I am planning on making a video about Yooka-Laylee, a short video in which I don't compare Yooka-Laylee to the games it is obviously trying to call back to. In that spirit, I am compelled to make a blog post about the comparisons that everyone is making: Yooka-Laylee vs Every Rare Game from 1997-2002. I didn't look up those years for accuracy, I wonder how close they are. Obviously the comparisons are justified but not everyone has played the games that set up Yooka-Laylee's existence, so I think at a certain point, we should look at the game on its own before slamming it up against a 15-year old wall, granted again, it's justified to do so considering they made this game obviously tugging at nostalgia of consumers.
I haven't beaten Yooka-Laylee yet, but I have sunk in about 5-7 hours. That was more time than I expected to spend in such a short time span, but still I'm only in the beginning. So I'm going to compare Yooka-Laylee to some Rare games that inspired the creation of Yooka-Laylee.
The four main games that come to mind are Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Conker's Bad Fur Day (although you could make some pretty loose Donkey Kong Country comparisons and still maintain some illusion of sanity, in my opinion). We could compare it to Battletoads, Jet Force Gemini, and Goldeneye, but that's obviously not what Playtonic was trying to do, so for the purpose of this blog post, it would be stupid to do that. Interesting otherwise perhaps, but for this cause, pointless. DISCLAIMER: I haven't played Banjo-Tooie very much at all so it isn't on the list. So I'm actually just going to compare Yooka-Laylee (Yooka for short) to its spiritual predecessors Banjo-Kazooie (BK), Donkey Kong 64 (DK64), and Conker's Bad Fur Day (Conker).
BANJO-KAZOOIE
I have no nostalgic ties to Banjo-Kazooie. In fact when I played Banjo-Kazooie for a very brief period of time when I was a very young child, I remember hating it. I gave BK a fair chance in my early twenties... I'm still in my early twenties... it was a few years ago. I beat 99% of the game and thought it was great. I never felt bored. I never felt that the game had no direction. I only stopped when my gaming guilt kicked in. I have gaming guilt by the way. The longer I play video games by myself, the more I feel like a piece of shit for playing video games. Through fantastic level and overworld design, Banjo-Kazooie felt like one strung together experience to the very end. Although some things were arbitrary (how many things were collectible in each world and the note doors), they were arbitrary for the sake of having a constant sense of progress without having to go to the pause menu every other minute to find out how many collectibles you still needed.
Flip everything I just said and you have a poignant list of my complaints with Yooka-Laylee, some bigger than others. I'll elaborate, because if I were reading this, I wouldn't go back and try to figure that statement out either.
One similarity: I have no nostalgic ties to Yooka or BK. So when I play Yooka, I see a video game that is mechanically a sequel to BK, which in itself I have no problem with at all. Yooka has a lot of things in it I find a lot more boring in comparison to that of BK. My first time exploring a world in BK is like waking up late on my day off after a long week and realizing that I have a bunch of Lucky Charms and just also happen to be in the mood for Lucky Charms. Everything is set in place in an exciting and constantly rewarding way. A string of notes will lead to nearby feathers and eggs in case you are low on those. They are probably put in that place because another puzzle nearby requires them, or more scattered because a certain puzzle may have you going across the whole map in a short span of time (a la the Gobi's Desert flying missions... or most of the flying missions). Although the camera is easily controllable for the player, the initial camera angles that the game defaults to are not just a static default camera angle, but one that gives you a photo-worthy glimpse of where you are in this new world and in turn can hint at what to do next, which as stated before creates a domino effect in your brain to keep doing everything that the world has to offer, provoking you to keep going and keep being satisfied by your efforts. Once the world has been drained, you want more. I don't feel this at all in Yooka. Quills (the equivalent to notes) seem to be set across the map to signify a place you haven't been before, so if you are looking for something later, and you don't find quills, you probably already searched that area. This isn't a bad idea, but there are sluggish missions where you are required to go back and forth to different corners of the world. Along the way you find other missions to trigger, and it all becomes a mess, on top of the fact that you have to remember where everything is and the worlds are enormous. Yooka also has a camera issue that I kind of mentioned but didn't elaborate on. The default camera angles sometimes show you more than just Yooka's ass in the form of a shiny landscape, but even a bird's eye view of the stage won't show anything of use because the missions and their layout in the stage are so spastic. Instead of making maybe ten (give or take a few) worlds, each with a unique theme and set of memorable missions, Yooka has five overly huge worlds that you have to make even bigger by expanding them, requiring you to crawl through the same locales for hours, picking up litter. Sorry, did I say litter? I meant quills and whatever. Just kidding; I meant litter.
There are a few things I think I do like more about Yooka than that of BK, but they aren't drastic and they are scarce. I feel more in control of Yooka than Banjo. A lot of the stressful moments in BK, for example all of Click Clock Wood, were more of a matter of me trying to keep Banjo in a path where I didn't steer him into trouble or hurtling to his death. Yooka walks around a lot smoother I feel and the camera controls are objectively better. However, these factors don't make the game better. Banjo in BK didn't feel overly clunky, I'm not trying to imply that, but a lot of things you did with Banjo felt more risky because the notes would reset every time you die or exit the level. Yooka doesn't even have a life system. Yooka's punishment is solely wasting your time. In the first world where you transform into a plant, there are only so many ways to transform back to normal, but since there is no consequence for fucking anything in the game whatsoever, I just jumped off of a cliff when I was done. This is because not only is there no consequence, but the plant transformation was stupid and ultimately not fun. It was funny that the game is implying that you are a male flower jizzing plant juice on a bunch of lonely and horny female plants, but that didn't make up for the horrifically sluggish movement of the plant transformation. In BK, even the termite form had a wide mobility and could actually do some things easier than normal Banjo, so if you weren't done with the world, going back to Mumbo to transform again just felt like something you had to do, but not an egregious mess.
BK is the aforementioned Lucky Charms analogy. Yooka is when I'm done eating breakfast and go to my office to work on things, only to realize that every single cable of every device around my desk is impossibly tangled. However somebody is showing me pretty pictures and telling me jokes along the way. It doesn't make the mechanical flaws forgivable, but it makes them slightly more tolerable and gives them a somewhat memorable and endearing soul.
I could go on about how much better Banjo-Kazooie is than Yooka-Laylee and do another rant on how nostalgia is a stupid concept, but I'm going to move on to a different game. This is as good a time as any to clarify that so far I don't hate Yooka-Laylee, but I'm finding a lot of people on the internet saying that it is on par or better than BK. Said people are entitled to their opinion, but I myself cannot see that. Using a simple Venn diagram, you will find that the lesser points of Yooka-Laylee far outweigh that of Banjo-Kazooie, and that there are (probably) way more rage-inducing and/or tedious parts in Yooka-Laylee than there are in Banjo-Kazooie. This is not the kind of blog where I actually go out of my way to make that diagram though.
DONKEY KONG 64
I do have a bit of nostalgic ties to Donkey Kong 64 but this is primarily for the multiplayer mode. I actually never really played the single player mode very much at all as a child. I bought a copy about six months ago, still haven't beaten it, but had a genuinely good time with it. In terms of arbitrary collection and the fact that none of your totals reset, I would say Yooka is a lot more like DK64 than it is like BK. I know its supposed to be "Banjo-Threeie" so saying that it is more like DK64 than BK is taboo, but that's stupid because that isn't even a bad thing. In a world as expansive as the worlds in DK64 or Yooka, it would be cruel to make the player start collecting things over again every time they died. But let's talk about why that works better for DK64 than it does for Yooka because I'm an asshole and I'm trying to say I don't hate Yooka, yet have a lot of negative things to say about it at the same time.
The tiny colored bananas that you collect in DK64 are a trail of breadcrumbs for exploring the stage. This makes DK64 more like an amusement park which makes Yooka more of a metaphorical abandoned stadium. There are signs for fun things to do at an amusement park, which are the subliminal purpose of the bananas in DK64. Some are colored differently for different monkeys, which makes backtracking very tolerable and for the sake of the amusement park analogy, we will say that these are signs that lead to different subcategories of entertainment or perhaps even restaurants, or in this case upgrades to your characters. Trowzer in Yooka is always just in some stupid place because it doesn't matter where he is because you buy upgrades from him and you're done with him forever. Yooka just has a bunch of scattered quills laying around in arbitrary groups. This is stupid. Oh, was that too harsh and opinionated? Yes. Oh well.
When I swing from vines over treacherous areas in DK64 it mixes the euphoria of being a child swinging on a tire swing with the risk/reward system of speed and clunkiness that I mentioned in BK. Yooka doesn't have either of these things, at least not for me.
I can't think of a staggeringly great thing that Yooka does over DK64. It is widely accepted by the public that DK64 is not as good as Banjo. I know that is all subjective but that's why I don't understand why people are blindly accepting Yooka to be on par with more focused and cleverly designed games like BK but somehow miles better than DK64, when mechanically there are so many smarter mechanics and more focused attention to detail moments in DK64 than Yooka.
On that note I love Grant Kirkhope but the Yooka-Laylee rap is fucking trash. It makes me want to bury myself alive. That's probably a fine point to transition with.
CONKER'S BAD FUR DAY
I haven't played too much of Conker because that game is more expensive than antiperspirant for church-going hookers, but I think I got about halfway through it and enjoyed it for the most part. These are a bit harder to compare because I have always seen Conker as more of a cinematic adventure platformer whereas Yooka-Laylee is a collectathon. That said, I think Conker's world is something that Yooka-Laylee should have taken a few hints from. You could say this about Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 even more but I think Conker is a pretty prime example because of its source material. Conker is an average story about an average man in the form of a squirrel and the first main world after the intro and tutorial is a barn, and yet it is endearing. The worlds also have you doing a bunch of menial tasks for silly characters while fighting equally goofy enemies, but the way the music and visuals are set up make it feel like a polished experience (again the camera helps as well). Conker is not a collectathon like BK, DK64, and Yooka, but knowing this helped the developers make more concise worlds with less fluff because the focus was more on the story than the collectibles, and every story needs some kind of memorable setting. There are so many classic moments in Conker because from the beginning the game sets up Conker as a bit of an anti-hero, or at least an ironic hero. His selfish disposition makes the player wonder whether or not they actually want Conker to succeed. Whoops. I started rambling about good points on Conker. Yooka doesn't do any of that. I think the theme set up with books and whatnot is actually done fairly well but they could have done so much more with it. That potential, in my opinion, leaves a bleeding black hole present throughout every second of the game. If all the worlds are books then why is one world a boring, generic ice world after a kind-of-okay Aztec-themed world? They should have done something more like Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time where each world has a different theme that you would want to explore based on an overall theme in the game. Thieves in Time is a cartoony game starring criminals featuring time travel. Visiting old west America, ancient Japan, Prehistoric times, and so on and so forth is all endearing and each world in turn has memorable themes, mechanics, and landmarks as well as gimmicks all based on the theme. Yooka-Laylee has no fucking theme, and the fact that the worlds are so pretty yet have no inherent personality shows this. Conker literally has a world made of shit. There is a shit world in Conker and it is memorable for all the right reasons. When this happens, things that make the game obnoxious (swimming past swimming blades for example) are in turn more forgivable. On the other hand you have Yooka, where the good points don't feel very satisfying or poignant so moments you find displeasing are what you remember more when you put the game down.
Again, at its core, that doesn't make Yooka a terrible game, because in the moment I think there is a lot of good in Yooka, but ultimately the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am in the game. I'm also disappointed that this is how far the concept of nostalgia has grown that a game this cloying and unapologetic not only gets a free pass but is praised for being cloying and unapologetic. All of the fourth-wall breaking video game jokes in the world can't save it from itself.
CONCLUSION (finally)
I could probably go on but those were the main points I wanted to make and they were easier to make in the form of other games, which in itself is a testimony to how Yooka-Laylee is not its own experience and why I would rather recommend Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Conker's Bad Fury Day, and Banjo-Tooie (which I pretty much haven't even played) over Yooka-Laylee. Somewhere in development, Yooka-Laylee lost its soul in the form of trying to clone the soul of games from the late 90's/ early 2000's. If you haven't played Yooka-Laylee... hmmm.... If you are a huge enthusiast of platformer games like I am then Yooka-Laylee is very interesting, I'm just not sure it's worth $40 because it is $40 of arbitrary fluff. If you are looking for a solid platformer that you will actually want to revisit for FUN later on in your life, save yourself the money and order DK64 on Amazon. Or if you haven't played Banjo-Kazooie, the game that Yooka-Laylee rips off in the guise of an homage, what the actual hell are you waiting for? Banjo-Kazooie is awesome!
Maybe my next blog won't be a big angry game rant. I just honestly don't have a positive note to end on.
Oh! Yooka-Laylee has a Shovel Knight cameo. If you haven't played Shovel Knight, spend all the money on it, because that is a rare example of a crowdfunded game that actually delivers on everything it promised and is an actual solid experience that you can actually enjoy without having fogged up nostalgia glasses! I said fogged up. Oh, right, this is a blog. In text... well buuyuyyyyeeeeeeeeeee
I Briefly Played the Switch
My friend got the Switch and told me "come over and PLAY THAT SHIT!" So I did with him and two of his other boiz. BOYYEEEZZZZ!!!! Alright so here are my brief amateur thoughts on that crap.
Ultimately I could talk about some major model design oversights, the joycon system is super innovative and the controller itself is surprisingly comfortable, yadda yadda, The Switch is still just a game system, so maybe I should talk about the games. He has four games and we played all four, so I'm going to hit them one by one, then talk about more general thoughts about The Switch afterwards.
SUPER BOMBERMAN R
(Total time spent playing: roughly 3.5 hours)
This is the game we played the most of, but I don't think it was because the game was super fun and well-designed. Anything bad you have heard about Super Bomberman R on the internet is most likely true, albeit a lot of game critique is subjective. This is still, at its core, just another damn Bomberman game, however, they managed to fuck that up even, so I think this is easily the worst Bomberman game I have ever played (in opposition to Super, Party Edition, 64, and Jetters). The online multiplayer is incredibly frustrating. The lag is ungodly, and if someone ditches the game, their bomber is still in play, meaning they can win by doing literally nothing and more accurately, not even playing the match. They don't even need to have their Switch on. Local multiplayer between three people seemed to have input lag as well, which makes zero sense. The single player mode is what my friend and I played after everyone else left. Two people can play the story mode together, and after doing so I can't imagine playing it solo. We started on World 2 because he had already beaten 1 and this may shock you but I wasn't super invested in the in-depth lore of Bomberman.
The story mode follows a group of Bombers that each have a different personality, oh, sorry, different lazy, caricatured personality gimmick. White Bomber is the leader that is hell-bent on saving the world and training to save the world. Yellow Bomber is optimistic to a fault, Blue Bomber has unrealistic narcolepsy, I don't know what Green Bomber's deal is, Black Bomber is vain, Pink Bomber is girl, and Aqua Bomber is also girl. I really wish all that was not accurate. Each world features ten stages in the style of old Bomberman games like Super Bomberman and Party Edition. Sometimes you just have to beat all of the enemies and get to the goal, but now there are more objectives such as finding randomly hidden keys, touching hidden switches, or escorting really stupid Bombers to a safe zone. There is also a world that hurt our eyes because it is all purple and way too luminous (see the internet worlds in Shadow the Hedgehog... and then multiply the burning sensation in your retinas by five). Each world ends in a two-phase boss. The first one is just them moving around as a bomber, like you, and you only have to hit them once, but each has a gimmick that makes it nearly impossible. Instead of a crafty puzzle to figure out how to get past this gimmick, these bosses all amount to randomly throwing bombs down and avoiding their bombs in hopes that one of your bombs kills him. This leads to their second form, which has 3D movement a la 64 and Jetters, but your bombs explode in the shape of a cross based on tiles... invisible tiles... These bosses are much easier and more intuitive than their first forms, but are way more tedious and waste a lot of your time. Most of them can only be hit after they use a certain move, so all of their other randomly selected moves purely waste your time.
