Video Games

Essential Video Games: A Pointless List

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I probably spend too much time thinking about the history of video games. Sometimes it is because my younger brothers ask me about old games; sometimes it is just that I like old games. An idea that often comes to me is the idea of setting up a video game canon, like the western literary canon. Yes, the idea of the literary canon has faced some criticism in the last couple of decades, but it is absolutely a useful tool if not a perfect one. If someone wants to study the history of video games, having a video game canon seems like a good first step to make that easier. 1up.com did two essential games lists back in the day that would have made a good place to start, but they seem to be lost to the ether. (It has come to my attention that USGamer.net is doing a video series of Essential NES Games, which is a good starting point for that specific system.) So we need a new place to start. Not that I am in a position to make such a list; for anyone to assume that they could would be the height of arrogance. But I am going to put forth a list of fifty games, too small a number to be anywhere near complete, as a starting point.

The question is how are “essential” games determined? I think there is a difference between what is essential and what is best. Not that most of the games generally determined to be the “best games ever” don’t deserve to be on this list, only that being one of the best is only one aspect considered. Take, for instance, the Mega Man series. I would say that the series deserves to be represented on this list, but which game or games? Do you put the first one since it was the first? What about the ever ongoing argument about which game is better, Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 3? What about all the subsequent subseries? For this initial rough draft list, I’ve only put Mega Man 2 on this list. It and 3 are essentially equally good, but MM2 has the fact that it is the game that really put the series on the map. It was the hit that secured the Blue Bomber’s place in the gaming pantheon. I’ve also put Mega Man X on the list. It is a great game in its own right and it was a seismic shift in the fortunes of that series. That is an example of the thought process I had as I put together this list. TO be on the is list, a game has to be some combination of excellent, influential or popular. So a game like Mortal Kombat, which I don’t much like, is important enough to the history of video games that it makes the list. It was certainly popular and definitely influential. For someone to understand the landscape of video games in the early ’90’s, one needs to experience Mortal Kombat right alongside games like Street Fighter 2 and Super Metroid.

That being said, I know there are holes in my knowledge. I don’t play a lot of computer games, so my knowledge of them is vague at best. Also, I am largely kind of a Nintendo goon, so Sega and the Arcade are obscenely underrepresented. Lastly, I have deliberately left off everything from the last 5 years or so. Not because there are no great or important games coming out, but because it is hard to gauge a games importance without a little history to look back over. All that is fine though, the point of this list is not to be comprehensive; the point is to spark thought and discussion. Eventually may evolve into a useful tool to help people explore the games that made this medium what it is now.  The list below started out chronological,  but all fifty games didn’t come to me at once and when I finished it was close to seventy games long so I had to edit it.  Instead of going back and spending a few minutes putting it in the correct order, I figured it was good enough as is. Et Voila:

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Pikmin 3

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Both of the people who read my blog regularly will likely recall that I’ve had Pikmin 3 on my “to play” list for about a year. I don’t know why I’ve put it off for so long. At first it was due to a deluge of other games; games like Wind Waker HD and The Wonderful 101. Pikmin 3 was continually pushed down the list. One thing that did keep pushing it down the list is that it is best played with the wiimote and nunchuk, which means that I couldn’t play it on just the Gamepad. That made it just that much easier to skip it and go to something that I didn’t need the main TV for. Now, though, I have finally taken the time to play this game. Pikmin 3 is an amazing game; beautiful, original and with a startling attention to detail. I feel like a fool for putting it off so long.

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I never played the first two Pikmin games. They came out during the time I was largely not playing video games. I did have a Gamecube, but other than Resident Evil 4 and Smash Bros Melee I didn’t have a whole lot for the machine. The Pikmin games looked good, but I just never happened to stumble upon them. Plus, my experiences with console based RTSes, even ones that were supposedly well made, have never been good. I did pick up the New Play Control Pikmin 2 for the Wii, but my nephew borrowed it and I haven’t seen it since. So Pikmin 3 was my entry into this series.

Pikmin 3 takes a complex genre, real time strategy, and gives a patently Nintendo take on it. It is simplified in some ways, like resource management and unit types. Games like Warcraft and Command and Conquer had various resources that the player had to harvest and then allocate to expand their army. Pikmin 3 does have some resources, but there is little about them to manage. Instead of an extensive tree of unit types to build an army with, there are only a handful of Pikmin types to use. In typical Nintendo fashion, the elements of Pikmin 3 all work together. The main goal of the game, other than to reunite the three little aliens that are the game’s protagonists, is to find fruit. The protagonists convert it to juice and drink, with their mission to the planet they crash on being to find new sources of juice. While there are frequently other goals, that is the primary one. The only other resources besides fruit are flowers and enemy carcasses, both of which are used to create more Pikmin. The color of Pikmin you get from them are determined by the type of Pikmin you used to send them back to the home base.

