2/23/2017

Ideas for Sega

Take 'em for free! Just give the developers more than a damn week to make it, or just generally don't screw them over while they are trying to help you turn a profit. Here are some ideas for Sega game series that I think could really turn things around for Sega or at least make some great sales. The success of Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 proves that it is possible. Yeah. I've heard people go "Bayonetta is Sega?" Yeah! Sometimes developers can make a good game for Sega if Sega stops rapidly sucking dick. Here we go!

Oh, and this is mainly just stuff that I would like to see happen or have any remote interest in, so if I didn't get to your favorite Sega franchise, you can go write about your own video game fantasy world. Leave me and my delusions alone!

Also no Bayonetta 3 because I feel that there would be no way to do it that would not be forced as hell. If you know the plot of Bayonetta 1 and 2 because you have beaten both games, there is my reasoning and that's basically it. If you don't know why Bayonetta 3 would be forced as hell, go play Bayonetta 1 and 2 and actually watch the cutscenes. Moving on.

Ecco Comes Back and then he um... beats all the alien sharks and such...
Ecco the Dolphin existed once! I was never that big of a fan of the game either but it was like Odell Down Under but you are always a dolphin, you're the smartest dolphin of all the dolphins, and you get to impale sharks with your own body so quickly that they explode. Turns out the dolphin had to fight aliens. It might be cool to see something like that go down today. 2D open world underwater isn't really the worst idea and there could be a lot of cool environments underwater despite the whole world being a water level. This actually almost happened, kind of, sort of. The guy who made Ecco was going to make some 3D game with a bunch of fish underwater but it failed kickstarter or something. Whoops. So maybe I'm the only one who thinks this could be cool. Honestly, 3D might not be the best fit for something like Ecco, since again, this is all underwater, but that doesn't mean a new Ecco game has to be bad by default.

Hatsune Miku with a party-based multiplayer mode that can be local and/or online
Wait, you guys still haven't done this yet? It's a rhythm game. You don't have to be a shut-in weaboo to enjoy the Hatsune Miku games because they are fun and tightly designed rhythm games. Make a mode where you can fuck with each other while a bunch of vocaloids dance on screen to implausible scenarios.

NiGHTS but it makes sense
I don't understand NiGHTS. I get the kids, NiGHTS, the basics of the vague plot, but how does this game work? To be fair, I think they tried to do this with Journey of Dreams, so I played that in middle school and hated it for some reason. So maybe I should just shut up and play Journey of Dreams. But also NiGHTS is mostly praised for its unique and surreal aesthetics, so why did they pick the console with the worst graphical capabilities to do a sequel on? Even if they make a Wii U NiGHTS, that has a lot of potential to look awesome and maybe have some actual learning curve so you know what the hell you're doing. Oh, wait, I forgot, the Wii U is already dead. Also make the plot more trippy and less kiddy. Nobody's dreams have a boring control tutorial in them and the dream-like presentation of the first game was one of the things that drew me to it in the first place.

Sonic but it doesn't suck ass, you can do cool things, and there's multiplayer... THE GAME!!!
This has pretty much been a dream game for me since I was very little: a Sonic game that doesn't have flimsy gameplay, preferably 3D, and you can play 4-players local in a bunch of goofy modes. The new focus in this game is not going fast, but wait! Sonic being fast is great, but going fast in a straight line with occasional curves is not so great. Sonic using his speed to do crazy mechanics that make a fun platformer and then you can go fast to explore overworlds and bigger stages or something? There you go! These mechanics can transcend to other typical characters like Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow (maybe some more of my favorites like Blaze, Metal Sonic, Fang on his hoverbike thing?) and make for a really silly but still mechanically sound multiplayer game as well. MMMMM!!!!!! Basically watch the Sonic CD intro, Sonic CD outro, some Sonic Battle gameplay, and then the Sonic movie from the 90's... and to a lesser extent look up Rayman Arena. Something like that but with actual content and spontaneity. My idea is a game where you can do all that stuff. So the game isn't "oh gee, look how fast I'm going." It's about using Sonic's speed to do cool stuff. To put in perspective: a game with The Flash wouldn't just make The Flash really fast. They use his superpowers in a grounded way that the player can still feel like they have control... and then comfortably control it without a record amount of glitches.

