2017 Game Review Haiku, #47 – it’s always monday

Make someone happy
Modern existentialism
Help Bob find freedom

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I can’t believe I’m still doing this. I can’t believe I’ll ever stop. These game summaries in chunks of five, seven, and five syllable lines paint pictures in the mind better than any half a dozen descriptive paragraphs I could ever write. Trust me, I’ve tried. Brevity is the place to be. At this point, I’ve done over 200 of these things and have no plans of slowing down. So get ready for another year of haikus. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

2017 Game Review Haiku, #46 – Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom

Stop robots, transform
Camera sucks, limp punches
Press buttons as told

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I can’t believe I’m still doing this. I can’t believe I’ll ever stop. These game summaries in chunks of five, seven, and five syllable lines paint pictures in the mind better than any half a dozen descriptive paragraphs I could ever write. Trust me, I’ve tried. Brevity is the place to be. At this point, I’ve done over 200 of these things and have no plans of slowing down. So get ready for another year of haikus. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

2017 Game Review Haiku, #45 – Life is Strange, Episode 1 “Chrysalis”

Max can rewind time
To save friends, make friends–control
A storm is coming

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I can’t believe I’m still doing this. I can’t believe I’ll ever stop. These game summaries in chunks of five, seven, and five syllable lines paint pictures in the mind better than any half a dozen descriptive paragraphs I could ever write. Trust me, I’ve tried. Brevity is the place to be. At this point, I’ve done over 200 of these things and have no plans of slowing down. So get ready for another year of haikus. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

2017 Game Review Haiku, #44 – Death’s Life

The most perfect death
Your final destination
A puzzle of clicks

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I can’t believe I’m still doing this. I can’t believe I’ll ever stop. These game summaries in chunks of five, seven, and five syllable lines paint pictures in the mind better than any half a dozen descriptive paragraphs I could ever write. Trust me, I’ve tried. Brevity is the place to be. At this point, I’ve done over 200 of these things and have no plans of slowing down. So get ready for another year of haikus. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

Absolutely nothing special about the platforming and punching in Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom

Everyone’s been talking about collectathons of late with the release of Yooka-Laylee, and I’m a pretty big fan of this…uh, genre. Sub-genre? This style of game. I mean, I like things like Insomniac’s Spyro the Dragon–still working my way slowly through Spyro: Year of the Dragon, somewhere now over 40% complete with plenty more eggs to track down–and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, which split the difference between action elements and collecting shiny trinkets pretty nicely. Shockingly, I’ve never played Super Mario 64 (or 98% of the Nintendo 64’s library). But, having a list of shiny objects to collect is not the worst thing in the world and, in a lot of ways, can be quite calming and satisfying, even if there’s no larger reward at the end of the task.

I’m also a firm believer of playing bad videogames. Not because I’m a masochist and love them more than good games, but because it is important to see all sides of the industry, from the AAA work that takes hundred of people and years to make to the smaller outputs that certainly needed more time in the oven or someone to step in and fight for or against specific design elements. Some less-than-stellar titles from my past include The Incredibles for PlayStation 2 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One for the Nintendo DS. There’s more, but I’m not going to name ’em.

Naturally, these two paragraphs of buildup is for me to talk to you about a little ol’ thing on the PlayStation 3 called Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom, of which I’m currently working my way through. It was a PlayStation Plus freebie for April 2017. If you, like me, have never heard of this beast before, fear not, for I have a summary of sorts. Invizimals is a Spanish augmented reality video game franchise developed by Novarama and published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. The series, which originally began in 2009 as a video game on the PSP, has since inspired toys, trading cards, comics, and an animated television series telling an interconnected transmedia story.

In Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom, you play as the child hero Hiro, who is sent through a Shadow Gate and into the Invizimals world to form allegiances with the various creatures that he encounters, as well as stop a bunch of evil robots for some reason that I stopped following. The uneventful story is told through in-game cinematics, but the introduction is done in full-motion video with actors, like Brian Blessed, that fans of the show would probably be excited to see. All I’ve been able to gather is that robots are bad and violent animals that attack them are cool. Not sure yet where humans fit into the picture.

Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom‘s gameplay is beyond perfunctory and repetitive. Hiro is able to fuse his teeny tiny body with the various Invizimals he meets, which help to unlock a number of abilities. Such as climbing up vines, swinging over inexplicably large drops, swimming underwater, and teleporting past locked gates. You can switch freely between these Invizimals using a weapon wheel menu, though the game will often automatically transform you into a specific Invizimal when the puzzle or platforming section says so. When given a choice, I’ve been sticking with Ocelotl, mostly because I like how the narrator says his name. There are two main actions: attacking and collecting. The fighting is bare bones, with mashing more than enough to get you through it, and the menus for upgrading don’t provide a lot of context for the abilities you are purchasing. As for collecting, well…there’s a lot to snag–Sparks (2,000 in total), Z-Sparks (13,000 in total), pup idols, dark seeds, and unlockable vault doors. None of it is difficult to gather, but I’ve completed some levels with a few items unscooped, and it’s eating away at my brain.

Some general complaints about Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom include that there are no subtitles or even options to muck around in. You may be able to play with the audio levels, but I can’t remember. There’s also next to no explanation for a number of things, especially the Battle Mode, which, from what I saw, is kind of like a one-on-one Pokemon fight in real time, where you can level up your creature. But to what end? I don’t know. There are also too many quick time events, which instantly warped me back to when I first got my Xbox 360 and only had Kung Fu Panda to play for many days.

Look, I’m just not as into Trophies as I am into popping Achievements, and part of that still has to do with how finicky it is to sync them with your profile and the clunkiness that is trying to quickly view the list as you are playing. But whatever. I’ve completed a few games on the PlayStation 3 to 100%, namely Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Doki-Doki Universve, Dragon Fantasy Book 1, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Kung Fu Rabbit, Machinarium, and rain, but have yet to acquire my first Platinum Trophy. I came close with Prototype 2 (at 91%). Sadly, or rather humorously, Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom might be my first Platinum Trophy. It doesn’t seem difficult to get, just a little bit of time and collecting and we’re at our final destination. So while it may not have been the best freebie in the world, at least it served a purpose…for me and my desire to have digital rewards. I’ll let you know when I hit it.

2017 Game Review Haiku, #43 – Fitz Packerton

Bank heist prep work starts
With lots of packing, stuffing
Finicky but fun

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I can’t believe I’m still doing this. I can’t believe I’ll ever stop. These game summaries in chunks of five, seven, and five syllable lines paint pictures in the mind better than any half a dozen descriptive paragraphs I could ever write. Trust me, I’ve tried. Brevity is the place to be. At this point, I’ve done over 200 of these things and have no plans of slowing down. So get ready for another year of haikus. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

2017 Game Review Haiku, #42 – Paisley Princess

Search 5 by 5 grid
For princess, if she wants help
Grind out equipment

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I can’t believe I’m still doing this. I can’t believe I’ll ever stop. These game summaries in chunks of five, seven, and five syllable lines paint pictures in the mind better than any half a dozen descriptive paragraphs I could ever write. Trust me, I’ve tried. Brevity is the place to be. At this point, I’ve done over 200 of these things and have no plans of slowing down. So get ready for another year of haikus. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

Games I’m probably going to get before 2017 ends

We’re inching our way towards the middle of the year, and so far, of the new games released for 2017, I’ve actually gotten a couple. Go me. Namely the re-release of Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King for the Nintendo 3DS and Night in the Woods, which I’m taking my sweet time playing. Other than that, a lot of the big AAA titles have come and gone and will most likely pop up on my annual list of games I didn’t get to play come the end of this year. Still, there are a few I’m keeping my eyes on and will probably get so long as the bank account doesn’t run dry. I don’t need many as my backlog is still ready to burst at any moment.

And now I’m going to briefly touch upon each one. Don’t be shocked when you see that most of them are for the Nintendo 3DS, also known as my beloved confidant.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Mmm a new entry in the The Legend of Zelda series, and one that many, many critics seem to love. This is going to be my reward for finishing up the second chapter of Death, Divorce, and Disney, which has been a little tough to focus on these last few months as life moves forward. I don’t have a Nintendo Switch, so this will join my mighty collection of retail Wii U games, which includes Super Mario Maker, Wii U Fit, and whatever Mario platforming game the system came with that I’ve never bothered to try. What an honor, and what a difficult couple of months it has been trying avoid a lot of details about this game on the Internet. It’s already out in the *ahem* wild.