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Solving puzzles and fighting enemies in the game is all based on the color of Pikmin. There are red, yellow and black Pikmin and they have a sort of rock/paper/scissors relationship. The red ones are immune to fire and good at fighting while the yellow are immune to electricity and, while not as good of fighters as the red are lighter and can be thrown farther. Choosing the correct Pikmin for the job is two thirds of the game. It simple in theory but difficult in practice. Especially once you get all three characters together and can split them into three distinct groups. Do you want to split your colors between each commander, or give each commander one color to lead. It hits that perfect balance of easy to play, hard to master.

Pikmin 3 is also one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen. The tiny aliens you control explore an Earth-like world, finding familiar fruits and your discoveries new names. It is cute. The same goes for all of the “alien artifacts” you find over the course of the game. Seeing these little aliens interpret various trinkets in amusing ways it highly entertaining. It all looks good, simultaneously detailed and clean. It is fun to just run around the areas of the game and just look at what there is to find.

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It is really just another great game on the WiiU, a system with a robust and varied library despite its reputation for not having any games. Nintendo may be failing to sell the system, but they are not failing to support it with excellent software. It seems likely that Pikmin 3 is the last entry we’ll see in this series, which is a shame based on how great this game it.

Castlemania

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After beating Rondo of Blood, I did two things. I downloaded Super Castlevania IV on my WiiU and played through that and I started playing the Symphony of the Night port in the PSP. That was the game I was originally trying to play in the first place. I had wanted to play the Castlevania game that most often gets called the best, and almost unanimously agreed that it is the best of the “Metroidvania” style games, the style it brought to the series. I have played all the games the sprung from this one, but by the time I was aware of it on the PS1, it was hard to find and expensive. While it has been on the PSP and Playstation Store for quite a while, I hadn’t made time to play it until now. I’m glad I’ve played it now; Symphony of the Night is excellent.

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Symphony of the Night turned the level based set up of the previous games into the series into a giant, connected, Metroid-like map. Instead of a steadily more challenging tour through Dracula’s Castle, here it is one giant map that is kind of free to explore from the start. The game doesn’t force you to go anywhere, but you are limited by what abilities Alucard has found. This means that the difficult can be uneven. It is also changed from being a straight action game to being an RPG. Alucard gains levels and has quantified stats. It is not necessarily a good change, but it is certainly not a bad one.

Symphony of the Night doesn’t feel as perfect and complete as Super Metroid, the other game that led to the made up word Metroidvania. Super Metroid is pure, distilled perfection. There is nothing extraneous in the game. All of the tools and abilities that Samus ends up decked out with are to some extent necessary. (I am of course referring only to a normal playthough, not using any of the special tricks that can almost break the game.) Symphony of the Night, on the other hand, is filled to the brim with extraneous tools and abilities. Yes, Alucard gains necessary abilities like the double jump and the bat form. But there are also elements like the weapons, which are varied and special but none of them are strictly necessary. There are the familiars, which I didn’t even realize existed until I was more than halfway through the game.

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That is what makes Symphony of the Night great. Super Metroid may be neat and polished; Symphony of the Night is messy. It is filled to the brim with stuff to find and toys to play with. The fact that most of these elements add to the game rather than detract from it is amazing. The player doesn’t really lose anything by not using familiars, but they add something to the game. If the player doesn’t want to deal with messing with their equipment, they can use the short sword that the player is almost required to get. While it uses a similar set up to Metroid, it ends up being quite different. Every time you play Super Metroid it is largely the same. Symphony of the night changes with each attempt, depending on what items enemies happen to drop and which tools you choose to emphasize. Those tools are fun to use. There are tons of weapons to choose from, many with unique special properties. The experience of the game can change drastically with some equipment choices. While not exactly the strongest weapon in the game, the Shield Rod has special abilities when paired with certain shields. Some weapons have greater range or swing faster. The leveling system can also be manipulated into making the game harder or easier depending on how you approach the game.