Super Monkey Ball That Isn't For Fucking Babies Extreme
This actually is not a simple request. I understand that. I love Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2, but every other game I have played or seen in the series blows. The levels in the first two games are not levels as much as they are self-contained puzzles. Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 were not platformers, they were puzzle games that doubled over as party games. Other games in the series have "puzzles" but they really aren't hard to figure out and aren't fun or exciting whatsoever. They are absolute baby games for babies and that is an absolute disgrace to the original games. Also Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 had great graphics and soundtracks, which could easily be done in the current generation. My PS4 library is still pretty low, I wouldn't mind adding Super Monkey Ball 3 to it. I'm not saying make an overly hard Super Monkey Ball game for the sake of being hard, but make one that has a welcoming and rewarding single-player and outrageous multiplayer like it was 16 years ago.

Vectorman but it doesn't make you want to kill yourself
This is more just "I suck at Vectorman". Vectorman was a really cool character and his world was a genuinely fun and pretty one. I think an HD tune-up, even if it was still slightly pixelated for sake of style, would be an instant cult classic in the 2D platformer world. I played Vectorman 1 and 2 when they were fairly recent games, but that is unfortunately as far as I've thought into a sequel.

Billy Hatcher 2
I love Billy Hatcher. I shouldn't because it really is not that great of a game and my YouTube channel focuses on imperfections in game design, but my channel also focuses on fun and the validity of opinions, therefore Billy Hatcher might just be my ultimate guilty pleasure game. There has only been one game in the series. I don't think Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg sold very well. He has made cameo appearances in other games a few times, but nobody knows who he is. I always have to explain to my friends on the couch who he was and it is always an embarrassing experience because I don't know Billy Hatcher from intensive Sega research, I know the game because I have beaten it at least twice (my current file has every emblem except for the S-rank emblems, for those who know anything about this game). The things that make Billy Hatcher an "okay" game could be fixed with a large handful of small tweaks, so even a Billy Hatcher HD or something that was an actual remake and not just a remaster would be fine in my book, but I think revisiting the world of Morning Land with a fresh new take with some new designers and whatnot could be interesting as well, while still keeping the original template somewhat intact.

Vanquish 2
Vanquish was an overlooked third-person shooter developed by Platinum where you played as a guy in an experimental robot suit and could do cool robot suit stuff. The game was really arcade-y in a lot of ways, but it also had a post-pandemic plot kind of thing where Earth had to live in a tube in space basically. Sam Gideon, your character in the robot-suit, was one of the only people with such a suit, or at least one at its level, because he was kind of a guinea pig for it. Vanquish's narrative was all about taking that technology to its limits. Well. Now we know its limits. What else can it do? Vanquish 2! Now with upgraded suit that can maybe walk on walls (but not like Overwatch, like defying gravity with magnet boots or something) and get even bigger, crazier explosive weapons. Vanquish also had a really well-designed theme of what weapons to use in certain situations as well as which weapons to keep equipped in said situations, which was something that I think they could do more puzzle-based and secret-objective stuff with. Oh, and again, robot suit that can do cool stuff. Sold? Yeah, I thought so.

Ristar 2
For someone out there, I'm sure this made someone's day that I mentioned Ristar. For the rest of you (most of you), Ristar was a platformer for the Genesis about a star kid named Ristar who has stretchy arms. You had to do a bunch of grabby puzzles, including swinging from stuff and scaling walls. I just feel like it wasn't fully explored and Ristar himself moved too slow. As in his walking speed was fine but you stop everything to do the grab move. Then when it comes to swinging around, the game is super fast-paced. Maybe a bit more action on the ground. I don't know. Ristar had a great soundtrack and awesome visuals too. So I would want it to probably still be 2D, and not necessarily pixel art, just pretty. Ristar looked super impressive for its time. It would look even cooler running 60 FPS. The world looked pretty unique too. It was kind of Kirby meets Sonic in terms of art style. Um. Anyways. Ristar 2 would be cool.

