Owen is a writer based out of Denver and currently preparing his first novel PUSH PULL for publication. In the meantime, feel free to explore his meandering thoughts, movie and videogame op-eds and situational playlists. If you know him from another life, this is a chance for exposure to his creative endeavors. www.owensader.com
Severed so demolished my expectations of what a touch based Vita game can be that I’ve struggled to write about it. The art style is mesmerizing, and fits perfectly in its resonate setting and understated story. Its uniqueness has made me reconsider the medium of “touch” as something more than a wasteland of F2P and convenient mouse conversions.
While it lasted, my days were better because I knew I would get to play Severed later.
The culmination of a gradual descent
Severed makes only one mistake. But it is a cardinal mistake: Death has no consequence. That single choice spiderwebs out into a myriad of gameplay effects, neutralizing entire parts of the game like health items, upgrade accumulation and even inverting the difficulty curve.
Even with that, Severed is a good game. It’s so good I might regret not giving it 5 stars someday.
It’s also the kind of game you only need a fraction of your brain to play. One third parasympathetic nervous functions, one third Forager, one third listening to Queer Eye change somebody’s life in the background (Jonathan Van Ness is a gay superhero).
I wouldn’t call Forager a grind. But it’s also never really challenging (besides the occasional puzzle). It’s just more zen: Make that. Pick up this. Build here. Explore there. A loop expanding gradually outwards with each circumference. The hook is a desire to see what quirky thing is going to pop up next.
It’s full of small, thoughtful gestures like comics and ‘making of’ stories
If a game can be ‘hand-crafted’, that’s what this is. Case in point, the creator’s face greets you every time you boot-up. His care and personality are what elevate the game beyond the simple mechanics and broken combat into something distinct.
It’s the kind of thing I would feel lucky to play with my daughter someday.
Review: ★★★
Memory: ‘Foraging’ so much at once the game slows to a crawl
The PS Vita is an amazing little machine. I distinctly remember playing Escape Plan in a GameStop circa 2012 and being blown away by the screen. Fast forward eight years, and a jail-broken PS Vita might still the best way to portably emulate in 2020
There’s something that the specs can’t capture about the system. It just feels good. I loved my PSP. That little shit traveled the world with me. And while my Vita doesn’t have as many miles on it as my PSP, it’s still seen a big chunk of the globe and been an occasional safety blank over a tumultuous period of my life.
From a strictly monetary sense, the PSP was probably a windfall compared to the Vita. Having a behemoth of engineering like the Nintendo Switch release during your life cycle is a rough set of cards. But the Vita had already been soundly routed by the 3DS at that point. In fact, it was pretty clear from the moment I opened the box the way this was all going to play out.
Still, nothing but love from me.
There’s a part of me that wants to buy the molds for Vita carts and try to talk Sony into a letting Ziggurat continue to press new games (3,000 copies of the recent Limited Run Vita edition of Papers, Please sold out in 30 seconds). It seems like a great outlet for under-appreciated PS3 games like BloodRayne Betrayal.
Someone pitched me a game recently. They said they wanted to make a “triple-i” game. They said they wanted 5 million dollars to make it.
That was the moment I realized that the term “indie” was basically dead and meaningless. If it ever really meant much to begin with.
That’s what I like about Limbo. It’s beautiful, creative, and short. It feels like an indie game (the actual 2-and-a-half year, eight-human, development cycle might belie this feeling). And from what I can understand the team kept their original vision intact.
In that short space of a game is a compulsive attention to detail and theme. Everything fits and everything flows. It’s experimental while remaining limited in scope.
I wish there were more indie games like it- scratch that. Just more games like it.
If someone wanted to start unwrapping the various neurosis that make me… me, I think my videogame purchasing habits would be a good start. It’s never a constant drip. It’s months of nothingness and then binging on all sorts of weirdness.
So unwrapping my most recent package, in my most recent binging streak, is a lovely Sunday dopamine hit:
Could “Video for All” be the best rental name ever?
Oni on PS2 is one of those titles I should have found a reason to play 15 years ago. But considering it’s lost in a Rockstar purgatory, it never really seemed that urgent.
The trajectory of the game after its release must have been heart-breaking for someone because there was clearly a lot of care put into this as evidenced by the Dark Horse pack-in comic (and at least 3 full-sized issues were released at some point).
I love this mini-comic. It’s both grossly overly-explanatory and kind of psychotic. Rocket powered heart-shaped hard drives? Yes please. If the game is 15% of that craziness, I’ll be a fan.
Parachute. Octopus. Parachute X Octopus. Call it a day.