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One of the most interesting things about Symphony of the Night is that while it seemed an offshoot, a strange experiment for the series, it ended up being the true continuation of the series. It is the game that kept the Castlevania series limping along for a decade when most 16-bit franchises not owned by Nintendo fell by the wayside. The series went 3D like everyone else, with about an average amount of success; which means that the games were bad, but not completely terrible. It wasn’t the smashing success of Ocarina of Time or Mario 64, but neither was it Bubsy 3D. The 3D side of the series muddled on, but those aren’t the game people remember. The ones that people love are Symphony’s progeny, the Metroidvanias that Konami produced for the GBA and DS. People remember Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow, they don’t tend to recall Lament of Innocence.

None of the later games ever surpassed Symphony of the Night, though. They often came close, but never quite reached the peak. The rough edges that made Symphony special were never really sanded off, they were usually just moved to a new area. Whether from a lack of care, money or time (or a combination of all three) none of the handheld games showed the same attention to detail that this game did. This one was a masterpiece, a one of a kind game that deserves its reputation for being one of the greatest games of all time.

Now Playing in July ‘14

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I spent a lot of July beating a lot of the games I’ve downloaded to my 3DS and WiiU. I also learned to love classic Castlevania and beat two Zelda games. It was a good month, though nothing I played this month was as out and out amazing as Shovel Knight or 1001 Spikes. Still, there was a lot of good stuff I played this last month.

Beaten:

Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition:

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Wow! This game is amazing. It has the whole Metroidvania thing going on, along with an interesting Mexican Lucha Libre/Dia de Muertos theme and an excellent combat system. It really nails the pace exploring, getting a new ability and exploring more. I didn’t quite 100% it, but I might. It is just a lot of fun. It is more skill based than most games of this ilk. It is not an RPG, where you can grind to make your numbers bigger; to really conquer this game you must master using all of Juan’s special moves. Plus, you can play as a wrestling mummy. Everything about this game is great. I don’t know what else to say about it.

Final Fantasy Tactics: wrote about it here.

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: find my thoughts here.

Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass: wrote about it here.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood: ditto.

Super Castlevania 4: I didn’t love this game quite as much as Rondo of Blood, but I still enjoyed it a lot more than I did in my first attempt to play it. It lacks some of Rondo’s improvements to Belmont’s move set, but it also features some additions that that game lacks. Like a separate button for subweapons and the ability to swing the whip around however you want. Super Castlevania 4 is a great game, but at times it feels more like a showcase for all the new things that Konami could do with the SNES than actually making a game. Not that it is a bad game by any means, but SC4 clearly wants to wow the player with technological tricks that simply don’t have the impact in 2014 that they would have had in 1991 (92?). Luckily, there is still a fine game underneath all mode 7 tricks.

Kung Fu Rabbit: A cheap little downloadable platformer that is surprisingly addictive. It is simple, but solid. It is a little like a light version of some of those “masocore” games that are all about difficulty. This game is a series of small levels filled with traps, like 1001 Spikes they are more puzzles than levels, though this game lacks that game exactness.  Much of the difficulty is based on the slight floatiness of the controls.  It is enough to be annoying, but not enough to ruin the experience.

Toki Tori: This game is simple. You have a very limited set of tools and abilities and must use them to navigate some tricky puzzle rooms. It isn’t flashy, it isn’t complicated. It is a near perfect puzzle platformer that pushes its tool set to the limits without breaking everything apart. For 1.99 there is no reason that everyone shouldn’t already own this game. It is excellent.

Armillo: This game is so close to being great. It has all the ingredients, but there is just something slightly off. Mostly the problems are in the controls. The player character rolls into a ball to move and the rolling feels slightly imprecise. Otherwise, it is a varied and interesting 3D platformer. It clearly has aspiration to be Super Mario Galaxy, but it just can’t reach that plateau.  Good, but not great.

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D:

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I played the Wii version of this game and loved it. The 3DS version doesn’t look quite as good, but the difficulty has been lessened as well, which a good change. This is a great game. It is hard, but excluding the rocket barrel stages is fair. I got it as my Platinum Reward from Club Nintendo. Everything I’ve heard from the internet has been complaining about how the games are a poor substitute to some crappy physical rewards. I don’t get it. If there wasn’t a game in the list of rewards that appeal to you, what are you doing playing games? I guess I can understand being upset it you already owned them all, but I doubt that many people actually bought all of those games.