I think we played this for so long because by the time midnight hit, we had made it to World 6, which is the end of the game. This only has two bosses, which are unbelievably identical. If the rest of the game didn't already feel slapped together, this feels like it was rushed even further. This boss is easy because most of the time he doesn't even target you. It takes forever and nothing telegraphs how close you are to defeating this particular boss so you have to rinse and repeat the same strategy over and over again until he eventually dies, again after waiting for the right move to hurt him at all. With these complaints, I have only scratched the surface with my gripes on the gameplay of Super Bomberman R, but let's talk about two other things that really annoy me before I move on to something else already. GEEZ!
Super Bomberman R's story mode does run on a life system, but its continue system breaks it. When you run out of all nine lives, you spend points that you earn by playing the game to continue. What difficulty you are in determines how many points that costs. These points are also the only way to unlock things, and there are a lot of bullshit deaths, especially because everything is a one-hit kill. I wish this game was a one-hit kill. After you beat the game, the shop allows you to unlock most of the Bombers you fought on your journey, however they cost almost five times what you actually earn by beating the game. The only other way to get points is to spam the story mode. So you have to really love this game, to an unhealthy amount of love, to unlock anything. Because this is also the only way to unlock stages and extra antennae or skins. Loop back around again to where I started talking about this game and you will realize that this is not impossible, but why the hell would you want to do this?
This is by no fault of The Switch supposedly. Other games seem to work online, according to other people on the internet. We also didn't discover any input lag on any other games we played, so all of the issues are just Super Bomberman R being a shitty game, and Konami being a shitty company. The only redeeming quality of the game is the multiplayer because again, it is still just Bomberman, that much functions. But due to aforementioned lag (even in local multiplayer at times), you are better off just playing one of the older ones. Really. Almost any one of the older ones.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD
(Total time spent playing: roughly 10 minutes)
I'm sure Breath of the Wild is awesome but it is not a party game so I messed around with it while we were waiting on another game to download. My friend just started me up on his file and told me what was what when I asked him about basic stuff. As I only spent a few minutes with it, I don't remember much. I remember liking the control scheme once I got used to it. I mainly just glided off of tall things, glided off of a hill onto an enemy on a tower and killed him while landing on his tower. I found a few chests, it is pretty cool that chests are actually just salvageable items in the game and not just "map", "compass", or "thing you need to get out of the next room". The cooking system I thought was pretty genius. I played with a chicken, then beat said chicken, because it's a Zelda game so I have to do it at least once. It doesn't murder you as hard in this game... or at all. But that's okay. The game implores you to hunt animals for food, so according to my friend, you learn that mechanic and then afterwards find chickens. Instead of giving you food, then chickens beat you pretty decently, but not enough to kill you (granted you have about 6 hearts or more) so you aren't punished by playing by the games rules. The visuals are really clean and pretty to look at while still looking like it belongs in the franchise. The weapon-breaking system was really cool. It was not nearly as annoying as I thought it would be at all, but ironically the Master Sword pissed me off. I know its Zelda tradition to have a Master Sword in the game and let you wield it but fuck tradition in video games. I don't care about tradition in video games. The Master Sword can't be broken, but has a battery. A fucking battery. So overtime it just dies out and you have to put it away to charge it. This gives you a weapon that hails over all other weapons just for not being able to break alone, but then it runs out and instead of switching to one of the other fifty weapons in your inventory, Link just grabs at an imaginary sword. Why is he sassy at you? He's the one that is going to die if he doesn't pull out another weapon! And one morrreeeee thingg!!!! The stamina meter can suck my dick. It can suck my dick dry. It has way too short of a time span so getting anywhere without the quick travel mechanic is more of a chore than it should be. Why can't he always just run at that speed? He did it in Ocarina. Link to the Past, he had Pegasus Boots and was zipping around everywhere! Is he an asthmatic in Breath of the Wild? Is the name of the game a cruel pun? My other friend when I said my only major complaint so far is the stamina meter said, and I quote "you know you can increase it right?" Yeah! It WAS increased! I was playing it on a file that had poured many hours in and was towards the end of the game, and I still can't run through a fucking field! But sure. Yeah. 10/10. Perfect fucking game. Why? Just why? I get the stamina meter for things like gliding (failsafe for glide-related glitches), climbing walls, or pushing large rocks. But why running? That's like having a Batman game where Batman needs to catch his breath after punching too much. Fuck this.
The rest of what I experienced was really cool though. I might get it for Wii U one day because I still really like the Wii U and nothing has convinced me to get a Switch yet.
FAST RMX
(Total time spent playing: roughly 1.5 hours)
This game surprised the hell out of me. It's like F-Zero, exactly what it looks like and what you probably expect it to be at first glance, but it has a few differences that really grabbed my attention within just a few seconds. There are boost paths on the ground that are orange and blue, and your vehicle has two different boost modes corresponding to orange and blue. If you ride an orange panel with orange on, then you get a speed boost, but if you are still in blue mode, it slows you down (like the hazard space in F-Zero). There is also a boost meter which works similar to F-Zero but not identical. You hold in the analog stick to activate the boost, which is not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. You would think swerving around and holding in the button at the same time might be annoying, but that boost is so unbelievably fast that you really shouldn't activate it around any remotely tight corners anyways. The boost comes in short doses and can get you in a lot of trouble if you don't know the stage well enough or use it in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are a lot of moving obstacles to account for as well that could move right in front of your boosting vehicle when you least expect it. You just have to play it for yourself to understand how fast it is. I mean, I know I am probably the 10,000th person to say this, but it has earned the right to have a generic name of just "Fast". The stages all look really nice too and split-screen is done as well as it can be. You only start with three vehicles but you can unlock about eight more if I remember correctly. Honestly I loved my time with Fast RMX, and if I had The Switch, I would probably pour way too much time into it. In my opinion it is every bit as good as F-Zero from a mechanical standpoint. I will say it lacks a certain flair of personality in general and just kind of feels like future racer big whoopty doo in comparison to F-Zero, but maybe years of playing F-Zero X have just spoiled me. That's a nitpick at the very most though. Fast RMX is awesome. And it's only $20! Super Bomberman R was a full-priced title and that game blows!
SNIPPERCLIPS
(Total time spent playing: roughly 1 hour)
One friend had left and the remaining three of us played Snipperclips. It's a lot of fun! I honestly don't know how well it plays alone, but with three people it was seamless and so goofy. In Snipperclips, you play as weird paper creatures that can overlap and snip each other to make new shapes out of themselves. This is how you solve puzzles. The puzzles are really intricate and left us stumped a few times, even with someone in the room who had played the game for much longer than the others. It requires clear communication and strategy which leads to utter silliness between the human players as well as what is happening on screen. I can't imagine anyone buying a Switch just for this though, or a group of 3-4 people wanting to spend their entire night playing a puzzle game together. But wait! Snipperclips does not just offer puzzles, but some form of arena mode very reminiscent of BattleBlock Theater (not that BattleBlock Theater has a patent on 2D basketball or punching your friends). This has a few mini-games that you can play competitively, but it works really weird. So in BattleBlock, for example, if you play with 3 people, the game automatically goes 2v1. One player is always alone, and almost always screwed, because there is no AI stand-in. A similar problem persists with Snipperclips, but it works much weirder. At the start of the game, there are obvious, color-coded score markers for two of the players, and the third seems to just be left as a wild card. They can side with whoever at whatever point in the game. I don't know if this is a positive or a negative thing for me or anyone reading this. There is also a free-for-all fight mode where you use the cutting each other mechanic to just simply cut each other until there is nothing left of them and they disappear. We did this in a three-stock match for way longer than we thought we would. Snipperclips offers both brain-dead simplicity and mind-boggling complexity to make a complete package of a party puzzle game, and since there aren't too many of those around, I think Snipperclips is really something to behold. Just not a reason to get a Switch.
MY OVERALL IMPRESSION
The Switch is simultaneously one of the coolest and most disappointing consoles I have ever seen. I have always seen it as a mold breaker but something that won't be perfected until one or two generations from now, and after playing it for myself for roughly seven hours, my opinion there still holds. The Switch has a few minute technical issues that lie in the form of syncing glitches and that weird thing where connecting the joycon on its cover thing the wrong way makes it nearly impossible to take back off, but these are fairly easy to overlook. The real crime here is the games. The Switch is another system like many before it where the developers seem to forget that games are one of the main things customers buy game consoles for. I know it seems stupid, but I have no other explanation. The system is really fast, has a lot of functionality, and is set up comfortably in addition to its intuitive controller design, but all of this is moot with no games. I was recently looking back on titles from older systems that have already discontinued, and I stumbled on the Nintendo 64 library upon launch. Its library wasn't great either. However it made up for lack of quantity with quality. It launched only with Super Mario 64, but within just a few months had Wave Race 64, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Mario Kart 64, and after a huge dry spell the world was graced with Star Fox 64 as well. That was just the beginning of what is now seen as one of the best consoles of all time. I'm not saying The Switch might be one of the best consoles of all time, but I'm saying if Nintendo and/or the developers of Switch games get their shit together and consumers get their heads out of nostalgia's ass, The Switch has a chance. This isn't a Wii spin-off, to customers and developers. You can make actual games on this now. An open mindset can make The Switch a system worth buying beyond its mere amusement and potential. Who wants to pay that much money for potential? No one. In case that wasn't clear, the answer is no one.
If you don't have a Wii U, The Switch might be right up your alley. If you do already have a Wii U, hold on to it and wait for bigger games to come out. Not even bigger games, just games that more effectively retain your interest that you can't get on other systems (Breath of the Wild included; the Wii U version is 99% identical to the Switch version). Personally right now there is nothing on the Switch that interests me enough to buy a Switch. I have Yooka-Laylee pre-ordered on Steam, I have Shovel Knight on Wii U, I can get Sonic Mania on PS4, and even Breath of the Wild is also on a console that I already own. This is just where the console game market is unfortunately heading, but I think there are a lot of smart ideas on The Switch as a console that can change that and keep consoles relevant.
At the very least, they can always entice me with Pokemon and Super Smash Bros. That has unfortunately worked before. Could admittedly work again.
Ultimately I could talk about some major model design oversights, the joycon system is super innovative and the controller itself is surprisingly comfortable, yadda yadda, The Switch is still just a game system, so maybe I should talk about the games. He has four games and we played all four, so I'm going to hit them one by one, then talk about more general thoughts about The Switch afterwards.
SUPER BOMBERMAN R
(Total time spent playing: roughly 3.5 hours)
This is the game we played the most of, but I don't think it was because the game was super fun and well-designed. Anything bad you have heard about Super Bomberman R on the internet is most likely true, albeit a lot of game critique is subjective. This is still, at its core, just another damn Bomberman game, however, they managed to fuck that up even, so I think this is easily the worst Bomberman game I have ever played (in opposition to Super, Party Edition, 64, and Jetters). The online multiplayer is incredibly frustrating. The lag is ungodly, and if someone ditches the game, their bomber is still in play, meaning they can win by doing literally nothing and more accurately, not even playing the match. They don't even need to have their Switch on. Local multiplayer between three people seemed to have input lag as well, which makes zero sense. The single player mode is what my friend and I played after everyone else left. Two people can play the story mode together, and after doing so I can't imagine playing it solo. We started on World 2 because he had already beaten 1 and this may shock you but I wasn't super invested in the in-depth lore of Bomberman.
The story mode follows a group of Bombers that each have a different personality, oh, sorry, different lazy, caricatured personality gimmick. White Bomber is the leader that is hell-bent on saving the world and training to save the world. Yellow Bomber is optimistic to a fault, Blue Bomber has unrealistic narcolepsy, I don't know what Green Bomber's deal is, Black Bomber is vain, Pink Bomber is girl, and Aqua Bomber is also girl. I really wish all that was not accurate. Each world features ten stages in the style of old Bomberman games like Super Bomberman and Party Edition. Sometimes you just have to beat all of the enemies and get to the goal, but now there are more objectives such as finding randomly hidden keys, touching hidden switches, or escorting really stupid Bombers to a safe zone. There is also a world that hurt our eyes because it is all purple and way too luminous (see the internet worlds in Shadow the Hedgehog... and then multiply the burning sensation in your retinas by five). Each world ends in a two-phase boss. The first one is just them moving around as a bomber, like you, and you only have to hit them once, but each has a gimmick that makes it nearly impossible. Instead of a crafty puzzle to figure out how to get past this gimmick, these bosses all amount to randomly throwing bombs down and avoiding their bombs in hopes that one of your bombs kills him. This leads to their second form, which has 3D movement a la 64 and Jetters, but your bombs explode in the shape of a cross based on tiles... invisible tiles... These bosses are much easier and more intuitive than their first forms, but are way more tedious and waste a lot of your time. Most of them can only be hit after they use a certain move, so all of their other randomly selected moves purely waste your time.
I think we played this for so long because by the time midnight hit, we had made it to World 6, which is the end of the game. This only has two bosses, which are unbelievably identical. If the rest of the game didn't already feel slapped together, this feels like it was rushed even further. This boss is easy because most of the time he doesn't even target you. It takes forever and nothing telegraphs how close you are to defeating this particular boss so you have to rinse and repeat the same strategy over and over again until he eventually dies, again after waiting for the right move to hurt him at all. With these complaints, I have only scratched the surface with my gripes on the gameplay of Super Bomberman R, but let's talk about two other things that really annoy me before I move on to something else already. GEEZ!
Super Bomberman R's story mode does run on a life system, but its continue system breaks it. When you run out of all nine lives, you spend points that you earn by playing the game to continue. What difficulty you are in determines how many points that costs. These points are also the only way to unlock things, and there are a lot of bullshit deaths, especially because everything is a one-hit kill. I wish this game was a one-hit kill. After you beat the game, the shop allows you to unlock most of the Bombers you fought on your journey, however they cost almost five times what you actually earn by beating the game. The only other way to get points is to spam the story mode. So you have to really love this game, to an unhealthy amount of love, to unlock anything. Because this is also the only way to unlock stages and extra antennae or skins. Loop back around again to where I started talking about this game and you will realize that this is not impossible, but why the hell would you want to do this?
