Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! This is five days late because work and writing both got pretty busy. As Facebook still hasn’t made the notes function available on mobile, I can only work on these things on a PC (aka at home and at work). Those extra five days let me play another three games, though, so this Round-Up is extra long at 11 games total!
Also, my video game talk at the Singapore Writers Festival went really well! Many people have complimented me, and I am super relieved because I was super nervous before going up and thought I was gonna mess it all up! But I totally didn’t! Yay for me!
Now, on to the games!
Madden 19 (PS4) - Doesn’t matter what year it is, I still suck at this game, just like my beloved Jets (SELF ZING!). Even on the easiest mode, I mostly don’t know what I’m doing. I know the basics of American football, but I can’t ever put them into action. Like, I know what reading the field means, but the amount of interceptions I’ve thrown in the span of four preseason games (12 for those of you keeping track at home) shows that I can’t actually do it. I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m playing as my beloved, but utterly terrible Jets (though they’ve won two in a row in the real world at the time of this writing; they’re still terrible, but they’re at least not winless).
I mostly play the Franchise mode (aka single-player), taking my team through a full season and possibly beyond. I am two games into my first season, and I still haven’t won a game, unlike the real Jets, who have won three :P
Oh, I forgot to mention: I am on the easiest setting and I am still getting my ass handed to me.
PS: I can play this game without having bought it because I subscribed to EA Access, which lets me play various EA games. This includes all of last year’s sports games (plus 2018 and 2017, I believe), but also their shooters like Titanfall 2, Star Wars: Battlefront II, and Battlefield V. I assume this is in an attempt to give people an inexpensive way to play their games, and then get them to buy various lootboxes in those games, as they’re mostly multiplayer games (though there are some single-player only indies on this service too). Joke’s on them, though, as I don’t like other people :D
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (Switch) - I played a bit more of this and unlocked both Cyclops and Colossus, which was not as hard as I thought it’d be. I immediately leveled Cyclops up and put him in my mutant team because, and say it with me, kids, Cyclops Was Right. I still have not unlocked Morbius because he is still super difficult and my team needs to be of a much higher level. Here’s hoping for actual story DLC when the X-Men and Fantastic Four stuff drops sometime in the future.
Mega Man X Street Fighter (PC) - This is a pretty fun, and absolutely free, 8-bit game created by an enterprising Singaporean fan named Seow Zong Hui. And then Capcom officially sanctioned it because Capcom is a pretty decent company (Street Fighter V and all its mess notwithstanding). It’s basically the usual Mega Man game, but instead of fighting robots, you fight Street Fighter characters. I normally wouldn’t be able to play this kind of game on a PC (platforming is very hard for me with a mouse and keyboard), but I bought an 8bitdo N30 Pro 2 Bluetooth controller earlier this year, and finally used it with this game (now I just have to figure out how to change the button mapping). I was able to traverse Chun Li’s level and beat her, traverse Blanka’s level but not beat him, and get exactly three screens into Ryu’s level because it is hard as nails. I hope it will be easier once I map the jump button to where my thumb thinks it should be instead of where it currently is.
Dandara (Switch) - This is an odd, yet fun Soulsborne Metroidvania platformer (and that’s the most video game phrase I’ve ever typed!) that has some of the timing platforming aspects of Celeste (Switch), the map and Metroidvania aspects of Super Metroid (SNES), and the death and resurrection mechanics, ridiculous bosses, and impenetrable story of Dark Souls (PS4).
Celeste: The basic mechanic is that Dandara has to jump from place to place while avoiding projectiles and/or enemies. And she can only jump. She can’t walk or run. She also can’t jump onto every platform, and she can’t jump an infinite distance. So you have to plan her path, and try not to get hit along the way. Often, timing is very critical to not missing a jump and then getting smashed in the face. The jumping is not as difficult as Celeste, at least not yet, but it can get quite tricky, especially when fighting a boss.
Super Metroid: Dandara unlocks various weapons and powers as she explores more and more of this world she’s in. She often has to double back and go down a path she couldn’t before after unlocking something new. There is also a handy map that fills in only when you enter a room. As it very helpfully includes all the doors, you know which doors you haven’t gone through yet for whatever reason. That said, it doesn’t mark the rooms with stuff you’ve seen but can’t get to, or that you’ve already found (like power-ups), which is annoying as you’ll never be sure if you’ve completely finished exploring a room.