I’ve always been a sucker for Game & Watch ever since I got Game and Watch Gallery 2 on GBC. So Nintendo Club only Game & Watch promotional games are going to check all the boxes. Yeah, it does feel a little lazy to only include three games on each cart (my old GBC game had twice that). But the fact that Vol 2 only has two games and then a third is a mash-up of those two games is so unabashedly classic Nintendo, how can you not love it?
After beating Sekiro you still have one more action to take. It consists of walking up and pushing the action button to que a cutscene.
I sat in the stage for a week. It’s not like I kept playing and mopping things up. I just didn’t touch the game. After all that intensity and adrenaline, to end it all seemed more overwhelming. Because it was a weird, unbalanced, and enjoyable ride.
The show stealer is the combat and boss battles. For me, it’s the most innovative combat engine this console generation. It’s a momentum-based system effortlessly balanced between risk and reward. There’s few things as satisfying in video games as a Mikiri Counter into a deathblow on a boss. Especially after you’ve died twenty times on the jerk beforehand.
And that’s the flow. Cursing and swearing and chipping away at a boss a little more every time. Because the game makes you earn it. Some bosses are so overwhelming that at first that you think you’ll never have a shot. And it’s mostly in the offensive and pressuring in on the bosses that you make progress. Even at the end when you want to lob the last couple hits over the net, it doesn’t let you. You need to earn it.
And that’s what I see as the evolution on the Souls/Bloodborne universe. Because if combat is the evolution, narrative is the anchor.
In the Souls/Bloodborne games you’re a silent anonymous actor that’s been cast into a bizarre world and inexplicably propelled towards a destination that even you (especially you) don’t fully understand. It’s not even really clear why you’re fighting or if you should be fighting. And what little the world does reveal is only a reminder of the depth that exists beyond your perception.
Sekiro on the other hand doesn’t cast you as one of those nameless and faceless agents (but it might as well for how much personality you have). Instead, you’re the hero (or anti-hero). Which is fine, but that demands a more coherent narrative. And I’m sure it’s there. You can kind of read the tea leaves: Oh, these are the bad guys. Oh wait, these guys are. No wait… Confusion, and muddled motivation, doesn’t work as well when you’re trying to make people care about plot and people. It’s all very specific, and yet weirdly esoteric.
And then there’s this small feeling like they planned more. You just feel a sense of last minute cutting sometimes: areas that don’t seem very meaningful, concepts that seem innovative but never really matter (Dragonrot…), and a couple boss battles that break the challenge curve (I’m looking at you Headless Ape, you asshole!). In fairness, those boss battles are few and far between. But when you hit one, man does it take the wind out of your sails. Not because of the challenge, but because it’s so arbitrary. Even when you beat it, you’re not really sure why.
What a flawed masterpiece. Thank you Sekiro for all the Covid love.
It’s probably not fair to call this a first impression. I’m guessing I’m halfway through the game and have been meaning to give my thoughts for a week.
Here are a few quick things that I loved about Sekiro before even booting up the disc: no DLC. From Software has said the game was complete upon release. The Souls and Bloodborne, while incredible, always had this feeling of something incomplete. You always had this feeling that there was more to be uncovered (or you wait until the GOTY and came to the party late). It’s a brave decision that probably doesn’t make financial sense but that I deeply appreciate.
No online components. This one is a little harder to describe. I miss some of the online features like the often intentionally misleading messages in Demon’s Souls. And I even liked killer shades entering the game in Dark Souls. But calling people into the world only works if the levels/bosses were designed with co-op in mind. Nioh is probably the most aggregious example of this. The bosses go from infuriating solo to a cakewalk in co-op. I understand it’s a an “easy” mode, but the idea of specifically designed solo-bosses is attractive at this point.
And so with all that in mind, how do I find the game? It’s an incredibly enjoyable experience: it’s well balanced. Plenty to explore. Linear but flowing.
And the part that I absolutely adore, that I continue to be impressed with, is the combat. Whomever came up with the concept of “Posture” system is brilliant. I would go so far as to say that the combat system is the most dramatic step forward since Demon’s Souls introduced the idea of a fragile constantly rolling protagonist. It almost makes me sad there’s no additional boss DLC…
The weaknesses are also not so much the games fault but the weight of it’s predecessors. The world is interesting, but not as mysterious and challenging as the Souls series, and nowhere near as engrossing as Bloodborne (which is almost unfair given the insane level of creativity and the disparate influences that game pulled together). It’s more literal. There’s a story, and you can even track it to some degree (shocking!). The people look like people. And there’s some demons and monkeys and snakes. But so far it’s mostly feudal Japan.