This is by no fault of The Switch supposedly. Other games seem to work online, according to other people on the internet. We also didn't discover any input lag on any other games we played, so all of the issues are just Super Bomberman R being a shitty game, and Konami being a shitty company. The only redeeming quality of the game is the multiplayer because again, it is still just Bomberman, that much functions. But due to aforementioned lag (even in local multiplayer at times), you are better off just playing one of the older ones. Really. Almost any one of the older ones.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD
(Total time spent playing: roughly 10 minutes)
I'm sure Breath of the Wild is awesome but it is not a party game so I messed around with it while we were waiting on another game to download. My friend just started me up on his file and told me what was what when I asked him about basic stuff. As I only spent a few minutes with it, I don't remember much. I remember liking the control scheme once I got used to it. I mainly just glided off of tall things, glided off of a hill onto an enemy on a tower and killed him while landing on his tower. I found a few chests, it is pretty cool that chests are actually just salvageable items in the game and not just "map", "compass", or "thing you need to get out of the next room". The cooking system I thought was pretty genius. I played with a chicken, then beat said chicken, because it's a Zelda game so I have to do it at least once. It doesn't murder you as hard in this game... or at all. But that's okay. The game implores you to hunt animals for food, so according to my friend, you learn that mechanic and then afterwards find chickens. Instead of giving you food, then chickens beat you pretty decently, but not enough to kill you (granted you have about 6 hearts or more) so you aren't punished by playing by the games rules. The visuals are really clean and pretty to look at while still looking like it belongs in the franchise. The weapon-breaking system was really cool. It was not nearly as annoying as I thought it would be at all, but ironically the Master Sword pissed me off. I know its Zelda tradition to have a Master Sword in the game and let you wield it but fuck tradition in video games. I don't care about tradition in video games. The Master Sword can't be broken, but has a battery. A fucking battery. So overtime it just dies out and you have to put it away to charge it. This gives you a weapon that hails over all other weapons just for not being able to break alone, but then it runs out and instead of switching to one of the other fifty weapons in your inventory, Link just grabs at an imaginary sword. Why is he sassy at you? He's the one that is going to die if he doesn't pull out another weapon! And one morrreeeee thingg!!!! The stamina meter can suck my dick. It can suck my dick dry. It has way too short of a time span so getting anywhere without the quick travel mechanic is more of a chore than it should be. Why can't he always just run at that speed? He did it in Ocarina. Link to the Past, he had Pegasus Boots and was zipping around everywhere! Is he an asthmatic in Breath of the Wild? Is the name of the game a cruel pun? My other friend when I said my only major complaint so far is the stamina meter said, and I quote "you know you can increase it right?" Yeah! It WAS increased! I was playing it on a file that had poured many hours in and was towards the end of the game, and I still can't run through a fucking field! But sure. Yeah. 10/10. Perfect fucking game. Why? Just why? I get the stamina meter for things like gliding (failsafe for glide-related glitches), climbing walls, or pushing large rocks. But why running? That's like having a Batman game where Batman needs to catch his breath after punching too much. Fuck this.
The rest of what I experienced was really cool though. I might get it for Wii U one day because I still really like the Wii U and nothing has convinced me to get a Switch yet.
FAST RMX
(Total time spent playing: roughly 1.5 hours)
This game surprised the hell out of me. It's like F-Zero, exactly what it looks like and what you probably expect it to be at first glance, but it has a few differences that really grabbed my attention within just a few seconds. There are boost paths on the ground that are orange and blue, and your vehicle has two different boost modes corresponding to orange and blue. If you ride an orange panel with orange on, then you get a speed boost, but if you are still in blue mode, it slows you down (like the hazard space in F-Zero). There is also a boost meter which works similar to F-Zero but not identical. You hold in the analog stick to activate the boost, which is not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. You would think swerving around and holding in the button at the same time might be annoying, but that boost is so unbelievably fast that you really shouldn't activate it around any remotely tight corners anyways. The boost comes in short doses and can get you in a lot of trouble if you don't know the stage well enough or use it in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are a lot of moving obstacles to account for as well that could move right in front of your boosting vehicle when you least expect it. You just have to play it for yourself to understand how fast it is. I mean, I know I am probably the 10,000th person to say this, but it has earned the right to have a generic name of just "Fast". The stages all look really nice too and split-screen is done as well as it can be. You only start with three vehicles but you can unlock about eight more if I remember correctly. Honestly I loved my time with Fast RMX, and if I had The Switch, I would probably pour way too much time into it. In my opinion it is every bit as good as F-Zero from a mechanical standpoint. I will say it lacks a certain flair of personality in general and just kind of feels like future racer big whoopty doo in comparison to F-Zero, but maybe years of playing F-Zero X have just spoiled me. That's a nitpick at the very most though. Fast RMX is awesome. And it's only $20! Super Bomberman R was a full-priced title and that game blows!
SNIPPERCLIPS
(Total time spent playing: roughly 1 hour)
One friend had left and the remaining three of us played Snipperclips. It's a lot of fun! I honestly don't know how well it plays alone, but with three people it was seamless and so goofy. In Snipperclips, you play as weird paper creatures that can overlap and snip each other to make new shapes out of themselves. This is how you solve puzzles. The puzzles are really intricate and left us stumped a few times, even with someone in the room who had played the game for much longer than the others. It requires clear communication and strategy which leads to utter silliness between the human players as well as what is happening on screen. I can't imagine anyone buying a Switch just for this though, or a group of 3-4 people wanting to spend their entire night playing a puzzle game together. But wait! Snipperclips does not just offer puzzles, but some form of arena mode very reminiscent of BattleBlock Theater (not that BattleBlock Theater has a patent on 2D basketball or punching your friends). This has a few mini-games that you can play competitively, but it works really weird. So in BattleBlock, for example, if you play with 3 people, the game automatically goes 2v1. One player is always alone, and almost always screwed, because there is no AI stand-in. A similar problem persists with Snipperclips, but it works much weirder. At the start of the game, there are obvious, color-coded score markers for two of the players, and the third seems to just be left as a wild card. They can side with whoever at whatever point in the game. I don't know if this is a positive or a negative thing for me or anyone reading this. There is also a free-for-all fight mode where you use the cutting each other mechanic to just simply cut each other until there is nothing left of them and they disappear. We did this in a three-stock match for way longer than we thought we would. Snipperclips offers both brain-dead simplicity and mind-boggling complexity to make a complete package of a party puzzle game, and since there aren't too many of those around, I think Snipperclips is really something to behold. Just not a reason to get a Switch.
MY OVERALL IMPRESSION
The Switch is simultaneously one of the coolest and most disappointing consoles I have ever seen. I have always seen it as a mold breaker but something that won't be perfected until one or two generations from now, and after playing it for myself for roughly seven hours, my opinion there still holds. The Switch has a few minute technical issues that lie in the form of syncing glitches and that weird thing where connecting the joycon on its cover thing the wrong way makes it nearly impossible to take back off, but these are fairly easy to overlook. The real crime here is the games. The Switch is another system like many before it where the developers seem to forget that games are one of the main things customers buy game consoles for. I know it seems stupid, but I have no other explanation. The system is really fast, has a lot of functionality, and is set up comfortably in addition to its intuitive controller design, but all of this is moot with no games. I was recently looking back on titles from older systems that have already discontinued, and I stumbled on the Nintendo 64 library upon launch. Its library wasn't great either. However it made up for lack of quantity with quality. It launched only with Super Mario 64, but within just a few months had Wave Race 64, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Mario Kart 64, and after a huge dry spell the world was graced with Star Fox 64 as well. That was just the beginning of what is now seen as one of the best consoles of all time. I'm not saying The Switch might be one of the best consoles of all time, but I'm saying if Nintendo and/or the developers of Switch games get their shit together and consumers get their heads out of nostalgia's ass, The Switch has a chance. This isn't a Wii spin-off, to customers and developers. You can make actual games on this now. An open mindset can make The Switch a system worth buying beyond its mere amusement and potential. Who wants to pay that much money for potential? No one. In case that wasn't clear, the answer is no one.
If you don't have a Wii U, The Switch might be right up your alley. If you do already have a Wii U, hold on to it and wait for bigger games to come out. Not even bigger games, just games that more effectively retain your interest that you can't get on other systems (Breath of the Wild included; the Wii U version is 99% identical to the Switch version). Personally right now there is nothing on the Switch that interests me enough to buy a Switch. I have Yooka-Laylee pre-ordered on Steam, I have Shovel Knight on Wii U, I can get Sonic Mania on PS4, and even Breath of the Wild is also on a console that I already own. This is just where the console game market is unfortunately heading, but I think there are a lot of smart ideas on The Switch as a console that can change that and keep consoles relevant.
At the very least, they can always entice me with Pokemon and Super Smash Bros. That has unfortunately worked before. Could admittedly work again.
My New PC Build
I started building a new PC for audio and I have been posting on Twitter about it. For anyone thinking about building a PC like this for themselves, I have two things to say to you.
THING 1:
Just do it. Yeah, it's expensive, but trust me, I am NO expert on computer hardware and even through a few hiccups, the vast majority of the process has been really easy. Think about it: it's 2017. In the modern age of computer technology there has been so much research and design done, why should any of the parts be expected to be overly difficult. It will be time consuming and there are a few parts that are difficult (installing the motherboard's I/O guard, fixing CPU cooler to the CPU) but the rest is just a matter of time and research. Then more time.
Right now I'm not done with the build yet because I am waiting on the delivery of three items (RAM, mount for Hard Drive Disk, mount for Solid State Drive). That leads me to
THING 2:
Here is a list of all the parts.
This is not, I repeat NOT a gaming PC build. I mean you could probably change a few parts out to make a sick gaming PC for under $1500 but I made it specifically for recording and mixing music and such. You'll see why that changes the build in a bit.
CPU (PROCESSOR) - Intel Core i5-6600K 3,5GHz Quad-Core
Honestly I don't remember why I picked this particular CPU, but this is a good starting point for the theme of this build. Do you know why most people don't go to buy PC parts and just buy an Alienware or something that has already been assembled in a shiny case? Aside from ease of access, your build really comes down to what you are going to be using the PC for, in which case there are kind of no wrong answers. For the processor specificially, the big boy out there right now would be the Intel Core i7 line. So why did I go with the i5? Cost-effectiveness. I'm not going for any "PC builder of the year" awards. I'm not a tech guru or even much of an enthusiast. I have ran an i5 in my Alienware for years and it still mostly runs like a dream. When it comes to speed, you are mostly looking into memory (RAM) more than the processor to my understanding. The i5-6600K is essentially one of the higher end models of the i5. So like most things on this build, it isn't necessarily high end or state of the art, but on the high end of the mid-ground to shave cost while still getting all of the necessary functionality. Keep in mind again that this is for a PC that will be primarily running a digital audio workstation like Pro Tools... but primarily Reaper. In today's age, and with a DAW as fast as Reaper, getting an i7 would be overly gratuitous and to a certain extent stupid. The i5 is still a standard thing that even software developers still use, so don't feel like you are short-changing yourself with an i5. Again, I'm no expert, but this is something I'm currently doing and I think that mindset is useful when looking for a road map of how to do this, hence this blog.
CPU COOLER - Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED 66.3 CFM
For those of you who are new to this as I was, note that a CPU cooler is not necessarily a fan. I mean, it is a fan, but it is different from a case fan. A cooler is designed to adhere to your CPU to directly cool it, since if that thing fries, your whole operation is pretty FUBAR. My choice of the Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED I might have changed in hindsight. It isn't a bad cooler by any means, I'm sure it's great, but this thing is huge. You can get CPU coolers that don't jut out or look as inherently ugly as this. Fortunately, it's going to be a PC in my home office so who cares? This model over its cousin Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is that this one has a big red LED on it. For those of you who don't know what that means, it just means that there is a light on it that makes it glow red. This is just flashy, and I figured if I was going to choose one or the other, why not?
To adhere a cooler to the CPU is actually one of the most difficult parts in the build, and you will need something known as thermal paste. Note, and this is important, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED comes with a small packet of thermal paste. I did not know this and went out in a panic to buy thermal paste. I ended up needing it because I goofed a little on installation but it really isn't that hard, I'm just an idiot. Thermal paste can cost you anywhere between $6 and $16 so with this whole process already being as costly as it is, maybe just don't buy extra thermal paste... and also don't screw up. Remember to clean up the thermal paste after application. Stick that sucker on there and wait a few minutes and now it is absolutely not going anywhere. I said this is one of the most difficult steps, and it is, but even then it's not too hard.
As for what to look for in a cooler? Pretty self-explanatory. Longevity and good air flow. All of this tech stuff looks complex, and yeah if you are going to go full geek on it, it is complex, but for the rest of the casuals like me, some of the parts don't require a lot of know-how or extensive research to know if you are getting ripped off or not. Cooler Master is one of the leading brands in this stuff. I'm not saying they are the best, because I honestly have no idea, but a few of the pieces I researched for this project seemed pretty great.
MOTHERBOARD - Asus Z170 Pro Gaming ATX LGA1151
All those big hooplah numbers and stuff there are kind of important actually. The ATX is what kind of motherboard you have, which will affect which case you can buy and how to adhere your cooler. The LGA1151 to a lesser extent is also definitive of cooler installation, but should fit in a wider array of cases. Beyond that, with a lot of choices out there, this is something you are going to have to do a lot of Googling for. I don't remember all the reasons I chose this one to be honest. Basically here is something that is going to possibly blow you away. Some of the parts you will see for parts lists on the internet have parts that are not necessary to building a functioning PC. They are incredibly helpful but not necessary. This, again, is a build for an audio PC. How would I benefit from spending hundreds of dollars on a sick graphics card? I wouldn't. In fact, depending on your CPU and motherboard, you actually do not need to buy a graphics card at all. The Intel model mentioned before allows minimal graphical capabilities. In layman's terms, it can perform HD graphics. You basically won't be able to play Smite on it, but can it load something like say Reaper? Microsoft Word? Absolutely! Even if you are building a PC for something other than gaming (i.e. Audio, Illustration, Graphic Design, Modelling Software, Video Editing) don't stray from the gaming-branded parts. A gaming PC is built to produce things fast and clean, and gaming in this age can take anything a run of the mill PC has to offer. A gaming PC part is designed to do it's specific task in relation to something that is going to constantly drain resources at sporadic amounts, and as a user, you want consistency, something that is going to do those tasks that clean for hours on end. If these parts can do this for Overwatch, then they can do it for your CAD design PC as well.
MEMORY (RAM) - G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 SDRAM 2133 Z170/X99
RAM is almost the equivalent to how fast your PC will run. Right now, you can run a decent PC on 8GB and save a load of money. However, some video games specifically have issues or many not run efficiently at all on 8GB of RAM, hence why the current line of game consoles (Switch, PS4, Xbone) run on more than 8GB of RAM. Whatever PC you are building, I would recommend getting 16GB. If you want to splurge, like I did, get 32GB. Why splurge though? Technology is constantly evolving due to research and development. The 16GB is standard today, but will be progressively as obsolete as the 8GB in a future tomorrow. Fifteen years from now, you could have a PC that you built that is still standard. Not sub-standard. Not "ehhh, it does the job". Good. Functional. Fast. As for what model and brand to pick, just look for general durability and customer reviews. RAM doesn't work like your disk drives, motherboards and OS's in the sense that you are going to have to install something or actively see it do something different than other parts in its field. It is just something that the other parts run on.