Ongoing:

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Shadow Wars: This is a perfectly excellent strategy RPG. Not perfectly balanced, but still a ton of fun. Really, Banshee just tears the middle part of this game to shreds. The story line is equal parts ridiculous and prescient. This game came out before the current troubles in Ukraine started, but does feature a Russian invasion of the country. I should be finishing this shortly.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: I’m not going to say too much, because I have a full post ready to go as soon as I beat this, which should be in the next couple of day. I’ll just here that this game really deserves its reputation. This is a game that a lot of care went into making and it shows. I wish there had been a Castlevania to get the care and attention that this game did since its release.

Ittle Dew: I’ve just started this Zelda clone. It is charming and enjoyable, but I do have a problem with the length of the protagonists sword swing. It is just so short that I end up getting hit trying to get into position to hit something. I’m sure I’ll get used to it as I play, but it is a great annoyance at the start.

Pikmin 3:

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I finally got started on this. It is great. I am having some trouble picking a control scheme. Stylus and Gamepad controls seem like the best option, but they are emphatically not for lefties. So I have had to revert to wiimote and nunchuk controls. Still, it is a lot of fun. I think I am already nearing the end of the game, but it has been well worth it so far.

Pushmo World: I am still hacking my way through these puzzles. There are a lot of them, but I’m in no hurry to get through this. I love Pushmo and I am savoring this WiiU version, at least until some new games start coming out.

Resident Evil 5: My brother and I are playing this co-op, but finding time has been a struggle. We’ve only cleared the first two chapters. It’s not RE4 so far, but it is still good.

Resident Evil Revelations: The big problem I have with this game is that I am a giant baby and putting even the slightly scary stuff from RE about 3 inches from my face it too much for me. I am about halfway through the game, but it is slow going. It is just too much for me.

Persona: I’m done with this for now. I am kind of starting to hate this game, so I am going to put it down and play something else for now. Maybe I’ll come back to once I finish some other SMT games.

Strange Journey: Progress is slow, but it is happening. I am still enjoying this game, despite how hostile it is becoming in the second half. I keep putting it off by playing other games on my 3DS, but this one is never far from my mind.

Baldur’s Gate:

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This game is great; easily my favorite PC RPG. I’ve never beaten it, though. I have made it right to the city of Baldur’s Gate, but crashing computers and the like have kept me from going further. I got the Enhanced Edition from Steam and rolled a new character to try to finally see this game to the end. This time I am playing what will be a Fighter/Cleric. According to the research I did, it should be a solid build. So far I’ve only made it Nashkel, but I am still playing.

Suikoden 2: check here.


Upcoming:

Double Dragon Neon: I want this game to be great, being both Wayforward and a beat-em-up. So far it looks really hard.

Earthbound: I need to get back to this.

Zelda 4 Swords Adventures: I didn’t get to it last month, but it is still on my radar

Yakuza 4: It is time.

Unfinished Business with Suikoden 2

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As I’ve said before, I love Suikoden 2. Playing Final Fantasy Tactics reminded me of some similarities between the games’ stories, so after completing FFT I started a new file on Suikoden 2. Not only did I want to refresh my memory, but I also have unfinished business with that game. I may have beaten more than a half dozen times, but there is one part of the game I’ve never experienced. I have never been able to complete Clive’s Quest.

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Clive’s Quest is a sidequest in Suikoden 2 centering on a character named … wait for it … Clive. In order to complete that sidequest you have to essentially beat the game in less than 20 hours. A tall task in a game that generally usually takes me more than 40. It is certainly possible, even without using some of the more involved tactics players have come up. All you have to do is skip almost all of the optional stuff in the game. This time, I was determined to see Clive’s Quest through. That determination, however, petered out around the time I hit South Window, a town you visit at about the one quarter mark of the game. At that point I realized how much I missed all the optional stuff you have to skip to complete that quest.

The Suikoden games are filled to the brim with optional things. You don’t have to work very hard to find most of them, simply walk around your castle and they happen. The spontaneity of these scenes is what makes the world of Suikoden seem so alive. It feels like this stuff is happening whether you are there to see it or not. Sure, there is fun stuff like having your army detective investigate each of the 108 Stars of Destiny that make up your party, but there is also more subtle stuff like stepping into the dining hall and seeing the two dog-like Kobolds performing a dance number. The more you poke around the game world, the more stuff happens that fleshes out the characters and the world.