And the final thing is the graphics. They look good. But somehow they seem less striking than their predecessors, even though this is years later and I’m playing it on a PS4 Pro.
There’s still plenty of game left. It will be a cool experience to see how this comes together.
One of the black holes that I’ve been falling into lately is
trying to figure out how best to play old game consoles (basically, anything
pre HD) on modern televisions. Anyone who’s tried to play a Saturn game on a 4k
TV knows how it basically looks like someone dumped a bunch of pixels into a
blender and that poured that smoothie onto the screen. From what I’ve heard,
buying a late model cathode TV is the most faithful, but that’s a level I haven’t
resigned myself to yet.
So I’m testing a bunch of different options to see how they
look: 4K TV directly, 4K through a newer system digital download (downloading a
PSOne classic on a PS3, for example), an older smaller LCD TV, Nvidia Shield, Computer
emulation (PCSX2), little LCD screen attachments (think PSOne screen), and even
PSP (older but emulation robust) and PS Vita (better screen, limited selection
of titles) respectively.
At the end of the day, I feel there has to be a better way
then all of these things. Raspberry Pi emulation seems to be the preferred
method for most. But a massive data dump of games is also what I want to avoid.
And so as a way to support my ever-sickening video game
collecting habit, I try to own the original game (even though I’m well aware
the developer doesn’t make any money off of me buying it used). So slowly but
surely, I’ll be testing these things out and reporting on them with all the
accuracy and unnecessary depth of a grown man putting off doing something more
important like cooking or raking leaves or auto maintenance.
There’s a cedar closet in my house. Naturally, instead of storing old suits, I’ve converted it into my videogame cabinet. It’s a very slow and satisfying process pulling everything out of the plastic tubs they’ve been sitting in for a decade+ and cataloguing them. I’ve never bonsaied a tree, but I imagine it gives the same sort of OCD pleasure.
Part of the enjoyment is punching games into PriceCharting.com and seeing what has drastically appreciated in value (or, more likely, not appreciated at all). Holistically, the PS2 and PS3 games have faired poorly. The old Atlus games have been a mixed bag (the original Persona is ridiculous given how many formats it exists in, while Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga are laggards). And the Dreamcast and Saturn the notable standouts.
As I’m going through my Saturn collection, I stumbled on this little guy.
Working Designs Ultra Series – RIP
As you can see, this was once owned by a “Premier Video”, a now (obviously) defunct movie rental place in my hometown. I remember buying a number of games from Premier: Battle Arena Toshinden, Virtua Fighter Kids, Shinging in the Darkness.
Wait. Which store?
And Shining Wisdom
I was surprised when I punched it in to see that it sells for $130 on eBay. It’s not the most valuable game I own, but I also can’t imagine ever toping it’s 40x return.
I haven’t played it yet (I’ve only had it for 20 years), but I always liked the shiny clay FMV scenes on the back (most people are probably glad we left these in the 90’s, but I appreciate how far they are from the uncanny valley).
The pinnacle of graphics for me when I was 12 was measured by how “smooth” they looked
I’m sure it’s a generic 90’s Zelda-clone, but that’s one of the best kind of clones (as long as they don’t take themselves too seriously). I’ve told myself I’ll give it a try once I finish cataloguing the rest of this stuff (in about 5 years).
I continue to be amazed by this game. Not just from the weird
little discoveries that seemingly exist throughout the world, but also by the
ingenuity of the puzzles and set pieces. In completing the first Guardian Beast
dungeon, I’ve been amazed at how well it came together. It’s one large,
continuous, perfectly designed puzzle that is both challenging and then upon completion,
obvious. Which is really the best type of puzzle.
It’s not difficult to make an easy or an incredibly obtuse puzzle. But neither of these is satisfying, and the latter is just grating. You can tell when a puzzle is obtuse, because when you learn the solution, you’re more frustrated than anything else (the old Police Quest games are seared into my brain with those moments. Who would inspect the tires before getting in a car!). And then there are challenging puzzles, where upon learning the solution, everything clicks into place, and you kick yourself for not figuring it out sooner. That sensation of how it feels after learning the solution, is how I judge puzzles, and by that measure BOTW is fantastic.
Of course, there are some Nintendo styled limitations that
seem both arbitrary and antiquated (and maybe a little endearing). For example,
you can only mark 100 places on your map, and with the map itself, it can be
difficult to remember where you’ve been and where you haven’t. Cooking, while
fun, is a grind (although I don’t know any games that have really gotten this
right). And yet these are small complaints, and realizing how much detail went
into this game, were probably intentional and debated thoroughly.