I know there's more I could have mentioned but I'm out of ideas and couldn't think of a sure-fire way to improve Crazy Taxi. If you have anything to add to this, let me know in the comments. This could bring up a lot of fun and creative ideas for people. Maybe. That or we can just acknowledge that this blog post is just me fantasizing about games that even if they came out next year, I might not even buy half of them. I wonder if the developers of some of Sega's games feel that way too... that explains a bit...

2/07/2017

My Desire for "Adult" Animation

I recently saw someone on Twitter post something about Samurai Jack. I don't have the exact tweet on hand and it was a re-tweet so I have no recollection of the name. For the purpose of this blog, they were implying that the resurrection of Samurai Jack was a giant flag for the television industry that people had more desire for "adult animation". Except they didn't say it in quotation marks like I did to imply a generalization, they actually said that. I'm not faulting them in any way. A full new season of a Cartoon Network original that started in the early 2000's running on Adult Swim is an obvious shift in the tides for animation in general, and that's a great thing. But since I'm a big realist, which makes everyone see me as a negative asshole, I have to point out the "be careful what you wish for" scenario. You know, the entire premise behind Fairly OddParents... as in... the key lesson behind the entire... fucking... series... oops, off topic.

Before I get started here, I would like to point out that I am not a fan of Samurai Jack. I have nothing against the show, its art style is captivating, and that Season 5 trailer is a joy to watch by itself. I just didn't like it when I was a kid for whatever stupid reason so I don't have any nostalgia for it or a large source of inspiration to invest time in watching the entire series. Also I don't have cable, so even if I caught up to Season 5 right this minute, it wouldn't matter for a long time. So this blog is specifically about my thoughts on the term "adult animation" and where I think this idea is heading along with where I hope it is heading. So this isn't a blog about Samurai Jack, but now is a good time to use it as a referential point.

Yes the revival of Samurai Jack that can now magnify the darker and more violent themes of the show in full is a sign of the time for modern animation, which I can fully get behind. However, I personally hope we can come to a point as a society, now get ready for this, where we don't gauge something's (or someone's) success based on its status on television. GASP! Television doesn't have to be the judge and jury on whether or not I am supposed to like something? Wowwweeeee!!!

Yeah, back in the day it was Broadway, cinema, or television, and if you couldn't make your way into any of these things, you might as well have not existed in the creative field. But welcome to you reading someone's stupid-ass soapbox on the internet. Yes. Right now. I have seen plenty of short films that are fully animated anywhere between twenty seconds to twenty minutes long, 2D or 3D, and most of them were thoroughly impressive. But for whatever reason, these aren't seen as viable contenders for entertainment in comparison to something like umm I dunno, Shrek? All memes aside, that movie is okay and for its time it is somewhat impressive for sure, but now for some reason, as with all great trends in cinema and television, things get Hollywooded. Not real verb, but you know what I mean. No? Okay: streamlined. Compressed into easy-to-drink canisters that you don't have to think about or chew on for too long to form your own opinion. This is where you get... ummmm I dunno, every Shrek installment after Shrek 2 and even arguably Shrek 2 or possibly even arguably Shrek 1 in comparison to Toy Story and Monsters Inc. or even 2D classics like Tarzan, Hercules, and The Emperor's New Groove. Hell, even Pixar has gone off the deep end (Cars 3?), and Disney has been off the deep end for a while. One could say since they own everything now, they are the deep end. If something makes you think, makes you feel something, and is written in a way that makes you appreciate or at least reevaluate something in your life, who cares if it had a billion-dollar budget or if it was made by three people sending files over the internet? Which leads me to my hopes for the future of animated series (or maybe even movies) in general, and if you haven't guessed yet the answer does not lie in TV.