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One the few of these bonus scenes that excludes the rest is Clive’s Quest. To see Clive and Elsa’s story play out, you have to reach certain towns before too much time passes on the game clock, the last being what is essentially the last dungeon with right around 21 hours on the clock. I can’t ever force myself to miss all the good stuff just to get those few elusive scenes. It is just about the only thing I haven’t done in this game. I’ve recruited both Valeria and Kasumi, since you have to choose one or the other. I’ve gotten all of the endings, even the one when Riou (the “canon” name for the protagonist) and Nanami run away instead of finishing the game. I’ve even intentionally let Ridley die so I could recruit his son Boris. Unfortunately I have never been able to force myself to ignore all the other stuff I could see just for Clive. After failing recently, I’m not sure I ever will.

Still, each failure to complete Clive’s Quest is another time I play through Suikoden 2, so none of them are truly failures. Each time I play through the game it is a joy. I really wish Konami would make this game available for purchase on some download service. If I am really wishing for things I can’t have, I might as well wish that Konami would take the time to retranslate the game. Again much like Final Fantasy Tactics, the translation is got in the late 90’s was serviceable at best and unforgivably sloppy at worst. Unfortunately, the game tends toward the latter. It is the biggest flaw in what is otherwise a great game.

My 5 Most Hated Games

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I made a handful of these lists a few years ago, hoping to start a blog feature called Top 5 Friday. That never really came to fruition. Is this me making another go of it? Not really. I’m just going to post Top 5 lists whenever I don’t have anything else to put up.

Today’s list is my 5 most hated games. This is not a list of the 5 worst games I’ve ever played, though there would be some crossover with the games on that list, but the 5 games that got the most visceral hateful reaction from me. With simply a terrible game it is easy to just shut it off and never play it again. To get me to truly hate something, I have to care about it to begin with’ as well as spend enough time with it to get me to really dislike it. So this list has a lot of sequels and RPGs. Bad sequels to games that I really liked and bad RPGs that I spent way too long playing.

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5: Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike – The first two Rogue Squadron games were excellent. The third looked to continue this, but included bafflingly awful on foot missions. I was at the height of my Star Wars fandom, and had spent so much time with Rogue Squadron 2 that I could barely wait for Rebel Strike. It couldn’t have disappointed me more. I hated it so much that I sold it back to Gamestop after only a few weeks, something I never do. Maybe I judged it harshly, but even after 10 years it was one of the first games that came to mind for this list.

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4: Tales of the Abyss – This is likely the best game on this list, as well as a game I really wanted to like. Tales of Symphonia hit me at just the right time in High School, especially for an RPG fan playing on the RPG starved Gamecube. I went to considerable length to track down its sequel. Aside from my natural inclination to like it, Tales of the Abyss came highly recommended, both for its improved battle system and its story. The improved battle system held up its end of the bargain; the story not so much. Tales of the Abyss is a long game, nearly 60 hours. A duration that is hard to stomach with a cast of unlikeable, irredeemable assholes that make up the player’s party in this game. I couldn’t stand this group of characters. At a certain point all of the characters ruin whatever likeability they ever had, and the game expects the player to side with them. I hated every minute I had to spend with that despicable group of anime clichés.

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3: Lunar Dragon Song – I love the first two Lunar games. When a sequel hit early in the DS’s life I was overjoyed. Then I played it. It makes every mistake an RPG could make. This game has no redeeming qualities. Worst of all, it got my hopes up for the continuation of a great series that this game really doesn’t deserve to be a part of.

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2: Hydlide – A kid with an NES probably had a limited amount of funds to get games with. One of my first choices was Hydlide. At the time every game was a new experience, I just had to figure out how each game worked. I spent hours trying to crack Hydlide, assuming that once I learned how it worked it would be fun. I never learned how it worked and it was never fun. Even later, when I learned how it worked it was still awful. This one has a special place pf hate in my heart for being my first bad game.

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1: Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth – All the previews of this game highlighted how like Final Fantasy Tactics this game it. At this point I had never seen anything like FFT, so another game like that sounded like a dream come true. So I begged my Mom to take to Funcoland to spend $40 on this game. Then I played it. It was like FFT; like FFT’s mentally challenged cousin. The game expected the player to grind incessantly. There was nothing even close to the Job system. In fact, the game seemed to go out of the way to hide how it worked mostly because I don’t think most of its systems did work. It looks like FFT, but it plays like a nightmare. After a week of unremitting agony, I finally convinced my Mom to drive me back and exchange it, getting I think Final Fantasy IX. That should be the end of this tale, but that would not get this game to the top of my most hated list. Years later, Hoshigami was released on the DS. I was both still a fan of strategy RPGs and still remembered how much I disliked this game. But all the preview talked about how it fixed the problems with original version. So I plunked down $30 on this game again. And it was still awful. This time I was not able to get my money back. I hate this game not just because it was bad, but because it fooled me twice. Fool me twice shame on me, I know, but that doesn’t make me hate this game less.