Culdcept Revolt

For something like four or five years, I’ve been carrying around a folded index card in my wallet. What’s on it, you ask? I’ll tell you–videogame names. Specifically, the ones to be on the lookout for either at used game stores or yard sales because, as my hair gets lighter and my brain heavier, the memory of all these funky titles is not as strong as it used to be. One title on that list is Culdcept, a turn-based strategy video game that shares some features with things like Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering. There was a PlayStation 2 version that I missed out on, but now there’s a new entry in the series for the Nintendo 3DS. I’m all about collectible card games, but digital is the way to go moving forward, so sign me fast. It comes out on August 29, 2017.

Ever Oasis

Ever Oasis is a new action-adventure RPG from the mind of Koichi Ishii, the creator of the Mana series. As you explore the desert and solve puzzling dungeons, you’ll gather resources to build up your oasis with the water spirit Esna. Allies will join your cause and use their skills to slay larger-than-life bosses. Your oasis is your kingdom, and you’ll get to choose which shops to build, stock their inventories, collect a share of the profits, and keep villagers happy by fulfilling requests. The graphics are colorful and cute, and the combat appears to have some depth to it other than mashing attack. It’s been compared to Fantasy Life, which is all I needed to hear. This will be out on June 23, 2017.

Miitopia

Look, I’m actually a big fan of the StreetPass game Find Mii–and its sequel Find Mii 2–which are mini-RPGs that require you meeting people in real life to make progress through each dungeon. In the end, you can earn new hats for your own Mii to wear, which is always fun. Anyways, Miitopia seems to be something like that, but now a full retail release that, I’m assuming, won’t rely entirely on StreetPass-ing people. I’m down with that. Sounds like you’ll cast these Mii characters in various roles across the kingdom, manage friendships, and give them jobs with distinct stats, abilities, gear, and a custom look. So, part Tomodachi Life too. The main quest is to defeat the Dark Lord and restore the stolen faces of the citizens of Miitopia. I’m so going to put my Shaq and Ron Swanson Miis to work. Miitopia drops on July 28, 2017.

Dragon Quest XI

This one is potentially unlikely, considering there’s been no announced released date for American shores, but I think we might hear something about that come E3. Japan gets it this summer for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo 3DS, the lucky bastards. Something I’m super excited about for the Nintendo 3DS version is that graphically it features a different style than the PlayStation 4 version, showcasing 3D graphics on the top screen and 16-bit styled sprites on the bottom screen. Otherwise, it seems to maintain a lot of the traditional elements that make the Dragon Quest series both quirky and enjoyable. Again, no U.S. release date announced yet. I’ll let you know when it is slime to pre-order.

Marvel Heroes Omega

I have a bunch of the Marvel Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends games in my collection, still untouched. However, I did play a ton of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls on the ol’ Xbox 360 and really enjoyed the changes for console. Marvel Heroes has been heading in this direction for a good long while, and while it is free on PC, I’ve not been able to devote the hard-drive space to it. So I’m looking forward to the free-to-play version called Marvel Heroes Omega on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Me thinks I’ll be going with Squirrel Girl because no one is better than Squirrel Girl. That’s just a hard fact, deal with it. This is tentatively scheduled for release in Spring 2017. Hey, that’s kinda now-ish.

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And that’s all I can think of for the foreseeable future. Granted, E3 draws near, and I’m sure there will be some surprise reveals for the holiday season that I might be interested in. I’m not expecting Elder Scrolls VI or Disney Magical World 3 any time soon, but maybe something else might look interesting enough to keep a sliver of my brain occupied until it is released. We’ll see. I’ll say it again, that I really don’t need any more games to play. Oh, also, I still wanna check out both LEGO Worlds and LEGO City Undercover. Sigh.

What games do you plan to still pick up in 2017?

2017 Game Review Haiku, #41 – The Bottom of the Well

Unsettlingly dream
Your landscape of decisions
Shock–I’m not social

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I can’t believe I’m still doing this. I can’t believe I’ll ever stop. These game summaries in chunks of five, seven, and five syllable lines paint pictures in the mind better than any half a dozen descriptive paragraphs I could ever write. Trust me, I’ve tried. Brevity is the place to be. At this point, I’ve done over 200 of these things and have no plans of slowing down. So get ready for another year of haikus. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu.