The internet! There are plenty of places that could house an animated webseries, proudly. If it needs sponsors, ad space, et cetera, that can happen too. It has happened before. Bojack Horseman was a big deal for people, and that was a Netflix original; not TV. That show was "adult animation" in its most simplistic form, but it didn't base "adult themes" as the show's backbone. The backbone was its heart, which doesn't fit with the whole anatomy analogy but what I'm trying to say is it made you feel something. It wasn't a cartoon about a bunch of animal people boning each other. Well, it has that too, but not to the extent that this is all the show has to offer. Sex in Bojack Horseman is used as a tool for character development and in turn jokes about the characters and their respective sex lives rather than just the joke being "sex! HAHAHAHA!" It also has themes that I think are being put under the umbrella term of "adult animation" but really there is nothing "adult" about this. Growing up. Growing old. Losing friends, gaining friends, seeking fulfillment, understanding our peers, changing our lives, introspection: these are all themes that any show could do, but most don't, or they try to do it but its demeaning to its audience. This is why I agree with the sentiment in the rise of "adult animation" but I think that the term is too vague and not what I really want.

Cursing can give a cartoon a certain air of human allegory, sexual themes can give a cartoon atmosphere and frivolity, and farts with the accompaniment of genitals can play around with society's joint inner infancy, but having a heart and brain at the show's core does not require these things. Am I opposed to these things? One of my favorite shows of all time is Drawn Together. Short answer: no. One image search of "Drawn Together" with Safe Search turned off and you can come to a more accurate conclusion: hell no. But there are still "kids' shows" that are plenty entertaining and really broke the boundaries of not only what you could do with animation at the time, but what you could do with television shows in general (again, back in the time where if your animated series wasn't on television, it didn't exist). Ren & Stimpy is the first one that comes to mind, but even if we shift our focus back to Samurai Jack from a whopping fifteen to sixteen years ago is barely a show for kids, but also wasn't labelled as "adult". Even Powerpuff Girls had gratuitous yet shameless amount of violence and both shows to my recollection both featured actual blood here and there. That wouldn't get past a censor today more than once a season for sure. This is the television industry's way to Hollywood these productions to make them safe enough to not have to answer to a bunch of complaints from horrible and lazy parents... or just angry people who really like to yell at people on the phone about things they should not be that worried about.

So for a show like Samurai Jack to be accepted again, it has to be aired on Adult Swim, and that's not inherently bad, but what if a show could exist with a similarly sized production team and have less strings attached? Even let's players and vloggers come to networks to gain a following, and this could be done the same way with a moderately sized staff working towards a common goal of making a kickass animated series. This series might be void of swear words but still question human morals at the same time, or it may be Tarantino levels of violence and cursing with inner workings of the human psyche as a central theme. But the important thing is that the original vision was kept from whoever the creators were, and if the show needs to be "adult" to get artistic themes across then I think the medium has missed the point in execution somewhere. If not for the labels and censors of television and to a lesser extent cinema, this would all be semantics and I would not post this stupid blog about it, but we don't live in that universe, or at least not yet.

There are already shows trying to be more like The Simpsons, or Archer, or Aqua Teen, or I dunno... Family Guy? Because a bunch of shameless producers can make carbon copies and bring a diet version of something that already exists to the forefront for people to digest under the premise of "it's better than nothing" or "better than waiting for the next season" or "there was nothing else on". This is lazy on both parts of the creators and viewers, and even if all of this internet animation hooplah I talked about were a reality, this would still happen, but the internet is a cruel and selective place. A rip-off of Hellbenders, Starbarians, or Bojack Horseman could have its fifteen minutes of fame but then would be eaten alive within months and in turn cancelled.