2nd Quest: The Phantom Hourglass

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The Legend of Zelda games on the DS are probably the most divisive in the series. Both The Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks share the same conflicting control scheme. They also tried to recreate the look of the console Zeldas on a handheld that wasn’t quite powerful enough to do it right. The cel-shaded look from Wind Waker returns here, and it mostly works despite the DS being a terrible system for 3D graphics. It looks slightly worse than Ocarina of Time did. With the DS Zelda games, Nintendo could have taken the easy route and just made what was essentially A Link to the Past on a handheld and everyone would have loved it. They did that with A Link Between Worlds. They went for something else entirely. I can’t say it completely worked out, but it was a noble experiment.

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The most divisive part of The Phantom Hourglass is the stylus controls. In what seems a desperate, and completely unnecessary, attempt by Nintendo to prove the usefulness of their touchscreen enabled DS very few actions in Phantom Hourglass use button presses, nearly everything is done with the stylus. Despite the fact that the controls are very different from the rest of the series or really any other game, playing Phantom Hourglass soon feels natural. There are times when the controls are awkward, mostly when the game is pulling mechanics straight in from previous Zelda games, but for the most part they are excellent. Many actions are streamlined, like picking up and throwing pots and rocks. It takes just two taps of the stylus to execute. Drawing paths for the boomerang or bombchus and aiming the bow are likewise very natural. The combat, however, suffers greatly. Swinging the sword boils down to imprecise flailing. Luckily, most enemies are designed to be taken down with such flailing, making it only a slight problem. The requisite bout of batting an energy ball back and forth with a boss is awful, though. It is all but impossible to be precise. I can understand how the controls are a love them or hate them prospect; they are far different from what players are used to, but I have to say they impressed me with how well they work.

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The other common complaint with Phantom Hourglass is about the Temple of the Ocean King. This is a dungeon that the player must go through multiple times throughout the game, each time going a few floors deeper than the time before. It is a decent idea of the surface, but the execution completely ruins the idea. Other than the chests you open, the dungeon resets each time, so you have to solve each puzzle again. Also, the dungeon is timed. So not only do you have to redo the dungeon, you have to redo it quickly. That’s not all; it is also a stealth dungeon, full of enemies called Phantoms, giant ghostly knights that the player can’t hurt. So you have to repeatedly, quickly sneak through this same dungeon more than a half dozen times. It was a poor design decision. And since it forms the backbone of the game, it really hampers the proceedings.

The biggest flaw, though, is the overworld. Returning to the look and world of Wind Waker was great, but the barely interactive sailing on the world map is the worst. I understand that space on the DS cart is limited and maybe they couldn’t do a big overworld, but knowing that the map was a necessary compromise needed to get that ugly low-poly 3D look, doesn’t help sell it. This is a Zelda game where exploring is a chore that I spent most of my time trying to avoid. That is as far away from the normal Zelda experience possible.

ph2Luckily the dungeons are all really good. When the game gets out if its own way and just lets the player play, it is a damn fine game. The available tools are limited, but the game comes up with multiple ways to use most of them. The grappling hook is really great in this regard. You can use it like the hookshot, but you can also use it to make tightropes across pits and like a slingshot to shoot the Link across some holes. It is the standout tool of the game. Most of the dungeons have some really great puzzles. They are not confined to one room, some of the better puzzles continue across several floors. They are truly satisfying.

The Phantom Hourglass is a flawed game. Most of the problems with the game could be fairly easily fixed. Taking out the repeating part of the Temple of the Ocean King mostly solves that problem and just giving the player direct control of the world map would make it less annoying. Still, despite those problems, The Phantom Hourglass is a largely enjoyable game. I find how experimental it is laudable, but that doesn’t really make it necessarily a good game. It is a divisive entry in the series with good reason. I liked The Phantom Hourglass, but I don’t see myself coming back to it any time soon.

Conquering Castlevania

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I’ve never really gotten the old school Casltevanias. Sure, I played the first two on the NES, but the first was too hard for me at seven years old and the second was too inscrutable. I watched other people enjoy them and recognized their excellence, but I was never able to really enjoy playing Castlevania. At least not until Symphony of the Night turned the series into exploratory action-rpgs. Those games, while varying greatly in quality, were exactly my thing. I ate those GBA and DS up.