HARD DRIVE DISK (HDD) - HGST Travelstar 500GB
This is where you actually store files. There are a lot of options here, and HGST (Hitachi) is one of the ones I found popping up the most. I went with this one because to save on shipping costs, I actually bought the vast majority ($860 worth) of my parts in a brick and mortar store. I recommend everyone do the same. You have people there you instantly know what you're doing even if you don't say it, and they get paid to help you. Most of them are also enthusiasts, they live for this stuff, it will be (in so many words) fun for them to help you with this. Let them. It saves you shipping fees. I repeat: it saves you shipping fees. That money adds up. Also unexpectedly the guy gave me a coupon that the store was running because I bundled my CPU with a certain SSD (solid state drive) and saved me $30. That's like, 3 case fans, or one crappy optical drive. Now why this HGST? I wanted that brand and about that size and it was in the store. Here's the thing with an audio PC, or at least a great audio PC: you want a big hard drive. You are not going to fill up a lot of this hard drive, or at least not most of it. DAW's like a lot of room to play in, they are bitchy like that. The fastest way to run software like this is to install the software on the hard drive (HDD) and then put session files and plug-in files and what have you on the separate and probably faster SSD. If you tuned that part out because you don't do audio, read that part again, because I found it also works the same for software like Adobe Illustrator and to a slightly less important extent, Steam. With something like Pro Tools for example, this is almost required for it to run smooth at all. Again, to clarify, this isn't so you can store massive amounts of files on the HDD, this is so the software isn't bogged down with all the other crap you have neighboring the installation files
As far as the hardware of it goes, you need something to mount it in the case. They make mounts for this, but other people have just used industry strength Velcro. This also means you can stick it almost anywhere in the case. I am waiting on a metal mount in the mail though. The cost isn't that far off from buying Velcro.
SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD) - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB2.5"
If it wasn't clear from the last paragraph, SSD's are awesome. Get one. They will be worth the extra money in the long run. I was hesitant getting one in my Alienware many years back, and now I can't imagine it without one. If you want something that is efficient and also won't set you back an extra couple hundred dollars than it needs to, I recommend the Samsung EVO series. The amount of room on it is really just up to what you think you need. I've seen as low as 100GB and I've seen as high as 4TB maybe even 8TB if I'm not mistaken. Before you go as low as possible to save a buck, keep in mind this is where most of your bigger files are going to be going, so I would shop for this part with the mentality of "rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it". Reaper is a small DAW, and unless you are recording 100 projects a week, 500GB should be plenty of room.
I think most of these come with mounts, but mine did not. The literature that comes with my EVO SSD even shows a picture of screws and a mount, yet came with none of that. Not sure what's up with that situation. But I'm waiting for a mount to come in the mail with this one as well.
VIDEO CARD - Ummm....
I don't have one as of now because again, this is an audio PC. If you are building a PC for gaming, video editing, or illustration, get a graphics card. Just get one. And get a good one. If you are doing gaming or video editing, get a great one.
CASE - Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed ATX Mid Tower Case
This is a great budget case. It's small but still surprisingly easy to get your arm in there and move around. It comes with two front-USB 3.0 ports and two case fans are already installed. In relation to most of the chunky, heavy cases for custom PC's out there, the 300R only weighs about ehhh.... 30-40 pounds? I haven't weighed it. I love this thing though. For ventilation and installation purposes, you might consider something a bit bigger, but personally I like it compact. I also like it costing less than $80 for an awesome case.
POWER SUPPLY - EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650w
Honestly, this is just the thing that powers everything, AKA the thing that plugs into your wall. You could argue from that statement that this is the most important part of the PC, but also it really doesn't take that much research or anything. I know it seems lazy at this point to just say "make sure it's durable, look at customer reviews, and do minimal research" but I mean, this is just a giant box that powers everything. The SuperNOVA line, or at least the 650 G2 does have an extra optional feature where it saves power when it doesn't need to use everything it has at one time. So that's pretty cool. Main advice I would give is get a Gold (the G in G2). At this point you are already spending over $900 for an awesome PC, why not make sure it doesn't fry on you?
OPTICAL DRIVE - LG WH16NS40 Super Multi Blue Internal SATA 16x Blu-Ray Disc Rewriter
You may not actually need an optical drive for a PC if all of your installation comes on a drive, but I think most motherboard installation stuff comes on disk. Now this optical drive that I picked is overkill and still only $65. Meaning you can get one that gets the job done and never use it again for $40. Hell, probably way less than $40. You can also get a portable USB one for cheap, install everything you need to install, then return the thing if you know you aren't going to use it for anything else. For me, I figured, this is an audio PC, and a lot of audio is on CD. My first full-length album was sent to me via mail on a disk when the masters were completed. So it just seemed stupid to me to not get a disk drive. But again, I went overkill. If on a lunch break I want to watch Rick and Morty for the millionth time, I can do that here, because it can handle CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray. If for whatever reason I ever need to WRITE a Blu-Ray disc for someone, this can do it too. This is really as over the top of an optical drive as I can imagine one ever needing.
OPERATING SYSTEM (OS) - Microsoft Windows 10 Home Full 32/64-bit Drive
I actually really like Windows 10, when it works, but that's dependent on what Microsoft wants to do. A lot of the time their "updates" actually downgrade a lot of features so it is kind of a gamble. This was another scenario where I was thinking for the future. I see down the road a lot of games not being compatible with Windows 7 and maybe even 8 anymore so I went with 10. Plus I have been using 10 for a year or two now and I'm just so used to it. This version of Windows 10 is on a flash drive, meaning I don't have to choose between 32-bit and 64-bit. This is kind of convenient for audio because some plug-ins only function 100% on one or the other, but for the most part just getting 64-bit is fine. Beyond this, there is Home and Pro when it comes to Windows 10. Pro has a lot of extra features, but they seemed more geared towards a computer for a company that a lot of people are going to be using. A niche thing. So if you are doing a lot of projects on your own with this PC, you might as well get Home. If this is a gaming PC you are building, I see absolutely no point in getting Pro. Illustrator, same concept as my audio PC: unless you have to network with a lot of the same people in the same company for several years on the same PC, just get Home.
SOFTWARE
Reaper - an awesome DAW that you can try for about two months and buy outright for $60. It comes with so many useful plug-ins that would each individually cost you an arm and a leg otherwise, and you get it for the price of a used mic.
TuxGuitar - a free and very small tablature software I use to write music with, although if you are familiar enough with piano roll you can probably just write in Reaper even easier.
Microsoft Office... not - I actually decided against this because my Alienware already has all that junk. I use that junk quite often, but I also have 2 monitors, so if I need it in the midst of a project on the audio PC, I can just boot up the other monitor and bring up whatever file I need on the Alienware.
CASE FAN - Cooler Master SickleFlow (Red) 69.7 CFM 120mm
This is an extra piece, but I bought it because it would glow red with the CPU Cooler. And because I thought I needed an extra fan. But the Corsair case I bought already comes with two case fans screwed in and ready to go. So this fan really is an extra fan. But it's installed, and they say you really can't have too much cooling in your PC unless it comes to water cooling, which I don't know anything about. Case fans are usually fairly cheap, so if you are paranoid about a hot PC, you might as well sink in for another fan.
MONITOR - Uhh... Ummmmmmmmmmm
I don't actually know the models of my monitors. The right one (main) is a Samsung and the left one is an AOC. I got the AOC as a Cyber Monday deal for less than $200, which is great considering it is a 27-inch. The Samsung has worked for ages and is still in great shape and can also handle two HD ports and some form of analog. The AOC already has a dead pixel. Samsung wins?
AUDIO INTERFACE BOX - PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL
You don't need this at all unless you are building an Audio PC. Even then I guess you don't need it to function but should consider it. Especially this particular thing, because it is awesome. Capable of phantom power, so it can handle up to 4 dynamic or cardioid microphones at once (big deal for me because I like dynamic mics a lot). Has a nice mixer knob so you can control the blend of input and PC sound that you are hearing, as well as the standard input faders for each input and output knob. But wait, there's also a separate one for the headphone jack! Oh yes! It also comes with software so you can add compressors and other things that would usually require you to buy a whole separate pre-amp or two but it's all in the this little USB box, ready to go.
SPEAKERS - KRK Studio
My left and right speakers are KRK Rokit 5's and my subwoofer is a roaring KRK 10s. If I put this on anything other than a lower setting, it literally shakes the house. But that's some clear bass response right there, so no real complaints.
That's my audio PC. How does it run? I don't know yet! My RAM is still in processing so I don't even know if I did it right. But like I said, a lot of it is pretty easy to set up. Just read all of the instructions that come with your parts, and then read them again, and once more. If you still feel unsure, Google it. I'm sure someone has encountered a very similar problem. I hope this helps someone or was at least interesting to someone or served some purpose or something I don't know! I might buy a sound card in the future if I deem it necessary. If I do, I'm sure I'll post about it on Randomrings Blog.
Starting budget: roughly $1000
Ending cost: approx. $1100
Ending cost if I would have settled for 16GB RAM instead of 32GB RAM: approx. $950
THING 1:
Just do it. Yeah, it's expensive, but trust me, I am NO expert on computer hardware and even through a few hiccups, the vast majority of the process has been really easy. Think about it: it's 2017. In the modern age of computer technology there has been so much research and design done, why should any of the parts be expected to be overly difficult. It will be time consuming and there are a few parts that are difficult (installing the motherboard's I/O guard, fixing CPU cooler to the CPU) but the rest is just a matter of time and research. Then more time.
Right now I'm not done with the build yet because I am waiting on the delivery of three items (RAM, mount for Hard Drive Disk, mount for Solid State Drive). That leads me to
THING 2:
Here is a list of all the parts.
This is not, I repeat NOT a gaming PC build. I mean you could probably change a few parts out to make a sick gaming PC for under $1500 but I made it specifically for recording and mixing music and such. You'll see why that changes the build in a bit.
CPU (PROCESSOR) - Intel Core i5-6600K 3,5GHz Quad-Core
Honestly I don't remember why I picked this particular CPU, but this is a good starting point for the theme of this build. Do you know why most people don't go to buy PC parts and just buy an Alienware or something that has already been assembled in a shiny case? Aside from ease of access, your build really comes down to what you are going to be using the PC for, in which case there are kind of no wrong answers. For the processor specificially, the big boy out there right now would be the Intel Core i7 line. So why did I go with the i5? Cost-effectiveness. I'm not going for any "PC builder of the year" awards. I'm not a tech guru or even much of an enthusiast. I have ran an i5 in my Alienware for years and it still mostly runs like a dream. When it comes to speed, you are mostly looking into memory (RAM) more than the processor to my understanding. The i5-6600K is essentially one of the higher end models of the i5. So like most things on this build, it isn't necessarily high end or state of the art, but on the high end of the mid-ground to shave cost while still getting all of the necessary functionality. Keep in mind again that this is for a PC that will be primarily running a digital audio workstation like Pro Tools... but primarily Reaper. In today's age, and with a DAW as fast as Reaper, getting an i7 would be overly gratuitous and to a certain extent stupid. The i5 is still a standard thing that even software developers still use, so don't feel like you are short-changing yourself with an i5. Again, I'm no expert, but this is something I'm currently doing and I think that mindset is useful when looking for a road map of how to do this, hence this blog.
CPU COOLER - Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED 66.3 CFM
For those of you who are new to this as I was, note that a CPU cooler is not necessarily a fan. I mean, it is a fan, but it is different from a case fan. A cooler is designed to adhere to your CPU to directly cool it, since if that thing fries, your whole operation is pretty FUBAR. My choice of the Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED I might have changed in hindsight. It isn't a bad cooler by any means, I'm sure it's great, but this thing is huge. You can get CPU coolers that don't jut out or look as inherently ugly as this. Fortunately, it's going to be a PC in my home office so who cares? This model over its cousin Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is that this one has a big red LED on it. For those of you who don't know what that means, it just means that there is a light on it that makes it glow red. This is just flashy, and I figured if I was going to choose one or the other, why not?
To adhere a cooler to the CPU is actually one of the most difficult parts in the build, and you will need something known as thermal paste. Note, and this is important, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED comes with a small packet of thermal paste. I did not know this and went out in a panic to buy thermal paste. I ended up needing it because I goofed a little on installation but it really isn't that hard, I'm just an idiot. Thermal paste can cost you anywhere between $6 and $16 so with this whole process already being as costly as it is, maybe just don't buy extra thermal paste... and also don't screw up. Remember to clean up the thermal paste after application. Stick that sucker on there and wait a few minutes and now it is absolutely not going anywhere. I said this is one of the most difficult steps, and it is, but even then it's not too hard.
As for what to look for in a cooler? Pretty self-explanatory. Longevity and good air flow. All of this tech stuff looks complex, and yeah if you are going to go full geek on it, it is complex, but for the rest of the casuals like me, some of the parts don't require a lot of know-how or extensive research to know if you are getting ripped off or not. Cooler Master is one of the leading brands in this stuff. I'm not saying they are the best, because I honestly have no idea, but a few of the pieces I researched for this project seemed pretty great.
MOTHERBOARD - Asus Z170 Pro Gaming ATX LGA1151
All those big hooplah numbers and stuff there are kind of important actually. The ATX is what kind of motherboard you have, which will affect which case you can buy and how to adhere your cooler. The LGA1151 to a lesser extent is also definitive of cooler installation, but should fit in a wider array of cases. Beyond that, with a lot of choices out there, this is something you are going to have to do a lot of Googling for. I don't remember all the reasons I chose this one to be honest. Basically here is something that is going to possibly blow you away. Some of the parts you will see for parts lists on the internet have parts that are not necessary to building a functioning PC. They are incredibly helpful but not necessary. This, again, is a build for an audio PC. How would I benefit from spending hundreds of dollars on a sick graphics card? I wouldn't. In fact, depending on your CPU and motherboard, you actually do not need to buy a graphics card at all. The Intel model mentioned before allows minimal graphical capabilities. In layman's terms, it can perform HD graphics. You basically won't be able to play Smite on it, but can it load something like say Reaper? Microsoft Word? Absolutely! Even if you are building a PC for something other than gaming (i.e. Audio, Illustration, Graphic Design, Modelling Software, Video Editing) don't stray from the gaming-branded parts. A gaming PC is built to produce things fast and clean, and gaming in this age can take anything a run of the mill PC has to offer. A gaming PC part is designed to do it's specific task in relation to something that is going to constantly drain resources at sporadic amounts, and as a user, you want consistency, something that is going to do those tasks that clean for hours on end. If these parts can do this for Overwatch, then they can do it for your CAD design PC as well.
MEMORY (RAM) - G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 SDRAM 2133 Z170/X99
RAM is almost the equivalent to how fast your PC will run. Right now, you can run a decent PC on 8GB and save a load of money. However, some video games specifically have issues or many not run efficiently at all on 8GB of RAM, hence why the current line of game consoles (Switch, PS4, Xbone) run on more than 8GB of RAM. Whatever PC you are building, I would recommend getting 16GB. If you want to splurge, like I did, get 32GB. Why splurge though? Technology is constantly evolving due to research and development. The 16GB is standard today, but will be progressively as obsolete as the 8GB in a future tomorrow. Fifteen years from now, you could have a PC that you built that is still standard. Not sub-standard. Not "ehhh, it does the job". Good. Functional. Fast. As for what model and brand to pick, just look for general durability and customer reviews. RAM doesn't work like your disk drives, motherboards and OS's in the sense that you are going to have to install something or actively see it do something different than other parts in its field. It is just something that the other parts run on.