All I'm saying is "original" or "keeping the original artistic integrity of the show's conception by their loving creators" shouldn't have to be "adult" to exist. Yes, seeing shows like Samurai Jack and Rick and Morty are refreshing and a beacon of hope for the medium, but there could be a bevy of animated bliss right under our noses in a few years from now, and I hope when that time comes, we won't still be asking each other "what channel is that on? Oh it's a webseries? Eh, it's not a real show then."

What should you take away from this ramble that I really should not have wasted my time with? Support the stuff you like. If its airing on television, watch it when it airs. If you don't have cable (me), buy the blu-ray when the season comes out (my relationship with Rick and Morty). If it is something online or an animation you found on YouTube that has like 100 views and the channel isn't getting much traction, watch the videos to the end and maybe share with your friends if it really impressed you. Maybe even go a step further and tell the creator(s) what you liked about it, or just that it really made your day a little bit better. This is the only way a future with animation can still occur, and from where I sit now, the future really isn't all that bleak. Before Ren & Stimpy aired, cartoons were almost exclusively used to advertise food and other products. Before then, a team worked day in and day out to create the first ever full-length feature film about a pretty lady hanging out with a bunch of dwarfs. In a few days from now, a cancelled action show about a samurai that was way ahead of its time had to be rebooted to a slot near Family Guy's for another shot at the audience's heart. The age isn't over, it just changed the game up a bit. Support the players.

2/01/2017

Do I Like Kingdom Hearts 2.8??????

Yeah...
...
...
Oh, I have to keep going? Okay then.

Kingdom Hearts 2.8 is actually a compilation disc of three separate features, so I will do a quick shot at all three.

KINGDOM HEARTS: DREAM DROP DISTANCE HD

I already beat the ever-loving hell out of Dream Drop Distance on 3DS. In fact, KH3D was one of the only reasons I got a 3DS in the first place, much like how I pretty much only have a PS4 for Uncharted 4 and Kingdom Hearts III. So after the 100+ hours I put into KH3D, I think I have a pretty grounded and fortified platform to compare the two versions.

You would think because KH3D is on a somewhat recent console and the PS4 is technically leagues more advanced than the 3DS that the PS4 remaster would be obviously better than the 3DS version, hands-down. I personally don't think it is worse, or at least not notably worse.

Kingdom Hearts 3D for 3DS utilized the touch screen in a few minor ways. There was a Nintendogs-like system where you could pet little animal creatures that helped you in combat and served as ability trees for your playable characters. In the PS4 version you can hit X and move the left-stick around, ignoring the big-ass touch pad in the middle of the PS4 controller. I'm not saying I would have preferred it to be the touch pad, but for one, it isn't doing anything else, and two, there was an intricate disposition system here that might be harder to pull off now. There are four different dispositions that each Dream Eater (the creatures I mentioned) can have and no one has 100% figure out what determines which disposition yet... to my knowledge. I have heard it has something to do with the way you pet them considering that it only changes as you pet them. This only matters because certain Dream Eaters have hidden ability tree paths that can only be unlocked by getting the Dream Eater to a certain disposition, even though you don't know that or which disposition or how to get to said disposition. This becomes even more ridiculous and impossible to comprehend if you are just jiggling a joystick around and hoping for the best. But that's a nitpick in comparison to this next thing.

Link Portals are challenges thrown in each world in the game that are necessary to complete the game. A welcome addition. You can find them easier on the touch screen in the 3DS version. The only mini-map in the PS4 version is in the top-right corner instead of the full-color and luxurious touch screen map in the 3DS version. Again, a nitpick of sorts. Here is why this is shitty. There is no secondary screen on PS4, so how do you open the Link Portal if you can't touch it? You hit X near it, which would be fine, if X also wasn't your primary source for attacking enemies. So if a Friendship Portal specifically pops up by a wave of enemies, and you hit X close enough to it while trying to hit enemies, it will keep asking you about the Friendship Portal. This forces you to waste a bunch of other abilities on enemies just to work around this in a way that isn't overly time-consuming and awkward.