Dark Souls: When Dandara dies, she leaves behind her salt (aka currency). She resurrects at the nearest camp or flag you found, and you have to trek back to your body to collect your salt without dying again, lest you lose it all. The salt is the only way to level up, so it’s not great to lose it. Dandara is nowhere near as difficult as any Soulsborne game, but it has similar storytelling mechanics in that it doesn’t actually tell you its story so much as it leaves it lying around for you to pick up or for an NPC or boss to vaguebook at you.
The boss design in this game is pretty sweet, though (when they get away from the floating heads, at any rate). The one I’m currently stuck on is a made of multiple rooms in a circular area that you have to jump around and wait for your chance to get into the central chamber to deal damage. It’s pretty sweet.
Star Wars Battlefront II (PS4) - Using EA Access (explained above), I am finally playing through Iden Versio’s in-continuity story (yes, this is the single-player campaign)! Iden Versio is the commander of the Inferno Squad, a specops team working for the Empire. I won’t say too much of the story (though the game is over two years old at this point), but I’m happy to finally play this.
It is first and foremost an over-the-shoulder third-person shooter, but there is some melee and vehicle combat as well (and man, am I terrible at flying a TIE Fighter), and takes place immediately after Return of the Jedi as the Rebellion attempts to mop up what remains of the Empire after the destruction of the second Death Star and the deaths of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine (they clearly do a shit job if the new trilogy is any indication). Yes, Iden Versio’s story is canon.
It’s also important to note that I mostly played this game on an iPad thanks to the PS4 Remote Play app! I played about a third of the story in my hotel room in Seoul, and I played another quarter or so in my bedroom (instead of the living room, where the TV and PS4 are). How much do I love the Remote Play app? So much.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 (Switch) - This silly-ass game about a silly-ass plumber catching some silly-ass ghosts has way more jump scares than I was expecting. I mean, they’re mostly hilarious and show just how much of a chicken Luigi is, but they’re also friggin’ terrifying and show just how much of a chicken I am.
But it’s not a scary game, jump scares notwithstanding. It’s a fun little puzzler that asks you to solve various puzzles while you catch ghosts. Sometimes, the catching of the ghost is a puzzle in and of itself, and most of them are pretty fun and not too difficult to figure out (though there are a few that will make you scratch a hole in your head). Like most Mario games, there are a bunch of collectibles to grab in each “level” (aka each floor in the haunted hotel Luigi finds himself in), and they add an extra bit of challenge. Unlike Mario, Luigi can’t really jump (there’s a special move with his ghost vacuum that lets him jump a bit, but it’s only ever really needed to solve a puzzle or free him if he’s surrounded by ghosts or bats or what have you), so this is not a platformer game in the slightest. Everything is about the puzzles, the ghosts, and the secrets.
I’ve beaten the main story, and got all the gems and Boos, but there’s still a few achievements I haven’t gotten yet, but I’ll probably leave them alone since they don’t really add anything new.
Ring Fit Adventure (Switch) - My muscles hurt.
Wait, let me back up. I haven’t exercised very much since last year. Some walking here and there, but almost nothing at all. I just couldn’t get any motivation to do so, especially since my leg still felt weird for a while, despite nothing being wrong with it anymore.
But then I heard about this game, and remembered how much fun WiiSports (Wii) was, so I decided to grab it, and see if it could get me back to exercising on a more regular basis. And you know what? Success. The adventure mode is ridiculous and silly, but it makes you exercise in a well-rounded way, with cardio, leg, arm, and core exercises, and even some yoga (which I am shit at). You can ignore the adventure mode and just do whatever exercise you want to do instead (but then you wouldn’t get the Ring character telling you that “your sweat is shiny and beautiful”, which is oddly encouraging). Yes, you probably look silly holding onto the weird ring peripheral as you exercise, but it doesn’t even matter. I’m exercising again, and that’s what’s important.
And my muscles hurt.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) - Terry Bogard joins the fight, and he brought a metric ton of his SNK friends along for the ride. Besides the 13 spirits (which I got pretty dang quickly), the stage also features a ton of guest characters in the background (but not Mai Shiranui because SSBU is for good boys and girls :P ), and SNK let Nintendo use 50 (!) tracks from its many games (compared to the two tracks Square Enix let Nintendo use for Cloud; what the heck, Squenix?!). That is a lot of music from a lot of classic games. But let’s meet the new fighter!