Yesterday is such an easy game to play

“Yesterday” is not my favorite song from The Beatles, nor is it my favorite point-and-click adventure game, but I enjoy both of them greatly. They are easy to listen to, easy to play, and leave me wanting a little bit more from their respective mediums. For those curious, depending on the day, either this or this is my favorite tune from The Fab Four. I don’t know if I’m ready to commit to saying what my favorite adventure game is yet. That’s kind of like naming the best cheese. Besides, there’s a bunch of so-called classics–here, I’ll name a few, like The Dig, Day of the Tentacle, and The Secret of Monkey Island–that I’ve still not touched despite having copies at the ready, which would probably affect my decision immensely. Probably.

Anyways, Yesterday from Pendulo Studios is a dark beast. A quick research of the company shows that many of its previous games were more comedic, but there’s not much to laugh at in this one, which features a lot of murdering, satanic worshipping, and forced suicides. It all starts with the philanthropic Henry White and his bungling friend Cooper. Both of these men work for a charity committed to helping New York’s homeless people. However, after a serial killer starts murdering members of the community, Henry and Cooper venture into the abandoned Cadway Subway station to see who they can help. It is here that they meet the murderous Choke and his assistant Boris and are forced to take drastic action. That’s more or less the prologue of the game, with the real meat of it focusing on satanic cult investigator John Yesterday many years later. He is recovering from an apparent suicide attempt that has left him suffering from amnesia because of course. Henry White now runs White Enterprises and has employed John to unearth the link between the serial killer and the occult known as the Order of the Flesh.

Yesterday, in terms of gameplay, is a pretty straightforward point-and-click adventure romp. You examine an environment, collect items in your inventory, chat with other characters for background details, and solve puzzles to move forward. Something that gave me a bit of anxiety was the high amount of items you often pick up and the fact that many of them do not vanish after being used. Reminded me of my time with Deponia, which was not a blast. Sometimes these items are used again later on, and sometimes they aren’t. You’ll never know until it is too late. Naturally, as it often happens with these types of games, some of the puzzles don’t follow the best logic this side of brain development, which leads to trying everything on everything in hopes of anything changing. If you only knew the number of solutions I came up with for acquiring a truth flower that didn’t come close to working.

Thankfully, Yesterday offers a couple tricks to help when you are stuck: a hint system and the ability to ping the scene and identify every object you can examine. The hint system builds up over time, so you can’t spam it, but it’ll point you in the right direction, though it can be a bit condescending. I ended up using it more than I would have imagined, but at least it let me stay in game and not close out to look up a walkthrough. You can also, at any time, press a button at the bottom of the screen to highlight every interactive object around you. This is great as it helped reduce pixel hunting, as there were occasionally a couple areas or items that I missed after doing an initial scan of everything.

I was pleasantly surprised with the conversations system. These occur with the two speakers framed in their own windows, with dialogue options in a bulleted list. As you move through each option, the boxes are checked off when the topic is concluded. New topics open us as you chat, and I found myself exhausting every topic, even if it didn’t immediately seem relevant to the puzzles at hand. I found the script and voice acting to be well done, save for that Frenchman who endlessly gave out tips on how to identify a Frenchman. At times, the whole thing reminded me of Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. Occasionally, the subtitles did not match the spoken words perfectly, but that’s just me being an editor and too observant. Lastly, I’ll say that the game’s visuals are gorgeous and detailed and kept me interested in seeing what was next. I especially liked the comic book-style cutscenes.

The loopy narrative about investigating satanic cults and unraveling John Yesterday’s mysterious past comes to a close rather quickly, somewhat abruptly, and the post-credits scene added little to the whole picture and was completely unnecessary. It felt like things were just beginning to build to something grander, but once the villain began to explain why he did everything and how, I knew it was over. Still, I enjoyed going through Yesterday at a slow pace, over a few nights, eating up the atmosphere, characters, and designs to make puzzling out progress less frustrating. Maybe I’ll check out Yesterday Origins or one of Pendulo Studios’ other titles down the road. However, for now, I have some other point-and-click adventure games still to launch in my collection, and I just know that many of them won’t make things as easy as Yesterday did in this tiring day and age of too much to play and not enough hours on Earth. Boo to that.