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Oddly enough, though, I’ve never played Symphony of the Night, probably the most celebrated game in the series and the originator of the half of the series I really like.  Unfortunately, by the time I got a Playstation, Symphony was already hard to find and expensive. Plus, I had yet to realize how much I like that sort of game. It has been a game on my “to play” list for most of the last decade. A few years ago I bought the Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP to make up for this. However, until recently my PSP was a time-share that I rarely got to take advantage of. So I still didn’t have the chance to play it.

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A couple of weeks ago, I determined to make time to play it and was greatly disappointed to find out that I had to play Rondo of Blood to unlock Symphony of the Night. However, I buckled down and got to playing it. The result was shocking. I unlocked Symphony in about 30 minutes, but I kept playing Rondo. For some reason classic Castlevania clicked with me this time. The low poly 3D models look like crap next to sprites from the original version, but the game still plays just about as well. It helps that Richter has a slightly more robust move set than is usual for a Belmont. That backflip makes a load of difference once mastered. I played the first few levels to unlock Symphony. After that, I was purposely, methodically taking the game apart. I’m still not all that great at the game, very few of the levels were beaten without continuing, but for once it seemed worth it to me to learn them. And with the exception of Stage 5′, I beat them all.

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Rondo of Blood is just a great game. It is difficult, but not unfairly so. It is not about rote memorization, but about learning how to deal with each kind of enemy then dealing with those enemies in different situations. Each victory is hard fought and feels earned. It also helps that the game saves your progress and lets you start from any level you’ve reached. Which means no repeating early levels over and over to get to the harder ones. It also helps with uncovering all the extra paths and finding all the hidden secrets. It is a great game.

I almost neglected to mention the best part: playing as Maria. In the game Richter must save a handful of captured maidens. One of them, Maria Renard, is a playable character. While all the horror imagery from the game stays the same, playing as this little girl in a pink dress turns the whole thing into something of a joke. She easily outclasses Richter’s mobility, having a double jump and a slide technique. Instead of his assortment of knives and axes to throw at enemies, Maria is armed with birds and kitties and a big turtle shell to hide in. She doesn’t find meat hidden in the walls, she finds cake and ice cream. It is absurdly hilarious. She is the best bonus character I’ve ever encountered.

Maria in action

Maria in action

 

I wanted to be sure that my new found appreciation for Casltevania was not just this game, so I downloaded Super Castlevania 4 on my WiiU to try it out. I was delighted to find that my groove from playing Rondo transferred over. I haven’t beaten it yet, but I’ve sped through the first five levels. I’m liking it enough that I’m thinking of getting the NES games too. Probably not until I’ve finished Symphony of the Night, which I’ve finally started.

2nd Quest The Minish Cap

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The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is Capcom’s third (technically 4th if we count the 4 Swords mode from the GBA Link to the Past port as its own game) and final game in the Zelda universe. Their first two games, Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, were solid Gameboy games that were built on the bones of Link’s Awakening. While neither is perfect, both are solid games. With The Minish Cap, Capcom finally got it right. For the most part.

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The Minish Cap starts with young Link and Zelda attending a fair in Hyrule town before going to the castle. There, the evil sorcerer Vaati takes control of the elemental powers and turns Zelda to stone. The only clue Link has to go on to save her is a legend about the Picori, a race of tiny people. Soon, through the use of the titular Minish Cap, a magic hat (not really, but that is close a close enough explanation) that gives Link the ability to shrink himself down to tiny size to meet with the tiny Picori as well as with the reach previously unreachable areas. It gives the game a fairly original hook.

First and foremost, The Minish Cap is a fine looking game. The backgrounds are detailed and colorful; the character sprites, though they look a little over rendered, are still magnificent. Minish Cap is easily the best looking 2D Zelda game. The detail in the surroundings is especially impressive when you shrink down. The bosses look nice, but most of them are just big versions of regular enemies, which is a little disappointing.

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It is also just a lot of fun to play. The selection of tools, while small, gives Link an interesting move set. Almost all of them appear in other games, but here they all used rather well. Plus, there are several sword abilities that are only useable with specific items. The game actually gives the player Link’s down stab from Zelda 2. The dungeons, while few in number, are inventively laid out and just generally a joy to play through.