HARD DRIVE DISK (HDD) - HGST Travelstar 500GB
This is where you actually store files. There are a lot of options here, and HGST (Hitachi) is one of the ones I found popping up the most. I went with this one because to save on shipping costs, I actually bought the vast majority ($860 worth) of my parts in a brick and mortar store. I recommend everyone do the same. You have people there you instantly know what you're doing even if you don't say it, and they get paid to help you. Most of them are also enthusiasts, they live for this stuff, it will be (in so many words) fun for them to help you with this. Let them. It saves you shipping fees. I repeat: it saves you shipping fees. That money adds up. Also unexpectedly the guy gave me a coupon that the store was running because I bundled my CPU with a certain SSD (solid state drive) and saved me $30. That's like, 3 case fans, or one crappy optical drive. Now why this HGST? I wanted that brand and about that size and it was in the store. Here's the thing with an audio PC, or at least a great audio PC: you want a big hard drive. You are not going to fill up a lot of this hard drive, or at least not most of it. DAW's like a lot of room to play in, they are bitchy like that. The fastest way to run software like this is to install the software on the hard drive (HDD) and then put session files and plug-in files and what have you on the separate and probably faster SSD. If you tuned that part out because you don't do audio, read that part again, because I found it also works the same for software like Adobe Illustrator and to a slightly less important extent, Steam. With something like Pro Tools for example, this is almost required for it to run smooth at all. Again, to clarify, this isn't so you can store massive amounts of files on the HDD, this is so the software isn't bogged down with all the other crap you have neighboring the installation files
As far as the hardware of it goes, you need something to mount it in the case. They make mounts for this, but other people have just used industry strength Velcro. This also means you can stick it almost anywhere in the case. I am waiting on a metal mount in the mail though. The cost isn't that far off from buying Velcro.
SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD) - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB2.5"
If it wasn't clear from the last paragraph, SSD's are awesome. Get one. They will be worth the extra money in the long run. I was hesitant getting one in my Alienware many years back, and now I can't imagine it without one. If you want something that is efficient and also won't set you back an extra couple hundred dollars than it needs to, I recommend the Samsung EVO series. The amount of room on it is really just up to what you think you need. I've seen as low as 100GB and I've seen as high as 4TB maybe even 8TB if I'm not mistaken. Before you go as low as possible to save a buck, keep in mind this is where most of your bigger files are going to be going, so I would shop for this part with the mentality of "rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it". Reaper is a small DAW, and unless you are recording 100 projects a week, 500GB should be plenty of room.
I think most of these come with mounts, but mine did not. The literature that comes with my EVO SSD even shows a picture of screws and a mount, yet came with none of that. Not sure what's up with that situation. But I'm waiting for a mount to come in the mail with this one as well.
VIDEO CARD - Ummm....
I don't have one as of now because again, this is an audio PC. If you are building a PC for gaming, video editing, or illustration, get a graphics card. Just get one. And get a good one. If you are doing gaming or video editing, get a great one.
CASE - Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed ATX Mid Tower Case
This is a great budget case. It's small but still surprisingly easy to get your arm in there and move around. It comes with two front-USB 3.0 ports and two case fans are already installed. In relation to most of the chunky, heavy cases for custom PC's out there, the 300R only weighs about ehhh.... 30-40 pounds? I haven't weighed it. I love this thing though. For ventilation and installation purposes, you might consider something a bit bigger, but personally I like it compact. I also like it costing less than $80 for an awesome case.
POWER SUPPLY - EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650w
Honestly, this is just the thing that powers everything, AKA the thing that plugs into your wall. You could argue from that statement that this is the most important part of the PC, but also it really doesn't take that much research or anything. I know it seems lazy at this point to just say "make sure it's durable, look at customer reviews, and do minimal research" but I mean, this is just a giant box that powers everything. The SuperNOVA line, or at least the 650 G2 does have an extra optional feature where it saves power when it doesn't need to use everything it has at one time. So that's pretty cool. Main advice I would give is get a Gold (the G in G2). At this point you are already spending over $900 for an awesome PC, why not make sure it doesn't fry on you?
OPTICAL DRIVE - LG WH16NS40 Super Multi Blue Internal SATA 16x Blu-Ray Disc Rewriter
You may not actually need an optical drive for a PC if all of your installation comes on a drive, but I think most motherboard installation stuff comes on disk. Now this optical drive that I picked is overkill and still only $65. Meaning you can get one that gets the job done and never use it again for $40. Hell, probably way less than $40. You can also get a portable USB one for cheap, install everything you need to install, then return the thing if you know you aren't going to use it for anything else. For me, I figured, this is an audio PC, and a lot of audio is on CD. My first full-length album was sent to me via mail on a disk when the masters were completed. So it just seemed stupid to me to not get a disk drive. But again, I went overkill. If on a lunch break I want to watch Rick and Morty for the millionth time, I can do that here, because it can handle CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray. If for whatever reason I ever need to WRITE a Blu-Ray disc for someone, this can do it too. This is really as over the top of an optical drive as I can imagine one ever needing.
OPERATING SYSTEM (OS) - Microsoft Windows 10 Home Full 32/64-bit Drive
I actually really like Windows 10, when it works, but that's dependent on what Microsoft wants to do. A lot of the time their "updates" actually downgrade a lot of features so it is kind of a gamble. This was another scenario where I was thinking for the future. I see down the road a lot of games not being compatible with Windows 7 and maybe even 8 anymore so I went with 10. Plus I have been using 10 for a year or two now and I'm just so used to it. This version of Windows 10 is on a flash drive, meaning I don't have to choose between 32-bit and 64-bit. This is kind of convenient for audio because some plug-ins only function 100% on one or the other, but for the most part just getting 64-bit is fine. Beyond this, there is Home and Pro when it comes to Windows 10. Pro has a lot of extra features, but they seemed more geared towards a computer for a company that a lot of people are going to be using. A niche thing. So if you are doing a lot of projects on your own with this PC, you might as well get Home. If this is a gaming PC you are building, I see absolutely no point in getting Pro. Illustrator, same concept as my audio PC: unless you have to network with a lot of the same people in the same company for several years on the same PC, just get Home.
SOFTWARE
Reaper - an awesome DAW that you can try for about two months and buy outright for $60. It comes with so many useful plug-ins that would each individually cost you an arm and a leg otherwise, and you get it for the price of a used mic.
TuxGuitar - a free and very small tablature software I use to write music with, although if you are familiar enough with piano roll you can probably just write in Reaper even easier.
Microsoft Office... not - I actually decided against this because my Alienware already has all that junk. I use that junk quite often, but I also have 2 monitors, so if I need it in the midst of a project on the audio PC, I can just boot up the other monitor and bring up whatever file I need on the Alienware.
CASE FAN - Cooler Master SickleFlow (Red) 69.7 CFM 120mm
This is an extra piece, but I bought it because it would glow red with the CPU Cooler. And because I thought I needed an extra fan. But the Corsair case I bought already comes with two case fans screwed in and ready to go. So this fan really is an extra fan. But it's installed, and they say you really can't have too much cooling in your PC unless it comes to water cooling, which I don't know anything about. Case fans are usually fairly cheap, so if you are paranoid about a hot PC, you might as well sink in for another fan.
MONITOR - Uhh... Ummmmmmmmmmm
I don't actually know the models of my monitors. The right one (main) is a Samsung and the left one is an AOC. I got the AOC as a Cyber Monday deal for less than $200, which is great considering it is a 27-inch. The Samsung has worked for ages and is still in great shape and can also handle two HD ports and some form of analog. The AOC already has a dead pixel. Samsung wins?
AUDIO INTERFACE BOX - PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL
You don't need this at all unless you are building an Audio PC. Even then I guess you don't need it to function but should consider it. Especially this particular thing, because it is awesome. Capable of phantom power, so it can handle up to 4 dynamic or cardioid microphones at once (big deal for me because I like dynamic mics a lot). Has a nice mixer knob so you can control the blend of input and PC sound that you are hearing, as well as the standard input faders for each input and output knob. But wait, there's also a separate one for the headphone jack! Oh yes! It also comes with software so you can add compressors and other things that would usually require you to buy a whole separate pre-amp or two but it's all in the this little USB box, ready to go.
SPEAKERS - KRK Studio
My left and right speakers are KRK Rokit 5's and my subwoofer is a roaring KRK 10s. If I put this on anything other than a lower setting, it literally shakes the house. But that's some clear bass response right there, so no real complaints.
That's my audio PC. How does it run? I don't know yet! My RAM is still in processing so I don't even know if I did it right. But like I said, a lot of it is pretty easy to set up. Just read all of the instructions that come with your parts, and then read them again, and once more. If you still feel unsure, Google it. I'm sure someone has encountered a very similar problem. I hope this helps someone or was at least interesting to someone or served some purpose or something I don't know! I might buy a sound card in the future if I deem it necessary. If I do, I'm sure I'll post about it on Randomrings Blog.
Starting budget: roughly $1000
Ending cost: approx. $1100
Ending cost if I would have settled for 16GB RAM instead of 32GB RAM: approx. $950
Zelda Reminiscing
I'm actually not that big of a Zelda fan. Think about this though, when is the last time you heard someone actually publicly announce that? Either you have to be super into Zelda or you are a fucking insane person. I'm not saying Zelda is necessarily overrated, I'm just saying at the end of the day they are still just fucking video games. I love video games and understand the emotional impact that a game can give you. Kingdom Hearts II is a game I play when I am in a large bout of depression, The World Ends With You and Klonoa: Door to Phantomile make me cry, and I still occasionally enjoy Sonic Adventure 2 even though I know it isn't that great of a game. Some people just have a different outlook on things than others. If you genuinely think Zelda is God's gift to man, or whatever, I think you should think whatever makes you truly happy... as long as it isn't at the expense of others. I grew up with Ocarnia of Time too you entitled fuck, stop calling me retarded for not thinking its the best game on the planet.
The inspiration(s) for this blog is that Breath of the Wild came out today.... I have not played it yet, but it looks really cool. I also haven't written a blog this week, and I can't sleep. So I'm going to talk about some Zelda games in a way that isn't just "nnnghhhh ohhh Zelda's so good!!!" First though, here is a list of Zelda games I haven't played at all so nobody is like "why didn't you talk about this one". Here:
Four Swords Adventures, Skyward Sword, Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages, The Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, A Link Between Worlds, Tri Force Heroes, the CD-i games, the Tingle games, Crossbow Training, Hyrule Warriors
Those are the games I haven't played, or at least I am pretty sure I haven't played the Oracle games, I might be wrong on those. That's well over half of the franchise but that doesn't mean I haven't spent a fair amount of time on some Zelda, baby. Let's dive into the games I have played as a guy who really is and isn't a Zelda fan. Whoopeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Twilight Princess
This one is a good one to start with because it is a filter for people that are just going to see this as me bashing the Zelda franchise and all its fans. That isn't what I'm trying to do here, but because I don't have the same experience with the series as others, they will see this entire blog as an attack. So here:
I fucking hate Twilight Princess.
Alright, that weeds them out. Let's continue.
Picture me as a young teenager at the end of middle school really excited for a new Zelda game where you can swing your sword around a bunch where before this I had been primarily playing Sonic and the Secret Rings or Wii Sports boxing or something dumb. I tried to love the Wii so much as a kid. Plus I was subscribed to Nintendo Power who was stroking Twilight Princess's dick. I had three posters of the game before the damn thing even came out. For Easter, my parents got me that game because they knew I was really excited for it, and this crazy awesome game guide that I still have. Well.... I was bored.
From that point on and even when I see other people play it today, I can only think that they upped the ante on the art style and overall hype to get people to think "this is the next Ocarina of Time" and in a way, that's not wrong. Twilight Princess was, in many ways, the closest thing you could get to Ocarina without playing Majora's Mask or just shutting the fuck up and playing Ocarina again. But that's why I hate it, it is a boring, streamlines Ocarina. And why I hate that fact even more is because the visuals are fucking gorgeous, or at the very least the concept art is.
I really want to love Twilight Princess but slowly running around as a wolf that can't really do anything fun and jerking a remote around in dark, earthy caves doesn't grab me for more than five hours... which I think after about a year of hype was all the time I spent on Twilight Princess. It also has issues that I have with 3D Zelda in general where I get stuck. Not stumped, just not entirely sure what the hell to do. See in Ocarina this was okay because I felt there were somewhat more fun things to do in the overworld in general if you did have to hunt around for actual progression. Twilight Princess has a lot to do to the point of which it is overwhelming and tedious. This is something I hate about most modern day fantasy adventure games in general that squander such an amazing foundation of a genre, and the last franchise I expected to go down that road was Zelda. For me, Twilight Princess was that game, but a lot of people told me that ironically the GameCube version is better. Even more people have told me to shut my stupid mouth.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
This is one of the games on this blog, list thing that I have played a bit, but not too extensively and in this case, not in many years. My cousin had that GameCube collection thing that had a bunch of old Zelda games on it and I thought Zelda II was one of the more intriguing titles. Looking back on it now and watching let's plays of people actually beating the game to my amazement still makes me feel that way, but admittedly there is a lot of "how the fuck was I supposed to know to do that?" in the game that dissuades me from buying a new-aged port of the game.
The only reasons I would ever say that I like Adventure of Link more than Twilight Princess are because The Adventure of Link wasn't a major disappointment because I played it when I was like 10 and had no expectations. The other reason is because unlike Twilight Princess, this game was made to be a whole new experience. There are very little similarities to draw between this and the original Zelda, and that's fucking cool. This is the kind of innovation I wish they would take with the rest of the series, seeing as the stories aren't that intertwined to begin with. I feel like they did this a bit with Breath of the Wild from what very little I have seen of it so far and would go as far to say that Breath of the Wild looks like what an adolescent version of me wanted Twilight Princess to be.
But enought about that shitty, overrated game. I also just wanted to bring up Adventure of Link because it has always been the underdog of the series and yeah, it's not the best, but I think it deserves a little more credit.
Majora's Mask
I honestly don't have much experience with Majora. It's a cool game and all, and I hear it makes some pretty major improvement over Ocarina, especially in regards to the 3DS remakes, but as a kid I just sucked balls at it, so I never got that far. Even as a sheltered kid raised in happy foo-foo land, I found the darker tone of Majora's Mask strangely inviting. It begins with despair, but in a way that kind of makes me want to get into it more to end this suffering. The whole world is being bullied by a big moon, so that's plenty of suffering to work towards ending too. This plagues you for the entire playthrough and because of the weird time mechanic, the moon even sometimes accomplishes its goals of... getting really close to the screen. But this isn't you fucking up and getting a game over because you suck, it's just part of this really bizarre game. I always felt Zelda's more bizarre elements were the moments where Zelda shines the most anyways, so having a whole game around that was a pretty ballsy yet fitting choice. Maybe one day I will actually play it and beat it, but I never owned the game so who knows.