Terry Bogard: The main character in both the Fatal Fury and King of Fighters fighting game series (also playable in various other fighting games), Terry Bogard wants to avenge his father’s death at the hands of Geese Howard (HONK!). Sakurai-san and his team programmed it so that players can use the usual SSBU controls to do Terry’s moves, but can also use proper fighting game controls. I mean, I’ll still be using the simple controls, but it’s nice that they put them in :D
Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King (Switch) - This has six Aladdin and five Lion King games from different retro systems, but I’ve only tried the Sega Genesis versions (or “Console S”). I still have my original Genesis carts for both Aladdin and Lion King, so this is literally the only versions of the games I’ve ever played. There are also Japanese versions of both games, the SNES Lion King, and Game Boy and Game Boy Color ports of both games (which you can safely ignore because they are terrible). Aladdin also has a “Final Cut” version, which fixes various bugs and camera issues from the original Genesis version, and a “Demo” version, which is an incomplete demo from a 1993 trade show. Best of all, there is a “Watch” option that lets me watch near perfect runs of both games, and lets me jump in whenever I want, i.e. after it passes that one part I can’t get through because these games are still as hard as I remember them being.
This also has a rewind function (like the Disney Afternoon Collection (PS4)) that lets me undo whatever dumb mistake I just made. Literally a life saver :P
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4) - I was not prepared for how difficult this game was going to be. Yes, every preview talked about the Soulsborne combat, but I just assumed that meant style and not so much the hard-as-nails aspect.
I was wrong.
Thank jeebus I can lower the difficulty level. I started at “Jedi Master” aka Normal (“Jedi Grandmaster” is the Hard mode), then proceeded to get my ass handed to me about as often as that one time I tried to play Bloodborne (PS4). I complained to the girl (and had a stress dream about it because I am a weird person), and then dropped the difficulty to “Jedi Knight” aka Easy. I am having a much better time now. I still can’t parry worth a damn and die way more often than I should, but I refuse to drop down to “Story Mode” aka I Don’t Combat because I actually do want to learn the combat, and then maybe scale back up to “Jedi Master” (which I only pretend is a possibility).
The story follows Cal Kestis as he runs from the Empire at some point between Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One. Probably the best part of this game so far is that I can customize my lightsaber, and some (most? all?) of the customization options are based on the lightsaber creation options at Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland. Will the girl and I be making a lightsaber at Disneyland next week that I will then recreate in the game? Probably!
I’m only on my third planet, but I’ve unlocked five so far. I am enjoying the Metroidvania exploration and puzzle-y bits a lot more than the combat, but that’s just par for the course for me. I’m really looking forward to continuing the story, and, other than finishing Battlefront II, continuing to suck at Madden 19, and playing LEGO games with the girl, I’m unlikely to touch another PS4 game until I finish this (sorry Outer Wilds, The Outer Worlds, and Death Stranding!).
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (Switch) - The story mode on this game is ridiculous, and adorable, and utterly nonsensical. Basically, Mario, Sonic, Toad, Bowser, and Dr Eggman get stuck in a video game (that Dr Eggman created) and have to compete in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in order to get enough gold medals to get back out of the game. Meanwhile, Luigi and Tails (and every other Mario character you know and Sonic character you don’t) are at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and are also competing in various events for gold medals. The idea that anyone can just compete in an Olympic event by just showing up is ludicrous, but also awesome. This story mode basically serves as an introduction to every character and event in the game (and possibly unlocks a bunch, though I didn’t check what was available before I dove straight into the story mode). Also, there are 20 chapters to this story, which makes an already ludicrous story even more ricockulous.
My favorite 3D events are football, rugby sevens (which surprisingly is an Olympic sport!), boxing, and karate, and my favorite 2D events are judo and volleyball, but they’re all pretty fun (except maybe for some of the track and field stuff; the button mapping seems quite odd for things like javelin or the discus throw, and the 2D marathon can die). The “Dream” events (video gamed-up versions of racing, shooting, and karate) are pretty fun, as are the minigames, which act as pared down version of some of the Olympic events (and one is basically a side-scrolling shmup).
During my E3 breakdown, I mentioned that this game hadn’t been on my radar at all until I saw the retro events during that Nintendo Direct. Thank goodness for that Direct because rugby sevens alone is worth the price of admission.
And that’s it! I mean, that was a lot, so you know. AJ Low is now closed for the remainder of the year, but the girl and I will also be visiting my parents in the US for two weeks in Nov/Dec, so the next Video Game Round-Up! will either be ludicrously long or very short. Hopefully, my parents’ Internet will be good enough that I can use the PS4 Remote Play and continue both Iden Versio and Cal Kestis’ stories while away from my PS4. If not, there are various Switch games to keep me busy.
Until next month (when I will hopefully not be late), play more video games!
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