The biggest problem with The Minish Cap is that it is just too darn short. There are only five dungeons and the word map is tiny. For a series that is generally as expansive and epic as Zelda, The Minish Cap is disappointingly brief. The game ends just as it gets going. There are a couple spots it looks like more dungeons could have been added, like the Graveyard and the mountain, but they were already pushing the game’s scenario to include 5 dungeons.

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A slightly lesser problem is how gated the game feels. There are a lot of spots where you are blocked off by a hole with a rock to push into it from the other side. Those spots work for me. There you just need to get the right item to advance, a perfectly valid reason to block the player off. The spots where your hat won’t let you go somewhere until you so somewhere else or talk to someone else first. That sort of nonsense is prevalent in this game. Then there are the Kinstones. Many of the other characters have half a kinstone and Link must find the other half and match them up. When he does, it unlocks something on the map, like a piece of a heart or a cave full of rupees. It essentially takes all the reward out of exploring, since you have to find the kinstones before you can actually find most of the stuff.

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Taken for what it is, The Minish Cap is an excellent game. But it is something far different from the regular Zelda game. Instead of a relatively open game about exploring. The Minish Cap is a very structured experience. The game is telling its story and the player is not really allowed to deviate from it. Fortunately, while the game is very guided toury, it is a singularly fun tour. Until A Link Between Worlds, I would say this was the best handheld Zelda game. The Minish Cap is a brief little delight.

Shovel Knight Already Used All the Good Shovel Puns

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sk1I feel like I wasted my love letter to NES games article on 1001 Spikes after playing Shovel Knight. I still love 1001 Spikes and wouldn’t change anything I wrote about it, but Shovel Knight is definitely a more heartfelt love letter than it was. 1001 Spikes and Shovel Knight have a similar effect, though they reach it from opposite directions. 1001 Spikes looks like an early 8-bit game, but it doesn’t really play like any of them. It is deliberately and viciously cruel to the player, but not in the same ways that archaic 8-bit games were hard. It’s difficultly is on purpose, part of a joke on the player, not like actual old games’ desire to wring quarters out of players or artificially inflate the playtime. Shovel Knight is more like a late NES game, but informed by more than 20 years of game development. Its creators have described it as an NES game that plays like you remember them playing rather than how they actually did. That is accurate. While it pushes the NES aesthetic a little further than some later games on the system (check out Yacht Club Games breakdowns of how they broke from NES limits on Gamasutra), it looks and moves just like and NES game, only with all of the rough edges sanded off.

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Shovel Knight pulls from tons of NES games. Its world map is much like Super Mario Bros. 3, its 8 evil Knight in the Order of No Quarter are much like Mega Man’s 8 Robot Masters, the Shovel Drop move is the same as the cane pogo from DuckTales, etc. However, it weaves these myriad influences into something new and unique. Shovel Knight moves like Mega Man, more agile than a Belmont but lacking the momentum of Mario, but he is mostly restricted to melee combat. The controls are pitch perfect. Plenty of parts of the game seem incredibly difficult, but are actually quite easy thanks to how well the protagonist controls. There is a cool risk/reward system with the checkpoints, where the player can break them for more money, but then they won’t respawn at them. What is lacks are those really cheap moments that tend to abound in even the best NES games. In fact, Shovel Knight occasionally feels too easy, at least until you try a new game plus.

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What the game does best is create a world highly reminiscent of an NES game, with that particular sort of non-logic that rules that era. The main character is a knight that fights with a shovel, but other than an avalanche of puns no one comments on it. The shop owner beats the player to all the good treasures and makes him buy them from him in the dungeon. Then there is the Troupple King, who is half trout and half apple. He dances and fills up the player’s chalices with helpful ichors. Everything is just slightly weird and wholly charming.

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A feeling of love for 8-bit action games simply permeates Shovel Knight. The player can feel it. For players that can remember spending weekends renting Mega Man or Castlevania and playing it as much as possible, this game feels like coming home. I don’t know how to keep writing about this game without straight gushing about it. Like the music, which is excellent. Same goes for the graphics. The whole package perfectly captures the aesthetic of the era. Then there is the pdf instruction manual made to look just like an instruction manual from the NES era. I know I can be a sucker for nostalgia, and no game has more effectively given me the sort of nostalgia that I want than Shovel Knight. Aside from that, though, I genuinely believe that it is a very good game. The levels may be a touch too long and a touch too easy, but it is immensely playable. After beating it the first time, I immediately fired up it up to play a second time. I never do that. If you are a person with any affection for NES games, you owe it to yourself to play Shovel Knight. It is just the best.