The Legend of Zelda
I played this a little more than that of Zelda II and Majora, but still not much. Really it just boils down to this game is incredibly impressive for its time. This isn't in a King Kong or Noseferatu kind of way where you watch it and go "yeah, it sucks ass, but its so impressive!" Zelda 1 is still fun, it is just also actually impressive for its time. Zelda 1 is an adventure game that pretty much defined adventure games and still feels like more of an open-ended adventure than most modern adventure games released decades later. DECADES! This is another Zelda game that I wish I just didn't have to sleep so I could grab this game and beat it to have a more solid opinion on it, but as it stands now, I can totally still see this being a fan favorite beyond just being the original game.
Ocarina of Time
Ocarina is the Zelda game I have the 2nd most experience with. It's not my favorite. I'll get to that. But if I'm not mistaken, Ocarina of Time was the first Zelda game I ever played, as I'm sure it was for a lot of people. It still has a special place in my heart... I guess... but at the end of the day, like I said before, they are still just video games. Ocarina has a lot of things fundamentally wrong with it that I think take away from what people tend to call "the perfect game" or at least "the best Zelda". I really don't get it.
There are a lot of kooky, entertaining characters and the visuals are pretty great for late 90's and all that but like...
What was that targeting system? Why were there so many time-wasting mechanics like the Gerudos throwing you out of the town and making you do shit over and over again? Why did I play tennis with the lord of darkness? Why were there huge amounts of boring dialogue with a character who doesn't speak? Why do people leap to defend puzzles in this game and then use things that aren't puzzles as examples?
Oops. I did that thing where I shit on games that people don't like again.
I think they should remake Ocarina in a way where the characters make it a million times more clear as to where you are supposed to go, and an updated combat system similar to Wind Waker, and the dungeons are just completely redesigned. And maybe less dialogue. The whole plot is explained in the beginning basically. Most of that didn't need text. Maybe Master Quest already solves most of my gripes with Ocarina, but I never played it and don't feel like spending an arm and a leg on Zelda. So um. I won't.
I get why people love Ocarina so much though. It definitely has a world and portrayal of said world that is weirdly heartwarming to come back to, despite the fact that I don't even like the game that much. To each their own. If you love Ocarina, that's cool. I just admitted earlier that there was once a time in my life where I enjoyed playing Sonic and the Secret Rings more than Twilight Princess, so what the hell does my opinion matter when it comes to what you like?
Link's Awakening DX
Since I don't really like Ocarina, I hate Twilight Princess, and I haven't played too much of the other games, Link's Awakening DX, a game I borrowed from aforementioned cousin, stands as one of my favorite Zelda games of all time. I honestly don't remember much of this one. I just remember being really enamored in the world, it's inhabitants, and I just generally felt more engaged. I remember fighting a lot of things. And I remember being overly amused by Chain Chomps being in the game. I really wish I had more to say about this one because a lot of people don't talk about it. I would like to revisit this game some time more so than the others, but again, I need sleep and food sometimes, so I can't just be playing yer goshdang Zelda all damn day!
Four Swords
Four Swords is another favorite of mine, which is sad because now I play it alone. Originally you could only play this on the GBA port of Link to the Past and you could only play it with two or more people. It wouldn't let you past the menu without the big wonky multiplayer cable thing. Now I have this DSi version on my 3DS where you can play it by yourself, which is good because no one else I know has it. Four Swords is a lot of fun, because it basically just a modern expansion of Link to the Past with Minish Cap graphics... oh, I'm sorry did you need me to explain more?
The items had more actual puzzle potential than anything in Ocarina (just as an example) and teamwork was essential to not only getting far but getting the most out of the game (because it is ultimately pretty short).
If nothing else, Four Swords is one of the most memorable Zelda games for me because I really like Vaati. I think he looks cool and was a fun boss. Mechanically he is fun because being able to defeat him shows how much you and your teammates excelled in this team-building exercise of a Zelda game. That's pretty much all I know to say without you playing it for yourself. It really isn't amazing or anything but what other mainline Zelda game has something like Four Swords?
The Wind Waker
Wind Waker HD on Wii U is pretty awesome. I haven't beaten it yet but it's already one of my favorite Zelda games. It controls like butter, the combat system is as complex as you need it to be as a player, and the whole world is bright and goofy. There are some game modern-isms like dialogue text giving away teaching moments and puzzles that I don't understand why they are in this game at all, but ignore that and you have a really solid adventure at the tip of your thumbs.
A Link to the Past
I still actually never beat this game, but came close, and don't know why I never did. I spent a lot of hours on the GBA version and now have the Wii U port and really need to beat this game. Might even do a video on it one day. Either way, this game puts a big smile on my old, miserable, gross face for some reason. None of the other Zelda games do that as much Link to the Past. They may do it, but not as much as Link to the Past. I like the perfect blend of being open-world and linear in this game and how it gives you an urgency to keep going whether you give a shit about the princess or not. I always say any fan of Zelda should really play this game. I would be surprised to find a Zelda fan that truly despises it.
That petered out at the end a bit because I need sleep, but yeah, A Link to the Past is my favorite Zelda game. Um. What's yours?
(Also thanks for reading my sleep-deprived, Sprite-induced, spell-check-ignorant internet rants. Enjoy Breath of the Wild. I have to save money right now that I can't blow on a $60 game but the rest of you enjoy it.)
The inspiration(s) for this blog is that Breath of the Wild came out today.... I have not played it yet, but it looks really cool. I also haven't written a blog this week, and I can't sleep. So I'm going to talk about some Zelda games in a way that isn't just "nnnghhhh ohhh Zelda's so good!!!" First though, here is a list of Zelda games I haven't played at all so nobody is like "why didn't you talk about this one". Here:
Four Swords Adventures, Skyward Sword, Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages, The Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, A Link Between Worlds, Tri Force Heroes, the CD-i games, the Tingle games, Crossbow Training, Hyrule Warriors
Those are the games I haven't played, or at least I am pretty sure I haven't played the Oracle games, I might be wrong on those. That's well over half of the franchise but that doesn't mean I haven't spent a fair amount of time on some Zelda, baby. Let's dive into the games I have played as a guy who really is and isn't a Zelda fan. Whoopeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Twilight Princess
This one is a good one to start with because it is a filter for people that are just going to see this as me bashing the Zelda franchise and all its fans. That isn't what I'm trying to do here, but because I don't have the same experience with the series as others, they will see this entire blog as an attack. So here:
I fucking hate Twilight Princess.
Alright, that weeds them out. Let's continue.
Picture me as a young teenager at the end of middle school really excited for a new Zelda game where you can swing your sword around a bunch where before this I had been primarily playing Sonic and the Secret Rings or Wii Sports boxing or something dumb. I tried to love the Wii so much as a kid. Plus I was subscribed to Nintendo Power who was stroking Twilight Princess's dick. I had three posters of the game before the damn thing even came out. For Easter, my parents got me that game because they knew I was really excited for it, and this crazy awesome game guide that I still have. Well.... I was bored.
From that point on and even when I see other people play it today, I can only think that they upped the ante on the art style and overall hype to get people to think "this is the next Ocarina of Time" and in a way, that's not wrong. Twilight Princess was, in many ways, the closest thing you could get to Ocarina without playing Majora's Mask or just shutting the fuck up and playing Ocarina again. But that's why I hate it, it is a boring, streamlines Ocarina. And why I hate that fact even more is because the visuals are fucking gorgeous, or at the very least the concept art is.
I really want to love Twilight Princess but slowly running around as a wolf that can't really do anything fun and jerking a remote around in dark, earthy caves doesn't grab me for more than five hours... which I think after about a year of hype was all the time I spent on Twilight Princess. It also has issues that I have with 3D Zelda in general where I get stuck. Not stumped, just not entirely sure what the hell to do. See in Ocarina this was okay because I felt there were somewhat more fun things to do in the overworld in general if you did have to hunt around for actual progression. Twilight Princess has a lot to do to the point of which it is overwhelming and tedious. This is something I hate about most modern day fantasy adventure games in general that squander such an amazing foundation of a genre, and the last franchise I expected to go down that road was Zelda. For me, Twilight Princess was that game, but a lot of people told me that ironically the GameCube version is better. Even more people have told me to shut my stupid mouth.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
This is one of the games on this blog, list thing that I have played a bit, but not too extensively and in this case, not in many years. My cousin had that GameCube collection thing that had a bunch of old Zelda games on it and I thought Zelda II was one of the more intriguing titles. Looking back on it now and watching let's plays of people actually beating the game to my amazement still makes me feel that way, but admittedly there is a lot of "how the fuck was I supposed to know to do that?" in the game that dissuades me from buying a new-aged port of the game.
The only reasons I would ever say that I like Adventure of Link more than Twilight Princess are because The Adventure of Link wasn't a major disappointment because I played it when I was like 10 and had no expectations. The other reason is because unlike Twilight Princess, this game was made to be a whole new experience. There are very little similarities to draw between this and the original Zelda, and that's fucking cool. This is the kind of innovation I wish they would take with the rest of the series, seeing as the stories aren't that intertwined to begin with. I feel like they did this a bit with Breath of the Wild from what very little I have seen of it so far and would go as far to say that Breath of the Wild looks like what an adolescent version of me wanted Twilight Princess to be.
But enought about that shitty, overrated game. I also just wanted to bring up Adventure of Link because it has always been the underdog of the series and yeah, it's not the best, but I think it deserves a little more credit.
Majora's Mask
I honestly don't have much experience with Majora. It's a cool game and all, and I hear it makes some pretty major improvement over Ocarina, especially in regards to the 3DS remakes, but as a kid I just sucked balls at it, so I never got that far. Even as a sheltered kid raised in happy foo-foo land, I found the darker tone of Majora's Mask strangely inviting. It begins with despair, but in a way that kind of makes me want to get into it more to end this suffering. The whole world is being bullied by a big moon, so that's plenty of suffering to work towards ending too. This plagues you for the entire playthrough and because of the weird time mechanic, the moon even sometimes accomplishes its goals of... getting really close to the screen. But this isn't you fucking up and getting a game over because you suck, it's just part of this really bizarre game. I always felt Zelda's more bizarre elements were the moments where Zelda shines the most anyways, so having a whole game around that was a pretty ballsy yet fitting choice. Maybe one day I will actually play it and beat it, but I never owned the game so who knows.
The Legend of Zelda
I played this a little more than that of Zelda II and Majora, but still not much. Really it just boils down to this game is incredibly impressive for its time. This isn't in a King Kong or Noseferatu kind of way where you watch it and go "yeah, it sucks ass, but its so impressive!" Zelda 1 is still fun, it is just also actually impressive for its time. Zelda 1 is an adventure game that pretty much defined adventure games and still feels like more of an open-ended adventure than most modern adventure games released decades later. DECADES! This is another Zelda game that I wish I just didn't have to sleep so I could grab this game and beat it to have a more solid opinion on it, but as it stands now, I can totally still see this being a fan favorite beyond just being the original game.
Ocarina of Time
Ocarina is the Zelda game I have the 2nd most experience with. It's not my favorite. I'll get to that. But if I'm not mistaken, Ocarina of Time was the first Zelda game I ever played, as I'm sure it was for a lot of people. It still has a special place in my heart... I guess... but at the end of the day, like I said before, they are still just video games. Ocarina has a lot of things fundamentally wrong with it that I think take away from what people tend to call "the perfect game" or at least "the best Zelda". I really don't get it.
There are a lot of kooky, entertaining characters and the visuals are pretty great for late 90's and all that but like...
What was that targeting system? Why were there so many time-wasting mechanics like the Gerudos throwing you out of the town and making you do shit over and over again? Why did I play tennis with the lord of darkness? Why were there huge amounts of boring dialogue with a character who doesn't speak? Why do people leap to defend puzzles in this game and then use things that aren't puzzles as examples?
Oops. I did that thing where I shit on games that people don't like again.
I think they should remake Ocarina in a way where the characters make it a million times more clear as to where you are supposed to go, and an updated combat system similar to Wind Waker, and the dungeons are just completely redesigned. And maybe less dialogue. The whole plot is explained in the beginning basically. Most of that didn't need text. Maybe Master Quest already solves most of my gripes with Ocarina, but I never played it and don't feel like spending an arm and a leg on Zelda. So um. I won't.
I get why people love Ocarina so much though. It definitely has a world and portrayal of said world that is weirdly heartwarming to come back to, despite the fact that I don't even like the game that much. To each their own. If you love Ocarina, that's cool. I just admitted earlier that there was once a time in my life where I enjoyed playing Sonic and the Secret Rings more than Twilight Princess, so what the hell does my opinion matter when it comes to what you like?
Link's Awakening DX
Since I don't really like Ocarina, I hate Twilight Princess, and I haven't played too much of the other games, Link's Awakening DX, a game I borrowed from aforementioned cousin, stands as one of my favorite Zelda games of all time. I honestly don't remember much of this one. I just remember being really enamored in the world, it's inhabitants, and I just generally felt more engaged. I remember fighting a lot of things. And I remember being overly amused by Chain Chomps being in the game. I really wish I had more to say about this one because a lot of people don't talk about it. I would like to revisit this game some time more so than the others, but again, I need sleep and food sometimes, so I can't just be playing yer goshdang Zelda all damn day!
Four Swords
Four Swords is another favorite of mine, which is sad because now I play it alone. Originally you could only play this on the GBA port of Link to the Past and you could only play it with two or more people. It wouldn't let you past the menu without the big wonky multiplayer cable thing. Now I have this DSi version on my 3DS where you can play it by yourself, which is good because no one else I know has it. Four Swords is a lot of fun, because it basically just a modern expansion of Link to the Past with Minish Cap graphics... oh, I'm sorry did you need me to explain more?
The items had more actual puzzle potential than anything in Ocarina (just as an example) and teamwork was essential to not only getting far but getting the most out of the game (because it is ultimately pretty short).
If nothing else, Four Swords is one of the most memorable Zelda games for me because I really like Vaati. I think he looks cool and was a fun boss. Mechanically he is fun because being able to defeat him shows how much you and your teammates excelled in this team-building exercise of a Zelda game. That's pretty much all I know to say without you playing it for yourself. It really isn't amazing or anything but what other mainline Zelda game has something like Four Swords?
The Wind Waker
Wind Waker HD on Wii U is pretty awesome. I haven't beaten it yet but it's already one of my favorite Zelda games. It controls like butter, the combat system is as complex as you need it to be as a player, and the whole world is bright and goofy. There are some game modern-isms like dialogue text giving away teaching moments and puzzles that I don't understand why they are in this game at all, but ignore that and you have a really solid adventure at the tip of your thumbs.
A Link to the Past
I still actually never beat this game, but came close, and don't know why I never did. I spent a lot of hours on the GBA version and now have the Wii U port and really need to beat this game. Might even do a video on it one day. Either way, this game puts a big smile on my old, miserable, gross face for some reason. None of the other Zelda games do that as much Link to the Past. They may do it, but not as much as Link to the Past. I like the perfect blend of being open-world and linear in this game and how it gives you an urgency to keep going whether you give a shit about the princess or not. I always say any fan of Zelda should really play this game. I would be surprised to find a Zelda fan that truly despises it.
That petered out at the end a bit because I need sleep, but yeah, A Link to the Past is my favorite Zelda game. Um. What's yours?
(Also thanks for reading my sleep-deprived, Sprite-induced, spell-check-ignorant internet rants. Enjoy Breath of the Wild. I have to save money right now that I can't blow on a $60 game but the rest of you enjoy it.)
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...
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...
