Hello everybody! I’m back with another Video Game Round-Up! I didn’t get a chance to play too much this month as I spent most of it writing and doing other writing-adjacent activities (like editing and going to a conference), but I have something to announce: I will be doing another video game talk at the Singapore Writers Festival! You can find out more here, so if you’re in Singapore on Saturday, 9 November, come by and hear me talk about video games! It says that the session was “conceptualised by SWF Youth Curators”, but you don’t actually have to be a “youth” to attend. I checked already. However, I definitely have to keep to the allotted 45 minutes this time (30 minutes for lecture, 15 minute for Q&A), so no going over for an extra long session like last time :P
Now, on to the games!
NieR: Automata (PS4) - After saying I wouldn’t keep playing after finishing the first playthrough as 2B, I did actually start playing the second playthrough as 9S because the first playthrough only took me 13 hours and not the 100 hours I assumed it would. The second playthrough is quite similar to the first, but 9S has the ability to hack, which 2B did not. But most of the story is the same as they spend most of their time together. There are only two (two-and-a-half?) sections that I can remember where 2B is running around without 9S, and I’ve already played through one of them. I am taking a lot longer to finish as 9S, though, because I’m doing a lot more sidequests that I just kind of ignored as 2B. Still, I look forward to playing as A2, whose story should be entirely different as she only crosses 2B and 9S’ path once.
As stated last month, I did stop playing this when Control came out, so I am still about halfway through my 9S playthrough, but I gotta say, 9S’ hacking ability seems a tad mite overpowered. As 2B, it could take me a fair amount of time to beat up a bunch of robots with her swords, but as 9S, I can just jump into their software, play a 10-20 second hacking minigame, and then have the robots explode as soon as I was done. It makes combat a lot easier, which is probably why I’m doing all those sidequests now.
The music is still fantastic. More of this kind of music please!
Baba is You (Switch) - This is a puzzle game with an incredibly interesting twist: you can change the rules! There is a win condition in every puzzle board; for example, “Flag Is Win”. When my character touches the flag, I have completed the puzzle. But that specific win condition might be literally impossible when I first start up a board because of other rules; for example, “Wall Is Stop”. So, if that rule is in place, and my character is surrounded by a Wall, and the Flag is outside of that Wall, how to win? This is where the twist comes in. Every word in the rules is movable and changeable. Like, they’re their own little blocks. So the solution to the previous puzzle is moving the word “Wall” out of the sentence, so that it is no longer “Stop”. Then I can simply walk through the wall and touch the Flag.
My character is usually the titular Baba, but because “Baba Is You” is a rule in and of itself, sometimes the solution to a puzzle is for me to be something other than “Baba”.
It’s very difficult to explain this game with just words and I have done a terrible job of it, so I suggest watching very, very early gameplay of it on YouTube (and by very, very early, I mean like the first two or three boards only). Some of these puzzles are so friggin’ difficult to solve, they take me days and I honestly start to believe they are impossible. But then I solve them, and I feel like the smartest person in the world... Until the next puzzle stumps me for days.
This is one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played, and it just might make my Best of the Year list.
Control (PS4) - This was billed as a game in the new weird genre. New weird is a literary genre that melds aspects of science fiction and horror (and occasionally other things as well). China Miéville, Alastair Reynolds, and Jeff VanderMeer are some of the more well-known authors who write (or are said to write) in this genre. That billing was 100% spot on.
Control starts with Jesse Faden entering the Oldest House, the Brutalist skyscraper headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, looking for her brother as an other-dimensional entity known as the Hiss begins its invasion. She becomes the new Director of the FBC when she picks up the Service Weapon that I’m almost 100% sure the previous Director used to kill himself. When she picks up the Service Weapon, every portrait of the Director throughout the building changes to reflect her new status. Also, the Oldest House is definitely connected to other dimensions and is veeeeeery comfortable with non-Euclidean geometry (which makes me uncomfortable).
Yeah, it’s weird.
