.  Plus tickets ended up costing only $8 each with connivence online ordering fee.

Hmmm.

You know, I think I am going to call it.  Gaming wise, I see August being as similar as June.  We might have a D&D game thrown in there, but since both Conklederp and I can only make two out of four possible weekends, there is a decent chance.  And if not, maybe we can scoop some people up for another round of Mansions of Madness.  Because who doesn't like being swallowed by a house and deposited into the ether of some cosmic eldrich horror?



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Turn Around

Monthly Update: July 2018

Are you getting tire of my saying, "Holy crap, it's already [Insert Current Month], because last month just flew by!?"  Because if so, then "sorry," because June kinda just did.  Fly by.  Or at least for me it did.  And also, I'm not sorry.

I also kind of want to semi-apologize because I realize that my last handful of posts were Nintendo (specifically Nintendo Switch) related and when I am mentally looking forward to my next batch of articles and July in general, there is more Nintendo.  And I guess that's just the way things go when your primary video gaming system happens to be the Nintendo Switch.  And if you have been following along, I still have not gotten around to fixing my 3DS (or a semi-integral part of my car for that matter), so even my playable Nintendo gaming systems are dwindling.

But, the last week of June I did manage to pick up a previously coveted NES Classic so I have been fooling around with the 30 games that come on that, and before you ask or wonder, I probably will not be modding the thing as I am just a little too afraid in my abilities to not brick the system.  Maybe I'll just go the route of the Pi and attempt that?  And I realized that it had been a loooooooong time, possibly since Beardsnbourbon was over for a visit that I last played the SNES Classic, but I could be wrong.  Good thing I had played Final Fantasy III so many times that I was somewhat easily able to remember what I was supposed to be doing based on which airship I had and whom I had in my party.  To the Empire with a stop off in Miranda!

But moving away from Nintendo, at least for the time being, I do currently have Steam open, and I do tend to turn on The Elder Scrolls Online, if only to keep my game up-to-date so come the day when my computer decides that it wants to play ESO for more than 10 minutes before crashing, I will be good and patched up.  And as for Steam, I am doing a pretty decent job in not buying anything during their Summer Sale, mainly because the last game I played, not including the Mansions of Madness app that we used last night, was Dark Souls III back on March 5th.  And what I find kind of odd for me, is that while looking through my library of games, I really only get a hankering to play games that I have already played, like Dead Space, or  Morrowind.  Sure there are some games that I would love to play that I cannot get on the Switch like Prey, The Enemy Within, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture,  and Alien: Isolation, but my computer is getting up there in years and cannot handle much above 2011 games, with the few exception mind you.

On the other side of the board, hopefully we can get our D&D group together to finish up that one-off quests that will be going on its second session.  It's been since April when we had two sessions in a month.  Maybe some people felt a little burnt out, or more than likely, Summer kicked in and everybody, ourselves included, started having our weekends filled in with things that did not involve sitting around a table for six to eight hours on a Sunday afternoon.  But we did manage to have some friends over this last Sunday to play (and introduce) Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, which I came to realize that we had not played since Conklederp and I moved into our new house last November.  Eight months is a pretty long time to go without playing one of our favorite board games.

So July 2018, you are here.  Now let us do something about it.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And It's Fine For Some