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.
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.
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...
...
...
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...
Late to the Party: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
I didn't watch The Force Awakens until a few weeks ago. I think I'm now at a point where I have chewed on the movie long enough by stepping away from it but it was recent enough to where I still remember the movie.
Movie release: 2015
Interest in movie: I'm a single male in my 20's so naturally I like Star Wars. Kidding. The original trilogy was a pretty big deal for me when I was really young, and the prequels, to a much lesser extent, excited me as well. Even a very childish version of me who saw Attack of the Clones in theaters was like "are you kidding me?" They waited an awfully long time to make a movie that was not a spin-off, but a direct continuation of a movie released many years prior. When I heard they were shoving in as many original cast members as possible I avoided the movie like the plague thinking that it was a soulless cash-in. I also heard a lot of people say that VII was really entertaining while other people said it was trash. Some people said "it's so good, it's just like A New Hope!!!" and others said "it's so bad, it's just like A New Hope!" I didn't have much interest in watching it, but my mom wanted me to watch it because "it had all the characters and it's awesome" which scared me even more. But honestly, this is not going to be a post bashing or particularly praising The Force Awakens, or for time's sake "VII", because I feel fairly neutral on the whole thing.
I'm just going to split this into 3 things I really liked about VII and 3 things I didn't like about 7. This way it isn't just a directionless rant. Now it will be a segmented directionless rant.
Oh also, this is going to have major spoilers. I'm serious. Huge spoilers that will break the experience of the movie for you if you haven't seen it yet. If you have seen it, keep going. If you haven't seen it, honestly I recommend watching it. If you haven't seen Episode IV, V, and VI, you should watch those before VII.
STUFF I LIKED ABOUT THE FORCE AWAKENS:
1: Daisy Ridley and Jon Boyega's performances and welcome inclusion as new characters
Star Wars is not only the biggest sci-fi franchise in existence, but it is also one of the biggest franchises in general. Star Wars is everywhere and everyone loves it basically. Cramming two new characters into a movie that is not supposed to be a spin-off was a risky move, and something I had very low expectations for. That's why when Rey and Finn come together and the plot actually starts developing naturally through these two strangers, it was actually refreshing and felt like a new movie. Beyond that, the actors gave life to these characters and made them feel like they weren't Luke Skywalker 2 and 3, because they aren't. Finn's whole "trying to be secretive but not doing a good job at it at all" thing throughout the movie rubbed me the wrong way, but overall his obliviousness to a lot of situations is a welcome character weakness and ends up being a strength into his growth as a character. Rey is a whole other field of awesome and I really wanted her to succeed. This could, again, just be because my expectations of Rey and Finn were incredibly low going in, but trying to keep an open mind throughout the movie, these actors in particular took me out of that mindset and strapped me in for the ride, which should be any actor's goal even in the face of hypothetically questionable direction.
2: It looks like fucking Star Wars, or at least what I wish Star Wars looked like
In my opinion, sometimes Star Wars as a universe can look really bland. It works in Episode IV, V, and VI, especially for their time period, but in some scenes it does strictly look like "jungle land", "desert land", "space battle", do you get the idea? There are a lot of scenes in VII that look like a desktop wallpaper for Star Wars in motion, and that is honestly something that I felt was missing from I, II, and possibly even III and maybe even VI. I know, it's blasphemy to say that IV, V, and VI aren't perfect cinema. Crucify me. Strap me by my wrists and ignite me. Don't even get me started on the fight between Rey and Kylo Ren either. My god that is one good looking snowy forest in motion. When Han approaches Ren, there is this really cool scene where a purple light is shining from outside onto the father and son and it really shows off why people call Star Wars a space opera. It does what an opera would do with a 4-minute musical segment in about 5 seconds with one moving image. It was reminiscent of Episode IV, V, and VI, looking back, but not in a way where I felt it was a rip-off as much as it was actively impressing me and shots like those to this day are what I think about the most whenever someone brings up VII. Even the desert scenes in the beginning set up the junk-filled world that Rey lives in like they tried to do in The Phantom Menace. Except that was The Phantom Menace so I don't have to explain much more. Not one character came out and said "Yo, Rey lives in some effed up ess bro!" Not once. It was set up in a way that doesn't show "this is a bad place to live" but rather what that slummy of a place means for Rey's character, all done through visuals... and a bit of dialogue but that's not a bad thing, it's a movie. The movie looks pretty. They could have made it all boring earth tones and made it "gritty" but they didn't. They showed the old Star Wars universe with a fresh coat of paint, and that's one of my favorite things about VII in general.
3: The old cast are vessel characters for a new plot
One of my main fears going into this movie was surprisingly nullified because they actually brought old characters into the path of Rey and Finn in a way that didn't feel like too far-fetched of a coincidence. If you think about it too hard then yeah, what luck that they would stumble into such situations to link them to Luke Skywalker and the gang. Can we call them "the gang?" But in context of the movie, it is all about portrayal, and I didn't find it distracting for the most part. Since Rey has a connection with older characters in the movie and that is part of her story as well as Luke's, Han's, Leia's, etc. it feels like a natural progression more than a cash-in. If anything, it would be disappointing at this point if Star Wars Episode VII was a movie that had a setting unaffected by the fall of the Empire. All of the characters they bring back have a purpose. I found the C-3PO and R2D2 introductions kind of jarring, but maybe that's just me. Han, Chewie, Leia, and Luke were all implemented in a way that I didn't feel short-changed... I mean I didn't pay to see the movie but you know what I mean.
STUFF I WAS NOT SO CRAZY ABOUT IN REGARDS TO THE FORCE AWAKENS
1: The "It's a New Hope Part 2" Debacle (kind of)
Let's get right into it then: The accusations that the plot of VII is a complete rehash of IV. Nobody is wrong here, in my opinion. These are all just opinions, who cares? You can think whatever makes you happy. I totally see where people are coming from with this accusation. I simultaneously agree and disagree, because that is the twisted way my brain works. And now for the elaboration. It's pretty obvious to anyone who has seen Episodes IV, V, and VI that some of the themes used in VII are eerily similar to what we have seen before. Say what you will about the prequels but at least they serve their functions as prequels without borrowing from the formulas set by the other movies. I however don't think it is as easy to pinpoint as "VII just rips off of A New Hope" though. I have a slightly different theory. For those of you unfamiliar with screenplay writing or story writing in general, which is a lot of people, even I myself am an amateur, it is a common rule of thumb that almost every story since the dawn of storytelling has three acts. I don't think this was intentional, but I feel like each act of VII is somehow a plug-and-chug version of a different movie in the original trilogy.
Start with A New Hope; the main culprit in everyone's accusations of why the plot in this movie is soulless, which I already stated that I don't fully agree with. Rey's origin story is pretty similar to Luke's, and the way Finn approaches Earth is nearly identical to R2D2 and C3P0's appearance in IV. But to say the whole movie copies off of the original movie is kind of a stretch. In what part of A New Hope did someone kill their own dad, or start fully becoming one with the powers of the Force? What? That didn't happen? Ohhhhhh. At the end of A New Hope, Luke is down one friend and a couple family members but becomes a sick-ass fighter pilot to take on the Empire. That didn't happen at the end of VII, but I guess you could argue that there is a similar bridge like this into the second act of VII. So I don't see VII Plot = IV Plot rather than VII First Act = Overly Condensed Version of IV Plot. See?
Next: Empire. Big family member reveal and all that, as well as the main Jedi character learning to wield the Force even though no one else knows how to do that anymore all happens in the 2nd act of VII. So this is me not really disagreeing as well. It would have taken maybe a couple weeks at most to make the story not so obviously safe and tried-true to the original trilogy plots, but they didn't do that because Disney. I'm assuming because Disney. Could be wrong. It's Disney. It even blows up a planet exactly like Alderaan. That scene looked cool and all, which I guess serves a very watered down metaphor for my feelings on the movie. "Yeah that was really cool, but from a writing standpoint, they already did all of this... all of it!"
I don't think I need to explain the parallels between VI and the third act of VII. That's just a big Death Star. Yeah, it's a planet, not the Death Star... but come the fuck on. It's a Death Star with a bigger dick. The dad death parallel isn't even subtle. He just kills him. The build-up doesn't even- oh- oh wait! This gets it's own damn section!
2: That one scene with Han Solo. You know the one.
One of my main fears about watching the movie was that they were going to butcher Han Solo, and to my surprise they didn't. If anything showing that even in old age and after aiding in the galaxy's salvation, he is still hunted down for being a crooked scumbag is refreshing and kind of funny in its own right. This is what Han was all about in the old movies and it serves as an evolved version of that. They even show more of a heart in Han with his scenes where he interacts directly with Leia and Ren. This further exemplifies his short but sweet relationship with Rey. Then an edge-lord fucking kills him. This could have been a poignant, brilliant scene, but it is done in the stupidest way. If Ren would have sneezed or something it would have at least been campy, but this is just stupid. For the record, I'm not pissed that Ren killed Han. Like I said above, it's all about portrayal. Execution and context are the two main things that make this shit work, and they threw both out the window. There is no reason to really love or hate Ren up to this point. He's an edgy teenager at his darkest moments and a whiny bitch at his softest, yet he is supposed to be the main villain. It's kind of a joke, in my opinion. This whole build-up scene where Han seems to be getting through to Ren is so almost good that it hurts me. He just blank-faced kills him. Then Han pulls a Darth Maul into the pit of nothingness below. Here's why this is really stupid, or rather stupidly portrayed, and its so simple that it's going to blow your mind... BLOW YOUR MIND... maybe not... here it is:
Why? Why would he do this? Nothing in the movie shows that Han is a great or terrible father to Ren. If anything the dialogue shows that Ren was just being an edgy bitch, as per his general character design, and how much that really has to do with Han was never shown. On the other hand, and this is people's argument against my point, it is supposed to show how dark and shit Ren is. Bullshit. A) Han was obviously no threat to Ren, so killing him was pointless as hell. If he was really the badass supervillain that Ren fans see him as, he would have seen Han's usefulness as leverage for the other original cast members or possibly even other scum bags across the galaxy. This could have brought a much more potent motive to kick off VIII without just using "a disturbance in the force" to bring Luke out of hiding. B) Even if it wasn't pointless, Ren spares at least one life when he could easily kill them just in the beginning half of the fucking movie. But yeah sure, he's just super edgy and doesn't give a fuck if his dad dies and that's what makes him "cool". I fucking hate Kylo Ren. Which leads to my next point!!!
3: God Characters
There are multiple characters that I consider to be "gods" for the wrong reasons and it ruins any semblance of a point that VII is trying to go for, if they were actually trying to go for anything other than a 2 billion dollar paycheck. These three characters in particular that I am going to be talking about are Kylo Ren (of course), Luke Skywalker (you saw that coming), and Rey Whatsherface (simultaneously my favorite and least favorite character in the movie).
I already pretty much stated why I hate Kylo Ren and why I think his inclusion in the movie is arguably lazier than C3PO's, but there is another personal pet peeve I have with Kylo Ren. He is the new Darth Vader simply for the sake of being the new Darth Vader, and the movie doesn't even try to cover it up. His origin story is thrown out on full display and it shows him as the badass pretty early into the movie, except he's not the badass in my opinion but whatever. So they expect us to believe that as a teenager, which we can assume from the context of the movie that he was a teenager, this son of a rogue thief was trained in the way of the Jedi by the god of Jedi and then decided "fuck you mom and dad, you just don't understand me! I'm going to go listen to AFI in space and build a space colony and a giant laser in the core of a fucking planet and kill everyone." That just happened? He just commands a bunch of people now because he's edgy. You could argue here that those people all belong to Snoke, but even then it wouldn't make any sense for Snoke to just be like "oh hey, yeah we can use you to kill people but ALSO you can command all my shit even though you have proven multiple times that you are too stupid and emotionally unstable to handle this position." Darth Vader had this relationship with Sidious/Palpatine but there was build-up there. In fact, despite your feelings on the prequels, all six movies before VII had an important hand in the legacy of Darth Vader so when he commands a space fleet, I can see that happening. Anakin is driven with purpose and is stubborn as shit in every single movie. Kylo Ren is like Shadow the Hedgehog mixed with Robbie Rotten. Does that sound like the worst thing ever? That's why I hate Kylo Ren.
Luke is not as bad of a god character because we actively witnessed him become a Jedi god in the original trilogy. However him being seen as a myth in a time period that wasn't really that long after the fall of the Empire seemed kind of stupid to me. Even his own sister acts like he's some legend that she sends an entire squadron to blindly seek out for years. Then at the end, finding him is the big climax of the movie that is supposed to lead to VIII, because we don't know what's going to happen. How is Luke going to react? That's cool and all but they just say like "we probably need Luke's help". There is no concrete reason why Luke is required to snuff out Lord Goth. Maybe in VIII there will be, but I doubt it.
Then there is Rey, who I love, but also hate for this reason. This also kind of falls on Finn too actually. Not that long ago, these two characters didn't know what a lightsaber was, no exaggeration. Rey picks it up and Luke (again, having power that makes no sense within the context given by Episodes I-VI) sends a huge vision to whoever just so happens to pick up his lightsaber that he hid in a box in some bar that they just happened to go to. Oh good. How convenient. Rey leaves it behind anyways. Also keep in mind that nobody up to this point has used a lightsaber except for Kylo Ren and no one has used the force in front of these characters except for Kylo Ren. Finn admits openly that he didn't even know that the lightsaber was a weapon and starts using it against enemies instantly. Not a big deal, but then later he fights the guy who is supposed to be the most powerful Sith guy in the galaxy at the time and holds his own. A DAY AGO, HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT A LIGHTSABER FUCKING WAS! Why is this stupid? Other than the obvious? It took Luke Skywalker, Jedi god himself, a whole fucking movie to figure out how to use that thing. It was implied in the prequels that it took years to even be allowed to carry one of those things when the Jedi Council was intact. This guy is trained to be a Stormtrooper. You know, the guys who can't even aim a fucking gun and wear cardboard armor and have paper skin that makes them die to one laser shot or hard enough blow to the helmet. He's on Jedi level now too. Keep that in mind, and then look at Rey. She touched a lightsaber once and can now do Jedi mind tricks, use the Force telekinesis stuff, and she fights Kylo Ren too. This was a great fight scene and probably my favorite scene in the whole movie, really, but why would she be able to do this or know how to do half of the things she did. The force just courses through her so now she just knows how to do everything. They didn't that shit this bad in the Digimon anime, but when Digimon does it, it's lazy writing. When Star Wars does it, it's just the Force. In the words of Han Solo "That's not how the Force works!"... my second favorite scene in the whole movie.
OVERALL
The Force Awakens is a functioning movie with enough heart, actor enthusiasm, and welcoming setting to be entertaining. Saying I like it more than I and II is not saying much but I'm saying it. I don't know how I feel about it in regards to III. Obviously it doesn't touch the original trilogy, I honestly think that, but that doesn't make it a horribly lazy movie. I think it was a welcome continuation and with how overly hyped the movie was, there was no way that it wasn't going to be a major disappointment to everyone because it was a continuation of a trilogy of movies that redefined sci-fi and possibly film in general.