There are other reasons why I would say the 3DS version is better, but the frame rate upgrade is a huge plus and full camera control wasn't something I felt I needed in the 3DS version but isn't a bad thing to have in the PS4 version. The definitive version, as they say, would be the 3DS version but you really can't go wrong with the PS4 version either. Dream Drop Distance is one of my favorites in the series and it is a great game in the series to play while you wait for Kingdom Hearts III because it happens right before it and has a bunch of stuff you can read and watch about other games in the series you might have missed (I have met plenty of people who only played I and II and I think Square Enix sadly knows this too).

KINGDOM HEARTS 0.2: BIRTH BY SLEEP - A FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE

This was surprisingly good and bums me out for III. Fragmentary, as I call it, is set in The Realm of Darkness and the designers, directors, and other developers really took advantage of the setting and lore behind that to make Fragmentary a unique and psychedelic experience. I know there is no real place for this in KHIII, or at least not for the whole game, and that is something I think the series could use. This amazing concept was brought to its fullest potential in a 2-hour game about a character that a lot of people don't even know about because they didn't play Birth by Sleep. Aqua is like my new favorite character in the series basically after playing BBS: Final Mix recently and this game... demo... thing?... just made me realize that she is actually the series badass.

On a more mechanical level, Fragmentary makes me incredibly excited for Kingdom Hearts III. The magic is way more useful, comfortable, and even looks more satisfying than it has in any other game in the series. Their usage of the -ja level magic was really smart and grows directly from elements from BBS. There were a few moments where it felt a bit like Final Fantasy XIII in the sense that you just go down a hallway, fight planted enemies, then move on with the plot, but the parts that weren't were some of the most engaging in the series. Getting back away from the the technical, the 3D models are so much more expressive now (for the most part) and that is fucking amazing. All Square Enix has to do is not screw it up and make it about four metrosexual dream-people in a car taking pictures of things... that's all they have to do and Kingdom Hearts III will be my new favorite... that's all they have to do...

KINGDOM HEARTS [symbol thingy] BACK COVER

For those of you who don't know what this is, I'm still not 100% clear myself. Apparently there was a kind of recent mobile Kingdom Hearts game and this is all the cutscenes for it? Or a tasteful re-imagining of the main dialogue? I don't know. So like... the fuck?

First off, you don't have to understand the overall arc of the Kingdom Hearts universe to get Back Cover, but at the same time, this will disappoint fans like me who do know what's going on. Back Cover is a prequel that takes place even before BBS yet has little-to-no connection to anything else in the series. Also there is only one fight scene, and its the lame one they show in the trailer, and the rest of it is dialogue. There are also cutscene breaks like there are in the game when it transitions from one hefty cutscene to another, which breaks the immersion a lot since this was supposed to be more movie-esque, but if you're a fan of the series, you won't find this super jarring because you are already used to that bullshit.

That all being said, and I'm not being sarcastic: Back Cover has some of the most clever writing and most believable voice-acting in the entire fucking franchise. It's the Reservoir Dogs of Kingdom Hearts in the sense that it all bottles up in one place and the sequence of events take place out of order, but are organized in their importance to the viewer's understanding to better tell a story. Too bad that story has basically nothing to do with anything in the rest of the universe, or at the very least, you sit through an hour or so of it and none of it tells you anything you didn't already know about the bigger picture of Kingdom Hearts. So if anyone tells you "you're not a real fan because you didn't watch Back Cover" you can tell them to back off. If they refuse to back off, then tell them that I told them to back off. If they still don't, I'm really sorry and I have nothing else for you. Oh yeah. So Back Cover. Good? Bad? I don't know. It's very Advent Children in a lot of ways. It is a fun little side-adventure and nothing else in the franchise has taken this route so if you are going to get 2.8 anyways, you might as well get your money's worth and check it out. If not, there's always YouTube, if you can find it without someone's annoying commentary over it.

OVERALL

Duh, I already said I liked it. Leave me alone.

... But thanks :) <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

That was too much.

Amendment: those were supposed to be hearts, but in this font... they don't look like hearts...