I don’t want to say too much about the story for fear of spoilers, but it’s awesome. The gameplay is also pretty great, with tight shooting controls and unlockable superpowers that allow Jesse to throw stuff with telekinesis, take over Hiss minds with some kind of forced telepathy, and even straight up fly. By about halfway through the game, Jesse’s basically a badass Jedi with a magic gun.
While I am 100% enjoying the story missions (except for the one I’m currently stuck on because those Goddamn waves of Goddamn Hiss can go Goddamn fuck themselves), I think the side missions are a lot more fun and interesting. You get to fight some pretty inventive bosses, find most of Jesse’s powers, and even help Ahti the janitor with various cleaning tasks (which are still quite fun).
Control is a masterclass in narrative-via-collectibles. There are various classified documents lying all over the Oldest House that give you all sorts of backstory on various elements in the game: Objects of Power, weird places in and out of the Oldest House, past FBC missions, and even book reviews. There are also a bunch of live-action videos featuring Dr Casper Darling explaining some weird stuff, and episodes of the creepiest puppet show of all time, "Threshold Kids". You often can’t read a full text document, however, as various tantalizing bits are redacted. But the stuff that’s there is pretty great, and like Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4), I want to collect every piece so I can read all of it and piece together as much of the FBC’s history as possible.
But there is a problem with this game. Whenever I unpause, finish a mission, or get into a fight with lots of moving parts, the frame rate drops to single digits. This means that the game basically freezes for me then skips ahead, while all the AI continues to function as normal. And not for an inconsiderable time. Normally, I don’t care about this kind of tech stuff (I am one of like five people on the planet who didn’t care that the graphics in Mass Effect: Andromeda (PS4) were fugly as hell) as long as the story and game itself are enjoyable. But this framerate drop makes the game literally unplayable for as long as it lasts. This is especially annoying during fights in which I might die because I have no idea what’s going on (it has happened more than once). Developer Remedy patched part of this already so the fights are a lot smoother, but unpausing (and restarting after a death) still drops the framerate.
PS. I will totally platinum this game.
Astral Chain (Switch) - Last month, I said I wouldn’t actually get this game until I finished NieR: Automata, but then everyone was talking about how great it was, so I buckled under the peer pressure. I’m about halfway through the game, and here’s my hot take: the non-action parts of the game are really fun and interesting, while the action parts of the game are kind of boring and repetitive. This is a really weird thing for a Platinum game. Platinum is known for the action in their games, but it’s just not very compelling here. Plus, the control scheme is weird as hell, and I can’t change it to make it more intuitive.
At the beginning of the game, you are give a choice between a male and female character. In the story, they are twins, and whichever one you do not choose becomes Akira Howard, and the one you do choose becomes Whatever-You-Want Howard (I chose the female character and called her Yoshi). This game is fully voiced, except for the character you choose. For some reason, Platinum decided that, even though they recorded voices for both characters, only the twin you do not choose gets to talk, and your character doesn’t. They just sort of occasionally grunt. I mean, that’s a really weird decision.
I’ve mostly complained about this game, but the not-combat is legitimately fun. You are a cop, so you get to do a bit of investigative work and chase after delinquents, the characters are all really fun and funny, there’s a photo mode, etc. And it is anime as hell. The opening title scrawl is 100% anime title scrawl. The head of the special police you are a part of is totally giving off some Gendo Ikari vibes, especially when he pushes up his glasses.
I will finish the game even though the combat isn’t super fun, mostly because the story is quite enticing.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) - It’s a new hero! It’s Banjo-Kazooie! Apparently, the Smash community has been clamoring for Banjo-Kazooie for a long time, and were faked out by the Dog and Duck from Duck Hunt last time. But they’re finally here, and... it’s fine. Not my favorite character, but, as always, the new character comes with new music, a new stage, and new Spirits. I’ve grabbed all the new spirits already, including that chibi Link that I complained about not having last time, and a spirit that was only available by downloading and playing the demo for Dragon Quest XI (which I literally played for like two seconds after skipping all the cutscenes, and then I deleted it). So, I once again have all the Spirits! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
*koff*
During the recent Nintendo Direct, they revealed that the next DLC character is Terry Bogard from the The King of Fighters and Fatal Fury series, and that there would be more DLC characters after the initial five that would be available as individually purchasable DLC. But now, more about Banjo-Kazooie!