I don't fully know how I feel about this movie still because I don't think about it every single day. But any CALM and THOUGHT OUT and RELEVANT arguments for or against anything I said in this blog would be appreciated and personally interesting. That's how you write a run-on sentence.
Movie release: 2015
Interest in movie: I'm a single male in my 20's so naturally I like Star Wars. Kidding. The original trilogy was a pretty big deal for me when I was really young, and the prequels, to a much lesser extent, excited me as well. Even a very childish version of me who saw Attack of the Clones in theaters was like "are you kidding me?" They waited an awfully long time to make a movie that was not a spin-off, but a direct continuation of a movie released many years prior. When I heard they were shoving in as many original cast members as possible I avoided the movie like the plague thinking that it was a soulless cash-in. I also heard a lot of people say that VII was really entertaining while other people said it was trash. Some people said "it's so good, it's just like A New Hope!!!" and others said "it's so bad, it's just like A New Hope!" I didn't have much interest in watching it, but my mom wanted me to watch it because "it had all the characters and it's awesome" which scared me even more. But honestly, this is not going to be a post bashing or particularly praising The Force Awakens, or for time's sake "VII", because I feel fairly neutral on the whole thing.
I'm just going to split this into 3 things I really liked about VII and 3 things I didn't like about 7. This way it isn't just a directionless rant. Now it will be a segmented directionless rant.
Oh also, this is going to have major spoilers. I'm serious. Huge spoilers that will break the experience of the movie for you if you haven't seen it yet. If you have seen it, keep going. If you haven't seen it, honestly I recommend watching it. If you haven't seen Episode IV, V, and VI, you should watch those before VII.
STUFF I LIKED ABOUT THE FORCE AWAKENS:
1: Daisy Ridley and Jon Boyega's performances and welcome inclusion as new characters
Star Wars is not only the biggest sci-fi franchise in existence, but it is also one of the biggest franchises in general. Star Wars is everywhere and everyone loves it basically. Cramming two new characters into a movie that is not supposed to be a spin-off was a risky move, and something I had very low expectations for. That's why when Rey and Finn come together and the plot actually starts developing naturally through these two strangers, it was actually refreshing and felt like a new movie. Beyond that, the actors gave life to these characters and made them feel like they weren't Luke Skywalker 2 and 3, because they aren't. Finn's whole "trying to be secretive but not doing a good job at it at all" thing throughout the movie rubbed me the wrong way, but overall his obliviousness to a lot of situations is a welcome character weakness and ends up being a strength into his growth as a character. Rey is a whole other field of awesome and I really wanted her to succeed. This could, again, just be because my expectations of Rey and Finn were incredibly low going in, but trying to keep an open mind throughout the movie, these actors in particular took me out of that mindset and strapped me in for the ride, which should be any actor's goal even in the face of hypothetically questionable direction.
2: It looks like fucking Star Wars, or at least what I wish Star Wars looked like
In my opinion, sometimes Star Wars as a universe can look really bland. It works in Episode IV, V, and VI, especially for their time period, but in some scenes it does strictly look like "jungle land", "desert land", "space battle", do you get the idea? There are a lot of scenes in VII that look like a desktop wallpaper for Star Wars in motion, and that is honestly something that I felt was missing from I, II, and possibly even III and maybe even VI. I know, it's blasphemy to say that IV, V, and VI aren't perfect cinema. Crucify me. Strap me by my wrists and ignite me. Don't even get me started on the fight between Rey and Kylo Ren either. My god that is one good looking snowy forest in motion. When Han approaches Ren, there is this really cool scene where a purple light is shining from outside onto the father and son and it really shows off why people call Star Wars a space opera. It does what an opera would do with a 4-minute musical segment in about 5 seconds with one moving image. It was reminiscent of Episode IV, V, and VI, looking back, but not in a way where I felt it was a rip-off as much as it was actively impressing me and shots like those to this day are what I think about the most whenever someone brings up VII. Even the desert scenes in the beginning set up the junk-filled world that Rey lives in like they tried to do in The Phantom Menace. Except that was The Phantom Menace so I don't have to explain much more. Not one character came out and said "Yo, Rey lives in some effed up ess bro!" Not once. It was set up in a way that doesn't show "this is a bad place to live" but rather what that slummy of a place means for Rey's character, all done through visuals... and a bit of dialogue but that's not a bad thing, it's a movie. The movie looks pretty. They could have made it all boring earth tones and made it "gritty" but they didn't. They showed the old Star Wars universe with a fresh coat of paint, and that's one of my favorite things about VII in general.
3: The old cast are vessel characters for a new plot
One of my main fears going into this movie was surprisingly nullified because they actually brought old characters into the path of Rey and Finn in a way that didn't feel like too far-fetched of a coincidence. If you think about it too hard then yeah, what luck that they would stumble into such situations to link them to Luke Skywalker and the gang. Can we call them "the gang?" But in context of the movie, it is all about portrayal, and I didn't find it distracting for the most part. Since Rey has a connection with older characters in the movie and that is part of her story as well as Luke's, Han's, Leia's, etc. it feels like a natural progression more than a cash-in. If anything, it would be disappointing at this point if Star Wars Episode VII was a movie that had a setting unaffected by the fall of the Empire. All of the characters they bring back have a purpose. I found the C-3PO and R2D2 introductions kind of jarring, but maybe that's just me. Han, Chewie, Leia, and Luke were all implemented in a way that I didn't feel short-changed... I mean I didn't pay to see the movie but you know what I mean.
STUFF I WAS NOT SO CRAZY ABOUT IN REGARDS TO THE FORCE AWAKENS
1: The "It's a New Hope Part 2" Debacle (kind of)
Let's get right into it then: The accusations that the plot of VII is a complete rehash of IV. Nobody is wrong here, in my opinion. These are all just opinions, who cares? You can think whatever makes you happy. I totally see where people are coming from with this accusation. I simultaneously agree and disagree, because that is the twisted way my brain works. And now for the elaboration. It's pretty obvious to anyone who has seen Episodes IV, V, and VI that some of the themes used in VII are eerily similar to what we have seen before. Say what you will about the prequels but at least they serve their functions as prequels without borrowing from the formulas set by the other movies. I however don't think it is as easy to pinpoint as "VII just rips off of A New Hope" though. I have a slightly different theory. For those of you unfamiliar with screenplay writing or story writing in general, which is a lot of people, even I myself am an amateur, it is a common rule of thumb that almost every story since the dawn of storytelling has three acts. I don't think this was intentional, but I feel like each act of VII is somehow a plug-and-chug version of a different movie in the original trilogy.
Start with A New Hope; the main culprit in everyone's accusations of why the plot in this movie is soulless, which I already stated that I don't fully agree with. Rey's origin story is pretty similar to Luke's, and the way Finn approaches Earth is nearly identical to R2D2 and C3P0's appearance in IV. But to say the whole movie copies off of the original movie is kind of a stretch. In what part of A New Hope did someone kill their own dad, or start fully becoming one with the powers of the Force? What? That didn't happen? Ohhhhhh. At the end of A New Hope, Luke is down one friend and a couple family members but becomes a sick-ass fighter pilot to take on the Empire. That didn't happen at the end of VII, but I guess you could argue that there is a similar bridge like this into the second act of VII. So I don't see VII Plot = IV Plot rather than VII First Act = Overly Condensed Version of IV Plot. See?
Next: Empire. Big family member reveal and all that, as well as the main Jedi character learning to wield the Force even though no one else knows how to do that anymore all happens in the 2nd act of VII. So this is me not really disagreeing as well. It would have taken maybe a couple weeks at most to make the story not so obviously safe and tried-true to the original trilogy plots, but they didn't do that because Disney. I'm assuming because Disney. Could be wrong. It's Disney. It even blows up a planet exactly like Alderaan. That scene looked cool and all, which I guess serves a very watered down metaphor for my feelings on the movie. "Yeah that was really cool, but from a writing standpoint, they already did all of this... all of it!"
I don't think I need to explain the parallels between VI and the third act of VII. That's just a big Death Star. Yeah, it's a planet, not the Death Star... but come the fuck on. It's a Death Star with a bigger dick. The dad death parallel isn't even subtle. He just kills him. The build-up doesn't even- oh- oh wait! This gets it's own damn section!
2: That one scene with Han Solo. You know the one.
One of my main fears about watching the movie was that they were going to butcher Han Solo, and to my surprise they didn't. If anything showing that even in old age and after aiding in the galaxy's salvation, he is still hunted down for being a crooked scumbag is refreshing and kind of funny in its own right. This is what Han was all about in the old movies and it serves as an evolved version of that. They even show more of a heart in Han with his scenes where he interacts directly with Leia and Ren. This further exemplifies his short but sweet relationship with Rey. Then an edge-lord fucking kills him. This could have been a poignant, brilliant scene, but it is done in the stupidest way. If Ren would have sneezed or something it would have at least been campy, but this is just stupid. For the record, I'm not pissed that Ren killed Han. Like I said above, it's all about portrayal. Execution and context are the two main things that make this shit work, and they threw both out the window. There is no reason to really love or hate Ren up to this point. He's an edgy teenager at his darkest moments and a whiny bitch at his softest, yet he is supposed to be the main villain. It's kind of a joke, in my opinion. This whole build-up scene where Han seems to be getting through to Ren is so almost good that it hurts me. He just blank-faced kills him. Then Han pulls a Darth Maul into the pit of nothingness below. Here's why this is really stupid, or rather stupidly portrayed, and its so simple that it's going to blow your mind... BLOW YOUR MIND... maybe not... here it is:
Why? Why would he do this? Nothing in the movie shows that Han is a great or terrible father to Ren. If anything the dialogue shows that Ren was just being an edgy bitch, as per his general character design, and how much that really has to do with Han was never shown. On the other hand, and this is people's argument against my point, it is supposed to show how dark and shit Ren is. Bullshit. A) Han was obviously no threat to Ren, so killing him was pointless as hell. If he was really the badass supervillain that Ren fans see him as, he would have seen Han's usefulness as leverage for the other original cast members or possibly even other scum bags across the galaxy. This could have brought a much more potent motive to kick off VIII without just using "a disturbance in the force" to bring Luke out of hiding. B) Even if it wasn't pointless, Ren spares at least one life when he could easily kill them just in the beginning half of the fucking movie. But yeah sure, he's just super edgy and doesn't give a fuck if his dad dies and that's what makes him "cool". I fucking hate Kylo Ren. Which leads to my next point!!!
3: God Characters
There are multiple characters that I consider to be "gods" for the wrong reasons and it ruins any semblance of a point that VII is trying to go for, if they were actually trying to go for anything other than a 2 billion dollar paycheck. These three characters in particular that I am going to be talking about are Kylo Ren (of course), Luke Skywalker (you saw that coming), and Rey Whatsherface (simultaneously my favorite and least favorite character in the movie).
I already pretty much stated why I hate Kylo Ren and why I think his inclusion in the movie is arguably lazier than C3PO's, but there is another personal pet peeve I have with Kylo Ren. He is the new Darth Vader simply for the sake of being the new Darth Vader, and the movie doesn't even try to cover it up. His origin story is thrown out on full display and it shows him as the badass pretty early into the movie, except he's not the badass in my opinion but whatever. So they expect us to believe that as a teenager, which we can assume from the context of the movie that he was a teenager, this son of a rogue thief was trained in the way of the Jedi by the god of Jedi and then decided "fuck you mom and dad, you just don't understand me! I'm going to go listen to AFI in space and build a space colony and a giant laser in the core of a fucking planet and kill everyone." That just happened? He just commands a bunch of people now because he's edgy. You could argue here that those people all belong to Snoke, but even then it wouldn't make any sense for Snoke to just be like "oh hey, yeah we can use you to kill people but ALSO you can command all my shit even though you have proven multiple times that you are too stupid and emotionally unstable to handle this position." Darth Vader had this relationship with Sidious/Palpatine but there was build-up there. In fact, despite your feelings on the prequels, all six movies before VII had an important hand in the legacy of Darth Vader so when he commands a space fleet, I can see that happening. Anakin is driven with purpose and is stubborn as shit in every single movie. Kylo Ren is like Shadow the Hedgehog mixed with Robbie Rotten. Does that sound like the worst thing ever? That's why I hate Kylo Ren.
Luke is not as bad of a god character because we actively witnessed him become a Jedi god in the original trilogy. However him being seen as a myth in a time period that wasn't really that long after the fall of the Empire seemed kind of stupid to me. Even his own sister acts like he's some legend that she sends an entire squadron to blindly seek out for years. Then at the end, finding him is the big climax of the movie that is supposed to lead to VIII, because we don't know what's going to happen. How is Luke going to react? That's cool and all but they just say like "we probably need Luke's help". There is no concrete reason why Luke is required to snuff out Lord Goth. Maybe in VIII there will be, but I doubt it.
Then there is Rey, who I love, but also hate for this reason. This also kind of falls on Finn too actually. Not that long ago, these two characters didn't know what a lightsaber was, no exaggeration. Rey picks it up and Luke (again, having power that makes no sense within the context given by Episodes I-VI) sends a huge vision to whoever just so happens to pick up his lightsaber that he hid in a box in some bar that they just happened to go to. Oh good. How convenient. Rey leaves it behind anyways. Also keep in mind that nobody up to this point has used a lightsaber except for Kylo Ren and no one has used the force in front of these characters except for Kylo Ren. Finn admits openly that he didn't even know that the lightsaber was a weapon and starts using it against enemies instantly. Not a big deal, but then later he fights the guy who is supposed to be the most powerful Sith guy in the galaxy at the time and holds his own. A DAY AGO, HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT A LIGHTSABER FUCKING WAS! Why is this stupid? Other than the obvious? It took Luke Skywalker, Jedi god himself, a whole fucking movie to figure out how to use that thing. It was implied in the prequels that it took years to even be allowed to carry one of those things when the Jedi Council was intact. This guy is trained to be a Stormtrooper. You know, the guys who can't even aim a fucking gun and wear cardboard armor and have paper skin that makes them die to one laser shot or hard enough blow to the helmet. He's on Jedi level now too. Keep that in mind, and then look at Rey. She touched a lightsaber once and can now do Jedi mind tricks, use the Force telekinesis stuff, and she fights Kylo Ren too. This was a great fight scene and probably my favorite scene in the whole movie, really, but why would she be able to do this or know how to do half of the things she did. The force just courses through her so now she just knows how to do everything. They didn't that shit this bad in the Digimon anime, but when Digimon does it, it's lazy writing. When Star Wars does it, it's just the Force. In the words of Han Solo "That's not how the Force works!"... my second favorite scene in the whole movie.
OVERALL
The Force Awakens is a functioning movie with enough heart, actor enthusiasm, and welcoming setting to be entertaining. Saying I like it more than I and II is not saying much but I'm saying it. I don't know how I feel about it in regards to III. Obviously it doesn't touch the original trilogy, I honestly think that, but that doesn't make it a horribly lazy movie. I think it was a welcome continuation and with how overly hyped the movie was, there was no way that it wasn't going to be a major disappointment to everyone because it was a continuation of a trilogy of movies that redefined sci-fi and possibly film in general.
I don't fully know how I feel about this movie still because I don't think about it every single day. But any CALM and THOUGHT OUT and RELEVANT arguments for or against anything I said in this blog would be appreciated and personally interesting. That's how you write a run-on sentence.
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