Banjo-Kazooie - This is actually two characters in one, similar to the Duck Hunt Dog and Duck and the two Ice Climbers. Banjo is an anthropomorphic bear and Kazooie is a bird of some kind. They’ve starred in three platforming games from Rare (the fabled developer of the original Donkey Kong Country (N64) and the greatest James Bond game of all time GoldenEye 007 (N64) who are now forced to work on nonsense like Sea of Thieves (XB1)): Banjo-Kazooie (N64), Banjo-Tooie (N64), and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (360).
Celeste (Switch) - Why am I playing Celeste again?! Because new free DLC dropped, that’s why! There is a now a Chapter 9, and it is harder than anything that has come before. I just beat the fifth screen after being stuck on it for like three days, and now I’m stuck on the sixth :P
The story looks it’s going to deal with grief, and the processing thereof, so I fully expect to be bawling at the end of this (you know, after bawling about how hard it is).
In the meantime, time for more pixel-perfect platforming!
River City Girls (Switch) - This game entered my consciousness due to a mention by Eugene on one of his NES streams, and then quickly burrowed itself into my subconsciousness. It would have stayed there if not for a few mentions on various YouTube channels I watch, and then I watched a quick Let’s Play, and knew I had to have it. It is a brawler that’s ostensibly a sequel to River City Ransom (NES), but this time it’s the boyfriends who get kidnapped and the girlfriends have to save them (the boyfriends are the villains from the original game). Misako and Kyoko are hilarious characters who beat up everybody in their way.
It’s a pretty easy game to play, and I really like the leveling and learning new moves mechanic, so I can dish out the pain in new and interesting ways. I mean, I just learned a suplex, so that’s awesome.
Super Metroid (Switch) - SNES games are finally available on Switch Online, and of course the greatest game of all time is available on it, and of course I played it. This was my fourth playthrough (twice on the SNES, once on the Wii, and now once on the Switch), and I collected 94% of the collectibles, the most I’ve ever collected. I fully admit to using a guide for the super hidden stuff, but I found most of them on my own (mostly from remembering where they were from the first three times I found them). This run took me slightly less than 7 hours to beat.
I keep saying that Super Metroid is the greatest game of all time. That’s probably not true, but it is my favorite game of all time. It is the perfect distillation of the Metroidvania genre: having a large game area in which many places are locked off until you find the item that allows you to open them those places. There’s a lot of backtracking to discover new secrets that you couldn’t access before. Metroidvanias were open-world games before we had open-world games; the only real difference is that Metroidvanias don’t have any side quests and open-worlds aren’t usually locked off by anything except level/story progression (you could ignore the story and basically roam the entire map from the very beginning of Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4), for example). Control is a Metroidvania as many places are locked off until you discover the requisite powers and access cards, but because there are side missions, it’s considered an open-world as well (a small open-world, but an open-world nonetheless).
Super Metroid isn’t the first Metroidvania game (the original Metroid (NES) is), but it is the best.
If you’ve never played this game before, I highly recommend it.
And that’s the end! Next month will likely feature more Control (PS4) (in maybe a huge spoilery essay, RDR2-style?), more NieR: Automata (PS4), more Baba is You (Switch), more Astral Chain (Switch), more Celeste (Switch), and more River City Girls (Switch). I will also be playing the Link’s Awakening remake (Switch), which is coming out in like five days. But also! I will be playing the Untitled Goose Game (Switch), which is also supposed to come out in five days, to heck and back! And yes, Untitled Goose Game is apparently the official name. And maybe I’ll get to that last Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC (PS4). Maybe.
Until next month, play more video games!
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